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: Comedy
Premise: After learning that his family is leaving the town he grew up in, a heartbroken 13 year-old boy convinces his best friends to go trick-or-treating one last time in a daring attempt to break their town’s unbreakable trick-or-treating record and become legends. Writer: Eric Gegenheimer
Details: 109 pages

Okay, full disclosure here. I GREW UP in the town where today’s script is set! Oak Park, Illinois. As a result, I had a rather personal experience with the material. Everything Eric talked about, I knew. Lake Street? Walked it every day. Razzle Dazzle Costumes on the Oak Park Mall? That’s where I bought MY Halloween costume!

Needless to say, this was like walking down Nostalgia Lane. But even if I hadn’t grown up in Oak Park, I’d still be impressed, as it’s rare an amateur script is the best of the week – especially when the competition includes Alexander Payne, an Academy Award winner!

But that’s what happens when you write a smart, funny, heartfelt comedy.

Best Friends Forever, appropriately, introduces us to four best friends in the year 1987. There’s the “leader” and our protagonist, Daniel. There’s the “stud” of the group, Devin. There’s the “nerd” of the group, Will. And there’s the eternally quiet fourth member, Brian.

These four 13 year olds are in their last year of Junior High and things are starting to change for them, especially Devin, who’s pulling away in favor of going to parties and meeting girls. But the real change occurs when Daniel’s parents hit him with some shocking news – the family is moving in two weeks. His father got a job in another city.

Daniel is destroyed. He’s about to lose his friends forever. But after a little pouting, he’s inspired by a wild idea. The best times he and his friends had were during Halloween. What if they all went on one last trick-or-treating jaunt? And not only that, what if they tried to beat the 20 year old Oak Park Trick or Treat record?!

Naturally, his friends (who don’t yet know he’s moving) are skeptical. They’re 13 years old! 13 year olds aren’t supposed to trick-or-treat. Devin, especially, is against it. Trick or treating is SOOO not cool. But after a desperate plea, they reluctantly get on board. 

We meet a few more players in the meantime. There’s, of course, classic 80s bully Carter Burke. All he cares about is humiliating nerds like Daniel and his gang, and after Daniel’s father embarrasses him, he’s really got it in for Daniel. Then there’s my favorite character – maybe ever – Miles Fisher. He’s four foot five and 68 pounds, loves Star Wars, and is king of the nerds. He’s also arrogant as f#$% (“While my fellow academics may turn their noses up at the thought of asking for candy, I find the rituals of Halloween quite rewarding.”) He may not be Carter Burke, but he makes things just as difficult for our heroes, especially Will, who he tortures relentlessly. Fisher is one of those characters who if Best Friends Forever ever got made, he’d become a cinematic icon.

The rest of the story is pretty simple. The group zips around Oak Park (and River Forest, our sister community – yes, Chicago’s suburb planners had a creepy hard-on for trees) trying to get enough candy to beat the record, running into a bunch of obstacles along the way. There aren’t many surprises or twists here – which is okay, since Eric keeps the screenplay focused squarely on the characters.

My initial thoughts after reading “Best Friends Forever?” Warm and fuzzy. Eric incorporates into his screenplay something so few comedies do these days – heart. And it leaves you with a richer more fulfilling experience at the end.

That and he has a unique ability to capture familiar moments that we all remember so well. For instance, there are a ton of lines like this one: “Allison’s friends giggle in that teenage girl way where it’s impossible to tell if they’re being cute or cruel.” Seriously, right!!?? If you can make a reader identify with enough moments in your script, they’re going to give themselves to your story. Eric is a master at this.

He also does a great job putting you in the time period. I read a lot of “period” scripts where the writer gives us no visual cues of what time period we’re in. It might as well be the present. The costumes the boys wear alone (Ghostbusters, Marty McFly, The Cure) let us know exactly where we are. But there are plenty of other hilarious 80s references that continue to remind us.

But where Eric really excels is in his character development. The very first scene – a sleepover between the four friends – shows us how much these guys mean to each other. We have them arguing over what movie to watch on cable (the focus being on nudity), telling scary stories, reading comic books, sleeping in sleeping bags. After that scene, you know these four are BFF, so when we find out Daniel is moving, it’s sort of devastating. It leaves an undercurrent of sadness to their pursuit that adds a layer of depth I don’t usually see in these scripts. And that’s the way it should be. We should feel some sort of conflict in the characters’ pursuit if you want to connect with the reader.

But it ain’t all reeses peanut butter cups and 100 grand bars. There are a few apples and candy corn packets in here that keep this trick or treat bag from winning the grand prize.

Simply put, the whole “trick or treat contest” was confusing. They were trying to beat this famous trick or treater, but I didn’t understand any of the rules. Were they going to combine all their candy? If so, isn’t that kind of cheating? And I’m not saying cheating is the worst thing in this scenario but because nobody monitors this contest, “honestly” beating the champ is really all you’ve got. If you know you didn’t really win, what’s the point?

There’s also something about a “stamp card” (houses stamping your card to prove that you trick or treated) that I didn’t understand and had never heard of before. It was another unclear rule in a contest full of them.

Also, a ton of emphasis is put on this former champ, a kid who, in order to get the record, ditched school at lunch so he could start trick or treating early. Yet our friends start trick or treating four hours later and somehow still beat the record?? Not only that, but they get involved in a number of diversions that steal big chunks out of their 3 hour trick or treat time. In my estimation, they trick or treated for maybe 90 minutes total. And they still won? This is why I was wondering – did they pool their candy together? Was that always the plan or did they come up with that at the last second?

And on top of all this, there’s this sort of leisurely pace they set for trick or treating. They never seemed in a hurry. It just didn’t seem like a group of kids who had to work their ass off to get the record. And the reason this is a big deal is because this is the PLOT OF THE MOVIE. The movie is about a group of kids trying to break a record! So if you don’t convince us that your characters are doing everything possible to break it, how can I be satisfied when it’s over?

I told Eric he needs his characters to ditch school at lunch just like the former champ. And to just create more of a sense of urgency.

There were a few other things that bothered me. I thought the haunted house set piece was a collosol waste of time. It was one of those classic sequences us writers convince ourselves works because there’s a lot happening. But because it didn’t have anything to do with anything else in the movie (resulting in rock bottom stakes), it just sat there like a giant rotting potato.

Also, the fourth friend, Brian, needs to be re-written. He doesn’t say anything ever. And what do I tell you guys about characters who don’t talk? They disappear on the page. And that’s exactly what happened here. Okay, he’s quiet. That’s what makes him different. But that just doesn’t work in screenplays. Whenever he came up, I was like, “Who is he again?” I might just ditch this character altogether.

BUT, like I said – the character work with almost everyone else was top notch. Daniel’s storyline about moving was powerful. Devin’s obsession with girls worked well. Will’s nerdy battle with Fisher was top-notch. And Carter and his goons were great.

I think this script needs to be clarified from a plot point-of-view. But character-wise, it’s light years better than most of the amateur scripts I read.

Script link: Best Friends Forever

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] not for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

 What I learned: Don’t use words that misrepresent the moment. There’s a scene early on where Carter corners Daniel at school. This is what Eric writes: “Daniel’s eyes drop. He’s suddenly incredibly interested in the tile pattern on the floor.” While we understand the meaning of the sentence after we read it, the words “incredibly interested” conflict with the tone the moment is supposed to represent. The idea is to show that Daniel is scared. “Incredibly interested” doesn’t convey that. So the sentence initially reads confusing. I would go with something simple like, “Daniel’s eyes drop to the floor.” Or, “Terrified, Daniel’s eyes shoot to the floor.” Make sure the words in your sentences properly represent the moment!

For those playing catch-up, Twit-Pitch was a contest I held where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter as long as it was contained within a single tweet. I chose the top one hundred loglines from those pitches and read the first 10 pages of each, which I live-reviewed on Twitter every evening (join me on Twitter – just yesterday I reached 10,000 followers!), giving writers a rare look into a reader’s head as the screenplay was being read. It was an interesting experience. To read the original discussion of the loglines and contest, head over to the 1300-comment post that occurred afterwards.

So where are we now? Well, the contest resulted in seven scripts whose first 10 pages were so good, they automatically advanced to the finals. There were then twenty “maybes,” pages that were good enough to catch my interest, but not good enough to automatically advance. I went back through those 20 “First Tens” and read them again, picking 13 to join the other 7 in the finals.

Now before I get to the finalists, I want to point out the biggest problem I ran into while reading everyone’s first ten pages. It’s something that happened too many times. There were a LOT of great first scenes, but a lot of bad SECOND scenes.

This is a devastating mistake to make because it speaks to a bigger issue. New writers LOVE writing first scenes. They LOVE pulling the audience in with something wild or weird or different or exciting. But the second they get to their second scene, which usually involves meeting their main character, they stumble around a formless scenario that only barely resembles a movie scene.

In other words, they don’t approach their second scene with the same gusto and “this has to be great” approach they do their first scene. And not surprisingly, this approach continues throughout the script. There are key scenes (the inciting incident, the scene where the hero gets his powers, the scene where the hero meets the female lead, the final battle) where the writer puts everything he has into them. But every other scene? They’re just trying to get through it.

Please – CHANGE THIS APPROACH! Sure, a scene where we meet our main character may not initially seem as exciting as that opening scene where the aliens land on earth. But your job as a writer is to make it JUST AS ENTERTAINING!

Out of curiosity, I watched John Carter yesterday, and was shocked to see that even the highest level professionals make this mistake. We start off with some sort of Mars battle (which wasn’t very good – but at least something was happening). Then we cut to our main character, John Carter, being secretly followed by someone through an Old West town. Carter realizes he’s being followed and knows he has to ditch the tail. So what does he do? He darts behind a group of people. The tail keeps walking, losing him, and we see that John Carter has blended in by keeping his back turned towards us while flirting with a random woman.

THAT’S YOUR FREAKING ESCAPE SCENE???? THAT’S HOW YOU INTRODUCE YOUR MAIN FREAKING CHARACTER??? BY COMING UP WITH THE MOST UNINVENTIVE STANDARD DITCH SCENE IN THE HISTORY OF MOVIES??? HE BLENDS IN WITH THE CROWD AND FLIRTS WITH A GIRL???

At that moment, I knew the movie was screwed. If the writer wasn’t trying to come up with an inventive ditch scene in the very second scene of the movie, then how could I expect him to try on the 20th scene in the movie, or the 30th? I mean look at another chase scene – the Millennium Falcon trying to ditch a Star Destroyer in Empire Strikes Back. You know what happens in that scene? Han Solo turns around and ATTACKS A SHIP 10,000 TIMES BIGGER THAN HIS. The Empire is so surprised, they don’t know what to do. Then, the Falcon disappears from their radar. We eventually learn that Solo has attached his ship to the side of the Star Destroyer, making him invisible. THAT’S a clever scene. THAT’S a scene where the writers actually tried.

The point here is that you can NEVER TAKE SCENES OFF IN A SCRIPT. There shouldn’t be a single scene where you say, “I just need to get through this.” You should try to write the best scene possible every time out. Even if it’s a freaking exposition scene. You need to try and write the best exposition scene you can possibly write. Because I guarantee you, if you take scenes off, we’ll get bored. Don’t EVER let the reader get bored. Always do your best.

Okay, sorry about that. Done with my rant. Here were the original Top 100 of the First Annual Scriptshadow Twit-Pitch Contest. And now HERE are the Top 20 finalists. I will be reading these scripts in full (possibly on Twitter – but still haven’t decided yet) and announcing a winner in 6-8 weeks. Read the first 10 of each yourself and let me know who your frontrunners are.

DEFINITES

1) RE-ENACTMENT – A civil war expert and his son must fight to survive a reenactment organized by a dangerous southern cult.

2) THE TRADITION – 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals.

3) SECOND CHANCE – After winning a nationwide lottery a man must decide what to do with his prize, fifteen minutes of advice to give to his younger self.

4) THE PROVING GROUND – 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive.

5) TUNDRA – When a U-Boat vanishes in the 1940s, it leads a team of American GIs to a terrifying secret trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica.

6) GUEST – After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

7) GUNPLAY – A terrorist with a $10 mill bounty, a callous soldier of fortune and a mysterious man with no name walk into a bar in Afghanistan.

MAYBES THAT MADE THE CUT

8) FATTIES – When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

9) RING OF LIAR – A lifelong bachelor accidentally proposes to his clingy girlfriend then tries to trick her into dumping him, but the tables soon turn.

10) THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS – Man loves woman whose dreams predict future, but future she sees isn’t with him. Can he convince her to choose love over fate?

11) THE LAST ROUGH RIDER – It’s 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.

12) WOODEN – 22yrs old and tired of the pain and suffering of being a real boy,Pinocchio embarks on a journey to get turned back into a puppet.

13) EVERYTHING FALLS APART – When the world’s biggest superhero agreed to grant a dying boy’s last wish, he didn’t count on the boy wishing for all his powers.

14) UNTITLED WRIGHT BROTHERS – In 1903 North Carolina, the Wright bros attempt the first flight, but shenanigans arise when they fall in love with the same woman.

15) CUT, COPY, PASTE – A group of friends returns from a time-travel fieldtrip to find a nerdy student has altered his past turning him into a living legend.

16) CHAMPAGNE HIGHWAY – A man trying to solve the mystery of his con artist grandfather must overcome his own beliefs and the resistance of his broken family.

17) RIDING THE GRAVY TRAIN – With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it’s phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.

18) SANTA MUST DIE – A group of last-minute shoppers trapped in a mall on Christmas Eve are stalked by a demon-possessed Santa. Horror/Comedy.

19) CRIMSON ROAD – Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD… the whole street is full of them.

20) DOUCHE PATROL – Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show.

The writers of these scripts have 2 weeks FROM TODAY to get their full scripts to me. If they don’t, I have one alternate ready to take their place, “The Giant’s Passage.” –  So hurry up guys!

I don’t usually review first drafts anymore.  But a lot of people have written to tell me that this script is really good, so I’m going to make an exception.

As for this writing/directing team, I’m not sure what to make of them yet.  I think they wrote and directed “I Love You, Phillip Morris,” which, while not something I’d ever want to see, was at least different.  And recently, they took on directing duties for one of my favorite scripts, “Crazy, Stupid Love,” and played it a little too mainstream in my opinion.  Something was lost in that translation.  The story didn’t move as fast as it did in the script.

Still, comedies are tricky to direct and when you have another element to latch onto, like the con, it makes things a lot easier, since the entire movie doesn’t need to rest on laughs.

33 year-old Nicky Spurgeon comes from a long line of con men.  His dad was a con man.  His grandfather was a con man.  In fact, his grandfather and father used to con each other!  And that’s made Nicky about as untrustworthy of others as one can get.  Gotta love those troubled backstories.  They make your characters so damn interesting.

Anyway, Nicky’s hanging out in a bar one day where he meets a hot girl who takes him back to her room.  Just before they’re about to do the Dew, the woman’s husband barges in with a gun, threatening to kill Nicky.  But for some reason, Nicky’s not phased.  He shrugs his shoulders and tells the hubby to fire away.

The couple is shocked when Nicky then reveals he’s been onto their con for an hour now.  Pissed but intrigued, the girl, Jess, follows him out and begs him to teach her what he knows.  But since Nicky doesn’t let anybody in – doesn’t trust a soul – he tells her to get lost.

Jess is one persistent little cookie, though, and eventually convinces him to take her on.  He quickly shows her all his tricks, then brings her onto his big con, which will take place at the Super Bowl.  After a few twists and turns, he nails the rather confusing Super Bowl con with Jess’ help.

But whereas Jess thinks they’re now a team (and possibly more), Nicky’s always thought of her as a means to an end.  Now that the con is over, so is she.  Just like that, he disappears, and Jess is devastated.

But three years later, she and Nicky cross paths again before a huge car race.  Turns out Nicky is pulling a big con there, and Jess happens to be with one of the drivers, having left the con world behind.  Nicky finds himself drawn to Jess once again, but this time she’s not having it, stonewalling him at every turn.  Eventually she relents though, and Nicky is posed, once again, with that question: Does he give himself to this woman, or is it still all about the con?

I have a question about con man movies.  Why is it that our con man always randomly gets hit up by another con man (in this case, Jess)?  I mean, what are the chances?  It’s not like every third person in the world is a con man, right?  So the odds are pretty astronomical that someone would try to con a conner.  Yet it ALWAYS happens. I don’t know. That’s just never made sense to me.

Anyway, my big thing with Con scripts is that they have to be CLEVER.  Every scene, every character, every con, every double cross – has to be cleverly executed.  If we can see it coming from a mile away?  If at the end of the con, we don’t experience that internal, “Oooooohhhh?”  then you’re not doing your job.

To me, that “ooooohhh” never happened in Focus.  I wouldn’t say any of the cons here were bad. But none of them blew me away either.  The best con is one in which we’re actually unaware a con is going on – so I don’t know if it counts.

Luckily, it’s a GREAT scene that almost single-handedly saves the draft.  Nicky, who has a major gambling problem, starts to lose control while betting against a very rich Asian man at the Super Bowl.  They bet on miniscule things like who’ll make the next first down or whether the quarterback will hand off or throw.  Nicky keeps losing, but each time, betting double or nothing, until a 100 dollar bet turns into a million dollar bet.  It’s one of the more intense scenes I’ve read in awhile and has you gripping your seat, desperate to see how it will end.

Unfortunately, after that sequence, we experience an awkward three-year time jump and are introduced to an unnatural storyline involving Nicky trying to con a bunch of race car drivers.  The first draft-ness definitely affected this section (the writers feel like they’re still exploring the idea) but even considering its rawness, it doesn’t feel right.  I mean, race cars haven’t even been mentioned in the script before this.

I also hate large time jumps late in scripts because they imply nothing in the story is immediate.  If we can jump forward 3 years and nothing is affected, then the story probably isn’t focused enough (no pun intended).  I’m not saying it can’t or hasn’t been done before, of course.  Just that it’s difficult.

Focus has potential.  Nicky is an interesting character.  And the love story with Jess is pretty solid (and will only get better with more drafts).  But I’m not sure either of the script’s halves currently work.  The Super Bowl half is plagued by us not knowing what Nicky’s plan is. And the Race Car half just feels out of place.  Will be interesting to see what they end up with.

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

What I learned: You want your characters to be fucked up in some way.  Somewhere in that brain of theirs, wires need to be crossed.  The more wires that are crossed, the more interesting the character tends to be.  Here, Nicky comes from a family where his father played his own father in a con, accidentally killing him in the process.  How can you trust anyone when you grew up in a family that couldn’t even trust each other?  This lack of trust is what makes Nicky’s relationship with Jess so interesting.  He doesn’t know whether to give in to her or play her.  That script-long tug-of-war is the emotional meat of this piece and while it’s bogged down by too much first-draftness, I see it working well once the story’s been slimmed down.