A modern day city war is an idea that needs to be done and reading through this review, I have to say this idea sounds pretty fucking awesome. This may be an older script, but they should think about making this. It could be insane. You’d need to rewrite it and tone down the 80s derivative cheesiness – approach it more realistically – but once you did that, hell, call Michael Mann and get this thing done. I agree with Roger here in his “What I learned” section. I never understood putting quotes or anything else before the script unless it was something that was going to be placed in the movie. Anyway, here’s Roger Balfour with the review (p.s. One day left for the Top 105 Logline participants. Get’em in people. Get’em in).

Genre: Action
Premise: A Colombian Drug Cartel declares war on Los Angeles when Zack Callahan, a disgraced cop who now works as a forensics technician for the LAPD, singlehandedly discovers the Cartel’s 2.4 billion dollar “Cash Mountain”. Zack reclaims his badge and his gun as he struggles to save Los Angeles from the mercenaries sent to destroy the city and reclaim the money.
About: I would venture to guess this was written in 1989 or 1990. I am not certain. But this is what I do know: Jonathan Lemkin has written for “Hill Street Blues”, “21 Jump Street”, and “Beverly Hills 90210”. He wrote the screenplays for “The Devil’s Advocate”, “Lethal Weapon 4”, and “Red Planet”. He also adapted the Stephen Hunter novel “Point of Impact”, released as the Mark Wahlberg vehicle, “Shooter”. Interestingly, he wrote a modern-day time-travelling werewolf Western called “Howl” that he was going to direct for Warner Brothers. To which Roger asks, what happened to this project and can I read the script, please?
Writer: Jonathan Lemkin

This is a screenplay for men.

Okay, it might be a screenplay for girls too, but only if you’re the type of gal that loves the 80s zeitgeist flick where a cop, pushed into his red zone, embraces the Dirty Harry inside of him so he can defeat the bad guys.

In other words, this is a screenplay for boys and girls who love “Die Hard” and “Lethal Weapon”, the films of Sam Peckinpah, and the music of Ennio Morricone.

It’s also a perfect example of how to write a fucking action movie, and I dare say it, it’s what “Live Free or Die Hard” should have been.

Who’s this Zack Callahan cat? Does he measure up to John McClane or Martin Riggs?

For a guy that considers McClane and Riggs as cinematic father figures, I have to be up front and say ‘No, Callahan doesn’t’.

But he comes pretty damn close. He has charm, he’s excellent at what he does, but he lacks that suicidal, Devil-may-cry edge that gives those characters that extra ‘oomph’.

And that’s the only aspect that holds this script back from an [x] impressive rating.

Although he’s extremely well-written, he’s cut from the same cloth as McClane and Riggs. And rather than feeling original or classic, Callahan feels more like a carbon copy.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t care about him or that this script is a “Die Hard” or “Lethal Weapon” copycat. On the contrary, there’s some cool stuff in here with some city-wide destruction that made me think of “2012”. While perhaps not on par with the above mentioned cop films, it’s better than all of their sequels.

What about the villain, Escobar?

Carlos Escobar is a strong villain. To continue this cop movie parlance and be succinct, he’s more memorable, more lethal than all of the villains in those two franchises, with the exception being Hans Gruber. And he doesn’t have to perform naked tai chi to achieve this status, either.

Escobar doesn’t monologue, he kills.

In fact, that’s how this script opens. In Colombia. With Escobar garroting the poor guy who made the mistake of laundering a Cartel’s drug money for his own personal gain. This caught the attention of Rafa, the head of the Cartel and Escobar’s boss.

Rafa tells Escobar, “The entire western distribution is backed up. He could have touched every level. I don’t want to leave any of it. I want you to go to LA. Start with that prick banker Collier. Clean up this mess.”

And Escobar is off to LA, where he kills the prick banker (making it look like a suicide) and follows the money trail, killing everyone that dared to meddle with Rafa’s business.

What’s interesting is that Escobar isn’t the uber-villain or the guy that’s in charge. He’s just the guy that cleans up messes and takes care of business. However, he is a mercenary, a force of nature like Chigurh in “No Country For Old Men”.

The trail of corpses catches the attention of our hero, Zack Callahan, a technician for the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division. This script gets points for creating a CSI character before CSI hit our television sets. He uses his forensics and ballistics know-how to reveal that Collier, the prick banker, didn’t commit suicide.

When Escobar kills four heavyweight crack dealers in South Central LA, Callahan matches bullet fragments he found in the prick banker with the bullets at the South Central LA crackhouse.

And it’s not long before Callahan becomes obsessed with the case, and using some old-fashioned deductive gumshoe work, manhandling, and state-of-the art crime-scene investigation, discovers the location of “Cash Mountain”.

What, pray-tell, is “Cash Mountain”?

“Cash Mountain” is a hidden treasure-trove of U.S. currency. It’s 2.4 billion dollars of laundered drug money stored in the derelict Bob’s House of Carpet building.

When the money is stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of downtown Los Angeles for safekeeping, a federal feeding frenzy ensues as the city, DEA, ATF, Customs and the U.S. government fight amongst themselves to get a piece of the spoils.

Meanwhile, Escobar is about to remind everyone that the money doesn’t belong to them. In an act that is a declaration of war on Los Angeles, Escobar uses a dirty state-side lawyer to recruit the best (and scariest) team of mercs Cartel money can buy.

It’s understood these are all men Escobar has used before, perhaps on an individual basis. Not this time. Now, they’re joining forces to bring a city to its knees.

It’s a helluva act turn that hurls this story from a forensic caper into a destructive, grand-scale Spaghetti Western. When the mercs arrive in town for the money, it’s not unlike The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming to reclaim what’s always belonged to them.

They are here for their gold, and they are here to destroy Los Angeles.

Who are our Horsemen?

There’s Paul Balor, a hired killer in his fifties that’s survived this long for a reason. There’s Henri Mercier, a wiry and fit Frenchman. Prakorb Puthong, a looks-can-be-deceiving Thai assassin who is very fond of liquid fire. And the youngest villain of the bunch who represents the new breed of contract killer, J. Boone.

At one point in the script, a C.I.A. dude muses, “A three to five man combat team properly armed, with quality intelligence, could bring this city or any other on this side of the iron curtain, to a complete and total standstill in less than three days.”

And he’s right.

Our villains use everything from grenade launchers, surface-to-air missile batteries, rocket launchers, flame throwers, and generally any weapon you can think of to accomplish their task.

The first thing they do is sabotage the two Converter Stations that supply 80 percent of Los Angeles’ power. Men are reduced to dust in the resulting electrical storms and grass fires and the city is cast into darkness.

Next, they wage guerilla warfare on the LAPD, ultimately infiltrating their comm system. When Zack joins the fray, the resulting battle destroys a city block as bullets, napalm and missiles are exchanged with little respect for human life.

The Mayor is reluctant to show quarter as long as the damage to the city is still in the black. He’s convinced he can use the 2.4 billion dollars to turn L.A. around. He could send every kid in Watts to an Ivy League School. He could pave up all the potholes, get rid of the smog problem.

This is his reasoning: Those electrical plants that were blown up? They only cost forty-two mil, each. Fuck ‘em, he’s not giving up the 2.4 billion dollars. He’s still in the clear! That city block that was destroyed? That block was scheduled for demolition, anyways. These terrorists are saving him money!

He is not going to evacuate the city. After all, “We live in LA because we like catastrophe.”

The battle moves to LAX as Escobar and his team destroy the runways and various buildings with mortars. The National Guard is called in. The mercs attack the interstate system with humvees, razor wire, spikes and belt-fed machineguns.

They demolish a congested freeway overpass with explosives and the resulting helicopter, humvee and surface-to-air missile battle interrupts the seventh game of the World Series when it spills into Dodger Stadium, panicking the fifty-six thousand people there.

It’s pretty fucking fantastic.

How’s the 3rd Act?

It’s the classic end-game ‘Give us back our money or we’re going to blow up all of Los Angeles’ scenario. Carlos and his men take control of the Aurora, a Liquid Natural Gas tanker situated in the LA harbor.

He’s going to use its facilities to create a Blehvey, aka A Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion if his demands are not met.

Zack teams up with his Captain from SID to try and defuse the fancy bomb Escobar has put together:

The mercs are basically using a mainline located in the subway tunnels as a spark, which they will detonate. The subway system will act as a fuse that ultimately leads to the tanker. Blow up the mainline? Blow up the tanker.

Blow up L.A.

The merc deaths are pretty satisfying. Not your usual 80s action mano-a-mano death-matches, but more like Spaghetti Western duels utilizing the dangerous chemicals aboard the tanker.

The final duel between Zack and Escobar is really cool, and it involves a Panzerfaust 3 RPG anti-tank weapon and a flare. It’s good stuff.

Earlier, you mentioned that Zack is a disgraced cop?

Yes. Zack blames himself for a SNAFU that resulted in the deaths of fellow police officers. The manifestation of his guilt was turn in his gun and badge and take up as a technician for the Scientific Investigation Division.

He also became so OCD and withdrawn his wife divorced him.

The emotional core of $$$$$$ is Zack redeeming himself and reconnecting with his ex-wife.

It allows for some character depth, but make no mistake, this script is all about the Good Guy vs. Bad Guys pyrotechnics.

I really enjoyed how this read like a modern day Spaghetti Western, and I think it’s the highlight of this script that separates it from stories like “Lethal Weapon or “Die Hard” and really gives it an air of being its own thing. It feels like a Sam Peckinpah flick, and if he were still around today, I’d love to see this made with him as director. For an 80s actioner, there’s probably no higher compliment.

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

What I Learned: I’m not sure what to think about screenplays that start with a page full of quotes, as usually they seem pretty extraneous to the reading experience. But this quote kinda fucked with my head and it was one of the reasons that I decided to read the script:

“Imagine drug gangsters murdered Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and his predecessor Ed Meese. Also they kill half the Supreme Court, and then say, another couple of hundred lesser judges, the Editor of the New York Times, and the Mayor of Chicago, and assassinate a presidential candidate, who probably would have won, while he was campaigning.

“That’s about the size of things in Colombia. So, blowing up Los Angeles really doesn’t seem that far out of line…”

This quote is attributed to a Time Article entitled, “Going Too Far”, and it really set the tone for what this script was going to be about. It made me want to read the script. So I would say, if you are going to throw caution to the wind and open up your script with a quote, pick something that’s going to do the work of a logline and make the reader want to dive into the story.

Remember, if you haven’t sent me your ten pages or 1 page synopsis yet (to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com), you have until Monday night at 11:59pm, Pacific Time, to do so. If you are late, your spot will be given to an alternate, so make sure to get those entries in on time!

In case you haven’t been checking in every day (tsk tsk), there’s an article in this month’s (December) Wired about Scriptshadow. Up until recently, it was only available in the print version, but they’ve since put it up online. So check it out. (p.s. I don’t look like that guy in the picture).

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: In the year 2047, a man pursues an illegal super-gene that can extend a person’s life by 300 years.
About: J.J. Abrams and David Klass sold this back in 1994. That was back when J.J. was writing and selling a lot of scripts, including the complicated (and much better than the movie) Regarding Henry, which he wrote when he was 24. One of the craziest writing stories I’ve ever heard is when a movie at the beginning of production (I’m so sorry but I’ve forgotten the title) didn’t feel like they had the script right. So they called J.J. and told him they wanted him to do a quick 1 week rewrite, and would pay him 1 million dollars for it. J.J. showed up but once he got there, everyone decided that they didn’t want to change the script afterall. So J.J. just hung out for a week and picked up a million dollar check. It’s one of those stories that sounds too good to be true but this is apparently well-known. Does anybody know what movie I’m talking about? I’m pretty sure it was a Michael Bay movie. Maybe The Island?
Writer: J.J. Abrams and David Klass

J.J. Abrams, to me, is this generation’s Steven Spielberg. Like a character in a video game, everything he touches is infused with an upgrade. This is a man who’s tapped into the collective conscience in a way nobody else is even close to right now. I mean, he figured out a way to make Star Trek cool! But before J.J. was an A-list Hollywood director. Heck, before he was even a TV director, he was a writer, like you and me. And this is one of his early efforts.

The last big 90s sci-fi script I reviewed was Kurt Wimmer’s Exit Zero. It’s funny reading these scripts because no matter how talented the writers are, the scripts are just dated. I mean, I think every 90s action script ever written has a guy running towards a window, shooting it, then jumping through, hurtling towards death, only to be saved by some “surprise” last second mechanism. Oh, and don’t forget the motorcycle chase where the motorcycer evades his pursuers by sliding under a semi truck. Yup, sadly, both of these appear in Shelter. If I see either of these scenes in screenplays TODAY, btw, I stop reading.

I have nothing against 1994 J.J., but 1994 J.J. is pretty fucking terrible. I mean this is a sprawling mess of a script in every way possible. It’s got no story. It’s got no direction. It’s got no point. Every bad choice that could have been made is made. I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll start with the story. If you can call it that. It’s New York City 2047. The distant and soulless Jack Muller is a high-tech thief. He and his futuristic mod squad break into a rich dude’s penthouse and jam a needle into his spine, extracting what, I think, is important molecular fluid that may or may not allow people to live for 300 years.

Jack meets up with his father, Derrek, who’s thrilled about this super-fluid, because the two can sell it to the Russians for millions of dollars and retire. Except while they’re making the deal with said Russians, the police swarm in and whisk them off to jail. For reasons I forgot and because there’s no way in hell I’m wasting any time going back to check, it’s determined that Jack will go into a witness relocation program.

The script then says the hell with what you thought this story was and becomes a witness relocation script! Are you bored out of your mind yet? Jack becomes “Michael” and moves in with the mysterious “Susan,” someone who’s also done something so bad she can’t talk about it. The two, even though they hate each other, must pretend to be husband and wife. Under no circumstances are they ever allowed to talk about their pasts. After an endless number of “Michael and Susan hang out” scenes that I swear had more tryptophan in them than tonight’s turkey dinner, we learn that Susan’s actually a double-agent, part of a setup to try and extract information out of Michael about where he’s hidden the immortal gene fluid.

Oh but wait! It gets complicated when Susan starts to fall for Michael! Ugh, please kill me now. This is worse than New Moon. Eventually she comes clean to him. Michael’s pissed. He leaves to try and reconnect with his dad. In the meantime, Susan tries to figure out where her allegiance lies. Does she help the “Program” get the immortal fluid? Or does she help Michael escape? I wish she would’ve picked option number 3. Killing me.

I’d be interested to hear what J.J. thought of this script today. Would he champion it? Would he admit that it sucked? For a man who can get anything he wants produced, there may be a damn good reason this remains unmade. Still, it’s an interesting glimpse into J.J.’s early sci-fi forays. For example, there’s a scene early on with robot motorcyclers that no doubt inspired the robot motorcycle that chases young Captain Kirk in the Star Trek movie. Other than that though, I’m giving this one a big fat snooze-alert. You’ve been warned.

Script link: No link

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

What I learned: So work with me here for a second. Why would you create a story where your characters sit around and do nothing? Why would you create a movie where your characters wait for things to happen to them? If you’re writing a story, have it be with a character who’s *actively pursuing his goal!* That makes your character *active*. The fact that he’s *doing* something will add a thousand times more excitement to your movie. It’ll also make your main character a thousand times more interesting. Put your character in a story where he waits around dozens of pages for something bad to happen and you’re going to bore your reader into a coma.

Genre: Independent Drama
Premise: Recently released from the nuthouse, Roger Greenberg moves into his vacationing brother’s home, where he befriends the nanny, who’s 15 years younger than him.
About: From the writer/director of The Squid And The Whale and Margot at The Wedding comes “Greenberg,” Noah Baumbach’s latest film.
Writer: Noah Baumbach

Oh boy. A Noah Baumbach script. Welcome to Depression-ville. I will admit that The Squid And The Whale displayed a writer/director with a unique voice. But Margot at The Wedding was so relentlessly depressing and cruel, I wanted to crawl up in a ball and weep for a fortnight afterward. Not exactly the feeling I like to have when I’m leaving the theater. For this reason, Greenburg wasn’t on my radar. I figured I’d catch it on a bored Tuesday night as a $1 kiosk rental while I spent the majority of my attention scouring useless entertainment and sports blogs (does anybody get their info from traditional websites anymore?)

But this trailer changed all that. I don’t know what the rapidly changing litmus test says about Ben Stiller these days, but I still love him. He’s the only comedian who’s “sold out” yet still maintains the ability to be funny in those sanitized PG-13 family roles. Stiller is actually just what a Noah Baumbach movie needs. Someone who can handle the weightier stuff, but who carries that “It’s all going to be okay in the end” demeanor. The man doesn’t take life too seriously. And that mixes well with a writer/director who obviously does.

Well, I’m happy to report that not much has changed in Baumbach’s sixth film. “Greenberg” is a slow, depressing, sometimes cruel, frustrating, cynical and awkward look at a relationship that never stood a chance from the word ‘go.’ Florence is a 25 year old nanny/housesitter whose wealthy Los Angeles clients are spending a couple of weeks vacationing in Vietnam. Roger, the indie-freely “recently got out of the nuthouse” brother of the family, is going to be staying at the home while the family’s away. This opens up the door for Roger and Florence to have a totally unhealthy and ill-advised relationship. Needless to say, if there were an Awkward Relationships Olympics, anything that Noah Baumbach writes would medal. But Greenberg definitely takes the gold. For example, besides the numerous disastrous attempts at oral sex that occur (seemingly every ten pages or so), we must endure the painstaking trainwreck of conversations that happen afterwards in high-definition detail.

The relationship actually follows the “guy not ready for commitment” model but does so in the ultra demented Baumbachian universe. Greenberg’s issue is that he doesn’t want to do anything. He just wants to live a normal unattached existence. The problem is, he gets bored quickly, and therefore ends up hanging out with people he doesn’t want to be hanging out with. When things don’t go well, which is always, he bitches to them about being in his life, as his plan is to not be doing anything. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, not me either really. The biggest victim of this compulsive waffling is Florence, who is so vague in her own approach to life, that the two spend the majority of the script dancing around every possible definitive statement in the history of language.

Along the way, the family dog gets sick and the two are roped into keeping the poor pooch alive, at least until the family gets back. Greenberg also ends up connecting with old friends in sort of a “10 years later” version of Garden State. His good buddy Ivan is going through a divorce and Greenberg stammers his way through his version of support. There’s also a backstory about Greenberg being in a band with Ivan and another friend that went south during a sketchy record deal. The still unhealed wounds leave a black cloud over most of their interactions. Since Florence is also a singer, Greenberg starts to get the bug again, and at the ripe old age of 41, wonders if he shouldn’t be giving that old singing career one more try. But if you’re looking for a feel-good comeback story, I don’t think I have to remind you that you’re watching a Noah Baumbach movie.

The toughest thing about a Noah Baumbach piece is that he writes from a place of such deep hatred for the world, of its conventions, its standards, its idiosyncrasies, that unless you harbor that exact same outlook, the script feels more like a blunt object repeatedly smashing against your head than an eye-opening observational piece that reaffirms your beliefs. If Baumbach could balance this hatred out with some more humor, I feel like he could really broaden his audience. I mean even though Larry David writes in a different genre, he writes from that same place as Baumbach. The difference is, he has fun with it. When I put down this script, I felt like I’d been through a 24 hour screaming match with one of my best friends. It was too much for me.

One final note. I really really like this actress Greta Gerwig, who plays the role of Florence, and I think she’s going to blow up soon. She brings something totally unique to the table, unlike anything I’ve seen from any other actress. I’ll be seeing this movie to see her.

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

What I learned: Noah Baumbach doesn’t follow any conventional screenwriting practices whatsoever. As a result, you get sort of an awkward strange unfocused story. If that’s where your love of writing lies, then by all means embrace it. However, I will make a promise to you. You will never sell one of these types of scripts if you’re an unsold screenwriter. What Baumbach brings to the table is that he’s also a director, which means the script is more of a package than a standalone screenplay. If you’re going to write this kind of script, I strongly recommend that you plan to direct it yourself. It’s really the only way these kinds of screenplays get made.