Genre: Sci-fi Comedy
Premise: A plucky teenage boy is accidentally sent 30 years into the past, where he inadvertently prevents his parents from meeting, in the process threatening his very existence.
About: This is the very first draft of Back to the Future, written in 1981.
Writers: Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
Details: 110 pages (but the formatting here is really tight – this feels more like 130 pages) 1981 draft

I swear. I tried to see Thor 2 this weekend (as I said I would in my newsletter). With every fiber of my being I tried to go. At one point I actually constructed a catapult on my couch (from nearby items like couch pillows and a floor lamp) that would physically propel me towards the door so that I’d be forced to go.

But in the end, I just couldn’t (make the catapult work or see the film). I never did get into the whole Greek God thing in English anyway. Much like my distaste for Doritos and Everybody Loves Raymond, they were wisps of popular culture I never understood.

Instead, I decided to do something different today – read the first draft of Back To The Future! From what I’d heard, it wasn’t very good. The word on the street was that every studio in town passed on it. True, neither Zemeckis or Gale had done much at the time (Zemeckis’s first movie, Used Cars, had just come out and done so-so at the box office) but even if they had, nobody was drinking the McFly juice yet.

And therein lies the reason I must review it. I want to show screenwriters what can be done with a bad script. As long as there’s a good idea at the core, you can turn something bad into something good. It takes time (it took these guys 3 years). But if the script has potential and you’re willing to put in the work, there’s hope.

Back to the Future Alpha is essentially the boring version of the movie you’ve come to love. The script starts off strangely with Marty McFly perfecting his video pirating skills. He’s even trying to get Doc to streamline his bootlegging process so he can sell films out on the street before they hit theaters! I’m not kidding. And this is 1981!

Marty hangs around Doc’s place before and after school, shooting the shit. Doc’s always talking about power sources and how he needs more power for his latest project – oh, and there’s a secret locked room that he refuses to allow Marty to see.

Marty’s parents are both here, but their personalities haven’t been fleshed out yet. Likewise, Biff is operating on about 25% of his eventual personality. Marty’s still got a girlfriend (her name’s Suzy) whom he passes notes to in long classroom scenes where the teacher warms about the upcoming nuclear apocalypse.  There are no siblings here, though (and therefore no famous disappearing picture).

One day Marty’s hanging out at Doc’s and, out of curiosity, pours some Coke into one of his devices. This causes a chemical reaction that turns out to be exactly what Doc needs for his mysterious behind-the-locked-door project. Coke (due to its secret formula) actually plays a big part in this version of the story.

We finally learn that the thing behind the door is a time machine. It needs incredible amounts of energy. And the mix of Coke and plutonium generate that energy. There is no car here. No 88 miles per hour. Just a machine in a lab. CIA agents eventually show up at that lab looking for the plutonium Doc stole. There’s a shoot out, and Marty accidentally gets caught in the machine and travels back 30 years.

After realizing where he is, Marty runs to his mom’s house and she’s, of course, his age now. He asks her what’s going on. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about or who he is. Marty passes out and when he wakes up, Doc has come to pick him up (Marty had Doc’s name in his pocket from earlier, so they called him).

Doc seems to know what’s happened right away in this version (Marty doesn’t need to convince him he’s from the future), and sets about getting Marty home. He tells Marty he MUST stay in his house in the meantime so he doesn’t upset the space-time continuum. But Marty gets bored and heads to school (because, why not!) where he sees his mom again, who starts falling in love with him.

From that point on, everything happens pretty much the way it happens in the film, except for the final sequence, where instead of the clock tower, we get Doc and Marty driving to Nevada to channel energy for the time machine from the very last nuclear bomb test in America. And in a sequence that would come back to haunt moviegoers worldwide three decades later, Marty will have to hide inside a refrigerator to survive the nuclear blast.

The biggest change you see from this draft to the final one is that of URGENCY. Everything in the final draft MOVES FAST. Characters are always late. Characters are always on the move. Characters always have somewhere to be.

In this version, Marty’s just hanging out at Doc’s place with all the time in the world. Then he’s hanging out in his classroom with his teacher droning on about nuclear bombs. The story ISN’T MOVING. It’s GETTING READY TO MOVE. And that’s one of the major things that rewrites change. You locate all the places in your story that are GETTING READY to happen, and you replace them with things that HAPPEN.

Take Doc’s time machine, for instance. In this version, Doc’s still in the process of building it. He hasn’t come up with all the answers yet. This means four or five scenes of Doc wondering how he’s going to do it. In the movie, DOC’S ALREADY FIGURED THIS OUT. He already has the time machine ready. So the story’s already on the move. He calls Marty to the mall and we’re off to the races.

Or look at the classroom scene. The final draft would NEVER have a classroom scene. Characters sitting around while a teacher slowly doles out exposition? No way! Instead, Marty’s late for class. He’s getting stopped in the hallway by the principal. He’s trying to set up his date with Jennifer. We don’t have time for class! There’s always somewhere to be!

You also see a lot of forced set-ups here, which is one of the easiest ways to spot an early draft. Take Marty’s skateboarding. Obviously, one of the key scenes in the film is when Marty outmaneuvers Biff in Town Square on a makeshift skateboard. So we need to set that up. In this version, in the first act, Marty is walking home with Suzy and some kid’s skateboard shoots off towards Marty. Marty hops on it, does all these ridiculous tricks for no reason (other than to set up he’s a master skateboarder), then hands the board back.

Contrast that with the final draft. The skateboard is an integral part of Marty’s everyday routine. It’s how he gets around. We see him hop on it and hurry to school as early as the second scene of the film. That’s one area where rewriting helps, is taking those isolated ideas and interweaving them into the fabric of your screenplay.

The same thing can be said for stuff like the Clock Tower, the lightning bolt, the car-as-time-machine, the 88 miles per hour. We saw seeds of those ideas here, but they needed time to grow in order to be realized. Doc is living in the main building in town, which looks like it eventually became the Clock Tower. And the idea of them only getting one shot at this lightning bolt originated from the one and only shot at catching energy from the nuclear bomb test.

Speaking of the ending, that was another huge problem with this draft. You don’t keep your characters in one location for 90% of the movie, then put them in a car and drive them on a six hour road trip for the climax. It feels clumsy and disjointed. I’m guessing Zemeckis and Gale eventually realized this, which necessitated a more local solution. Hence the atomic bomb turning into a lightning bolt.

Also of note is the movement of a key plot point that really helped the structure of the second act. In this version of Back To The Future, Marty doesn’t disrupt his parents from meeting right away. Instead, he runs into his mom, then goes to Doc’s, then Doc tells him to hang out while he works on sending him back to the future.

Despite Doc hammering Marty on how dangerous it is to interact with anybody, Marty leaves the house and heads to school out of boredom. It’s only then that he screws up the meeting between his mother and father. This, of course, makes zero sense. Why would Marty go to school and potentially endanger his existence if he doesn’t have to?

In the final draft, they wisely changed the position of this plot point to maximize motivation. Marty saves his father after he falls out of the tree, getting hit by the car INSTEAD of his dad, and getting taken into his mom’s house, where she falls in love with him (instead of his father). All of this happens BEFORE he meets Doc. This way, when Marty and Doc game plan sending him back, they realize that Marty has already endangered his existence by having his mom fall for him instead of his dad. Marty now HAS NO CHOICE but to go to school and correct his mistake.  This works so much better than, “Eh, I’m bored. Let’s go to High School.”  Right?

I think to some of you, all of this is obvious. “Yeah, it was an early draft. Of course it wasn’t as good as the final draft.” But this is the draft Zemeckis and Gale were originally trying to sell. And that’s the problem. I see a lot of writers going out there with drafts like this. Drafts with huge potential but where the writers haven’t come close to maximizing that potential.

Think about it. Is your ending the refrigerator-in-a-nuclear-explosion ending? Or is it the Delorean racing 88 miles per hour while Doc swings from the clock tower lightning bolt ending? Sure it takes lots more drafts and lots more time to get the lightning bolt ending, but how the hell do you think you’re going to beat the competition with a subpar product?

I don’t think this draft of Back To The Future was bad. But it reads like a lot of early drafts do. Some fun ideas. Some decent characters. Some clumsy exposition. A start-and-stop story that’s still trying to find itself. But it didn’t feel FINISHED.

The lesson here is to look at what can happen when you rewrite. I heard stories about how these two, after getting rejected, wrote draft after draft after draft of this script, debating every single detail of the story until it got to where it needed to be. That takes dedication. And that’s what every screenwriter needs in order to succeed.

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

What I learned: Every time you get an idea, it’s just a seed. Your job is to water that seed and help it grow to as big as it possibly can. Too many writers are too impatient to do the watering. And their scripts always reflect that.

Get Your Script Reviewed on Scriptshadow: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if it gets reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Dark Thriller
Premise: (from writer) When a child killer is sentenced to death under dubious circumstances, the investigating detective discovers that the very man being executed holds the keys that can solve the crime.
About: (from writer) You mentioned in this week’s review of Escape From Tomorrow, “If you can find a way to break the rules in an interesting way, to create an excited discussion around your film or script, then the doors to Hollywood will open right up.” This script does just that! It’s a genre bending story that catches most readers off guard. — Just a note; it placed in the top 15% at Nicholls this year and finished in the top 10% in the PAGE AWARDS.
Writer: Shawn Davis
Details: 111 pages

Okay, I want to apologize here. In last week’s newsletter, I said that “Gravity Kills” was going to be the Amateur Friday script, when I meant to put “What Doesn’t Kill You” in there. Apparently I think anything with the word “kill” in it is the same thing. The biggest apology goes to Thomas, who wrote Gravity Kills. I’m incredibly sorry for the mix-up, buddy. Hopefully I’ll get to review your script another time.

Now that we got that screw-up out of the way, we can discuss what REALLY matters. Star Wars 7 in 3-D!! As in NO, Star Wars is NOT supposed to be in 3-D!!! Why would you go through all the hassle to be the last studio project to shoot on film if you were going to make it 3-D? I’m thinking JJ and Iger (Disney prez) struck a deal – “We’ll let you push the date back to the end of 2015, but you gotta give us 3-D.” The only silver-lining in this is that I think JJ did it for the screenplay. He knows it’s not ready to shoot. He knows they need more time to get it right. Star Wars isn’t just the creation of a story. It’s the creation of an entire universe. Imagination (TRUE imagination) takes time. So if the big reason we have Star Wars in 3-D is for the script, then JJ, 3-D it is.

What the heck am I talking about Star Wars for during Amateur Friday?? Because Star Wars is big enough that it can be talked about in any post. And since lots more Star Wars news is coming over the next couple of years, no post is safe!

“What Doesn’t Kill You” focuses on Clive Washington, a 45 year-old African-American detective with salt-and-pepper hair (hmm, I wonder which actor Shawn had in mind here) who’s had a rough month. He was involved in a skirmish that ended up getting another cop killed.

But that’s just the beginning of his problems. Three little sisters were murdered a couple of months back and they just found the bodies. All signs point to a lonely bachelor named Derek who splits his time between watching really sick porn and buying drugs (porn and drugs – not good for you, folks).

Derek doesn’t stand a chance with his city-appointed lawyer and gets the death penalty. To add insult to injury, a new law just passed that allows killers of multiple people to be revived after the execution, so they can be executed again. The state finds these killings so brutal, they want Derek to die three separate times.

When Derek is hit with his first execution, his “metaphysical body” is transported to the house where the killings took place. It’s here where we find out Derek isn’t the killer. It was someone else, a mysterious man in a black mask. Derek must gather as many clues as he can before he’s revived the first and second time to prove that he isn’t the killer (he gets a day between each execution).

In the meantime, Clive is starting to have doubts that Derek’s their guy. But what can you do when you’ve already technically executed someone? Derek is not legally alive. So you can’t turn him loose. This seals Derek’s fate, but that doesn’t stop Clive from trying to find the real killer before he continues his killing spree. And if you think you know who the killer is and what’s going to happen here?  Think again.  “What Doesn’t Kill You” keeps ya guessing until the very end.

Whenever you open a script, you’re always looking for something unique – a new voice, new concept, characters you haven’t seen before, a unique execution (no pun intended). You get that with What Doesn’t Kill You. I have some problems with this script, most notably the fact that it’s needlessly violent in a lot of places (brutal descriptions of violent acts against little girls often go too far). But if Shawn can dial a lot of that back, he may have something here. This reminded me a lot of Prisoners. And I think it may even be better than that script.

Here’s the catch, though. This “execution/revive” thing has to be real. Although it sounds made-up, I’m very trusting of the writer and wondered, “Could this law have snuck in there without me knowing it?”  When Shawn had the characters talking about the lone inmate in recent history upon which is was tested, I thought, “Hmm, I vaguely remember reading something about that… I think.”   So I googled it but got nothing.  If it’s indeed made up, I don’t know if this script can work. You can’t just make up a huge law like that and expect the public to go along with it.  I’d love to be proven wrong though.  Can anyone think of one? (Double Jeopardy was a real law, albeit used liberally in the film)

What was cool about that though, was it gave the script that “wild card” element a procedural needs to stand out. Seven had the really bizarre killings. Lambs had Hannibal. But no one’s really been able to catch that wild-card element since. This is definitely a wild card and is the main reason the script feels so different. Remember that without the wild-card, you have a cop chasing clues looking into a murder. We can see that every night on TV.

(spoilers) Besides the graphic violent description, another squeaky wheel is Derek’s character. Derek hasn’t done anything terrible (by “terrible” I mean hurt or kill anyone). But he is introduced looking at young girls online. Later, we’re asked to essentially root for this guy. And kudos to Shawn because he almost makes us do it. But we’re not going to get over that kind of thing. So he probably needs to dial that way back or take it out.

The thing is, it’s kind of essential to the story. We have to believe this man is our killer. And the fact that he looks at young girls online is the main reason he gets convicted for killing these three young girls. Screenwriting occasionally puts us in this position, where we’re forced to talk out of both sides of our mouth. We must make Derek likable enough to root for later, but terrible enough that it’s believable he’d get convicted. That’s some of the toughest stuff to make work.

The thing is, (major spoilers) Derek’s fingerprints and hair were planted on the scene. So if you just made him watch really fucked up porn (not little girls) and those two pieces of evidence put him at the scene of the crime, I think that’s enough to convince the police (and us) that he did it.

What I really have to give Shawn credit for is the out-of-body stuff. Technically, it shouldn’t have worked. You have your main character having an out of body experience. Then Derek has them three times while dead. It feels like we’re giving the story too much string – that it’s getting too “out there.” But it worked for me. I’m not sure why, but it did.

This script definitely needs a few tweaks, but I think we’ve found a cool new voice in Shawn Davis.

Screenplay link: What Doesn’t Kill You

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

What I learned: When dealing with extreme violent acts, do what directors do. Show the raised bat then cut to the next scene. There’s no need to show the swing and hear the thump. It’s too much. Remember at the end of Seven, we never saw Gwyneth Paltrow’s head (although I’m sure plenty of middle-aged women would’ve wanted to).

If you’ve been pursuing screenwriting these past few years, chances are you’ve heard of Dan Fogelman. WHY should you have heard of Dan Fogelman? Only because for one stretch there in 2010, he sold two scripts and one pitch for a total of 7 million dollars. In other words, he is the embodiment of the screenwriting dream. It started with his 2.5 million dollar sale for Crazy, Stupid, Love, was followed by a 3 million dollar sale for Imagine (a movie he’ll make his directing debut on) and ended with a “Political Jerry Maguire” pitch that sold for 2 million. I’ve read almost all of Dan’s scripts, and as he says later in the interview, he has an amazing ability to write readable scripts. This weekend yet ANOTHER one of Dan’s scripts is being released, Last Vegas. He was cool enough to hop on the phone and answer a few questions I’ve had about that amazing stretch he had.

SS: Hi Dan, how are you?

DF: I’m doing well, thanks.

SS: Now I know you’re busy working on your first directorial effort, Imagine, so I thought I’d jump into the questions right away and maximize our time. There’s a lot I’d like to ask.

DF: That’s great. Works for me.

SS: Back in 2010, you had that amazing streak of spec sales. But before we go there, I was interested in how you got started. What was the first script you sold?

DF: My first script didn’t sell, but it did get me my agents. I was 26, maybe twelve years ago, decided I’d take a crack at screenwriting and had a buddy who actually now runs my company… I wrote a script, like a Wonder Years style script about my bar mitzvah, figured a Jewish agent would read it and identify with it and yeah, that was basically the plot. So I bought myself Final Draft. I had never studied screenwriting or anything and wrote it and handed it to my buddy and had no idea if it was any good. I thought I’d pass it on to a few people and it all happened very quickly. He had a manager at his company who’s now a gigantic manager and my manager to this day and she read it and all of a sudden I had agents and everything just started from there. The script never sold. But it got me my first job, which was at Pixar.

SS: You were able to get into the industry off your FIRST written screenplay??

DF: Yeah, I was very lucky. I got very lucky.

SS: Wow, that’s amazing. Now when you look back at the script now, how do you feel about it? Do you feel it was up to snuff?

DF: I haven’t looked at it in a long time – I really loved it and I’ve taken elements from it and it was very VO heavy, very “Daniel Stern,” looking back on his childhood. I’ve taken a lot of characters and used them for a lot of TV shows or elements for funny scenes. I think it probably holds up. I once had a meeting with Hans Zimmerman about it, to produce it, and I remember he had a very heavy German accent and he said, “It’s very funny script, I’ve always thought the Jews were so funny.”

SS: That sounds like Hans.  Now regarding getting that job at Pixar. That was writing the Cars movie, right? That must’ve been a HUGE deal. I mean, the bigger production companies rarely hand out assignment work to anyone who isn’t super-proven. What did you say in that room to get that job? What was your pitch?

DF: I believe a bunch of up-and-coming writers were up to do it. It was more Pixar’s model at the time – and they may still do this – they bring in writers who can shape and reshape the story over a long period of time, as opposed to paying a ton of money for a big writer. That might’ve been why I got the job. You go up there and you don’t know anything about the film so it’s not like I was going in there to pitch a take – They just said it needed to be a movie about cars and that’s kind of all I knew – cars that ‘come to life.’ So they put you in a room where John Lasseter and others were and I benefited from not knowing anything about the business, I was relaxed, so I kinda bullshit it for half an hour. And I got home and they called and said ‘We want to offer you a job where, for 2 weeks, you move up to San Francisco.” 2 weeks eventually became 2 months and, in the end, I stayed there for a year and a half. I got along with everyone. It was a real starting point for my career. John Lasseter, he’s an amazing guy. He was a real mentor to me – having never studied screenwriting or film, it was like going to college for a year.

SS: Flash-forward a bit, and you start selling all these spec scripts. All for a lot of money. I remember it was a really big moment in the screenwriting community because it allowed writers to dream about that huge sale again. What do you think was the reason for those scripts selling for so much? Did you learn anything from that or know why it happened?

DF: What I learned was that, I work best as a spec writer. I’m not gonna do a book adaptation or if someone comes to you with an idea or an actor – taking that risk of writing something someone might not want after spending all that time on it. Crazy Stupid Love was kind of a game changer for me. At the time I’d written these scripts that were taking so much time to get through the system (The Guilt Trip and Last Vegas), and they just weren’t coming together- the scripts were there, people liked them, but they weren’t moving. And so I decided to go out and write something without any obligations, something where I didn’t have to please anyone, and that was Crazy Stupid Love. I wrote it very quickly. I have a little cabin up in Joshua Tree and I wrote it very quickly and I sent it to my agent and manager and said, “Here, I wrote this on spec and I think it’s good” and here I was, half-picturing Steve Carell in the lead and within a week my agent had gotten it to Steve Carell, who, as fate had it, wanted to do this exact kind of movie next. So he wanted to come onto it and help produce it and so they bought it and we were literally shooting the movie months after. It never happens like that. It had the right people – that was an anomaly how it happened, all of it. But Steve’s attachment was obviously the main reason why the script sold for so much.  And then when that happened, my other projects started moving through the system a lot faster.

SS: Okay, so when you move into a script like Last Vegas, obviously The Hangover did well and this puts a new spin on the Vegas trip – do you ever think about marketing when you write a script or do you just write what you love?

DF: The thing is, I wrote Last Vegas before The Hangover, and while I was writing it, The Hangover came out and I actually thought, ‘Oh this’ll never get made now.’ It takes movies so long to get made that it’s the nature of the beast that you’ll write a movie, it doesn’t get made right away, something similar gets made in the meantime, then your movie comes out, and it looks like you wrote it because of this other movie. That’s one of the crazy things about the business.

SS: Okay, last question. And I’m asking this one for the readers of the site. Pretend you’re 15 years younger and were still an amateur screenwriter. You have what you consider to be a good script. How would you go about trying to sell it?

DF: Ooh, that’s a good question. I mean, on my iPad right now are 17,000 emails from friends, family friends, all of who have screenplays they’d like me to read. My advice is – and this is going to sound bad – but my advice is, “I wouldn’t want to do this.” I tell them if you’ve got something else in your life, something that you like just as much as screenwriting, I would choose that over screenwriting. It’s a brutal existence, and it’s so rare that it pays off. But, if people come back after that and say, “No, screenwriting is the only thing I wanna do,” and they have a script, I usually say, “You just gotta bombard people.” I mean the truth is, there are SO many scripts out there. You know this as well as anyone.  And anyone can get a computer and buy Final Draft. More people think they can be a screenwriter or a writer than think they can be a professional baseball player. And you can tell by 5 pages whether it’s going to work or not – and you get emails about the premise and how it’s nothing that’s ever been seen before, but 9 times out of 10, your first script isn’t going to sell. But if you can work at it and get good and write something that really connects with people, you can start a career. I mean I don’t know if I’m good, or great, but I have a weird ability to write readable scripts. I don’t know if that makes me a genius, but it’s a skill. You gotta work hard and develop that skill and then, when you have something worthy, you have to bombard the world with it.

Having said that, it’s important to know that everyone’s story of how they made it is different. I haven’t met anyone who’s come into this the exact same way. So as long as you continue to get better at this skill and look for opportunities to break in, the hope is that sooner or later, you’ll be successful.

SS: Alright, Dan. Thank you for taking some time to help out Scriptshadow Nation. Good luck this weekend with Last Vegas and good luck with finishing Imagine.

DF: Thank you, Carson. I enjoyed it.

Post-interview thoughts: Wow! Dan broke through on his VERY FIRST SCRIPT. And here I’m always telling you that that can’t be done. I suppose we can add one more member to the exception list. Also fascinating to hear that Pixar likes to bring in inexperienced writers (who have potential) to write their movies. For a studio known as having the best-written movies in the business, there’s gotta be a lesson there. I know one thing I keep hearing a lot is that producers love young hungry writers because they’ll work like crazy for them. They’ll write a hundred drafts if they need to. Whereas older established writers come with big quotes and a lot more attitude. So maybe that plays into it. Anyway, it was a blast to talk to Dan and get at least a little bit of insight into how those big sales come together. I wish I had more time to really get into the details of all that but I hear directing a film takes a lot of time so I guess I’ll let Dan off the hook.  And of course, go see Last Vegas!!!☺

Genre: Thriller/Horror/Supernatural
Premise: An American doctor in the Congo must join a United Nations military unit to investigate a series of strange killings in the jungle.
About: Well, it’s Halloween, so what better script to review than the number 1 script on the 2010 Blood List! The Blood List is an offshoot of the Black List (unaffiliated) that ranks the best Horror scripts of the year. The pickings can be a bit spotty at times so even the top-ranked scripts can be suspect. The author of the script, David Portlock, has been at this for a long time (he wrote a produced short all the way back in 1996) but is yet to break through and get that coveted feature credit we all dream about.
Writer: David Portlock
Details: 109 pages – “August Draft” – 2010

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent at least 10 hours this weekend looking for the perfect candy bag for trick-or-treat Thursday. I’ve settled on a 10 gallon white kitchen bag but that may change between today and tomorrow. That 20 gallon black Hefty is looking awfully tempting. Now when it comes to trick-or-treating, I’m a traditionalist. I believe that if someone doesn’t give you a treat, you HAVE to trick. So I’m currently amassing a list of tricks I’m going to play on people. Let’s just say Halloween’s going to be egggg-celent (get it? Eggs? Cause I’m going to use them on houses!).

You’re probably curious what I’m going to be for Halloween. Well, due to the line of work I’m in, it’s down to either a title page or a parenthetical. So if you’re in Hollywood Thursday and see two giant parentheses walking around with the word “sarcastic” in between them, chances are it’s probably me. Come say hi, but only if you’re a parenthetical yourself.

Oh yeah, Dark Continent. So let me tell you why I picked this script. I’m tired of seeing the saaaame horror scripts over and over again. Haunted houses. Zombies infest a town. A masked killer takes over a community. Found footage. When you read, you’re always looking for something different. Because if someone can give you a new concept or a new spin on an old concept, chances are the choices WITHIN the script will be different as well. Weird creatures (possibly zombies?) in Darfur? I’ve never seen that before. When coupled with the script already being endorsed in another arena, I was in.

Dark Continent reels you in right away. We’re in the Congo. Sudanese soldiers have snagged a poor, unsuspecting girl and are about to rape her when someone (something?) comes out of nowhere and obliterates the would-be rapist, killing him and his soldier buddies as well. We don’t get a good look at the guy but it’s safe to say he’s a freak of nature.

Across the way, an American doctor named Anne Langly is trying her best to keep a local village healthy on a steady diet of band-aids and cough drops. And you thought Obamacare was bad. In between angry phone calls to the United Nations for more medical supplies, Langly hangs out with the senior doctor in the region, an old, wise French woman named Mama Piquot.

That is until Mama Piquot disappears. Coupled with a rash of killings in the area, the UN sends in some soldiers to check out what’s going on. Anne cons her way into the group so she can find her friend and they all head into the jungle. There they encounter even more killings (sometimes entire villages!) and get glimpses of who’s doing the killings: Super-human Africans.

These men can leap up to 30 feet in the air, have the strength of 100 men, and are smart enough to beat any pop quiz you throw at them. But how is this happening? What’s (or who’s) creating these super-humans? They’ll have to figure it out fast because if they don’t find a weakness or a way to take these mega-humans down, they’re probably not making it out of this jungle alive.

Okay, so one thing’s clear. Portlock really likes his 80s movies! “Dark Continent” is essentially a cross between Predator and Aliens, with a Congo’ian twist! We even have the strong female protagonist leading the charge. Ah, but Dark Continent failed to do exactly what I was assured it would – make unique choices. Everything here goes exactly the way these stories always do, and that made me script-sad. It made me change my parenthetical costume to “(disappointed)”.

What killed it for me was the “super humans who are being tested on” plot reveal. The reason I hate this plot choice is because it’s the plot choice of 70% of the video games on the market. Secret testing creates super-human monsters or people, and our characters have to kill them all. With video games being the bottom of the barrel in terms of writing, it’s wise not to get inspired by their writing. There will always be exceptions, but this is a rule I’m pretty confident you should stick by.

Another thing I couldn’t get on board with was the “villain by number” approach. There wasn’t a specific villain here. No Jason Voorhes, no Jaws shark, no Predator, no Queen Alien. Just a bunch of vague, scary warriors. Without specificity, we never have anyone to root against. I mean, that’s why Predator was so cool. He was a single badass alien hunter. We knew who he was, formed an opinion on him, and wanted to see him go down. It’s hard to form an opinion on a group of vague superhuman baddies. It’s too general. And like I always say, “general” is bad in screenwriting. You always want to be specific.

Also, the more of these “kidnapping” scripts I read, the more I’m realizing that unless the person kidnapped is a child or a young woman, we don’t care whether our hero saves them. A man? We don’t care. An old person? We don’t care. And in this case, it’s Mama Piquot’s kidnapping that inspires Anne to join the chase. I know it’s harsh. I know what I’m saying is cruel. But I don’t care if an old person gets taken. I just don’t. They lived a full life. They’ve contributed to the world what they’re going to contribute.  In movies, it’s just hard to root for kidnapped seniors.  I’d love to be proven wrong here. Can you guys think of any “kidnapping” movie where the person taken is either a man or an older person and the story still works? Cause I can’t.

In the end, though, the reason Dark Continent doesn’t pop is because the execution was too bland. I’ve said this so many times on the site but if I’m 30 pages ahead of the story (in other words, I have a general idea of where the story is going up to 30 pages in advance), I’m bored. As a writer, it’s your job to play with expectations. It’s your job to lure readers into your trap. Make them think they know where the story’s going, then pull the rug out from under them. I didn’t get that here, not even once. And even worse, when the mysteries were solved, the answers were too cliché (super-humans who were being tested on – I kid you not, I read a script last night with this same plot point – that’s never good, when you use a plot point that could be in the very next script your reader reads).

Dark Continent has some near-perfect spec WRITING. Every line here feels and sounds like a pro script. So I can see why it was considered better than many of its competitors that year. It was the storytelling that was too bland. Bland storytelling is every writer’s worst enemy, which is why we should all strive to take chances when we write. I think Portlock has the ability to turn this into something cool. It’s just a matter of challenging himself more.  Not going with the easy “been-there, done-that” choices.

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

What I learned: If you’re not trying to surprise your reader when you write, you’re not doing your job.

Genre: TV pilot
Premise: (from AMC) Set in the early 1980s, the series dramatizes the personal computing boom through the eyes of a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy whose innovations directly confront the corporate behemoths of the time. Their personal and professional partnership will be challenged by greed and ego while charting the changing culture in Texas’s Silicon Prairie.
About: This is one of the next big shows coming to AMC, the network that brought you Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. As for the writers, I’ve actually reviewed one of their scripts before and WOW have they improved. I thought their spec effort, The Knoll, was below par, with my main beef being that it was stick thin. But this is the polar opposite. Very rich and detailed and deep. Good job guys!
Writers: Christopher Cantwell and Christopher Rogers
Details: 64 pages

Breaking Bad is over. Mad Men has only one season left (well, two halves of one season actually – in a sly or slimy move, depending on who you talk to). Which leads to the inevitable question, what does the network producing the best shoes on television have next? Word on the street (or from a Google search) says that AMC has over 60 shows in development. So they’ve got plenty of potential successors. “Halt and Catch Fire” is first trying to take the baton. Will it succeed? Let’s find out.

It’s 1981. You know, when E.T. came out? When Michael Jackson had only a couple of facial reconstruction surgeries in the rear-view mirror (the MAN in the rear-view mirror)? And when the personal computer was just starting to hit the world. Computer systems salesman Joe Macmillan is someone who knows the PC boom is coming. The problem is he’s also suicidal, and actually drives his car off a cliff in the opening scene in an attempt to meet his maker. But he survives. Bummer. Or not bummer?

Joe, who used to work at IBM (and hated it), decides to use this second chance to take over the PC industry. He’s heard of this computer innovator named Gordon Clark, a bar-brawling family man (yeah!) who spends his nights pulling apart and putting back together Atari 2600s. Joe specifically comes to IBM rival Cardiff-Giant (at the time just a software company) to work with Gordon. His goal? To build a PC that’s better and cheaper than IBM’s.

And that’s exactly what they do (with a lot of resistance on Gordon’s part). They take one of IBM’s PCs and they reverse engineer it. Which is kind of a legal no-no. But Joe doesn’t stop there. He actually CALLS IBM and tells them that he did it. Which gets every lawyer within 5 miles of IBM’s headquarters together to take down Cardiff. What’s going on? Is Joe trying to destroy his own company?

Not exactly. In a somewhat difficult-to-understand development, the only way for Cardiff to avoid getting sued into bankruptcy is to pretend like they were working on a PC all along. This forces Cardiff’s top brass to allow Joe to head up the PC side of the company, where he of course brings with him Gordon, and a plucky (yet attractive!) young computer genius from a nearby university, Cameron. The three will do the impossible. They will take on the biggest computer corporation in the world and try to beat them at their own game – making PCs.

Lee Pace will play Joe.

Well, I don’t really know what I just read. I just know it was good! Almost an impressive. See, here’s what has me tripped up. This is a show about a company called “Cardiff-Giant” competing with titan IBM in the early days of the personal computer business. The thing is, I’ve never heard of Cardiff-Giant. Are they an also-ran company that eventually succumbed to IBM? Did Cardiff-Giant merge into some other famous company that’s still alive today? Or is this all just fiction? I mean, the Cardiff Giant IS one of the most famous hoaxes in history – a ten foot tall mummified man. So is the company title a hint that there’s more to this show than meets the eye? I don’t know!

Luckily, this is a really well-written pilot with a lot of good stuff going on. The first thing you notice about “Halt” is the irony (always use irony in your ideas if possible guys!). This is the computer business, a place where we expect dorks to huddle in their closets and basements and build computer boards. Which does happen here. But one of our two leads starts bar fights and the other is a ruthless closer that would make Alec Baldwin’s character on Glengary Glenn Ross feel like a spineless chump. These don’t feel like the geeky techies we associate with this industry, instantly giving the show some edge.

And Chris and Chris not only built those characters ironically, but used them to instill a lot of the conflict that drives the script. Joe is a suicidal dick who never takes no for an answer, and Gordon is a frustrated family man who isn’t afraid to tell someone to fuck off. The two don’t really like each other (or each others’ contrasting styles) and that adds a lot of fire to their scenes. Conflict, conflict, conflict people. It’s the oldest dramatic tool in the book. It’s gotta feel natural (you can’t force it) but if you set the characters up right and they’re naturally butting up against each other, the scenes will write themselves.

And the script just made some cool choices along the way. One of the easiest ways for me to spot a bad writer is to read a scene play out the exact way I’ve seen it play out 6000 times before. Only the good writers say, “How can I do this differently?”

There’s a scene early on where Joe needs an engineer for their group. So he goes to the local college to look for one. Now it’s important to see how this scene would’ve been written by a bad writer. We probably would’ve shown a professor type lecturing his students, and then a particularly difficult question would’ve been posed that stumped everyone, and our plucky young student, Cameron, would’ve answered it in an unexpectedly clever way. Joe would’ve been waiting in the wings, witnessing this, then caught up to Cameron afterwards and asked if he could talk to her.

Here’s how the scene went instead. Joe works his way in front of the class and tells everyone who wants to be an engineer to raise their hand. He’s going to list off several categories. Every time he lists a category they don’t have experience in, they have to lower their hands. He lists a bunch of stuff (electrical engineering, software design, microprocessing, etc.) and each time, more and more hands go down until there are three left. Of those three, he asks each to tell him one thing that will be true about computers 10 years from now. They each give their answer. Cameron ends up giving the best one. Macmillan says, “See me after class.”

I haven’t seen that scene before. And those scenes don’t just come to you off the top of your head. You have to fight for them. You have to go through a couple of cliché scenes until you find them. And the writers who are willing to put forth that extra effort and find that fresh take on a scene are typically the ones who succeed.

Speaking of Cameron, I loved how the Chris’s added ANOTHER layer of conflict within this three-person team. Later on, after Joe discovers Cameron, he gets drunk and sleeps with her. Realizing he screwed up everything, he ditches her the next morning. Later, however, when he becomes in charge of Cardiff’s PC division, he needs that engineer still. So he must go groveling back to this girl that hates him and ask her to join the team. She reluctantly does, and now we’ve got one big unhappy family.

We also have a boss who hates Joe. We have a rival (his old boss from IBM) who hates Joe. Everyone seems to hate these guys. And that’s PERFECT for a show because it creates drama. It creates resistance. It creates conflict. That’s what you need!

Now not everything is blueberries and soft shell tacos here. I had a couple of issues. Gordon’s character was inconsistent. He starts off as this guy who beats people up in bars. But when he meets Joe, he becomes meek. This tends to happen when you try and create two alpha males. In the scenes, one of them has to become dominant, and by association, the other’s going to disappear a little. However, Gordon disappeared too much. I liked him better when he would beat somebody’s ass. I hope they go with that guy in the show.

And also, this pilot was so heading for an impressive before the “Cardiff PC Division” plot point. This whole time, Joe looked like he was cleverly orchestrating this really cool plan that was going to outsmart everyone – an outsmarting I was dying to see – but it turns out they sort of accidentally get asked to start this new PC division because of a weird legal loophole that was never clearly explained. It drives me NUTS when major plot points are fudged over by unclear plot developments. I was hoping for more there.

Still, everything else here was top notch. Is it the next Breaking Bad? Too early to tell. I gave AMC show Hell on Wheels the same grade I’m giving this and thought it was headed for big things. But that show was bigger than AMC was capable of making it. It needed Boardwalk Empire dollars to do it justice. “Halt” doesn’t require a big production budget, so it will be all about the characters and the story. They’ve got some cool characters. Let’s see where the story goes from here.

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

What I learned: QUESTION MARK CHARACTERS – In a lot of good TV shows, you have characters who are question marks. You don’t know what they’re capable of or what they’ll do. You need to almost present them as ticking time bombs, waiting to explode. Here we have one protagonist who’s willing to beat the shit out of people (and get beat up) if they get in his way, and another who drives his car off a cliff at the beginning of the show, trying to commit suicide. Those are two big question mark characters if you ask me.