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So the other day, I was talking to someone outside the industry and she had strong opinions about screenwriting (doesn’t everybody?). According to her, it was all a matter of subjectivity. It came down to who was reading your script and if their sensibilities matched up with your own, that’s what determined whether the script sold or not. The Hollywood system was one big game of chance. You had to find the best match, not write the best script.
I held my tongue because we were in public and I didn’t want to pull a Christian Bale on Terminator Salvation.
But what frustrates me is how common this belief is, especially for people just getting into screenwriting. That it isn’t about craft, about working on all the little parts of screenwriting that make you a better screenwriter, but about typing up a Harry Potter knock-off and finding someone who likes Harry Potter.
This is why the majority of people who get into screenwriting give up after 2-3 years. They find it difficult to get their scripts in front of the “difference maker” people. And since they’ve trained themselves to think connecting with someone who has the same movie sensibilities as you do is the only criteria for making it, they throw in the typewriter when they don’t get the chance.
By the way, when they say 99% of all screenwriters fail, those 2-3 year guys are factored into that percentage. Which is hilarious when you think about it. Imagine if you tried to be a professional soccer player in 3 years. Or a neurosurgeon. Or a lawyer. Of COURSE those people never make it. They BARELY put in the effort. 3 years in screenwriting is NOTHING. That’s enough to learn structure, formatting, and the beginnings of character development. You’ll be lucky if you can write a cohesive 110 page story after three years, much less something that people fall in love with.
Now I’m not saying that subjectivity doesn’t play a role in your career. For example, if I was sent a biopic and a science-fiction script, I’d be more inclined to like the science-fiction script. But I can give you a hundred examples of weeks where I read both a biopic and a science-fiction script and I liked the biopic better. Why? BECAUSE THEY WERE BETTER WRITTEN. Because the writer knew how to tell a better story, develop better characters, keep my interest better.
If you want to be a successful screenwriter, STUDY THE SHIT out of screenwriting, write a lot of fucking screenplays, and read a lot of fucking screenplays. If you do those three things, you commit to the long haul, you have some hustle in you, and you have even a little bit of talent, you will succeed. Guaranteed. But for the rest of you who think this is all about sensibility? Here are 10 ways that myself and any Hollywood reader worth his salt can spot the NOT READYS and the READYS.
YOU ARE NOT READY IF…
You’re making basic formatting and protocol errors. I’ve yet to read a screenplay where a writer who doesn’t know how to properly introduce a character (capitalize name, give age, give description) or understand how a slugline works or any of the other basic formatting protocols, is ready for the professional stage.
You can’t stay focused. This is one of the easiest ways for readers to spot newbies. The tone is all over the place. The genre keeps changing. The story jumps all over the place. The best stories tend to be simple and focused.
You’re not exploring character flaws in at least one of your major characters. This is the classic wall between intermediate and advanced level screenwriters and one that many writers never cross because they don’t have any interest in exploring people. If you want to write a screenplay that Hollywood buys, you need to have a deep interest in people and what makes them tick.
Your scenes are just “there.” They don’t seek to entertain, to explore conflict, to highlight something interesting or fun about the characters involved. The scenes are just there to take up space. Each scene should be a tiny little movie. It should entertain the reader. See basically any Coen Brothers scene for reference. They mini-movie the shit out of their scenes.
You’re consistently unclear about basic things. The worst scripts to read are the ones that exist in a haze because tiny bits of information are consistently kept from you, leaving you unsure about the most basic information. Is Karen Dan’s mom? I think so because she was acting motherly a second ago, is 45 when he’s 23, and they live in the same house. Then three pages later, Karen and Dan are making out. I guess they’re not mother and son after all! Wow, that could’ve been so easily cleared up had the writer just TOLD ME THAT. Readers who don’t make basic pieces of information clear are a special kind of evil as they drive readers to the brink of insanity.
YOU ARE READY IF…
You’re consistently making surprising choices. The majority of writers write the same scenes, the same characters, and the same plot beats, because they’re all watching the same movies and are therefore being inspired by the same things. Either start watching movies and shows that nobody else watches, or push yourself beyond the obvious choice and come up with as many, “I’ve never seen this before” moments as you can. Challenge yourself. See how many fresh scenes you can add to your script!
Your script is the epitome of professionalism. You have zero grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors. Your formatting is perfect. So is your protocol. You can tell each sentence has been meticulously combed over to be as short, and yet as informative, as possible. The character descriptions are well-thought through, yet simple and clear. The best scripts I read are usually mistake-free or near-mistake-free. The same people who take pride in their presentation are the people who have worked hard on their craft.
Your choices are story-driven as opposed to gimmick-driven. – This took me longer to figure out, but I’ve discovered that writers who are gimmicky in their writing (write in a self-referential style or depend a lot on twists and reversals and breaking the fourth wall shit) do so because they don’t trust their ability to keep you entertained with basic sound storytelling. Have you ever watched a comedian who’s jumping around the stage like a lunatic, farting and falling and doing anything for the laugh? It’s funny but often in an empty way. Then you see guys like Jerry Seinfeld or Louis C.K. and they just stand there. And they’re so confident in their material, they know that’s all they need to do. Screenwriting is the same way. Just tell a good story. You don’t need a bunch of flash and pizazz. That’s typically an indication that you’re overcompensating for something.
You’re consistently using the Golden Triangle for your scene-writing. The Golden Triangle is conflict, suspense, and dramatic irony. If you’re using one of these three things in each scene, there’s a good chance that your scene is entertaining. Most newbies don’t know what these are or their different variations or the different ways in which you can use them. So the majority of their scenes lack spark.
No matter where we are in your script, your story is always building towards something. A good script always pushes toward its climax. And every ten pages, we should feel like the story is a little bigger than it was ten pages prior.
Getting good at screenwriting doesn’t happen overnight. You have to improve at it piece by piece and that takes time. So locate a weakness of yours (you don’t know how to add suspense, for example) and spend 1-3 months researching, studying, and writing suspenseful scenes. If you don’t know what you need work on, get some feedback. Send your script to friends, send it to fellow Scriptshadowers, send it to me. And ask us: “What do I need to work on?”
I remember this writer who’d send me these scripts and they had ZERO detail. Like if he were to describe a downtown area, he would write, “We’re down town. There’s an intersection and a few people around.” So you couldn’t envision being in any of his locations and it made his scripts feel empty. I told him that he needed to become more detail-oriented and start painting pictures of his world on the page. He worked hard on that and a year later, he sold a script for half-a-million dollars. This wasn’t long ago. But unless you know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it.
Just remember that your success is within your control. This is not a lottery. It is not a game of luck, despite frustrated people on the internet trying to convince you otherwise. If your scripts aren’t impressing people, it’s because you still have work to do. So get back in there and do the work!
Genre: Spy/Action
Premise: Years after a psychotic spy is kicked out of his agency, he’s pulled back in to complete a top secret mission.
About: This script comes from Wanted writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. You might be wondering where these two disappeared to after Wanted. After a couple of slow years, they developed Chicago Fire, which led to Chicago P.D., which led to Chicago Med, which is now leading to Chicago Justice. The funny thing is, when all was said and done, I’d be surprised if Brandt and Haas cleared 750k for their work on Wanted. But when you have a network TV show? CHA-CHING! When you have two? BA-BING! When you have three??? RA-RINNNNGGG! And if you have four, forget about it. You can afford a 2 bedroom apartment in San Francisco. TV is where writers make money, guys. It’s the sad truth us feature lovers hate to admit. Matt Helm is born out of a series of spy novels of the same name. In the 1960s and 70s, four films were made based on the books, but bore zero resemblance to them, since the filmmakers didn’t think they could compete with Bond. So a more tongue-in-cheek style was created, with Dean Martin starring. In 2002, Dreamworks purchased the rights to Matt Helm, and that’s the iteration that today’s script is based on. When Dreamworks left Paramount, Paramount kept the rights to Helm, at which point Spielberg himself flirted with the series. But he ultimately passed and the franchise is still stuck in development hell.
Writers: Michael Brandt & Derek Haas (based on the Matt Helm novel, “Death of a Citizen” by Donald Hamilton)
Details: 108 pages (10/07/06 draft)
One of the bankable arenas for a spec writer is the Agent and/or Spy spec. Hollywood is always looking for the next Jason Bourne. In fact, a “Female Bourne” spec just sold last week, called Red Widow.
If you’re interested in this, there are a couple of ways to go about it. First, there are a million of these book series to option. Don’t worry if they’re 10 years old, 20, 50. All Hollywood cares about is if they were once published somewhere and more than a hundred people have heard about them. Some of the older stuff shouldn’t be tough to get an option on. And lots of writers who’ve secured options on book material have told me they didn’t think it would be as easy as it was. It never hurts to ask, guys!
If you want to go spec script, then you have to find a new twist to the spy thing. Because Hollywood is more risk averse when it comes to specs. It takes that fresh angle to get their wallets horny. I’m a little sad that all Red Widow had to do was change the part from male to female, but hey, it’s the trend right now, and good job to the writer for capitalizing on it.
On to today’s script…
Matt Helm loves his job. Sure, he’s a little bit nuts and takes anti-psychotic meds, but he’s so good at what he does, the agency looks past it. That is until Helm fingers and kills the wrong mark, resulting in his prickly boss “reassigning” him to the suburbs. Subtext? “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
It takes another three years for a now stir-crazy Helm to get the call again. A trio of scientists have created a scary ass explosive called a “spider-bomb.” I could go into details, but let’s just say, like most bombs, it’s something you don’t want to be around when it blows up.
The agency believes that our scientists are going to sell Charlotte’s Web on the black market within the next few days, and need Helm to do his thing before that happens. Helm is paired with his former co-worker and former sex-partner, Tina, who will be in charge of the mission.
For some reason, Helm takes five random items into each mission, each of which are seemingly mundane, but in Helm’s hands, tools that can be unleashed to do the unthinkable. Helm is so damn good, that he easily takes care of 2 of the first 3 bad guys.
But while looking for the third spiderman, poor Helm has another one of his psychotic episodes, and becomes convinced that an ordinary woman is his mark. Terrified, Tina tries to stop him from killing her, but Helm is positive she’s a baddie. This results in the most intense scene in the script, with Helm, Tina, and us, wondering if this chick is, indeed, out to get him.
The fallout from this moment changes the entire complexion of the movie, and Helm will find that both his life, and his sanity, are officially on the line.
Let me ask you a question. And feel free to answer in the comments section. If someone were to pay you to come up with a spy franchise, what would you bring to the table to make it different?
Matt Helm goes with a psychotic agent. I like that angle, which I’ll talk about more in a second. But think about how many options you have. You can make the agent really young, desperate to prove himself. You can make him older, out of touch with the way the game works these days. You can make him a family man. You can get weird and have your agency based on a secret society that’s been around for centuries (Kingsman, Wanted). But the point is, you have to do something unique.
Like I said, Matt Helm went with psycho. Which was a sweet angle. Imagine Martin Riggs (Lethal Weapon) as a secret agent. That’s a movie right there.
But Matt Helm made the mistake that so many writers have made before it. They TOLD us Helm was crazy a bunch of times, but they didn’t SHOW us Helm was crazy a bunch of times. And telling never works. You can have a character tell us “Gary is funny” 75 times in a row. But if Gary never makes us laugh, Gary’s not funny.
It sucks because Helm’s best scene is that late scene with the woman where he isn’t sure if she’s bad or good since he’s going nuts. But that’s on page 70. Up until that point, we’re mostly told Helm is psychotic, with our primary visual reminder being Helm taking his medication.
You want to watch someone SHOW and not TELL us they’re crazy? Go watch The Joker in Suicide Squad. A good way to gauge if you’re doing the show and don’t tell thing is to ask, if none of your characters ever stated that your hero was crazy (or whatever it is you’re trying to get across), would the audience still leave the theater going, “Holy shit, that dude was crazy!”
The “Five Items” thing didn’t work either. The ways in which the items were used was uninspiring. This is another mistake I see all the time. Writers paint themselves into these corners with these rules, then they don’t deliver on them. So if your hero’s thing is that he cleverly uses 5 items on every mission, then his use of those items better live up to the hype.
It’s like the Boomerang Guy in Suicide Squad. We’re told he was able to do things with a boomerang that would make a nuclear missile look like a pop rock. Except all I saw him do was throw a boomerang and watch it come back to him. Mogli the Wolf Boy from Mad Max had more impressive boomerang skills than Captain Kangaroo.
This may sound like I didn’t like Matt Helm. But actually, despite being a tad predictable, I thought the writing itself was awesome. Brandt and Haas are super-enjoyable to read. They strike the perfect balance between crisp minimalistic action lines and the occasional chunkster paragraph required to feed the reader a lot of info.
And the character of Helm himself was fun. Not as fun as he could’ve been had they gone Full Nutzos, but fun nonetheless.
If I were them, I’d go full-tilt into this psychotic secret agent idea. We’ve never seen anything like that before, and that’s the only reason to get into this genre – if you’ve got something fresh. We’ll see if Matt Helm ever climbs out of development hell and gets a chance to prove itself. Jason Bourne is done, right? So there’s an open locker in the locker room.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Repeated “show don’t tell” shots of pills don’t sell the condition your character is suffering from. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, being psychotic – if you want to sell us that the character is suffering from these things, we must SEE THEM SUFFERING FROM THESE THINGS. Shots of them staring at the pills is NOT a “show don’t tell” moment. It’s more like a visual “tell.” Not nearly as effective.
Things get insane today. I mean like writers of Deadpool write about ninjas, cowboys, and vikings, with Quentin Tarantino making a cameo insane.
Genre: (cannot be classified)
Premise: A crazy man with three personalities, a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking, must defeat his evil billionaire boss before he destroys the world.
About: Uh, did someone say a Chris Pratt project written by the hottest screenwriting team in the universe? Do Mondays get any better? — Actually, a little more information on this. This is an early draft of the project written by Deadpool super-scribes Reese and Wernick. However, it looks like there have been new scribes hired since this draft to update the project. So take this for what it is – an early draft of a cool project that is trying to get cooler.
Writer: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (based on the Image comic book, Cowboy Ninja Viking, by A.J. Lieberman and Riley Rossmo).
Details: 119 pages – December 31st, 2011 draft
I chose today’s script because our big summer choice this weekend was Star Trek 3. Star Trek 3, the most bland sci-fi movie Hollywood could’ve possibly conceived of. And it did okay. But that’s only because “okay” has been redefined after every movie this summer has bombed.
When I saw “Cowboy Ninja Viking” I thought: “FINALLY!” This is the movie we need. Something with some god damned originality, Alice! Audiences are ACHING for a movie like this. It’s primed to be the next Deadpool.
But is it as good as Deadpool?
Hmmmm…. only a Scriptshadow review can answer that.
Duncan Trevello is crazy with a capital “K.” Wherever he goes, for as long as he’s been going, he’s had with him Cowboy, Ninja, and Viking, his alter ego multiple identities, all three of whom, of course, will be played by the same actor who plays Duncan (notable for major screenwriting lesson later on).
Duncan has been holed up in a nuthouse for eight years but escapes when he finds out his nemesis, Ammo, is coming after him. Duncan flees to Vegas where he gets on a black jack winning streak that would make Ben Affleck jealous (by following the crazy advice of his alternate personalties – like hitting on 19).
The pit boss is convinced that Duncan is cheating since no sane person would be making the choices that he’s making, so he pulls him into his office and beats him up. That’s when Duncan unleashes his secret, that he can take on the fighting skills of his three alternate personalities. So he beats the living hell out of the pit boss as well as a half dozen casino guards, and starts spending his money like mad all over town.
But Ammo finally catches up to him and takes him back to their master, billionaire Richard Blaq. We learn that Blaq plucked Duncan, as well as every multiple-personality orphan he could find, from his orphanage, and used his split personalities to create the ultimate fighting machine.
Duncan is able to escape once more, but when he learns that Blaq has created the most powerful computer chip in the world, he knows he must stop him. Because if Blaq has created something that powerful, he knows that he plans to use it for something awful.
Let’s get down to business, scribes. Why didn’t you think of this idea!!!??? This is the ultimate spec script idea. It gives a major actor FOUR DIFFERENT UNIQUE FUN ROLES TO PLAY. We talk about this all the time. Create multiple roles for a single actor to play and it’s fucking acting catnip! This was GUARANTEED to nab one of the biggest actors in the world. Not to mention PDA. Write a script that will either draw a producer, director, or major actor. This gets you your actor.
Better than that, it’s a best of both worlds project. Not only will this make money, but it gets you STREET CRED since it’s so weird. It’s the exact same thing that made Deadpool the envy of every studio in town. You get the money, the critics, the audience, and the opposite looks on Rodeo Drive than you get when you’re the producer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Unfortunately, once you start comparing Cowboy Ninja Viking to Deadpool, the katana starts cracking at the seams.
Maybe Wernick and Reese fixed these problems in later drafts, but in this one, they’re pretty glaring. See, here’s the thing with this script and with these nutball hero scripts in general. You have two options. You can have the story mirror the main character and just be balls-to-the-wall crazy. Or you can keep the story clear and concise, which allows your main character to be the lone balls-to-the-wall element in the movie.
I prefer option 2. If everything is unhinged, there’s nothing to ground the story, and we’re never going to know where we stand. That’s exactly what happened here. A clear plot didn’t emerge until super late and up until that point, I had little idea where we were or why.
That’s a big question writers need to be constantly asking themselves:
WHERE ARE WE AND WHY?
If you don’t know where your character is in the story and why, chances are the reader doesn’t either.
At one point, Duncan’s back with Blaq and the two are just sort of hanging out, not really happy with one another but not really upset either. And I’m thinking, “Wait, why is Duncan just hanging out? What’s he doing? Why isn’t he attacking this man that he hates?” It was like the story stopped functioning for awhile.
Another issue I had here was how much of the story was driven by Blaq. Black was the one making everything happen. He was trying to capture Duncan. He was trying to put together this army of people with multiple personalties (but why???). He was making some super computer chip that was more powerful than anything.
Everything was so centered on Blaq, no time was left over for Duncan!!! And he’s our hero! And he’s probably one of the most interesting characters ever created for a big film. And he’s just sitting on the sidelines, watching Blaq do all this bizarre shit.
The best part of this movie is the first act, because that’s the only time that Duncan is active. It’s the only time he’s making his own decisions, driving his own storyline. This is a lesson for everyone. If your script goes on for too long where your hero isn’t driving the story, we’re going to get bored. We didn’t come to see your hero play second fiddle. We want him on first chair.
If I were these guys, I would’ve kept this whole thing in Vegas. It’s the perfect town for a character this weird. And the great thing about this idea is that it doesn’t need a giant plot. We don’t need to be whisked all over the world like in a James Bond film. Your main character is the entertainment. Save a ton of money, improve the chances of this getting made, and just set the whole shebang in Vegas and shoot if for 40 million. Everyone will go see this. It’s the movie that Hollywood needs right now.
A mess of a plot that needs fixing but this character is so fun, I say this is worth reading.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The messier your main character, the cleaner the plot needs to be. If we’re trying to wrangle in fifteen layers of hero, we can’t be confused about what the hell is going on. Make it simple! This is actually what the original Deadpool did. Sure, it jumped around in time. But it was a crystal clear revenge film. We always knew what Deadpool was after.
Today’s script may be the strangest combo I’ve ever read. Forrest Gump meets Clockwork Orange.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: We follow the life of Cosmo Hopper, a drifter whose life has been influenced by several major historical events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Challenger Explosion, the Rodney King inspired riots, and the first Iraq War.
About: This is one of the two scripts Eric Bress, writer of The Butterfly Effect, sold back-to-back last year. I loved the first one and got a lot of flak for it from you guys. Well, we’re back with the second one, which is a lot more ambitious. Let’s check it out!
Writer: Eric Bress
Details: 107 pages – 1st draft
Guess what time it is?
TIME TO TALK ABOUT VOICE FOR THE 684,233rd time!
Raise your hand if you’re tired of hearing about voice? Okay, now ask me if I care. Go ahead. Ask me.
TOUGH!
See, the nice thing about reading an Eric Bress script is that it won’t be like anything else you’ve read before. We have death by falling Challenger Shuttle explosion debris in this movie. Try and top that.
On the flip side, if all you do is rewrite the movies you’ve loved from your past, you’re not going to write anything memorable. That’s not to say you can’t write an entertaining product. If your technique is good, if you understand basic storytelling (suspense, irony, dramatic irony, character development, conflict, anticipation, mystery), you can still write something solid. But you’ll never write something great unless it comes uniquely from you.
I mean, yes, I liked The Force Awakens. But I’ll be the first to admit that JJ didn’t bring anything new to it. He didn’t bring any voice. He brought his love and passion for the source material. And that was enough to get me excited about Star Wars again. But The Force Awakens never had a chance to be great because there wasn’t a unique voice behind it.
39 year old Cosmo Hopper is a homeless vagrant who’s just been accused of burning down a building and trying to kill everyone inside of it. Luckily, nobody died, but the interrogating officer wants to know why the fuck Cosmo would do such a thing. So Cosmo decides to tell the officer his life story.
Cut to Cosmo at seven years old when he loses his mother to cancer. That means his care is transferred over to his estranged weirdo father, one of those low-lifes who thinks he’s a scientist because he drinks a lot of beer and reads books.
Dad makes Cosmo his own personal guinea pig, putting him through a series of tests like holding him underwater for minutes at a time, walking on glass and hot coals, covering Cosmo’s favorite horse with gasoline and having Cosmo walk him through a thin path with fire on each side. Yeah, your basic nut job shit.
Lucky for Cosmo, his father dies one day when the two are fishing. They’re in Florida at the time, and watch in horror as the Challenger shuttle blows up in the sky and eventually rains down its debris on the lake. His father is hit by one of the chunks from the shuttle and that’s all she wrote.
Cosmo, now 19, says goodbye to his best friend and love of his life, Rosanna, and heads off to find his grandparents. He stows away on a crabbing boat (the most dangerous job in the world) eventually ending up in Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall. He finally finds love again with his grandparents, and things seem to be going well.
Eventually, Cosmo heads off to fight in the Iraq war, where he sees the kind of death and mutilation that even someone with the most fucked up father in the universe is prepared for. At one point, he’s responsible for taking all the blown up soldier bits and, like a puzzle, putting them back together again.
All during this time, Cosmo ponders the meaning of life, of the universe, with a particular obsession over the number 17 (“I’d seen 17 men die in my meat wagon and 17 explosions since then. The flight home was 17 hours and left at 17:00 hours.”) and longs to be back with the only thing that makes him whole – Rosanna.
But is it too late for them? Is it too late for Cosmo? Has he seen too much? Experienced too much? Not even Cosmo may be able to answer that question.
You ever wonder what Forrest Gump may have looked like had it been directed by David Lynch, with second unit directing by Harmony Korine? Yeah, me too. Well, it would probably look something like this. This is bizarro world shit up in here, and whether you love it or hate it will depend on how fucked up you are in the head.
Structurally, it’s kind of a mess. We’re randomly jumping through time to key historic moments both in our hero’s and our planet’s lives. But Bress does use a device to make it more palatable, and it’s one all screenwriters should be aware of. He uses the “base camp” technique.
So last week, I was consulting on a script for a writer and his story was jumping all over the place. We were in Egypt for awhile, then we spent some time on a ship, then we spent time in business boardrooms, then we followed the construction of a soccer stadium. The script was frustrating to read because it couldn’t focus on one thing.
You could argue American Drifter is the same way – with a tweak. Bress establishes a “base camp” at the beginning of the story – the interrogation of Cosmo Hopper for burning down a building. By establishing a base camp, wherever we travel in our story, no matter how far or how weird, we have this base camp to come back to.
Now ideally, you want a storyline going on with your base camp, something the reader actually cares about. That way, when we’re in Berlin or a crabbing ship or Florida during the Challenger explosion, we’re always thinking in the back of our minds, “I wonder if he’s guilty of burning down that building.” This device basically gives a shapeless story shape.
Now is the base camp storyline here great? No. But we are dealing with a first draft. And I assume Bress has improved it since. There didn’t seem to be big enough stakes attached to his burning down of this building. Nobody died. It was more about, was this a dry-run for Cosmo to do something even worse. And since he was already captured, I wasn’t worried about that.
A base camp movie that worked better was Source Code. Whenever we went back to base camp (our hero stuck in that room with the controllers), it was made clear to us that time was running out. If they didn’t find this bomb soon, another bigger bomb would blow up, killing thousands. So the interrogation actually had some stakes attached to it.
Still, this script is unlike anything I’ve read all year. It’s not perfect. It’s not something that will appeal to everyone. But in a sea of scripts that all read the same, this is a refreshing diversion I was happy to take.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Anybody you’ve ever been passionate about – good or bad – has a strong voice. M. Night, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino. The less passionate you are about someone, the less defined their voice is. Again, you can still enjoy a non-voicy person. But their films tend to inspire less of a reaction. So ask yourself when you’re writing – am I writing the kind of thing that wouldn’t offend a single person? That wouldn’t inspire passion one way or another? If the answer is no, you’re probably not drawing deeply enough within yourself to explore your unique point of view on the world.
What I learned 2: The bigger your movie, the harder it is to inject voice into it. Voice often divides people. And the biggest movies out there can’t afford to divide people. They have to appeal to everyone. So if you’re writing a huge 150 million dollar movie, don’t worry too much about injecting the script with a controversial voice.
Might today’s action spec be the most manly ever reviewed on Scriptshadow???
Genre: Action
Premise: A group of badass mercenaries are hired for the most difficult security detail in the world, protecting a Mexican politician targeted by the biggest cartel boss in the country.
About: Originally written by Predators scribe, Alex Litvak, Five Against a Bullet pulled in the king of cool, Joe Carnahan, to rewrite the script and direct the film.
Writers: Joe Carnahan rewrite (original script by Alex Litvak)
Details: 121 pages
Here’s my question. How do you turn a script like this into the next Fast and Furious franchise as opposed to the next straight-to-digital franchise? Cause honestly, it could go either way. It’s got five cool testosterone-busting leads for actors, the kind of badass parts you could see action actors playing over and over. Yet if they don’t get the right mix of hot faces and money, it doesn’t matter how good of a director Carnahan is. This will never get a wide release.
“Five” follows five badass dudes, starting with the leader, Frank, a man of few words who can get out of any situation by always expecting the worst. There’s Simon, a mouthy Australian desperate to prove he’s got the biggest dick in the room. Terry, a weirdo Japanese-American who can hardly be bothered to look up from whatever video game he’s playing. Vic, a slimy private detective who will bang your wife the second you hire him to see if she’s cheating on you. And finally, Rico, a former bodyguard who failed to protect his boss from one of the most ruthless cartels in the country.
These five are brought in to protect Alvaro Diaz, a Mayoral candidate in a large Mexican City. All they have to do is keep him alive for three weeks, until the election is over. The problem is, every cartel member and their step-mom wants to off this guy as he’s the only candidate with the balls to stand up to them.
The script follows our team as they try and figure out how to navigate even the most mundane of tasks, like traveling a few blocks. When the bounty on Diaz’s head is raised to 20 million, even the girls playing hopscotch are libel to slit your throat. And the longer this goes on, the more Frank worries he may have gotten himself in over his head.
When the heat of the campaign eclipses the heat of an average day in Mexico, Diaz decides to confront the man who wants his head, Montero, face-to-face. He lets him know that he’s not backing down, and if Montero wants to kill him, he’s going to have to pull something out of his ass. Frank, for the record, is not a fan of that challenge.
Eventually, when gang members start showing up at locations in advance of our team, Frank figures out they’ve got a mole. If he doesn’t flush out that mole quickly, there is no way they’ll make it anywhere close to election day. And we’re not just talking about Diaz. We’re talking about every single one of them.
So what is the difference between a straight-to-video balls-to-the-wall action flick and the next Fast and Furious franchise? Fuck if I know. But if I had to guess, I’d say eliminating as much generic as you can from your action movie. If all you have is guys shooting at each other and getting in car chases, it’s likely you have a boring action movie.
With Fast and Furious, as cheesy as the original was, it took place in a world (underground car racing) that hadn’t been explored much on the big screen. This is the unheralded benefit of a unique concept. Just by the nature of it being unique, most of the scenes you write will be unique without you even having to think about it.
Five Against A Bullet straddles the line between that world and the generic world (we get plenty of ubiquitous Mexican standoffs) but comes out on top strictly because of how good of a writer Carnahan is. I’m serious. This guy writes action better than anyone in town, and there isn’t anybody even close. When a car crashes in a Carnahan script it doesn’t “flip five times before coming to a stop.” It “barrel rolls over and over, vomiting metal and glass as it slides to a shuddering halt in the middle of the freeway.” I grew a beard reading this script it was so manly.
Also, Carnahan knows that the secret ingredient in an action movie is non-action scenes. If every scene is people shooting each other up, the audience gets bored. You have to find ways to mix it up.
One of the best scenes in Five Against A Bullet is when our guys are driving through town at night and get stopped by a police blockade. The police chief, obviously in bed with Montero, tells Diaz that his team is illegally carrying firearms and that the cars they’re driving aren’t up to code. Unfortunately, he apologizes, he’ll need to take both. This leaves the entire team in the middle of the city, in the middle of the night, without vehicles or a way to defend themselves. The suspense and anticipation this situation presents is far more engaging than yet another “Pew pew pew! Got’em!” gunfight.
Then there’s the mole stuff. Someone in the group is informing Montero where they’re going to be ahead of time. So Frank has to figure out who it is. I was far more engaged in this mystery than I was the next car chase. And a lot of newbie action writers don’t realize this. They just write the most elaborate gun fights they can think of.
My big problem with the script was the structure. I’ve mentioned this before. I don’t like stories that are built on waiting. I like it when the characters are actively going out and trying to achieve a goal (like a heist, which is what one of the recent Fast and Furious films was about).
Five Against A Bullet is all about waiting for someone else (Montero) to make a move, and then repeatedly reacting to that move. It’s not to say that can’t work. There’s a level of suspense involved in “Where is the next attack going to come from?” But movies tend to work best when the main character is pursuing something as opposed to waiting on others to pursue something. The latter results in a more passive story, which is particularly dangerous when you’re writing a testosterone-filled action film.
But again, Carnahan is such a good action writer, he makes it work. And to that end, I implore ALL action writers to find and read this script. Particularly, pay attention to the detail Carnahan adds. It makes everything he writes feel so much more tactile than your average action spec. You really feel like you’re there. For example, here’s how he has one of his characters introducing the cars they’ll be using to drive the team around: “V-12 short stroke switchout engines. These cars will turn 600 horses apiece and look like everyday drivers. Reinforced bumpers, so we can punch through roadblocks. Run flat tires. UL Level 10 Bullet-resistant glass. And that’s as much as 50k gets for three cars.” A bit different from your average newbie description of “A badass muscle car” no?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Look beyond the action for the best scenes in an action movie. Use tried-and-true storytelling tools to find scenes instead. Mystery (which one of them is the mole?) and suspense (place them in the middle of town, at night, with no way to defend themselves). You obviously want action in action movies. But if ALL you’re offering is action, then all you’re offering is boredom.