Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: An army colonel must hunt down a man who has stolen the “football” from the president, the famous briefcase that travels with the President at all times and allows him to access and launch all of America’s nuclear weapons.
About: Back to the 90s, baby, again! This 1994 script sale got John Pogue the assignment to write The Fugitive 2 (a movie that would never get made). Pogue has a classic Hollywood screenwriting story. He showed up in town, assumed he would be writing blockbuster movies within months, instead got nothing but no’s for 7 years. And then he sold two scripts at once to Neal Moritz (Fast and Furious franchise). A couple more after that. He would then end up getting a deal at Fox to produce and write for them. All of this happened quickly. Unfortunately, none of John’s bigger projects got made. But he did write the moderately successful “The Skulls” film which would spurn two sequels.
Writer: John Pogue
Details: 120 pages – 1994 draft
You can see why this script got the writer The Fugitive 2 gig. The two are very similar in the way they’re structured, the way the action is covered, the way they’re paced. But there’s one extremely important difference between the two and I’d guess that it’s the main reason this script never got made. But I’m not going to tell you what that is yet. You’ll have to read to the end to find out.
I always like reading these stories of scripts sold a million years ago because it’s a bit like seeing into the future when you track how the writer’s career went. You can dissect how they came onto the scene and then the subsequent choices they made in their early career, which would then affect the rest of their career. The reality is that those first couple of years when you break in are crucial because you’re so hot when you’re the flavor of the month and everybody loves you because you’re full of potential, possibilities, and probably most important, heat. If you can use that momentum to string a few successful projects together, you can lay the tracks for a 30 year writing career easy.
I’ll never begrudge a writer who’s found any level of success in the industry. Because while we’d all love to be Spielberg, the reality is we can’t be. But if you can grab onto even a small piece of the pie, you can still live the dream, being paid to write while living comfortably in one of the prime pieces of real estate in the world. I’m guessing that Skulls franchise paid better than selling insurance in Idaho.
Colonel Mitch Benedict is a no-nonsense guy. He cares only about the safety of the president. One of his jobs is to carry around the president’s nuclear suitcase, or what some people call, “the football,” so that if the president ever decides to launch a nuclear attack, he can do so from the comfort of lunch at Five Guys (or whatever fast food places were around in 1994).
So one day, Mitch is having a drink at a bar, and some businessman comes up to him and says he recognizes Mitch on TV as the guy who carries the nuclear suitcase. Mitch says he can’t talk about it, goes to the bathroom, and when he comes back, the businessman is gone. For some reason, this freaks Mitch out, so he decides to chase the guy. After a car and footrace, he catches him in an alley, steals the man’s briefcase, but the man gets away.
Mitch and his White House co-workers, which now include Captain Caroline Rice, a new recruit who Mitch doesn’t approve of because she doesn’t have any “confirmed kills,” look through the briefcase and find a secret camera inside that was taping their conversation. They also find some weird stuff in there about nuclear weapons and Mitch becomes concerned that this gentleman is up to no good.
When the president attends a Redskins football game, Mitch thinks the man will be here, so he and Rice perform surveillance during the game. The man does show up, blows up a trashcan, causing chaos, which allows him to run up to the NEW presidential aid who carries the “football,” cut off his hand, and steal the most important briefcase in the world.
The thing is, the football is useless. It requires too many checks and balances for some random thief to use it. It’s gotta be cleared by a satellite, the codes reset every day, and it needs voice authentication from the president and someone else. So nobody’s that worried.
Nobody, that is, except for Mitch! He’s convinced that this terrorist will figure out how to use the codes. And he turns out to be right. The man even calls Mitch and tells him where the final play of the game will happen – at the Washington Christmas Eve Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Aggression Pact! Will Mitch and Caroline be able to stop him!!???
If you ran this script through a computer program that denoted what components were being used to tell the story, that computer would spit out something like this: plot plot plot plot plot plot plot character plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot character plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot plot.
This script was so technical and so plot-dominant that it was impossible to become emotionally invested on any level.
I felt absolutely nothing for anyone here. This is a prime example of how the absence of sympathy and relate-ability and just plain knowing someone, can make the most cutthroat plot ice cold boring. Pogue is trying to write another Fugitive here. But the reason The Fugitive works so well is precisely because the main character, Richard Kimble, endures the single most sympathetic situation ever. His wife is murdered (sympathy) and he’s then erroneously charged with her murder (exponential sympathy). I mean who’s not going to root for that guy?
Mitch is ice cold. No personality. Never says anything interesting. I know almost nothing about him. And Caroline Rice’s character backstory isn’t just non-existent. It’s weird. Her whole storyline is built around that she doesn’t have a confirmed kill. How is a storyline like that going to make her relatable? Or sympathetic? Why does that make me care? Every character is treated that way here. They are not real people. They are chess pieces to be moved where the plot needs to take them. They’re interchangeable. They’re plastic.
This can be very frustrating for writers who write a good script and yet time and time again they’re told that something is missing but it’s not clear what it is. A lot of times it’s that the writer hasn’t written a character that the reader actually cares about, feels close to, or wants to succeed. I don’t care if Mitch succeeds here. And if that’s not in place, nothing is.
So why did they buy it? Well, the reality of this business is that you weigh the value of the concept against how difficult it will be to clean up the script’s problems. If they really liked this idea, they may have said, “I know we have a character issue here. But I love this idea so much I’m willing to hire a good character writer to clean that issue up.”
I hate pointing that reality of the business out cause writers see that and think, “Oh, my script doesn’t have to be awesome. It can be weak in some areas.” That’s true. But it still needs to be as perfect as you’re capable of making it. Cause chances are your perfect isn’t as perfect as you think, but it might be JUST good enough to get people interested.
This was really well-researched, especially for pre-google days, but I think Pogue got lost in all that research and only cared about making this pass some imagined White House authenticity test. When push came to shove, we just didn’t care about anyone here.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If there’s a lesson to be learned from this script, it’s that, yes, you always want your plot moving forward. But not at the expense of us being able to connect with the characters. At the very least, give us one scene – ONE SCENE – in the first act that you can point to and say, “That’s going to make people like my hero.” If you don’t have that scene, forget it.
