I recently caused a minor fracas by suggesting that screenwriters aren’t “writers,” per se, but rather “storytellers,” and that if you want to become a successful screenwriter, your focus should be on telling stories rather than writing.  I’m afraid that some of you took me a little too literally and assumed I meant that there’s no actual “writing” involved in screenwriting.

Writing is, of course, an essential part of telling any story on the page.  If I write, “Jason, bloodied and wheezing, stumbles through the airplane wreckage, blinded by the smoke,” that’s a hell of a lot more descriptive and exciting than “Jason walks through what remains of the airplane.” To that end, writing is essential.  It’s our job to pull a reader into our universe, and how we weave words together to create images and moments is a large part of what makes that process successful.

However, here’s the rub.  Unless you’ve created an interesting enough situation to write about in the first place, it won’t matter how well you’ve described that moment, because we’re already bored.  And that’s what I mean by “storytelling.”  One must create a series of compelling dramatic situations that pull a reader in for the writing itself to matter.

So to help clarify this, here is how I define writing and storytelling and how they relate to screenwriting.  Because this is my own theory, I’m not saying these are universal definitions, only definitions to help explain the points I’m making in the article.

Writing – When I refer to “writing,” I mean the way in which everything in the story is described, the way in which the picture is painted.  While important, you can give me the greatest description ever of a character, the greatest description ever of that character’s house, the greatest description ever of the way he goes about his nightly routine, and the greatest description ever of a car chase he gets into later…and I can still be bored out of my mind because you haven’t preceded any of these things with a story I care about.

Storytelling – “Storytelling,” on the other hand, is the inclusion of goals and mysteries that create enough conflict, drama, and suspense to pull an audience in and make them care about what they’re watching.  For example, that immaculately described car chase above is boring unless, say, the character driving has 10 minutes left to get across town and save his daughter, with the cops, the mob, and the government trying to stop him.  

So how does one “tell a story?”  What’s the secret to storytelling?  Well, I feel storytelling can be broken down into a couple of simple components.  The first is G.O.C.  (Goals, obstacles and conflict).  In most stories, you have a character goal – a hero who’s trying to achieve something.  In order to make their pursuit interesting, you must throw obstacles at them, things that get in the way of them achieving their goal.   Naturally, because obstacles prevent our hero from doing what he wants, conflict emerges, and conflict is what leads to entertainment, since it’s always interesting to see how the conflict will be resolved.  If a character wants something and gets it without having to work for it, there’s a good chance your story (or at least that part of your story) is boring.  John McClane’s goal is to save his wife, but the terrorists in the building provide obstacles to doing so, which creates conflict.

The other major component of storytelling is mystery.  If you don’t start with a character who has a goal, you should be working to create a mystery.  “Lost” built an entire show around this.  From the “Others” to the “Hatch” to the “numbers entry.” We kept watching that show because we wanted answers to those mysteries.  Note, however, that mysteries always eventually lead to character goals, since sooner or later a character will be tasked with figuring out that mystery (their goal).  “The Ring” is a good example.  A mystery is created with this video tape which kills people in 7 days.  Naomi Watts’ character, then, has the goal of finding out the origins of the tape, and seeing if she can stop it from killing people.

A writer’s mastery of these two components, the goal and the mystery, are often what defines him/her as a good storyteller and determines whether their screenplays will be any good.

What I often run into on the amateur level is the opposite.  I read tons of scripts where writers put all their efforts into immaculately describing their worlds, their characters, their scenes, and everything involved in painting the picture for the reader, but without any conflict or drama or suspense.  It’s the kind of stuff that makes you go, “This person is a great writer!!” But in the end, there’s no immediate goal, there’s no compelling mystery.  So it’s just boring shit happening.  Really well described boring shit happening, but boring shit happening nonetheless.  I know a lot of writers send their scripts out and get this recurring note back: “We loved the writing but the script wasn’t for us.”  It confuses the hell out of the writer.  “If the writing is great,” they ask, “Why the hell wouldn’t the script be for them??”  It’s because your story is boring as hell!  There’s not enough storytelling!

What you must do to prevent this is make sure you’re storytelling on three different levels: on the concept level, the sequence level, and the scene level.  What I mean by this is that your overall concept must have a story built into it, each sequence in your script must have a story built into it, and your scenes themselves must have stories built into them.  The second you’re not telling a story on one of these three levels, you’re just writing.  You’re describing shit or recounting shit or laying out shit.  You’re not storytelling.  Let’s take a closer look at these three levels using the film, “Aliens,” as an example.

CONCEPT LEVEL – The concept of Aliens has a great story behind it.  There’s a mystery: A remote base on a faraway planet has gone silent and they suspect that there may be aliens involved.  This mystery leads to a goal.  Ripley and a team of Marines must go in and figure out what’s happened, possibly having to wipe out the aliens.  An intriguing setup for a story.

SEQUENCE LEVEL – Having a strong overall story concept is great, but you need to find a way to keep that concept interesting for 120 pages.  If the characters in Aliens just go in and kill the aliens, your story is over within 30 pages.  This is where sequences come in – 10-20 page chunks that have their own little stories going on.  These sequences are going to have their own goals and their own mysteries.  In other words, you must be telling stories within these 15 page segments.  For example, the first goal is to get into the base and find out what happened.  They get in there, find out everyone’s gone, and discover some traces of a battle.  In the next sequence, the aliens attack, and the goal is for Ripley to get to the soldiers and save them. The next sequence introduces a new goal – figure out what to do about this.  They decide to go back up to the ship and nuke the place.  Except when the ship comes down to get them, it’s sabotaged by the aliens, leaving them there.  — The point to remember is: with each sequence, introduce new goals and new mysteries to keep the story entertaining.  If you’re not doing that, you’re just writing.

SCENE LEVEL – Storytelling at the scene level is where I can tell whether I’m dealing with a pro or an amateur.  Good writers work to make every scene have some sort of mystery or goal driving it.  There’s a situation that needs to be resolved by the end of the scene, and the scene isn’t over until that happens.  Again, we’re talking about the same tools here.  Goals and mysteries.  The goal could be as simple as “making sure the area is secure,” which is what the Marines’ initial job is when they go into the base.  Or the mystery can be as simple as “what happened here?” which is what drives the following scene – the characters trying to put the pieces of what happened together through the clues they find.

Each of these levels of your screenplay should be telling compelling stories or we’re going to get bored.  I run into really interesting story concepts all the time that turn into boring screenplays because the writer doesn’t know how to tell stories on the sequence or scene level.  It’s like they figure, “I came up with a cool idea for the movie.  I’m finished.”  NO!  You have to come up with a cool idea for every sequence!  Every scene!  Think of each of those as MINI-MOVIES, all of which have to be just as compelling as the overall idea.  Because I’ll tell you this: if you write three boring scenes in a row in a screenplay, you’re done!  The reader’s officially given up on you.  Try to tell a story every time you walk into a scene.

There are obviously smaller tools you can use to enhance your storytelling as well.  You can throw unexpected twists in there, suspense, dramatic irony, a character’s inner journey.   But if you’re a beginner/intermediate, focus on the basics first.  Goals and mysteries.  Goals and mysteries.  Always  remember: No matter how good of a writer you are, how strong your prose is or how well you can describe a scene,  unless you’ve set up a story where we give a shit about the characters in that place, it won’t matter.  Screenwriting is not a writing contest.  It’s a storytelling contest.  The sooner you realize that, the faster you’ll succeed in this business. I PROMISE YOU THAT.

Genre: Sci-fi/Comedy
Premise: A hapless and broken hearted barista is visited by two bad-ass soldiers from the future who tell him mankind is doomed, and he alone can save them.
About: This script from British writer Howard Overman sold in March of last year and made it onto the middle of the Black List, right next to Desperate Hours!  Overman has been a longtime British TV writer, writing such shows as “Merlin,” creating the show “Vexed,” and winning a 2010 BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Series for “Misfits.”
Writer: Howard Overman
Details: 116 pages – February 2011 draft

Wait a minute.

Hold up here.

Are you telling me that I just read a comedy script…that was funny?  And that I liked?  Has Scriptshadow slipped into Bizarro World??

Not only that, but a good comedy that was low-brow (the longest running joke in the screenplay is literally a shit joke)??  I always complain about low-brow comedies.  Scripts that have nothing to offer other than jokes.

Aha! But Slackfi DID have more to offer.  It had a story (with unexpected twists and turns ‘n stuff!) and even some character development.  By the way, what does that mean exactly?  “Character development?”  I see that phrase thrown around a lot and I’m not always convinced that the people who throw it would know how to catch it if it was thrown back.

Character “development” is any instance of your character developing into a different person.  This can be through overcoming a flaw, overcoming the past, or in the case of The Slackfi Project, overcoming a relationship.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Which is fine, I suppose, since there’s time-travel in Slackfi.  However, I don’t get the nicest responses when I dislike time-travelling scripts these days.  So thank God I enjoyed this one.

20-something Josh sleepwalks his way through his coffee shop job.  The guy can whip up a mean vienttia grand-aye half-whip double-sauce cinnamon-style frappe mocha-chino (apologies to all if I’m getting the terms wrong. I’m not a coffee person) but is bored out of his gourd while doing it.  Josh is the kind of person where smiles go to die.

But at least he has a reason for it.  His girlfriend, Zoe, dumped his stupid ass a few months ago and now toys with him.  She wants to hang out, but then she doesn’t.  She wants to go on dates, but then she cancels.  She wants to have sex, but then the next morning thinks it was a bad idea.  God was not a nice dude for creating people like this but they’ll be around for as long as people don’t have the balls to walk away from them, and unfortunately, Josh’s testicles haven’t grown to “walk away” proportion yet.

So how does one deal with devil-chicks like this in the meantime?  By playing video games with one’s apartment-mate of course!  Josh and his buddy, Apollo, are quite a team, getting high while ridding the alien planet Tressor of the dangerous race: Plekisaurians.  But when Apollo says he’s grown up and wants to do more adult things with his life, poor Josh finds himself with only one friend left, his overweight guinea pig, Mr. Tibbs!

Until one night when he’s visited by the duo of Wolf and Tiger, a badass male-female team who claim to be from the future! They tell Josh the world is a week away from a pandemic that will kill 6 billion people.  Josh is the only one who can save them because he delivers sandwiches to the lab where they test guinea pigs, who are responsible for the virus.  “Deliver sandwiches?” Josh responds.  But he’s a barista.  Wolf and Tiger look at each other, then double-check the address.  Oops, they’re in the wrong apartment.  They meant to go to Apollo’s apartment!

“Sorry,” they say, and leave.  Bummed beyond all reasonable definitions of the word, Josh happens to run into Wolf, Tiger and Apollo the next day, when they’re attacked by micro-chipped bad guys from the future called Replicants.  Apollo is killed, leaving Wolf and Tiger with no choice but to go with Plan B, Josh!

Unfortunately, while gearing up for the big attack on the lab, the police get a hold of Josh and explain to him that Wolf and Tiger are a couple of whack-jobs who escaped from the nuthouse.  They made up this whole thing about the future based on their obsession with the Terminator and Matrix franchises, and right now, they’re being escorted back to Crazy City.

At this point, Josh doesn’t know what to believe.  Are these two really crazy, in which case he should move on with his life?  Or in doing so, is he killing six billion people?  It isn’t until Josh confirms that his own guinea pig – MR. TIBBS – is a secret spy for the replicants, that he shifts into high gear!  He must find a way to break Wolf and Tiger out of the nuthouse, come up with a plan to get into the lab, and then….well and then massacre hundreds of guinea pigs so they can’t spread the disease.  All while his annoying ex-girlfriend keeps trying to ruin his life!

Okay, so let’s get back to that character development thing I was talking about.  When you write a script, you want to ask yourself, “How is my main character going to develop?  How are they going to change?”  If they’re not developing into anything new or different, that means they’re staying stagnant.  And for the most part, stagnant is boring.

Overman uses a relationship to develop his hero, Josh, coupled with a flaw.  The relationship is obviously his one with Zoe.  He allows her to treat him like shit and is afraid to move on.  Overman cleverly creates a scenario at the end of the script, then, where Josh is at the lab with Zoe outside the contamination door.  He has a choice of either letting her in, which saves her but kills 6 billion people, or leaving her out there to die and moving on with his life.

Remember, this is one of the best ways of conveying development in your character.  You give them a choice near the end of the story that basically asks: “Have you overcome your flaw or what?”  (Spoiler) In this case, Josh leaves Zoe out there (thank God!) and he’s officially developed into a better person.

BUT, I have a suspicion some of you don’t care.  Why?  Because I know how a large reading contingent HATES loser wimpy main characters.  That’s an issue that’s long escaped me – how to straddle that line.  In order to develop  your character into a strong person, he must first be a weak person.  So how do you make someone weak but still likable?  I have to admit Josh was a little too much of a loser for my liking, but the rest of the story was so clever and funny that I still rooted for him.

That’s the other thing I liked here – the story.  Most comedies I read have a VERY thin premise that’s stretched to the gills.  A joke that should’ve ended on page 7 has been beaten to death for 110 never-ending pages.  Slackfi actually had a story that was carefully plotted.

Which reminds me – one of the telltale signs of a good writer is what they do with their midpoint.  The midpoint should shift things around a bit, turn what was essentially one story into a slightly different story.  I always use the example of Star Wars.  It starts out being about some people delivering a message, but then turns into those same people trying to destroy a huge base.  In the midpoint of Slackfi, we find out everything Josh has been told is a lie, and that Wolf and Tiger are in the nuthouse.  It changes from Josh following along to Josh having to come up with a plan to break out Wolf and Tiger and then save the world.

Anyway, this was a funny little script, and evidence of what I was saying Friday about storytelling being more important than writing.  The writing in Slackfi is nothing to write home about.  Many of the sentences are stilted and simplistic.  Overman also has a bad habit of doubling up on beats, making many moments redundant (i.e. we’ll see Josh get rejected by Zoe and Overman will follow the action by writing something like, “Josh is stung by getting rejected by Zoe” – an unnecessary sentence).  But the STORY ITSELF for Slackfi is fun and keeps you reading.

So I recommend this script.  It’s a cool little sci-fi project that’s marketable enough to be brought to the big screen.  And I couldn’t help but think it would be a perfect double-feature with amateur favorite Keeping Time!

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

What I learned: The midpoint is a great place for passive characters to become active.  — Preferably, your hero will be active from the outset (like Indiana Jones).  That’s because movies like active characters.  But some stories necessitate that the hero start off passive.  Starting off passive is fine.  What you don’t want is for your hero to be passive for the entire script.  At some point, you want them to start driving the story.  Through Slackfi and Star Wars, I realized that the midpoint is a great place to do this.  Luke doesn’t start taking charge until the midpoint (when he comes up with an idea for how to save Princess Leia) and Josh doesn’t start taking charge until the midpoint (when he has to rescue Wolf and Tiger and come up with a plan to save the world).  So consider this option the next time you write a story that begins with a passive hero.

So as I was reading Laymen’s Terms earlier this week and going ga-ga over all the great villainy in the script, I realized that I hadn’t yet breached the subject of villains in any extensive way on the site.  And there’s a reason for that.  I hadn’t developed an extensive enough take on the matter!  Which is strange, because I’m a huge proponent of having great villains in your screenplay. Audiences often like to root against the villain just as much as they like to root for the hero.  So if you’re only including a hero in your script, you’re depriving the audience of half the fun!  I don’t care if you’re writing a romantic comedy, an indie drama, or a period piece.  99% of the time, there better be a villain involved!

So who are some of the great villains in cinema history?  Well of course there’s Darth Vader, Buffalo Bill, Longshanks (Braveheart), Hans Gruber, Michael Myers, The Joker, Hannibal, Apollo, the T-1000.  There’s also Agent Smith (Matrix), Annie Wilkes (Misery), Drago, Mr. Potter (It’s A Wonderful Life), Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci – Goodfellas), Hans Landa (Inglorious Basterds), Anton Chigurh (No Country…), Max Cady (Cape Fear), Alex Forest (Fatal Attraction), John Doe (Seven), Alonzo Harris (Training Day) plus many many more.

Strangely enough, I’ve found that what works as villainy in one movie may not work in another.  Sometimes you need your villain to be calculated, other times you need him to be terrifying.  It all depends on the situaiton, the genre, and the type of story you’re telling. So before we go into what makes a good villain, let’s first identify the different kinds of villains.

The Nasty Villain – I’d say this is the most common villain of all.  If you want a villain that gets the audience all riled up with hatred, this villain is your pick.  They seem to be driven by an unseen evil force that will stop at nothing to destroy our hero. Annie Wilkes, Mr. Potter, Anton Chigurh, even the blond haired baddie in The Karate Kid.  These are bad bad guys.  However, these villains can backfire on if you if they’re too thin, and a lot of amateurs make this mistake.  They make the villains nasty just because they’re the bad guy in the story.  To combat this, make sure to add a solid motivation behind their actions.   Anton wants his money.  Annie is obsessed with Paul Sheldon’s books.  Mr. Potter wants every last piece of this town.  Even super-thin Karate Kid Blondie hates Daniel because he’s stolen his girl.  Your villain can be a really bad person.  Just make sure they have a little motivation behind their badness.

The Complicated Villain –  “Complicated” is usually code for a villain with some backstory.  I remember this gained popularity after the 80s Batman movies.  Tim Burton started showing the complicated histories behind why these baddies became bad.  All of a sudden, our villains obtained depth.  They had a past.  We could almost sympathize with them in a way.  This created a more complicated reaction to the character for the audience – shades of gray instead of straight black and white.  Max Cady from Cape Fear, for example, endured years of rape and degradation inside a prison because the man he’s now stalking put him there.  I’m not going to say I like Max Cady because of this, but I definitely understand him better.  The danger in writing this type of villain is that they become too sympathetic.   If we start sympathizing with the villain too much because of their troubled past, we don’t want to see them go down.  So be careful!

The Sorta Likable Villain – These villains are bad, but there’s also something alluring, interesting, or cool about them that makes us sort of like them.  Apollo Creed, Darth Vader, and Hannibal Lecter are all “Sorta Likable” villains.  I find that a lot of the time, sorta likable villains exist in a film where there’s a villain worse than them.  This allows us to root against someone while still kinda rooting for the cooler villain.  With Darth Vader in Star Wars, the real villain is Grand Moff Tarkin.  With Darth Vader in Empire and Jedi, the real villain is the Emperor.  In Lambs, Hannibal isn’t the top villain.  That title goes to Buffallo Bill.

The Comedic Villain – Seen only in comedies, these villains can be tough to get right.  They must be funny, but not so funny that they aren’t threatening.  I read a lot of comedy scripts where the villain is funny, but also such a goofball or so stupid that I don’t see them as a serious threat.  Therefore, you have to find that perfect balance.  Matt Dillon’s character in There’s Something About Mary is a great comedic villain.  Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore is a great comedic villain.  As much as I love Dumb and Dumber, those two villains were so bumbling that I was never scared of them, and that may have hurt the movie just a tad.  One of the most surefire traits to add to a comedic villain to ensure we’ll want to see them go down is arrogance.  Arrogance gets an audience riled up every time.  And it just seems to mix perfectly with comedy bad guys.

The Hidden Villain – Sometimes stories dictate, due to your bad guy being a mystery, that you not reveal your villain until the third act.  If you’re going to do this, you’re going to need an antagonistic force to challenge your hero in the meantime.  While an antogonist can be a villain, in these cases, they’re usually not.  Take The Fugitive for example.  (spoiler alert!) Dr. Charles Nichols is the surprise villain in the third act. But Tommy Lee Jones’ character is the antagonist for the first two acts.  It’s important that the hero always have an antagonist force pushing against him in the screenplay or else there’s no conflict.  Which is why a hidden villain can be a dangerous move.  However, if you substitute another antagonistic force in the meantime, you should be okay.

No Villain – I strongly discourage writing a script without a villain.  But if you’re going to do it, you better have a great antagonist pushing up against your character for the entire movie.  In most cases, if there is no villain in the script, the antagonist is nature.  Take Castaway for example.  That movie is villain-free.  But it has a strong antagonist – the island.  The Grey is another example.  The antagonist is the weather and the wolves. Those are the forces relentlessly pushing against our characters.  So sure, the no-villain approach can be done, but you better have some kick ass antagonistic nature if you’re going to pull it off.

Okay, we’ve identified the kind of villains in a script.  Now it’s time to determine what actually makes a good villain? Once again, not all of these things will work all of the time and certain combinations may work in some situations while not in others.  You have to assess what kind of story you’re telling and add the appropriate villainous traits.

Pompous – Like I mentioned above, a pompous character is a hated character.  There’s just something about people who are full of themselves that riles us up.  We NEED to see them go down.  Look at Apollo Creed in Rocky.  That man LOVED himself.  So we were dying to see Rocky beat him.

Stronger than our hero – This is a big one.  If a villain is weaker than our hero, we’ll have no doubt as to who will win in the end.  That’s bad.  What makes movies fun is when we think our hero has no shot because the villain is too strong.  Hans Gruber in Die Hard is the perfect example.  The man just oozes confidence and intelligence.  You really think he has his shit together, and that makes us seriously doubt if John McClane is going to win in the end.

Intelligent – This doesn’t ALWAYS have to be the case, particularly in comedies, but I love villains who can go toe-to-toe with our hero intellectually.  It creates the same effect as strength.  You always fear that they just might outthink our hero.  Prince Humperdink from The Princess Bride (who’s MAJORLY ARROGANT by the way) is actually a really smart guy.  He looks over the battleground after the Man In Black and Inigo Montoya’s sword fight and knows exactly how it went down and which direction the Man in Black went.  Smart villains are worthier villains.

Deceitful – Everybody hates deceitful people, people who go back on their promises.  Therefore this is a great trait to give your villain.  One of the scenes in Star Wars where our hatred for Grand Moth Tarken goes through the roof is when he asks Princess Leia where the Rebel Base is, promising he’ll spare her planet if she does.  She ends up telling him, and he goes ahead and blows the planet up anyway!  Or in Up.  Charles Muntz pretends to be all nice and friendly to our heroes.  Until his true colors come out later.  We hate deceitful people!

Emotionless – Sociopaths are REALLY SCARY.  Cold and collected, villains who feel no remorse for killing are as terrifying as it gets.  They just have that blank emotionless look on their faces?  Ugh, creeee-py!  Look no further than the flagship villain for this category, Anton Chigurgh in No Country For Old Men.  This dude is terrifying because he doesn’t have a single feeling bone in his body.  John Doe from Seven is another one.

Motivated – Most villains only work if they have a strong motivation behind their actions.  Take the T-1000 in Terminator 2 for example.  He’s been programmed to come here and eradicate John Connor in order to make sure the machines win the war in the future.  It’s a simple motivation, but it’s also dead solid.  We understand why he’s obsessed with killing John Connor at all costs.  You can certainly try writing an unmotivated villain, like The Joker in The Dark Knight, but be careful.  Villains who do bad shit just to do bad shit often confuse and frustrate the reader.  Also, it’s likely your villain won’t have 80 years of built-up audience awareness behind him to get an audience to go with it, such as the case is with The Joker.

Villain is strongest where hero is weakest – This is often tied into a hero’s fatal flaw, and therefore can be quite powerful if applied correctly.  The idea is that whatever your hero’s flaw is – whatever his biggest weakness is – make the villain extremely powerful in that area.  Take Luke Skywalker for example.  His flaw is that he doesn’t believe in himself.  Darth Vader, on the other hand, is the epitome of belief.  He’s the most confident motherf*cker in the galaxy (buoyed by his expertise in The Force).  Because Vader is so strong in the area that our hero struggles with the most, it creates a sense of doubt in whether Luke will be able to defeat him, and those situation tend to be the most compelling to watch.

Backstory – This is a choice.  You don’t have to do it.  But backstory adds depth to your villain, and readers/producers/agents tend to favor depth.  They want some info on why your bad guy turned into a bad guy.  Well, here’s my take on that.  I think what they really want is to know is something about your villain before the story began.  It doesn’t have to be WHY they became a bad person (i.e. daddy used to beat me when I was a kid), it can simply be fucked up pieces of that character’s past.  For example, the backstory we get on Hannibal is that he tore people’s faces off and used to be a therapist who preyed on his victims.  It doesn’t really tell us why he’s the way he is, but it adds depth to his character since we know more about him.  I will also say this about backstory.  Be careful about making your villain’s situation too sympathetic.  At a certain point, if we’re sympathizing with them too much, we don’t want to see them go down.  And we have to want to see the villain go down.

And there you have it!  My take on how to create a great villain.  However, like a lot of these articles, I feel like I’m only scratching the surface.  I know you guys have some thoughts of your own on how to create great villains, so throw’em at me.  If there’s anything really good, I’ll add it to the article! :)

Genre: Period
Premise: In a small town during the 1935 dust bowl, a former soldier must protect a fleeing city woman from a group of gangsters who want her dead.
About: I don’t know much about the writer, but this script made the Black List in 2008.  People have been describing it as the next Low Dweller (now titled “Into The Furnace.”) although I’ve been told it’s very “Desperate Hours’ish” as well.
Writer: Jeremy H. Bailey
Details: 110 pages (undated)

So there’re two things I’ve been going gaga about over the past month.  One is Gangnam Style and two is Desperate Hours.  Both are amazing and world-changing in their own way.  Now if there was some way to combine these two forces into one super-force…well gosh-darnit we might have the single greatest piece of entertainment in world history.  The only thing better than that mobster battle in Act 3 of Hours would be if Psy popped out and said…..LONG PAUSE…”Oppam Gangnam style!” and started doing the horsie dance.  And then the pelvic-thrusting elevator guy began doing his pelvic-thrusting elevator dance to ward off some of the mobsters.  I know if I were one of those mobsters, I’d run for my life.

What were we talking about again?  Oh yeah, a period piece.  Makes total sense that I’m including a South Korean pop star in this review then.  So the reason I picked this script today was because someone told me it was similar to Hours, but “EVEN BETTER.”  Well, since it took me over two years to crown a new number 1 script on my Top 25 list, I’m not sure how you can get any better than that, but I was willing to give it a shot.

And I quickly found out that it was, indeed, similar to Hours in many ways.  Both scripts start out in a really depressing era, with Layman’s beginning during the Dustbowl.  Don’t know what the Dustbowl is?  From my shaky history class memory, it was the time after we planted all our crops and didn’t consider how to keep the moisture intact (something about crop rotation?).  So all the land went dry, and that caused these huge dust storms to swirl around the country, making the problem even worse.  Basically, America went all North Korea farming, to stick with today’s theme.

This has caused the tiny Oklahoma town of Red Thistle to go near-broke.  The only one with any money is a not-very-nice man named Two Bills Calahan.  A fat bald sweaty pervert of a fellow, Two Bills understands the power he yields, and he makes sure he takes advantage of every ounce of it.  This guy is such a scumbag that he actually brings in a beautiful struggling farmer’s widow every day, Evelyn, and pays her for his sexual needs.  Evelyn, who has a sick daughter, is so desperate for money that she has no choice but to do it.

Staying with Evelyn, it turns out she lost her husband in the war, and got back his brother as the prize.  Crane McNamee has been shunned by the community since he left town when they needed him most, and has come back with his tail between his legs to take care of Evelyn now that she’s living alone with her daughter.  The two have a complicated relationship that revolves around her constantly being pissed off at him.

Their relationship is about to get even more complicated though as, during one of the many dust storms, Crane finds a crashed car on the side of the road with a passed out woman and a dead men inside  He schleps the woman, a city girl we’ll come to know as Cassidy, back to his house, not knowing that the men who were chasing her aren’t far behind.

These men, led by a really scary motherf*cker named Washington, head to the middle of Red Thistle and demand to know where this woman is.  They make a deal with Two Bill that whoever finds her first gets a reward, and that Two Bill gets half of it.  Never one to turn away money, Two Bill takes the fight to the people, encouraging them to look under ever rock, behind every loose board.  They MUST find this woman.  And the people, desperate for money, become a senseless mob in the process.

Naturally, word comes down that Crane is hiding her, and Washington’s crew, along with the town, go to claim their prize.  But Crane is not giving her up.  He’ll do anything, including becoming the killer he left in the past, to protect her.  An awkward four-pronged battle then ensues between Crane, Washington, Two Bill, and the town, which seems headed in one direction and one direction only: Disaster.

It’s hard to write this review without comparing Layman’s to Hours.  Had I read Layman’s first, I’m sure I would’ve rated it higher.  It’s still a very good script, but in the back of my head I was always saying, “Oooh, Hours did that better.”  The first thing that struck me was the time and place.  What I liked about Hours was that it was set at the end of all that depressing shit.  America had started to recover.  There was a sense of hope.  With Layman’s, it’s set in the heart of hopelessness.  The Dustbowl had made everyone as poor as dirt, and there didn’t seem to be any end to it.  It was super-damn depressing. Like, the complete opposite of watching the Gangnam Style video.

I was actually telling a friend about the script after I read it, and I realized after a few minutes what I was saying…”Dustbowl, dying daughter with pneumonia, mom who must prostitute herself to stay afloat, crippled main character, dead soldier brother” — and all of a sudden we both just started laughing at how depressing it all was.  And the thing is, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds, but yeah, the hopelessness definitely played a part in my reaction here.

I’ll tell you one area where Layman’s DID eclipse Hours, though, and that was in the villain department.  It has two really nasty villains, one in Two-Bill and the other in Washington.  These are just two really BAD dudes, each in their own way.  And like I always say, if you can develop a great villain, you will rope in the reader.  Because there’s nothing more fun than watching a villain you hate go down.

To me, that’s what sets this script apart.  I so wanted to see this pompous megalomaniac Washington get his ass handed to him by Crane.  But the thing is, it could’ve been even better.  Crane was an okay protagonist, but not nearly as good as Frank from Hours.  With Frank, his situation was always clear.  He’d lost his family to the Spanish flu and he was still in love with the woman he left when he was young, only to come back and find out she’d married another man.  With Crane, there was something about how he could’ve saved his brother in the war but didn’t.  Maybe??  I wasn’t sure.  I could also never figure out what his relationship was with Evelyn.  Was he just a caretaker or was there more there?  She seemed to hate him.  But at the end she says she always loved him.  Loved him as a family member or like “in love” with him?  I couldn’t figure that out.  And it drives me batty when main characters’ intentions and motivations and their situations are unclear.  I just couldn’t get a handle on Crane.

The ending, also, was a little confusing.  At a certain point (spoiler) Cassidy tells Crane she came here for him?  But wait?  Why did she wait until the very end to tell him that?  Did she not know who he was yet?  I’m not sure.  It was one of those situations where it felt like the writer was so set on the twist, that he was going to force it in there through hell or high water, regardless of if it was clear or not.  I’m not upset about it.  Let’s face it: WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE.  But still, that third act definitely could’ve used another draft or two.

But boy oh boy, those villains.  They really kept me around wanting to know what happened.  They were so strong, in fact, and so fun to watch, that they pumped this script up to a double worth-the-read.  Them and that damn rain-maker, who was a stroke of atmospheric genius!

What I learned: Today’s “what I learned” came out of nowhere.  I realized that having two villains go toe-to-toe is a guaranteed great scene!  My favorite scene in the script is when Washington and his gang interrupt a church sermon to confront our other villain, Two Bills, to ask where their girl is.  There’s something about seeing two evil factions who we’ve met individually square off against each other that’s fascinating.  I just couldn’t wait to see who was going to bend first.  This is a cool tip to remember.

Genre: Horror/Procedural
Premise: An allegedly rehabilitated Dr. Jekyll is pulled out of prison to help hunt a new monster who seems to be using an improved version of the Hyde serum.
About: “Hyde” made the 2010 Black List.  While writing Hyde, screenwriter Cole Haddon concurrently wrote the story in graphic novel form for Dark Horse.  That novel is titled “The Strange Case Of Mr. Hyde” and is available on Amazon.  
Writer: Cole Haddon
Details: 114 pages (8-06-10 draft) This is the first draft (the one that made the Black List).

I’m still kind of geeking out after meeting Eddie O’Keefe last night, one half of the writing team of When The Streetlights Go On.  These guys just ignore ALL RULES.  The draft of theirs that made the Black List?  That script was written in SIX WEEKS.  Oh, and did I mention it was their FIRST SCREENPLAY.  Wowzers – that goes against everything history has dictated regarding first scripts.

Eddie talked about how he and his partner, Chris, don’t focus too much on structure, but rather come up with this huge playlist of songs that they feel is appropriate for the material, and just let the music guide their writing and their choices.  Again, this is sooooo NOT the way I’d recommend anyone doing it.  Because believe me, I’ve read stuff from writers who’ve written that way before, and it is NEVER GOOD.  So to see these guys use such an undefined unstructured approach so effectively is both scary and inspiring.

With that said, they DID read all the screenwriting books before they wrote the script.  They do understand things like active characters and act breaks and all that.  So they did have that in the back of their mind when they were writing.  They’ve also written lots of short stories and both attended film school – so it wasn’t like they were going into this screenwriting thing completely unprepared.  Still, I love how that approach works for them, because it’s what makes their work so unique and unpredictable.  Oh, and he told me that in addition to Streetlights and Broadcast, the two have written a script that he feels is EASILY their best work.  It’s just not very well known.  Eddie says he’s going to send that to me and I cannot wait!

What does this have to do with today’s script?  NOTHING!  I just wanted to get my geekery on and this felt like the right place to do it.  However, Eddie and Chris did not write today’s script.  So let’s move away from formless writing to something a little more structured, and surprisingly good!

So as you probably know, back in the day, there was this doctor named Henry Jeckyll.  Dude liked to experiment.  And dangit if he wasn’t such a believer in his work that he’d experiment on himself!  That didn’t turn out so hot, though, since one of his experiments turned him into a monster, a monster who crawled through 1880s London looking for people to mutilate. Eventually, the coppers caught up with him and killed his ass, and the world was forever better.

Or was it?

Five years later, a rash of prostitute killings have started up again, and the crime scenes look like something out of a superhero film.  20 some feet between fleeing footsteps. Blood trails halfway up the sides of buildings.  Whoever’s pulling off these killings is superhuman.

But who could it be?  Hyde was killed five years ago.  At least that’s what everyone was told.  Our resident inspector on the case, the off-putting Thomas Adye, learns that Hyde, in fact, wasn’t killed.  Why would you kill something with that much power when you could study it instead (Paul Riser from Aliens would be proud!)?  So the dual personalities of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde have been kept underground in the interim, locked up in a Hannibal Lector-like cage that only an unprivileged few have access to.  Adye is tasked with going to talk with Dr. Jeckyll to see if he can get a beat on who this monster is and where it might be.

The two don’t hit it off AT ALL and Adye leaves hoping he’ll never never have to see Jeckyll again.  But when he runs into the murderer who shrugs off a few bullets like he’s being tickled by duck feathers, he realizes he’s in way over his head.  If he’s going to take this killer down, he will need the help of the man he despises the most, his underground cell buddy, Dr. Jeckyll.

Away the two go, into the streets, pounding the pavement, talking to anyone who might know who this killer is.  Of course, the scum of the underground don’t like to talk to cops, so it’s hard-going wherever they turn, especially with the mischievous Jeckyll delighting in every little misstep Adye takes.

After a couple of false-positives, the duo finally find out who they’re dealing with (spoiler).  In case you haven’t figured it out yet – yup – our “psycho killer” is none-other than Jack The Ripper.  Yikes.  As if we didn’t have enough problems.  And since Mr. Ripper also seems to have gotten his hands on Dr. Jeckyll’s serum, he’s basically like a serial killing nuclear bomb!

So our mismatched couple will need to put aside their differences to catch the killer before he continues his run.  But it’s starting to look like the only way they’re going to stop him, is if they use some of that infamous serum themselves…

Duh duh duh duhhhhhhh…..

I’m not really a fan of these outdated public domain monsters. I know there’s a reason some of this stuff stands the test of time, but to me I’m always thinking, “Ehhh, isn’t a hundred years enough? Shouldn’t we, maybe, try to come up with new monsters and new stories?”  I know saying such words could get me blackballed from Hollywood, but seriously – let’s create something new, not rekindle something old!

With that said, this is about as good of a job as you can do with this kind of story.  The atmospheric writing (I love the way Haddon describes Jeckyll’s face as “UNEXPECTEDLY HANDSOME, startlingly so…” when it first slams into his jail cell bars, his features clear for the first time after being hidden in shadows the entire scene) and forward-moving story kept things fun throughout.  In these procedurals – these “chase the killer” scripts – it’s all about pushing the story forward, keeping the momentum going, and I thought Haddon did that brilliantly.  There’s never a moment where we’re just sitting around discussing shit.  We’re always AFTER THE KILLER.

The real star of the script though was the relationship between the straight-laced Adye and the mischievous Jeckyll.  This updated (or backdated) take on the buddy-cop dynamic was, dare I say, scrumptious.  It was hilarious to watch Adye obsessed and freaked out by every little detail, contrasted with Jeckyll, who was just thrilled to be out of his cell for a few days.  This was one big field trip for him, and dammit if he wasn’t going to play on everything before the whistle to go back inside blew (God I hated that whistle!).

I (spoiler) thought bringing Jack The Ripper into the mix was also clever, as was giving him access to Jeckyll’s serum, making him super-human.  I mean what’s scarier than a monster version of Jack The Ripper??  Maybe the only thing I was worried about was that this felt a teensy bit similar to the abomination known as Van Helsing. I hope if they make this, they don’t “kids family” it up but stick with the darker more intense approach.  That will definitely hurt opening day grosses, but it will pay off for the film in the long run.

Honestly, the only reason I didn’t rate this higher was because it’s not my thing.  But for what it is, it’s pretty damn enjoyable.

What I learned: A common screenwriting debate is whether you should write dialogue “properly” or if you should add accents and speech imperfections.  Take for instance this line on page 12 from Chief Inspector Newcomen: “Stay away from Hyde, Inspector. ‘E’s like a poison that keeps working at you. A poison, just ask ‘is mate Utterson.”  The way I see it is is this – you can add speech imperfections as long as you don’t overdo it.  As soon as I have to WORK to get through all the accents and deliberate misspellings, I get pissed at the writer, because a reader should never have to work.  So use it sparingly if you REALLY NEED TO, but don’t slaughter your dialogue with it.