Genre: Adventure-Comedy
Synopsis: A Goonies-like gang grows up and decides to go on one last adventure.
About: The Treehouse Gang sold for 750k against 1.5 million.
Writer: Timothy Dowling

Timothy Dowling is a writer/actor who came up with the idea for the then brilliant concept, “George Lucas In Love.” He also wrote the recent box office mini-hit “Role Models”, which I liked quite a bit. The Treehouse Gang landed him one of the biggest script sales of 2008. But do those dollar signs translate into a well-told engaging story? Let’s find out.

The Treehouse Gang’s first 10 pages sucked. In fact, they’re so bad, I contemplated not reading any more. Now when I say “bad”, I don’t mean “this person doesn’t know how to write” bad. I mean “What the hell were you thinking?” bad. When I hear “The Goonies”, I’m expecting something similar in tone to…The Goonies! See while that 80s classic may have been eccentric, it was still based in a realistic world. The Treehouse crew’s world is more like some sort of weird fantasy universe that makes up its rules as it goes along.

The “gang” consists of four high school freshman: good looking leader, Billy Hawkins, really good-looking wise-cracker, Trevor, the fat guy, Scottie, and the nerd, Milo. For the most part, I just envisioned the characters from Stand By Me. Anyway, this group goes on a series of adventures in search of real treasure! Like huge golden monkeys that are protected by Indiana Jones like lairs. Each mission is full of killer traps – and not just the kind of killer traps that kids think are “killer”. Like, if they screw up, they really die! There are Nazis holding their girlfriends hostage. They get shot at repeatedly. Even stranger, everybody in the area, including the parents and local news stations, know their kids are doing this and do nothing about it! Uhhhhh, what the fuck kind of world do these kids live in??? What parents allow their kids to go off and almost die every day?? If kids are being held hostage with guns, wouldn’t the police go out and, oh I don’t know, ARREST them? Not in The Treehouse Gang!

So anyway, we cut to 15 years later and Hawkins is working as a Verizon sales clerk. Trevor’s fat. Scottie’s hot. And Milo is still Milo (funny aside: Dowling suggests they use the same actor for young Milo and old Milo). They head off to their high school reunion where they meet up with the girls they used to date, get drunk, and Hawkins tries to convince them to go on one last adventure to claim the treasure they never found: The Treasure of Shipwreck Island!

The friends say “no thanks” but then Hawkins finds the secret map (the only thing preventing them from finding the island as kids). The Nazi from their youth reappears at that very instant (he must have been waiting in the bushes for a long time), and takes the map for himself! How bout that! The rest of the Treehouse Gang reluctantly signs on (They have to beat the Nazi!) and we move into our movie.

The rest of Treehouse plays out fairly predictably. The girls (now women) tag along. The Treehouse Gang keeps meeting up with Nazi Dude. They almost die. They escape. They get in arguments. Repeat.

The reason I never joined in on this adventure was because I never got over the way the kids were introduced. The Goonies worked because the kids were at that age right before you lose your innocence. When you’re a child, everything has the potential to be magical. Your imagination can distort ordinary and extrodinay which makes the eccentricities and the more unbelievable elements of the story believable because you’re seeing the world through their eyes. Making the guys high-school age took that opportunity away. In addition, Dowling asks you to believe in a way more ridiculous world than the Goonies ever did. So he loses on both ends. I mean where are there Indiana Jones-like caverns with a million traps and dozens of treasures here in the United States? In The Treehouse Gang there’s an abundance of them, all within a 20 mile radius.

I know they’ve been talking about making a Goonies sequel where the kids go on another adventure and I’d be interested in seeing that. This, not so much. If there’s anything positive to say about The Treehouse Gang, it’s that it’s better than The Adventurer’s Handbook. And that they’re probably rewriting the hell out of it. My guess is that they bought this one on concept alone.

[ ] trash
[x] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned from The Treehouse Gang: You have to create believable rules for your universe no matter how fantastical that universe might be. If I’m to believe that in your world, parents allow their children to gamble with death every day, then life must not be very valuable in that world. If life isn’t valuable, I’m never worried about any of your characters when they’re put in danger. If their parents/local authorities don’t give a shit, why should I?

I think I’m going to start out this week with one of our reader’s suggestions: The Treehouse Gang. This is a script that sold last year for a ton of money described as: What if the Goonies grew up and went on another adventure? Very cool premise. And since the writer wrote one of my favorite movies from last year, the undiscovered gem “Outsourced,” I have to say I’m going in with high expectations. Another spec that a lot of people have been talking about is “Broken Amber,” about a witness protection program that hides people in the past. Great premise. Would like to know if they executed it. I have a few other ideas but you guys are welcome to send in your suggestions. Also, please continue to check out my “Scripts I’m Looking For” section under my Top 25 List. At the top are “Orbit”, about a civilian who gets a chance to go up in the space shuttle only to have all the other astronauts die (Castaway in Space?) and “Aaron and Sara”, about a nerd and a popular girl trying to survive 4 years of high school. I know it sounds cliche but I promise you it won’t be. David O’ Russel (Three Kings, Spanking The Monkey, I Heart Huckabees, the infamous outtake from I Heart Huckabees) is directing. So I know the script will be odd.

And of course if you get your hands on something hot, send it my way. If the buzz is strong, I’ll do a FedEx review. That’s all for now. See everybody Monday.

EDIT: A couple of corrections. Aaron and Sara is actually the new title of a script from last year called BFF. Also, the writer of The Treehouse Gang did not write the version of Outsourced I was referring to. Regardless, go rent this movie now. I promise you’ll laugh. :) Outsourced.

Genre: Action Thriller
Synopsis: A plane cannot drop below 8000 feet or everybody on board dies.
About: Not every script gets sold. But that doesn’t mean you won’t make some money off your newly minted spec. Altitude, by Michael Palmer, got him enough recognition that he was broght in by fox to pitch his idea on Hitman 2. He won the execs over and 6 figures later, was officially in the game.
Writer: Michael S. Palmer

After spending all that time on Virgin America’s website yesterday, I decided I wanted to spend my next 120 pages on a plane. I didn’t know what kind of plane. All I knew was that I didn’t want any snakes. And I didn’t want Kareem-Abdul-Jabaar. I craved something that put you right in thick of it when the shit went down. I found just the script I was looking for: Altitude.

Okay, let’s not dodge the obvious here. This is Speed on a plane. And to be honest I’m surprised they still entertain these kinds of scripts. I thought 6 billion “Speed on a [blank]” pitches between the years of 1991 and 1995 would’ve worn the industry out. Nope. Guess not.

Altitude starts off with a plane full of dead people. When a SWAT team finally gets inside, they see that everyone on the plane is dead, even the pilots. Sound familiar? It should if you watched the pilot for that shitty Fox show, “Fringe” (which last time I checked had Porcupine Men). Yeah, we’re talking the exact same opening. Well, Palmer signed on with Fox to do Hitman 2, then Fringe uses an opening that’s the exact same as Altitude. I don’t think it’s difficult to figure out what happened here. My question is, does Palmer get paid for this? I mean they’re basically saying, “Uhhhhh, we don’t want to purchase your entire screenplay. But we would like to purchase the opening.” Can they do that? Or, because it’s not the entire script, can they just steal it? I think one day I’ll look into that. Cause that would be pretty cool if you could sell parts of your screenplay.

But in the meantime, we’re cutting to different parts of the world where planes are literally falling out of the sky. Into the desert. Into the city. Into parks. 24 planes go down in all. Is this a terrorist attack? What’s going on?

We cut onto Delta flight 1784 which is on approach when all of a sudden one of its passengers, JOHN, starts flipping out. He’s racing down the aisles, carrying some device with him. What is it? What’s going on? Passengers panicky. John charges the cockpit. Everybody charges him. Moments later he’s getting his face bashed in. But John’s trying to tell them: He’s not the enemy. He’s the only one who can save them. If this plane tries to land, he claims, everyone on it will die.

Apparently some virus called “Icarus” was unleashed into the Denver airport, where all these doomed flights originated. This particular virus activates once you reach a certain altitude. Then you can no longer go below that altitude. It was specifically designed for this situation. So that planes going up would never be able to come down (at least that’s how I understood it). So the question then becomes, how do you land a plane that can’t land?

Altitude depends more on action than it does on problem-solving. And there are some cool scenes. An impromptu takeoff on the same runway another plane is landing on. A refueling that requires that some of the passenger go out onto the wing. So yeah, there’s some cool stuff in there. But ultimately, Altitude doesn’t stick its landing (yes, I went there) because the characters don’t pull you in enough. It’s not for lack of trying. Palmer uses flashbacks (ick)
to help reveal a sub-plot involving his deceased daughter but it doesn’t work. It feels clumsy and doesn’t fit the fast pace of the rest of the film.

A final review here is tough for me. I think I’m going to give it a “worth the read” but only barely. For you action/thriller fans, there are some solid moments.

script link: link taken down

[ ] trash
[ ] barely kept my interest
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned from Altitude: Flashbacks. Use them? Don’t use them? This is a highly debated topic in the screenwriting world and an argument I’ve been on both sides of. Ultimately though, I say use them only if you can think of no other solution. Because they ruin all of the momentum you’ve built into your story. And they’re almost always used for boring stupid stuff that can be addressed quickly and easily during the story. In this case, Palmer uses them to show us a really downbeat backstory where we learn his disease research actually ended up killing his daughter….So what! No, I’m serious. So the fuck what!! If you could’ve got that out of the way in the opening 5 minutes with a picture or a moment or something, we would’ve had much more sympathy for John. But as it is, in mystery form, we don’t find out til page 80. That’s 75 pages you made us wait to build sympathy for a character you could have had us sympathizing with on page 5. — But getting back on point, the flashbacks were easily the least interesting thing about Altitude. And even worse (as is almost always the case) had you removed them, the story would’ve lost NOTHING. So keep that in mind fellow writers, the next time you’re thinking of using a stupid flashback. :)

For those interested, my favorite script of February, Mike Judge’s Extract (review here), just got itself a trailer. Go check it out and let me know what you think. I’m posting this without having even watched it so I have no idea if it’s any good. Although with Mike Judge, how can you go wrong, right?

I used my internet prowess to cache back the original State of Play review so I could copy-paste then re-post it. Took down the poster and the script link so I don’t think there’s anything illegal going on here. Enjoy. :)