The winner of last week’s heated Amateur Offerings showdown finally gets its moment in the sun. But as every great tennis playing chimp knows, the sun gets awful hot without sunscreen.

Genre: Monkey Tennis
Premise: After a tragic tennis accident, a failed tennis pro seeks redemption by coaching a talented chimp and entering him in to Wimbledon disguised in a man-suit.
Why You Should Read: This is the greatest monkey tennis story ever told. It’s an ironic homage, a pastiche if you will – a spoof if you must – of the great animal-based comedies of the 90s like Beethoven, Flipper, and Dunston Checks In, each one of them an iconic work which has stood the test of time.
Writers: Chris Grezo & Rupert Knowles
Details: 110 pages

Ben Stiller to play the chimp in a human suit?

Das.

Chimp.

Chimp.

Das.

By themselves, the above words mean nothing. Invisible food-coloring, if you will.

But together? They represent one of the most powerful phrases in the English language.

Das Chimp.

Don’t believe me? Have you ever had a single passionate thought about the word “Das” before last Friday?

Me neither.

But look at how much controversy that same word created once combined with “chimp.” We had a fellow competitor questioning the sanity of each and every member of the Scriptshadow community when his script was defeated by Das Chimp.

Let us call a spade a spade. “Das Chimp” is the single greatest title to ever grace the pixelbytes of Scriptshadow. It is both simple, yet oh so complex.

And therein lies Das Chimp’s biggest hurdle. Could a title promise something so great, that it was impossible for the story to live up to it?

My friends, I’m ready to find out if you are.

So please, grab a beer, grab a racket, grab your favorite stuffed animal, and join me… for Das Chimp.

It’s never a good day when you kill your doubles partner. That’s what happened to John Protagonist, who lost his nerve when his tennis match got tight, accidentally hitting the chair umpire with a serve, causing a chain reaction of Center Court implosion, leading to a giant light landing on poor Hamish.

Adds a whole new meaning to the term, drop shot.

Fast forward 10 years and John faces each day with the regret of what he did to a man who didn’t deserve his demise. John heads to the zoo to share a beer with his custodian best friend, Duncan, when he sees a chimp effortlessly hitting a tennis ball against the wall.

John approaches the chimp’s handler, the excessively weird but beautiful zookeeper, Lily, and asks if he can teach the chimp (Pierre) tennis. Lily is game, but to do this, they’ll need to make sure no one realizes Pierre is gone. John comes up with an idea and puts Duncan in a monkey suit where he’ll stand in for Pierre.

Once John gets Pierre out on the court, he’s even better than he thought, so he starts entering Pierre in tournaments. The scrappy Pierre keeps winning, and actually earns a birth into Wimbledon! There’s only one problem. Monkeys aren’t allowed to play Wimbledon! Who would’ve thought?

So John gets another one of his genius ideas. He’ll dress Pierre up in a human suit. No one will know the difference. Meanwhile, John is dealing with some unexpected issues. Pierre is in love with Lily. And the reason Lily is so weird is because she was raised my meerkats. She has no clue how human interaction works.

But John’s biggest challenge comes when Britain’s #1 Doubles team is mauled by a wild boar. Britain comes to John and asks if he’ll team up with upstart Pierre to represent the country again. John is reluctant, but dons the headband once more, this time to play with a chimp… a chimp wearing a human suit.

Elephant shit.

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not my assessment of the script.

I’m just noting that when you can include an elephant shit joke in your movie? And it’s FUNNY? By gosh you’ve already succeeded my friend.

But Das Chimp is no flash in the pan one-elephant-shit-joke wonder. Believe it or not, the majority of this script is funny. And not just funny, but well structured!

There’s an easy way to distinguish between “I don’t know how to write a screenplay” broad comedy and “I actually know what I’m doing here” broad comedy. Setups and payoffs. When I see lots of setups and payoffs in a broad comedy script, I know the writer has thought the script through, and, at the very least, completed a few rewrites. You can’t include too many payoffs without going through the script and figuring out where to set up them up.

For example, the crazed always angry Zoo owner lets out one of his wild boars at night to take care of people sneaking into the zoo after closing. 50 pages later, that same boar is responsible for sending John back into competition, after it mauls the other British doubles team.

And Lily is an entire compilation of setups. She acts beyond bizarre, to the point where you wonder if she’s retarded. Then we learn why she acts that way. She was abandoned by her parents as a kid and raised by meerkats. She would then get a job at the zoo because animals were the only world she understood.

But the best thing about Das Chimp is that Grezo and Knowles rarely make a lazy choice. Everything that happens here is either bizarre or the result of something bizarre.

I have no doubt that a less talented writer would’ve made Duncan (John’s friend) some corporate type, so as to properly contrast the friends’ lives (like the screenwriting books tell you to do). Instead, they make Duncan an animal shit-shoveler over at the zoo. And thank God they did. Duncan’s storyline – while in chimp costume, he falls in love with a real chimp, Princess – was my favorite of the script, and led to the biggest laugh.

In this scene, Duncan comes to talk to Princess. I dare you to read what happens next.

If I have a beef with the script, it’s that the setup could be sharper. Pierre’s ascent from chimp who likes to hit against the wall to rising tennis star is way too fast. I understand that we have to get to the story, but I never understand why it was so important that Pierre start playing tournaments. John’s motivation seems more tied to using Pierre as an excuse to be around Lily. He didn’t need to enter Pierre in tournaments to do that.

This may seem like nitpicking. But the script ends up taking its plot surprisingly seriously later on, retroactively sending me back to this first act, where the only reason things seem to be happening is because they need to for the script to exist.

Another area that could’ve been better is the Pierre tennis matches, which were too repetitive. A lot of Pierre running around for balls it doesn’t look like he’s going to get to… and then he gets to them! I speak from experience as I’ve written several tennis scripts myself. I’ve learned you need to limit the repetitive actions of the sport and focus instead on individualized non-playing situations.

For example, instead of writing an entire page of, “… and then Pierre runs over to get the ball, barely reaching it – BAM! – he hits it back…” you might focus on the fact that a ballboy suspects that Pierre isn’t human, and write in a series of moments where the ballboy is trying to figure it out.

Obviously, you have to include SOME points to build the drama in the match. But the strange thing about screenwriting and sports is you want to include as little actual playing of the sport as you can get away with. The exception would be if you’re focusing on something unique within the game. For example, if John’s racket cracks during a point and he doesn’t have a backup, so John needs to play a point WITHOUT A RACKET. We’re going to be more interested in that point because it’s unique. It’s not another, “…he reaches for the ball with all his might…”

Das Chimp isn’t perfect. But these two writers are DEFINITELY funny. I believe it’s a script worth perfecting. So I’d encourage anyone here that if they can think of more funny scenes for Das Chimp, to share them with the writers. The more laughs we can pack into this script, the better shot it has.

Script link: Das Chimp

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Give friends and family jobs that keep them closer to the story as opposed to further away. So you don’t want to make Duncan an architect or a stock trader. You give him a position at the zoo, where we can keep him close to the story without having to force it.

So the other day I FINALLY decided to watch “Atlanta,” the show from Community alum Donald Glover that had gone on to win a Golden Globe for Best Television Show, a Writers Guild Award for best Comedy Series, and was nominated for an Emmy in writing. Personally, I thought it looked pretentious and unfocused, so I never got around to watching it. Until now.

Before I get into my thoughts on the series, I have to share something with you. I hate Donald Glover. There’s something about the guy that rubs me like a bad batch of poison ivy. Discounting the fact that he’s an egomaniac who must prove he can act, direct, write, produce, rap, and do stand-up comedy, all under the guise of an “aw-shucks-I’m-just-trying-to-work” persona. Discounting the fact that there are articles being written about him that tell everyone to “underestimate Donald Glover at your own peril” (Gag me with an Instagram like). There are things even beyond those issues that I despise.

Mainly, that his writing is just okay. His dialogue is decent at times. But his storytelling leaves a lot to be desired. And his acting vacillates between mini mumbling monologues and looking like he’s so stoned that he might fall asleep at any moment.

Worst of all, it’s impossible not to know you’re watching Donald Glover whenever he’s onscreen. The Martian basically stopped for 5 minutes mid-film so that they could include a random “Donald Glover Short Film” Scene. I thought an actor’s job was to disappear into a role. Glover goes in the opposite direction, always wearing the same hipster clothes, always sporting the same trendy haircut, always giving the camera the same Donald Glover hangdog expression.

Donald Glover in The Martian.

Which makes it all the more perplexing that the man is one of Hollywood’s fastest rising stars. And it really bothers me. Not because I don’t get the love for the dude. But because every time a writer or an actor or a director (or in Donald’s case, an actor/writer/director/producer/rapper/caterer/surgeon) rises up, Hollywood is telling you something: THIS IS WHAT WE WANT. Which means you, the aspiring multi-hyphenate, must understand why this person is ascending so that you can take some lessons from it and use them to further your own career.

Yet here I stood with Glover, unable to figure out how he’d separated himself from the pack.
I’m sure Glover’s old fellow staff writers on 30 Rock (where he started) are asking the same thing. Why is this guy blowing up while we’re still trying to get staff writing jobs on The Goldbergs?
Powering down my television after that decidedly average pilot episode of Atlanta, I finally figured it out.

Do you want to know what it is?

Voice.

What Donald Glover has that all those other staff writers and bottom feeder feature assignment writers and aspiring amateur screenwriters don’t have is a VOICE. It’s undeniable. Glover is bringing something unique to the table that nobody else out there is doing. I don’t know what it is, exactly. But I do know that when I watch his shows or listen to the dialogue he’s written? It’s different. And the reason this is so important is that VOICE is the equivalent of GOLD in the artistic community – the most valuable commodity there is – to the point where it can propel someone like Glover to stardom.

Think about it. How many people in this business truly have a unique voice? Very few. The majority of Hollywood’s army are cogs in a machine, regurgitating or helping to regurgitate the same old movies and TV shows over and over and over again.

When someone emerges from that glut of sameness to give us something unique, they stand out like a punch at a cuddle party. In fact, the very reason I hate this guy is tied to his voice. That’s what voice does. Its unique point-of-view incites passion one way or another. In my case, it’s “or another” but for a ton of people, it’s “one way.” He’s got something unique.

As artists, there is no bigger fear than being bland. Wondering whether we’re one of those also-rans who doesn’t have anything original to say keeps us up at night. Don’t get me wrong. You can still work in Hollywood without a voice. If you can perfect form and technique and craft and understand how the storytelling and character creation mechanisms work, you can work in this town. But you’ll never be special. You’ll never stand out like Donald Glover.

So today, I’m going to help you find your inner voice. The bad news is, voice isn’t something you can construct through pure force of will. Your voice is who you are at your core and therefore emerges naturally. When you look at someone like Bill Murray, his unique persona isn’t calculated. It’s just him. On the flip side, there are clearly celebrities who enhance their voice in a calculated manner. Lady Gaga, for example, does a lot of calculated things in order to enhance her “voice.”
With that in mind, here are seven things you can do to find your voice so you can be more like Donald Glover and less like those journeyman staff writers on The Goldbergs.

1) Identify what your world view is – What is the operating thesis by which you see the world? Is it John Lennon-esque, that everyone should put aside their differences, hold hands, and find peace with one another? Or is it Machiavellian, where everyone’s backstabbing each other and looking out for number 1? Is it idealistic, like Spielberg? Or is it fatalistic, like Kubrick? One of the key reasons for a writer lacking voice is that they don’t explore underlying themes in their work. Without a point-of-view, a lot of what we write is empty.

2) Write stories that exploit that world view – A big mistake writers make is not writing the scripts that explore the world view they’re so passionate about! For example, if you have a Kubrickian world view, but you’re writing Das Chimp, you’re not taking advantage of your voice. Every script you write where you’re not exploring your world view is going to feel lacking in some way.

3) Break rules – Following the rules allows you to write something good. But breaking the rules is how you write something great. Writers with voice don’t make sure their inciting incident happens on page 12. They’re too busy telling a unique and unexpected story. There’s a balancing act here. You can’t ignore rules completely. They’re what keep your story focused. But if you come across a rule in regards to your script that, by breaking, makes the story come alive in some way? That’s a sign that the rule is worth breaking. In “Room,” the Screenwriting Rule Nazi would’ve encouraged the writer to either get them out of the room at the end of the first act, giving them enough time to build a storyline post-Room, or in the third act, crafting the escape as the climax (like you’d see in a traditional thriller). Instead they placed the escape at the midpoint, allowing them to explore a devastating question: Where was life better? In the room? Or out?

4) Be raw and honest – To have a voice, you have to let us into your soul. It’s the only way we’re going to get to know the true you. And the deeper down you take us, the more ‘you’ we’re getting. The majority of writers write as fanboys. They re-write their favorite horror movies, reshape their favorite action set-pieces, mimic their favorite dialogue writers. They think that’s writing. That’s not writing. Writing is baring your soul through your characters. Be truthful. Be honest. Get into the nitty gritty of how you endure the human experience. This is why everybody 30 years later is STILL trying to write John Hughes movies and failing. They don’t realize that those movies don’t work because of the fun parts. They work because of the darkness, because of the way Hughes explored human psychology during one of the most confusing times in a person’s life – adolescence.

5) Be brave – Tarantino, one of the most voice-y writers ever, once said (paraphrasing) “You should always be a little nervous to let someone read your stuff because of how fucked up some of it is.” That’s not to say everyone should include a Gimp-Rape scene in their script, especially if you’ve been hired to write The Nut-Job 3 (on second thought…..). But a good writer explores those messy areas in life and in human interaction that aren’t usually talked about openly. Embracing those awkward moments brings truth and originality to your work.

6) Evolve The Genre – We all have our favorite genres to write in. So I’m going to give you advice that’ll place you ahead of 90% of aspiring screenwriters out there. Before you write your script, ask yourself, “How do I plan to update this genre?” If you’re writing a horror film, maybe you’re infusing race into it (Get Out). If you’re writing a heist film, maybe you’re infusing time manipulation into it (Inception). If you’re writing a Western, maybe you’re bringing a level of violence to the proceedings that has never been seen before (Bone Tomahawk). I consider this tip, more than any other, a ‘cheat code’ in the game of voice, because without much work up front, you can make a script feel totally unique.

7) Make sure there’s at least one character in your script who’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before – Audiences rarely remember the plot to a movie years later. But they always remember the characters. I’ve found that voice-y scripts always have at least one character who’s totally and completely different. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Miles in Sideways. Wade in Deadpool. Juno in Juno. Unique characters go hand in hand with voice. So don’t write your script without one.

8) BONUS! – A non-traditional narrative – I went back and forth on whether to include this tip because there’s nothing more that I hate than a rambling narrative, a vague plot, or unclean structure. But the proof is in the pudding. The artists with the strongest voices tend to sacrifice plot and structure for character and situation. Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Sophia Coppola, Aaron Sorkin, Christopher Nolan. I’m not a fan of this tip. But I can’t deny its presence when it comes to writers with voice.

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) After a shooting at a police funeral by a suspected militia member, a recluse ex-cop and fellow militia man must interrogate the suspected gunmen in his own militia before copycat attacks start a nationwide war between cops and militia.
About: This script finished on the 2015 Black List. The film will star current Walking Dead villain, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The writer, Henry Dunham, will also be directing. Dunham first made waves with his short, The Awareness, which you can watch here.
Writer: Henry Dunham
Details: 105 pages

Just want to give everybody a heads up. Yet ANOTHER female John Wick project is going into production, this one starring Alias vet, Jennifer Garner. The script is being written by Chad St. John, whose Scriptshadow interview you can check out here. Not going to mince words, guys. If you’ve got a female John Wick script, ya better finish fast. I sense that the end of this trend is coming, especially with the so-so box office of Atomic Blonde.

On to today’s script, which actually contains an ORIGINAL premise. Imagine that. A concept that isn’t following any trends but is rather blazing its own trail. I’ve always been fascinated by the militia. We basically allow people in our country to come together and form their own personal armies. How is that okay?? It was for that reason that I picked Militia up. Let’s find out if it rewarded my curiosity.

40 year-old Gannon lives out in the wilderness. He’s in the midst of smoking a deer for dinner when he hears automatic gunshots in the distance. These gunshots are followed by three explosions. Gannon immediately gets on the phone with a dude named Olsen and the two agree to meet at “The Safe House.”

That safe house is a reclusive lumber warehouse where Olsen and Gannon are soon accompanied by a trickling-in of militia members. There’s Beckman, the techy of the group, Morris, the giant Alpha Male with a chip on his shoulder, Hubbel, a slovenly mountain man, Keating, a deaf-mute, and Noah, the only guy here who looks reasonably presentable.

As the group listens in on the radio, they learn that someone has attacked a cop’s funeral and shot up a good 20 cops in the process. This is bad news because the first people they’re going to suspect in this shooting is the militia. And that’s where the meeting begins – how to make it clear they weren’t involved.

However, when they check their supplies and learn an automatic rifle and several grenades are missing, they realize they WERE the ones involved, and now it’s a matter of smoking out the guy who did it. Gannon takes the lead with the interrogations, convinced that the antagonistic Morris is their culprit.

But it quickly becomes clear that not everything is as at seems. And when word comes in that there have been TWO MORE major militia attacks in neighboring states, they realize that this is way bigger than just one guy. In the end, it’ll be up to Gannon to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth before the police find them, raid the warehouse, and kill them all.

UGH!

I so wanted this to be great! I loved this setup.

So here’s a great tip for screenwriters looking for a big concept that can be made on the cheap. As we’ve discussed before, when your script is cheap to make, you increase the number of potential buyers exponentially.

To do this, start with a really big idea. It can be anything. A giant monster. A mega-quake. A nuclear war. Whatever. But don’t build the story around the actual subject. That’d be expensive. Build it around characters who are affected by the subject.

What this does is it makes your movie feel big even though it’s small.

That’s what Dunham does here. There’s a big attack on this cop funeral, but we don’t see a frame of it. We hear it. But we don’t see it. Then, the entire movie takes place in a warehouse with these characters trying to figure out which one of them perpetrated the attack.

Do you know how cheap it would be to make this movie? You could shoot it in 2 weeks. And it still FEELS BIG. That’s really smart writing there.

Another thing I liked about this script was that it was a SITUATION. What I mean by that is, we don’t see the attack, watch someone run away, show the cops prepare to catch them, show our attacker hide out, meet a love interest, try to move to the next safe area, get into a chase scene, etc., etc.

That’s not a situation. That’s a series of events.

Militia is a situation. A bunch of dudes in one place. One of them killed some cops. The leader has to figure out which one of them did it. Every person who walks into this theater is going to immediately understand what this movie is about. What the setup is. What the rules are. It’s a clear situation.

Not that non-situations can’t work. Yesterday’s film, Good Time, wasn’t a situation and it was a great flick. But situations tend to work really well for feature films. So if you can think of a good one, write it. Other situation-films include The Shallows, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Saw, The Hateful Eight, The Thing, The Wall, Birdman and The Martian.

Yet another great tip to take away from Militia is the mid-point RAISING OF THE STAKES. Remember that when you go into the second half of your story, you need to make things feel bigger somehow. If they stay the same, people are going to get bored. Especially in a movie like this, where you only have one location to work with.

So the midpoint news that it wasn’t just this one funeral attack that happened, but that there was a coordinated attack against cops across three separate states? That’s when I was like, ooooh, this is good. The movie was growing beyond its original setup. That’s always a good thing.

But all was not perfect with Militia.

My big issue with it was that the character-to-character interactions felt a little… phony. I didn’t get the sense that the writer really understood what militia men were like. And this is a common issue in screenwriting. You pick an idea because you like it, but you don’t know anything about the actual subject matter.

So you have a choice. You can do some research and combine it with what you’ve learned through similar movies that you’ve seen, or you can really do the hard work. That means doing a fuck-ton of research. That means finding and locating an actual militia member and talking to them. Learning what their day-to-day life is like.

Nobody likes to do this. So the more common route is the former. And, unfortunately, when you do the former, there’s a lack of authenticity to the proceedings. And I’m not saying it was insufferable here. Some of the interactions felt real. But there were enough moments where I wondered, “Would this really be happening this way?” that it affected my enjoyment of the story.

With that said, I love this setup and I have a feeling that with some rewrites, these authenticity problems can be fixed. So I’m going to recommend Militia. It’s a fun script.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you really want to make your descriptions pop, use analogies. When you have a guy with a deep voice, you don’t want to say, “His voice is deep and throaty.” That’s boring. Do what Dunham does. Here, he describes mountain man Hubbel’s voice with an analogy: “Every word from Hubbel sounds like gravel being raked.”

A script without a theme is like a photograph without a subject. The picture can be well-composed, colorful, sharp, and yet the experience of looking at the photo feels empty. You get no sense of what the photographer was trying to say with the image.

“Trying to say,” is a nice way to define theme. When you write a story, you should be trying to say something. You don’t have to. But it helps fill in the emptiness. It helps give your story meaning.

Today, I want to talk about how to find your theme. And not just for your own projects. When you break into the big leagues, being able to discuss theme in a pitch room will be one of the determining factors for you getting the job. When you’re angling for that million dollar Emoji Movie assignment, you better have an idea of what your theme is going to be going into the pitch or I promise you, you won’t get it.

Despite the term being one of the most abstract in the craft, theme isn’t as difficult to identify as you might think. In fact, most of the time, it’s right under your nose.

A few weeks ago, Steph Jones sent me her logline for a consultation (the script was also a part of last week’s Amateur Offerings). Her script was about two fame-seeking millennials who start a fake travel adventure blog. Going off that one-sentence breakdown, let’s see how we figure out the theme.

The driving force behind Steph’s story is clearly fame. That’s what these characters are looking for. Therefore, our theme should revolve around celebrity. So maybe the theme is about our culture’s obsession with celebrity without actually having to earn it, and the ramifications of that.

Keep in mind that simple/universal themes resonate best. And that a good theme teaches the characters a lesson after it’s all over.

Continuing on, let’s look at yesterday’s script, Murder on the Orient Express. Here’s the logline: “When a murder occurs in the first class cabin of the Orient Express, a world renown detective must figure out which of the travelers committed the crime.”

This one is tougher as the logline is too broad to imply any obvious themes. However, if you were writing this script yourself (spoilers!), you would know that the murdered man is an escaped killer, and that the travelers have decided to kill him for it. This opens up a more obvious theme, which is that of vigilante justice. If a man has done something inarguably horrible, is it okay to take justice into your own hands, or do you gamble on the risky nature of official justice, where the man might go free? This is one of the most common themes in film. You see it in Westerns, in superhero movies, and in revenge thrillers (John Wick).

Okay, let’s up the difficulty level. Dunkirk: “An army of 300,000 men, trapped on the beach, desperately await rescue while a surrounding German army decides whether to attack or not.”

War allows for the exploration of many themes. So it’s not like you can wrong here. But with the key plotline focusing on one soldier’s willingness to do anything to escape the beach, you could argue that the theme of Dunkirk is, simply, selfishness. At what point does sacrifice give way to looking out for number one? Indeed, this theme is present throughout many war movies.

Since this is Scriptshadow, we can’t go through an entire Thursday post without a Star Wars example. But let’s make it tough on ourselves. We’re going to find a theme for Rogue One: “A group of misfit criminals must join together to steal the plans of the most dangerous weapon in the universe.”

Hopefully you guys are getting a feel for this now, so before I offer my theme, go ahead and try to figure this out on your own. I’ll wait… Okay, so we have a group of people attempting to steal something. Normally, these people operate on their own. So this one is actually pretty easy. The theme is the power of the group over the individual. In life, one person can only achieve so much. But together, the possibilities are infinite.

Remember, themes should have consequences for the characters who deviate from them. Or, at the very least, the threat of consequence. So if one of the characters in Rogue One chooses an action that pits himself above the group, he should pay for it.

Okay, let’s end on the toughest one yet. It’s so tough, I’m not even sure what the theme is yet. Gone Girl. Here’s the IMDB logline: “With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man tries to prove that his wife is inexplicably responsible for what has happened.”

Usually, when the theme for a movie isn’t obvious after you’ve watched it, that’s a bad thing. It means the message didn’t come through clearly enough. And it may be why, while Gone Girl is considered a good film, it’s not one that’s remained in the public conscious. That’s why theme is so important. A well-executed theme helps a movie stay with someone for many years to come.

But I’ll give it my best shot. I’d say that the theme of Gone Girl is our society’s need to try people in the court of public opinion. You’re guilty until proven innocent. What I find interesting about this and similar themes is that while they shine a light on society, they don’t hit the audience on an emotional level. That’s something to keep in mind when you choose your theme. Do you want to make a statement about society or do you want to make a statement about the individual? The former gets critics frothing but the latter stays with audiences longer.

Now bust out your latest script and figure out the theme, dammit!

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations, which go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. And as of today, all logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround time. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Action/Adventure
Premise: The military contracts a disgraced Harvard professor who believes in dragons to escort them to a mysterious island where the mythical beasts potentially still exist.
About: What else is there to say? It’s another Max Landis script, baby. The one writer still making huge spec sales. This one, to my knowledge, has not sold yet. But if anyone has any updated information on that, let me know.
Writer: Max Landis
Details: 120 pages (Dec 2014 draft) Second Rewrite

Max Landis really likes orcs.

And dragons.

And fairies n stuff.

By the way, I finally figured out why the trailer for Landis’s Netflix flick, “Bright,” begins with that uncomfortable fairy-beating sequence. I realized that a meeting took place within the Netflix brain trust…

“How do we show that this is the kind of fantasy movie Hollywood can’t make?” So they had Will Smith beat the shit out of fairy, the message being: This ain’t your grandfather’s fantasy flick.

Was that choice a success? No.

But that’s what’s great about Netflix. They’re okay with taking chances. And chances often fail, as I’ve discussed in a recent Scriptshadow post.

So let’s get to today’s script, because I think there’s a huge screenwriting lesson we can learn from it. But before I tell you what that is, let’s dive bomb, dragon-style, into the plot…

Terra Obscura starts with one of the most traditional first acts you’ll find in a movie like this. Which was surprising since Landis is such an anarchist. Adam Burns just got fired from his Harvard professorial job after an interview of him saying he believes in dragons goes viral.

After his girlfriend reams him out for deep-sixing his career, Adam is kidnapped off the street by men who’ve watched too many movies, since they throw a bag over his head then yank him into a van. They then throw him on a helicopter, informing him that they’re going to an island where a Russian sub thats’s been programmed to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. has crashed.

Adam makes it clear he doesn’t know why he’s here. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“On the contrary,” the military official tells him. “You might be the only one who knows what’s going on.”

Cue our “HARD CUT TO” Predator helicopter moment. Oh yeah, this island they’re going to may contain… creatures of the magical type. That’s confirmed the second they fly over land when two dragons that would make Khallesi’s corset explode attack the Blackhawks.

Adam’s helicopter crashes and he and the men use a radiation meter to figure out where the marooned sub is. But on the way there, they run into orcs and fairies and Necromances and Dark Elves and other nerdy monsters. What Adam realizes is that the Russian sub may have been a ruse. Which means they’ve been lured here. But why? The answer may be much worse than a measly nuclear attack on the United States…

The first thing I noticed about Terra Obscura had nothing to do with Terra Obscura. Rather, it had to do with Skull Island and Ghostbusters. Strangely, two of the first three scenes in Landis’s script have helicopters arriving on an “invisible” island and giant monsters attacking them. After that, we flash back to show Adam getting fired from his job at a prestigious university because he yelled into a camera, “I believe in dragons,” then got fired by his boss after it went viral.

Both these scenes, almost verbatim, were in Skull Island and [the new] Ghostbusters. I see that this script pre-dates both of those films. So what does that mean? I remember Landis either worked on or was going to work on Ghostbusters. So maybe he wrote a similar scene there and they used it cause they had the rights? But I didn’t know Landis worked on Skull Island. And if he didn’t, does that mean someone just took this scene from Terra Obscura?

Of course, there’s a third possibility: None of us are as original as we think we are. Maybe these ideas are so obvious that everybody is writing versions of them. I don’t know. But I found that surprising. I was like, “I’ve seen both of these scenes already!”

There’s a bigger talking point I wanted to get into today, however. And it has to do with the fact that Bright got made and Terra Obscura (as of today) did not. Why is that?

BUDGET

Bright is set in the real world with actors wearing prosthetics. Terra Obscura is shooting in a jungle with a full slate of Lord of the Rings like creatures. In other words, it’s a lot more expensive.

I’m often asked by writers if they should write something big budget or small. The answer to this is more complicated than you’d think but I’ll give you the simple answer first. SMALL. Look at the data. How many non-IP giant-budgeted movies are made a year? Two? How many non-IP small budget movies are made a year? A LOT. So you’re increasing your number of buyers exponentially with a lower-budgeted script. Which is why Bright was kind of genius. It was a high-concept idea that was financially achievable.

However, there’s a growing belief that it’s so difficult to sell screenplays, you have to entertain the long game when thinking about which script to write. So if you want to write big-budget movies like James Bond, you write a James Bond-like movie, knowing that it isn’t going to sell. However, if people like it and you get buzz from it, you’re now brought into the Hollywood loop, and you’re in contention for assignment work on movies like that. So in that case, writing the big-budget idea was the way to go.

The point is, it depends on what your goal is. If you’re just trying to sell, Bright is the perfect conceptual blueprint. It’s a budget-friendly genre idea. But if you want to write for the Star Wars or Avatar franchises, write the best sci-fi fantasy script of the decade. Just know that you ain’t going to sell it.

As for the Terra Obscura script (which is the name of the island, if you were wondering), it was pretty good. It poses an interesting question for a script like this. Do you make your hero resistant or active? In the similarly set up, Aliens, Ripley is a boss. She’s all in right away. In Terra Obscura, Adam doesn’t want to be here at all. He’s scared. This is too much for him.

Both options have their pros and cons. When your hero is resistant, like Adam, he has somewhere to go as a character. It’s clear that there’s going to be an inner journey here. Him being able to overcome his fear will lead to him changing, which, when done well, results in a more impactful viewing experience.

However, in Aliens, Ripley is thought of as one of the best characters ever. And she was active and brave from the start. Why did that work? Well, Cameron decided to explore a different part of Ripley to show her growth. Both her distrust of the mission and her role as a mother to Newt became the backbone for her character growth.

And that’s the thing screenwriters forget. You’re not limited to one of those “fatal flaw” boxes. You can play outside the box.

Also, I find it dangerous to have a hero who’s too weak. Even if they’re eventually going to arc into a strong person, we’re going to be spending at least half the screenplay with them as a weakling. And audiences have trouble rooting for weaklings (not physical weaklings, but mental). That hurt my overall opinion of the script.

However, Landis knows how to keep a script entertaining. And whereas the Kong Skull Island plot points were visible from light years away, I didn’t know where this script was going. The Dungeons & Dragons creatures angle threw me off. And Landis’s love for that world resulted in numerous twists and turns I wasn’t expecting.

So Terra Obscura was just fun enough for me to recommend.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: A trick for writing high-concept low-budget genre films is to utilize one fantastical element and place that element inside the modern-day world. What this does is it ensures that studios don’t need to create any expensive effects-driven worlds. They can shoot 95% of the movie in real world settings. Then, the one fantastical element (Orcs in Bright, or time travel in Primer) is what gives your script a big feel for a cheap price.