Genre: TV Pilot – Horror
Premise: A vampire strain makes its way onto a flight from Germany to the United States, threatening to unleash a plague that could wipe out humanity.
About: FX series “The Strain” is aiming to be the next big thing, FX’s answer to The Walking Dead. It’s got the pedigree to pull it off. With former Lost Exec Producer Carlton Cuse and Guillermo del Toro shepherding the show, geek blood is dripping off this thing by the bucket load. The Strain’s source material is a three-book trilogy co-authored by Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, whose 2004 book, Prince of Thieves, was turned into Ben Affleck’s, The Town. Man, self-publishing must be the way to go if even Del Toro has to do it to get something made!
Writers: Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Details: 91 pages (June 26, 2013 draft – Production Draft).

I’ve been hearing some not-so-good things about The Strain. I’ve heard the source material isn’t so good. I’ve heard the script isn’t so good. But the talent involved gives one confidence. Del Toro’s working within the genre he’s most comfortable with (he felt a little out of sorts with Pacific Rim) and I’m a fan of novelist Chuck Hogan, who’s moving into screenwriting for the first time here. Plus, when you have low expectations, the only way to go is up.

40 year-old epidemiologist Ephraim Goodweather just got the call of his life. A plane just landed at JFK that’s “gone dark.” It’s sitting at the end of the runway without any signs of life. They need Ephraim to come in immediately and tell them what’s going on.

Problem is, Eph is in the middle of a court-appointed therapy session with his wife, who’s looking for any excuse to end their marriage. Eph having to leave in the middle of their appointment will likely be the last straw. But Eph can’t help it. In this case, he has to break the camel’s back.

But hey, it’s not like Eph’s running off to buy the latest Playstation. Lives are at risk here. Heck, this is a man who, if he screws up, an entire planet could die! So off to JFK he goes where he meets up with his sexy partner, Nora Martinez. The two board the plane to find that everyone’s dead. No signs of struggle. They’re all just sitting in their seats.

Then someone moves. Across the cabin, another body moves. 4 people have survived this mysterious phenomenon, and now Eph is hurrying to get them into quarantine. In the meantime, they trace some black light goo to the cargo bay, where there’s an old empty “cabinet” (aka, coffin) that has a lock ON THE INSIDE! Uh-oh.

Meanwhile, a crazy old man shows up begging Eph to burn the plane, the dead bodies, AND the living bodies, before “it” spreads. If doctors and scientists made decisions off the insane rantings of crazy old men, we probably wouldn’t have a planet to live on anymore. So they ignore him. Which is going to turn out to be a big mistake, methinks.

We hop back into New York where we meet Eldritch Palmer, the 3rd richest man in the world. Palmer is cavorting with pale people who don’t breathe, an indication that he’s up to something nasty. Indeed, he’s practically giddy with excitement about the news of the plane’s landing. Apparently, a long overdue event is about to occur. An event that will change the world forever.

The Strain is a competent pilot. That’s my problem with it. I want more than “competent.”

I mean we have all the ingredients for something cool, no doubt. We’ve got a mysterious plane landing where everyone is dead. We have implications of a demon/vampire unlike other iterations of vampires we’ve seen. We’ve got a conspiracy that starts with some of the richest men in the world.

While I was reading all this, I was thinking to myself, “I SHOULD be into this. So why aren’t I?”

Well, let’s start with the opening. A miscalculated opening is hard for a script to recover from. If readers are turned off immediately, they tend to keep that position throughout. Think about the last time you read a bad opening but ended up loving the script. It doesn’t happen often, does it?

The Strain’s opening wasn’t bad. But I’d seen it before. The pilot episode for Fringe was almost exactly the same, so right from the start, the story felt lazy.

From there, there were so many characters that there was no time to meet or get to know anybody. And the pilot was 30 pages longer than your average TV script. So it should’ve had plenty of time to set people up. The only person I got to know on any level was Dr. Ephraim. He was the only character who engaged in anything human, anything identifiable, via the therapy session he had with his wife.

One thing to remember is that TV is about characters. I get that the pilot has to set up the plot, but first and foremost, you have to hook us onto the people taking us through the story. Of the 20 characters introduced here, Ephraim is the only one I can visualize in my head. Everyone else was limited to a few lines of dialogue or a few adjectives of description.

One reason this may be the case? Ephraim was the only character who had to make a tough choice in the script. He’s in the middle of a marriage therapy session and he gets a call about the plane. There’s a potential disease outbreak on one side, and his marriage on the other. He’s gotta decide what’s more important. He picks the disease.

This isn’t just an example of a great way to introduce a character, but a reminder of how much more memorable someone is when they have to make a choice in a scene.

Outside of Ephraim, I’m not sure anyone here ever has a difficult choice to make. People tell other people what to do and they follow orders. No one finds themselves in a dilemma or a tough situation. It’s as if the plot is unfolding in raw form, before the writers came along and added drama to it.

Here’s what I mean. Take the scene where Eph and Nora have to check out the plane. As it’s written, they simply walk onto the plane, no problem. There’s no choice involved.

What if, instead, the airport Hazmat suits were damaged, left in a bad storage container. So Eph and Nora don’t have the proper protection to go inside. However, there are signs of life in the plane. If they don’t move fast, those people could die. Thus, a choice is presented. Go in with only threadbare protection, even though they’ll be at risk for exposure, or remain safe until better equipment comes, even though it probably means the remaining passengers will die.

And I’m not saying you have to write that scene. But you have to write “choice scenes” somewhere. You need choices. Or else there’s no drama.

In the Strain, everything’s laid out too perfectly. There aren’t enough obstacles making our characters’ lives difficult. Little troubles happen here and there (the coffin creature escapes) but it’s hard to tell how that affects things since we don’t understand what’s happening yet. In the end, I never felt that afraid or worried for anyone, which is strange when you consider that the fate of the world is at stake.

So, sadly, The Strain didn’t work for me. It’s not bad. But it left me wanting more. It needed more originality, better character setup, and more going wrong for the characters. Adding 5-6 more tough choices for people would’ve helped a lot.

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

What I learned: Repeat offender. Don’t use an adjective in your description, then quickly follow that with the same adjective in the dialogue. It reads lazy. So in The Strain, one of the characters is described as having “waxy” hands. Then, half a page later, one of the characters says, “Anything happens to her, I’ll find your waxy ass.” The repeat use of the word gives the text a lazy and uninspired feel.

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 (from writers) Historical Action
Premise (from writers): In 30 A.D., a charismatic stonemason bent on revenge leads a band of guerrilla rebels against the Roman occupation of his homeland.
Why You Should Read (from writers): This is the story that led up to the biggest trade in human record. It is Braveheart meets Gladiator, with characters on a collision course that splits history in two. Come for the battle, the intrigue, and the epic. Stay for the sacrifice, the betrayals, and the passion that drives a man to darkness. — As co-writers, we work from 3,000 miles apart. Yes, we have two of the WASPiest names imaginable. No, they’re not pen names. We’ve been polishing this script to a trim, accelerative tale that strengthens, weaves, and deepens with each choice our characters make. The ending is the most difficult we’ve ever worked on, but the feedback on the resolution has been powerful. We have to earn the effect we want a story to have, and with this script we aim to challenge, to provoke, but most of all…to entertain.
Writers: Parker Jamison & Paul Kimball
Details: 112 pages

Eric Bana as Barabbas?

Man, the last couple of days have been carraaaa-zy in the comments section. The Comments Post did not go over well with a lot of you. Miss Scriptshadow’s review caused a nuclear-sized meltdown in the Grendl-verse, and some manic derilect from 2011 topped it all off with a bunch of “Carson is evil” comments.

Today, however, it’s going to be all about the script. If you want to talk about other things, feel free to go back to those earlier posts. But I want today to be about the writing, specifically Barabbas. I’ve already read Barabbas once for a consult and I liked it with reservations. So I’m really glad you guys picked it as a healthy discussion should continue to strengthen the script even more.

The story is not without its challenges. It puts itself in some unenviable writing situations, which I’ll get to after the summary. I’m also interested to see what these guys have done with the latest draft and how much the script has improved. Let’s take a look.

“Barabbas” offers something whether you’re familiar with the story of the man or not. If you’re like me and had never heard of him, Barabbas plays out like a slow-burning quasi-mystery, pulling in familiar elements from religious history that eventually lead to a shocking finale.

If you do know Barabbas’s name, the script plays out like “Titanic.” You know where this will eventually end up, so you’re curious what’s going to happen to get us there.

Joshua Barabbas, 30, is a stone mason. Along with his younger brother David, the two build bridges and aqueducts for the Romans who, at the time, were occupying Jerusalem. When the Romans raid the Jews’ own temple to pay them their wages, David and Joshua have had enough, and rebel.

When their friend is erroneously chosen as the instigator of this rebellion and crucified, an angry Barabbas is persuaded by a local politician, the sinister Melech, to start a war. Using rage to guide his leadership, Barabbas and his fellow workers attack the Romans, but eventually flee to the mountains once outnumbered.

Realizing that there’s no turning back, Barabbas starts to grow a small army with the hopes of driving the Romans out of Jerusalem. But when Barabbas falls for the wife of a key ally in the city, he loses focus, and the rebellion begins to fall apart.

In a last ditch effort to recruit a huge army from the surrounding regions, Barabbas designs a plan to take down the Roman Regional Governor Pontius Pilate. (major spoilers) He ultimately fails, and his life hangs in the balance of the people themselves, when they must choose which of two men shall be set free, Barabbas or Jesus Christ.

I knew this weekend’s Amateur Offerings was going to be good because I’d read two of the scripts and knew both were solid (the other being “Reeds in Winter” about the infamous Donner Party, which ended up in some gnarly cannibalism). The rub? They were both period pieces, which are the hardest to get readers on board with. Therefore it was satisfying to see them both end up with the most votes, as it shows that readers still respect challenging material.

With that said, each script has its trouble spots. Assuming the reader sticks around long enough to get into the story, which is never a guarantee with period pieces, I was always worried about that darned Barabbas second act.

The problem is this – the second act is where countless scripts go to die. It’s hard as hell to keep it interesting even under the best of circumstances. In Barabbas’s second act, our army is relegated to a single location up in the mountains. Keeping a “swords and sandals” period piece lively when the main character and his army are relegated to one spot for 60 pages is as challenging a proposition as you’re going to find in screenwriting.

Compare that to Braveheart. The great thing about that film was that William Wallace kept moving across the country to bigger and bigger cities, so we got this sense of BUILDING as the story went on. That’s harder to do when characters are hiding in caves in the mountains, especially when you’re limited by history. Barabbas’s army couldn’t have gotten TOO big or else he would’ve been more well known in the history books. Barabbas’s one defining characteristic in the bible is that so little is known about him.

But my gut’s telling me we need to either get Barabbas off that mountain space at some point, grow his army bigger in some way, or find some other means to spice up the second act.

What if, for example, Barabbas had to go out on some recruiting trips into the surrounding cities? If we built up certain meetings with city leaders he would have to win over in order to receive their soldiers, that’d be one way to keep the story dynamic.

Getting him off the mountain to meet Jesus at some point would be interesting as well, but Parker told me he doesn’t want to physically see Jesus until that final scene, which I understand.

Another thing that bothered me during the initial read, and something I don’t think Parker and Paul have addressed yet, is the character of David, Joshua’s brother. Over the course of the script, David sees Jesus speak (we don’t see this) and starts to respond to his teachings. Whereas Barabbas wants war, David preaches forgiveness and peace.

The problem is that all of this happens too late and doesn’t have enough conviction. I was bothered, for instance, by a character named Thaddeus, who comes into the story late to aggressively preach Jesus’s philosophy. I couldn’t understand why this character wasn’t David. In order to get the maximum amount of conflict from a relationship, you need the two characters to be on opposite sides of the philosophical spectrum. David was tepid in his support of Jesus’s teachings until the very end. Let’s have this guy go out there, see Jesus speak, and let him be the one who comes back and starts aggressively converting the other soldiers.  Now you have a direct conflict.  Barabbas needs soldiers to take down Pontius and his own brother is turning those soldiers into pacifists.  Isn’t that better than Random Thaddeus, who I met five minutes ago, who has no allegiance to anyone, converting these people?

One of the complaints about Barabbas during AOW week was dialogue. Most people said it was serviceable, but that serviceable isn’t good enough in a spec trying to stand out. And I’d agree with that. But fixing this is a lot easier said than done.

What I believe people are responding to here is the lack of “fun” in the dialogue. People always seemed to speak in a proper and serious way. “You still labor at the aqueduct?” “Every day. Why?” “I’ve heard that funds are running short. That Pontius Pilate needs extra coin to finish it.” “As long as the Romans pay, we work.” This is a conversation between two people who have secretly loved each other since childhood. You’d think they’d have a more relaxed and easy rapport, right?

But the biggest issue here is that almost EVERYBODY spoke like this or very similar to this. So the problem might not be “dialogue” so much as “variety in dialogue.” I always talk about creating “dialogue-friendly” characters. People who have fun with the language and say things others wouldn’t. It would be nice if a featured character here were dialogue-friendly. From there, look at every character and figure out ways to make them speak differently from everyone else.

Finally, I wanted more out of the ending. I think the problem here is that Parker and Paul see the sacrifice at the end as the climax. Which it is. But before we get there, we need to give the audience the climax they’ve been waiting for, the one we’ve been building up for 80 pages, which is an attack on Pontius Pilate.

Let’s see him and his army try to head Pontius off at the pass on his way to Jerusalem. Let’s see him almost kill Pontius. He ALMOST does it! But something at the last seconds prevents him from succeeding and he’s captured.

Then, since it’s now personal between him and Pontius, we can see Pontius, behind-the-scenes, preparing Barabbas so that he’ll be the one picked for crucifixion by the people. Pontius makes him extra dirty and nasty looking, in the hopes that he’ll be the one killed.

I know we’re playing with fire here, but it could be an ironically delightful ending to see that Pontius had a horse in the race and was hoping to snuff out Barabbas, which, of course, would’ve changed history. He’s visibly disappointed, then, when Jesus is chosen instead.

Whatever these guys choose to do, though, I trust them. Barabbas is not perfect, but it shows a lot of skill, and it shows two writers who are going to make a splash at some point if they stick with it. I don’t know if it’s going to be with this script because, again, the subject matter is challenging, it’s a unique sell, and there’s that whole second act issue that I’m not convinced is solvable. But I just like these guys as writers and hope to see more work from them in the future.

Script link: Barabbas

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

What I learned: Use specificity instead of generalizations when writing description. Today’s “What I learned” actually comes from Casper Chris, who I thought made a GREAT observation when he compared two action paragraphs from Barabbas and Braveheart during AOW. Here were the two he compared…

Barabbas:

Barabbas leads the charge. The rest of the stonemasons pour down on the patrol. Slashing, spearing, hacking. Barabbas fights like a barbarian, fearsome and brutal. Ammon slices through soldiers with precision. David is quick and athletic.

Braveheart:

He dodges obstacles in the narrow streets — chickens, carts, barrels. Soldiers pop up; the first he gallops straight over; the next he whacks forehand, like a polo player; the next chops down on his left side; every time he swings the broadsword, a man dies.

Notice the difference. Whereas the Barabbas text uses mostly general words to describe the action (“slashing, spearing, hacking” “fights like a barbarian” “quick and athletic”), Braveheart uses specific imagery. There are more nouns here and the verbs are used to highlight powerful actions (“chickens, carts, barrels” “soldiers pop up” “he gallops straight over”). It was a great reminder that we need to put specific imagery into the reader’s head so he can properly imagine what’s happening up on the screen.

Welcome to the 1st edition of “Comments of the Week” on Scriptshadow. This is where I turn it over to you guys, the readers of the site, to do my job for me! “Best Comments” will not be a weekly thing, but rather something that pops up every now and then. If you want to be included, offer a strong take on an interesting topic. You guys often say things way more profound than me, so it’s only natural that we share these comments with the masses.

We’ll start with a great exchange after my review of the TV Pilot, Rush, courtesy and Gyad and Larry.

I have to say I’m getting burnt out on morally dubious protagonists. Sure, as script readers the “edgy” character appeals to our jaded palates but there have been so many of late that seeing a morally upstanding hero in a (non-network) series is becoming unusual.

This is a good point. I’ve been telling people that this kind of character is the way to go when writing a television series. But are we becoming so inundated with them that they’re losing their luster? Either way, I liked what commenter Larry had to say about it…

Agreed. What makes shows like Breaking Bad or Walking Dead awesome is that people do bad things but for GOOD/honorable reasons. This Rush guy seems just to be out to make some cash.

I hadn’t thought of that it that way but it makes sense. Morally ambiguous or not, we like these characters better if they’re doing these bad things for good reasons. Though it should be noted that Walter White stops doing what he does for good reasons in the final two seasons. Then again, because we took that long journey with him, we still wanted to see him succeed, or maybe come back from the edge.

This leads us to our next observation from Adam Parker, a response to my review of The Martian. The discussion had to do with Mark Whatney being a flat character and did we care about his journey enough to stick around for the whole ordeal?  Some commenters said we did because Mark’ life was on the line. To which Adam responded…

The main conflict (or narrative question) can NEVER be “Will the Main Character survive?” the answer is always YES.

While Adam’s statement isn’t true in all respects, the point he makes is a good one. 99% of the time, the main character will survive. So it isn’t enough to ONLY hinge your movie on that question. Instead, you should try and ask a deeper question. Like with Gravity (as some other commenters brought up), the question wasn’t only “Will she survive?” it was “Did she want to survive?” She’d lost her daughter and she was struggling with whether life was worth living. You’re always trying to find that deeper question to explore to give your story that added layer of depth.

Moving on to something way bigger in scope is the question of, what the hell is going on with the spec market? I honestly think Transcendence really fucked us. That was going to be the one original property that had a chance to stand up against these monster IPs. When it tanked, it scared the crap out of everyone. I still think the spec market will come back, but let’s not forget that there are new options being presented to writers. You have the ability to write something and publish it within 30 minutes on Amazon. That’s huge. Here’s Logline Villain’s thoughts on the matter…

Instead of adapting another’s book, one might consider writing his/her own book and then holding firm on scribing the adaption (e.g., Gillian Flynn – “Gone Girl”). Granted, the work has to be scooped up first, but that is always the requisite for breaking through in any writing platform.

Has it reached a point where penning a novel may be the aspiring screenwriter’s best opportunity to break through with ORIGINAL material? With self-publishing, the ‘net and Amazon, there are more avenues than ever to promote one’s novel – it worked out swimmingly in the case of today’s featured “The Martian“…

I suspect a market correction will come one day – where spec scripts are again in vogue – but is it worth crossing one’s fingers until then? I know, if it’s the next Chinatown, it will sell as a spec…

In the meantime, what’s more important? The end result or how one gets to the end result…

The egg must figure out a way to become a chicken. And the lion’s share of these adaptations are going to established chickens…

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

But before you close Final Draft forever, heed PmLove’s response…

I remain unconvinced. We can spend our lives chasing our tails over a breakout novel or script, either way it’s still tough to be the goose that lays the golden egg. There are so many $0.99 self-published books it’s hard to see the wood for the trees – I’d want more compelling evidence to say that self-publishing a novel is more likely to lead to a screenwriting breakout for original ideas. I’d say you might be barking up the wrong tree.

A great point. The grass is always greener on the other side. I’m sure there are writers over on NovelShadow saying the same thing. “There are so many books out these days, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out. I should just go to Hollywood and write a screenplay. All the movies there suck. I know I could do better than them.”

We’re going to finish with a couple of thoughts from Nicholas J, who always seems to have well-thought-out takes on the days’ article. The first is a reminder of the importance of concept, which is easy to forget.

I think there’s a very good argument to be made that concept trumps all. Given the choice between a great script with a ‘meh’ concept and an average script with a great concept, I have to think the majority of people who make movies will take the high concept. You can improve the execution of a great concept, but you can’t really infuse a great concept into a script that doesn’t have one.

That last sentence is the golden nugget. I was just dealing with this recently with a writer. We were doing everything in our power to give his logline more kick. But the reality was, his story wasn’t unique enough to create a compelling logline. That’s not to say the script won’t be great, it just makes things harder for him since he’ll get less script reads. This is why I tell people, if you have a choice, give us a hook in your concept, something you can write a logline around. Because once you dedicate yourself to something and the months (or years) go by, you’re less inclined to give up on it, even if you know your concept is weak. You have too much invested to move on. All of that could’ve been avoided with a simple two-minute decision at the beginning of the process: “Is this a good concept?”

And here’s Nicholas’s negative take on last Thursday’s article about “Exceptional Elements.”

It’s not that the average writers have accepted mediocrity, it’s that they are average writers.

That’s kind of like saying a college quarterback that never reaches the NFL is worse than Peyton Manning because he’s accepted mediocrity. Sure, Manning worked hard to get where he is, but so did the other guy. Manning just has the better combination of skills necessary to succeed. Manning is just better.

It’s the same thing with writing. There’s a reason that a microscopic percentage of aspiring screenwriters find worthwhile success. Writing something great takes an exceptional combination of unnatural skills. But the most important skill to have is creativity.

Creativity can’t be learned. Have you ever played a board game like Balderdash or one where you write photo captions? Some people, no matter how hard they try, are never able to come up with something good. Their minds just don’t work that way. Chances are their minds are better suited for something else like mathematics or memorization. I have a friend who is a genius when it comes to how things work. He’ll take one look at an HVAC system, tell you what makes it inefficient, and what possibly could be done to improve it. (Though I have no idea if he’s right or not since I don’t understand a word of it.) But ask him to look at a photo and come up with a funny caption and his brain short circuits.

This is what results so often in those average scripts. It doesn’t take a creative mind to love movies. And it doesn’t take a creative mind to love writing. So a lot of people attempt to write movies despite not having an ounce of creativity. This is why you see so many knockoffs in the amateur pile.

The writer loves mafia movies so they think, “I’m going to write a mafia movie!” They sit down to write and think of all the mafia movies that they love. They pull elements from each, whether consciously or not, and end up writing a paint-by-numbers version of Goodfellas. They’ve failed to put any actual creativity into it, and yet they don’t even realize it.

On the other end, you have those crazy scripts that don’t make a lick of sense. I mean, it’s great that you came up with a movie idea about a dog that goes to shark heaven, but that idea is fucking stupid. You see this a lot with amateur scripts where the writer throws crazy elements at the page, thinking it makes their script original and awesome, but it just ends up as a confusing mess to everybody that isn’t the writer. This is a result of the writer forcing creativity when they have none, or having a lot of creativity but not knowing how to harness it into something sensible.

So not only do you have to be creative, but you have to find the right balance of your creativity. You have to know how to fit it into a genre, or at least something that people will understand and want to see. You have to know how to dial it back and amp it up when necessary. You have to give it structure.

And I’m sure there are plenty of pro writers out there that don’t have much creativity either. But chances are they won’t continue to be successful for long, and may find other opportunities in the business that suit them better. And once you’re in the business, as we all know, you don’t have to write the next ETERNAL SUNSHINE to make a sale. But if you’re still looking to break in, you better be on your A-game, and your A-game better come with a rollercoaster of balanced creativity. Nobody breaks in with paint-by-numbers Mafia Movie #253.

Or, you could know somebody important. That works too.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with Nicholas? This comment led to others asking, “How do you know if you’re exceptional or not?” Doesn’t everyone think they’re exceptional? Isn’t that why so many bad scripts get submitted everywhere? I guess by breaking things down into manageable chunks, I was hoping it would be easier for writers to see what their strengths and weaknesses were. But if you’re new to the craft, it’s hard to have any reference for what “exceptional” is. You don’t know what you don’t know.  So I’ll leave it up to you guys. How does one know if their work is any good outside of the obvious (impartial feedback)? If you give us a good answer, you might find yourself featured on the next “Comments of the Week!”

Genre: Psychological drama. I think.
Premise (after reading): Unhappy with her life, a housewife visits a physicist who transforms the way she views the world – and her own mind.
About: Carson received an email the other morning proposing I, Miss Scriptshadow, review our very own Grendl’s script. I have the female perspective on my side, which Grendl insisted was crucial. I know nothing about this script and I barely know Grendl outside of occasionally hearing Carson say things like, “The psychoness continues” while reading comments.  The only stipulation for this review was a promise not to represent Grendl in a sketched caricature.  So, instead, I’m including a suggested image by Grendl himself.
Writer: Grendl
Detail: 118 pages

I honestly don’t know how to start.

Grendl, dearest Grendl, has chosen moi as the prime-time reviewer of yet another supposed masterpiece: Undertow. I remember very clearly my day of reckoning, as if it had wandered to me in a lucid dream…

Carson awoke with drowsy requests for a crepe breakfast, and the cat was agitated and restless, seemingly unaware of my impending call to glory. I grumbled about the day’s chores, and rolled out of bed to mix up a batch of my very best crepe batter, prepared for yet another amazing day.

Unsavory rap music now thrumming through the apartment, I suddenly heard from the bedroom a tentative, “Um, there’s an interesting email from Guess Who. And it involves you.”

The email itself was tame, still not without a touch of the Gren’s signature, eerie flair – the above-featured black and white photo of a woman basking in ocean water taunted us from beneath the text. Why? We don’t know. We probably never will. I suspect it represents an ‘undertow’ of some nature. Either way, the woman looks to be having a grand time. I hope she’s not drowning. But, knowing Grendl, she’s probably already dead.

We start quietly with Veronica, a bored housewife, meeting her artist ex-lover Dean in a cafe as they discuss the probability that Veronica’s husband Eric is cheating with a redhead: a hair has been found plucked from his pants zipper, and it certainly doesn’t belong to Veronica. That hair makes for light conversation, something one-and-done for Veronica, and we quickly move into discussion about Dean’s big art showing at the MET.

Dean concludes their meeting by mentioning psychiatrist-but-not-really, Dr. Michael Saeghardt, and how the darkness in his life has all but gone as a result of Michael’s ‘radical’ work. Intrigued, Veronica visits Michael later in a spooky building after deciding she is simply ‘not happy,’ only to be greeted by a scary-as-hell janitor and the implication that all is not what it appears.

In fact, Michael is a physicist, an expert on ‘slip streams’ or channels of mental energies that surge across our planet, accessible through levels and lucid dreamlike states of mind. Veronica must use the escape word to get out of the stream: “hand.” Once uttered, Veronica ‘wakes up’ and sees her own naked body suspended in a clear chamber. She runs out of the room to see a black and white cat, which melts into a psychedelic, zebra-striped concoction of goop that splashes every surface as it chases her from the building. She ‘wakes up’ again on a beach to see a man named Harrington (not his full name, mind you), and then a little boy, Kyle. Kyle pulls her into a WWII-style shoot-out with laughing Germans.

But, wait! Veronica’s now in a movie theater with an old high school flame. Then she’s on a game show set where the janitor, Haberdasher, brings out the living corpses of each ex-boyfriend from her past so we can gloss over their histories with Veronica. In real life (supposedly) Dean reveals he found his soulmate through one of these ‘experiences.’ Veronica hopes for the same, but it never really happens for her – she’s still stuck with Eric. We finally end up in a courtroom wherein it is suggested Veronica made everyone up, and is actually a serial killer hell-bent on forcing unsuspecting men to her delusional will. The cat makes another appearance here, by the way.

It is now Dean who ‘wakes up’ from this experience (his? hers? I don’t know!) and waltzes out to meet up with a beautiful blonde who’s lost her… cat. Is it black and white, he asks? Nope. It’s gray.

Fade. Out.

I didn’t know how to start this review, and I certainly don’t know how to follow up a summary like that. I have never read anything so trippy in my life, which is really saying something since I delight in trippy. It’s what turned me on to film, the capacity for exploratory visuals, and worlds. Scenarios otherwise impossible and laughable in real life.

Yet, Undertow is perhaps exploratory to a fault.

While the dialogue is at times full of gems and the imaginative elements are unparalleled, everything just drags on and on. Conversations that could’ve ended in two pages instead last ten. Nothing connected for me even when it seemed to be laid out – the cat meant something, right? There was also a special ring, like an Inception token, to discern ‘slip streams’ and real life. Again, whether it really meant anything, or even connected as a common thread, is lost on me.

Grendl is truly tapped into the visual complexities of such an unusual world, such unusual circumstances. But that’s where the logic stops for me, and the confusing barrage of a dream world gone haywire, starts.

The biggest problem I noticed after really getting into the story was tonal inconsistency. I told Carson after getting through the first fifteen pages that I was getting a Blue Jasmine vibe: Privileged ‘bitchy’ woman is perpetually unhappy.

Then it got weird, with naked bodies in chambers tied to a ‘true’ physical world – okay, that’s the Matrix. Right?

Then, slip stream ‘levels’ and hypnotized dream sequences. That sounds a hell of a lot like Inception.

The rest is a psychotic Alice in Wonderland, if Alice were to face all her ex-boyfriends.

Reality-bending scripts are incredibly difficult to make work – not only does there need to be a clear establishment of rules and boundaries, but we need to have a little fun with it, too. Then it needs to service a plot that makes sense, and vice versa. It can’t be whatever just because we say it is. It can’t be entropic just because a physicist in the script explained it all away as free-flowing energy. Reality needs to be reality, and dream worlds need to be dream worlds. There has to be that distinction no matter what. I’m sure there were plot twists I missed because of subtle reality-dream-world mingling, and that’s the kind of movie I don’t want to watch in my free time. This is, without a doubt, a script from Shane Carruth’s wet dreams.

Carson once described the proportionate work required in reading a specific script as the ‘burden of investment’: When a script is aesthetically dense, too difficult to read in one sitting, mapped out so chaotically it gives you a migraine, etc., then there is a certain ‘investment’ you make as a reader in order to understand the script in its entirety. The ‘burden’ part is simply the taxation of mental energy. Undertow maintained a HUGE burden of investment. I didn’t know which way was up or down after I got to fade out, and I’m not sure I wanted to know. My head was spinning. It’s good to make a reader think about your words after they’ve closed your script, but this was the sort of thinking that’s driven normally sane people to suicide.

The hardest part of this review is knowing deep in my gut that this was a laborious passion piece, a work Grendl perhaps holds very close to that Grinch-y heart of his. Undertow is not without intellect. It is not without observing human ills. It is not without an inkling of theme, or characters with real problems, scenes built on wild abstraction.

I just don’t get it, that’s all.

Hell, not everyone’s understood my work – it happens to all of us writers, beholden to artistic liberty and all at once the ability to tap into a commercially-viable well of generic human experience. A rock and a hard place.

This script could be something quite fascinating – pare down the dialogue, make it clear what is reality and what is not. Focus on one major narrative, one smaller narrative. Kill your darlings. Assuming this is meant to be in salable condition one day, the goal would be to take the bizarre – the shades of Shane Carruth – and churn it into something the layman would go see on a Friday night.

And if it’s never to be sold? Then I suppose the above doesn’t matter. Do with it what you will. As for my ‘female perspective,’ I understand some of the underlying issues Veronica faces are perhaps meant to draw in a female audience, but I prefer to believe gender has nothing to do with it. If a character is great, it’s because of their actions. Not gender.

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

WHAT I LEARNED: When dialogue scenes last too long, as many of these did, it’s usually because the writer isn’t tuned into the point of the scene (understands what each character in the scene is trying to achieve).  If you know each character’s goal in the scene, you know exactly when they’ve achieved or failed, and therefore to end the scene and move on.

Genre: Comedy TV Pilot
Premise: After being held in an underground bunker for 15 years by a cult leader, a young woman attempts to navigate the complexities of New York City.
About: This is Tina Fey’s next big show for NBC. She wrote it with Robert Carlock, who wrote for Friends and 30 Rock. Due to the duo’s clout, they’ve gotten the coveted “straight to series” order, which seems to be happening more and more as the networks try to escape the expensive and laborious process of pilot season. Keeping it in the NBC family, the series will star “The Office” actress Ellie Kemper. Fey was the first ever female head writer on Saturday Night Live. She is also (and this is likely more interesting to me than all of you) a HUGE Star Wars fan. Yeah!
Writer: Tina Fey and Robert Carlock
Details: 28 pages (10/22/13 draft)

Despite the golden age of television becoming more and more golden, one of the genres that’s still stuck applying bronzer to itself is comedy. Comedies don’t have that “sexy” factor for some reason. They don’t have cancer-stricken meth dealing chemistry teachers looking into the camera and saying, “I am the danger.” They don’t have the coolest fucking zombie dispatcher in the universe telling his buddies, after being captured by cannibals, “They screwed with the wrong people.”

Since Modern Family came on the scene, there hasn’t been a single exciting comedy to talk about, and I think that’s because the TV comedy universe isn’t changing with the times. They haven’t traversed that same gap that the 1 hour drama has. Think about it. There are so many unique shows to pick from these days. Everyone is taking chances. But on the comedy front? What is there? Girls. Brooklyn Nine Nine maybe? Some people like “Louie” but I can’t watch it for more than 5 minutes without wanting to scrape my eyeballs out with a coat hanger.

Luckily we have Fey. I don’t like everything she does. But there’s an energy in her comedy that’s hard to match. Whether you like it or not, you know she’s having a blast doing it. Combined with a unique premise, which this has, I had high hopes for Tooken. Let’s see if they were met.

Kimmy Schmidt was snatched out of her front yard when she was 13 by a man named Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. Kimmy was the 4th of a group of women who would later become known to the world as the Indiana Mole Women.

The unfortunate four were kept in an underground bunker where they were told that the world above had been destroyed, taken over by robots, and that Richard Wayne Gary Wayne’s relationship with God was the only thing keeping them alive. That ended when the FBI showed up (and a nearby black man became famous for explaining to the world what happened via an auto-tuned Youtube video, which also happens to be the opening credits).

After being interviewed by Matt Lauer in New York, the girls prepare to head back to Indiana where they’ll start their lives. But Kimmy wants to do something bigger with herself and decides to stay in New York. She’s got a bunch of cash because of the Indiana Mole Women Fund, so she heads into a city with an 8th grade education and no idea what’s happened for the past 15 years.

She eventually meets Titus, a gay 30-something failed actor who’s sole goal in life is to make the cast for the Broadway musical, The Lion King. Short on money, Titus brings Kimmy in as a roommate, taking advantage of her complete financial ignorance.

On their first night together, he takes her out on the town, where she does a bunch of 90s dancing and attempts her first kiss, before Titus realizes that she’s one of the Mole Women. Feeling bad, he gives her her money back and tells her to get out of New York before it eats her up. She refuses to, saying that they’re going to take New York by storm and achieve their dreams together!

Ellie Kemper

I gotta admit, breaking down half-hour comedy pilots is a little out of my comfort zone, but the more I read of Tooken, the more I realized writing is writing. You gotta come up with great characters. You gotta come up with interesting situations. And if it’s a comedy, you gotta make people laugh.

Sadly, I don’t know if Tooken achieved any of those.

The oldest staple in comedy is the fish out of water. It works every time. The only thing you have to do is come up with a fresh angle for it. And they did! I’ve never seen a Cult fish out of water comedy before. The problem was they didn’t fulfill the promise of that premise. It was like the fish was brought out of water, then placed in a New York City where it always rained.  In other words, he was only slightly out of his element.

There were a few premise-fulfilling jokes, like the 90s dancing at the club and being excited about a tiny New York apartment because Kimmy was used to sleeping in a box. But other then that, the script was relegated to plot setup, which is the problem with these comedy pilots. You have to lay enough pipe for a hundred episodes and do it in just 22 minutes. So I get that it’s hard. But you’ve got to figure it out! Comedy is cut-throat. If people don’t laugh during the first episode, they’re done! I was really excited about Super Fun Night when it came out because I love Rebel Wilson. But I knew after 10 minutes that it wasn’t working. I never watched another episode.

It’s a moment you hope you never encounter in a script. That beat where you know the thing isn’t working and it isn’t going to work. I was on the fence for awhile here, but when Titus showed up, I knew it was over.

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a comedy, a thriller, a drama or a period piece. One thing you can NEVER do is write uninspired characters. And you definitely can’t mail in a KEY character. Titus being an over-the-top gay Latino struggling Broadway actor is something I’ve seen dozens of variations of already. It was too safe.

But it wasn’t just him as an individual. It was him combined with Kimmy. When you pair up your two main characters in a comedy, they’re supposed to make each other funnier! They’re supposed to complement or clash with each other in a way that brings out some humor.

There was no clashing or complementing here. Titus was just this normal slightly sketchy guy who liked to go out. How does that complement a woman in ANY sort of interesting way who spent the last 15 years in an underground bunker?

I would rather Kimmy met a semi-cute straight New Yorker who we see some potential romantic possibilities with later in the series. That’s TV comedy 101. Give us two people we want to see get together.

Or team her up with some jaded New York bitch who’s the complete opposite of Kimmy. Whereas Kimmy has this boundless gullible optimism and, because of her experience, desire to always smell the roses, this roommate is out of touch and completely dependent on the New York machine.  At least then we have some conflict.

To add injury to insult, the funniest parts of Tooken all took place within the opening five pages. The autotuned opening credits. One of the girls wearing rusty braces. Another girl, who was still brainwashed, confused after the Matt Lauer interview (“I’m married to you now. I go with you?”). But from then on, sadly, it was Exposition Series Setup City.

Of course, comedy is one of the most fluid processes in the business. It’s always changing right up to the shooting as they keep refining the jokes.  So you know they’re going to keep working on this.  My worry is that it’s not the jokes here. There’s something wrong with the foundation. They’re not mining this premise enough, which is forcing them to find comedy in the wrong places. And with how important the Titus character is, his miscalculation could prove to be a show-killer. They need someone who’s better integrated into the story and the theme.

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

What I learned: Find your comedy in drama. One of the easiest places to find comedy ideas is through real life drama. Look at any dire or intense situation and ask yourself, “Is there a way to make this funny?” Fey and Carlock clearly got this idea from the Ariel Castro kidnappings. They asked themselves, what would it be like coming back to society after living in isolation for 15 years? They had to change the backstory so as not to make it offensive, but this comedy idea was birthed from about as tragic a situation as you’re going to find.