Genre: Thriller
Premise: After nearly dying in a car accident, a mechanic is given an experimental drug while in a coma. When he awakes, his IQ begins to skyrocket.
About: This is not the first Eric Heisserer/Ted Chiang collaboration. For those of you who get the newsletter, you’ll remember when I reviewed their previous collaboration, Story of Your Life (about an alien visitation that requires a linguist to help communicate with the ETs). The project has since secured Amy Adams for the lead role (she’s perfect) and Denis Villeneuve to direct. You may know Villeneuve as the director of another big spec script, Prisoners. Heisserer previously wrote The Thing remake and Final Destination 5. He’s since moved into directing, last year helming the Hurricane Katrina thriller, Hours, which starred Paul Walker.
Writer: Eric Heisserer (based on the short story by Ted Chiang)
Details: 116 pages (undated)

Ruffalo for David?

One of my favorite scripts from the last couple of years is Story Of Your Life. It took a big idea and approached it from a very intimate place. Sort of like M. Night’s “Signs,” but way better (and more original). As a screenwriter, this strategy is one of the best ways to get noticed, as you’re giving producers two things they want – a big concept and a story that can be shot on a reasonable budget.

But they’re not easy to write. Because of the tiny scope, the writer often ends up running out of engaging material. Look no further than one of the WORST movies I’ve seen this year, 2008’s Pontypoole (caught it on Netflix). It’s about a zombie outbreak that takes place entirely inside a radio DJ booth. Somewhere around minute 30, they ran out of stuff to do, and the rest was just, well, awful (they eventually figure out that the zombie outbreak is spread though…VOICE! So just by talking, the DJ is spreading the zombie virus! I’m not kidding!).

If you can prove yourself in that realm (your movie actually gets made), that’s when the gatekeepers trust you with a bigger budget. Which leads us to today’s script, the oddly titled, “Understand.”

30-something David Miller is a lowly car mechanic who, you get the feeling, hasn’t ended up where he thought he would. The one thing he’s got going for him is his beautiful wife, Lauren. One day after work, he picks her up and the two drive home like they always do.

Except before they get there, they get rear-ended into an icy river, where poor David watches his wife drift away. Three months later, David wakes up in a hospital room from a coma. He’s been told by his doctor that in order to get him out of the coma, they had to use an experimental drug.

As the days pass, David starts to feel smarter and starts craving knowledge. But this newfound intelligence comes with a price. The doctors won’t let David leave. Whatever this drug they injected him with is, it’s less about helping him and more about making him their lab rat.

The great thing about being super-smart though, is that you can outsmart the dumbos. And David’s able to escape with minimal effort. Once out in the wild, his intelligence continues to grow, allowing him to do things like learn Taekwando in the time it takes to check your e-mail and fly a Cessna plane with a three-minute prep course.

David quickly realizes why the doctors wanted to watch him so closely. David isn’t just becoming smart. He’s becoming a weapon.

Soon, David learns of a previous recipient of the drug he was given, another escapee named Vincent, who is a month ahead of him in the trials. Being one month ahead means having 30 additional days of intelligence growth. David may be a genius. But Vincent is the equivalent of 20 geniuses. David’s purpose shifts from eluding his pursuers (which now include the FBI) to stopping Vincent, who appears to be prepping an attack that could be the precursor to the end of the world as we know it.

“Understand” is a unique and entertaining piece of material. It’s sort of like Limitless meets The Bourne Identity meets Transcendence meets The Matrix meets Highlander. If there’s a hiccup in the script, it’s just that – it may be trying to do too many things.

For me, the script seemed to set itself up as an intimate thriller, possibly something that took place entirely in the hospital. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, it becomes a traditional “man on the run” Liam Neeson vehicle. It was during this section that I began to lose interest, since we’ve seen a bajillion of these thrillers already. The fact that the rapid-intelligence thing had been done fairly recently in Limitless didn’t help either.

But then Chiang and Heisserer start to get trippy, with David’s intelligence becoming so advanced that he can actually calculate where bullets are going to go before they’re shot, allowing him to dodge them (or, in some instances, deflect them with a knife blade).

However, once Vincent (the other super-smart guy) becomes David’s nemesis, the script almost becomes a super-hero movie, with the two fighting on top of buildings with super-advanced sparring skills. Heck, they eventually get so smart that they can move things with their minds, throwing yet another influence, Star Wars, into the mix.

What’s happening here is not a unique problem. Sometimes, for a reader to buy into a world, it requires the writer to slowly take us through the steps. In other words, it would be stupid if David could use telekinesis right away. But after we’ve seen him “level up” several times, it makes sense.

But if you take too long before introducing the REAL story (in this case, the emergence of Vincent and his diabolical plan), the reader can become confused. Oh, they say, I thought this was about a guy running away from the government. But it’s actually about a battle between two genius super-heroes.

The thing is, I mostly run into this problem with inexperienced writers who haven’t yet learned how to keep a consistent plot thread going for an entire script. They want to throw in new bells and whistles to keep your interest, not realizing that each one takes us further away from the original story we thought we were reading.

That’s not the problem with Eric’s script. He still knows what he’s doing so he makes it work. I just thought it felt a little unbalanced, with Vincent becoming this huge story agitator too late in the game.

The only other major observation I had was David’s job. David is a mechanic, which I thought was an odd choice since it had nothing to do with the story. There was ONE major payoff of him being a mechanic (he disabled the bad guy’s car), but if David is as smart as we’re led to believe, he should’ve been able to figure this out anyway.

We writers do this a lot. We absolutely LOVE a good payoff. But sometimes we love them so much that we’ll keep the setup to that payoff even if changing it would improve everything else in the screenplay BUT that payoff.

So say I was writing a comedy about an airplane pilot who can’t tell a lie for one day. The reason I made my main character a pilot? It’s a setup to an awesome payoff late in the script where my hero escapes the bad guys by hijacking a plane! Sure, that’s a nice payoff, but if I made my character, say, a lawyer instead, the setup would be a lot more ironic and lead to ton more funny scenes (Liar Liar). So you have to ask yourself, is keeping your main character a pilot so you can have that plane hijack scene really worth it?

I don’t think David being a mechanic is milking the irony of the situation enough. Flowers for Algernon (another “turn to genius” story) made its main character mentally retarded so that the irony level was high when he became smart. I don’t think that’s right for this particular script, but maybe they could do what Good Will Hunting did and make David a low level worker at a place known for the high intelligence level of its employees, like a giant bank or a huge trading firm.

By no means is going with a mechanic a bad choice. I just think if you can milk the irony of a concept, you do it. As a screenwriter, you don’t want to leave any stone unturned when you write a script. Always try to get the best out of every single element.

Anyway, “Understand” was a little schizophrenic but extremely well-written and moved at a speed-train like pace. The weird second half turn did throw me, but it also kept me off-balance, so I didn’t know what would happen next. I’d recommend this one if you can find it!

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

Number of times I checked the internet during read: 7

What I learned: Ahhh, I do not like numbered montages.

1) Frank works at his desk.
2) Frank and Sara sit at home, reading.
3) Frank goes fishing with his buddies.
4) Frank back at his desk, working.

I’m a big believer in keeping the writing as invisible as possible. The idea is to make someone forget they’re reading so they’re always immersed in your story. Anything you do to disrupt that reminds them it’s just a big fake made-up story. So seeing montages (long ones at that) that were numbered here, took me out of the screenplay. I was more focused on the “shot number” than the images themselves. With that said, Eric may be directing this or writing it for a director. In that case, maybe he wanted to know the specific shots he would have to get.

It’s Monday morning and the talk of the town is how a little movie about cancer kids beat Tom Cruise in the middle of Blockbuster Season. The little film that could (The Fault In Our Stars) grossed 48 million to Tommy Boy’s (Edge of Tomorrow) paltry 28 million. That’s not just a beating. That’s a slaughter. Twenty years ago – heck, even ten years ago – this never would’ve happened. So why is it happening now? Anybody who tells you they know for sure is a liar. And I don’t know either. But what’s so interesting about this particular battle is that there are a ton of factors involved. And they’re all so damn juicy that I can’t wait to get to them!

1) Is Tom Cruise a movie star anymore?

If you’re going to put your money on one horse for Tomorrow’s lackluster showing, it’s probably that Cruise isn’t a movie star anymore. His last three films (Oblivion, Jack Reacher, Rock of Ages) failed to hit 100 million here in the States. Whether this has to do with Cruise getting older, Cruise going through his crazy streak, or people just losing interest in the actor isn’t clear. But it’s looking like his glory days are over. The question is, is this representative of a much larger trend?

2) Is the movie star dead?

As people stood on the hilltops and claimed the death of the movie star these last few years, I didn’t buy it. But a look at this year’s crop of summer films says otherwise. From X-Men to Godzilla to Spider-Man 2 to Rise of the Apes. The star in all these movies is the property. The owners of these properties then plug in the casting holes with whomever they deem worthy. You’re seeing less and less movies being made like Die Hard, where the star’s the star. With that being said, this is mostly (at least for now) a symptom of the summer season. As we get into the last quarter of the year and ACTING is actually required to make the movie good, movie stars are needed. How long that lasts, we will have to see.

3) Was the concept too weird?

Even though I loved the script for Tomorrow, the one thing I worried about was whether a mass audience would buy into the concept. I get nervous when you mash two big ideas into a single film, because, typically, audiences will only buy into one. They can accept aliens invading. They can accept time-travel. But can they accept an alien time-travel movie? I’m still not sure.

4) The title sucked.

I don’t talk about movie titles much because it’s one of the most objective parts of the business. But if Hollywood isn’t given a property that already has a name, they almost always fuck it up. “Edge of Tomorrow??” What the hell does that even mean?? It’s the most generic title ever and reeks of compromise. Edge of Tomorrow dudes, let me help you out here. When you have a property that nobody knows about and you’re trying to compete against properties (X-Men, Spider-Man) that have been around for decades?? You don’t want a title that’s going to make you MORE invisible. You have to take a chance and use something that stands out. The script’s original title, “All You Need Is Kill,” would’ve been so much better. It’s way edgier, and probably would’ve brought in more of the key demo you wanted – teenagers.

5) Does this fuck things up even further for spec writers?

While “All You Need is Kill” was based on a graphic novel, for the most part, it was a spec script. Nobody knew about the graphic novel. And it was written on spec (and sold for a million bucks). With the failures of high-profile specs this year like Transcendence, Draft Day and now, to a lesser extent, Edge of Tomorrow, is Hollywood going to be further terrified of betting on non-IP? Also, if the movie star system is dead, what are screenwriters supposed to write about now?  It used to be, write a male lead inside a marketable genre.  If that’s gone, and the studios are only dealing with high-profile IP anyway, then what’s the strategy of the average screenwriter?  Should he even write original material anymore?  Will it be like TV used to be, where you write a spec episode of your favorite show?  So writers would write a feature in a long-standing franchise, like X-Men or Batman, in order to break in?  Probably not, but it’s not clear where this is going yet.  So we’ll need time to figure it out.

6) Did Fault really win the weekend?

Ah-ha, now we get to the part of the box office that the media still hasn’t figured out yet. Fault did beat Tomorrow at the domestic box office, but it’s not going to come anywhere NEAR Tomorrow internationally. Tomorrow has already racked up 80 million dollars internationally, putting it at 110 worldwide. When it’s all said and done, it should make close to 300 million. Fault will be lucky to make half that.  The thing is, for the last 20 years, the media has put so much focus on domestic, they still think that’s the race to talk about. They understand that race. But movies make more overseas now than they do at home. Sometimes a hell of a lot more. But how do you write that definitive worldwide box office column when one of the key movies hasn’t even hit all of the available territories? It’s kind of a confusing byline (“Edge of Tomorrow maybe won the world box office this weekend…as it was in 65% of the territories but hasn’t hit the major European circuit yet and still hasn’t bowed in Peru, where Tom Cruise is enormous” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Shailene takes down Tom!”). Since the domestic box office is definitive, I’m guessing they’ll continue to use it in stories. But at some point, this has to change.

7) People still read?

Probably one of the most confusing things about the modern-day box office is this whole reading thing. Studio heads, executives and producers claim the sky is falling because young people don’t want to spend two hours to see movies anymore when they can play on the internet, watch all that awesome TV, and play video games. It sure sounds logical, except that one of Hollywood’s biggest sources of income over the last 15 years has been book series adaptations. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent, now Fault in our Stars. Movies are becoming antiquated but people still have time to engross themselves in a 2000 year old medium for 10 hours a story? Clearly, if people are spending that much time reading to the tune of adding billions of dollars to the box office, producers can’t bitch that it’s getting too hard to compete for people’s time.

8) Cancer curse.

Hollywood is TERRIFIED of cancer. People don’t want to be reminded of death when they go to the movies. They generally want to be happy. They want to be reminded of why life’s awesome. So how did Fault in Our Stars overcome that prejudice? Well, partly because it IS a movie about life’s awesomeness. The characters here have a lot of fun together. It goes to some dark places, but for the most part, there’s lots of positive energy here. The reason it beat the curse though is because it’s a really well-told story. It’s got a nice narrative drive (with the Amsterdam goal) and the characters rarely do or say the obvious thing, which gave it a fresh feel. The thing is, it was able to prove this in book form first, so people already knew it was good. I’d go so far as to say this wouldn’t have made 10 million opening weekend if it wasn’t a book first. I’ll say this though. I’ve never seen a movie this aggressively market itself as a cancer flick and do so well.

9) Tomorrow is good!

The big tragedy here is that Edge of Tomorrow is a really good movie! Not that I can say that myself yet (I was home sick all weekend), but a dozen site readers e-mailed me to say it was awesome, some going so far as to say it was the best movie they’ve seen all year. Usually, when a movie’s good, even if it doesn’t open well, it’ll make up for it with a long healthy run. But Edge of Tomorrow is planted right smack dab in the middle of the Summer Season, where even monstrous movies can disappear on their second weekend. Then again, it’s only real demographic competition the next two weeks is 22 Jump Street and Jersey Boys, and neither of those films directly crosses over with Tomorrow. So let’s hope that word-of-mouth spreads and the movie rebounds. If not, it might be the fault in Tom Cruise’s star.

Genre: Drama
Premise: An intensely angry woman in a chronic pain support group starts looking into another member’s suicide while not really trying to put her life back together.
About: This finished on last year’s Black List and is currently in post-production with Jennifer Aniston and Anna Kendrick starring. In a testament to the value of hard work and perseverance, the writer, Patrick Tobin, has been writing for over 30 years, graduating from USC film school almost 25 years ago! This is his first big breakthrough success. The script has led him to another job adapting the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, “A Visit From the Goon Squad.”
Writer: Patrick Tobin
Details: 106 pages

Thank you to the Dragon Gods of Screenplay Heaven for an easy screenplay to read! Been waiting for a script like this for awhile. One that was minimalist but STILL contained depth! I hereby implore all of you, Scriptshadow Readers, to find this script and read it (it’s in the 2013 Black List folder, which everyone on my mailing list should have). This script embodies the spirit of the original Black List. Unknown writer taking a chance, writing something different and non-commercial, and getting recognition for it.

We’re on day 2 of the “passion v. commercialism” argument. And if these last two scripts are any indication, passion is winning! Ah, but that doesn’t mean you can write about your boring everyday life and get away with it. You gotta have skillz! You need to know how to burn this kind of joint before you can smoke it. Which I’m going to get to. But first, let’s take a bite of this delicious cake.

Cake is about 30-something Claire. We meet Claire in a Chronic Pain support group, where she’s sporting some scars on her face and neck. Clearly, she’s been in some sort of bad accident. But it isn’t just Claire’s body that’s hurting. Yup, you guessed it. It’s her soul, too.

A former attorney, Claire probably wasn’t the nicest person to begin with. But this accident – whatever happened – has turned her downright nasty. She’s almost excited to share with the group, for example, that their recent group member’s suicide (which involved a woman jumping off a bridge onto a cargo ship) ended with the gooey remains being shipped back to her husband in a Rubbermaid Cooler.

The suicide in question is a young woman named Nina. Claire envies Nina because she had the guts to get out. And while she’s not sure yet if she wants the same, she becomes infatuated with Nina’s decision, and by association, her life. This eventually leads her to Roy, Nina’s angry husband (lots of angry people here). It’s refreshing meeting someone with so much anger though, so the two begin a dysfunctional relationship based on pretty much anything but love and happiness.

(spoiler) It’s here where we finally get a window into Claire’s past. That car accident she was in killed her son. And when that loss turned her into the monster she is now, it lost her her husband too. Ironically enough, Roy has a son of his own. And maybe, just maybe, through spending time with them, Claire can find a way back to happiness.

This was fun!

I bet you’re confused upon hearing that, seeing as that synopsis is pretty depressing. But this is the thing about “Cake.” Claire is really funny! This is something a lot of you writers want to take note of. The great thing about writing someone at the bottom – someone who has nothing to lose and who doesn’t give a shit – is that they can say anything!

Real people are the opposite of that. We’re all giant liars. When we’re feeling bad and someone asks us how we’re doing, we fake a smile and say “Good!” When we have issues with a friend, instead of rocking the boat, we bury our frustrations and pretend everything’s great. Claire doesn’t do that. When you say, how are you, she says, with as much sarcasm as she can possibly muster, fucking dandy, before she shoots you a bitch smile and walks off.

Watching someone so untamed for 106 pages was refreshing. Now it’s a balancing act, because having an unlikable protagonist can backfire, but the thing about Claire was you understood why she was upset. She’s living through hell.

Also, there’s a huge difference between being unlikable fun and being unlikable boring. If Claire just kept to herself the whole time and was super duper depressed and barely said anything, we would’ve hated her. The fact that she’s so sarcastic and hilariously mean to everyone makes her fun to watch.

Recently, somebody asked me about the “slow build.” How do you do it? Cake is a nice template because you really don’t have much of a story here. Claire’s “goal” is to learn about Nina, but it’s a fairly loose thread.

When you’re building stuff up slowly, it’s important to set up mysteries (or you can call them “questions”). Mysteries allow you to move through your story slowly because the reader will still want to find out the answers to the mysteries.

Here, for example, we see those scars on Claire’s face and neck. We want to know what caused them. Claire wants to know why Nina killed herself. We do as well. Claire and her ex-husband have a bizarre relationship. We want to understand it.

Tobin keeps setting these little mysteries up, and they string us along. Combined with a fascinating character who’s acting the complete opposite of how normal human beings act, and it’s pretty easy to see why this is so readable.

Another thing that was nice to see was (spoiler) there was no super-deep melodramatic monologue moment. Usually when you have a script with a dying child like this, particularly one where the main character played a part in the kid’s death, you get the obligatory scene where they monologue their memories of the event, which ends in them crying and saying something to the effect of how they now know it wasn’t their fault.

It’s not that you don’t want highly emotional moments. But you don’t want anything obligatory about your script. Particularly if you’re not writing a mainstream movie. I mean, if you’re going to write something personal, it better be fucking unique. So say it with me everyone: Obligatory is a bad word. Bad obligatory!

Another reason this really worked for me is that with these protagonists that hate the world, there’s an inherent need to see them change. We want to see Claire find happiness again. We want her to overcome her boy’s death and her physical pain and want to live again and, frankly, not be so mean to everyone.

But this ONLY works if you’re truthful with the character. You have to be real. You can’t candy-coat the character and give them some artificial likable quality so we like them. You have to be honest and make her really mean.

Unfortunately, this comes with its own share of risks. People might end up hating your character if you don’t make them just right. I liked Claire because she was real, she was funny, and I understood why she was angry. But for other readers, it might be too much. They might not be able to excuse those qualities in anyone.

And also, these movies never make a lot of money. They’re always going to cater to niche cinephile audiences unless every single aspect of the production hits it out of the park, which is rare. So know that when you write these movies, you’re writing to an indie audience, which makes them a lot harder to sell.

With that said, this was a wonderful little script that totally surprised me. I love Patrick Tobin’s writing style and his unique voice. I’m actually shocked it took him this long to break through. Now let’s just hope the movie’s good!

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

Number of times I checked the internet during read: only once!

What I learned: If you’re going to make your main character “unlikable” in the form of them being an asshole or a bitch, just make sure it’s motivated. Nina is a bitch because she lost everything. She lost her son. She lost her marriage. She lost her looks. She’s angry at the world for a reason, so we understand it. If she’s a bitch “just because,” the reader’s going to hate her.

Genre: Drama
Premise: Follows a group of characters, with the focus on a writer trying to finish his latest novel in the midst of a complicated affair.
About: This is Paul Haggis’s latest writing-directing effort. Haggis’s film, Crash, won the Best Picture Oscar in 2004. Haggis has gone back and forth between big projects and personal projects since. His personal projects haven’t really broken out, but his big projects have done just fine (Million Dollar Baby, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace). Haggis was known even before Crash as one of the better writers in town, so his scripts are almost always good reads. Third Person comes out this month (June 20th) and has a stellar cast that includes James Franco, Mila Kunis, Olivia Wilde, Liam Neeson, Maria Bello and Adrien Brody. It should be noted that this is an older draft and that Haggis has probably worked on it since.
Writer: Paul Haggis
Details: 121 pages – May 24, 2011 draft

Man, just a week after I told everyone to beware of The Wall of Text, I see it on the FIRST PAGE of Third Person! BUT before all of you go hollering at me (“See Carson! There are no rules!”) we should note that Haggis is also the director of this script, and therefore the rules don’t apply. Without having to get his script past readers, he doesn’t need to keep their attention the same way you, the unknown do.

It was rather strange to see though, as the last couple of Haggis scripts I read were quite sparse. Maybe this was an early draft where Haggis was still exploring things and therefore unafraid to ramble? I don’t know. But after you get past the opening Text Wall, things start moving along a lot faster, and Third Person becomes one of the better scripts I’ve read this year.

I have a new gauge for determining screenplay quality: How many times I check the internet while reading! With Third Person, I only checked TWICE! For the average Amateur script, I probably check it at least 30 times. Maybe I’ll add the “internet check gauge” at the end of every review now. We’ll see.

Third Person follows a group of seemingly random characters. There’s 50-something Michael, a married writer who’s rented out a hotel room in London to finish his latest novel. There’s 20-something Anna, an aspiring writer who’s having an affair with Michael. She’s flown to London so Michael can read her latest short story (which she hopes to get published), with ‘fooling around’ also on the docket.

There’s 40-something Sean, a middle-income married businessman in Italy. He meets a beautiful but troubled local, Monica, who’s in desperate need of money to buy her daughter back from some bad men.

Finally, there’s Julia, an extremely attractive woman who’s had a huge fall from grace. Once married with a son, she went crazy and almost tried to kill him. She risks never seeing her son again if she can’t convince a court-appointed therapist that she’s sane.

The main story is Michael and Anna. Despite it being the most boring plot on paper, the relationship between the two is captivating. Both of these characters have trouble loving, and they push and pull at each other in such a depraved manner that you’re constantly wondering what the hell’s going to happen to them. Both characters have power over the other (him, his job, her, her sexuality) and use that power at every turn.

The Sean storyline is a weird one. Sean meets this Monica girl at a bar in Italy. She “accidentally” leaves her bag there. He finds her to return it, which is when he learns she’s trying to save her daughter and needs money to do it. Sean’s not sure if he’s being conned, but he gets the money for her anyway because he wants to believe in her, because he wants to believe in a just world. What happens next are a thousand twists and turns as we, like Sean, wonder if this woman is legit or not.

Julia’s story is the least interesting, as we’re not given enough information up front to understand why this therapist meeting is so important to her. Therefore, everything leading up to that appointment is fairly boring, as her scenes are relegated to cleaning hotel rooms at the hotel she just started working at.

I’d give Third Person an “impressive” through the first 100 pages. Michael and Anna’s relationship in particular was a blast to read. Not only was there the unpredictability of the relationship itself, but both characters were putting important writing works into the world, and the suspense of how those works were going to be received (Michael, by his publisher, and Anna, by Michael) kept me engaged. True, my love of writing played a part in that, but even without it, this was one of the better relationships I’ve read on the page in awhile. The only way I can describe it is pure… ENERGY.

Indeed, the unpredictability of those two bled into the rest of the script. Haggis is so far ahead of you as you try to predict where this will go, that after awhile you shake your head and give in. It’s what every great writer does. With whatever element you’re writing (story, character, scene), figure out what the audience’s expectation is, then use that against them. Haggis does that again and again and again here.

Where Third Person gets weird is in its final act. I don’t know if Haggis was trying to outthink himself or what, but let’s just say it begins with a HUGE F*CKING SHOCK. Something we didn’t see coming at all. I actually had to go back and re-read earlier parts of the script just to confirm that what I read was what I read (I’m sorry I can’t reveal it here – it’s too huge of a spoiler).

Personally, I don’t think Haggis set up that twist well enough for us to buy it. But it’s what happens afterwards that throws us for a loop. As the plotlines start to intersect, either they don’t intersect clearly or I completely missed some earlier setup, because all of a sudden Julia (the child-hurter) is calling Michael’s wife and I had no idea these two even knew each other. It was so out-of-left-field, I started to wonder if Julia and Anna were the same person.

Part of my reasoning was that Michael’s novel was supposedly about characters who didn’t know they were in a book (a throwaway line early on). But that didn’t explain how characters could’ve been the same people.

The thing is, the first 100 pages are so good, you almost forgive this confusion and believe it’s your fault (maybe it was?). And in the end, when I put Third Person down, I immediately wanted to discuss it with someone to figure this stuff out. That’s a good sign. Because I’ve read plenty of confusing scripts where the only thing I wanted to do afterwards was press delete.

The bigger picture here is that Third Person is a dying genre. This is a straight drama where nobody shoots anybody. Kramer vs. Kramer kind of stuff. They don’t make these movies anymore. Hollywood has a new name for them. They call them “execution dependent,” and saying those words in a studio office is the equivalent of telling the executive that you banged his wife last night. In fact, he’d probably be happier if you banged his wife.

Indeed, if these dramas are executed well, they’re awesome. But if they’re not, they can lose 50 million easy. And for what? Maybe 40 million upside? No studio wants to take that chance. They’d rather make a monster/alien movie that, whether it’s executed well or not, they can slap together a snazzy trailer for and get people to show up.

There are a few people left making these movies and Paul Haggis is one of them. Thank God for that because we need variety in the marketplace.

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

Number of times I checked Internet during read: 2 times

What I learned: If you’re writing a straight drama (no cops or spies), you have to make the audience talk afterwards. That’s the only way you have a shot. You don’t have explosions or special effects to bring people in the traditional way. So you need word of mouth. Haggis does that two ways here. First, there’s that huge shocking twist on page 100 that I can’t spoil (sorry!). And second, the last 20 pages are open to interpretation, which should get people trading ideas afterwards.  In other words, when you’re writing these, think about movies like “The Crying Game.”

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Genre: Horror
Premise (from writer): After survivors of a recent hurricane relocate to a quiet Louisiana bayou town, a creature goes on a nightly rampage of terror and carnage. Convinced it is the legendary werewolf known as loup garou, an intrepid teen vows to discover the beast’s true identity and destroy it.
Why You Should Read (from writer): This script is my take on the classic monster movie. The story moves quickly, is filled with colorful characters and contains a truly badass werewolf. It’s placed well in a couple smaller contests and now I want to see how it fares in the AOW thunderdome.
Writer: S.D.
Details: 93 pages

It only seems appropriate that a script about a mysterious werewolf is written by a mysterious writer. Known to us only as “S.D.” the Primal scribe has thrown his hat into the Amateur Offerings arena.

Mysterious or not, S.D. has a tall order ahead of him. Of all the monsters out there, I think werewolves are one of the weakest. My issue with them is that they’re basically glorified wolves, and the rules that govern them aren’t as clean as some of the other monsters. For example, we know vampires need blood to survive. We know zombies need human flesh to survive. What do werewolves need? Why do they kill? That’s something I thought a lot about during Primal.

Say you’re a guy who turns into a werewolf.  If you move into an area and start killing everyone in sight, you’re probably going to have to move out fairly quickly, which is logistically inconvenient – having to move from residence to residence every week or so. Now if you HAVE to kill? If killing is something you have no control over? That’s another issue.

But that was my problem. I never knew why the werewolf was killing. I don’t know if werewolf fans care about this stuff. But as a storyteller, I think it’s in every writer’s best interest to know all of the rules governing their universe and convey those to the reader clearly. Especially since S.D. appears to be breaking away from werewolf lore (his werewolves don’t need a full moon to turn). With that in mind, let’s check out Primal.

18 year-old Chris Durance works as an assistant manager in a New Orleans trailer park, where he also lives with his father. Things seem to be going well until two new sets of tenants move in. First, there’s the easily agitated James Hettis, and then the father-daughter duo of Remy and Annie. Lucky for Chris, Annie is a little beauty queen in the making, and she seems to have the hots for him.

Soon after that, the killings begin. There’s a hunter, an old codger, and even Chris’s own father! It’s serious enough that a Monsters-are-real blogger type, Tobin Fromski, shows up and starts documenting the killings. The thing is, nobody really believes that something supernatural is at work here. It’s gotta be some angry bear or something, right?

But as the evidence continues to mount, all signs point to some French version of the werewolf, which is like, the worst kind of werewolf there is. This guy doesn’t even need a full moon to turn. He does it whenever he wants!

The rest of the script is about everyone (including us) trying to figure out who the damn werewolf is. Is it the mysterious drifter who’s always hanging around just outside of town? Is it the intensely private new tenant James Hettis? Or is it some outside presence they haven’t met yet? Download the Primal script below to find out.

Primal was so easy to read! This script slides down your throat like a tall glass of milk. The paragraphs are short and to the point. The writing glides along from word to word. And it’s a pint-sized 93 pages.

Now there’s some debate about whether that’s a good thing or not. The argument being, how can you move someone on a deeper level if everything’s so short and simple? In the end, that’s a choice you make as a writer. Not every script is going to be Casablanca. Not every plot needs to be as complicated as Citizen Kane. So when you’re talking about a “monster in a box” werewolf script, simple is probably the best way to go.

With that said, the lack of complexity did affect my enjoyment of the story. Despite how well this was written, I knew who the killer was almost immediately. (spoilers) The other suspects (the drifter, James Hettis, and Annie’s dad) were so outlandishly bad that it would’ve been too obvious if they were the werewolf. That left one person – Annie.

The thing is, I believe Annie was the right choice to be the werewolf. S.D. just needed to cover his tracks better. This is essentially a murder mystery. And with any murder mystery, your job as the writer is to keep fucking with the reader. Every person we meet has to be presented along with the tiniest clue that THEY could be the killer (or werewolf in this case).

So everyone Chris investigates – whether it be old man Swagger, Deputy Munro, or even Chris’s own father – has to make us reevaluate what we think we know. I mean Chris’s father just came back from some long job, right? Maybe he caught something out there.

From there, whoever your killer is, you have to give us one scene that DEFINITELY RULES THEM OUT, so that we never consider them as a possibility. So for example, Chris should be with Annie when one of the killings occurs. That way we don’t even consider her and when she turns out to be the killer, we’re truly shocked. How you explain that other murder will be tough, but that’s what a writer’s job is. To come up with creative solutions to tough problems (they did it in Scream by creating dual-murderers).

Character-wise, I think S.D. suffocated the script with too many characters for a 90 page screenplay. On my count there were 18-20 characters, which is way too many for something as simple as this. With all those characters, you weren’t able to get in depth enough with the characters that mattered.

I mean I barely knew Annie. She had, what? 3-4 scenes with Chris before she’s devastated to hear that he’s leaving with his father? If you cut out some of those other characters, you could up that to 7-8 scenes, and then it feels a lot more realistic when she’s upset. I know when that scene came I was like, “What?? You barely know this dude.” I mean we have two deputies here. Do we need two? We have Sam Washington. Who the hell is Sam Washington?

Likewise, use that extra space to beef up the depth of ALL the key characters. I liked how S.D. built up Wes’s (Chris’s dad) backstory, how he lost his wife and had turned to drinking. But I barely knew anything about Tobin, the blogger, who probably gets more time than anyone. And come to think about it, I barely knew anything about Chris, too. And he’s your hero!

Outside of that, the script felt a little small. I don’t know if there was enough of a twist here to get people excited about this as a film. There’s the trailer park angle, which was different, but is it different enough? These movies can certainly get made because the setup is so easy to convey. But to REALLY get a producer excited, you need something fresh.

I mean there’s all this talk about this being a special kind of werewolf, but the only thing different about it was that it could change whenever it wanted. If you could expand the mythology of the werewolf and add some new twists to it, maybe this starts to feel fresher. I wish I could give some suggestions but, again, werewolves aren’t really my cup of tea.

Like a lot of people who win the Amateur Friday slot, S.D. is definitely a good writer. In addition to that, he’s writing movies that have a chance in the marketplace. But I think this is one or two complexity notches below what gets producers excited. Get rid of some characters, beef up the remaining ones, add a little more mythology to the werewolf, keep us guessing with the killer, and this script could eventually do some damage. I wish S.D. the best of luck!

Screenplay link: Primal

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

What I learned: Remember that whatever vice your character has, there was a trigger for it. It might’ve happened recently or it might’ve happened a long time ago. Find that trigger, because it’s probably the thing that’ll most shape who your character is. So for Chris’s dad, he’s a drunk. The trigger for him drinking was his wife dying a year ago. That’s who he is in this story. He’s a man grieving. He’s a man who must get over the death of his wife.