Edit: I was able to get my hands on the newest version of Fig Hunter and give it a read.  As a result, I’ve decided to add my thoughts on the new draft, which will appear after the original review.  So make sure to read til the end!

Genre: Comedy/Mockumentary
Premise: A couple of “fig hunters” (action figure hunters) go out in search of the rarest action figure in the world: Battle Armor Star Captain.
About: This is another one of the 2011 Nicholl Finalists. Again, the finalists are the top 10 screenplays in the competition. Only five of those will be chosen as winners.
Writer: Aaron Marshall
Details: Old version 122 pages – New version – 120 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).

Older Version Review:
I have to give it to any writer who takes on a Mockumentary. The thing about these hybrid beasts is that they don’t really work until they’re up on screen. The interview segments are so dependent on us buying the “reality” of the actors’ words, that it doesn’t feel right to see it all written out beforehand.

For that reason, I always advise writers to stay away from the Mocks unless they’re making the movie themselves. That being said, Fig Hunt does about as good of a job as you can of conveying a Mockumentary in script form.

Jason Udegaard is the 30-year-old version of Steve Carrel in The 40 Year Old Virgin. I guess you could call him the 30 year old virgin. His house is decorated with action figures and plenty of other nerdtastic touches. But whereas Carrel seemed at least capable of operating in the real world, Jason seems to be living in an alternate reality.

In this reality, the only thing that matters is finding rare action figures. And the crème de la crème of that world is Battle Armor Star Captain. The short of the story is that many years ago one of the big toy companies was getting ready to unveil a new series of action figures centered around Battle Star Captain. Unfortunately, before Battle Star could be shipped, one of the companion figures ended up in a poor little boy’s mouth and choked him to death. As a result, all Battle Star Captains were incinerated and thus never seen from again.

However, years later, a janitor discovers 19 Battle Star Captains that avoided their fiery death. The company, capitalizing on this screw-up, decides to ship the figures out to random stores across the country, mainly to juice up publicity for their other toys.

If only life were that simple. You see, there’s only one group of people out there who give a shit about a 20-year-old random action figure. Fig Hunters! This small but obsessed community spends every waking moment hunting down these forgotten plastic morsels. So when they hear that Battle Star Captains are going to be showing up across the country, it’s like a church congregation being told that Jesus is going to be hanging out at one of the local 7-11s.

Which brings us back to Jason. Jason is one of the last pure figure hunters. He doesn’t care about the money. He doesn’t care about the glory. He cares about the purity of collecting these rare works of art. And since Battle Star Captain is the Holy Grail of action figure collection, he absolutely must have him.

He’s joined by his best friend and fellow fig hunter, 31-year-old Marcus. Marcus is chubby, balding, and pathetic. Essential qualities to being a great fig hunter. The problem is, Marcus has actually found himself a female companion, a rarity in the fig hunter community, and she’s making him think twice about fig hunting as a full time job. Things are getting so bad, in fact, that Jason actually has to convince Marcus to help him find Battle Star Captain.

If finding an impossible action figure weren’t enough, they also have to battle…. Lord Werner. Werner is the worst kind of fig hunter. He’s a scalper. He finds rare action figures then sells them on eBay for a profit. He has a whole gang of fellow profit-seeking scalpers that give him a wide knowledge base that no other fig hunter can match. This means he’s always one step ahead of Jason and Marcus.

The hunt is chronicled online by a mysterious figure known only as “Rogue Fig Hunter,” who keeps tabs on when one of the 19 Battle Star Captains is found. We watch as the number continues to fall, until there are just two Battle Star Captains left. It’s looking like Jason will never get a hold of the greatest rare action figure in existence. The question is, if he does fail, will he ever be able to recover?

So what’s the verdict on Fig Hunter?

Well, if I was to equate the value of this screenplay to a rare action figure, I would probably categorize it as Lando Calrissian. Definitely harder to find then Luke, Han, or Darth Vader, but certainly easier to find than Hammerhead. (I actually don’t know what I’m talking about – I have no idea what the order of difficulty is in finding action figures – but just go with me dammit).

The script is okay. The problem is that whenever it ramps up, it slows right back down again. The script is 122 pages and I just don’t see why. Why wouldn’t you compress your comedy so that there’s more laughs per minute instead of less?

As I’ve always tried to convey, the comedy genre NEEDS TO MOVE. The writing needs to be sparse. Needless tangents need to be eliminated. One of the things that bothers me is when we jump into a flashback only to be told something we already know. So here, Jason is a nerd. We then jump back in time to see him as a kid and what are we told? You guessed it. That Jason was a nerd back then too. What’s the point of giving us backstory if it doesn’t tell us anything new about the character? Take The Imitation Game for example. The backstory was about Alan’s relationship with Christopher, who ends up being the inspiration behind the machine that saves all those lives. That’s worth showing because it informs so much of the present day storyline. We could have easily lost 7-8 pages off this thing by getting rid of the flashbacks.

What I did like about the script was that it had strong GSU. We have a character who’s desperately trying to achieve his goal. The stakes are high because we’ve established how much it means to him. And time is running out because Battle Star Captains are being found left and right. In fact, this script is a reminder that if you can convince the audience that a character cares about something, it doesn’t matter if that thing is the machine that breaks the code that saves millions of lives, or if it’s an action figure that brings someone personal joy. As long as we feel his passion for it, we’ll want him to achieve the goal.

However in the end, I’m not sure I can recommend the script. It sort of runs out of ideas . I mean when they create this whole obstacle course between Jason and Werner to determine who gets the last Battle Star Captain, where they’re competing on things like monkey bars – that’s when I officially tuned out. Remember, you’re always one bad/uninspired choice away from losing your audience, and that was the choice that lost me.

So I guess this wasn’t for me. That being said, if somebody told me they were going to read it, I wouldn’t stop them. I’d probably say something like, “It’s a little silly, but kind of fun.” If that sounds like the mood you’re in, give it a read.

Edit: Here are my thoughts on the newest version of the script.  Enjoy!

Okay, so I just read the newest draft of Fig Hunter and this proves what a well thought-out rewrite can do for a script. There are several key improvements, starting with the focus. In the earlier draft, we had this wandering storyline where there were 19 random Battle Star Captains spread throughout the United States and our characters had to chase after them over the course of, I believe, a year. So even though there is urgency (the figures are disappearing one by one), it’s not as urgent as it could be. In this new version, the toy company sponsors a 45-day action figure hunt from the get-go, and the winners will square off in a competition for a single Battle Armor Star Captain.

One of the reasons I always talk about focus and making your character’s motivations clear, is that it’s easier for the audience to follow along. If either of those things are murky, or they go on for too long without being addressed, the script starts to feel like a fever dream. Screenplays need to be focused. The story needs to be clear. The characters need to be clear. We have to know what everybody wants and why they want it. The difference between the last draft and this one in the focus category is like night and day.

For example, as I mentioned, one of my big problems with the previous draft was that all of a sudden, in the end, we’re thrown into this bogus random contest run by a couple of local DJs. Because it came out of nowhere and because the event seemed so scattershot, we didn’t care. In this version, the Fanathlon is set up early on in the script, so we understand it’s coming from the beginning. This gives it a lot more weight than if it’s just thrown at us on a whim. Also, it’s being held by the toy manufacturer itself, as opposed to a couple of random dudes who have nothing better to do. So that also makes it bigger. In retrospect, it wasn’t really the events (the monkey bars) that bothered me, it was the fact that this event came out of nowhere and we were supposed to think it was important. So set up your plot points ahead of time people. Your script will be better for it.

The characters felt more reined in as well. It just seemed like the writer understood them and didn’t simply go off on whatever tangent popped into his head whenever he thought of something funny for one of them to say. They really stay within character. And while at first I didn’t like the decision to curb Jason’s edginess, I realized over the course of the draft that there was a purpose behind it. It allowed the character to grow into that crazy more reckless version of himself, instead of just being that character from the get-go. In other words, there was more of an arc to his character.

Werner was much better as well. One of my favorite additions is that instead of making it so there was one kid who choked on the Battle Star action figure as a kid, there were three. And in this version, two of them died but one of them survived. The survivor? Werner. That’s the kind of backstory and/or flashback that I wanted in that earlier version. Instead of just telling us something we already assumed, it’s information that makes that character a lot more interesting, a lot funnier, and plays into the story.

Lots of improvements here.  So much more focused.  This easily jumps into “worth the read” status, and is a textbook example of how to improve your script through a rewrite. 

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

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

What I learned: Set up your key plot points ahead of time.  If you’re going to have a big competition at the end of your script, the earlier you can tell the audience that it’s going to happen, the longer they’ll be anticipating it.  And the longer they’re anticipating it, the more important it becomes to them.  If you tell us in one scene that our character is entering some super big important race, and then in the very next scene show us the race, how is that race going to feel important to us?  We just heard about it a second ago.  So set up those big plot points and big moments early on in your script.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: On their way to California, a family stops at a truck stop, only to realize it’s inhabited by a strange alien force.
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 in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.
Writer: Peter Tom Maatta
Details: 97 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 think Peter was a little nervous about throwing his script out there for the world to judge, and since last week got a little nasty in the comments section, I want to remind everyone that the idea behind Amateur Friday is not only to discuss amateur screenplays, but to help the writer make their screenplay better. So the more constructive you can make your comments, the more educational Fridays will be.

That’s not to say I want you guys sugarcoating anything. I think it’s important to let the writer know when something isn’t working, even if it’s the whole damn shebang. If you hated it, say you hated it. But instead of focusing on coming up with the perfect witty Francis-like put down, use that brain power of yours to suggest how to fix the script, even if it’s a minor suggestion. We’re all in this together so let’s be supportive.

Okay, on to Truck Stop. This script fucking sucked.

No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. That was a joke everyone. Calm down.

In staying with the theme of this week’s selections, this script had a weird vibe to it that isn’t quite like anything you’ve read before. I definitely sensed some David Lynchness to the story, so if you dig the Lynchster, you’ll probably find something here to like.

40-something Kevin Ford and his wife Danielle are taking the kids, 15-year-old Katie and 10-year old Nathan, on a road trip to California. It’s a needed getaway since Kevin recently experienced a home invasion while the family was gone. But this wasn’t any home invasion. He believes he saw creatures break into his house. So his therapist tells him to get out of Dodge, enjoy life a little bit, and that’s what he plans to do.

Oh if it were only that easy. About halfway there, the family stops at a truck stop to get a bite to eat. As we were notified at the beginning of the script, this truck stop had a little reeses pieces phone home experience back in the 50s. So we already know something weird’s going on with this place.

On this night, however, it’s fairly packed, with typical inbred-fare no less. In fact, the clientele is so sketchy that the family starts getting nervous and prepares an exit plan. The problem is that Katie is off talking on her phone and Nathan is off playing hide and seek with himself, so even though Kevin has a really bad feeling about this, he can’t get the family together in time to get out. And boy is he going to regret that.

Up from the basement comes one of the restaurant workers who’s drenched in blood. And outside there’s a large contingent of men in black refusing to let anybody leave the truck stop. Apparently they’re aware that this place has alien activity. And that means the truck stop is quarantined. As things spiral out of control and truck stoppers start dying, Kevin finds himself waking up at the beginning of his vacation, like none of it ever happened.

In fact, he doesn’t remember the truck stop at all. He just has some fleeting moments of déjà vu. So when they get to the truck stop again, he’s trying to figure out why he feels like he’s been here before. Once he does, he tries to get the family out again, but runs into the same problems. Cut to Kevin waking up in his car once again. I think you get the point. This keeps repeating itself as Kevin remembers more and more each time, and has to use that knowledge to try and save his family.

In short, I thought there were some really interesting ideas here. I liked the idea of a strange truck stop in the middle of nowhere with an alien presence. There’s all sorts of things you can do with that and I was curious to see what Peter would come up with. I also liked the family angle. Approaching this from the point of view of a family that has to escape together makes for some good drama. So the core of this story has potential.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the script is ready. It feels like it was rushed out before all of the crazy ideas were molded into something coherent. In fact, coherency is a big problem here, and it starts with the tiniest of details. There were a lot of spelling mistakes and misused words in the script. Just in the first 15 we get “he” instead of “the.” We get “hoping” instead of “hopping.” We get “possible” instead of “possibly.” We get “slowing” instead of “slowly.” On a good day, I can handle a few mistakes, but when they start affecting my enjoyment of the story, it becomes a problem. Plus it just makes it seem like the script was rushed. No reader likes to read a script they feel was slapped onto the page haphazardly.

That sloppiness continued in other places as well. For example, this script started back in the 40s. It then jumped to the 50s. Then it jumped…….. I don’t know when. We just cut to a new scene. I didn’t know if we were still in the 50s, if we had jumped forward another 20 years, or if we were now in the present day. Because it was never stated. Those are important details that need to be conveyed.

This then permeated into the story itself. I couldn’t understand, for example, why this alien in the truck stop had waited to strike for 40 years. Or if it *had* been striking that entire time – killing people left and right – why hadn’t the authorities gone to check it out? And what did Kevin’s previous experience with aliens have to do with his current experience with aliens? I’m thinking the odds of running into an alien are one in a billion. Yet our main character runs into them twice. If there was a connection there somehow, it would be okay, but as far as I could tell, each event was isolated.

And then there were moments like Kevin going over to talk to a weird guy in the diner who’s giving him déjà vu. He has a quick conversation with the man then heads back to his wife, who asks, “Who was that?” And Kevin’s response is, “Just somebody I thought I knew.” And apparently that’s good enough for his wife. Wouldn’t you be curious how your husband would know somebody a thousand miles away from your home at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere? Wouldn’t you ask, “Who would you know out here?” But she doesn’t say a thing. She just rolls with it. It didn’t feel thought through – like Peter was thinking about how the characters would really react to one another. This is something I probably would’ve shrugged off under normal circumstances, but all of the sloppiness I mentioned earlier made it so I didn’t trust the script. Any time something didn’t make sense, my first thought was to blame the author. That’s what a sloppily written script will do to a reader.

The plot itself kind of loops in and out of coolness. I liked the men in black characters hanging out outside and not letting anybody leave. And probably my favorite sequence was when (spoiler) all of time stops and the sky opens up and we see these giant aliens coming down and resetting the truck stop. It was just so trippy and weird I was totally captivated. The problem was that the narrative was so mushy and strange, that these moments were more surprising than they were dramatically compelling. What I mean is, I was never clear on what these moments had to do with the story. I wasn’t even sure what Kevin had to do to get out of the time loop. Even at the end of the script (spoiler) when he makes it out, I wasn’t clear how he had made it out.

My suggestion would be to give this story a different slant. I’d start off by getting rid of the opening flashbacks. It’s not clear why we need a scene of the atom bomb blowing up or even why we need to see the truck stop owner bring the alien into his restaurant. That feels like back story to me and I’d rather just jump into the real story.

I’m also not convinced that the looping time thing is the way to go. We already have a truck stop with a strange alien presence inside. Throwing in a time loop might be one sci-fi additive too many. If we can just get this family to the truck stop and have the alien (or aliens, or MIB) start wreaking havoc on the people, and they have to escape, that could be enough.

For example, maybe the alien arrives and starts killing a few people and somehow the people in the diner are able to kill it. So they think they’re okay. Then these strange men show up to take care of it, and they realize that these men (the men in black) are actually more dangerous than the aliens themselves, and are planning to kill them because they’re a witness to alien activity. Then add some twists and turns (maybe more aliens show up). But at the heart of the story is a family trying to get out of this crazy situation alive.

Originally, I thought that the humans inside this truck stop were actually going to be aliens. That might be cool in itself. The family shows up. Everybody there acts really weird. They can tell something is up. And maybe the family happens to be there right at the moment the men in black have finally figured out that this truck stop is a haven for aliens and have come there to kill them off. So our family is actually collateral damage in the ordeal and must work with the aliens to get out alive. I don’t know, something a little less trippy.

Anyway, I don’t think this was quite ready for consumption, but it had some cool ideas that could be harnessed for future drafts. Thanks, Peter, for letting me read it. :-)

Script link: Truck Stop

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

What I learned: Don’t set up something if you’re not going to pay it off – if you’re not going to explain its connection to the rest of the story. A huge deal is made out of this alien home invasion that happened to Kevin. Yet it’s never explained what that has to do with the alien presence at the truck stop. Were they trying to warn him? Were these the same aliens? What was their intention for breaking in? If you’re gonna set something like that up, you eventually have to connect it to the rest of the story. Otherwise it feels random and sloppy.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: An agent infiltrates a dangerous eco-terrorism unit only to find herself falling for the unit’s leader.
About: This is from Sundance sensation Brit Marling, whose film Another Earth has broken out of indie obscurity into slightly less indie obscurity. Supposedly, Brit would be playing the main character here, but I’ve also heard that Ellen Page would be playing the lead. So I’m not sure what’s going on. Brit is a multi-hyphenate. She writes. She directs. She acts. She bakes cookies. Let’s see Britney Spears do that! Not that innocent my ass! (only on Scriptshadow do you get pop culture references this current).
Writers: Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling
Details: 113 pages – March 15, 2010 draft – draft 2.0 (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).

While today’s script doesn’t compare in zaniness to the first two scripts of the week, it isn’t exactly chopped liver in the originality department. In fact, on any other week, it would probably be the most original script of the bunch. The subject matter is kooky. The execution is unpredictable. The characters are strange. I can’t remember ever seeing a movie quite like it. But does that mean it’s good?

Hmmmm…

Maybe?

Here’s the thing – and I’ve said it before. Eco-terrorism and movies don’t mix. It’s been attempted over and over again and it just doesn’t work! The main reason for this is that the stakes of an eco-terrorist attack are dramatically lower than real terrorism. I mean how dangerous can a bunch of disgruntled uber-hippies be? Unfortunately not that dangerous. That means lives aren’t at stake. And that means the stakes of stopping them are never high. Teaching a pharmaceutical company a lesson by o.d.’ing them on their own drugs might be an interesting story in real life, but in a movie, it doesn’t have enough drama sauce.

The East follows Sarah Moss, a private agent at a security company that specializes in investigating enemies of major corporations. Kind of like a privatized version of the FBI. One of these corporations – it’s not clear which – hires the company to look into an eco-terrorist unit called “The East.” These aren’t the guys who stand in front of local supermarkets and threaten to drink chemical laced water from polluted lakes. These guys kidnap CEOs and force them to swim in their own chemical created sludge.

The agency decides that Sarah is the best agent for the job, so she transforms herself into a grungy “save the earth” hippie and burrows herself inside the group. Everything about The East is predictably weird and the members are all under mind control by a charming [decidedly less dangerous] Charles Manson-like leader named Benji.

Sarah is scared of Benji at first, but then finds herself attracted to him, something that isn’t going over well with his current girlfriend, Izzy, even though this place is supposed to be about the free love man. On top of that, Sarah has only lived a life for herself. She is selfish to a T, and isn’t used to having feelings for others.

So she must navigate the peculiar dynamics of the group to monitor their upcoming marks, and then report back to the agency, who for some reason she’s still able to visit whenever she wants (I guess she can just come and go as she pleases?). I wouldn’t say that Sarah ever becomes understanding of The East’s ideals, but she does start to like Benji and is torn by whether to take him down or not. However, in the end, that’s exactly the choice she’ll have to make.

Whenever you write an infiltration movie, they are certain mainstays you want to explore. The biggest one is you want your character to be torn. The more that the main character sees the other side’s point of view, the harder her choice becomes. That inner struggle leads to tension and that tension leads to drama, the lifeblood of any screenplay. This is what you see in Avatar for example. Jake Sulley is torn between what the humans stand for and what the Na’vi stand for. I didn’t think The East explored this enough. Sarah never sides with what these guys are doing so there was never a dilemma. Yes, she did start to like Benji, but that development came in way too late, almost like it was discovered on the last pass of the script and then thrown in as an afterthought. Therefore the script didn’t have nearly as much conflict as it could’ve had.

That’s not to say there was no conflict. Just the fact that our character could get caught at any moment created a good deal of drama. But because the cult weren’t killers – just advanced hoaxers – you always felt that if she did get caught, she’d simply be abandoned at the nearest town. Lack of true danger = lack of true drama.

The screenplay also suffered from MSS (Murky Story Syndrome). This is when the story isn’t laid out clearly for the reader – a huge problem in most amateur screenplays I read. I had a hard time figuring out, for example, who the agency was doing this job for and why doing it for them was so important.

I knew Sarah was infiltrating the group to get information on future attacks. But for who? Why does it matter if we don’t know who hired them? Because if I don’t understand the point of the infiltration, I don’t understand the stakes, and if I don’t understand the stakes, nothing else matters, because I won’t care. If I told you a story about how I got a flat tire right before work, and I had to race to put a spare on to get there in time, you probably wouldn’t care. But if I told you that the previous day, my boss said that if I was ever late to work again, he’d fire me, now that story becomes a lot more interesting, because there are actual stakes involved in me succeeding.

There were some things to like. As I said in the beginning, it didn’t feel like anything I’d read before. I was never quite sure where the script was going. I thought some of the stuff inside the cult was creepy. There’s a scene early on where they put Sarah in a straitjacket and tell her to eat some food without her hands. It’s a strange scene that works in a weird way. There’s a scene later on where Sarah sees members of the cult doing a strange Wicker Man-like ritual that’s also pretty spooky. And finally there’s a scene where they cleanse a naked Sarah in the river that gave me the heebie-jeebies. I actually wish they would’ve taken this a step further. The weirder and crazier you make the cult, the more interesting this movie gets. Because right now you don’t have any stakes. It never feels like anybody is truly in danger. But if you created this really whacked out unprecedented cult-like atmosphere, it might be enough to keep us entertained. That’s why The Wicker Man is such a classic – because you never knew what was coming next – you never knew just how wacky the people on this island could get.

So I would try to make this story clearer. I would try to add higher stakes within the cult. I would put more lives at risk. For example, I’d probably add a scene early on where they killed one of their own members for screwing up. That way for the entire rest of the movie we’d be terrified for Sarah – because we know if she got caught she was dead. I guess I just wanted more danger here. I wanted to feel more of an edge. Despite some original twists and turns, the story was too soft for me.

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

What I learned: The East taught me something pretty cool – that you can use specific word phrases as callbacks for later on in the script. They’re kind of like visual setups and payoffs in word form. So early on, the agency headquarters is described like this: “A building you might not notice from the road, but once you do, its design and simplicity haunt you.” Later on, the reemergence of this building becomes a key surprise plot turn. So when we round a corner, the writers describe the building in the exact same way: “A building you might not notice from the road, but once you do, its design and simplicity haunt you.” The payoff is more dramatic because the exact same description is used.

Genre: Crime/Thriller
Premise: After being left for dead, a man plots his revenge against the Chicago mob family who killed his wife.
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 in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.
Writer: Erik Fredsell
Details: 104 pages

I have a feeling that this script is going to generate some interesting discussion. This is what Erik, the writer, wrote in his query letter: “I’ve asked you to review this script before-about a year ago. I thought it was the most erudite piece of writing that has ever been produced in the history of screenplay writing…I was wrong. I was forced to go back and take a look at it because a producer contacted me about it. The screenplay was filled with superfluous scenes that ate up pages and pages. The dialogue was far too pretentious, and the narrative structure was pedestrian. I spent months redrafting the script. I’ve brought it down to 104 pages from 139.”

First of all, I want to applaud Erik for making these changes. This tends to be one of the more monumental steps amateur screenwriters make in their journey. We all start off believing our scripts are worthy of being 130, 140, and 150 pages. The second we realize that we don’t need all those extra pages, all those extra scenes, and all that extraneous dialogue, is the second we become better storytellers. The problem here is that, even at 104 pages, I’m still seeing a lot of those same problems. There are still extraneous scenes. There is still extraneous dialogue. And there are still traces of pretentiousness. So while I’m guessing this is way better than the previous draft, some pretty significant changes still need to be made.

I know this because, normally, it’s easy for me to summarize a story. But when I have to stop, think about how I’m going to convey things, stumble through the points I need to make, and am constantly trying to remember the plot, that’s an indication that the story was too confusing or too muddled. I’m still not exactly sure what happens in Manchester Black, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

Michael, our main character, is mistaken for somebody involved with the mob – I believe somebody who was supposed to deliver something called a “mandori box.” So the mob takes him and his wife, tortures them to find out where the box is, but since Michael doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they end up killing his wife and leaving him for dead.

We then follow Michael through four very torturous years where he rehabilitates his body, all in preparation to get his revenge on the people who did this. The thing is, we don’t go about this linearly. Nor do we always stay with our protagonist. In fact, the movie starts with us seeing our protagonist enact his revenge, and then we go back in time, bit by bit, to see why he enacted his revenge.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Erik is a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, and I have a strong feeling that he’s going to get bashed by the commenters for it. I mean we have influences from Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill blanketing the script at almost every turn. You have to be careful when paying homage to icons, because if you do so too blatantly, you’re seen as a copycat, and people are just pissed that they have to trudge through a not-as-good version of a far better movie. That’s not to say this is straight Tarantino. I found this script to be darker and less forgiving than Tarantino’s work, sort of Tarantino by way of William Monahan. So Erik does have his own voice. But I’m not sure it shines bright enough to outweigh the clear influences in the screenplay.

Getting back on track, once Michael takes out some of the key men responsible for killing his wife, their mob boss, Vincenzo, orders some of his top hit men to take Michael out. We intermittently cut to these groups of hit men, sometimes on their way to kill Michael, and sometimes just hanging out shooting the shit. Eventually, they all fail, and Vincenzo will have to do the deed himself. Theoretically, this should be easy. He’s one of the top mob bosses is in the city. But Michael has something going for him that none of these men can touch – the desire to avenge his wife’s death.

I have so many things to say about this script, I don’t even know where to start. First of all, I already know what commenters are going to say. They’ll start with the script being overwritten. And they’re right. Here is one of the very first sentences in the screenplay: “Michael, draped in an exanimate black suit, inexorably walks past the eponymously embossed window, towards three thuggish men sitting at a table.” I’m not even sure what half of those words mean.

The reason overwriting is a problem is that it takes the reader’s focus off the screenplay and places it on the writing. Screenplays aren’t a writing contest. They’re a storytelling contest. Outside of Scriptshadow, these words will never be published anywhere. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a walking thesaurus. The goal of writing a story is to bring the reader into your world. If you try to be too flashy or too wordy, you’re constantly pushing the reader out of that world. You want to be visual with your writing, yes, but the second it looks like you’re trying too hard, you’re dead. And it feels like the writing is trying way too hard here.

Second is degree of difficulty. Ambition is good. Trying to do something different is good. But tackling a degree of difficulty higher than your ability level is suicide. We have two things here that make telling this story extremely difficult. The first is an endless character count. The more characters you have, the less time you have to develop your main characters, and the more likely you’re going to have a reader who’s confused as hell about who everybody is. I couldn’t remember half the people here, and even worse, I don’t think a quarter of them were necessary. We’d occasionally jump to characters who didn’t have anything to do with the story. They’d just talk. So that led to a lot of confusion.

The second problem is all the time jumping. Manipulating time is one of the coolest things film allows you to do. But conveying it on the page is way more difficult than conveying it onscreen, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to confuse the hell out of the reader. It took me about 40 pages, for example, to figure out what was going on. A big part of the problem was, I didn’t understand why we were telling this story out of order. I kept thinking to myself, would this lose anything if it were told linearly? It might be more predictable, but it’d certainly be less confusing. So the jumping around felt like a cheap manipulative trick just to make the story different. It’s a better idea to have your time jumping motivated in some way. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a perfect example. We jump around in time there in order to take advantage of the characters’ memory loss. Stories always work better when choices are motivated.

The thing is, I can understand a guy like Erik’s frustration. There is some serious talent on display here. I’m not an authority on mob flicks, but the dialogue here was pretty damn good. When these guys spoke, I felt like they were really those people – and I don’t often see that in screenplays. Also, he’s well read and intelligent. You can see that intelligence on every page. So here’s this guy, with all this talent, looking out there and seeing scripts like the dumbed down “Nonstop” sell, and wondering, how the hell are these guys making a living at this and I’m not??

Here’s the reason. Because the story has to come before everything. You have to display storytelling skills and not an ability to write random monologues, or crazy characters, or jump around in time a lot. I don’t care how well you describe that stuff, or how different you can be. If it’s not serving the story, if it’s not easy to follow, if it isn’t building the stakes, etc., etc., then it won’t matter. There are pieces of this story that are really good. There are scenes in this story that are really good. But on the whole, it’s a garbled mess. It’s too difficult to follow and has too many unnecessary tangents. Say what you will about Nonstop, but the storyline is always clear, the stakes are always clear, and you can see it as a movie. With Manchester Black, at least in its current form, it’s too hard to follow.

So how would I fix this screenplay? I’d start by cutting the character list by half. It would force you to only use the characters you absolutely needed to tell the story. The next thing I would do is cut out any scene with a monologue in it. I don’t remember a single monologue in this script that was necessary. I’d then focus on the story elements that have the most punch. For example, this mandori box sounds interesting. But it’s essentially treated like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction (another reference people are going to kill you for). Let’s make that box a bigger part of the story. Finally, continue to focus on the components that bring out the most emotion – avenging his wife’s death for example. You do that well here. So I’d continued to feature it in the next draft. Once you strip the movie down, and we don’t have to keep track of so many people, the time jumping should be easier to follow. I’d still like it to be motivated, but I could see it working a lot better if your script were streamlined.

And finally, don’t end your mob movie at a warehouse. That’s where every mob movie ends! :-)

Script link: Manchester Black

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

What I learned: I’m gonna say this again. A scene where all that’s happening is one person giving another person their theory on life is a scene of death. Here’s a monologue from one of the characters on page 49. It happens as two characters we don’t know very well are randomly driving their car somewhere: “You’re talking about evil like it has any inherit meaning beyond its limited definition. My view is that if God is truly omniscient, he can see things from all perspectives. He knows why I do what I do just as well I do. And what is evil but perspective. It isn’t tangible, and there’s always a reason behind it, even if it can’t be seen. Look at it with total honesty-this whole argument. How do we weigh a man’s actions? He provides for his family, gives to charities, volunteers, but one day he murders his wife. You don’t even need to examine his reasoning. Just look at it like this: He built up a lifetime of goodwill, and does one moment negate all he has done throughout his life and make him evil? Same thing goes for terrorists. They’re freedom fighters and liberators to many people. Serial killers-sufferers from severe psychosis. Child molesters, rapists-an outgrowth from years of sexual abuse. There is no evil my friend just perspective.” Well-written? Sure. Does the story lose anything if the scene is erased? No. And that’s the problem. If the scene can be erased and absolutely nothing is lost, you don’t need the scene. Does that mean you should never have a monologue in your screenplay? No. Of course not. But you have to find a way to weave them into the story – to make them matter. Now I didn’t love this scene in The Matrix, but it’s adequate enough to make my point. There’s a scene where Agent Smith has Morpheus chained up to a chair and is trying to get him to give him the codes to Zion. He goes on a rather long monologue about how humans are actually a virus. Let’s apply the same test here. Does the story lose anything if the scene is erased? Yes. One character is trying to obtain highly important information from another character before his friends come and save him. Drop the scene and the movie doesn’t make sense. So you can have monologues in your screenplay. They can even contain philosophical meanderings. But they have to be an essential part of the story to work.

Genre: Comedy?
Premise: A male stripper mentors a young impressionable kid, who ends up enjoying his new job a little too much.
About: This is the new exciting project from Steven Soderbergh, the man who’s retired more times than Brett Favre. It will star Channing Tatum (of course), Matthew McConaghy, and the new bad boy on Hollywood’s block, Alex Pettyfer.
Writer: Reid Carolin
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).

Ahhhh, Steven Soderbergh. One of the most controversial noncontroversial filmmakers alive. He’s responsible for movies like Traffic, Oceans 11, and Sex, Lies & Videotape. Unfortunately he’s also responsible for movies like Bubble. That’s why I’m always reluctant to open a Soderbergh project. I’m afraid of artsy-fartsy Soderbergh, the Soderbergh who doesn’t give a shit about entertainment. I’m even more scared of that Soderbergh these days, since he doesn’t have to worry about his next job.

But when I reached out to Scriptshadow Nation on Magic Mike, I was surprised to hear feedback like “Funny.” “Touching.” “Heartwarming.” It sounded like a real heartfelt character piece, not a glorified student film. And hey, Sex Lies & Videotape is still in my top five independent films of all time. So maybe this was going to be cool.

28-year-old Mike was born with something special. He’s got charm. He’s got looks. He’s got work ethic. And he’s got big dreams. He wants to open a restoration business that he’s been saving up for forever.

During the day, he’s a roofer, scraping by on 15 bucks an hour. But on the weekends, when the sun goes down, he’s a stripper at a hot Tampa Bay strip club. “Magic Mike” is the headline act – the one the ladies save the big bills for.

One day, during a roofing job, Mike meets The Kid, a 19-year-old bad boy in need of direction. He lives with his older sister, who may love him more than anything, but is frustrated he’s drifting through life aimlessly. Mike likes The Kid, probably because he reminds him of himself when he was younger, and introduces him to the stripping life.

The Kid immediately falls in love with it. Whereas before he was barely able to afford toothpaste, he’s now got more money than he can stuff in his pockets. Being 19 with money to burn is sort of like waking up in a candy store all alone as a 10-year-old. Where do you begin?

When The Kid’s sister, who Mike’s sweet on, finds out that her baby brother is stripping, she’s mortified. Mike assures her that he’s going to keep an eye on him. But eventually, The Kid runs into some trouble he can’t get out of. It will be up to Magic Mike to save the day. The question is, will it mean giving up all of his hopes and dreams to do so?

I wasn’t sure what to make of Magic Mike. It’s sort of like Coyote Ugly meets The Full Monty meets a trashy reality show. The biggest achievement of the screenplay is that it flips a well-known character type on its head. We’ve seen the stripper with a heart of gold a thousand times before. But have we seen the male stripper with a heart of gold? I don’t think so. And that’s what makes this script unique.

Probably the strangest thing I noticed while reading Magic Mike was that there’s so little conflict in the script. Remember, movies are about drama. And you can’t get drama unless you have opposing forces consistently clashing with each other. Somebody wants one thing, somebody else wants another. There isn’t a whole lot of that in Magic Mike.

I mean, the first three quarters of the screenplay are like a dramatized version of a Jersey Shore episode, with the characters running around, partying, and having the time of their lives. The Kid is introduced into this world and he just has a blast with it. Mike runs around unimpeded as well. He enjoys watching The Kid flourish. And he enjoys the fruits of his own labor, hooking up with endless women, and making tons of cash.

The only real conflict throughout the first three quarters of the screenplay comes from the sister, who throws Mike for a loop when she becomes the first woman in history who doesn’t go gaga over him, mainly because she considers herself above strippers. I suppose she’s also frustrated with her brother getting involved in a shady profession, so you could argue that there’s some conflict there.

But the thing is, she’s only passively interested in stopping him. She doesn’t like it, but as long as her brother’s happy, she’s happy. There’s a little bit of conflict in her rejection of Mike, but there was something missing from the relationship. I don’t know if I wanted them to have more chemistry or if their relationship wasn’t explored enough, but I didn’t care whether they got together or not, and I don’t think a situation like that works unless that’s the case.

You could also argue that there’s conflict within Mike, who wants to do something bigger with his life. The reason that conflict didn’t work either, though, is that Mike loved stripping. He seemed to have such a great life that if his dream of opening up his own business didn’t work out, you got the feeling he was going to be fine. I mean, this guy is smart, nice and good looking. Whichever way it goes for him, life is still going to kick ass.

Now eventually, we do get to some serious conflict, but it isn’t until the final act, when everything falls to shit. I admit it gets interesting, but I kept asking: Is it worth wading through 90 minutes of pure unadulterated partying for?

If you look back at what I believe is Soderbergh’s best film, Sex Lies & Videotape, you’ll notice that there’s conflict from the very first frame. The wife is living a lie – she’s frustrated with her marriage but she’s not admitting it to herself (conflict from within). Her husband is cheating on her (conflict). An old friend of the husband’s comes to stay with them. The two of them have unsettled business from the past (conflict). The friend is a sex addict who can’t have sex (conflict from within). And the friend and the wife start to have an emotional relationship (conflict) which causes even more conflict between the old friends and the wife and husband. That’s why that movie is so good – because no matter where you turn, there’s conflict. I’m not saying that Magic Mike needs to be the same way, because it’s a different movie, but I just found it strange how easy the movie was for all its characters.

Where the script really impressed me, though, was in the writing itself. The other day, we celebrated how fun and exciting the visual writing style of Christopher McQuarrie was. Here, the writing is as sparse as I’ve ever seen it. Carolin really stands by the rule of only writing what’s absolutely necessary to convey the story. Part of this is that he doesn’t have a lot of action to describe like Christopher McQuarrie did in his script, but that’s part of being a good screenwriter. You assess the kind of story you’re telling, and if it’s a story like Magic Mike, that’s more about the characters than the action and the visuals, you don’t include a lot of description.

When you take Magic Mike as a whole, I think there’s enough here to recommend it. It’s not filled with a lot of drama but it’s an interesting angle to a familiar subject matter. There’s nothing bad about the story. There was never a time where I wished I didn’t have to finish the script. And I suppose enough happens in that final act to sort of make up for all the coasting in the first two. So while I wouldn’t call this a home run, I’d probably say it’s a solid double. Worth checking out if you can find it.

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

What I learned: The less description you use, the more powerful and memorable your words will be. We all have a person in our lives who doesn’t talk very much, so when they do, it’s usually because they have something to say. For that reason, we listen. You wanna treat the action/description in your screenplay the same way. Only talk when you have something to say. There’s a moment early on in the script where Mike is leaving his place, and we catch a glimpse of his small business sign that says “Mike’s Detailing.” It’s a small but important character detail that tells us one of Mike’s passions. Now I might’ve missed this if this script was blanketed with descriptive blocks of text. But because it wasn’t, because Carolin only wrote what he had to, that detail stuck out. There’ve been a lot of times where I’ve pointed out to writers that I didn’t understand something in their script. They’ll say to me, “What are you talking about? It’s right here on page 36! It says right there that he walks into the barbershop! See??” And the page they show me has like five 4-line paragraphs on it. And the previous 35 pages all look similar. Of course I missed it. That detail is buried under a mountain of text. So be smart about what you include when you write. Because the less you write, the more your details will stick out.