Been getting some e-mails about this. I’ll be making plenty of announcements regarding the official announcement of the contest, which will probably be about two or three weeks from now. So you should be prepping those loglines as we speak. Also, I’ve decided to use Paypal for those of you who want to submit more than 1 logline, with a package of up to 10 loglines for 5 dollars. So if you don’t have a Paypal account yet and you plan on submitting more than 1 logline, please go set one up now! Can’t wait to start reading these.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A look at the white commercial farming industry in Zimbabwe in 2002, the year of the first opposing political party to president Mugabe’s tyranic reign.
About: Victoria Falls is one of the winners of this year’s Nicholl’s Fellowship. The Nicholl’s Fellowship is considered by most to be the most prestigious screenplay competition on the planet. Although winning the Fellowship is by no means a path to success (many winners we never hear from again), there are some who have used it to launch great careers. Recently mentioned on the site are previous Fellows Ehren Kruger (1996) and Anthony Jaswinski (1997). Kruger’s winning script was the excellent unconventional twist-ending thriller, “Arlington Road.”
Writer: Matt Ackley

Victoria Falls, even on its best day, even with a great director, even with an A-List actor, is never going to light up the box office. It’s just not that kind of movie. The themes are heavy here. The subject matter will challenge you. Thinking is a requirement. It feels like something you’d see nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.

What I like about Victoria Falls is that it’s not what we think it is. Since the script is set in Zimbabwe, we’re automatically assuming it’s going to be about a bunch of oppressed Africans. Yet the focus is actually on a family of rich white farmers who are kicked off their land without reason by Zimbabwe’s tyrant of a leader, the dreaded Robert Mugabe. What I don’t like about Victoria Falls is that there are large sections of the script where I felt like I should be taking notes so I could ace my History test tomorrow. First and foremost to me, movies represent entertainment. And anytime I feel like I’m being taught something, I get squeamish. I think the true mark of a great historical or socially relevant film, is to teach you without you realizing you’re being taught. And that wasn’t my experience here.

So as long as class is in session, you’re probably wondering what Victoria Falls is. It’s actually the name of the biggest waterfall in Africa. And as you can see in the below picture, it’s one of the few waterfalls where you can actually lay over the edge without going over. Because people need to lay over 700 foot waterfalls. Yeah, that’s exactly what I want to do when I go to Africa. Right after I dive head first into a Volcano and swim into the heart of a tsunami.

The story centers around two best friends, poor Zimbabwe native Ojaji, and the rich white son of a local farming family, Nico. Nico’s father is nearing the end of his working days and would like for Nico to take over the farm. But Nico has other ideas. He wants to grab a pot of the family gold and head over to America to party it up. And he wants Ojaji to come with him. The two are all set to bounce when Ojaji feels some guilt for leaving his crumbling country, a country where 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollars is worth 3 U.S. dollars. In an ironic twist of fate, he takes the job Nico was supposed to take, managing his father’s farm.

Meanwhile, for the first time (In its history?) Zimbabwe has an opposition party. Mugabe, who is painted as a seriously bad dude, will do anything to squash the uprising. So in order to appeal to the masses, he promises that, if elected, the rich white farmers will be sent back to their country, and the locals will run all the farms themselves. It’s a bold but effective claim. Zimbabwe is home to 5000 whites and 12 million blacks. Yet whites own more than 70% of the farmland. There’s a predicable amount of animosity towards them as a result, and the chance to send them packing strikes a chord. Ojaji is then forced to become a bit of a politician himself, as he tries to save the farm from the relentless locals, who would like for nothing more than to burn the farmhouse down along with everyone inside it.

Zimbabwean politics. Farm management. An upcoming election. What more can you ask for in a piece of summer entertainment, right?

What we have here is a good writer who’s maybe trying to do too much. I mean there’s a lot going on in this script. We have the two best friends going off in different directions. We have a political battle between a renegade party and a dictator. We have Ojaji trying to run a farm. We have Ojaji’s sister secretly promoting the opposing party. We have a strange love triangle between Ojaji, Nico, and an American woman. I just felt that at a certain point, we lost focus. What was Victoria Falls about? I wasn’t always sure.

That’s not to say the script isn’t deserving of a Fellowship. There are some wonderful moments and the final act rewards you for your patience with an intense almost action-movie like ending. But the foundation of the story – asking us to sympathize for the rich white man amongst the poverty and struggles of so many less fortunate people – is a tough pill to swallow. From a purely story point-of-view, it’s the same reason why I didn’t like Friday Night Lights (the film). I couldn’t figure out why I was supposed to root for a team that always won. I tend to pull for the underdog.

I’m happy the writer had this competition, because I’m not sure the script would’ve been recognized otherwise. If you liked Gaza or The Untitled Bill Carter Project, you might want to check this out. The subject matter here just wasn’t my cup of tea, and ultimately kept me from falling for this story the same way the Nicholl’s judges did.

Script link: **sorry guys – asked to take this down.**

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

What I learned: This is a competition script. Plain and simple. You could send this logline to a thousand agencies and you’d probably get 999 rejections. But there’s a lesson here. You need to understand how marketable your idea is before you type Fade In. Know that if you’re going to write the next Victoria Falls, agents, producers, and managers will likely turn their cheeks. Contests will probably be your only route. Write something more mainstream with a hook, and the logline does the work for you – getting you reads everywhere you submit. As long as you know what you’re in for, you can make a more informed decision and write any kind of screenplay you want.

Genre: Heist/Drama
Premise: A toll booth worker takes the blame for a bank robbing he was tricked into. When he gets out of jail, he decides to rob the same bank in order to justify his sentence.
About: This is the recently announced project Keanu Reeves (no relation) signed onto, which he will also produce. It will be directed by Malcolm Venville. Stephen Hamel and Lemore Syvan will produce along with Reeves. – Some of the trades are calling this a romantic comedy. Though I can see why classifying the script may have been difficult, there’s not an ounce of comedy in here, so you can kaput that rumor right now. Sacha Gervasi is probably best known for writing 2004’s “The Terminal” for Steven Spielberg.
Writer: Sacha Gervasi
Details: 121 pages (unknown draft date)

So how *does* one classify Henry’s Crime? We’ve determined it isn’t a romantic comedy. But it does have romance. Yet I wouldn’t call it a romance. It’s got a lot of drama, that’s for sure. Oh, and it’s also a heist flick. Well… It’s not quite a heist flick. You’d need a lot of heisting going on for that. I guess you would call this a soft blend of all of these, with an exclamation point after “soft”. I’m having a hard time forming my thoughts for this review because Henry’s Crime didn’t really leave a lasting impression on me. It’s minimalist to the extreme. It’s reserved. It’s passive. And for that reason, it moves through you like a daydream. You’re experiencing it but when you wake up…you only remember bits and pieces.

The premise is actually kind of neat. A simple toll booth worker named Henry is unknowingly roped into a bank robbing by a few loose acquaintances. When it all goes to shit, Henry’s the one who gets caught. He’s told that if he names the men involved, he’ll go free. For reasons that are still unclear to me, he doesn’t name the men. This leads to a four year stint in jail, where he meets a wise older gentleman named Max. They become best friends. The sage Max is always pushing Henry to find his point here on earth. Why is he here? Henry doesn’t know. After Henry gets out of jail, he goes in search of this point. He ends up heading back to the bank he didn’t rob, and that’s where it hits him. He went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. So he might as well go ahead and commit the crime.

So far, so good.

Except that’s pretty much where the interesting stuff ends. Henry’s Crime feels like a script desperately searching for a way to fill up all the empty space around that intriguing premise. And although there are some original choices made in the story, they never really feel like they’re a part of it.

Henry himself is quite a vapid character. He rarely interacts with life unless it interacts with him first. He doesn’t offer his opinions on matters unless someone asks him. He will speak only when spoken to. In fact, most of Henry’s vocabulary revolves around different ways of saying, “I don’t know.” To be honest, Henry feels a lot like a robot. I couldn’t help but think of Jeff Bridges in Star Man. Remember how that character always seemed confused and asked a lot of questions? That’s pretty much Henry here. Except Henry is from earth. I know, I know. There are a million Keanu Reeves jokes to be made here. But I actually like Reeves and respect how he takes chances on material. Only a few A-list stars are that brave. But this role may even be too introverted for him.

Anyway, eventually Max gets out of prison and Henry convinces him to help him with his plan. It so happens that there’s an old theatre company right next to the bank, and that underneath it is an ancient water tunnel that nobody knows about, which leads to the bank vault. Henry ends up befriending a young actress who works at the theatre, and the two strike up a relationship. Eventually (and I wouldn’t fault you if you laughed here), Henry and Max realize that they can only get into the tunnel through one of the actor’s rooms. So Henry tries out for and lands the lead part in the play, which allows Max to use his room to dig into the tunnel.

I mean…that’s about as bold of a choice as you can make. Because if it doesn’t work, it’s gonna fall faster than the floor Max is standing on when he breaks through.

Towards the end, things start getting Prison Break in nature (can anyone explain to me how that show lasted more than one season? THEY BROKE OUT OF THE PRISON!!! There’s nothing left to do!). The original gang leader who robbed the bank first (and screwed over Henry), finds out about the heist and wants in. So does the security guard who spotted Henry during that original robbing (though his interest feels more like a convenient way to give them a man on the inside). And while this is the one place where the script adds a healthy dose of conflict, the heist itself doesn’t sustain it.

I fully admit there’s a chance here I didn’t “get” this story. I didn’t read the trades until afterwards and therefore had not heard of people classifying this as a “Capra-esque” romantic comedy. Looking back at it, that surely would’ve colored my approach to the read. But I think it’s better I went in knowing nothing. Because that way I read the material for what it was. And I never felt any comedy in here at all. In fact, I thought this was a pretty heavy drama. Who knows? Maybe Variety got it wrong and everyone else picked it up. I will give this to Gervasi. He’s written something very original. But I simply couldn’t get into it.

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

What I learned: This very well may be a pet peeve of mine so I’m not going to speak for the rest of Hollywood here. But one thing that drives me crazy is characters that only ask questions. One of the reasons I hated Kevin Smith’s Dogma so much, is that all the main character does is ask questions. That’s all she does the entire script. I never learned a single thing about her because she was too busy asking everyone else questions. And while Henry isn’t that bad, he definitely spends a lot of time asking questions, and as a result, I never get to know who *he* is. Without knowing your main character, it’s hard to identify with and root for him. And that was my big problem with this script. I never got a sense of who Henry was, so I didn’t really care about his life.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A group of rich friends have a monthly dinner ritual where they each bring the biggest weirdo they can find, then discreetly make fun of them over the course of the evening.
About: Add yet another project heavy-set in-boy Zach Galifianakis is attached to. The film will co-star Paul Rudd and be directed by Jay Roach. The film is actually a remake of a French film that came out about a decade ago (Having some major déjà vu here after The Tourist review). Galifianakis’ part was originally to be played by Sacha Baron Cohen when he was attached to every comedy in town. When he dropped out, so did the project, and Roach has been trying to get it going again ever since. It should be noted that, like a lot of comedies, these things are rewritten right up to the end, so a few story points may have changed from this relatively older draft.
Writer: Andy Borowitz (Revisions by Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio and Jon Vitti — Further revisions by David Guion & Michael Handelman — Based on the original French film “Le Diner de Cons” by Francis Veber)
Details: 118 pages (February 2007 draft)

I guess if there’s anyone qualified to review this script, it’s me. I’ve actually seen the original French film it’s based on. In fact, I’ve seen quite a few French comedies. I don’t know what it is about them that I’m drawn to. I mean, the French aren’t exactly known for their sense of humor. But the films are kind of like bastardized versions of our own ridiculous comedies. So they take everything about them that’s ridiculous, and make them even more ridiculous. I don’t know if I ever really laugh at them, so much as marvel at how strangely seductive and amusing they can be. So when I heard there would be an American film based off of a French film, that bases its principles off American films, I thought at the very least I might be able to offer some commentary on how insane that is.

The story is about a group of rich assholes that have a monthly dinner ritual whereby they each find and bring with them a “schmuck.” Someone so out of touch with the world, so strange, so ridiculous, that they’re unaware of just how idiotic they are. The person who brings the strangest “schmuck” ends up “winning”. Our hero, Tim, is on the verge of landing a 100 million dollar investment for his company, and his boss, in anticipation of Tim’s newfound status, has invited him to one of these infamous dinners. Tim is stressing out as there are only a couple of days left before the dinner and he still hasn’t found a schmuck. If he doesn’t impress these men, there’s a good chance they won’t let him into “the club.”

Enter Barry Speck (no doubt Zach Galifianakis), an IRS auditor who recreates famous moments throughout history (think the moon landing) using taxidermied mice. To say that Speck is a bit of an odd duck would be selling him short. The guy recreates history…with dead rodents. Tim realizes right away he’s found his golden ticket and asks Barry to join him for dinner in a couple of days. Barry, not used to any attention whatsoever, is thrilled by the invitation and accepts.

Back at home, Tim prepares his beautiful girlfriend Julie for their Jeffersons moment. But when Tim explains what goes down in these exclusive dinners, Julie is horrified and tells him he shouldn’t go. Of course, since that means throwing everything he’s worked so hard for down the drain, Tim’s quite reluctant. This inaction leads to Julie huffing and puffing and eventually claiming she needs some “time away to think about their relationship”. So she leaves. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as she does, Barry shows up. Tim asks him what the hell he’s doing here and Barry says he’s here for the dinner. Tim informs him that the dinner isn’t until tomorrow but Barry refuses to accept this. He’s convinced the dinner is tonight. Tim tries to inform him that he’s the only one between the two who would know when the dinner actually was. But Barry’s not buying it.

After Barry worms his way into Tim’s apartment, he eventually finds out that Julie’s run out on him. This hits Barry particularly hard because he experienced a particularly harsh dumping himself. After talking it through, Barry convinces Tim that Julie is probably cheating on him with her slimy boss, Kieren. Hence begins the main thrust of the story – Tim and Barry desperately trying to prevent Julie from being with Kieren. Naturally, whatever plan they come up with, Barry ends up making it ten times worse than it would’ve been had they done nothing at all. When Tim realizes just how disastrous Barry is, he tries to get rid of him. But the thing about Barry is, once he’s in your life, he doesn’t leave.

For a movie called “Dinner For Schmucks”, it’s somewhat odd that the dinner doesn’t happen until the last 30 pages of the screenplay, but like I mentioned before, this is a French film. And for better or worse, the French throw logic, along with movie conventions, out the window.

There are some good things and some bad things here. One issue I had was Julie deciding she needed to “get away” because of the schmuck dinner. I mean come on. There are worse problems going on in relationships *every day*. If that’s what’s going to break you up, then keep walking honey, cause you were never going to make it in the first place. One thing that will undoubtedly work though is Zack Galifianakis as Barry. I mean, if there was ever a more perfect marriage between actor and character, I’d like to see it. Barry is such an odd weirdo and Galifianakis has so claimed the crown on odd weirdos, that the two couldn’t be more right for each other. But that doesn’t necessarily make it funny. And that’s where Schmucks runs into some trouble. Is this movie supposed to make you laugh? Or is it supposed to make you uncomfortable with Barry’s character? Cause it definitely achieves the latter. I’m not so sure it achieves the former.

The jury will be deliberating on this one for sure. I think at best it can be a solid middle-of-the-road comedy. At worst it can be a huge misfire, with the audience sort of wondering what the focus is and seeing the humor as too weird. Regardless of what it becomes, the script isn’t quite up to snuff. It would be interesting to see what’s happened since, but I can’t recommend this draft.

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

What I learned: I try to preach this to any writer who will listen. It’s one of my big things and that’s why I keep harping on it. Make sure your script abides by real-life logic, not movie-world logic. I simply did not buy this idea that Julie would get so upset about a business dinner that she’d leave Tim. This falls into the “movie logic” world, where you need something to happen (in this case, Tim and Julie need to be split up) so you come up with a bogus reason to do so, regardless of if it would ever happen in real life. I’m telling you, readers and audiences aren’t dumb. They’ll sniff this shit out. I realize there’s some leeway involved in comedies, but not on the critical plot turns that set up your movie. You gotta make sure that stuff is 100% believable.

In Bruges is one of those movies that you’re supposed to like if you’re a film nerd. Saying you don’t instantly loses you credibility. I guess I just lost credibility. I’m not sure it’s the script so much as Colin Farrell’s acting. I can never understand what the hell the guy’s saying and I don’t think he’s funny. If I need a guy to break girls’ hearts or make women swoon, I’ll hire Farrell. If I want an actor who can deliver jokes, Farrell is somewhere on the bottom of my list. But hey, people love In Bruges and I’m not going to rain on their parade. Even though I just sorta did. Today, Roger takes a look at another of McDonagh’s (the writer of In Bruges) scripts, Seven Psychopaths. If I ranked all the scripts I get requests for, this one is somewhere near the top. People love this guy. Let’s see what Roger thinks.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Black Comedy
Premise: A writer’s life is violently turned upside down when his friends kidnap a Mafioso’s dog.
About: “Seven Psychopaths” is McDonagh’s third film script. It’s his favorite unproduced script. And that’s all he’s gonna say about it. At the age of 27, McDonagh became the first writer since Shakespeare to have four plays performed simultaneously in London. His plays have been nominated for multiple Tony Awards. He won an Oscar for his short, “Six Shooter”. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay Award with “In Bruges”.
Writer: Martin McDonagh.
Details: 116 pages (undated)

Canto I.

The only writer other than Shakespeare to have four plays performed concurrently in London’s West End Theatre District is Martin McDonagh. That’s an almost four-hundred year disparity between quite possibly the world’s greatest writer and a modern day Irish playwright.

One writes in manacled iambic pentameter and the other writes in an idiosyncratic language that champions casual swearing.

Both are writers who tell stories that explore the immemorial facets of honor, love, loss, sorrow, ambition, wrath and madness with jewel-like illumination.

A Shakespearean sonnet might stir the pain that hides in scars by driving a rapier through your heart, but a McDonagh murder ballad will pummel that protective wall you constructed around your soul with the butt of a gun until it creates its own entrance, turning what was once a barrier into a gate.

And that thing you call manliness that is actually a buffer between you and the world will erode in the winds of a howling melancholy and screaming black drama, leaving you with wrists upturned and your veins exposed to the world, laughing all the while.

Canto II.

Now here’s a script that exists on the other side. The side where rules are broken and where the writer’s creativity and skill create a form that, double-fisted, punches and shoots its way through the parameter walls and stretches the tethers of the tenants to the point where they snap, the story refusing to be held in such confines.

The new form might frighten you. It might scare you away. But there’s no need to run. Read it. Don’t know how? Let it show you how. Give it a chance. Like Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” or Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”, McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths” is a work that showcases meta-literary pyrotechnics. You learn how to read it as you go along.

But here’s the thing. It’s actually a quiet display that does not get in the way of the story. There are points, especially near the mid-point, where it teeters on the brink, where McDonagh seems to mutter fuck-all while he tight-rope walks between pretentious disaster and pure screenplay brilliance, but then he makes it to the latter side and all you can do as a reader is shake your head in wonder and nod approvingly as you skim back over the pages you just read to see exactly how he made it across.

There’s a danger that comes with playing with the rules. But your reward, if you survive the attempt, is that you may achieve something much more interesting than what would be possible by opting to play safely in the life-guarded screenplay sandbox. There’s a part in this script where it seems like McDonagh is telegraphing the entire third act, but then he reels the story back in and we’re served with something completely compelling, fun, tense, violent and heartbreaking.

If you get to the mid-point and find yourself frustrated, like I did, just keep reading.

I promise that it’s not what you think it is.

Canto III.

Here’s the story. We have our writer Marty, who may or may not be Martin McDonagh. He’s a writer. He’s a bit of an alcoholic. He’s trying to write a screenplay he has entitled “Seven Psychopaths”. Yeah, I know. But hold on. Pay attention.

Marty’s best-friend is Billy Bickle. Billy…well…let’s just say that Billy doesn’t like Marty’s girlfriend, Kaya. Kaya doesn’t like Billy. But it’s okay, because Billy is concerned with being a good friend and he’s not afraid to tell Marty that Kaya is kindof a bitch. He’s looking out for his friend.

At one point we might even get a glimpse at Billy’s diary and learn that he’s made lists on how he can be a better friend to Marty and Hans.

Hans is –-

–hold on. Sorry. I’ll get to Hans in a second.

Did you catch the “Taxi Driver” reference there? Look again. Billy’s name. Billy Bickle.

Billy actually thinks that he’s the son of Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro’s character in Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”. No, he doesn’t think he’s the son of De Niro. He believes he’s the son of the character, Travis Bickle. He thinks Travis Bickle is real.

But it’s not…it’s not something you want to ride into him for. Billy’s a sweet guy and it’s kind of painful to watch Marty get drunk and make fun of him concerning this character trait. It just makes Marty come off as cranky and mean-spirited. And Billy is an awesome friend. I would be honored to have a friend like Billy in my life.

You see, Billy is concerned that Marty is drinking too much and that’s causing problems with work on his script. And he’s not afraid to say it. As burgeoning scriptwriters, we could all use a cheerleader like this on our sides, alcoholic or not.

Now let’s get back to Hans.

Hans is an older guy, closer to sixty than fifty. He’s poor but always neatly dressed. He wears a distinctive cravat that might just be a stylistic fashion choice, or he might be using it to cover up a telling scar. He has a black wife named Myra, a victim of breast cancer who spends her painful days lying in bed at the cancer word.

Hans hasn’t worked in twenty years or so, and you get the sense he’s struggling to pay Myra’s hospital bills. So he’s come up with a dog-napping scheme to help him with his financial woes. Billy helps him out. They steal dogs from people at the local park, hold them in pens and wait for the missing-dog flyers to appear. And since this is a pretty rich area, they are able to score hundreds of dollars in reward money from suddenly ecstatic and wealthy owners.

But one day they make a mistake. They nab a cute, little three-legged shitsu by the name of Bonny that both men grow pretty fond of.

Except there’s already a guy who’s extremely fond of Bonny. Namely, his owner Charlie Costello. See, when we first meet Charlie, he’s at a double funeral for some mafiosos.

That’s something else you should note. Someone has taken it upon themselves to murder members of the mafia, leaving Jack ‘O Diamond playing cards on the bodies.

Anyways, Charlie is at this funeral, and he’s consoling the mothers of the fallen men. He’s telling me, with much passion, that he’s going to crucify the people responsible for this.

Then someone arrives to tell him that something has happened to his shitsu, Bonny.

And then we truly see Charlie’s true colors.

He goes apeshit and when the Irish priest at the funeral tries to calm him down, Charlie responds by pushing him into an open grave. Yep. He pushes. A priest. Into. An open grave.

And now worlds are about to collide. People are about to die.

And it reminds me a lot of McDonagh’s play, “The Lieutenant of Inishmore”. Which is about a psychopath named Padraic, a leader in a Irish National Liberation Army splinter group, who finds out his best friend has been killed.

His best friend is a cat named Wee Thomas.

Anyways, a bloodbath ensues as Padraic returns to his old stomping grounds as he avenges the cat.

So Charlie is a bit like Padraic. His interrogation starts with the woman who was walking Bonny when he went missing. She’s chained to a chair and he has a gun in his hand. And if we weren’t sure about Charlie’s sanity already, this scene provides us with frightful and hilarious clarity.

Canto IV.

It can be argued, that when it comes to plays, that what you need is three ingredients. (1) Quirky characters. (2) Good dialogue. (3) Interesting stories for each character. And off you go.

The idiom of McDonagh’s work is that, yes, he has quirky characters. And he also has dialogue that captures a sense of madness through speech. His characters express themselves through the oddness of their expressions. And not only do they seem to have interesting backstories, the stories that they are living portraying in the present to the audience are compelling and interesting as well.

But plays are different. You can tell more than you have to show, and you can get away with it.

Cinematically, it’s wise to show more than you tell.

And McDonagh has some great stories that he shows us here. You see, there are stories within stories here. The frame device is the screenplay Marty is writing, and he needs to find and populate his story with seven characters. Seven characters worthy of the title psychopath. Seven psychopaths with interesting stories to tell.

There’s a funny bit of business that involves a hungover Marty finding an ad in the paper, a call for psychopaths with interesting stories to be used in a film being written by Marty. He didn’t put this in the paper. Billy did.

And this is how we meet Zachariah. He’s very old. He arrives to Marty’s apartment to tell his tale to Marty’s tape recorder. Marty just wants to be rid of the guy, so he goes about his business making coffee and such when he hears Zachariah reveal that he lived his life as a serial killer who travelled the country killing other serial killers.

He didn’t do this alone. He had a girlfriend and partner named Maggie.

And it’s the type of well-told tale that catches your breath. And what starts out as a story about grisly serial killers turns into a sad tale of regret and love lost.

Zachariah’s motive for coming to Marty is so that Marty will post a note after the credits roll if his screenplay is ever made into a film from Zachariah to Maggie.

You see, he’s an old man looking for the woman that got away.

And it’s a powerful, touching sequence that made me cry. And then I was laughing while crying at the irony of shedding tears over the story of a couple that offed serial murderers.

And that’s what makes this script such a joy and pleasure to experience. It’s the stories and connections and reversals that rise to the surface as a man looking for his stolen dog wreaks havoc on the people responsible.

Canto V.

The characters speak dialogue that showcases McDonagh’s ear for elliptical speech. People often speak around subjects and the truth before they finally settle on it. It takes them a bit of time to figure out how they’re going to approach a subject or something that’s bothering them. But when they finally do, it’s a moment of connection that lights up the circuits and gets our agreement and empathy.

There’s a great line of dialogue, a line that resonates still:

“I think anything made with brains and heart is life-affirming, no matter how black the subject matter.”

Living in the Bible Belt, people like to make me feel weird.

Sometimes they ask me, “How can you like that? It’s not uplifting.”

Like this one time I was watching David Gordon Green’s “Snow Angels”, and after it ended, my roommate, who had been grading papers in front of the flat-screen, she says, “That wasn’t very uplifting, was it?”

And she scowled at me and told me it was a terrible, terrible film.

Not totally pleasant, yes, but it was totally captivating. It had things to say. Things about grief that spoke to me, calmed me as a person who was going through his own grief. But she clocked out and chose not to believe that it had things to say.

Why?

Now I’m a guy that likes somber, melancholy, dark fairy tales dripping with sparkled chiaroscuro and luminous tenebrae…I like stories with swearing and guns and knives and people behaving badly.

And you know, people will look at me and say, with a straight-face, that there’s no value to such stories. No artistic, humanistic, or moral merit.

Well, what a shitty stance that’s more a matter of taste and bias then it is of criticism. Than it is of giving a story a chance.

And it frustrates me, because I’m a person that tries to find the beauty and truth in everything. I want to say, didn’t you pay attention? There’s light here, there’s gem-like soul-stirring stuff going on here, and sometimes you need some of the darkness to accentuate the light, the life. It’s like alchemy, chemistry. You need the vile stuff, the dark stuff, to cull out the light.

Canto VI.

Because I’m going to tell you right now, there are multiple moments in this story that violates Stuart Beattie’s screenplay axiom: “Never kill the dog.”

Animals die in this thing.

And so do people.

Life is hacked to death with a machete. It melts in pools of acid. Flare guns are shot into mouths, bullets bounce around inside bodies. There’s fisticuffs and bloody physicality. Men break up with women. Women and men both die tragic deaths.

And I don’t really think there’s any bias or prejudice betwixt the things that die in this script.

Canto VII.

But there’s men professing love for each other. It’s not homosexuality. It’s the manly Romantic friendship found between two males in Victorian times and literature. You know how people would snicker in the theater during “Lord of the Rings” whenever Frodo and Sam gazed at each other? How people mistook that for them being hard and wet for each other?

There’s that except it’s not two dudes who want to fuck each other (it wasn’t in Tolkien either).

It’s a sense of honor, of loyalty, of friendship.

It’s also a meditation on Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”. Chinks in the armor and macho exteriors that lay bare the insecurities, the tenderness, the red-beating hearts of these characters. Push past through the posturing and physicality to see these men naked, offering their beating hearts in outstretched supplicant hands.

There’s writer as warrior.

You fight for the time and dedication to write, and sometimes you lose the simple pleasures of life in exchange. If you’re in a relationship, it’s a hard juggling act. Because writing has become your mistress, and your stories have become your children. You have to decide, who is going to be the wife, and who is going to be the mistress? Your writing? Or your mate?

I think there’s a sacrifice that comes with choosing a path as a writer, with things like logophilia or cinephilia. When you’re so haunted and obsessed with words and images you find the rest of the world passing you by as you lose yourself in the loop. Sometimes it’s out of your control.

And sometimes when you’ve worked months or years to complete something, you’ve shed friendships and jobs. You’ve opted not to settle on a straight career path and a yuppie life because you’re working something minimum wage while you live in a ratty apartment with Good Will décor as you spend the majority of your time writing.

A lot.

Like Seven Samurai, these guys uphold their honor to each other, their friendships for the greater good, but it’s the warriors who ultimately lose. They have lost their lives and Marty has lost his friends. As Kambei muses, “Again we are defeated.”

Because in the end, Marty has even lost his girl because his writing is important, and she is, after all, a fucking bitch.

And with Marty alive, life-sustaining work has prevailed over war, left all warriors (Billy and Hans and the others) as the defeated party.

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

What I learned: When you’re someone like Martin McDonagh, you don’t compromise. People don’t tell him, “That’s a great first draft.” He has the confidence and the stubbornness and the belief in his own work to say, “We’re shooting it my way and we’re not going to change a fucking word.” And you know what? That’s what’s gonna happen. If you’re going to last in this business, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your scripts. The moment you lose belief, the moment you quit and give up. It’s over. Otherwise, how are other people going to believe in you? Are you writing for a paycheck? Or are you writing because you need and have to tell stories? Are you writing a story to tell it to other people, or are you telling it to yourself?