Welcome to Amateur Week!  All week we’re reviewing scripts from amateur writers that got the best response from this post.  We’ve already had one script perform REALLY WELL in “Fascination 127.”  And today we review the highest concept of all the entries, “USS Nikola Tesla.”  Is it only a cool concept?  Or is the execution just as good?  Let’s find out… 

Genre: Sci-Fi/Supernatural
Premise: (from writer) The American Navy’s latest destroyer, the USS Nikola Tesla, disappears without  a trace. Two years later she reappears with no sign of her crew. But no one realises this ship holds a dark secret that dates back to World War Two and a horrifying experiment.
About: The big worry when you open up a high concept script from an amateur writer is that that’s all it’s going to be.  The writer will set up the high concept in the first 20 pages, we’ll be riveted, and then once they don’t have that crutch to lean on and actually have to tell a story, the whole thing falls apart.  I PRAY whenever I read one of these scripts that that’s not the case.  Because if a reader finds a high concept script that’s also a great story?  It’s like finding gold.  You can start printing the money.
Writer: Anonymous (more on this in a second)
Details: 99 pages
Status: AVAILABLE

When I recieved the e-mail query for this script, it was accompanied by a very cryptic note from the writer, who explained that he couldn’t include his name on the screenplay.  It was something about…I don’t know…how he had top secret clearance at Area 51 or something and if his name was associated with the script, men in black would visit his home and terminate him, along with all other members of the Resistance, except for the ones who were sent back in time to save humanity.  I’m not sure what any of that means but it has me curious as to what happens if this script sells.  Who do they write a check to?  The writer obviously can’t accept the money.  Maybe I’ll take it.  Seems like a logical compromise.

Of course, I’ve gone down the anonymous writer path before.  You’d be surprised at the lengths writers will go to get their scripts read, and the “anonymous” route is a popular one.  Oftentimes the writer will imply a bunch of vague allusions to “big name actors” circling their script and how they’ll get in trouble if they send it.  But they’re going to risk it all and send it anyway!  They just can’t reveal their name.

There was even one guy who told me he had come across an old screenplay during a yard sale.  He bought it for kicks and it turned out to be the most amazing thing he’d ever read.  If I was interested, he noted, he could send it to me.  I said, “Sure” just to see how far he’d take the story, and he magically sent me a PDF document of the script that was converted from a word processing program.  If this was an old script he found at a yard sale, wouldn’t it have had to be scanned?  Anyway, I opened the script up out of pure curiosity, and the first scene was a 10 pager focusing on urinal humor.  Look, I respect playing the game a little.  Just know that when a reader feels like they’re being taken for a ride, they’re going to be hard on your script.   So, will that approach doom USS NIKOLA TELSA?  Let’s find out.

“Tesla” begins with an ode to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.  A bunch of American soldiers in Afghanistan walk up a hill in the desert to see, below them, a giant half of a submarine.  No, not a submarine sandwich (I should be so lucky).  But an actual submarine.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, two teenagers are making out on a foggy dock when a huge naval destroyer comes bearing down on them.  They run for their lives, barely able to make it to safety, but soon afterwards, there’s a loud groaning noise from inside the ship and then a shockwave of energy shoots out, vaporizing the couple.  And before the dude could even make it to second base!

Cut to army officials in rooms making hushed phone calls.  “It’s back,” they tell one another.  The USS Nikola Tesla.  Apparently it had gone off on some training mission two years ago and disappeared!  Naturally, they need to figure out what caused its return, so they e-mail the experts.

Two of those experts are Lieutenant Robert Montrose and Lieutenant Claire Allen.  Montrose is a notorious Navy playboy who’s constantly looking to get his turret waxed.  And Claire is a no-nonsense engineer who’s next sexual encounter will probably be her first.  Obviously, when these two get paired together, conflict is going to fly!

And they do get paired together, along with a group of other officials who have been brought in to check out the mysterious return of this boat.  It isn’t long before they realize something’s up.  The boat likes to groan a lot, and it seems like everywhere you look, something is dashing behind a corner.  Add a little magnetism to the mix – a pen will be yanked out of your hand and stick to the wall – and boarding this boat becomes its own little house of horrors.

But the biggest question of them all comes in the form of Charlie, a young man dressed in a World War 2 naval uniform who tells Montrose and Claire he’ll give them a tour of the boat if they’re interested.  Once he touches them, a flash of light occurs, taking our characters to Nowheresville, and the story along with them!

Montrose and Claire end up in a 1950s military hospital and Charlie informs them that he was part of the original Philadelphia Experiment and when his boat was destroyed, he decided to use this new boat to show the world just how stupid they were for messing with science.  How he plans to get his point across?  By blowing some cities up mothafuckuh!  And he has the powers to do it!  While poor little Montrose and Claire only have the power of persuasion to stop him.  Dammit these paranormal Navy ghost World War 2 Philadelphia Experiment castoffs.  They always seem to screw up a perfectly good day.

Okay.

To put it bluntly?  My biggest fear was realized.  Strong setup.  But with every page afterwards, the story fell more and more apart.  And it’s not Anonymous’ fault.  Well, not entirely.  This is why there’s such a steep learning curve with screenwriting.  You have to learn how to tell a story, not just set up a story.  It’s a mistake I see made all the time.  Writers think that all they need is a cool idea and they’re finished.  No, you need a cool idea AND the knowledge of how to write a second act.  The second act is where the concept takes a back seat to the characters.  If the characters aren’t interesting in some way, if they aren’t tackling something substantial within themeselves and between each other, then the second act will rest too heavily on a series of forced plot points that we won’t care about because we don’t care about the people inhabiting them.

And that’s what happened here.  Once Charlie shows up, the script just becomes one goofy nonsensical sequence after another.  Look at Aliens.  That was a hardcore action sci-fi thriller, right?  But in that second act, you have Ripley battling her trust issues (she doesn’t trust Burke or Bishop or the entire operation) and trying to protect this surrogate daughter, Newt.  In “Tesla,” we have Montrose and Claire bickering with each other via cheesy dialogue and Charlie being super-dramatic and often confusing with his scientific explanations.  I’m still not sure how Charlie became a part of this ship in the first place.

I suspect that this stems from another common amateur mistake – the refusal to outline.  You can almost always tell an un-outlined script because the further the script goes on, the less it makes sense.  It feels like the writer is making stuff up as he goes along because that’s exactly what he’s doing.  When you write this way, you feel this pressure to “keep things interesting,” and so you try and top whatever outrageous scene or sequence you just wrote with an even MORE outrageous scene or sequence.  It’s kind of like that desperate boy pining for a girl’s attention.  Sucking up jellow through a straw into your nose didn’t work, so why not rip your shirt off and start dancing on the table?

That’s not how screenplays work.  You need to carefully plot out what’s going to happen 20 pages down the line so you can build up to that moment, whether it be through suspense, set-ups, or character development.  “Tesla” certainly had a lot of stuff going on, but none of it felt cohesive.  It felt more like a distraction to make sure you didn’t realize that there wasn’t a story.

If I were Anonymous, I’d focus on three things moving forward.  First, learn the value of outlining. Once you know where your script is going, you can create a more logical and plausible plot.  Second, learn how to tackle your second act.  A second act isn’t just a bunch of crazy shit happening.  It’s a slow build, where you tackle most of your characters’ issues.  Which leads me to the third focus – character development.  Give your lead characters something inside of themselves that they’re trying to overcome.  With Ripley it was trust.  But it might be the recent death of a family member, an inability to love, or the desire to prove that you belong.  The possibilities are endless. But if a main character isn’t tackling SOMETHING inside themselves, chances are they’re boring.

What I learned: A screenplay isn’t just a high concept you parlay into a cool first 15 pages.  The other 95 pages are going to be read as well, and those are the ones that are going to be more tightly scrutinized. Cause every reader worth his salt knows that that’s where you find out if you’re dealing with a writer or just an idea guy.  Consider your high concept to be your “good looks.”  It’s what gets you in the door.  But you still have to be charming, you still have to be intelligent, you still have to be interesting.  Your second and third acts are what’s going to prove your value as a writer, so make sure they kick ass.

 

Welcome to Amateur Week!  All week we’re reviewing scripts from amateur writers that got the best response from this post.  We’ve already had one script perform REALLY WELL in “Fascination 127.”  Will “Chase The Night” be the next big amateur script to celebrate?  Let’s find out!  

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from writer) On his 25th birthday, a troubled orphan receives information about his estranged mother, sending him into a world of corruption as he investigates the circumstances behind her life and death.
About: I knew this one depended on how unique and compelling the choices were behind the main character’s investigation.  That’s what sorta worried me about this logline – that a specific compelling circumstance wasn’t mentioned, but rather a general blanket set of circumstances which were implied.  The logline felt a little cold in that respect.  But I liked the emotional component of the story, so I was interested to see if it connected on that level.
Writer: Thomas A. Schwenn
Details: 115 pages
Status: AVAILABLE

Star Wars Tuesday.  Blood List Wednesday.  Disciple Program finishing #1.  Halloween yesterday. How is “Chase The Night” supposed to follow all this?  Good question.  And I’ll tell you my biggest concern reading the logline.  I thought it sounded a little boring.  That’s not to say it *would* be boring.  Just that the logline made it sound that way.  Remember, your logline is like the billboard or trailer for a movie.  It’s the only thing you have to promote your screenplay.  So like a great billboard or trailer makes us want to see the movie, a logline has to make us want to read the script!  It has to sound exciting!

Just to remind everyone, faulty loglines can be broken down into two categories.  The first is that you haven’t adequately conveyed the excitement of your script.  There is no excuse for this.  If your script is exciting, you better workshop the HELL out of your logline to make sure it’s perfect and conveys the coolness of your script.  The second issue is much more concerning.  The concept itself stinks.  This goes well beyond workshopping a logline.  It means scrapping the entire script.  Because no matter how you dress up your logline, how many times you reword it, it’s still going to convey an idea that isn’t very good in the first place.  Which is why I always say, get your logline figured out first.  Because eventually you’re going to be using that to market your script, and if it doens’t work now, it’s not going to work then.

Actually, I’ve seen this lead to a long-standing trend of trying to dress loglines up into something the script isn’t in order to get reads. You realize, “Ooh, if I stress the ghost aspect more in the logline, even though it’s barely in the script, it’ll sound better!”  This is how I would classify Monday’s script, “Pocket Dial,” which promised a lot of modern technology relationship humor in its logline, but didn’t give us any of that in the actual screenplay.  Not only is that going to piss readers off, but my question to these writers is, “If that makes your logline better, why didn’t you write that script in the first place?”

Okay, enough bitching and moaning.  It’s supposed to be a happy day, a day in which we gorge on all the candy we accumulated last night.  Oh, not that I went trick-or-treating last night.  No, not at all.  Why would someone my age go trick-or-treating?  That’s ridiculous for you to even suggest that.  I’m just saying that if I *was* a kid  and I *did* trick-or-treat yesterday, that I would have a lot of candy that I’m eating right now – or that *that kid* would be eating right now.  Not me.  Cause I didn’t go trick-or-treating……Man, is it hot in here?

25 year old Tommy Young is not a happy compadre.  He carries an old picture around with him showing a young woman, who we’ll come to know as Mariah, hanging out with two friends, Jack and Sam.  Although we’re not sure why yet, Tommy has some business with these guys and that business needs to be addressed pronto.

He eventually finds one of the men, Jack (now in his 50s), washed up, drunk, and demands to know about Mariah.  It’s here where we get a little more info on the woman.  It appears that many years ago, Mariah was charged with killing her parents – Tommy’s grandparents.  Yes, Tommy is Mariah’s son.  He wants to know the truth about what happened that day, cause he’s convinced his mom would never do such a thing.

Well he’s not going to get that information from Jack because Jack’s Daniel (that’s my clever way of saying he’s wasted).   So off Tommy goes to find the other dude, Sam, who’s since become a cop.  Jack ends up kidnapping Sam no problem, then ties him up and starts asking questions.  Sam denies knowing anything about Mariah, but starts to crack a little as Tommy puts the heat on.

In the meantime, Sam’s precinct gets word that he’s missing and starts looking for him, forcing Tommy to take Sam on the run.  It’s here where we’re introduced to the main detective on Sam’s case, Frank Marshall.  While Tommy and Sam skitter all over the city avoiding capture, Frank interviews friends of Tommy to get a beat on where he may be holding Sam.

At some point, Sam decides to help Tommy figure out what happened to his mom, although this was a seriously confusing part of the script.  Sam is constantly asking to be let go, while also providing details and clues for Tommy to find out if his mom really killed his grandparents.  Is he trying to get away or is he trying to help?  To be honest, I was never sure.

And that’s pretty much how the rest of the script goes. It’s Tommy and Sam finding clues to help their case while Frank Marshall finds clues to save Sam.  I wish I could provide more plot points but there really weren’t any.  This was pretty straightforward.  Which was the first problem of many I had with “Chase The Night.”

This was a strange script.  Because from a distance, it had a lot of components that make up a good story.  You have a guy looking into his mother’s murder case.  So there’s a goal and a mystery there.  And you have the chase aspect going on as well, in that at any moment, Frank could catch them.  You also had high stakes, in that Tommy’s trying to free his mother from jail.  But despite all this, the script struggles mightily to keep the reader’s attention.

We’ll start with the logline, which states that an orphan receives information from his estranged mother. I never saw that anywhere in the script.  So I didn’t even know Tommy was an orphan.  And because of that, I coudln’t figure out why he all of a sudden needed to do this.  Why didn’t he do it earlier?  And to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you what Tommy was trying to do!  He just had this picture with these people in it.  It wasn’t until halfway through the story that I understood what Tommy’s goal was.  I still don’t know if that was done by design or by accident.  But plot murkiness is a script killer, and this plot was murky.

But what really bothered me was how detached the writing was.  Everything was so…clinical, so cold.  The main character wasn’t very interesting.  The story wasn’t very interesting.  And a big part of that had to do with how little “voice” there was to the writing.  All the words were where they needed to be.  And it actually read quite well.  But it was just so…I don’t know how to put it…”distant.”  And that left me bored.

Also, I’m not sure the information in this story is dispensed in a way as to garner the most drama.  For example, I didn’t know why Tommy was looking for Jack at first (other than that he was in the picture) so I didn’t care.  I guess you can argue that you’re playing up the mystery behind the picture, but if you misjudge how interested the audience is going to be in regards to that mystery, you end up with a really bored reader.

Finally, I could never figure out what the rules of this Tommy/Sam pairing were.  Did Sam want to get away?  Did he want to help?  It seemed like sometimes he wanted to bail (“Just let me leave.  They’ll never find you.”) and other times he was Watson to Tommy’s Sherlock.  There was this vague implication that Tommy’d convinced him to “do the right thing” and help him find out what happened to his mom, but even that was never clearly laid out.  So it just felt comical that these two were running around town together.  Are they friends?  Are they enemies?  I didn’t know!

If I were to give Thomas advice for his next script, I would say to add more character and color to his writing.  Let’s have it pop off the page more.  Try to be more clear with your plot and motivations as well.  We need to know, definitively, why Sam is hanging around Tommy this whole script.  We need to know, definitively, what this picture is about, how it got in Tommy’s possession, and why it’s motivated him to become Liam Neeson in Taken.  And try to have a few more unexpected things happen during the story.  This story unraveled way too predictably.  I wish Thomas good luck on his next screenplay.  Sorry I couldn’t get into this one.

What I learned: Your 3rd Act twist has to have a properly weighted setup, or else you end up with a “WTF” moment. (Spoiler) So the big twist here is that Stan Bell, the chief of police, covered up his son’s murdering of Tommy’s grandparents, blaming it on Mariah.  Except here’s the thing, I hadn’t seen Stan Bell since page 15, where he was introduced for .5 seconds, then disappeared until the final sequence.   How is that a satisfying twist?  Shouldn’t we know the person who the twist is centered around so that we care?  Shouldn’t he have 4-5 scenes of him dispersed evenly throughout the script so his reveal isn’t a total “wtf” moment?  Make sure to properly weight your setups people, particularly if they’re setups to a big final payoff.

 

Taking a break from Amateur Week because it’s HALLLOOOOWEEEEEEN and that means Scriptshadow must be spoooooooooky for 24 hours and that means a horror script review but since I don’t have any good horror scripts, I’m reviewing a script that is ABOUT a horror film.  Sound fun?  I hope so cause I ain’t giving you another choice here.

Genre: Biopic’ish
Premise: The struggles behind the making of Psycho, the project that would become director Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous film.
About:  Anthony Hopkins will star as Alfred Hitchcock.  Helen Mirren will star as his wife, Alma.  Scarlett Johansen will star as Janet Leigh.  Sacha Gervachi will direct.  I believe this is Sacha’s first feature film as a director (he’s made a documentary).  He’s best known as the writer of Steven Spielberg’s wackadoozy film, “The Terminal.”  John J. McLaughlin adapted the book into a screenplay.  You probably recognize him as the writer of Black Swan.
Writer: John J. McLaughlin (based on the book “Alfred Hitchcock and The Making Of Psycho” by Stephen Rebello.
Details: 104 pages, fourth revision, Oct. 19, 2011 draft

First of all, WTF!!!???

Disney bought Lucasfilm yesterday.  Disney just BOUGHT Lucas.  Lucas doesn’t get bought.  He buys other people!  And now we’re getting another Star Wars trilogy.  And you know what I say to that?  WOOOO-HOOOO!  I love it.  I’ve been dying to get Star Wars into real writers’ hands forever now, and it’s finally going to happen!

How does this tie into today?  Well, George Lucas was a bit of a pudgy filmmaker.  And so was Alfred Hitchock!  Actually, to be serious, I was not looking forward to this script.  I don’t like when entities try and mine a famous event when there isn’t a story there.  Like, oooh, it’s Psycho!  Let’s make a movie about the making of it!  Err, but the making of the movie wasn’t any different from the making of any other  movie.  So what, let’s do it anyway!

I hoped I was wrong.  That there was some fascinating story behind the making of Psycho that I’d never heard about.  But something told me this wasn’t the making of Citizen Kane.

So here’s the story.  Hitchcock is coming off of North By Northwest, which is a monster hit.  But he’s bored.  Everyone wants him to make another North By Northwest but Hitchcock, like his movies, wants to do the unexpected.  Something unlike anything he’s done before.  And when he reads Pyscho, he knows that’s it.  That’s his next movie.

But this is a strange move.  Hitchcock doesn’t do horror.  Only schlocky talentless directors do horror in 1960.  On top of that, it’s not something the studios are interested in.  They think this flick is dead before the end of opening weekend.  But Hitchcock has plans to do something a little different with it. He particularly sets his sights on a shower scene, which he believes he can immortalize.  You see, there wasn’t much nudity in films those days, and definitely not from movie stars.  Yet Hitchock had a plan to imply a ton of nudity without actually showing any.  It was going to be unprecedented.

If only the studios agreed.  They tell Hitchcock there’s a reason everyone in town passed on Psycho and they’re not funding it.  I have to admit, I was a little unclear about this.  Hitchcock makes mega-hit North By Northwest and the studio won’t fund his next movie, which he’s doing for 800,000 bucks?  But whatever.  The movie business was different back then so I’m probably missing something.  Anyway, Hitchcock pulls a Passion Of The Christ and funds the movie himself.

In the meantime, Hitchcock starts fighting all sorts of battles.  He’s the master of suspense, but he’s 60 years old, and the establishment wants to know when he’s going to retire.  Hitch doesn’t like getting old, and he feels that this movie is going to make him young again.  Then there’s his weight problem.  The dude cannot stop eating.  And he hates himself for it.  He sees a monster whenever he looks in the mirror, and that kills him.  But the biggest battle of all is his wife, who becomes the almost-star of the movie.

Alma was Hitch’s right-hand woman throughout his career and, if you believe this script, someone he wouldn’t have been nearly as successful without.  But Alma’s getting sick of Hitch’s lack of attention so starts paying attention to a dashing but not very talented writer named Whitfield Cook.  They start writing a script together while Hitchcock films Psycho and it starts to weigh on Hitch, who realizes that if he doesn’t rekindle his relationship with Alma, she might run off with the hack and Psycho will turn out a disaster.

So what do I think about “Alfred Hitchcock and The Making Of Psycho?”  Well, it’s a good enough script.  It includes some interesting tidbits about the making of.  But after I read it, I found myself asking, “Why did this movie need to be made?”  “What new does it bring to the table?”  I suppose the story of Alma is entertaining, but the script chooses to focus on Hitchcock as the main character even though her story is probably more interesting (mainly because it’s less known).

At times, the writer seems just as unsure as we are about the point of the story.  I mean, we start with two tightly focused scenes regarding Hitchcock’s age.  So naturally, Hitchcock’s inner conflict will be his inability to accept getting older.  However, after those scenes, the age thing is never brought up again.

Instead, we seem to focus on Hitchcock’s food obsession (in particular his foie gras craving), which is unfortunately quite thin.  When things don’t go right, he eats.  There’s really nothing deeper to it than that.

Finally, we move to Hitchcock’s issues with his wife.  He rarely pays attention to her, despite all she’s done for him.  This is what leads her on this quasi emotional affair (one which she never physically acts on) and while I guess it’s kind of interesting, it’s also kinda not.  Nothing really scandalous happens.  It’s just a bunch of stares and devilish thoughts, leaving the storyline without a satisfying climax.  And that summarizes my feelings about the script.  It just kind of stands there with little to say.

What saves it are the few behind-the-scenes looks at Psycho’s famous scenes and stars.  A heavy emphasis is put on the shower scene, which had never been done before in Hollywood.  The most interesting thing about that storyline was the Censors Board.  I guess before you even shot your movie back then, you had to go to a “Censors Board” and get approval from this dreadful stickler who decided whether everything was okay to shoot or not.  For example, toilets weren’t shot back then. So you couldn’t shoot a toilet!  Wtf???

And with the shower scene, every freaking angle had to be approved of.  And it wasn’t.  They wanted Hitch to shoot Janet Leigh from the neck up.  How boring would that have been?  So Hitchcock ignores the censors and shoots the scene the way he wants it, because he knew that scene was going to be the one everyone talked about.

I have to admit, there is something cool about being behind the scenes of one of the most famous films of all time, and it is enough for me to give this script a pass.  But I’m left with the very same question I had at the beginning of this review.  Is there a compelling enough story here to build a movie around?    I’d probably say no.

What I learned: This is mentioned in the script as one of Hitchcocks’ staples and a scene that always works – A character needs to get someplace but is held up by someone who wants to chat (Marion Crane just wants to buy that car but the salesman keeps talking to her).  Write this scene into your script.  It always works!  

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effect of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Family/Action-Adventure
Premise: (from writer) A ten-year-old girl finds a dragon egg in the desert behind her New Mexico home. The egg hatches and the girl befriends the creature. After discovering a way to return the dragon to its natural world, the duo embarks on a cross country journey, flying at night, with government agents on their tail.
Writer: Troy Warren
Details: 99 pages.

I know I don’t review many family scripts on the site, but a producer was telling me the other day that the two genres that have been the most dependable throughout the years – dating back as long as the movie business has been around – are Action and Family.  Those movies make a ton of bucks and they make a ton of bucks all over the world.  Now I know most family films are developed internally, and the total historic box office is swayed by the ridiculous grosses of all those Disney animation classics, but the comment did open my eyes and is what persuaded me to go with Luna this week.

I’m also really curious because I received two early reactions regarding the script.  One called it charming, cute, and essentially perfect.  The other said it was the worst thing she’d read all year.  Hmmm, which one was right?

10 year old Luna Cruz lives in that magical desert land known as New Mexico.  She resides in one of those adobe houses that sits amongst dust, tumbleweeds, and roadkill, without a hint of civilization in any direction.  In other words, 10 year old Lana lives in a pretty boring town.  But that doesn’t mean her life’s boring.  She has a brother who thinks he’s a young John Travolta, a grandmother who wears a house arrest bracelet, and a little brother who finds pooping his pants to be an almost zen-like experience.

But none of these characters are as wacky as the one who’s about to enter her life.  During an Easter egg hunt, Luna’s pooping little brother finds himself a giant easter egg that quickly hatches.  But it’s no bird that comes a chirpin’ out.  It’s a baby….lizard maybe??  Oh, she wishes.  It’s only when the little ball of scales starts burping out fire that Luna realizes – Holy Baloney – she’s found herself a real live DRAGON!

Meanwhile, over in Los Alamos, Californigh-yay, some government types get all uppity about a strange energy blast that occurred down in New Mexico.  The implication is that something other-worldly went on, and they wanna get their hands on this other-worldliness.  So they send agent Sophia Bailey down to get to the bottom of it.

Back in New Mexico, our little dragon friend, who Luna’s decided to name “Gordo,” is growing faster than Rosie O’Donnel at an Old Country Buffet.  Since Luna realizes she’s in over her head, she tells her grandmother about Gordo, and after doing a few Google searches, realizes that Gordo probably got here via some time vortex from the past.  They find a bunch of Ivy League nerds who know all about these vortexes and decide to travel to New York to meet them.

With Sophia, and soon the military, hot on their trail, they make it to New York where the Vortex Nerd Patrol uses a mathematical equation to determine where the next vortex is going to appear, the one that can get Gordo back to mama.  It turns out it’s in Nevada (Area 51 to be precise) and they only have 44 hours to get there. If Luna and Gordo miss that window, there’s a good chance our little dragon buddy is going to live the rest of his life as a lab subject, something Luna will do anything to prevent!

So who was right?  The extremely negative reviewer or the extremely positive reviewer?  To be honest, I’m not sure either of them were right.  My issue with Luna is that the story is too average.  Those who read the site know I can’t stand when I’m 40-50 pages ahead of the writer.  And that’s the problem I ran into with Luna.  I always knew exactly what was going to happen 50 pages ahead of time.  And it’s hard for me to be entertained when that’s the case.

Now I had a discussion with another reader about this and they pointed out, “Yeah but you have to realize, Carson – this is a kid’s movie.  To kids, it IS going to be surprising and new because they haven’t seen thousands of movies and read thousands of scripts like you.”  It was a good point and something I’ve thought about before.  Is the bar just WAY LOWER for the general audiences out there?  Specifically children?

On the one hand I’d say, yes, it is.  But on the other, I still think it’s a problem.  Whenever you write a script, it has to get past the bullshit detectors.  Whether those detectors are readers who have read hundreds of scripts or producers who have made dozens of movies.  These guys are the line of defense your script must make it past to be both bought and made.  And their bar is just as high as mine.  They’re looking for a freshness, a new take on familiar stories, an unpredictability to the characters and structure, just like me.

I look at a movie like Up or Wall-E, popular children’s movies, and there’s definitely an unpredictability to those stories.  I mean, one of them has no talking for 45 minutes and the other has a house that flies around the world via hundreds of helium balloons.  Those are both things I haven’t seen before.  And I feel like you need those elements, even when you’re playing to a super-young audience.

So moving forward, I believe Troy needs to dig deeper here.  I think the story needs to be more complex and less familiar.  A couple extra subplots could help, just to make the story less linear.  And I think we need to do more with the characters.  Where’s the fatal flaw in the main character, Luna, for example?  Luna was a blank sheet of paper to me.  She was cute.  But because there wasn’t anything complicated or difficult going on in her life (other than her schoolmates making fun of her) I never felt more than one-dimension with her.  And your main character needs more than one dimension!

Take her family.  Clearly, something’s happened to Luna’s family.  It appears that her mom and dad are absent?  There’s some interesting backstory there which we’re not privy too.  Then you have this dragon, who’s been ripped away from his mother.  Why not make a connection there?  Why not explore that?  The effects of a child who grows up alone?  Who doesn’t have that mother/father figure in their life.  If Luna can get Gordo back to her mother, it’s almost like she’s able to get herself back to her own mom.

You don’t have to go that way, obviously.  But that’s the way you need to approach it in order to add depth to your story, in order for it to be more than just names on a page.  You want to make audiences and readers think and this was too simple of a plot, too obvious of a direction, to get us thinking.  Both from a standpoint of depth and choices, there wasn’t enough meat on the bone.  Look at Bailey, who had the potential to be much deeper, not unlike Tommy Lee Jones’ character from The Fugitive.  Start her off emotionless.  Then, as she gets to know this kid and what she’s going through, she starts to turn, and by the end, she’s trying to save Luna.  Maybe you tie in that theme of being alone and Bailey herself grew up without that all-importnat mother figure.  There’s SOME OF THAT here now, but not nearly enough.

I also think more could’ve been done with the ending.  And this goes back to many of the choices here being too simple.  As it stands, (Spoiler) Luna has to get the dragon to the Vortex without getting shot down by the military.  So what happens?  Luna gets the dragon through the Vortex without getting shot down by the military.  It goes EXACTLY the way it’s supposed to go.  That’s not interesting. That’s not drama!

What if we establish in the past that the mama dragon is looking for her baby, and when that Vortex opens up, she surprisingly comes bursting through to get her baby back.  So now we’re not dealing with one dragon, but two, with the military forced to make a tough decision.  Do they start shooting?  Do they take down the bigger threat?  Every part of the plan is thrown off because the mother dragon has arrived.  And now you have a finale that could go in a million different directions (maybe the mother is killed.  Maybe the mother is injured. Maybe Gordo is injured and the mother has to save him).  That’s the way you want to write your stories, by throwing things in there that open up a bunch of fresh options, not just stay on that obvious straightforward path.

I realize I’m being a little harsh here.  Luna is actually one of the better written Amateur Friday scripts I’ve read, but I think that’s why I’m so passionate about its flaws.  I know Troy can do better.  He has the writing chops.  But like a lot of writers out there, he has to challenge himself more.  Your protagonist’s journey should feel troubled, impossible and unpredictable.  There were a few speed bumps here, but none of them felt that difficult to me.  I always knew Luna and the dragon were going to be okay.  Do you remember when E.T. died??  Yeah, E.T. DIED!!!!!  How devastating was that????  That’s something I DIDN’T EXPECT.  I wanted stuff like that here.  I know Troy can do it, but he’s gotta push himself.  And so do the rest of you.  Always PUSH YOURSELVES when writing scripts.  If it’s too easy, you’re probably not working hard enough.

Script link: Luna Found A Dragon

What I learned: I have a rule.  If you feel like you’ve seen it before, erase it and write something else.  That goes for lines of dialogues, scenes, action sequences, characters, whatever.  If you feel like “I’ve seen this in another movie,” pound that delete button.  Add a little twist to it, go in a different direction, or completely rewrite it.  Do anything BUT write what’s already been done.  I specifically kept thinking of E.T. while reading “Luna.”  The secret pet aspect.  The military aspect.  Getting the dragon home aspect.  Let’s go back, erase all those references, and replace them with something new and fresh.  This should not feel like an E.T. update.  It should feel like its own individual movie.