Today I encountered something I never thought in a million years I’d read… the female Fight Club.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Hit List) On the night of her 30th birthday, Elizabeth accidentally comes into possession of a very special item…a severed toe. She soon finds herself obsessing over the toe’s owner and, desperate to shake up her own mundane life, must decide whether or not to give in to the darker impulses the toe has stirred within her.
About: Mallory Westfall was nominated for Tisch’s (USC) Oliver Stone Screenwriting Award with her script, Begotten. She has since been a staff wrier on Syfy’s horror series, Channel Zero. She currently works as an executive story editor on AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead.
Writer: Mallory Westfall
Details: 128 pages
Man, for all you Scriptshadow readers yet to graduate high school, I highly recommend going to NYU’s Tisch or USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. I’ve seen a TON of Hit List and Black List writers who attended one of those two schools.
A lot of people ask me if it’s worth going to college for film or screenwriting. If you can get into Tisch or USC, hell yeah. Not only do you get screenwriting teachers who’ve actually worked in the business. But if you can get into one of these schools and network your ass off, meeting and befriending as many people as possible, you will work in this business, one way or another, for the rest of your life.
The irony of today’s script is that it’s nothing like the stuff that usually comes out of these schools. While there is some level of structure present, it’s hardly what you’d call a tight script. For the first half of the screenplay, I had no idea where it was going. Every time I thought, “Oh, it’s THAT kind of movie,” it would change into something else. After awhile, I got frustrated. “What is this???” And then I figured it out. I was reading the female Fight Club.
Elizabeth is turning 30 tomorrow, which sucks because her life’s lame. Turning 30’s fine when everything’s on the upswing. But when you’re stuck in a dead end office job and everyone around you can barely remember your name, it’s no fun.
One day after work, Elizabeth is driving home, and the back door of the truck in front of her bursts open, giving her a view of an entire group of people tied up. One woman in particular, with purple toe nails and a moose tattoo on her leg, locks eyes with Elizabeth. Quickly, a man inside the truck slams the door closed, but not before something flies out of the truck and slams into her windshield. It’s a toe! A toe with purple nail polish!
Elizabeth takes the toe home and begins to worship it. Strangely, it begins to bring her confidence. She starts standing up for herself at work, even swearing in front of her co-workers! Elizabeth becomes obsessed with the toe’s owner, and begins investigating who she might be. This leads her to a mysterious bus stop (which happens to be right across the street from her apartment) where she’s picked up and taken to a warehouse. There she’s terrorized by men in masks who threaten to kill her.
Just when it looks like it’s over, Elizabeth is told that this place isn’t some twisted hellhole, but actually a company where people pay to have the shit scared out of them. The idea is to be “woken up,” jolt your mind so that you start appreciating life again. Invigorated, Elizabeth continues her hunt to find the mysterious, now toe-less, girl. Eventually she meets her at a party for people who have been through the company torture experience, and befriends her.
Keesiah loved her experience with the company but didn’t think they went far enough. So she recruits Elizabeth to give people an even more life-rattling experience, with one twist: They don’t sign up for it. Elizabeth is so obsessed with Keesiah at this point that she goes along with it. But she soon realizes that Keesiah is not mentally sound. And that if she doesn’t do something to stop her, Keesiah will end up killing someone.
I’m torn over this script. On the one hand, it’s weird as hell. On the other, we need more weird scripts like this. This is exactly what’s been missing from The Black List. These used to be on the Black List all the time. But with everyone writing biopics these days (it’s only a matter of time before someone writes a biopic about the person who invented the biopic), there aren’t as many slots for offbeat material like The Toe. So while I have problems with The Toe, I’m happy Westfall wrote it.
The first problem I have is that this script is waaaaaaaaay too long. 130 pages? For a script about a severed toe? Come on. That’s the screenwriting equivalent of a hostage situation. And you don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out why the page count is so high. It takes Westfall 10 pages to establish that Elizabeth is introverted and friendless. Established screenwriters can achieve that in 3 pages with their eyes closed. All you need is one quick scene at the office where it’s clear nobody hangs out with Elizabeth and you’re done.
Whenever I see slow opening pages, I know I’m in for a long read. The opening pages should move the fastest, not the slowest. Get us into the story as soon as you can. After that, the script sort of wanders into this strange romantic relationship between Elizabeth and her toe. This section was also slow. The same beats – Elizabeth needing to be around the toe – were repeated over and over again. Good lord. Screenwriting Rule 8a: Don’t repeat the same beats!
Yet strangely, I wanted to keep reading. The main reason being I had no idea where this was going. Was Elizabeth going to enter into a relationship with the toe, like that movie Lars and the Real Girl? Then later, when she was kidnapped, were they going to kill her? Then later, when she realized it was a company, was she going to expose them? Join them?
It was enough to get me to the point where Keesiah entered the picture. And that’s where the story officially picked up. Once you have a psycho in your script, people are going to keep reading if only to see what that psycho is capable of. It’s no different from Tyler Durden in Fight Club. What was this guy up to? What was he going to do next? A major reason for that movie’s success was the curiosity surrounding that character.
Still, The Toe could’ve been so much tighter. We literally don’t meet Keesiah until page 68. PAGE 68! That’s nuts. We should’ve met her by page 45. Page 55 at the latest (midpoint of a 110 page script, which is what this should’ve been). What happens when you introduce a main character that late is you have to cram their storyline into a much tighter space. If you meet her early, you have time to build up her character, lay out her story, give the character the time they deserve. When does Tyler Durden arrive in Fight Club? By the end of the first act, right?
Then again, there are no rules in this business. If you want to linger, you can linger. If you want to introduce characters late, you can introduce characters late. An argument can be made that that’s why this script was so interesting. The late-arriving plot points kept you wondering where all of it was going. I’m just not convinced that was the plan. I suspect it might have happened by accident.
Still, this was weirdly entertaining. I give it to Westfall for trying something different.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the laziest devices you can use to get your hero out of a complicated situation is to have them hit their head and pass out then cut to later. Late in the script, when Keesiah is making Elizabeth help her sever the fingers of one of their victims, Elizabeth tries to stop her, the two scuffle, and Elizabeth falls, bumps her head, and passes out. This allows the writer to cut to later, with Elizabeth waking up and asking Keesiah what they did. Please writers, STOP DOING THIS! I have lived an entire life without ever seeing someone fall down, hit their head, and pass out. Yet if you read the screenplays I read, you’d think it was a daily occurrence in every single person’s life. If you ever make your character hit their head and pass out, ask yourself if it’s an organic action that makes sense for the story or if you’re just being lazy. If it’s the latter, go back and rewrite it.
