Genre: TV Pilot – Horror
Premise: A small town is plagued with a growing number of demonic possessions. The town outcast, who was shunned after claiming to battle these forces as a child, may now be the only one who can stop them.
About: This show comes from Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. Kirkman, looking to expand his empire, has brought his newest pilot to Cinemax, where it has quickly been picked up to series. The show will star Patrick Fugit, a name many of you may have forgotten. Fugit famously played Cameron Crowe’s version of himself in his film, Almost Famous. One of the nice things about this never-ending TV renaissance is that actors who may have been forgotten forever are being given another chance.
Writer: Robert Kirkman (based on the comic created by himself and Paul Azaceta)
Details: 70 pages (6/29/14 draft)

I don’t know what’s going on here, but something doesn’t feel right. Robert Kirkman has an amazing relationship with AMC. With Fear The Walking Dead arriving soon, he’ll have two hit shows on the prestigious network, making him, probably, the network’s biggest star.

So why, then, did AMC not pick up Kirkman’s Outcast? The guy should’ve been able to pitch it in his underwear while dribbling jello onto his belly and AMC fall over themselves to put it on the air. But that’s not what happened. It was sent off to Cinemax, a channel 70% of Americans believe no longer exists.

The only positive scenario I can imagine here is that so many people wanted the next Kirkman show that Cinemax, in a desperate bid to become relevant, overpaid – gave Kirkman a deal AMC couldn’t match. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway, since that version of the story means I’m about to read a far better script. And with that, I slide into one of my more anticipated pilot reads in awhile.

Outcast begins with one hell of a disturbing teaser. An 8 year-old boy, Joshua, watches as a cockroach skitters up his bedroom wall. Seemingly in a trance, he SLAMS his head into the bug out of nowhere, smearing the roach into two pieces and then, for good measure, eating those pieces (with the bug still wiggling its last bit of life). Joshua, we’ll soon learn, is possessed by a demon.

Cut across town to Kyle Barnes, who lives in a Hoarders-stricken home that he leaves about as frequently as Rob Kardashian. We find out why that is when his sister, Megan, forces him to join her for some errands. Once out in public, everyone who sees poor Kyle looks at him like he’s the Devil.

Throughout the course of the pilot, we learn that Kyle did something horrible to his wife, who’s since taken their little girl and moved away. That wasn’t Kyle’s first strike either. He also beat up him mom when he was a kid. This guy’s got some issues. Or does he? Might there be something more going on here?

When Kyle hears about Joshua being possessed, he goes to his only ally in town, the gambling drinking Reverend Anderson. Anderson knows that Kyle has a gift – a gift to battle the demons inside of others. And so he brings Kyle to Joshua in the hopes of performing an exorcism.

But when Joshua starts talking directly to Kyle, telling him things about his life Joshua couldn’t possibly know, Kyle realizes that these possessions – with his mother, with his wife, with his child – have never been random. They’re targeted. Demons have been possessing the people closest to Kyle for years, trying to get to him. But why? And what is it that they ultimately plan to do to Kyle?

Patrick Fugit will play Kyle.

I’m going to tell you what I liked about this pilot. It’s a character piece through and through. And that’s what a pilot needs to be. It needs to be about characters having deep-set issues that date back years. We need this because we’re about to spend years with these characters ourselves and if their issues (with themselves, with each other) aren’t extensive, then there isn’t a whole lot to explore now is there?

I recently watched the pilot for Showtime’s show, Ray Donovan. You can feel a 9.5 Richter Scale-sized earthquake of conflict between Ray and his father, when the two meet for the first time after his dad is released from prison. There’s just so much pain and anger and history there that you want to stick around to see where it all comes from.

With Kyle we have this whole backstory with his mother, who used to beat the hell out of him. We also have something with his sister, who he apparently saved as a child but who now he doesn’t get along with. We have a history between him and his wife (and daughter) that needs to be resolved. We have an entire town who hates him because of this supposedly terrible thing that he did. Those are a lot of character relationships that need to be fixed!

And I liked how Kirkman set that all up. He didn’t just come out and say, “This is what happened to Kyle!” We meet Kyle in the midst of his recluse lifestyle. We see brief flashbacks of his mom locking him in the pantry. We see him try to alienate his sister. We see the way the townspeople feel about him. But we aren’t given straight answers as to how any of this connects. It makes us want to read on! We want to find out what he did that was so horrible (we eventually find out that he either hit his kid or his wife – but not, of course, for the reasons the townspeople think).

So what didn’t I like about the pilot? That it was a character piece through and through. The character stuff is so heavy here, it starts to get overbearing towards the end. If you thought Rick from The Walking Dead was a downer, Kyle’s got him beat by a country mile. This dude’s had a rough life and he’s not afraid to mope about it!

I don’t know. After awhile it was just like, “We get it. Your life sucks.” However, you could make the same argument about all The Walking Dead characters. A lot of them are acting the exact same way today as they did four seasons ago. I actually stopped watching last season because of that. I was like, “Haven’t we seen all of this already?”

Kirkman has a tendency to slip into monodrama, and that’s why The Governor’s Walking Dead season was the best. It brought out all these new sides of the characters (their personality, their energy), and gave the show some variety for once. Reading Outcast, I’m already sensing they’re going to nix variety in favor of long faces and serious storylines.

With that said, I kind of love the concept here. As I’ve said before, with this new TV world emerging, there are all these subject matters that people only used to use for movies that can now be used for television. That’s exactly what they did with The Walking Dead. Zombies used to be exclusively a movie genre. They made it a TV one. Now they’re doing the same with possession/exorcism. I think that’s smart as hell.

I just wish Kirkman would’ve implied a bigger mythology, a bigger plot. I’m all for intimate settings and character driven material but this IS a genre show and therefore we should get a sense of the bigger picture. Right now the bigger picture seems restricted to this town, which isn’t too exciting. Do I really care if Uncle Billy John Bob gets possessed? Not really. But if I felt these possessions were threatening to spread to nearby towns, maybe even the city, now you’ve got my attention.

As it stands, I’ll watch an episode or two to see where this goes. It has me curious but not hooked. Which sucks cause I really wanted to be hooked!

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

What I learned: I love the 1-2 punch Outcast uses to draw you in. One way to draw a reader in is to introduce a big problem. We get that when we find out Joshua (the little boy) is possessed. Another way to draw a reader in is to introduce a broken relationship. We get that when Kyle and his sister, Megan, get into a fight as soon as they run into each ther. So a perfect way to start a pilot is to introduce BOTH of these scenarios one after the other. Introduce your plot element (the problem) and then your character element (the broken relationship). If you do this well, you’ll have roped us in immediately.

I hope nobody’s experiencing any lasting psychological effects from Weird Scripts Week. I know I’ve been unaffected by it. The pet monkey I purchased yesterday has been working out splendidly. Still learning how to deal with the beating of the chest and the feces throwing. But other than that, I think this was a wonderful decision. Still trying to figure out how I came up with the idea. You guys have 47 days left til the Scriptshadow 250 Screenwriting Contest deadline, so keep writing. In the meantime, here are five juicy distractions.

Title: Triumph and Disaster
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: A man with frontal lobe damage teams up with a sex addicted widow and a porn-obsessed autistic teenager to race to Las Vegas to meet Lynda Carter, aka Wonder Woman, in an attempt to get the man’s restraining order lifted — all while their respective loved ones do everything they can to stop them.
Why you should read: I know there’s been some opposition to scribes getting reviewed more than once, but my script NERVE AND SINEW got a ‘worth the read’ last year, and I think this one is at that level (or even hopefully beyond it). It’s a low budget, simple story with memorable, complex characters. And sex. A pretty good amount of it. Also, this script takes the opportunity to honor Lynda Carter before she gives way to Gal Gadot.

Title: A Harry Dick Apocalypse
Genre: Horror-Comedy
Logline: A cynical poker player who must become America’s ace in the hole when he bluffs his way into the president’s secret bunker during a global cataclysm.
Why you should read: I’ve been writing for much of my adult life but exclusively screenplays for the past eleven years. One of the best compliments I’ve received about the script is that the reader didn’t have to read the character slug-lines to know who was speaking. The best compliment I’ve had is that it’s a funny story. My inspiration was “Dawn of the Dead” (I know you hate zombies but they are just garnish on the plate) and “Dr. Strangelove,” with a dash of Woody Allen’s “Banana’s.” I tried to make the characters as neurotic as those on the TV series, “The Office.”

**********************************

Random Submission E-mail found in Carson’s Inbox:

HI, there,

I understand from the web that you are looking to have a movie script reviewed.

Please feel free to Google me (Ab Vegvarry) and if you are still interested get in touch, and you won’t be disappointed.

regards,
Abb Vegvary
(no script attached)

**********************************

Title: Chickin Lickin
Genre: Drama/Coming of Age
Logline: A tentative young woman gains confidence after the rescue of a baby chicken brings her under the tutelage of a Miyagi-style mentor who trains roosters for cock-fighting.
Why you should read: Cock-fighting is outlawed in the continental U.S. but still legal in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. I’ve been living in St. Thomas for the past 20 years and wanted to utilize an unusual dynamic which might feasibly only exist there, in order to write a different sort of coming of age story. Hope it works! Thanks for checking it out.

Title: Every Good Intention
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: In the wake of their mother’s death, estranged brothers Darren and Reed Holt find themselves at odds with one another after “the perfect robbery” goes horribly wrong, threatening both of their lives.
Why you should read: EVERY GOOD INTENTION is set among the backdrop of Cleveland, Ohio, where the lifestyles of its citizens can be as harsh as the ever-changing seasons. If you love a great character-driven story, you will appreciate this tale of complicated relationships, wasted pasts and foolish pride. If you prefer the intensity of an action-driven script, then you will certainly enjoy the dramatic consequences and fallout that arise from a robbery gone awry. To sum it all up, think OUT OF THE FURNACE meets A SIMPLE PLAN. This is a script that reads like a 90 minute gritty Bruce Springsteen ballad. I realize it can be a challenge to pull off a satisfying character story these days that lacks all the CGI and big-budget effects, however, sometimes real life can be pretty interesting. I wanted to write a story that someone could read and say, “I know a guy like this, and could see that happening…”

Title: Death of the Party
Genre: Thriller/Slasher
Logline: A privileged teen is terrorized by a Snapchat serial killer, while her party guests fall prey at her secluded mansion.
Why you should read: When writing this script, our main goals were to always keep the reader guessing, always keep the reader entertained, and to write a movie we would want to see on opening night. — DOTP is lean. It’s fast-paced. It’s a suspenseful, genre-bending tale, written to maximize mystery, tension, and fear. But most importantly, it’s FUN! — We are graduates of The Second City Chicago (commonly referred to as the Harvard of Comedy). Although this isn’t a comedic script, SC gave us the tools to know how to concoct a story that gets to the point quickly, has no fat, and packs a wallop. In sketch format, there’s no time for unnecessary frills. You have to hook them quickly, and keep them riveted, or die a horrible, horrible death in front of an unforgiving crowd that’s not afraid to boo you right off the Windy City stage.

You didn’t think we’d go through an entire Weird Scripts week without reviewing a David Lynch script, did you?

Welcome to Weird Scripts Week! This week, I’ll be reviewing odd scripts, odd ideas, and writing that’s just plain odd. It will all culminate Friday when I review the strangest premise I’ve ever reviewed on Scriptshadow. To check out Monday’s cross between an aquarium and a power drill, click here. Tuesday’s script will turn you into a vegetarian. Yesterday’s script will send you off into your own 24 hour video. And today is… well today we’re talking about spit.

Genre: Comedy?
Premise: When a guard’s tiny saliva bubble shoots out of his mouth and into the circuitry of a top-secret government project, it starts a chain reaction that discombobulates an entire town.
About: After some grandstanding from both Showtime and David Lynch on budget issues for Lynch’s new version of Twin Peaks, the series will be making a return later this year. A couple of low-rated Showtime shows may pay the price for that but if you want to work with visionary directors, there will be casualties. Speaking of casualties, One Saliva Bubble is Lynch’s passion project, and I don’t think he’s ever gotten over having to move on from it. The director of such films as Eraserhead, Dune, and Mulholland Drive actually had a co-writer on this script named Mark Frost, who went on to write the two 2000s Fantastic Four movies. He was also a writer on the original TV version of The Equalizer.
Writers: David Lynch and Mark Frost
Details: 140 pages (first draft – 5/20/87 draft)

For our fourth script in this week’s Weird Scripts series, we’re going to the granddaddy of weird – the maestro of misinterpretation, the grand pooba of pointlessness, the conductor of confusing. Yup, I’m talking about David Lynch. The old school Lynch came up during a time where you were actually encouraged – gasp – to be different. To try new and offbeat things.

What Lynch’s mentors didn’t know was that telling him this was like telling Homer Simpson he could design his own donut line. You talk about a guy who took advice to heart. Sheesh. I’d expect more sense out of an Amanda Bynes and Miley Cyrus collaboration than I do this man’s movies. Does One Saliva Bubble fall in line with the rest of his work? We shall see…

Somewhere near the tiny town of Newtonville is a secret military base. It just so happens that on this evening, at this base, a few guards are joking around near an exposed computer panel, and a spittle of saliva shoots out of one of their mouths, lands on the panel, and short-circuits a tiny portion of the wiring.

This causes a malfunction whereby the panel erroneously sends a signal to a military satellite to start a countdown sequence for some top secret weapon. 24 hours later, this satellite shoots a laser beam down to Newtonville, which bounces around, hitting almost everyone in town.

The hardest hit is the airport. It’s there where our four protagonists are located for various reasons. There’s the psychotic contract killer, Horton Thursby, the genius Swiss scientist, Professor Hugo Zinzermacher, the loser middle-aged family man, Wally Newton, and the town idiot, who’s just come back from the insane asylum, Newt Newton.

What this laser beam does is it displaces the minds of our four characters, so that Horton and Wally switch bodies and Hugo and Newt switch bodies. For reasons I can’t even begin to explain, while their personalities have been transported, none of the characters actually know they’re inside new bodies.

This leads to mayhem. For example, a major company has brought Professor Hugo in from Sweden to help them come up with a winning formula to defeat their nemesis. But instead, they unknowingly get Newt, who carries a sock full of toys with him wherever he goes. When brought to the company, Newt as Hugo starts playing with his toys on the floor, and the entire company rushes to figure out what it all means, what this genius is trying to tell them.

Horton, on the other hand, heads home to Wally’s home life, a life where the “old Wally” gets bossed around by both his wife and his son. When they try and pull that bullshit on him this time, he tells them that if they ever fuck with him again, they’ll regret it for the rest of their lives. Wally’s home problems: solved.

Wally, on the other hand (who’s now in Horton’s body), finds himself as the head of an organized crime ring, and his tough guy underlings are confused about his new nice-guy managing style. The professor, meanwhile, is brought back to Newt’s house, a place where Newt is assumed to be retarded. Which, of course, becomes very confusing when “Newt” starts solving math equations that would frustrate Will Hunting.

When an outside U.S. military division suspects something is amiss in the town of Newtonville, they send a couple of guys out there to get to the bottom of it. But it might be too late. Our characters have already turned, and it’s only a matter of time before they undo the balance of the town and the military establishment that birthed this horrid experiment.

Some Lynchian imagery.

There’s actually a lot more to this story (more characters – more body switches) but to try and summarize them all would require the help of Michio Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson. There are people dressed in Heinz bottles, a roller skating rink where everyone skates in rhythmic unison, and an obsessive thread where everyone keeps complaining that there’s “no cheese” in town.

So did it work?

Well, I’ll say this. This is easier to follow than your average Lynch movie. That’s probably because Lynch has a co-writer this go-around. When you don’t have to explain anything to anyone, you can follow whatever whim you fancy. But if you have a co-writer, he needs to know what you’re doing so he can do the same.

The simple act of having to explain yourself requires you to follow some sort of logic, and that’s not how Lynch prefers to write. As a result, there’s something of a story here. I’m just not convinced it’s very good.

Body-switching movies are essentially dramatic irony movies. We know who the person in the body is, but the other characters do not. This allows for a lot of fun scenes that write themselves. For example, we know that Wally’s wife and son run his life, that they bully and berate him every day. So when a cold-blooded killer shows up at home that night in Wally’s body, we know mom and son are in for a world of hurt.

The problem with the premise is that Lynch and Frost are trying to bullshit us. “Bullshitting” is when you fudge something you know you shouldn’t be fudging and hope the reader either doesn’t notice it or goes along with it. The thing is, the reader always smells the bullshit. You might get it past a few really dumb people, but any reader or audience member worth their salt is going to smell your shit from a mile away. I’m going to say this once: You’re not as sly as you think.

The bullshit here resides in the form of the body-switching rules. The switches allow for every single trait of the characters to be transferred into the new bodies EXCEPT their knowledge that they’re in a new body. This becomes a major plot hole because how are we supposed to believe that a contract killer isn’t all of a sudden aware that he’s not with his gang anymore, but hanging out in a middle class suburban home with a wife and son?

It doesn’t make sense. And eccentric directors like Lynch shouldn’t get a pass just because they’re weird. I’m fine with doing the crazy dance on your pages. But you can’t bullshit us on the major hook of your story.

Speaking of story, while this is more coherent than most Lynch films, it’s far from perfect. The body-switching and subsequent division of characters into their new lives is just a reaction to this laser beam event. Once that’s happened, the characters lack a point or a goal.

Lynch and Frost attempt to bring in this second military presence to draw the story to some sort of conclusion, but it’s a half-hearted attempt at best. It comes in so late that we’re not even sure what the military’s goal is or what they’re trying to do. Stop it? Turn these four people back to normal? Does that really matter?

And I think that’s the most telltale question of all. “Does it really matter?” If fixing the problem inherent in your story (in this case, the body switching) doesn’t matter (or only barely matters), that means there are no stakes to the story, which would explain why, when you read One Saliva Bubble, you’re not ever engaged.

Think about this in terms of Tom Hanks’s “Big.” If he doesn’t change back, he misses 30 years of his life. He never gets to see his family again. There are some real stakes attached to him not going back to his kid body.

This would also explain why the script is 140 pages. Usually, when don’t have some sort of structure in place to push you towards the third-act climax, you just keep writing more and more scenes. And why wouldn’t you? If your characters have nowhere to be (no problem to fix, no goal to achieve), you’ll naturally just keep exploring the premise (in this case, body switching).

So where does One Saliva Bubble fall on the Weird Scripts Week scale? That’s a great question. I think it lands at number two behind “Bessie.” It’s a weird script, but it’s not Lynchian weird. I’m still debating whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Script link: One Saliva Bubble

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

What I learned: Playing something as a gimmick compared to playing something as authentic. When you play a concept as a gimmick, you won’t be able to explore your characters in a meaningful way, and, as a result, those characters will never resonate with your audience. So here, Lynch and Frost choose to play their premise as a gimmick. You could almost call this “The Zany Adventures of Four People Who Switch Bodies After Being Hit by a Laser Beam.” For example, the writers aren’t interested in, say, Horton the Killer learning to take care of a family for the first time in his life. They just want to show the fun scenes of a school bully beating up the son character so that our contract killer in disguise can square off against the bully and make him piss his pants. And I’m not saying those scenes aren’t fun. But they’re surface-level scenes. Unless you’re reflecting on how the unfamiliar experience you’ve put your character in CHANGES that character, you’re not really exploring that character or making them compelling to the audience.

ALERT ALERT!!! The SCRIPTSHADOW NEWSLETTER has been sent! Check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders if you did not receive the newsletter in your mailbox. You can add my e-mail to your ADDRESS LIST to make sure future newsletters go straight to your inbox. If you still can’t find the newsletter, e-mail me with the subject matter – NEWSLETTER. It’s a BIG one, with a review of what many consider to be one of the best scripts of the past five years. Sign up for the newsletter here.

So it happened again.

What’s that? You don’t know what I’m talking about?

Oh.

I had another meet-up with a writer.

Which resulted in another, “What the HELL are you thinking?????”

A sweet well-intentioned guy. Very nice.

But then it happened. He pitched me. Told me what he was working on.

I listened. I tried to be patient. But before I knew it, I was shaking my head. I asked him if he read my site. Because he said he was inspired by it. But if you’re inspired by my site, why are you doing the exact opposite of everything I talk about?

That may seem like a harsh reaction but I used to stay quiet in these situations. Nod my head and smile. But what good does that do anyone? Is it better for me to let this gentleman waste the next six months of his life or tell him right then and there that his ideas…well… suck.

What was the problem with this young gentleman’s ideas? None of them were movies! There wasn’t a single cinematic idea in the bunch. I’m not going to expose those ideas here for the world to laugh at. But let’s just say they were the equivalent of a man struggling through a job he didn’t like. Very basic, very “un movie like” premises.

Hearing him talk about these ideas, you could feel his passion. But passion without a good idea is about as useful as a slurpee without a cup. It’s going to spill all over your clothes, leave a stain, and result in a very angry Indian man yelling at you.

Okay, so it’s not exactly like a slurpee without a cup but the point is, this is amateur mistake numero uno. The thing that keeps 90% of aspiring screenwriters on the wrong side of the Hollywood wall. Their ideas are BORING! They don’t promise us anything exciting.

How does the saying go? A cat sitting on a blanket isn’t an idea. A cat sitting on a dog’s blanket is.

And there are a lot of things that go into it but basically you want to give the audience an idea that promises a lot of conflict. I mean look at the setup for Fury Road. A woman steals the most powerful man in the region’s five wives and tries to run away. We can see how that’s going to end up in a lot of conflict, a lot of problems, a lot of “shit going wrong.”

The reason I’m babbling on about this is because I’m tired of seeing writers waste their time on boring freaking ideas that will never go anywhere. I read them all the time in the Amateur Offerings’ submissions and I think, “What are you thinking??? How could you possibly think anyone would want to see this movie?”

For awhile I thought these were just hopeless writers who didn’t have the talent to come up with a good idea. But then I started thinking, maybe no one’s sat down and taught these people the difference between a good idea and a bad one.

So I came up with 7 questions to help these writers determine the value of their idea. If they can say yes to at least four of these questions, they probably have a story worth telling. Any less and they may want to go on to the next idea.

Now I’ve ranked these in order of importance. So the top questions are weighted higher than the bottom ones. In other words, it’s more important that you answer yes to the first few questions.

A couple of things to remember. The game changes if you’re going to direct your script yourself. That’s because when you direct, you give yourself another opportunity to differentiate your product. So if your script seems mundane on the page, but you plan on shooting it in a really unique or weird way, that still allows you to stand out. Like Gregory Go Boom. That script probably looked mundane on the page, but the director gave it a truly fresh feel on the screen.

Also, don’t try and defend your idea by putting it up against similar ideas that were a) book adaptations or b) director-driven projects. As a spec screenwriter, you will never get the benefit of the doubt a New York Times best seller does, nor will producers care when you plead with them, “I know not a lot happens but it’s going to be like a David Lynch film.” Since you’re the unknown spec writer, you have to be bigger and flashier to get noticed. So here are the seven questions you’ll hopefully answer “yes” to. Good luck!

1) Is your idea high concept?

I’d say that this is probably the most helpful thing you can do to get your script noticed. I read ARES, Michael Starbury’s script about a special division created to recover the extraordinary and supernatural. Truth be told, it wasn’t very good. But the idea was so big, so “you could totally see this as a movie,” that it sold for mid six figures. High concept is not synonymous with big budget either. A high concept could be a therapist who takes on a child patient who sees ghosts (The Sixth Sense). Or a couple who runs into their doppelgangers on their vacation (The One I Love).

2) Are you writing in one of the six marketable genres (horror, thriller, sci-fi, comedy, action, adventure)?

These are the genres that sell best on the spec market. Dramas don’t do well here. Westerns. Period pieces. Coming-of-age stories. If you’re not writing in one of these six, you should probably be worried about your spec’s chances.

3) Is your idea marketable?

This would appear to be the same question as number two, since the reason those genres are celebrated is because they’re marketable, but there are plenty of non-genre movies that can still be marketed. One of the ways you can figure this out is to find three movies (within the last decade) similar to yours that have done well at the box office (relative to their costs). The biopic is a good example of this right now. Studios have proven they can market these movies and people will show up.

4) Do you have a fascinating or extremely strong main character?

Actor bait can work as a sort of Hail Mary for smaller ideas. Think a meaty juicy role where an actor gets to do a lot of stuff. It could be anything from being a schizophrenic (A Beautiful Mind) to being bitter and having scars on your face (Cake, Vanilla Sky).

5) Does it have a unique angle?

We just talked about this the other day. Once you choose your idea, try to figure out what your unique angle is going to be. If you don’t have a unique angle, it’s likely your script is going to feel just like everything that came before it. Take one of the unexpected hits from a couple of years ago, “Now You See Me.” The writers decided to write a heist film. But everyone writes heist films. What was different about theirs? Well, they made the heisters magicians. That’s an angle we haven’t seen before.

6) Is your script thick with conflict?

A premise that promises a lot of head-butting between characters, a lot of tension, a lot of sides pulling at one another, a lot of uncomfortable interactions, is an idea that’ll likely make a good screenplay. A perfect example is Gone Girl. A woman disappears and we follow the husband, who everyone suspects killed her. Every situation this man steps into is going to result in some kind of conflict. Contrast that with, say, a movie about a man who’s grieving the loss of his life. I guess there’s some inner conflict in that idea, but it’s minimal, and we’ll grow tired of it quickly, meaning the idea is weak. A man who grieves the loss of his wife, only to find out she used to work for the CIA, and now people who were after her are now after him? Okay, you might have an idea there.

7) Does your idea contain irony?

If you’re writing what many would consider to be an “independent” movie, I consider an ironic premise almost essential. It’s really your last ditch effort to make your tiny movie stand out. A king who can’t speak must give the most important speech in history (The King’s Speech). When an older man meets a minor online, it turns out to be the minor who’s the predator (Hard Candy).

Don’t worry if you don’t get an affirmative on every one of these questions. That’s unlikely. But as long as you get more yes’s than no’s, you should be in good shape. Also, there’s a final component to all of this, and that’s your own creativity, your own voice. You have to add those creative flourishes and ideas that only you can bring to the table. For example, I could write a movie about a group of teenagers stuck in a town full of zombies that would get yes’s to most of these questions. But if I’m not bringing some creativity to the story, it’ll still be a dud. Nobody wants to be a dud. Be a stud. And never ever roll in mud.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A home invasion crew targets the richest family in town, only to get a lot more than they bargained for.
About: This script was just purchased a couple of months ago. Eric Bress actually sold ANOTHER script, American Drifter, a couple of weeks later. Bress is best known as the co-writer and co-director of The Butterfly Effect, a film that he’s remaking as we speak. Let’s all pray that Ashton Kutcher isn’t in it.
Writer: Eric Bress
Details: 85 pages

Is Kodi Smit Mcphee ready to go this dark??

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

On Monday, I officially changed the definition of insanity to just: George Miller, after seeing how fucked up Fury Road was.

Well, I’m about to change the definition again. I’m going to give half of that definition to Eric Bress. Holy SHIT is this guy dark. I mean…. Lol… I’m sitting here still shaking my head. And I finished this script 20 minutes ago.

This is, like, disturbed shit on a whole other level.

But the great thing about art? Is that you can be disturbed as well as admired. And I admire the hell out of this screenplay. I mean, this was supposed to be a home invasion movie. How crazy could it get?

Here’s an answer for you: VERY FUCKING CRAZY.

The Schottenfelds are rich as hell. We notice that by their 20 acre property and huge mansion. We have the wiry, maybe even wimpy, father, David. The trophy wife who’s secretly a badass in Barbara. 17 year-old emo, Meredith. And the jock of the family, 12 year-old Lance.

Oh, and there’s one more family member. 18 year-old loner, James. Now, the way this script is written, we start with a home invasion and then jump back in time at various points to get to know the characters before the event.

And what we learn about James is that he’d purchased a Contra-sized arsenal of weapons and was planning on pulling off the biggest school shooting in history. Luckily for those students, his parents found out about it, and were about to send him off to a special program to make him better.

But James hasn’t left yet. And thank God for that.

On a seemingly normal evening, the family is getting ready to do what families do, when eight men barge into the house and demand, well, just about every cent this family has, including every bank account they’ve stashed money in across the world.

The group is led by one nasty motherfucker in Burke. Burke isn’t afraid to feel up Meridith, hang Lance over a 30 foot balcony, light David on fire, and beat the shit out of Barbara. This is just not a good dude in any sense of the word.

The problem is, while Burke seems to know way more than he should about this home, he doesn’t know that James hasn’t left yet. And that James has a stockade of weapons that could take down ISIS. What follows is the reversal of all reversals. Burke and his crew go from the hunters… to the hunted.

There is so much good about this script, I don’t know where to start. First of all, it’s not for the squeamish. There is some hardcore violence in here so if that’s not your thing, the charms of this screenplay will likely not work on you.

But if you were delighted by scripts like Fatties, then read on!

Let’s start with ANGLES. Remember that there are about 75 movie types out there. By that I mean, sub-genres within the main genres. So we have the teenage romantic comedy, the alien invasion movie, the body switch movie, the serial killer procedural, the trapped in a box with monsters flick, the buddy comedy, the revenge flick, the coming-of-age movie, etc., etc.

These are all proven movie types so they’re used over and over again. What your job is when you write one of these films is to find an ANGLE that makes them different. So take teenage romantic comedies (Clueless, The Breakfast Club, Mean Girls). If you’re going to write a teenage romantic comedy, you need to find a new angle, because if you give us a generic teenage rom-com or one that doesn’t offer anything new (example: the Freddie Prinze Jr. masterpiece, “Down To You”), we won’t feel any need to see it.

A recent example of Hollywood finding a new angle for this type of movie is The Fault In Our Stars. A teenage romantic comedy about cancer patients. Hadn’t been done before. It was risky as shit, but usually the angle you pick will be risky. In order to find a new angle, you’ll need to do something that’s never been done before. Which is, by definition, risky.

So here we have the home invasion movie. We’ve seen this film before with Panic Room and Firewall and The Purge. So what’s the new angle you’re going to bring to it? In American Hostage, it’s that the teenage son is a psychopathic murderer who’s a thousand times worse than any of the invaders. And instead of them hunting him, he hunts them. That’s the angle that makes this script different.

Now if that was all there was, it wouldn’t be enough. You can’t JUST be different. You have to execute. And boy does Bress execute. I usually know I’m in good hands when I read something in a script that I’ve never read before. That tells me the writer is creative and that he’s TRYING. That last part sounds like it should be a given. But 90% of writers out there aren’t trying hard enough to make their scripts great. So it’s a big deal when I notice this.

What’s the moment I’d never seen before?

James drives the invaders’ van up to the house with the head of one of the men he’s killed planted on top of the swaying antennae. Before he killed this poor guy, he made him record a message in his iphone to the other invaders (telling them to leave). So when the invaders come outside, the head bobs back and forth, the message playing from the iphone, making it sound like the severed head is really talking. It’s the creepiest fucking image I’ve read all year.

But what about the story, Carson! I mean is this just a series of gross gimmicks? No! This script is really good. And it works because we know that James is out there. And that he’s killing these guys one by one. So we’re driven to keep reading to see where he’s going to strike next. And since Bress did such a great job making us hate these guys (beating up the mom, groping the daughter, lighting the dad on fire), we can’t wait for that next attack.

Also, I really liked the jump-back structure here, with the invasion occasionally interrupted to go back a week and meet the characters in their everyday environments. This allowed us to get to know the characters on a deeper level so that we gave a shit when they were stabbed or hit or… lit on fire.

Usually in a script that jumps into the action right away, you don’t get that, so we don’t really know the people we’re supposed to care for. Bress found a way around that problem. And he didn’t do it with super-long flashbacks or anything. Each jump-back was one scene. Very tight and easy to digest.

The script also made me feel something I’ve never felt before. We learn, early on, that James planned on shooting up a school, one of the most horrific acts you can imagine. So the fact that you’re rooting for this guy gives you this complicated uneasy feeling inside. You know you shouldn’t love him. And yet you do. You can’t wait for him to dole out more pain to these assholes.

It’s pretty rare that a script will make you feel multiple things at once. So when you find one that does, you raise your cap. And then put it on a car antennae.

The only downside to this script is that it’s so violent that it won’t be for everyone. And that sucks, because there are people who won’t be able to appreciate how well-written American Hostage is. And it’s really well-written. This is a great example of how to write a memorable contained thriller.

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

What I learned: Do yourself a favor and consider an UNEXPECTED HERO for your screenplay. Everyone knows Vin Diesel’s going to beat ass, that The Rock is going to take names, that Jason Statham is going to kick your teeth in. These characters are all very on-the-nose. So what if, instead, you went with the most unexpected choice for the ass-kicker (or hero) in your movie? A mentally unstable 18 year-old who was planning to shoot up a school. That’s about as unexpected as it gets.