Genre: Drama
Premise: A war photographer is the only witness to a huge massacre in Pakistan. An ex special ops soldier with ties to the massacred party hires him to travel to Afghanistan and enact revenge on the men responsible.
About: This script came together as an idea by Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, upcoming Superman movie) who hired the writer, Kurt Johnston, to write it for him. The script has been in development for a while and this is one of the early drafts. Christian Bale and Sean Penn recently signed on to play the lead roles and the director of the Swedish version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is set to direct.
Writers: Kurt Johnstad (story by Zack Snyder)
Details: 112 pages – 1.5 draft – October 10, 2008 (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).

So I wasn’t going to review this one because it’s an early draft and the movie Sean Penn and Christian Bale signed on to was a more recent draft. But I’ve gotten enough people to recommend it to me that I decided it was worth taking a look at.

Joe Wallace is an American war photographer in Pakistan who’s been relegated to snapping photos of diplomats’ birthday parties. I guess America isn’t the only place where the economy sucks. But what Joe is about to realize is that the war is a lot closer than he thinks. A group of men storm the party and massacre everyone there, except for Joe, who escapes by the skin of his teeth. But the event scars him deeply and when we meet him again a few weeks later, he’s a full-blown heroin addict.

Ethan Black, an older ex-special ops soldier, had family killed in that massacre, and when he finds out Joe was the only witness, he seeks him out and hires him to help him find the warlord responsible.

So away they go, heading to Afghanistan at a time when you definitely do not want to be traveling through Afghanistan, meeting old friends and trying to piece together where this warlord might be hiding. Eventually they find out that his brother’s wife was building schools to educate females, and we all know how the Taliban feels about educating females. So a statement had to be made.

The movie is a down and dirty look at what it would really be like traveling through Afghanistan at this time. They have to con their way through roadblocks, they have to maneuver their way through unfriendly towns, they have to figure out who to trust and who not to trust. There’s no glamour here. It was almost like Zack and Kurt decided they wanted to make the most un-Hollywood movie possible. It’s dark and it’s depressing and it’s probably exactly how it would really be if you tried this yourself.

One of the big changes made to the newer drafts is that it’s now a kidnapping movie as opposed to a revenge movie. This is a really important distinction I’ve talked about before because it changes the tone of the story and it changes the pace of the story. When you’re talking about a revenge film, the person is already dead. For that reason the pace is more leisurely. You’re not in a hurry to take somebody down because they’ve already done their damage. That slower pace usually ends up hurting the screenplay because the urgency factor (UF) goes way down. And when you lose urgency, you lose a lot of what makes a story work.

If it’s a kidnapping scenario, urgency is at the forefront. Every second lost is a potential second that the kidnapped party could be lost forever. Look no further than Taken to see how that plays out. In addition, the entire tone of the piece changes. Whereas with revenge, the tone is sad and fatalistic and hopeless, with kidnapping, it’s hopeful and optimistic and exciting. There’s always a chance that you could still find that person alive.

Now I’m not going to tell you that revenge is always the lesser of the two choices. The Brigands of Rattleborge is one of my favorite scripts and that movie is pure revenge. But it becomes a lot harder to make the movie work because you need to supplement your story with things to make up for the lack of urgency and hope. Rattleborge had amazing characters for example. It also did a top-notch job making you hate the villains so that you couldn’t wait to see them go down. Unfortunately, I don’t see either of those things in this early draft of “The Last Photograph.” Not only did I never meet the bad guys, but I never knew the people who were killed either. I mean, if I don’t know the bad guy and I never cared about the people killed, why would I be invested in this story?

From the opening page, every action is coated with despair. I’ve read scripts that are more depressing than The Last Photograph, but I’m not sure I’ve read a script that became so lost in its own hopelessness. Every line sounds like a line you’d hear from somebody right before they committed suicide. One of our heroes is a heroin addict who has no hope of ever being happy again. And the other is an introverted Bounty Hunter who’s never allowed himself to feel anything.

That was another issue I had. Whenever you pair two people together, they need to be different in some way. These characters were almost exactly the same. The only difference I could see between them was that one had a drug problem and the other didn’t. Since their interactions are the centerpiece of the story, you can imagine why it didn’t work. They never really clash about anything. There are no real differences here. It’s just a couple of guys who realize that life sucks and then you die. I think that some people gravitate towards that fatalistic mentality but I’m not one of them.

Having said that, I cannot think of two better actors to play these parts. Sean Penn loves these miserable 50 something types. And giving Christian Bale a heroin addict to play is probably more addictive to him then heroin itself.

But I’m trying to figure out what it is people liked about this so much. I imagine we’re just into different films. I see them liking Biutiful and The House Of Sand And Fog and 21 Grams. Those films are too depressing for me. The only movie that’s really depressing that I love is The Sweet Hereafter and the reason for that is that it’s not just an exercise in hopelessness. There’s actually a clever story being told. And while the narrative in The Last Photograph is clean and easy to follow, it seems like that story is secondary to showing how miserable two people can be.

But there are some things that worked. I thought the writer did a good job with imagery. One of the challenges of writing a screenplay is trying to get the reader to see what you see, using only words. That’s not easy to do. There were many times where I felt like I was there in Afghanistan with these guys. Joey Ramon covering What A Wonderful World while Hindu porn is pumping away on the TV and our character is injecting Brown heroine into his veins is a powerful sensory filled image. And while I know some readers hate music cues, I like them, because they help me understand the tone the writer is going for. There were a lot of music cues that put me right in the heart of the moment here.

Unfortunately, the characters were too cliché (to be honest I don’t know how you write a heroin addict that doesn’t feel cliché these days) and the story too depressing for my taste. I also wouldn’t have minded a few more surprises along the way. As we’ve talked about before, it’s easy for a road trip movie to become monotonous. It’s up to the writer to infuse it with surprises and twists, anything to place us on the less traveled path. I felt like we were too often on the traveled path, which is kind of ironic considering the subject matter. But hey, that’s just me. If you love serious fare – if Babel is in your top five – you might want to check this out.

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

What I learned: This screenplay was a good example of a term Stacy Menear (writer of Mixtape) taught me. Monodrama. The entire screenplay hits only one emotion. And if you stick with one emotion for too long, that emotion loses its magical effect. People are more likely to respond when you take them through a range of emotions. Unfortunately, we don’t get that here. I’m really hoping they addressed this in future drafts.

It’s going to be a great week here at Scriptshadow. We have an Impressive script and a new Top 25 script. In fact, I might even make it a Top 10 script. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it. So, is today that script? Read on to find out…

Genre: Comedy
Premise: An FBI agent whose family life is falling apart is tasked with escorting an eccentric bank robber to jail.
About: Moving Elliott sold to Universal Pictures back in 2001 for mid six figures and started the careers of Glenn German and Adam Rodgers, who went on to sell a few more scripts. Unfortunately, those careers never extended into produced credit territory, which is a shame since this script is so good. In fact, even though this script was sold back in 2001, its greatest attribute is that it’s timeless (note to writers: the more timeless your story is, the longer its shelf life). You could still shoot this movie today as written. I really hope somebody takes that chance because this script does not deserve to be lost in development hell. Here is an interview that the writers did back in 2005.
Writers: Glenn German and Adam Rodgers
Details: 118 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).

Elliott Jenkins, an African-American armored truck driver, is picking up some moolah from the bank with his menacing partner Donald Griggs. Elliott is a unique guy. He can be laid back, he can be intense, he can play the dumbest guy in the room, he can play the smartest guy in the room. He’s eccentric. A little off center. And all in all, a happy go lucky honest kind of dude. So it’s a little strange then, as he and Griggs load the money onto the truck, that a second armored truck pulls up.

Oops. Maybe Elliott and Griggs aren’t so honest after all. After a few distracting words with the second crew, our thieves hightail it out of there.

Halfway across town we meet Jack Traylor. Jack is an FBI agent whose family life is going to shit. His wife has left him and wants full custody of his two children, his young son and teenage daughter. These are the only two things Jack has left in his life, so he’s going to do everything he can to hold on to them. Unfortunately, with the bills piling up and the neverending demands of being an FBI agent, the two worlds keep crashing into each other, and lately Jack has found himself in too many situations where his kids have been put in danger, not the kind of facts you want showing up at a custody hearing.

Anyway, while driving his kids home for the day, Jack runs into that armored truck that Griggs and Elliott are driving and becomes suspicious. He follows them into a Long John Silvers, and the next thing you know Griggs is opening fire on him and his daughter. Jack is able to nab Elliott but Griggs escapes.

Back at headquarters, Jack gets reamed out for yet again mixing family with work, and as punishment, his boss wants him to escort Elliott across town to jail tomorrow. Jack pleads with his boss to use somebody else because his custody hearing is tomorrow but his boss doesn’t give a shit. In fact, he’s ready to take Jack’s badge right now. Not screwing this up may be the last chance for Jack to keep his job.

So Jack agrees to do it, but there’s no way he’s losing his kids, so he decides – against all reason – to do it all. After picking up Elliott, the first place he goes is to the bank to refinance his mortgage so he can keep his house (and therefore keep his kids). What he quickly finds out though, is that Elliott is not the easiest guy to shut up, and that wherever he goes, Elliott always has an opinion. Sometimes he helps him and sometimes he doesn’t, but he’s always got advice for Jack.

Complicating things is that Griggs is still out there and has a huge hard-on for finding Elliott. As the day goes on, Jack starts putting together the pieces, and realizes that something is off. Why would two guys who just stole hundreds of thousands of dollars stop at a Long John Silver’s anyway? Why did Griggs fight for his life while Elliott practically begged to get caught? And why does Griggs keep chasing Elliott? Jack suspects that he may be part of a bigger plan. The problem is that he’s so consumed with keeping his family together that he doesn’t have time to figure that plan out.

This script had so many things going for it. It had a tight urgent easy-to-understand goal. It had tons of obstacles that got in the way of that goal. It had two compelling main characters. It had conflict at the center of that pairing. It had a character with a ton to lose (high-stakes). It had a solid villain in Griggs, who was always on their tail. It had enough setups and payoffs to make Back to the Future jealous. It had a great sense of humor. And what put it over-the-top was that it had an intriguing mystery.

If this were just some movie about a guy escorting another guy across town, it would have been average at best. But where this script elevates itself is when Jack realizes that there might be more going on here. When we realize that Elliott could have a bigger goal in play, and that getting escorted was all part of a bigger plan, that’s when I knew I was reading something special.

And you know, I actually loved all the family stuff too, which I normally don’t. These guys have somehow managed to write a family movie without falling into that safe PG territory. The Disney promotional team would have a heart attack combing through this, but I think that’s what makes it work. It’s been a long time since we’ve infused a traditionally R-rated genre with a family theme. But these guys have done it, and done it well.

But these scripts don’t work unless the central relationship works. And the key to making that central relationship work is to put the two characters as far apart as you can on the spectrum, and then over the course of the movie, get them to a place where they understand each other. Seeing two people who weren’t meant to like each other eventually like each other is one of the more satisfying threads you’ll find in a film – if it’s done well. And like everything else in the script, it’s done well.

I also want to highlight Moving Elliott for doing something that another recently reviewed screenplay did not do. My big problem with that script (amateur entry “Inhuman Resources“) was that it was too thin. There were no subplots. It just barreled through to the end, never stopping to develop anything other than the main plot and the pursuit of the main goal.

Moving Elliott is an example of how to populate your screenplay with subplots. Instead of just barreling towards the jail, we have the custody hearing, we have the house foreclosure, we have a project he has to get to his son at school, we have his daughter secretly dating a guy behind his back, we have the mystery behind Elliott getting caught so easily. We have the pursuit by Griggs. That’s what’s so awesome about this screenplay. It’s populated with so many little subplots and extra things that a simple movie about transferring a convict becomes a complicated story about an FBI agent trying to make it through the day with his family intact. I can’t stress this enough. If you have ever wondered about how to integrate subplots into your script, check out this screenplay. It’s a master class.

However, this is not the Top 25 script. Why? A few minor reasons. The dialogue wasn’t punchy enough for this kind of movie. It’s almost there. But this is the kind of film that needs those memorable one-liners that people will be quoting for weeks after leaving the theater. And right now it doesn’t have them.

I also thought the opening scene was more confusing than clever. This may sound like nitpicking but the introduction of one of your main characters is one of the most important scenes in the entire movie. The idea here is that Elliott is supposed to be clever and intelligent – that plays out through the rest of the story. But the way he handles the second armored truck interrupting their pickup, is akin to something a 12-year-old would come up with. He babbles some stock nonsense about calling the guy’s supervisor if he mentions this to anyone, and for no other reason than that this is a movie, the guy goes along with it. If they could’ve improved this scene so that Elliott comes off as the clever “smartest guy in the room” he’s supposed to come off as, that would have sold him as the person he needs to be.

Other than that, I loved this. I don’t know if Universal still has the property. But if they do, they need to dig it up right now and take another look at it. Cause this script does not deserve to be collecting dust. It could be a great film.

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

What I learned: When you sell that first script, you haven’t made it. I think that’s terrifying to hear because we’re sold on this whole idea that selling a script is the endpoint. It’s the moment when we’ve officially “made it.” But if you look at the career of these guys, they wrote a great script here – and yet they still don’t have a theatrical credit to their names. That’s baffling to me but it’s far from unique. There are a lot of really good writers who still struggle in Hollywood purgatory. It’s a great reminder that once you sell that first script, you need to fight and claw and write and work and put everything you’ve got into keeping it going. Because one of the sad realities is that if you don’t keep moving up that ladder in those first 2 to 3 years, people will start to look at you as one of those average second rate writers who will never go beyond that intermediate level. It’s not fair and, in this case, it’s a crime. But that’s the reality of the business.

A while back, I wrote an article about surprise box office hits and what we as screenwriters can learn from them. I love trying to figure out why some movies succeed and others fail, and especially how those successes and failures relate to screenwriting, so I thought it would be fun to tackle a new batch of films and see if we couldn’t gleam a few lessons from them. Now I’ll reiterate the obvious. Directing and marketing and star power are huge factors in why movies do well at the box office. But it all starts with the screenplay. Every trailer, every poster, every marketing campaign, every great acting performance – all of those things stem from the screenplay. It’s with that spirit that I bring you my second installment of five surprise hits and what we can learn from them as screenwriters.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Rough Projected Gross: 45-50 mil
Actual Gross: 95 mil
Written by: Aaron Sorkin

What We Can Learn: I’ll give you the first trick to getting your movie to overperform. Cast Jesse Eisenberg. No really. If you remember, he was in one of the films from the last list (Zombieland). But seriously, the success of The Social Network was one of the bigger surprises of 2010. I remember leading up to the film’s release a lot of nervous people close to the project wondering how a dark look at a shiny new Internet tool was going to play to the masses. Who the hell in Omaha Nebraska wants to watch a 20-year-old kid become a billionaire and whine about it? Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. But that’s the thing. That’s the exact reason why people showed up.

Irony.

Don’t believe me? I want you to go to any piece of marketing material you can find for The Social Network. Find me one shot or one video clip of the main character, Mark Zuckerberg, smiling. You can’t can you? That’s because there isn’t one. The Social Network is about a young man who made 50 billion dollars and is unhappy. That doesn’t make sense. Rich people are supposed to have it all. The cars, the houses, the vacations. So when we see the richest 20 something in the world looking miserable, there’s a mystery there that we want answered. And let’s not forget that this is a man who created a network of 500 million “friends,” who’s himself friendless. So we have two high level uses of irony in play here, and in both cases, they’re used to create a compelling dynamic main character. That’s important to remember. You come to The Social Network to see the person, not to be wowed by the plot. The Social Network, as a film, actually has a funky narrative structure. It’s not always easy to follow and it doesn’t reward you in the same way a traditionally structured movie would. But you watch because the main character is so interesting. So before you go out and you write your next screenplay, try to come up with the most intriguing main character you can. Whether you use irony or not is up to you but you better find a way to make him as interesting as possible.

BRIDESMAIDS
Rough Projected Gross: 45-55 million
Actual Gross: 167 million
Writers: Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig

What We Can Learn: Talk about a movie that came out of nowhere. I still remember when Deadline Hollywood was reporting that this thing would make 13 bucks on opening weekend. The argument was that nobody wanted to leave the safety of their homes to watch women burp and fart. They were wrong. Audiences were begging this movie to give them as many noises from as many orifices as possible. The thing is, this film just as easily could have disappeared into one of those orifices. I mean it had no real stars. It didn’t even have a hook. At least with The Hangover, there was a neat concept driving the story. This is just a bunch of bridesmaids, which last time I checked you could find every other hour on E!. So why did it work? I think I know. And it shouldn’t be that shocking. It’s the characters. But unlike The Social Network, where it was more about creating one giant captivating character, the feat in Bridesmaids was how much effort they put into all the characters. Normally, in these types of movies, the main character is pretty well defined. That’s what the screenwriting books drum into your head. Make sure your main character rocks. But most books stop there. When it comes to the secondary characters, they could care less. But what I’ve found is that you can usually separate the wheat from the chaffe by how much effort a writer puts into their secondary characters. That’s where the real work comes in. It’s so easy to just give a secondary character a minor quirk and then move on. It’s hard to sit down and spend just as much time trying to figure them out as you would a protagonist. However, by doing that extra work, your script always shines brighter. That’s what Bridesmaids got right. Every character here was extensively thought through. Kristin Wigg’s character was the unlucky in love girl who always found herself with the wrong man. Maya Rudolph’s character was the stoic steady-as-a-rock best friend. Rose Byrne’s character was the bitter sad stepmom trying to hide behind a false smile. Melissa McCarthy’s character was the crazy happy go lucky overly optimistic even when she has no reason to be character. I read tons of comedies where the drop-off after the main character is so steep, it’s as if the writer just gave up in hopes that some hilarious comedian would be cast and make the role funny. But as you know, there’s nothing uglier than a comedian in a thinly written role trying to do a song and a dance to make up for how undefined the character is. If you don’t believe me, go watch Night At The Roxbury.

THE KING’S SPEECH
Rough Projected Gross: 25-45 million
Actual Gross: 135 million
Writer: David Seidler

What We Can Learn: Raise your hand if you predicted before The King’s Speech came out that the movie would gross over 100 million dollars. Anyone? Anyone? To be honest, I’m surprised that all of these movies did so well. But a stuffy British costume drama rocking the box office was particularly surprising. People say the adult drama is dead, but you wouldn’t know it if you counted the box office receipts from 2010. So then what is it that made this film such a surprise success? Well, I’ve talked about it before. The King’s Speech utilizes two of the most time-tested and well-worn story devices out there. The first is the underdog. Stories always work when they have a good underdog in the lead role. You can sell an underdog story to anybody – doesn’t matter if they’re 7 or 77, especially if it’s true. Seeing and enjoying people overcome adversity is in our moviegoing DNA. The other device is the crazy mentor. I use the word “crazy” loosely, but people are just really familiar with that kind of character and love seeing them operate. But I think The King’s Speech took it one step further and added – yes, there’s that word again – irony. In this case, the situation allowed a nobody to stand up and demand things from the King of England. There’s just something funny and ironic about a peasant ordering around a King. Anyway, the combination of these two well tested tools are what made a stuffy period piece one of the sexier box office hits of the year. Yes I just used the word “sexy” in conjunction with The King’s Speech.

BLACK SWAN
Rough Projected Gross: 20-30 million
Actual Gross: 110 million
Writer: Mark Heyman

What We Can Learn: This is a great movie to study for today’s purposes because every movie Darren Aronofsky had made up until this point had been a box office dud. His biggest film, The Wrestler, made only $26 million. So there was really no reason to believe Black Swan would do any better. In fact, with our subject matter dressed snugly in a leotard, it can be argued that this movie would’ve been lucky to hit the $10 million mark. So then what was the difference? Why did this one succeed when all the others failed? You’re lucky you tuned in into Scriptshadow today because I’m going to tell you. Whereas before, Aronofsky chose stories with broad unclear narratives (Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain, even The Wrestler had a bumpy throughline), Black Swan had one of the cleanest narratives of the year. The main character has the crystal clear goal of maintaining the lead actress role in her play until opening-night. Nipping at her scuffed heels is her evil understudy. How do you get cleaner than “Get to the end of the maze before the villain defeats you.” That doesn’t mean there weren’t complex aspects to the story. We still got some trippy dream sequences and plenty of hallucinations. However, the objective was never in question. The stakes were never in question. We understood every story point clearly. And that’s something Aronofsky didn’t do in the past. So I think this is a great lesson. Remember that when you’re writing independent fare, you’re fighting an uphill appeal battle. It’s in your interest to make elements of your story clean and easy to understand. If you can nudge your narrative closer to a popular genre, like Aronofsky did here by making Black Swan a thriller, you can stay true to your indie roots yet still draw in a big audience. Oh, and it also doesn’t hurt to add a sex scene between your two lead female characters.

INCEPTION
Rough Projected Gross: 90-120 million
Actual Gross: 292 million
Writer: Christopher Nolan

What We Can Learn: I remember reading an article about this last month. In it, a reporter noted that Inception was a box office shock of epic proportions. Warner Bros. had made the movie to keep Christopher Nolan happy between Batman films. They had no idea it would become as big as it did. So the writer of the article was interested in how the success of the film was going to change the moviegoing landscape. What was Hollywood going to do about this? The answer? Nothing. They just watched a sleeper film become a $300 million behemoth and had no idea what to do with it. Now I’ve made my feelings clear about this film. I think it’s really flawed. Regardless of that, I believe the box office for Inception is trying to tell Hollywood something. People want more challenging big budget fare. This may sound contradictory to what I just said about Black Swan. But actually I think the statement is complementary. Independent films need more audience friendly storylines. Big-budget films need more challenging storylines. Hollywood is confused by this because it thinks audiences only want one or the other. I believe audiences are getting sick of the comic book movies and the mash up movies and the movies based on rides and the movies based on toys. They go to these films and feel empty afterwards. At least when you left Inception, you thought about something. You talked about it with your friends. And those are the kinds of conversations that get people back into the theater a second and third time. I think Hollywood is really missing out on the bigger picture here. The thing that the Internet has done is it’s allowed conversations about movies to be had by millions. But Hollywood keeps giving these people movies that aren’t worth talking about. Now I know that Disney VP just came out with a statement proclaiming that story doesn’t matter when you’re making a tentpole flick, and pointed to the terribly written billion-dollar earner Alice In Wonderland as an example. I think there will always be a market for high concept well marketed family fare. But I also think that there’s an appetite from the more serious moviegoers for big budget tentpole films that also make you think. The thing is, those movies aren’t being written. And the truth is there just isn’t a lot of material out there that teaches writers how to successfully write these kinds of movies. You have to balance the challenging aspects of your screenplay with the high concept marketability of a big-budget picture. If you get too esoteric or “out there” than the movie no longer becomes thoughtful. It just becomes confusing. Using our previous director as an example, Aronofsky wanted to make The Fountain for 100 million bucks. There’s a good chance the box office for that film would’ve topped out at $10 million. So really, it’s up to you guys to figure this out. It’s up to you guys to come up with these concepts that balance the two extremes. As always, it begins with the screenwriter. So get the fuck off Scriptshadow and start writing.

Genre: Sci-Fi Adventure
Premise: The last human on earth, a young girl, is protected by an army of robots against an even bigger army of zombies.
About: Zombies vs. Robots (Inherit the Earth) is yet another graphic novel that has been translated into a screenplay. The geek-tastic set up feels like a kissing cousin to All You Need Is Kill, a graphic novel about a young man forced to take on an alien army over and over again. While both scripts seem to be catered to the tween crowd, both also have soft chewy emotional cores, especially Inherit the Earth. The writer, Petty, has made his name mostly in the videogame world, working on such titles as Batman Begins and Splinter Cell.
Writer: JT Petty (based on the graphic novel by Chris Ryall & Ashley Wood)
Details: 115 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 don’t know if Inherit the Earth will ever get made. It’s such a bizarre idea I’m not sure your average audience member can wrap their head around it. I mean let’s be honest. It has robots. And zombies. And time travel. This goes beyond Blake Snyder’s double mumbo-jumbo into triple mumbo-jumbo. Does the third mumbo-jumbo cancel out the second mumbo-jumbo? I sure hope so, because if people can accept this, they’re going to find one of the more heartfelt science-fiction movies ever made.

Inherit the Earth is about a crazy scientist named Dr. Satterfield who’s consumed with building a time machine. He’s helped around his lab mostly by robots – I’m presuming this is sometime in the future – most notably his young-looking robot assistant, William.

Satterfield goes a little nuts, insisting that he try his time machine himself, even though it hasn’t been tested properly. Before his assistants can stop him, he leaps through, only to come back 3 seconds later as a raging flesh eating zombie. He starts munching on everyone who subsequently start munching on everyone else, and before you know it, the entire world is one big zombie party.

Cut to seven years later where the last human alive – a young girl named Lucy – is being holed up in the US government’s indestructible Cheyenne Mountain base. Lucy is the last hope for humankind, so the entire mountain is fortified by hundreds if not thousands of military robots.

Now up until this point, keeping the zombies at bay has been easy. As we all know, the only thing slower than a zombie is a Walmart customer. But what these robots don’t know is that the zombies have evolved and there are now “smart” zombies. So when a huge army of zombies strategically breaks through the barrier, the robots are unprepared. Chaos ensues and the biggest robot-zombie massacre ever goes down. When Lucy’s nurse bot is destroyed (the only robot programmed to provide humanlike emotional support for Lucy), that old assistant from Satterfield’s original outbreak, William, is assigned to replace her.

William’s terrified of being thrown into the role as he’s never been programmed to provide emotion. But zombies are everywhere, killing everyone, and there isn’t a lot of time to argue. So he and a really hot gun toting mega-babe robot named Rose escape with Lucy out into the desert.

With the zombies in hot pursuit, and with no more huge mountain barricades to protect her, it’s looking like the end of the human race is near. However, the group gets an idea. The Satterfield of the past will be arriving in the present within a few days. If they can get to his lab and kill him before he has time to get back to the past, they can prevent the zombie outbreak from ever happening and save the world. Since robots are not allowed to kill humans, Lucy will have to be the one to kill Satterfield.

I’ve said this before. If you’re going to give us a sci-fi movie or a fantasy movie or an adventure movie, you better find a way to connect with us on an emotional level as well as give us the action and the trailer moments and the special effects that we crave. Throwing zombies and robots up on screen is going to be fun for about 5 minutes. But if you want us to stay interested for the other hour and 55 minutes, you have to create an unresolved relationship in the movie that we care about and want to see resolved.

That relationship here is the relationship between William and Lucy. What this script does a really good job of, is conveying the loneliness of Lucy’s plight. She’s the last human on earth and she’s just a little girl. She’s surrounded by nuts and bolts and ones and zeros. Nobody knows what it’s really like to be in her position. And that alienation eats at her every day. The robots have actually had to program themselves to provide an artificial version of emotional support in order to mirror the kind of support a child needs.

When the robot responsible for this dies, that task is left to William, who’s just an assistant robot meant for simple duties. What makes it even worse is that Lucy hates him. Whenever she’s upset or confused or sad or lonely, she looks to him for support, and he has nothing to offer her. So in a way, it’s like a typical troubled parent-daughter relationship where two people are just not able to find any common ground.

While all the running from zombies stuff is fun, the real story – the thing that we really want to see resolved – is whether William can finally learn to make an emotional connection with this girl. Likewise, we want Lucy to see how hard William is trying. We want her to see that even though he’s not capable of love, he’ll do anything to save her.

This is what screenwriting is about. It’s not about all of the whizbang special effects gadgetry. Once you map that stuff out – once you have your plot structured – you better have a relationship at the core of your second act that needs deep exploration and that an audience is going to be interested in. The further apart you put the two people in that relationship – Lucy hates William and William is light years away from being emotionally available to Lucy – the more compelling that story is going to be. If you don’t have this, you get Transformers – movies with fake relationships and thin unresolved surface level issues that leave you feeling empty and detached from the two-hour experience minutes after they’re over. Now a studio executive may point out: yeah, but Transformers made $1 billion. Well my reply is: yeah, but you could’ve made 2 billion.

The great thing about Inherit the Earth is that it gets the plot stuff right too. We have a clear goal here: get to and kill Satterfield. We have urgency: Satterfield will arrive in a couple of days so they have to move it. We have more urgency: Thousands of zombies are chasing them (always try to add more urgency!). We have high stakes: literally the fate of the world is at stake. We have unexpected twists and turns: the strange cult that they run into. Everything is in place here for a great story.

What I also liked was that Inherit the Earth didn’t always take the safe route. I think whenever you’re writing a screenplay, it’s your job to explore avenues you’re a little afraid of. You have to take some chances and maybe go into a few places you wouldn’t normally go in. These decisions are the decisions that end up making your screenplay different from every other screenplay out there. So when our characters run into a cult, and we get into the scene where we find out what’s really going on with these people, and what they’re really planning to do with Lucy, it’s horrifying. And it’s not somewhere I expected this screenplay to go. But that’s why I liked the decision so much. It took a chance.

Maybe my only complaint with “Earth” is that the ending gets a little messy and in doing so misses an opportunity to truly pay off the emotional set up between William and Lucy. It’s hard to explain but the final scene is like a category five tornado, and because of all the wind and the noise and the chaos, we’re unable to experience the perfect closure we need between William and Lucy. It’s not a huge deal and I think it only needs some tweaking, but it’s a good reminder that clarity is important every step of the way. You can’t fake your way through anything. You have to make sure that every single word is carefully constructed to convey what you need to convey, especially in the end, when all the threads are finally paying off. However, the reason it didn’t bother me was because the final image was so perfect and so haunting. It totally made up for it.

I just really liked this and I hope the studio takes a chance on it. I have no idea if an American audience would be able to buy into the premise. But if they can, they certainly have the screenplay in place to make it work.

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

What I learned: Beware of predictability and safety when you’re writing. They are your enemies. If your script is always predictable and always safe, then there’s a good chance what you’re writing isn’t very interesting. The Shawshank Redemption has our lead character getting raped repeatedly. Back to the Future has a son who has to make out with his own mom. Even a movie like Up kills off one of the most delightful characters you’ve ever met within the first 10 pages. Here in Inherit the Earth, the whole cult sequence is unsettling and unexpected, a dark place a lot of writers would have been too afraid to tackle. But for me, that’s the sequence that legitimized the story. It showed just how dark and terrible a place the world had become, and that made the need to save it all the stronger. So always check yourself. Make sure you’re not the predictable safe writer.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A young man begins to suspect that his bosses are monsters – real monsters.
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).
Writer: Richmond Weems
Details: 94 pages

I had some major déjà vu going on when I picked this. I don’t know if there was a spec a few years ago similar to this, or if I read an earlier draft of the screenplay. But there is definitely something familiar about this concept.

As for the concept in question, it’s pretty good. While Lady Jane may disagree with me, the second you add monsters to your story, you get your screenplay a lot closer to high concept land. And I love the idea of a group of employees finding out that their bosses are secretly monsters. The question is – as it always is – did the writer execute?

Half of my notes on this one were destroyed in the great Chicago Fire so you’ll have to excuse me if I get some of the details wrong. Thirtysomething Zach Taylor works at a company doing a vague job with not a whole lot of upside. In fact, Zach, along with the rest of his employees, are all just mindlessly sleepwalking through their careers.

That is until one of their coworkers, John Miller, doesn’t show up for work the next day. The company has a long-standing practice of firing its employees who then disappear off the face of the earth. But these guys knew John Miller so they’re curious why he didn’t say anything to them.

The event results in Zach being a little more perceptive, and he quickly starts noticing a lot of strange things going on at the workplace. For example, the cleaning lady will be standing there one moment and then be gone the next. Instead of assuming she’s just a really fast cleaner, Zach thinks something fishy is going on. This is followed up by an urgent phone call from someone in the building screaming for help. And that’s when Zach really knows something’s up.

But it isn’t until Zach starts paying really close attention to his three bosses that he becomes convinced that they’re actually monsters. The problem is, the second he’s onto them, they’re on to him. And when they realize that Zach could potentially expose their long-running plan of gobbling up their downsized minions, they set up a big party at the end of the week for which Zach is certain will be the death of himself and all of his fellow employees.

So how was Inhuman Resources?

I got one word for you.

Plastics.

Actually, I take that back. I have another word for you.

Subplots.

This screenplay needed more subplots! It also needed fleshing out in almost every area. The idea is executed in the most minimal way, so it doesn’t feel so much like a movie as it does a short extended out to 100 minutes. Let’s start with the location. I may be mistaken because it’s been a few days since I read this, but I don’t remember a single scene that took place outside of the building. If you’re making a contained thriller that happens over the course of a few hours, then keeping everything in one place is fine. But if you’re telling a more traditional story, you need to get outside of that workplace and into the rest of the world so you can give your story some actual texture. With us seeing these people’s lives only within the walls of this company, it was like only seeing one fourth of who they were.

But back to subplots. What should the subplots be in a movie like this? I don’t know but I’ll teach you a trick to help you find them. It’s a simple trick. I call it “pretend that you don’t have a concept.” Pretend like the screenwriting gods came down from above and said to you “I can give this screenplay to the biggest producer in town. The only catch is that you can’t include the monster stuff.” What would you then do to make your screenplay interesting? Well, the only thing you really have at your disposal are your characters and your plot. So one thing you might do is create a love story between two of the people who work at the company. You might create a rivalry with one of the coworkers. You might create a work storyline where there’s some deadline they have to make. Those are very simple options and you would definitely want to dig deeper, but do you see how once you can no longer lean on your concept, you’re forced to actually come up with a story? And by doing so, without you even knowing it, you’ve created subplots.

Next up is a huge pet peeve of mine and something I’ve brought up many times before but in this instance it’s almost inexcusable. You need to know what your character’s job is. Why? Because people spend one third of their lives performing a job. It is one of the biggest insights into who a person is. If I introduced you to Joe and said he was a butcher, you’d get a pretty good idea of who he was, right? Now let’s say I introduced you to Stacy, and told you she was a divorce lawyer. Again, you’d have a pretty good idea of who Stacy was just by her job. Now I’m not saying you can’t play against those stereotypes and change things around once you get into the story, but you have to start somewhere – and knowing what your character does for a living is immensely helpful in figuring out who they are. If you don’t know what your character is doing for nine hours of every day, then you don’t know your character.

Now in this instance it’s even more of a problem, because the entire movie takes place at the character’s place of work. I suppose there is an off chance that keeping the workplace ambiguous is a part of the plan but I doubt it. But even if that was the case, I think it’s a bad idea. If you don’t know what these people do, then you don’t know what tasks to give them, what projects they need to work on, what their routine would be like. I mean think about it, if they work at a comic book company, it’s going to be a lot different than if they work at the IRS. Every single detail of their day is probably going to be different. But since this hasn’t been figured out, the characters are forced to do generic tasks (or in most cases no tasks), which contributes to the overall generic feel of the screenplay.

Plus, when you have a fun idea like this, it should be fun to come up with the company, because you can play off the monster angle. Maybe, for example, they’re a closet manufacturing company (monsters like to hide in closets). That’s pretty lame, but you get the idea. Now that you have a real company that does real things, you can start coming up with real tasks for your characters. Maybe they’re designing a closet for the richest man in town. Or maybe they’re designing closets for a new school (which the monsters picked specifically because it offered a lot of eatable children). Now you can get your characters out of the building and into the real world doing things. The point is, now you can flesh out your story.

Inhuman resources is an example of a script where the writer has thought of their concept and nothing else. Every single element in the screenplay needs to be fleshed out. I like the idea for the movie. It definitely has potential. But this thing won’t shine until it gets a giant makeover.

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

What I learned: A couple of lessons here. Never tell anyone that the script you’re giving them is your first script. Richmond was able to get away with it in this case but that’s mainly because I had a déjà vu moment when I read the concept. But most agents/producers/managers know that it usually takes about six scripts before writers really start to understand the craft. So usually, when a writer points out that this is their first script, I close that e-mail faster than George Lopez’s late-night show. You may be proud that you’ve completed your first script – and you should be – but if you want your script to be read, it’s best to keep that information to yourself. Another lesson to learn here– and I’m just bringing this up because the first lesson reminded me of it: Do not inundate your industry contacts with seven or eight different script loglines from your script archives in addition to the script you’re sending them. I don’t claim to know the exact psychology behind this, but whenever a writer does it, it gives off a desperate vibe. But the bigger issue is that readers will probably start wondering, if this person has all these old screenplays that no one liked before, what’s to say this one is any better? When talking about your screenplays, you should probably only mention the screenplay you just finished (that got you the meeting), the screenplay you’re working on, maybe the last screenplay you wrote, and then possibly some future ideas for screenplays. You can even cheat and give them “ideas you’re thinking about writing” that you’ve actually already written. Then, if they like them, you can “write them” really quickly and send them off to them. Now, not only have you given them a screenplay that you know they’ll be interested in, but they think you wrote it in a month, which is always good.  Hey, agents lie all the time. Why can’t we?