I’m not sure what I was expecting from a January horror film. But it certainly wasn’t what I got. Everybody say it with me: “MA-MA.”

Genre: Horror
Premise: (from IMDB) Annabel and Lucas are faced with the challenge of raising his young nieces that were left alone in the forest for 5 years…. but how alone were they?
About: “Mama” seems to be the result of a growing trend of directors showing their chops via short films, then expanding those short films into full features or feature assignments. Mama started out as a 2008 short and has now been brought to the big screen, at least in part by Guillermo del Toro (it’s unclear how involved he was with the production). Co-writer Neil Cross is the creator of the show “Luther,” with everyone’s famous Prometheus captain in the lead role, Idris Elba. Andres Muschietti is the co-writer with his wife, and also the director of the film, which stars Jessica Chastain, the Academy Award nominee from Zero Dark Thirty.
Writers: Neil Cross and Andres Muschietti & Barbara Muschietti

Warning.

This movie is scary.

This movie is really scary.

But this movie will also make you cry.

It will hit you on an emotional level that you were not prepared for.

You will be in the theater doing your best to suck back tears before those dreaded lights come on in the end and everybody can see how much of a wuss you are.

In other words, it’s the ideal screenplay that I always ask for in the horror genre but never get. I get cheap scares. I get cheap thrills. I get cheap characters. I never get horror that makes me feel something. And I sure didn’t expect it from this film. I remember seeing the preview in the theater a month ago and laughing. You had kids crawling around like spiders while the word “Mama” was echoed theatrically in a child’s voice. I didn’t see any way this could be anything other than awful.

Boy was I wrong. Mama is the best movie I’ve seen in half a year. It would’ve been in my Top 5 of 2012 easily. Instead, it was released in the studio dumping ground of late January and February. But this is far from a piece of studio trash.

Mama starts with a harrowing opening scene featuring a deranged suburban father breaking down after the 2008 financial meltdown. He kills his wife, a couple of his co-workers, then grabs his two young daughters and starts driving. Where? He doesn’t know. He just needs to get away from here. His disorientation eventually results in his car shooting off a ledge in the mountains. The family survives the fall and starts marching through the woods, looking for shelter.

They find it in a small dilapidated cabin. But soon after going inside, they realize that somebody else lives here. And when Daddy decides to take the rest of the family with him to that big suburban block party in the sky, that house host (who we only see parts of) rips his head off and starts raising the girls herself.

Five years later, the father’s brother, who thankfully still has his head on straight, is desperately looking for the family. Miraculously, after looking everywhere in those mountains, he finds them. Except the girls are anything but the ones who left on that fateful day. They’re alone, malnourished, dirty, and, well, “feral” would be the only way to describe it. They scamper about on all fours and haven’t seen a bottle of Head & Shoulders in quite some time, as you can confirm below.

Over the next three months, a psychiatrist and his team carefully work the kids back into society and eventually the daughters are able to move in with their Uncle and his girlfriend, the too-cool-for-school Annabel. Annabel has her own shit going on. She’s a guitarist in a rock band. She’s used to living life on her terms. She was just dating this guy cause he was fun. Now she finds herself in the unenviable position of playing mother, a role she’s clearly not ready for.

After the girls move in, strange things start happening. The couple begins to hear noises, and the girls can be heard playing and laughing with somebody. One night, the disturbance becomes so intense, the Uncle gets up to see what he can find. He sees something that can’t be explained, stumbles backwards, over the railing, and slams headfirst into the stairs below, the force so great it sends him into a coma.

You know what that means . Annabel is now stuck on her own with the kids. And I don’t care if you’re mother of the year. No one wants to get stuck with kids who scamper around on all fours and tell you things like, “Don’t hug me. She’ll get jealous.” At least no one I know. While Annabel’s simply trying to make it through each day, the children’s psychiatrist has been studying the children’s tapes, and becomes interested in the girls’ repeated references to a woman who raised them in the cabin. At first he assumes that woman is part of their imagination. But the more he looks into it, the more it looks like this woman may in fact be real. And that she’ll stop at nothing to get her kids back.

Ma-ma.

The structure behind this screenplay was exceptional . I can’t remember reading a horror script that had this much forward momentum – that never got boring – that never got weak. There were a lot of things that contributed to that. Let’s see if we can identify some of them.

As you all know, I like screenplays with strong character goals. And that doesn’t change when it comes to the horror genre. I love Naomi Watts desperately trying to solve the “7-Days” tape in The Ring. I love the family trying to get their daughter back in Poltergeist. I love the mother trying to exorcise the demon inside her daughter in The Exorcist. But with the horror genre, you occasionally get the type of movie where a force is haunting our characters and we just sort of sit back and watch it happen. You see this, for the most part, in movies like, “The Others” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” and more recently in the Paranormal Activity franchise.

These are much harder stories to pull off because nobody’s going after anything. By including a character goal, your story gets pulled along the track by someone seeking to solve a problem. When you don’t have anyone pulling, your’e obviously stuck in one place.  And how interesting is that?

So what Mama does is really cool. It does both. Within the house, Annabel is taking care of these girls while all this crazy shit is happening. That’s the “haunting” section. Then the psychiatrist has a goal. He suspects that the “mother” these girls are referring to wasn’t made up, as he originally suspected, but that she might be real. So he starts investigating that possibility. This works really well since we’re able to cut back and forth between the haunting and the investigation, allowing a sort of “cheat” where we get the best of both worlds.

Another real strength of Mama is its main character, Annabel, and the situation it places here in. We establish early on that she’s a terrible parent and is only in this thing for the Uncle. So when the twist comes with the uncle falling into the coma, the story switches gears to place the worst character for the job in a position where she has to do the job. What a great story choice! I mean how much more compelling is that than having the loving doting perfect Uncle around all the time?  If that were the case, there would be no conflict, because Annabel would never be forced to deal with the children. This was one of several really slick story choices I give the writers credit for.  Get the fucking uncle out of the picture.

Then there was the brilliant integration of the subplots. You had the psychiatrist. You had the Uncle in the hospital. You had the grandmother, who wanted custody of the kids. Then, of course, you have the girls’ own interactions with Mama herself.

And the reason I’m going gaga over all of this is because I read the bad versions of these screenplays every day. Where there are no subplots. It’s just people in a house with something weird attacking them. And that gets boring after 30 pages. Here we have so many subplots to keep weaving in and out of the main plot, that the story always remains fresh.

I also loved the decision to use two children. 99 out of 100 writers would’ve made the more predictable choice of going with one child, because one spooky child is what we always see. Of course, one spooky child is also cliché and therefore boring. By adding a second child, it opened up all these new avenues, and boy did the writers take advantage of it. One of the most brilliant choices in was to have one of the children pull away from Mama (and gravitate towards Annabel) and the other prefer Mama.

(spoiler) This created the all important CONFLICT that you want in every character dynamic (even if the dynamic is two young children) and led to a shocking, emotionally satisfying climax, one that you never could’ve achieved with a single child. And it’s why I keep going on about this same old advice – AVOID THE OBVIOUS CHOICE. Not only is it boring, but when you push yourself to go with the non-obvious, it almost always opens up new story directions that you never could’ve predicted. Why? Because nobody else has gone down that path before!  so they’ve never found those choices.

There were only a few minor things that bothered me. I didn’t understand how this thing could travel from house to house through the walls. That was vague. The moths seemed more spooky than story-relevant (although I did like their payoff). And there was a laughably clumsy moment late in the story where Annabel is driving to the forest and nearly runs over the Uncle, who just happened to be stumbling onto the road at that moment. But other than that, this was a GREAT cinematic experience, the kind you dream of having every time you pay 18 bucks. Top-notch storytelling, top-notch movie-making. I will go to see this one again!

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive (go see it now!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: I absolutely LOVED the execution of the character flaw here and it fits in perfectly with the article I wrote the other day. Annabel’s flaw is that she doesn’t want to parent. She doesn’t want that responsibility. You’ll notice that the entire story, then, is designed to challenge this flaw. Annabel is thrust into the position as the sole parent of two young girls. They’re resisting. She’s resisting. But as the script goes on, she starts to change, begins to care for them, and in the end, (spoiler) she’s willing to fight an otherworldly creature with her life in order to save them. It’s the ultimate character transformation, and it’s a big reason why this ending was so emotional.

Warrior may not have made the splash it had hoped to, but that doesn’t mean MMA-themed movies are dead. Someone out there is going to write an MMA-centered classic. The question is, is it today’s writer?

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 effect of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: (from writer) Action
Premise: (from writer) Way To The Cage chronicles the fictional formation of ultimate fighting when an underdog brawler fights his way off the streets and forces his way onto the world stage to challenge the international no holds barred champion in the first Mixed Martial Arts match ever sanctioned in the United States.
About: Says the writer, “ I’ve been on the mat with some of the best fighters in the world and choked unconscious. But I’m just a writer. What if I had set out on a journey to discover myself, and along the way…created the perfect fighting style?” Also: “Way To The Cage placed in the 2nd Round of the Austin Film Festival Competition 2012 (Top 10% out of 6,500). You should read it because of my personal experience watching Mixed Martial Arts blossom in the early years. I also wanted to treat reoccurring themes in “fighting” movies with more respect. And didn’t want to fall victim to using sex & violence as cliches.”
Writer: Richard Michael Lucas
Details: 114 pages

This is sort of an offbeat choice for a script review. I’m not really into the MMA. I’m a lover, not someone who jumps into a cage and fights to the death. But I also recognize that if you only stay within the genres that you like as a reader, reading can get boring. You miss out on some potentially cool experiences. “Desperate Hours” is not a script I would’ve normally picked up. Ditto “The Ends Of The Earth.” And both of them turned out to be great.

Also, I like to occasionally review a script that’s placed in a well-known contest. It’s important for a writer to not only know the level of quality required for a script sale, but the level of quality required to be a Nicholl finalist, or a Nicholl quarter-finalist, or, in this case, a top 10% finisher in the Austin Screenplay Competition. So what *is* the difference? Probably consistency. You often find SOME good things in these scripts, but there are just as many things that need work.  I’m hoping that that’s not the case here, though. I’d love it if the competition got it wrong and we found a gem.

Way To The Cage places us back in 1992 and introduces us to 19 year-old Philly local, Josh King. Josh is an odd duck, someone who’s not interested in pursuing the well-traveled blue collar path of his fellow Philadelphians. He wants to fight for a living. Which is hard enough as it is. I don’t know how many people make a living at fighting, but it’s probably less than the number of people who make a living at screenwriting, so it’s a tough gig.

But Josh has managed to make things even tougher on himself. He doesn’t want to box or wrestle. He wants to be a part of a new Japanese/Brazilian movement of free-form fighting known as Mixed Martial Arts. In other words, Josh has made his goal about as impossible as it can be.

After studying the fighting styles of these unique fighters through a series of underground bootlegged tapes, Josh perfects his own unique approach to mixed martial arts before heading off to Los Angeles where this free-form fighting style is in its infancy. It’s there where he becomes obsessed with finding and fighting the current face of MMA, Brazilian mega-fighter, Merco.

Josh fights his way up through a series of former Merco opponents and gains enough respect to get invited to Japan to fight on the MMA circuit there. At first he gets pummeled. But Josh’s strength is his ability to invent his own moves and figure out his own solutions. So soon he’s defeating the very fighters he was losing to, and finally gets the big showdown he’s been waiting for – a one-on-one with Merco.

I can see why Way To The Cage made it to the second round at Austin. It looks like a screenplay. It smells like a screenplay. The writing is clean. There’s none of that stopping and needing to re-read sentences that plagues so many amateur scripts. From a bird’s eye view, Way To The Cage looks like a professional piece of work. Richard deserves credit for that.

However, when you take a closer look, when you start to dissect the scenes and the characters, you find that, unfortunately, there are some issues here. And I’m hoping Richard will indulge me. This isn’t meant to disparage what he’s accomplished. It takes a lot of work to get to this point in your writing. But in order to take the next step, just like all the work Richard had to put in to get to the top of the fighting game, he’ll have to put in to become a top writer.

The biggest problem is that there isn’t any drama. Remember, drama emerges from resistance, from conflict. Forces and obstacles colliding against each other. Like we were talking about the other day with The Graduate. Mrs. Robinson desperately wants to seduce Ben. Ben desperately wants to escape Mrs. Robinson. Each character is the other’s obstacle, and the resulting collisions are what make the scene so electric.

There’s very little drama or conflict in Way To The Cage at all. In fact, in the first 30 pages – the entire first act – there isn’t a single scene that I’d say has conflict (except for maybe the Bronco fight). Usually it was Josh easily defeating some street fighter. Josh talking with his father. Josh talking with his best friend. Josh talking with his ex-girlfriend. Josh sitting outside his mother’s grave at the cemetery.

Compare that to Rocky. In the first act we get a great scene where Rocky finds out his gym locker’s been revoked. He barges into the gym and challenges Mick, the owner, about it. Mick fights back with a vengeance and the two go at it in front of everyone. THAT is conflict. THAT is drama. THAT’s a scene we remember.

We don’t get anything like that here. It just feels like Josh is drifting through his days. That’s not to say setting up Josh’s everyday life isn’t important. But you have to do it in a way that ENTERTAINS US. And the key to doing that is giving your characters goals (find out why my locker’s been taken from me) and putting obstacles in front of those goals (Mick refuses to give him his locker back).

Secondly, there were way too many obvious and cliché choices in the story. I say this all the time but when I’m 30 pages ahead of the script, when I’m never surprised, when every choice is something I’ve seen in a previous movie before, I have no choice but to check out. And the writer shouldn’t be surprised about that. He would do the same thing if he were me reading a script like this. Which brings up an interesting conundrum. Too many writers believe that when THEY’RE writing the cliché, it’s somehow different, because THEY’RE different, and therefore the cliché will come off differently.

I mean here we have the dad who wants his son to give up on the fighting thing and come work with him on the docks (make the “safe” choice in life). We have a dead mother. We have scenes where dad and son are remembering how great mom was while sitting at her grave. The romantic interest “doesn’t date fighters.” I just wasn’t getting anything that I hadn’t seen in these kinds of movies before.

The one area where I saw some potential was with Tommy, Josh’s friend. Although it’s unclear exactly what happened, it appears that six months prior, Josh crashed a car with Tommy in it, destroying his legs and putting him in a wheelchair. That storyline could’ve gone to some interesting places. Strangely, however, Tommy seemed to have no problem with Josh whatsoever. And when Josh moves to LA, Tommy’s storyline is pretty much done. Again, there was zero conflict in their relationship, zero issues that needed to be resolved.

The thing that was so great about Rocky was that it hinged on three really fascinating relationships. There was Rocky and Adrian. Rocky and Paulie. And Rocky and Mick.  None of those relationships were easy.  That’s why we remember Rocky. We don’t remember Rocky because of the fighting. And unfortunately, that’s all Way To The Cage seems interested in. There are tons of fights and they’re all meticulously detailed. Which is great. It’s fine. But as a reader, I’m not interested in how well a writer can execute the description of a reverse choke-hold. I’m interested in who the character in that choke-hold is. What are his demons? What are his flaws? What’s holding him back? What needs to be resolved with the other people in his life?

I mean what needs to be resolved with any of these characters here? Nothing really. Him and his dad are fine. Him and his friend are fine. Even him and his ex-girlfriend get along well. The only people he doesn’t get along with are a few of the people he fights. And since we barely know those people, we don’t really care if Josh defeats them or not.

To Richard’s credit, he does a really good job building up Merco, the villain, so that when he finally enters the picture, we’re intrigued to see how it will play out between him and Josh. But even there, there were some strange choices that lessened the impact of their collision. There was something about others wanting Josh to become an artificial “villain” to Merco so promoters could create a rivalry. It was really murky and didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Moving forward, the number one thing I’d recommend Richard do is study conflict. You have to learn how to create conflict in every scene so that you can have drama in those scenes. If all your characters are doing is talking through stuff, that’s not a scene. And three or four of those in a row and your script is dead. When I see that, I know the script’s not going to be any good. Injecting drama is a MUST so you HAVE to learn how to do it.

I’d also probably re-work the structure. Nothing really happens in Philly for 30 pages. The LA section also wanders a lot. It isn’t until we get to Japan that it feels like our character is beginning his story. That’s where he encounters the most conflict, the highest stakes, his first true setbacks.  It’s where we get some actual CONFLICT.  Yet it’s the shortest part of the script.

I’d start the story a few years later as well, when this kind of fighting had already taken off. And Josh (whose unique style has made him a local celebrity in Philly) realizes that if he’s going to make a living off MMA, he’s going to have to go where the big boys are, in LA. Then get rid of Japan. It’s too weird to cram a whole other country into the final act. Establish some big tournament in LA as soon as Josh lands (the first ever MMA tournament), and Josh struggles as soon as he gets there. Unlike Philly, there are fighters coming in from all over the world. It’s a different league. But in the end, preferably through overcoming his flaw (more on that in “What I learned”) he wins the tournament and establishes himself as the best.

I realize that’s a bit cliché but the big problem with this script is that it wanders. It NEEDS FOCUS. An announced tournament early on does that. That’s why the underrated Warrior worked. That’s why Rocky worked. It’s why The Karate Kid worked. I mean you can take a chance and focus on a more understated “street” like finale. But Sylvester Stallone found out what happens when you do that when he made Rocky 5. It didn’t work out.

Anyway, I’ve been pretty harsh here. But I’m sure Richard has endured much worse on the mat. Improvement is the name of the game in screenwriting. Learn from your mistakes, figure out how to get better, then use what you’ve learned in the next script. Good luck! :)

Script link: Way To The Cage

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: “Way To The Cage” is a good example of what happens if you don’t give your main character a flaw. Like we discussed yesterday, no flaw typically means no depth, and I definitely felt that here. Josh was a pretty straightforward uncomplicated character (he just wanted to be a fighter) so he was kind of boring. Looking back at the flaws I highlighted yesterday, we could have added any number of those to Josh to give him some meat. Maybe fighting was more important to him than friends and family (Flaw #1). Maybe he’s too reckless, using his fighting for the wrong reasons, which keeps getting him in trouble (Flaw #8). Or maybe he can’t move on from his mother’s death (#11). A solid character flaw here would’ve added a lot to the hero and a lot to the story.

What’s the easiest way to tell the difference between an amateur and a pro script? That’s easy: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. The pros know how to do it. Amateurs don’t. Most amateurs don’t even attempt to add character development. And the ones who do usually use something like addiction or the death of a loved one to add depth. It’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t add these traits. But if you really want to delve into your character and make him/her three-dimensional, you want to give them a flaw, then have them battle that flaw during their journey, only to overcome it in the end. This is called a “transformation,” or an “arc.” It’s when your character starts in a negative place and finishes in a positive place. If you really want to boil it down and get rid of the fancy-schmancy screenwriting terms, it’s called “change.” And the best movies have central characters who go through a big change.

Now I don’t have 50 hours to write about character development so I can’t get too detailed here. But I should tell you a few things before I get to the meat of the article. Character flaws are more prominent in some genres than others. For example, you should ALWAYS include a character flaw in a comedy. Our inability to overcome our flaws is essentially what leads to all the laughs in the genre. Action movies, on the other hand, often have heroes who don’t change. The story moves too fast to explore the characters in a meaningful way. Thrillers are similar in that respect, although a good thriller will find a way to squeeze in a character flaw (I remember that movie “Phone Booth” with Colin Farrel and how it dealt with a selfish character). With horror, it depends on what kind of horror you’re writing. If you’re writing a slasher flick, character flaws aren’t necessary. A thinking-person’s horror film, though? Yeah, you want a flaw (the lead’s flaw in The Orphange was that she coudln’t move on with her life – she was obsessed with the past). In dramas, you definitely want flaws. Westerns as well. Period pieces, usually.

In my own PERSONAL opinion, you can and should ALWAYS give your characters flaws, no matter what the genre. People are just more interesting when they’re battling something internally. Without a flaw, without something holding them back, characters don’t have to struggle to achieve their goal. And that’s boring! Think about it. I always tell you to place obstacles in front of your hero so that it’s difficult for them to achieve their goal. Well what if while your character’s battling all these EXTERNAL obstacles, he also has to battle a huge INTERNAL obstacle?? Much more interesting, right??

You just need to match the kind of flaw and level of intensity of that flaw to the kind of story you’re telling. For example, Raiders is a fun action flick, so we don’t need a big deep flaw for Indy. Hence, Indy’s flaw is his lack of belief in religion and the supernatural. He doesn’t care about the Ark’s supposed “powers,” because he doesn’t believe it has any. But in the end, he finally believes in a higher being, closing his eyes so the spirits from the Ark don’t kill him. It’s a very thin and weak execution of Indy’s flaw, but the story itself is fun and light so it does the job.

The problem I always ran into as a writer was that nobody gave me a toolbox of flaws that I could use. That’s why I wrote today’s article. I wanted to give you eleven (the new “ten”) of the most common character flaws that have worked over time in movies. Now when you read these, you’ll probably say, “Uhh, but that’s too simple.” Yeah, the most popular flaws are simple. And the reason they’re simple is because they’re universal. That’s why audiences find them so moving – they can relate to them. Remember that – the more universal the flaw, the more people you’ll have who can identify with that flaw.

1) FLAW: Puts work in front of family and friends – This is a flaw that tons of people relate to, especially here in the U.S. where our country is set up to make us feel like losers unless we work 60 hours a week. Balancing your personal and professional life is always a challenge. It’s something I personally deal with all the time. I work a ton on this site. And when I’m not working on the site, I’m working on future ideas for the site. That leaves me with very little time to go out and have fun. The question then becomes, over the course of the story, “Will the hero realize that friends and family are more important than work?” We see this explored in movies time and time again. Most recently we saw it in Zero Dark Thirty (in which Maya never overcomes her flaw). Or last year with Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) in Moneyball. Again, it has to match the story you’re telling, but it’s always an interesting flaw to explore.

2) FLAW: Won’t let others in – This is a common flaw that plagues millions of people. They’re scared to let others in. Maybe they’ve been hurt by a past lover. Maybe they’ve lost someone close to them. Maybe they’ve been abandoned. So they’ve closed up shop and put up a wall. The quintessential character who exhibits this trait is Will in Good Will Hunting. Will keeps the world at arm’s length, not letting Skylar in, not letting Sean (his shrink) in, not letting his professor in. The whole movie is about him learning to let down his walls and overcome that fear. We see this in Drive, too, with Ryan Gosling’s character refusing to get close to anyone until he meets this girl. We also see it with George Clooney’s character in Up In The Air.

3) FLAW: Doesn’t believe in one’s self – This should be an identifiable flaw for anyone in the entertainment industry. This business is full of doubters, especially when you’re still looking for a way in. It’s tough to muster up the confidence in one’s self to keep going and keep fighting every day. But this doubt isn’t limited to the entertainment industry. Billions of people lack confidence in themselves. So it’s a very identifiable trait and one of the reasons a main character overcoming it can illicit such a strong emotional reaction from the audience. It makes us think we can finally believe in ourselves and break through as well! We see this in such varied characters as Rocky Balboa, Luke Skywalker, Neo, and King George VI (The King’s Speech).

4) FLAW: Doesn’t stand up for one’s self – This flaw is typically found in comedy scripts and one of the easier flaws to execute. You just put your character in a lot of situations where they could stand up for themselves but don’t. And then in the end, you write a scene where they finally stand up for themselves. The simplicity of the flaw is also what makes it best for comedy, since it’s considered thin for the more serious genres. I also find for the same reason that the flaw works best with secondary characters. We see it with Ed Helms’ character in The Hangover. Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (afraid to stand up to his father). And George McFly (Marty’s dad) in Back To The Future.

5) FLAW: Too selfish – This flaw I’m sure goes back to the very first time two homo sapiens met. There’s always been someone who puts themselves in front of others. Everybody in the world has someone like this in their life, so it’s extremely relatable and therefore a fun flaw to explore. It does come with a warning label though. Selfish characters are harder to make likable. Just by their nature, they’re not people you want to pal up with. So you need to look for clever ways to make them endearing for the audience. Jim Carrey in Liar Liar for instance – an extremely selfish character – would do anything for his son. Seeing how much he loves him makes us realize that, deep down, he’s a good guy. But it’s still a tough flaw to pull off. I can’t count the number of scripts readers or producers or agents have rejected because the main character “isn’t likable,” and usually it was because of a selfish asshole main character. A few more notable selfish characters were Han Solo in Star Wars, Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day, and Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

6) FLAW: Won’t grow up – This is another comedy-centric flaw that tends to work well in the genre due to the fact that men who refuse to grow up are funny. We see it in Knocked Up. We see it in The 40 Year Old Virgin. We saw it with Jason Bateman’s character in Juno. We even see it on the female side with Lena Dunham’s character in the HBO show, Girls. I’ll admit that this flaw hit a saturation point a couple of years ago, so either you want to find a new spin on it (like Lena did – using a female character) or wait a year or two until it becomes fresh again. But it’s been proven to work because of how relatable a flaw it is. Who isn’t afraid to grow up? Who isn’t afraid of all the responsibilities of being an adult? That’s what I want to get across to you guys. These flaws all work because they’re universal. Everybody has experienced them in some capacity.

7) FLAW: Too uptight, too careful, too anal – You tend to see this flaw in television a lot. There’s always that one character who’s too anal, the kind of person you want to scream at and say, “LET LOOSE FOR ONCE!” We all have friends like this as well, so it’s another extremely relatable flaw. Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is plagued with this flaw. Jennifer Garner’s uptight hopeful mother in Juno is driven by this flaw. And you’ll see this flaw in Romantic Comedies a lot, in order to give contrast to the fun outgoing girl our main character usually meets (Pretty Woman).

8) FLAW: Too Reckless – You’ll usually find this flaw in more testosterone-centered flicks. Like with Jeremy Renner’s character in The Hurt Locker, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in Lethal Weapon, or James T. Kirk in the latest incarnation of Star Trek. The flaw dictates the character enter a lot of big chaotic situations in order to battle his flaw, so it makes sense. I’m not a huge fan of this flaw, though, because I believe the best flaws are universal. That’s why they emotionally manipulate audiences, because people in the audience have experienced those flaws themselves. Recklessness isn’t something people emotionally respond too. That’s not to say it isn’t effective and doesn’t allow for a satisfactory change in an action flick. It just doesn’t hit that emotional note for me like a lot of these other flaws do.

9) FLAW: Lost faith – This is a bit of cheat because questioning or losing one’s faith isn’t necessarily a flaw. But it’s an incredibly relatable experience. Something like 97% of the people on this planet believe in a higher being. But a majority of those people question their faith because now and then something terrible happens to shake it. Which is why you’ll see a ton of characters enduring this “flaw.” We saw it with Father Damian Karras in The Exorcist after his mother dies. We see it with Mel Gibson’s character in Signs after his wife is killed in a car accident. Again, losing someone close to us is a universal experience, so it’s one of those “flaws” that works like a charm when executed well.

10) FLAW: Pessimism/cynicism – This flaw isn’t used as much as the others, but you’ve seen it in movies like Sideways with Miles (Paul Giammati has actually made a living out of this flaw), Terrance Mann ( James Earl Jones) in Field of Dreams, and Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club. I always get nervous around flaws that make characters unlikable and pessimism tends to do that for me. For example, I never warmed to Sideways as much as others because Miles’ pessimism was so grating. But on the flip side, tons of people relate to that character for the very same reason. They’re just as frustrated with life as he is. Which is why the movie has its fans.

11) FLAW: Can’t move on – This is one of the lesser-known flaws but a powerful one. It’s basically about people who can’t move on, who are stuck on someone or something from the past. Their obsession with that past has stilted their growth, and brought their life to a screeching halt. Most famously, you saw this in Up, with Carl Fredricksen, who hasn’t been able to get past his wife’s death. But you may also remember it from the movie Swingers, where Mike (Jon Favreau) is still obsessed with the girl who dumped him. He keeps waiting for that call. With relationships being so fickle, people are experiencing this flaw ALL THE TIME, so it’s very relatable and therefore very powerful when done right.

So there you have it. You’ve now got eleven flaws to start applying to your characters. And remember, those aren’t the only flaws you can use. They’re just the most popular. As long as you start your character in a negative place and explore how they get to a positive place, you’re creating a character with an arc, a transformation. There’s more to character development than this, which I discuss in my book, but getting the character flaw down is probably the most important step.   Feel free to offer some of your own character flaw suggestion in the comments section. I’ll be watching closely so I can steal the best ones. :)

Today’s screenplay is a cult classic in the spec world. Only true insiders know about it. But that’s about to change.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: Between 1996 and 2005, three enormous personalities dominated the trade headlines with their petty antics. No, this story is not about Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Russel Crowe. It’s about Disney Head Michael Eisner, Co-Head Michael Ovitz, and Disney #3 Jeffrey Katzenberg.
About: So here’s the deal with this script. It’s written anonymously, supposedly because the writer didn’t want to get in trouble for laying out an expose on what went on behind-the-scenes in one of the most f*cked-up marriages to ever drive a Hollywood studio. These were powerful men who made big decisions. If you’re detailing their secret meetings, you probably want to keep your identity out of it. What I don’t understand is if this script was sent out to sell, or just something Hollywood insiders passed around for fun. Either way, it’s one of those well-known cult-scripts, which means it’s high time I reviewed it.
Writer: ?????
Details: 133 pages (labeled as 1st Draft)

Let’s just get something out of the way right now. This is not a good script. It’s unfocused. It rambles. I’m not sure who the main character is.  Characters always say exactly what they’re thinking (“on the nose” dialogue). It’s kind of like what would happen if an Amateur Friday writer was told to write an expose on the Michael Eisner Disney years using the same format that Aaron Sorkin did for The Social Network.

With that said, it’s a good STORY. Why is it a good story? Because you have big boys acting like big babies and people love to watch big babies pretending to be big boys. After we get past the first three-quarters of the script – which is all setup – things really start to get juicy. And confounding. And bizarre. I read the script pretty fast so I may get some of the facts wrong, but here’s how I remember it going down.

We start out, like The Social Network, at a courtroom, where Disney is being sued by its shareholders because Michael Eisner, the studio head, fired his best friend (Michael Ovitz) after hiring him just 16 months earlier, and giving him a 200 million dollar severance payout. Shareholders don’t like when you hand out 200 million of their dollars for f*cking up, so naturally they’re pissed. But before Judge Judy makes her entrance, we cut back to 8 years ago, to the year 1996.

At the time, Disney’s feature department was stumbling. The company just didn’t seem to know how to make movies anymore. So they hire Michael Eisner, who was running ABC television programming at the time, and things started to turn around. A huge reason for this was Eisner’s number 3, a smart hard-working wizard of a man named Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg was credited for making groundbreaking decisions like making Disney’s movie library available on video for the first time. He also had an acute understanding of what audiences wanted, and helped produce some huge hits for the Mouse House.

Across town, Eisner’s best friend, Michael Ovitz, was doing quite well for himself as well, starting up and running super-agency CAA. Ovitz got so many big clients and controlled so many of the elements that got movies made that he was quickly tabbed the most powerful man in Hollywood. Ovitz could pretty much do anything he wanted. He was Superman.

Back at Disney, Eisner began to get jealous of Katzenberg’s success. The man was getting a lot of credit for doing a lot of things, mainly because someone kept leaking stories about his amazing achievements to the press. Eisner suspected the culprit was Katzenberg himself. Increasingly suspicious, Eisner distanced himself from Katzenberg, a decision that would prove costly, since he had promised Katzenberg the number 2 position in the company if anything were to ever happen to Frank Wells, the current number 2. Well, Frank Wells ended up dying in a helicopter crash. Which put Eisner on the spot. Would he hold true to his word?

Apparently not. In fact, Eisner became famous for promising things to people then claiming he never said them in the first place. And according to him, he never promised Katzenberg the position. So Katzenberg fled to create Dreamworks with Spielberg, but not without leaving a hefty bill. In his contract, Katzenberg was promised more than 200 million dollars in royalties from the movies he helped make. Despite it being there in plain print, Eisner refused to give him this money. Out of pettiness? Out of defiance? It’s unclear. But he just couldn’t fathom the idea of giving Katzenberg what he was due.

Meanwhile, the hunt for a new number 2 was heating up. Eisner had to pick someone soon. But the pool of players was tiny. Eisner considered mega-friend Ovitz, but it looked like Ovitz was going to get hired to run Universal. However, in a twist of fate, Ovitz was passed over for the job by Ron Meyer, a huge blow to Ovitz’s bulletproof image. This allowed Eisner to make a play for his best friend. He knew Ovitz wouldn’t take a number 2 position. He wasn’t a number 2 kind of guy. So Eisner said, “How bout we be co-heads?” Ovitz agreed and into Disney he went.

But things started going wrong immediately. On his very first day, all of the Disney executives told Ovitz they refused to report to him. Sandy Litvack, who thought HE was getting the number 2 position at Disney, also took Frank Wells’ giant old office, putting Eisner’s “co-head” down a floor and in a small office, which didn’t make any sense. But Eisner didn’t seem bothered by the issue. Nor did he seem bothered by the fact that nobody planned to report to Ovitz, essentially ostracizing him on the first day of the job.

Ovitz had a feeling something wasn’t right, but knew jumping ship right after losing out on the Universal job would cause irreparable damage to his status and reputation. So he stayed. And it only got worse. Eisner seemed to ignore Ovitz. Whenever Ovitz did put a deal together or come up with a big idea, Eisner nixed it. Eisner seemed so set on blocking or disregarding anything Ovitz did, that Ovitz became convinced it was a setup- that he was brought in to fail. Except he couldn’t figure out why his best friend of 30 years would do something like that to him.

16 months after being hired, Ovitz was fired, given 200 million to basically go away. And that’s what he would’ve done had the shareholders not sued. But they did, which is why we get to read about this story today.

Like I said, this script is a mess. It doesn’t get good until Ovitz is hired at Disney. THAT’S where the story begins so THAT’S where the bulk of the screenplay should’ve been focused. But that doesn’t happen until page 80! Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start Facebook until page 80 in The Social Network? And everything before that was backstory. We would see Zuckerberg in high school. How he suffered to find friends. How he barely got into Harvard. How his parents struggled to pay tuition.

Yeah, all of that would be nice to know. But it’s ALL BACKSTORY. And you can only squeeze so much backstory into a script. Audiences are much more interested in what’s happening NOW than what was happening before. The best writers figure out a way to squeeze in all that backstory yet still keep the story moving. In Two Blind Mice, I don’t need to know about Jeffrey Katzenberg’s time at Paramount. I don’t need 50 pages of what happened at subsequent studios and agencies BEFORE Ovitz showed up at Disney. I need to see Ovitz SHOW UP at Disney. Because that’s where this gets interesting.

Imagine you’re the top dog in your field. You’re heavily recruited to your best friend’s company. It’s one of the biggest splashiest marriages in your line of work. You then show up on the first day…AND NOBODY GIVES A SHIT. In fact, they SHUN YOU. Even your secretary gives you a hard time. What do you do? THAT’S a compelling character to me. What does Ovitz do in that situation? How does he survive? How does he find a way out of this? Why not follow Ovitz from page 1 and make this a tragedy? A fall from grace?

That was another problem for me, was that we weren’t following one character. We were following a group of characters. And because of that, we didn’t know who we were supposed to identify with. It’s not that that can’t be done, but often the strategy leaves the reader stranded or torn, like a dog whose owners are standing on both sides of him, both calling for him to “come here boy!” Which way do you go?

You also saw wasted scenes, such as numerous cuts to Eisner and Ovitz’s wives, who were also best friends. I don’t have any idea what these scenes or these characters brought to the table outside of maybe making it clearer that Ovitz and Eisner were close. But this is why this is a first draft. You explore these things. You go off on tangents and see what you can find. Then in the next draft, your job is to go through your script and tell yourself, “Cut everything that isn’t absolutely necessary to tell the story.” These two are not necessary, so I’m betting they would’ve become one of the first cuts.

What’s also interesting about Two Blind Mice is that it’s kind of a dual-protagonist script where we don’t like either of the characters. They’re both annoying, with Eisner being the more annoying of the two. It’s awfully hard to write a story without anyone to sympathize with (even The Social Network had the idealistic Eduardo to latch onto), and if this story wasn’t so crazy and true, this would’ve been a death knell for the script. However it is interesting that at a certain point, the writer decides to side with Ovitz, and make him the screwed-over hero in this whole ordeal. It’s almost like he realized this very criticism midway through the script and went, “Oh yeah, I have to make them like someone.” Indeed, when Eisner starts being a complete dick to Ovitz, it’s the first time we develop a rooting interest for someone.

I can see why this got passed around. It’s detailing the secret power struggle of two of the biggest titans in town. Hollywood loves themselves some gossip so passing this to a friend was a no-brainer. As a script, though, it’s messy, and would need numerous rewrites to get it where it needs to be. Still, it’s a fascinating enough story that it’s worth reading.

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

What I learned: You have a choice with your first draft. You can either write a “vomit” draft, where you just let it all out at once. Or you can carefully outline your script so that it’s more focused and structured. A vomit draft is generally referred to as a “lazy man’s draft” because you don’t have to prep. You just write. As a result, it’s often embarrassingly sloppy, and will require 3 to 4 drafts just to get it on par with an outlined first draft. To me, Two Blind Mice (great title by the way) feels sloppy, like a vomit draft, which means way more work going forward. I’m not saying either way is right or wrong. But I will promise you that a vomit draft is going to take a ton more work to get in shape.

For the foreseeable future, every Tuesday will be a Scriptshadow Secrets type breakdown of a great movie, giving you 10-12 screenwriting lessons from some of the best movies of all time. Today will be the first entry, “The Graduate.” Next week will be The Big Lewbowski. And going forward from there, I’ll be taking suggestions. Feel free to offer potential films in the comments section, and if you like what someone’s suggested, make sure to “like” their comment so I know what the most popular requests are.

THE GRADUATE

Logline: A college graduate comes back home, where he’s pursued by one of his mother’s friends, a relationship that is tested when he falls in love with the woman’s daughter.

Writers: Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (based on the novel by Charles Webb)

The Graduate allllllmost made it into my book but, to be honest, I was a little scared of it. The movie is based around the one thing every single screenwriting book tells you not to do – include a passive protagonist. I thought, “What if I can’t figure out why it works? It’ll fly in the face of everything I’ve learned.” The good news is, I DID figure it out. What I realized was that the 3-Act structure is basically built around the idea of an active protagonist. Someone wants something (Act 1), they go after it, encountering obstacles along the way (Act 2), and they either get it or don’t (Act 3). If someone isn’t going after something, the 3 Act structure isn’t as relevant, which is why so many scripts that don’t have a goal-oriented hero fall apart. The solution then, is to offset this lack of action somehow. And you do it with one of the most common tools in the craft: CONFLICT – a central focus of this breakdown.  Read on!

1) To quickly convey who your protagonist is, introduce them around people who are the opposite – This is an age-old trick and it never fails. If your hero is crazy, introduce him around a bunch of normal people. If your hero’s too nice, introduce him around a bunch of assholes. The opposing characteristics of these characters will work to highlight your own hero’s traits. So in The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock is introverted and quiet. The writers then THRUST him into his graduation party, where everyone is loud and excited. We wouldn’t have captured Benjamin’s mood nearly as well if all the other characters were just as introverted and quiet as he was.

2) If your hero’s passive, one of the other main characters must be active – If all you have is passive people in your screenplay, then nobody’s going after anything, which means there will be ZERO happening in your script. Someone has to drive the story. In this case, because Ben isn’t active, Mrs. Robinson is. She’s the one who wants Ben, who wants the affair, who pursues Ben. This is why, even though Ben is such a reactive person, stuff is still happening in the story. We have someone pursuing a strong goal.

3) The Power Of Conflict – I realized that the main reason this story works despite its main character being so passive, is that every single scene is STUFFED with conflict. Every scene in The Graduate has either a) two characters who want completely different things, or b) One character keeping/hiding important information from another character.  There is just so much resistance in The Graduate.  Since each individual scene is so good (due to the intense amount of conflict), it distracts us from the fact that there’s no goal driving the story forward (until later, when Ben falls for Elaine).

4) Easiest Scene to Write – One of the easiest ways to make a scene fun is to give one character a SUPER STRONG GOAL and give another character the EXACT OPPOSITE GOAL. This creates conflict in its most potent form, which leads to a high level of drama. It’s no coincidence that this approach created one of the best scenes of all time, Mrs. Robinson trying to keep Ben at the house and seduce him (her goal) while Ben is trying desperately to escape and avoid her seduction (his goal).

5) STAKES ALERT – Notice how when Mr. Robinson invites Ben to a nightcap, he says, “How long have your dad and I been partners?” This is a HUGE piece of information as it raises the stakes in Ben and Mrs. Robinson’s relationship considerably. If the only thing at stake in this affair is Ben’s pride or emotions, that wouldn’t be enough to drive an entire movie. But screwing up his father’s business, that’s a whole different ballgame. You want to make sure the consequences for your characters’ actions are as big as they can possibly be.

6) MID-POINT SHIFT ALERT – The Graduate has one of the best mid-point shifts I’ve ever seen. Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, comes back from school. She and Ben are then set up. The whole second half of the movie now moves to Ben’s relationship with Elaine while he tries to fend off a scorned Mrs. Robinson. Like all good mid-point shifts, it adds a new wrinkle to the story that keeps it fresh. Had they stretched Ben’s relationship with Mrs. Robinson across the entire story all on its own, the movie likely would’ve run out of steam.

7) Cheating/Infidelity scripts must be PACKED with dramatic irony – When you have a character cheating or a couple hiding a relationship from others, you want to put them in as many situations as possible where there’s dramatic irony. For example, when Ben first meets Elaine before their date, Mrs. Robinson is in the room, leering at them from the corner. Same with an early scene where Mr. Robinson invites Ben for a nightcap and Mrs. Robinson (who just tried to seduce Ben moments ago) enters the room. We feel the tension because of the secrets Ben and Mrs. R share. These situations also lead to some great line opportunities, such as when Mr. Robinson says to his wife, “Doesn’t he look like he has to beat the girls off with a stick?” “Yes,” she replies. He does.

8) The “Bad Date” Scene – The Graduate did something really cool that I’ve never noticed before. The story needed to show Ben and Elaine fall in love quickly because Elaine had to go back to college and we had to believe Ben had fallen in love with her enough to chase her there. Normally, I see writers writing these “lovey-dovey” scenes to prove their leads’ love to the audience (see Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones). For whatever reason, these scenes often have the opposite effect, making us nauseous and annoyed by the couple. So The Graduate takes the COMPLETE OPPOSITE approach. Ben’s only going on a date with Elaine because his parents make him. In order not to piss off Mrs. Robinson, he’s a total bitch to Elaine all night, taking her to a strip club and embarrassing her on stage. It gets so bad that Elaine starts crying, making Ben realize how much of a jerk he’s been. He apologizes, which leads to their first kiss. Experiencing a traumatic night instead of an ideal one thrust them much deeper into their relationship, adding the kind of weight to their experience a “happy” date just wouldn’t have been able to achieve. So the next time you write a first-date scene or need to accelerate a relationship, consider your characters NOT getting along instead of getting along.

9) SCENE AGITATOR ALERT – Remember, you should always look for ways to make it difficult on your hero in a scene, especially when they want something badly. So when Ben finally gets to Elaine’s college and spots her getting on a bus, he follows her on in an attempt to win her back. Except Ben isn’t able to sit next to Elaine because someone’s already sitting there. He’s forced, instead, to sit diagonally behind her, meaning he has to lean forward at a weird angle to make his case. It’s awkward. It makes his task difficult. And that’s exactly what you want to do to your character. If it’s too easy, you probably aren’t getting enough drama out of the situation.

10) “Crash the Party” moment – Whenever something’s going too good for too long for your protagonist, “crash the party.” In other words, bring them back down to earth. So later in the movie, after Ben’s chased Elaine to her college and the two have spent multiple scenes having the time of their lives together, Ben arrives back at his hotel to find Mr. Robinson waiting for him. He crashes the party, informing Ben that he knows about the affair, and that there’s no way he’s letting Ben anywhere near his family from this point forward.

These are 10 tips from the movie “The Graduate.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Inception,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!