A rare submission script that lands an IMPRESSIVE rating!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A serial killer has an entire city living in fear – until he is kidnapped by three petty crooks looking to make their big score. The ransom demand they make to City Hall is chillingly simple: “Give us a million dollars or we’ll let him go again”…
About: Today’s script finished in SECOND PLACE in last month’s Logline Showdown competition. I read it last week, was blown away, and immediately started hyping up this review. Now, you’re not going to get your perfect rags-to-riches story here. Mike Hurst, the writer, does have several credits. But he is currently rep-less so he’s been forced to hustle like everyone else here. Today’s script has made it sacrosanct that after every Logline Showdown, I review the first AND SECOND ranked scripts. Even more of a reason to ENTER LOGLINE SHOWDOWN THIS WEEK!
Writer: Mike Hurst
Details: 93 pages
Fresh off White Lotus, James for Danny?
March Logline Showdown is THIS FRIDAY!!! That means all logline entries need to be in by THIS THURSDAY, March 23rd, at 10:00pm Pacific Time. Here are the submission details.
Send me: Title, Genre, Logline
E-mail: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Rules: Script must be written
Deadline: Thursday, March 23rd, at 10pm Pacific Time
Cost: Free
For those of you complaining that we shouldn’t have competitions based solely on loglines, today is your validation day. You have been proven right. Fear City finished second to another script and, yet, it was the best script in the bunch. By a wide margin!
But you could also make the argument that the contest worked. Because the logline got a ton of votes. It just ran up against another strong logline.
The more egregious error was made on my part. After I read the script and realized how awesome it was, I did a quick search into my e-mail and found that I’d read it already! Or, at least, tried to read it. It was a submission in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest. And it didn’t even make the second round!
How did that happen?
There’s actually a good lesson to learn here. I remember there was a period during that contest where I was reading like 10 entries a day (the first act of each script). And anything that was mildly annoying became a PASS. Well, this script has bolded underlined slugs. It’s ugly. It’s awkward. It’s invasive. And that may have been enough for me to move on.
This is why I encourage writers not to do anything too out-of-the-box with their presentation. You don’t want to give overworked undernice industry people any reason to say no. Only reasons to say yes! Still, I’m disappointed in myself for missing this one because it’s always been one of my biggest fears – that I have these amazing scripts on my hard drive that slide by me for some reason or another.
Okay, let’s jump into the script!
The city is under siege. There’s a shooter on the loose. Someone is waiting until nighttime and then, once the streetlights go on, blam! Some poor guy or gal gets shot in the head. There are 14 people who have fallen victim to The Midtown Maniac and the cops don’t have a clue where to start looking for him. It’s gotten so bad that as soon as it gets dark, the entire city hurries inside their homes.
Joe, 20 years old, sickly, lives in a crappy apartment with his older brother, Danny, and Danny’s unstable criminal pal who just got out of prison, Vin. Joe thinks he knows who the Midtown Maniac is. Every time there’s been a shooting, Joe sees a mysterious loner dude park his beater car down in the lot and mope his way to his apartment.
Meanwhile, Danny sleeps with a girl just to steal her sister’s medication, which is the same medication Joe needs but can’t afford. Vin, a volcano on the verge of eruption, is just looking for a reason to snuff out Joe, who he hates. You get the feeling if you look at this guy the wrong way, he’ll curb stomp you until your face is compost.
The lack of any financial prospects are taking a toll on the trio, who are getting on each other’s nerves. When Joe tells the others about his Midtown Maniac theory, they think he’s nuts. But the more they look into it, the more they realize he may be onto something.
That’s when Danny gets his big idea. The city is paying 1 million dollars a night for cop overtime to keep the city safe from this animal. Danny figures if they kidnap the Midtown Maniac and demand a million bucks (or they’ll let him go), it’s a no-brainer. The city won’t be able to pay fast enough.
They wait until the Midtown Maniac is coming home one night, put a gun to his head, and kidnap him. They then escort him, in the middle of the night, to an old crappy farmhouse Vin owns outside the city. Once there, Danny drives to a public phone, calls the police, and makes his demand: “We’ve got the Midtown Maniac. Give us a million dollars or we’ll let him go…”
Back at the farmhouse, John Sadowitz, aka the assumed Midtown Maniac, says he has no idea what these guys are talking about. He is not and cannot be the shooter. He keys in on Joe, who he realizes is the weakest of the three, and starts injecting doubt into his theory. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, the police find evidence that tracks the shooter back to the trio’s building. The only ex-con in that building is Vin. So they think he’s the Midtown Maniac!
As the team tracks the saga over the news, they soon realize they’re out of their league. Panicking, Danny makes a hurried deal with the cops to have them drop money off in a pre-chosen area of the forest. They head to the spot to pick up the bags and, of course, they’re surrounded. But somehow, some way, Danny finds a way out. The question is, for how long?
There was so much to like about this script.
First and foremost, what awesome character work! I learned a valuable lesson right off the bat: Specificity helps SO MUCH in making characters feel realistic. When we meet Danny, he has sex with some woman he clearly doesn’t like. The next morning, before she wakes up, he steals pills from her bathroom. We’re thinking he’s a drug addict or something.
But we learn he stole the pills cause his sick brother needs them. They’re too expensive otherwise. It’s a highly detailed way to set up a) that Joe is sick, and b) that Danny will do anything to take care of him.
In the 99% of scripts I read, writers will set up that Joe is sick by describing him as pale and saying he coughs a lot. They’ll set up that Danny is a good brother by having him literally say, “You know I’d do anything for you, right? You’re family. Family sticks together.”
The difference between the way these situations are set up (Mike’s way and the generic way) create a totally different effect. The effect Mike creates is that this situation is so specific, it’s hard not to see these as real people. That’s the gold star achievement and it’s what you’re trying to do as a writer – make readers believe that the characters in your story are real people. Extremely specific dramatic events achieve this.
Vin is a little more straight-forward. He’s just angry. But Hurst still gives him this plotline of fiery defiance regarding going back to prison. Something devastating happened when he was in prison. And he’s determined not to revisit it. That defines every single decision he makes. And it works.
John Sadowitz then throws a wrench into everything because Sadowitz insists he’s not the shooter. And the truth is, these guys don’t know for sure that he is the shooter. What if he isn’t? Then they’re all going to jail for kidnapping. And we know how Vin feels about that.
There’s one scene that always comes up in a great script. It’s the scene where you realize, “I’m reading something special here.” We get that scene midway through the script when Danny, determined to prove that Sadowitz is the shooter, goes to Sadowitz’s apartment to look for his gun. If he can find his rifle, he’ll know they have Sadowitz.
As he desperately tosses the apartment that evening, he sees something shoot past the window. He looks up. Then he sees it again. A SWAT TEAM MEMBER quietly runs by. Danny freezes. He’s toast. They’ve come for Sadowitz and now here he IN SADOWITZ’S APARTMENT! With a SWAT TEAM surrounding him. What is he going to do?? He quietly moves to the window and that’s when he realizes, they’re not breaking into Sadowtiz’s place! They’re surrounding Danny’s apartment! Which is just across the way in the same building. They were going after Vin.
This scene is followed by a great dramatically ironic moment where the cops cluelessly come to everyone’s door, including Danny, and ask questions about if he knows the people in that (Danny’s) apartment. Danny must assume the identity of Sadowitz to escape the cop’s curiosity. All of this as Danny eventually finds the rifle and walks out with it in a bag, through 50 cops standing around! It’s a great scene.
But, truthfully, the whole script is fraught with this level of tension. I can’t remember the last time I read a script where every single word was needed and not a single extra word was included. Which is the thing they TELL you to do when you write a screenplay but it’s almost impossible to pull off. Unless you’re Mike Hurst I guess!
There were two things that I had issues with in the script. First was the plan itself. It wasn’t well thought-out enough. Making a demand with no further instructions and no way for the police to contact you seemed about as effective as trying to operate an elevator via mind control. At the very least, tell them when you’re going to call them next. There needed to be a lot more communication with them and the cops.
The second issue I had was that we knew, almost immediately, that our trio was screwed. They were so overmatched, we never once thought they had a shot at that million bucks. For a movie like this to cook, we need to think our protagonists have a shot. Cause you want the audience to hope that, somehow, some way, they’re going to pull this off.
And yet EVEN WITH these problems, I still think this is an IMPRESSIVE script. It’s shockingly believable. The characters were great. But where the script really stood out was in the plotting. This was probably the best plotted screenplay I’ve read all year. It moves with so much purpose and with such great rhythm. And it has all these surprises. Characters you’d never thing would die, die. This on top of a killer concept! That’s a rare package.
If Mike fixed up those two issues I mentioned above, I’d put it in my Top 25.
Script link: Fear City
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Display how characters care for each other by SHOWING instead of TELLING. Having Danny steal medicine for Joe conveys how he cares for his brother A MILLION TIMES better than if Danny tells Joe how much he cares about him. Yet the large majority of writers will do the latter.
