Hey, who says Hollywood’s wrong by not giving a shit about writing these days? Is it REALLY that bad to go into productions with unfinished scripts? They can all point to the fact that one of the greatest movies of all time, Casablanca, went into production only half-finished! You heard that right. Casablanca didn’t have a finished script when they started filming! But here’s what’s always bothered me about this often brought up piece of cinema history. There’s a difference between “writing the script during production” and “writing an already well thought-through tightly outlined script during production.” If all your scenes are in place. If you already know how your characters are going to evolve and change. If you already know where your story is going. And in some cases, you already have the scenes thought out. That kind of “writing during production” actually still has a chance of being good. But if you’re literally making up the entire plot as you go along, that’s a different kind of “writing during production.” As much as I love Gareth Edwards as a director (the guy is going to be a freaking All-Star), you can get a sense of what REALLY going into a production without a script results in by watching his first film, “Monsters.” You’ll spot a lot of repetition, a hazy through-line, and a lack of character development, all things that need to be ironed out ahead of time. My point being, don’t think that because Hollywood lore states that Casablanca’s script was unfinished when filming began, that the underpinnings weren’t in place. It was probably mostly there. There are lots of cool other things we could discuss about Casablanca if we had more time. There were four writers revolving in and out as the script was written. A few of them had different takes on the story, making it even more miraculous that the story came together. For example, there was a lot of internal discussion over whether they should ditch the flashbacks (I personally think they could’ve). To think that they were debating the flashback device all the way back in the 1940s! That argument will never go away! Anyway, since Casablanca is well known for its dialogue, I’ll try to focus a lot of today’s tips on dialogue. But there are some other lessons we can learn here as well. Let’s take a look.

1) Combine scenes whenever possible – This is an old tip, but a good tip. Our protagonist, Rick, digs some money out of his safe for Emil, his casino runner, WHILE discussing with Casablanca’s head policeman, Renault, his planned arrest of Victor Laszlo. An amateur writer would’ve addressed each of these situations separately, taking up valuable screenwriting real estate. Pro writers combine scenes so the story moves along faster!

2) Use a clever exchange/sparring to hide backstory and/or exposition – After Head Policeman Renault tells Rick that they’re going to arrest Victor Laszlo, the writer needs to get in some backstory that Laszlo escaped from a concentration camp, as his time at the camp is an integral plot point. Now a bad writer would’ve had Rick bring this up immediately in his response, resulting in an “obvious backstory” line like, “But he escaped from a concentration camp. He’ll probably escape you.” Instead, the writer diverts attention from the line by creating a playful sparring, allowing him to hide the backstory within the exchange organically: “It’ll be interesting to see how he manages,” Rick says. “Manages what?” Renault asks. “His escape.” “Oh, but I just told you.—“ “—Stop it.” Rick replies. “He escaped from a concentration camp and the Nazis have been chasing him all over Europe.” The sparring here makes the backstory line invisible.

3) For good dialogue, make sure each character has a set of clearly defined opinions about the world/life – The more you know about your characters, the more likely they’ll deliver good lines of dialogue. Let me give you an example. Early in the script, Renault tells Rick’s head waiter, Carl, to give our villain, the Nazi Major Strasser, “a good table, one close to the ladies.” Now say the writer knows nothing about his waiter, Carl, here. Most bad writers wouldn’t. They’d say, ehh, he’s a minor character. I don’t need to know anything about him. In that case, you’re likely to get a weak generic line, something like, “You got it, boss.” But had you given some thought to Carl, you may have decided he harbors a deep resentment towards Nazis, and likes to get in subtle digs at them whenever possible. Now as you approach his response, you have a lot more to play with. It is for this reason that we get the line in the script, which is a thousand times better: “I have already given him the best, knowing he is German and would take it anyway.”

4) When placing a bunch of characters together, make sure that every single character has an angle – This is what’s so great about Casablanca. There isn’t one person in this bar who doesn’t have an angle, who isn’t looking to push their own agenda. Ugarte wants to sell those Visas. Renault wants to impress Strasser. Strasser wants to take down Laszlo. Laszlo wants to escape to America. Rick wants to avoid Ilsa. Ilsa wants to talk to Rick. And to take it one step further, make sure a lot of those angles clash. That’s where you get conflict, which is where you find drama, which is how you entertain audiences. That’s basically Casablanca in a nutshell.

5) Whatever your character’s flaw is, make sure you write a scene that shows that flaw as a choice – Here, Rick’s flaw is that he only cares about himself. He doesn’t stick his neck out for anybody. Therefore, a scene is written where he can either save Ugarte (the man who gave him the visas) or let him be arrested. Ugarte pleads for help from Rick, but Rick just stands by as he gets arrested. Through that choice, we learn his flaw.

6) Stating one’s flaw out loud is no longer in vogue – It’s one of the most famous lines in cinema: “I stick my neck out for nobody.” And yet if you used it today, it would feel way too on-the-nose. Go with an action, as explained in the previous tip, instead. Action (show, don’t tell) always has more of an impact than words.

7) Be “disagreeable” in your dialogue as much as you can – A cute and simple way to spice up dialogue is to never have characters agree with what is said. Have them add resistance or conflict or obstacles or opposing reactions. So when the German, Strasser, says to Rick, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Unofficially, of course.” Rick doesn’t respond in the positive with, “Sure.” He turns it around and says, “Make it official, if you like.” If characters are just agreeing with each other all the time and having really easy conversations, there’s a 99% chance that those conversations are boring as hell.

8) Never underestimate the power of sarcasm during dialogue. It almost always makes the dialogue more fun – When Strasser asks Rick, “What is your nationality?” Rick doesn’t respond with the boring, “I’m a bar owner, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He replies. “I’m a drunkard.”

9) Add extra people to your dialogue scenes – There’s rarely a scene in Casablanca with just two people. I don’t think it’s any coincidence, then, that the movie is known for its great dialogue. Extra characters act as agitators and obstacles to dialogue, which forces characters to be more creative in the ways they talk with one another. Woody Allen, another great dialogue writer, uses this approach a lot as well.

10) Make the “other man” tough to leave, as opposed to easy – Remember that drama usually thrives on tough choices. If you make the choice for any character too easy, it’s obvious what will happen, which is boring. Make it difficult, and the audience will be hooked, as they’ll be unsure what choice the character will make. Here, the “other man” (Laszlo) is about as good a man as they come, so we really have no idea who Ilsa is going to choose, him or Rick.

11) Unless the boyfriend/husband is also the villain – There are certain situations/stories where the “other man” is also the villain. He’s beating our heroine or is the “wrong guy” for her. In those cases, it’s okay for him to be bad. But if the other man isn’t the villain in the story (here, the Nazi, Strasser, is our villain), consider making him a “good guy,” as that’ll make our heroine’s choice tougher, and therefore more dramatically compelling.

These are 11 tips from the movie “Casablanca.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

note: Scroll down for the weekend’s Amateur Offerings post!

Hey everyone.  Carson here.  Today we have a very familiar guest poster, professional screenwriter John Jarrell.  You may remember John from his Hollywood Horror Stories post a few months back. John wanted to write another article for the site, but this time focus a little less on horror and a little more on hope.  Hence, today, John will be discussing that moment every writer dreams of – his first screenplay sale.  As you may remember from his last post, John runs an awesome screenwriting class here in LA, one of the few held by actual working screenwriters.  This man not only tells how you how to write what Hollywood’s looking for, but explains how to navigate the elusive trenches that only those with experience in the industry know how to navigate.  If you feel like your writing has stagnated, if you don’t know where to go next, or if you just want some really awesome instruction, check out John’s site to learn more about him, then sign up for his Tweak Class.  You won’t regret it!

Trust me — nothing will ever quite match the crack-high of earning your first real money from screenwriting.

Experienced this yet? You and your bros crash some screening, party, mixer. People (even women!) ask what you do. You admit that you’re a (cough) screenwriter.

Great, they say, wow. Anything I’d be familiar with?

Not yet, you explain, you’re unproduced and haven’t sold anything… but Lionsgate is really, REALLY excited about a project of yours, and it could be any day now…
And that’s pretty much where the pussy hunt ends.

Because other than credits and/or money, there’s no standard by which civilians and Industry insiders can possibly differentiate between those working hard to become legit screenwriters and the army of ass-clowns out there just playing at it.

So… what’s an aspiring screenwriter to do? How can we rid ourselves of this dreaded Wannabe Syndrome, shake the metaphorical monkeys clawing at our backs? Parents, classmates, landlords, loan collectors, the faux-hipster who spotted you Twenty at The Farmacy, and, most importantly, our own stratospheric expectations?

The answer’s pretty straightforward.

Get paid for your screenwriting.

Bury a fifty-foot putt. Knock the guy through the ropes. Or as DMX so succinctly puts it, “Break ’em off somethin'”.

Because rightly or wrongly, the business of screenwriting ultimately comes down to convincing a complete stranger to give you real money for something you typed into Final Draft.

Actually, this is great news – that part about strangers paying money for scripts. Because they’re still doing it, making the blank page the great equalizer for us all, every screenwriter’s secret weapon.

Yeah, sure, no shit, John. Love the concept. But where the hell does one even START in this godforsaken town? By what means do you actually propose to get this done?

Bottom line? By any and all means necessary. Hard work. Blind luck. Freak breaks. Perfect timing. Brute Force.

At least that’s what worked for me.

*********

Before you can get paid, however, you need an agent or manager. Getting my first agent is one of those bizarre, by-the-seat-of-your-pants Hollywood stories.

Summer 1990, my actor buddy Mike was cast in perhaps the most nonsensical martial arts movie of all-time — Iron Heart starring Britton Lee. Britton was actually Korean, not Chinese, and shouldn’t be confused with Bruce Lee, Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Dragon Lee, Bruce Dragon Li, or any other Enter The Dragon copycats of that era.

Shooting was in Oregon, and late one night Mike went to a wedding party at the Portland Marriot. The bash got crazy loud, completely out of hand. Two women from an adjoining suite came over to complain, but rather than turn the racket down, the Groom convinced them to stay and party instead.

The blonde one was hot, and my bro took a liquored shine to her. Mike’s a pretty handsome guy (he became a Network soap star years later) and so he followed Young MC’s advice to the Pepsi Generation to just “bust a move”. (Under 30? Google it.)

Small talk kicked up. “Where are you from?”, “What do you do?”, etc.

So she tells Mike she’s a literary agent in Los Angeles.

And Mike, bless his heart, blurts out — “Wow. I know about the best script!”

Cue needle scratching LP surface. This chick’s looking at him like, I’m on vacation, in Portland Fuckin’ Oregon, and I’m still getting scripts thrown at me!”

But he kept her talking (like I said, Mike’s pretty hot himself) and put it out there that I’d gone to NYU and long story short, she told him this —

“If you’re serious, leave a copy at the front desk and I’ll have somebody in L.A. look at it. I fly out at 6 a.m. tomorrow.”

Want to know if your best buddy is the real deal? Here’s the gold standard.

Mike hauled ass back to his hotel, got the only copy of the script within 3000 miles, penned a quick note with my contact info, then drove all the way back to the Marriot again, at 3 a.m., and left my script for her.

Raises the bar pretty damned high, doesn’t it? Saying nothing of the fact he could’ve gotten laid if he hadn’t decided to hook me up instead.

Next morning, Mike hipped me to what happened, and I was like, great man, thanks, really appreciate it… and promptly forgot all about it. I’d already had my ass kicked so many times over that script I’d given up all hope. Shitty coverage, angry agency rejection letters, demoralizing notes from two junior, junior, baby execs, all that. A man can only eat so much shit in one sitting.

But one week later I found a message on my Panasonic answering machine.

“Hi, I’m Susanne Walker, from the New Talent Agency in Los Angeles. I’d like you to call me back. I read your script and I think it could be very, very big.”

Completely blissed out and brimming with newfound hope, I drove down to L.A. in my ’66 Bug, $200 to my name, ready to take my rightful place astride the Industry’s brightest and best paid.

Susanne got me meetings everywhere. Mace Neufeld, Scott Rudin, Paramount, Warners – all the Town’s heavy hitters. This was Ground Zero of the ’90’s Big Spec Era. It was ridiculous then, like a cartoon when compared to today’s Business. Writers were selling dirty cocktail napkins sketched with story ideas for a million cash. As the trades boldly confirmed each morning, with a decent script, anything and everything was possible.

There was only one little glitch.

Bad timing.

My script was essentially Taxi Driver meets Romeo And Juliet. Two tough Irish kids, living in the burned-out bowels of Jersey City get in trouble with black gangsters and the Mob, gunplay and tragedy quickly to ensue. People loved the gritty action and characters, and it was the type of genre film Studios were still interested in making back then.

But then State of Grace opened, just as I was taking all these meetings, I’m talking same exact week. Even though it boasted Sean Penn and Gary Oldman, it completely cratered at the box office, sinking its home studio, Orion.

Everybody agreed, our stories were COMPLETELY different. But they did share the same world, and quite literally overnight, all my hard work turned toxic, Fukushima’d by State of Grace’s blast radius.

One veteran producer put it perfectly — “It’s a shame one big, dumb movie out there is going to kill your sale.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

My new agent had nothing for me after that. One unknown with one good unsold spec wasn’t any more likely to get an open writing assignment back then than they are today. All she could suggest was to write another spec — the last thing on Earth any aspiring screenwriter wants to hear.

I got pissed. Mega-testosterone, 24 year-old white-boy pissed. I cursed the Film Gods for crushing my quick sale and the lifetime of Hollywood leisure to follow. Bitterly, I resolved to knuckle down and write that second goddamn script, vowing it would be so good that some stranger would be forced to give me money for it — they simply wouldn’t be able to help themselves.

Mike moved down to L.A., and together we took shelter in an old beach studio. Venice in ’91 was a dicey shithole, not the Pinkberry/ iPad skinny jeans love-fest you know now. Borrowing a PC, desk and chair from our dope-harvesting landlord, I barricaded myself inside our place and went on a screenwriting killing spree.

Grinding day and night, punching out page after page, wearing nothing but a bottomless bowl of Cheerios on my lap, I summoned the gripping tale of a Brooklyn attorney who witnesses a murder committed by a Mafia client he himself got off in court. When the attorney threatens to testify, the Mob comes after him and his family, gunplay and tragedy quickly to ensue.

Twenty-four days later, I chicken-pecked “The End”. I entrusted my magnum opus to Mike, holding his Backstage hostage until he read it. He finished, grinned and said — “If someone doesn’t buy this, I don’t know what to say.”

Flushed with pride and riding the final, indignant fumes of my prior rejection, I pointed The Bug down to my agent’s place. I remember bulldozing into her office like I was storming the Bastille.

“Here it is, my new spec, exactly what you asked for,” I stammered, thrusting it towards her like a broadsword. “I believe this is The Big One.”

“Okay, swell, thanks for driving in,” she said, ward nurse handling potential mental patient. “I’ll call you the second I’ve read it.”

Standing next to her desk was a stack of client scripts maybe twenty, twenty-five specs tall; a Xeroxed, three-bradded Leaning Tower of Pisa. In harrowing slow-motion, she took my newborn masterpiece and discarded it atop of the pile. Number Twenty-Six.

Something about it just broke me.

In that dark instant I got my first, unfiltered snapshot of how infinitesimal my odds really were — and it ruined me. Like they say, when you’re walking a tightrope, never, ever look down…

Returning to Venice, expecting the very worst, I marched into my half of the hovel and hand-shred all my notes; stepsheet, page revisions, all of it. Then I staggered, crushed, to the Boardwalk, bought a pair of 22 oz. Sapporo’s, found an empty bench and got ridiculously, pathetically, shithoused blind drunk.

Like a little baby, I cried out there, a six-foot, 190 lb. pity party. I bawled my fuckin’ eyes out among the hacky-sackers and forlorn homeless, casting my broken dreams atop the invisible, flaming bonfire of their own.

So this was the real Hollywood, I thought. The one every B-movie, t.v. show, and Danielle Steele beach-book warns you about. A financial and emotional Vietnam from which cherry young recruits like myself never returned.

Fuck me. How in the hell could I have thought selling a script would be that easy?

*********

Alas, Dear Reader, I’d overreacted. Turns out, I had not been irrevocably voted off Screenwriter Island.

Susanne called three weeks later. The ol’ good news/bad news.

Good News — She liked my script and thought it could sell. You heard me — sell. For money. Awesome, right?

Bad News — She felt it needed an entirely new Third Act. She wanted to throw out everything I had and rethink the whole thirty pages from square one.

Sooner or later every screenwriter’s life reaches a crossroads where the whole of their career — the full possibility of what they may or may not become — comes to rest in their own fragile hands. In that brief instant, there’s nobody and nothing to rely on save your own gut instincts – not unlike the process when any of us face the empty page. All the solemn risks and rewards rest squarely on your slumped shoulders alone.

My own crossroads came very quickly. On this very call, in fact.

Susanne insisted on a new Third Act before she’d go out with it. Not only didn’t I want to do extra work, I honestly wasn’t sure it was the right call creatively. I was exhausted, beaten down, my self-doubt was flaring up, and the Imposter Syndrome had me by the throat. The concept of more time in isolation, the unique self-loathing only a screenwriter knows, was simply too much to bear.

So, brain racing, I decided to sack up and posit this —

Why not cherry-pick one of the many esteemed producers we’d met when I first hit town, slip the draft to them and get their opinion?

It seemed the perfect solution. We could get an objective, world-class opinion without exposing the script and burning it around town. Further, the producer’s take would be our tie breaker. If he/she agreed with Susanne, then I’d get to work on the third act straight away, without another whimper. Conversely, if the producer agreed with me that it was ship-shape and good to go, we’d fire things up and paper the town with it.

Susanne liked the idea. Now all that remained was to choose the producer.

We picked Larry Turman, the wise man who produced The Graduate. Larry was a real straight-shooter with a ridiculous wealth of experience.

Susanne messengered my script (remember those days?) over to Larry’s office on the Warner Hollywood lot, and a few weeks later his assistant called saying Larry wanted me to drop by and talk about what I’d written.

Enduring the endless crawl up Fairfax that day was awful. That Third Street intersection has always been a clusterfuck, long before The Grove arrived. Legions of ornery blue-hairs shot-gunning in and out of the prehistoric Vons parking destroyed traffic with a sadistic regularity.

Running way late, tragedy struck. I stepped down on the clutch and SNAP! the clutch cable broke. I actually heard it shatter, like a little bone, and the pedal sank straight to the floor, useless as a severed limb.

No clutch, no drive car. Simple as that. If your clutch goes AWOL, it’s game over. You pull over, Siri Triple A and wait.

But I still had one blue-collar trick up my sleeve. True fact — you can drive an old VW without a clutch. Here’s how. Turn the engine off, cram the gearshift into first, then restart it. Your Bug will lurch and whiplash terribly, then start grinding forward. If you match the RPM’s just right, you shift back into second, too — top speed, 20 mph.

So that’s what I did, said “fuck it” and snailed onward, my Bug’s antiquity a sudden asset in my favor.

This went down at Third and Fairfax, Clusterfuck Central. Hazards on, I politely edged to the shoulder, but that did nothing to halt the on-coming bloodbath. Apoplectic motorists began HONKING AND CUSSING ME OUT as they passed. Every single motorist had their horn pinned down and/or were commanding me to forcibly insert my Bug into my own colon. Zero mercy. Welcome to L.A.

This road-rape only encouraged me. Smiling my best “fuck you, too”, I continued surfing the glacial grind towards Warner Hollywood.

I was shown into Larry’s office a humiliating forty minutes late. Here I was, this Dickensian scrub, some hat-in-hand wannabe, accidently insulting the only ray of hope I had in Hollywood.

Besides being mortified, I also looked like shit now. Oil-smudged hands, pit stains pock-marking my only clean shirt, hair matted flat to my humid skull.

“Larry, I’m really, REALLY sorry. My sincerest apologies.”

I’d blown it, and I totally accepted that. No doubt, it was a colossal bed-shitting, one I’d have to live with forever. But Larry was legitimately one of the nicest guys I’d met since crossing over the River Styx — hell, he’d actually taken time to read my script as a courtesy! — so I felt it important he know my fuck up was not intentional.

“Believe it or not, I drive an old Bug, ’66 actually, and the clutch broke. Those last two miles I had to baby her in, at, like, ten miles per hour.”

Larry peered back. What sense he might make of these ramblings, I had no clue.

“Well, your car may not be working too well, but I know something else that is.”

“Huh? What’s that?”

“Your brain,” Larry said. “You’ve written a really good script here…and I want to buy it.”

I am Jack’s completely blown mind.

“You’re fuckin’ with me, right?”

“Not at all, John. We’ve partnered with a venture capitalist, and I want to acquire your project with some of the development money we have.”

By naïve force of will, what Orson Welles once called, “The Confidence of Ignorance”, trusting my gut and a shit-ton of hard work, I’d fought my way onto the big board. I was now a paid writer.

*********

Money changed hands, and that changed my life, forever.

I was working a $125-per P.A. gig at Magic Mountain when I got The Call. Over the payphone, Susanne confirmed the deal had closed. Tomorrow, I’d have a check for $25K in my pocket, with the promise of THREE-HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE once we set it up.

Believe me, it felt EPIC. Something I pray every last one of you tastes someday. Think Tiger Woods, ’97 Masters, triumphant fist uppercutting Augusta sky, Barkley suplexing Shaq flat on his back, Hagler/Hearns with Marvelous alone still standing.

Oh, and by the way, Susanne was right — it did need a whole new third act. Five of them, in fact. And I started working up the first Day One/Page One with Larry.

Looking back, who knows? Maybe Susanne’s approach would’ve been best. Maybe if I had rewritten the Third Act in-house, we’d have sold it for even more money; started a bidding war, landed a massive, splashy spec sale putting me squarely on top.

But for me in ’91, there was no tomorrow. It was land this script, now, or beg my folks for airfare and crawl back to N.Y.C. busted apart. Many times, I’ve reflected about how not getting it done would’ve affected me, as both a writer and a man. Thank Baby Jesus, I never did find out.

Of course, here’s the punch line, the part I had no idea about —

This was just the first, brutal step of my climb up Screenwriter Mountain. Game One of a seven game series that would eat up a full decade, with a thousand times the agony of this little walk in the park.

Eventually, though, I’d pay off my student loans with a single check. Realize the Great American Dream and buy my parents a house, then grab a vintage Marshall and Gibson SG I’d always masturbated myself to. But meeting after meeting, script after script, I kept driving my trusty ’66 Bug as a reminder to keep my head on straight, come what may.

If you take nothing else away from my mangled musings, let it be this —

Screenwriters are special. Americans in general are taught never, ever to say that; never to imply any relative value between ourselves and our neighbors. But the fact remains — we writers have undertaken special challenges, endured special risks, absorbed a special amount of punishment and persevered with a special amount of grit, determination and (hopefully) integrity along the way. Screenwriters make a spectacular effort to scale our mountain of dreams while the majority of others huddle in the warmth and easy shelter of the base camps and ski lodges below.

So yeah, by any and all means necessary. Work hard. Trust your instincts. Fight like hell to spin every setback, every strand of Hollywood bullshit into gold.

And on that glorious day when you finally see an open kill shot, take it, my friend. Bury it right between the eyes.

Carson back again.  I don’t know about you.  But this sure makes me want to go write.  Once again, John’s classes start THIS MAY in Los Angeles.  So get over to his site now and SIGN UP!  He only has a limited number of slots open!

One of the harder genres to get right is studied today as we bring you Amateur Friday a day early!

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: In 2049, a government employee is wrenched into an anarchist plot to destabilize a dystopian U.S. government.
Why you should read (from author): This screenplay is 1984 meets North By Northwest, by way of V For Vendetta, with a splash of Breaking Bad for good measure. It’s set in a realistic future, one not all that different from 2013, where the dystopian elements of society hide under bridges and behind CIA doors. It uses the classic Hitchcock trope of an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary situation.
Writer: Casey Giltner
Details: 116 pages

What I’ve noticed since switching to this format, where you guys test drive the amateur options every week and choose the best ones, is that the overall writing level for the script I ultimately review has improved tremendously. There’s no doubt about that. Little to no spelling or grammar errors. Crisp and easy-to-understand description. A professional polish to almost every one. But like an imitation Rolex, once you look closer, you start to see the imperfections.

Those imperfections usually boil down to one of two things (and usually both) – our good friend’s story and character. With story, there’s often a lack of understanding as to what drama is. The writer doesn’t know how to consistently place his characters in situations that are entertaining to the reader, leaving large gaps of the script that feel plain and therefore boring. On the character front, I often read characters that are either a) not unique enough, b) not likable enough, or c) not deep enough.

This is one of the most frustrating levels a writer attains during his career. He’s reached a point where he’s taken seriously, but watches on, confused, as his scripts are continually passed over. The problem is they’re not yet good enough to understand what they’re doing wrong, and therefore can’t fix the issues plaguing their screenplays. The only way off Confusing Island is to keep writing, keep getting feedback, and keep improving upon their previous work. Eventually, they start to understand where their weak points are, how to fix them, and therefore how to get their writing up to Hollywood standards.

Operation Vertigo is a good example of this. I can see why it was the top pick of the weekend. It has a good opening, some solid writing, and a professional polish to it, but it quickly runs out of steam, not really giving us anything new or exciting to keep us satiated. I’ll get to all that in a second, but first let’s look at the plot.

The year is 2049. We live in a state of government oppression. Everywhere we go, we’re watched by the man. Every time we turn something on, it’s logged. This all-watching system is known as THE GRID. And while the government spins it that the GRID is a good thing, it’s pretty obvious that it’s being used to control us.

James Donovan is a senior department technician for the company that operates THE GRID (I think – I’m still a little unclear on that). But right now, the old GRIDDLE is the least of his worries. It turns out his wife is banging a freaking senator! That sucks no matter how far in the future you are. So James decides he’s going to take things into his own hands and kill her, or the senator, or both. So he sneaks into their little rendezvous hotel room, but just as he’s about to kill them, somebody ELSE wearing a mask comes in and kills them FIRST!

Okay, that’s a pretty cool opening. I’m intrigued.

James is quickly targeted by someone named “Investigator” (that’s her name throughout the script) from the CIA. She thinks he had something to do with the killing but can’t prove it. James is so torn up about the whole thing that he goes drinking late into the night (not easy to do as there’s a curfew in this future world) only to be approached by a chick named Zooey, who wants him to join her cause called “Vertigo,” (a bunch of people trying to expose the government for their evil ways).

When a bomb then blows up the bar they were JUST IN, James finds himself at the mercy of CIA agent “Investigator” once again! Investigator thinks it’s really suspicious that James happens to be around all these places where bad things happen. But she keeps lacking evidence so she has to let him go. Eventually, James hooks up with Zooey again, who introduces him to her underground crew of fellow Vertigoians, and they tell him they need him to be an inside man for them, since he has access to the all-powerful GRID.

Now that he’s been seen cavorting with the enemy, the CIA makes a strong move to take down Vertigo, forcing James and Zooey on the run. The agency eventually captures Zooey, and Vertigo tells James that they can help him break in and save her. But they’re going to need him to turn off the GRID first. James does exactly that, but quickly realizes that he wasn’t meant to go in and rescue Zooey after all. This was just one giant setup, and he’s the sucker who just got duped.

Okay, so I’m Asshole Producer Guy with no filter. You may think this is a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. Nice Producer never tells you what’s wrong with your script. He just ignores your phone calls and e-mails and never calls you back. Being Asshole Producer Guy, this is what I would say if asked what I thought of Operation Vertigo: “There’s nothing special here. There’s nothing new. I mean this movie is basically The Matrix without all the cool stuff.”

Okay, I’m putting Asshole Producer Guy away now. But I admit that I agree with him. This script is lacking that big hook. Everything explored here (the overbearing government, the lack of privacy, etc.) has been done to death. We’ve seen it already so it comes off as generic. And that’s not to say you can’t still explore these issues, but you need to do so with a new angle.

However, even if you get past that, the story isn’t that fresh either. You got a guy on the run. He hooks up with a renegade operation. One of them gets kidnapped and he has to save her. It’s a very basic storyline that follows the template for these thrillers way too closely. To fix this I’d advise the exact same thing. Give us something NEW. Give us a plot development we DON’T expect as opposed to a dozen that we do. The scripts I hate most are the ones where I’m 30-40 pages ahead of the story. And here, I was probably 40-50 pages ahead of the story. The mark of a good storyteller is to anticipate the audience’s expectations and then give them something else. Make their anticipation work against them. That never happened once here. Even James getting double-crossed at the end was telegraphed.

Finally, the characters are stereotypes and way too bland. None of them are struggling with any internal conflict (i.e. Neo struggles with his belief in himself in The Matrix). They’re not involved in anything other than straightforward relationships. I don’t want to sound like I’m piling on, but you can tie this issue into the first two. The concept is too generic, the execution is too generic, and the characters are too generic. In other words, you’re not pushing yourself here. You’re not asking questions every writer should be asking before they write a script or a character or a scene, which are: “Is this something I’ve seen before?” and if the answer is yes, then, “How can I make my take different?”

It’s not easy asking yourself those questions and it’s even harder to find answers for them. But that’s the thing you have to remember – if it’s all coming too easy, it’s probably because you’re writing a version of something you’ve already seen before. By asking those tough questions – even though it ends up taking you a lot longer to write everything – you’re more likely to end up with something original.

Start by asking, “What can I add to the concept here that gives it that special unique quality?” In previous movies it’s been bending the laws of space and time (The Matrix) or people being arrested for murders they haven’t committed yet (Minority Report). But it’s gotta be SOMETHING. It can’t just be a garden variety take on government oppression in the near future. We’ve seen that too many times before. We need something more!

Script link: Operation Vertigo

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

What I learned 1: Don’t give one of your main characters a generic monikor as their character name. Major characters need official names. Here, “Investigator,” is probably the most memorable character in the script, yet she’s called “Investigator,” which doesn’t make sense.

What I learned 2: Sci-fi is a concept-driven genre. Therefore, when writing sci-fi, you absolutely have to have to have an idea that’s never been done before or have a unique take on an old idea. If you aren’t doing one of these two things, your sci-fi script doesn’t have a shot. I can guarantee you that.

Author Ira Levin’s book about a woman impregnated with Satan’s child was deemed so commercial that legendary producer Robert Evans snatched up the rights before the book was even finished. He then recruited European director Roman Polanski to write and direct the film, which would become Polanski’s first foray into American cinema. Polanski wanted his wife, Sharon Tate, to play the part of Rosemary, but Evans convinced him to go with Mia Farrow, despite the fact that her husband at the time, Frank Sinatra, wanted her to quit the profession. In fact, when she officially accepted the part, he filed for divorce. The film’s adapted screenplay went on to get nominated for an Oscar and was a huge box office success, grossing ten times its budget. Some, however, believe that because of the movie’s subject matter, its principal participants were cursed. Polanski, of course, lost his wife in the Manson murders, then later sexually assaulted a young girl, forcing him to flee to France and never set foot in America again. And Mia Farrow, after being left by Sinatra, eventually married Woody Allen, which of course ended in tragedy when she found out Allen was having a sexual relationship with her adopted daughter from a previous marriage. Regardless of all that, Rosemary’s Baby is one of the best movies from the 60s, and therefore ripe for its share of screenwriting tips.

1) The Villain Goal – I often talk about giving your protagonist a goal, as that goal will drive the story. However, if your protagonist doesn’t have a goal, you can transfer the goal over to the story’s villain. That’s the case with Rosemary’s Baby. The story is being driven by a goal held by Rosemary’s elderly neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castevet. The two need a woman to carry Satan’s baby. And she’s been chosen.

2) DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT – Remember what Dramatic Irony is. It’s when we know something one of the key characters does not. And it works best when the thing we know is something that puts our character in danger. Almost all of Rosemary’s Baby is based on this device. We know that she’s carrying the devil’s baby and that all these people around her are manipulating her, but she doesn’t. We want to scream, “Run! Get away from everyone!” which is usually when “dramatic irony” is working best.

3) Look for your scares using human psychological elements – When most writers think about scares, they think of the cliché stuff. Ghosts, demons, witches, etc. Rosemary’s Baby is a horror film without any real “scares.” Its horror comes from its psychological nature, the fact that Rosemary is being manipulated. To me, the scariest situation of all is when the person you’re supposed to trust the most deceives you, which is a big part of why this movie works so well. Rosemary’s own husband has sold her off to the devil. If you can’t trust your own spouse, who can you trust?

4) When writing a horror film, jump into your mysteries right away – You need to hook your reader immediately in a horror script, and one of the best ways to do this is to introduce a mystery inside the first couple of scenes. Here, we see it when Rosemary and her husband, Guy, are checking out the apartment. They discover an armoire hiding a closet. Keep in mind, this is the 60s. If the screenwriter is jumping right into the mysteries in a 1968 film, you better hope you’re doing it in 2013, where audiences are 10,000 times less patient.

5) Contained movies require writers adept at adding conflict – Remember, when writing a contained film (almost all of Rosemary’s Baby takes place in an apartment), you need to add AS MUCH CONFLICT AS POSSIBLE. You do this in three main areas – internal level, relationship level, and external level. On the internal level, Rosemary battles with her desire to make everyone happy, even though inside everything’s telling her to look out for herself. That line of conflict stays present throughout the entire movie. On the relationship level, Rosemary is having marital issues with her husband, Guy, who seems to be putting his career ahead of Rosemary. This causes lots of conflict during their time together. And of course, externally, Rosemary is battling the invasion of her elderly neighbors, who are trying to control her life. Conflict should be present in all your films, but you better PACK IT IN if you’re writing a contained film.

6) Nice Villains Finish First – I continue to believe that nice villains (when done right) are the scariest villains of all. Asshole cruel dickhead terrible villains are often cliché and boring. Whereas there will always be situations where scary or “clearly bad” villains are necessary (i.e. Buffalo Bill wasn’t very nice), nice villains should at least be considered when writing your script. Here we have neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet, who have orchestrated the rape and manipulation of our heroine, Rosemary. But they’re always there for her with a smile. They’re the first people to help here whenever there’s a problem. This movie just does not work if these two are forceful and mean and clearly cruel.

7) Don’t let your protagonist be wimpy for too long – In this kind of movie, everything is predicated on our character being duped. So for a good portion of the movie, the protagonist must play that role. But if this goes on for too long, we start to get frustrated by the character, sometimes even turning on them. We don’t like characters who don’t do anything to change their shitty circumstances. So at some point (usually in the second half of the second act) the protagonist should start rebelling. Here, it’s when Rosemary throws her own party. From that point on, Rosemary begins making her own decisions, as opposed to letting the decisions be made for her.

8) Build up suspense by allowing your audience to see their presents the night before Christmas – Waiting for the horror to finally arrive is one of the more enjoyable aspects of watching a horror film. But it’s a lot more fun when the writer teases that horror. It’s kind of like getting to touch and lift and shake your gifts the night before Christmas. It gets your mind spinning, excited and curious about what could be in those boxes. Here we get the armoire blocking the closet. We also get Rosemary’s friend, Hutch, warning her about all the strange deaths in her building. We see it later in the first act when Rosemary’s new friend seemingly commits suicide by jumping to her death. These moments are just like getting to hold and shake those unwrapped gifts. They make us eager to see what’s inside.

9) Whoever has the goal that’s driving the movie (even if it’s your villain) should encounter obstacles along the way – This is important to remember. When your hero is driving the movie with their goal, what makes their journey interesting are all the obstacles they encounter along the way. This same approach must be applied if your villain is the one driving the story. Since our villains’ goal is to guide Rosemary through her pregnancy so she has a healthy baby, Polanski creates ways to foil that plan. First, Rosemary’s friend Hutch shows up, who becomes suspicious of Rosemary’s neighbors. Then later, Rosemary insists on throwing a party with all her old friends, friends who could conceivably convince her how strange her pregnancy is. Regardless of who has the goal in your story, they should always encounter obstacles.

10) Go against the obvious with your horror ending – Again, most writers believe that a horror ending has to be the grandest scariest freakiest craziest spookiest scenario possible. As a result, a lot of the endings to horror scripts end up being similar. What separates Rosemary’s Baby and a big reason it’s such a classic, is that it does the exact opposite with its ending. Rosemary walks through a brightly lit apartment with people everywhere, sitting and talking in very non-threatening ways. Nobody really says or does anything when they see her. She’s allowed to be in the room without retaliation. What makes it so spooky is just how un-spooky it is!

These are 10 tips from the movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Genre: Drama
Premise: A woman is kidnapped, drugged, and robbed of her life’s savings. She must now figure out how to reclaim her life, a task made easier when she meets a man on a train. Plus there are pigs.
About: Shane Carruth became a breakout sensation in the filmmaking world a decade ago when his first film, Primer, shocked Sundance and became the Grand Jury Prize Winner. The time-travelling mind-bending thriller shot for under 10 grand gave young filmmakers everywhere hope that they, too, could shoot films on the cheap and become star directors. But in the years after, Shane’s inexperience with the Hollywood system led him to dead end after dead end, unable to put together another movie. He then shocked the film world (once again) when this new film of his showed up at Sundance this year, a film no one knew he had even made. Carruth wrote, directed, and starred in the movie.
Writer: Shane Carruth.
Details: 97 minutes

Upstream Color was one of the most frustrating movies I’ve ever seen. It was a movie designed to destroy you, to make you detest it. It challenged you to be the one person in the theater who came away saying, “I liked that.” Even still, if you managed to be that person, you didn’t know why you were that person, why you liked it. Or maybe you did. Maybe you convinced yourself you did. Like Carruth’s first movie, Primer, it’s a film that makes you feel smart if you can follow along. It makes you feel superior. It’s a recipe that Carruth’s used to gain his cult following: Make the puzzle complex enough so that you feel good if you can put it together.

But there’s a difference between being a skilled puzzle maker and just throwing a bunch of pieces on the screen. In fact, I think there are many parallels here to Shane Carruth’s career and Richard Kelly’s. Both broke through with these strange puzzle-centric stories and made them jusssst weird enough that you weren’t sure if their intrigue was created on purpose or the result of pure luck. Kelly’s mess of a second film, Southland Tales, proved that it was probably the latter. And Upstream Color, in my opinion, proves the same.

Let me give you some background here. Keep in mind I heard this through the grape vine. It’s by no means fact. But I did hear it from a couple of independent sources so I’m willing to believe it. Shane came out of Primer with Hollywood in the palm of his hands. Everyone wanted to work with him. They tabbed him a young Kubrick. So Shane went around pitching a half thought-through idea about some marine biologists that was part drama, part romantic comedy, part sea adventure, etc. Nobody really understood what the movie was about so Shane went back and wrote this script called “A Topiary,” about kids who used star burst energy to create and control flying dragon-like creatures.

It was 244 pages long. (for those who are mathematically challenged, that would be a 4 hour movie)

Despite this, Shane had some big people who wanted to help him. How big? Try David Fincher. Fincher wanted to shepherd his career, guide him along, produce his films. So Shane showed him his script and then waited for the money. Except Fincher (and others) had some problems with the script. It was long and wandering and devoid of drama. They wanted to give Shane notes. Shane was SHOCKED. Shocked! I mean, are you serious? You’re not just going to give me a hundred million dollars without any strings attached and let me make my movie??? And thus began why Shane Carruth hasn’t made a movie in ten years. Cause he told guys like David Fincher to go fuck themselves.

Now some of you might be holding up your fists and screaming, “you go, girl.” “Fuck Hollywood.” Except David Fincher isn’t just anyone in the land of smog and billboards. Fincher notoriously went through hell with “the system” when he made Alien 3. It’s something that still affects him today, and why he tries to stay somewhat outside the system even as he’s working within it. In other words, Fincher is one of the few people who actually understands what it’s like to be in Shane’s shoes. He’s sympathetic. So if Shane’s having trouble with this guy, I can only imagine how he rubbed everyone else.

Now the reason I bring this up is because Upstream Color plays like a movie that nobody else but Shane has seen. You know how you screen things for friends or let friends read your scripts so that you can iron out the things that don’t make sense? Things that don’t seem to be playing the way you intended them to? This film didn’t go through that process. Or if it did, Carruth ignored any and all feedback. Because the storytelling here is a mess. It’s like the ultimate experimental student film. Zero script and a bunch of experimentation.

So what is it about? Well, I needed to consult with a few other people to come to this summary, but here’s the best I could do. There’s this woman, a film editor or something, I think. She gets kidnapped by this guy who’s created these “drug-worms,” little maggots infested with some sort of mind-control chemical. Once swallowed, the victim basically becomes a mental slave. The guy who kidnaps her then tells her to clear out all her bank accounts and give him all the money. She wakes up a few weeks later, having no idea why she’s broke and can’t remember anything.

But that becomes the least of her worries when she notes a worm swimming through her body up around skin level. She tries to keep cutting it out but with no success. She then hears a noise, a loud “WOOOMP WOOOMP” that draws her from her home out to a pig farm. She tells the strange pig farmer that she can’t get this worm out. No problem, the pig farmer says, and performs surgery on her, inserting (I believe) some pig parts inside of her. This seems to eliminate the problem. Or so we believe.

The woman then wakes out of her mental stupor, realizing that she’s lost her job and that a couple of months have gone by. As she attempts to put her life back together, she meets a dude on the train who has a sketchy (potentially illegal) hotel job. Sketchy Hotel Guy takes a liking to the woman and keeps asking her out. But because the last dude she met led to worms and pig parts inside her body, she’s understandably reluctant. Eventually, however, his persistence pays off, and the two start dating. Except this is REALLY DEPRESSING DATING. Like, both of these people have extremely mundane boring lives and talk about the most boring things imaginable. So we must endure banal, directionless, sad dialogue between them for many many scenes.

Eventually, Sketchy Hotel Guy realizes that Pig Girl isn’t all mentally there. Clue number one is that she likes to take a bag of rocks to the local swimming pool, dump them on the swimming pool floor, recover them one at a time, reciting lines from an obscure book while doing so. Observing this, it occurs to Sketchy Hotel Guy that the two of them might be under some mind control.  So he and Pig Girl do some investigation, locate the pig farmer, go to his place, and realize that each of the pigs he owns is some sort of psychic counterpart to a human being out there in society. Which means they’ve both been psychically pig-abducted. I think. They then go out, tell all of the psychically abducted pig people that they’re being controlled by pigs, and those people come to the pig farm to look at their pig counterparts, coming to terms with the reality that they’re… sorta pigs too, now. Then they all go home and order pizzas with extra pepperoni (okay, I made that last part up).

Okay, I’m just going to state the obvious here. This idea is dumb. I’m sorry, but it’s just dumb! Psychically controlled pig people? There’s no screenwriting gobbledy-gook that needs to be mentioned or applied here. It’s just a DUMB IDEA. I don’t care how you dress it up. You put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.  Someone needed to tell Shane Carruth that this was a dumb idea and to not to make this movie! But, see, Shane Carruth isolated himself from Hollywood so that nobody could tell him no. He’s like the indie version of George Lucas.

I mean, nothing really matters if the idea is stupid, right? If people aren’t on board with the idea, they won’t give a crap about the story. Except for the rare case when you get a really awesome storyteller who can make a bad idea interesting. Shane Carruth, however, is not that storyteller. You’d have a better chance translating Mayan scripture than one of his stories. And some people think that’s by design. I don’t. I believe that the success of a storyteller is dependent on the audience understanding his work in the way he intended for it to be understood. If he’s trying to make you see “A” and you’re seeing “B,” that’s a failure. And I don’t think anyone but a scattered few are interpreting Shane’s work the way he intended. And this could’ve been avoided by simply – oh I don’t know – LISTENING to other people. Other people’s opinions are not the devil. You don’t even have to make the changes they suggest. Just LISTEN to them. If you did, you might be able to make more than one film a decade.

Personally, I think the movie would’ve been better if the guy who kidnapped her originally (who hypnotized her so she wouldn’t remember who he was) was the one she later started dating, instead of Sketchy Hotel Guy. I mean, now you have some actual dramatic irony. We know this guy is dangerous, that he’s stolen this woman’s money, and she’s falling in love with him. That’s a scenario I would’ve been intrigued by.

But there’s nothing as skilled as that here. It’s all just strange ideas mixed in with an awkward romantic relationship storyline. I did like a few things. I liked the title. I liked the cinematography. I liked the score. The first few minutes of the movie were captivating in a purely cinematic way. But it always comes back to the story for me. If you don’t know how to dramatize situations, how to add suspense or create compelling relationships or clear conflict. Or just make sense! You’re going to fall on your face. And Upstream Color, along with all the little piglets it birthed, falls squarely on its face.

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

What I learned: Dumb ideas make bad movies. I know this sounds obvious but I see a TON of scripts that are doomed before I even read the first line because the ideas are dumb. Simple test. Throw your idea in with a bunch of others, send them to some friends, don’t tell them which one is yours. Ask them to rank the ideas from best to worst. If your idea isn’t coming out near the top, don’t write it. Or just pitch your idea to people. Regardless of what they say (they’re all going to tell you they “like” it to be nice to you), look at their eyes. Are they excited, or are they confused and bored? A sign of a good idea is when they jump in and start adding ideas. Or they’re just excited. If someone looks genuinely excited about your idea, you know you have something good.