THE SCRIPTSHADOW NEWSLETTER HAS BEEN SENT! And it has a new TOP 25 script review inside. Holy Moses was this script good. If you didn’t receive the newsletter, check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. If you still can’t find it, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with subject line: “NO NEWSLETTER.” If you want to be added to the newsletter, e-mail me at that same address with the subject line: “NEWSLETTER.” Enjoy!

Read each script and vote for your favorite in the comments! Winner gets a review next Friday. Let’s find something great! Monday is a holiday here in the U.S. so I’ll be back on Tuesday…

Title: The Lone Ambassador
Genre: Sci-fi/Thriller
Logline: After a mysterious alien spaceship crash-lands near area fifty one, a ridiculed ufologist is forced to go rogue and uncover over sixty years of government secrecy.
Why You Should Read: I honestly never thought I’d be submitting one of my screenplays to script shadow, but here it is. The majority of my youth was spent in my imagination navigating beyond our world, hoping that the myth of another planet just like ours, was true. My dream was to write a story about a young-naive boy, abandoned by the naysayers who roam our society in hopes to deny our truth. Enjoy, and beat me down with brutal honesty. Thank You.

Title: The Inept
Genre: Dark Humor
Logline: Chaos ensues in quiet suburbia after Eddy finds a lost wallet and obsesses over how to return it and then win over its owner, the beautiful Lindsy Rocker.
Why You Should Read: Enter a world where dueling dildo fights, threats by midget bookies, baristas posing as psychiatrists, and mistaken identity over strippers with stomas simply represents a “bad week” for Eddy, a socially inept virgin obsessed with a photo found in a woman’s lost wallet.

Title: Damaged
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: A violent ex-con is hired as an investigative crime reporter under the agreement that he will perpetrate the crimes in order to write about them.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been trying for six months now to get this script read on Scriptshadow’s Amateur Fridays. If I had to pinpoint the reason that I keep failing, I would obviously turn to my logline. I know this one comes of as generic and vague. I’ve tried re-writing it a hundred times and short of lying completely and re-vamping it to feature robots and super-hero’s, there’s not much I can do. This is the story that I have and I do truly believe that it is a good one. I was aware going in how pedestrian the subject matter could be, so I concentrated primarily on scene construction, trying to make each scene as unique and memorable as possible.

Since finishing this script I have started on something new, something more high concept and reader friendly. But I still believe that all scripts are important as they all help us to improve. This is something that I can’t do until someone reads this and tears it apart for me.

So please, I’m at the mercy of the Scriptshadow community. To paraphrase Tyler Durden, tear me down so I can build something better out of myself.

Title: Ghost Story
Genre: Horror
Logline: Soon after moving into their new apartment, a young couple’s idyllic life begins to unravel in the most horrific ways due to the presence of a malevolent spirit.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been making a living as a screenwriter here in Mumbai for the last five years, before which I studied film in Los Angeles, and even worked on a few movies as a production assistant.

I’m a horror film connoisseur, and someone who swears by the holy trinity of horror cinema: “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” and “Alien.” Although horror is my genre of choice, I’ve also secured paid gigs writing a crime-thriller, and a Hitchcockian suspense-thriller.

Following months of depression after failing to get my first horror screenplay produced, I went about writing a story which was far more contained, thereby cheaper to produce, and thus “Ghost Story” was born. “Ghost Story” is a slow burn horror-thriller in the vein of “The Shining” and “Paranormal Activity,” but without the latter’s found footage aesthetic. What sets “Ghost Story” apart is its matter-of-fact approach in presenting supernatural events in a real and believable way. Imagine “Insidious,” but with the real world aesthetics of “The Lunchbox.” It felt great when “Ghost Story” made the quarter-finals in Screencraft’s 2015 Horror Screenplay Contest.

For the past year, I’ve been paying the bills developing concepts — two action-thrillers, and one superhero-urban fantasy — for a local production company.

I’d sincerely appreciate your feedback on “Ghost Story” — not to mention feedback from the rest of the ScriptShadow community as well — because really I want to make it better. So fingers crossed, hoping this query email piques your interest!

Title: A Falling Knife
Genre: Crime Drama
Logline: When a war erupts between two Philadelphia mob factions, a gang enforcer becomes a police informant – and falls in love with the the officer he’s feeding information. It’s THE DEPARTED meets BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.
About Me: I started my career as a writer for a variety comedy show, but my heart was always in drama. Last year I mustered the courage to quit my comedy job and do a career pivot into drama. It’s been a challenging transition, but something I’m really happy I’ve done. It’s been tough getting noticed in a new genre, and I’ve been quite humbled by starting from scratch. So in that sense, I very much consider myself an amateur.
Why You Should Read: I think it’s a very unique twist on an evergreen world. We’ll always want gangster movies, but the same old story won’t do anymore. It needs to go somewhere new. One thing I noticed about almost every one of these movies is that the energy between these intense male characters only ever manifests itself in violence. I saw a real opening to explore the emotional side of these violent, masculine guys by creating a love story between a cop and his informant. They’re in this forbidden relationship, a star-crossed love where they are enemies and lovers at once — they have to rely on and confide in each other, while at the same time struggling to fully trust one another. It lends an inherent tension to the script that to me feels fresh. It’s not all bombs and guns (though of course, there is plenty of that) but also something deeper and wholly unexpected in this genre.

CHECK YOUR SPAM AND PROMOTIONS FOLDERS!

I’ve heard that Gmail’s getting super-harsh on anything that isn’t a personal e-mail, so if you didn’t receive my Scriptshadow Newsletter in your Inbox, make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. This is one of the bigger newsletters I’ve written in awhile and it contains a script review of the best screenwriter in the world’s hot new script. So if you didn’t receive it or want to sign up, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER,” and I’ll send.

On to today’s review…

Genre: Horror/Fantasy?
Premise: A recently released convict travels to his wife’s funeral, only to meet a mysterious man along the way who tricks him into becoming his employee. Employee for what though? That’s the question.
About: I’m surprised American Gods (a multi-award winning novel) hasn’t made it to our television sets sooner. The geek-friendly IP is a favorite amongst horror and fantasy savants and its author, Neil Gaiman, celebrated to the level of deity. You’d think with super-show Game of Thrones pulling in watch parties that rival that of The Bachelor, a show based on “Gods” would’ve been next on deck. Now that it’s finally here, the question is, will anyone be able to find it? The show will air on Starz, and while that network has put out some quality television, it doesn’t seem to have the footprint that buzzier destinations Netflix, HBO, and AMC have. This one’s being adapted by some heavy hitters though. Bryan Fuller is the creator of the beloved (but ultimately little-watched) NBC show, Hannibal, and Michael Green scripted the new Alien AND the new Blade Runner movies.
Writers: Bryan Fuller & Michael Green
Details: 57 pages

So let me tell you about my history with Neil Gaiman. At 12 years old, I, like every other kid, started reading Stephen King. And if you remember what it was like to read Stephen King at 12 year old… well it was akin to running through -12 degree weather with a pack of wild dogs chasing you. In a word – thrilling. And the metaphor truly is apt because when you finally escaped them, just like when you finally escaped “It,” you felt like you got away with something.

But then you hit your teens and all of a sudden books weren’t cool anymore. Sports were cool. Going out was cool. Girls were cool. And even if you didn’t totally agree with the notion, you felt like you’d outgrown King. I mean how does King compete with your first trip to second base?

Somewhere around that time I began to hear of Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman, people said, was the next Stephen King. With me being “over” King, I felt it only obvious that I couldn’t then read another version of King. Which means my history with Neil Gaiman is zip. I don’t know anything about the guy. I don’t know anything about any of his books or anything that he’s done.

As I’ve grown up, I realized that King still had a lot left to say and that being too cool for him or any author is silly. But I still never got back to Gaiman. That leaves me writing this review from a place of ignorance. But sometimes that’s for the best. It means I can judge the pilot solely on its story and not on if it’s meeting the expectations of everyone who loves the book so much.

Shadow is a 30 year-old prisoner with five more days left on his sentence. Luckily for Shadow, the warden calls him in to let him know he’s being released tomorrow. Unluckily for Shadow, it’s because his wife just died in a car accident.

Shadow hops on a plane to head home for the funeral, and that’s where he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, a 60 year-old chatterbox who looks like he should be hustling a 2 for 1 Miller Lite deal in some sleazy south Florida bar.

Sensing his taste for law-breaking, Mr. Wednesday wants to hire Shadow to work for him. Shadow kindly declines, but when the plane is diverted due to weather, and Shadow tries to drive the rest of the way, Mr. Wednesday keeps showing up at all of Shadow’s stops, inquiring about that hiring. We get the sense that there’s something otherworldly about this fella.

Shadow finally gets home, only to learn that there’s more to his wife’s death than he was told. As in she died with another man’s dick in her mouth. That dick belonging to Shadow’s best friend. This leaves Shadow in a very dark place, which we can only guess will spur him to take that job with Mr. Wednesday. Now if we only knew what Mr. Wednesday planned to do with him.

American Gods contains symbols, philosophy, and dream sequences. In other words, all the stuff that I hate. Why do I hate this stuff? Because it’s cheap. 9 times out of 10 it’s a go-to crutch for when you don’t know what to do with your story. Don’t know where the characters are going next? Uhhh… Here’s a tree made out of bones to distract you! And someone talking about how storms are like birds!

To put this in perspective, this is the same thing I knocked a little pilot script called True Detective for. And that turned out all right. Well, for you guys anyway. Not for me.

But American Gods gradually pulls itself out of that haze and provides us with a narrative (Shadow trying to get to his wife’s funeral). While things do start to pick up, I couldn’t help but feel like not enough was happening. Yes our hero’s got a goal. Yes there’s something intriguing about Mr. Wednesday. And there is a holy-shit scene where a woman swallows a man up in her vagina during sex.

But I was never compelled to find out what happened next. The goal didn’t seem important enough (if he doesn’t get to the funeral, so what?). The mystery didn’t seem mysterious enough.

But the biggest problem with American Gods is one that I’m assuming they discuss all the time in the writers room. This is a complex world. I don’t even know what the fucking genre is. The final scene has Shadow, our main character, as a stock ticker, and his value doubling. What the hell does that mean?

For readers of the book who know exactly what’s going on, a moment like this makes them grin. Me? I don’t have any reference points. There’s nothing for me to compare this to. And as I kept reading, I wondered if that was going to be a blessing or a curse. How “out of the loop” can non-fans of the book be before they give up? Do you try to play to them then? Or stay with the super-fans?

Another thing I still haven’t figured out in the TV world is how little plot you can get away with. You can’t have fast-moving plots in every TV episode. It’s impossible. It’s more about putting characters in rooms and exploring the conflict between them. Which is exactly what they’ve done here.

And yet it doesn’t feel like enough. At least in your pilot, you gotta go bigger, don’t you?? Then you can pull back in subsequent episodes. But I don’t think you can sneak into your story with a TV show these days. There are too many of them out there, too many reasons to turn the channel. If you don’t wow us right away, we won’t tune in again. I keep trying to remind people that the Game of Thrones pilot, while slow, ended with a brother and sister having sex and the brother pushing a young boy off a tower to his death. Uhhhh… I’m going to come back to see what happens next after that. I’m not so sure I’m coming back to see what Stock Ticker Shadow means.

Long story short, I wanted to be punched in the gut by this pilot. Instead I was massaged. And while that massage was relaxing, it’s not compelling me to come back for more.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I personally think choices are more dramatically compelling if we understand the stakes. The major choice driving this story is “Will Shadow work for Mr. Wednesday?” Unfortunately, we don’t know what Mr. Wednesday does. So we don’t know if working for him is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. And hence we’re not that interested in whether Shadow says yes or no.

Note: I screwed up with the Scriptshadow 250 Top 5 Announcement. Monday, as we Americans know, is a major holiday (Memorial Day). So we’re going to move that announcement to Wednesday instead. Sorry about that!

Genre: Somnium
Logline (from writer): A loyal astronaut, scheduled to be on the first mission to Mars, begins having terrifying dreams of the mission going wrong. Then, when the mission is sabotaged, he finds himself the prime suspect.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I’ve been writing for three years now, my script Jack Curious is in the Scriptshadow top 25 at the moment. This script is the script I wrote to teach myself the craft, and while it made the quarterfinals of the Big Break Contest and connected me with some cool people, it’s been sitting on the shelf for the last two years. I’d love the opportunity, with the help of the SS community, to pull it apart and work out how to make it better. I also have most of the budget together to make my narrative feature directing debut (I’ve only done docos so far), and I’m wondering if this could be the script to do it with.
Writer: Bryce McLellan
Details: 109 pages

We’re seeing a lot of Mars projects these days. We had The Martian. There’s that new weird Mars teenage love story (that I reviewed a few years back and was convinced would never see the light of day). There’s a Zachary Quinto movie I just learned about called Passage to Mars that for some reason takes place in Antarctica. There’s the Deadpool writers next sorta-Mars movie called “Life.” There’s “Approach The Unknown,” about a single manned Mars Mission. There’s one of my favorite amateur scripts submitted to the site, The Only Lemon Tree on Mars. And if you want to get really technical, they’re thinking about making a sequel to Veronica Mars.

What does this mean?

Hell if I know.

People have a galactic hard-on for red dirt?

I guess if we want to get into it, there’s something to be said for understanding where the hot topics are. Because once you know you’re playing in the same sandbox as everyone else, you have to decide if you can build a better sandcastle than them. If all you’re going to do is fill up your Big Gulp cup with goopy sand and flip it around four times and call it a day, your sandcastle probably won’t be able to compete with the next guy’s.

That’s why I recommend staying away from the hot subject matter. If everyone’s writing about Mars, write about Neptune. Or Uranus. Heh heh. Heh heh. “Uranus.” However, since we can’t go back in time and warn Bryce about this, we’ll have to see if he’s pulled off Plan B: finding a new angle into a Mars story.

The year is 2050 or so. Sam obtained the Mars Mission astronaut job when one of the other astronauts went crazy. I guess being picked for the first mission to Mars can be a bit anxiety-inducing for some. Joining Sam will be the Buzz Aldrin-like Jack and the smart-as-a-whip, Connie.

The American-led launch is competing against a similarly constructed Chinese launch, and just like when two Hollywood studios get the same idea at the same time, instead of joining forces and creating the best launch possible, they waste a lot of money to win the race by a few weeks!

And then Sam starts experiencing nightmares. They’re flying to Mars, their ship disintegrates, he lands on the surface with a thud. And then there are the winds. Sam can’t stop having nightmares about those horrifying 200 mile an hour Mars windstorms.

Meanwhile, as we move closer to launch, we cut back in time six months, where we learn that Sam’s wife, Kate, was pregnant. Since she’s not pregnant in the present, and we don’t see any kids around, we get the sense that that situation didn’t end well. And subsequent flashbacks will confirm that.

When a fire on the shuttle sets the launch date back a few months, people within this NASA-like operation begin to suspect that someone’s working for the Chinese, possibly sabotaging the mission so that China can launch first.

The big question is: Is it Sam? A lot of people think so. And with Sam’s nightmares getting worse, with his brain starting to break down, not even he’s sure anymore.

Let’s start with the good news. This is NOT like other sandcastles. And I should’ve known that since Jack Curious, Bryce’s Top 25 Scriptshadow 250 script, is anything but normal.

However, I think Somnium suffers from the flip side of things. Have we deconstructed storytelling TOO MUCH here? Is this “too indie?” Is “too indie” even a thing? I think so. But I know a lot of you don’t.

Let’s start with the flashbacks. Whenever I look at flashbacks, I ask the question, “Are they necessary?” 99% of the time, they’re not. But when they are, they’re usually used in a pattern. And that’s because the writer is using them to tell a separate story in the past, that, if told well, can actually be as interesting as the present story.

I’m not sure this flashback story passed that test. It’s about a woman losing her child. And the thing was, we already knew she lost the child. Like I pointed out, we didn’t see any kid in the present. And she wasn’t pregnant in the present. So obviously she had to have lost the baby.

So why is it important that I see that for myself? Why can’t that just be backstory and not a series of flashbacks? I don’t have a good answer for that, and therefore I’d argue the flashbacks weren’t necessary.

Next up is the way the plot was designed. And Bryce takes a HUGE chance here. I give him credit for that. But let’s look at this logically…

Remember the movie, National Lampoon’s Vacation? The original one with Chevy Chase? Remember what they were trying to do? Get to Wally World, right? Well imagine if that movie wasn’t about actually going to Wally World, but rather about getting in the car that would take them to Wally World.

That’s kind of what this felt like to me. And I’m not saying that the destination has to always be the biggest thing possible. But when you dangle something as exciting as Mars in front of the viewer, and then you tell them we’re not even going to see Mars in the movie…it’s kind of like a literary version of blueballs. We feel cheated, right?

Now, to Bryce’s credit, Somnium starts to get a lot better in its second half. The main reason for that is the China mystery. Are they sabotaging the launch? And if they are, is Sam involved? That was the plot point that drew me back into the story after I got pissed when I realized we wouldn’t be going to Mars.

I also liked the mystery of Sam getting fed these suspicious pills. It added another layer to the sabotage mystery. Maybe someone was manipulating Sam to sabotage the launch without his knowledge?

Unfortunately, none of this stuff gets paid off in a satisfying way. It was paid off in that vague “you decide” way. And I’ve never been a fan of that.

If I were Bryce, I would introduce the Chinese sabotage mystery much earlier in the script. Make it a major plot point. Because if there’s one thing this script lacks, it’s structure. It’s plot. It’s built on this wishy-washy foundation of flashbacks and character uncertainty. It needs a plot that’s more definable.

Then use the flashbacks as a decoy. We think they’re about Kate losing the baby. But through them, we reveal that Sam IS actually involved with the Chinese, therefore making the past plot an official part of the story as opposed to just character backstory.

The more you structure Somnium, the better it’s going to be. And I think Bryce is a good writer. So he can pull it off. But it’s going to require work.

Script link: Somnium

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Flashbacks JUST FOR CHARACTER BACKSTORY are usually a bad idea. If you’re going to use flashbacks, use them to ADD TO THE PLOT. We should learn cool things in the flashback that we couldn’t have learned in the present. And these things need to AFFECT THE PLOT. That’s one of the only times flashbacks can be an asset.

Genre: Drama
Premise: After a priest stumbles across the execution of a Mexican family who were trying to cross the border, he finds himself hunted by the killers.
About: This script sold two years ago in a mid-six-figure deal. The writer, Mike Maples, has been at the game for awhile, with his first and only feature credit, Miracle Run, being made back in 2004. Padre was pitched as being in the vein of No Country for Old Men and A History of Violence. Like I always say, guys, find those buzz-worthy movie titles to compare your script to. Whether it be “Fargo on the moon” or just, “This is the next Seven.”
Writer: Mike Maples
Details: 100 pages – undated

I honestly think Matt Damon would be perfect for this part.

There are two types of screenwriters trying to break into the business. There are the ones who grew up on big fun movies who want to bring those same good vibes to the masses, and there are the ones who want to say something important with their work, who want to make “serious” films.

Take a guess which ones have an easier time getting into Hollywood.

That’s one of the first pieces of advice I’d give to anyone getting into screenwriting. Write something marketable. Yet when I run into one of these serious types, the suggestion of marketability is akin to asking them to copulate with a rhinoceros. They feel like they’re “selling out” if they even consider the masses while writing in their vintage 1982 moleskin notebook. It’s almost as if they’d prefer wallowing in obscurity for the rest of their lives, attempting to push that Afghani coming-of-age story, than break through with a strong horror premise AND THEN write their anti-Hollywood film.

Well if today’s script tells us anything, it’s that it IS possible to sell a thoughtful more serious spec. It doesn’t happen often. But it can happen. Let’s figure out what today’s writer did that was so special.

40 year-old Gideon Moss is a priest who lives just north of the Mexican border. While everyone else in the area is furious about illegal immigrants crossing into their country, Gideon regularly delivers water and food to those at the end of their journey.

One day, while on a run, he stumbles across a recently murdered family of Mexican immigrants. A quick look around and he spots, in the distance, a couple of locals staring at him. Doesn’t take much to add 2 and 2 together.

Figuring they’ve been made, the men, a part of a bigger militia, barge into Gideon’s church later that week during a sermon, round up him and all the Mexicans, take them to the desert, bury them alive, then crucify Gideon on a cross. Gotta give it to these guys for creativity.

Left to bleed out, Gideon escapes, and starts hunting the gang down one by one. Oh, there’s one last problem I forgot to mention. The militia? They’re all cops. So it’s not like our pal Gideon can ask for a helping hand. Lucky for him, and unlucky for the baddies, he has a very military-friendly past.

Okay, so this isn’t exactly an Afghani coming-of-age story, but it fits a rule that I push on writers attempting to write “serious” films. Make sure there’s at least one dead body. While there may be a temptation to mirror real life and call your script ‘realistic,’ the reality is that film is larger than life. You have to have at least one larger-than-life element in your story. A dead body fits that criteria.

Also, if you’re going to write one of these serious scripts, you need to be descriptive. You need to have the power of picture-painting. Your world is decidedly less exciting than 12 superheroes battling each other on an airport tarmac. So you have to make up for that in your ability to place your reader inside your world. A truck can’t just drive. It has to exist, as Maples shows us here: “A rooster tail of dust billows behind the truck and hangs in the still scorched air.”

It should also be mentioned that if you’re going to write this type of script, you have to have the skill to actually pull it off. The most painful scripts to read are the ones where writers without any skill try and weave their way through complex descriptive sentences. For example, they’d re-word the above into… “The truck lampoons the stretch of road with forest trees all around it and shifts into gear like a rocket out of hell.” Honestly, I read a lot of lines like that.

Also, you have to have dialogue skills for these scripts. When someone offers to help Gideon, despite the risks involved, he doesn’t reply, “No, your life is too valuable,” he replies, “Leave it be. Your box is thirty years down the line. No use taking a short cut.” That’s a professional line of dialogue right there. Or later we get this exchange, which takes place between the badass villain and one of his dim-witted minions: “What the fuck is this?” “You just squandered five of the ten words in your vocabulary, son. Keep the rest for later.”

Padre also utilizes two tropes that tend to work well in film. The first is the priest who’s not so priestly, and the second is the cop who’s not so friendly. As we like to preach around these parts, always look for irony in your story. Corrupt cops are as ironic as it gets. So are murdering priests. Usually, you only see one of these in a movie. It was fun to read a script where we got both.

And there were just little professional spikes that set this apart from the average amateur script. For example, a little girl is killed in that scene where the bad guys round up everyone in the church and bury them alive. Now normally, a writer would think that was enough. Nobody likes to see a little girl die. We’ll hate the bad guys even more and want to see them go down.

But Maples makes sure that we SET UP A SCENE WITH THIS GIRL EARLIER. So one of the first scenes is Gideon visiting a nurse friend at the hospital. The nurse gives him drugs to pass to the little girl, who’s sick at home because she’s illegal and can’t afford hospital care. Gideon delivers the medicine to the girl, so that we know her and care about her (not to mention doubles as a Save The Cat moment!). That makes her later death a thousand times more impactful. Amateur writers rarely think to do this sort of thing.

If there’s a knock against the script, it’s that it feels a little familiar. There are usually 3-4 of these kinds of scripts on the Black List each year. And I wasn’t a fan (spoiler) of the revelation that Gideon used to be a Black Ops soldier. It seemed like a lazy choice, and honestly, I don’t think it was necessary. Gideon comes off as badass enough that you don’t need to make him even more badass with some backstory title. But outside of that, this was a strong script.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you’re going to write a script like this, be honest with yourself and make sure your writing is at the level required to pull it off. I’m not saying you don’t have to know how to write to write “Neighbors.” But the skill level of putting words together is decidedly less important with scripts like Neighbors or Deeper. With drama, you will be judged more harshly on your writing ability, because your job is to set a mood and a tone with your writing, something that takes a lot of time and practice to master.

Genre: Period Political Thriller
Premise: Set in one of the most volatile cities during one of its most volatile eras – Beirut in the 1980s – High Wire Act follows a bottomed-out alcoholic diplomat who’s called upon to negotiate the release of a CIA agent who used to be his best friend.
About: From the writer who brought you Michael Clayton and FOUR of the Bourne scripts (Tony Gilroy) comes this hot project, which will star Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike.
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Details: 120 pages

High Wire Act got me thinking about the types of movies Hollywood makes these days. Cause it ain’t movies like High Wire Act. Unless you have a prestige director and an Oscar campaign ready to roll, I know execs who’d be more welcoming to the Zika Virus than an obscure period political thriller.

Remember when they used to make movies like Boiler Room? Or Rounders? You didn’t even need a concept! All you needed was a subject matter. Uhh… traders on Wall Street. Uhh… poker players! We’ll figure out the story later.

Truth be told, I’m kinda glad those movies don’t get made anymore. They sucked. I mean go back and try and watch one of them. You’re sitting there going: This is basically about a guy named Matt Damon playing poker. They didn’t even try and hide it.

Luckily, High Wire Act is more sophisticated than those scripts, plus it has the benefit of being written by someone who actually understands screenwriting.

Mason Skiles, an American diplomat in 1972 Lebanon, has managed the rare feat, along with his wife, of becoming friends with many of the locals. There’s one boy in particular, 15 year old Kamir, who Mason has personally mentored and will soon send to school in the United States.

Unfortunately, however, school will not be in session for Kamir. A group of masked men crash one of Mason’s parties and take Kamir, who it turns out is the brother of a high profile terrorist. During the scuffle, Mason’s wife is shot and killed.

Cut to 10 years later and Mason is a drunk back in the states with a bargain basement arbitration practice. Just when things can’t sink any lower, he gets a call. It’s the CIA. They want him on a plane to Beirut pronto. But they won’t tell him why.

Mason reluctantly goes, where he finds out that his former best friend and fellow diplomat, Desmond, has been taken. And the kidnappers are requiring they deal with Mason only. Hmmm… that’s interesting.

So Mason goes to meet them and wouldn’t you know it, guess who the kidnapper is? That little boy, Kamir, is all grown up and ready to make a deal. The Israelis have kidnapped Kamir’s troublemaker brother. If Mason can get him back, Kamir will deliver Desmond.

And that’s where things get REALLY complicated. Kamir’s brother is essentially Osama Bin Laden to the Israelis. There’s no WAY they’re going to give him up. Which means Mason is going to have to pull off the greatest negotiation of all time in order to save his friend. Can he do it?

This script starts with a bang and never lets go. My issue with these scripts is that the writer will get too wrapped up in the politics side of things. That stuff isn’t interesting to me. Nor is it interesting to most. What audiences care about are people. If you can set up a cast of characters who are interesting and put them in dramatic situations that are compelling, it doesn’t matter what the overarching storyline is. WE WILL CARE.

And that’s what Gilroy does. He opens with a flashback that introduces us to our happy main character, his happy wife, his happy best friend, and the happy teenage boy he mentors.

Immediately after making us fall in love with them, the terrorists arrive and kill Mason’s wife. I was devastated. And why? It’s just words on a page. But this is the power of good screenwriting. You create moments between characters, make us care about them, then take those characters away.

Even more brilliant? PERSONAL STAKES. What bad writers do in these scripts is they introduce a bunch of random people with random ranks who we don’t know, and expect us to give a shit if one of them is kidnapped.

What Gilroy does is he makes the kidnapped guy our main character’s best friend (PERSONAL STAKES). And who’s the kidnapper? The kid Mason mentored (PERSONAL STAKES). Everything here is personal, which makes the bonds and thus the plotlines stronger.

Gilroy doesn’t stop there. He utilizes what I’ve deemed the “mystery goal.” The mystery goal adds flavor to a goal, it adds a spike. When Mason is called upon 10 years later to go back to Beirut, he isn’t told why. It’s a MYSTERY. So you’re not just sending your character somewhere (their goal) but strengthening it with a mystery along the way. Of COURSE we’re going to want to keep reading. Just like Mason, we want to find out what the fuck they want him for.

Another key tip is to make your mystery goal IMPORTANT. Typically, when you lay down a mystery, you can keep that mystery going for 10-15 pages and the reader’s going to stay invested. People naturally will stick around until the mystery is solved. But the more IMPORTANT you make that mystery, the longer you can stretch out the reveal.

The way the CIA talks to Mason about this Beirut trip, they make it sound like a really big fucking deal. Like this is one of those things you can’t pass on. As a reader I’m going, “Ooh, this seems big time. I have to know what this is about.” If the same person had come to Mason and said, “I heard these people are sorta interested in talking to you. Maybe you should check it out.” Does that sound important enough to make you care? Of course not.

Lots of great scenes here too. Bad writers take common scenes and play them out the way they alway play out. Good writers take common scenes and they TURN THEM in a way where they play out unexpectedly. So when Mason goes to meet with the kidnappers for the first time, there are two men in masks he’s talking to. The main one, the older guy, is screaming and yelling at Mason, telling him that Mason’s going to play by their rules. After about 3 minutes of this, the other masked man calmly raises his gun and shoots the man in the back of the head for being difficult. He then takes over the negotiation.

WHAT THE FUCK?? Wasn’t expecting that.

After all this, you’re probably expecting me to give this an impressive. I was actually going higher than that at the midpoint. This was going Top 25. But then the script started doing exactly what I said you shouldn’t do at the beginning. It started focusing on the politics, the web of lies, the world of the impersonal as opposed to the personal.

One of the issues here was that Beirut had a dozen warring factions inside of it in the 80s. So there were SO MANY bad guys. So many different clubs who were part of the problem. Add onto that people double-crossing each other and after awhile, you couldn’t keep track of it anymore.

It’s the double-edged sword with these types of scripts. As they move towards their climax, they have to get bigger. But the bigger they get, the harder it is to keep track of what’s going on. So you have to either deftly calibrate how much the audience can take, or be an expert at keeping loads of information clear and easy to digest.

I eventually got lost in all the madness. And that’s too bad, cause this script had a hold on me for a big portion of its page count.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the oldest writing tricks in the book. Place your hero where he least wants to be. The last place Mason wants to be after his wife was murdered there is Beirut. So where is he sent to? Beirut. You do that and I’m telling you, most of your movie will write itself.

What I learned 2: You’re never going to write the perfect screenplay. The goal is simply to do more good than bad. If you can achieve that, you’ll have a script worth reading.