For those not familiar with the list, here’s a backstory article from the L.A. times.

I am hearing these scripts made the list, but unfortunately I don’t have a point tally on them yet. This is totally uncomfirmed. Stay tuned for changes…

update: These are not official results. Just educated guesses by some creative execs.

update 2: A few more rumored scripts have been added at the end.

update 3: Going to bed. Will have to monitor things in the morning. When the official list comes in, I’ll post it, with comments, links to reviews, and thoughts. If you work at an office and get it before me, please send it along. :)

SNATCHED by Lee Patterson. Repped by UTA. – review

LOOTERS by Ian Shorr. Repped by CAA/Benderspink.

ONE NIGHT STAN by Joshua Friedlander. Repped by ICM/Principato/Young. – review

THE OESTRICH INCIDENT by Glenn Gers.

THE LOW SELF-ESTEEM OF LIZZIE GILLESPIE by Mindy Kahling and Brent Forrester

BURLESQUE by Susannah Grant

BIG SWINGING DICK by Shashwata Chatterjee

THE SITTER by Gatewood & Tanaka – review

THE VOICES by Michael R. Perry

SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN by Simon Beaufoy

LADY SCARFACE by Tony Puryear

THE DETAILS by Jacob Estes – review

PRYOR by Bill Condon

A HAPPENING OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS by Gary Lundy

BY WAY OF HELENA by Matt Cook

SYMMETRY OF BROKEN THINGS by Matthew Hoge

EMERGENCY CONTACT by Bear Aderhold and Thomas F.X. Sullivan – review

LA REX by Will Beall

ENRON by Lucy Pribble

AIR CONDITIONING by Tommy Smith

CEDAR RAPIDS by Phil Johnston – review

ARCHANGEL by Andrew Will

ARIZONA by Sheldon Turner

YEAR 12 by Edward Ricourt

HEADHUNTER’S CALLING by Bill Dubuque

TOKAREV by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller

FAIR TRADE by Matt Aldrich

DREAM ON by Jason Ubaldi

COCHRAN & LAFARGE: THE EPIC STORY OF THE GREATEST FUCKING MIMES THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN by Michael Colton and John Aboud

CHANGE UP by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore

MY SISTER IS MARRYING A DOUCHEBAG by Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux

BALLS OUT by The Robotard 8000

BRAVE INTERNET WARRIOR by Josh Olson

Don’t forget – Black List coverage coming Friday. So excited. Pacing around my place, muttering to my appliances, “Black List.” Favoring anything with a black surface. I don’t know if there will be a review on Friday. Depends on when I get the list. This is too much. Can’t take it. Need to go bite something.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A successful owner of a technology business learns he has a child from a one night stand. He drops everything to temporarily move to the mother’s town, where he attempts to become a part of his daughter’s life.
About: This script sold earlier this year and is being made by “Sunshine Cleaning” and “Sylvia” director Christine Jeffs. J Mills Goodloe, the writer, has an interesting career behind him. He worked for Richard Donner for a long time, associate producing or co-producing the Lethal Weapon films. He also did producing work on Conspiracy Theory, Assassins, and Maverick. He segued into writing, which he slowly found success at through assignment work. Wonderful Tonight is his first sale.
Writer: J Mills Goodloe
Details: 121 pages (9/18/09 draft)

One of my favorite movies of 2009 was Sunshine Cleaning, about a couple of sisters who start a crime-scene cleanup service. Part of my love for that film may have to do with the faint-worthy tandem of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, but it’s mostly because the smart writing and unique choices the writer and director made kept the story continually engaging. It was one of those old school independent films that truly felt independent, not like this newer crop that are obviously studio films in indie clothing.

For this reason, I was excited to see what Jeffs was doing next, and was surprised to find that it was a romantic comedy. The curiously titled “Wonderful Tonight” (curious because it’s not the title I think of when I read the premise) is sort of a throwback to romantic comedies of the past infused with some contemporary flavor, sort of an equal parts Breakfast at Tiffanies and Jerry Maguire. Now I’m not going to claim this is a successor to those films, but it has some qualities that reminded me of them.

Bob Street is like a younger better looking Steve Jobs. He’s recently invented a revolutionary phone that will do everything short of paint your house, and it’s a year away from hitting the market, where everyone assumes it will clean up. Strangely, Bob approaches his business like one approaches a rerun of Friends – you’ll keep it on but you’re never really paying attention. What we come to learn is that this is the way Bob approaches all aspects of his life: always there but casually detached. There’s clearly something missing from his life.

One night while grabbing dinner, Bob runs into 21 year old Claire. She’s young, pretty, a free spirit you might say, and when her and Bob begin talking, she’s intrigued, as most girls are, by the fact that he doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything. He extends her an invitation to hang out, completely indifferent to whether she’ll say yes or no. It works on her better than Axe Body Spray. The two head over to Bob’s multi-million dollar pad, which is when Claire realizes this dude’s a little more than your average drifter.

Conversation and wine lead to that place conversation and wine usually lead to, and the next morning Bob, who’s polite and thankful for Claire’s company, tells her he has to go. He doesn’t really, but this isn’t the first girl Bob’s bedded and he’s just used to the routine. The two leave on good terms, with Bob promising to call. However, he never does.

It’s around a year later when Bob, now fully consumed with the launch of his phone, finds out that that little random soiree of his, kind of resulted in the birth of his daughter. And by kind of I mean it did. Knowing he has a daughter triggers something in Bob, and in the throes of the most important moment of his life, he drops everything to temporarily move to Pennsylvania where Claire and the child live. Although Bob’s not quite sure how to approach this, he does know he wants to be a part of his daughter’s life. The problem is that Claire has written him off and, well, let’s face it, she hates him (wouldn’t you). Bob persists though, looking for any angle to get in, all while trying to salvage some relationship with the woman he abandoned.

I have to admit, one thing I don’t respond to in scripts is when the story seems to be going one way, then all of a sudden goes a completely different way. Reading Wonderful Tonight (knowing nothing about it mind you), I thought this was going to be a simple story about a successful man who meets a “common” girl and a relationship ensues. So when that aspect ends, and we segue into the business, the discovery of the pregnancy, and the resulting move by Bob to Claire’s town so he can be with the kid, it took me awhile to realign my bearings – to say, “Oh, okay, this is what the movie is about.” Luckily, Goodloe understands his craft, and was able to make this transition easier for me than it usually would’ve been. As a result, I was able to focus on the story, which ends up being great fun.

The best aspect of the script is in making a complicated relationship believable. In any romantic comedy, you look for unique ways to create conflict between the characters, ways to keep them apart. Most of the time, those devices are well-worn (one of the characters is married), or worse, not believable. Claire scorning Bob because he ditched her after having his child feels fresh and truthful, creating an intriguing conflict and tension between the couple that I never doubted for a moment.

If I’m going to make a complaint, I’d probably single out the ending. I won’t get into spoilers. I’ll simply say it felt slightly bigger than the movie and a little forced. There was an honesty to this relationship that caught me by surprise. So to take me out of that world in order to give me a more true “Romantic Comedy” ending momentarily reminded me that I was watching a film, and not something that was really happening. It’s by no means a deal-breaker. But I guess I was looking for something more “real.”

Definitely a solid script though. Crack this open and feel good for a couple of hours. We all need it. :)

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The writers that stick out are the ones that spin a scene or a moment in a unique way, who ignore the obvious route and give us something more clever. I’m reminded of a scene in The Sixth Sense, where Bruce Willis wants to learn about his child patient, Cole, but Cole refuses to talk. So Willis plays a “game” whereby he tells Cole to step forward if the answer is yes, and backwards if the answer is no. He then proceeds to ask him about his life, and we get answers by Cole stepping forward or backward. It was an effective way to give us some key exposition about Cole’s life. Here in Wonderful Tonight, there’s a quick but memorable scene where Bob is trying to figure out Claire’s age. He moves to his wine cabinet and says, “Let’s make this easy: We’ll open any bottle that’s not older than you are.” He then proceeds to point to a number of bottles (1979, 1981, 1984) as Claire continues to indicate, “higher.” He settles on an 88, and that’s how we learn her age. It reminded me how easy it is to go the other way. To just have your character ask, “How old are you?” “21.” Which is, unfortunately, what a lot of writers do. I mean, it takes about 1/100 the amount of time right? So always remember to take the extra time to discover the perfect way to craft your scene – a way that makes it slightly different from everything we’ve seen before.

Wait, it’s only Wednesday?? I coulda swore it was Thursday. I’m telling you, B-Day (Black List Day) can’t get here soon enough. Stay tuned for heavy Black List coverage here on Scriptshadow.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: We follow the teenage years of John Lennon, right before he joined The Beatles.
About: Proof once again that a trip to the Black List is a first class endeavor – every year more and more of these Black List scripts are getting made. It’s no wonder producers, managers, and agents are jockeying to get their clients on it. Nowhere Boy landed in the Top 20 of last year’s list with 13 votes. It will be hitting UK theaters on Christmas and in the U.S. sometime…after that I presume. A relative unknown is playing Lennon (Aaron Johnson) and his aunt is being played by powerhouse actress Kristin Scott Thomas.
Writer: Matt Greenhalgh
Details: 123 pages (March 31st 2008 draft)

The reason I hadn’t read this yet despite it being a town favorite last year is because a) I am not a connoisseur of the biopic. And b) it feels a bit like someone scrounging for the few remaining scraps of Beatles history we don’t already know about. I mean what’s next? Ringo’s kindergarten years? Going into this, I imagined a moping John Lennon experiencing “tough times” for an hour and a half, then ending on a shot where he goes into an audition and sees three strapping young lads named, Ringo, George, and Paul. Cut to black. That’s exactly what I didn’t want to see. I was hoping (but not hopeful) to learn about a new side of Lennon, a layer that added to his legacy, something that convinced me this was a story worth telling. Is Nowhere Boy that story? Or is this just a documentary with bigger production value?

We meet John Lennon as a rebellious 15 year old in Liverpool. Although the circumstances behind his situation are murky, John lives with his tightly-strung aunt, Mimi, whose lack of a husband makes John her only priority. His real mom – the gorgeous sparkplug Julia, is nothing but a distant memory to John, as the only thing we know about her is that she gave John to Mimi. That abandonment plays a big role in how John approaches the world, and as you can guess, not in a positive way.

Like lots of artists, John was not an ideal student. The man remembered for his overwhelming ability to love was actually a bit of an asshole in his younger days. Ignoring schoolwork, challenging authority, chasing after girls. While everyone else studies obsessively to make it into college, John pinballs his way around Liverpool, looking for the next temporary high.

But when the highs refuse to add up, John gets it in his head to find his mother. On a whim, he and a friend travel to her house and just like that, there she is. Julia is thrilled to see her little boy, so much so that she pulls him in and screams with delight. As John wraps his brain around the events, they head off for the kind of spontaneous day saved for Audrey Hepburn movies – it’s everything John dreamed for.

This begs the central question of the screenplay: Why did Julia give John away in the first place?

As the first visit leads to a second, and the second to many more, that answer creeps up on us. There’s something slightly off about Julia. Her moments of boundless joy are followed by bouts of sadness. There’s a disregard for social and moral norms around her, as we watch her change in and out of clothes right in front of her 15 year old son, and cozy up to the endless wave of shady men who gawk over her. We know there’s something wrong with Julia. We just don’t know what.

However, it’s Julia who introduces John to rock and roll. This was a time when rock and roll was considered to be the devil, so when this “authority figure” bucks the norm and introduces John to bands like The Delinquents, and his early idol, Elvis, it’s like he’s fallen in love for the first time in his life.

It’s impossible not to readjust your screen when you read the words, “a quaffed up 15 year old in a white sports jacket and pink carnation [approaches] – this is Paul McCartney.” Listening in on Lennon and McCartney’s first conversation feels like you’ve discovered an ancient 8mm film showing the Beatles first jam session. Since Greenhalgh’s such a strong writer, you believe every word that’s uttered, even though you know it’s completely made up. A few scenes later, baby faced future Travelling Wilbury George Harrison, who John initially rejects because of his age, joins the group. Three-fourths of the Beatles are born.

These early stages of the band coincide with John’s climactic confrontation with Julia, where he finally finds out why she left him. The moment is powerful if a little detailed (the explanation gets complicated), and afterwards, there’s an unexpected development that’s so shocking, you’re convinced it’s a the author taking creative license. But it did indeed happen.

Nowhere Boy succeeds where most true stories fail because Greenhalgh spins the story around John’s troubled relationship with his mothers. What could have been (like I mentioned at the outset) our character wandering aimlessly, feeling sorry for himself, looking for “meaning” in his life, is grounded by John’s obsessive drive to be loved and accepted by Julia. You almost assume that if he doesn’t figure it out, he won’t be able to become the musician that would one day change the world.

The only time I wasn’t immersed in Nowhere Boy was when we drifted away from the mother-son relationships, or we weren’t with John, Paul, and George. Seeing John at school and out with other friends, while necessary to set up his life, didn’t have enough focus or firepower to keep us involved. A more focused subplot might’ve been helpful here, but Greenhalgh chose to keep it loose. Luckily, once we get into the second act, the story shifts into those more engaging storylines.

One thing that crossed my mind while reading this, which I think would be super cool, is if you made four of these movies, one for each member of the Beatles. Set them during the exact same time, and have the four weaving in and out of each others’ films, so we could see similar events from different Beatles’ perspective. Come on, that’s way cooler than putting the Beatles in a video game, right?

Oh, and I just have one more question. Where the hell’s Ringo? Why no love for Ringo??

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Try to keep one unanswered question that we’re dying to know the answer to all the way to the end. Writers tend to associate mysteries only with thrillers and horror films. But you can create a mystery (or “unanswered question”) in any genre you write, even a biopic. The central issue of, “Why did John’s mom leave him?” is really what drives the story. It’s why we keep turning the pages. Without that, Nowhere Boy would’ve felt like it was going nowhere. Never force the issue, but if you can add a key mystery or question to your script, it’ll keep the audience’s attention all the way to the end.

trailer note: Is it just me or is this a terrible song choice for the trailer? I mean, when you’re doing a movie about John Lennon, don’t you want to use a song a little more – I don’t know – Beatle-y?

Complicated? You know what’s complicated? Me having to sit here, knowing that the Black List is being compiled, and not being able to see it! That’s complicated. Friday is B-Day. Right here is where you’ll get the most comprehensive Black List coverage on the web. So count it down with me.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A divorced woman in her 50s starts sleeping with her ex-husband, who’s now married to the very woman he left her for, making her the “other woman.”
About: This is Nancy Meyers’ (The Queen of Rom Com) new movie. The Father Of The Bride writer also helmed the project, which stars Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, and Steve Martin. Alec Baldwin is getting some Oscar buzz for his performance in the film, but consider it more mosquito level buzz and not, say, fire alarm buzz, as it seems these kudos popping up only a week after Alec Baldwin declared he was a failed actor and plans to retire soon (yeah right. Like any actor has ever willingly retired). Sympathy buzz to keep him in the game methinks?
Writer: Nancy Meyers
Details: 127 pages (2008 draft)

When you’re talking about rom coms, Nancy Meyers is the genre’s go-to scribe. When and how that happened, I’m still trying to figure out. It probably has something to do with Hollywood deciding to destroy the romantic comedy by putting Matthew McConaughey in all of them. By giving female audiences some eye candy to look at for two hours and not a lick more, they lowered the bar so much, not even Vern Troyer can get under it. Now that would be a rom com worth seeing. Vern Troyer falling in love.

Anyway, I want to make it clear that I don’t dislike Nancy Meyers. But I do think she heavily skews her writing to please the female crowd, and pretty much ignores us dudes. As a result we get a lot of overly sappy, heavy on the schmaltz, love fests whose greatest accomplishment is making your female date go, “Awwwww” at least five times during the two hours. Whatever happened to romantic comedies with edge? Like Pretty Woman? The lead female was a hooker for God’s sake! I wonder if anybody’d have the balls to make that today.

Well, word on the street is that “It’s Complicated” is good. Of course, this time of year every movie is good because, well, it’s “For Your Consideration” season. For those who don’t live in Los Angeles, this is a very strange fortnight whereby studios pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to place “For Your Consideration” ads in the major trade magazines. You see very intensely lit dramatic shots of, say, Kevin James, accompanied by, I kid you not, the words, “For Your Consideration. Best Actor: Kevin James.” The magazines don’t even run any articles during this time. It’s all about propping up actors and movies that have no business being propped up.

But I digress. Luckily, we get to cut through the shit here and see the project in its most basic buzz-free form, the script. So how is the script for “It’s Complicated?”

Jane is in her fifties but, as Meyers puts it, “…knows 50 is not the new 40 and because of that, she is still described by all who know her as beautiful.” It’s been ten years since her and her lawyer husband, Jake, got divorced so you’d think she’d be over it. And for the most part, she is. But the youngest of Jane’s three children is finally heading off to L.A. to pursue acting, and while Jane’s thrilled for her, it means she’ll be all by herself for the first time since the divorce.

Her rom-com friendly occupation of owning a bakery only takes so much time out of the day, so she’s decided to distract herself by building an addition to her house that will take advantage of the wonderful view on the far side of her home (rich people have such difficult lives). Adam, the handsome-but-doesn’t-know-it 40 year old architect, swoops in to manage the project and although the last thing Jane wants is the complication that comes with any sort of romantic involvement, there’s clearly a chemistry between the two, so she lets him in.

However, when she and the kids fly in to Chicago for their son Luke’s college graduation, Jane finds herself repeatedly bumping into Jake. Jake’s life-path feels a bit like the bitter divorced female’s version of the perfect revenge. He may have landed the hot young piece of ass he left his wife for, but reality kicked in five years later, and now the two have nothing in common, never have sex, and Jake has to take care of a bizarre 5 year old named Pedro who he has nothing in common with.

When his wife cancels out on a last second date, Jake ends up bumping into Jane at dinner. The two loosen up with a couple of drinks, and before you know it, they’re reminiscing about old times. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a story about two exes having drinks and reminiscing about old times that DIDN’T end up in sex. Sadly (or happily) Jake and Jane don’t break the mold (side note: Meyers gets extra credit for giving us the first over-50 sex scene in eight years that doesn’t mention Viagra!)

For those women out there complaining there are no empowering roles for women in movies these days, well get out your butterscotch cookies and celebrate because “It’s Complicated” is your salvation. This is always Jane’s story, and after the sex, it becomes all about Jake’s pursuit of Jane, with Jane calling the shots, as opposed to the other way around, which is what we’ve been seeing for the last 100 years in film.

Back at home, between square footage measurements and tile choices, the cautious Adam makes his move on Jane. The guy was hurt a lot worse than she ever was (his wife left him for his best friend) and it’s clear he hasn’t emotionally opened himself up since the divorce. Jane, with her motherly instincts and safe demeanor, seems like a perfect fit for him, which makes his pursuit all the more teeth-clenching, as we can see that she’s obviously still in love with her ex-husband, and is surely going to hurt this poor guy.

The script’s drive extends from this dilemma, as we wonder which man she’s going to choose. Meyers does a really good job making you care about both of them, resulting in a final decision that’s bittersweet, since we’re pulling for both to win the prize.

What I realized while reading “It’s Complicated” is that while Meyers’ dialogue is by no means great, it’s always very good, keeping the reader engaged and attentive. She also does a solid job of juggling characters, which there are many of in the script. Afterwards I remembered them all, which, as anyone who reads a lot of non-professional scripts knows, is really freaking rare.

But despite how well it’s written and despite how well Meyers understands the craft, “It’s Complicated” is never anything more than a well-executed romantic comedy. It doesn’t possess that “je ne sais quoi” (yes, I just went French) that elevates a romantic comedy above the standard fare. But it’s still miles better than anything about girlfriends with ghosts and their pasts or ten ways to make sure she knows that you’re not into yourself, or whatever the hell those movies are. This is a movie with some heart and if you’re into romantic comedies, it’s a present you may want to unwrap come Christmas day.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If someone were to ask me what the top three mistakes beginning writers make when writing a script were, somewhere in there would be “coming into the story too early.” You hear this advice in every screenwriting book ever written. Still, writers continue to ignore it. If you take It’s Complicated as an example, here’s the idea Meyers started out with: “What if a woman lost her husband to the younger hotter woman he had an affair with, then ten years later, he realized his mistake and began to have an affair with her, his ex-wife?” It’s a great idea. But there’s a lot of ways to approach it. Specifically, when, during that timeline, do you jump into the story? The beginning writer will usually jump in early. He may even start the script back when the husband and wife were still together, showing how the young hottie-potottie came in, wedged them apart, took him, maybe show a montage or jump to ten years later, then get into the current problems in these ex-couple’s lives, etc. This would be a mistake. The hook here is Jane having an affair with her ex-husband. *That’s* the story we came to see so that’s the story we have to get to as soon as possible. Wisely, Meyers recognizes this, and starts the movie ten years after the divorce. The stuff about the past is alluded to in dialogue quickly and efficiently, allowing us to focus on the hook, which is where the meat of the story is. So always ask yourself, “Have I started late enough in my story?”