The Brigands of Rattleborge meets Water for Elephants meets Deliverance?
Genre: Drama/Dark/Thriller
Premise: After a 1976 traveling carnival sets up in a small town in Louisiana, the locals become enraged with the actions of the carnival workers, and set about taking the carnival down.
About: S. Craig Zahler needs no introduction on this site. He is the writer of The Brigands of Rattleborge, one of my top 5 scripts (and soon to become a TV show). Fury of the Strongman is a script that he’s been pushing for quite a while and, according to the trusty source, “the internet,” he’s still actively trying to get it made. I hope he succeeds! This is probably the most interesting of all his projects.
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Details: 155 pages
Readability: Slow
No reason to beat around the bush. If you like Zahler, you’re going to love this script. If you hate Zahler, you’re going to detest this script. Since I like Zahler, you probably know where I stand. :)
The year is 1976. A carnival led by a midget named Nickel is enjoying a long stay in a Wisconsin town. Our cast of characters includes Woodburn, the strongman. Laughy, the clown. Wendy, the pretty girl. Young Mountain and Paloma, the husband and wife knife throwing act. Harry the Human Crab (who looks exactly like you’d imagine him to). As well as a host of other oddballs who specialize in unique skills.
Our main focus, though, is Woodburn, who’s furious that his girlfriend, Wendy, wants to do a topless act. Woodburn has seen one too many women from his past go down that route, and when it happens, they keep going, right into prostitution. Despite Wendy’s insistence that she’d never do that, he breaks up with her.
Later that night, a horny teenage couple gets drunk at the carnival then crashes their car into a tree, killing them both. The dead girl happened to be the daughter of the governor, so they get kicked out of Wisconsin. The only place Nickel knows he can go is Louisiana, so they get the caravan together and drive south.
As it so happens, they set up in the very same town Woodburn grew up in, a town that he ran away from the second he was old enough. When he heads into town to get a drink, he’s spotted, and we learn that before he left town, he gave his father a present – he broke his spine, turning him into a paraplegic. People in town like his dad. Which means they don’t like Woodburn.
Meanwhile, Laughy (in full clown makeup) heads into town to get some whisky but is stonewalled by the angry liquor store owner, Right Hook Ronnie. Ronnie thinks that Laughy is black under that makeup and he doesn’t sell liquor to black people. Laughy refuses to leave until he gets his whisky and things get heated, resulting in Laughy pulling a gun on Ronnie. This ensures that Laughy wins this round. But Ronnie assures him that this fight isn’t over.
Ronnie then gets all the town degenerates together and heads to that night’s show. At first, all they do is heckle. But then they start spreading out, beating up carnival workers in the shadows. And when they find Wendy’s tent, let’s just say things go as bad as they can possibly go. It doesn’t take long for Woodburn to figure out who was responsible for Wendy’s death, and when he does, every single man involved will have to answer to the fury… of the strongman.
Fury of the Strongman is vintage S. Craig Zahler.
A man is wronged. That man wants revenge. And nothing is going to stand in his way.
I’ve tried, over the years, to figure out Zahler’s formula – why his scripts hit harder than others, and there are a couple of things that stand out.
One, he takes his time in the first act to really set up his characters. A lot of writers rush through this part. They’re scared of people like me saying they’re taking too long. Zahler doesn’t care. He makes sure to give every character a proper description (“Lying there upon a bench that is comprised of raw wood and cinder blocks and holding a barbell with two rigid fists is CHAD WOODBURN, a shirtless thirty-nine year-old in jeans who has receding copper-brown hair and the massive muscular physique of a champion weight-lifter. A GRUNT and a thick EXHALATION issue from his mouth as he pushes three hundred and fifty pounds off of his chest and into the air.”)
He then follows that description with an introductory scene that solidifies who the character is. Here, we meet Woodburn breaking up with his girlfriend because he doesn’t agree with her choice to do a topless act. We now have a very good feel for who this character is. The reason that’s important is because the better we know a character, the more we care. I can’t stress this enough. The newer screenwriters always screw this up. They always write vague characters. Maybe Zahler goes too far and gets too specific. But it’s better to know too much about a character than too little.
What’s amazing about Zahler is that he doesn’t just do this for one character. He does it for ten characters. And he doesn’t compromise. Everyone gets a full description. Everyone gets a full scene that solidifies who they are.
Another thing Zahler does is he’ll include two inciting incidents. He has the early inciting incident that jump starts the movie. And then he has the ‘official’ inciting incident that turns the script from a slow-burn into a full-on thriller. The early inciting incident in “Fury” is the teenaged couple crashing the car and dying. That INCITES the local authorities to kick the carnival out of town, which forces them to set up in another state.
The second (official) inciting incident is when Laughy gets in a fight with a local liquor store owner. After Laughy pulls a gun on him, the owner, Right Hook Ronnie, vows revenge. He rounds up all the scum and heads to the carnival that night to cause trouble. This doesn’t happen until page 70 (!!!), by the way, which is halfway through the script.
Once Zahler gets his two inciting incidents out of the way, the revenge storyline kicks in. From there, it’s all about intense blood and violence. This section of the script isn’t just meant to serve the story, it’s meant to leave an impression on the reader, which is why I think a lot of people can’t handle Zahler. He goes “all in” on his violent scenes.
The weird thing about this script is that it’s very similar to The Brigands of Rattleborge. So similar that if I would’ve read this instead of Rattleborge in 2009, it probably would’ve been the script that I gave an [x] impressive to and placed in my Top 10. But these ultra-violent scripts play differently in 2021 compared to 2009. Something about what’s happened in the world since that time – all the movements, all the craziness – makes what happens in this script feel a little *too* real.
So I found myself wincing more during Fury than I would’ve in the past. Also, I think there’s something to be said about creativity in violence that makes it a little more palatable. That’s what I remember from The Brigands of Rattleborge. There’s that famous scene where our anti-hero cuts a hole in a guy’s body then sends a hamster inside of it to wreak havoc. It was kind of fun in a gross way. Whereas here, we just get brute violence. At least that’s how it felt. Maybe I’m becoming a wimp as I get older.
Despite this, it’s impossible not to be drawn into this story. In a world where we get the same movies packaged in slightly different containers over and over again, “Fury” feels like an original. I’m surprised this hasn’t been more of a priority in Zahler’s extensive screenplay slate. It feels like nothing else out there right now. And it certainly leaves an impression.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Place characters in situations where they’re not welcome. I know this seems obvious. But it’s one of the easiest ways to generate conflict. When Laughy walks into the liquor store, he’s not welcome there. When Woodburn shows up at the local bar, he’s not welcome there. ‘Not welcome’ means CONFLICT and conflict is the key to entertaining audiences. Any time you’re searching for a scene to jumpstart your story, send your characters into a situation where they’re not welcome.
