Genre: Period/Noir
Premise: (from writer) In wartime LA, a lounge singer falls for the detective hired by a vigilante group to investigate her gangster boyfriend’s treasonous activities.
About: Fatal Woman won this year’s Zoetrope screenwriting contest. – Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting 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.
Writer: Laura Kelber
Details: 106 pages (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 loved what Laura had to say in her query letter. Not only was her attitude great but she had an interesting story to tell. This is what she said: “When this won the grand prize of a major contest back in February, I thought I had it made. I thought, at the very least, I’d get a mid-level manager. But there was zero interest. Zip. Nada. I didn’t get so much as a “what else you got?” query. In fact, I got a helluva lot more response when one of my comedy scripts made the Nicholl Quarterfinals. OK, I know exactly what you’re gonna say: amateurs shouldn’t write period pieces. I know! I’ve written 17 screenplays now, including comedy, drama, and supernatural, dutifully submitting them to contests. But it was an effin’ period piece that won the grand prize. It’s a sad fact (or maybe it’s a good one), that contest winners don’t always tend to be commercial. After the disappointment of getting nowhere with this script, I’ve moved on to others. I like to write. So this one is more or less dead to me. Tear it to shreds!”

Well Laura, your wish is my command. :)

No, I’m not going to tear Fatal Woman to shreds. But I do think it has some significant problems. Having said that, I have a pretty good idea why it won. I talk to a lot of contests readers and I’ve held a couple of contest myself. There’s this wide-held belief that if you have a thousand screenplay submissions to anything, that at least one of them is going to be great. Not true unfortunately. You have to remember that like 80% of the scripts are from people who’ve never even read a screenwriting book before, which makes the pool of relevant scripts considerably smaller. And even then, as you all know by reading this site, it’s still incredibly hard to write something great. So what ends up happening is that it isn’t necessarily the best script that wins the contest, but the best writer. And I think that’s what happened here. The writing here is great. But the story itself is often muddled and confusing. Let’s take a look.

It’s Los Angeles circa 1942, the middle of the war, and Monique is a Veronica Lake-like lounge singer who’s nearing that age where people will start seeing her as a Ricki Lake-like lounge singer. In fact, her thuggish boyfriend who owns the nightclub, Flip Foster, is already moving on to the new hot younger version of her, creating all sorts of tension at work. Rrrreow!

One night after a set, Monique is approached by private detective Dan Armstrong, a handsome bloke (they used that word back then right?) who lost his leg in an accident and is therefore unable to fight for his country. Dan thinks that Flip is involved in some suspect illegal activity and wants to know if Monique will help him get to the bottom of it. Since Flip no longer wants to make sexy time with Monique, she decides, “Why not?”

Unfortunately, that’s where I started getting confused. A bunch of strange plot points are thrown at us one after another and we’re stuck trying to figure out what the actual story is. It starts when Flip takes Monique out on his ship and Dan sneaks onto it as well, only to get captured by Flip and questioned as to who he’s working for. In one of the more bizarre moments, they actually make him take a truth serum. I think that’s the official moment where I started pulling away from the script.

Eventually Flip, who I’d assumed was this terrifying dangerous crime lord, politely shuttles Dan back to shore and lets him go without a scratch. Since when are bad guys so nice? In the meantime, Monique finds out that Flip is using the roundup of Japanese Americans at the time (For those who don’t know, our racist 1942 government rounded up all the Japanese-Americans and put them in concentration camps on the off chance they were spies) to change their identity into Chinese-Americans, release them back into the general population, and make a nice chunk of change out of it.

At some point, Monique decides she’s in love with Dan and wants to run away from him, but when Flip hears about this, he’s furious and refuses to let her go. Because Flip is footing the bill for Monique’s ailing brother, she has no choice but to stay with him, and that means she’ll never get to be with the man she’s fallen in love with.

As she alludes to in her e-mail, Laura starts off with a concept that has such narrow audience appeal that the majority of people who hear the logline aren’t going to be interested in reading it. Literally the only way you can write one of these scripts and get others interested is if the script is absolutely flawless. That’s the only way. You get an L.A. Confidential, what, once every 20 years? That’s why I try and steer you guys away from this stuff because I don’t want to see you waste your time.

As for the script itself, I think it gets buried under too many plot threads and too many ideas. One of the ways I measure a script’s potential is I imagine somebody asking me what it’s about. If I have trouble with that explanation or the explanation itself doesn’t sound very exciting, there’s a good chance that the script is in trouble. If you asked me what Fatal Woman was about, I’m not sure how I would answer. I would say something like, “It’s sort of about a lounge singer in 1942 who falls for a private investigator. But it’s also about trafficking Japanese-Americans for money. Though not really because that plot doesn’t really play into the ending.” You get a semblance that there’s something there but it’s not concrete. It’s not clear or “hook-y” enough.

Let’s use that old trick of trying to find some irony in the premise and see if we can’t come up with something better. What if a guy who was trafficking Japanese-Americans during World War 2 ended up falling in love with one of them? That’s not great and I would brainstorm it extensively to find more conflict and higher stakes, but already I think it’s a more interesting story. I mean what does a lounge singer have to do with trafficking Japanese-Americans? There’s too big of a disconnect between the elements (stealing a phrase from yesterday’s logline article). This seems so much cleaner.

Now I’m not saying everything’s bad here. I thought Dan was a really interesting character. I like the idea of a man who desperately wants to fight for his country but can’t because he’s handicapped. I thought it was interesting seeing the shame and guilt he lived with every day. So I really felt that character was well developed.

And the writing itself, as advertised, was very good. I mean here’s Monique’s character introduction: “She’s talented and perky enough to please the audience, but would draw yawns from any passing talent agent.” I mean that told me everything I needed to know about the character in one line, which is the mark of a great screenwriter.

But this script suffers from too many problems, the biggest of which is that I’m not sure it knows what it’s about. There’s only a semi-commitment to the Japanese-American smuggling subplot, and that leaves the bulk of story to rest on the Dan/Flip/Monique love triangle, which I don’t think has the muscle to keep our interest. We’re also confused about what characters are doing and why they’re doing them half the time. I had no idea why Flip would just let Dan go. Why not kill him? I’m still not sure who was fighting at the end of the script. Was it Dan’s people versus Flip’s people? If not, who were these other guys? And what did any of it have to do with the Japanese-American smuggling plot? Why is it that that plot became a big deal in the middle of the second act and then simply vanished? And why have the climactic scene in the movie take place in a tiny office? Since I wasn’t clear about a lot of these things, Fatal Woman basically became a bunch of characters wandering around talking to each other. The goals weren’t clear. The stakes weren’t clear. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get into it.

My advice to Laura would be this: “You’re a really good writer. I think trying to fix this story is more trouble than it’s worth. Move on to the next script and kick ass with it.”

Script link: Fatal Woman

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

What I learned: One thing I’m sure people will bring up is the 5 to 6 line unfilmable asides Laura uses throughout the script, such as this one on page 38: “Wait a minute! What happened to that steamy lip-lock? Apparently, afterwards, they hopped into the cab and drove all the way back to Dan’s place. Obviously, they’ve had sex. It might have been a long night of Kama Sutra passion, or maybe Dan thinks a simple wham-bam routine’s all he needs to impress a dame. We’ll never know, because it’s the ‘40s and the Hays Code is in full swing. Why else would Dan use a word like “heckuva”?” For the most part, I found these asides charming and fun. But here’s my theory on this. Your primary goal as a screenwriter is to make somebody believe that your story is *real*. If you can convince somebody that a made-up string of sequences from inside your imagination REALLY HAPPENED, you have reached the mountaintop as a storyteller. That’s what we’re all trying to do. The second they’re aware they’re reading a script, you’ve lost that spell. You’ve brought them back to reality. So why put anything in a script that’s going to facilitate that? It’s the equivalent of walking up to them and saying “Hey, you know this is all fake right?” Ironically, the reason I didn’t mind the asides here was that I wasn’t really into the story to begin with, so they were a welcome distraction that made me smile. But had I been engulfed in Fatal Woman, I probably would have had a big issue with them. There are exceptions to this rule of course. For example, I don’t mind them much in goofy comedies when we know what we’re reading isn’t real anyways. But I do have problems with them in almost every other genre.

For those of you unfamiliar with the First Ten Pages Experiment, what I did was have long time Scriptshadow readers send in a logline for their screenplay. The top five loglines, voted on by those readers, would get the first 10 pages of those scripts reviewed on the site next week. Of those five, if any of them were well-liked enough (by you guys), I’d review them on a future Amateur Friday. Now in a last second surprise (hey, every contest has to have some drama right?), CLOTH removed themselves from the competition due to the production team deciding it’d be best to keep the project under wraps. I was kinda bummed cause I wanted to read the script but that just means one of YOUR scripts gets to take its place. If you’re interested in becoming a part of future private contests such as this one, e-mail Carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line, “Include.” Here are the top 5!

WINNER!!!
STATIONARY (54 votes)
GENRE: Comedy-drama
LOGLINE: A businessman begins seeing Post-It Notes that give him directions on how to improve his life.

2nd PLACE
THE FOURTH HORSEMAN (35 votes)
GENRE: Action/Thriller
LOGLINE: Hired by Homeland Security to envision terrorist attack scenarios, a skillful ex-soldier turned novelist, must battle anarchists when they hijack his nightmare plot to destroy new York

3rd PLACE
THE OSWALD SOLUTION (21 votes)
GENRE: DRAMA
LOGLINE: When a prison guard falls in love with the wife of a death-row inmate, he’s forced to choose between his love for her or reveal the discovery of crucial evidence that will save her husband’s life.

4th PLACE
NICE GIRLS DON’T KILL (20 votes)
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When a meek and universally abused copy editor is mistaken for the professional killer she accidentally bumped off, she decides to take on this violent new identity until the killer turns out to be not so dead, and very pissed off.

5th PLACE
DEEP BURIAL (17 votes)
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Posted out to a remote nuclear waste dump site in the Australian Outback to secretly assess the mental state of the ex-addict Aboriginal worker who mans the plant, an anxious young female psychiatrist is forced into a fight for survival when they find a mysterious stranger stranded in the desert.

Since I know you guys just couldn’t survive without knowing who finished 6-10, the rest of the top 10 went like this: The Wreckage, The Lost Colony, Sagittarius and The Crab, The Wake, and then we had a three way tie between Plurally Inclined, The Accidental Lawyer, and Long Way To Tippery. I would be more than happy to read any of these for future Amateur Friday reviews so if any of you are interested in submitting, let me know.

Anyway, this little experiment took on a life of its own and I came to realize just how opinionated people were when it came to loglines. Particularly when their own logline was ignored in favor of someone else’s! But I think there’s a bigger lesson to be learned here. When you start looking through a lot of loglines you begin to see them through the eyes of an agent or a producer or a manager. You start to understand that this is the process by which you’re being judged. And if you come up with a concept that’s only “decent” or “pretty good,” you’re going to be out-shined by loglines that are of lot more exciting, even if your script itself is better. It helps you realize just how important concept is.

And really, it begs a bigger question, which is that, “Is it my logline that’s the problem or is it my idea that’s the problem?” And that’s one of the hardest questions to ask yourself as a writer. Because nobody likes to work on something for a year only to find out that nobody’s interested in reading it. Yet I see it happen all the time. I would go as far as to say it happens to 75 percent of the writers out there. This is why I tell you to test your logline BEFORE you write your script and not after because if you wait until after, you may find out that you’ve just wasted a year of your life.

So with that in mind, I want to look at the 9 loglines that got 3 or less votes and give you my opinion on why they didn’t garner more attention. The objective here is not to embarrass anyone. One of the problems with this business is that nobody tells you WHY they didn’t like something. How can you fix something or move on from something if no one’s explaining why it isn’t working? I want to explain – in my opinion – why these loglines aren’t working. Now some of you are probably asking, “Well if these loglines weren’t working, why did you pick them in the first place?” As I stated to the people submitting, I didn’t just include my favorite loglines. I included loglines from longtime readers who I felt had earned a chance, as well as top commenters whose scripts I was interested in reading. Anyway, let’s look at the logs…

GENRE: Action
TITLE: HELL AWAY FROM HOME
LOGLINE: An unhinged former DEA agent sneaks into Mexico (all the while being hunted by his ruthless ex partner) to get revenge on the Chief of Police/Narcotrafficker who captured and tortured him nine months earlier.
Patrick is one of the most knowledgeable commenters on the site. So why didn’t his logline attract more attention? My fear is that there isn’t anything that stands out or sounds original in the logline. DEA, Mexico, ex-partner, revenge, Chief Of Police. How many movies have you seen that have included this exact set of variables. A LOT. You gotta have that ONE thing that truly stands out about your logline or else you’re fighting an uphill battle.

GENRE: Sci-Fi/Action
TITLE: Foe
LOGLINE: In a near-future world shattered by an alien invasion, a lone Special Forces soldier stumbles on a group of military veterans holding their abandoned VA Hospital as the invaders lay siege.
I’m a big sci-fi fan so at first glance, I see this as something I’d want to read. But a closer look gives me pause. “Lone Special Forces solider” is a very generic sounding character. It seems like every character in an action movie is a lone special forces soldier. Then you have a bunch of military veterans trying to protect their hospital. So now I’m imagining a bunch of old guys fighting aliens. I suppose that might be cool but it almost seems like two different movies – aliens on the one side and military veterans on the other. I can see why this logline would confuse people.

GENRE: Science Fiction/Thriller
TITLE: SCINTILLATION
LOGLINE: A disturbed woman fleeing an abusive marriage finds work at an observatory in New Mexico where she discovers a relativistic attack is about to be launched against the Earth — and she’s the only one who can do anything about it.
One of the commonalities I see in non-hooky loglines is a disconnect between the elements. For example, here, we have a disturbed woman fleeing an abusive marriage. Then all of a sudden she’s the only one who can stop the world from being destroyed. What do those two things have to do with each other? Why do we need to know that she’s fleeing a marriage? I’m not saying that her failed marriage isn’t an important part of her character but we only have one sentence to convey what our movie is about. Why point out something that, relatively speaking, is so unimportant?

GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: Finger Lickin Code
LOGLINE: Once the two most senior members of a famous chicken organization are murdered by a one-legged man, a disturbed puzzle solving whiz finds himself with a possibly schizophrenic sidekick, 11 sealed cryptexes, and one secret recipe he must save.
I haven’t really figured this out yet so maybe somebody can help me, but there seems to be a real abrasiveness towards wacky comedy ideas. However, we know movies like this get made, so who are the people who like these ideas and where are they hiding? Keeping that in mind, this might be one of those loglines that suffers from information overload. It’s just a lot of stuff going on and you can’t really wrap your head around it all.

Genre: Drama, Crime, Sports
Title: Short of a Miracle
Logline: A basketball prodigy escapes the inner city to play collegiate basketball, but the actions of his father, a corrupt NYPD officer, threaten to derail his promising career.
I’ve had this conversation with the writer before (very cool and nice guy) and he seems to be aware of it even though he’s still pushing the script. People just don’t seem to be interested in fictional sports movies unless they’re comedies or boxing films. It’s as simple as that. I’m not saying this script can’t be great, but everybody in the business knows you can’t get these movies financed so they’re never going to read it. You can drive yourself insane trying to push this idea out there.

GENRE: Contemporary Noir Thriller
TITLE: ELLA CINDER
LOGLINE: When a sexy female private investigator in Los Angeles tracks down a femme fatale for a playboy from a famous family, she uncovers a deadly conspiracy to rob the family’s fortune that may be linked to her own mysterious childhood as an abused orphan.
There’s too much going on in this logline. By the time you get to the end of the logline you don’t even remember the beginning because there’s so much stuff in between. We have a female private investigator, a femme fatale, a playboy, a deadly conspiracy, the robbing of a family fortune, and a mysterious childhood as an abused orphan. Where is the person reading the logline supposed to begin? This logline needs to focus on the core concept of the story and strip everything else away.

GENRE: Horror
TITLE: Fetalgeist
LOGLINE: A pro-life student group finds itself trapped inside a long since abandoned yet very much haunted abortion clinic.
You know I actually thought this one would do better. It has some nice irony in it and a great spooky setting. But maybe the biggest lesson I learned from this process was to stay away from subject matter that divides people so much. That sounds contradictory even as I’m writing it because I’ve always learned that you SEEK OUT subject matter that causes conflict and brings out passion. But when you’re talking about abortion, you’re talking about something people just get really wound up about.

GENRE: Heist Movie
TITLE: The Inside Job
LOGLINE: To save a sick little girl, a master thief must team up with his doctor ex-girlfriend to steal stem cells from a vicious mobster who can’t know he’s had surgery.
I thought this would have potential but I think it runs into trouble in the second half. The second you use the word “mobster” in your logline, you’ve stepped into an arena of cliché that a lot of people dislike. That’s not to say to never put mobsters in your movie. But I find it’s a word that turns people off for some reason. Maybe others can chime in on this and let me know if they feel the opposite. But it’s the last part: “vicious mobster who can’t know he’s had surgery” that’s the real confusing part. The mobster can’t know he’s had his own surgery? If your logline is even a little confusing, you’re screwed. Because how can somebody expect you to write a clear story if you can’t even write a clear sentence? That’s why it’s so important to workshop your logline and get others opinions on it so you know that it works.

GENRE: Horror (Realism ala “Carrie”)
TITLE: Deafo
LOGLINE: In a town torn apart by enforced pit closures, a deaf teenage loner sets out on a dark journey of violent revenge against everyone who has ever wronged him
Again, look at the disconnect between the elements here. The first half of the logline is about a town torn apart by “Enforced pit closures (a clunky phrase that probably shouldn’t have been included). Then the second half is about a deaf teenage loner who goes out for revenge. What do enforced pit closures have to do with a deaf teenage loner? Guys, the elements in your logline (and story for that matter!) have to connect. They have to be cohesive. The Matrix isn’t about a circus trainer who learns that he’s living inside of a computer program. It’s about a *programmer* who learns that he’s living inside of a computer program.

Those are my thoughts on the loglines. But really, I’m just one opinion. Let’s go to you guys, the people who voted. Why did you pass up on these loglines? Try and be constructive and not just tear them to shreds. Remember, we’re trying to help each other here. Let’s learn what people dislike so we can all avoid these mistakes in the future.

Genre: Apocalypse/Western
Premise: At the turn of the 22nd century, a Federal Marshal tracks his best friend’s murderer through the Utah badlands to an outlaw stronghold. To bring his man to justice, he must first take out 30 of the most lawless fugitives in the land and their leader, a shadowy figure from his past.
About: This script finished on 2011’s Brit List, the United Kingdom’s answer to the Black List. I have to admit that many of the scripts I’ve read off of the Brit List haven’t been very good, but every once in a while I run into a sleeper. I’m hoping this is the sleeper. Burnthaven is being developed by the producer of Slumdog Millionaire.
Writer: Sebastian Foster
Details: 106 pages (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’m going to admit to something that might get me kicked off my own website. I saw Once Upon A Time In The West for the first time this year. Yes, you heard me correctly. I only just saw one of the most important movies in all of history. Here’s how clueless I was about the film. I actually thought that Clint Eastwood was in it. For the first 30 minutes, I kept shifting impatiently. “When the hell is Clint going to show up??” Well, Carson, it turns out Clint Eastwood isn’t in the movie. Which just pissed me off. If I’m going to watch a Western, I at least want to watch one with the genre’s most famous star.

But then something happened. The movie started to grow on me. In a really weird way too. I became baffled not only at the sheer amount of silence in the film, but how well it worked for it. It seemed like everyone was having these really long dialogue exchanges BUT WITHOUT ANY DIALOGUE. And then the score. Easily one of the most haunting scores you’ve ever heard. If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it. I guarantee it is unlike ANY movie you’ve seen before. It just has this strange energy to it that I can’t describe in words. Check it out.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, Westerns aren’t my thing. So when I pick them up, I usually do so begrudgingly. That changed when I saw the premise of this script. A Western set in the future? After the apocalypse? That’s something I could get on board with.

Burnthaven starts off in the dried up Utah plains in the mid-2100s. We’re not told much about the past, but from the decaying airplanes and oil tankers you see strewn about, you have a pretty good idea of what’s led us to this point.

“This point” is a world trying to get back on its feet. Marshall Robert Hudson, an honest but tough lawman, is one of those people leading the charge. Hudson and his deputy, Rigsby, are tending to a crashed “stagecoach” (horses towing a gutted Greyhound bus) when one of the survivors, a squirrely man named Cander, shoots and kills Rigsby in order to preserve his stash of water filters, which are the equivalent of gold out here in the water starved plains.

Cander steals a horse and gallops away, and Hudson makes it his mission to find and bring him back to justice. The problem is a group of local bandits, led by the soulless Toby Meeks, a mean African American senior with his face half burnt off, gets to Cander first, taking an interest in his water filters. They head back to Meeks’ hideout in Burnthaven, and Hudson follows them there.

Needless to say, Meeks and his crew rule the town with fear and are used to getting what they want. But they’ve never met a man like Hudson before, who doesn’t take no for an answer. At first Hudson tries to get Cander back the old-fashioned way, by asking politely, but Meeks shoots that idea down real quick. It becomes clear, then, that the only way Hudson is going to get his man is if he kills each and every one of these bandits. So that’s exactly what he does.

What I liked about Burnthaven was that I could actually imagine a world like this in a post-World War 3 United States. This isn’t the imaginary universe of The Road Warrior, where people dress up in exposed football pads and colored Mohawks. This is just bad people taking advantage of a bad situation going up against the good guys. And that’s how things are when shit hits the fan. The bad dudes rise up and start ruling the world with terror. So I appreciated the realism in how Foster approached this world.

However, as the script went on, I began to realize that nothing about the past played into the story at all. In fact, minus the water filters and the Greyhound bus shell, you could’ve easily plopped this story down into 1857 and it would have been the exact same movie. That bummed me out even more than realizing Clint Eastwood wasn’t in Once upon a Time in the West. I mean what’s the point of setting a Western in the future if you’re not going to take advantage of the future setting?

There were some strange story choices here as well. Hudson loses his best friend to a guy who killed him more out of fear than any genuine “badness.” So the guy we’re going after isn’t really a bad person. This may seem unimportant at first glance, but if we don’t hate the guy we’re going after, we’re not really going to care much if our hero catches him or not. I mean look at my third favorite unproduced script, The Brigands Of Rattleborge. In it, we see the man we’re chasing rape and kill our hero’s wife. That’s someone I want my protagonist to catch.

On top of this, our hero doesn’t even want to do anything bad to the guy. He just wants to take him back to his town and give him a trial. In the meantime, he’s ruthlessly killing the 30 men who are holding him. So let me get this straight. He believes in justice and a trial for the man who killed his best friend, but anybody who gets in the way of that justice needs to be killed? Am I the only one who thinks this doesn’t make sense?

On top of all this, the script just becomes repetitive. Our main character is killing 30 people and he painstakingly counts them down one by one. After about the seventh kill, all I could think was, “I have to wait for 23 more of these??” And that’s exactly what happened. We just waited and waited as Hudson would kill these people one after another. Is there any way we could make it, like, 6 people?

I am willing to admit that this isn’t my genre. It seems like there’s a different set of rules in Westerns that I don’t get. Specifically, there seems to be this theme of honor that’s hit on in these films. So maybe Western fans like the fact that Hudson is trying to stay honorable in all of this instead of simply killing the guy who killed his best friend. I guess there’s some logic in that. But it still seems strange to me that he’s willing to kill 30 people to get that justice. Anyway, I couldn’t get into this one. I didn’t think it was very good.

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

What I learned: You have to commit to your plot points. If you don’t know or care about what’s going on, we won’t either. I’m referring specifically to the water filter plot. What do the water filters have to do with anything here besides initiating Cander’s killing of Rigsby? From what I understand, Meeks thought Cander had hidden a stash of them, which is why he doesn’t kill him right away. He wants to locate them first. But after that, Meeks just forgets about the filters. In fact, I don’t think they’re ever brought up again. What this tells me is that the writer didn’t fully think through this plot and is trying to fudge it. The biggest tell of this fudging is the fact that we don’t we see a single person in the entire movie THIRSTY!!! How can you expect us to commit to a storyline about needing water when nobody in the movie mentions a need for water??? Contrast this with the animated film Rango. Watch that movie and see how much emphasis is put on the lack of water and how that plays out throughout the movie. You don’t get to simply abandon major plot points in your movie because you don’t want to try and figure them out. That’s lazy and amateur hour.

Genre: Thriller/Drama
Premise: A man inherits a huge piece of land in Montana only to learn that it comes with an enormous price: a longstanding blood feud with the neighbors.
About: This is a 2011 Blood List script that will go into production later this year. Adam Wingard will direct (Pop Skull, A Horrible Way To Die). This is what he had to say after reading the script: “I was instantly attracted to the authentic 70’s style grittiness and the Terrence Malick/Sam Peckinpah feel of the script. It’s got this sweeping scope that takes you in, lifting you up as it explores the beauty and mystery of nature, and then tears it all apart with sheer brutality and violence.”
Writers: Alex and Max Schenker
Details: 102 pages – August 1, 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 don’t know what I was expecting when I picked this one up, but it definitely wasn’t what I got. Punchbowl’s about a young man named Dylan Massey, a 24 year old slaughterhouse grunt who’s probably going to be killing cows for the rest of his life. The only light in his life is Savannah King – the beautiful woman who puts up with him. Dylan knows that Savannah’s too good for him. And he knows that the second she realizes it, she’s out the door. Which is why he wants to provide a better life for her. Unfortunately, there aren’t many opportunities for a better life in rural West Texas.

And then Dylan wins the lottery, in a manner of speaking. Dylan’s grandfather just died and in the will left him a 4500 acre estate in Montana. People don’t have 4500 acre estates anymore. That’s like owning your own country. So at first Dylan is skeptical, but is corralled into driving up there by Savannah, his best friend Garrett, and Garret’s girlfriend Isabella.

The place is GORGEOUS. It’s like what the pioneers must have seen when they first travelled across America. And it’s all Dylan’s. He immediately asks Garrett to move up and work with him. They’ll be millionaires, living the life they always dreamed of. The girls are just as excited. It’s all like a dream come true.

Heh heh heh. Or so they think.

Our group gets the first hint that something’s wrong when they head into town. Everybody there is just NOT friendly. Lots of glaring. Lots of avoiding. They eventually run into the Sheriff, who tells them what’s up. There’s been a generations-old feud going on between the Masseys and their neighbors, the Shores. Dozens of Masseys and dozen Shores have been killed over the years. And word on the street is that Dylan’s next.

It’s not surprising then that they get home to see the words “Go away” on their front porch written in pig blood. Everybody’s freaking out, wondering if they should leave. But you don’t voluntarily wake up from a dream. You sleep for as long as you can.

So Dylan gets this crazy idea that he’s going to end the feud. He saunters over to Fallon Shore’s place, the most evil man you can imagine, and says he wants to talk. He’ll agree to give Fallon a few hundred acres if he ends the feud. Fallon wants to know if the acres include a water stream (known as “The Devil’s Punchbowl” because of how much blood has been shed over it). Dylan says “no” and Fallon says he’s sorry, but that means the feud is on. And boy is it ever. That night, these men are going to give a whole new meaning to the word “Hell.”

Man, this was a weird one. It was weird good for the most part, but for everything the Schenker brothers did right, they seemed to drop the ball on something else. The biggest issue with the screenplay for me was how abruptly it ended. So much time is put into the setup here that when we finally got to the actual feud, there were only 30 pages left, and that wasn’t NEARLY enough to tell the story. This is the kind of story that needs time to breath, and it would’ve had that time had it gotten to its story sooner.

This is why you always hear the advice: “Move your story along quickly.” Especially the setup. And especially in a movie like this where the central plot is 1500 miles from where the story begins. We needed to get to Montana sooner, establish the danger sooner, and then we could’ve worked our way through a few escalating skirmishes before we got to the big battle. As it stood, all we had was the big battle, which was sort of like being fed the main course without the drinks, bread, and salad. I kept thinking, “But we don’t even know the Shores yet. We’ve had like, two scenes with them. I’m not ready for a final confrontation.”

Another misguided choice was giving Dylan and Isabella (Garret’s girlfriend) a secret romance. Sometimes we can get so obsessed with adding conflict, that we add it even when the script doesn’t need it. Sure, a Dylan and Isabella affair created conflict and some dramatic irony, but it ultimately had nothing to do with the plot. It was only there to be there. And since the conflict between the families was SO intense, adding a silly affair plot almost seemed annoying, like something we have to put up with in order to get to the good stuff. I’m not saying to never add conflict between the group in movies like this, but if you force it, we’re going to notice, and that’ll kill our suspension of disbelief.

On the plus side there’s something very authentic about the details in this script. I FELT like I was in Texas. I FELT like I was in Montana. I felt like these characters were real people. And on top of that, these brothers can write. There were some great moments in Punchbowl. There’s a creepy scene where a townie approaches Savannah at the grocery store, starts massaging her pregnant belly, and asks her what it’s like to have the devil inside of her (a Massey). There’s also a great dinner scene where Dylan invites the Shores over for a truce talk that is just laced with tension. That’s when Punch Bowl was at its best. That’s where this script really shined.

And boy is Fallon a GREAT bad guy. You work so hard to create memorable villains in your screenplays yet so many of them come off as sloppy copycats of much better villains of past films. Fallon is just a nasty man. But more importantly, you believe in him. And you hate him. And you want to see him go down. If you can create a villain that gets to the audience THAT much, you’ve taken care of 60% of your movie. Just that NEED to see him burn, to breathe his last breath, can power an audience’s interest.

But ultimately this script is a mixed bag. It alienates you at the same time that it pulls you in. For example, there was all this senseless animal violence. And the feud itself was too vague. I mean we’re told that the town is split in its support for the families. But we never meet anybody who supports the Masseys. And then of course, there’s this sudden ending, where it feels like someone accidentally skipped 15 chapters on the DVD and threw us into the final climax. I wanted to see more of a build up there. I wanted to see more conflict between the families. Besides all that though, this is too interesting not to recommend.

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

What I learned: Whenever you have a story that has your hero(es) moving to a new town, you want to get to that town as SOON as possible. That’s because in addition to setting up your character’s CURRENT life, you’re going to have to set up their NEW life (and their new town). That’s two consecutive setup sequences, which is a lot of screenplay real estate. This is why you see most “new town” screenplays STARTING with the characters arriving in the new town. The Karate Kid for example (I know, I know, completely different movie) – we start with them arriving in California. Now in this case, the Schenkers wanted to establish the characters’ shitty lives before they got lucky, which is a choice I support. But we don’t get to Montana until page 35. That’s WAAAAAAY too long. We should be there AT THE LATEST by page 25, and preferably by page 20. Montana is where the meat of the story is so that’s where we need to be.

Genre: Indie Comedy
Premise: A couple of Canadian losers drive down to New York to try and sell Christmas Trees. Dumb and Dumber meets Sideways.
About: Melissa James Gibson is a well-known Canadian playwright. As far as I can tell, this is her first screenplay sale. Paul Giamatti and his wife are producing the film. Giamatti and Paul Rudd will be playing the lead characters. Phil Morrison is directing. Morrison is best known for the well-received 2005 film, Junebug. Strangely, he hasn’t made a film since.
Writer: Melissa James Gibson
Details: 115 pages – 3/11/11 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).

The only thing I knew about this one when I started reading it was that Paul Giamatti was involved. He usually makes interesting choices so I was in. Later I discovered Paul Rudd had been cast and started wondering what the tone of the script was. Afterwards, I’m still searching for that tone. This is a weird script, starting with the premise.

Guy is a 42 year-old Quebecian who just got out of a 5 year jail stint for burglary. Guy is a thief. A lifer in the trade. Except he’s ready to end that life. Guy wants to go on the straight and narrow. So after being released, he heads home to reunite with his wife and eight year old daughter. But there’s a problem. Actually, there’s a couple of problems. His wife went ahead and told their daughter Guy had died. It was apparently too hard to tell her the truth. So Guy can’t even come into the house. He can’t meet and talk to his daughter. Which makes absolutely no sense of course. If I have a daughter who thinks I’m dead, I’m walking in and telling her I’m not. I’m sure she’ll get over it.

Anyway, that’s just the beginning. Guy tasked his old partner in crime, Rene (the one I believe got away on the job that put Guy in jail) with taking care of his wife while he was gone. Well Rene takes care of her all right. If by “taking care” you mean “has lots of sex with.” Now his wife loves Rene, and his daughter thinks of him as her father. In two words: Not good.

Well at least Rene still has all the money from their last job, right? Umm, not really. When Guy goes to collect his half of the loot that he’s been waiting 5 years for, he finds out Rene has spent it all. Nice! That leaves both of them broke. Guy wants to know how they’re going to make money – legally, but Rene isn’t being very helpful. He says he’s going down to New York to sell Christmas trees with a friend. Guy says, “Ditch the friend. You’re going with me. And we’re splitting the money.” Rene reluctantly agrees and off the two go to New York.

Once there, Guy realizes that Rene doesn’t have any of this planned out. He doesn’t even have a Lot to sell the trees on! So they start selling trees out of the back of their truck. It becomes clear that Rene is a total moron and Guy gets more impatient with him every minute because of it. Eventually, the duo start poaching on an empty lot, and things pick up. So how does this all end? Why they decide to steal a piano of course! “Huh?” You ask. “What does that have to do with a movie about selling Christmas Trees?” Beats me. Welcome to Lucky Dog.

Where to begin with Lucky Dog. Let’s start with the title, which has absolutely nothing to do with the story. That’s usually a bad sign and a harbinger of things to come. That’s followed by a nonsensical “you can’t talk to your daughter because she thinks you’re dead” sub-plot. Then, out of nowhere, the script becomes about selling Christmas trees (What does selling Christmas trees have to do with a movie about a couple of thieves?). By the midpoint I had no idea what the script was about or what was going on.

I wasn’t even sure what they were doing this for. To make money? Okay, fine. But for what? What was the ultimate goal? To make money so they could have… money? That’s not a goal. Making money for the sake of making money is never going to entertain an audience. They need a point – a REASON for wanting to make money. Somewhere near the end we learn that Rene’s going to use the money to provide for Guy’s wife and kid. Which didn’t make any sense because the whole time in New York, all Rene wanted to do was fuck other women. And I guess the reason Guy wanted the money was to buy his daughter a piano? Except we didn’t find this out until 15 pages before the ending. Strange.

Then there’s the baffling relationship between the two main characters. Rene is fucking Guy’s wife. But this isn’t a secret. Guy knows about it. Yet he never raises a stink about it. He gets annoyed every once in awhile, but all in all doesn’t seem to mind much. Here’s a scenario for you. Before you go to jail for five years, you task your best friend with watching your wife. You come back to find out he’s fucking her. Do you say anything to him or just continue your friendship like nothing happened? Apparently in this universe, you opt for the latter. That’s what was so damn strange about this script. There were so many illogical aspects about it that it was impossible to take any of it seriously.

Luckily, once they get to New York and settle in, the script FINALLY starts to find its groove. Once it became solely about selling Christmas trees, I at least understood the story. There is some funny stuff in there, such as the two believing they can sell Christmas trees on a lot that isn’t theirs.

Also, thank God for Olga, the woman who befriends Gary after buying a tree. She was the only character in the entire script who was exciting – who jumped off the page. There was an honesty and a vibrancy to her that none of the other characters had. I wondered why she was so head and shoulders above the other characters and I later found out that the script was written by a woman (I just assumed it was a man because it was a script about two guys on a road trip). Naturally, I wondered if she simply understood the female voice better, being a woman. That may sound sexist but I can’t think of any other reason why all the guy characters were muddled and she was so well defined. I actually would’ve LOVED a lot more of Olga. When she first appeared, I thought, “Thank God!” This script needed a woman – a love story. But then she disappears for the majority of the script until the strange piano theft finale.

I don’t know how to conclude this. Lucky Dog was just all over the place. The story was weird. The characters were odd. Nobody’s actions made much sense. The goal was vague. I felt like I was on a backwards merry-go-round being juggled by Godzilla. I never knew which direction was up.

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

What I learned: Maybe you guys can help me here. I’m all for a writer being “different.” I’m all for a script making unconventional choices and constantly surprising you. In fact, I often advocate for that kind of thing. I love not knowing what’s coming next. But there seems to be a line where once you cross it, “different” becomes “confusing/frustrating.” Sure, the script is giving us something we’ve never quite seen before. Plot points are unique. Characters don’t act like we expect them to. But the combination is so off-kilter that we can’t identify with anything – we can’t find our “bearings” so to speak. And that “unique” script ends up being confusing and weird. I don’t know where that line is, I just know when it’s crossed. And here it was crossed. No matter what I did, I could never get a feel for what this script was or what it wanted to be. It was simply all over the place.