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: Sci-Fi
Premise (from writer): Two young brothers search for buried treasure with hopes of helping their struggling family, but when they uncover an otherworldly artifact with mysterious properties, they find it may have far greater value than they imagined.
Why You Should Read (from writer): This is my sixth screenplay and I’m still realizing, “Man this writing stuff is still hard!” Several months ago, I received two rounds of notes from Carson and after each round, I sucked it up and made the necessary cuts and addressed the dreaded “more character development” notes. Now I hope to get another round from the SS faithful. Carson described this as Stand By Me meets E.T. I thought that was a great comparison, and basically what I was aiming for. No big explosions. No black ops military assaults. No zombies driving fast cars. Just kids on an adventure. Period. Hope you enjoy it. And it chosen, I will definitely be around and interacting in the feedback if I’m lucky enough to have anyone read it.
Writer: Joe Voisin
Details: 109

As Joe notes in his WYSR, I’ve already read this script TWICE, so I was curious to see what new tasty treats Joe would be bringing to the third draft.

And I think Joe brings up a good point. Even when you’re on your sixth script, which a lot of writers never get to, it’s STILL HARD. In many ways, the more you learn about screenwriting, the harder it becomes.

You can master one area (say, plot), and still be at the bottom level of character, or dialogue, or pacing, or structure, or concept. The key is identifying where you need to get better and then practicing.

Sometimes I recommend using short scripts to get practice in. So say your scripts lack suspense. Write a few short scripts where you focus specifically on creating suspense. If you don’t practice these things, you’re never going to get good at them.

Unearthed introduces us to scrawny 10 year-old super-smart, Jonah. Jonah is out treasure hunting with his 14 year-old brother Henry, a young man who’s ready to take the next step in life. The two are barreling through farmland and forest with their family’s metal detector.

Surprise surprise, they find a buried sword. But not just any sword, a sword from the Revolutionary War! This is important, as the family is dirt-poor at the moment, their mother, Lara, struggling to make ends meet on a factory salary.

With their grandfather, Matthias, in need of expensive medication to ward off bouts of dementia, the money this sword might bring could really help them out.

But before the boys take that step, they realize there’s a lot more where that sword came from. When the metal detector starts beeping off the charts, further digging shows that there’s a giant structure under the earth. But what the hell could it be?

Meanwhile, evil neighbor Cyrus, an old bastard with nothing better to do than be an asshole, catches on that something’s happening on his property, and he makes a move to shut the boys down. But as the brothers unearth (literally) more clues as to what this underground object is, it becomes clear that their town has been harboring an incredible secret for the past 300 years.

I’m not surprised that Unearthed won the Amateur Offerings week at all. The script is a super easy read. Joe keeps his sentences simple and easy to digest and I wish more writers would take that approach to heart.

Sometimes writers think they have to impress you with their vocabulary and their wordsmithing skillz and as a result we get zig-zagged through the most perilous of sentences, usually with no idea what the writer was trying to say.

None of that here.

And there’s a sense of wonder and boyhood curiosity that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy when you read Unearthed. You really like Jonah and Henry and you want them to succeed.

My issue with Unearthed has always been two-fold. I don’t know if it’s a big enough idea. And I don’t know if enough plot has been packed into the story.

Let’s start with the first issue. Whenever you tackle the sci-fi genre, the expectations are high. The audience wants to be taken to a world they’ve never seen before, even if you’re exploring things on a low-budget level. I’m not sure that happened here.

Unearthed is frustrating in that I always kept waiting for something big to occur, but it never did. I felt like the foreplay kept going on forever. We find a sword, we find a structure underground, we find a probe thing. I wanted that big plot point to arrive and turn this into a bigger-feeling movie.

To use E.T. as an example, we go big right away. There’s an alien living with a boy. We’ve already been taken to that “next level” from the get-go. But I suppose an example of that script elevating itself to the next level would be the government moving in. It took what was essentially a small character-driven movie and made it into something that felt bigger.

That moment never came here. It always felt like four people taking a really long time to discover something that was only kinda cool.

And that leads me to the second issue – I want Joe to learn to push through his plot quicker. For example, the first two scenes have Jonah and Henry finding a sword in the forest and then rushing downtown to pick up their grandfather, who’s wandered out because of his dementia.

Now let me ask you, how many pages do you think these two scenes should total? Take a second and map them out in your head. What’s the page count?

Well, it takes Unearthed TWENTY pages to get to that point. That’s nearly 20% of the entire screenplay. 1/5 of your story has been spent on finding a sword and getting Grandpa in town.

As writers, when we’re in the moment, it always feels like we need more time than we actually do. We want to play out those beats and those exchanges way longer than they need to be played out. And we don’t realize just how long those beats feel to the reader.

I’d say, at most, you’d need 8 pages for those two scenes. And I’d encourage Joe to actually go shorter than that. And the side benefit of doing this? You now have more time to add MORE PLOT to your story.

And that’s what Unearthed needs. It needs more going on.

Now I suppose there’s a counter-argument to this. Stand by Me didn’t have a whole lot going on plot-wise. The stakes were fairly low (going to look at a dead body). So what gives?

Well, a couple of things. Stand by Me wasn’t sci-fi. So again, there’s an expectation that when you bring sci-fi into the mix, the audience wants more. They want bigger. And second, while Stand by Me didn’t have a whole lot of plot, it had some of the best character work and character interaction ever put on screen.

And that’s important for writers to remember. I always say that the game is changed when a movie does something better than any movie that’s ever been made. There’s no plot in When Harry Met Sally, but that movie has the best dialogue ever put in a romantic comedy EVER. So it can get away with plot issues. Ditto, Stand by Me. The characters in that movie were just so vibrant and deep, it overcame the fact that there wasn’t a whole lot going on plot-wise.

And I suppose that brings me to the final issue with Unearthed. The character work. I will say this. Joe has improved the character work A LOT here. I remember in the first draft there was nothing going on between the brothers.

At least now we have some issues in play. Henry is growing up. He wants to go do his own thing. And that means Jonah is dealing with the possibility of losing his brother.

I just think Joe could’ve pushed this more. Like A LOT MORE. To be honest, I like the idea of Henry running off to live with his father more than him refusing to move with his family to Savannah. There’s more depth to the decision to chase after a father who’s shown he doesn’t care about you.

So if Henry is telling Jonah, in confidence, that he’s going to run away in a few days to go live with their dad, and telling Jonah he can either come with him or stay here in this shit town, the stakes in this relationship are going to be a lot higher and you’re going to find a lot more conflict in their dynamic.

I really want to give this a “worth the read” because of how much the script has improved. But I still think the small story, the slow-moving plot, and lack of truly strong character development is holding Unearthed back.

But watch out for Joe. I’m sure he’ll only continue to improve.

Script link: Unearthed

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

What I learned: Screenplay real estate is SUPER VALUABLE. Realize that a 10-page scene is taking up 1/10 of your entire movie. So if you’re going to write a scene that lasts that long, it needs to be an amazing fucking scene or super-duper important. Otherwise, shorten it. A lot.

Today’s script asks the question we’ve all been wondering since we took up this craft – “Is it possible to write a good movie about a screenwriter?”

Genre: Biopic
Premise: The real life story of Dalton Trumbo, one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, who was blacklisted from the entertainment industry during the 40s and 50s for openly embracing communism.
About: Starring Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, Dalton Trumbo is one of the big Oscar hopefuls this winter season. Writer John McNamara is a longtime TV scripter, who’s written for series as varied as Lois & Clark and The Fugitive. I was actually excited to read Trumbo when I first heard about it. That was until I read Aquarius a few months ago, the awful David Duchovny show which McNamara wrote. How did we go from that piece of garbage to a potential Oscar contending screenplay? I’m just as interested in the answer as you are!
Writer: John McNamara
Details: 118 pages

So I’m thinking every writer should attempt to write a biopic at least once, and here’s why. When you write a biopic, it’s rarely about plot. The script is powered by character, specifically the character you choose to make your subject.

Because you don’t have the cozy confines of plot to power your story (the dinosaurs have gotten loose!), you have to find ways to entertain your audience through character, and what better way to learn about writing great characters than by making them the sole engine of your story’s entertainment?

We realize pretty early why Dalton Trumbo is a great character. The man speaks his mind! And he speaks it from the unpopular side of the argument. You may not create the most likable character this way, but dammit if you won’t create a memorable character.

It may sound weird to compare an Oscar contending screenplay to the pit that is reality television, but the entire reality TV industry is based on this approach: Find people who speak their minds. People who speak their minds are universally interesting. Why do you think Donald Trump is so popular right now?

“Dalton Trumbo” introduces us to its title character not long after those dang Nazis have been taken care of. The man is the biggest and baddest screenwriter on the block. Heck, he’s so rich he’s building a lake next to his mansion.

While Dalton celebrates his riches with his wife, Cleo, as well as his growing family, a new fear is sweeping the land – COMMUNISM. The Russians have taken the place of the Nazis as America’s enemy, and Dalton Trumbo doesn’t think that’s right.

I mean, Communism basically stands for everyone being taken care of. That’s in stark contrast to a place like America, where if you live on the street, the most help you’ll get is someone screaming, “Get a job” as they splash a puddle of dirty water over you from their passing car. Not exactly the kindest ideology.

So when the U.S. creates something called the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee (worst committee name ever??) to hunt down communists in Hollywood, Dalton becomes the face of the resistance.

What starts out as a giant joke (Trumbo yukking it up when called in to testify for Congress), quickly gets serious, as the most vocal offenders start losing jobs in Hollywood. Trumbo stays defiant though, pointing out how ridiculous this all is. Until he’s sent to prison for his beliefs.

Trumbo gets out a year later to a different world. If you even THINK the word “communism,” the entertainment industry will turn you into the real-life version of an end credit. It was the only time in Hollywood history where someone could say, “You’ll never work in this town again,” and it actually be true.

But the always defiant Trumbo went underground and started writing movies for other writers who COULD get movies made, then taking half the paycheck. In fact, Trumbo wrote one of the biggest movies of all time, Roman Holiday, this way, only getting proper screenwriting credit 60 years later. On a side note, that must’ve been one hell of a WGA arbitration.

Eventually, Trumbo scraped together his band of merry blacklisted rejects and started writing for the “Roger Corman” outfit of the time, King Brothers Pictures. Some of the greatest screenwriters ever were writing moves about insect aliens and Bigfoot.

This led to Trumbo hitting a creative low-point, which drove him to write a little movie about a boy and his bull called, “The Brave One.” The film went on to win an Oscar for Trumbo under the name, “Robert Rich.” This led to Kirk Douglas calling Trumbo and asking him to write a little movie he was working on called “Spartacus.”

Despite Congress and many in Hollywood trying to strong-arm Douglas into getting Trumbo’s name off the film, newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, famously went to see the movie at its premiere, effectively ending the Blacklisting witch-hunt.

Trumbo famously liked to write in his bathtub. I guess you could say he had a “clean” writing style.

Well call me biased since this is about a screenwriter but… HOLY SHIT WAS THIS GOOD! I mean, McNamara succeeded in the first rule about writing about writing, which is to not show any writing! The Brave One, for example, is written in less than a page here. And I’m not sure we see any writing on Spartacus at all.

Dalton Trumbo wisely keeps the focus on ACTION. And I don’t mean Michael Bay action. I mean keeping the main character ACTIVE. Trumbo is always going after something here, always stirring shit up. And that’s what keeps this screenplay, which is essentially a bunch of talking heads, trucking along.

Like I said at the beginning of the review, you start with character in your biopic. You gotta give us a lead who’s exciting to us. And Trumbo achieves this because he takes on the establishment. When you take on anything bigger than you, you’re going to receive a lot of shit back, and that’s where drama lives, in the space between pushing and getting pushed back.

And McNamara doesn’t stop at making Trumbo a shit-stirrer. He makes him a hypocrite too. Note to writers: Characters who are hypocrites always illicit a reaction. So they’re a good character trait to add.

Trumbo is this extreme liberal who’s all about standing up for the little guy – giving the poor man on the street a hearty meal and a place to sleep. And yet he hoards his millions and enjoys the perks of living in the biggest house on the block (and building fucking lakes next to that house!).

I thought it was quite interesting that Trumbo’s hardships never got that bad. Even when he’s at his “lowest point” he only has to move into a “semi-mansion.”

You may think that all you need to do with a character like this is sit back and let him entertain. But you still have to build a plot into your story. And with biopics, that plot must be nuanced. Remember, your main character has to remain the star of the film. If the plot is too big and starts bullying your hero around, the screenplay loses its punch.

So McNamara adds some big – just not “too big” – goals for Trumbo to go after. At first, it’s to stand up for the first amendment. Trumbo knows his opinion about communism isn’t popular, but he’s fighting for the very American right to have that opinion. And the conflict he encounters through this battle drives the first half of the screenplay, culminating in the prison sentence.

The second half of the screenplay, when he leaves the prison, then becomes an underdog story. Now that Trumbo has fallen and nobody wants to touch him (even his best friend has publicly shamed him), Trumbo’s goal is to thrive inside a system that refuses to let him write.

The irony of Trumbo writing monster flicks eventually leads to one of his screenplays winning an Oscar, which reignites the debate of whether blacklisting is necessary. Having one of the biggest stars in town then ask him to write his next movie is the final nail in the blacklist coffin.

“Dalton Trumbo” is also peppered with these brilliant little additions, such as making American icon John Wayne the villain of the film! Wayne, who’s clearly playing the role of a 2015 Clint Eastwood, is the biggest supporter of the flag-waving blacklist movement, and the battle between this little screenwriter and this giant movie star is one of the script’s highlights.

There’s not much to fault “Dalton Trumbo” for. I suppose its biggest weakness is its subject matter (trying to get people to watch a movie about a screenwriter in the 1950s – I wouldn’t want to be on that marketing team – Movie Trailer Voice: “This holiday season, one man uses his pen to change a nation.”). But if Bryan Cranston can pull off even half of how Trumbo’s written on the page, this should definitely be Oscar-worthy.

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

What I learned: In every screenplay you write, either your main character needs to be making something happen, or something needs to be happening to him. In many cases, both of these things will be happening at the same time. If you open to any page in “Dalton Trumbo,” you’ll see this. So in the first act, the government comes after Dalton (something is happening to him). So Dalton then takes on the government (he’s making something happen). The government later throws him in prison (something is happening to him). Afterwards, Dalton keeps writing despite Hollywood trying to stop him (he’s making something happen). If you ever reach a point in your script where your main character isn’t making something happen and you’re not using exterior forces to make something happen to him, your script will be at a standstill. It will feel like nothing is happening. So make sure you’re always doing one of these two things!

Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Premise: When a construction worker goes missing during the restoration of an old pier, a group of kids go searching for him, only to find out that the pier is haunted by evil mermaids.
About: “The Pier” finished in the runner-up spot on last year’s “Brit List,” the list of the best unproduced scripts written by British writers. While the Brit List hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire in recent years, Hollywood definitely took notice this time. Writer Jay Basu was courted to adapt one of the biggest video games of all time, Metal Gear Solid, and was also brought in by Universal Pictures to join its “Monsters Universe” team, the studio’s attempt to create a universe out of its famous monster franchises (the Mummy, the Wolfman, etc.). Finally, Basu was able to get credit on the sequel to now mega-director’s, Gareth Edwards, breakout indie film, “Monsters,” which is titled “Monsters: Dark Continent.” That film can now be found on Netflix.
Writers: Jay Basu (current revisions by David Bowers)
Details: 105 pages (June 2013 draft)

For every Jurassic World, there is a Pixels, a movie Sony was betting big on this summer but was barely able to scrape 24 million out of this weekend. This marks Sony’s ONLY big release this season, so the fact that it bombed worse than Jr. Pac-Man is devastating for a studio that has clearly lost touch with the public. I guess they have new people running the show now but if they’re not careful, they’re going to end up like United Artists.

Speaking of summer blockbusters, may I remind you of the man who invented the summer blockbuster? A certain bearded gentleman named Steven Spielberg? I don’t think today’s generation realizes just how much Spielberg changed the game. Before him, everyone wanted to make dark moody three hour thought-bombs. Spielberg wanted to make candy-bombs. And it completely changed the way we went to the movies.

Jay Basu is clearly channeling his inner-Spielberg with “The Pier.” This script has the big idea, the sense of wonder, the childlike curiosity – all the things that make a Spielberg movie a Spielberg movie. But is it any good? That’s the real question. A question that can only be answered with a Scriptshadow review!

We’re in a small seaside town known as Wharton Bay. At one point, this town was THE destination for the vacationing summer family. It had one of those super-piers, with restaurants and roller coasters – it even had a ballroom!

But an accident crippled the pier, leaving it unsafe, and ever since, it’s grown old and dusty. That is until Jake and Annie Campbell moved into town. Jake has raised just enough money to revive the pier with the plan of bringing it back to its former glory.

Unfortunately, just as major progress is being made, one of the workers disappears. This leads to an investigation that threatens to close down the entire operation. Which is where our hero, 12 year-old Ash, comes in. Partially deaf, Ash is Jake and Annie’s son. He realizes that if he doesn’t figure out what happened to this man, his family will have to go back to the big city, where everyone made fun of him.

So Ash teams up with his weirdo friend, Bones, his brand-new crush, Emma, and his older brother Liam and Liam’s girlfriend Natalie. The five head to the Pier, only to realize that the damn thing is haunted. As they sneak in and out of the various abandoned buildings, they realize the place is being watched over by… yup… evil mermaids who want to eat your soul!

The five must fight for their lives as they figure out a way back to shore. But the longer they stave off these deep sea demons, the more they realize that there’s something else going on here. Maybe these mermaids aren’t trying to kill them after all. Maybe this is just a big wet cry for help.

This was a perplexing one. If The Pier was up for a slot on Amateur Offerings, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t win the weekend. I’m struggling to figure out why this got so much attention and I’m stuck between the fact that the Brit List isn’t very competitive, and I’m not as appreciative of family fare as maybe the industry is.

Either way, let’s start with the positives. This is a “mass-entertainment” concept. It’s the kind of idea that studios like because it appeals to that young demo that’s the least discerning and it snags that PG rating, which allows the most amount of people to see your movie.

Second, it takes a familiar premise and approaches it in a new setting. Obviously, The Pier is aiming to be The Goonies and it substitutes a pier for caves.

Third, we have a new type of monster. Basu flips the script here and takes what is traditionally thought of as a “good” creature, and turns him/her bad. That was kind of inventive and contributes to the coveted “same but different” sweet-spot Hollywood’s always aiming for.

I think I sometimes glaze over these things because they seem like the easiest part of writing to me. But then I remember how many bad and boring concepts I come across. The majority of writers out there don’t know or don’t care what the masses want to see.

If there’s one thing you have to give “The Pier,” it’s that it FEELS LIKE A MOVIE. By that I mean, you can put it on a poster, you can create a great trailer. There’s action, adventure, excitement, scares. These are all MOVIE-LIKE things. Contrast that with, say, Jonah Hill and James Franco’s, “True Story.”

These are two of the bigger movie stars in the world. But look at this poster. Do you know what this movie is about? Do you see this poster and want to watch this movie? Does this even look like a movie to you?? That’s what I mean with “The Pier” when I say it FEELS like a movie.

But when you go into the actual execution of “The Pier,” it’s kind of baffling that this script garnered any attention. Every aspect of the script is extremely basic. You always know what’s coming 20 pages before it’s written because the writers aren’t interested in pushing the story in any unique or unexpected directions.

So you know we’re going into some dark room and we’re going to see a scary mermaid in the corner. You know in the next sequence we’re going to go into a carnival room of mirrors and we’re going to see a scary mermaid in a mirror. That’s the whole movie really. We just go from location to location on the pier and see scary mermaids.

And I suppose you can argue: “Well that’s every monster movie, Carson.” Isn’t that every episode of The Walking Dead? I guess, yes. But here’s the difference. Scripts can survive ONE element of basic or subpar execution. They can’t survive MULTIPLE subpar elements.

And that’s the thing. With, “The Pier,” the characters were very basic (less inventive versions of the Goonies characters). The plotting was very basic. The humor was very basic. The dialogue was very basic.

For example, here’s a line from Liam, the cool older brother, when he’s told they’re going to check out the man’s disappearance: “Like C.S.I. Wharton Bay? But instead of actual police it’s three dopey kids?”

What cool 16 year-old boy uses the word “dopey?” “Dopey” is a word a 45 year-old man uses.

Or here’s a representation of the humor in the script. Towards the end, when time’s running out, Ash says: “And if we don’t do something now, our story will always be about how five kids went missing out on Mermaid pier.” Liam quickly responds: “Three kids, two young adults.”

I’m not saying that’s a terrible joke. But it’s just so… plain. And that was my issue here. Everything was too plain. I’d imagine, if they were going to make this, that they’d bring in a big time writer to really elevate all of these choices, from the characters to the scares to the plotting to the dialogue. It’s way too reserved and safe, even more so than a script like Pixels, which only was allowed to slip through development because Sandler gets final say on the script and the man doesn’t give a single shit about quality.

And I think that’s the real issue here. When I read a script and I don’t feel like the writer TRIED HIS HARDEST – that’s something that I can’t get past. I KNOW there’s a better joke out there than, “3 kids, 2 young adults.” You can’t not know that. And if you’re not striving for the best you have to offer, why are you in the game?

Basu and Bowers should definitely be congratulated for coming up with an idea that captured Hollywood’s attention. It’s harder to do than you think. But I’m really surprised this script made as much of an impression as it did with its way-too-standard execution.

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

What I learned: Do a “Joke Pass” on every script you write. That means go through every single one of the jokes in your script and try to come up with a better joke. Even for the jokes you think are your best. I guarantee you’ll elevate half of the jokes in your script.

What I learned 2: Actually, you should be doing passes for every major element of your screenplay. You should do a character pass, a dialogue pass, a theme pass. By doing a pass where you focus on one specific thing (and not try to fix everything), you have a much better chance of keying in on what’s wrong/missing with that thing and fixing it.

Genre: Comedy (I think?)
Premise: At 6.30am on December 21st 1970, the King of Rock’n Roll showed up on the lawn of the White House to request a meeting with the most powerful man in the world, President Richard Nixon. He had a very urgent request: to be sworn in as an undercover Federal Agent at large.
About: Elvis and Nixon was acquired by Amazon at the Cannes Film Festival and will star stellar actors Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon as Nixon and Elvis respectively. The script was written by Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and, in his first screenwriting gig, actor Cary Elwes (presumably off the buzz of his book, “As You Wish.”). This is, indeed, a strange writing team. Joey Sagal is best known for acting in a bunch of cheesy movies (Not Another Celebrity Movie, Anna Nicole, Redline). He’s also played Elvis Presley a number of times in his career, making you wonder if he originally wrote this for himself? Wife Hanala purportedly has over 90 million Youtube viewers and, according to her IMDB page, seven other films in development. I have to admit, this isn’t your typical “hot young writer” scenario we usually see with a buzzed about movie. But hey, why can’t that be a good thing?
Writers: Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal & Cary Elwes.
Details: 123 pages

I’m telling you right now, the cables and networks and theater chains better watch out. Because the entertainment world is changing faster than you can say Blockbuster Video. Internet giants Netflix and Amazon are digging into their Lord Of The Rings-sized caves of gold to disrupt the whole paradigm.

And while Amazon is putting Elvis and Nixon in theaters first, you get the feeling that the next Elvis and Nixon will be made exclusively for Amazon’s site. And once that happens, coupled with Netflix doing the same, expect a tsunami effect to follow. We’ll never look back.

A note to Amazon though if they expect to compete with Netflix. Rebrand your TV and movie arm. Every time I go to your site to watch a show or a movie, I have to navigate a weird chain of links to do so. It’s so annoying that I’ve found myself avoiding going back because I know how much of a chore it will be. With Netflix I just go to: NETFLIX. It’s pretty damn simple. Make your entertainment arm simple as well and watch the money start rolling in. You’re welcome. I only want an associate producer credit.

Well, the plot of this one pretty much goes how it says in the logline. Elvis is watching TV one night. He sees all the drugs and the flag burning and the Black Panthers and he decides that America has gone to shit.

So he enlists his buddy Jerry Schiller, the only true friend he has in the world, to head to Washington with him so he can meet President Richard Nixon and request to become a “Federal Agent At Large,” even though there’s no such thing – the idea being that he can then help clean up America or something.

Jerry’s tired of being Elvis’s bitch. Every time this happens he upends his life to help the King. Yet against everything telling him to say no, he says yes, and off they go. As soon as the two land, they head straight to the White House. Elvis has written a letter to Nixon detailing his need to become a Federal Agent at Large right away.

Unfortunately, the White House guards tell him that even though they love blue suede shoes, there’s not much they can blue suede do.

Luckily, word of Elvis’s wish meets two young White House aides who happen to be Elvis fans. They ask Nixon if he’ll meet Elvis but Nixon says he thinks the guy’s an idiot. So hell no.

They break the sad news to Jerry, who’s pissed for about five minutes before remembering that Nixon’s daughter is a fan. So he gets word to her that Elvis wants to meet her father, and the next thing Nixon knows, he’s a slave to the demands of his spawn.

The movie ends with the 20-minute long meeting, where a pissy Nixon gradually warms up to Elvis, realizing he’s a great guy who shares a lot of the same political views as the V-fingered figurehead. Nixon surprisingly requests a photo of the pair which would go on to become the single most requested photo from the National Archives in history.

Believe it or not, Michael Shannon is smiling here.

I don’t think I’ve encountered anything this light and fluffy since tripping over my neighbor’s Pomeranian. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But you’re kind of encouraged, when writing screenplays, to write something with weight, with actual stakes. And the whole time I was reading Elvis and Nixon, I kept asking myself “What are the stakes here?”

I realize that’s a very “Screenwriting Professor” thing to say, and that art shouldn’t be boxed into such restrictive ideologies. So let me put it another way. What happens if Elvis doesn’t get his meeting with Nixon? I’m pretty sure nothing in his life changes. For that reason, this trip, this goal, doesn’t matter. So it was hard to get emotionally invested in the movie.

I mean, the trip obviously matters to Elvis, who’s obsessed with meeting the president and getting this secret badge thing, and that accounts for something. Sometimes you can distract the audience from the low stakes of your story by making the matter so important to the hero that we simply don’t pay attention to the bigger picture.

The problem is, Elvis is painted as such a one-dimensional character here, it’s hard to care about him caring. The King is pretty much played as a joke throughout. Most of the time, he acts like a 12 year-old who wants the hot new cowboy costume for Halloween in order to impress all his friends at school.

He truly honestly wants this secret agent badge so he can infiltrate bad groups of people. Elvis Presley. Infiltrating people UNDER COVER. Which I suppose is funny, and the joke they’re going for, but it comes at the expense of taking your hero seriously. And I personally can’t stand when writers make a joke at the expense of character.

Which leaves “Elvis and Nixon” feeling like one giant curiosity. I spent most of the read trying to understand why such top-level talent would want to make this. And then it hit me. Elvis and Nixon are two of the most iconic caricatures in pop culture history. To get to play one of them must be a dream for an actor. You really get to have fun.

I guess my next question would then be, does Michael Shannon have fun? I’m pretty sure the last time the guy smiled was when he was 8, after watching a school bus full of children drive over a bridge. And this only brings up more questions. Like what is the tone going to be here? I’m guessing they’re going for FULL WEIRD – Charlie Kaufman style – as that’s the only way I can see them justifying this lightweight concept. If you play this straight there’s simply not enough meat on the bone.

In fact, I think this script could’ve been a lot better had it taken its protagonist more seriously. There are these hinted-at moments of Elvis’s complex childhood, as well as repeated mentions of the handlers who control his life. I would’ve liked to have seen his character arc around those issues. See him stand up for himself or something. Instead, we get a pseudo-airhead who believes he’s a secret agent, which just wasn’t meaty enough to justify a feature film in my opinion.

Not saying it won’t work for others. But this was too thin for me. Elvis in his 20’s thin.

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

What I learned: Just say NO to your hero. A lot! — Throughout this script, Elvis keeps getting a “No,” in response to his desire to meet the president. But he keeps fighting and fighting until he finally gets his “Yes.” And really, that’s how every story should work. You give your protagonist a goal, and then you spend the majority of the screenplay saying “No” to him. But he keeps fighting and fighting until he finally gets his “Yes.”

No! No!! Put the cheese down, woman!

So a few months ago this writer wrote into me hyping up his TV pilot. Without getting too specific, it was about a future world in the mold of that new show “Humans” on AMC – the “A.I.” like show about robots being used as slaves. Hearing the writer discuss his script, I don’t think I’d ever been more excited to read something. Not only was it a cool idea, it tackled intense themes like mortality and survival and the power of family. It sounded really good.

And then I read it.

And the script was… not what I had been told it was. It was just so damn… cheesy. There’s no other way to put it. It was a freaking cheese-fest. Like it needed its own display in a Wisconsin supermarket.

But I’m not just an observer at the corner of Swiss and Gouda. I’m a client. I once wrote a tennis script that I thought was going to change tennis forever. It was this deep intense look at a troubled doubles team scraping by on the tour. I gave it to a producer and he didn’t really respond to it. When I pressed him for details on why, he said it reminded him of “that movie Side Out.” I’d never heard of that movie so I looked it up. Here’s the still that I found.

Ouch.

That was not what I was going for AT ALL. But it shows just how pervasive this problem is. And why everyone fears it. I mean, I think we’re all trying to avoid making the next Side Out. James Gunn, the writer-director of Guardians of the Galaxy, had a mini-breakdown in the middle of shooting that film when he became convinced he was making the next Pluto Nash.

Point being, I run into this problem a lot. Writers who go for these really intense dramatic stories that end up coming off super-cheesy. And they don’t know it. And the question becomes, how do you recognize this and fix it before you send your script out and embarrass yourself?

So I got to thinking about that question: What makes a show/movie cheesy? And I came up with a handful of observations. Now to understand what I mean by cheesy, we’re going to look at both extremes, intense drama and cheeseapocalypse. On the “non-cheesy” side, you have something like the Todd Field film, “In the Bedroom.” Here’s a clip from that movie.

As long as we’re talking about rooms, why don’t we hop into an adjacent room for what some consider to be the cheesiest movie of all time. Here’s a scene from, “The Room.”

Now here’s the scary part. Tommy Wiseau, the director of “The Room,” was trying to make a movie like In the Bedroom – something with that kind of power, with that kind of gravitas. What went wrong? That’s an article for another day. But the cheese-factor here can be attributed to a few things, as can most unintentionally cheesy efforts.

1) False Reality – “False Reality” is when you move away from how characters would act in real life and start substituting actions that work specifically for your movie. So if you look at this scene from The Room, Tommy Wiseau reasoned that he needed this scene for his plot. But a big reason why it feels so cheesy is because the scene would never happen in real life. A guy doesn’t sit down on a roof and immediately start talking to someone about girls cheating then leave. Nothing about it feels honest and therefore it screams, “False Reality.” Everything in In The Bedroom’s scene feels honest, like this is the way it would really go down. That authenticity is what wards off the cheesiness.

2) Bad dialogue – The words “cheesy” and “dialogue” go together like peanut butter and jelly. That’s how easy it is to write cheesy dialogue. To avoid this age-old trap, apply the same “false reality” logic to your dialogue as you would your scenes. Ask the question, “Would the characters really be saying this?” Because a lot of times as a writer, you make characters say things in order to move your plot forward or to slip in your observations about life. But you don’t stop to consider if that’s what they’d say in the real world. Now the conversations are never going to sound exactly the same, of course. You have to abbreviate movie-conversations to keep the story moving. But the essence of what they’re saying needs to be necessary. It needs to be truthful. And it needs to be believable. That’s what you need to nail. Also, avoid on-the-nose dialogue at all costs. People rarely say exactly what they’re thinking so when they do, it draws attention to itself, and cheesiness is a by-product of that. So Tommy Wiseau saying, “I’m so happy I have you as my best friend and I love Lisa so much.” Nobody says that kind of thing. That’s why the line is so cheesy.

3) Two-dimensional characters – This one isn’t as easy to spot because it’s less about what’s happening in the moment and more about how much time you put into constructing your characters. The less you know about a character, the more likely it is that they’ll respond to situations in a generic manner. And “generic” is cheese-fuel. Have you ever known someone who speaks in generalities and catch-phrases? “You working hard or hardly working, John?” “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” “Looks like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” They come off as cheesy right? It’s because they have no depth. Everything they say is surface-level. An act. The same thing goes for your characters. The better you know them, the more specifically you’ll have them act, which in turn makes them more authentic, which is the opposite of cheesy. So write out those extensive backstories, give your characters unique ways of speaking, create complicated relationships for them, give them goals in life, give them unique hobbies, weird stuff they’re infatuated with. Give them that flaw that holds them back. Make sure that flaw dictates everything they do. Make them specific!

4) Stay consistent with your tone – In military parlance, there’s an old saying: “Hold the line.” It’s when you’re shoulder to shoulder in the trenches with your army, shooting down the approaching enemy. Your job is to make sure those guys don’t get past your line. Tonal consistency is a similar idea. You choose a tone for your story and you try and stick to it. The problem is, you get all these goofy, funny, or weird ideas you want to add (the approaching enemy soldiers), and you’re so tempted to just duck down and let them through. You can’t. You’ve chosen this tone so you have you to stick with it. I can’t take your dark funeral drama seriously if one character’s farting all the time. I can’t take your blood diamond action film seriously if one character cracks wise every time he gets in a fight. I can’t take your Leaving Las Vegas type romantic drama seriously if you include the animal cracker scene from Armageddon. Whatever your tone is, hold the line until you get to “The End.”

Like a lot of things in screenwriting, avoiding the cheese tag comes down to truth. If you convey your story and characters and dialogue in a way that feels truthful, we’ll surrender to your world. But if characters are constantly doing things or saying things that they’d never say or do in that situation (or in real life), that’s when shit starts feeling like a big ball of Velveeta. And with that, I leave you with a challenge. Here’s a scene from the zombie show “Z Nation,” which I consider to be really cheesy. I want you to tell me WHY this scene is cheesy. In doing so, consider the show’s polar opposite – “The Walking Dead.” How would THEY have done this scene? Feel free to add your own reasons beyond the four I’ve brought up. The more cheesy rules we end up with by the end of the day, the better.