Can an actor jump into the screenwriting world without a hitch? Past experience tells me no. But today’s actor may break the mold.

Genre: Crime
Premise: Two brothers go on a bank-robbing spree in rural Texas with a determined near-retired Texas Ranger on their tail.
About: This script sold just a few weeks ago! The writer, Taylor Sheridan, is actually best known for a recurring role on the TV show, Sons Of Anarchy.
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Details: 113 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).

Have to admit, didn’t know much about this one going in other than that it sold. Oh, and that the writer was an actor. So that made it interesting. Always curious to see if the front-of-the-camera guys can hack it behind the camera. Or hack it before the camera even starts rolling. Can’t be an easy transition having assistants waiting on you hand and foot one day, then being kicked by those very same feet the next.

In fact, I have a writer friend who’s writing a project for someone right now and nobody cares what he says. They’re just changing everything. And I’m listening to these changes thinking, “They can’t be serious. They’re destroying the most BASIC things that make the screenplay work.” I mean, you’d think that common sense would take over at some point. And this is a known respected filmmaker he’s working for! Yet they’re just butchering the script. So sad.

The questionably titled “Comancheria” follows two brothers, Tanner and Toby, as they make rural Texas their bank-robbing playground. Toby is the sensible brother. He’s clean cut and focused and doesn’t take chances. Tanner, on the other hand, is a loose cannon if there ever was one. These brothers haven’t spent a lot of time together lately. Tanner’s been stuck in jail and Toby’s been taking care of their dying mother, whom neither of the brothers liked much.

Needless to say, the two have very different reasons for robbing these banks. Tanner just wants some easy money. Well, that and the thrill of the game. But for Toby, this is much more personal. His wife left him a long time ago and for that reason, he has to watch his kids grow up from afar. And since every person in the history of his family has been poor, he wants to break that chain and make sure his kids have the kind of money where they’ll never have to worry again.

So after they rob a few banks, 70 year old Marcus Hamilton, a Texas Ranger about to become a Texas retiree, is called in to take a look at the robberies and see if he can’t figure out how to stop these guys. The thing with the brothers is that they’re robbing these tiny little banks out in the middle of nowhere and only taking the drawer money, which can’t be tracked.

It sure takes a lot longer than robbing a single bank vault but it’s damn effective as it’s almost impossible to get caught. But as most bank robbing sprees go, at some point something goes drastically wrong or the bank robbers get greedy. With time running out on when they need the money, Tanner gets greedy, and it’ll end up costing the brothers, potentially with their lives.

The thing that stuck out to me most about this story was how simple it was. We had two brothers with a clear goal – to rob a series of banks. We also had two “villains,” Marcus and his partner, with a clear goal, to capture the brothers.

The key to making a narrative like this work is to make sure that your hero’s goal is strong. Sheridan did a great job establishing how important stealing this money was for Toby. Everything he was doing was for his kids, who he had a very complicated but loving relationship with. As long as you establish that your hero desperately wants to achieve his goal, then by association, we’ll want him to achieve it as well.

The strength of a goal is determined mostly by motivation, and how well you establish that motivation. What that means is digging into your character and getting to know him and getting to know why he wants to do what he wants to do. Sheridan spends a lot of time in the conversations between Tanner and Toby discussing Toby’s kids, the way they’ve pulled away from him, the way his ex-wife has facilitated that divide. This is a man with nothing in this world other than his children, and even though he doesn’t know them that well, he loves them to the point where he’d do anything for them. The specificity of this relationship is what makes us believe that it’s real and go along with it. In other words, it’s not just slapped in there by a lazy phone call at the beginning of the movie from his son saying something like, “I miss you dad,” and the dad replying, “I miss you too, son.” Believe me, I see that kind of cheap tactic ALLL the time.

Another thing that stuck out to me here was the dialogue. Boring dialogue is usually normal dialogue. Characters speak in a very plain obvious way. They use very plain obvious sentences. Good writers find ways to play with the sentences, to give them a slightly different feel so they pop off the page. But it’s a tough skill to learn because you have to do it without it FEELING like you’re doing it. So these heightened lines must sound as relaxed and normal as everyday conversation. Lots of writers have trouble with that. But Sheridan nails it. Let’s look at quick exchange in the middle of the movie. Ranger Marcus is asking an old man at a diner if he saw anything during the robbery.

MARCUS
Ya’ll been here for a while?

OLD TIMER
Long enough to watch someone rob the bank that’s been robbing me for thirty years.

Perfect example. I can think of a million boring versions of this line that average writers would’ve written. “Not long, nope.” “I suppose so.” “I wasn’t keeping track.” I could go on. There’s nothing wrong with these answers. But they’re average. They’re not memorable. They don’t pop. Why go average when you can go heightened?

MARCUS
You say you saw them?

OLD TIMER
Saw the guy running from the bank.

MARCUS
What’d he look like?

OLD TIMER
Had a mask on. But he ran pretty good, so I’d gather he’s youngish.

MARCUS
That so … What’s youngish in your book?

OLD TIMER
Younger’n you and me, but older than all these little girls running around here pouring tea.


We have another interesting answer here. He could have easily given an age. He could’ve said “25.” And again, that would’ve been fine. But when you’re writing scripts, and especially when you’re writing dialogue, you’re trying to elevate the reality of the world you’re portraying. This answer is brilliant. It answers his question but in an unexpected interesting way.

The only reason this script didn’t rate higher for me was because it’s not the typical kind of movie I like. With that said, I don’t think anybody could’ve executed this story as well as Sheridan did. I mean the writing is top notch. The dialogue is top notch. The character development is waaaay beyond what I’m used to in a screenplay. If I was into this kind of movie, Comancheira would get an impressive. As it stands, ‘double worth the read’ will have to do. Oh, and one last piece of advice to Mr. Sheridan – GET RID OF THIS TITLE. It screams “Don’t watch me.”

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Be careful about mimicking real-life dialogue. There’s a certain rhythm to real life conversation that’s important to capture, but as far as the vocabulary and the flavor, real life conversation is pretty dull. When you’re writing dialogue for a movie, you’d like for it to be slightly heightened. Not overtly so. But it should definitely have more pop. “No thanks” might become, “Not for me, compadre.” “What are you up to?” might become “What the hell happened to you?” Now all of this is dependent on the character delivering the dialogue (i.e. an average Joe will speak in an average way) and the story you’re telling (comedy dialogue will be more flavorful than drama dialogue), but in general, avoid stale dialogue by looking to invisibly heighten it. Don’t be afraid to add a little flavor.

Today’s screenplay proves you can only hide for so long before something comes for you and makes you do something you don’t want to do…

Genre: Contained Horror
Premise: A family lives in a nuclear fallout shelter, hiding from a deadly race of mutated humans known only as, the breathers.
About: This is a script that’s been getting a lot of heat lately. Lots of people I talk to really love it. Hence, I had to read.
Writers: The Duffer Brothers
Details: 105 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).

There is one type of script that is absolutely perfect for the spec market – this one. If you come up with a contained horror scenario that’s intense, that has immediacy, and that’s a little bit different from what’s come in the past, somebody will buy it. Shit, I’LL buy it. You can make these movies for a cheap price AND they’re easy to market. So they’re always going to be in high demand.

But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. You have to find that fresh angle. Hidden is by no means original, but it has just enough new that it doesn’t feel like yet another contained thriller clone.

For example, almost all scripts with people hiding from an unseen danger put several strangers together. It’s a smart way to go because you can create a mysterious backstory behind each character (that can be revealed over the course of the script) and the potential is high for conflict since you have a bunch of different personalities.

But Hidden took the unique approach of sticking us with a family. You definitely lost some potential conflict with the choice, but what you gain is an overwhelming sense of love between the characters and an “us against them” mentality. This created a strong bond between us and the characters, which meant we were rooting for them from Page 1.

And remember that when you have the audience rooting for your characters, you can pretty much get away with anything. You can even ignore some of the things I preach all the time because if we’re desperately rooting for the characters, the structure isn’t as important. We just want to see the characters win, regardless of the mechanics beneath them. The closeness of this family really helped in that sense. I read on because I wanted to see them survive.

Speaking of the family, it includes Claire and Ray Hewitt, former middle-class suburban parents, and their seven-year-old daughter, Zoe. They’re down in this shelter because a year ago, on an ordinary Sunday, a mass hysteria rose up when a unique virus started infecting everyone. The virus turned ordinary people into dangerous and uncontrollable beasts.

The Hewitt family tried to get away like everybody else, but when the military started attacking civilians, they fled into the woods and found this hidden shelter. They’ve been here ever since, hiding. And it’s gone pretty well. Except they’re finally running out of rations and will need to find food somewhere else – not an easy task since going to the surface is the equivalent of suicide.

But hunger is just one of many invisible clocks ticking down for this family. And those clocks start ticking a lot faster when an accidental fire sends smoke out the ventilation shaft up into the forest. It’s only a matter of time, now, before the breathers spot the smoke and seek out its origin. When that happens, it’s doubtful our family will be able to remain…hidden.

Lots to like about this one! The writing itself was top-notch. The brothers have an amazing ability to keep descriptions sparse, so that the script moves along quickly, yet still pack interesting shit into their action, so that the info both moves the story forward and paints a powerful picture of the situation.

I read lots of scripts from writers who hear their writing needs to be sparse, but they take it to the extreme. The writing ends up containing so little meat, so little detail or depth of information, that it’s as if the words disappear somewhere between the page and your eyes.

I loved how the brothers would take time, for example, to explain how a rat was able to get into their food supply and chew through the cans, cutting their survival time in half. It’s stuff like this that paints a detailed picture of their predicament – that shows the unique things a family in this type of situation would have to go through. There’s meat here. There’s specificity.

But the real power of the script came in the writers’ ability to tell a story. Again, so many new writers focus on how to string words together. And it’s not that that isn’t important. It is. But it’s not nearly as important as telling the story and keeping the reader interested.

Right away, we hear about these “breathers.” The way the family talks about them, you’d think that the devil himself was hunting them. And yet we don’t know what they are yet because the writers have chosen to make them a mystery. Well guess what? That mystery is a storytelling device to keep us, the reader, interested. We will keep reading until we see these breathers for ourselves.

Then there was the smoke that went up through the ventilation shaft. We knew that the breathers might see this and possibly find them. So from the moment that smoke went out, we’re in a deep state of anticipation as we hope against all hope that they’re not going to show up. That’s storytelling. You manipulate the plot in such a way where the reader *has* to read on because they *have* to find out what happens next.

And then there were, of course, the set pieces of the script. For a movie this small in scope, the set pieces are incredibly well-crafted. What I loved about the brothers was that they knew when they had a high-impact scene, and they milked the hell out of it.

Too many writers extend scenes that have no business being extended. You only want to milk scenes if the set-up is big, the stakes are high, and the situation is compelling. There’s a scene, for example, where the escaped smoke has caused the leaves hiding their doorway to blacken with soot. This means that the parents have to go topside to replace them with fresh leaves in order to stay hidden. So they do, leaving Zoe alone in the shelter.

This is the exact kind of scene you want to milk. You’ve set up a dangerous situation. The stakes are through the roof (literally). You’ve left your youngest character alone. Go to town with this scene. Zoe watches them, for example, from the underground “periscope,” and thinks she sees breathers running towards them. She has to warn them, but has no way to. We cut back and forth between the breathers getting closer and Zoe trying to open a hatch she’s not strong enough to open. The brothers milk every second of this scene, and appropriately so, as it’s the perfect kind of scene you want to milk.

What’s really impressive is they have about five of these sequences throughout the script, all about 10 pages long, all of which move like the Chicago wind. Truthfully, I was shocked at how quickly the brothers were able to make such a tiny movie move so fast.

For me, this was a guaranteed impressive through the first two acts. However, while I liked the twist ending, I’d heard there was a twist ahead of time, so I was anticipating something a little flashier. Unfortunately, while the twist did its job, it didn’t quite live up to the expectation in my head. Don’t get me wrong. It was cool. It just wasn’t “fall out of your seat” cool.

So even though that brought it down a notch, this is one of the better horror scripts I’ve read in a while. It’s a little different. The characters are compelling. The writing is great. You just don’t see all of those things in a horror script these days. For that, I commend these guys. A job well done!

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Show and Tell. Any good screenwriter will tell you to SHOW things, not TELL things. But there’s actually a way to show while telling, and I call it the “Show and Tell.” Here, on page 10, the brothers want to establish how many days the family has been down here. So they highlight hundreds of marks on the wall (this is them showing). Zoe then asks how many days they’ve been down here. Claire answers, “Count for yourself.” Zoe counts, and tells us the number (301). So technically, since there’s a discussion about the days, we’re telling. But the conversation is motivated by a ‘showing,’ the walls. So it’s a combination of the two. Which is way better than someone going, “Man, if we hadn’t been down here for 300 long days already…” which, believe it or not, is the kind of clunky exposition I read all the time.

For all you child prodigies out there desperate for a movie that conveys your pain, I’ve found just the screenplay for you!

Genre: Drama
Premise: A child prodigy goes to extreme lengths to save his parents’ troubled marriage, which has imploded because of him.
About: This is written by Ed Solomon, who wrote the first Men In Black, and also one of the more underrated screenplays of last year, “Now You See Me.” Really liked that one! His latest finished in the middle of last year’s Black List.
Writer: Ed Solomon (based on the film “Vitus”)
Details: 117 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 love me some child prodigy scripts! Bobby Fischer is one of the best first halves of a movie that eventually turned sucky I’ve ever seen. Right up there with The Beach.

I can’t tell you what our fascination with child prodigies is but there’s something strangely appealing about them. Or maybe “appealing” isn’t the right word. Fascinating? Spooky? Unsettling? I mean they’re basically little mini-adults. And that’s just…weird. Yet I can’t look away!

“Disappear’s” Bobby Fischer is 6 year old Adam. Adam can pick a piano apart faster than a NASCAR pit crew. As the author points out, watching Adam play the piano isn’t just amazing because he’s six years old. It’s amazing because it’s amazing. Adam has this innate ability to learn any song – even ones he’s never heard before – within seconds. Not only that, he can play one song with one hand and another song with another hand. Oh, and just a reminder. He’s 6!

Naturally, parents Tom and Debbie are proud of their son but at the same time, being parents of a prodigy isn’t easy. It’s not easy being the second smartest guy in the room whenever your six year old is around. Tom must deal with that every day. And while Adam is the best piano player in the country, Debbie struggles just to land a seat on the local symphony.

Another thing that comes with the child prodigy territory is the responsibility of cultivating your child’s insane talent. You have to give your son the best teachers in the country. You have to give him the best tools available. You don’t want to be the parents who squandered a rare once-in-a-generation skillset.

But it’s this very obsession that takes a toll on Debbie and Tom. Debbie has to give up her dream of being a cellist in order to carpool Adam around. The strain also contributes to Tom getting fired, forcing the family to scrape by on what the English call, “a pittance.” Their world soon revolves completely around Adam. And it’s killing them, because in the process, they’re forgetting who they are.

And it’s not like Adam doesn’t notice. He understands the pressure as well. And to deal with it, he obsesses over the only thing that gives him comfort – bats. Yeah, I know, a little weird. Most of us obsess over normal things like love and Star Wars action figures. But when you’re a freakish genius mini-adult, you don’t exactly have normal obsessions. So Adam finally gets to the end of his rope, creates a bat costume, goes up to the top of his roof, and jumps off it.

Adam may be smart when it comes to Chopsticks, but he obviously knows very little about Isaac Newton. He lands on his head, giving him a severe concussion. And the next thing you know, Adam is “normal.” He can no longer ace the impossible tests. He can no longer play the piano like Mozart. He’s just like every other kid.

His parents freak out. The thing that’s made them celebrities has vaporized in a big puff of smoke. When your special son is no longer special, who are you? But once Adam starts doing “normal” things and acting like a “normal” little boy, his parents realize they can go on living normal lives, becoming a normal family. In the strangest way, the loss of Adam’s gift ends up saving them. However, there’s one last piece of the puzzle that will throw a wrench into everything – a secret that threatens to turn all the events that have transpired upside-down.

“Disappear” starts off in a unique way. We get thrust into the everyday happenings of this young prodigy family without a warm-up. So much for first acts. It’s just – BAM! – we’re in there watching a genius kid. It was a unique approach, but it did have an effect on the rhythm and structure of the screenplay. It felt like we’d been plopped down into the beginning of the second act. And when you start there, where do you go?

Usually, when you write a screenplay, you have an “inciting incident.” It’s the moment responsible for sending your character on his journey. In Juno, for example, it’s when Juno finds out she’s pregnant. She can’t turn back after that. So her journey begins. It’s a rhythm and structure thing we’re used to. So it’s what we expect when we go to a movie.

We understand after Luke’s Aunt and Uncle die, for example, that he must now help Obi-Wan deliver this message. We understand after Juno gets pregnant that she has to decide what to do with the baby. These incidents “incite” our characters (and at the same time us!) into the central plot of the story.

I didn’t see that here. We’re thrown into the mix of a child prodigy who’s already a child prodigy. There’s no “inciting incident” where we find out, for example, that he’s special. For that reason, it took a lot longer to figure out what the story was about. And I’m not saying this is “wrong.” There’s no such thing as “wrong” when you’re writing. I’m just saying it was a risky choice, one I’m not sure paid off.

But what really pushed me away from this story was Adam. Your hero does not need to be likable. But he does need to have something that makes you want to follow him around for two hours. Adam was petulant, cruel, selfish, disrespectful, annoying, and just an overall asshole. He was one of the most unsympathetic heroes I’ve ever encountered. He did have some interesting things to say about bats, but other than that, he seemed to think he was better than everyone else. I was so alienated by this character that I couldn’t give myself in to the story no matter how hard I tried.

Another interesting choice Solomon made was the inclusion of a love story with the babysitter. Adam has a 13-year-old babysitter when he’s six who decides to break out a bottle of champagne and her and Adam get drunk and she basically tells him they’re going to get married when they’re older. Without going into the oddness of this scene (getting drunk with a 6 year old??), I was miffed that this tiny moment would then become a major subplot.

When Adam reaches 13, he starts pursuing the babysitter. Like, a lot. And it was confusing. I wasn’t sure what pursuing an old flame had to do with the burden of being a genius and ruining your family. It just felt like a totally isolated storyline that never fit.

I like the way Solomon was thinking. You want to give your character a goal – something that keeps him active. Pursuing a girl achieves that. But thematically and story-wise, it didn’t feel right. And so it left me scratching my head.

It’s probably a surprise, then, when I say my favorite character in the script was Jeannie – the babysitter! While I may not have agreed with her storyline, she was beautifully written. She had personality and chutzpah and life. Here dialogue was top-notch, representative of her type (overly positive, quirky) yet never over-the-top, never written to draw attention to itself. It was almost like Solomon was so burdened by the drama he had to explore in Adam’s family, that he needed an outlet. And Jeannie became that outlet. If only her presence was more natural in the story, it would’ve been perfect.

This script is nicely written, but the wavy slow-starting narrative and a main character who was almost impossible to root for doomed it for me. :(

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: “Out on an island” subplots. Be careful of subplots that feel like they’re out on their own island – far away from the rest of the story. In other words, you can’t just add a random subplot to fill up screenplay space. It has to tie in closely with the rest of the story, feel like it’s part of the whole. This Jeannie storyline – to me – felt like it was out on an island. If you erased it, very little about the story would change (almost always a bad sign). Every once in awhile, if the writer is skilled and the “Island subplot” is fascinating, it can work. But I’d avoid it if at all possible.

Waiting for Roger to send me this review was like watching paint dry.  The great thing about me, though, is that I don’t wait for paint to dry before painting again. So I was about to start writing a pretend review for a phantom script titled, “Oxley’s Mittens.”  It was going to be about this guy named Oxley who inadvertently purchased some magic mittens that allowed him to control the weather.  He then uses them to thrust Los Angeles into a deep set winter, effectively bringing the town, and the movie business, to a standstill.  Well, I’m glad Roger’s e-mail finally showed up then.  Cause I did not know what happened after the midpoint in Oxley’s Mittens.  Feel free to tell me in the comments section though.  Maybe we can all write a screenplay together!  In the meantime, here’s Diablo Cody’s directing debut. 

Today’s Black List screenplay explores two people falling in love, with one huge problem standing in the way.

Genre: Romantic Dramedy (is that a genre?)
Premise: An alcoholic falls in love with a woman who doesn’t drink. As their relationship intensifies, he must work harder and harder to keep his secret from her.
About: Finished in the middle of last year’s Black List.
Writer: Brandon and Phillip Murphy
Details: Sep 29, 2010 – 111 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).

One of the stranger things about last year’s Black List was that there was not one but TWO scripts about alcoholics. But that’s not the freakiest part. They were both placed RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER on the list. Dew-dew-dew-dew Dew-dew-dew-dew (Twilight Zone score). Is that not bizarre or WHAT??

Okay, it’s not that bizarre at all but just go with it. It’s hard coming up with new angles for every review. Alcoholic cloning cousin scripts felt fresh when I thought of it.

So The Last Drop’s principle cast member is a guy named Clay, a good-looking dude in his 30s. Quite charming. Funny. Can have you laughing for 5 straight hours on the phone if need be. Not only that, but he’s fearless. He can walk up to any woman in a bar and have an 80% conversion rate. But that’s part of the problem. Clay spends nearly every free moment of his life IN bars.

In fact, he works at The New Yorker, one of the most prestigious magazines in the country, and rarely shows up for work. The thing is, he’s such an awesome writer that they let him slide. In fact, they kind of know he’s an alcoholic. But as long as he delivers the goods, they don’t care.

So one day, while casually slurping down a drink that’s probably straight alcohol, he notices a beautiful woman sitting alone at a table. This is the kind of girl that makes a boy forget about all the other girls out there. There’s something behind those eyes that he has to know everything about.

So he downs his drink and approaches this girl we’ll come to know as Holly. Just by the way they’re looking at each other, we know they’ve already fallen. They may not have said it yet, but we know. When love grabs hold of you, it beams off of every skin cell on your body.

Before Clay can reach the second act of his play though, Holly’s lunch date shows up – her father. Talk about the mother of all cockblocks! Luckily, Holly slips him her card before he goes. He’s got her number. SWEEEEET!

Clay celebrates, of course, by getting unabashedly wasted. But as all of us guys know, getting wasted with a new girl’s phone number is a cocktail recipe for disaster. That night, Clay calls and leaves Holly FOURTEEN DRUNK-DIAL VOICEMAILS. I don’t care how much a girl liked your first meeting. 14 drunk-dial voicemails puts you squarely in the category of PSYCHO. Poor Clay realizes that he blew his shot. Ain’t no coming back from that one.

Or is there? When you’re in love, you don’t give up. Even when the odds aren’t in your favor. It turns out Holly runs a bakery – something he finds via a little stalking. Never underestimate a person with too much time on their hands and Google. So Clay decides to write a glowing review of her place in the New Yorker, and it turns her languishing business into the star of New York City. After that, Holly has no choice but to give Clay a second chance.

The two start hanging out, and it’s then when Clay realizes Holly doesn’t drink. And since Clay doesn’t NOT drink, every time they’re together, Clay has to sneak into the bathroom or some other private location to get WASTED. It’s sad but it’s the only way he can operate.

At a certain point, however, Holly begins to suspect something’s up. Clay isn’t always acting…balanced. Naturally, this all ends up in a huge train-wreck of a finale that you just knew was coming. This is the kind of stuff that happens in a whirlwind romance. Feelings and circumstances are so intense that they eventually come to a fiery head. However, it’s what you do after that collision that determines where the relationship goes. Will Clay manage to save his chance at true love?

This was a different kind of script. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a romantic comedy about alcoholism before. That alone makes it unique. But it also makes it a bit of a struggle tonally. Are you supposed to be laughing about the situations Clay finds himself in or are you supposed to be sad? I’m not sure. Because a guy passing out on his front sidewalk after an endless night of drinking is giggle-worthy at 19. Not so much when you’re 30.

There seemed to be something off about the structure as well. When you write a love story, you need that middle section where you sell the two characters falling in love. It’s essential for the rest of the screenplay to work because we have to feel that love in order to care that they get back together in the end.

So what’s weird about this script is that the main character loses the girl right away – immediately after they first meet. This requires the story to focus on Clay trying to get a girl back that he never really had in the first place. And since that takes some time, by the time he does convince her to be with him, the writers are forced to scrunch that “falling in love” section into a tiny portion late in the second act. In fact, I think the extent of their falling in love happens in a montage.

For that reason, the final act, when Clay goes to Holly’s parents, feels a little sudden. We haven’t experienced these two together long enough to mine the most out of this sequence. And it’s too bad, because it has all the makings of a great sequence. A guy meeting a girl’s parents for the first time when he’s absolutely obliterated, yet trying to hide it from them.

The Last Drop was a unique script in more ways than one. One thing that really stuck out to me about it was its montages. I’ve never really liked montages because the idea of a script is to transport the reader into a world where he’s not thinking about the words on the page. Montages are so mechanical (they’re often numbered or listed) that they kill that suspension of disbelief. And yet they’re a necessary evil because sometimes in a screenplay, you need to bridge time.

The Murphys have a very non-invasive way of writing montages. They sort of write these mini-scenes one on top of another so it doesn’t actually feel like you’re reading a montage. It definitely takes up more space but I loved how the events blended into each other as opposed to a feeling like a grocery list. It read more…organic I guess. And organic is a good thing!

In the end, I genuinely wanted to see if Clay was going to get better. I think that’s the reason you keep reading a screenplay like this. Remember that this is a story about characters – specifically a relationship – so it’s not as GSU applicable. Goals are replaced by questions. Such as, will Clay get better? Will Clay and Holly end up together? That’s why we keep reading. We want to know the answers to those questions.

So did I like The Last Drop? Yeah, um-hm. I did. Not only did I like it for the reasons I listed above, but I liked it because it was different. I’ve just never seen this subject matter tackled quite the way it was here. If you’re a reader, you’re always looking for that slightly different fresh angle. This had that.

Check this one out if the subject matter interests you. Oh, and don’t give up on it. It gets better as it goes along. Patience will reward you.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This script is a great reminder of why structure is so important. If you play with structure too much, you can be stuck trying to do big important things in very small spaces. In this case, because it takes so long to get our characters together, the screenplay has less space to sell their relationship. That’s not to say it can’t be done. It just becomes more difficult because it’s always more difficult to sell important pieces of the story in a small amount of time. So feel free to play around with structure. You never want the structure of your script to feel *too* predictable. But know that if you bend too much, you can put yourself in a position that’s difficult to recover from.