I don’t think there are five directors in history who have had as unusual of a career as M. Night Shyamalan. He came out of the gate with two hit movies and everyone was anointing him the next Steven Spielberg. He’s since directed six films that the majority of people consider to be really bad (with the exception of maybe Signs). That’s resulted in a huge backlash against him. But I think the real reason there are so many M. Night haters is that he’s so defiant about his script’s problems. While he never comes out and says it, his m.o. after a flop is to insinuate that critics and audiences don’t “get it.” Maybe if M. Night had some humility and took himself a little less seriously, he’d endear a lot of those fans to come back to his side (or at least not spend half their day pounding him on message boards). I picked “Lady In The Water” to analyze because I believe it’s the moment audiences first began to realize that M. Night may be a one-trick pony. Sure, his next film (The Happening), was worse. But I think this one represents a lot of what’s wrong with Night as a writer. I remember watching it and just thinking, “What WAS that??” For those who didn’t see the film, it’s about a middle-aged sclumpy apartment building manager (“Cleveland,” played by Paul Giamatti) who’s visited by a strange girl (named “Story” – no, I’m not kidding) who seems to have arrived via the pool in the middle of the complex. In order to get her back to her world (the “Blue World”), Cleveland will need to learn about her strange universe and enlist the help of all the tenants in the building. It’s really bad! Let’s dig in.

1) Never place symbolism or theme above story – This is Night’s Achilles heal. He’s said in the past that a story must meet something like 7 criteria for him to make it, and most of that criteria involves theme and symbolism. Let me make something clear to you: If you ever write something where theme or symbolism is more important than story, you will never sell your script. You may impress your old English professor. But you will not sell the spec. With specs, story ALWAYS comes first. Write a good story, and then have theme and symbolism SUPPLEMENT that.

2) Listen to criticism – For some odd reason, Night continues to make the same mistakes over and over again (prioritizing theme and symbolism being one of those mistakes), despite nobody going to see his films anymore. As a writer, it’s your job to LISTEN to what somebody is saying when they critique your screenplay. Too many young writers blow this off, believing the reader “didn’t get it.” It may not be that they didn’t get it. It may be that you didn’t present the information in a way that allowed them to get it. So always listen to criticism and even if you don’t agree with the critic, try to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying.

3) Criticism Example – Let me give you an example. A long time ago, I wrote a script about a guy who was dying of brain cancer who had to jump into the future to get it fixed. Things don’t go cleanly when he gets there. There’s a lot of chasing around – double-crossing – that kind of thing. Almost everyone who read the script felt that the hero was too selfish. A producer eventually suggested, “Instead of him trying to save himself, why not have him try to save someone else?” I immediately dismissed his suggestion. I couldn’t imagine it. I just couldn’t. I’d built this character from the ground up and there was no way in my mind I could see him as someone other than what I created. So I stubbornly wrote a few more drafts MY WAY, but that same criticism kept coming back. I eventually put the script down, picked it back up a year later, and saw exactly what everyone was talking about. The hero was definitely too selfish. So I changed it from him going to the future to save himself to him going to the future to save his wife. The script instantly got better. I’m not saying that every critique will be right. But if you’re hearing the same thing over and over again, get away from the script (maybe not for a whole year, but for a little bit) come back, and try to see that critique through fresh eyes.

4) Don’t drown your story in mythology – Mythology is the world and rules behind that story you’ve created. If you try and make your mythology too extensive, it will become bigger than the story, and begin to drown it. This was the downfall of Lady In The Water. There were narfs and scrats and water people and tree people and eagles and madame narfs and rules upon rules upon rules of how this universe was supposed to work. It was too much. Too confusing. And eventually the audience checked out because they couldn’t keep up with it all. I’m not saying extensive mythology can’t be done. That Harry Potter franchise did okay. But, it’s very hard to do well. Focus on keeping only the relevant aspects of the mythology in the script. And if it’s still too much, consider simplifying it.

5) Quirky for quirk’s sake is a recipe for disaster – In Lady in the Water, we’ve got a guy who only works out with one arm!!! So he’s got a tiny left arm but a really big muscular right arm. There is no story reason for this to happen other than it makes him WACKY and QUIRKY. When you do this, the reader feels the writing. He notices you, the writer, typing away. If you’re doing your job right, the reader will never think of you. He will be so wrapped up in your story that he isn’t aware its even been written.

6) Beware coincidences when writing screenplays – A woman from another world shows up in an apartment complex pool, and it just so happens that a couple of Korean residents in that complex know an obscure Korean fairytale that contains all the details of this woman’s past and what she needs to do to get back home. Coincidental? Of course. And again, it makes us think of the writer. Stay away from coincidences. They are bad and do terrible things to your story.

7) The “fate” excuse isn’t good enough – “But no,” the writer says, “The Korean residents knew the fairy tale because fate brought the lady in the water in touch with them!” Whenever you’re using the “fate” reason to explain story holes or fill in story gaps, the script begins to feel LAZY. Think about it. It’s such an easy solution. It gives you carte blanche to have a million coincidences happen, which kills any suspense your story may have.  The “fate” angle can work if it’s used selectively and cleverly, but when it’s used lazily, it kills your story.

8) Beware the close cousin of coincidence: convenience – When the story needs to move quickly, our water nymph girl knows the exact answers to all the tough questions about her world (“Oh yeah, a scrat? This is how you defeat it.”). Other times, when we need to give Cleveland something to do, she all of a sudden has no clue of what’s going on (“Which person am I supposed to meet here?  Beats me!”). How convenient, right? Convenience is yet another sign of lazy writing.

9) Use gas on your emotional beats, not nuclear power – Night has a real problem with this. His moments can’t just be sweet emotional connections between people. They have to have an added element that REALLY. HITS. YOU. OVER. THE HEAD. So there’s this potentially nice scene where Cleveland must heal Story. He’s on the ground with her in his arms. She’s dying. And as he’s about to talk her back, the seven women behind him all place their hands on his back! Give. Me. A break! Your emotional beats should be powered by gasoline. Not a nuclear reactor.

10) Silly/goofy choices – I don’t really know how to convey this tip in a way that will help people. Because we all live in our own reality. What’s amazing to us may be boring to Joe in Kansas. What’s cool to us may be lame to our best friend. Having said that, I read so many amateur scripts where writers make the goofiest silliest choices, and they don’t seem to realize it for whatever reason. M. Night suffers from a really bad case of this. He had a scene in The Happening where characters ran from the wind! He had a scene here where a ten year old boy extracts key story information from a cabinet full of cereal boxes! He’s got a character here who has one huge muscled arm and one regular one! Obviously, in Night’s universe these choices aren’t goofy. But the rest of the world disagrees. So to avoid this mistake, you have to step out of your shoes, read through your plot, and ask, “Would people perceive this choice as silly?” And be honest with yourself. Even better, ask your friends (only the ones who tell you the truth). Because I see things like this ALL THE TIME and I ask, “What were they THINKING?” Not enough writers scrutinize their choices. Don’t be one of those writers.

I was one of those troubled souls who loved Braveheart so much that I actually memorized the famous battle speech and recited it, in full character, wherever I could. Needless to say, I was kicked out of my fair share of establishments. The thing is, I saw Braveheart before I got into this whole screenwriting thing, and I’ve always wanted to go back and break it down with all the newfound knowledge I’ve accumulated. I must admit I’m bit intimidated by the “epic” screenplay though, because you can’t structure 180 page scripts the same way you do 110 page scripts. To me, getting someone to WANT to read a full 180 pages is the biggest feat you can achieve as a screenwriter. 95% of the scripts I read can’t keep me interested past page 5. So I’m always fascinated by the writers who pull this off. Speaking of, Randall Wallace, who got an Oscar nomination for this screenplay (the movie itself won the Oscar for best picture) has been M.I.A. for the last dozen years. The last thing he wrote was We Are Soldiers. I’m fascinated and a bit terrified by this. How do screenwriters go from the top of the heap to the bottom of the barrel so quickly??? I mean, this is a great script!

1) Let us see what shaped your character’s life in an epic – I realized with Braveheart how effective it was to actually SEE what shaped our character. We watch as William Wallace loses his father to the English, then later as his wife is murdered by the English. Because we were there when it happened, we root for Wallace more than had those experiences been mere backstory. In a typical 2 hour film, you don’t always have time to show these memories. But in an epic, the option is there.

2) Epics and Sequences – I realized the key to structuring epics is they need sequences. That means constructing a series of 15 page “mini-stories,” each with a specific purpose, that span the entire script. So in the first sequence of Braveheart, it’s about a young child’s dad dying. In the second, it’s about William Wallace courting a girl. The third is Wallace getting revenge for his wife’s murder. The fourth is Wallace’s rise. As long as each sequence is focused on a specific thing, your script should never wander, no matter how long it gets.

3) Think of “sequences” as a to-do list – When you think about your huge day and all the things you need to accomplish, it feels impossible. But when you break it down into specific tasks and focus on one at a time, it’s all of a sudden manageable. Approach your epic (or any script) the same way. As an entire story, it’s big and intimidating. But once you break it down into smaller chunks (sequences), it all of a sudden feels doable.

4) Make each battle unique – What really separates Braveheart from a lot of epics is how original and well thought-out each battle was. The first battle is an impromptu attack on the men who killed Wallace’s wife. The next, the Scottish sneak into a castle pretending to be English soldiers. The next is the big battle, where they use a surprise anti-horse stake attack as well as flanking the enemy with their own horses. The next, they storm York with brute force. The next, the Irish surprisingly switch sides mid-battle and join the Scottish. When I read boring period pieces, they tend to involve boring, unimaginative battles that all feel similar. Try to put just as much thought into each battle as you would your story. Be different, take chances, find a cool angle.

5) Know when to take your time and when to speed up – Part of screenwriting is knowing when to take things slow and when to move it along. Mel Gibson and writer Randall Wallace had a disagreement about the revenge scene (the one that takes place after Wallace’s wife is killed). In Randall’s version, Wallace storms into the town like a bat on fire. Gibson’s version, which made the film, took it way slower, with Wallace coming in quietly. Without question, Gibson’s version was the better choice. And the reason slow worked was because the revenge we wanted was so potent. We were willing to wait for it. Had Wallace been avenging something less personal, such as the slaughter of a bunch of nameless characters, going in faster may have been the better choice.

6) Use a personal relationship to villain-ize your villain – Most villains are general and boring. They scream out cliché “villain-y” things like, “Take them down!” and “We must crush them!” Since these phrases are so general, they don’t individualize the villain. Instead, look for a personal relationship to place your villain in so you can explore his evilness on an up-close level. In Braveheart, we get this with King Longshanks and his homosexual son, with whom he spends the entire story berating and abusing. Because we’re exposed to the villainy on an up-close and personal level (at one point Longshanks even kills his son’s boyfriend), it’s specific, and therefore makes the villain feel REAL.

7) The power of reversals – Braveheart is built on reversals, using them wonderfully. There are so many times in this movie where we expect one thing, but get another. We think Wallace will save his wife when her throat is about to be slit. Instead, she’s killed. He comes in afterwards, looking like he’s surrendering. He attacks instead. Two men join his party later, one crazy and unpredictable, the other straightforward and dependable. When the three go hunting, it is the “good” one who tries to kill Wallace and the “bad” one who saves his life. In the second big battle, the Irish are on the English’s side. As they attack, they stop and join the Scottish instead. Later in the battle, Wallace calls in the cavalry, as is part of the plan. They walk away instead, double-crossing him. Braveheart is so fun because it’s always reversing something.

8) Epics need epic motivation – Remember, you’re asking your reader to stick around for 60 more minutes than normal. That’s only going to work if you have a main character who’s so compelling that we’re willing to follow him forever. You do this by giving him an EPIC motivation. We watch Wallace lose his father and then later the love of his life. That right there is epic motivation. Of course we want to stick around until he defeats the English.

9) If possible, give your hero a big picture AND little picture goal – Characters work best when they have two reasons for going after their goal, one overarching, the other more personal. So here, Wallace is fighting for the freedom of his country (overarching). But he’s also fighting for revenge (personal).

10) How do you write a great speech!? – I came into this script wanting to know why the Braveheart speech was so amazing, while almost every other movie speech I’ve seen since has paled in comparison. Here’s what I learned. First, there’s humor! Wallace starts out by making some jokes to his soldiers. It lightens the mood and is a little unexpected (which is always good). Second, there’s interaction! The soldiers challenge him, breaking up his speech so it’s not so scripted. Third, there’s a point! He’s not just trying to rile people up. He needs to CONVINCE this army to fight for him. In fact, you can break this entire speech down into GSU. Goal – get them to fight for him. Stakes – England will take over Scotland if he doesn’t succeed. Urgency – He needs to do it RIGHT NOW. The battle is about to begin!

UPDATE: Calling all female screenwriters – we want YOU to submit your best work for an upcoming Amateur Offerings Weekend that will showcase scripts written exclusively by women! Send a PDF of your script along with the title, genre, logline, and a ‘why you should read’ section in an email to carsonreeves3@gmail.com ASAP! :)

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: Pilot
GENRE: Science-Fiction/Thriller
LOGLINE: An intelligent spacecraft, crash-landed on an alien world, resurrects its failed-pilot-turned-engineer, in the hopes he can repair the damage before the planet collides with a dying star.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “So I was at a Hanson concert the other night… Don’t ask. Needless to say, I’ve earned myself some significant points with my significant other… Anyway, I started asking myself (silently): where did I take a wrong turn in my career endeavors? I mean, I’m a smart guy. I’m artistic. At age six, I wrote my very first book; A short Christmas story involving Santa Claus, magic dust and some wicked sweet pictures accented with glitter and elbow macaroni. But after more than two decades later, I have yet to break through the industry walls. Which brings me to my point; I have an incredible sci-fi script that I’ve been toiling over for the past year and some change, and I’ve the fourteen draft revisions to prove it. And when I say draft I don’t mean polish. Each and every draft I write has its own distinct outline. It’s been sort of an obsession to get this thing as perfect as can be, because… well…  I honestly obsess over my writing quite frequently. It’s a curse as well as a gift, because I’m willing to put the time in to perfecting my craft while my wife sits idly by feeling neglected… Which brings me full circle as to why I had to go to the Hanson concert to begin with.

The short and sloppy pitch is it’s Cast Away meets 2001. Both movies I liked but didn’t love for different reasons… Which is probably why I felt compelled to slap the two together. I loved the human element in Cast Away; Tom Hanks. Out on his own. Doing anything he can to survive and get back to the wife he loves… But I felt it lacked “stuff”, not to put too scientific a term on it. It lacked the miniature story twists, turns and surprises that I love so much. I didn’t come out of it feeling like I had discovered more about myself in the process. 2001 was a brilliant film, visually… But at the same time, felt very cold and distant (which no doubt was Kubrick’s intention) and lacking a human connection. You had Dave the astronaut, but by the time he came around, I was usually knocked out cold. It took me a good ten viewings before making it all the way through!

Sorry if I’m getting off point, but my script, Pilot, has the unique visuals; has a uniquely flawed character at its core; and well… I’m obsessed with it. You would be doing me (as well as my wife) a great service just to tell me to let it go and move on to the next script, because I’ve rewritten this thing over to death, and I honestly have no more drafts in me. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get, by my hand alone. This is my best work, and I’m a self-judgmental SOB when it  comes to my own work. Check it out!”

TITLE: The Devil’s Jokebook
GENRE: Film Noir / Horror
LOGLINE: Heaven and Hell converge on New York when an ancient book disappears. But the only man that can save the city is a non-believer with a grudge against the Church.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ:  “My script is a 2013 ShriekFest Finalist. This is my fourth time being a finalist in that competition. My story meshes classic film noir elements with the supernatural. Think “The Maltese Falcon” with demons. But I’ve swapped out the old school cops with Vatican goons and the mob with demons to put a fresh spin on those tropes. Please consider The Devil’s Jokebook for review. It’s a DEMON NOIR with one hell of a punch line.”

TITLE: Stuart Frankfurt’s Middle Life
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: Tired of being overlooked and undervalued, Stuart Frankfurt lies to get attention. As his popularity grows, so do the lies—and then they start to come true.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “This is my seventh or eighth script, and the one that’s furthest from my comfort zone. I tend to prefer quirky indie films, but those loglines are harder to get noticed (I experienced this when I submitted one to your 20 logline day. It received all of a dozen comments, and while positive, it was certainly not enough to get picked). This time I tried to come up with a higher concept film idea and write it with the same attention to character. I wrote this script about two years ago, got notes, made changes, and promptly forgot about it. I recently remembered it, re-read it, and still liked it. Maybe you will, too.”

TITLE: Alex & Alex
GENRE: Romantic Comedy
LOGLINE: After meeting in group therapy, two depressed college students try to start a relationship even though they share many of the same personal demons.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “I am passionate about telling stories with powerful emotion and I think I’ve captured something special with my script “Alex & Alex.” It’s based on my own dating troubles in college and is full of laughs and tears. I think this story perfectly blends sometimes-raunchy college humor with heartwarming romance. It also deals with the social issues of mental health much like the film “Silver Linings Playbook” and features two lonely and broken characters that find a kindred spirit in one another. I believe I have a ton of creative talent to offer and I have dozens of original, diverse and interesting screenplay concepts. I love working on the craft of writing and I’m always looking for inspiration in my daily adventures. I would love to become a filmmaker and have a chance to tell my stories. I hope you love what you read!”

TITLE: Breaking News
GENRE: Contained Thriller
LOGLINE: A flash drive is left at the door step of local news station showing a vicious murder of the town mayor with a mysterious message at its end. As the weekend anchor, on his final day, and his team investigate, they discover a bigger plot may be behind the mayor’s demise. (The Newsroom meets The Purge)
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “For the last couple of years, I have been writing screenplays only learn and improve at my craft. While I believe I’ll always be learning and looking to improve, I am confident that I have reached a point where I can put my work out there to be looked and, hopefully, be sold. Breaking News is that work. I really think this script can be turned into something and I wanted to put it out there for the Scriptshadow crowd to read. Give it a shot and your time won’t be wasted.”

Genre: Sneak-Into-Disney-World-And-Don’t-Tell-Anyone Genre
Premise: While on a family trip to Disney World, a man finds out that he’s lost his job. As the reality of this situation starts to hit him, he begins to see the famous park in a dark, twisted way.
About: Escape From Tomorrow debuted at Sundance where it quickly became a hot ticket for its unique backstory: the writer-director shot the film in Disney World and Disney Land without Disney’s knowledge. The buzz grew because everyone assumed that this would be the only chance to ever see the movie. How would Disney ever allow it to be released to the public? But after four months of lawyers combing through the film, they decided that even though many of Disney’s famous characters and landmarks were used, Disney wouldn’t be able to win a lawsuit (due to complicated legal terms like “fair use” that I can’t even begin to explain). As the film industry waited for Disney to roar, they never did, deciding instead to remain silent. The assumption was that any legal threat would bring more attention to the little indie film. Their position was that it would be ancient history within a few weeks if they just ignored it. They may have been right. The film made $66,000 in 30 theaters this weekend, for a $2000 average per theater. That’s low for a limited release. By comparison, Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine had a $102,000 average per theater on its opening weekend. For all the pub this film is getting, that’s surprising. Then again, it was also released on VOD (something I only learned AFTER I laid down $28 for two people), so that will probably determine if the film was a sound investment or not.
Writer: Randy Moore
Details: 90 minutes

I’m always telling you guys to limit your scripts to 110 pages. And if you have a comedy or a thriller, you should probably be closer to 100. You would think then, that I’d be happy to see a movie with a 90 page script. That means the story’s going to move even faster, right!? Not exactly. You see, 90 minutes is the minimum running time a movie must be to play in theaters (I think the actual number is 88 minutes). So when I see that, I subconsciously think that the filmmakers/writers didn’t have enough story for a feature film, and just padded their script with a bunch of filler to meet that minimum requirement.

There are exceptions. If you have something really contained with a low character count (“Buried,” for example) 90 minutes/pages might be just right. But Escape From Tomorrow had a family in Disney World. That story should’ve been longer. This was a prime candidate, then, for Padding Nation. But I was still hoping the film would prove me wrong.

Escape From Tomorrow introduces us to Jim, a father of two who’s on the last day of his trip to Disney World. Jim doesn’t seem to be the happiest guy to begin with, so when he gets a call from his company to inform him that he’s fired, it only adds fuel to his depression fire.

Naturally then, you’d expect to see this depression played against the happiest place on earth. And you’d be right. After the family goes on a few rides, Jim’s focus quickly becomes these two really young French girls (we’re talking 14-15 years old) who are frolicking around with barely any clothes on. Jim’s able to split from his wife by taking one of his kids, and follows the girls around to all the rides. The girls appear to notice him, and maybe even like the attention, but Jim can only get so close before his nagging wife keeps reappearing to nag some more.

What follows is a whole lot of nothing. We’ll go on a ride. Jim will watch the girls. Then his son will throw up. Jim will meet another mom, go to her room and have sex with her, even though it isn’t clear whether it really happened or not. Jim finds himself in the center of Disney World being held hostage by a crazy German scientist who turns out to be a robot. He’s shown images of a flight simulation and a naked woman. Jim loses his daughter, who he later finds out has been sorta kidnapped (I say “sorta” because she’s given back without any trouble).

Oh, and then there’s the ending (spoiler alert)! Jim succumbs to the anemically set-up “cat flu” and dies in the bathroom of his room! Only to show up again, alive and well, with that naked woman we’d intermittently seen jump cuts of throughout the movie (for no discernable reason of course). My friends, if you thought Upstream Color was too mainstream, then boy have I found the movie for you.

Okay, before I get pissed off about the storytelling here (and I am going to get pissed off), I have to give Randy Moore a TON of credit. He did the impossible. He broke into Hollywood. If you’re a reader of this site, you’re hopefully racking your brain every night to try and find a way into this exclusive club (at least I hope you are). In order to do it, you gotta write/make something great, inspired, clever, controversial or all of the above.

If you can find a way to break the rules in an interesting way, to create an excited discussion around your film or script, then the doors to Hollywood will open right up. Moore figured out a way to do that. Illegally filming a movie on the hallowed grounds of Disney World, a movie that smashes the very image the company likes to portray, was genius. It really was. One of the easiest ways to get people to discuss your film/script is to find an ironic slant. And what’s more ironic than an evil, twisted Disney World trip? And then to shoot the film in black and white? Stripping the Mouse House of the color they so desperately use to lure everyone in? Genius!

And when I did some research on Moore, I found out other good things. He worked his BUTT off to make this movie over the last three years. The first thing he did was come up with the idea. But here’s why Moore is where he is and you’re still sucking up black mold from your 400 square foot bachelor pad in Burbank – HE ACTUALLY WENT OUT AND MADE HIS IDEA. He didn’t stop at the concept point. He went to Mandy.com and found his crew. He planned meticulously for how he was going to pull off the shoot without Disney knowing. I mean, the guy went out and did it. And as crazy as it sounds, that’s the only thing that separates the successful and the non-successful people in this business. Some just talk about it and dream about it. The others GO OUT AND DO IT. And for that reason, I shall respect Randy Moore and others like him regardless of if I like or dislike their films.

But (oh, come on, you knew it was coming) I was SHOCKED to find out what I found out about Moore. You see, I had assumed this whole time that we were dealing with a filmmaker only who had a vision for a film but no money to hire a screenwriter. So he just did the best he could and scribbled out a bunch of scenes in order to get his movie made.

Then I learned that Randy Moore was a longtime [albeit unsuccessful] screenwriter?? That he was a reader and did coverage for people? That he consulted on scripts??? That blew me away because there isn’t a shred of ANYTHING good in this script whatsoever. If you stripped away the movie and read this script on its own, without a question it’s a “what the hell did I just read?” It’s that bad.

Let me try and break down some of the problems here. NOTHING LOGICAL HAPPENS. There is no cause and effect. In other words, one thing does not lead to the next. Random things just happen and you’re expected to go with it. Oh, our main character has sex with some woman he meets while his son waits in the next room. Oh, there’s a naked woman who keeps appearing on the screen and then in the end, the re-birthed Jim goes to Disney World with her. Oh, there’s a break-out of “cat flu” on the grounds (what the hell is cat flu????). Oh, a robot scientist locks Jim up (???????). Oh, Jim gets into a spat with a large, wigged man in a wheelchair.  This film was built on set-ups that NEVER got a payoff (how can you screw that up?  Setups and payoffs are some of the easiest things to do in screenwriting!).

The only narrative focus used here are these 14 year-old French chicks. That’s the only thing pulling the story forward – Jim’s pursuit of them. But their inclusion is so thin (we don’t know anything about them – they might as well have been carrots and Jim a mule) that we don’t care if he gets them or not. So they only seem to be there so we can see more places in the park and pad the story with more scenes (remember what I said about those 90 pages?).

There was a scene, when Jim’s daughter is “kidnapped” by a witch, where I thought, “Okay, this kind of makes sense.” We’re in Disney World. There are witches in this world. He’s going insane so maybe this is or isn’t happening. I can make some sort of connection there. If there was more of that, maybe the story might have actually been interesting. But instead we have cat flus and huge men with bad wigs on wheelchairs and the Epcot Center ball blowing up because it’s a fun special effects shot, things that don’t seem to have anything to do with Disney World.

I mean, coming up with a more cohesive story that still allowed Moore to play around with Jim’s insanity wouldn’t have been that difficult. Have him lose his family early. They go off one way, him the other, and the narrative engine is him trying to find them again. If you want to get trippy, maybe he starts to question if he ever had a family – if they weren’t a part of his imagination.  Or his wife’s back at the room and he loses his kid and is so terrified of his wife’s reaction, that he decides to look for him himself. Or, if you really want to get wild, start by having Jim wake up in a strange room with a dead girl (the French girl?). No idea how he got there. He goes back to his family, sneaks in before they wake up, and must pretend like nothing’s wrong on their last day at Disney World, all while Disney guards become more and more suspicious of him and seem to be following his family everywhere. Things get really bizarre when he sees the impossible – the French girl, out and about, still alive.

Yeah, I’m not asking for awards for these ideas, but give us SOME sort of narrative thrust so we’re not randomly stumbling through a world with no rhyme or reason. That kind of thing is interesting for about 7 minutes before the audience gets impatient and wants a reason to stick around.

I suppose this kind of thing might work for David Lynch fans who are into trippy unconventional plots, but from what I’m hearing, even Lynch fans are calling this movie random and pointless. And that’s not a good sign because that’s the only audience that’s going to go for this. Again, I commend Moore for coming up with this idea and generating so much buzz. But the screenplay for this was so disappointing, I can’t possibly endorse it. I just can’t. It was so very bad. ☹

[x] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: You are not as good as you think you are. I don’t care if you’re a script reader, a script consultant, or if you’ve sold a script – ALWAYS GET FEEDBACK! Always! Because the world doesn’t see your story the same way you see it in your head (ESPECIALLY stories like this, where you’re playing with reality). You need that outside perspective so you can identify the faults in your script and fix them. “Escape” could’ve become a classic if it was actually good. But it appears Moore never got any feedback on the script.

What I learned 2: Even “trippy” scripts need structure. You can’t use the excuse, “Well, it’s supposed to be weird” to explain away a wandering plot and wall-to-wall strangeness. Create the boundaries of your world first, then you can play within them.

Last week we discussed box office surprises and how those movies’ screenplays factored into their success. The idea is that when something unexpected happens in this industry, we, as writers, should know why it happened, so we can then use that knowledge in our own writing. Well today, we’re going to do the opposite. We’re going to look at some box office duds and see if we can’t figure out why they dudded. Again, the more knowledge we have, the better equipped we are to find success.

As I noted last week, directing, marketing and star power are all going to play a big role in a movie’s success. But everything stems from the screenplay. When you’re talking about the reasons for a box office failure (from a screenwriting perspective), you’re talking about two things. You’re talking about the concept, that 3-5 second pitch you can convey on a poster or billboard, and you’re talking about the story, since most trailers are going to convey the gist of your story within their two-minute running time. All else being equal, if nobody shows up to your movie, you can probably blame one of those two things.

The Lone Ranger
Projected Box Office: 250-300 million
Actual Box Office: 90 million
There are tons of theories on why this movie bombed. Even Johnny Depp has one (the American press conspired to destroy it). Many of these theories are probably right, but I’ll tell you something I noticed that not a lot of people talked about. When you watched The Lone Ranger trailer, you saw absolutely nothing new. Train chases, seen’em. Cowboys, seen’em. Indians, seen’em. Shootouts, seen’em. There wasn’t a single thing in that trailer that I hadn’t seen before. And if you’re writing a summer blockbuster script, and you aren’t giving us something we haven’t seen before, you may as well throw in the white flag, because audiences aren’t going to show up. The summer season is the “Thrill Season” for the movie business, and you gotta knock us out if you expect to compete. I mean look at the movie that came out last weekend, Gravity. That’s the perfect example of something new and different and fresh we HAVEN’T seen before, which is why so many people showed up for it.

R.I.P.D.
Projected Box Office: 130-150 million
Actual Box Office: 33 million
I actually thought this script was pretty good. Not great. But fun. However, the exact issue I spotted during that first read was exactly what doomed it. R.I.P.D. felt too similar to another film franchise – Men In Black. This is one of the trickiest games you play as a writer because you’re told to write something similar enough to other films that studios can envision it, but fresh enough that audiences won’t see it as old hat. R.I.P.D., in its trailer, felt too similar to a huge franchise and the reason that’s a killer is because even if you do a really good job of copying that franchise (or film), you’ll still be seen as the “lower quality” version of it. Now you can sometimes circumvent this issue if there’s been enough time between the film you’re copying and the one you’re releasing, but Men In Black 3 had just come out a year earlier, so people were bound to see this as Copycat Nation. Always have something different about your screenplay. If it’s too similar to something else we’ve seen, we’re on to the next script.

After Earth
Projected Box Office: 140-160 million
Actual Box Office: 60 million
I think the main reason this movie didn’t do well was the casting. There’s something about Will Smith doing a movie with his teenage son that gets people  riled up. A father who can hand you the starring role in a giant effects-driven action movie reeks of the worst form of entitlement, right? In this country, we like to see people earn it. And while I know Jayden Smith did well with Karate Kid, I think America’s still waiting for him to prove himself before he’s ready for major action parts. With that said, this script didn’t open THAT terribly. It made 27 million dollars on its opening weekend. So if it really impressed its audiences, it could’ve made 75, maybe even 90 million dollars from word-of-mouth. So why didn’t it? Well, I noticed something about this film in retrospect that I now believe is killing all of M. Night’s  films. They’re all so MONOTONE. Every character is one-note. They’re either sad, angry, or a combination of the two. The obsession with this downbeat tone results in audiences leaving the theater… down. And if moviegoers are leaving a movie down, do you think they’re running off to their friends to tell them to see the movie? Of course not. This when you had two of the more charismatic actors in the world!

Man On A Ledge
Projected Box Office: 65-75 million
Actual Box Office: 18.6 million
It’s too bad this movie bombed because I heard the original writer is a really nice guy and his script got shredded into something that barely resembled his original idea. Having said that, Man On A Ledge’s failure can be attributed to a mistake I see often in the amateur community – a confusing premise. A good premise is clear and strong and obvious to the audience as soon as they see it. A bad premise takes a lot of extra explaining, and often still leaves unanswered questions. I read Man On A Ledge AND watched the trailer and I’m still not a hundred percent on what’s going on. A guy is pretending that he’s going to jump off a building so that his friends can secretly rob the bank across the street? I mean that sorta makes sense, but with all the ways you can rob a bank, is a fake ledge-jumping decoy really the most logical option? If I don’t understand the concept, I’m not going to see the movie. So that’s one of those things where there’s no wiggle room on. This is why you wanna run your concepts by your no-bullshit crew (people who are honest with you and tell you when your stuff sucks). If they’re confused or not impressed, move on to the next idea.

Runner Runner
Projected Box Office: 60-70 million
Actual Box Office (as of October 9, 2013): 9 million
Runner Runner is what I refer to as a middle-of-the-road script. It’s a decent read, it keeps things interesting enough that you turn the pages, but it doesn’t do an inch more. In other words, it’s generic. And to me, generic is the worst crime you can commit as a writer, because it’s the opposite of everything a writer should be: committed, hard-working, always challenging himself, never satisfied. These qualities ensure you’ll keep writing until you’ve got that fresh new concept, that fresh new scene, or that unique character that nobody’s seen before. A driven writer knows when a section of his script is average or derivative and keeps working on it until it pops. Runner Runner is the opposite of that and audiences don’t need an entire movie to see that. They can pick that up by watching the trailer. So when Runner Runner’s trailer displayed 2 minutes of generic characters, lines, and imagery, of course we’re not going to show up and pay ten bucks for it.

Cloud Atlas
Projected Box Office: 80-100 million
Actual Box Office: 27 million
When agents or producers tell you that your 180 page epic sci-fi script doesn’t have a market, and therefore, there’s no point in sending it out, this is what they mean. There may be 2 or 3 directors who could’ve done a better job than the Wachowski Siblings with Cloud Atlas, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It still would’ve made 25-40 million. That’s because serious takes on esoteric science-fiction fare don’t make money. We’ve seen it with movies like The Fountain. We’ve seen it with movies like Solaris (2002). Even Blade Runner didn’t do that well. If you want to survive in sci-fi, you have to go more mainstream. Robots trying to assassinate people. Guys waking up every 8 minutes in a train after it keeps blowing up. Giant Robots battling monsters. And the thing is, you can still explore some dark themes in those scripts. You’re just not being pretentious about it or over-complicating the narrative. It should be noted, though, that you can make your pretentious esoteric sci-fi flicks if they cost very little (like Primer). There IS an audience out there for these films. It’s just not very big.

There’s an old saying in Hollywood that no one sets out to make a bad movie. And, for the most part, I believe that. It’s in everyone’s best interest to make a good movie because it ensures they’ll keep getting work. BUT, I still think there are a lot of lazy people in Hollywood who aren’t trying as hard as they think they are. Being honest with yourselves when something isn’t working and figuring out a solution (particularly at the script stage) can be the difference between a good and a bad movie, or in some cases, stopping a movie that’s going to lose everyone money.