The Big Idea script

I’ve written a couple of articles covering this kind of thing in the past, but observing the script market over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed and learned a few more things. One of those things is that most writers don’t break in with a big splashy spec sale. The more common route is to write a script that gets noticed around town, sign with a manager or agent off that script, meet with all the new contacts you’ve gained, and sooner or later start landing assignment work, which will afford you an opportunity to move up the professional ladder and hopefully make that big spec sale yet. For that reason, I’m no longer solely concerned with which kinds of scripts sell, but rather which kinds of scripts get you noticed. That’ll be the focus of today’s article. Here are the six script types that will, at the very least, get you noticed, and if you’re lucky, sell.

The Big Idea – What producer out there doesn’t love money? They love it! Money not only affords a producer a nice house, a nice car, nice schools for their kids – it affords them OPTIONS. When you have money, you can be picky. You can take more chances. And those chances allow you to grow as a company, to become a bigger player, a more dominant force in the industry. Which is really all any producer wants. And the script that affords them the best chance at this is The Big Idea. High-Concept movie fare. Stuff that can be turned into a franchise. This includes, but isn’t limited to, big robots, big monsters, vampires, spies, time-travel, big comedy ideas, wizards, zombies, super-heroes and much much more. Anything that you can imagine audiences coming out in droves to see. Now you still want to be clever with your idea. You want to look for ways to write these ideas that haven’t been done before. But if you do, these scripts almost always give you the best shot at getting noticed.

The Spectacular Script – The Spectacular Script is just that, a spectacular script. Nothing short of amazing will suffice. The story should be expertly plotted. The characters should be original, deep and dynamic. The relationships should move us. We shouldn’t be able to predict any of the twists or turns, yet when they arrive, they should make perfect sense. The ending should rock us to our soul. This is the rarest script to break through with because there just aren’t many people out there who can pull off a spectacular script and those who can are usually already professionals. I consider Where Angels Die a spectacular script. I consider American Beauty a spectacular script. If you’re using a character piece or a straight-forward drama to get noticed, you have no choice but to write a spectacular script as these genres aren’t marketable enough to weather anything but perfection.

The “Out of Left Field” Script – This is that goofy wacky idea that’s so bizarre, readers HAVE to read it. Charlie Kaufman popularized these scripts back in the 90s, and they’ve since become a staple on the Black List. We have The Beaver (a man who walks around with a Beaver puppet on his hand), The Happytime Murders (puppet noir). The Voices (A serial killer whose talking pets inspire him to keep killing). The idea is to write something so odd, so weird, so unexpected, that it inspires this reaction from the reader: “You’ll never believe what I read today.” Often, the trick with these scripts is to take something people normally consider light and fun, and turn it into something dark, dirty or violent. Cute kitty? Have him tell your main character to kill his girlfriend. Puppets? Have them investigating a murder. These scripts are less about selling and more about getting read. There hasn’t been a huge “Out of Left Field” script for a couple of years now so the market is definitely ripe for one.

The “Flipping A Genre On Its Head” Script – Flipping a genre on its head (or “updating” a genre) has been one of the most tried and true ways to write a saleable script out there. The idea is to take a genre (or idea), and add something new, fresh, or unexpected to it. The pirate genre was dead for 20 years. Then Pirates of The Caribbean came around and added ghost pirates to the mix. The genre was instantly invigorated. Snow White was this fragile pale little fairy tale creature. Snow White and the Huntsman turned her and the world around her hard and edgy. We saw big directors add contemporary spins to Star Trek and The Great Gatsby. Maybe one of the reasons The Lone Ranger failed was that they failed to flip it or update it. It was just the same old story. There’s a lot of classic material out there just waiting for a makeover. It takes writers with vision to spot this material and know what to do with it.

The “A List Actor” Script – Outside of huge franchise properties, the biggest thing that makes a movie go is the star. And the good news is that stars like good material. Sure, they love money too. Every big actor wants to be paid their 20 million dollar quote. But when they’re not doing those huge films, they’re just looking for good material that has a part in there they’d love to play. This is where you enter the equation. Simply put yourself in an actor’s shoes and ask, what role would I love to play more than anything? Chances are, it’d be something complex, right? Something that challenges you and allows you to flex your acting chops? OCD, multiple personality disorder, multiple parts, addiction, historic complex figures, mentally challenged, physically challenged, mentally disturbed, someone with a potentially damning secret (i.e. they may be homosexual). But that’s not all. Actors also like to play heroic kick-ass roles if there’s a unique angle to them (Book of Eli – he’s blind, The Bourne Identity – he has amnesia). Write a good script for an A-List actor and you’re in good shape.

The Viral Script – These are scripts that do not have a shot at selling. They are written to be read only, and therefore the goal is to go viral. Now why would you ever write a script that wasn’t meant to be purchased? Because for your long-term prospects in the industry, you want as many people reading your stuff as possible. The Viral Script spreads through word-of-mouth, which is the best way to find new fans. Popular Viral Scripts include Blockhead, about the Peanuts gang grown up in New York doing drugs and having sex. Balls-Out, a script focused on making fun of screenwriting conventions. And A Many Splintered Thing, a noted Nicholl script, which was written in the first person. These scripts are always a gamble, because you run the risk of people going, “Why the fuck are you giving me a script that has no chance of selling?” But the entire screenwriting profession is a risk, and the cool thing about these scripts is you can take chances with them you’d normally never be able to take. Seriously – break every rule in the book. You’re writing without the pressure of having to sell anything. One other piece of advice with these scripts: Push the envelope. You want to be really crazy, out there, and constantly challenging the boundaries of screenwriting. Nobody sends a “viral” anything around that’s safe.

Now are these the only scripts that get noticed? Of course not. High-Concept found footage films still get a lot of reads (i.e. Chronicle and recent spec sale, Glimmer). A good horror script will always get reads because horror’s cheap to produce and offers a big up-side. And of course, anyone with a script that displays an original voice will get read. But the six I’ve listed above – those are the biggies. I will remind you of two more very important factors in getting noticed though. First, you need to give us something we haven’t seen before. No matter which one of these options you pick, do not copy what you’ve seen before. You have to give it your own unique spin. Second, you have to execute. A Big Idea script is useless to me if it’s sloppily constructed and has boring characters. And finally, the more of these things you can pack into one script, the better. If you give me a big idea that flips a genre on its head with a great part for an A-List actor (Pirates Of The Caribbean), you’ll have all of Hollywood knocking at your door.

NEXT THURSDAY – The Six Types Of Scripts Least Likely To Get You Noticed

Genre: TV Pilot – Medical Drama
Premise: A brand new young crop of doctors begin their career at a cash-strapped county hospital.
About: Jason Katims is best known for producing the beloved TV show, Friday Night Lights. He also updated the old Ron Howard film, Parenthood, turning it into a TV show, which I’ve heard makes everybody who watches it cry. County was a show he was putting together for NBC with Jason Ritter to star last year. A pilot was shot, but it never aired. Let’s figure out why.
Writer: Jason Katims
Details: 71 pages – Network Draft 1/5/12

What in the world is going on?

Why am I reviewing a TV pilot??

I’ll tell you why. Because Pilot Week is coming up at the end of the month and I gotta get in some TV reviewing practice! I don’t know jack shit about these TV scripts, or telescripts or teletubbies or whatever the hell they’re called. When I wanna watch TV, I pal up with Johnny Depp and watch myself some scratch n sniff Honey Boo Boo!

Okay okay. I do watch SOME scripted TV. I almost watched every season of Breaking Bad (the 4th season was starting to get repetitive so I haven’t returned in awhile). But ever since Lost went bye-bye, I’ve been desperately searching for something to drool over. I actually have one (and only one) idea for a TV show (it’s an hour-long sci-fi drama, of course), but since I’m so unfamiliar with all these strange TV terms (cold open???), I need me some study time before I can even begin to write anything related to TV.

Which brings us to today. Jason Katims is a big deal in the TV world. He wrote this show called Friday Night Lights, which pretty much every single girl I’ve ever run into is in love with. So I figure it must be good. And with medical dramas being the bread and butter of the TV business, who better to give it a shot than the guy writing about football in Texas, right?

29 year old Jack Malloy is on his first day of work as an intern at County Hospital. Jack is a good guy, the kind of guy who wants to make a difference. Given the opportunity to help someone but lose his job or not help someone and keep his job, it’s pretty clear what Jack’s going to do.  This man’s a helper!

Joining Jack is Erica (“too pretty for this place”). She’s a little fragile. A little afraid to speak her mind. But she’s freaking adorable. Which is why Jack falls for her immediately. Uh-oh. Too bad, Jack. Erica’s got a fiancé who lives out of town!

Next we have Talaikha (95 pounds and maddeningly unemotional). Why do I feel like I’ve seen this character before? Travis – African American who worked his way up from nothing (not that he’d ever tell you that). Billy is the oldest intern of the bunch at 40, but he’s plump and ready to share a joke no matter how inappropriate the situation. And finally, Rosa, a Hispanic “ball of fire” (what else!).

Each character experiences their own shocking first day, with some having a tougher time than others. The most interesting storyline, of course, is Jack’s. He’s got a dying Vietnamese mother who’s a Jehova’s Witness and therefore refuses to accept a blood transfusion (she only accepts the blood of Jesus Christ and they’ve run out of that at the moment). Making matters worse is that the mother has a teenage daughter without a father. In other words, this is the only person she has in the world. Therefore, Jack must come up with a solution to save a woman who refuses to be saved.

Across the hallways, Rosa must tell someone her age that she has inoperable cancer. Erica gets beat up by a family for possibly swaying a patient to sign a “do not interrupt” dying request. Travis spots his sister in the E.R. after, once again, O.D.’ing, an issue exacerbated by the fact that she’s got a daughter. Oh, and of course that goofy Billy’s stuck with a leg amputation patient who insists on keeping his leg!

The pilot mainly focuses on the unique problems a typical doctor goes through working at a county hospital. For example, when a patient is having major headaches, an intern suggests an MRI. They’re promptly told that they might as well be ordering brain surgery. When people get sick here, the stuff you learned at medical school is useless. This is the real world where neither the patients nor the hospital have any money. This forces doctors like Jack to make awful choices, like sending deathly sick homeless patients back out on the street in order to clear up rooms for all the new bodies arriving. Don’t agree with it? Sorry, that’s County.

But don’t you think that’s going to get Jack down. After abandoning all his other patients and even jetting across town to another hospital to see if they can perform a rare bloodless transfer procedure on his Jehova’s Witness, he finally finds a solution to the problem and saves her life. Looks like that daughter is going to have a mother after all.

Okay, really though? The sassy spitfire Latina doctor? The pudgy funny doctor? The white lead who’s constantly trying to do the right thing, rules be damned? Isn’t this like every other one of these shows ever created?

Here’s the thing, though. Whenever these shows show up (like Gray’s Anatomy), aren’t they ALL just like every other medical drama ever created? What’s different about them? To me, not much, and yet Gray’s Anatomy became this big hit. So on the one hand I’m saying, “I’ve seen this before,” but on the other I’m saying, “As did I with other medical dramas that became hits.”

But to me, the stereotypes were just too big here. I mean come on. The 95 pound Indian girl with zero emotion, who tells her patients they’re going to die without a hint of compassion. Isn’t that THE EXACT SAME CHARACTER as the Korean doctor on Gray’s Anatomy!?? What’s scary is that I know that and I don’t even watch that show! People who love these shows, I’m guessing, would find this even more cliché.

Then again, maybe this is something I don’t understand about television. Maybe television writers consider these characters “archetypes” and you start a pilot with them because their issues are easy to identify with and latch on to. Then, because you have a hundred hours to play with via all those episodes, that’s where you get into the depth, into the origins, into the meat of who these people really are. I ask you, TV writers, is that the case? Because I know in the feature world, I would call these blatant stereotypes and would tell you to avoid them like the plague. Why not make the fat guy the one with no emotions? Why does fat always have to equal “the funny guy?”

Despite HUGE problems with the endless character clichés, I have to give it to Katims. He almost made me tear up a couple of times. A favorite plotline of mine was the Rosa “delivering cancer news” stuff. It’s been done before, but Katims did a good job giving us some backstory on the girl (her boyfriend stuck with her through the first cancer treatments, but he’s pulling away at the thought of a second round) and created this great bond between the girls as they decided to stick it to this asshole when the negative tests came back. But instead they come back positive. And they’re REALLY BAD. As in she’ll die soon. And all of a sudden, Rosa realizes that these two won’t be friends, that there’s nothing she can do for this girl, and that she’s basically leaving too, just like the boyfriend. I silently cursed myself for falling for this but darnit if it didn’t work.

And Katims seems to have a talent for that. You can’t help but eventually hop onto the idealistic Jack’s back and believe in his quest to save every damn person in this hospital. And I loved how he did that with very little dialogue. Jack is almost all action, and yet you feel closer to him than anyone else. To that end, Katims did a really good job. I cared about enough of these people in the end to want to know more about them. But County never quite overcomes the obnoxious feeling of familiarity behind it. Placing things at a cash-strapped hospital made for some fresh challenges, but that doesn’t mean you can just transplant the character sheet over from another show. And for that reason, there’s no way I can give County a clean bill of health.

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

What I learned: Ultimately, TV is about the characters, not the idea. It’s your characters who are going to take you through 100 episodes, so they have to be fascinating. In my opinion, that’s harder to do if they’re stereotypical. Give us people we’ve never seen before – especially if it’s a familiar setting like a hosptial – and you’ll rope us in immediately. There wasn’t a single character in County that I haven’t seen in a medical show before, and I believe that was its downfall.

Is it possible for a script about the high school experience to feel original anymore? The Spectacular Now says, hell yeah.

Note, this review was first posted awhile back, but I re-read the script and added some new thoughts to the review in anticipation of its release.

Genre: Dark High School Dramedy
Premise: A popular alcoholic high school student starts dating a nerdy girl, possibly out of pity.
About: The names of today’s writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber, may sound familiar.  That’s because they broke onto the scene with the structure-defying spec, 500 Days Of Summer.   One of their first jobs after the success of that film was adapting The Spectacular Now, a book by Tim Tharp.  The film recently debuted at Sundance and won awards for both of its leads, one of whom is Shailene Woodley (Clooney’s daughter in The Descendents), who’s gotten a lot of press lately for being completely cut out of the new Spider Man movie.  The Spectacular Now will debut in limited cities this August.
Writers: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (based on the novel by Tim Tharp)
Details: 119 pages – July 23, 2009 – first draft

It’s been awhile since I was in high school. I was there before Twitter and Vine. I was there before you knew you were in a relationship (We didn’t have “Facebook status” to confirm that stuff. We had, “Uhh, are we going out n stuff?” “Uhhh, I guess so.” Bam. Sorta-relationship). And the more I think about it, should high school kids even get relationship titles? I mean come on. High school relationships have the same lifespan as a fruit fly. Who cares who’s going out with who? It’ll be over tomorrow.

Oh yeah, NOW I’m remembering. Back then, every single moment was the most important moment EV-ER. If you accidentally walked into Homeroom with a smidge of jam on your face from breakfast that morning, your life was destroyed for the next two weeks. You’d meticulously break down who in the school saw the .1 millimeter of jam. Did Julie see it? Did Claire? Did Kenny? He would surely tell everyone about the glob of raspberry jam pouring down your cranium like blood from a bullet wound.  That image would be stuck in your head.  The giggles that were going on behind your back you didn’t see.  Ahhhh!!!

You have to remember this when reading a high school script. You have to transport yourself back to that frame-of-mind, even though in hindsight, all those things you obsessed over were so ridiculous (although I do wonder sometimes if the reason Becka Madel never went out with me was because she saw the jam on my face that day). Now the bar for high school movies this decade is low. I mean what do we got? Perks of Being A Wallflower? (How exactly was it a perk seeing that again?) So “Spectacular” doesn’t really have a lot of competition. I hope it takes advantage.

Sutter Keely is a complicated individual. He’s somehow managed to become “the popular guy” without carrying the dubious title of being “the popular guy.” Watching him walk into a room is like following Obama into the White House. Everybody knows him. Everyone wants to be around him. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Sutter is dating the hottest girl in school, Cassidy.

But Sutter has some other sides to him as well. First off, he’s a drunk. He keeps a flask and a buzz with him wherever he goes for the explicit purpose of being able to see the world through rose colored glasses. Sutter doesn’t keep any “real” friends either. He’s the guy who knows everyone but nobody knows him. And Sutter doesn’t plan ahead. His life’s goal is to cruise around and bring smiles to people’s faces. Sutter lives his life in the “spectacular now.”

But Sutter’s 18 years old and on the verge of the biggest decision of his life: What does he do next? Does he go to college? Does he get a job? These are things Sutter wishes he never had to deal with. Yet here they are, closing in on him like a coffin, forcing him to do what he hates to do most: commit.

This is probably why Cassidy dumps him. She’s sick of the fact that their relationship holds no meaning to him, and as if to prove her right, Sutter barely blinks afterwards. The way he operates is to never get too close. That way he never feels anything when they leave. Little does he know that that’s the very reason they do leave.

The post-breakup phase doesn’t last long. Sutter randomly runs into a girl from his school, oddball Aimee Finicky. Aimee’s the nerdy girl who sits in the corner of the room, hoping nobody notices her. There’s some cuteness there but Aimee’s complete lack of personal style destroys any chance of it coming through. Out of a combination of pity and curiosity, Sutter starts hanging out with her.

This seriously unbalanced relationship goes the way most of these relationships do. Aimee falls madly in love with Sutter, while Sutter goes along with it only because he’s got nothing better to do. At a certain point, he realizes he either has to stay in or get out, and he decides to stay in. Aimee’s love eventually seeps through the walls he’s put up, helping him get to the root of his issue, which is that his father left him at a young age.

Aimee encourages him to go see his father, and while initially reluctant, he realizes that if he’s ever going to grow up, this is what needs to happen.

The biggest trap you can fall into with these teenage high school scripts is cliché. Since most real-life high school kids mimic pop-culture, they actually live a life of clichés, making cliche movie versions of themselves “technically” authentic (everybody’s using the same catch phrase, kids identify themselves via film stereotypes). Regardless, you want to avoid any kind of cliche you can when writing these scripts.  Cliche equals flat and flat equals boring.

What you have to do then, is move away from the high school and see what defines these characters as people, as individuals. You need to find out what parts of their lives make them unique, what specific challenges are theirs and theirs only. Once characters start to feel like individuals (real people!), it doesn’t matter where you place them, high school, a Fortune 500 Company, or a job at the local 7-11,  the story will be interesting because we’re interested in THEM.

Take Cassidy for example, Sutter’s ex-girlfriend. The easy way to write this character would be to make her the “hot popular bitch.” And to a degree, she is. But when she and Sutter break up, she doesn’t fuck the first dude she sees to piss him off. She’s still concerned about him, about his drinking, about his choices. She still has feelings for him, but has met someone else as well, and isn’t really sure what to do. Or take her new boyfriend, the popular jock, Malcom. When Malcom finds out that Cassidy’s still talking to Sutter, we think he’s going to kick his ass. And at first, that’s the plan. But he ends up breaking down to Sutter and admitting that he wishes he could be more like him, more relaxed, more fun. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t do so, he’s going to lose Cassidy. In other words, the characters aren’t acting like stereotypes.  They’re breaking those stereotypes and acting like people.

The Spectacular Now also does a great job with dialogue. Whenever Sutter and Aimee were having conversations, I believed what they were saying. And that might not seem like much but most of the time when I’m reading words on a page, that’s exactly what I’m feeling: words on a page. It takes a lot to break that spell.

So I spent a few minutes trying to figure out why these particular words (which weren’t mind-blowing by any means), felt so real. This is what I realized: The more real you make your characters (their goals, their flaws, their backstories, etc.) the less convincing the dialogue has to be. The most important thing about dialogue is that we believe it. So if the audience accepts the characters, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying. They could be bumbling morons. But since you already believe in their existence, the words themselves are an extension of that existence. I’m not saying dialogue doesn’t matter, of course. I’m saying develop your characters and your dialogue will emerge naturally.

And the last thing that really surprised me was how well the father stuff worked. The “father who deserted his family” thing can be quite the cliché in movies. But I liked how Neudstater and Weber gently weaved that storyline in here. Usually these things hit us with the subtlety of a church bell, but Sutter’s father isn’t even mentioned until the second half of the script. It had a real-life feel to it. Nobody blurts out their family problems to you on the first day. It takes time to open up. And I like how these guys mirrored that approach here.

Don’t have a lot of bad stuff to say here. I guess Sutter is such a complex character that I never understood exactly what his problem was. He drank too much? He lived in the present too much? He was too nice to people? He never allowed himself to get close to people? These flaws overlapped each other at times and made him a little confusing. Luckily, we like the guy enough to overlook it.

I thought the plot could’ve been a little stronger (it’s really threadbare), his relationship with Cassidy wasn’t all that clear to me, and the final father meeting was maybe a little too on-the-nose. But hey, it’s a first draft. You can’t ask for the moon. This was really well done. If you like your screenplays character-driven, check this out.

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

What I learned: Whenever your main character is gearing up for a big moment (a speech, a confrontation, a race, whatever), throw something unexpected at them. If it’s a speech in front of a hundred people, have them get there to find out it’s now in front of 10,000 people. If they’re confronting their girlfriend about cheating, have them bang down the door only to find her parents with her. If it’s a bike race, have them get there only to find out their bike is broken and they’ll have to ride a shitty second rate bike. – You want to make things difficult for your characters. It’s always more interesting. (spoiler) After Sutter sets up the big meeting with his dad, he gets there to find out his dad’s forgotten about it. Now the dad wants to meet a friend and drag Sutter along. You see how much more interesting the dynamic becomes as opposed to if they’d sat down and had a predictable boring heart-to-heart? Think about real life. Everything that goes according to plan is uninteresting. It’s only a story when the unexpected happens. You need to think that way in your screenplays.

Today’s script will hopefully answer the age-old question, how is he the “lone” ranger if he has a partner?

Genre: Action-Adventure/Western
Premise: When a corrupt sheriff takes over a hidden silver mine, a lone Texas Ranger and a local Indian named Tonto must team up to stop him.
About: Okay, this is not the draft that you’ll see in theaters. This is actually the draft that was written in 2009, when The Lone Ranger was set to be a really big movie. But then Disney got scared and canceled the movie, only allowing it back once the script was rewritten to drastically reduce the budget. So that’s what the writers did. And maybe this is why those trailers look so generic. They likely had to get rid of a couple of really big set pieces to get the price down. As a result, The Lone Ranger comes into 2013 as one of the summer’s more questionable entries. It just doesn’t feel like one of those “must see” films. Of course, as one astute Scriptshadow commenter mentioned, you can never count out “The Depp Factor.” We’ll see if Johnny Miracle can save this film from being one of summer’s big underachievers when it’s released tomorrow.
Writers: Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio (based on the radio series created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker)
Details: March 29, 2009 draft – 125 pages

I’ve always looked up to Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio. They were a huge inspiration when it came to writing about screenwriting. Their Wordplayer Blog, at one point, was the only real place to find quality articles on screenwriting. They’re also incredibly wealthy and successful screenwriters who came to Hollywood with a 5 year plan, made their first sale way ahead of schedule, and have been kicking ass ever since (well, except for Treasure Planet, of course).

With that said, I’ve always been a little disappointed in them. They spend so much time working on these Disney movies that I’m not sure I know what a Ted Elliot and Teddy Rossio screenplay looks like. These guys have been such cogs in the Disney machine that they’ve never written anything for themselves. After reading John Favreau’s, “Chef” (which I reviewed in my newsletter), which was basically about Favreau realizing he needed to write for himself again, it seems insane that we’ve never seen a film from these guys that they created on their own.

Easy for me to say, right? It ain’t hard to call out safe screenwriting when you’re not the one making 5 million a film. I guess I have to remember that everyone successful in Hollywood is operating out of fear, fear that one day they’ll stop being asked to write or direct or act for millions of dollars. When those jobs dry up, THAT’S when you take your chances. Because that’s when you NEED to take chances. But until then?  Why wouldn’t you take the money?   Which leads us to The Lone Ranger, a script (or a draft of the script) that is every bit the prototype for safe screenwriting.

Texas Ranger John Reid has just stumbled onto one hell of a crime scene. An entire train full of people has been killed. So he takes a team of fellow rangers and heads to a nearby town, the only town that our murderer (or murderers) could’ve run off to. Once there, he finds a semi ghost town, with a few suspicious characters manning the local shops.

This leads him to the town’s half-crazy Sheriff, Latham Cole, a man so bizarre he’s placed a full-on locomotive in the middle of town (he figures by doing so, the tracks will have to come to him). We can’t tell if Latham Cole is good or bad but it doesn’t really matter because after their meeting, the murderer of all those train passengers, Butch Cavendish, pops out and kills all the Rangers except for Reid, leaving him to die.

But he doesn’t die! That’s because his mysterious soon-to-be-partner, Tonto, shows up and nurses him back to health. Tonto mostly spits out vague “wisdom,” which annoys Reid, but he can’t really get mad at the guy who saved his life. And actually, Tonto wants to help him get back at this Cavendish guy, but on one condition: Reid help him kill Latham Cole (who Tonto’s convinced is currently being possessed by an evil spirit). Reid agrees, in part because Cavendish has kidnapped his sister-in-law and nephew.

Soon After, Cavendish and Latham join forces and head to an old silver mine that Latham had been prepping, and begin readying it for operation again. Which means, of course, that Reid (now The Lone Ranger) and Tonto, must stop it! The End.

Man, what a disappointing script this was. Here’s the biggest lesson I’d take away from it. Don’t update something that can’t be updated – something that’s old news. I mean let’s be real. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are boring. They were created for a different time. Heck, they were born on radio! Neither of these two characters are relevant today and you feel it in every single page.

There’s a reason you didn’t see any classic Johnny Depp zingers in The Lone Ranger trailer. There are none. Tonto is a stereotypical Native American Indian that offers sage wisdom. That’s all he does. The whole movie. That’s the extent of his character is the sage-wisdom-offering guy. Naturally, with neither of the two lead characters being interesting, this movie was dead from the get-go.

But then you have the plot. And here’s my issue with Rossio and Elliot. These guys LOVE changing goals during their scripts. They’re never going to give you a clean narrative like Raiders Of The Lost Ark (i.e. “Get the Ark”). It’s going to start off as a murder mystery, then someone wants revenge, then someone’s sister-in-law is kidnapped, so they’re after her, and then there’s a spirit in one of the bad guys, so they’re after him, and then they get the sister-in-law back, and then there’s this mine they have to stop. And that’s the problem. When you keep changing the goals in your story, at some point, the audience stops remembering why the characters are doing what they’re doing. This was one of the big complaints leveled against Rossio and Elliott with the Pirates movies, the difference being that the characters in that film were actually interesting.

In addition to this, I couldn’t figure out why we needed two villains here (Cavendish and Latham). It was never clear which one was the “real” bad guy, leaving me constantly confused. And I never understood what their relationship was with one another. At one point, for example, Latham is going to have Cavendish executed. But a tribe of Indians interrupt the execution, forcing the two to work together to fight them off. After that, they start working together for good. Cavendish seemed to forget the fact that, oh yeah, earlier, two hours earlier you wanted to kill me! And I’m not saying the explanation wasn’t in there somewhere. But when you’re throwing so many plot changes at us, it becomes hard to keep up. This script would’ve been so much easier to follow with just one bad guy and a manageable amount of goal-changes.

I’m also unclear why this draft resulted in such a high budget. It looks to have even less action sequences than the movie I’m seeing in the trailer. There was a scene where Reid had to fight off a hundred coyotes, as well as a few sorta-big gunfights. But for the most part, there was a lot of talking here and not a lot of action.

Truth is, I’m afraid Rossio and Elliot took on an idea that was impossible to breathe life into. These characters feel ancient. Their interactions are dull. Tonto is stereotypical and boring (I can’t believe Johnny Depp was interested in this role when he has scripts like Desperate Hours at his production company). Reid is just…there. I don’t even know why he wears a mask. It’s not like it matters if anyone knows he’s John Reid or not. Even if the current draft is way different, I have a feeling this movie just won’t work. There’s something about this world that feels stale. A great film for 1956. Not for 2013.

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

What I learned: Remember, motivation is what makes audiences CARE about whether the protagonists achieve their goal or not. A weak motivation could destroy an otherwise good script. So you HAVE to get it right. The character motivation here was weak. The Lone Ranger was trying to save his sister-in-law? A woman he didn’t even like?? We’re supposed to care about that??? Contrast that with the motivation in an almost identical film, Django Unchained. Django’s WIFE, who was taken from him, is being held by a slave owner. Now THAT’S motivation! It’s personal. It’s heartbreaking. It’s intense. An audience will care if Django gets his wife back. I don’t see a single person going to The Lone Ranger and caring whether Reid gets his sister-in-law back.

So last week I took some kryptonite-laced shots at the man of steel for being a “reluctant” protagonist, an issue I contend can destroy a screenplay. What’s a reluctant protagonist? It’s a hero who doesn’t want to take on the problem. I contend that we don’t like our heroes wimpy. We don’t like them sitting back and doing nothing. It’s the exact opposite of what the word “hero” means. However, there’s no such thing as a screenwriting rule that works across the board. There are times where the reluctant protagonist works, The Godfather being one of those examples. This gave me an idea to kill two birds with one stone. I’m not the foremost authority on The Godfather, and therefore wanted a reason to read it. And I knew that Michael Corleone, the main character, is a reluctant protagonist, which would allow me to see why the character works here when in so many other scripts, it doesn’t. I’ve also always been drawn to how slow stories work. Only the best writers know how to keep you turning the pages during a slow burn. So those are the main things I went into this script looking for. Let’s see if I found my answers, or any good tips for that matter. (you can have 500 MORE TIPS just like these by buying my e-book here)

1) Counter your hero’s reluctance with positive qualities – I think the biggest issue with reluctant heroes is when you couple them with a downbeat or depressed disposition. The combination of those two things always makes characters droll and boring. Look no further than Superman in Man of Steel for that. Instead, look for traits that CONTRAST that negative quality. One of the best traits you can use to offset this is charisma. Michael Corleone has it. William Wallace (a reluctant hero from Braveheart) had it. A double dose of negativity can quickly make your hero moody, depressed, and a downer. Steer clear of that with a positive trait (if not charisma then something else!).

2) If you have a reluctant protagonist, the earlier you can break out of being reluctant, the better – In actuality, most screenplays have reluctant protagonists at the start of the story. This is the period where they’d rather stay in the safety of their everyday lives than take on the pressures of this new adventure that’s presented itself. So we almost always see reluctant protagonists become willing and active participants at the beginning of the second act. For stories where this doesn’t happen, note that the longer you keep your hero reluctant, the more frustrated with him we’re going to get. Because we came to your movie to see your hero DO SHIT, not RESIST DOING SHIT. Michael Corleone starts being active pretty early, when he must protect his father after the assassination attempt.

3) There’s a difference between an reluctant active protagonist and an reluctant inactive protagonist – I think the problem I had with Man of Steel was that Clark was not only reluctant to do anything, he DIDN’T do anything. A reluctant character works much better if, even though he doesn’t want to get involved, HE DOES. Michael Corleone doesn’t want to be doing the things he’s doing, but he does them anyway. Another famous reluctant character, Mad Max, didn’t want to be there helping any of those people, but he did because it furthered his own agenda. Ditto with William Wallace. He didn’t want war, but he realized it needed to happen to free his country. So write a reluctant protagonist, just make sure he’s out there still being active.

4) If you have a character you need us to like who does bad things, introduce them doing good things – Vito Corleone (The Godfather) does a lot of bad shit. He’s hurt a lot of people.  He’s killed a lot of people. But the power of writing is that you can make the audience like ANYONE. Don’t believe me? Have you seen Silence Of The Lambs? Yes, writers have made cannibalistic serial killers likable.  One of the simplest ways to do this is to introduce your “bad” character doing something good. Vito Corleone is introduced helping a man whose daughter was beaten and nearly raped by two men who got away with it. He orders those men to be taken care of. How can you dislike a guy who’s taking down rapists?

5) Outline big party scenes – Big party/event/wedding scenes (anything with a lot of people) are some of the hardest to write. Writers often bounce around from character to character without a plan, which results in a messy directionless sequence. When you’re writing a big scene, like the famous wedding scene that opens The Godfather, make sure to plot out beforehand every character and what that character is doing. Preferably, you’ll have characters that need something during the sequence (a goal!), as that tends to make things more focused and interesting. Here we’d map out all the people coming to the Godfather with their requests. We’d map out Miachel showing up with his new girlfriend – what they’re going to talk about and why. We’d map out a scene to show that Carlo, who’s marrying the Don’s daughter, is sketchy. We’d map out Michael’s brother Sonny, who cheats on his wife with one of the bridesmaids. Map all of this out ahead of time and make sure each set of characters is doing something IMPORTANT. That’ll keep you from lingering on irrelevant stuff, which is where these big sequences go to die. Have a plan and you’ll do just fine at your next wedding.

6) A reluctant protagonist in a drama has a much better chance of working than a reluctant protagonist in an action film – Know what genre you’re writing when considering the reluctant protagonist. In an action movie, when your audience wants a lot of action, it’s going to be pretty silly if your main character is avoiding it all. In a slower drama, however, where plot and action aren’t as important, you have more freedom to play with a reluctant lead. I’d still be wary of it, but you do have more freedom there.

7) The best setups and payoffs establish high stakes during the setup – Remember, a payoff doesn’t really resonate unless you establish high stakes when it’s set up. That’s what makes the famous “horse head in the bed” scene so powerful. The day before, Jack Woltz, our unlucky movie producer, shows Hagen (Don’s lawyer) his horse stable and gushes about how much he loves horses, especially one in particular, a 600,000 dollar horse which he’ll put out to stud, leading to endless riches. Guess which head ends up under his covers? This scene doesn’t work the same way if Woltz casually passes a race track and barely points out a horse that he likes. We build the stakes up high by having him LOVE this horse.

8) Always look for an indirect way to handle backstory/exposition – Remember, one of the most boring ways to convey backstory or exposition is to lay it out in a very straightforward manner via dialogue. Instead, try to find an angle that conveys the information in a nontraditional way. They did this quite cleverly in The Godfather. Michael tells Kay (his girlfriend who knows nothing about his family’s lifestyle) about Luca Brazi, the muscle for his father. His story is about how Luca was sent over to take care of these men who attacked his father. The backstory for this character he gets into is very graphic and violent. But Coppola added an angle. Michael is smiling while he’s telling the story, so Kay isn’t sure if he’s telling the truth. Gone is the on-the-nose boring rundown we’re USED TO in these situations, replaced by a, “is he or isn’t he telling the truth” angle that makes the same information kind of fun. It’s a slight change, but it’s these slight changes that separate you from the next guy, who’s doing it the obvious way.

9) Conflict, suspense and mystery are your friends when writing a slow story – When you don’t have urgency (as is the case with The Godfather), you need to use other tools to keep your audience interested, or else they get impatient. You do this with these three tools: suspense, conflict, and mystery (and tension – though it can be argued that tension is conflict). Consistent use of these should keep even the slowest stories interesting. We see conflict, for example, in all of the requests of Vito Corleone, who makes his guests work for it. We see tension in his relationship with Michael, who doesn’t want to be involved in the family business. We have suspense in what’s going to happen with Johnny, the movie star who desperately needs a part from a producer who won’t give it to him, in Michael needing to save his father at the hospital when he knows the bad guys are coming, and leading up to the dinner where Michael plans to kill the police chief and Sollozzo. There aren’t a lot of mysteries in The Godfather, but that’s an option for you to use as well. If you’re writing a slow screenplay and you’re not using these three tools frequently, your script is probably boring.

10) How committed are you? – The more I read, the more I find that the deepest most emotionally affecting stories are based on books and real life. Why? Because the writer has tons of backstory and character knowledge to draw from. When a screenplay is written from nothing, the writer often doesn’t fill in the details that happened before the story. As a result, the characters never project any depth (why would they? They never existed before they were placed on the page). I’ve constantly been looking for a solution to this. How does one manage the same depth of a book adaptation without writing a book? Is it possible? Or should a screenwriter actually write a book before his screenplay? It sounds nuts but I GUARANTEE you, if you did that, your screenplay would be a hundred times deeper than if you didn’t. And aren’t we all looking for an advantage over the next guy?  Reading the opening of The Godfather (based on the book by the same name), with this huge wedding, with Vito Corleone listening to requests for help, with Sonny cheating on his wife, with Vito’s daughter desperately trying to keep a man she barely has, with Michael introducing his new girlfriend to everyone, to Luca Brazi, to movie stars pleading for a break, a spec writer just wouldn’t know or care about 75% of these characters. They’d know their hero, they’d know the second most important guy in the scene, and then maybe one other character (the lead girl). Everybody else they’d know their first name, what they’re wearing, and that’d be it. And that’s exactly why all spec scripts feel so thin. To measure up to this expected level, try to write as much backstory as you possibly can on every character in order to give them as rich and as detailed of a history as you can. Then and only then, will they project the kind of depth and presence characters in adapted scripts like The Godfather project.