Genre: Gothic Horror
Premise: Two hitmen are recruited by a strange Native American woman to kill a bizarre monster who lives under her basement.
About: This script was written in the mid-70s for Hal Ashby’s production company. Ashby is best known for the weirdest love story of all time, Harold and Maude, a personal favorite of mine. He was obsessed with this project though, coveting Jack Nicholson to play the lead. He had the author of the book, Richard Brautigan, adapt the screenplay himself, but was unhappy with the result. So he got a real screenwriter in Michael Haller to adapt the story, the final product of which he was excited about. But he could never get all the pieces together. Later, Tim Burton would become obsessed with the project, but he also had trouble getting it made. This is the Haller version of the script.
Writer: Michael Haller (based on the novel by Richard Brautigan)
Details: 108 pages
Still getting over that Oscar hangover?
Texting your buddies to remind them when tonight’s Bachelor Finale Viewing Party starts?
I’m right there with ya. Mine starts at 6:30. I invited all my neighbors but for some odd reason, when I approached them with roses and asked, “Will you accept this Bachelor Viewing Party Rose?” 5 of them shut the door in my face, 3 stood silently, and 2 called the police.
The good news is I made bail. So onwards and upwards and let us all hope Ari finds love.
A few of you sunk your teeth into me the other day like a diseased zombie when I eviscerated some script choices in Three Billboards, calling me delusional for blindly following the GSU faith. But anyone who reads this site regularly knows I like a lot of weird scripts. I mean, I liked Meat, which was the anti-GSU. I’m also consistent in saying that how you break the rules is how you will make your script stand out.
Where myself and my critics differ is in intentional rule-breaking vs ignorant rule-breaking. I’m fine when someone breaks a rule with a purpose. But when I sense they made a choice ignorantly, either overall or in a specific area, I’m going to call them out on it. If you overlook a more dramatically engaging choice out of sloppiness, that needs to be discussed. Because while the strength of that film may have masked that particular mistake, aspiring screenwriters need to know that it won’t work if they try the same thing.
How does this tie into today’s screenplay? Because today’s script is a more obvious example of what happens when you abandon structure, instead “writing from the heart” and steering your choices through theme.
The year is 1902. Two hitman, Cameron and Greer, are coming back from a failed job in Hawaii. Greer is the brains of the operation while Cameron’s a bit of an autistic weirdo. Everything is counting for him. He counts footsteps, words, repeated noises, everything.
When these two get back to the mainland, they’re approached by a young beautiful Native American woman named Magic Child. Magic Child hands them a few thousands dollars and says they need to come back with her to Oregon to kill something.
At a time when Coke cost negative 5 cents, a few thousand dollars is a lot of money. So these two don’t hesitate in accepting the offer. However, once they get back to Magic Child’s town, shit starts getting weird. They go back to Magic Child’s mother’s house, Miss Hawkline, and within five minutes, Magic Child and Miss Hawkline become the same person. So there are now two Miss Hawklines.
Sure, why not.
Original Miss Hawkline explains that Cameron and Greer need to kill a monster for them. This monster lives underneath their basement, in something known as the Ice Caves. You see, Miss Hawkline’s scientist husband was working on an experiment, and may or may not have accidentally created the monster before disappearing.
Cameron and Greer are all geared up to go, but as the group of four gets to talking, they become distracted, even confused, about why they’re all here. After several scenes of this, they seem to get their senses back, only for Miss Hawkline to confide that the monster has the ability to make them confused. Which is why they’re confused.
Uh-huh. Okay.
This goes on for many more pages, with the group fucking (yes, fucking), having tea, and eventually realizing that the monster they thought was the monster was never the monster. Or… something. In the end, the missing dad comes back and everything is great again. But not really.
Getting back to my point. It’s easy to say that one’s critique of a story choice is incorrect when the overall screenplay works. But when an objectively awful screenplay makes the same mistake, nobody’s there to defend the same reasoning. The reality is that every script is the sum of its parts and therefore if a script does a few things wrong but a lot of things right, it’s still a success. But that does not mean its mistakes are above criticism. And I’d argue that that’s what this site is about – having a discussion about those choices so we don’t make the same mistakes in our own scripts.
The second this script went away from its structured setup – find and kill the monster – to an unstructured one – reality dissolves and everyone talks to each other for long periods of time trying to figure out where they are and what’s happening – it completely falls apart. It’s a terrible choice. And it’s a terrible choice specifically because it abandons structure.
It just so happens that this script is so appallingly bad after that choice that I doubt any of you would disagree with me after reading it. But while the critique of a similarly bad choice in an otherwise good movie (Three Billboards) makes for a more interesting discussion, a bad choice is still a bad choice. Sam Rockwell’s racist character in Three Billboards not becoming the deputy under a new black sheriff was the wrong choice. Period. Dramatically, it was way more interesting than sending Rockwell home to do nothing for the next 30 minutes. And writers need to know that.
Getting back to The Hawkline Monster, the bigger problem here is that poor screenwriters working before the internet had little to no resources for how to structure a screenplay. So you got a lot of scripts like this, which charged strong into the midpoint, only for the writers to run out of ideas. Their solution, then, was to write whatever came to mind for the next 50 pages until they got to the climax.
Sadly, a lot of writers still write this way.
The way to prevent this is to KNOW YOUR ENDING. Once you know what you’re writing towards, it’s the same as picking a vacation destination. You can now look up prices, book the plane, book hotels, study the place you’re going to visit, pack, go to the airport, and show up at your destination. Imagine if you hadn’t picked a vacation spot? You just winged it. You might show up at the airport with a suitcase full of t-shirts and land in Juneau, Alaska during a time of year when all the hotels are booked.
Once you have your ending, you just have to make sure your characters are always moving towards that ending, that there are obstacles getting in the way, and that each ten pages we’re feeling a little less certain that they’re going to succeed. That’s what provides that sense of purpose you need in a story.
If you want to write purely through theme and leave your pacing and purpose up to the powers that be, go right ahead. But don’t be surprised when people look at you sideways after they’ve read your script.
Script link: The Hawkline Monster
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Screenwriting is a mathematical writing medium and is therefore heavily dependent on structure. I know people hate to hear it. But it’s true. Until you see it that way, you’re always going to have a hard time pacing your scripts correctly.
