Genre: Wes Anderson
Premise: Adapted from a French film, “My Best Friend” is about an unlikable middle-aged art dealer who’s come to the realization that he has no friends, and so goes about trying to find one.
About: Wes Anderson wrote this script for Imagine Entertainment over at Universal. It’s one of the few scripts (it may even be the only script) Anderson’s written without the intent to direct. However, in subsequent interviews, he’s professed how much he loved writing it, leaving a tiny door open that maybe one day he’ll direct it. As for why it hasn’t been made into a film yet, it may be that they’re banking on that slim chance. But my money’s on the fact that it was written in 2009, and in 2010, the French-adapted comedy Dinner For Schmucks bombed big time, pretty much putting the kibosh on any French comedy imports. The trend seems to have shifted towards the “lots of lesbian sex” import genre. So if they can bring someone in to change the characters into female nymphomaniacs, they may have something on their hands! Anderson’s newest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, comes out next month. But if you’re jonzeing for some immediate Wes, check out the trailer for his new horror film!
Writer: Wes Anderson (based on the French Film written by Patrice Leconte)
Details: 95 pages, First Draft (Aug 3, 2009)

Fiennes would be the perfect lead in this Anderson movie as well!

So I was going through my script pile last night and I came across this old forgotten Wes Anderson script. It occurred to me, as I picked it up (“digitally” picked it up mind you) that I’d never actually read a Wes Anderson script. Or if I had, I didn’t remember doing so. I found this reality to be problematic, since Anderson is such a force on the Indie film scene. But what could I possibly learn from some reject Wes Anderson script anyway? If it’s this forgotten, it couldn’t be any good, could it? Let’s find out!

Nicholas is an art dealer with zero honor. He is oblivious to the way he fucks people over, which is fine when you’re 25 and have time to mature and change your selfish ways. But Nicholas is 46, and a life of fucking people over has led to a lonely existence, an existence he hasn’t become aware of until recently.

Currently, Nicholas is buying up all the paintings in town from a particular artist, Moses Rosenthaler, who he has it on good authority is going to die soon. After he dies, Nicholas will host a showing of all the Rosenthalers and make a killing. Yup, like I said, this isn’t the kind of guy you want to bring home to your parents.

Nicholas is also a bit of a scammer (surprise surprise) and doesn’t have any money. This forces him to team up with a fellow art dealer, Lucinda, an older woman he doesn’t like but who has money. He lets her in on his Rosenthaler secret and she agrees to put up half the loot.

That night, Nicholas invites Lucinda to his birthday party. She comes and is amused to find that nobody’s actually shown up. She points out the obvious to Nicholas, that he has no friends, which he vehemently denies. They get in an argument, and Lucinda makes a bet that if he can prove he has a friend within a week, she’ll give him all the Rosenthalers for himself. If he loses, she gets all of them. He agrees.

Nicholas enlists taxi driver and aspiring artist, Zbigniew, to drive him around town to find one of these friends. In every way Nicholas is socially moronic, Zbigniew is a social superstar. He can charm an entire room with an anecdote or joke, whereas whenever Nicholas speaks, people get scared and run away. Upon seeing Zbigniew’s talents, Nicholas hires him to teach him “how to make friends.”

It’s a ridiculous request and Zbigniew tries to say no, but Nicholas is so darn insistent that Zbigniew has no choice. Nicholas looks for friends first on his payroll, from his lawyer to his psychiatrist, but comes back empty-handed. He even goes back to someone from 6th grade who he thought was his best friend, only to find out that he’s actually his mortal enemy (because Nicholas doesn’t even understand the basic definition of  the word “friend,” he doesn’t realize that terrorizing someone over the course of their childhood would actually make that person hate him).

Eventually, of course, Nicholas begins to realize that he’s enjoying his time with Zbigniew, and that he may be the friend he’s been looking for. Unfortunately, as soon as Nicholas realizes he can use Zbigniew to win the bet, he screws it all up, potentially losing everything in the process.

Wes Anderson

One thing I’ve found with these French comedies is that they often operate under 1980s American Comedy rules, where the setup doesn’t have to be logical. You get silly stuff like Brewster’s Millions. That’s the biggest hurdle “My Best Friend” faces. Nicholas and Janice make this bet that he can’t find a friend, yet never define exactly what that means. Is a “friend” someone he hangs out with every Saturday night? Someone who calls him back within a day of his voice mail? The script never defines this, and it’s a huge problem.

The flimsy setup also begs questions like, why can’t Nicholas just pay some random dude 5 grand to pretend he’s his friend? And I hate that. I hate when the rules of the story aren’t defined, because then there’s too much wiggle room for the writer to bullshit. And that’s exactly what you saw here. Once Nicholas tells Lucinda that Zbigniew’s the friend, she starts rambling off all this stuff about how he has to prove it. (“Um, then he must steal something for you!”) Okay, so the final act is Zbigniew having to steal something to prove that Nicholas is his friend?? What???

There’s an old saying in screenwriting. If there are problems in the third act, it’s because of problems in your first act. This is the prototypical example of that. We have a weird misconceived “Zbigniew tries to steal a painting” climax because the rules of what “a friend” are are never stated. This forces the characters (and by extension the writer) to make those rules up in the last act, which feels lazy and results in a sloppy finale.

But here’s why I still liked this script. The characters were great. And I think Wes Anderson gets shortchanged on characters because everything takes a backseat to his unique production design and quirky sense of humor. But he’s so damn good at creating comedic characters. Nicholas, as this clueless asshole, never fails to amuse, because he’s so damn dull when it comes to understanding friendship. Zbigniew needs to teach him how to actually talk to people. Just talk! And Nicholas still figures out a way to screw it up.

What I found clever about this was that we have one of these potential script-killing problems in “My Best Friend” (the main character is a total asshole), yet Anderson brilliantly offsets it by pairing him up with the most likable person on the planet – Zbigniew. He’s kind, earnest, passionate, active. The guy loves art but he can’t create it for the life of him. Yet he still tries.  How could you not root for that guy?

And I think what this script does that a lot of good scripts do, is you’re so into the characters, you don’t really think about the plot. You’re just in the moment with these two people. Laughing and enjoying their company. So even though the plot here is flawed, it doesn’t matter as much because you just want to see these two guys “get together” at the end.

And you know, that’s kind of the genius of this story. It’s essentially a romantic comedy. It takes your typical rom-com premise (guy and girl team up to find a guy the love of his life, but the two end up falling in love with each other in the process!) and hides it within a bro-mance. Brilliant!

I don’t know if they can ever make this without Wes Anderson directing. It has his fingerprints all over it. Trying to get someone else to interpret it is going to send the film into “Community Season 4” territory (when creator Dan Harmon left) – a badly plagiarized imitation. The thing is, I believe this would be one of Wes Anderson’s best movies if he made it. It’s a little more mainstream than his typical fare, yet still has that unmistakable quirky bent his films are known for. If I were him, I’d consider it. It’s a really good script. (The script is out in the ether. People have it. So if you want to read it, ask around in the comments).

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

What I learned: If you’re having trouble with your third act, go back to your first act and make sure you’ve clearly set up your protagonist’s goal, as well as the rules for achieving that goal. If you know that Indiana is going after the Ark, you probably know your climax is going to involve him and the Ark. But if you’re vague about it (i.e. Indiana is going after miscellaneous “treasure”) figuring out your final act is going to be a lot tougher. Here, we never defined the rules behind what “friendship” means, so the ending was sloppy in defining how the bet was won.

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: After a small plane crashes, three survivors start to experience weird sensations along with heightened awareness. When the government comes in to investigate what happened, the survivors get the feeling that there’s more to their crash than they’ve been told.
About: This is one of the new pilots (no pun intended) over at AMC. It was written by Blake Masters, who created the show “Brotherhood” on Showtime, about the Irish mob. Masters was actually one of those blessed/cursed writers who spent a long time in Hollywood selling scripts and TV projects, yet getting none of them made. “Brotherhood” started out as a movie before his agents asked if he could turn it into a TV show. He did, and Showtime loved it so much they snatched it up immediately. His career has since taken off (he also wrote last year’s “2 Guns” starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg) and is only getting better. If that doesn’t get you excited, Jonathan Demme, who directed Silence of the Lambs, is directing the pilot episode!
Writer: Blake Masters
Details: 62 pages – 3/15/13 draft

David Morrissey, who played The Governor on “The Walking Dead” will play the series lead, Lewis.

Uhh, if you’re writing about plane crashes and science fiction, COUNT ME IN! Why am I 30% convinced every time I step on a plane that it’s going to go down? Besides of the fact that it’s a TUBE OF STEEL and that TUBES OF STEEL shouldn’t be able to fly! There are too many physics variables working against it. Too many things that have to go right in Newton’s Laws of gravity.  Seriously, airplanes can’t even land in the right airport anymore!  How are they supposed to stay in the sky?

For that reason, I LOVE reading scripts ABOUT plane crashes because – and yes, I’m aware of how warped this sounds – I enjoy watching others suffer in a plane crash. Because it gives me joy that I’m not one of those people. That in some strange way, despite it being fiction, I survived!

Now when you combine these plane crashes with sci-fi, I mean, come on. You’re talking about a mix of ingredients so powerful that they can do no wrong. Do I need to mention a certain couple of star-crossed lovers? Two island-soaked friends torn by their inability to give to one another but who were secretly and always in love except that that PESKY SAWYER had to keep messing it all up by being so darn charming and rogueish? Yes, I’m talking about Jack and Kate! I’m talking about Lost. Plane Crash + Sci-Fi = greatest show ever. Every time. Always. That equation ALWAYS works. Except for The Event. And Fringe. Otherwise, history proves that this combination is failsafe.

Line of Sight follows Lewis Bernt, who’s all bernt out when he realizes his wife’s been cheating on him – doing the whole sleazy hotel meet up thing to really hammer home the sliminess. But Lewis, a NTSB plane accident investigator, is going on a hunting trip with his friends this weekend and the last thing he wants is to get in some big fight with his wife before he leaves.

Oh, but get this. Juicy gossip warning. The guy she’s cheating on him with? His friend Walker? He’s PILOTING the plane that’s taking them on the hunting trip! Scandalous right? Yeah, them and four other friends are taking a small plane out into the wilderness. And when Lewis arrives, he lets Walker know that he now knows the secret.

Along for the ride are Lewis’s good friends Tony, unambitious to a fault, David, a “cerebral goofball,” and two other hunting dude types. Well, the plane gets ready to leave but before it does we cut to black, and the next thing Lewis knows, he’s woken up in a plane crash. He’s alive, as are Dave and Tony, but everyone else is dead. Except for Walker, who’s missing. Nobody remembers what happened.  Especially the dead guys.

A rescue team helicopters in to, literally, pick them up, and as Lewis is being pulled up, he sees the wreckage. It’s all wrong. It’s presented as a horizontal crash, but there are no skid marks consistent with a horizontal crash. This simply can’t be. It’s impossible. But before he can take anything else in, he’s flown to the hospital.

While in his hospital bed, Lewis starts seeing a lot of suspicious people milling about. Mostly government types. Lewis’s job is crash inspection, and he knows that these people shouldn’t be here. When they do get around to him for questioning, it’s clear that they’re intrigued by he and Walker’s issues, and that that may be where they’re starting their investigation.

Oh, but that’s not even close to the real issue. The real issue is that the three survivors start experiencing messed up shit. Tony just stares off into nothingness for hours at a time. Dave has become a super-genius with the ability to do “how do you like them apples” type math equations. And Lewis is feeling all this heightened shit happening around him. He can hear things in the wind, see patterns in mundane things. Life’s gettin’ all trippy for these three.

Eventually, Lewis starts looking into his crash, and finds odd facts associated with it, like that there are 4 times as many plane crashes on the date of his crash than any other day. And that there’s a pattern in the frequencies of those crashes. The reality is, these three survivors are changing. Into what? It’s not clear. Nor is it clear why the government is so intrigued by the accident. I suppose the real question is, what is the government keeping from Lewis about the crash? What are they keeping from all of them?

Writer Blake Masters

Here we have a show clearly inspired by the likes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the plane crash film, Fearless. Which I say as a compliment. You have three men, divinely affected by this experience, who are trying to find meaning after it happens. I think that’s a good setup for a TV show. So does it work?

For awhile.

I loved the setup here. I loved the spooky mystery behind Lewis waking up in a crashed plane with three days of his life vanished. I love that we don’t know what happened that caused the crash, whether it was supernatural or logical (did he get in a fight with Walker and that caused the plane to go down?). I was really into all the questions for about 30 pages.

But I’m going to be honest, as we entered that second half, I began to get frustrated. Tons of things were happening, questions were being brought up, seemingly by the second, and nothing was being answered. I know people say Lost did this every episode, but Lost was more deliberate about each question. The questions in Line of Sight seemed to be thrown out at us willy-nilly, almost off-the cuff.

Dave leaves a screwdriver at the table while screwing something. It continues to stand up. Lewis stares at and obsesses over strawberries for no reason. We have crazy dudes going on and on about “frequencies.” They then get hit by a car. Everyone hears music in the wind. A crossword that was completed with letters mysteriously turns to all numbers. People are able to walk across highways without looking or stopping and not get hit. People get stopped for doing 135 miles per hour and the officer lets them go for no reason. Everyone has itchy hands. People are writing down random equations on paper. People are building machines worth half a billion dollars. The FBI and other government agencies are watching our survivors.

It just felt like TOO MUCH. I think laying out mysteries is great. But if you start throwing one down every other page, sooner or later you’ve spread yourself too thin and we’ve lost interest. How is Mystery 13 compelling if I know in 5 pages it will be usurped by Mystery 19? I think this script just needed to SLOW DOWN. If you try to cram too much crazy shit into your story, it starts to feel desperate, like the kid with the skateboard doing trick after trick in front of the new girl at school saying “Look at this! Look at this!” Desperation is never attractive.

With that said, there were some good things to talk about here. I loved that we started right away with a problem, and not necessarily the kind of problem you’d associate with this kind of show. I believe writers feel pressure to go big with their teaser, especially if they’re writing in the supernatural or sci-fi genre. But sometimes the best open is just to create a good old-fashioned (but intriguing) character problem.

In “Line of Sight,” we start with Lewis going to grab his wife’s phone out of her purse and finding a hotel card instead, a hotel card that clearly implies she’s been cheating on him. Lewis doesn’t confront his wife right away (why do that? You’d destroy all the suspense!) and instead gets ready for his hunting trip. When he gets on the plane, he heads up front where his friend Walker is, and promptly tells him that he knows he’s fucking his wife. End of teaser!

Not a single sci-fi element to be found, and yet you can bet your ass we’re staying around until after the commercial. So never underestimate using the HUMAN COMPONENT with your opening. You can create something just as intriguing by exploring two people as you can exploring a bank heist or a plane crash or a car chase.

I also loved some of Masters’ descriptions. He’d come out with one every few pages that I’d never seen before that perfectly encapsulated that character. For example, here’s a character named Edgar’s entrance: “Jensen spots a THICK SET MAN (let’s call him EDGAR) standing beside a town car. His tie flaps in the wind but the rest of him is rooted deep in the earth, solid and unmovable.”

I mean how awesome is that? I love how Masters doesn’t necessary tell you about the man himself to describe him. He talks about the stuff surrounding him (his tie, the earth). I thought that was really clever.

But you wanna know the moment I turned on the script? It’s when the crazy character came up to Lewis babbling about “the frequencies,” then he steps backwards and gets RAMMED INTO and killed by a car. I’ve seen that type of scene so many times in these movies/shows, that I lost confidence in the script right there. When I see moments that have been used so many times before in a genre, it’s almost always an indication that the writer didn’t work hard enough to differentiate his script from the pack. If we get that scene we’ve already seen before, we’re bound to see plenty of other scenes we’ve already seen before as well.

Line of Sight had the feeling of a dying campfire, with everyone desperately rushing around to throw twigs and newspaper onto it in the hopes of keeping it going. But everyone knows it’s a only a matter of time before it dies out. It’s not badly written. It has some nice moments. But it packs way too many questions into its 62 page flickering flame. Space out those questions in future episodes, and maybe we can keep this fire going.

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

What I learned: Start a scene out on something other than your characters. This is more of a directing move, but you can use it in your script as well. Remember, just cause you have 2 (or 3, or 4) characters in a scene, it doesn’t mean you have to start on them. Find something else in the room, something relevant to the scene or interesting, and start on that instead. Masters does this early on, in the previously mentioned “Lewis looks in his wife’s purse” scene. Instead of starting on Lewis and his wife, Masters starts on the purse, and we only HEAR Lewis and his wife talk in voice over.  Eventually, Lewis’s hands enter the screen and start looking through the purse.  It’s a slightly more interesting way to write the scene that gives it a visual edge over the straightforward “master shot” we usually envision when we come into a room.

“The Sequence what??”

Edit: A couple of people in the comments section have told me that someone (Chris Soth) already uses the term the “mini-movie method,” so I’m changing the terminology back to the original “Sequence Approach.”  

Why is writing a script so difficult? I can answer that easily. Because there are a lot of damn pages to fill! Specifically, it’s that second act that kills everyone. That’s where the enormity of the story hits you, and when a lot of writers realize they don’t have enough to fill up all that space. I mean when you think about it, writing a first act isn’t that hard. You set up your characters, introduce your concept, get the plot rolling. Anybody can do that. But as soon as you get past those first 30 pages, you find it harder and harder to move on. All of a sudden filling up even five pages feels impossible. You just want to get to the damn end so you can resolve the story.

I recently got to thinking, “What’s the problem here? What is it about that vast amount of white space that trips people up so much?” And I realized it’s the lack of structure within that space. It’s a little like wanting to be a doctor and thinking about all that schooling you need. 10 years. 10 YEARS! How the hell are you supposed to get through that?

But when you start breaking it down into years and then semesters and then classes – in other words, into MANAGEABLE CHUNKS – it starts to feel doable. And it’s the same thing with screenwriting. You need to find a way to break those 120 screenplay pages down into manageable chunks.

This brought me back to a screenwriting philosophy I keep gaining more and more respect for as time goes by: “The Sequence Approach.” This is not my creation. I learned about it through Paul Gulino’s book, “The Sequence Approach,” (the only book I link to on the site besides my own) and he learned it because it’s how pre-1960 Hollywood used to format their screenplays. Now I never liked that name: “The Sequence Approach.” It sounds too mathematical for a craft that’s supposed to be creative. But it is what it is so it will have to do!

Now like I said, our big problem here is the fact that when we look at a screenplay as a whole, it’s too big. Even if we break it down into 3 acts, that’s still 50-60 unstructured pages we have to fill up in that second act. It’s too daunting! We need a way to create manageable chunks within that framework, portions small enough that they don’t intimidate us.

The Sequence Approach basically states that instead of writing one giant 110 page story, we write eight 12-15 page smaller stories.  Think about it.  Everyone can write a 15 page short, right?  That’s easy.  And if you can write one 15-page short, you can write eight 15-page shorts.

All you have to do is come up with a movie concept that features a protagonist with a goal, then write 8 mini-scripts with that protagonist (or in some cases, supporting characters) pursuing 8 linked mini-goals. The pursuit of these mini-goals will last 12-15 pages each, and be little mini-scripts in themselves, with their own setup, conflict, and resolution. Let me show you how it works in action.

I thought up a movie idea not long ago that I kinda dig. It’s not great, but it will serve our purposes for this article. Here it is:

TITLE: Trust Fund Dan
GENRE: Comedy
PREMISE: A 40 year old trust fund baby who’s been living off his dead parents’ money for the past 20 years, is informed that an overlooked banking error from 1990 has resulted in the termination of his trust fund. For the first time in his life, he’ll have to get a job and learn to live in the real world.

So before you write your script, you want to lay out all eight of your sequences and write out the objective of your protagonist within each. Each of these eight objectives will drive the story forward until the next sequence arrives. In addition to listing the goal of your character in each sequence, list the purpose of the sequence itself (a general breakdown of where you want it to go) along with any other ideas you may have. So this is how the sequence outline for Trust Fund Dan might look like:

Sequence 1
Goal: Dan tries to put together the ultimate party.
Purpose: Establish that Dan is rich and lives off his trust fund.  The purpose of this sequence is to show how easy Dan’s life is and how out of touch he is with the real world. Sleeping in, getting his next stash of pot, and attending parties are really his only three obligations. Establish, as he calls people and puts together this lavish party, that he’s a moron who’s never worked a day in his life and doesn’t even understand the concept of money. At the end of the sequence, he’ll get the call from his lawyer and learn that all of his money has been taken away.

Sequence 2
Goal: Dan tries to get his money back.
Purpose: Now that it’s gone, Dan desperately tries to figure out what happened and how to get his money back. He goes to the Trust Fund lawyers, the banks, everyone associated with his money, to figure out what happened. But because he’s so stupid and knows nothing about the real world, he fails to understand any of what they’re telling him. But the consensus is clear: He’s broke. He asks his friends for money, but finds out that none of them were his real friends. They were just leeching off him. At the end of the sequence, he doesn’t even have enough money to buy food. He realizes he needs to get a job.

Sequence 3
Goal: Dan tries to get a job.
Purpose: Much like the scenes in Step-Brothers, these scenes will show just how clueless Dan is about “jobs” and how the real world works. Have fun with these scenes. He goes through a montage of job interviews and makes a complete fool out of himself. He finally gets stuck as a part-time janitor at a local community college.

Sequence 4
Goal: To figure a way out of this mess.
Purpose: When Dan realizes just how shitty real work is and how little he gets paid, he starts plotting a way back to his life of luxury and invests in every get-rich quick scheme he can find. From spending his entire month’s pay on scratch-off lottery tickets to starting up sketchy internet businesses that rely exclusively on porn advertising. His scary co-janitor, a former gang-member, even enlists him in a vague business venture that involves something about “credit cards.” He fails at everything because he doesn’t know anything. He also occasionally runs into a very pretty teacher there who he instantly falls in love with.

Sequence 5
Goal: To ask the teacher out (or find a way to spend more time with her).
Purpose: Because Dan has no idea how to manage money, he’s unable to pay rent and is kicked out of his apartment. He is now officially homeless and starts secretly living at the college. In his pursuit of the teacher, he starts hanging out in her lectures and, for the first time, starts to actually learn something. Because he’s also the worst janitor ever, he’s always in danger of being fired. But he eventually convinces the teacher to go out with him on a date (which should be a funny scene, since he won’t be able to pay for it).

Sequence 6
Goal: To get back on his feet.
Purpose: Despite the teacher starting to affect how Dan sees the world (she helps him see the value of hard work), Dan finds out that his little co-venture with his fellow ex-con janitor buddy has panned out! They’re bringing in the dough! Dan quits his janitor job and starts spending money like crazy again, taking the teacher on an extravagant date of the likes he used to experience all the time. Dan’s on top of the world again and he couldn’t be happier. But alas, he has no idea that his “business” involves stealing people’s credits cards, and at the end of the sequence, he’s arrested and thrown in jail. Mortified at what he was doing, the teacher leaves him.

Sequence 7
Goal: To figure himself out.
Purpose: After a short stint in jail, Dan’s mysteriously bailed out. It’s his lawyer, who informs him that he was able to pull off a miracle and retain half the money from the original trust fund, enough for Dan to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dan should be excited, but he isn’t. For the first time, he wants to know what he really wants out of life. He finds out more about how his parents earned their money, how hard they worked for it, and again that theme of “the value of hard work” is hit upon.

Sequence 8
Goal: Get the girl back.
Purpose: Dan decides that instead of wasting money on a bunch of stupid boring shit, he’s going to invest it in a degree and pursue a real career. So he enrolls at the college he was a janitor at. He enrolls in all of the teacher’s classes, but she ignores and rebuffs all his advances. In the end, he pulls out of all of her classes and focuses on getting a degree. Finally, he’s learned to appreciate the “value of hard work.” By chance, one day after school, he sees her in the parking lot and her car won’t start (Her car not starting will be set up multiple times throughout the script. This will be the big payoff). He smiles. Walks towards her. Cut to black.

So this is obviously a rough and tumble outline of the story. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s a first run-through. The idea is to get your 8 sequences down so you have a game plan in place. As you get started on the script, you’ll add more detail to each sequence, move things around, and add scenes and characters. I might make Dan’s Trust Fund lawyer a bigger character, for example. I might have him befriend a few of the kids at the college and give those characters some arcs of their own. I might make some of these sequence goals more concrete (Number 7, “To figure himself out,” feels a little vague. I’d like to improve upon that). I’d try to introduce the love interest earlier somehow.   All of that will be added as you either write your script or do successive drafts of your outline.

Now it’s not always going to be this simple. Each script is different. Things get tricky when there isn’t a clear goal for a sequence, which is the case, for example, with a lot of romantic comedies. I don’t recall any sequence goals in When Harry Met Sally. But in that case, you’d still divide your script into 8 smaller scripts. You just need to work harder to figure out what each of those smaller stories will focus on. A story is easiest to tell when the main character is trying to achieve something. But since you don’t always have that, you might instead say, “The opening sequence in When Harry Met Sally is about Harry and Sally getting to know each other.” In other words the “goal” is transferred over to you the writer. You write the 15-page sequence where Harry and Sally ride to New York together with a strong emphasis on getting to know each other. The idea here is that by breaking everything down into these manageable chunks, it’ll be easier to create some element of focus for each “chunk,” and therefore you should be able to get through the entire script more easily.

There ya have it, an easy-peasy way to write a script. Try it out. You may be surprised at how simple it is!

Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Procedural
Premise: (from IMDB) The lives of two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana.
About: This was a huge spec pilot that went out that a lot of networks were bidding for, with HBO finally winning. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and will premier this Sunday. Creator Nic Pizzolatto is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. He’s an author of the novel ‘Galveston.’ Originally from Louisiana, he taught literature at several universities, including the University of Chicago, before going into screenwriting in 2010. His only other credits are writing a couple of episodes for, what sounds like, the exact same show, in Fox’s “The Killing.”
Writer: Nic Pizzolatto
Details: 52 pages

I remember when this show first sold. There was a TON of talk about it, the kind of talk usually reserved for some super high-concept spec sale or a new Christopher Nolan movie. I read through the description of the show several times, trying to figure out what the big deal was, but as far as I could tell, it was just another procedural.

I guess it did have Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson involved, two established film stars, and since you don’t usually see that in a TV show, it was worth noting. But I was still trying to figure out why the trade sites were going batshit over this thing. I felt like I was missing something. Uhhhh, so it’s a procedural about detectives trying to catch a killer? Haven’t we, um, seen that before? Well, with the script in hand, it was time to find out what all the fuss was about!

True Detective begins oddly. Former Detective Martin Hart, 56, is being interviewed about a couple of things, his relationship with his old partner, Rustin Cohle, and an old case he was involved in 20 years ago, where a young woman was killed and posed as an angel.

Most of that discussion, strangely enough, centers on Cohle, who appears to be a weirdo to the tenth degree. There are some people on this planet who don’t believe in God. Cohle is the thousand times multiple of that person. He buys and reads dozens of books to help define his belief, how we’re all a bunch of meaningless nobodies floating inside a meaningless construct of time and space. Your typical upbeat stuff!

Anyway, we’re soon interviewing Cohle as well, getting his thoughts on that old case with the dead woman posed as an angel, but more so Hart and Hart’s thoughts about him. An inordinate amount of time in True Detective is spent on Hart’s thoughts on Cohle, and Cohle’s thoughts on Hart’s thoughts on Cohle. Sounds exciting right? Well it isn’t!

While we do eventually begin talking about the most interesting part of the story, the dead girl posed like an angel, the description of her and what they think happened to her is actually quite brief. Instead, the writer decides to make the centerpiece of True Detective a visit Cohle made to Hart’s house for a family dinner. Cohle doesn’t like being around people, so he gets wasted beforehand. We assume this is probably some insight into a huge drinking problem Cohle has or the beginning of some major event that caused a fracture in their friendship, but it’s neither. He just comes over. He’s drunk. And he talks to Hart’s wife and kids. Wow, way to build up something that goes absolutely nowhere!

In actuality, this entire pilot, where nothing happens, is a setup for one line, the final line, the only line in the script that actually gets you excited. Unfortunately, BECAUSE it’s the last line, it gets you excited for an episode to come, not the episode you just watched, where you feel beyond gypped that you just spent an hour of your life watching/reading. (Spoiler) That line is when Rustin Cohle says to the guys interviewing him: “It’s started again, hasn’t it? The killing. Him. And how can that be possible, when we got the bastard in 2000?”

So how is it that a script/show like this can get so much heat, and land on such a quality network like HBO, when its pilot is so subpar? GREAT QUESTION! I’m trying to figure that out myself. But I’d like to venture a guess. Cohle is an interesting character. I mean, I wasn’t interested by him. His bleak depressing persona actually kinda put me off. But his whole extreme philosophy about how life is meaningless along with the crazy attention to detail he has for investigating murders – I can see an actor wanting to play that role. And in writing, that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create characters so compelling that actors can’t NOT want to play them. That’s exactly what happened, with suddenly hot Matthew McConaughey coming on. He legitimized the project, which gets a known actor wanting to play opposite him (Harrelson), and all of a sudden everyone’s saying this pilot is genius, when in reality, it’s simply a well-known actor wanting to play a challenging role. If I were the head of HBO and someone came to me with a shitty pilot that Matthew McConaghey was attached to, I’d probably buy it too.

And I hate to use that word – shitty – but come on. The majority of True Detective is people talking about each other! That’s never ever interesting. I think the biggest faux pas the script commits is that it masquerades as something deep, when in reality there’s zero depth. The writing is dense, with thorough descriptions of characters and events (such as the way the dead angel body is posed), giving the illusion that we’re dealing with something profound here. But it’s all a magic act. Description is boring. Remembering old times or people when they were younger is boring. If your story is devoid of conflict or drama, then you don’t have a story. And there is ZERO conflict/drama in True Detective.

The only real thing the script has going for it is the unanswered question of “why the fuck are we interviewing these guys?” I admit, that was the only thing I was looking forward to – the answer to that question. But not because the story did a good job making me want to know. Because I was dying to find some kind of point to what I was reading!

If this had showed up in my Inbox for an Amateur Friday slot, I would’ve been positive it was from a beginner. It takes good writers ONE SCENE to set up who their characters are. Not 20 pages! And the whole dead angel girl isn’t even original. It feels like every other setup for a serial killer. So I guess I’m not surprised that Pizzolatto is fairly new to screenwriting. I mean maybe he goes into actually telling stories in future episodes. But this episode was one big boring setup where nothing happens.

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

What I learned: As David Mamet has often said, one of the most boring things you can write is a character talking about another character. There is nothing inherently interesting about it. Since this entire pilot is based around people talking about other people, it’s pretty easy to see why it doesn’t work.

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: Contained Horror Thriller
Premise (from writer): A woman fights to escape an isolated home controlled by an Incubus, a demonic force that feeds on sexual energy. A task made more difficult by her co-hostages, who are content to remain under the creatures spell.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Something interesting about me: Watch the pilot episode of “The Wire” and you will see my elementary school in the background behind the young Barksdale dealers. I went from playing marbles to shooting craps on the same corners where many of the show’s stories were ripped. I’ve loved movies and writing since childhood. They provided a 90 minute respite from an oft times less than ideal environment. I’ve had many people tell me that a career as a writer was a dream beyond my reach. Admittedly, I believed them. But even without the hope of making a dime let alone a living, I kept writing, reading scripts, and consuming all I could to learn about the craft from sites like Scriptshadow. I can’t stop writing. I’ve tried. It is a part of me. A part I want to make better. A goal I work on daily. “In the Flesh” is a sample of that effort. I believe a good one. One that people will one day read and enjoy. If I’m wrong, I’ll write something better tomorrow.
Writer: Ken Alston
Details: 91 pages

note: I read this without knowing the logline (Miss SS picked the loglines for Amateur Week) which I think really helped my enjoyment of it.  

Whoa, the last Amateur Offering Post was a dead heat. 172 comments long and at the end, I still didn’t know which script had come out on top. A little backstory might help explain why I went with In the Flesh. If you received the last newsletter (the new one JUST WENT OUT – if you didn’t get it, check your SPAM now!), you know I touted a big surprise in those offerings. Well, that surprise was that none other than Grendl had written one of the scripts (Tall, Dark and Handsome). I figured it might be interesting to put one of his screenplays in there under an alias. As we all know, the cave-dwelling commenter can be a bit antagonistic, and that makes it hard to read his stuff objectively.  Without anything cluttering our judgment, I anticipated a fair contest.  It seemed to work for awhile until a couple of long-time readers sniffed out the surprise, recognizing his style from previous posts.

The thing was, Tall, Dark and Handsome did well, going neck and neck with In The Flesh, but when it was all said and done, I decided to give the review to the writer who hadn’t had a review on the site before. And I mean, how can you not love Ken after that “Why You Should Read” section? His comments convey hard work, overcoming adversity, a love of screenwriting, humility, and a great attitude. A little more heartwarming than, “Because I wrote it.” That’s not to say I’ll never review Grendl’s script. I probably will at some point. Just not this week.

Weak heroines not apply in “In The Flesh.” Alison, 28, is the kind of girl who goes after what she wants. And tonight, after a couple of drinks, she wants Cole, the one guy in the bar sexy enough to make her forget about morals.

The two spend a wild night in the throes of drunken passion, and upon waking up, Alison isn’t ashamed. This isn’t the kind of guy you wince at come morning wondering how you’re going to spin it to your friends (“Well, he was wearing nice… shoes?”).   Cole’s the real deal.

The thing is, the real deal isn’t around (they never seem to be once the morning comes).  But he was forward-thinking enough to leave her some brand new undergarments. Which begs a few questions Alison doesn’t want to ask. Weird clue #2 is when she goes downstairs and tries to leave, there’s no doorknob on the front door.

It’s here where she runs into Breeze, an airhead-ish hippy who’s as sweet as a bowl of cookie batter. Alison assumes Breeze will have answers, but she seems just as clueless as Alison is. In fact, Breeze assumed that Alison lives here. Hmmm, now things are getting really strange.

Alison quickly realizes that if they don’t get out fast, they’re going to be decorating the wormy underground of the backyard. So she tries to break out the window. Unfortunately, she’s met with electrified bars! Eventually, Alison meets a third tenant, Doyle, a proper British gentleman who seems to have been here for awhile. Doyle informs Alison that she should stop trying to get out because… no one gets out.

That night, Alison’s introduced to another piece of the puzzle in the form of a beast-like growl coming from the basement. Are they all food? A constant influx of main courses accompanied here for late-night consumption? We certainly think so. But the great thing about In The Flesh is that it never quite goes where you think it will. Things keep changing, and with every change, we become more unsure of our heroines’ fate.

One of the marks of a good script is if you don’t typically like the genre that you’re reading, yet you’re still into it. Actually, the setup for In The Flesh was right up my alley. A woman waking up in a strange house with a bunch of locked doors, each with their own mysterious tenant? I was in.

But then later (spoilers) we learn that there’s a monster in the basement. And usually that’s where I go “Ehhhhh, no thanks.” But the characters were all so well-drawn and expectation-defying, and the script kept tripping me up as far as where it was going, that I wanted to find out what would happen.

So when we do find out what’s in the basement (a person) and see how it acts towards our protagonists (tries to bite them), we assume it’s a vampire. But again, the great thing about In The Flesh is that it’s constantly going against convention. It’s not a vampire at all, but a Succubus (or Incubus?). Now I’ve never seen a Succubus used as a monster in a script before, so I thought that was a nice twist.

The monster fit the tone and theme of the script well. This was about flesh, about sex, about want. A Succubus (or at least this succubus) survives by sucking all the life out of you through sex. We see this nicely handled not only with Alison and Breeze, but with the mysterious frail girl living in one of the rooms who’s only a shell of her former self (she’s been sucked dry) as well as the overtly subordinate Doyle.

Which makes Alison stand out all the more, because she’s the only one here who wants to get out and will do anything to do so. In other words, she’s ACTIVE, which is exactly what we want our main character to be. I mean this is easily one of the strongest female leads I’ve read in awhile.

Also, this horror script succeeded where so many others fail in the emotional component. We need a relationship to latch onto, something to play with, something that changes over time. That’s what gets us through the second act. Here it’s Alison’s relationship with Breeze. At first she’s disgusted by Breeze, calling her a moron, a retard. She even offers her up to the Succubus in a deal for a better room! But after awhile, she becomes attached to Breeze, and she wants to save her just as much as she wants to save herself.

I did have a few problems with the script. It was a little too bloody for me. I prefer the “cutaway” approach, cutting away before the blood starts gushing. And to Ken’s credit, he does that sometimes (the scene where the Succubus attacks Breeze in her room for example). But at the end, there’s so much blood, it almost becomes comical, and I think it undermines how clever the script has been up to that point.

I also thought some of the rules in this universe were unclear. I never fully understood why the Succubus slept during the day. I thought it lived by similar rules to the vampire in that it had to avoid sunlight. But this seemed to be true sometimes and not true others? I don’t now. It was confusing. A minor problem to clear up though.

Oh, and let me say this. This may be the first sex scene I’ve ever read in a script that I’d consider “hot.” Usually sex scenes are boringly or awkwardly written, but when Breeze makes a move on Alison, I am not going to lie, I forgot I was reading a screenplay. Yeah yeah, I know everyone will be saying, “Girl on girl. What guy isn’t going to like that??” I’m telling you, I don’t care what the sex scene is – I’m always aware I’m reading it.  This was the first time in forever that I got lost in one.  Kudos to Ken for pulling that off.

So the verdict is, this was a darn good script. It’s great to find and celebrate another talent here on Scriptshadow. ☺

Script link: In The Flesh (note: this is a newer draft of the script that Ken wrote after the comments he got on Scriptshadow.  So it’s probably even better than the draft I read)

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

What I learned: Try to store something in the freezer for your readers. One of the issues I see with amateur writers is they lay everything out right away. If a character shows up, they explain him. If something weird occurs, we’ll get three minutes of dialogue telling us why. Good writers give you a glimpse of something, then store it in the freezer for later consumption. I love how Ken introduced the Frail Girl, but before we could figure out anything about her, she was tucked back in her room, not to be seen for another 20 pages. We want to know what’s up with that girl, but we only get to find out when the writer takes her out of the freezer.