Red-hot screenwriter Aron Eli Coleite bursts into the Top 10 of 2011’s Black List with his end-of-the-world screenplay, “The End.”

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi/Apocalypse
Premise: (from Black List) Four people – a veteran broadcaster in London, a sixteen year old girl and her best friend in Ann Arbor, and a devoted family man in Shanghai – each try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event ends the world in six hours.
About: This script was purchased by Warner Brothers and made the 2011 Black List, finishing with the 9th best tally of the pack (28 votes). Writer Aron Coleite’s career has really picked up in the last year. The former Crossing Jordan and Heroes writer recently wrote an episode of ABC’s new show, The River (co-created by Scriptshadow Top 25’er “The Voices” writer, Michael R. Perry), sold a pitch to New Regency for mid-six figures (a supernatural prison break movie), and also sold a new procedural to Jerry Bruckheimer. I’d say that’s a pretty good year. Too bad he’s chosen to end the world before he can enjoy all that success.
Writer: Aron Eli Coleite
Details: 104 pages, September 23, 2011 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I used to love end-of-the-world screenplays. We all know how I feel about Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World (which just came out with its first trailer! Hooray!). And then of course there’s Top 10 script How It Ends. Since then, however, I’ve read about five of these puppies, and for whatever reason, my Apocalypse funny bone isn’t being tickled anymore. I don’t know if I’m looking for a new angle (puppets maybe?) or if the effect has simply worn off, but I just don’t get jazzed for life as we know it being scrambled in a galactic frying pan anymore.

Part of the reason this script didn’t work for me was because it was a real downer! I mean, this is an extra large serving of depression, hold the onions. Not that that can’t work. Deep Impact – another depressing end of the world movie – brought in a lot of dough. But after reading this I was just like….I need to go buy some ice cream or something. I’m depressed!

The End follows three main characters (in three separate storylines) six hours before the world’s obliterated by a gravitational black hole or something. It’s not clear when the information of the world’s demise is received (Are they just learning about it now or have they known for days – not sure) but the point is, time’s running out!

The first of our characters is a 35 year old Wae, a janitor at a Shangai Wal-Mart who only cares about one thing, finding the perfect egg (the egg must be a very specific measurement – still not sure what that was all about). It’s the middle of the night in Shanghai, and Wae plans to walk home, with the world crumbling around him, so he can make his son an egg for breakfast.

Next there’s Sir John Bainbridge, a 70-something BBC radio personality. While everybody else in the world has run home to their mommies, John’s decided to stay on the air. He is, therefore, the only person on the radio, which means everybody’s tuned into him. What starts off as one man’s assessment of the world’s destruction (and a clever way to dish out exposition) eventually becomes an exploration of a broken old codger’s dysfunctional family.

Finally, there’s Olive, a 16 year old Christian whose family is struggling to make it to church for the End Of Days sermon, which I’m hearing is one of the most popular of the year. It might even beat Christmas. However, as she gets closer, she thinks that instead of spending her final moments listening to some boring priest drone on about, like, death and stuff, she should spend that time with her secret (older) boyfriend! And maybe, if she can find a way to him in time, she can marry him, lose her virginity, all before she’s beamed up to Cloud City. So she enlists the help of her childhood best friend, the goofy “Zebulon,” and the two race against time to make it happen. Of course, while locating everything they need for the wedding, it becomes clear that Zebulon’s secretly in love with Olive.

Okay so we have three separate storylines here. Here’s my opinion on multi-storyline scripts. You better make sure each storyline kicks ass. Cause if even one is average, your movie will suck. Nobody goes to see 2/3 of a good movie.

What USUALLY happens in these scripts, actually, is that the writer has a main storyline idea, but since he wants multiple narratives, comes up with two or three lesser storylines to fill out the script. These stories are never as good as the first one, because they were added after the fact.

Whether one thinks that’s what happened here will depend on the individual, but personally, I thought the only story worth telling was Olive’s. We have a goal (get to the boyfriend and get married), stakes (this means everything to her), and if I have to tell you where the urgency comes from, you’re going on a permanent screenwriting sabbatical. There’s also conflict and dramatic irony (we know Zeb loves her, but she does not), so this storyline really shined.

The next best storyline was Wae’s. Wae does have a clear goal (get back to his kid) but it doesn’t carry the same weight as Olive’s (make breakfast for his kid?). Also, he’s not traveling with any other characters, so there are no opportunities to explore his internal conflict through his relationships, like we see with Olive and Zeb. Instead, the only conflict he experiences is external. This results in some cool sequences (a jousting sword-slicing motorcycle duel), but overall, his trek is relatively uneventful.

That leaves us with the third and least interesting storyline, John the radio personality. To me, this storyline’s purpose was expositional (to give us a running play-by-play of the events as they unfold) with a family storyline shoe-horned in to make it SEEM like it was more than that (something about a brother he never talked to or something). There were no goals, no stakes, and somehow no urgency (despite the world ending in six hours). On top of that, it’s an old man sitting in a room for two hours. So that one was hard to get up for.

That said, there were definitely some cool moments in The End. The gravity bumps will guarantee some “holy shit” moments in the trailers. Watching two people float up above the ground as they kiss with rain shooting upwards around them, yeah – that should sell a few tickets. And when you juxtapose that with a jousting motorcycle duel to the death, I can see some teenagers saying – “dude, we gotta go see that!”

The question is, what will they be seeing? No matter which way you shake it, The End is depressing as hell. It’s like a sci-fi Babel. It makes The Grey look like a bunch of dudes who just won the Anchorage lottery. Not sure how eager people will be to run off and get depressed for two hours. Of course, I could be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is about the triumph of the human spirit amongst the end of times. I don’t know. I just wish I didn’t want to curl up with my teddy bear afterwards and cry myself to sleep.

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

What I learned: The best character goals meet two criteria. First, the character must desperately want to achieve the goal. So in Zombieland, even though Tallahassee’s goal was “just” to find a Twinkie, he so desperately wanted to find that Twinkie it was still compelling. Second, the goal itself must be big. So in The Hangover, the goal was to find Doug and get him back to his wedding in time. That’s a big goal. The combination of a BIG GOAL that your wants along with that goal being one he DESPERATELY WANTS TO ACHIEVE is what gives a story the most pop. That’s not to say you always need both of them. Like I just said, Tallahassee’s goal wasn’t big at all. It was merely personal. I’m just saying that your goal won’t be as powerful if it only meets one of those two requirements. That’s how I felt with Wae. I knew how important it was for him to make his son breakfast (personal side of the goal). But just the act of making breakfast wasn’t big enough for me. So I didn’t care if he achieved it or not. Olive’s goal, on the other hand – to get married – that was a goal that was both big (getting married is a big deal!) AND personal (she really really wanted to do it!).

What better screenwriting treat is there than a pilot…about a pilot! I ditch the normal screenplay review today to take a rare look at a teleplay.

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: (TV pilot) – Crime
Premise: From the writer: Based on a true story, Full Tilt Boogie follows Danny, a middle-aged pot pilot who juggles his life as a smuggler busting the US/Mexican border with his responsibilities as a father and ex-husband.
About: This story is based on the writer’s own father! The script was a top ten finalist in the Scriptpipeline TV competition. It’s also been a finalist in several other competitions.
Writer: Amber Crawford-Idell
Details: 59 pages

How about today’s pilot? The author is the daughter of our hero! I actually didn’t know that when I first read it. It definitely colors my perception in retrospect. But after thinking about it for awhile, I believe Amber’s closeness to the material is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. This is no doubt a fascinating situation with writing that leaves most amateurs clutching their bags in the standby line as their plane speeds down the runway. But on the storytelling end, I’m not sure this one ever gets off the ground. It’s not time to cancel this flight yet though. I think with a little help, it can still get to its destination.

48-year-old Danny is a pot smuggler. He shuttles weed back and forth across the Mexican border in a small airplane with a small crew. But on this particular evening, his plan has gone haywire and he and his buddies find themselves in the Mexican desert running from the authorities. They’re just barely able to get away, but the next day, when they head down to their plane, IT’S GONE!

Strangely, Danny doesn’t seem too concerned about this. I don’t know about you, but when I’m flying a couple of million dollars’ worth of weed around, I get upset when it disappears. To Danny’s credit, he does want to get to the bottom of it, but man does it not seem like a priority.

After questioning several folks, he ends up at a large private party in Mexico where he’s offered the lead pilot job on a big operation. But Danny’s not interested in getting bigger and instead heads back to America to explain to his business partner that his plane vanished.

Shockingly, when he gets there, he finds out his plane – with the marijuana and everything in tow– has just SHOWN UP. Nobody knows how it got there. Nobody knows who flew the thing. It simply arrived without a trace.

It isn’t long before this intriguing mystery is answered, and not in a very satisfying way. Apparently, a Mexican child saw Danny flying through the mountains late at night many years ago. After seeing how happy Danny was, the young man decided he was going to grow up and work with Danny. So he’s been researching/stalking Danny ever since. Now a man, he’s taken it upon himself to prove to Danny he’s worthy, I guess by stealing his plane?

Hmm, I’m not sure that’s the best way to get someone to hire you. Steal a couple million bucks of their property. Why not just approach him and ask for a job? I had some other problems with this section as well. How do you even see a man, at night, hundreds (thousands?) of feet above you, flying by at 200 miles per hour? Much less how happy they are? Wouldn’t that be impossible??

Anyway, the twist is that the man is the son of Danny’s drug rival, and he wants to take down his father just as much as Danny does. At the end of the episode, Danny flies back to America and it’s there where we realize he actually has a normal family life with a son and a daughter, who have no idea that he’s secretly running drugs across the Mexican border every day.

There’s lots of fuel for a TV show here. Combined with the high level of writing, Amber has a genuine reason to be excited about Full Tilt Boogie.

But what this pilot lacks is storytelling. There’s never a clear through line to the story. Danny’s in Mexico, he goes back to America, he’s back in Mexico, then he’s back in America, then he goes back to Mexico, then he goes back to America. I understand the nature of this show requires our character to fly around a lot but because we’re never in one place for very long, the story never gets a chance to establish anything.

I was particularly confused by a sequence where Danny flies to some random town – either in America or Mexico – and just randomly bumps into a Mexican girlfriend who he throws a roll of money at and then flies away. You can’t waste scenes in your script, ever. What did this have to do with anything?

Granted, I’m not as savvy about TV writing as I am features, but this script needs a clear goal with some high stakes. What I would do is focus the entire pilot on the disappearing plane. Instead of that being solved by the midpoint, I’d draw it out until the very end. That, then, is your hero’s goal – to find out what happened to the plane.

But where I’d really change things up is in the stakes department. Right now, Danny doesn’t care about his 2 million dollar payload and plane being stolen. And neither does anyone else to be honest. Not only does that not make sense, but it’s boring.

Obviously, this marijuana is someone’s. And if there’s someone who just lost $2,000,000 worth of marijuana, they’re going to be angry. And they’re going to take that out on whoever lost the marijuana. Which means our buddy Danny needs to be in BIG TROUBLE. If he doesn’t find that plane and those drugs soon, he’s dead. NOW you have yourself a story!

Stakes need to be raised in other places as well. For example, in another scene Danny steals an airplane from one of the biggest drug dealers in Mexico. Does the dealer get angry? No, not at all. He actually forgets about it. And when Danny brings it back, the dealer doesn’t even mention it.

I don’t know about you, but the Mexican drug cartels I hear about don’t forget about stuff like that. They decapitate stuff like that. Then throw the bodies on the local highway. In other words, they’re fucking scary. All the drug people in this script are like your best friends from high school. That needs to change.

Amber’s got some major writing talent. Now she just needs to focus on the storytelling component. When in doubt, always go back to GSU!

Script link: Full Tilt Boogie

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

What I learned: This is a HUGE problem I see over and over again with young writers: Lack of clarity in the writing. If a reader misinterprets one plot point, they might be confused for the rest of the script. Therefore you have to be clear about what’s going on! For example, in the opening scene, Danny and several other drug runners are being chased by Mexican agents. As they’re running, we see their plane down by an airfield with a bunch of marijuana beside it. Danny and the men hide in a hole, barely escaping the agents. The next day, Danny comes out to see that the plane and the drugs are missing. Now with what I’ve told you so far, what would *you* assume happened to the plane? The agents took it, right? That’s what I thought at least. But Danny seemed shocked that the plane was gone. Well isn’t that the whole reason the agents were chasing you? Because you were smuggling drugs? Therefore if they saw your plane full of drugs, wouldn’t they confiscate it? That lack of clarity resulted in me being confused for the next 20 pages. I just kept thinking, why doesn’t he know that the agents took it? — There’s another scene later on where Danny is at a big Mexican party. He’s offered a job and a brand new plane, but it’s never made clear whether he accepts the job or not. We next see him on the outskirts of the mansion, talking to his buddy. They then hop into the plane that was a part of the deal and fly off in it. But because it wasn’t adequately explained whether he turned down the job or not, I couldn’t figure out if had just stolen the plane or had taken it for the job. This is a big deal! Because it’s a totally different story if he’s given the plane or he’s taken it. It’s your duty as a writer to make all of these things crystal clear. The murkier your writing is, the more confusing, and therefore less enjoyable, your script will be.

There hasn’t been a good art heist screenplay in over a decade. Does The Fugitive screenwriter finally crack the code?

Genre: Action/Adventure/Heist
Premise: A pair of rival art thieves must team up to steal a Leonardo da Vinci painting that nobody knows exists.
About: This is a spec script written by David Twohy. Twohy is probably best known by today’s moviegoers as the writer of Pitch Black. But his most well-known work is, obviously, The Fugitive. Right now, Twohy is currently filming the new Riddick movie with Vin Diesel. If they’re filming the same script that I read, that one will go back to Pitch Black’s roots, keeping things simple (Riddick stalking a group of men on an isolated planet).
Writer: David Twohy
Details: 117 pages – April 16, 2011 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I kind of love David Twohy. How can I not. He wrote The Fugitive, the best thriller ever. He also penned one of the great sci-fi screenplays of all time with “Pitch Black.” Not only did it have one of the coolest central characters you’ve ever seen in a sci-fi film, but talk about a midpoint shift! An entire planet turning dark and billions of aliens shooting out of the planet’s core to feed on anything they can find!

Where I’m still smarting, however, is in Twohy’s last effort, The Perfect Getaway. That movie was awesome for about 90 minutes. And then……well, and then…the ending happened. The “big twist.” And oh boy was it not good. It was everything you don’t want your twist to be. Manufactured. Forced. Nonsensical. So while my love for Twohy still remains, I still haven’t gotten over that flick.

But I have good news. Twohy is back! And if The Leonardo Job turns out anything like the script, it’s going to be great.

Steve Styles is a gadget heister. He’s the kind of guy who will build a $50,000 mechanical dragonfly to scout out the room that houses the painting he’s about to steal. And that’s exactly how this movie begins, with Styles deftly using a number of gadgets to get into a museum and steal a 3 million dollar painting.

But as he’s speeding away in a getaway car, he’s unaware that a man on a sled is secretly breaking into his trunk, stealing the very painting he just stole…AT 65 MILES PER HOUR. When Styles figures this out, he knows exactly who’s responsible: Kofax.

Kofax is much older than Styles and doesn’t believe in gadgetry. He believes in good old-fashioned hard work. And this is just one of the many differences between these two rivals – art thieves who hate each other with every bone in their body.

After Kofax steals from the stealer, he learns of a big deal going down in Europe and so he flies there, where he eventually meets Gina, a woman who claims to know about a secret 23rd painting from Leonardo da Vinci. But this isn’t any ordinary painting. It’s a fresco. That means it’s the size of a giant wall. It’s also hidden behind another wall in a museum due to a misguided construction choice 500 hundreds years ago.

Kofax thinks the job is impossible (how do you even get behind a wall in an active museum?) and isn’t convinced that the painting exists anyway. So he’s out. Enter Styles, who’s eager to take on the challenge. But once Kofax realizes Styles is on, he wants back on too, and Gina’s solution is to have them work together.

Of course, since this is a Twohy script, there are lots of twists and turns along the way, and just when you think you know what’s going on, you realize you don’t. There is plenty of jockeying to figure out who here is telling the truth, who’s lying, who you can trust, who you can’t. In the end, someone’s going to end up with this painting – if it indeed exists. The question is…who?

Let’s start off with the obvious. This script is expertly written. This is what a script looks like from a seasoned professional who’s mastered his craft. Let me give you an example.

The movie starts out with an art heist. It’s a reasonably simplistic scene that we’ve seen many times before. It’s well written but nothing special. Yet here’s the difference. Most amateurs would stop there. They’ve written their opening heist scene. They’re done.

What makes Twohy different is that he’s not done. As Styles races away, we cut to somebody on a sled, picking the lock of the trunk. This surgeon of a man is about to lift the painting this guy just lifted. Now THAT’S something I’ve never seen before. In other words, the writer pushes himself to do something different – to do something fresh.

The next awesome choice Twohy makes is in the construction of the heist itself. Whenever you create a heist scenario, it’s imperative that you make the heist look impossible. If it doesn’t look impossible, then we’ll have no doubt our hero can pull it off. And if there’s no doubt, there’s no movie. The doubt is what creates the drama! So the more of it you can produce, the more exciting your movie will be.

Thirdly, Twohy creates a ton of conflict between the two main characters. No, we’re not talking Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan conflict here. Styles and Kofax have tons of history together and absolutely despise one another. They’ve stolen paintings from each other worth millions of dollars. So we have a real conflict and a real distrust between the two. That makes every scene between them fun.

On the flip side, there were a few things I didn’t like. One thing that always bothers me is when a writer starts the movie off with one character, then switches over to another character, who becomes our hero. The reason I don’t like that is because, mentally, I’m always waiting for that first character to come back and lead the story. He was introduced first, so naturally I assumed he was the hero.

So I kept waiting for Styles to reemerge, until, after 25 pages, I realized Kofax was the protagonist. Complicating this is that Kofax is introduced as the bad guy. He’s the one who stole the painting from the guy we liked. It would be like in Raiders, if after Belloq stole the idol Indy just secured from the cave, that we followed Belloq for the next half hour. Do we really want to follow him? Or do we want to follow the guy who stole the idol in the first place?

I admire that Twohy likes to explore the antihero (as he did with Riddick), but it threw me off guard as I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be rooting for for the first 40 minutes.

Twohy also makes the questionable decision to bring in our villain late. I don’t think he shows up until page 75. This is something I tell writers to avoid if at all possible. Not only does the audience need someone to root against in these kinds of films, but it’s really hard to build up an entire bad guy with just 45 pages left in a screenplay. So I wish Twohy would’ve found a way to get him in earlier.

Still, Twohy is such a great screenwriter that even with these unconventional choices, he finds a way to make it work. And like I always say, you have to do something differently in your script or else it feels cookie-cutter, which can sometimes be worse than writing a straight up bad script. So in the end, this is definitely a script worth celebrating.

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

What I learned: To spice up a predictable scene, add a ticking time bomb. There’s a nifty little scene early in the movie where Styles is chasing Kofax after Kofax stole the painting Styles stole. Styles, in order to catch him, calls the On-star people on a fake police line, telling them that Kofax’s car is stolen. The Onstar people remotely turn Kofax’s car off, inadvertently stopping it in the middle of some train tracks. This allows Styles to confront Kofax, while in the distance, a train approaches. With the painting tucked into the trunk, neither of them will leave until it’s safely secured. – Notice how the ticking time bomb here adds tension to the scene. If Styles had simply run Kofax off the road, hopped out, and demanded the painting, there’s no “ticking time bomb,” there’s no reason to take care of things immediately. It might’ve been an okay scene. But it wouldn’t have been nearly the scene that’s in the script now. So add a ticking time bomb to your scenes to bring them alive (you’ll notice that we had a similar scene in The Fugitive – with Richard Kimble trying to get out of the bus before the train hit).

The screenwriting duo that is The Duplass Brothers follow up Cyrus with their new screenplay about fate.

Genre: Drama-Comedy-Indie
Premise: A thirty-something man who still lives at home unexpectedly bonds with his brother when the two try and find out if his brother’s wife is cheating on him.
About: “Jeff, Who Lives At Home,” is coming to theaters soon. It stars Jason Siegel, Ed Helms, and Susan Sarandon. The screenplay is written by writer-directors Mark and Jay Duplass. Their previous films include Cyrus, Baghead, and The Puffy Chair.
Writers: Mark and Jay Duplass
Details: 87 pages – June 1, 2009 Draft(This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Some people blame the Duplass Brothers for pioneering the horror that is Mumblecore. You know what I’m talking about. Those movies shot on video with available lighting and a handheld camera and characters who improvise. It’s not that the movies are bad so much as they’re terrible. I mean, you’re not supposed to want to throw your TV out the window during a movie, right?

My problem with the Duplass Brothers is that they have a tendency to back away from the moments that define a movie. For example, in Cyrus, I kept waiting for something interesting to happen with Cyrus but it never did. Cyrus was only *sort of* psycho, so you always felt safe, like our hero was going to be okay in the end. And was that movie a comedy? I’m still not sure.

However, I’ll always give the brothers a shot for one reason: Baghead. Baghead was one of the weirder movies I’ve seen. It’s about these four people who head up to a cabin in the middle of the woods and start getting stalked by a man with a bag on his head (we’re unsure, of course, whether the stalker is one of them or someone else). It walks this unpredictable line between humor and horror that I’ve never seen baked up that way before. It’s a film you should check out if you have the chance. But be prepared for something really different or you’ll leave disappointed.

That brings us to “Jeff, Who Lives At Home,” about a guy named Jeff (Jason Siegel) who, well, lives at home. While we’re not clear WHY Jeff lives at home, the implication is that some traumatizing event happened to him as a child which never allowed him to grow up.

When we meet Jeff, he’s sitting around, thinking about how the movie Signs is the best movie ever, mainly because it was about fate and how we all have a purpose. So Jeff starts thinking, what’s his purpose? What signs are out there to guide him through his life?

Right at that moment, Jeff gets a call from someone asking for “Kevin.” There’s no one named Kevin who lives there, but Jeff thinks this is a sign, and rearranges the letters in the name “Kevin” to come up with “knive.” He then goes and checks the silverware drawer, grabs a knife, and finds the word “Delta” carved on the handle. Cut to Kevin in his closet where he finds a group of Delta Airlines playing cards. He throws them against the wall (no, I’m not kidding) and the only card that is face up is the ace of hearts. This is the end of the sequence.

Naturally, at this point, I was thinking about peeling the skin off my body with a potato peeler. But I forced myself to press on. Jeff then goes to pick up something for his mother but since he can’t drive, he takes the bus. On the bus he spots an African-American kid about 18 years old who’s wearing a jacket with the name “Kevin” on his back.

So he follows him to a basketball pickup game and ends up somehow playing. It turns out Jeff’s really awesome at basketball (even though this has nothing to do with the story at all). Afterwards, he and Kevin become quick friends until Kevin robs him. Friendship over.

At this point I was getting so angry at the pointlessness of the story that I wanted to pillage my neighbor’s basement. But I soldiered on. Eventually, Jeff runs into his brother who he has an even worse relationship with than Snooki and The Situation (sorry, I had to get a Jersey Shore reference in there). He and his brother become convinced that his brother’s wife is cheating on him. So they decide to follow her around.

During this time, Jeff shares his new revelation about fate with his brother, who thinks his theories are insane. We’re also intercutting with their mother, who spends the movie in a cubicle at her office, and finds herself the recipient of a secret IM’ing admirer.

Eventually, the three of them come together in the end and encounter an unexpected event that may or may not prove Jeff’s theory about fate.

Where to begin here. The first 25 pages of this script where almost unreadable. I don’t like scripts where no story emerges within the first 25 pages (I don’t like scripts where no story emerges within the first 10 pages!). I want to know where my story is going. We don’t get a whiff of that here so Carson not happy.

But when Jeff’s brother enters the equation, the script takes a turn for the better. Maybe it’s because we were thankful that at least SOME purpose had entered the story, but I thought the conflict between the brothers was actually pretty authentic. As soon as you present a relationship that needs to be repaired to an audience, the obvious response is going to be wanting to see if that relationship can be repaired (which means – most importantly – we want to keep watching!).

As for the cheating stuff…I don’t know. Here was my problem with it. We only get one scene with the brother and his wife that establishes their relationship. And neither of them seemed to like each other. So when the brother becomes devastated by his wife’s cheating, I’m not sure we buy into it. I mean, I barely know these people. Why do I care if his wife is cheating on him?

That’s the problem with an 87 page screenplay. You don’t have enough time to establish the relationship to the point where we care what’s happening with it. And it doesn’t help that you spent the first 30 pages of your script with one of your characters throwing cards at a wall.

I also felt the subplot with the mom was too thin. It basically entailed a secret admirer IM’ing her from inside the office all day. It’s a nice little surprise when we find out who the person is, but the storyline itself was so lightweight that it felt like padding to get the script up to feature length.

The script’s shining light is probably its ending. I like indie movies that go big with their endings and the climax here definitely has some weight to it. I just wish there was more of that weight throughout the rest of the script.

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

What I learned: Flesh out your subplots. Thin subplots feel empty and pointless. To combat this, try to add as much detail and thought to your subplots as you do your main plot. The mother’s storyline here amounts to a woman at a cubicle receiving IMs. I don’t know what the mother does. I don’t know what her company does. It seems like there’s nothing for her to do all day other than answer IMs. That’s not how the real world works (well, for most of us anyway). Build up the details of your subplot world. Give her company a purpose. Maybe she’s a debt collector (would explain why she’s angry all the time). Or maybe she’s a customer support person (again, would explain why she’s so angry – she gets yelled at all day!). Have her boss demand that something be done by the end of day. Now those IMs are interrupting all the calls coming in AS WELL AS a deadline. It’s much more compelling to watch a character make a tough choice (do I answer this IM or keep working?) than freely answer IMs to her heart’s content. Flesh out those subplots people. Add details. Add reality. Or else your subplot is nothing more than a boring distraction.

Awesome screenplay finally arrives in theaters!

 

It’s National Grey Day my friends!  Yes, it is the day where you tell your boss you’re leaving work early to go see The Grey.  If he has a problem with this, give him my e-mail and I’ll have some words with him.  Explain that I’ve been trumpeting the awesomeness of this script for a couple of years now and that movie watchage must occur on opening day.  Explain to him that Liam Neeson cannot be fighting wolves with glass shards strapped to his knuckles and you NOT be there.  It’s simply impossible.  If he’s still giving you a hard time, tell him to go read my review of the script here.  Of course, there’s a strong possibility that he will now want to come with you so only use that as a last resort.

GREY DAY!!!