Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A strapped-for-cash woman agrees to be part of a lab study where participants are placed in a room for a month, but begins to suspect that she’s been in the room for much longer than that.
About: Don’t know much about this one other than that the movie is being made by Vital Pictures and will come out sometime next year.  You can see the writer’s early attempts at a Kickstarter page here, which has a trailer and some cool concept art.
Writer: Seda
Details: 108 pages

Liberace.  Madonna.  Beyonce.

And now…Seda.

Two names is so passé.  These days, it’s preferable to cap it at one.

Okay, am I thrilled that a screenwriter has given himself one name?  No.  Does it scream pretentiousness?  Yes.  But I have to remember that this is the entertainment industry.  You gotta market yourself to stand out.  And maybe I have a teensy bit of sympathy since I’m not using my real name on this blog either.

One name or not, when I started reading Subject 6, a script heavily influenced by Cube and The Matrix, I started to exert all kinds of worriedness.  I’ve read these kinds of scripts before.  And when I say “these kinds of scripts,” I mean scripts with a bunch of fucked up things happening for seemingly no reason.  The fear?  That the “seemingly no reason” is because there IS NO REASON.  The writer’s constructed a setting that allows him to make a lot of cool trippy fucked up things happen without having to come up with that all-important explanation  Which is why I almost universally hate these screenplays.  If you want to know what I’m talking about, read the pointless 2:22.

Now it started off okay, with our heroine, known only as “SIX” (in reference to the number listed on her fatigues), waking up in a bare-bones icy room that carries only the necessitates – bed, toilet, floor, ceiling.  There’s also a TV, which inexplicably allows our subject to watch hundreds of other people in their own experiment rooms.

From what we can gather, the experiment is some sort of psychological test.  Participants are paid 20 grand to come in and simply sit in a room for 30 days.  You can opt out of the experiment any time you want by pressing a big red button in your room, but if you do, you forfeit your payment.

Naturally, there isn’t much to do other than sit around and talk to the other participants.  Yes, for some reason, you have a video phone in your room that allows you to talk to any of the other rooms.  Seems like an odd freedom for the experimenters to allow, but anyway, it introduces Six to 33, a strapping young slacker philosopher type.

The two hit it off and pretty soon they’re planning a rendezvous inside the walls between their rooms (they happen to be placed right next to each other).  But the rendezvous goes bad when these things called “Technicians,” huge men in nuclear-fallout-type suits, intervene and shock Six, who wakes up once again in her room at the beginning of the experiment, as if none of her previous experiences happened.

Six grows suspicious and escapes through a ceiling vent.  It’s there where she’s rescued by a group of people who tell her the truth.  There is no 30-Day experiment.  The people who are here are stuck here forever.  The technicians just keep resetting them over and over again.  Which is why this group has formed.  They’re trying to find a way out – an escape.  But this facility – whatever it is – is ginormous.  So it ain’t going to be easy.

Another issue is that Six keeps flashing back to some psyche ward doctor’s office where a man is evaluating her.  He asks her about this experiment, about these “technicians,” about her escape, and Six begins to doubt whether any of it is real.  Is she crazy?  Is she just a looney chick locked up in a padded room imagining all this shit?  Her fellow escapees tell her “no,” that it’s all a part of the experimenters’ plan – to destroy the mind, to make you lose confidence in your reality.  But Six isn’t so sure.  And neither are we.

Is Six nuts or does this place really exist?  And if it does, how did she get here?  Or, if the psych ward’s real, what happened in her past that led to her insanity?  All those questions are…sort of answered in Subject 6.

Wheel me in and call me Sally cause I don’t know what to make of Subject 6.  There are moments where this script absolutely shines and there are others that left me searching for a bottle of aspirin.  I’ll say this about the script.  I rarely knew where it was going.  And anyone who reads this blog knows that goes a long way with me.  90% of the scripts I read are as predictable as the sun setting, so when one has me genuinely wondering what the next page holds, that’s impressive.

BUT, the thing that kept bothering me was all the silly random stuff, like the repeated religious references that seemed to be there for no other reason than their inherent creepiness.  For example, when we see a dead character in a hallway with the word “Foresaken” scrawled on the wall behind him in his blood?  Commence the eye-rolling.  What the heck does that have to do with the story?  As far as I could tell, nothing other than it looked cool.

There was also one obvious derivative component that bothered me – the Matrix team.  I mean, the group that takes Six in does so in a way that’s so eerily reminiscent of The Matrix that I thought I was watching an aborted take from the film.  And then you have this really HUGE Jabba The Hut like leader man named “One” who weighs 800 pounds.  All I kept thinking was…wait a minute here – this group has to go on super risky scavenger missions for food and one of them is 800 pounds?  How exactly is this possible?  Is he eating the other members when nobody’s looking?

Having said all that, I *did* want to turn the pages.  I mean, the script genuinely had me wondering where the hell it was all going and, more importantly, I wanted to find out.  But the big reason I’d recommend this to others is that the third act really comes together.  Which was surprising.  Because the third act is usually where these scripts fall apart, since the writer can’t answer all the questions he’s been asking.

But as Six keeps flashing back between the Insane Asylum and the Experiment, not only was I wondering which one was real and which one wasn’t, but I genuinely found myself empathizing with Six.  I wondered what it would be like to go “crazy” in this manner.  What if this really was your life?  Is this what people with mental diseases really go through?  Do they live this kind of life every day?  How fucking terrifying.

Once the script crossed that fourth wall, it’d done its job with me.  I didn’t agree with all the choices.  I thought things got a little goofy in the second act when the team was introduced. But the recovery in the third is what saved it.  For that reason, I say check this one out.

What I Learned: The introduction of One (the huge Jabba The Hut leader of the underground) is a perfect example of a writer wanting something so badly (the image of this huge overweight barely moveable leader) that he puts it in there without considering how illogical it is.  I mean, from what we’ve been told, this group has to risk their lives going out to find scraps of leftover food to stay alive.  Yet somehow we have an 800 pound man chilling out?  Does that make any sense?  These are the moments when readers lose faith in writers because they’re not doing their due diligence.  We all want to include cool things in our scripts, but if you’re going to do so, they have to MAKE SENSE.  If they don’t, ditch them or come up with an explanation.

Genre: Sports Drama
Premise: An aging baseball scout who’s losing his eyesight must enlist the help of a daughter who hates baseball to scout a young prospect.
About: This one has a really interesting backstory to it and should give screenwriters everywhere hope that it can happen, if not on the timeframe they planned.  Writer Randy Brown wrote this 15 years ago and actually had Dustin Hoffman attached at one point.  But Hoffman and the producer didn’t get along, so the project went belly-up.  15 years later, Randy’s writing for some MTV shows (and running a cafe).  He met a producer through a mutual friend, who gave it to someone close with Clint who thought it would be great for him.  Now this is where you’re really going to freak out as you realize just how important timing is in this town.  Clint couldn’t do it because he was doing A Star Is Born with Beyonce.  Well, Jay-Z got Beyonce pregnant and all of a sudden, Clint had an opening in his schedule. The script was purchased for a million bucks and the movie is coming out later this year.  How bout them apples?
Writer: Randy Brown
Details: This says it’s a 2011 draft but the references in it clearly indicate it’s the original draft from 15 years ago.

Usually, when a script has been ignored for 15 years, there’s a reason for it.  It’s just not good enough.  Either that or its time has passed it by.  Or sometimes, when there’s a popular script in town that can’t get made for one reason or another, everyone in Hollywood plunders ideas from it, to the point where the original script now feels derivative.  I remember that happened with The Tourist, a famous script that keeps coming up on many people’s “Best Of The Unmade” lists.

So to be honest, I kind of expected Curve to be terrible, some barely-above-average screenplay whose only redeeming quality was a prominent senior role for Clint Eastwood. But boy was I wrong.  Curve is almost textbook in how to write a screenplay.  I’ll get more into that in a sec, but right now, here’s the breakdown.

Senior citizen Gus Lobel is baseball scouting royalty.  Credentials?  Oh, he only found Hank Aaron.  And he was the guy who scouted Micky Mantle and bet his career he would become a hall-of-famer, something many people ignored, only to find out 30 years later how wrong they were.

But Gus is also a stubborn crotchety old fuck.  And he doesn’t listen to many people besides himself.  So nowadays, with all these fancy-schmancy computers coming around, detailing RBIs and OBPs and OBGYNs, giving new scouts a whole new arena to judge baseball players on, Gus is insistent that none of that shit does anything.

Which is why the upper levels of the team he’s working for, the Atlanta Braves, are starting to have questions about if Gus is stuck in the dinosaur ages.  Sure he knows his stuff, but as one executive points out, “Nobody cares who scouted Hank Aaron anymore.”

But that’s only the beginning of Gus’ problems.  Gus is also losing his eyesight.  He’s had to rearrange his entire apartment, in fact, so that he doesn’t randomly bump into furniture.  Because Gus is so stubborn, he’s in denial about this, but he’s going to have to figure it out fast.  The team is sending him out to scout Bo Gentry, an 18 year old phenom who’s projected to be the next Mark McGuire.

Across town, we’re introduced to Gus’ 30-something daughter, Mickey.  Yes, Mickey was named after Mickey Mantel, even though she’s a girl.  That right there shows you what Gus’ priorities are.  It’s baseball first – daughter second.  And that isn’t lost on Mickey, who loves her dad more than anything, but when you show up for family dinner only to find out you’ll be watching a 3 hour baseball game…well…EVERY SINGLE TIME, you begin to hate baseball more than hell.

But when Mickey catches on to her father’s eyesight problems, she worries for him, and imposes herself on his latest roadtrip, something he’s vehemently opposed to.  But as he follows Bo Gentry from game to game, he realizes it’s impossible for him to SEE whether this guy is the real deal or not.  And that means he has to depend on his daughter, a girl he groomed to love baseball when she was growing up, but who hates it now, to save him.  In the strangest of ways, this dependency brings them together in a way no other experience could.

Okay, to start things off, let me reiterate that you should NEVER TRY TO SELL A SPORTS SCRIPT that isn’t based on a true story (or novel) unless it’s a boxing script or a comedy.  Trouble With The Curve is the rare exception to the rule, although I will say that when this exception comes around, it’s usually with a baseball script.

Okay, now on to the script itself.  The writing here is amazing!  And I don’t mean it’s beautiful to read.  I don’t mean the prose makes my heart sing.  That’s not what a good screenplay should do.  When I say the writing is amazing, I mean that every sentence is carved down to only its bare essence, only the words we need to know, and nothing more.

I bring this up because of a couple of scripts I read recently.  The first was a confusing mess and a big reason for that was that there were too many words.   The writer kept tripping over himself because he was constantly navigating through a sea of alphabetical albatrosses.  He was trying to be too clever by half when he should’ve stuck with the “half,” as that’s how many words you should be shooting for when you’re writing screenplays.

I also compare it to tomorrow’s script, which is well-written and clear, but every page feels like it’s taking twice as long to get through because of the extra verbiage.  This kind of writing gets exhausting to read.  I mean, I’m enjoying the script because it’s an interesting mystery (I’m not finished yet), but I find it hard to get through because of that excessiveness. And I’m not even talking like HUGE BIG PARAGRAPH CHUNKS here.  It’s more that the simplest sentences, something like, “He darts over to the phone,” become, “He peers at the surrounding walls, which seem to be closing in on him, then darts to the phone across the room.”  It’s twice or three times as much reading as the reader needs to be doing.

But what I really liked about this script was the character work, and more specifically the relationship work.  It’s simple but clever, and very well done.  You have a man who thinks a sport is more important than his daughter, who must now depend on that daughter to save his position in the sport, even though she hates the sport because of him.  I don’t know if you can come up with a more beautifully constructed triangle of conflict.  Watching Gus start to reluctantly rely on his daughter, and the ironic way in which that brings them closer – it was perfect.

I could go on about this script.  It’s just really well done.  I don’t know if it’s Oscar worthy. That’ll depend on if it’s directed well.  But the foundation is definitely there.  This one surprised me!

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

What I learned:  Let me tell you when I knew I was dealing with a professional here, and not an amateur, or one of these pros who got lucky and cheated their way into the system.  The stakes and the deadlines.  Only the good writers know to contain their screenplays with them.  First, the end of Gus’ contract is coming up (deadline).  So if he doesn’t prove his worth with this prospect, he loses his job (stakes).  Then there’s Mickey, who just got a job at a prestigious law firm.  Now she has to go on this trip with Gus.  They’re upset and tell her, “That’s fine, but you need to be back to meet with the client by Thursday. (deadline)”  The implication is, “If you screw this up, we’re letting you go (stakes).”  From there, we keep cutting back to the Atlanta Braves’ offices, where the club’s brass are pushing harder and harder to eliminate Gus if he screws this up (raising stakes).  Stakes and deadlines need to be everywhere in your script.  They’re the plot mechanics that keep your audience invested in the story.

t

My friends…it’s been awhile.

We haven’t had a bona-fide good script to read since forever ago.  In fact, here are some quick factoids about how long it’s actually been…

1) Gangnam Style still hadn’t hit the internet.
2) K-Stew and R-Patz were still living together.
3) I hadn’t moved out to LA.
4) Kennedy was still alive.

So imagine my surprise when I started reading Gold and…it was actually good!  It was such a foreign experience to ENJOY a screenplay that I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.  I actually stopped several times just to savor the moment in case it all fell apart.  But it never did.  In fact, it had one of the best endings I’ve read all year, securing an “impressive” rating.  So how did this script strike gold?  Read on to find out.

40-something David Walsh enjoys the finer things in life.  Like food.  And booze.  And…well mainly food and booze, if his body is any indication  His gut could be mistaken for one of the Hollywood hills and his dress code could be mistaken for “homeless chic.”  When we meet Mr. Sloppy, he’s being interviewed about his involvement with a man named Mike Guzman.  This Guzman fellow is apparently pretty important because the guy asking about him is very keen to find out how the two met.  And indeed that’s where our story gets juicy, but before we go there, we learn a little more about Walsh first.

Walsh is a prospector – someone who looks for mineral deposits below the earth.  He then buys the land and tries to sell it to companies who have the money to mine those deposits.  Now at the top of this game are big-name dudes who sell land with millions of dollars of potential deposits, shit like gold and diamonds.

Not the case with the guys at Walsh’s level.  Walsh has the occasional property in the middle of Utah that may or may not have some nickel 100 feet underneath them.  Basically, he’s the Jerry Lundergarten of prospecting – a desperate salesman trying to offload land that nobody gives a shit about.

That’s until he has “the dream.”  Seven years ago, Walsh was in Indonesia watching a man named Mike Guzman work.  Guzman is a famous explorer/scientist who specializes in geological surveying.  If a volcano collapsed somewhere 5 million years ago and has left tons of nickel deposits 500 feet under the earth, he’s the guy who can probably find it.

Problem is, Guzman’s hit a rough patch, just like Walsh, and needs a big strike.  So when Walsh shows up and says he had a dream that he and Guzman would find gold in Indonesia, Guzman can’t help but get excited.  But looking for gold costs money.  You need equipment, permits, workers.  This isn’t panhandling in the local river.  This is trudging through miles of dangerous jungle terrain then digging hundreds of feet into the ground.

But not long after they start looking, they find something.  Gold deposits.  Lots of them.  And from that moment on, everything changes.  Some of the biggest banks in the world want a piece of this zero turned hero.  And soon, Walsh and Cruz have themselves a full-scale multi-million dollar mining operation housing potentially 30 billion dollars worth of gold.

But naturally, as all the rappers seem to agree, mo money equals mo problems, and Walsh finds himself swimming inside a whole new kind of shark tank.  These sharks are genetically modified to extract all of your money and spit you out.  One moment, Walsh is on top of the world.  The next, he’s further under it than the very gold he’s digging up.

But none of that will compare to the utter shock that all men involved will experience when the “Holy shit” final act comes around. This one leaves you with eyes the size of hubcaps going, “No fucking wayyyyyy!”  And to think that it’s all true??  Wow.

Gold has an interesting but strong structure.  It’s divided into four equal quarters, each of which has its own gameplan.  The first quarter is about the struggle.  It’s when we meet our hero and see that he’s on the bottom of the barrel.  It’s an important part of the script because it establishes the character type that audiences always root for no matter what: THE UNDERDOG.  Walsh is as underdog-y as they get and because we see him kicked around by other characters, we immediately sympathize with him and want him to succeed.  This is a huge reason why this script works so well.

The second quarter is about hope.  It’s about our two underdogs digging for gold – literally.  Because this whole section is based on suspense (will or won’t they find the gold?) we’re entranced.  The combination of desperately wanting our underdogs to take over the world along with the curiosity of if they’ll find the gold or not has this section moving at a million miles an hour.

The third quarter is the aftermath of success.  In my opinion, this was the worst section of the script.  “Aftermath of success” is always hard to do in screenplays because it almost always goes the same way.  The hero doesn’t have time for his girlfriend anymore.  He starts to believe in his own hype.  He enjoys his success too much.  He loses perspective.  Been there, done that.  However, the stuff with the other companies trying to screw him over keeps this section alive.  All of that stuff was entertaining.

The fourth quarter is the fallout – what happens after it all unravels.  This section works for a couple of reasons.  First, we knew it was coming.  And we want to see how bad it’s going to get.  As gruesome as car crashes are, it’s impossible for us humans to look away from them.  And second, there’s a great twist.  I’m not going to spoil it here.  It’s one of those twists that defines the entire movie.  So seek out the real world story yourself or wait til the movie comes out.  But it packs a wallop.

The big take from Gold might be the use of this 4-Act structure.  For those who don’t know, most movies are broken up into 3 acts – the first act is 25-30 pages, the second act is 55-75 pages, and the third act is 20-25 pages.  But over time, because that second act is so big, some writers have decided to break it up into two parts.  This creates 4 acts then, instead of 3.

It can be simpler to write a movie this way because you basically write 4 equal sections of 30 pages each.  That’s a little easier to grasp than a short act, a really long act, and another short act.  In fact, it’s almost like you’re writing 4 little half-hour stories.  Now remember, the story you’re telling has to fit into that structure, like Gold does, but it’s a great little option to bust out if you’re one of the many writers who get lost in the second act.

Another thing I noticed about this script is how compelling it is to watch the “desperate salesman” character.  We saw it with Jerry Lundergarten in Fargo.  We saw it with Jack Lemmon’s character in Glengary Glen Ross.  And we see it here with Walsh.  I don’t know what it is but the desperation that reeks from these characters makes them impossible to look away from.  I’m sure there are examples of these characters not working, but I can’t think of one.  Writers need to remember this for future screenplays!

Overall, this script just worked.  Great characters.  Moved well.  Fascinating story with lots of twists and turns, particularly that whopper of an ending.  It was incredibly well researched.  Dialogue was authentic and strong all the way through.  Hard to find many faults with this one outside of the 3rd act I mentioned above.  Definitely check out Gold if you can find it!

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

What I learned: The delayed character description.  In almost all cases, when a new character hits the page, you want to describe him immediately.  The reason for this is that it’s standard practice, which means readers expect it.  Therefore, when you tell us “JOE” just walked into the room and there’s no description of Joe, or “JOE” starts talking yet we haven’t met the guy, it’s annoying and confusing to the reader.  However, there are a few situations where adding a description to a character intro interrupts the flow of the read.  If Joe charges onto a battlefield and you have to stop to tell us he’s tall and gangly and has a spider-web collection, it kind of kills the moment. So the delayed description is motivated.  In Gold, Walsh is introduced pouring a drink, exchanging a few words with an investigator, and THEN getting his description.  To me, this falls under the category of a delayed description for no reason.  So it’s one I would’ve avoided.  The ultimate lesson here is, describe your character right away unless there’s NO OTHER WAY to do it.  You’ll keep the reader happy.

What I learned 2: Always pick a more interesting verb!  Describing a car on page 4, Massett and Zinman don’t say, “It pulls into a spot,” they say “it lumbers into a spot.”

Genre: Horror/Zombie
Premise: A married couple goes on a cruise to heal their wounds after losing their son, but when the ship rescues a strange sick man, they soon find that their own lives are in danger.
About: Hey, how often do we get to read a script by TWINS?  Touchstone bought this spec back in 2010.  Alexi Hawley scripted the 2004 Exorcist prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning, and more recently was story editor on the Nathan Fillion show, Castle.  Brother Noah was a writer on the TV show, Bones.  
Writers: Alexi and Noah Hawley
Details: 110 pages

In all honesty, had I known this was a zombie script, I wouldn’t have read it.  Dead In The Water was a random script I had in my screenplay pile which I knew nothing about, which is exactly why I wanted to read it.  I was hoping for another Ends Of The Earth or Dead Of Winter.  But didn’t get it.  I got a zombie flick.

I’ll tell you what, though.  Before I knew this was a zombie script – in other words throughout the first act – it was pretty damn good.  And once it became a zombie flick, the darn thing kept going.  It took some chances along the way – did things a little differently – and therefore, gasp, kept me fairly entertained.  I’m still not sure what to make of it on the whole.  There’s a character called Suparman who feels like he’s been beamed in from a different movie…on a different planet.  But all in all, I think there’s more good here than bad.

The script starts out with a great opening scene.  A group of doctors are out for a spin on their sailboat when they spot a couple of men on a trawler dumping bags into the ocean.  The trawler speeds away and the doctors decide to investigate, only to find that the bags aren’t just bags.  They’re body bags.  And as they move up to get a closer look, one of the bags…STARTS MOVING.

They open the bag up to save the individual but it turns out it’s not him who needs saving.  Blood splatters.  There are screams.  And we CUT to a cruise ship.  This is where we meet Brian and Carrie Lake, a couple grieving over their dead son.  Both are devastated but Carrie’s ready to move on. Brian, a cop, can’t let go however, and would rather sleep in their room all day than go out and “have fun.”

So Carrie heads out on her own, and while up on deck, spots something in the water that stops her cold.  It’s a man!  Drifting along on a piece of debris!  She calls out to the ship’s crew and the next thing you know they’re lifting the man up on deck.  Well waddaya know?  It’s one of the doctors!  And he’s not looking good.  In fact, he starts vomiting blood all over the place!  Mmmmmm…blood vomit.

Carrie relays the experience to Brian, who continues his bed brigade, so Carrie goes to take a nap on deck.  When she wakes, however, something is off.  There’s…nobody around.  It’s like everyone from the cruise just disappeared.  Oh, until she sees a man with a blood-stained mouth coming after her.  And then another one.  And then another one.

Carrie runs off, where she’s able to find a few more people, and the group quickly realizes that a virus has spread throughout the ship, bringing the dead back to life, dead who are hungry for human flesh.  Let this be a lesson about picking up strangers.

Carrie now has a single-minded goal – finding her husband, and this is where the script does something different.  It starts out with a segment called “Carrie,” which follows Carrie’s journey as she tries to find Brian.  Then, when that’s over, we cut to the “Brian” segment, where we show Brian trying to find Carrie.  If that were it, the script still may have been too predictable for me.  But then, for some odd reason, we also have a final segment titled, you guessed it, “Suparman.”  Suparman is a 22 year old Indonesian man who is some sort of circus acrobatics expert, able to wield duo-machetes which allows him to slice and dice zombies like they’re tomatoes.  I honestly have NO IDEA what Suparman was doing in the script, and yet, I was glad he was.  It gave the story this slight level of absurdity that differentiated it JUST ENOUGH from typical zombie faire to give it an edge.

The first thing I want to point out is what an advantage CONTAINING a horror scenario is.  For those who read or saw Contagion – if you were like me, you saw a movie trying to cover so many countries and so many scenarios that it eventually lost itself.  It’s hard to sell mass death when there are so many places to hide, so many islands and areas safe from contamination.  On something like a cruise ship, however, there’s nowhere to run.  You’re trapped.  And that makes the situation a thousand times scarier.

I thought the cutting to different people was a smart move too.  It broke up the conventional zombie structure of a group trying to move from point A to point B (while avoiding zombies).  That’s where I think a lot of these scripts die.  Because once the mystery is over, once the group knows they’re zombies and have to get to [some location] to survive, the scripts become very technical.  They’re just moving on rails while avoiding zombies.  All the creativity is gone.  Now I’m not saying Dead In The Water completely eliminated this, but the structure break-up was just enough to keep us on our toes.

As far as the characters here….hmmmm… I guess they were okay.  The whole “dead child” thing is a little stock.  I’ve seen it before.  In fact, it was the main storyline for another “dangerous person comes aboard a boat” flick, Dead Calm.  I don’t know what it is about this backstory but I’ve never been a fan of it.  First, there’s something just too sad about a dead child.  It doesn’t translate well to screen.  And second, it’s almost impossible to avoid melodrama with it.  The couple has to be sad, they have to discuss how sad they are, and it always comes off as too much.  I’d avoid this backstory unless you have a fresh take on it.

Anyway, the ultimate point is this – if I were a producer, I would buy this script.  It’s a money-maker for sure.  Zombies on a cruise ship?  Never been done before (at least to my knowledge).  You got the contained setup, nowhere to run.  Zombies on a cruise has potential for a lot of fun scenarios, as proven here with the unforgettable shark climax.  And then of course, you get to top it all off with Suparman – the machete-wielding alien from another planet.  What’s not to like?

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

What I learned: The isolated character name is a good way to imply the screenplay equivalent of a close-up during a key moment.  — Remember guys, you don’t want to write “CLOSE-UP” in your script.  It’s too technical.  So the isolated character name is a great way to imply that the camera is on the character.  Here’s an example from page 40…

They turn and run as the infected flood the stairs behind them.

ERYN

reaches a doorway.  Ducks through it and onto…

EXT. PROMENADE DECK – DAY

Genre: Dark Thriller
Premise: A wayward aspiring chef moves into a homeless shelter only to learn that the food they cook here is a little more…exotic than he’s used to.
About: The Wachowski Brothers’ first script sale was “Assassins.”  But they’d actually written plenty of scripts before that, including this one, which, after The Matrix, landed at Trimark.  In fact, many moons ago, George Romero was rumored to be directing it.  Unfortunately it never went anywhere, which is too bad, cause it was certainly better than those Matrix sequels.
Writers: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Details: 113 pages

Wachowskis!

Where have you been all my life?  Or at least since The Matrix.

My Chicago brethren have been lost at cinema sea since that amazing classic, scuttlebutting out two Matrix sequels that didn’t make any sense, something bright and shiny called Speed Racer, a gay military project called Jupiter Ascending, and adapting the most unadaptable book ever, Cloud Atlas, which just debuted its trailer a couple of weeks ago.

To say these two have been squandering their amazing talent is an understatement.  These Chicago hot dogs have all the talent fixings, including tomatoes, pickles, mustard, peppers, and celery salt. The problem is they’ve set up their hot dog stands in the wrong locations.  Hey, I’m all about taking chances, senor.  But if you travel too far away from the epicenter, you lose everybody, and I think that’s what’s happened to this duo.

Now the way I understand it, before the Wachowskis got their big break with Matrix, they were big name writers, hired to pen a lot of the hot jobs in town.  Carnivore was written before their Matrix success, which I’m hoping indicates a team still trying to prove their worth.  Let’s check it out.

John Bunyan, who, no, does not carry an axe, stumbles into Chicago with nothing but the clothes on his back and a deep fried dream of becoming a chef.  Speaking of food, he stops at a dingy old diner to grab some grub, where he runs into the insanely beautiful but broken down Ophelia.  Ophelia is being escorted by her total asshole of a date, Roman Links, a weasel of a human being who’s forcing her to eat a dinner she doesn’t want to eat.

John steps in, sticking up for the damsel in distress, and the two get into a fight, with John barely registering a TKO.  Feeling terrible, Ophelia tells John she knows of a place where he can stay, and takes him to “The Mission,” a homeless shelter run by a creepy dude named Rex Mundi and an older woman who likes to be called “Granny” even though she’s nobody’s grandma.

John enjoys the place about as much as someone can enjoy a homeless shelter but what he’s really surprised about is the food.  It’s DELICIOUS!  Granny makes some sort of Granny Stew that puts even the freshest In and Out cheeseburger to shame.  Mmmmmmm…

In the meantime, Ophelia and John start hanging out.  You get the feeling that this girl has reallllly low self-esteem because I don’t know many hot women who date homeless dudes.  But I guess after you’re with Roman Links, the elephant man would seem better.  Speaking of Roman, he’s not taking their break-up too well.  In fact, he sneaks into Ophelia’s apartment late at night wearing nothing but a flasher jacket and pees everywhere.  Yup, a real winner this guy is.

John wants to do something to this asshole but he’s getting more and more preoccupied by Granny’s cooking.  It’s just so delicious.  Unfortunately, it has some troubling side effects, such as a hefty sexual appetite for biting human flesh.  I think we know where this one’s going boys and girls.  Yup, it turns out that stew John’s been eating (spoiler) has a certain special ingredient.  Human flesh!!!  And now John’s making Ethan Hawke and those Andes plane crash victims look like they were dining on baked beans and cheerios.  Much like Twilight before the K-Stew betrayal, John NEEDS Ophelia’s flesh.  He needs human meat to survive!

So what’s going to happen here?  Is John going to be able to pull away from his newest craving?  Or is he going to make Ophelia a Taco Ten Pack?  Lucky for everyone here, you get to find out.  There’s a link to the script at the bottom of the review!

Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading sooooo many bad scripts lately, but I actually enjoyed this delicious mess.  It was kind of like eating a Chipotle burrito right after a few Sprinkles cupcakes.  Together, they make you feel sick.  But you liked each of them at the time of consumption.

First of all, the Wachowskis have a great style of writing.  They’re flashy enough so that you’re impressed by their writing, but they never let it get in the way of the story.  It’s always about providing atmosphere and bringing you into their fucked up universe.  A lot of amateurs make the prose the star.  They try to wow you with their wordsmithing ways, to the point where you’re wading through an ocean of syllables simply to figure out that a character has walked from his car to his house.

You can really see the power of the Wachoskis in their scene transitions, one of which I’ve highlighted here. In the scene, a nameless character is running for his life.  He’s barely able to get to his car.  This is what happens next…

He jumps into the car, locking the door and jams the key into the ignition.  // Suddenly, a baseball bat arcs down so that the twisting of the key seems to shatter the windshield.  The explosion of glass becomes–

INT. DINER – NIGHT

The crash and tinkle of dirty plates being thrown into a bin by a busboy clearing them from the table of an old diner.

The visuals here practically scream cinema.  You’re not reading.  You’re seeing the movie up on the screen.  That’s one of the goals of screenwriting, placing your readers in the movie theater.  You have to admire how the Wachowskis are consistently able to pull that off.

From a geek standpoint, one of the more interesting things about the script is how obsessed the Wachowskis were with dreams even back then.  There are a ton of dream sequences and you can practically smell the inspiration for The Matrix.  I’m not sure they were entirely necessary for the film, but they were fun nonetheless, especially since the Wachowskis are so strong visually.  The nightmare where Ophelia (a vegetarian) eats meat for the first time and catches a rare disease where one’s cellulite calcifies into thick gobs of bone underneath the flesh had me squirming in my seat.

But in the end, what set this script apart for me is something I always preach here on Scriptshadow.  It was different. I didn’t know what was coming next.  It was a horror film without the cliche horror trappings.  The Roman Links character – when he sneaks into Ophelia’s place and pisses all over it, then growls at her like an animal as he attacks her – I was like, WTF???  There were enough weird moments like this where I had to keep reading.

It goes to show that this medium truly celebrates writers with a unique voice.  If you’re not blindly following the crowd or trying to ape your favorite movies, but rather writing something only YOU can write, then assuming you have some talent and skill as a writer, you’re going to make it in this industry.  And if that doesn’t come naturally to you, you have to work at it.  You have to push yourself away from your inspirations and focus on what you can bring to the table that nobody else can.  I felt like this was only a movie the Wachowskis could make.  I’d like to see that same individuality from more screenwriters!

You can find the script here in text form! – Carnivore

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

What I learned: One of the EASIEST ways to make us like your protagonist is to have them stick up for somebody.  When Ophelia is getting attacked by her date in the opening diner scene, John comes to her rescue, telling Roman Links to lay off.  We instantly like John from that point on.