Today we take a look at a script from the man responsible for the darker, edgier Daredevil reboot. Not surprisingly, the script is a bit of a daredevil itself.
Genre: Drama
Premise: A story that follows a dozen different seedy characters in New York City during one of its sleaziest decades, the 1980s.
About: This script made the 2006 Black List. I don’t know much about it but the writer, Caleb Kane, had been a Broadway actor for a long time and has appeared in a lot of popular TV shows. He segued into writing and wrote a few episodes of Fringe. He wrote a draft for the reboot of Daredevil, but hasn’t had that big breakout writing moment yet. These City Walls appears to be his writing sample.
Writer: Caleb Kane
Details: 165 pages!!! (1/06 Draft)
Denzel for Mr. Man?
I love me some 165 page screenplays. As in, “I hate me some 165 page screenplays!” I mean seriously? 165 pages? Do you really think you’re THAT good that you can completely ignore what every reader and producer in town finds acceptable? I guess so. And I guess it worked since enough people liked it to get it on the Black List (to a degree – I don’t think it finished very high). But seriously, I have never seen a 160 page script that couldn’t be sliced to pieces.
I’m actually glad this came along on the heels of the Fight Club post, as it, too, is a non-traditional screenplay. We’re jumping around between multiple characters. We’re taking our time getting in the plot. We’re not entirely sure who the main character is. There is an experimental vibe to the script, and I’m sure something can be learned from that.
Maybe the first is: Beware the ULTRA AMBITIOUS SCREENPLAY. Jaw-dropping page counts, murky plots, lots of characters. I know I just wrote an article telling you how to approach these types of scripts, but that doesn’t mean I think you should write them. Besides the fact that it’s just really hard to wrangle together a story of this enormity, readers aren’t really trained to understand scripts like this. They’re looking for clear narratives, clean goals – a story that moves forward quickly and with purpose. These anti-structure screenplays are hard to define so even when a reader likes something about them, they’re reluctant to say so, since they can’t really pinpoint (in industry terms) why they feel that way. It’s safer, then, for a reader not to support a script like this. Something to keep in mind.
It’s winter in New York City. 1983. 20 year-old Ruben has worked his way up the ranks for Mr. Man, a local pimp who’s keen on expanding his business. But before he can do that, he needs the perfect girl. Someone new. A fresh face. If Ruben can find him that face, he can get in on the ground floor of Mr. Man’s new business venture.
Ruben does just that, finding a homeless 17 year old girl named Noel trolling the streets with her boyfriend. Mr. Man slyly gets the boyfriend hooked on heroin so he can remove him from the picture, and turns Noel into one of his top girls. Everything’s going according to plan until Ruben starts falling for Noel, and wants to get her out of New York City. Mr. Man notices something growing between the two and doesn’t like it. He tells Ruben that he better mind his own business. The girl is his.
In the meantime, Mr. Man blackmails one of his richer clients with pictures of him doing some really nasty stuff with one of his girls. Mr. Man classes up his women and uses the client’s access to a high rolling clientele, and soon he’s not slumming it on the streets anymore. Unbeknownst to him, however, Ruben has saved a bunch of dough and is planning for Noel’s escape. Mr. Man can’t have that, which means we’re going to get a stand-off between the two. And it’s very likely only one of them is coming out alive.
That is a REALLY simplified synopsis of the screenplay. I should probably get an award for that actually, as I make it sound like a pretty focused little story. The reality is, there are a lot more characters and way too many subplots here. I see this problem a lot in these screenplays – where writers are trying to be super-ambitious. They write a bunch of storylines, thinking it will add complexity and grandiosity to their story, making it more “respectable,” but many of those storylines either a) don’t push the narrative forward or b) aren’t very good.
I mean, we have this subplot where a drug-addict named “Boo” is trying to kidnap his son back from his ex so he can place him in a child porn magazine and make some easy dough. Boo had next to nothing to do with any of the other characters. Plus his storyline just wasn’t very interesting. Since that accounted for 15-20 pages, Kane could’ve easily cut the subplot and got this down to 145 pages. Do the same for another unnecessary subplot or two, and you’re down to 120 in a jiffy, a page number where readers don’t actively hate you within 2 seconds of opening your screenplay.
These City Walls DOES have some stuff going for it though. I WAS curious enough to keep reading and I think that’s because a lot of the characters popped. I don’t know if I’d say they were great because there wasn’t any traditional character development here. We weren’t getting into their pasts or arching them. But they all had personalities, and I think that’s something a lot of writers forget to add. You can include all the depth in the world when it comes to character, but if there isn’t a personality there, we’re probably going to be bored by them.
There’s plenty of personality to go around here. Mr. Man was a part any actor would want to play. Despite Boo being unnecessary, his drug-addicted rantings and mumblings made him stick out. Noel was delightfully naïve. Ma Love stuck out as the aging prostitute. Blackmailed client Milton Klein wore the nervous screwed businessman part well. I don’t remember a lot of characters when I read scripts. I remembered almost all of them here. And that’s saying something.
I thought the dialogue was pretty good at first. It felt authentic. Lines like, “Motherfuckin’ outlaw, man. Bet. Just gotta keep movin’ on that one big sting, though, you know? Get my game straight.” – they put me in that time and place. Impressed me. However, as the script went on, pretty much EVERYONE started talking like this so the effect lost its luster. Literally 8 different characters could’ve said that line, they all spoke so similarly. When you’re writing dialogue, you HAVE to distinguish your characters so that they all talk uniquely. If they’re all talking alike, the dialogue (no matter how good) becomes stale and tiresome, like it did here.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but I think the fixes here are pretty obvious. Get rid of the unneeded time-sucking subplots, and build the story around Mr. Man’s ascension into high class escorting. In other words, give him a CLEAR GOAL. Make this like a prostitute version of Scarface. With that goal driving the story, everything will be more focused, and you still get to explore most of the seedy characters from this draft, just in a more plot-heavy setting. Right now we don’t get to Mr. Man’s first high-class prostitute party until, like, page 110. GIVE ME A BREAK! That should’ve been on page 45 at the latest.
Anyway, this had some nice flashes, but it was too messy to recommend. Too bad. I was hoping to find a lost gem. ☹
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “Writing samples” are scripts that highlight a writer’s biggest strength. They typically aren’t marketable enough to be made. So if you’re great with dialogue, write a script that centers around dialogue. You then get a lot of meetings from people who need dialogue punch-ups and hopefully start making some dough. If a writer gets big enough or a big enough actor falls in love with one of the roles in the script, a “writing sample” will occasionally get made.
What I learned 2: OTMSS (one too many subplots syndrome). A lot of time, when a writer is told to cut out pages from their script, they do so via little pieces here and there. A line of dialogue, a description, the tail end of a scene. If you REALLY want to cut pages, cut out unnecessary subplots. These are subplots that you convince yourself are necessary because you like what they add to the characters, but that don’t move the story forward in any interesting way. Get rid of one of these and you can make 10 pages disappear like THAT. It’s one of the easiest ways to cut a bunch of pages.
