Search Results for: F word
Recently I’ve been talking a lot to John Jarrell, a screenwriter who’s been working in this business for over 20 years, and learning quite a bit from him. When he mentioned he was putting together a class, I told him that I had to promote it on the site, especially since I’ve been getting so many e-mails recently asking where the best screenwriting classes are. I think you’ll be able to tell right away how awesome John is and how much damn knowledge he’s accumulated over his career. But probably the best thing about John is what an awesome guy he is. He’s just a great champion of screenwriters everywhere and really wants to help. Enjoy the discussion and if you like John, sign up for his class here in Los Angeles!
SS: So tell us a little about yourself. Who are you?? What’s your screenwriting backstory?
JJ: Basically, I was a young guy who took on $50,000 worth of student loans to go to NYU Film and chase a dream of making movies one day. I literally drove out to L.A. in late 1990 with nothing but $200 dollars and my trusty ’66 VW Bug to my name. The old “confidence of ignorance” approach. (Not recommended, by the way.)
Five months later, with my Hollywood hopes and dreams being pulped into cream corn, I hit a clutch do-or-die shot and sold my first script. I was over the moon. Next thing I knew, I had real cash in my pocket and was flying home on a private G-3.
It had happened so fast, it all seemed to be too good to be true. Of course it actually was too good to be true. Which I learned pretty quickly.
My script didn’t get made and within a year I was broke and unemployed again. What followed was five unrelenting years of struggle simply trying to survive and put food in my mouth. (also not recommended)
But I did survive, and in ’97, based on a fresh spec, I got a break. I was signed by this small new agency called “Endeavor”. Things kinda took off after that.
Since then I’ve written films and tv pilots for many of the major studios and have worked with some of the best producers and directors in Hollywood. These include — Jeffrey Katzenberg, Neil Moritz, Joel Silver, Terence Chang & John Woo, Mike Medavoy, Richard Donner, Luc Besson, James Foley, Carl Beverly and Warren Littlefield.
Among other projects, I wrote “Hard-Boiled II” and a remake of Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite” for John Woo, was one of the many, many writers on “Live Free, Die Hard” at Fox, and scripted the animated family film “Outlaws” for Dreamworks. I’ve also sold four tv pilots and just finished my first book — the real life memoir of a legendary Chinatown gangster from the ’70’s and ’80’s.
a. What do you think the key is to breaking into this industry?
b. What do you think the key is to staying in this industry.
JJ: A) To get a start in this Business, first and foremost, you need a great script. Not merely good, but GREAT.
Twenty years ago screenwriter Larry Marcus (“The Stuntman”) told me that if you have a great script it may take a week, a year, or even ten years, but if you’ve written something undeniably fantastic, someone will find it. Why? Because there simply aren’t that many great scripts out there. It’s straight-up supply and demand.
I was pretty young at the time, and remember thinking, “That’s bullshit.” But what he said was right, and I’ve seen that dynamic play out with both my friends and myself as we’ve pursued our careers.
The other key elements to “getting a break” are timing and luck, and unfortunately, as most of us know, you can’t always control those. But I do believe you can “create your own luck” to an extent by working relentlessly to push your project. Meet people, network, send your script out knowing 99% of the time you’ll probably hear “no thanks”, but don’t let that discourage you.
See, this is the real key for any aspiring writer — “It only takes one buyer”. That’s what my first agent told me, and it’s just as true today. You can hear 1000 “No’s”, have a million doors slammed in your face, but just one simple “Yes” validates everything. As a writer, I’ve always found strength and inspiration in that. You don’t have to conquer Hollywood, you just need to find that one buyer out there who gets it.
SS: What’s your general philosophy on screenwriting? What do you think makes a script work?
Having an airtight structure backstopping your script is absolutely critical in my opinion, especially these days when the window for experimentation and/or ambiguity is largely slammed shut.
Want to give execs and producers immediate confidence in whatever they’re reading of yours? Land your story’s structure. It allows them to “see the movie” straight out of the gate and provides a solid foundation for you as the writer to do your very best work. Structure is a key element of what we do at Tweak Class.
SS: Your big strength is probably action. I don’t see many good action scripts these days. In your opinion, what’s the secret to writing a good action script?
JJ: With the films I’ve written, I’ve always focused on creating “intelligent action” — elevating above and beyond genre expectations by making things smarter and more real. If there’s any “secret” to the process, that’s probably it. “Bourne Identity” may be the high-watermark in this department. It provided proof positive that when you raise the bar on intelligence and realism that high, you can reach a vast audience… even people who don’t usually like action films.
Remember, just because a project is labeled “action” doesn’t mean it has to be stupid. Yet, I feel like a lot of writers play down to that, even unconsciously. Repeating the shopworn clichés — the ball-busting, froth-spewing Police Lt., the scowling, uni-browed Russian drug lord, etc.
Sure, they still make movies with these one-D characters. But as an aspiring writer, you’re being held to a much higher standard than that. The limited pool of buyers out there want to see something fresh and inventive — even if they ultimately dumb it right back down to the most basic clichés (picture me laughing here).
Two rules I try and live by — 1) Never write something you yourself wouldn’t want to read. 2) Whenever you find yourself writing a scene that feels stock, like you’ve seen it a million times before, cut it and start over. Believe me, if you don’t, sooner or later someone in the food chain will call you on it, and it may kill your read.
Bottom line, guys, make your scripts as smart and interesting and badass as you would want a film to be if you just forked over $12 to see it. That’ll help keep you honest and keep the quality of your writing high.
SS: For me, personally, I need some depth in an action script to respond to it. But you obviously talk to these action producers all the time. In your experience, what are they looking for?
JJ: Just like the rest of us, great action producers want something fresh and fun, a badass idea that gets them totally pumped. Christ, you can see their faces light right up in the room when you pitch ’em one they legitimately love. Remember, at heart, these guys are all big fans of action, just like we are.
The Business is making a lot less movies these days, so producers are even more selective about what they can finance. The good news is that they’ll always make action movies — the genre is old as Hollywood itself. So as a writer, help increase your odds of survival by thinking smart, badass and fun as hell — even if it’s a dark fun. Brother, if your world, characters or premise feels stock, you’re already dead and buried five pages in.
One more thing I’d like to add — Don’t kid yourself about “action” producers being ridiculous cartoons or “not getting it”. I’ve worked with Joel Silver, Neil Moritz, John Woo/Terence Chang… believe me, these men are SHARP. They have a depth of knowledge when it comes to genre that is outright intimidating.
Joel in particular was incredibly bright, one of the smartest men I’ve met in my life. When I wrote “Romeo Must Die” he had crossed the $100 Million Dollar mark FOURTEEN times. You don’t get there by accident, believe me. Man, that was such an incredible learning experience for me as a writer. Joel was a true connoisseur and had an incredible love for the genre, which he himself largely helped define.
SS: A lot of people don’t know the journey a script takes when it leaves your computer to getting sold. Can you tell us how that works? From when your agent sends it out to the sale, what happens?
JJ: Well, a lot of that has changed in the past four years. Pre-2008 when you wrote a great spec, you gave it to your agent and they would send it out to the different studios and producers that were logical, legitimate buyers.
Today, the emphasis is really on packaging. To a large extent, the studios have gotten out of the development business because of the expense, so now the agencies play a lot of that role. When an agency gets a viable spec, they try and attach a director or star in-house from their client lists first. Once they’ve cobbled together an appealing package, THEN they shop it to studios and financiers. The thought is that it increases their odds of selling it, and doubles or triples their profits because they rep the attachments involved.
“Naked specs” (scripts without attachments) still do sell, just in much, much smaller quantities. Attachments are king right now. But regardless of the Business of it all, what I said at the start still holds true — having a great script is always your best bet for navigating through the Hollywood crazy factor.
SS: What are a few of the best lessons you’ve learned over the years about screenwriting, stuff that’s really improved your writing?
JJ: Wow, there’s so many at this point, twenty years later. William Goldman’s advice to try and “begin each scene at the last possible moment” is a great one. Paddy Chayefsky’s “If it should occur to you to cut, do so” is also spot-on — even if it hurts like hell for a writer to do it. And there’s always Hitchcock’s dictum that “Movies are real life with the boring parts cut out”, which is an excellent guide for any writer constructing a screenplay.
In Tweak Class, we also get into very practical, real life advice for helping writers during the long struggle to finish a feature. Features aren’t sprints, they’re marathons, and there’s a psychological battle to fight every bit as much as a creative one.
Stuff like recognizing when you’re past it, when you need to stop for the day because you’re not generating good material is really important. As Dirty Harry so famously said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Page count means nothing, page quality everything. It took me years to get hip to this, to understand there’s no shame in calling it a day when you’re wasted.
Another thing I push hard, which may seem self-evident to some, is that you should NEVER, EVER edit the fresh pages you’ve written the same day you write them. You’re burnt out by then, snowblind. Give them a day minimum, a week’s even better, before starting to mark them up. From vast personal experience, I can testify this is the quickest and easiest way to destroy material that would have actually been pretty good upon later, clear-eyed reflection. (laughing again)
End of the day, I firmly believe that Writing is Momentum and a writer has to protect that forward progress at all costs. My class gets into a lot of workable ways to do just that.
SS: We all have weaknesses as screenwriters. What’s your biggest weakness? And how do you work around it?
JJ: One key weakness for me is simply not writing enough. When I look back over my career, I feel like I could have — and should have — written twice as much as I did. Writing is damn hard work, and facing a blank screen and all that comes with that is not exactly my idea of fun. Still, despite 27 features and 4 sold pilots, if I could do it over again, I would write a lot more.
Another weakness is driving myself way too hard when on a project. I have a bad habit of beating myself to a pulp psychologically, talking myself down during tough days. Funny thing is, it does not provide better results. If anything, it hampers your process. “Pressure is the enemy of art.”
Henry Miller has that great quote about writing — “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.” He also said to “Keep Human” while writing. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to approach screenwriting from either of those perspectives. For me, for better or worse, it’s mostly war all the time… and believe me, I don’t recommend it to others.
SS: If you were a young screenwriter today, what kind of script would you write to give yourself the best chance to break in? And what would you do after you wrote that script to break in? What would your process be?
JJ: I suppose I’d do the same thing I did way-back-when — I’d cook up something commercial and put it right down the middle. My first script was pretty dark, tough Irish kids in the old Jersey City, and while it was good, we couldn’t find a buyer. I was new to Hollywood, and my first agent just flat out said — “Write me something I can sell.”
I was juiced up on youthful indignance back then, taking my script’s rejection way too personally, and decided that goddamnit, this business would not beat me! I resolved to write something they would have to buy — something a complete stranger would willingly give me money for. And that’s precisely what I did.
After that, I would try to line up a paying gig while writing a second spec even stronger than the first. Young writers have to keep WRITING. But back then, like a dummy, I didn’t do that. There’s a tendency for young writers to rest on their laurels and celebrate, and I was no exception. Within two years my script had gotten shelved and I was out of work. (more laughter)
SS: You work with the biggest agency in town, WME. How did you end up there? And where did you start as far as representation? Can you give us the journey from your first rep to your current one?
JJ: I ended up at WME through Endeavor. I was signed at Endeavor when it was just starting out, at the very inception. It was tiny and really felt like family back then, just the coolest environment and best ENERGY you can imagine for an agency in this dog-eat-dog town. Being involved at that time was an absolutely amazing experience, one of the high points of my professional life. Hard to imagine today, but I would just stop by and hang out with the agents, bouncing jokes off each other, having a blast, all that. There were some really special people there.
Of course, what happened later is history. Endeavor blew up, became WME, and many of those agents became superstars. Now it’s a completely different world. But often I think of those early days with a big smile in my heart.
My career prior to that was probably like many writers out there — boutique agencies that couldn’t quite get it done, agents that didn’t have the juice needed to get me in the room on things. And to be fair, I wasn’t exactly lighting the town on fire with my writing back then.
But ultimately, again, there aren’t any shortcuts. My getting signed at Endeavor came as a direct result of my finally writing a script worthy of getting noticed by the people I wanted to notice me. That’s how this game works, like it or not. You have to prove you belong.
SS: What’s the best screenplay, produced or unproduced, you’ve ever read, and why?
JJ: I have a massive vintage script collection at home and here are a few of my all-time favorites —
Larry Kasdan’s Body Heat. Good God, what a great read! Every single detail is so artfully laid out and seeded in, and the heat of it, the naked lust and desire, just bleeds right through the page.
Hampton Fancher’s early draft of Blade Runner — For pure writing’s sake, I much prefer this to the Peoples’ rewrite. It’s just more textural and evocative to me, with some slight differences that I really enjoy. A magical script in my opinion.
Oliver Stone’s Scarface — People these days forget what a world-class screenwriter Stone is, one of the greatest who’s ever lived in my opinion. What’s so mind-blowing about this particular draft is that damn-near EVERY LINE in the film is right there on the page as Stone intended it. As badass a screenplay as you’ll ever read.
Paddy Chayefsky’s Network — Pretty much the Holy Grail for screenwriting as far as I’m concerned. His command of subject, character and dialogue is unparalleled here. You’re reading these long, thick passages of dialogue — something you could never get away with today — and suddenly realize that every last word counts. It’s entirely surgical, and coming at you at lightning speed. Unreal. Do not attempt this at home!
Lastly, Andy Kevin Walker’s Seven — The greatest serial killer movie ever written, and one that’ll never be equaled. I remember reading it when it first hit town and having it scare the absolute shit out of me. I was living in a tiny Venice Beach studio by myself, and when I got to the sequence with the desiccated guy “Victor” and the Polaroids, I got up to make sure nobody was hiding in my closet. Andy really is the master of the brilliant twist on top of the brilliant twist.
SS: What’s your teaching philosophy?
JJ: I’d never really thought of it in those terms, but I suppose it’s that there are no magic bullets or secret potions. Screenwriting is a craft you have to work very, very hard at, and nobody, no matter how experienced or successful, is exempt from that. Making money at it and being good at it are entirely different things, as many of us well know from reading an ocean of shitty big money drafts.
I want my students to be legitimately good at it. To develop the skill set needed to make a career out of writing — not just hope they’ll get lucky optioning a script or two every ten years.
Most of all, I see all the writers in my class as peers. Anyone can come up with a great idea — the right idea — at any time, regardless of experience. I’m a produced screenwriter. So what? Does that give me a monopoly on great ideas? Hell, no. The cool thing about screenwriting is that the blank page is the great equalizer — anyone can work hard and excel there, regardless of who they know, who their parents are, who they’re connected to, and so on. That’s one thing I really love about it. That anyone can participate and succeed.
SS: I know your class is a little different from the other classes out there. Can you tell me what you focus on? What can your students expect from your classes?
JJ: “A little different” is a polite way of putting it :) What surprises new students is how much FUN we have — and how much great work comes out of that. The class is extremely interactive, and that support and synergy can be outright electrifying at times. There’s no better rush than having a class get on a creative roll together.
But hey, don’t just take my word for it, check out our Facebook Group Page (“Tweak Class Screenwriting”) or the website (tweakclass.com) and see what my students have to say. Hell, go ahead and PM them and get their takes firsthand.
End of the day, I guess the Log Line here is that writers who join my class can expect to learn how the day-in, day-out business of screenwriting is actually practiced by professionals — both creatively and business-wise.
Not just the writing stuff, which is essential, but how to pitch, how to read a room, how to surf the million-plus curveballs any situation can throw you. It’s hard to win the big game if you don’t know the rules, right? Tweak Class focuses on getting your “A” game together in every sense, getting individual projects successfully plotted and First Acts written by the end of the ten weeks.
Every single member of my classes has accomplished both these goals, and trust me when I say you will too.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A strapped-for-cash woman agrees to be part of a lab study where participants are placed in a room for a month, but begins to suspect that she’s been in the room for much longer than that.
About: Don’t know much about this one other than that the movie is being made by Vital Pictures and will come out sometime next year. You can see the writer’s early attempts at a Kickstarter page here, which has a trailer and some cool concept art.
Writer: Seda
Details: 108 pages
Liberace. Madonna. Beyonce.
And now…Seda.
Two names is so passé. These days, it’s preferable to cap it at one.
Okay, am I thrilled that a screenwriter has given himself one name? No. Does it scream pretentiousness? Yes. But I have to remember that this is the entertainment industry. You gotta market yourself to stand out. And maybe I have a teensy bit of sympathy since I’m not using my real name on this blog either.
One name or not, when I started reading Subject 6, a script heavily influenced by Cube and The Matrix, I started to exert all kinds of worriedness. I’ve read these kinds of scripts before. And when I say “these kinds of scripts,” I mean scripts with a bunch of fucked up things happening for seemingly no reason. The fear? That the “seemingly no reason” is because there IS NO REASON. The writer’s constructed a setting that allows him to make a lot of cool trippy fucked up things happen without having to come up with that all-important explanation Which is why I almost universally hate these screenplays. If you want to know what I’m talking about, read the pointless 2:22.
Now it started off okay, with our heroine, known only as “SIX” (in reference to the number listed on her fatigues), waking up in a bare-bones icy room that carries only the necessitates – bed, toilet, floor, ceiling. There’s also a TV, which inexplicably allows our subject to watch hundreds of other people in their own experiment rooms.
From what we can gather, the experiment is some sort of psychological test. Participants are paid 20 grand to come in and simply sit in a room for 30 days. You can opt out of the experiment any time you want by pressing a big red button in your room, but if you do, you forfeit your payment.
Naturally, there isn’t much to do other than sit around and talk to the other participants. Yes, for some reason, you have a video phone in your room that allows you to talk to any of the other rooms. Seems like an odd freedom for the experimenters to allow, but anyway, it introduces Six to 33, a strapping young slacker philosopher type.
The two hit it off and pretty soon they’re planning a rendezvous inside the walls between their rooms (they happen to be placed right next to each other). But the rendezvous goes bad when these things called “Technicians,” huge men in nuclear-fallout-type suits, intervene and shock Six, who wakes up once again in her room at the beginning of the experiment, as if none of her previous experiences happened.
Six grows suspicious and escapes through a ceiling vent. It’s there where she’s rescued by a group of people who tell her the truth. There is no 30-Day experiment. The people who are here are stuck here forever. The technicians just keep resetting them over and over again. Which is why this group has formed. They’re trying to find a way out – an escape. But this facility – whatever it is – is ginormous. So it ain’t going to be easy.
Another issue is that Six keeps flashing back to some psyche ward doctor’s office where a man is evaluating her. He asks her about this experiment, about these “technicians,” about her escape, and Six begins to doubt whether any of it is real. Is she crazy? Is she just a looney chick locked up in a padded room imagining all this shit? Her fellow escapees tell her “no,” that it’s all a part of the experimenters’ plan – to destroy the mind, to make you lose confidence in your reality. But Six isn’t so sure. And neither are we.
Is Six nuts or does this place really exist? And if it does, how did she get here? Or, if the psych ward’s real, what happened in her past that led to her insanity? All those questions are…sort of answered in Subject 6.
Wheel me in and call me Sally cause I don’t know what to make of Subject 6. There are moments where this script absolutely shines and there are others that left me searching for a bottle of aspirin. I’ll say this about the script. I rarely knew where it was going. And anyone who reads this blog knows that goes a long way with me. 90% of the scripts I read are as predictable as the sun setting, so when one has me genuinely wondering what the next page holds, that’s impressive.
BUT, the thing that kept bothering me was all the silly random stuff, like the repeated religious references that seemed to be there for no other reason than their inherent creepiness. For example, when we see a dead character in a hallway with the word “Foresaken” scrawled on the wall behind him in his blood? Commence the eye-rolling. What the heck does that have to do with the story? As far as I could tell, nothing other than it looked cool.
There was also one obvious derivative component that bothered me – the Matrix team. I mean, the group that takes Six in does so in a way that’s so eerily reminiscent of The Matrix that I thought I was watching an aborted take from the film. And then you have this really HUGE Jabba The Hut like leader man named “One” who weighs 800 pounds. All I kept thinking was…wait a minute here – this group has to go on super risky scavenger missions for food and one of them is 800 pounds? How exactly is this possible? Is he eating the other members when nobody’s looking?
Having said all that, I *did* want to turn the pages. I mean, the script genuinely had me wondering where the hell it was all going and, more importantly, I wanted to find out. But the big reason I’d recommend this to others is that the third act really comes together. Which was surprising. Because the third act is usually where these scripts fall apart, since the writer can’t answer all the questions he’s been asking.
But as Six keeps flashing back between the Insane Asylum and the Experiment, not only was I wondering which one was real and which one wasn’t, but I genuinely found myself empathizing with Six. I wondered what it would be like to go “crazy” in this manner. What if this really was your life? Is this what people with mental diseases really go through? Do they live this kind of life every day? How fucking terrifying.
Once the script crossed that fourth wall, it’d done its job with me. I didn’t agree with all the choices. I thought things got a little goofy in the second act when the team was introduced. But the recovery in the third is what saved it. For that reason, I say check this one out.
What I Learned: The introduction of One (the huge Jabba The Hut leader of the underground) is a perfect example of a writer wanting something so badly (the image of this huge overweight barely moveable leader) that he puts it in there without considering how illogical it is. I mean, from what we’ve been told, this group has to risk their lives going out to find scraps of leftover food to stay alive. Yet somehow we have an 800 pound man chilling out? Does that make any sense? These are the moments when readers lose faith in writers because they’re not doing their due diligence. We all want to include cool things in our scripts, but if you’re going to do so, they have to MAKE SENSE. If they don’t, ditch them or come up with an explanation.
Genre: Sports Drama
Premise: An aging baseball scout who’s losing his eyesight must enlist the help of a daughter who hates baseball to scout a young prospect.
About: This one has a really interesting backstory to it and should give screenwriters everywhere hope that it can happen, if not on the timeframe they planned. Writer Randy Brown wrote this 15 years ago and actually had Dustin Hoffman attached at one point. But Hoffman and the producer didn’t get along, so the project went belly-up. 15 years later, Randy’s writing for some MTV shows (and running a cafe). He met a producer through a mutual friend, who gave it to someone close with Clint who thought it would be great for him. Now this is where you’re really going to freak out as you realize just how important timing is in this town. Clint couldn’t do it because he was doing A Star Is Born with Beyonce. Well, Jay-Z got Beyonce pregnant and all of a sudden, Clint had an opening in his schedule. The script was purchased for a million bucks and the movie is coming out later this year. How bout them apples?
Writer: Randy Brown
Details: This says it’s a 2011 draft but the references in it clearly indicate it’s the original draft from 15 years ago.
Usually, when a script has been ignored for 15 years, there’s a reason for it. It’s just not good enough. Either that or its time has passed it by. Or sometimes, when there’s a popular script in town that can’t get made for one reason or another, everyone in Hollywood plunders ideas from it, to the point where the original script now feels derivative. I remember that happened with The Tourist, a famous script that keeps coming up on many people’s “Best Of The Unmade” lists.
So to be honest, I kind of expected Curve to be terrible, some barely-above-average screenplay whose only redeeming quality was a prominent senior role for Clint Eastwood. But boy was I wrong. Curve is almost textbook in how to write a screenplay. I’ll get more into that in a sec, but right now, here’s the breakdown.
Senior citizen Gus Lobel is baseball scouting royalty. Credentials? Oh, he only found Hank Aaron. And he was the guy who scouted Micky Mantle and bet his career he would become a hall-of-famer, something many people ignored, only to find out 30 years later how wrong they were.
But Gus is also a stubborn crotchety old fuck. And he doesn’t listen to many people besides himself. So nowadays, with all these fancy-schmancy computers coming around, detailing RBIs and OBPs and OBGYNs, giving new scouts a whole new arena to judge baseball players on, Gus is insistent that none of that shit does anything.
Which is why the upper levels of the team he’s working for, the Atlanta Braves, are starting to have questions about if Gus is stuck in the dinosaur ages. Sure he knows his stuff, but as one executive points out, “Nobody cares who scouted Hank Aaron anymore.”
But that’s only the beginning of Gus’ problems. Gus is also losing his eyesight. He’s had to rearrange his entire apartment, in fact, so that he doesn’t randomly bump into furniture. Because Gus is so stubborn, he’s in denial about this, but he’s going to have to figure it out fast. The team is sending him out to scout Bo Gentry, an 18 year old phenom who’s projected to be the next Mark McGuire.
Across town, we’re introduced to Gus’ 30-something daughter, Mickey. Yes, Mickey was named after Mickey Mantel, even though she’s a girl. That right there shows you what Gus’ priorities are. It’s baseball first – daughter second. And that isn’t lost on Mickey, who loves her dad more than anything, but when you show up for family dinner only to find out you’ll be watching a 3 hour baseball game…well…EVERY SINGLE TIME, you begin to hate baseball more than hell.
But when Mickey catches on to her father’s eyesight problems, she worries for him, and imposes herself on his latest roadtrip, something he’s vehemently opposed to. But as he follows Bo Gentry from game to game, he realizes it’s impossible for him to SEE whether this guy is the real deal or not. And that means he has to depend on his daughter, a girl he groomed to love baseball when she was growing up, but who hates it now, to save him. In the strangest of ways, this dependency brings them together in a way no other experience could.
Okay, to start things off, let me reiterate that you should NEVER TRY TO SELL A SPORTS SCRIPT that isn’t based on a true story (or novel) unless it’s a boxing script or a comedy. Trouble With The Curve is the rare exception to the rule, although I will say that when this exception comes around, it’s usually with a baseball script.
Okay, now on to the script itself. The writing here is amazing! And I don’t mean it’s beautiful to read. I don’t mean the prose makes my heart sing. That’s not what a good screenplay should do. When I say the writing is amazing, I mean that every sentence is carved down to only its bare essence, only the words we need to know, and nothing more.
I bring this up because of a couple of scripts I read recently. The first was a confusing mess and a big reason for that was that there were too many words. The writer kept tripping over himself because he was constantly navigating through a sea of alphabetical albatrosses. He was trying to be too clever by half when he should’ve stuck with the “half,” as that’s how many words you should be shooting for when you’re writing screenplays.
I also compare it to tomorrow’s script, which is well-written and clear, but every page feels like it’s taking twice as long to get through because of the extra verbiage. This kind of writing gets exhausting to read. I mean, I’m enjoying the script because it’s an interesting mystery (I’m not finished yet), but I find it hard to get through because of that excessiveness. And I’m not even talking like HUGE BIG PARAGRAPH CHUNKS here. It’s more that the simplest sentences, something like, “He darts over to the phone,” become, “He peers at the surrounding walls, which seem to be closing in on him, then darts to the phone across the room.” It’s twice or three times as much reading as the reader needs to be doing.
But what I really liked about this script was the character work, and more specifically the relationship work. It’s simple but clever, and very well done. You have a man who thinks a sport is more important than his daughter, who must now depend on that daughter to save his position in the sport, even though she hates the sport because of him. I don’t know if you can come up with a more beautifully constructed triangle of conflict. Watching Gus start to reluctantly rely on his daughter, and the ironic way in which that brings them closer – it was perfect.
I could go on about this script. It’s just really well done. I don’t know if it’s Oscar worthy. That’ll depend on if it’s directed well. But the foundation is definitely there. This one surprised me!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Let me tell you when I knew I was dealing with a professional here, and not an amateur, or one of these pros who got lucky and cheated their way into the system. The stakes and the deadlines. Only the good writers know to contain their screenplays with them. First, the end of Gus’ contract is coming up (deadline). So if he doesn’t prove his worth with this prospect, he loses his job (stakes). Then there’s Mickey, who just got a job at a prestigious law firm. Now she has to go on this trip with Gus. They’re upset and tell her, “That’s fine, but you need to be back to meet with the client by Thursday. (deadline)” The implication is, “If you screw this up, we’re letting you go (stakes).” From there, we keep cutting back to the Atlanta Braves’ offices, where the club’s brass are pushing harder and harder to eliminate Gus if he screws this up (raising stakes). Stakes and deadlines need to be everywhere in your script. They’re the plot mechanics that keep your audience invested in the story.
t
My friends…it’s been awhile.
We haven’t had a bona-fide good script to read since forever ago. In fact, here are some quick factoids about how long it’s actually been…
1) Gangnam Style still hadn’t hit the internet.
2) K-Stew and R-Patz were still living together.
3) I hadn’t moved out to LA.
4) Kennedy was still alive.
So imagine my surprise when I started reading Gold and…it was actually good! It was such a foreign experience to ENJOY a screenplay that I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. I actually stopped several times just to savor the moment in case it all fell apart. But it never did. In fact, it had one of the best endings I’ve read all year, securing an “impressive” rating. So how did this script strike gold? Read on to find out.
40-something David Walsh enjoys the finer things in life. Like food. And booze. And…well mainly food and booze, if his body is any indication His gut could be mistaken for one of the Hollywood hills and his dress code could be mistaken for “homeless chic.” When we meet Mr. Sloppy, he’s being interviewed about his involvement with a man named Mike Guzman. This Guzman fellow is apparently pretty important because the guy asking about him is very keen to find out how the two met. And indeed that’s where our story gets juicy, but before we go there, we learn a little more about Walsh first.
Walsh is a prospector – someone who looks for mineral deposits below the earth. He then buys the land and tries to sell it to companies who have the money to mine those deposits. Now at the top of this game are big-name dudes who sell land with millions of dollars of potential deposits, shit like gold and diamonds.
Not the case with the guys at Walsh’s level. Walsh has the occasional property in the middle of Utah that may or may not have some nickel 100 feet underneath them. Basically, he’s the Jerry Lundergarten of prospecting – a desperate salesman trying to offload land that nobody gives a shit about.
That’s until he has “the dream.” Seven years ago, Walsh was in Indonesia watching a man named Mike Guzman work. Guzman is a famous explorer/scientist who specializes in geological surveying. If a volcano collapsed somewhere 5 million years ago and has left tons of nickel deposits 500 feet under the earth, he’s the guy who can probably find it.
Problem is, Guzman’s hit a rough patch, just like Walsh, and needs a big strike. So when Walsh shows up and says he had a dream that he and Guzman would find gold in Indonesia, Guzman can’t help but get excited. But looking for gold costs money. You need equipment, permits, workers. This isn’t panhandling in the local river. This is trudging through miles of dangerous jungle terrain then digging hundreds of feet into the ground.
But not long after they start looking, they find something. Gold deposits. Lots of them. And from that moment on, everything changes. Some of the biggest banks in the world want a piece of this zero turned hero. And soon, Walsh and Cruz have themselves a full-scale multi-million dollar mining operation housing potentially 30 billion dollars worth of gold.
But naturally, as all the rappers seem to agree, mo money equals mo problems, and Walsh finds himself swimming inside a whole new kind of shark tank. These sharks are genetically modified to extract all of your money and spit you out. One moment, Walsh is on top of the world. The next, he’s further under it than the very gold he’s digging up.
But none of that will compare to the utter shock that all men involved will experience when the “Holy shit” final act comes around. This one leaves you with eyes the size of hubcaps going, “No fucking wayyyyyy!” And to think that it’s all true?? Wow.
Gold has an interesting but strong structure. It’s divided into four equal quarters, each of which has its own gameplan. The first quarter is about the struggle. It’s when we meet our hero and see that he’s on the bottom of the barrel. It’s an important part of the script because it establishes the character type that audiences always root for no matter what: THE UNDERDOG. Walsh is as underdog-y as they get and because we see him kicked around by other characters, we immediately sympathize with him and want him to succeed. This is a huge reason why this script works so well.
The second quarter is about hope. It’s about our two underdogs digging for gold – literally. Because this whole section is based on suspense (will or won’t they find the gold?) we’re entranced. The combination of desperately wanting our underdogs to take over the world along with the curiosity of if they’ll find the gold or not has this section moving at a million miles an hour.
The third quarter is the aftermath of success. In my opinion, this was the worst section of the script. “Aftermath of success” is always hard to do in screenplays because it almost always goes the same way. The hero doesn’t have time for his girlfriend anymore. He starts to believe in his own hype. He enjoys his success too much. He loses perspective. Been there, done that. However, the stuff with the other companies trying to screw him over keeps this section alive. All of that stuff was entertaining.
The fourth quarter is the fallout – what happens after it all unravels. This section works for a couple of reasons. First, we knew it was coming. And we want to see how bad it’s going to get. As gruesome as car crashes are, it’s impossible for us humans to look away from them. And second, there’s a great twist. I’m not going to spoil it here. It’s one of those twists that defines the entire movie. So seek out the real world story yourself or wait til the movie comes out. But it packs a wallop.
The big take from Gold might be the use of this 4-Act structure. For those who don’t know, most movies are broken up into 3 acts – the first act is 25-30 pages, the second act is 55-75 pages, and the third act is 20-25 pages. But over time, because that second act is so big, some writers have decided to break it up into two parts. This creates 4 acts then, instead of 3.
It can be simpler to write a movie this way because you basically write 4 equal sections of 30 pages each. That’s a little easier to grasp than a short act, a really long act, and another short act. In fact, it’s almost like you’re writing 4 little half-hour stories. Now remember, the story you’re telling has to fit into that structure, like Gold does, but it’s a great little option to bust out if you’re one of the many writers who get lost in the second act.
Another thing I noticed about this script is how compelling it is to watch the “desperate salesman” character. We saw it with Jerry Lundergarten in Fargo. We saw it with Jack Lemmon’s character in Glengary Glen Ross. And we see it here with Walsh. I don’t know what it is but the desperation that reeks from these characters makes them impossible to look away from. I’m sure there are examples of these characters not working, but I can’t think of one. Writers need to remember this for future screenplays!
Overall, this script just worked. Great characters. Moved well. Fascinating story with lots of twists and turns, particularly that whopper of an ending. It was incredibly well researched. Dialogue was authentic and strong all the way through. Hard to find many faults with this one outside of the 3rd act I mentioned above. Definitely check out Gold if you can find it!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The delayed character description. In almost all cases, when a new character hits the page, you want to describe him immediately. The reason for this is that it’s standard practice, which means readers expect it. Therefore, when you tell us “JOE” just walked into the room and there’s no description of Joe, or “JOE” starts talking yet we haven’t met the guy, it’s annoying and confusing to the reader. However, there are a few situations where adding a description to a character intro interrupts the flow of the read. If Joe charges onto a battlefield and you have to stop to tell us he’s tall and gangly and has a spider-web collection, it kind of kills the moment. So the delayed description is motivated. In Gold, Walsh is introduced pouring a drink, exchanging a few words with an investigator, and THEN getting his description. To me, this falls under the category of a delayed description for no reason. So it’s one I would’ve avoided. The ultimate lesson here is, describe your character right away unless there’s NO OTHER WAY to do it. You’ll keep the reader happy.
What I learned 2: Always pick a more interesting verb! Describing a car on page 4, Massett and Zinman don’t say, “It pulls into a spot,” they say “it lumbers into a spot.”
Genre: Horror/Zombie
Premise: A married couple goes on a cruise to heal their wounds after losing their son, but when the ship rescues a strange sick man, they soon find that their own lives are in danger.
About: Hey, how often do we get to read a script by TWINS? Touchstone bought this spec back in 2010. Alexi Hawley scripted the 2004 Exorcist prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning, and more recently was story editor on the Nathan Fillion show, Castle. Brother Noah was a writer on the TV show, Bones.
Writers: Alexi and Noah Hawley
Details: 110 pages
In all honesty, had I known this was a zombie script, I wouldn’t have read it. Dead In The Water was a random script I had in my screenplay pile which I knew nothing about, which is exactly why I wanted to read it. I was hoping for another Ends Of The Earth or Dead Of Winter. But didn’t get it. I got a zombie flick.
I’ll tell you what, though. Before I knew this was a zombie script – in other words throughout the first act – it was pretty damn good. And once it became a zombie flick, the darn thing kept going. It took some chances along the way – did things a little differently – and therefore, gasp, kept me fairly entertained. I’m still not sure what to make of it on the whole. There’s a character called Suparman who feels like he’s been beamed in from a different movie…on a different planet. But all in all, I think there’s more good here than bad.
The script starts out with a great opening scene. A group of doctors are out for a spin on their sailboat when they spot a couple of men on a trawler dumping bags into the ocean. The trawler speeds away and the doctors decide to investigate, only to find that the bags aren’t just bags. They’re body bags. And as they move up to get a closer look, one of the bags…STARTS MOVING.
They open the bag up to save the individual but it turns out it’s not him who needs saving. Blood splatters. There are screams. And we CUT to a cruise ship. This is where we meet Brian and Carrie Lake, a couple grieving over their dead son. Both are devastated but Carrie’s ready to move on. Brian, a cop, can’t let go however, and would rather sleep in their room all day than go out and “have fun.”
So Carrie heads out on her own, and while up on deck, spots something in the water that stops her cold. It’s a man! Drifting along on a piece of debris! She calls out to the ship’s crew and the next thing you know they’re lifting the man up on deck. Well waddaya know? It’s one of the doctors! And he’s not looking good. In fact, he starts vomiting blood all over the place! Mmmmmm…blood vomit.
Carrie relays the experience to Brian, who continues his bed brigade, so Carrie goes to take a nap on deck. When she wakes, however, something is off. There’s…nobody around. It’s like everyone from the cruise just disappeared. Oh, until she sees a man with a blood-stained mouth coming after her. And then another one. And then another one.
Carrie runs off, where she’s able to find a few more people, and the group quickly realizes that a virus has spread throughout the ship, bringing the dead back to life, dead who are hungry for human flesh. Let this be a lesson about picking up strangers.
Carrie now has a single-minded goal – finding her husband, and this is where the script does something different. It starts out with a segment called “Carrie,” which follows Carrie’s journey as she tries to find Brian. Then, when that’s over, we cut to the “Brian” segment, where we show Brian trying to find Carrie. If that were it, the script still may have been too predictable for me. But then, for some odd reason, we also have a final segment titled, you guessed it, “Suparman.” Suparman is a 22 year old Indonesian man who is some sort of circus acrobatics expert, able to wield duo-machetes which allows him to slice and dice zombies like they’re tomatoes. I honestly have NO IDEA what Suparman was doing in the script, and yet, I was glad he was. It gave the story this slight level of absurdity that differentiated it JUST ENOUGH from typical zombie faire to give it an edge.
The first thing I want to point out is what an advantage CONTAINING a horror scenario is. For those who read or saw Contagion – if you were like me, you saw a movie trying to cover so many countries and so many scenarios that it eventually lost itself. It’s hard to sell mass death when there are so many places to hide, so many islands and areas safe from contamination. On something like a cruise ship, however, there’s nowhere to run. You’re trapped. And that makes the situation a thousand times scarier.
I thought the cutting to different people was a smart move too. It broke up the conventional zombie structure of a group trying to move from point A to point B (while avoiding zombies). That’s where I think a lot of these scripts die. Because once the mystery is over, once the group knows they’re zombies and have to get to [some location] to survive, the scripts become very technical. They’re just moving on rails while avoiding zombies. All the creativity is gone. Now I’m not saying Dead In The Water completely eliminated this, but the structure break-up was just enough to keep us on our toes.
As far as the characters here….hmmmm… I guess they were okay. The whole “dead child” thing is a little stock. I’ve seen it before. In fact, it was the main storyline for another “dangerous person comes aboard a boat” flick, Dead Calm. I don’t know what it is about this backstory but I’ve never been a fan of it. First, there’s something just too sad about a dead child. It doesn’t translate well to screen. And second, it’s almost impossible to avoid melodrama with it. The couple has to be sad, they have to discuss how sad they are, and it always comes off as too much. I’d avoid this backstory unless you have a fresh take on it.
Anyway, the ultimate point is this – if I were a producer, I would buy this script. It’s a money-maker for sure. Zombies on a cruise ship? Never been done before (at least to my knowledge). You got the contained setup, nowhere to run. Zombies on a cruise has potential for a lot of fun scenarios, as proven here with the unforgettable shark climax. And then of course, you get to top it all off with Suparman – the machete-wielding alien from another planet. What’s not to like?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The isolated character name is a good way to imply the screenplay equivalent of a close-up during a key moment. — Remember guys, you don’t want to write “CLOSE-UP” in your script. It’s too technical. So the isolated character name is a great way to imply that the camera is on the character. Here’s an example from page 40…
They turn and run as the infected flood the stairs behind them.
ERYN
reaches a doorway. Ducks through it and onto…
EXT. PROMENADE DECK – DAY