Genre: Drama
Premise: Crash-like look at how technology has disconnected us.
About: Marc Forster will be directing this one. Forster’s trying to rebound from the backlash of the difficult-to-follow “Quantum of Solace”, a movie that many critics faulted for its plodding screenplay. Forster is on record as shaping the entirety of the script, so if you didn’t like it, he’s definitely the one to blame. The thing with Forster is that he’s always gravitated for the brooding, the sad, the depressing, and Quantum of Solace was all about the brood. In other words, if you hire a cow, don’t be surprised when you get milk. Anyway, “Disconnect” is much closer to his sweet spot. It’s got that indie feel, and plenty of depressed people to exploit. — Producer William Horberg will produce for Nala Films. Nala’s Darlene Caamano Loquet and Emilio Diez Barroso optioned the script and will act as producers. William Horberg and Brad Simpson will also be producing. Nala’s recent credits include “Dan in Real Life” and “In the Valley of Elah,”. They’re currently in post-production on the supernatural thriller “Shelter,” starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which I wouldn’t mind taking a look at (hint hint – ahem).
Writer: Andrew Stern
Details: 125 pages (July 11, 2008 draft)

Disconnect is what you might get if the founder of Google saw Crash and said, “Hey, we should do that… but with the internet!” The script is really trying to say something about the state of the world. But I’m afraid that in all its preaching, it may have forgotten to add an interesting story. I’m not going to discount Disconnect because I’m a fan of multi-storyline ensemble pieces, but I couldn’t help but feel, while reading it, that I was watching a play where all the characters were speaking another language. I witnessed the emotion. I witnessed the pain and the hurt. But because I couldn’t understand what was being said I wasn’t able to *feel* it. It just never allowed me in. Ah, but Carson, it’s called “Disconnect”. Isn’t that the point? No. Even in a movie about our lack of connection, we still have to connect with the characters. We always have to connect to the characters.

The first act of Disconnect is not unlike a college history lecture. Lots of people are introduced to us so if you didn’t break your notebook you’re pretty much screwed. You have Jay, a Wall Street prick who likes looking at young girls online. You have Mary, newly appointed Director of Investigation and Enforcement for the Federal Trade Commission. You have Cindy, whose ill-fated attempts to get pregnant have led her to an online message board for unhappy people. There’s her husband Derek, who’s so attached to his laptop he even surfs the internet during dinner (ugh, that one hits a little too close to home). There’s Rich Boyd, a brilliant tech entrepreneur. There’s his wife Lydia, who updates the most mundane things on her blog regardless of how personal they are. Their daughter Abby has 3000 Myspace friends and their son Ben uses the internet as a desperate bid for any friend, since he doesn’t have any in real life. There’s Peter and Keri Dunham, who just found out their 11 year old has been watching gang-bang pornos online. There’s Mike Dixon, a former cop who’s dedicated his life to helping parents monitor their children’s online activity. And that’s only the beginning. There are many more.

I don’t really know how to review Disconnect. Its stories are watchable, but never compelling, the way you’d expect observing a regular person through their daily routine might be. The most exciting thing about it might be checking their e-mail to find out an old friend said hi. It’s not as mundane as Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant”, but large chunks of screenplay do go by with very little happening.

The two storylines that take precedence are Ben Boyd (the son with no friends) being baited by two kids online to kill himself (one of whom is Mike’s son, the cop who specializes in monitoring children online). The other, and my favorite of the script, is when Cindy (can’t get pregnant) and Derek realize that their identity has been stolen and their entire bank account’s been wiped out.

Ben’s story was disappointing because it was blatantly ripped from the headlines (If you remember, there was that girl from Myspace who killed herself for the exact same reason). But the identity theft storyline was good. Part of its appeal is learning just how terrifying identity theft can be. It’s not just stealing a couple hundred bucks from the ATM machine. It’s someone having access to every single piece of information from your entire life. It’s people being able to become you, to open accounts in your name, to commit crimes in your name, to sell your identity to others. Anybody who knows how difficult it can be to get an incorrectly assigned parking ticket off their record can imagine what it must be like to get a crime erased that you didn’t commit . But what I really liked was that it was the one story that really *showed* how technology’s torn us apart. Cindy and Derek are the married couple who have drifted apart over the years. Forced to work together to solve the mystery of *how* their identity was stolen, the two must reveal to each other their extensive private online activities. In the process, they learn things about each other they never would’ve learned otherwise – both the good and the bad (but mainly the bad). It’s an extremely powerful point Stern makes in regards to how little we know about the person we spend every minute of our life with. I wish the rest of the stories could’ve made their point as effectively.

There are some other storylines as well. A reporter goes after an online quasi-porn webchat ring that exploits teenagers. A non-religious guy poses as Jesus in webcam chats to hawk faith-based merchandise to help his girlfriend pay for hospital bills for her cerebral-palsy infected sister. Mary (Federal Trade Commission job) is haunted by some sexually explicit e-mails she wrote more than a decade ago. She sees the job she’s spent her life trying to get slipping away in a matter of minutes. The threads range from obvious to imaginative, but never quite capture the personal wallop that the identity-theft storyline does.

I have a ton of respect for Stern because these scripts are a bitch to pull off. I know from experience. I think the big mistake writers make in approaching them is to focus more on how everybody is connected rather than making the individual stories as good as they can possibly be. Do that first and *then* try to connect your stories so you can have that Robert Altman “Short Cuts” moment where two people we know well but who don’t know each other, pass one another by in a store, obliviously.

Disconnect brings up that often-asked question: Is technology bringing us closer together or pushing us further apart? There’s a moment in the script where the mom doesn’t know where in the house her son is. So she IMs her daughter who in turn texts her brother to come downstairs. I think the intention of the sequence is to make us look pathetic. But is it really that much of a downgrade from: “BEEENNN! GET THE HELL DOWN HERE I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!!!”? That’s the way I grew up and I have to wonder, is it any better? Either way I applaud Stern for giving both sides of the argument, even if he makes it blatantly clear which side he falls on. As I lay back in my couch, typing away on my laptop, simultaneously checking my e-mail, watching streaming tennis matches from the U.S. Open, occasionally browsing new music on Itunes, preparing to upload this document to my blog…uh, I think we know which side I fall on too.

This script is still a few drafts away from achieving what it sets out to be. For that reason, I can’t quite recommend it, but it’s definitely interesting.

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

What I learned: When you have a million characters in your script, it’s okay to remind the reader who they are the second or third time around. For example, the second time we see Jay, Stern writes something like: “Jay (the Wall Street prick we met earlier) barrels down 5th avenue.” It’s definitely a judgment call but I recommend you consider it if you’re setting up a ton of characters in your first act. The reality is we’re probably not going to remember them all and will need a little help.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Terrorists plant an atomic bomb in an American city and threaten nuclear devastation unless their demands are met.
About: This is that infamous script that Spielberg called the best he had ever read at the time, which was back in 1990. It was purchased for 500k against 1m and Spielberg was going to direct it himself but it got stuck in rewrite hell (how a script even goes through rewrites when you call it the best script you’ve ever read is a testament to just how hilarious Hollywood can be). This is the original sale script. The first half of the writing team, Dworet, is also a doctor and along with Pool, was hired to write the plague thriller “Outbreak” for 250k after Ultimatum sold. Since then, neither writer has secured any produced writing credits, although Pool did get a ‘Story By’ credit on Armageddon (a scary reminder of how fickle Hollywood can be).
Writers: Laurence Dworet & Robert Roy Pool
Details: 127 pages (March 1, 1990)

Apparently they’re selling these on QVC .

Did Steven Spielberg go through any traumatic experiences back in 1990? Cause I’m having a hard time figuring out what it is he saw in this script. Okay maybe that’s being harsh. We do have to take into account that it’s been 20 years and the political and social climate has changed quite a bit since then. Although I was too young to care, I do remember there being a lot of fear of someone walking into a city with a nuclear bomb in a suitcase and blowing everything to hell. Yet here we are, 20 years later, and 20 years more capable of achieving something like this, and yet the idea still feels old-fashioned.

It’s this simplistic hokeyness that dogs The Ultimatum from the first tick. J. Robert Scott works for the National Security Council when he’s informed that a nuclear bomb suitcase is about to be detonated somewhere in the U.S. Turns out he’s got a more important council to deal with first though. I’m talking about the National Marriage Council. Yeah. Guys. You know what I’m talking about. Seems Scott’s marriage is hanging by a thread after he dipped his pen in the company ink. Or sharpened his pencil in the company pencil sharpener. Or however the fucking phrase goes. What I’m trying to say is that he banged some reporter chick named Ginny. Which is the first problem I had with the script. You don’t have sex with someone named “Ginny”. You walk “Ginny” across the street. You change “Ginny’s” bedpan. But you don’t engage in intercourse with her. Anyway, Ginny is moderating a presidential debate because there’s a presidential election going on and in two days, America will have a new leader. Yes you can.

Steven, we love ya. But come on, did you honestly like this script?

That’s when the call comes in. The one about the suitcase bomb. Some really nasty terrorist organization claims to have a nuclear bomb which they will walk into the middle of the American city of their choosing and blow up if the president doesn’t — get this — force the Zionist Jews to leave the Holy City. This was the moment where my spidey senses began to tingle. I know terrorists aren’t the smoothest rocks in the desert, but what makes anyone think that millions of Jewish people are going to get up and leave their city under the threat of another country being bombed? That’s like me walking into my local ice cream shop and saying “Give me all your ice cream or I’m going to trash my neighbor’s living room.”

Anyway, Scott works hand in hand with the president to sniff out which city the terrorists are planning to turn into Chernobyl, in hopes of getting there and disabling it before it blows. They must manage this without anybody finding out what’s going on – since if they do, there will be 25 cities recreating that end scene from Deep Impact. It will be mass chaos I say. MASS CHAOS! Scott’s ex-hookup bootie-call grandmother, Ginny, smells a coverup, and changes into her super-reporter costume to hunt down her Pulitzer.

The focus actually bounces back and forth between Scott and Ginny, as Scott tries to find the suitcase and Ginny tries to break the biggest story in United States history. None of it is any interesting though because Ginny is always light years behind Scott. For example, Scott and the president take a course of action (i.e. “It’s probably in Chicago. Let’s go there.”) Then 20 pages later Ginny will find some plane receipt and go, “They went to Chicago. We have to follow them!” I’m not sure what the dramatic advantage of being 20 minutes behind the audience holds but it’s used to great effect here.

The script is also weighed down by an insufferable amount of characters. Even with a trusty cheat sheet I was still having to take coffee breaks every fifteen minutes to give myself pop quizzes so I could remember who the hell was who. And since everybody’s last name was Johnson or Smith, let me tell you, it wasn’t easy! (Although I did get a B+ on my last quiz). When a new character was introduced on page 97 – yes, you read that right – NINETY-SEVEN, I officially gave up on finding that damn suitcase. Let the damn city blow if it means I have to memorize one more character who never shows up again.

But I digress.

Ultimately, what The Ultimatum amounts to is one giant McGuyver episode. There’ a bomb. It’s going to blow up. Someone stops it with one second left. If this is what passed for spec material back in 1990, I feel like a 49er who came in 59. This was not pleasurable.

Script link: The Ultimatum (If you are the writer or copyright holder of this script and would like it taken down, please e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I will do so immediately)

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

What I learned: Don’t ever introduce a new character on page 97. Just don’t do it. Ever.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A social worker tries to save a young girl from her deranged parents.
About: Purchased spec starring Renee Zelleweger and Bradley Cooper. Paramount has kept this behind the curtain for almost 3 years now. One wonders if they should open a case about its absence and call it Case 40. It would seem that with Cooper’s newfound stardom, this would be opening soon, but only a vague 2010 release is planned. Strange considering the movie is already playing in South Korea. The film is directed by Christian Alvart, who has since directed the upcoming spooky-as-hell looking sci-fi flick, Pandorum. You may recognize the writer, Ray Wright’s, name off the marquee for the “sometimes Japanese movies should just be left in Japan” remake of Pulse. He’s also writing the upcoming “The Crazies”. I have no idea what The Crazies is but there is a small group of internet nerds who are very upset about it.
Writer: Ray Wright
Details: 113 pages (original 2006 draft that sold)

Stop yer bickerin. Carson likes horror. Smart horror though. The horror has to have some brainage behind it. Like the cleverly constructed Case 39. But before we talk about that, let’s talk about Bradley Cooper’s hairline. Real? Fake? There’s definitely something funky going on there. Lest you believe I’ve devolved into instigating tabloid fodder, a second look proves that I’m actually setting up today’s review. You see, Case 39 is all about deceptive appearances.

Emily is an LA county social worker. She’s attractive, has a good head on her shoulders, and like a lot of social workers, buries herself in her work. As a result, the poor woman doesn’t have a lot of time to meet guys. Which means she’s not married. Which means she doesn’t have kids. And it’s clear from the way she yearns to save children, that she desperately wants one of her own.

But even Emily has her limits. She can’t save everyone. So when she’s given yet another case, the innocently labeled “Case 39”, she pleads for some mercy. Abuse doesn’t work around your schedule though and Emily finds herself investigating a young girl named Lucy Sheridan who’s been falling asleep in school. Jesus, if that constitutes child abuse, I was abused at least 500 times in High School. But actually, the teachers are worried something might be going on at home. Lucy used to be a good kid. Something has changed. So Emily drives over to the Sheridan’s for a courtesy visit and discovers a couple of parents who look more like undertakers than middle class adults. They’re tired, cranky, weird, spooky. In the brief moments when Emily and Lucy are alone, the little girl’s eyes scream out “Help me.”

Emily gets a hunch that something really bad is going on and begs her boss to do something about it. But without any evidence of physical abuse, his hands are tied. Being the good unlawful social worker that she is, Emily heads over to the house the next night only to find Hanz and Franz (the parents) trying to burn their daughter alive in an oven! Holy shit! Emily saves Lucy just in time, and her parents are sent to their new house, of the nut variety.

Unfortunately there are no houses that can currently take Lucy in, so Emily gets this radical idea to adopt her herself! Yeah, radically stupid! In an act I can only imagine breaks at least four dozen Los Angeles laws, the county awards Emily temporary custody of Lucy. Awww. Finally, Emily has her little girl. I’m thinking this is going to work out really well. Don’t you agree?

Seeing as we’ve just entered Act 2, I’m guessing, *probably not*.

What starts off as a beautiful mother-daughter relationship quickly turns – shall we say – downright terrifying. Sometimes Emily seems normal. Then there are times when she seems anything but. Looking back at Lucy’s parents, Emily starts to wonder if maybe they weren’t crazy. Maybe they were…scared. But scared of a little girl? What could possibly be scary about a 3rd grade girl?

What I looked like after reading The Baster.

One of my favorite scenes (besides the oven scene) is when Emily becomes suspicious that something strange is going on with Lucy. So she sneaks back to the abandoned Sheridan house to look around. She’s drawn to the parents’ bedroom, where she notices hundreds of scratch marks on the floor. It takes her a moment to realize they’re the marks of the bookshelf being repeatedly dragged every night. But to where? She simulates the motion and realizes it was being dragged in front of the doorway. This leads her to discover two large deadbolts on the door. Why in the world would these two need to deadbolt their bedroom door?

Later, when Emily is in her bedroom, wondering what Lucy is doing in hers, wondering if she’s going crazy, wondering if it’s ridiculous to think that the young child she adopted is actually the devil, a simple call from her daughter to tuck her in is enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

The problem with Case 39 is its third act, which feels a little routine. In a film that kept you guessing and played with suspense in a way I haven’t seen since The Sixth Sense and The Others (although The Orphanage did a good job), the final 30 pages were too cliché for my taste. The issue is a forced attempt at a “you gotta have faith to defeat her” storyline that seemingly comes out nowhere. Maybe Wright was a draft or two away from setting this up better, but as it stands, it took what would have surely been an “impressive” down to a recommended read.

I don’t wanna shortchange this script though. It was definitely fun and I’ll be catching the movie when it comes out. Whenever that may be. Hmm, should we open a case to find out?

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

What I learned: 180 degree character transformations are hard to pull off. Emily loves children more than life itself. So to believe that she’d be able to kill a child at the end of the story is a huge stretch that takes a lot of setting up. It is only because Lucy repeatedly kills others and almost kills Emily, that we buy into Emily’s transformation into a killer. Anybody who saw Anakin Skywalker’s unconvincing transformation into the Emperor’s disciple in Episode 3 knows that it’s easier to screw these things up than pull them off. So make sure you lay the groundwork during the course of your screenplay to sell that transformation once it occurs. If you don’t do your job, we’ll call bullshit and check out of your story.

no link. :(

Genre: Romantic Dramedy
Premise: Wally is in love with his best friend Kassie. When Kassie tries to get pregnant via artificial insemination from the perfect guy, Wally replaces the sample with his own.
About: To star Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and Jeff Goldblum. Directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Blades Of Glory). The material is based on an original short story by Jeffrey Eugenides published in The New Yorker. What isn’t clear to me is if this is an assignment by Loeb (in which case he’s relieved of a ton of the blame) or if he bought this to write himself.
Writer: Allan Loeb
Details: 119 pages (Feb 2007 draft)

Who needs a penis?

When I reviewed “Solitary Man” last week, I knew it was going to be the kind of script that divided men and women. The main character was an aging womanizer who treated women like cheap Chinese food. And somehow I was rooting for him. Enter “The Baster,” where the roles are reversed. Now, it’s a strong and alienating female character at the center of the story. And I hated her. I mean hated her with every fiber of my being. But why? Is that fair? Shouldn’t I have rooted for her the same way I was pulling for Ben? These and other questions are answered in my review of The Baster.

Kassie Larson may be vying for the most villainous unlikable female love interest in the history of cinema. No wait, make that the history of entertainment. Kassie doesn’t want a man. She wants the genetic Holy Grail. You know that sign at the theme park that says you gotta be “this” tall to ride? Kassie has her own sign. A sign that says you have to be “this” tall, “this” strong, “this” smart, “this” funny. If you don’t have every single “this”, guess what? You don’t get to ride Kassie. In fact, if you don’t meet her stringent criteria, you’re no better than the homeless guy on East 32nd and Lexington. But that’s okay right? What’s wrong with high standards? No one should have to settle. Except Kassie takes her demanding selfish unrealistic view of the opposite gender and uses it as an excuse to treat her best friend, Wally, like complete and total shit.

Wally’s in love with Kassie of course. We wouldn’t have a movie if he wasn’t. But why Wally cares one iota for this destroyer of all happiness is a question that’s never addressed in The Baster. Because of Kassie’s stratospheric standards, she is without man. And because her biological clock is ticking, she wants baby. Wally, being her “best friend,” feels that he’s the best candidate. But Kassie wants to find a stronger, taller, smarter, better looking baby-maker – “Modern day natural selection” style. This leaves desperately-in-love Wally to strike out in his final attempt at everlasting love with Kassie.

“Why does Carson hate me?”

But this is New York. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. A place where an honest women can inseminate herself with a turkey baster. So when Kassie holds an “I’m Getting Pregnant Party,” Wally uses the opportunity to snatch her donor’s sperm and replace it with his own. This way, Kassie is going to have Wally’s baby and not even know it!

Afterwards, Kassie decides to spend the next seven years in Minnesota. So we skip that time and rejoin her when she moves back to New York – her young son in tow. Or shall we say, her and Wally’s young son in tow. Except she doesn’t know that. Thus begins a second courtship, with Kassie supposedly “maturing” and not putting as much emphasis on all those silly superficial things (translation: She’s gotten older and uglier and has a kid and therefore has to lower her standards). So after destroying Wally’s universe, Kassie now puts a relationship on the table. Wally dumps his longtime girlfriend for the chance he’s been waiting for his entire life. Then less than a week later, Kassie starts dating the original donor (or who she thinks is the donor), claiming this is okay because she never told Wally they were exclusive. Am I the only person who wants to throw this woman off a cliff?

Underneath it all is the slowly building suspense of what’s going to happen when Kassie finds out that Wally’s the real father. Except it’s hard to drum up any excitement for the revelation because I’m thinking, as soon as she finds out and gets all pissed off, Wally will finally be free of this blood sucking Devil-Spawn. So I was hoping for the revelation. But I think for the wrong reasons. We’re supposed to be *worried* that it will ruin Wally’s chances. We’re not worried. We’re hoping. Desperately hoping.

I don’t know why I’m hating all these Jenifer Aniston projects lately. I actually like Aniston. She manages to be sexy and funny –not an easy feat to pull off in this day and age. Angelina Jolie. Sexy. Not funny. Paula Poundstone. Funny. Not sexy. I can’t even think of another woman I’d characterize as funny and sexy. So I have respect for the woman (check her out in “Management.” She’s great.) But this script is a whole different beast. It’s practically begging you to root against it – challenging you to like one single character. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. In retrospect, I’m not sure this is Loeb’s fault. I don’t think the premise works as a movie. Maybe it did as a short story. But man are these characters difficult to empathize with.

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

What I learned: One thing Loeb did well was establish a clear and consistent theme. The theme of “natural selection” permeates through the main as well as all the sub-plots. That message came out loud and clear. Though I’m continually at odds with just how important theme is when one of the more well-integrated themes I’ve read in awhile rests inside a story I disliked so much. Writers have been shot on message boards for suggesting as much. So I’ll frame this as a question: How important is theme to you?