Today’s screenplay isn’t like anything else out there at the moment, setting the stage for another exciting read.
Genre: Thriller/Action
Premise: When the underprivileged John Unger is invited to spend the summer at the mansion of his peculiar classmate, his thirst for grandeur leads him down a dangerous exploration of greed, morality, and the secret horrors of the ruling class. Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s black list. It was smartly plucked from a 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald short story collection. Just a reminder to those looking for material. The 95 year public domain statute allows you rights to anything written up until 1923. Cody Behan clearly had his eyes on this one as he wrote it last year, when the statue was up until 1922. Something to keep your eyes on, guys. Fitzgerald’s early works (The Beautiful and the Damned included) are out there for the taking.
Writer: Cody Behan (based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Details: 126 pages
Movie announcements in the last few days have become bizarre. Tom Cruise and Elon Musk are filming an entire movie in space? Unless that movie is titled, “Hanging out with the International Space Station Crew and Eating Food Sludge Packets Together,” I can assure you this will never happen.
I just did a little online sleuthing. It costs $10,000 to put ONE POUND in space. An Arri Alexa camera is 15 pounds. All decked out it’s closer to 30 pounds. That’s 300,000 for your camera. Oh, and let’s not forget the 170 pound camera man. He’ll cost you 1.7 million dollars to put into orbit. That’s not counting the half a million dollars you’ll have to invest in training him to become an astronaut.
And then what’s your plot when you get into space?? A Tom Cruise zero gravity spinny circles contest? You could make the exact same movie with special effects that will cost you 1/10th the price and look 10 times as good.
What does this have to do with today’s script? Actually, a lot. It turns out F. Scott Fitzgerald had some zany high concept ideas of his own back in the day. This is not The Great Gatsby. This is Fitzgerald if he hired Edgar Rice Burroughs to write one of his ideas. It’s weird. It’s kooky. And for a story I’d never heard of before, it’s better than you’d expect!
16 year old John Unger has escaped his lower-class mining town to become one of the rare poor people admitted to Connecticut’s prestigious St. Midas school. When he arrives, he’s immediately given the cold shoulder by all the richy riches. All of them except for one.
The mysterious Percy shows up like a baller at a party, busting out a ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR BILL and then burning it to ash in front of everyone. John becomes enamored with Percy, and the two find themselves hanging out constantly.
When summer rolls around, Percy invites John to stay at his home with him. The two travel across the country to the middle of nowhere, where John is shocked to see the coolest most isolated compound in America. Percy, last name Washington, as in, yes, great great grandson to George Washington, lives in the richest home in the United States.
That’s because the land rests on a diamond that is LITERALLY as big as the Ritz Hotel. And here’s where things get interesting. Back in 1922, nobody had Google Maps. This means that you could, theoretically, hide your land from everyone. But times they are a changing. World War 1 has birthed the war plane. And there are rumors drawing a lot of these pilots out to this area, where they could see the family’s secret. If that were to happen, Percy’s father Braddock is convinced the government will take it from them..
This is why Braddock has purchased two spanking new gigantic anti-aircraft guns. When you have more money than God, anti-aircraft guns are a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile, John meets Percy’s smoking hot sister, Kismine, who is thrilled to have a boy to talk to for once. She and John strike up a quick romance, which plays a number on the family dynamic.
A few weeks into the summer, John stumbles across a deep pit, populated with a dozen ragged pilots. It turns out Braddock has been shooting down every plane he sees then throwing the injured pilots down here, where they will spend the rest of their lives so they don’t tell the world Braddock’s secret.
And then it gets worse for John. Turns out this isn’t the only friend Percy’s brought back to the house. Turns out this isn’t the only guy Kismine has developed a crush on. And what happened to these young men? They weren’t in the pit. That’s when John realizes the terrifying truth. He’ll be murdered. But now that he knows the gameplan, can he be the first to survive?
I was surprised by just how zany this script was. We get all these big idea cameos, like Braddock’s radium stockpile, which he is convinced will be the cure to cancer. Or that his family is related to George Washington. Or that they have giant anti-airplane guns… in the year 1922! It honestly reads like the 1922 version of a Marvel movie. It has that big budget popcorn feel to it. And it’s full of these fun twists and turns.
The only problem with the script is that it combines two things that don’t gel well with screenwriting. The first is that we’re putting our hero at a static location where he waits around for the story to come to him. It still manages to work because the reveals are so fun. But there are definitely times where it feels like we’re waiting around for the next plot point to arrive. Active characters always work better. And John is not active.
The other problem is that the story spans a long period of time. I believe six months in total. If you were to write this movie today, it would take place over a weekend. To Behan’s credit, he uses the same device that allows movies like Fight Club to cover a long span of time – VOICE OVER NARRATION.
John is constantly giving us updates on what’s going on. This allows John to say things like, “Even with the blazer, the first few weeks were brutal.” In a single line, we’ve jumped forward three weeks. And it doesn’t feel forced. With that said, this probably would’ve played better with a tighter time frame.
Remember that the more condensed the timeframe, the more tension you’re going to have in every scene. When you have months and months to cover, it’s like a hall pass to take scenes off. To relax. And you don’t want to relax in a screenplay. Especially in a thriller.
The final thing of note is that boy do you have an advantage when your source material is F. Scott Fitzgerald. The dialogue and description throughout “Diamond” was a cut above what the average reader is used to. Here’s a monologue from Kismine: “You see how they look at me. How they treat me. How they dismiss and condescend my every thought. As a daydream. A fantasy. I’m a daughter of Washingtons. I’m expected to dress in pretty dresses, drape myself in pretty jewels, speak in pretty tones, smile pretty smiles, think pretty thoughts, dream pretty dreams, and bite my pretty little tongue. And a year from now, when they present me at court, I’ll be expected to make a pretty match to preserve the stability of the sterling Washington name. I am a show pony trapped in a pretty stable. So don’t scold me for being “a part of” anything. The only thing I’m guilty of is being the only Washington with a conscience.”
Or take this description of John and Kismine’s first kiss: “The distance between their lips vanishes. And again appears.” That’s a lot better than what I usually read, which is some version of, “They kiss passionately.”
I’m really curious about this script. It first presents itself as some hoity-toity 1920s rich vs. poor moral tale, not unlike Gatsby, but then morphs into good old fashioned fun. I haven’t read anything like it. Ever. What do you guys think?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here’s a fun little dialogue trick you can use. It almost always works. Have a conversation where each character is having their own conversation. There is no overlap between the two. Here’s an early scene between John and Percy…
