Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Blood List) When a young journalist suspects that an abducted girl is being held somewhere in her own neighborhood, she decides to delve into the secret lives of her neighbors to determine which one is capable of the horrific crime.
About: Writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman are an up-and-coming writing-directing team who have been quietly landing on some of Hollywood’s more popular lists (The Hit List, The Blood List) as well as writing and directing their own shorts. On Your Doorstep finished in the middle of last year’s Blood List (The new Blood List comes out Friday!) and has been acquired by Haven Entertainment, an indie production company who made Josh Radnor’s film, Liberal Arts, and more recently, the big John Milius documentary.
Writers: Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman
Details: 96 pages (August 27, 2013 draft)
I don’t know what happened to me these last two days. The combination of The Good Wife and John Wick’s dog turned my brain into some sort of new age pate. I knew it was bad when I went to In and Out and they asked me how I’d like my burger. “Good Wife Style, “ I replied. It was an awkward moment for everyone.
When I got home, it hit me. It’s freaking Halloween Throwdown Week! We need to be reviewing Halloween scripts, not badgering witnesses on the stand! Which is why I went back to The Blood List, our favorite stomping ground for the spooky and the macabre, to get today’s tasty treat.
On Your Door Step is one of those scripts that succeeds in exactly what it sets out to do. The question is, does it excel beyond that success? Is it able to get into February territory?
20-something Carmen grew up in the dilapidated logging town of Willow Creek, up near Seattle, Washington. Carmen was one of the few lucky gals to get out and make a life for herself, as she’s now a journalist for a big city newspaper.
But her exit from town was anything but clean. When she was 12, she was playing with her best friend, Kaylie, and after an argument, Kaylie left, never to be seen again. A lot of people blame Carmen for not doing more to save Kaylie, and Carmen’s never forgiven herself as a result.
But fate is funny. 15 years later and Kaylie’s bones have been found. Carmen’s boss thinks it might be a good idea to write a story about the murder. So he sends Carmen back to the town she grew up in, a town she never thought she’d see again.
Shockingly, on her first night back, a 17 year-old girl starts banging on her door. Scared shitless, Carmen calls the police. But by the time they get there, the girl’s gone. Carmen does some digging, and believes the girl she saw is a girl who went missing 5 years ago named Joelle. That would’ve made her 12 years old, the same age Kaylie was when she went missing. Hmmmm…
With Kaylie’s bones located right near her block and this new girl banging at her door, Carmen suspects that whoever took these girls resides right here, on her block. And she believes that person is still holding Joelle. There are only 7 houses on the block, so she doesn’t have many people to investigate.
But her first suspect turns everything around. He’s not the killer, but he is a pedophile. And he lets Carmen know, if she’s got any chance of solving this case, she’s going to need someone like him, someone who can think like a pedophile.
Ellen Page for Carmen?
On Your Doorstep is a clever twist on the murder/missing girl plot. Instead of a killer who’s roaming around aimlessly, our bad guy is living right here on our protagonist’s block. This localizing of the plot keeps the story simple and easy to follow, and it also ups the tension, since we know the killer is nearby.
Desmond and Sherman were also smart to create a personal connection between Carmen and the case. She was friends with Kaylie, something she still feels guilty about. Had the newspaper sent any other reporter, I’m not sure we would’ve cared as much.
I was also impressed by some chances the writers took. They pulled a Silence of the Lambs in that Carmen has to make a deal with the devil (a pedophile, Malcom, who can get into the minds of other pedophiles). That gave “Door Step” a slightly harder edge.
In every script you’re going to have to take two or three major chances. If everything feels too perfect, your script’s going to be boring. It’s a frustrating part of the process, adding an element you’re unsure about. But those are the things that make your script stand out from the pack. I mean The Matrix had its characters battling each other with Kung Fu. I don’t care who said they read that script ahead of time and thought it was perfect. That had the potential to be embarrassingly bad. But it was one of the big chance-taking moves that made the movie stand out.
The only problem I had with “Doorstep” was one I suspect kept it from finishing higher up on the lists.
Even though our writers took a chance with the “Hannibal” approach (a pedophile helper), they did so with kid gloves. What’s so great about Hannibal is that we’re genuinely scared of him. I’m not sure I was supposed to be scared of our pedophile (Malcolm), but I needed to be scared of what he could do to others (specifically children), and I wasn’t. If we don’t feel the WEIGHT of this character’s demons or what he’s capable of, I don’t care if you call him a pedophile. He’s just another guy.
It’s one of those balancing acts writers have to pull off. If you write Malcolm more aggressively, as a true pedophile, you risk turning readers off who don’t want to read about a “good” version of a pedophile. But if you write him too soft, the character loses street cred. He doesn’t seem honest because the writer is turning him into the “safe pedophile.” That’s what Malcolm felt like to me. The safe version of a pedophile.
I always suggest that when you’re writing a dark script, you err on the side of pushing the envelope. That’s a big reason Prisoners (a similar script) sold for a million bucks. Those scenes of torture were relentless. There was no holding back.
One of the things I enjoy doing when I read a script is going back to the big choices the writers made and seeing if there were other ways to go. The right choice at a key moment in your story can turn a bad script into a good one and a good script into a great one. So it’s a habit you want to get into as a writer – asking yourself, “What if I do this instead of that?”
I wondered if “Doorstep” would’ve worked better had Carmen been living at the house instead of passing through. There’s something scarier about the fact that a killer lives on your block. Possibly, then, Carmen would have a daughter who lives with her as well, around 11-12 years old. Now we have someone our main character loves who’s directly in danger from the killer.
I also wondered if placing the story in a low-income town was the best way to go. All of the people who lived on Carmen’s street were scum. Might it be more ironic, and therefore scarier, if this took place in an upper-middle-class neighborhood? Where everyone seems perfect and has their shit together?
I honestly don’t know if those are better options (what do you think?). I just like to explore them to remind myself that they’re there. The second you start thinking everything in your script is set in stone is the second your script is dead.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Character street cred. If you’re going to write a “bad” person (a killer, a rapist, a pedophile, a hitman), you have to commit to that. You gotta give him the kind of street cred that makes him believable. If you shy away from the uglier aspects of who someone is, the character will come off as the “safe” and therefore “fake” version, which, depending on how integral he is to the plot, can undermine the believability of your entire story.
