Genre: Horror
Premise: A company man is tasked with recruiting a rogue board member who’s disappeared while attending a remote “wellness” center in Switzerland.
About: I’ve always liked Gore Verbinski. A lot of people gave him shit after cashing in with the Pirates’ sequels. But before that he did the offbeat “The Weather Man,” the awesome, “The Ring,” and the cool underrated flick, “The Mexican.” He even made one of the most unique animated films ever in Rango. So when he’s not big-budgeting it, I always pay attention. And it looks like Verbinski’s going back to his roots with “Cure for Wellness” (currently in post-production). Verbinski wrote the script with Justin Haythe, who’s probably best known for penning the underrated Dicaprio/Winslet flick, Revolutionary Road. Let’s see what the two have in store for us today.
Writer: Justin Haythe (Story by Justin Haythe and Gore Verbinski)
Details: 118 pages – 2/17/15 draft

Despite looking a bit young, I’m guessing Dane Dehaan is playing the lead, Castorp?

One of the hardest things to do in the horror genre is find a concept or location that hasn’t been used before. There are those who will tell you that everything has been done before so you shouldn’t even try. It’s best, according to them, to find a well-worn idea and put a new spin on it.

But I have a theory about writing. I call it “Hard vs. Easy.” Every writer makes a choice to write in either “Easy Mode” or “Hard Mode.” Easy Mode is when you turn off the analytical side of your brain and just write. You are not judgmental of your writing. You don’t go back and wonder if you could’ve done better. Whatever you put on the page is what you put on the page.

I call this “Easy Mode” because it doesn’t take any work. You write what you write and that’s it. “Hard Mode” is the opposite. In “Hard Mode,” you ask the tough questions like, “Have I seen this before?” And if you have, you go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a better choice. Hard Mode is hard because it’s not fluid. There’s a lot more stopping, a lot more thinking, a lot more judging. When you do come up with something, you have to rev yourself back up since you haven’t put anything on the page for awhile. Overall, it’s a much more taxing experience.

However, “hard mode” tends to provide better results because you’re nixing the clichés and obvious story choices that plague the majority of scripts out there. Writers who work on hard mode are more likely to find new locations, new ideas, new characters, because they just aren’t satisfied with the status quo. They know how vast their competition is and realize that the only way to compete with them is to challenge every idea they come up with.

A Cure for Wellness takes us to a place we’ve never been to before in a horror movie. That’s a “hard mode” choice. Sure, Verbinski and Haythe could’ve placed us in yet another mental institution. But we’ve seen that before. We’ve bought that t-shirt. Is it hard to nix that and spend a couple of weeks trying to come up with a location we HAVEN’T been to? Of course it is. But in the end it pays off because you’re giving the audience something ORIGINAL.

A Cure For Wellness introduces us to Castorp, a rising star at an unnamed company. Castor is the embodiment of the American upper-class male. He works 18 hours a day and is driven only by making more money and gaining more status than his fellow man. Castorp has no family, no friends, and defines his worth simply by how much business he can bring in for the company.

Right now, business is good. Castorp has been recognized by the board for his outstanding work. And they want to reward him. But first, they have a task for him. One of the board members, Roland Pembroke, went off to a “wellness” center in Switzerland and hasn’t come back. A big merger is coming up and Pembroke needs to sign off on a few things before the merger can happen.

Castorp isn’t happy, but anything that gets him further up the company ladder is a price he’s willing to pay. So off he goes to this remote wellness center, which happens to be in the mountains of Switzerland, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Once there, Castorp realizes there’s something “off” about this place. While it’s state-of-the-art and all of the wellness clients seem happy, there’s a mysterious air about it all. Everyone always seems to be going off to their next “treatment,” and when they come back, there’s something a little less “there” about them. Oh Castorp, if you only knew how much worse it was going to get.

Castorp requests to see Pembroke at the manager’s office, but it’s past visiting hours, which means Castorp will need to wait until tomorrow. Castorp, personifying the impatient American businessman, demands to see Pembroke now. He’s eventually visited by the wellness center’s founder, Henrich Volmer. Volmer is a calming man, and assures Castorp that he’ll be able to see Pembroke soon.

A frustrated Castorp decides to head back into town while he waits, but ends up getting in a car accident. He wakes up three days later inside of, you guessed it, the wellness center, where Volmer informs him that his body is all out of whack. Volmer encourages Castorp to participate in his program, which, as you can imagine, takes Castorp down a rabbit hole he may never climb back up from.

Cure for Wellness invokes movies like The Wicker Man, The Shining, and Shutter Island, but manages to be something in and of itself. Its best asset is its irony. Here we have the world’s topmost “wellness” center, and yet as the story goes on, its clear that its patients are descending into an unrecoverable sickness.

As I pointed out in the beginning, Verbinski and Haythe committed to writing this on hard mode, allowing it to feel quite different from movies with similar setups. One of the creepiest (and more original) choices was the design behind the wellness “cure” for its patients, which was based around hydrotherapy. All of the treatments were designed around water.

You were placed in water, water was infused in you, you were asked to drink a certain water. And so there are a ton of creepy scenes that involve the innocuous fluid. One of my favorites was when Castorp was placed in a water tank not unlike the one Luke is placed in after getting injured in Empire Strikes Back. The techs responsible for him sneak off and engage in a weird sex game. In the meantime, two black eels appear inside the tank and Castorp starts freaking out, accidentally destroying the breathing apparatus, resulting in him losing consciousness, all while the techs are off in the other room, enjoying themselves.

Water tank therapy. Black eels. Tech operators engaging in freaky sex games. Can’t say I’ve ever seen THAT in a movie before. And that, my friends, is how you write on hard mode.

The only thing that worried me while I was reading Cure for Wellness was that it was going to be a “smoke and mirrors” screenplay. What’s that, you ask? “Smoke and mirrors” screenplays – which I see a lot of in the horror genre – are when the writer’s story is driven by a series of red herrings, twists, and half-baked mythology.

This is the REAL CASTLE where they filmed the movie!

They’re essentially one giant sleight-of-hand, a desperate hope that you’re looking at the trick rather than what’s really happening. A good script has its mythology, backstory, and storyline figured out ahead of time so that everything comes together and makes sense at the end. Since horror is an inherently sloppy genre, with writers more focused on scares than story, you see a lot of smoke and mirrors. God forbid you actually do the hard work and make it all make sense.

There are people who feel that Shutter Island was a smoke and mirrors screenplay. There are people who think It Follows was a smoke and mirrors screenplay.

It’s particularly easy to go the smoke and mirrors route when you’re writing one of these “main character is going crazy… or is he???” scripts. The rationale is that because he doesn’t even know if he’s going crazy, we can be unclear about everything, leaving it “up to the reader” to decide what’s real or not. The problem is, when you leave EVERYTHING up to the reader, you prove that you haven’t figured anything out for yourself. Leaving your script feeling lazy and uninspired.

But I’m getting off-track. Cure for Wellness had so many weird things going on that I didn’t think it could bring itself back from the edge. However, the deep and rich backstory about the wellness org’s origins (which dated back 200 years), as well as the reveal of what Volmer did to all his patients –indeed came together in a satisfying way.

I get the feeling that this will be an even better movie than it is a script. It’s got a bit of a “blueprint” feel to it as opposed to a standalone script feel (like yesterday’s screenplay). I’m betting the trailer is going to look amazing. Good to see Verbinski recovering from Lone Ranger.

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

What I learned: One of the things that drives me nuts when reading a script is when the writer preps us for the setting AND THEN FOLLOWS THAT BY GIVING US THE SETTING. Just give us the setting! Screenwriting is about conveying as much as possible in as few words as possible. Telling us you’re about to say something before you say it is a waste of time. Here’s an example from Cure For Wellness: “The Mercedes moves through an idyllic setting: rolling green lawns, terraced gardens where PATIENTS play shuttlecock, shuffle board, lawn boules. Others walk along well-trimmed pathways, through gardens with bountiful flowers.” The first part of that description is superfluous. We should grasp the “idyllic setting” when you describe the “rolling green lawns, terraced gardens, etc.” You don’t need to first tell us it’s an “idyllic setting.” I should point out that this is a personal preference thing. There is no “right” way to write. But writers who follow this rule tend to have smoother easier-to-read scripts.

Genre: Horror
Premise: (from IMDB) An American nanny is shocked that her new English family’s boy is actually a life-sized doll. After violating a list of strict rules, disturbing events make her believe that the doll is really alive.
About: In a Dark Place was retitled “The Inhabitant” which has subsequently been retitled “The Boy,” and it already has one of the creepiest trailers I’ve seen all year. It stars Lauren Cohan, who Walking Dead fans will recognize as Maggie Greene. The script is written by Stacey Menear, who wrote one of my favorite scripts (it’s over to the right in my Top 25) five years ago. This is his first produced credit. The film hits theaters in January.
Writer: Stacey Menear
Details: 115 pages

Halloween Week continues here on Scriptshadow and today makes me soooooo happy! Stacey Menear, whose script, Mixtape, I reviewed five years ago and who gave an interview to us around that time, has finally broken through with his first produced credit! It kills me when super-talented writers give up amongst the hard knox of Hollywood and I’m so happy to see that Stacey pushed through the tough times and got a film made.

It’s important to remember that one of the most underrated components to making it in this business is sticking it out. Getting better and better with each draft, meeting more and more people who become fans of your work, until finally, one day, talent, skill, experience, and all that networking come together for a film opportunity. Stick with it folks. Don’t give up before it all comes together for you!

20-something Gerti Evans is running from something. Why else would you leave your country to come be a nanny for people you’ve never met? As we’ll find out later, Gerti just got out of an abusive relationship with some crazy psycho and moving halfway across the world was the only way to escape him.

But Gerti is about to learn that she hopped out of the oven and into the frying pan (or however the saying goes). She arrives at a mysterious mansion in the English countryside and is introduced to the Heelshires, an older couple with a son. Well, sort of a son. The Heelshires, you see, kind of maybe possibly take care of a porcelain male doll who they believe is their boy. His name is Brahms.

Gertie assumes this has to be a joke, but quickly realizes that the Heelshires are anything but jokers. They go on to explain that taking care of Brahms requires following a strict set of rules that involves never leaving him alone, giving him a bath, reading to him, playing music really loud for him.

As soon as Mrs. Heelshire determines Gertie can handle the job, she and the hubby head out for a three-month vacation, leaving Gertie all alone. In this giant house. With a doll. Who they believe is a real boy. Yeah, cue the Exorcist soundtrack.

At first Gertie treats this situation like you’d expect it to be treated. She throws a blanket over the creepy doll and goes about her day. It helps that the cute local grocery boy (or man), Malcom, comes by every once in awhile to deliver some food. And periodic calls with her sister back home, which include updates about her evil ex-boyfriend, Cole, help pass the time.

But then strange things start to happen. Gertie’s clothes are moved. Brahm isn’t always where she left him. She even finds her favorite meal made for her in the dining room one evening. Could it be a joke? Malcom maybe? Eventually, Gertie finds that following the rules laid out by the Heelshires stop these mysterious events. And before Gertie knows it, she’s treating Brahms, gasp, like a real boy. Might Gertie be falling into the same trap as the Heelshires? Or is there some real otherworldly shit going on here?

Uh, this script was fucking awesome. I was thoroughly creeped out. But not just that. Stacey has proven once again why he’s such an awesome screenwriter. There is so much here to celebrate, starting with the structure.

I’ve read tons of these scripts before. And all of them work for exactly one act. The setup . Because these scripts are easy to set up. You have a creepy doll. You have the main character. We know that that doll is going to do creepy shit later. So we want to read on.

But they always fall apart once they hit the second act because instead of the writer actually building a story, they try to fill up space between cliché doll-movie scares. The doll not being in the room they left them in. Some old record player playing old music. Who turned it on?? The sound of laughing or crying in the other room but when our hero goes to check the sound, it stops.

The thing is, In a Dark Place does include some of these tropes, but because it’s also building a story, they work. That’s what screenwriters forget. A trope or cliché by itself is empty. But if it’s something that’s carefully and organically worked up towards via good storytelling, it will kill.

So here, Stacey makes a couple of smart decisions that ensure the script extends past the first act. First, there’s Cole, the evil ex-boyfriend. His presence lingers throughout the script, conveyed mainly through Gerti’s phone conversations with her sister. We know this guy is going to show up at some point, and that leaves a LINE OF SUSPENSE open for some later dramatic shenanigans.

We also have Malcom, who serves as our love interest, and also as our gateway into the Heelshires’ past. In that sense, he pulls double-duty. We like this guy and we want Gertie to move past this terrible relationship she got out of, so we’re rooting for the two to get together. And also, Malcom is nervous about talking about the Heelshires’ past, so we get these sporadic spooky tidbits about their history, including how they got to this point with Brahms.

This leads us, of course, to the mystery of Brahms himself. Who was the real Brahms? How did he die? What are these rumors about him doing something horrible to a little girl? About a fire? How is he able to move? Is his soul really trapped inside this doll? There are so many questions when it comes to Brahms that I couldn’t wait to turn the pages to find out more. This isn’t fucking Annabelle where the extent of the doll’s history is: “Doll is possessed. The End.” There’s an entire mythology built into this weird doll-thing and it was awesome to keep learning about.

And then there were the story twists. One of my favorites was (spoiler) when we learn that the Heelshires aren’t coming back. That they freaking walked into an ocean to kill themselves. And that they left a will that makes Gertie the owner of Brahms. And then they left a separate letter for Brahms. Which said: “Now you have a new doll to take care of.” As in, yes, Gertie is HIS doll. Not the other way around.

I also loved that Gertie becomes a believer and starts taking care of Brahms as if he’s a real child. In every other doll-horror script I’ve read, from the mid-point on, it’s a series of scares with the doll being in other rooms and making noises and our hero getting more and more freaked out until there’s a final battle with the doll.

Gertie becoming a believer was, in many ways, a thousand times creepier. And by making that unexpected choice, it led to a better ending (spoiler) where Cole shows up, starts calling her crazy for thinking the doll is real, and we set up a situation where Brahms can now defend the girl who’s become his protector. You don’t get that story option if you go the traditional route, which is why I love Stacey’s writing so much.

And then on top of that, Stacey’s just a great word-for-word writer. Here’s him describing Gertie’s driver at the beginning of the script: “He’s an ancient looking guy, more hair coming out of his ears than on his head.” Or Gertie herself: “She’s blonde and pretty in that “Hi, I’ll be your waitress for today” kind of way.” And he just added these technically unnecessary but creepy atmospheric things, like the rat problem in the house, with Gertie being forced to clean up the bloody dead rats from the rat traps every week.

There’s not much more to say. I’m a fan! Check out In a Dark Place out if you can get your hands on it!

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

What I learned: This is the perfect example of a great writer who struggled to get stuff through the system UNTIL he went with a genre script. The thing is though, he didn’t sell out. He found an idea that allowed him to still utilize his particular brand of writing, his voice. This still feels like a “Stacey Menear” screenplay. So don’t think you have to give up your soul to write a genre piece. Find a marketable genre that allows you to still be you as a writer and that way you can write something and actually have a chance of getting it made/sold.

Can one of the biggest sci-fi screenwriters in town infuse some life into Universal’s vaunted monster franchise?

Genre: Horror/Fantasy/Action
Premise: After a black ops team awakens a 2000 year-old mummy, they must prevent him from opening the gates of hell.
About: Many of you may have read how Universal was going to create a universe/franchise (a la Avengers) out of their monster IP. This project, The Mummy, was going to be their flagship film. Then, for whatever reason, they slowed the train down, and while it appears they’re still going to unleash these monsters onto the world at some point, they’ve decided to hit the pause button for the time being. What this means for the Spaihts’-written script of The Mummy, we’ll have to see. Jon Spaihts, as many of you have heard, broke into Hollywood with his Black List topping script, Passengers, and then went on to write an early version of Prometheus. Sony just recently decided to take a chance on that Spaiht’s marketing-challenged script, with The Imitation Game’s Morten Tyldum directing and Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt attached to play the leads.
Writer: Jon Spaihts
Details: 125 pages – 7/11/2013 draft

I know some of you wanted me to review Friday the 13th, but I asked a few industry folks about it and they said it was one of the worst scripts they’ve read all year, which makes sense, since the studio decided to scrap the script entirely and start over again. So alas, there will be no goalie masked Jason Voorhees love today.

While Jon Spaihts’ last name may be impossible to spell, his particular brand of sci-fi is some of the best in the business. If there was a sci-fi film you watched within the last five years, chances are he wrote a draft of it. That makes Spaihts’ move to the Mummy franchise a little surprising, but as you’ll see with the direction they went, it may not be that surprising after all.

Navy Seal Tyler Colt was just following orders while on a secret mission in Iraq. But when his team stumbles upon an ancient tomb, they all inexplicably go crazy and start killing each other. Tyler escapes, but for the next two years is haunted with specific nightmares about ancient kings and armies killing each other in terribly brutal ways.

Eventually, Tyler is approached by Colonel Gideon Forster, a member of a special weapons group that does the same kind of stuff as they chronicled in that bad George Clooney movie. Forster wants to go back to that tomb because he thinks there’s something valuable in there. Tyler resists, but in the end goes along with it because this is the movies.

Forster also brings along Jenny Halsey, a sort of female Indiana Jones, except instead of raiding tombs, she uses her female assets to con greedy billionaires into giving her their ancient amulets and such (which she then returns to museums). Needless to say, Tyler and Jenny don’t see eye to eye.

The group goes and raids the tomb once more, stealing the coffin inside, then hopping on a plane back home. Everything seems great until their plane hits an unexpected storm and crashes into the middle of Rome (later it looks like the storm wasn’t an accident). The mummy within the coffin (who we’ll later learn was King Ashurbanipal, the most violent king in history – he made Genghis Khan look like a girl scout), gets loose and – this is the first time I can use this phrase literally – all hell breaks loose.

The Mummy is looking for his crown and his sword, ancient artifacts that are somewhere in Rome, which forces Tyler and Jenny to find these items first. As Jenny tell us, if the Mummy gets these items, he will open up the gates of hell. And once that happens, it’s game over, insert new coin.

Let’s get this out of the way. This ain’t your Brendan Fraser’s father’s Mummy. Universal has decided to go with the darker edge that made all those superhero films between 2006-2012 so popular. It worked for superheroes. Why can’t it work for monsters?

Of course, 2013 was right when the audience tone pendulum started swinging in the other (lighter) direction. This may be why Universal pushed its planned monster franchise back. They want to wait and see how the tone dust settles before investing 175 million dollars into something.

With that said, I liked the more serious tone. Those old Mummy movies played like they were written by a third grader, especially the last couple, which were borderline embarrassing. What Spaihts has done is he’s brought the same attention to detail that he brought to his sci-fi offerings and made you believe in this mummy.

I’ve said this before about screenwriting but that’s where the men leave the boys behind. An amateur screenwriter will fill in the mummy’s backstory with his imagination. The pro will actually research their mummy and make him a real person. And that’s what Spaihts did. Ashurbanipal is a badass mummy with this entire history of being the most violent king in history and being obsessed with the underworld. Therefore when he gets loose in the present, he actually carries some weight. It’s not just a guy wrapped in toilet paper.

I also liked how the backstory for Ashurbanipal was handled. It wasn’t like, “Oh, he ruled the land in 300 B.C. and first found his Caniful Sword in the Battle of Rysaficus when he was seven…” Our characters HAD to learn his backstory in order to figure out how to defeat him, in order to understand what he was doing. So any backstory we were given was relevant, as it held clues as to how to take down the villain.

Spaihts also does a good job keeping all characters goal-oriented, including the villain. Remember, a character with a goal is an ACTIVE character. So you want as many characters with goals as possible. And, as you can see from this synopsis, it’s okay to give the heroes and the villains the same goal (the crown, the sword). As long as the characters are after something and being active, they can be after the same thing, different things, whatever.

If the script has a problem, it’s that Spaihts focused TOO MUCH on the Mummy. I mean, I get it. The movie is called “The Mummy.” But because the Mummy is so fucking cool, our heroes, Tyler and Jenny, get overshadowed.

The two KIND OF have something going on. For Tyler, he’s been haunted by these terrible mummy nightmares for a couple of years after the Iraq invasion and that’s made him unable to function in society (a commentary on PTSD maybe?) and for Jenny, she’s paid a ton of money to run around with billionaires and coerce them into giving away their artifacts, so she’s burdened with the stigma of putting money ahead of duty.

But I’m not sure either of those things registered with me. For a character to pop, I feel like he/she needs to have a flaw that the masses can relate with. To bring up one of Spaihts’ favorite movies, Aliens, Ripley was racked with distrust, which drove the majority of her actions and really made her accessible. It was more of a human emotion than a script-created screenplay 101 “problem.”

And it’s not like Spaihts doesn’t know how to do this. His best script – the one he broke in with, Passengers – is all about human emotion. I think there’s just a pressure with these action-adventure popcorn movies to keep the leads light and fluffy. Make them dislike each other a bit so there’s a lot of conflict-fueled banter (Jurassic World anyone?) and the studio heads will be happy. Still, I would’ve liked a little more depth to these two. I mean, having a great villain is great and so few writers put enough thought into their villains. But if the audience doesn’t love their hero (ahem, Indiana Jones) then they’re not going to be as engaged.

So despite the fact that we probably won’t see this version of The Mummy, I thought Spaihts wrote a solid draft. If you can find this one, check it out. It’s a good blueprint for how to write a PG-13 studio-friendly family-friendly film with just a teensy bit of edge.

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

What I learned: If you want an unconventional way to grab your reader, start your script with a scene that’s the complete opposite of your subject matter. That’s what I liked about The Mummy here. I’m sure when I say “The Mummy” to you, the first thing you think of is being in an Egyptian pyramid somewhere 2000 years ago. Spaihts’ version of The Mummy starts with a team of Navy Seals invading Iraq through an underwater oil pipe. That caught my interest immediately, making me sit up and pay attention.

Today I get a momentary respite from the Scriptshadow 250 to review a real-live spec sale. How does a 500 thousand dollar script hold up against your contest entries?

Genre: Fantasy
Premise: A cancer-stricken teenager gains cartoon powers when he finds a magical doorway that leads to a cartoon universe inside his missing father’s old office.
About: This script just sold a couple of weeks ago to Warner Brothers for half a million bucks! The writer, Mike Van Waes, used to be an assistant at the Jim Henson Co. and, not surprisingly, has his own web comic (called Vexed Wisecracker – write what you know!). The script sold without an attachment. Nice!
Writer: Mike Van Waes
Details: 118 pages – July 2015 draft

It’s happening quietly. But it is happening.

Specs are selling, my friend.

A sci-fi spec called Ascension just sold yesterday and Matthew Vaughn(!) is going to direct it. Matthew Vaughn tends to direct IP property that he finds himself. So him attaching himself to an original spec is a big deal. With the recent sale of The Virginian, and now Hammerspace, the spec market has quietly come alive.

I want to ask why but I also don’t want to ask why. This is one of those waves you just ride.

Mason Mulligan is 16 years old and doesn’t have a lot of time to live. He’s been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and sometimes simply getting out of the house is difficult for him. Not that Mason is feeling sorry for himself. He hates that his mom babies him. And that his younger brother, Wyatt, has been tasked by said mom to follow him around and make sure he’s okay.

One day, in a fit of rebellious angst, Mason heads over to the decrepit roller rink his father used to use as an office. Mason’s father, Henry, is the creator of Hammerspace, a popular “Spongebob Squarepants” like character who a comic book company bought off him early and turned into a smash hit on every platform imaginable. Unfortunately, because of a bad deal, Henry never saw any of that money. That might have contributed to Henry disappearing. That’s right, nobody’s seen Mason’s father in two years.

Anyway, while reminiscing at the old rink, Mason finds a magical key that allows him to open up a magical locker that takes him into a Narnia-esque animated universe where he meets Punchy, the 3 foot-tall squattish overly-happy main character his father created. Punchy is so excited to meet another human being besides Henry that he follows an annoyed Mason back into the real world.

Meanwhile, Mason starts to gain animated powers, like the ability to walk on air, get slammed by a frying pan with no repercussions, and defy human physics. As fun as that is, Mason learns through Punchy that his father might still be alive in the animated universe, which means he must find and confront him about why he left the family.

As most of you know, I’m reading through 250 amateur screenplays for the Scriptshadow 250 contest. It’s nice to mix in a professional script that just sold, as I can ask myself, What is it that this guy’s doing that the contest entrants aren’t doing? Why did his script sell?

Well, for starters, you gotta be professional. I know that’s a vague term so let me elaborate. I was reading a contest script yesterday. I was five pages in and I liked what I’d read so far. Then I saw a misspelled word. It was a minor mistake, but it was a mistake nonetheless. To the outside observer, this might seem like an overreaction. Who cares, right! But to someone who’s read thousands of amateur screenplays, this was a red flag. I’d seen it so many times. A red flag in the first five pages ALWAYS leads to more red flags.

Sure enough, on the very next page, the paragraphs started to get longer. They went from 3-4 lines to 5-6 lines. A writer who isn’t putting in the effort to keep his paragraphs short and to the point? Who’d rather be sloppy and redundant, making the read more of a chore? Red flag.

In the coming pages, more spelling mistakes. And now misused words were showing up. And the dialogue, which was crackling before, was becoming sloppy, as if the writer was no longer proofreading what he read. He was just flying by the seat of his pants and refusing to do any rewrites.

Naturally, the story continued to get sloppier, to the point where I didn’t even know what was going on. And it was only page 25. That’s why when I see that early red flag, I always cringe. It’s like seeing an ant in your apartment. THERE’S NEVER JUST ONE ANT. There are more lurking. It’s only a matter of time before you find them.

Hammerspace was tight and professional. No red flags. You could tell this script had been combed over, outlined, rewritten, double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked. Doesn’t matter if you hated the script. You could tell that the writer made a professional effort. And while I shouldn’t be praising a script for that (professionalism should be a given), I see it so rarely on the amateur level, that I do appreciate it whenever I encounter it.

Now, what about the story? That I’m less sure of. Hammerspace takes a familiar concept and explores it through a new medium. We’ve seen the normal guy who gets super powers, of course. Hammerspace asks, “What would happen if you got cartoon powers?” My question is: Is that a compelling question?

Because while I liked the idea of a kid whose cartoonist father disappears and he goes looking for him only to end up in the cartoon space he created, this is less about that storyline than it is about Mason being able to walk on air and survive zany moments like being hit with a frying pan. The gimmick gets old quickly and never really gets used in an interesting way.

I actually thought Hammerspace was going to be darker. It starts off with this terminally ill kid dealing with the end of his life and his father who went missing two year ago. But as the script went on and it focused more on the aforementioned powers and the silly character of Punchy, it felt more like the cousin of the Goosebumps movie opening this weekend.

And that may be exactly why franchise-starved Warner Brothers bought it. But I guess with the script teasing something darker, I felt let down.

I also don’t think the script had a strong enough narrative engine. Once Punchy E.T.’s himself into Mason’s life, it isn’t clear where the script wants to go. The dad stuff is still always looming, but never quite thrust into the spotlight, leaving for a lot of characters wandering around and getting into random hijinx (here comes the bully!).

Contrast this with the similarly-conceived Ready Player One, about a kid going on a quest inside a popular video game universe, where the goal is clear. Solve the riddles that the creator placed in his game. If you solve them all, you get the creator’s entire trillion dollar fortune, as well as the game itself. Talk about clarity and high stakes. We never had that here. Or, to put it in Scriptshadow terms, the GSU was muddled at best.

I don’t want to sound like a bummer. I’m just not sure where they’re going with this. They could either Charlie Kaufman this motherfucker or turn it into the next Zathura. Right now it’s riding somewhere in between, and that’s probably why I didn’t respond to it as much as I wanted to.

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

What I learned: Sophistication of Presentation. Sophistication of Presentation is the minimum level of skill you’re required to display on the page in order for the reader to judge you solely on your story (and not on your writing ability). Sophistication of Presentation isn’t just about avoiding spelling and grammar mistakes (although that’s part of it). It’s about having a strong understanding of sentence structure, of vocabulary, of how people speak to one another. Here’s an early line of dialogue from an uptight female friend of Mason’s in Hammerspace: “But maturity is more a state of mind. Don’t you think? Like, a search for greater meaning. Intellectual curiosity. Finding the poetry within what others find trivial.” This is a writer who clearly paid attention in their English and writing classes, someone who passes the “Sophistication of Presentation” bar. What I usually encounter is something more like this: “You’re not a mature person, Joe. You should stop being an a-hole and learn more to be a person of intelligence.” Do you see what I mean? There’s a lack of sophistication to that sentence. When I see that lack of sophistication displayed throughout the script, it’s a quick sign that the writer isn’t ready for the big leagues yet.

How could I have been so wrong about a screenplay?

Genre: Biopic
Premise: We follow Apple co-founder Steve Jobs through three of the most important presentations of his life.
About: This film’s history is almost as storied as Steve Jobs himself. The infamous Sony hack revealed that David Fincher never really connected to the script. When he declined, so did leading Steve Jobs candidate Christian Bale. Sony head Amy Pascal didn’t really like the script either, waffling every time she was encouraged by producer Scott Rudin to put it into production. Eventually, the project had to move to Universal, where B-team Danny Boyle and Michael Fassbender came to the rescue (give me that B-team any day of the week!). But would it be enough to make the film a must-see? It’s looking promising. The film opened in only four theaters this weekend, but grossed a staggering 500k per screen. For comparison, American Sniper, released via the same strategy, grossed 600k per screen.
Writer: Aaron Sorkin
Details: 2 hours and 2 minutes long (off of a 177 page screenplay)

Boyle and Sorkin!

I gave the Steve Jobs screenplay a “wasn’t for me.”

Can I have a redo?

Hello. (Again).

Steve Jobs: The Film, knocked me on my ass, held me down, and tickle-tortured me until I couldn’t breathe anymore. And yet I couldn’t shake that “love-hate” relationship a proper tickle-torture leaves you with.

This movie works. And it shouldn’t have. It’s too different. Too repetitive. Led by too big of an asshole.

But somehow, “Steve Jobs” avoids the spinning pinwheel of death and replaces it with a Spotlight engine that always finds the exact PDF script you’re looking for. And that’s thanks to two people. Danny Boyle and Michael Fassbender.

I’m always the first to say that no director or actor can overcome a bad script. But every once in awhile, this proclamation bites me in the ass. If you find a chunk of ass on Sunset Boulevard, please return it to me.

“Steve Jobs” follows Apple co-founder, Jobs, through three of the most important Apple announcements in history – when Jobs announces the original Mac, when he announces the NEXT system, and when he announces the original iMac. Each mini-story centers on the half-an-hour leading up to his presentation, leaving Jobs to spar with all his nemeses in the meantime. These include: his boss John Sculley, his programmer, Steve Wozniak, his marketing director, Joanna, his other head programmer, Andy Hertzfeld, and his daughter, Lisa.

If you remember, my problem with the script was two-fold. First, the 3-act structure was too repetitive, with every act taking place right before a big presentation.

This got tiring when it was just words on a page (in a 177 page tome, mind you), but Danny Boyle did an EXCELLENT job translating those pages to images. He constantly moved us through the buildings so that most conversations took place in new environments. And most of the time, he’d make sure those environments added something extra to the scene.

For example, in the script, it felt like every Jobs-Wozniak conversation was the same. But in, for example, Jobs and Wozniak’s third act confrontation, Boyle has the two barking at each other in the auditorium with Jobs on stage and Wozniak 20 seats deep. By forcing the two to hash things out in front of numerous Apple employees, it gave the conversation an energy you just couldn’t feel on the page.

The second problem with the script was our unlikable main character, Steve Jobs himself. The man was a total prick on the page. But Michael Fassbender gave the character life. And you know what? He didn’t exaggerate Steve’s positive traits in some desperate bid to make him likable. He played him like a real guy who understood his flaws and did his best to manage them.

His scenes with Joanna (Kate Winslet) were particularly persuasive for a couple of reasons. First, he respected her. And second, he had a LOT of scenes with her. So a lot of the movie is Steve talking to a woman that he respects the hell out of. This evened things out when Steve belittled other characters. We knew there was a good side to this man. He merely had a hard time finding him.

Also, he was so sweet to his daughter. In the script, it felt like he was merely tolerant of her. But here, he clearly connected with and loved this girl. That one-two punch (his connection with Joanna and also with his daughter) made me see that Steve Jobs could be good, and even wanted to be good.

Now let’s get to what the script did REALLY right. When you read an Aaron Sorkin script, the first thing you want to talk about is DIALOGUE. It’s what he’s known for. It’s what he does best. So you’re always seeing what you can learn from the master. I learned a lot.

First, almost every single conversation was laced with a ton of conflict. Jobs battling with Lisa’s mom over whether she deserves his money. Jobs battling with John Sculley about the reason he was fired from Apple. Jobs battling Andy Hertzfeld about making sure the Mac said “Hello” during the inagural presentation. Jobs battling with Joanna about whether he should pay for his daughter’s Harvard tuition. Jobs battling with Woz over acknowledging Woz’s Apple II team.

Remember, heavy conflict dialogue is some of the easiest dialogue to write because it’s clear what needs to happen in the scene (each character must try and “win” the argument). When your dialogue is conflict-less — when there’s nothing to “win” – that’s when you’ll find characters struggling to say interesting or meaningful things.

I’d say 75% of the scenes here involved heavy-conflict. That’s not by accident. Sorkin knows that’s where dialogue thrives.

Sorkin is also known for his obsession with the walk-and-talk. He uses it so frequently that it’s become a walking joke. And we see a lot of it here, where Jobs is moving throughout the buildings, taking on character battles every time he’s on the move.

Well, the walk and talk is not just a way to keep the scene moving. It’s also great for dialogue. When you have characters walking, you create a journey, and a journey isn’t over until the characters reach their destination. Until that happens, you have your audience on a line, which means you have their attention. Simply put, your audience is more focused on dialogue when your characters are moving since their attention will be heightened until the destination is reached.

That’s not to say you can’t make a conversation interesting when characters stand in one place. There’s plenty of that going on here as well. But the next time you watch a film, all else being equal, keep tabs on how attentive you are when characters are walking and talking as opposed to when they’re stationary. You’ll find that you’re a little more tuned in when they’re on the move.

It’s similar to putting time-constraints on dialogue, which, not surprisingly, Sorkin does as well. This whole movie is a time constraint. There isn’t a single conversation that takes place where Jobs isn’t in a hurry – where his presentation isn’t a few minutes away. And Sorkin always saves the most important conversations for right before the presentation.

THIS IS NOT BY ACCIDENT.

We naturally feel more anxious the closer we get to a deadline (in this case, Jobs’s presentation). So if you place a big conversation right before a deadline, we’re LOCKED IN. We’re worried about our character making the impending time constraint, so we’re secretly pushing for him to hurry his conversation up. The problem is, the conversation is important, so we’re tuned into that as well. This means we’re tuned in on all frequencies, creating a sense of extreme focus.

It’s no coincidence then that the biggest conversation of all (between Jobs and his daughter before the final presentation) occurs AFTER Jobs’s presentation is supposed to start. That’s right, for the first time in the film, Sorkin pushes us PAST his start deadline, heightening our awareness beyond any and all previous levels so we’re super-tuned in. The dialogue sizzles in part because there is so much weight placed on every word. I mean, Jesus, the whole world is impatiently waiting for our hero downstairs! Does it get any more intense than that?

For contrast, imagine Jobs trying to have the same conversation with his daughter on a lazy Sunday afternoon, at his house, with all the time in the world, each character perfectly relaxed. Sound like a conversation that’s going to knock your socks off? My guess is probably not.

These are all things I’ve talked about before, though. You’re probably looking for more in-depth tips this Sorkin go-around. What does Sorkin do that makes his dialogue crackle where so many others fizzle? I noticed a few things. Once Sorkin sets up the basics (heavy conflict, a time constraint, characters on the move), he weaves in a variety of conversational variables. Here are some of the big ones I noticed.

1) Asides – A character will all of a sudden take us on a tangent. They’ll say something like, “When I was eight, do you know what the most important thing in the world to me was?’
2) Jokes – Characters crack jokes, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes at the other character’s expense. A good joke relieves tension, preventing the dialogue from getting too melodramatic.
3) Zingers – Sorkin loves Zingers. Have a character say something derogatory to another character, then have the other character come back with a clever burn.
4) Teachable moments – This is one of Sorkin’s favorite things to do. Have your characters teach the audience something. So a character will say something to the effect of, “Did you know the Romans refused to feed their soldiers after a battle?” The character will go on to explain why this is, before eventually bringing it back to how this relates to their problem.
5) Analogies – Characters will constantly say things like, “It’s like putting together a stereo. You want to choose the parts on your own.” Lots of analogies in a Sorkin script.
6) Set-ups and payoffs – Whereas a lot of writers like to set plot points up and pay them off later (Marty McFly plays guitar in high school. This pays off later when he’s asked to play guitar at his parents’ Fish Under the Sea Dance), Sorkin likes to set up DIALOGUE and pay it off later. So Jobs might call Woz a dickwad. Then 15 minutes later, Jobs will need Woz’s help for an unexpected problem, and Woz will say something like, “I didn’t know dickwads were capable of that.”

On their own, each of these things might seem obvious. But from a person who reads a lot of screenplays with a lot of bad dialogue, I can assure you that the biggest problem with amateur dialogue is how plain and uninspired it is. Characters say exactly what they’re thinking in a monotone matter. By mixing in all of these tools, Sorkin’s able to write a lot of vibrant dialogue. Of course, on top of these tools, you still need imagination, creativity, and talent. Just because you know to use analogies doesn’t mean you can think up an analogy as clever as Aaron Sorkin. But just knowing that you should bring that into the mix in the first place puts you well ahead of the majority of your competition.

Steve Jobs shocked me. I thought this was going to be just like the script. But Danny Boyle elevated it to something more. And he NAILED the Jobs-daughter relationship, which was the heart of the screenplay. Jesus, man. The ending? On that rooftop? These eyes don’t lie. I was tearing up. I want to go find my old iMac and give it a big fat iHug.

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: What I learned had nothing to do with the actual screenwriting side of this movie. What struck me is how much Steve Jobs failed in his career. The Mac was a failure, the Lisa (the computer before) was a failure, the NEXT was a failure, Jobs was fired from Apple. It wasn’t until the iMac hit that Jobs truly succeeded. The next time you’re worried about a bad writing day or a script that didn’t get received as well as you’d hoped, remember that a man who many consider to be a genius failed repeatedly in his first 12 years in the business. Failures didn’t stop Jobs. So they shouldn’t stop you.