Genre: Comedy
Premise: A Twilight-like actor becomes the face of Bass Fishing in a desperate attempt to get an audition for Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Old Man And The Sea.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted.
Writer: Gayne C. Young
Details: 105 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I got two words for you: colostomy bag.

If that doesn’t get your rotors revved up and ready to go, you might not want to “dive” into today’s amateur offering, Bass Champion. But if you choose not to take that leap, you’ll be missing out on one of the few worthy Amateur Friday screenplays I’ve read.

The first thing you gotta get right with a comedy is the premise.  The premise has to be funny.  And this premise passes the test.  I’m not sure why, but it’s probably due to the insane combination of the Twilight world and the Bass Fishing world, which just don’t go together at all. And yet our author, Gayne, finds a way to make it work, deftly poking fun at both the ridiculousness of tweenie vampires and the hickishness of bass fishing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk plot.

Tate Blocker is a hot young “Robert Pattinson” like actor on a vampire TV show called “Forever Youth.” Tate takes method acting to the extreme, going to whatever lengths he needs to to become the character, including believing he’s an actual vampire. The problem is, it’s all a bag of tricks. Tate doesn’t understand what it’s really like to “get dirty” and sacrifice yourself to something.

Which is exactly why Christopher Nolan won’t even consider him for a roll in his new adaptation of The Old Man And The Sea. And it’s killing Tate. He’ll do anything to get that audition.

Halfway across the country, Bass Fishing champion and overall stupid-ass Bud Milton has made the inopportune mistake of sticking his pecker inside a fish’s mouth for a few laughs. Problem is, one of his cronies taped it, and now it’s all over Youtube, creating some really bad press for the sport, culminating in PETA swooping in and demanding nothing less than the shutdown of Bass Fishing.

Tate’s agent realizes this is the perfect opportunity to bust her client out of the TV world. If Tate can become the new face of Bass Fishing, it will refocus the media away from PETA, and in the process win over Christopher Nolan to get Tate that audition. It’s the perfect plan! Well, sorta.

If Tate is going to compete, he’s going to need a partner. And that partner comes in the form of anger-management poster child Rod Bender, a one-eyed alcoholic former Bass Fishing champion whose repeated fighting got him kicked off the tour years ago. Rod’s the only partner good enough to make up for Tate’s unsettling lack of skill.

The problem is that Bud, our oral fishing friend, is dead set on making sure Vampire Boy doesn’t win jack shit, and he’ll do anything to make him and his washed up partner disappear. And to make things worse, Hark Herald, who plays Tate’s werewolf co-star on Forever Youth, is pulling his own publicity stunt to win over the lead role in Christopher Nolan’s film. With escalating pressure from PETA, Rod’s physically abusive teaching methods, backstabbing from his female co-star at Comic-Con, and Bud’s never-ending dirty tricks, does Tate stand a chance of becoming the ultimate Bass Champion and winning the role of Santiago in The Old Man And The Sea?

So, is Bass Fishing perfect? No. Gayne is clearly still learning the craft and maybe leans a little too heavily on cheap humor (colostomy bags in two of three scripts this week!). But what I like about this week’s comedy script is that finally we have an amateur writer who’s put his story on the same priority level as his comedy.

You can see that in how deftly he’s structured his script. We have a main character with a clear goal (get an audition with Christopher Nolan). We have high stakes (Bass Fishing gets shut down and Tate loses the role of a lifetime if he loses). We have a ticking time bomb (Nolan choosing Santiago soon). We have a great central relationship in Rod and Tate, two completely opposite characters who must learn to work together to achieve their ultimate goal. Every character here is properly motivated. Rod wants back on the tour. Bud has to win or his career will be over. Tate’s agent wants to leave behind her soul-sucking child-actor agency. Everything that happens in this comedy has a reason for happening. Structurally, this is one of the best amateur Friday screenplays we’ve had.

Another thing Gayne’s got going for him is he understands his material. He gets these two competing worlds (the vain-ness of Hollywood and the trashiness of the South) so well that when he brings them together, you feel like you’re reading a script that you haven’t read before. True there are some familiar elements, but who the hell places a Twilight actor in the middle of the deep south?? I just haven’t seen anything close to that idea explored before. And everything here is like that – existing in that coveted “familiar but different” bullseye territory that every screenwriter should be aiming for.

I also loved the little touches in the story like Hark and Tate going after the same role. And the Comic-Con stuff had me dying (guys wearing “I’m a Tate-o-Sexual” shirts and Rod beating the shit out of a girl in a wheelchair after being mistaken for a homeless person from one of Tate’s Forever Youth episodes). Tate’s dedication to researching his roles, like going to a castle and living with roaches for a week. I really felt like Gayne pushed the comedy limits and never got bogged down in the obvious (well, almost never).

On the downside, I can tell he’s still learning some things. The opening of the script doesn’t move us into the story as smoothly as I would like. Setting up a story is deceptively hard because it’s when you introduce all the artificial elements (the goal, the ticking time bomb, etc.) that make the car go. Introducing these elements in a manner that’s not herky jerky and doesn’t draw attention to itself isn’t easy to do. If you’re too lazy about it, the reader quickly becomes aware that he’s reading a script. For instance, when Rod is being recruited from Outdoor Empire, we’re very aware that this is the “recruit the crazy partner” scene. It doesn’t “flow.” It doesn’t just “happen.” You have to keep writing these scenes to death until they feel effortless, until they feel like a natural extension of everything around them, because if the audience doesn’t believe your setup, it’s going to be hard for them to believe everything that follows.

The other stuff I wasn’t so hot on was the crass-ness of the humor. But I’m torn about it. On the one hand, a lot of it stemmed from the characters. The word “fuck” is used in Hollywood and the South a lot, so it makes sense that it’s used a lot here (and I mean A LOT). As for the shit jokes. Well…hmmm. This seems to divide audiences. But for me, now that I’m no longer in high school, it doesn’t really make me laugh anymore, so when we basically extend a 15 second scene to 3 minutes so we can draw out a shit joke where the wheelbound president of Bass Champions dumps his colostomy bag into a urinal, I’m inclined to say, “Lose it and move on.” Then again, one of the funniest jokes ever onscreen was a shit joke, that being the blanket flinging scene in Trainspotting. I think the lesson here is that you do have to listen to other people when they say you’ve gone too far with a joke. But in the end, because humor is so subjective and comes down to personal taste, you gotta stick with something if you believe it’s funny. So in that sense I respect Gayne’s choices.

In the end, I just love this premise (Did I mention I love this premise?). And the fact that Gayne actually built a story around it as opposed to stringing together a bunch of one-off sketches, puts him in a league above other aspiring comedy scriptwriters. Bass Champion still needs some work. I’d like the setup to be smoother and it gets a teensy bit repetitive in the middle. But concept wise, story wise, and execution of the premise wise, it does a really solid job. I’m thinking Gayne has a shot in this crazy business.

Script link: Bass Champion 

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

What I learned: All of your characters – not just your main character – should have something at stake. So here, the central stakes are for Tate to get an audition for Santiago. But his agent also has something at stake. If her client doesn’t get the role, she’s stuck in a shitty agency forever. For Rod, this is his last shot to get back into the sport he loves. For Bud, losing to Tate means he’ll lose the only thing he cares about, his fame. Even the sport itself has stakes attached to it. If Tate doesn’t win and squash PETA’s media attention, then the entire sport could close down. So add stakes wherever you can in your script, not just to your main character.

Genre: Black Comedy
Premise: After a high school kid finally lands the girl of his dreams, she becomes severely crippled in an accident, and fully expects him to continue with his boyfriend duties.
About: Head Injury made the lower half of the 2006 Black List. I don’t know much about the writers though, other than they have one project set up at Dreamworks called “Bromance.” I’d heard of the script but figured it to be yet another run-of-the-mill comedy. However, after reading Head Injury, I’m not so sure that’s the case. These two are not afraid to explore the deepest darkest corners of the mind.
Writers: Barry Schwartz & Raza Syed
Details: 104 pages – July 11, 2006 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Ho. Ly. Shit.

Black (or “Dark”) comedies never do that well at the box office, but the screenwriting world loves them. From The Voices to The Beaver to Heathers to Election, each of these scripts seeks to dig deep into our psyche and test just how fucked up the chewy center is. If you’re laughing when a deranged lunatic who talks to his cat lobs off his girlfriend’s head and keeps it in the refrigerator…well, that means you got problems dear. But don’t sweat it, because it means I got problems too.

The question with Black Comedies is “How far is too far?” What is the line that can and cannot be crossed? To me, that line is Peter Berg’s “Very Bad Things.” If you become too relentless in the darkness. If every scene pushes the limit of taste. If there’s no balance whatsoever. A black comedy can quickly turn into a piece of shit. I still remember that final scene in Very Bad Things where they’re on the lawn in wheelchairs. It gives me the shivers to this day. If they ever make a sequel to Being John Malkovich, please don’t let the person’s head they go into be Peter Berg.

I bring this up because Head Injury is daring enough to walk that line. And while at its best it reminds you of films like Election, at its worst, it brings me back to the overbaked weirdness of Very Bad Things.

10 year old Ethan is a fatty. And 10 year old fatties, as you know, are easy targets. So every day at school, Ethan’s life is a living nightmare, with bullies stacked on top of bullies rearranging their schedules to bully him. And yet all Ethan can do is think about beautiful Kaitlin, the most popular and beautiful (if not the nicest) girl in school.

So one day, after getting embarrassed during one of those dreaded “climb the rope” sessions in gym class (no climbing of any rope can end well for a fat kid), Ethan decides to change his life. He starts exercising. He starts eating better. He starts lifting weights. And by the time Ethan hits 17, he’s one of the most popular kids in high school.

It is at the height of his powers then, during a school field trip, that the sparks between him and Kaitlin finally fly, in the back seat of the bus no less, and Kaitlin decides to orally reward him for his newfound popularity.

And then, during this exchange, the bus crashes. Everybody ends up being all right. Everybody, that is, except for Kaitlin, whose body has been mangled and twisted beyond recognition. But the good news, she’s still alive!

Or is it?

What Ethan doesn’t know is that by engaging in this act with Kaitlin, he has unofficially made himself her official boyfriend. Parents, teachers, friends, all look to Ethan to stand by Kaitlin’s side, and boy is that stand going to be tough. Kaitlin has a myriad of health issues, not excluding a “collapsed vagina,” whatever that means. And to make matters worse, Kaitlin, who’s now essentially the female version of Stephen Hawking, decides to come back to school.

Here’s the thing though. Kaitlin still acts like the same popular bitch she was before the accident. She still bosses people around, still expects everyone to bow to her, still wants to be part of the cheerleading team. But worst of all, she still treats her boyfriend (or in this case, her new boyfriend) like a puppy that must obey every command or feel her wrath.

Ethan has no idea how this all happened. He’s been chasing Kaitlin his entire life. And now, when he’s finally got her, she’s……this??? And he never even officially became her boyfriend! He was getting a blowjob from her on the bus! Problem is, he can’t break up with her. Kaitlin’s friends, her parents and school faculty, all keep telling him what an amazing person he is for sticking it out and helping Kaitlin through this horrible time.

In the meantime, Ethan’s former best friend from grade school, Sela, who he ditched when he became popular, has grown up into Alternative Hot Girl, and become the only person Ethan can confide in about all this. The two start sleeping together and plotting a path to freedom. Except that with each passing day, it becomes harder and harder to push Kaitlin out of his life. So if he doesn’t act soon, he’s going to be stuck with this…thing…forever.

This script is harsh. I mean it really pushes the boundaries. Kaitlin is the foreman of ultimate bitches. At one point, she tells Ethan that if he doesn’t have sex with her, she’s going to report to the police that he raped her. It’s reverse rape. And that sex scene (or attempted sex scene) has to be one of the most awkward unpleasant disgusting scenes I have ever read. It’s not for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.

The problem with Head Injury is that all of the characters are either unlikeable or weak, so you don’t really have anyone to root for. Kaitlin is obviously the worst person on the planet. But Ethan just goes along with it. He’s such a weak individual that after awhile you want to punch him in the gonads and say, “Dude, stand up to her already!”

Sela represents an opportunity to salvage this, but then she too becomes difficult to like. She begins the movie as a calm cute slightly nerdy best friend. And when they’re older, she’s much the same way. But then out of nowhere she becomes this sex-addict triple-nympho who goes psycho ballistic at the mere mention of Kaitlin’s name, who she proclaims destroyed her life.

Herein lies the issue with Head Injury. Dark comedy can be great. But you need at least one character to latch onto.  I’m not saying they have to be “likable” necessarily. But someone you care about enough to root for. And I didn’t see that here. Everyone was either despicable or annoyingly passive. And this goes back to something we always talk about. If your main character is too passive, it’s only a matter of time before the audience grows frustrated with them.

Technically, Ethan does have a goal – to dump Kaitlin. But the application of that goal is so wimpy as to be non-existent. He only tries to do it a couple of times, and the rest of the script is Kaitlin pissing on him in every way imaginable.

But there were character choices I liked. Such as keeping Kaitlin a bitch even after she’d become handicapped. This movie would have just been sad if she’d gotten injured and gurgled her way through conversations and ate everything through a straw. We wouldn’t have been able to handle that without wanting to slit our wrists. So the fact that she still thinks she’s little miss popular and that the world should revolve around her was kinda funny.

I can’t recommend Head Injury because it crosses that line I mentioned earlier. The reverse-rape scene pole-vaulted this thing to Disturbedville. But I will say this about the script. You remember it. I forget 90% of the scripts I read within a week. This script I will remember, and I suppose that’s why it ended up on the Black List. What did you think?

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

What I learned: Character consistency. You can’t just change your character’s behavior at whim. A character’s actions must stay consistent with their personality and motivations throughout the screenplay. Kaitlin and Selma are perfect examples of violating this rule. Kaitlin is the world’s most heartless person. She doesn’t have an emotional bone in her body. So in that reverse-rape scene, when she starts crying about how difficult it is to be crippled, we don’t believe a word of it, because it’s not in her nature, as set up in the previous 90 pages. Likewise with Sela. This girl is nice and sweet and thoughtful and smart one moment. Then the next moment she becomes a raging lunatic nymphomaniac. It was like reading an entirely different character. Always keep your character’s behavior consistent. If they are going to change, you must take the time to set that up, or else it’ll feel like it’s coming out of nowhere.

Genre: High School Comedy
Premise: A teenage friendship is tested when one of the friends informs the other that he’s gay.
About: Gay Dude was on the 2008 Black List. It subsequently disappeared into the Hollywood ether before popping up as one of the projects on Lionsgate’s new “microbudget initiative,” a new production initiative stemming from the success of movies like Paranormal Activity. The group of movies will be shot for around 2 million dollars. The writer of Gay Dude, Alan Yang, has been quite successful since Gay Dude got him noticed. He’s worked on Parks & Recreation, sold a bromance pitch to Summit called “We Love You,” sold a spec “White Dad,” to Sony. He also has a script called “Jackpot” set up at Fox about a group of high school friends who win the lottery.
Writer: Alan Yang
Details: 108 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Here’s the shitty reality about readers. They don’t always give you a fair shot. It just happens that sometimes your script hits a reader at the wrong time. They’ve read five terrible scripts in a row and are assuming yours will be the sixth. It’s been a bad day. It’s been a bad week. They just got dumped. Their boss is an asshole who deluges them with the worst of the worst screenplays to cover. Sometimes a reader is just ready to hate your script. And it’s unfair and it sucks but life is unfair and sucks so…that’s reality baby.

Gay Dude is a perfect example of that. I remember reading it during a period where I was reading seven scripts a day (due to a contest) and I’d just read four really terrible comedies whose collective awfulness had actually managed to destroy humor for 47 minutes in the world. So within fifteen pages of the sophomoric humor of Gay Dude, I had already hit “skim-mode.” (this is the dreaded mode readers get into when they’ve given up on your script).

This is the real reason I preach all this advice about keeping your writing concise, being clear with your descriptions, not writing scenes that don’t push the story forward, not adding characters you don’t need. So that you don’t lose your reader in those crucial first 10 pages. Because many readers are looking to disqualify you as soon as possible so they can skip through your screenplay and be done with work an hour early. Again, it’s unfair, but a 9 to 1 bad script to good script ratio will do that to a person.

Long story short, I felt like Gay Dude needed another shot. I hadn’t read ANY scripts on the day that I picked it up this time, so I could be sure that I was giving it the best chance to succeed. I’m not going to lie and say it blew me away or anything. But it was a lot deeper than I originally gave it credit for.

Eager Michael and chubby Matty have been friends for as long as they can remember. Now in high school, they’re only a couple of months away from prom. And they’ve decided to make an American Pie like pact to get laid before the big day is over. That’s why they…um…break up with their girlfriends?

Yeah, these two aren’t the brightest string lights at the prom dance but Michael seems to think they can do better. Except a little problem pops up before better can make his presence known. Matty informs Michael that he’s, like, gay dude.

Michael thinks he’s joking but he’s not joking. Matty likes the scrotum. Michael’s a little weirded out by this. This is, remember, a person he’s been best friends with since he was two. So he retreats into “what the hell is going on” mode before finally strapping on his support cap and refocusing on their goal – to get laid before prom. It’s just that now half of their search will include…men.

The problem is Michael becomes TOO supportive, forcing Matty to visit places like the only gay bar in town, which consists of a bunch of old dirty gay guys. Since Michael figures “gay is gay,” he assumes it’s what Matty wants. But Michael’s off-target assessment begins to grate on Matty, who eventually finds a guy his own way, and that guy becomes, well, sort of a replacement Michael.

The lack of communication feeds the downward spiral of their friendship until there’s no friendship left, leaving both friends to wonder how those two words could have changed so much.

Gay Dude made a couple of really good choices that elevated it above normal teenage script fare. The dialogue was good and Yang actually explored the friendship on a real level. Let’s start with the dialogue. The back and forth between these two was organic, witty, and popped off the page. We’d get exchanges like this one, where Michael talks about his prudish girlfriend, “It was like a sexual brick wall with Ava. The last couple of dates we were moving so slowly that we were actually going backwards. Three dates from now we would’ve been bowing to each other and speaking in formal, turn-of-the century English.” “Good morrow to you, sir.” “Good day to you, madam. Shall we wait another fifteen years to commence the fucking?”

Or this exchange, where Michael tries to find out when Matty knew he was gay. “When did you first realize this? Like, is this a recent development?” “Fuck no. Remember that guy, like when we were like seven, he used to come around the school and we would slip him half our sandwiches through the chain link fence?” “That guy was a homeless guy.” “Yeah, well, I sort of had a crush on him.” There’s a lot of fun back and forth like this throughout the script.

But what really sets Gay Dude apart is that it actually explores its characters (and their relationship) on a real level. And this is where so many amateur comedy screenplays fail. They think it’s about packing as many jokes as they can inside 100 pages. Laughs will only get you so far. Sooner or later, you need to connect with the audience. And Gay Dude isn’t afraid to tackle those confusing and frustrating feelings that come with finding out your best friend is gay at a time in your life when you’re not emotionally capable of dealing with it. Late in the script, it’s clear that if the two just sat down and talked, they’d get past this. But they don’t know how to do that. So instead they lash out each other (Michael tells Matty’s homophobic father that he’s gay) and everything gets a lot worse before it gets better.

The problem Gay Dude runs into is that it does feel a little one-note. There isn’t enough variety in here to last an entire film. I felt like the characters were having the same conversations (“It’s not easy to find out you’re gay!”) over and over again. In addition, there wasn’t enough variety in the set pieces. For example, we go to a gay bar. And then after that doesn’t work, we go to a gay rave. It’s important, especially with a concept like this which has the potential to be “one-note,” that you really try to differentiate your set pieces.

There’s also a story thread where Michael starts suspecting Matty is faking being gay that doesn’t go anywhere and actually ends up confusing the story as opposed to helping it (if he isn’t gay, why does this story matter?). It’s not a huge deal, but again, I think this stemmed from the fact that the story was one-note, and SOME sort of complexity needed to be added. I just didn’t think it was the right complexity.

Anyway, I do think Gay Dude is worth the read. It digs deeper than most comedies, which in turn makes us care about the characters, which should be priority number 1 in any genre you write. By no means perfect but a breezy 90 minutes nonetheless.

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

What I learned: Story over shenanigans people. If you’re trying to decide between a scene in your comedy where you’re adding yet ANOTHER silly situation, or getting into the meat of your characters issues, pick the issues. Strive for a balance overall, but don’t be afraid to get into your characters real problems. Remember, we’ll laugh a lot more if we actually care about these people. Gay Dude proves that.

Genre: Historical Epic
Premise: In 1804, before America has any cachet in the world, a rogue U.S. diplomat arrives in the savage city of Tripoli to demand the release of American prisoners.
About: Tripoli was famously about to begin production in 2003 (2004?) when at the last second the studio pulled out. Ridley Scott, the director of the project, immediately moved on to another Monahan scripted endeavor, “Kingdom Of Heaven.” Tripoli has made waves in screenwriting circles since, with many proclaiming its awesomeness. As I’ve found this to be standard practice when it comes to deserted high profile projects, I decided to read the script and decide for myself. Monahan is pretty much the go-to guy when it comes to historical-based screenplays and is one of the better writers in Hollywood overall (I really dug his underrated screenplay for Edge of Darkness). He actually sold this screenplay on spec.
Writer: William Monahan
Details: 129 pages – 4/11/02 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Historical-related plots are so hard to pull off. They’re always walking that line between maintaining the historical accuracy of the times and keeping things entertaining enough for a modern audience. The problem is that the speed of life back then was so damn slow, and if you violate that pace, if you try to speed it up Michael Bay style, it feels false, necessitating that you move your story along at “Sunday afternoon” speeds. This requires the writer to dig deep into his bag of tricks to keep the story moving – conflict, mystery, suspense, tension, plotting – all of them must be used to “trick” the audience into thinking things are moving faster than they actually are. The problem is, there aren’t many writers who can do this. But since Monahan is about as skilled as they come, maybe Tripoli would be different.

Or…maybe not.

I didn’t like Tripoli. In fact, I had a harder time getting through this than I did a day at Sunday school. I don’t know if this movie was built for me because it is looooooong and drawwwwwwn out and not much happens and I don’t know if the subject matter is big enough for an entire movie. It’s basically about a guy walking around for a couple of hours. Let me lay out the plot for you.

The story starts off in the Barbary Coast of Africa in 1804. America isn’t a major player yet. To the point where places like Tripoli scoff when Americans show up in their city and demand the release of American prisoners. This is exactly what happens as our hero, Eaton, an easily frightened American diplomat on his way to another country entirely, but who gets roped into Tripoli after local pirates seize his ship, sees other Americans there and asks for their release.

This was the first sign of trouble for me, that our hero wasn’t even specifically headed to Tripoli in the first place. He was going somewhere else and only upon noticing a few of his other countryman being held did he decide to make a stand. When the situation was so meaningless that our hero wasn’t even going there to address it in the first place, it just felt like a second rate problem. And indeed, the Americans aren’t in any imminent danger. They’re just sequestered to their ship in the port. So right away, the stakes feel low.

To the script’s credit, there is one great sequence in this opening act, and that’s when Eaton demands to speak with the city’s ruler, a barbaric man who skins people alive, pokes their eyes out, and forces them to live in cages in his throne quarters. And we thought Charlie Sheen had issues. Just the anticipation of this meeting between Eaton and the ruler was great, and when they do finally have their showdown, and Eaton stands up to him, it was easily the best moment in the script. I still had high hopes for Tripoli at this point.

Unfortunately, Monahan takes the story in another direction entirely. After the ruler denies Eaton the release of his countrymen, Eaton finds out that the king has a brother who’s been exiled to Egypt, and that this brother is a way cooler cat who doesn’t skin people alive and put them in cages. So he gets this idea that he’ll go to Egypt and convince the brother to come back and rule Tripoli.

And thus begins an endless trip where Eaton finds the brother and the two walk back to Tripoli, debating how they’re going to take over the city with so few men. As you know, for any “road trip” scenario to work, the characters have to be interesting. And both Eaton and the brother are – I hate to say it – but really boring. They sound like two college professors debating 200 year old world affairs for two hours. I mean it’s really hard to get through.

I suppose the final battle to take the city back could be epic with Ridley Scott directing, but because I didn’t care about any of the characters involved, in particular the American soldiers who I barely knew, the battle didn’t matter. To make things worse, there’s a huge anti-climactic moment that interrupts the battle at the end that basically makes everything that came before it (aka the entire movie) meaningless.

Tripoli’s faults come down to that most basic pillar of storytelling – stakes. I just didn’t feel the stakes. I didn’t really know or care about the Americans being saved. I didn’t understand why replacing the leader of Tripoli was so important. It seemed like our main character was set on it only because of principle, because the ruler was bad and his brother was good. I get principle but I don’t know if I believe that someone takes a months-long trip to Egypt to find a replacement king then goes back and tries to take over the city simply on principle. In Braveheart, if William Wallace loses any of those battles, his country loses their fucking freedom!! Now THOSE are stakes. Replacing the ruler of a mean but small group of savages who annoyingly interrupt European trade routes with their piracy? I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about that.

Also, I didn’t like the recruiting of the replacement brother. Mainly because the CITY IS WHERE ALL THE FUN IS! Tripoli, with this barbaric insane leader who kills people for sport….THAT’S WHERE I WANT MY MOVIE TO BE. That’s where all the conflict is. When we’re in this city, we feel like Eaton could be skinned alive at any moment. When he’s off wandering around Egypt, we feel no danger for him whatsoever. Why not have Eaton stay in the city and plan his takeover there? I suppose the answer to this has something to do with that’s not how it happened in real life. So then maybe you focus the story on one of the other characters, possibly one of the Americans stuck in the city?

To be honest, this is why I get worried whenever I open a period piece. Many of them seem to be geared towards historical nerds who love the details yet aren’t that interested in telling a rip-roaring story, which I guess brings us back to Monday’s script review, Repent Harlequin. The details are definitely necessary to making a script great. But a script’s laurels can’t rest solely on historical details. It has to be based on some kind of unique entertaining hook, and I’m still struggling to figure out what the hook of Tripoli was.

So if William Monahan, one of the best writers in Hollywood, is struggling to make an historical epic work, then let that be a word to the wise for all you amateur writers out there thinking you’re going to break into the spec market with an historical/period piece yourself. It’s really damn hard!

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

What I learned: If you refuse to listen to me and still want to write your period piece, seriously consider starting your screenplay with an opening crawl that highlights the relevant details of the time. One of the reasons I had such a tough time getting into Tripoli was that I had no knowledge of this time period or this city. If there are some important details about why Tripoli is the way it is or what stage America is at right now, the reader needs to know (i.e. “In 1807, pirates out of Tripoli were wreaking havoc on the surrounding countries, severely crippling the most important trade routes in Western Europe, which in turn crippled America’s commerce…”). Set up for us why this story is relevant.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: (writers’ logline) A film producer known for remaking some of Hollywood’s biggest movies becomes the subject of a posthumous investigation by Entertainment Tonight.
About: Last week’s comments section for Amateur Friday was a disaster. I want to rebound here. Remember what Amateur Friday is about. It’s about identifying the problems in an amateur screenplay to help both yourself and the writer of the script get better. There’s a huge difference between constructive criticism and hurtful criticism. Let’s show some class and keep everything on the constructive side. —- Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted.
Writers: Josh Ames and Richard Karpala
Details: 102 pages

Ahhh Citizen Kane. A strange movie indeed. I’m one of those people who find the film fascinating, not so much because of the movie, but because of everything that happened around the movie. The egos involved. The history involved. The scandal. The David vs. Goliath aspect. With all those rich subplots, it really is the best story behind the making of a movie ever. And I can’t tell you how weird it was when I actually visited Hearst Castle and saw the real-life Xanadu for the first time. It made the whole thing even more real. Very trippy indeed.

So naturally, anything with Citizen Kane in the title and I’m going to be interested. And this one sounded good. The idea of trying to remake Citizen Kane is beyond ridiculous, and yet in this day and age, plausible. A comedy about that process could be gangbusters if done right.

Unfortunately, the movie I was expecting to read and the movie I actually read were not one and the same. Today’s writers take a more “meta” approach in their tackling of the subject matter. And the success of that decision will probably depend on the subjectivity of the reader. Let’s take a closer look.

The script starts off PERFECTLY. Charles Foster Kane – or a modern day version of him at least – stumbles into an expansive living room with bullet holes strewn everywhere, plants on fire, and a suffocating barrage of smoke. As sad opera music plays, and in ultra-slow motion, Kane pulls off a grenade pin. “Rosebud,” he says. And proceeds to blow his insides against the walls. Talk about updating a classic!

But whatever does “Rosebud” mean? I’ll tell you who wants to know. Entertainment Tonight. They assign our hero, Frank Tesh (yes, John Tesh’s brother) to find out as much as he can about Charles Foster Kane, so as to shed some light on why that word might have been his last.

He starts off by locating Kane’s infamous mistress, Susan Alexander, a MILFy cocaine-addict who still strips when they allow her to. Susan fills Tesh in on Kane’s early life, where he first discovered his love for movies. When he was old enough, he took a 25 grand loan from his uncle and proceeded to make “Heart Songs,” a touchy feely film that won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance (one of my favorite jokes in the script).

But Kane wasn’t satisfied with his success. What he really wanted to do was make remakes, regardless of how controversial they were. And his wish was granted. Producers everywhere allowed him to remake movies like Top Gun, Forrest Gump, and Back To The Future. Kane was on top of the world.

But that world came crashing down when his wife found out about his mistress, and pretty soon Kane was divorced, alone, and miserable. Even his most trusted confidant, Leland, sells him out by writing a scorching guest review of one of his movies on Ain’t It Cool News (another favorite moment). In the end, it all became too much for him, so he took his own life.

I’m not sure where to start here so I think I’ll begin with the degree of difficulty. This is something I bring up a lot and it’s definitely something every writer should be aware of. You need to know when you’re aiming too high. A lot of writers feel that the freedom of art should allow one to go anywhere they want and if it’s funny enough or clever enough, it will all simply work itself out. Unfortunately, that’s idealistic and unrealistic. The higher the degree of difficulty, the more likely it is that your story will fall on its ass.

Here, Josh and Richard are writing a highly broad comedic update of Citizen Kane while tackling a social commentary on the state of Hollywood remakes and sequels. Do you realize how pin-point accurate the tone has to be to pull that off? I don’t know if Aaron Sorkin could throw that together in his best year. I mean the humor here is really broad – almost Airplane 2: The Sequel broad.  You have an apparition of John Tesh appearing whenever our hero, Frank Tesh, does one of his interviews. And at the end of said interviews, Frank always ends up either having sex with or blowing whoever he interviewed. I’m not saying that a younger crowd wouldn’t find this hilarious, but that’s the problem. I don’t think a younger crowd gives a shit or has even seen Citizen Kane. So you’re trying to strike a tone that caters to the older educated cinephile and the goofy juvenile high school kid.  Is that even possible?  I don’t know, I guess I was hoping for something more clever, something that challenged me more.

Also, once the initial fun factor wears off, we realize that we’re basically following the exact same story format as Citizen Kane, but in broad comedy form. This puts us way ahead of the story and since there are no real stakes or consequences to anyone’s actions, we’re just hoping that each of the sequences is funny.

Strangely, this script brings to light some of the weaknesses in the original Citizen Kane, which are actually the same well-documented problems I have with all stories that exist in the bio-pic format. There’s nothing truly driving the story. The mystery behind “Rosebud” is a lazy attempt at creating a reason to look back into Charles Foster Kane’s life, made all the more clear when we find out the damn thing was in reference to a relatively insignificant sled. The thing with Citizen Kane though, was that it was such a rich and thorough examination of a man, that we didn’t care that such a thin objective was driving the story.

Citizen Kane: The Remake has replaced that richness with shenanigans – and many of them- which means, unfortunately, there isn’t a shred of story left to grab onto. In fact, the secret behind what Rosebud means (it’s a tube of lipstick Kane used to wear as a child) is given to us midway through the script, technically leaving no more reason for the story to continue. We know what it means. So why are we still following the guy who’s trying to find out what it means?

But the bigger issue here is the same problem I have with most of the comedies I read. Citizen Kane: The Remake is more about stringing together funny scenes than it is about telling a story. And when all you have to connect with your audience is laughs, they start tuning out on you around the half hour point (this was the exact moment, in fact, where I started pulling away from Citizen Kane: The Remake). This is why in the history of sitcoms, whenever they’ve tried to do an hour special, it’s never worked. Because after a half hour of jokes, the audience needs something more to keep them interested. They need characters to care about, relationships that need mending, a story to latch onto. There’s none of that on display here. It’s just cold hard comedy.  And as a result, I became more and more distanced from the material as it went on.

There’s a part of me that wishes Ames and Karpala would’ve taken a more traditional route here and followed a director who was trying to remake Citizen Kane. It wouldn’t have been as inventive or daring, but it would’ve been much more manageable. Watching a Michael Bay like idiot suggest to a producer who held Citizen Kane close to his heart how he wanted to stage that opening scene (with Kane dropping the grenade during a slow operatic score) would’ve been priceless. But I’ll give it to Josh and Richard for taking a chance. They went for something a little left of center. They just may have underestimated how difficult it was to pull off.

Script Link:  Citizen Kane: The Remake

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

What I learned: Beware of the 3 a.m. idea! These are ideas that make you laugh your ass off at 3 in the morning. But that does not mean they should be included in your screenplay. In fact, most of the time, they definitely shouldn’t be included in your screenplay. I mean, apparitions of John Tesh (who’s not dead so why would there be an apparition of him?) playing a piano in the corner of the room during all of Frank’s interviews? Sometimes you need to police yourselves. You need to say, “You know what? That’s too much. We need to dial it back.” There is a limit, even in broad comedy.