Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A manager at a small town fast food restaurant must use every resource available to come up with 10 grand in 24 hours, after losing a “sure-thing” bet.
About: This finished near the middle of the pack of last year’s Black List with 11 votes. Writer Jeff Lock, who worked as an assistant for director Allen Coulter (Extant) made the unique choice of sending his script out without getting representation first. It’s a rare luxury people with contacts in the business can afford to do. As such, it creates a buzz on both the buying end and on the representation end, allowing you to get more bang for your buck. Of course, the script has to be good to pull it off. And Beef (described as the next “Fargo”) is definitely that.
Writer: Jeff Lock
Details: 106 pages – January 2014 draft
Rockwell for Jason?
Remember when spec script, Moonfall, with its infamous storm on the moon scene, was being trumpeted as “Fargo on the moon.” And everyone got all excited about the possibilities of that until they read the thing and realized the script couldn’t have been more un-Fargo if it had tried?
Well, luckily, today’s script, also described as “Fargo-esque” actually IS like Fargo. It’s got the small town feel to it. It’s got some fucked up weird characters. It’s got an anti-hero who finds himself falling deeper and deeper into his own concocted demise. It’s got that dark black humor that served Fargo so well.
The only thing it doesn’t have is that “Coens” branded name attached to it. And that’ll be its biggest hurdle in its attempt to become a film that people actually see.
“Beef” follows gambling-addict Jason, the manger of a Muncie, Indiana “Beefy’s” who’s just lost a bet on the Indy 500 of all things, and now owes 10,000 dollars to the local bookie. The problem is Jason doesn’t have 10,000 dollars. But he does have Beefy’s.
In his eternal wisdom, Jason decides to exploit a company policy which forces employees to acquiesce to anyone robbing the store. Jason tells the bookie’s assistant to come visit him after closing hours tomorrow, he’ll hand over all the money in the safe, plus an extra grand for the trouble, and then tell the police some black guy in a ski mask stole it.
It seems like such a simple plan. Until just about everything that can go wrong the next day does. First of all, Beefy’s only has about half of what he owes. So he needs to make another five grand by the end of the day before the “robbery” occurs.
His oldest employee, Florence, starts off the day by having a heart attack and dying. His two stoned minimum-wage employees both throw up and pass out when they see this. For this reason, all the roast beef burns in the oven, leaving Jason with five grand to make and not a single roast to work with.
So he sends the stoned employees over to the other Beefy’s across town to get more roasts – a tricky endeavor since the manager at the store hates Jason and would rather have sex with a cow than give away his precious roast beef. In the meantime, the bookie’s assistant starts spreading the word that you can just walk into Beefy’s and they’re forced to hand over whatever money they have, so now other people want to rob the store too.
And let’s not forget about the sociopathic freaky-as-all-hell Deer-Heads. These are the guys who work for the man who owns Jason’s bookie. They learn that the bookie is planning on skipping town and not paying up, forcing them to get involved with poor Jason, who doesn’t have anything to do with that end of the problem.
The truth is, all Jason wants to do is get past this and get the hell out of Muncie. Move to Florida, get a job he loves instead of one he loathes, and live a happy life. But as this day goes on, it becomes more and more unclear if he’ll make it out alive.
Beef was a juicy script. I mean, it’s a little bit frustrating because you know it’s probably going to be a movie that stars Sam Rockwell that will be shot in 23 days and therefore have that rushed look that only a Sundance mother can love.
But as a screenplay, this is a great piece of writing to study and I’ll tell you why. It uses one of the most powerful tools in screenwriting. The tool of “How can I make things as difficult as possible for my hero?”
Because that’s all this script is. Jason gets into a classic movie dilemma. He owes a lot of money within a timeframe that he can’t meet. His goal is to get that money. The stakes are if he doesn’t, they kill him. And the urgency is 24 hours.
Once you have a clear GSU situation set up, you can start to utilize the WTWTTCH (what’s the worst thing that can happen) tool. For example, what’s the worst thing that could happen when Jason walks into the store the next morning? Well, one of his employees is dead!
What’s the next worst thing? Well, all the beef he needs to sell that day has been burned. What’s the next worst thing? The only place he can get new beef won’t give it to him.
Almost every single segment of this screenplay is Jason needing something and something getting in the way of that need.
For example, Jason needs to make a ton of money today and the regular everyday foot traffic isn’t going to cut it. So he makes a call out to local sports teams, stores, universities – and gets them to order Beefy’s catering that day. This provides an opportunity to throw more obstacles into the mix. When these people show up to collect their food, he doesn’t even have the beef! So he has to figure out a way to get them the food.
In the business world, you’re supposed to come from a place of YES. When the customer wants something, you always say “yes.” In the screenwriting world – particularly in regards to your main character – you want to come from a place of NO. You always want to deny them what they want, as that will force them to find other ways to get what they want, and those ways tend to be more entertaining.
There’s one other tip I wanted to highlight with this screenplay. When you place your hero in a dangerous situation – one where they owe money for example – you must show the reader what will happen if the goal isn’t met. Because if we don’t get the sense that our main character is in any real danger, we’ll never feel that afraid for him throughout the movie.
I like to call this the villain’s “proof of concept” scene. It’s the scene where we show just how fucking evil and terrifying our villain is. So in Beef, when Jason initially comes to his bookie to tell him he doesn’t have the money, Lock writes this scene where the bookie calls his little niece down, gives her a giant shotgun she can barely hold, places an apple on Jason’s head, and tells her to shoot it off.
There’s this lingering sense of dread as the little girl’s muscles strain just to keep the gun propped up and pointed at the apple. At the last second, the bookie doesn’t go through with it, but the message is clear. This guy doesn’t fuck around. He will kill you in some sick sociopathic way if you don’t deliver. And now the rest of the journey feels purposeful, since we’ve LITERALLY SEEN what will happen if Jason fails.
Movies like Beef are at a crossroads these days. Unless you have that big a) director or b) actor that allows you to make an Oscar run, more and more of these films are going straight to Itunes, which means a lot of people are missing them. Beef is right on that cusp of being either the “forgettable Itunes” movie or the “Oscar contender.” It’ll all depend on who they get. I wish them luck because this was a good script.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Take your script to Obstacle City – Just look for ways to place as many obstacles in the way of your hero as possible. Obstacles are where conflict comes from. And conflict leads to drama. This is what the Coens do really well, and it’s a big part of why they’re known as two of the best screenwriters in the business.
