I’d like to welcome everyone to the First Annual Scriptshadow Logline/Screenplay Contest. I know you guys are eager to get going so let me explain how this is going to work. Starting today, you have two weeks (deadline: November 9th 11:59pm Pacific Time) to send your logline to this e-mail address: CarsonReeves3@gmail.com. On Monday, November 16, I will publish the Top 100 loglines, along with the writers’ names, on the site.

These 100 contestants will be notified and have two weeks to send me either a one-page synopsis of their screenplay or the first ten pages. On December 21st, I will announce the top 25 from that list. These 25 will then have three weeks to send me their full script. On February 8, 2010, I will announce the winner, as well as the first and second runner-up.

FIRST PLACE – A review on Scriptshadow, which will likely garner (but not guarantee) requests from agents, managers, and producers.

SECOND AND THIRD PLACE – Second and third place finishers will have their loglines posted on the site, as well as a contact e-mail, in addition to receiving coverage from me.

RULES
1) Anybody can enter.
2) The contest is free.
3) Limit 1 logline per contestant
4) Loglines are limited to 50 words or less.
5) Loglines WILL be posted on the site.
6) Synopses WILL NOT be posted on the site.
7) The winning script will not be posted unless the writer would like to do so.
8) Anybody who uses multiple e-mail addresses to submit extra loglines will be disqualified. Remember, this contest costs nothing so please be respectful of the rules.

HOW TO SUBMIT
1) Send your loglines to CarsonReeves3@gmail.com.
2) Submissions should contain your NAME, the TITLE, the GENRE, and the LOGLINE.
3) You will receive confirmation within 3 days. If you don’t receive
confirmation, feel free to check back in with me.

So how do you write a good logline? Well, there’s a great website dedicated to just that. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, this is a great place to start. As per the site, here are a couple of examples for reference…

JAWS
After a series of grisly shark attacks, a sheriff struggles to protect his small beach community against the bloodthirsty monster, in spite of the greedy chamber of commerce.

THE FUGITIVE
A doctor – falsely accused of murdering his wife – struggles on the lam as he desperately searches for the killer with a relentless federal agent hot on his trail.

THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
After a luxury liner is capsized by a tidal wave, a radical priest struggles to lead a group of survivors to escape through the bow before the ship sinks.

I know I originally discussed giving multiple loglines to each contestant, but I’d like to keep this first contest simple and fast. For that reason, you’re strongly advised to only send in a logline for a screenplay you’ve finished. You don’t have that three months, as initially reported, to write the script should you make it into the next round. As for what kind of loglines will do well, there are two: Flat outright good loglines, and loglines that appeal to my sensibilities (see my Top 25 if you’re curious about what those might be). Finally, if the above timeline is confusing, don’t sweat it. Just get your loglines in before November 9th and if you make it to the next round, detailed instructions about subsequent rounds will be sent to you. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

Ooooh, let the spookiness begin. Halloween Week is upon us, along with its first entry, the horror-comedy, “Grabbers,” which Roger’s been very eager to review. But can I just say something about Halloween first? Because it’s something that’s really been bothering me. Can we all agree that pumpkins are disgusting? You don’t have to look at a pumpkin long to know that it wasn’t meant to be eaten. Yet when Halloween rolls around, all I see at the grocery store are pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin milk. I don’t mean to sound like a 13 year old girl but…Barf! If we weren’t interested in eating pumpkin-flavored food for the other 11 months of the year? We’re not interested in eating it now. Pumpkins weren’t meant to be eaten! There. Rant over. Take it away, Roger.

Genre: Horror, Comedy, Creature Feature
Premise: When an island off the coast of Ireland is invaded by blood-sucking aliens, the heroes discover that getting drunk is the only way to survive.
About: A 2009 Brit List script that ended up in a tug-of-war between many production companies. It’s now optioned by Tracy Brimm and Kate Myers of Forward Films with John Wright as director. They’re the same team responsible for the slasher-comedy, “Tormented”.
Writer: Kevin Lehane. According to his blog, he created a bunch of specs but had trouble getting them read. When they weren’t ignored, they were rejected. But thanks to Danny Stack, a writer for “EastEnders” (among others) and one of the founders of The Red Planet Prize, Lehane’s luck changed and the same scripts that were initially rejected or ignored were suddenly coming back with strong, positive responses. “Grabbers”, which had sat on his desk for a year, was suddenly in a tug-of-war.

“Tremors” is a movie that has one of my favorite lines of dialogue ever, spoken by mercenary homemaker, Heather Gummer (a fantastic name), played by Reba McEntire. “You didn’t get penetration even with the elephant gun!” Somehow, Reba delivers her line with the requisite mixture of incredulity, innuendo, and cornpone charm.

I’m not sure if there’s a line as good as that one in the Irish version of “Tremors”, called “Grabbers”, but that’s not to say that this Brit List script isn’t a fun ride with its own share of gleeful moments of horror-comedy. Proudly wearing its creature feature, B movie, drive-in pedigree on its Lovecraftian tentacles, “Grabbers” is a breezy, bloody read that had me grinning like a drunken horror aficionado all the way through.

I like the way this script opens. We’re at sea on a lonely fishing tug called The Merry Widow when an arc of light streaks across the sky and crashes into the ocean, catching the attention of the crew. It’s a simple, evocative image that establishes our mysterious alien menace, which, of course, proceeds to pull our trio of fisherman overboard. There’s something eerie about the image of an extraterrestrial threat dwelling in Earth’s own uncharted aquatic deep.

And we’re quickly introduced to our sullen hero, Ciaran O’Shea, a Garda gone to drink on the enchanting Erin Island. My scant knowledge of the Garda is limited to Ken Bruen novels, but in good grace to us readers on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Lehane explains that “An Garda Siochana” are the unarmed Irish police force. O’Shea is zombie-shuffling through life and duty in an alcoholic haze, and Erin Island, with all its non-existent crimes and vacationing families, is the perfect environment for a low-achieving, apathetic Garda.

Sergeant Kenifick is skeptical about leaving O’Shea to run administrative duties alone for two weeks, so he’s saddled him with Lisa Nolan, a by-the-books, overachieving workaholic from Dublin who will fill in and keep a watchful eye on O’Shea while the Sarge is on leave. Of course, there’s some friction between the two opposite personalities and, entertainingly, budding sexual tension.

The duo meet up with the resident physician, Dr. Gleeson, and Adam Smith, a marine ecologist, who have discovered a pod of beached whales that bare some distinctive wounds.

It looks like they’ve been whipped with a huge cat-o-nine tails.

O’Shea takes charge and cashes in a favor with a contractor, Declan Cooney, and soon Cooney and his construction crew are tasked with the disposal of the beached whales. In true creature feature fashion, we discover many dark grey eggs deposited in the sand nearby. At this point, something crawls out of the ocean and quite possibly does something horrible to Cooney and his crew.

Meanwhile, a fisherman named Paddy Barrett (quite possibly my favorite character) captures what might be a sea creature in a lobster trap, which he promptly takes home and deposits in his bathtub, with disastrous results. In a horrifying sequence that made me both squirm and laugh maniacally, Paddy fights the spidery, tentacled grabber whilst completely pissed on homemade potcheen (an Irish moonshine).

The little fucker is pancaked to the ceiling of his bathroom and it shoots its barbed tongue at him, and it reminded me of Ripley fighting off a face-hugger in one of the Alien movies. Except this is more Sam Raimi-ish, but maybe not so cartoonish and Three Stooges-like (although in the next scene, there’s a direct reference to the Evil Dead when a corpse is used like a marionette doll). There’s a wicked Irish wit to the humor that I really dig, which is laced throughout the story.

Lehane does a good job setting up Erin Island and introducing all of the important players that inhabit island. It’s an interesting community sketched well, and it’s balanced with some tautly structured scare sequences. In a way, very Stephen King-ish, and I like that.

By the end of the first act, there’s a pretty significant body count for O’Shea and Nolan to tend to and investigate, and when Paddy comes to O’Shea with proof of his ordeal (which he somehow survived), this monster movie is off and running.

I think the true grisly delight of this tale is when it injects a killer concept into the tried and true monster movie form (monster arrives, monster kills people, heroes dissect monster, heroes figure out how to beat monster, heroes prepare for final showdown with monster). It’s a fucking great idea, and maybe its genesis owes fealty to Jackie Chan and “Drunken Master”, but whatever. It’s fantastic and funny and really brings the story to life.

Through an experiment that’s reminiscent of John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, our heroes learn that Paddy only survived his alien encounter because of the blood alcohol level in his bloodstream, which poisoned the vampiric monstrosity.

Basically? If our heroes don’t want to be monster food, they have to maintain a blood alcohol level of Point Two.

Which doesn’t fare will for Miss Nolan, as she doesn’t drink, nor has she ever been drunk in her life. And her character is milked for comedic and dramatic effect, in both her drunken exclamations and actions. She’s really a great counterpoint to O’Shea, and this is somewhat of a redemption story for him. I don’t want to give away his back story, but it’s something that’s only mentioned in a line or two of dialogue and it’s very effective (a true economy of words). It reminded me of this quote, “Strong reasons make for strong actions.” It’s something dramatists learn early on, courtesy of Shakespeare.

Without telling you How or Why, the humungous male grabber sets its sights on O’Shea for wholly amorous and lustful intentions. There’s some nice monster mayhem in the 3rd act, when our heroes barricade themselves and their loved ones in a pub and endure a siege. It’s like something out of a George Grosz nightmare as our heroes drunkenly fight off all the egg hatchlings and the (in heat) Shoggoth-like Big Daddy grabber.

I don’t think “Grabbers” quite transcends its genre roots to gain an impressive rating, but then again, it doesn’t need to. It’ll be a great movie, anyways. For you horror hounds out there, this script just might be the crown jewel of this year’s Brit List.

In all honesty, this is a script I wish I’d written. Not only is the logline comedic horror gold, but I find the script is really growing on me. An inspired, tight, and clever spec that clocks in at under 100 pages. Not only can I wait to see the movie, I can’t wait to own it on Blu-ray right next to my copies of “Shaun of the Dead”, “Tremors”, “The Thing”, and “Evil Dead 2”.

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

What I learned: That the Irish spell tires “tyres”. And that when it comes to writing monsters, it’s more effective to gently offer the right details than go overboard with a painstaking description. Remember, it’s more powerful to simply suggest what a monster or creature or alien looks like with a few key words or phrases. Let the reader create their own image of what it looks like in their head, because that’s usually what’s going to be scarier, anyways. As Stephen King says, writing is telepathy. Lay down the general gist, let the reader do the heavy lifting.

Uh, I don’t think you’re ready. I don’t think anyone’s ready. This is basically going to be the greatest week of Scriptshadow ever. We have the opening of the Scriptshadow Logline Contest on Monday. We have five full days of horror-related script reviews for Halloween Week. And, oh yeah, Wednesday through Friday I’m going to reveal the Top 25 scripts voted on by you readers. Over 400 Top 10 lists were submitted. So it should be a great gauge of what you guys liked. Oh, and if that wasn’t amazing enough, On Saturday I’ll post the Top 10 scripts voted on by readers that haven’t been reviewed on the site. If you die at the end of this week, you will die a happy person.

Hello everyone. Just wanted to give you a heads up that writer/director Mike Million’s film “Tenure” is playing at the Austin Film Festival this week. There’s a Saturday showtime and a Wednesday showtime. I will be mucho jealous for those of you who get to see it since, as you know, it’s one of my favorite scripts.

If you’ve only recently become a fan of the site, check out my interview with Mike where we discuss the skills he used to make it onto the inaugural Black List. And if you’re as obsessed with the script as I am, make sure to become a fan on the film’s Facebook page.

If you do get to see the film in Austin, make sure to say hi to Mike and that you discovered the film through Scriptshadow, as he’s a fan of the site. Also, don’t forget to send me your review!

First there was The Black List. Then the British got in on the action with The Brit List. But let’s be honest here. The only list that matters is the one created by the people who write the screenplays themselves. You guys. The Shadow 25 represents the Top 25 reader chosen scripts. Over 400 of you wrote in with your Top 10 screenplays. The voting system was simple. I assigned a point number to each choice. The number one script on everyone’s list represented 10 points. Number two = 9 points. Number three = 8. All the way down to number ten, which represented 1 point. I then added up the numbers. The highest point total finished at the top of the pack.

Unfortunately you won’t get to see the number one script today. We’re going to start off with scripts 21-25. On Thursday we’ll do 11-20. And on Friday we’ll do the top 10. No doubt there will be some surprises. I was surprised on a number of occasions. The best thing about this process was no doubt learning about screenplays I hadn’t heard about. Or had heard about but just forgotten about. It’s nice to add some fan favorites to my “Read List.”