Today’s big 90s spec sale is part The Fugitive, part Shawshank, and part Hell or High Water.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: After a daring prison break, a bank robber forced to work with two problematic fellow prisoners, heads back to his home town to make things right.
About: Shout out to Scott for making me aware of this one. The script sold in 1995 for 600,000 against 1 million. It was written by Ken Nolan, who penned Black Hawk Down and Transformers 5. The movie looks like it was shelved once competing rain project “Hard Rain” rained on its parade. Blame it on the rain. I swear, I have to reign this lame rain jokes in. Rain or shine, I can’t stop using them.
Writer: Ken Nolan
Details: 127 pages
Henry Cavill is looking for a new job, right?
One of the most common fears we screenwriters have is that while we’re dutifully writing our latest screenplay, a movie with a similar concept will get released and our script becomes irrelevant.
It’s a legitimate concern and the reason today’s script never got made, despite selling for so much money. Another rain-centered crime movie, Hard Rain, made it to theaters first, taking all the wind out of “The Long Rain’s” sails.
The reason this happens so often is because we’re all pulling water from the same well. And so while we may think we’re original, the reality is, that idea we came up with four months ago was inspired by the same set of news stories that tens of millions of other people saw.
I still remember a few years back, there were not one, not two, but three separate projects purchased that were focused on a peeping tom motel situation. If you did the math, you went back about 5-6 months and learned there was an article in a major publication about this peeping practice.
In other words, a bunch of people saw the same article and a percentage of them, who were screenwriters, thought, “Ooh, that would make a good movie.”
This is why I encourage writers to avoid coming up with movie ideas inspired by popular culture or current news stories because you’re choosing to compete with the highest number of writers whenever you do that. It’s better if your idea comes from real life experience or something random you encounter that very few people are aware of.
One of the reasons Tarantino is considered to be such a unique artist is because all of his ideas come from updating obscure old movies that not many people know about. So he’s not going to have a lot of competition for those ideas.
Anyway, I barely remember Hard Rain. What I do remember is that it had a fun trailer. Will The Long Rain offer more than that?
Nick True is in Mississippi prison for something. We don’t know what yet. On this particular night, the prison is being flooded with nonstop rain. It gets so bad that the guards have to chain all the prisoners up (three people to a chain) and place them outside so they don’t drown.
Nick, who often offers us deep thoughtful narration about life and imprisonment, is chained to a couple of sketchy dudes, TEE-VEE and Preacher Willie. As the little outdoor corridor they’re in also starts to badly flood, they rebel, and soon The Nick True Trio makes a boop-bop skedaddling run for it.
They somehow scale three fences and run into the rainy night. They’re able to make it to a barn, where they dry up. But then in a really random coincidence, the cops find them, and they’re on the run again. The rain still hasn’t stopped, by the way.
While they’re on the run, we start flashing back to how Nick ended up in prison. He was with the love of his life. They were going to have a fairytale ending. All Nick had to do was rob a bank first. Cause fairytale endings need money in America.
Obviously, the robbery goes badly. But even worse, Nick’s own brother deceives him in the worst way. Nick ends up losing his girlfriend and his brother. AND he ends up in prison. Hat trick on why crime doesn’t pay, Nicky.
But this prison break, along with all this rain, has given Nick a second chance. You see, that money he stole from the bank is still out there. He hid it. So if he can get it back, he just might be able to reboot that fairy tale.
Man, talk about a script that’s of its time. This screenplay couldn’t have been more 90s if Kurt Cobain scored a Youtube accompaniment for it. “Here we are now! IT IS RAINING! Is that Tommy Lee Jones? Or Morgan Freeman!??” (If you sing that to the tune of Smells Like Teen Spirit, it makes sense, I promise)
Whenever you start reading a script, one of the first things your mind does is attempt to figure out what kind of movie you’re watching. Once you understand the template, you know what to expect for the most part and you can settle in and enjoy yourself.
But what happens when the script doesn’t announce what it is? If you don’t make that clear, you can expect a lot of reader frustration. And I wasn’t clear on what this was. The script starts off with a really fun opening prison break scene where the characters are chained up together.
This is how you make things different. Everybody says, “Everything has already been done before.” And that’s true. There have been a million prison-break scenes. But I don’t remember any with three people chained up to each other. Any recently, anyway. That creates all sorts of new obstacles the writer can play with to write some creative scenarios.
This is followed by our characters hanging out in a barn where they get their bearings. The next day, the cops accidentally run into them and they’re forced to shoot a cop and steal his car. A helicopter drops down out of the clouds and starts chasing them.
They get to a bridge, which they shoot off into a raging river. And then, while they’re being pulled down the river, we jump backwards in time and cover how Nick ended up in prison, which was that he robbed a bank. This is a long slow flashback.
Then we’re back in the present again. Then the past. Then the present. Then the past. And things just sort of feel disjointed. It’s an “on-the-run” movie. No it’s a heist movie. No it’s a slow introspective character piece. Throughout all of this is this deep voice over from Nick where he ponders life. What is this thing? It’s like a Frankenstein script.
But then, somewhere around page 65, it picks a lane. We find out through the flashbacks that the money he stole from the bank robbery, he hid. Which means it’s still out there. And he’s going to get it.
It was an interesting moment when this plot beat entered the story because I immediately noticed I was more interested in what was happening. Was it just that plot point that pulled me in? No. The thing that changed it all is that NICK ALL OF A SUDDEN BECAME ACTIVE. Instead of being “the guy on the run,” he became “the guy with a plan.”
That’s a great screenwriting lesson. For the first sixty pages, I’m sitting there wondering when’s the “point” going to kick in? But my dissatisfaction was more likely coming from the fact that the main character wasn’t an active participant in the story.
This is one of the unheralded screenwriting power moves in The Fugitive, and one of the main reasons it works so well. Richard wasn’t just running from the police. He was trying to solve his wife’s murder. If he’s just running from the police, he’s reactive the entire movie. But if he’s trying to solve a murder, he’s active.
That change in The Long Rains saved the script. And then Nolan kicks things up a notch with a great climax. It’s definitely not a perfect screenplay but Nolan does a good job sneakily setting up the real story he wants to tell throughout the first half. Once he gets to tell that story, the script comes alive. Check it out yourself!
Script link: The Long Rains
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This script taught me that you can make things a lot more interesting for your smart main character by handicapping them. In this case, you stick him with two dumb people. Cause now, “stupid” enters into the equation sometimes, and the stupid moves lead to more interesting scenarios than the smart moves. For example, TEE-VEE can’t swim, so when they’re stuck in the raging river, TEE-VEE is practically ripping Nick apart to stay afloat, even though, by doing so, he’s ensuring that both of them will drown. So now Nick has to figure out a way around that. That scene doesn’t exist if Nick escapes prison on his own. So always look to handicap your heroes!
