Genre: Drama
Premise: A reclusive gardener’s life is turned upside-down when he’s given a unique plant thought to be extinct.
About: I originally thought this was the project Chris Weitz was doing next, but it turns out this is an older script that got some heat back in the day but never made it over the hump. Well, that needs to change, cause it’s a damn good script.
Writer: Jay Sherman
Details: 109 pages – Older draft (2005)

Contrary to popular belief, The Gardener is not a prequel to Garden State. So you won’t find Zach Braff staring melancholy-like into the camera while a hip indie band plays wistfully in the background. Instead, The Gardener is one of those movies with such a bland title, you figure it has to be amazing to have overcome such a handicap.

Turns out, that’s exactly the case. The Gardener is one of the best written most surprising screenplays I’ve read in awhile. Of course, it starts out with a story almost as mundane as its title. Lem Gardner, 30s (yes, his last name is Gardner), is an unassuming man out of touch with the world, who finds his only joy in gardening. Plants he understands. Humans? Not so much. Orphaned at 12 when his mother, also a gardener, died, Lem’s become the head gardener at the Botanical Gardens, meticulously taking care of plants the way most people would take care of their family.

Lem is forced to work with numerous slackers on the grounds, most of whom could care less about the difference between a fern and a carnation. One of the more eccentric characters is Gabriel, a wild-eyed hippy who’s made the Botanical Gardens parking lot his personal living quarters for the last three months. Lem has spent most of that time trying to convince him to leave, but see that’s Lem’s problem. He’s too passive. He’s unable to take charge. Even people as meek as Gabriel walk all over him. But when Gabriel finally decides that it’s time to move on, he leaves Lem with a parting gift: a weedish mess of a plant so obscure it’s assumed to have gone extinct. Lem, falling over himself at his fortune, begs Gabriel to tell him where he found it. But Gabriel is cryptic, telling him only to keep the plant in a dark place, and to never interfere with its growth.

The housing of the plant begins a chain reaction that turns Lem’s uneventful life upside-down, starting with an attractive couple who moves in next door. The kind and lovely Beatrice’s garden is is an absolute mess and when she finds out that Lem is a gardener, well naturally she enlists his green thumb to bring it back to life. Her sketchy overbearing boyfriend Wayne is skeptical of the plan but is about as threatened by Lem as one would be of Pee-Wee Herman, so he allows it.

So far, so average, right?

Well it turns out that The Gardener’s been buttering you up for the big twist – a what-the-fuck moment that will have you going back to read the page over again. During his evening routine, Lem hears a bump in the basement. He hurries down, looks around, and hears a “Hello?” He centers himself, attempting to locate the voice’s source, only to find that it’s coming from… the tank containing the plant! He walks over and notices a tiny naked man in the tank. This man, Terrarium Man, is freaking out, wondering what the hell he is and why the hell he’s in a tank. Lem is, of course, equally freaked out, but after the initial shock, the two realize that this tiny man has been birthed from the plant. Yeah, I know. What the fuck??

Despite the fact that there’s a tiny man now living in his basement, Lem does his best to go about his daily life, a life that’s spinning out of control due to a stray cat hell bent on destroying the prize statue in his backyard, the emotional fallout of Beatrice realizing that her boyfriend doesn’t love her, the spoiled son of the Botanical Gardens’ owner waiting for his father to die so he can turn Lem’s garden into a golf course, and the subsequent birth of both a Terrarium Woman (who for some reason can’t see Lem), and a Terrarium Boy.

To say that The Gardener is all kinds of bizarre is an understatement. But it’s bizarre in all the right ways, which is what matters. This is that rare combination of indie sensibility mixed with semi-high-concept goodness that you just don’t see in many scripts. It has that “I have no idea what the fuck’s going to happen on the next page” factor I so often complain about never seeing anymore. Not to mention the writer, Jay Sherman knows how to write. He juggles multiple plotlines here and each one escalates at the perfect pace, so we never come back to a storyline we’re not interested in seeing more of.

If there’s a complaint, I guess I would’ve liked to have seen more crossover between the Terrarium universe and the real universe. As they stand, they’re completely separate, making the only way they affect one another through Lem. This works, but I can’t help but think there were some more potentially interesting plotlines missed by isolating the two. I mean, even if it was as simple as Beatrice discovering the plant – that could’ve led to a hell of a conversation.

The Gardener won’t be for everyone, but if you liked The Ornate Anatomy Of Living Things or Dogs of Babel, or just have a jones for something offbeat, you’ll want to check this out.

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

What I learned: Are you one of kabillions who like to write character-driven scripts with little in the way of plot? The “high-concept” indie flick is a great way to write something that gets you respect in the industry, with the added benefit of potentially getting made. I see so many “indie” character-driven scripts that bring nothing to the table outside of depressed characters trying to make it to the last page. If you want to write about characters like that and, oh I don’t know, have people actually care, consider adding an extra element to your premise that elevates it into something more than your average independent film. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, 500 Days Of Summer, The Ornate Anatomy Of Living Things. All of these films/scripts are able to explore their characters on a deeper level, but do so inside a concept that makes them more accessible to a mainstream audience. Some people think of these twists/quirks as gimmicks. But it’s a small price to pay if it sends your script to the top of the pile.

Genre: Period Drama
Premise: In the early 1900s, after their family is brutally murdered, two brothers choose different paths in life, one becoming an FBI agent, the other a criminal.
About: The 19th ranked script on last year’s Black List (right behind “Going The Distance” and above “Nowhere Boy”), The American Way was purchased by Anonymous Content and The Film Department. Described as a cross between Once Upon a Time in America and The Untouchables, the spec was Brian Kistler’s first sale right out of AFI Film school. It has since been retitled, “Murder Inc.” and will be directed by Ericson Core. Core was a D.P. on “Payback,” “The Fast and the Furious,” and “Daredevil.”
Writer: Brian Kistler
Details: First Draft, September 2008 (draft that landed him on the Black List)

So here we are, just two weeks away from the 2010 Black List. You can expect some mighty intense coverage here on Scriptshadow. As a prelude, I’ll be reviewing some Black List scripts from years’ past. The downside to this is, the only reason I haven’t already read them is because they didn’t sound interesting. Today’s script is a perfect example. It’s a mobster-centric movie set in the 1930s. I wouldn’t say I dislike period mobster films. If they’re done well, I’ll go see them. But they’re not must-see TV in the Reeves household. Still, I’m hoping with the Black List seal of approval, that this and a few others will turn out to be gems.

The American Way grabs your attention in the first half page. 12 year old Billy has just watched the horrific massacre of his parents and 4 year old sister. Only minutes after the killer’s left, with his mother’s body still twitching on the floor, Billy’s 10 year old brother, John, strolls in. It is a life-changing moment for both brothers not just because they lost their family, but because from this point on, John will always blame his brother for not doing more to stop the murder.

Cut to 20 years later. It’s 1938. Some guy named Hitler is crying for attention in Europe, and America is obsessed with making sure communist propaganda doesn’t ooze its way into society. So much so, that nobody’s really concerned about the local mob scene, allowing organized crime to flourish. Billy, all grown up now, is an FBI agent with a reasonably decent home life. When mutterings inside the mob indicate a possible assassination attempt on Senator Gordan Gance, Billy’s division must figure out a way to protect him, without the financial backing of a government with bigger fish to fry.

Things get personal though when Billy finds out that the man who plans to kill the senator, Charlie Cohen, is the same man who murdered his family. Billy comes up with an outside-the-box idea. Release his estranged brother John (now doing life in prison for an undisclosed crime), and task him to go undercover in Cohen’s gang, allowing them to get the skinny on any potential moves the bad guys make. A small caveat is that John will not be told that this man is the man that murdered his family.

These days, John is just as dirty and sketchy as Billy is moral and by-the-numbers. He still hates his brother for being a coward that day (didn’t really understand this – what did you expect a 12 year old to do?) and the only reason he takes the job is that after he’s done playing pretend, he inherits a get-out-of-jail-free card.

In a very “Gangs Of New York” scenario, John works his way up Charlie Cohen’s chain-of-command, developing a conflicting relationship with the man in charge, and begins to question whether Cohen’s murderous ideology is all that bad. Since his primary victims tend to be Nazi affiliates, Cohen complex character is tough to form an opinion on.

Kistler does a great job continually upping the stakes in The American Way. For example, John stupidly starts sneaking around with Cohen’s woman. And at a certain point, Cohen assigns John to kill his own brother. I have to say, the final act, which starts paying off all these setups, really makes up for the slow deliberate pace that takes us through the first two acts. It was easily the best part of the script.

But it’s those first and second acts that prevent The American Way from becoming that gem I so desperately wanted it to be. It takes forever for John to infiltrate Cohen’s gang, and the character of Bill has very little to do during that time. He basically hangs out with his wife, waiting for either good news or bad news from the front. John occasionally visits his bro, spicing up the script with a little conflict, but it wasn’t enough for my taste, particularly because their relationship is the most interesting part of the story.

One thing I couldn’t get past was this notion that – in real life – they would send John into Cohen’s gang without telling him that Cohen killed his family. I mean, I’m no FBI agent, but if there was ever a plan that sounded more like a disaster waiting to happen, I certainly haven’t heard of it.

But The American Way is well-written and deftly (if a little slowly) plotted. I would’ve picked this to be made over Public Enemies any day of the week. For you period mob-heads out there, cancel work tomorrow and give this a read. Even though it wasn’t my thing, I recognize that this is a solid effort from first-timer Kilster.

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

What I learned: Pick up the pace people! No matter what genre you’re writing. — I’ve been preaching this to anyone who will listen lately. The pace of your average movie has picked up over the last 15 years. We’re getting into the story faster and faster. But I’m finding that people who write period pieces aren’t changing along with it. They’re still writing at the same pace period pieces were written 15 years ago. Particularly because readers see these stories as difficult to market (remember, their job is to find movies that can be *made*), they’re already going into your script with a bias. Don’t give them a reason to tune out. I felt it took us so long to get through the first and second acts that at times my patience almost gave out. Now luckily, the great third act paid off that patience, but I only kept reading because this was a Black List script. Had this came to me naked, I’m not sure I would’ve stayed around to enjoy the view.

What are you doing??? Only six hours left and some of you haven’t sent me your 10 pages yet. Hurry up!

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!