First off, I just want to thank everybody who’s written in recently to say how much they’ve gotten out of the site the last few years, from the guy who just started writing a couple of weeks ago to even a couple of well-known Hollywood directors. It appears that while there was a highly vocal negative minority, there are thousands of writers/agents/producers/industry people who love the site and just don’t get into the politics of it. It almost made me reevaluate my decision. But for the time being, I’m encouraged by the new format. Change forces you to see everything in a new light, which often leads to new exciting ideas. And I want to explore some of those ideas in the months ahead.

For now, Monday will usually be a screenwriting-centered review of a new movie release (like today’s). Tuesday is going to be a “10 Screenwriting Tips You Can Learn From [Famous Movie]” article like the format I use in my book (this week’s is The Graduate). Wednesday is going to be a bit of a wild-card, but I’m going to try and use it to review unknown/weird/infamous/interesting screenplays from the past. Thursday will be an article. And Friday will be Amateur Friday.

Also, reviewing recent spec sales isn’t totally dead yet. The big complaint from the detractors seemed to be that I publicly posted reviews and/or sent scripts to people. So, once a week, privately via my newsletter, I’m going to review a recent/hot screenplay. These reviews won’t be posted on the site and you’ll have to go searching for the scripts yourselves, but at the very least, you’ll still be able to see what’s making noise in the industry and learn some screenwriting lessons in the process. It’s not ideal. And it sucks we won’t be able to discuss them. But it’s something. So if you’re not already on my mailing list, you’ll probably want to get on it now.

The Scriptshadow Labs will work its way into the line-up as I piece it together (a Macbook implosion and extensive data-recovery process has slowed things down a little – but don’t worry – we’ll get there). And I’ll probably be using the Tuesday and Wednesday slots to try some new stuff here and there. Here’s to seeing where it all goes! And now, Gangster Squad…

Genre: Crime/Period
Premise: A gang lord in 1949 Los Angeles becomes so big that the only way the cops can handle him is to go off-book and wage a war against his empire.
About: Gangster Squad (here’s my old script review – sorry, still haven’t gotten comments transferred over yet) is based on a number of articles from 1940s Los Angeles newspapers. In an offbeat choice, it was directed by Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer. It stars Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, and Emma Stone. The script, written by newcomer Will Beall, was very well-received around town. Beall has since been announced as the writer for the Justice League movie. His other LA cop drama, L.A. Rex, landed high on the 2009 Black List, which is what jump-started his screenwriting career.
Writer: Will Beall (based on the book by Paul Lieberman).

I’m just going to say it. Ruben Fleischer was probably too light-weight of a choice to direct this. I’m all for taking chances on writers and directors. It’s one of the few ways careers can advance in this industry. But that’s the thing with taking chances. There’s a chance they won’t work out. I’d totally forgotten who’d directed this when I went to see it the other day, so I didn’t go in to pre-judge the directing by any means. But when I left, all I could think about was how light-weight the film felt.  The look was too glossy (strange choice for a movie about gangsters). The sets (like the Chinatown sequence) felt overly “set-like.” And the casting, outside of Sean Penn, felt uninspired.

I mean this is actually a cool idea. There’s an untouchable gangster running LA. The police can’t compete with him legally. So the chief puts together an off-the-books “squad” who can act with impunity to take him down. Everything, however, depends on the casting of that squad. And here we have Josh Brolin, who’s plagued with a deadness to his acting. We have Anthony Mackie, who plays the African-American officer, who has zero film presence. We have the T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick, who screams “B-Movie.” We have Michael Pena, who’s as light and feathery as a crepe. And we have Giovanni Ribisi, who’s a great actor but doesn’t leave much of an impression here.

Even the major talent, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, feel like they’re acting more in a school play about gangsters than a 100 million dollar movie. There’s very little chemistry between the two and Gosling doesn’t carry one-tenth the weight he did in Drive. And Emma Stone just looks happy to have gotten this role so she can stretch her acting chops. Though she proceeds to do so mainly by batting her eyelashes and whispering a lot.

The only actor who carries any weight in this movie is Sean Penn, who is so far above all the other actors that his performance actually backfires, shining a light on just how over-matched everybody else is. As a first-time director, I’m not sure how much the studio bullied Ruben into these casting choices, but from my experiences, it’s usually the big actors that the studio pushes on the director, while letting them choose the lesser guys. And the lesser guys here were the movie’s downfall.  The Squad was supposed to be badass.  Unfortunately they turned out half-ass.

Which is too bad, because the script itself is pretty decent. It’s not great, but it’s improved from the older draft that I read in July. For those unfamiliar with the story, here’s a quick breakdown:

There’s this mob boss, Mickey Cohen, who’s running Los Angeles into the ground in 1949. If something isn’t done soon, the city will never recover. Enter Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) the only clean cop in Los Angeles. He’s recruited to scramble together a “Gangster Squad” to take Cohen down. His key recruit is Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) a young selfish cop who finds it’s much easier to let the nasty dogs bark than get in the cage and shut them up. But when the bad guys kill Wooters’ shoe-shine kid (yes, one of the more unfortunate choices in the script), he does a 180, becoming O’Mara’s Number 1. Things get complicated, however, when Wooters falls for Cohen’s girl (played by Emma Stone).

First thing of note here is that the structure is pretty solid. You have the goal (Take down Mickey Cohen), the stakes (if you don’t, Los Angeles crumbles) and eventually the urgency (Cohen is constructing the only wire between Chicago and LA.  If he completes it, which will happen by the end of the week, they’ll have no shot against him).

I’m pretty sure this ticking time bomb was an addition to the draft that I read, and it’s something I’ve been noticing more of lately. Some movies won’t establish their ticking time bomb right away. They instead choose to add it later, usually around the midpoint, as a way to up the stakes, as is seen here in Gangster Squad. Just as they’re getting a handle on Mickey, they find out about this wire he’s building which will give him absolute power. And they only have a week to stop it.

Still, I’m always nervous when long stretches of a screenplay don’t have SOME urgency attached to them. Which is why it might be a good idea to offer a temporary ticking time bomb before the major one arrives (if you choose to have the late arriving TTB). So in Gangster Squad, for example, maybe the word on the street is that the Mayor (who’s on Mickey’s payroll) is replacing Police Chief Parker with one of his guys any day now.  So Parker makes it clear to O”Mara, “We don’t have a lot of time.”  I’m not pretending this is a great idea. I’m just saying it never hurts to look for ways to create an immediacy to your protagonist’s actions.

Now, on the plus side, we have some pretty good (but not great) character development here. On Friday, I criticized the lack of character development in “The Last Ones Out,” saying that there were no real choices that the characters had to make. And character development is about establishing a flaw in your character, then giving him choices that challenge that flaw.

Take O’Mara for example. His flaw is that he puts his work above his family. When he’s given a choice early on to either do what’s safest for his family or form the Gangster Squad, he chooses the Gangster Squad. Over the course of the story, as things get more and more dangerous, he continues to choose his work over the safety of his family. This is character development. Tell us what defines your character, then throw choices at him that make him face this flaw in himself head on.

When it was all said and done, Gangster Squad left me appreciating what Scorsese does a lot more. The film will make Fleischer a much better director in the long-run, but learning the challenges of making a movie like this definitely had an effect on the final product.  Gangster Squad failed to do the job for me.

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Lately I’ve been wondering if there’s a fault in the 3-Act structure. 95% of the movies and screenplays I see get late into the second act and experience this 10-15 minute “boring as hell” lag where all the relationships get resolved and slow dialogue scenes get stacked on top of each other, and the momentum is just sucked out of the story. Gangster Squad was just good enough to keep me watching, but once it hit that Late Second Act, it lost me for good. Specifically the scene where O’Mara and Wooters are sitting on the back porch, drinking, and talking about how things suck. I honestly haven’t figured out the best way to deal with this troubled section. You obviously need to wrap certain storylines up before the climax, but if there are too many “wrap-up” scenes in a row, you lose the audience/reader. Part of the problem may have been the huge character count in Gangster Squad. Too many characters, most of whom we don’t know (who the hell was the guy who hung out with Emma Stone the whole movie??), meant wrapping up character storylines we just didn’t care about. Maybe that’s the big lesson to take away from this. To lessen the length of this potential pitfall section, only include characters you absolutely need in your story. They’re the ones we’ll care about, and therefore the ones whose relationships we’ll WANT to see resolved late in the second act. Even still, I would try to keep this section as short as possible. It kills the momentum of so many screenplays/movies.

Today’s amateur zombie screenplay poses the question – What is character development really?

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 for your screenplay. To help vote for contending amateur script and to stay up to date on which scripts will get reviewed, join my mailing list. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Drama/Zombie
Premise: (from writer) In a quarantined post-viral New York City, Elaine and Cora, two survivors with a strong stance against killing the infected, collide with two brothers who take the exact opposite approach.
About: Today’s writer used this zombie short to get into NYU, which was shot in a couple of days with minimal help.
Writer: Avishai Weinberger
Details: 109 pages

I know what you’re saying. “Another zombie script?” Well there might as well be an echo in the room because that’s exactly what I was thinking. The good news? We’re not alone. Today’s writer began their e-mail with, “I know what you’re thinking. Another zombie script?” So we’re all on the same page here. We’re all worried that this is going to be “just another zombie script.” But! Our guest of honor promises that they’re doing something different, focusing more on character development than zombie slurpage.

And that’s a big reason why I picked this. When writers want to write character pieces, they all have different ideas on what that actually means. Some think it means all of their characters should talk about deep issues and traumatic childhood experiences’n stuff. That’s not character development. That’s boring. What DOES character development entail? Read on to find out.

The Last Ones Out starts with two friends in their late teens stuck in a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn. There’s 17 year old Cora, a mute, and 18 year old Elaine, an alpha female. The pair spend their days looking for food and fending off the occasional zombie. The zombies here are a little different from the kind we’re used to. They look confused, almost afraid. But when they get hungry, they have no problem turning you into a four-course meal.

But as strange as the zombies are, it’s not half as strange as how Elaine deals with these gimpy goofballs. Instead of shooting these bastards square in the forehead like our zombie-killing ancestors have taught us to do, she lures them out into the open and sets them free. She lives by a Terminator 2 no-casualties mantra.

Back in their apartment, Elaine does her best to care for the ailing Cora, who it appears still hasn’t recovered from the trauma of the apocalypse (hey, can ya blame the girl?). So her main focus outside surviving is bringing loopy Cora back to the land of the living, so to speak.

Just as Elaine’s about to give up on a rescue, the duo are visited by two brothers, 24 year old Joseph and 20 year old Ben (Surviving the apocalypse appears to be a young man’s game). While there’s some initial reluctance from the girls, the guys seem pretty genuine, so they let them in. The real point of contention in the group comes later, when Elaine finds out that Joseph is a shoot first and ask questions later kind of guy. Or in other words – a zombie killer! Elaine is not cool with this and gives him the John Connor speech about how you can’t just kill people. Err, Joseph points out, but they’re not people. They’re zombies.

Despite their differences, the group will have to work together when they find out an army is awaiting survivors on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. All they have to do is make a trip to an abandoned hospital, get a few things the military is requesting, and hope they don’t run into any zombies along the way. Yup, I’m sure that’s going to happen.

There’s a lot to learn from The Last Ones Out. Avishai definitely did some things right. There’s a really smooth easy-to-read writing style here and a solid third act. But the first two acts move way too slow and simply don’t have enough direction or meat to keep the reader riveted.

Let’s go back to that question about character development. That’s what Avishai wanted to do here – explore the characters. Was it a success? Well, in my opinion, the characters here weren’t that interesting.  I was kinda annoyed by how Elaine wouldn’t kill zombies.  And I was frustrated (and often confused) as to why Cora wouldn’t talk.  The relationships weren’t that interesting either. There was only minimal conflict between anyone, and the key relationship, between Elaine and Cora, was more confusing than anything (although I’ll admit the confusion was alleviated via a 3rd act payoff).  I felt the characters’ frustration and loneliness and fear.  But because the interactions were so static and neutered, I didn’t feel like anything was developing on the character front.

How can this be fixed? Well, one of the best ways to explore your characters is through their choices. Put difficult choices in front of characters and you’re going to see them develop right in front of our eyes. Let me give you a generic example. What if Elaine and Cora are running out of food and they’re both on the brink of starvation? Elaine knows this. But she’s indicated to Cora that everything’s fine. Does Elaine sneak the food for herself, letting Cora continue to starve?  Does she share the food, even though it’s not enough for both of them?  Or does she selflessly give all the food to Cora?  How she reacts to this problem gives us insight into who she is.  Then maybe later,  when circumstances get even more dire – when they’re literally down to their last piece of bread – does she change?  Whereas before she shared the food, maybe now she fights for it.  What we’re seeing before our eyes is a character developing.  She’s changing.  Choices are a great way to show this.

Or we can use one of the most common zombie tropes there is. Someone gets bit. They’re going to transform soon. Do our characters kill them or save them? This is a compelling CHOICE because it gets down to the core of who a character is. Are they selfish or loving ? This was kind of explored later on with Ben but it was 70-80 pages into the script. We needed compelling moments like this in the first and second acts as well.

Which leads me to probably the biggest problem with The Last Ones Out. There’s no goal for 60 pages. There’s no direction, no plan, outside of occasionally spray painting messages to fellow survivors. As I’ve said before, it’s not that a lack of a strong goal can’t be done in a screenplay. It’s just that it becomes infinitely harder to tell your story because your characters aren’t actively going after anything. They’re sitting around. And there’s too much sitting around here. The only time that really works is when there’s a TON of conflict within the group, creating lots of drama . But as I said before, there’s no real conflict inside of any of the scenes in the first and second act.

How do you fix the goal problem? Just give them a goal that’s important. In the story, Elaine’s cell phone works (for the record, I didn’t think the cell phone storyline made sense. It created too many questions). But it’s a mystery why it works. So maybe their goal is to find the cell towers, or find the cell headquarters, so they can see if there’s anyone running the system. That’s their current search. Now, instead of just wandering around for the occasional (and cliché) food hunt, they’re looking for something more concrete. Remember guys, characters ALWAYS NEED A PLAN. A plan means action. And you want to keep your characters active.

When your characters are NOT actively going after things (when they’re home at night), you need to figure out other ways to keep your reader interested. Readers don’t give out “mulligans” when they’re reading. They don’t say, “Oh, you just had that big outdoor scene so I’ll let you write two slow boring scenes now.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. If a reader’s bored, they check out. Which mean EVERY. SINGLE. SCENE. has to be interesting in some way.

(Spoilers follow) So, for example, let’s say we establish Cora as a zombie early on. But Elaine has been using a combination of medicines to keep her from turning all the way. When the boys show up, she has to hide this secret. She knows if they find out, they’ll kill Cora. So now there’s way more tension during the scenes because Elaine is hiding something. And the boys (who should probably be older and more sinister in the new version – they’re too docile here) are starting to get suspicious. That way, even your slow scenes have something going on in them. I know this is kind of explored with Ben later in the script, but again, it was too late. This direction would also allow a more logical reason for why they raid the hospital. Elaine needs more meds for Cora (the whole “military needs us to get meds” thing was obviously only thrown in there to create a late set piece at the hospital.  Be careful not to unnaturally force plot points into the story.  Good readers always spot them).

(major spoiler in this paragraph) There are a bunch of other little things I wish I had time to get into (I’m kind of preoccupied figuring out what the posts are going to be next week) but let me say a couple more things. I think you need to change the relationship between Elaine and Cora from friends to mother and daughter. I just never bought that Elaine would become so obsessed with nursing a zombie back to health who she never knew in the real world, to the point where she refused to kill any other zombies. But if it was her daughter, that would be different. I’d buy that.

Despite some fairly extensive criticism here, I wanna point out that the final act of The Last Ones Out was quite good. You have to do a better job setting up the army’s introduction, but the revelations and the urgency and the intensity of the final act – all of that was done quite well.

Going forward, I would also ask yourself, “What’s different about my zombie movie?” I think you need to find a more unique hook here. You’d probably counter, “Well my zombie script is more character driven.” Yeah but really, any good zombie flick should have character development. The “not killing the zombies” angle is sort of hook-y, but I don’t know if it has the weight to make a producer go, “I want that now!.”  So I’d try to improve the hook.

Congrats on finishing this, Avishai, and thanks for letting me read it. Hopefully my notes will help improve the next draft. :)

Script link: The Last Ones Out

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

What I learned: In any movie, you want the climax to be the hardest thing our protagonist battles through. Every possible way you can make things more difficult for your characters during the climax? DO IT!. For example, I didn’t like how that they got to travel to the army base during the day, where it was easy to spot and avoid zombies. Why not force them to go at night, when the zombies are the most active and it’s harder to spot them? You gotta make it difficult!

I remember when I first got into this screenwriting game, I used to see the films that finished at the top of the box office each year (Pirates of The Caribbean, The Lord Of The Rings, Shrek) and think, “That’s the kind of material Hollywood likes to buy, so that’s the kind of material we should try to write.” But that’s not how the spec market works. All of those movies are written in-house. In other words, studios don’t buy the script from a writer. They decide to make the project then go hire writers to write it. Disney wants to make Wreck-It Ralph. Okay, let’s go find a screenwriter to write Wreck-It Ralph.

On top of general in-house projects, you have book adaptations. Summit/Lionsgate buys The Hunger Games, then they look for a writer. Then you have sequels and prequels (Skyfall, Taken 2, The Hobbit), which also require hiring writers. You got writer-directors, who write and direct their own stuff (Ted, Django Unchained). You have your superhero properties, your article adaptations, your TV show adaptations, your foreign movie remakes. These are the movies that will dominate the box office.

Surprisingly, movies that were produced from screenplay spec sales don’t do well when matched up with the big boys. Why? Plain and simple, Joe Schmoe can’t compete with a ride that’s been popular for 40 years (Pirates Of The Carribean), a super hero who’s been around for 70 years (Batman), a book that’s been popular for 80 years (The Hobbit). No matter how much marketing the studios put into a project that originated as a spec, it’s never going to make as much money as those pre-established properties.

But fear not. Don’t start writing your own “Changing Gears” article just yet. You see, certain spec scripts DO take a chunk out of the box office, and it’s why I’m writing today’s article. We’re going to look at the top 10 spec-screenplays-turned-movies in the 2012 box office, and see if they can’t help us figure out what kind of screenplays we should be writing to get our own scripts sold.

1
Snow White And The Huntsman
Genre: Action-Adventure
Original writer: Evan Daugherty
Box Office Rank: 15
Box Office Gross: 155 million
About: This was a big splashy 7 figure spec sale so you knew the studio was going all in on it. You can sorta say it’s an adaptation (Snow White), but it was actually sold on spec. A big reason this sold was that edgy fairy-tale and real-life mash-ups (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) were all the rage at the time. Hollywood went all in on them (for better or worse). Once they got Kristin Stewart in the lead here, they promoted the hell out of this thing, and it hit. Hence, it’s the highest spec sale turned movie of the year.

2
Safe House
Genre: Action-Thriller
Original writer: David Guggenheim
Box Office Rank: 21
Box Office Gross: 126 million
About: I can’t remember a time when a script moved so fast from sale to production. If there’s a dream scenario for screenwriters, this has to be it. This thing didn’t hit a single director snag, a single lead actor change, a single anything. The script was vanilla but there was clearly something about it I couldn’t see because it turned into a good flick.

3
Flight
Genre: Drama
Original Writer: John Gatins
Box Office Rank: 30
Box Office Gross: 93 million
About: Something really popped out at me here. Denzel Washington is one of the few big actors who likes spec scripts. He was in Book Of Eli (spec), Safe House above (spec) and Flight. Interesting. Don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not. Of all the spec scripts on this list, this is easily the most unconventional. Drama specs are hard sells. However, it should be noted that writer John Gatins was a director who had just finished his first film, “Dreamer, Inspired by a True Story” when he brought this to the studio.

4
Chronicle
Genre: Sci-fi/Supernatural/Found-Footage
Original Writer: Max Landis
Box Office Rank: 46
Box Office Gross: 65 million
About: I’ve “chronicled” this script already on the site. My guess it that it sold on concept. The horror found-footage craze was reaching its breaking point. Then this writer comes along and says, “Dude, let’s take the found-footage angle into another genre.” The script itself wasn’t amazing, but it was a neat idea. It’s another reminder that concept drives the spec world. — Writers will point out that Max Landis has a famous daddy and that’s why he sold this script. Uhhh, there are lots of people trying to write screenplays who are related to much bigger celebrities than John Landis and their scripts are going nowhere. So show some respect!

5
Hope Springs
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Original Writer: Vanessa Taylor
Box Office Rank: 47
Box Office Gross: 63 million
About: I remember reading this one a LONG time ago when it was simply known as the “Untitled Vanessa Taylor Project” and really liking it. I think it started in my original Top 25. But it was something I looked at and thought, “This will never get made.” It centered around two “old” people and there was a lot of talking involved. But they found a way to put it together and it did really well for this kind of project. Big ups to the oldies!

6
This Means War
Genre: Comedy/Action
Original Writer: Marcus Gautesen
Box Office Rank: 56
Box Office Gross: 55 million
About: While there aren’t many good things to say about This Means War the movie, it’s interesting to note that this script sold all the way back in 1998! So it stuck around. A lot like Safe House, it’s a two-hander, with two parts for big actors to play. Some people tell me this trend is hot right now. And with two specs in the top ten using the formula (Safe House as well), I guess that makes sense.

7
That’s My Boy
Genre: Comedy
Original Writer: David Caspe
Box Office Rank: 85
Box Office Gross: 37 million
About: I remember this one when it was called “I Hate You, Dad.” The script didn’t do much for me at the time, but it really came alive onscreen. Sandler and Samberg nailed the characters. Easily the best Adam Sandler movie in forever and I think it’s because for once he made something that wasn’t written by one of his in-house hacks. It should also be noted that the writer, David Caspe, created the show “Happy Endings,” which likely contributed to the script getting around, landing on the Black List, and ultimately picked up.

8
Trouble With The Curve
Genre: Drama
Original Writer: Randy Brown
Box Office Rank: 86
Box Office Gross: 36 million
About: This probably has the best story in the top ten as Randy Brown wrote this script a decade ago. Then it just disappeared. Nobody remembered it. Cut to 2011, Clint reads it, wants to do it, and the next thing you know Brown’s being paid a million bucks! It’s also rare you see a spec sale centering around sports that isn’t based on a true story. So this one had all sorts of unorthodox things going for it.

9
The Guilt Trip
Genre: Comedy
Original Writer: Dan Fogelman
Box Office Rank: 93
Box Office Gross: 32 million
About: Remember when Dan Fogelman was hot hot hot? He couldn’t press “enter” on his laptop without making 2 million bucks. There was Crazy Stupid Love. There was Imagine. There was Nathan Decker. There was Last Vegas. Then there was this. I always felt like “The Guilt Trip” (previously titled “My Mother’s Curse”) was the red-headed stepchild of his screenplays, but regardless, Dan Fogelman had a hell of a run and if there’s anyone you want to base your own screenwriting plan off of, it’s probably this guy.

10
Man On A Ledge
Genre: Thriller
Original Writer: Pablo Fenjves
Box Office Rank 109
Box Office Gross: 19 million
About: You know, I’m not sure I can say anything good about this screenplay (the version I read had revisions by Chris Gorak). It was just such a bizarre choice for a story and about as strangely executed as you can imagine. The wooden acting Sam Worthington would later display in the film didn’t help at all, but it was a big spec sale at the time. The writer, Pablo, has actually been a very successful ghost writer in the book world for a long time. But unless the original was just 180 degrees different from the final product, I don’t know what Summit was thinking when they bought this.

Okay, so what does this all mean? Well, when I’m giving people advice on what kind of spec to write, I advise them to make the concept catchy in some way (have a hook!). And if it isn’t, then it at least has to be marketable somehow. For example, “The Guilt Trip” isn’t exactly a catchy concept. But it’s easy to market. Anyway, after the concept, I tell them to pay attention to genre. Because certain genres do better in the spec world. With our top 10 here, I see we have four comedies (one of those romantic), two thrillers, two dramas, one sci-fi, and one supernatural. There are some sub-genres there that make it a little more complicated, but generally speaking, that’s our breakdown.

You’ll notice that the dominant genre here is comedy and that’s usually the case when it comes to the spec market. Comedies are one of the few genres where the playing field is even. Funny is funny, regardless of whether it comes from a book or comes from you, the unknown screenwriter. So this isn’t surprising. Thrillers also do really well in the spec market, so that’s no surprise. What surprised me was that we have two drama specs here. I guess I forget that drama specs DO sell. But my experience has been that a drama script has to be written five times as well as a comedy or a thriller to sell, because it’s a naturally slow genre and you have to be a really good writer to make slow stories work.

Since thriller and action are mostly interchangeable, it should be noted that we have three action specs here (Safe House, Snow White, This Means War). Everybody I talk to is looking for action specs because you don’t need a hot action book to be able to market an action film. The problem I keep hearing from producers is that action writers are (ironically) lazy. They make too many cliché choices ripped off from movies we’ve already seen and so all the action specs they read suck. Come up with something a little unique, put the same amount of effort into the characters that you would a drama, and you could be hitting paydirt.

The eye-opening thing for me is that the number 10 box office spec script was the overall 109th ranked box office movie. Think about that. That means for every 10 wide-release movies, only one of those is a spec. That might freak you out. And it should a little. It’s proof-positive that the playing field is a hell of a lot harder than you think it is. Which is why you can’t dump material on the market that’s 60% ready and expect it to sell. There are too many writers, most of whom are already established, competing for those 10 slots. So don’t haphazardly come up with a goofy idea, write it up in 14 days and start sending it out to your contacts. Think like a businessman. Think about what you’re going to need to bring to the table to steal one of these slots. Is your concept cool? Do you have something that’s easy to market? Do you have roles that A-list actors will die to play? Sure, you can play the idealistic card and say to yourself, “I’m just going to write what moves me,” and hope for the best. But the only people I see who succeed with that strategy are geniuses. The rest of us have to be a little more methodical in our approach.

I’m not sure this breakdown tells us anything definitive (except that there are no period pieces), but I wanted to strip away all the noise so you could see exactly how spec scripts were doing at the box office. What do you guys think? Did you spot any trends?

You know, it’s funny. When the New York Times e-mailed to say they were doing a piece on Scriptshadow, I wasn’t as thrilled as someone being contacted by the New York Times should probably be. I knew an article meant more exposure. Which is usually a good thing. But I also knew that every time the site gained awareness, detractors used it as an opportunity to preach their dislike of the blog. Which was never a fun thing to deal with! So I was reluctant. But the implication was the Times was going to do the article anyway, so I at least wanted to give my side of the story.

Unfortunately, as I anticipated, the chirping about Scriptshadow grew louder after the article, with the usual suspects saying the site was hurting writers. This is something I never agreed with. At worst, Scriptshadow was a minor inconvenience to writers I didn’t give a favorable review to. At best, it was teaching thousands of screenwriters via the dissection of the latest script sales/assignments, and helping numerous writers get into the business. It may have operated in a gray area, but the site was doing a lot more good for writers than it was doing bad.

But I also recognize that the growth of the site has changed things. Scriptshadow used to be this little underground blog. And when you’re that guy, it’s easier to take chances, to do and say things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to say or do. I think people see the site as more “official” now, and that’s an issue they have with its current iteration. If it’s “official,” I shouldn’t be operating in this gray area anymore. But I believed so strongly in what could be learned from professional writing, I tried to keep it going as long as I could. I’m just not sure it’s worth taking the risk anymore. My life is pretty great at the moment, and I’d like to keep the headaches to a minimum.

So what does this mean for the site? Well, depending on how you look at it, some potentially good things. New spec reviews won’t disappear completely, but they’ll be pretty sparse, as there will be more of a process involved in reviewing them. I might review stuff that’s been produced but not yet released. We’ll see about that. I have a lot of ideas for posts, and I’m looking forward to experimenting and seeing what clicks with you guys. I want to try and dust off the occasional older spec sale and see if we can revive a few scripts that way. We’ll be delving into recent movies, popular movies, classics, and more amateur screenplays. We’ll also be doing more theme weeks.

But what actually excites me about this change is that I’ll be able to focus more on Scriptshadow Labs and The Scriptshadow Social Experiment. I’ve got about 20 amateur writers I’ve found over the years here at the site who I really believe in. They just haven’t written the right script yet. I want to develop a community with these writers where not only am I helping them where I can, but they’re helping each other. Kind of like the best writer’s group in Hollywood. My goal is to review multiple versions of their scripts on the site, using all of the great Scriptshadow readers to crowd-source suggestions and help these scripts become better. We’d then review the new drafts as they come in, so we can see “in real time” how scripts are developed and how good notes (or bad notes) can affect the improvement of a draft. Hopefully, we’ll get the best of these scripts either purchased, produced, or both, and you guys will learn a lot more about the process in the interim.

The Social Experiment is a much bigger project, something I’ve been saving up for. The idea behind it is similar to the Labs, just on a larger scale, with writers interacting and learning from each other. It will also feed writers into the Labs. I know that sounds similar to some stuff out there, but I don’t want to reveal all my ideas for it just yet, as I’d like to keep some secrets until it’s released. Almost every penny I’ve made has gone back into the site. And I’m going to need a lot of pennies to get this going. But when I do, I expect it to be a game changer.

In other words, I want to restructure Scriptshadow into the best site on the web for amateur screenwriters to learn the craft of screenwriting, while ALSO giving them a chance to BECOME professional screenwriters. To that end, I think change is good. I still don’t think there’s any learning tool better than reading current spec sales, but I’ll try to provide the best backup plan I can.

In closing, I’d just like to say that everybody is entitled to their opinion on the reading and reviewing of professional screenplays. It’s not a black and white issue so I try and listen when someone comes to me with an opposing viewpoint (like e-mails me. Not yells at me on Twitter). What bums me out is that I started this site to promote that amazing tool, and I still think reading and discussing professional scripts is the best way to learn screenwriting outside of writing itself. But at a certain point, it was irritating too many people, and that wasn’t fun to deal with. I still plan to incorporate recent spec sales into the site in some capacity. It just won’t be as reviews.

I guess this means the transition starts now. It’ll probably be a rocky one until I figure out what works, but hopefully something better comes of it on the other side. Thanks for all of your support guys!  2013’s going to be fun.  :)

I love it when a screenplay comes out of nowhere. Totally picked this one up out of a pile, and boy did it deliver!

Genre: Thriller/Mystery/Procedural
Premise: The true story behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.?
About: This script was written, I believe, in 2004, where it was hot enough to get Leonardo DiCaprio attached. But DiCaprio moved on to other projects and it never got made. Now was this just because DiCpario wanted to do something else? Or did a certain government body encourage the project to disappear?
Writers: Mark Lane and Donald Freed
Details: 127 pages (undated)

Wow, this one sure came out of nowhere. I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly excited to break it open. I figured another “Lincoln-like” history lesson was coming my way. And since that experience killed a thousand smiles inside of me, I’d have fought in the Civil War to make sure the same experience didn’t happen again.

That’s the thing with documenting these big important historical figures. Writers feel like the writing must, likewise, be “big” and “important.” And when you write that way, you forget the most essential component to telling a story – to entertain. Some of you might disagree with that. You might say the most important component is to teach, or to force the audience to ask questions. There’s some legitimacy to that. But if you can’t keep your audience interested, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying to them. They’re not paying attention anymore.

To add fuel to the fire, this script has long since been forgotten. Forgotten scripts are typically forgotten for a reason. So I expected that reason to surface pretty quickly. But something funny happened when I opened “Slay The Dreamer.” I wasn’t reading a stodgy too-proud-of-its-importance period piece. I was reading an actual story. What do I mean by that? Well read on…

It’s Memphis, Tennessee, 1976. Reverend Jim Lawson, a prominent Memphis pastor who used to march with Martin Luther King, is going about his daily church activities when he gets word that “Grace Walden” has been found. She’s in a nearby state asylum. We don’t know who Grace is, but from the way Lawson reacts to the news, we get the feeling she’s very important.

Lawson’s friends with some local big-timers, so heads over to the courthouse to start looking for a lawyer. He wants someone to help him get Grace out. But no one wants anything to do with him. Apparently the name “Grace Walden” is well-known around here. And she’s a story you don’t get involved with. But Lawson’s insistent. Why? Because Grace Walden seems to know something big. Something about Martin Luther King’s murder.

After being turned down by all the big shots, Lawson meets an awkward up-and-coming white lawyer named Jeff Jenkins. When Jeff finds out that Grace Walden was put in this asylum without any due process, he wants to do something about it. So he goes to visit Grace at the asylum, where he quickly learns that her room is heavily guarded. It’s clear that somebody somewhere doesn’t want anyone talking to this woman.

But Jeff cleverly finds a way to see her, and is surprised to find out she’s white. She’s also heavily sedated, making her act as crazy as they say she is. Still, she’s able to mumble out some names that give Jeff a starting point for an investigation. One of those names is a local drunk who used to live with Grace. He tells Jeff that Grace saw the man who shot Martin Luther King, and it was not James Earl Ray, the man convicted of the murder. Despite that, the FBI came to make her sign a statement saying that Earl Ray is the man she saw, but she refused. That night, agents came to her apartment, took her, and whisked her away to the nuthouse.

Upon realizing that this is much bigger than he originally thought, Jeff goes to his well-established hotshot lawyer father, who surprisingly tells him to ditch the case. It’s not worth it. But something about his father’s warning doesn’t ring true. It’s almost as if he’s hiding something. So Jeff continues to dig, eventually helping Grace escape from the institution, and snagging one of the biggest lawyers in town.

But that’s when shit really goes south. The Reverend realizes that the FBI is monitoring his church. Loads of old files about the King murder are burned. The police and agents start threatening our heroes. If what Grace saw that day really was just the imagination of a mad woman, the authorities sure aren’t acting like it. Could it really be true? Did someone besides James Earl Ray really kill Martin Luther King? And if so, who was it?

Clearly, a script like this is bolstered by the fact that it’s a true story. The producers even say that they’ll provide documented proof of everything written if asked. So you’re not just reading another thriller here. You’re reading a hidden part of history. But then why would this script die? It’s a GOOD script. If there was a 2004 Black List, this would surely make the top 10. My guess is that it’s a hard sell. King was such a huge important figure in our history – to imply a Hollywood-like conspiracy did him in cheapens his legacy in a way. Unless every single fact here was meticulously checked, it could easily come off as sensationalistic and cheesy.

Imagine you’re Leo. You’re getting closer to making this movie. And people start whispering in your ear: “You’re doing a disservice to King’s legacy if this research isn’t extremely well-founded.” Imagine the questions you’d have to face during the press junket. “How real is this?” “How much of this is fact? How much fiction?” That would be my guess on why Leo left. Not because of a lack of quality in the script, but that he would have to stand behind its claims. And that would be hard to do.

But man, if all this stuff is true? What a story! I had a good feeling about it right from the opening tip. When your script is driven mainly by men talking in rooms, your first scene tells a lot. It shows whether you can keep men talking in rooms interesting. The opening scene of Slay The Dreamer introduces the mystery of Grace. Who is this woman? Why is the Reverend so excited about locating her? Why had she disappeared for so long? Why is she in an insane asylum? All of these questions were rushing through my brain after the first scene alone, which meant I was in.

I also loved the choice to make our hero, Jeff Jenkins, an underdog. Always a good idea to wrap your story around an underdog. They’re almost impossible to root against. But what was really cool here were the relationships. They were so intricately woven and unexpected. I loved that Jeff needed his father’s help to bring the truth to light, yet we find out his father was actually working for the side that covered the Grace situation up in the first place! Talk about keeping it complicated.

This is a good script to study for the *changing goal* as well. Remember, scripts usually work best when your main character is pursuing a goal. And if you don’t have one giant goal, you should have a series of goals. Here, Jeff must first find out what Grace Walden’s deal is. After that goal is met, he must now get Grace Walden OUT of the institution. When that goal is met, he must prove the truth, that Grace Walden did not see James Earl Ray run past her that day, and that therefore somebody else killed Martin Luther King. The continuous goals are what kept this story driving forward.

If there’s a fault in the script, it’s probably in the third act. What was a mystery/thriller turns into 30 pages of courtroom prep. And no matter how interesting they tried to make it, it just wasn’t as fun as those first two-thirds of the script. Also (spoiler), and I’m assuming this is obvious since Ray is still listed as King’s murderer, the script ends on an anti-climactic note, with all Jeff’s witnesses and evidence thrown out before the trial begins (a trial we never see by the way). Definitely a bummer to watch all that training and not get to see the heavyweight bout. But that’s the noose you tie around your neck when you tell a true story. You can’t just make something up that didn’t happen.

But “Slay” does get you thinking. I didn’t know much about the details of King’s assassination before this. And now I want to know more. Whatever the case, this was a totally unexpected read. Really fun and entertaining – A Few Good Men meets JFK. If it’s true, then wow, this would make one hell of a movie.

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

What I learned: There are three things every screenwriter should study the hell out of: police procedure, the legal world, and the FBI. It’s impossible to avoid these elements for too long in the movie world. One of them usually pops up in every 2 to 3 screenplays you write. To not intimately know the legal world when you’re writing a script like “Slay The Dreamer” will result in a lack of credibility. Which almost always results in a lame unrealistic screenplay (not the case here – I always believed what the writers were saying). So, where can we find material to help us learn about these things? Great question! I was hoping you commenters could recommend some material…