It’s an early 4th of July review with a special ‘What I Learned’ section that discusses a new screenwriting term you’ll want to wrap a blanket around and take to your next sleepover. Enjoy!
Genre: Historical/True Story/Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) The truly astonishing tale of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi – the French sculptor wholly responsible for designing, building, and delivering the Statue of Liberty across the Atlantic to where it stands today.
About: This script finished on the lower half of last year’s Black List. It’s written by Jayson Rothwell, who penned 2012’s remake of “Silent Night.” Rothwell’s script must’ve caught France’s attention, as he is now adapting a script for French Based Studiocanal, Ken Follet’s “Code to Zero.”
Writer: Jayson Rothwell
Details: 110 pages
It’s funny.
I tell writers on this site all the time that if you want to break in these days, write a true story. And yet, true stories are the scripts I’m the least excited to read. I only give that advice because that’s what’s selling. And I want you guys to sell!
What’s ironic is that I’ll ultimately have to bare the brunt of this advice when I review the scripts I begrudgingly implored writers to write, lessening the chance that I’ll get a slick new sci-fi spec like “Ex Machina” or an out-of-the-box horror thriller like, “Get Out.” Unfortunately, horror and sci-fi spec sales are harder to find these days than creative freedom on a Star Wars set.
But Liberty has me more curious than most. I’m not going to go all nationalist ‘Merica on you. The only flag waving I do is when I’m flagging down a cab to take me to In and Out. But I’ve always seen the Statue of Liberty as a curious oddity. Why is the thing most associated with our country not even created by our country? Isn’t that weird?
What’s awesome is that Jayson Rothwell feels the same way, and has taken what would’ve been an otherwise stodgy factually-based snore-fest and turned it into a really funny take on the fake news version of Lady Liberty.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, an artist in the year 1871, isn’t the brightest LED fidget spinner on amazon.com. But the man’s got moxie. When Germany attacks the village Frederic is living in, he puts together a small army to fight back. An army of one. Himself.
He charges towards the heavily armored German battalion and is immediately killed via canon fire. Yet somehow, miraculously, Frederic gets back up and keeps charging. This moment is a precursor to a common thread with Frederic, which is that every time you count him out, he gets back up and keeps going.
Now only if he could do it more gracefully. Frederic is a putz. He drinks, he chases women, he bums a couch off his much more successful brother. The only thing Frederic has going for him is his slightly better-than-average artistic skills. The man can build you a hell of a somewhat interesting statue.
But Frederic is tired of building likenesses of local government figures. He’s thinking bigger. So when the opportunity arises for local artists to submit a present to the Americans they hope will solidify relations with their country, Frederic comes up with the most daring idea of all – a giant female statue that represents hope. We’re talking 30 feet tall!
Everyone thinks this is a dumb idea, but Frederic doesn’t care, and begins soliciting every rich Frenchman and American he can find. JP Morgan, Victor Hugo, William Astor. If you had cash, Frederic was at your door. Now America being the destination, the feedback was always the same. “What if we made it… bigger?”
Somehow Frederic scrapes together enough money to start production, and manages to actually build the thing. But now begins the impossible task of getting the statue to America, a feat far from guaranteed. And even if he manages to pull that off, Frederic will face his biggest obstacle yet – a country unprepared to receive the statue since they never believed he would pull it off in the first place.
I was so relieved when I opened up Liberty and read the Narrator’s first passage: “The year is 1870. Here we are in the sleepy French border village of Colmar, famous for absolutely nothing. Not even a cheese. France has declared War on Germany over some bullshit or other. Nobody really remembers.”
I was like, “YESSSSSS!!!!” Finally, someone who doesn’t take history so seriously, who wants to have fun with an idea instead of show us how good their Wikipedia reading skills are.
And I loved the opening scene, with Frederic charging towards the German army all by himself. Getting killed. Flashing back to his past, the goofball narrator making fun of him along the way, then coming back to the future to find out Frederic is still alive. And then the only reason the Germans don’t kill him is because he offers them his mother’s irresistible madelines.
But this is where the script gets itself in trouble. It sets up the expectation of a goofy take on history, yet it struggles to meet that expectation, vacillating between goofball humor (mooning the irritable Victor Hugo when he wouldn’t donate a dime) and an emotional narrative, with Frederic pushing through ten years of adversity to achieve his dream. In fact, by the end of the script, it wasn’t really a comedy at all.
I’ve seen this before. When you come into these scripts guns blazing, you have to have the conviction to follow through. If you move back towards that safe middle, you’ll never achieve that killer crazy script you set out to write. I may not have liked Baby Driver. But that’s an example of a writer who stayed true to his convictions.
Now does that mean Liberty was bad? No. It’s actually quite good. You quickly fall in love with Frederic, who’s the perfect mascot for artists everywhere. I loved this theme that all artists are idiot dreamers until they aren’t – until they achieve that one success.
And that, most of the time, what separates the great artists from the failures is simply the fact that they hang in there. Despite all the ridicule. Despite the family disappointment. Despite living hand to mouth. If you stick in there long enough so that your knowledge catches up to your talent? Success is waiting. How could you not cheer for a character like that? And isn’t that the secret ingredient to any good screenplay? Make us love your protagonist and we’ll forgive your warts.
With that said, I would’ve loved more variety to the plot. Liberty gets stuck on this raising money thing and it milks it for every franc it’s worth. It feels like 50-60 pages of this script are dedicated to raising money. Raising money in France. Raising money in America. Go back to raise money in France. Raise some more money in America. Frederic is always trying to get more money to fund the latest phase of his statue.
Now, on the surface, this meets good plotting criteria. If your hero is always pursuing money, he’s always pursuing a goal, which means he’s active, which means the story is moving forward. That’s exactly what I tell you guys to do. But, you see, you have to add variety to your plotting or the reader gets bored, regardless of whether you have a solid goal in place.
For example, maybe the statue can only be made with a certain kind of copper. So Frederic has to go off and find that copper. That’s not the best idea, but you get what I’m saying. At least you’re MIXING IT UP. If you’re hitting up character number 30 for money, you might be exploiting that plot point a little too hard.
Despite its tonal imbalance and lack of variety, I was so thankful that a script like this wasn’t afraid to subvert expectations. I’m soooooo sick of these true stories that people are only writing cause they’re selling. And while I’d still recommend you do this if you want to sell a script, I’ll also say that readers LOVE when you surprise them, when you do something unexpected. And that’s exactly what Liberty did.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Mini-subplots! Mini-subplots are just like they sound. They’re not full on subplots that take up 12-20 pages of a screenplay (trying to find money for a mortgage payment, for example). They’re cute mini versions of subplots that take up 2-5 pages tops. An example of a mini-subplot is Frederic’s pursuit to get a donation out of Victor Hugo (writer of The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Every 15 pages or so, Victor will tell Frederic to stop bothering him, or Frederic will attempt to change Victor’s mind, or Victor and his assistant will moon Hugo from their apartment across the street. In the end, when the statue is temporarily erected on the Seine River, Victor admits to Frederic that it is a thing of beauty, and has finally reminded him of what happiness feels like. All these little Victor snippets last a quarter of a page, a page at most, adding up to a total of 4 or 5 pages. These mini-subplots don’t define your story, but they add texture to it, and sometimes, as was the case here, lead to some of the script’s most memorable moments.
