Genre: Sci-Fi/Comedy
Premise: An eccentric inventor invents a crude time travel device which allows him to send messages back to his earlier self. Although his intentions are initially noble, he soon begins to use the device for his own selfish needs.
About: Many of you might recognize this script from the first (or was it second) season of Project Greenlight, as it was one of the scripts that made it to the finals. It didn’t get the big prize, but landed a pretty sweet consolation: Ben Affleck optioned it. Speaking of Project Greenlight, I really miss that show. Still the best reality show ever put on air. The problem was how the show conflicted with the ultimate goal. They showed how terrible everyone was at their job, showed everyone screwing up the movie, then expected us to run to the theater and pay our hard earned money on opening night. Another thing I remember is that that show was supposed to be the Hollywood buster – proof that the guys in the Armani suits with their cushy studio offices didn’t know what they were talking about. Ouch. How did that work out? Anyway, Project Greenlight, and by association Hanz Gubenstein, disappeared into the ether after that. But I recently found the script, which means we can finally find out what got Affleck so excited (and so can you – a link for the script is at the bottom of the review).
Writer: Rick Carr
Details: 112 pages (maybe?)

There are times in the script reading process where you come across scripts that defy explanation. Not necessarily bad scripts. Just scripts that have you squinting your eyes, shaking your head, and unable to ditch the frozen “what the f*ck” expression plastered to your face. I want you to imagine the screenplay for Primer. Now I want you to cross it with Back To The Future 2. Now I want you to imagine some Groundhog Day thrown in for good measure. Combine those three movies and you have Hanz Gubenstein.

OH WAIT! I forgot to add one important detail. Imagine if this script were written by someone who had no idea how to write a movie.

Hanz Gubenstein is the epitome of the anti-structure. For those of you who have championed the downfall of the foundation-based screenplay, of the screenwriting gurus and the 3 day expos… For those who believe that a story is simply inherent, that you need only follow your passionate fingertips to a 100 page conclusion, well guess what, Hanz Gubenstein is your script.

To get you into the mindset of how freaky out-there this thing is, Hanz Gubenstein is not a main character in the movie. Nope. This is not that kind of film – where you place the character who’s in the middle of your title into the heart of your story. No no no. Not doing that here. Too obvious. This story belongs to Dr. Jeffrey Jeffries, who we’re told is the 4th inventor of time travel. Hanz Gubenstein was actually the first. And there were two other guys as well. Not that they play any part in the story. Why would they?

So our crazy inventor Jeffries invents a crude time machine, whereby you can send messages back to yourself from the future in order to give yourself guidance about said future. For example, you might send a message that says, “Hey, don’t go out with that girl you met today. She’s actually a man.”

Jeffries enlists his humble apprentice, Sid Hackenpfuss, to help him test the machine, and before you know it they’re receiving messages from their future selves. At first the messages are innocent and playful, but after awhile, the two start wondering how they can take advantage of this technology. If they won the lottery for instance, they could give the money back to charities and save the world. The two quasi-idiots decide that this is the best course of action so they send themselves back that day’s winning lottery numbers.

Previous Jeffries and Sid then win the lotto, but for some reason decide to have fun with the money instead of donate it to save others. I think you know where this is going. The next thing you know they’re playing other state lotteries and winning those as well. When that isn’t enough, they begin playing the stock market, sending themselves back tons of market data they then use to make hundreds of millions of dollars.

Eventually a federal agent named Agent Aghnet suspects that the two are up to something and starts following them. Jeffries becomes deathly concerned by the fact that the two aren’t receiving any messages past two days from now, which he assumes means that in two days, something terrible is going to happen to them. His “obvious” solution (of course) is to start doing the exact opposite of whatever he thinks he should do, so as to trick fate and avoid doom.

Doomsday arrives however, and Jeffries is killed by Aghnet just before he’s able to send a message back warning himself of Aghnet’s plan. But when Aghnet sees the message onscreen, he presses it out of curiosity (he still doesn’t know it’s a time machine) inadvertently warning Previous Jeffries of his death, and by association altering the time continuum. However, in the end, this only gets Jeffries, Sid, and Aghnet stuck in a never-ending time loop whereby Jeffries keeps trying to prevent his death and Aghnet keeps trying to ensure it.

And uhhh…that’s pretty much Hanz Gubenstein for you.

So last week I was listening to Creative Screenwriting’s podcast with Ben Affleck and he was asked about this screenplay. Affleck’s response was a strange one. In a very non-committal way he offered, “Oh yeah…(nervous laugh)…well, I guess nothing ever came of that.” Now even though Affleck didn’t actually say anything, his tone inferred everything I suspected. You read Hanz Gubenstein and you think, “There’s something here.” I mean there’s some really funky comedy revolving around the ridiculous characters and the insane amount of time folding back onto itself over and over again. The problem is, it’s so scattered, so all over the place, that the thought of trying to mold it into something comprehensible is too daunting. It’s like being given the pieces to the Golden Gate Bridge without a blueprint and told, “Now go figure this out.” Where the hell do you start?

Still, this is a great script to study for beginning screenwriters because it epitomizes what happens when there’s no structure at play – when you’re just following your whims and writing each scene as it comes to you. For example, there’s a twenty page scene in the first act – I kid you not – where Jeffries and Sid are in a room talking about time travel. They’re in a small room TALKING ABOUT TIME TRAVEL. For 20 minutes!!!

Within those 20 pages there is a 4 page long drawn out joke where Sid keeps trying to defer time travel credit to other people besides himself. A FOUR PAGE LONG JOKE!

Obviously, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. But all you need to do is look at some other successful screenplays to see where this one missteps. Take Hanz Gubenstein’s older more established rich uncle, Back To The Future, for instance. Look at how visual the scenes of Doc explaining time travel are. We have the Delorean. We have nuclear fuel. We have the flux capacitor. We have Einstein being used for a demonstration. We have invisible fire tracks shooting through our heroes’ legs. Now I want you to imagine all of those things disappearing and instead, Marty and Doc in a small room discussing it. That’s Hanz Gubenstein.

Repetition has been a big buzzword in my recent posts and the R-word rears its ugly head here as well. Not only are we stuck in a small room for 60% of the screenplay, but there’s no real evolution to the story. The two just keep trying to win the lottery over and over again! Eventually Aghnet shows up and throws a little wrench into the story but even *his* involvement becomes trivial and repetitive after awhile.

The truth is, ignoring good storytelling mechanics WILL hurt your story unless you know what you’re doing. For example, what the hell is Jeffries’ motivation for wanting all this money?? The only reason he seems to want it is to make more money. Yet we never know what he plans to use this money for. In fact, everything we’ve been told about Jeffries has indicated he *doesn’t* want money. So why is this story revolving around someone who’s desperately trying to make as much money as possible, even though they don’t want or plan to use it??

I could go on. There’s enough randomness here to start an entire new blog on, but using that alone to assess Hanz Gubenstein probably wouldn’t be fair. Ben Affleck’s optioning of the material reinforces a long standing  truth in the industry – that a unique voice will get noticed. It may not lead you from rags to riches, but it will help you stand out and get your shot. HOWEVER, it’s also a well-known truth that you need the chops to back that voice up. You need the voice AND the craft. You can’t have one without the other. And unfortunately for Jake, he hit with a script that showed unique talent, but with no ability to hone it.

Hanz Gubenstein just about made my head explode. And it does so many things wrong I can’t possibly recommend it. But I will say that it’s an interesting read, and that you probably haven’t read anything like it before. Check it out if you’re so inclined.

Script link: Does Anybody Here Remember When Hanz Gubenstein Invented Time Travel? (note: Scrib’d is a funky site that makes it hard to read this script. Good luck.)

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

What I learned: While just “letting the story take you where it wants to go” is a fun way to write a first draft, that draft will never be anywhere close to a finished product. At some point you’re going to have to sit down and do the real work – mapping out the structure, creating the story beats that keep the plot moving, building the character arcs – all those things that take the genius you discovered in your idea, and craft it into a fully fleshed-out story. Hanz Gubenstein has no structure, and that’s ultimately what dooms it.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Comedy
Premise: One of the top villains in the world is pushed out of the villain coalition when it’s suspected that he has too much compassion for others and might actually be – gasp – good.
About: Villain is one of the first two Amazon Screenwriting Contest $20,000 winners. The writer, Richard Stern, tried to push the script on Hollywood a couple of years ago and while he got a lot of reads around town, nothing came of it. There is apparently a lot of controversy surrounding this script in that it resembles some recent Hollywood release. I believe Megamind maybe? (not sure – I’ve never seen it). One thing I do know. I’m terrified of the comments section for this post.
Writer: Richard Stern
Details: 112 pages – 8th draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

The most e-mailed question I’ve received over the last couple of months has been, “Carson, what do you think of the Amazon Script Contest?” And my answer has always been…I don’t know. I knew I couldn’t give an opinion until reading that long list of rules on the site. And because the last thing I want to do is carve out an entire afternoon to read some rules, I’m still pretty ignorant about the whole thing.

I’ll admit that what I’ve heard isn’t good though. Something about anybody can change your script whenever they want to (sabotage anyone?). Something about they hold the rights to your script for a year. And I’ve even been told there’s a site dedicated solely to pointing out how bad most of the scripts are.

But if you’re going to tear the contest apart, you have to give it its due as well. The one thing Amazon does that none of these other contests do is it allows the readers to see what beat them. That’s a huge deal since it helps writers learn about their competition and the craft.

Of course all I care about for today’s purposes is if the script is any good. I don’t care if the fucking thing comes from Hickory Sam’s Smokestack Screenplay Contest where each script is battered and skewered on a frying pan before Cleevus the One-Eyed script reader reads it. If it’s a good script, it’s a good script.

So what’s the deal with Villain? Is it a good script?

Impossibly Handsome super-agent Drake Develin is finally proposing to divinely beautiful super-agent Alicia Cox. “Marry me,” he says. And she says yes. But before they can start making flower arrangements, a GIANT ROBOT crashes into their room, grabs Develin and SQUEEZES HIM TO DEATH. Agent Drake Develin is now Agent Drake Dead…lin.

Cut to Professor Mortimer Savage, criminal mastermind super-villain and the apparent orchestrator of this death. Together with his cloned robot-bodyguard-butler, Hugo, Savage is on top of the world. That is, until Savage realizes that by killing his arch-nemesis, he has no one to compete against anymore.

This hurls Savage into a mid-life crisis, punctuated by the Villain Coalition dropping him from the club for not being evil enough. He’s replaced by some new copycat robot-builder named Jackal, and before Savage knows it, he’s unofficially a “good guy,” teaming up with Develin’s old partner, Agent Fox, battling Savage’s network of evil villains.

Of course (spoiler), Savage eventually finds out that The Jackal is really – wait for it – Develin! Which means Develin is now a bad guy and Savage is now a…good guy. I think. Whatever the case, Savage will have to get in touch with his inner hero to finally take down Develin/Jackal and save the world! Or an island. Or something.

Okay, a couple of observations right off the bat. This is so not my thing. To be honest, this script was dead before it even reached my hands, because goofy super-hero humor is my reading kryptonite. I can’t appreciate it on any level. Maybe that’s why I have no idea if this is a Megamind clone or not, because I’ve never been interested in seeing that movie either.

Something else I realized right off the bat was that this wasn’t a good script for Amazon to pick as its winner. The problem is, Villain is one of those scripts that’s very easy to make fun of. The humor is so silly and the plot so ridiculous, that even though that tone is intentional, it creates a fertile ground for angry writers to tear it apart. Onscreen, a robot crashing through a hotel chasing our hero might be pretty awesome. On the page it’s, “This?? THIS BEAT MY SCRIPT?? THIS FUCKING STUPID SHIT!?!” One thing I’ve learned from reading scripts is that there’s no easier genre to tear apart than goofy comedy. In fact, there was a script that sold a couple of years ago for a million bucks with a very similar tone to Villain (Iron Jack – you can read the review here). I’d imagine that script would’ve received the exact same reaction had it won the Amazon competition.

But I *can* see why this won. Having run a couple of contests myself and talking to other contest runners, I know that out of every 1000 entries you get, you’re looking at about 10 decent scripts. And that’s just decent. While those scripts have some impressive component (great premise, great dialogue, unique approach) which helps them stand out, they’re usually plagued by sloppy uneven execution. It’s so rare that you find a contest script that’s consistent all the way through. And say what you will of Villain, but the script is consistent (yes, I’m not unaware of the obvious joke here).

As far as the screenplay itself, you can pick out a number of things that the writer did well. First of all, you have a high concept hook. A villain mastermind who’s hiding a big secret – that he’s good. That one decision puts you ahead of 70% of the competition, who don’t have any hook at all. You have some cleverness here (things like the bad guy ends up being the good guy and the good guy ends up being the bad guy). The dialogue is by no means exceptional, but it’s funny and clever most of the way through. The three act structure is executed to a “T.” The story moves at a very brisk pace. There’s barely if any fat here – a result of creating multiple ticking clocks throughout the script. And it’s a really easy read. I mean this script reads faster than a Japanese bullet train, a testament to the writer understanding the writer-reader relationship.

So whether you think this script is stupid or not, professional readers can easily identify that Stern understands how to tell a story in screenplay form and as much as I hate to say it, 80-90% of writers who enter a competition don’t know how to do that yet. Which is why this script rose above the rest fairly easily.

Now of course none of this matters to me, because I detest the subject matter. There were a lot of angry posters Saturday when I brought up the awesomeness of the Dead Island trailer – pissed that we were getting, yet again, another zombie flick clogging up our multiplexes. Well imagine that feeling times a hundred and you now know how I feel about super hero flicks, real ones or parodies. To me, this script is no different than The Incredibles, which was another well-put together story but did absolutely nothing for me.

And of course, as we discussed in the Chinatown review, I can’t give something a high grade if it does nothing for me emotionally. So despite the technical achievements of Villain and despite me understanding why it won, it was definitely not for me.

Script link: Villain 

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

What I learned: I have no idea why Villain didn’t find a home when it went out a couple of years ago, but one of my guesses is that it would be insanely expensive. You have giant robots chasing people through hotels. You have battles taking place on volcanic islands. It seemed like every other scene was a 30 million dollar set-piece. While I used to subscribe to the theory of “write what you want and let the producers figure out the budget,” I think in these times more than any, producers are counting money when they read your scripts. They’re thinking “How am I going to sell a 200 million dollar non-pre-existing property to a studio?” They know they can’t so they move on to the next script. So while I’m not going to lay down any hard and fast rules, writing a 250 million dollar film probably isn’t in your best interest.

Amateur Friday is back! I didn’t like the sound of last week’s “New Writer Friday” but I can’t think of anything better at the moment so back to Amateur Friday we go.  Who knows though?  Next week it could be something else. We’ll see. The drama continues! :)

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: A book appraiser working at an old farm mansion finds a diary that implies the family who used to live there 200 years ago may have come in contact with a crashed alien ship.
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: Glenn J. Devlin
Details: 114 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).

For long-time readers of the site, this premise probably sounds familiar. That’s because it was one of the 25 loglines to make the semi-finals of my “Script/Logline” contest a year ago. If you made the top 25, that meant I read your entire script, so I actually read an earlier draft of this already. While I remember it creating an eerie atmosphere, I also remember it becoming vaguely hokey in the second half when (spoiler) the alien arrives. I mentioned this to Glenn and I was curious to see what he did with the rewrite, as I absolutely love the idea.

Colin Brayton, late 40s, is a book appraiser. As you’d probably expect, Colin’s not exactly “making it rain” every night at the clubs. This guy’s idea of a raucous party is an original second print edition of Tom Sawyer.  In other words, Colin keeps to himself.

One day, an older man named Asher Bradford shows up at Colin’s shop and asks him if he’d like a job. The Dibble Estate, one of the oldest estates in Virginia, has thousands of books that need to be appraised, which Asher is willing to pay a hefty sum for. Of course, this means Colin will have to go out to the estate and live there for awhile, which is the last thing he wants to do, but in the end he knows the job is too good to pass up.

Once there, he meets the caretaker of the house, Madeline Prentice, an attractive woman in her 40s who has more rules than your average grade school gym teacher. Madeline does not like Colin being here and she lets him know it.

So Colin tries to stay out of her hair until he comes across an old diary amongst the books he’s appraising. Shockingly, it’s from a 15 year old girl named Kate who used to live here back in 1781! Her entries are rather mundane at first, but that changes quickly when she recalls a strange vessel flying across the sky and crashing onto the estate.

We then flash back to 1781 and meet our author, Kate, along with her parents and siblings. The script quickly settles into a rhythm of cutting back and forth between the past and the present, dictated by Colin’s need to find out what happened with this ship.

The gist of the story is that Kate and her family inspect the crashed craft and meet a surviving alien who they name Bronte. The family takes Bronte in, but learn that other aliens will be coming after him soon. This results in a tough decision. They either have to kick Bronte out or move far far away with him where they’ll never be found.

In the meantime, Colin is trying desperately to convince Madeline that all of this is true, while she, of course, thinks it’s hogwash. Colin goes out in search of the ship, as well as for other alien artifacts Kate speaks of, trying to find some evidence that this is more than a young girl’s imagination. During this time, the icy chill between he and Madeline begins to thaw, and they develop a friendship with one another, with the hint of something more. But before any of that can be resolved, Colin must find out the fate of Bronte and the family.

Okay, I’m going to do something I rarely do on this site. I’m going to admit that I don’t exactly know what’s wrong with The Alien Diaries. What I do know is that something *is* wrong. The script moves way too slowly and I’m not sure the most interesting version of the story is being explored. However, far be it from me to throw my hands in the air and give up. I’m going to give an analysis of this script whether it likes it or not.

So we actually have two storylines we’re dealing with here. The present storyline and the past storyline. Let’s start with the present. NOTHING IS GOING ON IN THE PRESENT STORYLINE. It’s just a man and a woman with some sexual chemistry observing an event that happened 220 years ago. There’s no problem they’re trying to solve. There’s no immediate issue they need to take care of. There are no stakes to whether they achieve their goal or not. And actually, there’s no goal to achieve in the first place. This makes the entire present storyline….I hate to say it but…pointless.

Whenever you have a script exploring two parallel plot threads, you want to make sure that each thread has something important going on in it. I know this is a completely different genre, but think of Apollo 13. In that movie, when Tom Hanks and crew are up in that ship trying to find a way to survive, are the guys down in Houston just standing around twiddling their thumbs? No! They have just as much to do, with almost as much at stake, as the guys up in the module have. They’re running simulations, slamming together breathing masks, running re-entry calculations. That they have so much to do in this movie is why the ground stuff is almost as exciting as the module stuff. Here, Colin and Madeline have nothing to do, so almost all of their scenes are boring.

Now, as far as the past scenes, those are a little more complicated, and this is where I’m not sure why things aren’t working. Theoretically, initiating an alien into a family should be interesting. I mean, they did it in E.T. right? And that movie was pretty good. But there’s something off about it here.

One issue is that just like the present day storyline, the majority of the 1781 storyline is absent of any problems. There’s no immediacy. That changes later when the other aliens arrive, but that’s really late in the script. Until that point, we’re just watching a family get acquainted with an alien. There’s no real conflict there. And maybe it’s because we’ve seen this play out before in movies like ET – but “just getting to know the alien” isn’t enough. There needs to be a problem, a danger, something to bring the story alive. Otherwise you have a present day storyline where nothing’s going on, cutting to a past storyline where very little is going on.  And that’s a whole lot of not going on.    

Another problem here is that our main character doesn’t have anything going on internally. This script is slow enough where it’s posing as a character piece, but there’s little to nothing going on inside any of the characters. What is it that Colin has to overcome? What is it in this specific journey that challenges his biggest flaw as a human being?

Or let me put it in simpler terms. You know there’s not enough going on with a character when you realize that no actor would want to play the role. Think about it. What challenge would an actor get from playing the role of Colin? All they’re doing is showing up on set and reading a book. If you want to get an A-list actor interested in one of your parts, you gotta work some complex UNSETTLED shit into the character that they need to work through during the course of the story.

So the combination of an uneventful present day storyline, a mostly uneventful past storyline, and a main character who’s got no inner demons or inner conflict to overcome…that’s a super deadly combination right there. That is something that’s going to be really tough to make entertaining.

The thing that’s eating at me is I love this idea. And I’m trying to figure out a story direction that would best take advantage of the premise. You know, one of the most important decisions any writer makes when he sits down to write a script is which direction he plans to take the story. And I don’t think this direction is the most interesting direction Glenn could’ve taken.

But this much I know. The script needs to start with a problem. Every script needs to start with a problem. If your hero doesn’t have a problem, you don’t have a story. And the first real problem that arrives in The Alien Diaries (the other aliens coming for Bronte) doesn’t arrive until, I believe, 70-80 pages into the script. And that’s just too late. Glenn needs to go back, identify a problem that BOTH sets of characters in his story have, and build a story from there.

Now I know I’ve been harsh but the potential of this idea is bringing out the passion in me. There’s some good stuff to build on in Alien Diaries. I liked the book appraiser stuff. I’ve never seen that explored in a movie before, and there’s something mystical about the profession that fits well with this idea. The foundation is also there for an interesting relationship between Colin and Madeline. Their conflict is a little too artificial so far (they hate each other for the sake of needing conflict in the relationship) but that’s how all these relationships start in early drafts. You just keep nuancing them with each successive draft until they begin to feel natural.  But yeah, the idea’s cool enough to keep plugging away at.

Anyway, I appreciate Glenn putting his baby up for some hard core analysis. Hopefully I’ve given him some new ideas for the next draft. :)

Script link: The Alien Diaries

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

What I learned: I think this is a classic case of leaning on your premise. That’s when you’ve got a great premise, and you just try to write enough stuff around it until you have a script. Instead, try to pretend like you don’t have that great hook. Try to make sure your characters are compelling enough that we’d want to watch them regardless of if they were in this story or not. Try to make everything AROUND the premise better than the premise itself, instead of just hoping that the premise is enough.

Genre: Crime/Noir
Premise: A private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles onto a larger conspiracy involving the Los Angeles water system.
About: Chinatown has been called one of the greatest films ever made. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards in 1974, winning for Best Original Screenplay. In 1971, producer and all around kook Robert Evans originally offered Robert Towne $175,000 to write a screenplay for The Great Gatsby. But Towne came back with a different idea, asking for $25,000 to write his own story, Chinatown. It was the first part of Towne’s planned trilogy about the character J.J. Gittes. The second part, The Two Jakes, was about another grab for a natural resource — oil — in the 1940s. It was directed by Jack Nicholson and released in 1990, but the film’s commercial and critical failure scuttled plans to make the third film. Evans intended for the screenplay to have a happy ending with Cross dying and Evelyn Mulwray surviving. Evans and Polanski argued over it, with Polanski insisting on a tragic end. The two parted ways due to the dispute and Polanski wrote the final scene just a few days before it was shot. The original script was over 180 pages long. Polanski eliminated Gittes’ voiceover narration (hey, see what happens when you get rid of voice over! An Oscar!), which was written in the script, and structured the movie so the audience discovered the clues at the same time Gittes did. (Wikipedia)
Writer: Robert Towne
Details: 123 pages

If you polled every established screenwriter in the business and asked them what the best screenplay ever written was, Chinatown would probably come out on top. The Robert Towne screenplay is considered to be the gold standard of screenwriting. So one day while drinking a glass of Cavasia and watching the tail end of the women’s professional bowling championships, it hit me like a sack of bricks: How come I haven’t reviewed the greatest screenplay ever written? It seemed like an odd oversight.

Now I have a confession to make. I’ve never been a huge fan of Chinatown. It’s not that I don’t like the film. I think it’s okay. I just never understood the immense love for it. I mean, let’s be honest for a minute. It’s a murder mystery about water corruption. Try pitching that at your next meet-and-greet. For that reason, I’ve never sat down and read the screenplay from cover to cover. But all that was about to change so I could answer the eternal question that has been burning in screenwriting circles for centuries: Is Chinatown really the best screenplay ever written?

I’m not going to summarize the whole plot because the movie is too well-known. But for you youngsters who don’t know what the acronym “VHS” stands for, I’ll give you a quick synopsis. Chinatown is about private investigator Jake Gittes, who begins investigating the murder of Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power back in the 1930s. It appears Mulwray was sniffing up the wrong tree in a larger conspiracy meant to protect the DWP’s interest in other parts of the water-starved city. Jake becomes chummy with Evelyn Mulwray, Hollis’ wife, who helps him piece together the mystery behind Hollis’ shocking death. But it soon becomes clear that Evelyn herself is hiding a dark secret, one that will help explain just how deep this conspiracy goes.

Okay so let’s get right to it then. Is Chinatown the best screenplay ever written? The answer to that question is no. Well, at least in my opinion the answer is no. I still think Back To The Future is the best screenplay ever written. But that’s a debate for another time. What surprised me, despite never holding this movie in high regard, was that once I stripped away all the images, once I forgot about the film and Jack Nicholson and just concentrated on the words, how good of a script it really was.

I’ll start with the first 15 pages. A big problem I have with most crime/murder mysteries is that they follow the same boring opening template:  “Dude gets murdered. Time to start looking for the killer.” A monkey could set up that scenario. Here, things are quite different. Mrs. Mulwray hires Gittes to see if her husband is cheating on her. He does a little investigating, finds out that he is. But after the investigation is over, a new woman walks through the door claiming *she* is Mrs. Mulwray. Which means the other woman was a fake.

Okay, when I say that professional writers make more original choices in their stories than amateurs, this is exactly what I mean. This is not a setup I’m used to seeing. Just like yesterday, in my review of Nautica, it passes my murder-mystery test of not just setting up the lazy question of “who killed the dead guy,” but poses a much more complicated series of questions, starting with, why the hell would a woman pretend to be someone else’s wife and hire a private investigator to follow her non-husband? It just doesn’t make sense. Interestingly enough, it isn’t until AFTER this scenario that the principal murder takes place, leaving us really confused about what the hell is going on. This multi-faceted setup is what hooks us. It’s different. It’s unique. We need to know what happened.

Another notable thing about the Chinatown script is its story density. One of the problems I had with Amateur Friday Randy Steinberg’s script (I love you Randy. Just using your script as an example!) was that there was no story density, no subplots, no character development, which led to a very “thin” feeling plot. Here, we have several intriguing threads going on at once. There’s the Hollis murder. There’s the city water conspiracy. There’s the mystery behind Evelyn. And then there’s the Ida Sessions stuff (the mysterious girl who first claimed to be Hollis’ wife). There were even a couple of smaller threads as well, making sure Chinatown always felt rich and complex. Of course, handled shoddily, these multiple threads could’ve led to the story feeling overplotted (read my Die Hard 2 review to see what I mean by “shoddy”), but everything’s been so well thought through here – each thread exists for such a specific purpose – that that’s never the case.

I also love how every key character in Chinatown has a real backstory, and that those backstories are multi-dimensional. Take Evelyn for example. She’s not simply the innocent wife. She’s been having affairs of her own, implying all sorts of things about her marriage. We never find out exactly what happened there, but we get enough of a whiff to imagine a rich full complicated history between the two.  If you can do that in your screenplay, you can make the audience believe that the characters they’re watching are real.  Because backstory implies a life before the movie existed, which tricks the brain into thinking the people they’re watching exist in real life.  Of course, if it’s some cliche generic backstory, we never get that sense, leading to the opposite effect – us not believing the characters are real.

I also thought the way Towne handled the backstories was great. When it came time to tell the story points that mattered, he went into great detail. But when it was time to get into backstory that didn’t necessarily affect the plot, Towne wisely showed restraint, something very few writers are able to do in the same circumstance. For instance, when it finally comes time for Gittes to dish about Chinatown, he doesn’t really tell us anything. He just implies how terrible it was. Such a nice change from the kind of thing I usually see (“Well, my partner and I were walking down an alley. And there was this 7 year old kid dealing drugs. I didn’t want to shoot him, but the gun went off accidently….”)

Chinatown is also a great example of how to construct conflict within the central relationship. With Gittes and Evelyn, there are actually two elements of conflict happening at all times. First, he doesn’t 100% trust her. So there’s always a restraint there, a cautious wall he puts up, which adds a nice subtext to their conversations. And also, there’s sexual tension between the two. Both characters are attracted to each other, which also plays into their dialogue, and nicely contrasts with the lack of trust. This is by no means a new device, but it works particularly well in this relationship for some reason.

As far as what’s not in this script, there’s no real ticking time bomb here, which I guess is not surprising since that was less of a concern back in the 70s. Everybody had all the time in the world so who cares if things get finished now or later? Now would it have helped Chinatown? I think yes, it would have. Not dramatically. But there were a few times in the script where we could’ve used some momentum. Also – and you’ll have to excuse me if this is a bigger deal in the movie because I’m just going off the script (it’s been ten years since I saw the film) – but there’s no true villain here. I mean, there are some smaller villains. And of course Cross is pretty bad. But here in the script he shows up late and the extent of his evil is only revealed in the final act. One of my big things is to try to get a great villain in your script. So it was interesting that Chinatown chose to cloak its villain for the majority of its story.

You know it’s funny. If this showed up on my desk for the first time today, I’d probably say, “Change the water conspiracy to something more interesting and get the opening act moving faster.” But otherwise, this script really is a master class in crafting a character-driven mystery. It’s not the greatest script ever written in my opinion, but I can’t fault others for believing it is.  It’s damn good writing.

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

What I learned: Restrained information. There are two instances where big parts of the characters’ pasts are set up, yet both times, very little or the barest amount of information is given. With Evelyn, it’s how she got pregnant. With Gittes, it’s Chinatown. Notice how Evelyn doesn’t go into extreme detail about the experience. “My mom died. He was angry. I was 15. I ran away.” It’s just quick flashes of information. And as I noted before, with Gittes, it’s not any specific thing that happened in Chinatown. It’s more the character’s reaction to the memory than the memory itself. These moments always tend to work better with restraint, and Chinatown is proof of that. Less is more people. Less is more.

Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Premise: An investigator tries to solve a murder case on a ship that involves a handyman, a young stock broker and the stock broker’s girlfriend.
About: Nautica was originally written and sold back in 2001 and was going to be directed by Tarsem Singh. As so often is the case in Hollywood though, things fell apart and the project was quickly forgotten. More recently, however, Summit picked up the pieces and is repackaging the Dead Calm like thriller with a new untainted title – Riptide. Brad Pitt and Shia Labeouf are rumored as possible co-stars. This is the original 2001 script.
Writer: Richard McBrien
Details: 117 pages – 2001 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).

How the hell this thing has been lingering in obscurity for ten years is beyond me. This is a really fucking good script. It’s not like G.J. Pruss’ Passengers, which hasn’t been made because the script’s appeal doesn’t translate to screen. Or Dogs of Babel, which is an amazing script but tough to market.

It basically has all the ingredients to be made into a movie. It’s got three great characters. It’s got thrills. It’s got mystery. It has gob-stopping suspense. And best of all, it’s told in a slightly unique way, giving it that “something different” factor. Jesus, all you’d have to do is sign Justin Bieber up for a cameo and this movie would print money.

The story goes a little something like this. Investigator Geoff Anderson shows up on a small island in the Pacific to arrest island hopper and all around drifter Max Shilton. Max has been found clinging to life in a yacht belonging to Frank Cotter, a successful stock broker.

500 miles away, Frank Cotter’s body has been found discarded in the ocean, and the barely identifiable sack of bloated pus shows signs of struggle consistent with murder. Anderson believes Max killed Frank for his boat and his money. But he’s about to find out there’s a lot more to this story.

A flashback begins, where Max explains he was a penniless handyman stuck on an island. Out of nowhere, Frank, an old acquaintance of his from high school, shows up on the island in a multi-million dollar yacht and a beautiful woman by his side, Kathy. The two get to talking, and when Frank learns there may be bad storms ahead, he hires Max as a navigator.

Within hours, Max and Kathy begin flirting. There’s clearly a strong sexual attraction here, and the two are stealing passionate kisses whenever the opportunity arises. When Frank starts to sense it, however, tension mounts. In a vulnerable moment, Frank pushes Max off the boat. Max is able to bring Frank down with him and a struggle ensues, climaxing in a life-struggling kick to Frank’s face which accidentally kills him. That, according to Max, is what really happened. It was all just an accident.

Anderson’s not buying it. Luckily, he also has Kathy in custody. So he goes to get her side of the story. Surprisingly, she defends Max. It’s true, she says, that he didn’t kill Frank. But Max also left out some key details. There’s much more to this story.

Kathy and Frank used to live in New York, with Frank being a successful foreign exchange trader. However, Frank was secretly skimming money off the top. When some investors found out, they stormed the offices and killed a couple of his co-workers. Frank was able to escape with 15 million bucks, but had nowhere to hide. So he and Kathy bought a boat and headed out to the middle of the Pacific, where they could never be found.

When Frank spotted Max, the old friend he grew up with, he feared that word would get out where he was hiding. Which is, of course, why he hired Max as a navigator, so he could kill him.

Naturally, this is just the beginning. Each time we go back, more and more details are revealed, molding and shaping our story into something increasingly elaborate. Suffice it to say, you’ll be guessing what happened all the way up to the end.

Nautica is a great little script for a lot of reasons, and it starts with the mystery at hand. Of all the things that drive an audience’s interest in a story, a good mystery is near the top of the list. Think about Monday’s script, Red Harvest. The mystery (who killed Willsson) started us off, and wasn’t bad, but it was solved quickly. So what’s left? Nothing. Kill the mystery, kill the interest.

Now there have been thousands of movies and TV shows that have started off with a murder. So what makes Nautica different? Simple. The mystery inspires multiple questions. First, our “killer” is clinging to life on this boat when we find him. Why? Second, the owner’s body was found 500 miles away. Why? Third, the wife of the murder victim is siding with the supposed killer instead of her husband. Why? Our brain is bouncing around like a room full of ping pong balls on mouse traps trying to link these events together. From the very first page, we’re actively engaged, which is what every writer in the world is trying to accomplish.

Here’s the thing about Nautica though. It’s a pretty messy narrative. We’re jumping back from past to present, present to past, different points of view, piecing together the story. I’d be hard pressed to identify a three act structure here. And as someone who believes strongly in the three act structure, I had to sit back and ask, “Okay, why is this still working then?”

And I remembered that if the central element that’s driving your story is strong enough, the structure isn’t as important. In this case, the mystery of what happened is so powerful that the usual story beats an audience craves aren’t necessary. It’s a distraction thing. We’re so distracted by the mystery that we’re not focusing on the nontraditional way the story’s being told.

Now I’m by no means advocating a free-for-all when it comes to structure. Only that it’s possible to have a messy structure if your script is focused in other ways (in this case, with the mystery). Here’s the thing though. The lack of structure does eventually come back to bite this script in the butt. There’s a portion of the story between pages 60 and 90 where the lack of focus results in a series of scenes that feel redundant and or unnecessary. This kind of thing happens when the structure isn’t in place because structure is what dictates the scenes you’re going to write next. Without it, you’re like a ship lost at sea. You think you’re going the right way – and maybe you are – but it’s taking you longer to get there than you’d like. It’s why this script is 117 pages – when a thriller with three characters probably shouldn’t run over 100.

My only other beef with Nautica is the ending, and I’m going to allude to but not give away a spoiler here, so turn away if you don’t want to know. A good twist ending should jolt you, make you think for a few seconds, then have the “Ohhhh” moment. The Sixth Sense is the perfect example. It confuses you for a brief second, but then you’re like, “Ohhhhh.” I think Nautica’s twist ending works, but you have to think about it and work things out in your head a little too extensively before the “Ohhhhhh” comes. And it’s not a very long “Ohhhhh.” It’s more like, “Oh yeah, that works,” which isn’t as satisfying.

Still, I loved this script. I know a script is working when I keep getting duped and immediately afterwards think, “How the hell did I just get duped by that?” Nautica has a lot of those moments. I thought long and hard about whether to give this a double worth-the-read or an impressive. I really am stuck in the middle. But in the end, the question is, “Did this script entertain me all the way through?” And the answer is yes. So impressive it is.

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

What I learned: A good murder mystery starts off with a murder that has the reader asking multiple questions, not a single question. A single question is good enough for a weekly cop show (“Who killed this guy?”). But a film should have your mind racing on several fronts. If you look at movies like Seven for instance, when they come across that first body, it isn’t as simple as, “Who killed this guy?” It’s “What the hell happened here?” There’s a bigger picture involved. And it’s our need to figure out that big picture that makes us want to keep reading.

NOTE: I notice people are discussing spoilers in the comments. This is one of those scripts where even the mention of similar movies hints at what the spoilers are, so please note all spoilers, and readers please traverse the comments at your own risk!