Genre: Spy/Action
Premise: Years after a psychotic spy is kicked out of his agency, he’s pulled back in to complete a top secret mission.
About: This script comes from Wanted writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. You might be wondering where these two disappeared to after Wanted. After a couple of slow years, they developed Chicago Fire, which led to Chicago P.D., which led to Chicago Med, which is now leading to Chicago Justice. The funny thing is, when all was said and done, I’d be surprised if Brandt and Haas cleared 750k for their work on Wanted. But when you have a network TV show? CHA-CHING! When you have two? BA-BING! When you have three??? RA-RINNNNGGG! And if you have four, forget about it. You can afford a 2 bedroom apartment in San Francisco. TV is where writers make money, guys. It’s the sad truth us feature lovers hate to admit. Matt Helm is born out of a series of spy novels of the same name. In the 1960s and 70s, four films were made based on the books, but bore zero resemblance to them, since the filmmakers didn’t think they could compete with Bond. So a more tongue-in-cheek style was created, with Dean Martin starring. In 2002, Dreamworks purchased the rights to Matt Helm, and that’s the iteration that today’s script is based on. When Dreamworks left Paramount, Paramount kept the rights to Helm, at which point Spielberg himself flirted with the series. But he ultimately passed and the franchise is still stuck in development hell.
Writers: Michael Brandt & Derek Haas (based on the Matt Helm novel, “Death of a Citizen” by Donald Hamilton)
Details: 108 pages (10/07/06 draft)
One of the bankable arenas for a spec writer is the Agent and/or Spy spec. Hollywood is always looking for the next Jason Bourne. In fact, a “Female Bourne” spec just sold last week, called Red Widow.
If you’re interested in this, there are a couple of ways to go about it. First, there are a million of these book series to option. Don’t worry if they’re 10 years old, 20, 50. All Hollywood cares about is if they were once published somewhere and more than a hundred people have heard about them. Some of the older stuff shouldn’t be tough to get an option on. And lots of writers who’ve secured options on book material have told me they didn’t think it would be as easy as it was. It never hurts to ask, guys!
If you want to go spec script, then you have to find a new twist to the spy thing. Because Hollywood is more risk averse when it comes to specs. It takes that fresh angle to get their wallets horny. I’m a little sad that all Red Widow had to do was change the part from male to female, but hey, it’s the trend right now, and good job to the writer for capitalizing on it.
On to today’s script…
Matt Helm loves his job. Sure, he’s a little bit nuts and takes anti-psychotic meds, but he’s so good at what he does, the agency looks past it. That is until Helm fingers and kills the wrong mark, resulting in his prickly boss “reassigning” him to the suburbs. Subtext? “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
It takes another three years for a now stir-crazy Helm to get the call again. A trio of scientists have created a scary ass explosive called a “spider-bomb.” I could go into details, but let’s just say, like most bombs, it’s something you don’t want to be around when it blows up.
The agency believes that our scientists are going to sell Charlotte’s Web on the black market within the next few days, and need Helm to do his thing before that happens. Helm is paired with his former co-worker and former sex-partner, Tina, who will be in charge of the mission.
For some reason, Helm takes five random items into each mission, each of which are seemingly mundane, but in Helm’s hands, tools that can be unleashed to do the unthinkable. Helm is so damn good, that he easily takes care of 2 of the first 3 bad guys.
But while looking for the third spiderman, poor Helm has another one of his psychotic episodes, and becomes convinced that an ordinary woman is his mark. Terrified, Tina tries to stop him from killing her, but Helm is positive she’s a baddie. This results in the most intense scene in the script, with Helm, Tina, and us, wondering if this chick is, indeed, out to get him.
The fallout from this moment changes the entire complexion of the movie, and Helm will find that both his life, and his sanity, are officially on the line.
Let me ask you a question. And feel free to answer in the comments section. If someone were to pay you to come up with a spy franchise, what would you bring to the table to make it different?
Matt Helm goes with a psychotic agent. I like that angle, which I’ll talk about more in a second. But think about how many options you have. You can make the agent really young, desperate to prove himself. You can make him older, out of touch with the way the game works these days. You can make him a family man. You can get weird and have your agency based on a secret society that’s been around for centuries (Kingsman, Wanted). But the point is, you have to do something unique.
Like I said, Matt Helm went with psycho. Which was a sweet angle. Imagine Martin Riggs (Lethal Weapon) as a secret agent. That’s a movie right there.
But Matt Helm made the mistake that so many writers have made before it. They TOLD us Helm was crazy a bunch of times, but they didn’t SHOW us Helm was crazy a bunch of times. And telling never works. You can have a character tell us “Gary is funny” 75 times in a row. But if Gary never makes us laugh, Gary’s not funny.
It sucks because Helm’s best scene is that late scene with the woman where he isn’t sure if she’s bad or good since he’s going nuts. But that’s on page 70. Up until that point, we’re mostly told Helm is psychotic, with our primary visual reminder being Helm taking his medication.
You want to watch someone SHOW and not TELL us they’re crazy? Go watch The Joker in Suicide Squad. A good way to gauge if you’re doing the show and don’t tell thing is to ask, if none of your characters ever stated that your hero was crazy (or whatever it is you’re trying to get across), would the audience still leave the theater going, “Holy shit, that dude was crazy!”
The “Five Items” thing didn’t work either. The ways in which the items were used was uninspiring. This is another mistake I see all the time. Writers paint themselves into these corners with these rules, then they don’t deliver on them. So if your hero’s thing is that he cleverly uses 5 items on every mission, then his use of those items better live up to the hype.
It’s like the Boomerang Guy in Suicide Squad. We’re told he was able to do things with a boomerang that would make a nuclear missile look like a pop rock. Except all I saw him do was throw a boomerang and watch it come back to him. Mogli the Wolf Boy from Mad Max had more impressive boomerang skills than Captain Kangaroo.
This may sound like I didn’t like Matt Helm. But actually, despite being a tad predictable, I thought the writing itself was awesome. Brandt and Haas are super-enjoyable to read. They strike the perfect balance between crisp minimalistic action lines and the occasional chunkster paragraph required to feed the reader a lot of info.
And the character of Helm himself was fun. Not as fun as he could’ve been had they gone Full Nutzos, but fun nonetheless.
If I were them, I’d go full-tilt into this psychotic secret agent idea. We’ve never seen anything like that before, and that’s the only reason to get into this genre – if you’ve got something fresh. We’ll see if Matt Helm ever climbs out of development hell and gets a chance to prove itself. Jason Bourne is done, right? So there’s an open locker in the locker room.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Repeated “show don’t tell” shots of pills don’t sell the condition your character is suffering from. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, being psychotic – if you want to sell us that the character is suffering from these things, we must SEE THEM SUFFERING FROM THESE THINGS. Shots of them staring at the pills is NOT a “show don’t tell” moment. It’s more like a visual “tell.” Not nearly as effective.
