Genre: War/Period/Real-life story
Premise: The story of how a young World War 2 Navy commander saved a group of men after their ship was destroyed by the Japanese. That man? John F. Kennedy.
About: This script made a lot of noise a few months ago and will probably end up pretty high on this year’s Black List. Although the script went into just about every major production company in town, there hasn’t been any mention of a sale yet. Should it indeed finish high on the Black List though, expect that to change. Co-writer Evan Kilgore is a novelist with 4 books to his name and his writing partner, Samuel Franco, executive produced 2014’s small indie film, Affuenza. In other words, Hollywood had no idea who these guys were. Well, they know now!
Writers: Samuel Franco & Evan Kilgore
Details: 117 pages (5/4/15 draft)

I have to give it to Franco and Kilgore (that sounds strangely like a 1930s comedy duo). They may have discovered the most genius idea ever. First off, what are movies about? They’re about heroes. And what bigger hero is there than John F. Kennedy? So already, this writing team has tapped into an extremely marketable character.

But wait, there’s more!

The problem with JFK is that all his stories have been told. Or at least, THAT’S WHAT WE THOUGHT! Franco and Kilgore discovered this long forgotten heroic war story of JFK’s. And guess when that story takes place? World War 2. World War 2 is one of the easiest subject matters to market in the movie industry.

So let’s recap. We’ve got…

1) One of the greatest heroes in American history.
2) A little-known heroic story from his past.
3) A World War 2 setting.

As they’d say on Seinfeld: “It’s gold, Jerry! Gold!” However, there’s this strange Dallasian cloud hanging over this project. Despite having all these elements in place, despite it going into every territory in town, it didn’t sell. What does that mean? Could it be that the script’s bad? That’s what was on my mind when I picked Mayday 109 up. Let’s see if we can get a better understanding of what went on here.

JFK was a kid with way too many health problems. He was supposed to die numerous times growing up, but he always seemed to fight his way through it. And if there’s anything this first act is about, it’s about how JFK never stops fighting.

At Harvard, he competes in the Swimming Championships despite having a 101 fever. When his older brother, Joe, throws it in his face that he’s not up to snuff, JFK challenges him to a sailboat race. Despite never having beat his bro before, he does it this time. JFK don’t give up and don’t back down. Betta ask somebody.

Cut to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and JFK wants to go to war, something his father is against. JFK goes anyway and within a few years becomes the Captain of a Patrol boat. This doesn’t sit well with the crew, who believe it’s the Kennedy name that got him the position, not his actual ability.

Before he can dissolve that tension, their ship is rammed into by a giant Japanese destroyer. His men are scattered everywhere and somehow JFK is able to save 10 of the 12 crew, getting them over to a nearby patch of land.

From there, the group must make a tough decision. Do they try and swim to a nearby island that gives them a better chance at contacting help? Or stay here and wait for someone to pick them up, a decision that could end with the Japs finding them first.

Kennedy convinces the reluctant group to swim, and that begins an island-hopping adventure where Kennedy swims from island to island looking for friendlies. Eventually, he finds some locals, carves a “help” message into a coconut, and has them travel to a nearby base. This coconut would later become famous, as it’s one of the reasons Kennedy was able to become president of the United States.

Jeremy Irvine to play a young JFK?

The cool thing about writing a true story is that everything’s all plotted out for you. Sure, you need to cut some things and move other things around, and maybe even get creative with the order in which the story is told. But if you’ve found a good real-life story, you have what all screenwriters dream of – a defacto outline ready to go.

Mayday 109 has that. After the crash, you’ve got that strong goal (get to safety). The stakes are high (Japanese boats heavily patrol the area), the urgency is there (they have no food, no water. If they don’t find a solution soon, they die). And yet something’s missing. What it is, I’m not sure.

My initial instinct is that the story’s too chaotic. It doesn’t have the proper structure in place to take advantage of the dramatic problem. I’m reminded of another boat wreck movie, Titanic. One of the reasons James Cameron’s movie worked so well was because he designed his story to milk the tension, to milk the suspense.

The Titanic doesn’t just hit an iceberg and go down 2 minutes later. That would’ve been chaotic and crazy, but it would’ve been over within 2 minutes! Instead, they hit the iceberg and there’s this realization that the ship is going down, but it’s going to take a couple of hours. This means that everything that happens from that point on, even basic conversations, are going to have an undercurrent of suspense to them. Because we know the end is coming. And everyone’s running out of options as far as what to do.

Here in Mayday, it doesn’t feel like that kind of thought – the kind that maximizes the suspense – has been put into this. There’s more of a “moment-to-moment” approach, where we’re simply trying to solve immediate problems (Should we swim to the next island? Yes or no?). And while that kind of storytelling is perfectly valid, it can become exhausting.

And repetitive too. The script is pretty much about Kennedy swimming. A lot. If I’m being honest, I got sick of that. And that’s supposed to be the core of where the story’s excitement comes from.

Finally, I feel like the character stuff was a bit on the nose, specifically JFK’s relationship with his father. We never go beyond the basic, “Dad doesn’t believe in me” stuff, and it kept the script from really resonating on a deeper level. For example, we get lines like JFK saying to his dad, “Just once believe in me the way you believe in Joe.” That line can work if the rest of the dialogue is deftly written. But if the rest of the dialogue feels surface-level and on-the-nose, lines like this stick out as a problem.

As I’ve said to you guys before, the key to making a script really resonate with the reader is to do so on the character front. You can have a wild captivating story like this one. But if you don’t create a couple of fascinating relationships within the chaos that need to be resolved, each which strike to the core of who your characters are and what their problems are, the story will sink.

Not to get all James Cameron on you. But Rose from Titanic is the perfect example of this. She was trapped in a life that prevented her from being who she wanted to be. Her relationship with her fiancé represented this. So when she finally broke away from that, it was emotionally cathartic for the audience. There’s an attempt to do something similar here with JFK and an ensign who doesn’t like him, but again, it happens mostly on the surface.

And I don’t want to be too down on the script. It’s not a bad screenplay. I think there’s just an element to the story that hasn’t been realized yet. I hope the writers figure out what that is, because if they do, I could easily see someone like Robert Zemeckis coming on and directing this. It seems like it’s right up his current wheelhouse.

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

What I learned: I am hereby limiting ALL SCREENWRITERS to only THIRTY DASHES (outside of sluglines) in each screenplay they write. NOT A DASH MORE! The overuse of this inorganic-looking character can quickly make a screenplay look like a technical document. Remember, the uglified formatting of a screenplay ALREADY makes it look too technical. You don’t want to add anything that’s going to accentuate that. If I were to estimate how many times the dash was used in Mayday 109, I’d say easily in the neighborhood of 1500 times. It really killed the look and flow of the script.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Thriller/Lifetime (Made-For-TV)
Premise (from writer): When her homecoming ends in tragedy, a desperate single mother spins a web of lies to protect the family nursery from a ruthless property developer.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Breaking into the industry through Lifetime MoW (Movie of the Week) means is legit. Many writers have started out there and transitioned into feature films. It’s a subject we’ve never covered on Scriptshadow in my 4 years there. We’re always focused on high concept studio-oriented stuff. Why not made-for-TV? That career path would make for an interesting discussion in your blog.
Writer: Brett Martin (Electric Dreamer)
Details: 105 pages (note: This is an updated draft from the one posted on Amateur Offerings) – Edit: I’ve been informed that I read the OLD draft. Take that into consideration when reading the review. Sorry about that, Brett!

Sarah Wayne Callies for Gemma!

Long-time commenter and awesome community member, Electric Dreamer, has bestowed upon the Scriptshadow community a challenge heretofore unknown to the reader faithful. To review a made-for-TV screenplay.

We talk about genre scripts and Oscar hopefuls and giant spec sales all the time, ignoring the fact that there’s a huge industry that exists below the line where writers make a living on, let’s just be honest here, guilty pleasure TV flicks. “The Day Janie Left” doesn’t just write itself, you know.

So I thought today’s review could double as primer for the made-for-TV world. If you want to play in the sandbox where the sand isn’t as deep, where you can develop your skills before moving up to the big leagues, then Made-For-TV might be for you. Let’s check out Electric’s “Reap What You Sow” to see what these films are all about.

30-something Gemma has just arrived back in her home town with her 15 year old cancer-stricken daughter, Rose. The two are flat broke and from the bits and pieces of their conversation we’re privy to, it sounds like Gemma is hoping to reconnect with her father, possibly even stay with him, a difficult decision since he’s always been an abusive alcoholic.

But when Gemma shows up at her childhood home, her father is dead, his neck pierced with a broken whiskey bottle. It would appear that he had a drunken accident.

OR DID HE???

When studly Sheriff and former Gemma boyfriend Carl Baxter comes to take a look at the mess, he’s not convinced that this was an accident. In fact, he’s suspicious of the fresh bruises that have appeared around Gemma’s neck.

COULD GEMMA HAVE MURDERED HER FATHER???

While Carl turns the dad’s death into an official murder investigation, Gemma learns that the richest man in town, Walt Sharpe, was just about to close a deal to buy Gemma’s house. It doesn’t take Gemma long to realize that Sharpe wants to build some giant resort, and that her father’s house is right in the middle of it.

Apparently, when the dad died, the contract disappeared. So Walt employs his right hand man, Butch Garner, to form a relationship with Gemma, allowing him access to the house where he might possibly locate this missing contract.

But then Butch starts to actually like Gemma, and everything gets redonkulous. This forces the increasingly psychotic Walt to try and get the house through other means. And through that pursuit, we learn the shocking truth behind who killed Gemma’s father.

Okay, I’m going to start off with some advice right out of the gate. Brett sent me a new version of his script, in which he says he completely rewrote the first 12 pages. I COULD TELL. And this is why I warn writers away from doing massive changes at the last second.

Screenplays are odd beasts. They don’t operate under the known laws of physics. You can look at a change you just made and think, “Wow, I really nailed that. That’s so much better than what I had before.” Then you pick up your script a week later, read the same scene, and it’s like a mentally challenged fifth grader hijacked your script.

What happened?

What happened was TIME. Time allows perspective. When you rush, you don’t have perspective. You can’t see how the changes fit into the larger picture yet.

That’s clearly what happened here because once the script got going, it was fine. It was only the first few scenes that had me confused. For example, here’s the first half-page.

So we’re at a motel. Then we’re told of furniture and a mattress outside and that “It’s Moving Day for someone…” Is this an off-the-cuff description to add color to the writing? Or is this referring to specific character(s) we’re about to meet?

This early in a script, before you’ve identified the style or voice of the writer, you have to assume that everything is being written with a purpose. Therefore, I’ll assume the “moving” has to do with our characters (Gemma and Rose). But if it’s “moving day,” why aren’t they moving from their home? Why are we at a motel?

Maybe they’re in the process of moving? Like they’re on one leg of the journey? Except in the scenes that follow, there’s no actual moving that occurs. The point is, I’m stuck trying to figure something out that should be obvious. And I believe this mistake was made because of rushed writing.

I point this out in my book as one of my tips. Don’t make a lot of changes right before you send your script out. Something’s bound to get screwed up.

Moving on. Reap What You Sow is a very tight story. One thing I’ve realized about the Lifetime/Hallmark movies is that because they embrace formula so openly, they’re perfect for the GSU (Goal, Stakes, Urgency) approach. These movies DESPERATELY want you to use this formula. And they don’t care if it’s transparent.

So here Gemma has a goal – she has to get her late father’s garden/landscaping business up and running to secure the house. The stakes are if she fails, she loses the house. And the urgency is that she only has a month to do it or else Walt gets the home.

But Brett didn’t stop there. Brett use something I like to call GSU-squared (or even GSU-cubed). This is when you give GSU to EVERY SINGLE MAJOR CHARACTER IN YOUR SCRIPT.

So we know Gemma’s GSU plight. But we also have Walt’s. His goal is to get the house from Gemma. The stakes are that if he fails, he can’t build his super-resort. And the urgency is the same time frame that Gemma’s got (since they’re working off the same ticking time bomb – one month).

Then you have Butch. Butch’s goal is to find the contract. The stakes are his standing in Walt’s company. And the urgency is the same (1 month).

By giving every character GSU, your script is always MOVING. Whenever we cut to a character, they have something they’re trying to achieve. And because of “S” (stakes), that something is always important.

If you’ve ever found yourself cutting to characters and they feel boring or static, chances are it’s because they don’t have a goal, or there are no stakes attached to their goal, or there’s no time constraint involved in their journey. Give a character GSU and they instantly come alive.

So Brett did a really good job there.

But where Reap What You Sow runs into problems is in its dialogue. And maybe this is because I don’t understand the expectations for dialogue in made-for-TV movies (the extent of my made-for-TV watching is limited to Mommy Dearest), but whether their expectations are low or not, there wasn’t enough LIFE in these words. Here’s a sampling from a scene in which Rose’s new crush, Seth, stares at her oxygen get-up.

It felt like dialogue. It never felt like people talking. And I think that’s because Brett didn’t know his characters well enough. Rose, in particular, seemed like she was only there to add financial strife to Gemma’s situation. I never saw her as a real person. And when you don’t get to know your characters, you don’t learn their little idiosyncrices, their fears and reservations – the things that inform how a person speaks.

For example, I read a script not long ago where a meathead character would pepper his speech with “you know” every five seconds, even when he didn’t need to. Or, to compare similar characters, there’s the character of Emma in the TV show, The Bates Motel. Like Rose, she needs a breathing apparatus.

Emma is infatuated with Norman, so every part of the way she speaks is geared towards pleasing him, impressing him, trying to get him to notice her. There’s a neediness to her speech pattern that brings her dialogue alive. Here in “Reap What You Sow,” characters speak mainly to move plot along or give opinions about things (i.e. “I don’t like Butch.”). There’s a lack of naturalism and a lack of fun to the dialogue.

And I don’t think this being a TV movie should be an excuse to write less-interesting dialogue. Sure, the dialogue’s probably going to be more on-the-nose than in, say, a David Fincher film, but you should still try to be on-the-nose with some flair.

I guess the best way to sum up my reaction to the dialogue here is that it felt like Brett was bored writing it. I want him to write a version where it feels like he’s having fun. And isn’t that what Lifetime wants anyway? Don’t they want a little cheese? A little goofiness? A little flash?

It’s nearly impossible for me to give a rating here because I’m trying to rate something that embraces a lower quality product. And while I definitely thought there was a lot to celebrate, the story wasn’t challenging enough to keep me engaged. That and the dialogue were what kept this from being “worth the read.”

With that said, I feel like Brett achieved what he set out to do, and I don’t see his script as being that far behind what Lifetime puts on the air. What did you guys think?

Script link: Reap What You Sow (new version)

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

What I learned: Brett hooked me up with a couple of writers who have operated in the Made-For-TV-Movie world. After promising each of them a box of Sprinkles cupcakes, they’ve shared with me some trade secrets. They say that Hallmark responds to scripts that promote the wholesome, family love, uplifting thing. While Lifetime is a little more varied. They prefer the tawdry woman in danger scenario. But also like domestic strife, standing up to invaders, and the storybook romance (an old flame rekindled). Any made-for-TV movie fans here? What other secrets can you tell us!?

Genre: Biopic
Premise: At age14, Richard Wersche Jr. became an informant for the FBI. He spent the next two years helping take down the biggest drug gang in Detroit, Michigan.
About: There are THREE “White Boy Rick” projects in development, although this one, by most accounts, is the best of the bunch (so far). What’s interesting here (and a reminder for writers who like biopics but are afraid of copyright issues) is that writer-bros Logan and Noah Miller sold this as a spec. They didn’t have any rights to Wersche’s story. To be clear on that, nobody requires you to get the rights to a life in order to write a script about them. You can write the best biopic you can, and leave the “rights” issues to the production company and/or studio that buys the script. Logan and Noah Miller are probably best known for their 2013 indie film, Sweetwater, a Western that starred Ed Harris and January Jones.
Writers: Logan & Noah Miller
Details: 136 pages (undated – but the script went out in February of this year)

Tye Sheridan is pretty much the only actor you can go with for Rick.

When not one, not two, but three production companies are all racing to make a movie about the same person, you figure that person’s life has to be pretty extraordinary. For that reason, I went into this screenplay with some high expectations. And you know what they say about high expectations?

It’s 1986 and 14 year-old Richard Wersche Jr. has the geographic lack of fortune to be born in one of the worst cities in America – Detroit. Detroit used to be the chest-puffed-out capital of the automobile industry. That is until the Japanese started making cars that were cheaper and better.

When that industry broke down, Detroit became a haven for gangs and drugs. But where there is chaos, there is opportunity. And Richard Wersche’s father got the idea to start selling guns to gangs. It’s not exactly legal, but it keeps food on the table. And who’s dad’s best employee? Wouldn’t you know it. It’s his son, little White Boy Rick.

One day Dad gets a knock on the door from the FBI. They know that if there’s anybody who’s got a beat on these gangs, it’s the man selling them guns. So they offer money to dad if he can give them the inside scoop. However, to their surprise, it isn’t Dad who knows everything about every customer, it’s his son, 14 year-old Rick.

As soon as the Feds realize that Rick’s a mini-Einstein, they employ him to infiltrate the drug community. This leads to Rick meeting the Curry Brothers, the number one dealers in the city, and three of the most dangerous motherfuckers you’ll ever cross paths with. The Curry Brothers like Rick. He’s an anomaly. A little white teenage brat who thinks he knows it all. That’s enough to embrace him and make him a key piece of the enterprise.

The movie then follows this little 14, then 15, then 16 year old kid as he’s pulled back and forth between the government and this gang, both of them taking advantage of and exploiting Rick. But Rick figures out a way to rise above it all. And when the Curry Brothers finally get caught with their hands in the crack jar, Rick’s there to take their place, becoming the biggest dealer in the city.

But then there’s no one left for the Feds to take down except for, ironically, the boy who got them there. So Rick is thrown into prison for the rest of his life, and not a single one of those Feds who used a minor to do their jobs ever got punished for it. Rick is still behind bars today, waiting for justice to be served to the men who took advantage of him.

I don’t know if White Boy Rick is a great script so much as it is a great real-life story. And this is what I keep telling you guys is the dirty little secret of screenwriting. If you find that awesome idea or that awesome character, the script will write itself.

I mean we have a 15 year-old taking down some of the biggest drug dealers in the country. He becomes a millionaire, making more money a month than, as he points out, the president of the United States. He ends up running the biggest cocaine trading pipeline between Miami and the Midwest. He’s used by both sides of the system. He USES both sides of the system. It’s no secret why three separate companies are rushing to turn this man’s story into a movie.

White Boy Rick also taught me that utilizing an “impending sense of doom” shouldn’t be limited to horror films. Here, the impending sense of doom is the main story element driving us to keep reading. We know that Rick can’t walk this line forever. Either the bad guys are going to figure out he’s playing them or the good guys are going to stop needing him, and when either of those things happen, he’s toast.

To that end, this script did a great job. I wanted to see how Rick would fall.

If the script has faults, though, it’s its unabashed desperation to land Scorsese as a director. Because Scorsese has made this film so many times now, what was once a unique product has become pure formula. Not unlike the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back” formula that drives a rom-com, the Scorsese Tragedy has its own familiar beats. And while Rick was an amazing character, you couldn’t help thinking of Goodfellas, or The Wolf of Wall Street, or Casino, when you read White Boy Rick. It almost feels like one of those scripts was chosen and these new words were simply pasted on top of the old ones, starting with the obligatory first act of pure main character voice over.

It’s a writing crutch we all fall back on. When we write a movie, the first thing we do is go back and watch all the similar movies to see what they did right. The problem with this approach is that, whether you’re aware of it or not, those story beats are seeping into your soul, and without you even realizing it, you’re soon copying those beats into your script. So sure, you may be doing what made that other movie work, but you’re doing so at the expense of originality. You need to deviate from the script sometimes, pun-intended.

Despite the familiarity of the formula, I’d still recommend this script because the title character is so freaking fascinating. You can’t believe this really happened. And the Millers did an excellent job of making Rick likable. This guy did some horrible things. He ran a drug organization that indirectly killed hundreds (maybe thousands) of people. Yet the Millers cleverly present Rick as the victim, the teenage boy who was taken advantage of by everyone in his life, even his own father.

And maybe that’s the lesson to take away from this. When you have an idea this good or a character this good, you can make a lot of mistakes in your script and the script still works. If you have a flimsy or light premise like, to use a random example, Enough Said (that rom-com with James Gandolfini and Julia Luis-Dreyfus), the tiniest mistake (a boring twist) could derail the entire story. White Boy Rick proves what happens when you have the ultimate subject. Much like Rick in real life, the script becomes bulletproof.

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

What I learned: A common mistake I see in monologue-writing is the writer getting too wrapped up in what the character is trying to say, and then delivering an overly-rewritten on-the-nose monologue that’s boring as hell. Monologues are always more memorable when they’re unique, or, like a good story, deviate from the expected path. To that end, I loved this monologue in White Boy Rick. In it, one of the FBI agents asks Rick if he knows who Nancy Reagan is. Keep in mind that the point of the monologue is to convey how important it is (to both Rick and us) that the government win the war on drugs. Most writers would’ve written a very straight-forward dull message about how the war on drugs is destroying America and if they don’t do something soon, the fabric of the country will be permanently destroyed. Here’s how the Millers write it instead. AGENT TURNER: “Well, it turns out that the First Lady is very fucking angry these days. She’s so fucking angry that she’s declared war. A War on Drugs. You know what that really means? That means that if she doesn’t get what she wants, if she doesn’t win this fucking goddamn war, the President doesn’t get any pussy. She locks his dick out of her vagina. And that’s bad for the country. Hell, it’s bad for the whole fucking world. Because when the President of the United States of America ain’t getting laid, he gets really fucking frustrated, and the next thing you know the nukes start flying and we’re buried in World War III with the fucking Russians.”

Genre: Noir/Superhero
Premise: A unique interpretation of the Superman vs. Batman story that reinvents the characters and cleverly avoids outright association with either property.
About: Screenwriter Jeremy Slater has the dubious honor of having his name attached to the biggest bust of the year, Fantastic Four. But there were some extenuating circumstances. First of all, whatever movie Slater wrote clearly isn’t the one that showed up at theaters this weekend, as the film has been famously repurposing itself over the last six months. And second, just being asked to adapt a major franchise is a HUGE EFFING DEAL as a screenwriter. It’s the equivalent of what used to be the big spec sale. It means you’ve arrived. And Slater got this job by writing the screenplay I’m reviewing today – a screenplay that many consider to be one of the best in Hollywood.
Writer: Jeremy Slater
Details: 2012 draft

Man of Tomorrow has been slip-sliding around in my read pile for the better part of 3 years. At some point, I just forgot what it was about and it slipped into read purgatory. Then the script came up in a few recent conversations and people were like, “You haven’t read Man of Tomorrow??”

The record scratched. Everyone in the room turned. My script ignorance was put on blast – not something I’m used to. I know the script was on the Black List a few years ago but wasn’t it somewhere near the bottom? That was all part of the mystique that surrounded Man of Tomorrow – mystique that would play into this dark and unpredictable read.

The year is 1946. 50-something Paul Harrigan is an FBI agent who’s been tasked with the impossible – containing Tommy Anders, the man who has taken over Chicago and turned it into a spot so crime-infested that even Al Capone would be disgusted with it. And Al Capone actually makes an appearance in this movie so a reaction like that is possible!

The reason Tommy can just take over a city is because he possesses super-human powers. He’s stronger than a thousand men. Bullets bounce off his body. And rumor has it he can even fly. But unlike his doppelganger, the superhero who shall not be named (his name rhymes with buperban), Tommy uses his powers for naughty reasons, namely running the biggest criminal organization in the country.

Tommy’s only problem is that a not-so-nice man named Erinyes doesn’t like him. Erinyes is a psycho with a gravelly voice and a silver mask who keeps killing Tommy’s men. His message is a simple one: “Get the hell out of Chicago or Ima gonna make you dead.” My words not his.

While Tommy doesn’t want to admit it, Erinyes is the first mortal he’s ever been afraid of. More specifically, he’s scared Erinyes will kill the love of his life, Lili. You can’t stop bullets if you’re not around when they’re fired.

What follows is a story surprisingly full of twists and turns that plays out under a Pulp-Fictionalized timeline, one that jumps back and forth to tell its story out of order, as if the script hadn’t catered to the geek populace enough. When it’s all said a done, Hitler, Al Capone, a nuclear bomb, and lots of heavy shadows will make cameos in “Man of Tomorrow,” a non-traditional script if there ever was one.

So there’s this growing contingent of people out there saying that since the spec script is dead, there’s no reason to try and write a script to sell anymore. It makes more sense to determine what kind of movies you want to write in Hollywood, then write a really weird out-of-the-box story that exists adjacent to that universe.

So if Jeremy Slater wants to write a Superman movie, it doesn’t make sense to write a movie about a superhero who saves the day. That’s every superhero movie ever. Instead, set your story in the 1940s. Create a Superman vs. Batman storyline, but rename the characters and modify their powers a bit. Throw in a film noir style and jump around in time to really shake the story up.

Now you’re got something that shows you can write a superhero movie, but you’ve also proven that you have a unique voice and that you think outside of the box.

To this strategy I say… hold your horses. I still think you can sell scripts if you target genres that are still selling (Thrillers, Horror, Comedy) and you execute them well. I also think there’s a fine line here. Man of Tomorrow shows what happens when a writer executes this strategy successfully. But I read the 100 other scripts that execute this strategy miserably.

Cause the thing is, just being different isn’t enough. You still have to know how to tell a story. And I can tell that before Slater wrote this screenplay, he wrote plenty of traditional scripts. It takes control to be able to jump back and forth in time and not lose the reader. It takes skill to create characters with as much depth as these (Harrigan is drowning in internal conflict, and both Tommy and Erinyes have extensive and heartbreaking backstories).

The point is, yes, writing something outside of the box is good, but you still need a solid understanding of storytelling to pull it off.

This leads us to the more pertinent question of is today’s script any good on its own (regardless of its weird approach)? I’d say yes, but I didn’t like it as much as everybody else seemed to. And everybody else REALLY seemed to like Man of Tomorrow (writers have literally said to me: “You haven’t read Man of Tomorrow?? Cancel the rest of your day and read it now!” “But I have a doctor’s appoint—“ “CANCEL IT NOWWW!!!!”)

I think it’s because I’m not a film noir guy. I don’t like stylized reality (I’d rather have my skin peeled from my body via a potato peeler than watch a movie like Sin City). I like things to be as grounded as possible (unless the genre dictates the opposite, like Star Wars). And I detest alternate history. In this script, Tommy kills Hitler and wins World War 2. Erinyes is the creator of the atom bomb, which he plans to use to kill Tommy. It was all a bit too geeky for me.

But there’s no question, when you read “Man of Tomorrow,” how much skill is on the page. Here’s a random sample of the writing I copied from page 3: “The old guy still has a flair for the dramatic. He pauses to light a cheap cigar, takes a few puffs, exhales greasy smoke through his teeth. Never taking his eyes off Tommy.” That level of detail is far superior to what I usually read, which is something closer to this: “Our hero is smoking as he stares at the other man. He looks him hard in the eyes. There’s a clear dislike between the two here.”

So if I had a higher Geek degree, I’d probably be giving this five stars. But from where I stand, I’ll have to appreciate it more from afar. Which is still pretty impressive when you consider I’m generally not a fan of this stuff.

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

What I learned: The right action, no matter how tiny, can sell an entire character, which can be critical early on in when you need to convey newly introduced characters quickly. Let’s look at the very first action of our hero, Harrigan: “We find HARRIGAN shoveling a porterhouse steak into his mouth.” Reread that and pay close attention to the details. The verb “shoveling” indicates aggressiveness. And a “porterhouse steak” is a very masculine food. 10 words! 10 words is all we needed to give us a sense of this character. To bolster this point, consider how differently you imagine Harrigan when I introduce him this way: “We find Harrigan nibbling on a cucumber roll.” You’re imagining a completely different character, right? That’s how important actions (even tiny ones, like how they eat) are in selling your characters.

Much ado has been made about the disaster that is Fantastic Four (25 million opening weekend on a film that, when conceived, the studio hoped would make 70-80 million). The film has been getting roasted for months in LA, with whispers (actually, let’s be honest, screams) of how the entire production fell apart due to young untested director Josh Trank going AWOL (Word is he would lock himself in his trailer for days, doing blow instead of directing).

People have been saying that they were still shooting scenes as recently as a month and a half ago. That’s unheard of for an industry that spends the large majority of its time in post-production. Star Wars, for example, will have stopped shooting for a year by the time it comes out in December.

Then Trank had the cojones to come out on Twitter and call the movie terrible, claiming if Fox would’ve just let him make the film he wanted to make, they would’ve had a good movie on their hands. Yikes. You’ve already pissed off the monster. Why are you walking back into his den and taunting him? It’s a move that if you’re choosing sides on who’s to blame, Trank tipped the scales in his favor. How do you not have enough self-awareness to know that everyone in town is already skeptical of you? To publicly trash the hand that feeds you the night before your movie opens? It doesn’t matter if you’re right. You need to know when to lay low and ride it out.

All this noise, however, has masked the bigger question. Should Fantastic Four have been made in the first place? As a screenwriter, one of your jobs is to gauge whether your idea is actually a movie. One of the biggest mistakes I see by far from amateur writers (although it happens plenty in the professional ranks too), is committing to an idea that isn’t a movie.

Now of course, this is a subjective question. What one person deems a worthy idea, another deems the worst idea ever. But there are definitely elements – from genre to conflict to irony to uniqueness to subject matter – that factor into whether something is worthy of being a movie.

Take a movie like “Shame,” which starred Michael Fassbender and was directd by Steve McQueen. Is that a movie idea? It’s a vague exploration of a man with an addiction who lives with his sister. Sure, the movie looks amazing because it was directed by McQueen. And the performances were good because the actors were good. But if you stripped those things away and just looked at it on the page, was it a movie idea? No, it wasn’t. It was two characters in search of a story.

When I look at Fantastic Four, I wonder if it’s a movie idea. Its main superhero’s power is that he can stretch. Another member of the group turns into a rock man. How did they get these powers? Errr, cause they went up in space and, uhhh, something caused a change in their molecular structure?

I know we just got done celebrating a movie called Ant-Man, but at least Ant-Man was unique. At least it allowed the filmmakers to explore things that we hadn’t seen before in the superhero universe (the battles that take place when you’re the size of an ant). Here we just have some superhero powers that don’t make a lot of sense and aren’t that cool in the first place.

The biggest superhero films so far – Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman, Superman. Their powers are simple and very easy to understand. We don’t understand Fantastic Four, and hence we’ve never embraced it on the big screen (this is the third incarnation in which it’s failed).

I guess what I’m saying is, you have to try and recognize when your idea doesn’t work. Especially as a spec writer where you’re going to be spending at least a year on something if you’re going to make it good. If you’re sensing problems in the idea before you even write the first scene (How do I make a character with stretchy-powers cool)? I GUARANTEE those problems aren’t going to magically go away on Month 7. Sure, you can take a chance. And sometimes we do figure the issues out. But more often than not, the obstacles are insurmountable, and that, I believe, is what happened to Fantastic Four. It was never a movie in the first place.

Moving from movie superheroes to writing superheroes, Diablo Cody just came out with a new movie this weekend. It’s called Ricki and the Flash and stars perennial Oscar winning actress Meryl Streep as an aging rocker who’s always put music in front of her family.

The movie went out wide (to about 1600 screens. For reference, FF4 had 4000 screens), and finished with a paltry 7 million bucks. So here’s my question – and it’s directed specifically at female viewers. Tons of noise has been made over the past few years about the lack of equality in the entertainment business.

Men get all the writing jobs, the directing jobs, the acting jobs. And women believe they’re not being represented. Ricki and the Flash is clearly a response to that criticism. It’s got maybe the best actress in history in the film. It was written by the most recognizable female writer in the business. And it’s a female-themed movie on almost every level.

So then why didn’t women show up to this? Why aren’t they supporting what they say the market is missing? Is the answer simply, bringing back the earlier topic, it’s a bad idea? And if this is not the kind of movie women want made, what is the kind of female-driven movie project that women want made? What is the market missing?

I want to finish today by addressing a question I saw in the comments of one of last week’s posts. I had talked, in the post, about how the characters in the script I was reviewing needed to have more depth. And a commenter replied, “Well, yeah, but what does that MEAN??” Everyone in the industry SAYS that, but then they don’t say how you actually create characters with depth.

Well, I’ll come to the defense of these people by saying that explaining how to create depth in your characters is going to take in the neighborhood of 4000 words AT LEAST. It’s not something you can just bust out in a sentence or two.

Still, I wanted to answer this question for that writer. And recently, I’ve been getting into cinematography. It turns out lighting presents the perfect analogy for character building. The first thing a cinematographer does when he’s lighting a scene is he figures out the main source of light. Maybe it’s a window. Maybe it’s a lamp. Maybe it’s a laptop screen. Once he’s located that lighting source, that’s his in-point to lighting the scene. He puts a main light up to mimic the source of that light, and then he evolves the lighting from there, adding more lights to fill up the scene where he needs to.

When you create a character, you should be thinking in a similar manner. You need that base source of light. And, to me, that’s the character’s flaw. Or, more specifically: “What is the one thing that has been holding this character back from becoming a whole/happy person?” It might be that they don’t believe in themselves. It might be that they’re selfish. It might be that they’re stubborn. In Ricki and the Flash’s case, it might be that they’ve put their work in front of their family their whole life. Whatever the case, that is your main source of light for creating depth in a character.

Of course, just like a cinematographer will then start filling in the location with more lights (a “rim” light, a “fill light,” practical lights), you can fill your character in with more traits that create depth. For example, maybe your character has a vice (drugs). Maybe they have issues with their father. How many “lights” you add is up to you. But as long as you have that first one – that main source of light – you’ll have created a character with some level of depth. Hope that helps.