Genre: Family/Drama/Fantasy/Animation
Premise: A group of old fashioned toys live comfortably in an abandoned house. However, their world is turned upside-down when a single mother and her daughter move in.
About: This is Alex Garland’s latest script. He wrote it for his wife, Paloma Baeza, to direct. This would be her first feature. She’s directed four short films. The most recent, Poles Apart, is an animated film about a polar bear who meets a grizzly bear for the first time. Helena Botham Carter voiced the polar bear.
Writer: Alex Garland
Details: 106 pages

Alex Garland is one of my favorite writers. I loved his last two films, Ex Machina and Annihilation. And if you want to go back a ways, I thought his novel, The Beach, was excellent. So I’ll read anything he writes. Even if it’s a children’s story! That is, of course, if this is a children’s story. The Toymaker’s Secret is a bizarre amalgam of genres – family, horror, fantasy, ghost story, comedy, drama – which works in its favor sometimes, and against it in others. I guess you might call this a “darker” version of Toy Story. Let’s check out the plot.

In East London, 1891, the Toymaker is on his deathbed. It’s here where he tells his apprentice that it’s time to pass on his secret – the secret of bringing toys to life. The apprentice is crawling out of his skin, he’s so excited. But first, he brings up a quibble.

“Master, one question.”

“Speak.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why wait for the deathbed? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have told me this days ago?”

“I just said. It’s the way it’s always been. Since the days of Merlin.”

“Yes, but just given the importance of the secret, it seems so risky to wait until now.”

“Well, there’s a nice symmetry, isn’t there? At the moment of death. Passing the secret of life.”

“But it does make the timing unnecessarily critical.”

“Well quite. And given that time is fast running out — “

“— But what if something had happened to you? You could have been hit by a horse-drawn carriage.”

“That’s exactly why I look both ways before crossing the road.”

“Or been struck by lightning.”

“Could we address these questions after I’ve imparted the secret, rather than before?”

The Toymaker then brings the apprentice close and whispers the secret. Moments later, he’s dead. The apprentice jumps for joy. But not for the reasons we think. “You old fool. I see it all now. The greatest secret in the history of mankind. And for centuries, it has been wasted on children’s toys. But no longer. I shall use it for a very different purpose. I shall build an army of mighty automatons. All shall fall before me like dry wheat beneath the scythe! And I shall rule THE WORLD!”

The apprentice then runs outside, gets hit by a horse and carriage, gets struck by lightning, and dies.

Cut to Alfred, a teddy bear, Tulip, a doll, Celine, a snake, and Gawain, a knight, watching from the window. The toys realize they’re on their own now, and when a new family moves in, they’re forced to relocate to the walls, where they build a new home. They watch this family live for 80 years, until they are no more. Then they spend the next couple of decades living in the house alone.

That is until Catherine, a single mother, and Emily, her 9 year old daughter, move in. The toys are annoyed, but they’ve done this dance before. Then everything changes when a local contractor stops by to look at the house, and announces that the kitchen ceiling is going to need to be replaced. Since 90% of the toys’ secret home is above the kitchen, this forces them to uproot and move everything to a different section of the house.

When more contractors show up and suggest more changes, the toys realize that if they don’t think of something fast, their secret existence will be discovered. That’s when they come up with a plan to haunt their inhabitants. They do a pretty good job of this, with Tulip allowing herself to be “discovered,” only to pull an Exorcist, twisting her head around and making weird noises.

The only problem is that Emily is on to them. She finds her way into the secret world of the toys and demands to know what’s going on. They confess that they’re terrible “people” and tried to get them to leave. Emily forgives them, but both sides then encounter a new threat. It turns out that a toy the Toymaker never finished has also been living in the bowels of the house. And now he wants revenge for being left by the other toys…

While Rian Johnson may have forever turned the phrase “subverting expectations” into a screenwriting swear word, it’s still something you want to be doing when you’re writing. Subverting expectations doesn’t have to be the opposite of a big twist we were expecting, or the opposite of the climax we all wanted. It can include going against any expectation the reader has, even the smallest ones.

When I started The Toymaker’s Secret and he was on his deathbed and he prepares to tell his apprentice his big secret, I groaned. I’d seen this scene way too many times before. I got ready for a lonnnng read. But then the apprentice asks, “Why wait for the deathbed? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have told me this days ago?” and I laughed. Not only did it subvert my expectations, but it was a dead-on observation that I’d always wondered myself. I went from skeptical to intrigued.

Then, after the apprentice learns the secret, he screams out how he’s going to make an army of automatons and take over the world, and I groaned again. “Oh,” I thought. “It’s going to be one of those movies.” Then the apprentice runs outside and gets killed. My expectations were subverted a SECOND time. Once more, I was intrigued. I should’ve known better. This wasn’t some weekend screenwriting warrior we were talking about. It was Alex Garland. Lesson learned.

The best thing about The Toymaker’s Secret is the characters, specifically the toys. I loved three of the four toys immediately. Each of them had such distinctive personalities. Alfred was the rule-follower and task-master. Tulip was the overly curious one. And Gawain was extremely serious about his duty. That’s one of the most important parts of the game, guys. You want the reader to know who your characters are. They should never be confused or wishy-washy about them. The lone wishy-washy character here is Celine, the snake. And she disappears into the background as a result. The same will happen to your characters unless they’re DISTINCT. We must know who they are and what they represent. Never forget that.

The worst thing about The Toymaker’s Secret is the plot. Remember that when you stick your characters in a single location for the majority of the story, you are limiting your narrative options. It’s not a coincidence that the word “movie” comes from the verb “move.” Movies like stories that MOVE SOMEWHERE. The exception is when there’s an outside force inflicting conflict on the characters in the location. Like David Fincher’s movie, Panic Room. Those characters are constantly threatened by an outside force.

The Toymaker’s Secret’s narrative is driven more by the impending collision between humans and toys. That’s really the only reason to keep watching. We’re curious how the two are going to meet, and what will happen when they do. This type of story engine can work. It’s just hard. And you can see Garland struggling with it throughout. The plot never truly gets going.

It all catches up to him in the third act, where we throw in the insane toy who’s been locked in the basement the whole time. The “late-arriving villain” is another toughie to make work because we don’t know him well. Therefore we don’t know what he wants. Therefore we’re not scared of him. Therefore we don’t give him a lot of weight. When you try and build your climax around a plot point like that, the results are predictable.

Which is too bad because I loved these toys. I thought Gawain, in particular, was hilarious. And Tulip was adorable. The scene where she sneaks into Emily’s room and uses a VR headset for the first time – rocking everything she knows about life – was wonderful. There’s a movie you can build around these characters, for sure. But this script tries to cover too many bases and, in the process, never discovers what kind of movie it wants to be. With that said, Garland keeps it readable, and I was never bored. So I’d say this is worth checking out.

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

What I learned: One word can add so much to an image. When Tulip is stabbing the contractor’s toe through the wall with Gawain’s sword, Alfred comes flying in to stop her before she’s discovered. Here’s the description.

We are with TULIP, about to JAB SAM again —


— when suddenly she is RUGBY TACKLED by ALFRED.

Garland could’ve easily used “tackled” all by itself. It does the job. But by adding “RUGBY” before it, it creates a much more specific image.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: In the fast-rising sport of Bricklaying, an anti-doping agent and disgraced former champion must take down the champion’s former nemesis, who they suspect is using a bricklaying-enhancement drug known as “Brick Dust.”
Why You Should Read: Bricks of Glory was inspired by a real life event called the Bricklayer 500 which takes place in Vegas every year. They take the top 20 bricklayers from around the world and compete to see who can build the highest (and most structurally sound) brick wall in 60 minutes. A friend of mine’s husband won the Regional Competition in my area so I went to Vegas to watch the show and attended the World of Concrete convention as research. Man, what a trip. I mean they seriously treat this like a major sporting event! I find it so hilarious! So in my script, I completely exaggerate this and make it a much bigger, funnier, spectacle of a sport. Bricklayers use flair, like lighting their walls on fire and juggling bricks, and the competition is so fierce, they resort to taking performance enhancing drugs. I’ve put a lot of work into this script, even doing table reads with stand up comedians to help me punch up the jokes. But if you want to see what inspired it, here’s a video recap of the Bricklayer 500 which should sell it better than I ever could: https://youtu.be/zR69ZFdldH0
Writer: Alison Parker
Details: 103 pages

It’s been 20 years, but the sequel to one of my favorite movies ever – Braveheart – has FINALLY come out (The Outlaw King). Yes, the adventures of Robert the Bruce, starring Chris Pine, arrived on Netflix this morning. The film is stuck at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. But keep in mind that most of those reviews came in before the director cut 20 minutes from the film after festival showings, massively streamlining it. I’ll be watching Braveheart 2 this weekend and reviewing it Monday.

Today, we’re taking on one of my favorite AO comedy premises of 2018. I’m really excited about this since comedy gets a bad rap on this site. This sounds like a truly fun idea. And while kooky sports comedies have fallen out of favor in recent years, it’s a genre that can easily get hot again. Will Bricks of Glory be the script to do it? Let’s find out!

In the 1960s, when sports like baseball and football grew to record-breaking ratings, greedy sports CEOs looking to take advantage of their fans began charging unheard of sums for balls. The strategy backfired, and within a couple of years, fans completely abandoned ball-centric sports, sending all major leagues into bankruptcy. All of this allowed for non-ball-related sports to flourish, which is how bricklaying became the biggest sport in the U.S.

It’s now 1987 and the star of the sport is 27 year old Wayne Walker, whose theatrical style and killer catch-phrase (“Get laid!”) made him an instant celebrity. His number one fan is his young daughter, Harley, who couldn’t be more proud of her dad. That is until it’s discovered Wayne is using steroids to win! The disgraced champion is stripped of his trophies and given a 20 year ban from the sport!

Cut to 2007 and Harley now works for the World Anti-Doping Agency. Harley is given a task from the president of the agency himself. There’s a new super-powerful steroid being used in bricklaying called “Brick Dust.” The president asks Harley to reconnect with her estranged dad, get him to enter the Bricklayer 500, and exploit his contacts to identify who’s using the steroid so they can shut them down. Along the way, Wayne figures out what’s going on, but forgives his daughter, then enlists her as his bricklaying assistant. The two then team up to try and win the Bricklayer 500 together!

From the moment bricks started getting laid in Bricks of Glory, things were uneven. Alison invents a world where balls become too expensive and all sports collapse, paving the way for bricklaying to become the biggest sport in the world. My issue with this is that you don’t need it. You could popularize bricklaying without having to mention other sports. By introducing this loopy mythology, you rewrite the history books. I mean, we’re supposed to believe that since the 1980s, there has been no basketball, baseball, football, or soccer in the world. I know this is a comedy but that’s some MAJOR buy-in for a premise that didn’t need it.

From there, we have several time issues. The first part of the movie takes place in 1987. A featured scene in that section has our hero being tazed. But police didn’t have tazers in 1987. We then jump forward 20 years, where the rest of the movie takes place. So this movie takes place in 2007? That feels like a really odd year to set a mainstream comedy in if it doesn’t need to take place in that year for the plot to work. If you’re going to set a movie close to modern day, wouldn’t it be smarter to just set it in modern day?

Just to take you into the mindset of the seasoned reader, I’m assuming one of two things at this point. One, that the script is old and the writer never updated the timeline. Or two, they wanted Wayne’s heyday to be in the 80s because it’s funnier than the 90s. They also didn’t want Wayne to be too old when his ban was over, therefore choosing a 20 year ban (making him 47) as opposed to 30 years (making him 57) and accepted the year 2007 as the story year because they didn’t want to do the hard work to figure out how to get us to 2018.

I’ve told you this a million times already but I’ll say it again. If a script starts sloppy, it’s almost impossible for it to recover. I’ve already made so many judgements by this point that I’m nowhere near where the writer needs me to be – which is inside the story, not questioning anything. Again, I realize this is comedy. You can’t apply too much logic. But I also know that comedy works best when it’s simple. And it seems like way too much effort was put into an opening that could’ve easily introduced this premise in a simple way. The concept of bricklaying as a sport alone is funny! You don’t need a bunch of nonsense surrounding it.

As for the plot, I liked that the story was built around a family relationship. I think that’s smart. It grounds the story. It allows us to connect to the characters, as we’re rooting for this broken relationship to be fixed. I just found the whole steroid thing to be uninspired. Who cares about steroids in sports these days? Nobody. But there’s a way bigger screenwriting-related issue at play here. When you come up with a unique concept, you want the problems that arise to be related specifically to that concept. In other words, steroids can be applied to a hundred sports. What’s unique about bricklaying?

I like the idea that people are cheating in the sport. So maybe they suspect that the villain is using an illegal type of brick that’s 10% lighter or something. Or he’s using some caulk (is that what it’s called) that’s 50% stickier, allowing him to stack bricks quicker. Use your imagination. But steroids? I feel like I’m stuck in a time-warp with that storyline.

Bricklaying as a sport is a funny premise. Let’s not overcomplicate it. Set the story in the present. Wayne has been the sport’s poster child ever since videos of him bricklaying went viral a year ago. He’s recently gone Hollywood and isn’t doing the work (think Ronda Rousey). This has allowed a new young Justin Bieber like phenom to gain popularity (who beats him in the regionals). With the Bricklayer 500 coming up, everyone’s picking sides. Use the Rocky 4 structure. Wayne fears that he’s too old to hang with these young guns (which is funny since the sport has only been around for a year and he’s 28), and has to train with the original bricklayer who started it all, go “back to his roots” so to speak, to defeat this young upstart.

Script link: Bricks of Glory

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

What I learned: Times, ages, and dates. Readers are really good at picking up weird time-related issues in scripts. Which is relevant because timing is always changing in scripts. You might decide in your third draft, for example, that your hero’s brother should be 15, not 12. But then you forget to change the age later in the story, when you’ve jumped forward 5 years. You introduce this older version of the brother as 17 (12+5) as opposed to 20 (15+5). When you forget to do this stuff, it looks sloppy. It feels like you’re not on top of things. And that’s how I felt here. Just the fact that the story randomly takes place in 2007 is bizarre to me. And most readers are going to notice that. As annoying as it is, get your times, ages, and dates sorted out before you send your scripts anywhere. It seems like a small thing. But readers tend to judge this stuff harshly.

Selene Caramazza to play the lead in my FBI idea I’ll never write?

Yesterday, in response to the Nicholl-winning script, Numbers and Words, coupled with a larger discussion about Nicholl’s propensity to reward scripts with strong social messages, long-time thoughtful contributor Scott Serradell said this in the comment section:

I’m a little funny about the whole goings-on with Nicholl. I just question their legitimacy a bit if writers — knowing what advances in the Nicholl ranks — can then tune their stories to hit the right marks. Is that just tailoring? Or a polite form of trolling?

Well, let’s find out: My next script (and Nicholl entry) is titled “The Only Gay Bar in Gaza” — and it’s basically the brief (but beautiful) tragic romance between an Israeli man and a Palestinian man. Right there, I think I’ve got about 3 or 4 “message” boxes checked off. If I add a “based on a true story” it might just work!

I replied to Scott by saying if he really wrote that script and entered it into the Nicholl, I could guarantee, based on the concept alone, that it would make the semi-finals. If the execution was better-than-average, there’s a good chance it would be a finalist. Scott responded with,

But something about that ignites my cynicism. I mean, that little pitch above took all of 5 minutes to conjure up. And it certainly wasn’t because it was some personal story burning to get out; I merely took an assessment of what attributes the judges might be looking for and tailored (or trolled) my response accordingly. Is it right? Is that ethical? Well, if those are the rules of the game, does any of that matter? — If the broader goal is to get recognized by the industry, am I not obliged to do whatever it takes to set myself outside the pack?

That got me thinking. Not about the Nicholl. But about what happens when you remove yourself from the equation and generate ideas solely based on what you think the gatekeeper will respond to. Are you then better equipped to come up with successful ideas, similar to what Scott was able to do in this circumstance? The crippling x-factor in a screenwriter’s pursuit of writing a breakthrough script is the personal attachment he or she has to the idea. Writers often become fixated on commercially inert concepts simply because they’re obsessed with an aspect of the idea that they have a personal connection with.

This is true of every writer. Even professionals. How many ideas do you have on your computer that you love despite nobody else giving a damn? The reason for that is we have an intense connection to either the character, the concept, or the theme, that clouds our ability to judge the concept objectively. So today I’m asking, what if you removed the variable that’s clouding your judgement? What if you tried to come up with ideas that you, yourself, would never write, but you’re positive would make billions of dollars at the box office? Do you become a better idea-generator under those circumstances?

To see if this is the case, apply the same logic to Hollywood that Scott did with Nicholl. What does Hollywood like? The people who visit this site know the answer to this question better than anybody. They like superheroes. They like giant monsters (King Kong, Robots, Godzilla, sharks). They like horror. They like a guy with a gun. They really like a girl with a gun. Time-travel. Serial killers. Aliens. They like two-handers, especially action-comedy. They like biopics about people who led fascinating lives. They like true stories that involve heroism. They like the apocalypse. They like heists. They like irony.

Today’s post is more of an experiment than anything. Maybe my theory is wrong. But I’m curious to see what you guys would pitch if you had zero vested interest in your idea, and were only pitching what you were convinced Hollywood would go bonkers over. Is it as simple as saying, “A biopic about Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson, the founders of Smith and Wesson? Here’s my routing number. Transfer the 5 mil by Friday, thanks.” Or “A female FBI agent is tasked with putting together a team to take down the biggest crime organization in the city, which happens to be led by her father (or mother).”

Remove yourself from the equation and pitch your surefire Hollywood hits in the comments. Upvote any pitches you like. Let’s prove or disprove my theory by the end of the day.

Genre: TV Show – Hitchcockian Thriller
Premise: A secret military program in Florida prepares soldiers coming back from the war to effectively integrate back into society.
About: Homecoming started off as a podcast and gained a lot of publicity at the time as it was the first podcast that had attracted big name talent to the medium (Catherine Keener, David Schwimmer, and Oscar Isaac were featured players on the show). Universal would later secure the rights for TV. From there, Sam Esmail (of Mr. Robot fame) came on to run the show, and Julia Roberts signed on to be the featured star. Amazon debuted the show this weekend. The original creators of the podcast, Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, did much of the writing for the TV version as well.
Writers: Micah Bloomberg & Eli Horowitz
Details: 10 roughly 30 minute episodes

I’m a HUGE fan of Sam Esmail. I’ve been reading his scripts long before he became one of the hottest names in town (as the creator of Mr. Robot). If you’re ever frustrated about whether you’re going to “make it” or not, I saw this guy spec out script after script for a good 7 years. Everybody thought he was talented, but they all felt his scripts were too voice-y or weird to get made. TV turned out to be the perfect arena for him as it allowed him to play with his weird sensibilities without having to wrap all the weirdness up in one go. So I’ve been looking forward to this as soon as I saw the trailer. I mean, the only other person who’s gotten Julia Roberts to do TV in 30 years was her ex-husband. So you knew this was heavyweight material. Or, at least, that was the assumption. Is it heavyweight material? Let’s find out.

Heidi Bergman has been brought in as a psychotherapist in a new military program that helps soldiers returning from the war. Her job is pretty simple. She sits down with each of the soldiers throughout the week and listens to their stories about the war. Her main patient is a gentle African-American man named Walter Cruz. Cruz seems to be the opposite of what you’d expect a soldier to be after returning from a war. He’s kind, he’s sweet, he’s funny. Heidi enjoys her sessions with him.

Meanwhile, Cruz’s closest friend in the unit, Abel, thinks this whole program is sketchy. They’re being kept in this mysterious building. There’s no one else around for miles. They’ve been told they’re in Florida, but he points out that they have no direct evidence that that’s the case. He goes so far as to say they’re still in the Middle East and that the U.S. created this fake facility to trick them. Cruz thinks his friend is going loco. But in the back of his head, he wonders if there’s some truth to the theory.

Occasionally, we jump forward several years, where Heidi is now working as a waitress at a dingy marina diner. It’s there where a strange investigator, Thomas Carrasco, approaches her, wanting to know about the failed program, dubbed, “Homecoming.” But Heidi’s moved on from that world and tells Carrasco as much. She doesn’t remember much and labels the entire program uneventful. Carrasco’s bosses likewise tell him to give up. But just as he’s going to close the file, he decides to dig deeper. He’s convinced that something nefarious is at the bottom of the Homecoming file.

The problem with Homecoming is its lack of a hook. It wants you to think it has a hook. A mysterious program that helped military veterans which has since been abandoned. But the program itself isn’t that interesting. The pilot tries to tempt us by implying these men have a high proclivity towards violence. One of the scenes attempts to prepare the men for the real world by staging a mock job interview. During the interview, one of the vets loses his shit and starts fighting another soldier. It’s supposed to be a highlight scene and yet the only thing I could think afterwards was, “So you’re saying military vets have PTSD and a proclivity towards violence? Wow. Cutting edge theory you’ve put together there.”

The moment I suspected this show was in trouble was the last scene of the pilot. Remember, the final scene in a pilot must work double duty. It has to wrap up the pilot, but also introduce a cliffhanger to make us want to watch the next episode. Homecoming’s final scene takes place 3 years after the program. Heidi now works as a waitress in a diner. The investigator pulls her outside to ask her what she remembers about the program. The scene is positioned as if some giant bomb is going to be dropped at any moment. He’s probing what she remembers. She tells him it was just a job. Finally, there’s a dramatic pause, and he asks, “Do you remember William Cruz?” William Cruz is the soldier she spent the most time with. Another dramatic pause. And then she replies, simply, “No.”

And that’s the end of the pilot. That’s our big wowza cliffhanger: Heidi denying that she remembers William Cruz.

I’m sorry, but, that doesn’t get me back in the door. You need something WAY BIGGER. You need an exchange closer to… HEIDI: “I’ve already told you. I don’t remember much.” INVESTIGATOR: “Anything will help. Anything at all. Walter Cruz. Do you remember him?” HEIDI: “Why are you even asking me this? I’ve moved on.” INVESTIGATOR: “Because every soldier in the Homecoming Program… is now dead.” He stares at her, gauging her reaction. We can see she’s shocked by this but trying to hide it. “I’m sorry, I have to get back to work.” And then she goes inside.

Look, I’m not saying that’s the greatest cliffhanger ever. But at least NOW YOU HAVE A SHOW. Now I want to know what happened to these guys. Now I want to know what this mysterious program is about. And the only way I can find answers to these two questions is to keep watching. Why would I want to keep watching a show just because Julia Roberts lied about remembering one of the soldiers?

Also, the podcast format doesn’t adapt nicely to television. Or, I should say, they didn’t figure out how to adapt it to television. Obviously, a podcast is going to have a lot of talking. It needs to fill up the dead air. But TV is a visual medium. It works better when it’s showing, not telling. And to Esmail’s credit he does some cool things visually. There’s one shot early on that follows Roberts through the entire facility from above.

But there are just as many problematic moments, such as Heidi’s silly boss who calls her all the time and babbles on endlessly without ever really saying anything. I’m sure in the podcast format, this non-stop babble worked well, since it killed a lot of minutes. But watching it becomes tiring, particularly since, like I said, he’s not saying anything. He’s just filling up space with words. It wasn’t until the fifth boss-phone monologue, in the third episode, that he actually introduced a plot point, which was that they were secretly administering medication to the soldiers in their meals. Your ratio of talking to plot points shouldn’t be 1000 to 1.

I remain unconvinced that creators know what to do with the new streaming format. Are they treating it like TV? Are they treating it like movies? Because if you’re treating it like one long movie, then sure, you don’t need a big cliffhanger at the end of the pilot episode. But I’d argue that any situation whereby you leave it up to the watcher to find and click the next episode means that if you didn’t hook them, they won’t click. In other words, traditional TV rules still apply.

With all of that said, I don’t think Homecoming is a failure. It’s certainly more interesting than most of what you’ll find on TV. The score is weird. It has its share of fun visual gags (my favorite was an old warehouse with an antiquated/futuristic motion detector, so that the dusty old lamps light up and turn off one at a time as you walk through the building – BZZZZ-POP, BZZZZ-POP). Esmail loves top play around with the camera. And Roberts is always hard to look away from. I guess I wanted this to be great. And I was disappointed that it didn’t live up to those expectations. But you could certainly do worse.

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

What I learned: Never write scenes because you need to fill up time. Write them because they are necessary to move the plot along. This boss character who calls Heidi all the time – 95% of what he says is absolutely meaningless. He’s just there to be the babbling boss who eats up minutes. Audiences get bored quickly. Don’t make it easy for them.

Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it. These are the words that have been assaulting my brain every hour for the last seven days. That would be when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out. Since then, I’ve gone to Amazon.com every hour on the hour and stared at a sleek picture of a brand new Playstation 4. Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it. I’ve wanted a Playstation 4 forever. But I’ve specifically not purchased one because I know I’ll waste hours of time with it. That plan has worked up until seven days ago. But every time I see a commercial for that rootin-tootin freakin video game, I want to buy it. I want to roll in its digital dirt. I want to swim in its plethora of pixels. So far I’ve held off. But I don’t know how much longer I can last.

Luckily, I found a Western for this week’s amateur offerings. That’s helped some. As for the rest of the scripts, we’ve got an electric variety. Pilots. Comedies. Thrillers. Oh, and one of these “Why You Should Reads” is quite inspirational. A lesson in assertiveness and exploring every contact you’ve got, no matter how small it seems. Check it out!

If you’ve never played Amateur Offerings before, you’ve been deducted 4 Scriptshadow points. A vote from you could mean the difference between a screenwriter starting his career and spending the rest of it in obscurity. Read as much of each screenplay as you can. Afterwards, cast your vote for your favorite script in the comments section. Voting closes on Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a review next Friday. — If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck to all!

Title: Bricks of Glory
Genre: Sports Comedy
Logline: In the fast-rising sport of Bricklaying, an anti-doping agent and disgraced former champion must take down the champion’s former nemesis, who they suspect is using a bricklaying-enhancement drug known as “Brick Dust.”
Why You Should Read: Bricks of Glory was inspired by a real life event called the Bricklayer 500 which takes place in Vegas every year. They take the top 20 bricklayers from around the world and compete to see who can build the highest (and most structurally sound) brick wall in 60 minutes. A friend of mine’s husband won the Regional Competition in my area so I went to Vegas to watch the show and attended the World of Concrete convention as research. Man, what a trip. I mean they seriously treat this like a major sporting event! I find it so hilarious! So in my script, I completely exaggerate this and make it a much bigger, funnier, spectacle of a sport. Bricklayers use flair, like lighting their walls on fire and juggling bricks, and the competition is so fierce, they resort to taking performance enhancing drugs. I’ve put a lot of work into this script, even doing table reads with stand up comedians to help me punch up the jokes. But if you want to see what inspired it, here’s a video recap of the Bricklayer 500 which should sell it better than I ever could: https://youtu.be/zR69ZFdldH0

Title: The Boom
Genre: TV – One Hour Drama
Series Logline: In the early 2000s, dreamers, misfits, prodigies, and hustlers swarm to Las Vegas in search of fame and fortune during the birth of the poker boom.
Pilot Logline: After becoming an online poker sensation, a gambling addict goes to Vegas to try his hand at the real thing, meanwhile a tortured ex-gangbanger kidnaps his cousin, a sports-betting prodigy, and drives him to the same casino hoping to capitalize on his skills.
Why You Should Read: In 2003, an amateur poker player named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker, sparking a massive increase in poker play all over the world. College students became millionaires playing online poker and moved to Las Vegas to live it up, while the existing live pros became celebrities. The Boom seeks to leverage the unique stories and characters from this time period to create the first ever series which chronicles the lives of professional gamblers in Las Vegas. It’s an ensemble similar to The Wire in that it follows a wide variety of characters and not all of them cross paths. The pilot starts with an 11 page prologue that culminates with the event that launches the series and from then on follows two separate storylines featuring four main characters, all struggling to survive in Las Vegas at the start of the poker boom. One of the things I’m most proud of with this pilot is that non-gamblers have found it accessible—so if you don’t know a thing about poker, please don’t let it prevent you from reading!

Title: Legal Pursuit
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A mocumentary following the legal exploits of the personal injury law firm Fraud, Trick & Brown and their pursuit of fortune, fame and sometimes justice.
Why You Should Read: In America today if you accidentally nail your hand to a wall because of a faulty nail gun, you’ll want to sue the nail gun manufacturer and there are plenty of lawyers that’ll nip at your heels for the case. However, if your teenager went to the hospital for eating a Tide Pod and you want to sue the detergent company for a lack of warning not to eat it, who are you going to call? You’re going to need a more ethically flexible attorney willing to blame someone else for you.

Legal dramas tackle social injustices, changing times, and debates about what real justice is and how the law should work. Legal Pursuit is a half-hour single camera comedy that shows how the legal system sadly works and follows the attorneys of Fraud(pronounced Freud), Trick and Brown. The lawyers that’ll lie, cheat and manipulate everyone they can to defend you in court and split the settlement 70/30… 60/40… Fine: 40/60!

Desperate for business in this bad economy, each client is a potential win that will keep the lights on for one more week, get them that fancy electric car, pay off their new boat or afford them a vacation to Hawaii. Oh! Legal fees, surprise witnesses and experts need to be covered too! Enjoy! And if you don’t, I’d love to hear thoughts from the SS community to help make this the best it can be.

Title: THE SHADOWED
Genre: Horror-Western
Logline: An outlaw and his gang must team-up with a company of Texas Rangers to battle with the resurrected ghosts of vengeful Navajo braves besieging an isolated border town.
Why You Should Read: My script was shortlisted in The Tracking Board’s Launch Pad competition, allowing me to become a TB Alumni. I wrote the script after chatting with stuntman Ian Van Temperley, who hoped to be able to do the horse stunts for The Shadowed if it ever went into production. Whilst doing the stunts for the TV series Galavant, Ian Van Temperley shared my Shadowed script with the show’s creator Dan Fogleman. Dan read the script and wrote back saying this: “Dan Fogelman here from Galavant. I wanted to let you know that I read your script and was very impressed! The best thing about the script was the outlaw character Wakes, along with how well your action sequences were not only crafted, but written. It’s a very hard thing to do well, and you clearly know how to describe them. Most action sequences get hard to follow and hard to “read” – that’s not at all the case here. You have a great main character and a terrific action movie here. I enjoyed reading it.”

Title: Endangered 6
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a widowed U.S. war vet and his estranged daughter check into a Manhattan hotel to reconnect, they soon find themselves alone and trapped in the building only to discover they’re at the center of a terrorist conspiracy that will kill hundreds on the streets of Manhattan, but they’re the only ones who know… or have the power to stop it.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been honing my craft for a while and have a few specs on the hard drive to show for it. This one was a finalist last year in a thriller screenplay contest and I’d like to see how it might do here with the Scriptshadow crowd. When I set out to write this my goal was to write a fast paced thriller with a broken relationship between a father and daughter at its emotional core. It’s Panic Room on steroids. Hope you feel the rush too!