Genre: Light sci-fi/Romantic Comedy
Synopsis: What if, on the verge of getting married, you learned that your soul mate was someone else?
About: This spec just sold to Dreamworks earlier in the week.
Writer: Chris McCoy

Hot off the presses is the recently sold spec script “Good Looking”. Good Looking is about a dating service in the near future that is able to identify with 100% accuracy your one and only true love. As WILL and EMMA near their wedding, Will begins to wonder if Emma is the right girl for him and tries out the service. Imagine his surprise when he finds out that his true love is not Emma, but some girl named SOPHIE. The script focuses on the crumbling of Will and Emma’s relationship as Will becomes more and more fixated on the fact that he may be with the wrong person.

It’s actually a really good premise with a ton of potential. You’ve been with someone for five years, then along comes this dating service that tells you (with 100% certainty mind you) that that person isn’t your true love. You start to have doubts. You start to wonder. And all of a sudden, you want to meet this other person.

Unfortunately Good Looking is never as good as it is in those first few pages because there’s no real engine behind the story. This script needed some energy, some drive. And, at least for me personally, I didn’t care if the two leads stayed together, which is the essential component to any romantic comedy.

Good Looking takes its time setting things up. I’m no Page Nazi but Will doesn’t have his appointment with the Good Looking service until page 39. Since we know where this movie is going by page 5, that gives us 34 pages of sitting around and doing nothing.

I might have forgiven McCoy if there was some story within the story that we could get excited about. Or if we could learn something new about the characters. But all we find out is that Will is a decent enough guy, if not a little boring. Emma’s a police officer who’s kind of moody. And that’s it. Those 34 pages are dedicated to reinforcing those character traits.

I think what bothered me about Good Looking was that it understands the beats it has to hit, but forgets what to do in between them. For instance, Emma and Will are supposed to get married. Yet it’s freaking 3 months away! There’s no sense of urgency. If a mistake is made, we still have another 2 months and 29 days to fix it. Why not make the wedding in a week? That way every decision and problem is magnified times a thousand.

Now as far as the Rom Com world in general, there are a few key things you have to get right. First we have to like the guy. Second we have to like the girl. And third we have to want them to be together. That way, when the “guy loses girl” scenario happens, all we can think about is him getting her back (or vice versa) But Emma is an aggressive moody cop that likes bad 80s movies and smokes pot. That’s not someone I would want to get back together with, and so I didn’t want Will to get back together with her either.

There’s a so-so third act where Will is trying to court Sophie (the “soul mate”) that feels like it comes on too late. In the end he decides he doesn’t want “perfect love”. He wants love with all its imperfections. Which is a sentence that sounds good in a trailer, but in the context of Good Looking, it doesn’t quite feel honest. I don’t know any guy who likes to get screamed at for 2 hours because he forgot to empty the dishwasher.

There’s a movie here somewhere and I get why it sold. As human beings, we’re obsessed with the color of grass just over the hill. Is it really greener? Or is it just as patchy and inconsistent as the grass in our front lawn? That’s really what this movie is about. It’s not about 100% matches or any of that – it’s about the human condition of never being satisfied with what we have and always feeling like we can do better. I think, in the next draft, if Good Looking focuses more on that theme, it could be that rare Rom Com, the kind that makes you think. As of this moment, it’s too raw for my taste. Hope it gets better in the rewrites.

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

What I learned from Good Looking: Lots of things here. But I’ll focus on the lack of urgency. The wedding should’ve been scheduled for a lot sooner. The choice of making it 3 months down the road almost destroyed the script all by itself. We never ever felt a sense of urgency with the story. People just sat around talking and acting upset. In a story like this you need to feel like time is running out. It really ups the stakes and gives your script momentum.

Those paying attention will already know that my script of the month is Tenure. There isn’t much more I can say about it other than that I loved it from top to bottom. At its heart, it’s the most basic, most tried-and-true genre of them all: the underdog story. And who doesn’t like a good underdog story? But you’ve still gotta execute it. And Mike Million is a literary executioner. I was so excited when I heard not only that this was being made into a movie, but that Million was directing it, because it’s one those stories that will not work without the author’s interpretation. One of my most anticipated films of the year. The below link will take you to the original review.

Review: Tenure.

Okay, this probably went WAY over some of your heads. But “Inception”, the script review I posted yesterday, is currently the Holy Grail of scripts. It’s impossible to get. As of this moment, there’s only one copy, and it’s on Christopher Nolan’s computer. Or more likely printed out and kept in a safe. So the idea of me getting my hands on it is kinda ridiculous. But it was sure fun to come up with the story! Sorry for having to perpetuate the lie for so long. And I actually received a lot of nice e-mails telling me to keep my head up. Thank you! It made me feel terrible. So I’m finally coming clean. Inception was an April Fool’s Day joke. I’m not in any trouble. :)

Now if I may, let me indulge a little, and recall some of my favorite parts of the review.

-“The movie revolves around a man named JACOB HASTLEY, 34, a scientist and recent paraplegic who’s considering suicide.” — Hahaha! This actually sounds pretty good. When I read it back I thought, ‘That’s a role Leonardo Dicaprio would probably want to play.’ (DiCaprio is attached to play the lead in the film).

-“These first traveling scenes to other solar systems and galaxies are some of the highlights of the script. Nolan takes us to worlds that defy everything we know about physics and matter and space and time. It’s hard to describe it but he writes it as if we are inside of his mind, thinking it, just like he is. It is such a risky choice as a writer and like nothing I’ve ever seen on the page but it totally pays off.” — I think I laughed non-stop for fifteen minutes coming up with this.

But my all time favorites have to be these two:

-“KANSAS is a dog-whisperer who seems to have an otherworldly connection with the animals she teaches…And then there’s ISABELL, a blind woman who will stop at nothing to see again.” — Come on guys! lol. If that didn’t give it away.

To be honest, the concept sounds vaguely like it could work. I explored the mind-universe idea in one of my own scripts, so I know it has potential. I apologize to everyone for going that extra mile and e-mailing them that this was not an April Fool’s joke. But, you know, it’s April Fool’s! So you’re allowed to add lies on top of your lies. Think of it this way. An ex-girlfriend once played an April Fool’s “joke” on me where she told me she was pregnant. And didn’t back off until the end of the day! So you guys got off easy. Before I leave though, I’d like to leave you with one last favorite from the review…

-“Inception has a purpose. Jacob must find the truth behind the origin of the universe (its “inception”) before the other travelers catch up to him.” — hahahaha. I loved throwing the title in there, as if that gave it more credibility. lol

I’ve put the original review back up. It’s under the Breach and Clear review. Thanks again to everyone for the well wishes. I promise not to do this again until next year. :)

Genre: Action-Comedy
Synopsis: An Alias-like agent must fill her soon-to-be-fiance in on what she really does.
About: This script made the rounds recently and everyone and their mother seemed to love it.
Writer: Kyle Long

Either this is a clever mix of several popular TV shows/movies or a completely derivative ripoff of them. Breach and Clear is basically a mixing of Alias and Chuck, with a little True Lies sprinkled in for added flavor. A girl tries to balance her secret life as a Homeland Security agent with her desire to have a “normal” relationship with her soon-to-be fiance. Hmm, sound familiar?

Quite honestly, I don’t know what the big fuss is about. Seriously. Chuck is on Monday nights on NBC and is probably a lot funnier (I don’t know – I’ve only watched one episode). What struck me about Breach and Clear was just how average its choices were. I want you to imagine a secret agent girl who has to kill numerous baddies during her day job. Then I want you to imagine your average video-game playing one-day-at-a-time office worker. Now imagine those two worlds colliding…There you go. You’ve just imagined Breach and Clear. Absolutely nothing different or original ever happens in the script. It wasn’t “bad” by any stretch. It’s just that everything went exactly according to plan. And that was my big problem with the script. The whole thing felt like it was on cruise-control.

Rounding out the characters are a vengeful female villain who wants to exact revenge on the girl for killing one of her agents. And then of course you have the girl’s stud partner, who is an ultra suave cross between Enrique Iglacius and James Bond and who our boyfriend is completely threatened by (and apparently Adam Sandler did a rewrite on this because there are the requisite 2 dozen”he has a big penis” jokes that are the staple of every Sandler film). I guess I just wanted to turn the page and be surprised for once. But Breach and Clear never gave that to me. I suppose for huge fans of the genre, it delivers. But if you’re like me and looking for something new, you’re going to want to stay “clear” of this one. :)

I’m just one opinion folks. A lot of people loved this script. Check it out for yourselves…

script link: Breach and Clear

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

What I learned from Breach and Clear: You should always be challenging yourself. You should always ask yourself after every character you invent, scene you write, line you type…”Is this original???” “Is this something I’ve never seen before?” Of course nothing can be truly original. But there should always be enough originality in your script to distinguish it from everything else.

First of all, I would like to apologize to Warner Brothers. What I did by posting key plot points of their property, Inception, was stupid at best and financially crippling at worst. I apologize to Christopher Nolan, as well as Kevin J. Anderson, who is the owner of the unpublished source material. I promise, from now on, to be more careful and aware when reviewing material that is still in unfinished form. To anyone who was hurt by this act of selfishness, I apologize profusely.

For those requesting a copy of the material, I am no longer in possession of one. Thank you.