Genre: Comedy
Premise: On the cusp of gaining independence from the British, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson lose the only draft of the Declaration of Independence in the world, putting the future of the United States in doubt.
About: A script about our founding fathers. I’m a couple of days late on this. But what creed do us Americans live by? BETTER LATE THAN NEVER! Yeah! Murica!! Actually, if these guys were smart, they’d change the title to “Murica,” and run away with a sale. United States of Fuckin’ Awesome is one of the few comedy scripts to have won the Nicholl Fellowship, which it accomplished in 2014.
Writers: Alisha Brophy & Scott Miles
Details: 98 pages
Screenwriting contests are funny. And I’m not excluding my own experiences running them from this observation. They’re basically competitions for writers who don’t really know what they’re doing yet. Therefore, the person who wins has rarely written the perfect screenplay. They’ve written something that has wonderful moments mixed with amateurish moments, with the determining factor being there’s more good than bad.
This can be frustrating for losing contestants who then read the scripts, as they expect them to be amazing. When they aren’t, they immediately focus on the fact that their screenplays aren’t amazing either. So why did THAT imperfect screenplay beat out THEIR imperfect screenplay?
Often, these writers are using the principle of Everything That’s Not Amazing Is The Same. And this couldn’t be less true. Whereas the winning script may have nailed important screenwriting elements such as concept and character, the losing writer may not even grasp the basics, like how to get into a scene late and get out of it early. Or how to use every scene to push the story forward.
Of course, the real problem is that they don’t know these things yet because nobody who knows anything has ever read their script, sat down, and explained these problems to them. If you’re unaware that you’re doing anything wrong, you’re going to think your script deserves to win every contest it enters.
And this is another misconception that people who don’t understand screenwriting have. That storytelling is this subjective thing. Like the only reason “The Killer Eagle” beat out “Recon Assassin” is because the reader loves eagles or something. That’s not true. There are storytelling basics you need to incorporate just to GET to the point where you’re being judged subjectively. And most aspiring screenwriters have been at this for so little time, they haven’t learned these things yet.
So when their third ever script doesn’t ellicit oohs and ahs, they convince themselves that it’s because the world of art is “subjective” and people just aren’t “getting” their script. You wanna know what smart screenwriters do? They figure out why their story isn’t landing, and improve on the things they have control over.
I can tell you right now that United States of Fuckin’ Awesome achieved in its first five pages something that 99% of aspiring screenwriters have no idea even exists. Irony. We talk about “red flags” on this site a lot. A reader is constantly red-flagging rookie mistakes to clue them in on if this writer knows their shit. But we don’t ever talk about GREEN FLAGS – ways you can tell a screenwriter knows what he’s doing. And irony is a big green flag.
Seeing several of history’s most iconic figures introduced banging whores, whining like cowards, and swearing like sailors, plays against our expectations and intrigues us. That’s a green flag.
Speaking of flags, it’s July 3rd, 1776, and we’re about to watch the story that the history books never told us. Ben Franklin, who it turns out is a borderline moron with an addiction to whores, has teamed up with Thomas Jefferson, the country’s biggest nerd, to finish the most important document in history, The Declaration of Independence.
They grab their good buddy, George Washington, obsessed with reclaiming the party lifestyle that defined his youth, to celebrate at a local pub. Unfortunately, the group get really trashed, and after Franklin heads to a whore house, wakes up to discover that his whore, Claire, has stolen the document!
This is not good, since Jefferson included every single name in the document who would be running America. This would act as a de facto assassination list if this got into the redcoats’ hands! So off the three go, Hangover-style, in search of the elusive document.
Along the way they run into Jefferson’s boss, Sam Adams, the biggest asshole in the world, Benedict Arnold, the nerd who’s only ever wanted to sit at the cool kids’ table, and Andrew Jackson, a bully of a man who only cares about kicking ass, specifically the nerdy ass of Jefferson.
The chase takes them all over town, only for them to realize Claire is at the biggest redcoat party of the year! Our trio will need to secure a canoe, paddle across the river while wasted, and infiltrate the party to get that Declaration! Cause if they don’t? We’ll never declare “Murica!”
Even though United States of Murica borrows liberally from The Hangover, it’s still a well-constructed screenplay that moves quickly. I liked the McGuffin (the lost Declaration of Independence), but what I liked more were the consequences of not getting the McGuffin. The British would have a Kill List which would allow them to destabilize the already shaky colonies and win the war. The stakes were high!
My main issue with the script is that, from there, it went on cruise control. This happens a lot during second acts in comedies. The writers have used most of their jokes up by the early part of the second act, leaving them to repeat story beats.
It takes a lot of work to make a second act great. And one of the challenges is not settling for those repetitive story beats. You have to sit down and do the dirty work of saying, “There are too many sequences like the one I just wrote. I need to come up with something better.” Newer writers and lazy writers never do this. And their second acts suffer for it.
But I’ll tell you where this script eventually won me over.
The climax.
One of the tried-and-true ways of writing a good ending is sending your heroes into the belly of the beast. In general, you want to look for scenarios that are conflict-heavy and do the bulk of the writing for you. When you send your heroes into the villain’s den (Silence of the Lambs anybody?), a lot of those scenes will write themselves.
I’m sure everyone reading this review can think of half-a-dozen funny scenes born from disguising our heroes as redcoats and forcing them to infiltrate a giant redcoat party. And those are the scenarios you’re always searching for as a writer – the ones where scene ideas pop up without you having to think.
United States of Fuckin’ Awesome does operate on a gimmicky premise. And the founding fathers swearing nonstop definitely gets old after awhile. But the writers add just enough creative and funny ideas to keep the script entertaining. It’s worth a read if you’re a comedy writer for sure, especially one who plans to enter the Nicholl.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Identifying milkable scenes. There’s a great setup here at the redcoat party where Washington, disguised as a redcoat, comes upon a group of British soldiers who are making fun of, you guessed it, George Washington. Washington must sit and endure this, and at the end, one of the soldiers looks at him and asks, “Enoying the party?” And that’s the scene. This so could’ve been a show-stopper scene had the writers identified it as milkable. Washington should’ve been forced to get in a full-blown conversation with the redcoats, to the extent where he’s using a terrible fake English accent. He should’ve been encouraged to tell his best “Washington is a loser” joke. There’s so much more that could’ve been done here that was missed. When you got those scenes staring you in the face guys, make sure you take advantage of them!
