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Ender’s Game

Posted on February 9, 2010 | by admin

Here’s Roger with his review of Ender’s Game. Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for an interview with a writer that reignited my love of Sci-Fi and reminded me that the simplest of Sci-Fi concepts can be the best. :)

Genre: Science Fiction, Action, Coming of Age
Premise: Aliens have attacked Earth and have almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has started breeding military geniuses and trains them in the arts of war. The early training takes the form of games, and Ender Wiggin is a genius among geniuses who wins all the games. But is he smart enough to save the planet?
About: Ender’s Game started out as a novelette by Orson Scott Card in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. When it was expanded into a novel, it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. In May 2003, Card released his latest version of the screenplay to Warner Brothers. D.B. Weiss (and later, David Benioff), working closely with director Wolfgang Petersen, wrote a new script. Petersen eventually departed and Card announced in February 2009 that he had completed a new script for Odd Lot Entertainment.
Writers: D.B. Weiss (author of the videogame-themed novel, Lucky Wander Boy and one of the scribes for the screen adaptation of Bungie’s Halo and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Series for HBO) based upon the novels Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card. Also based upon the screenplays by Orson Scott Card, and Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris (X2, Superman Returns).
Details: Draft is dated 7/7/05


Before there was Harry Potter and Quidditch, there was Ender’s Game and Battle School. Sure, when it comes to narrative voice, Miss Rowling is heavily influenced by Roald Dahl, but when it comes to plot elements, it’s hard not to draw comparison between Hogwarts and its various houses (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, et al.) and Battle School and its various armies (Salamander, Dragon, etc.).

I’ve never read Ender’s Game, Rog. What the hell is Battle School?

It’s a space station where children are trained in the art of war.
You see, humanity is almost wiped out when a race of aliens with insectoid physiognomy called Formics (from the Latin formica, which means ant) invade Earth. Due to the heroics of a backwater half-Maori commander, one Mazer Rackham, the Earth survives the invasion and the Formics retreat.
To prepare for future confrontations, a shaky international military unit is formed, called the International Fleet (IF).
Many children around the world dream of passing the battery of tests the IF conducts so they can leave Earth and train at Battle School.
It’s at Battle School where students, some as young as six-years old, are organized into armies and participate in simulated micro gravity battles. The children learn everything from historical battle formations to space combat tactics. Needless to say, the teachers and adults at the school encourage the students to be competitive, cultivating their bloodlust and violent nature.
Picture a combination of the Danger Room from the X-Men comics, a Quidditch Arena from Harry Potter, but set in a ginormous zero-g spherical arena.
Who’s this Ender kid?
In the script, we meet Ender Wiggin when he is eleven years old as he undergoes his IF testing. Colonel Graff administers this particular round, “Shapes appear on your end, you arrange them to match the larger shape on my end. It’s a test of your facility with spacial relationships.” Ender dons a pair of haptic feedback gloves and puts together each puzzle with dizzying speed. Graff manages to remain stoic at Ender’s ease with the test, and sends the boy on his way.
Disappointed, Ender walks home and is bullied by his older brother Peter. Peter is a nasty piece of work. Brutal and aggressive, his only goal in life is to attend Battle School, and he loathes his empathetic and weak younger brother, constantly picking on him, infuriated that he can never get Ender to lash out at him in violence. At Ender’s house, we meet his sister, the ginger Valentine Wiggin, another empath who shares a close relationship with her younger brother.
In the novel, it should be noted that Peter is jealous of this relationship. In this iteration of the story, there is no character development that suggests such envy. The very Greek psychological subtext is, for the most part, non-existent.
It’s here where we cut over to the ruins of Westminster, where we meet an eleven-year old urchin named Julian “Bean” Delphiki. Bean is even smaller than Ender, and he hacks an automated ration teller to gain a bounty of chocolate bars. Unfortunately, he’s attacked by a gang of bullies led by Achilles (a nice touch, as Achilles de Flanders is the primary antagonist in the Bean Quartet, the parallel novels told from Bean’s perspective). Bean is tasered and left at the scene of the crime, where he is collected by the police and deposited at a hospital. At the hospital, a social worker named Sister Carlotta is intrigued that such a young boy, who has never been to school, has the proficiency to hack machines.
And just like that, Bean takes the IF tests and is on his way to Battle School.
Quick digression: Now, all this is material out of the parallel novel, Ender’s Shadow.
Sometimes I think Bean’s story is more affecting, more sentimental, because Bean is an orphan. There’s an Oliver Twist-like Dickensian sadness to his perspective that’s hard not to emphasize with. An urchin who protects Ender, carrying a burden and existing as a hero unsung whose courage breaks my heart. I’m glad to see that he’s utilized as a major character in this draft. It’s a smart choice. Sadly, there’s no later confrontation with Achilles at Battle School, which in the novels, serves as a nice point of character contrast between Ender and Bean when it comes to conflict resolution. One would think that’s the type of stuff worth exploring (if one is going to turn to Ender’s Shadow for scene material).
Back in America, Mazer Rackham arrives at the Wiggin household to inform Ender and his shocked family, that indeed, he is going to Battle School. As a matter of fact, Ender “scored higher on the Battle School cognition battery than any applicant we ever tested”.
Soon after, Ender is on a shuttle with Bean and the other kids who have been accepted to Battle School. Mazer informs them, “You all think you’re brilliant already. You’re wrong. Less than half of you will advance to the Tactical Academy, and one in ten of those will move on to Central Command. I hope against hope that one of you will be strong enough, smart enough, good enough to be of some real use.
“But honestly, in my opinion, the only one of you worth the fuel it takes to lift you into orbit is Ender Wiggin.”
Does Ender being singled out as top talent jeopardize his life at Battle School?
Yep.
Every new “launchie” is required to go to Battle Room training before they can be assigned to an army.
But not Ender.
Ender is told that he’s been assigned to Salamander Army. This incites the ire of Commander Madrid, the fifteen-year old leader of Salamander, who sees Ender as a liability whose presence will ruin his team’s undefeated winning streak.
Much of the 2nd Act is spent in the Battle Room.
Have the rules of the games been changed from the novel?
Oddly, yes.
The students are still attired in hydraulics-reinforced flash suits, helmets and propulsion packs (to control their movement).
But in the script, it reads less like zero-g war games and more like a game of Quidditch.
The goal still consists of getting a player through the other team’s gate, but that’s it. This player needs no support from his teammates. In the novel, the goal was to destroy or “freeze” all of the opposing players. Then four teammates were required to touch the enemy gate with their helmets while the fifth player passed through it.
During these games, Madrid forces Ender to affix himself to a floating obstacle and basically hide as the rest of his team fights. He’s not to get in the way at all.
Sucky. Does Ender eventually get his chance to shine?
At first, Ender pleads with Mazer to be demoted out of the Salamander Army, but Mazer refuses.
But hope comes in the form of the comicbook-reading Salamander star player, Petra Arkanian. Petra empathizes with Ender and his sink-or-swim plight.
She takes him under her wing, showing him how to work his suit and maneuver in a zero-g environment. She also teaches him how to handle his firepower and control his shooting.
Everyone questions Ender’s talent, until Petra takes him to the Game Room (for recreation) and he discovers a cluster of 2D Real-Time Strategy Games that most of the kids ignore. I imagined something akin to a holographic StarCraft. Entranced, Ender studies the RTS game and is eventually approached by an older cadet, who shows him the rules and challenges him to a game.
This is where it gets interesting.
Petra returns to find Ender, playing ten games at once, against ten other cadets. “He ranges back and forth along the lines, barely taking time to look at each screen before slapping the Command button and barking out commands with Eminem rapidity.” A huge crowd forms as Ender defeats all ten cadets, establishing his presence as a tactical wargame phenom.
How does Ender’s genius translate to the Battle Room?
Ender begins practicing with a ragtag group of launchies to not only perfect his movement and shooting, but to develop strategies that are much different from what most of the other armies are using. He teaches the other kids, “Even the best armies are thinking about the Battle Room the wrong way. Platoons, lines, columns, phalanxes –- they’re all battlefield tactics.”
Ender develops guerilla-style zero-g tactics, and it’s not long before Rackham puts Ender in command of a new army: The Dragon Army. Ender and his group of young launchies showcase their new style of play and become the new team that racks up an undefeated record, eventually catching up to Madrid and his crew.
The games eventually culminate into a huge battle where Ender and his crew are forced to fight against two armies at once. Of course, using some innovative thinking, Ender leads his team to victory.
This really pisses off Madrid, and soon Ender is forced to finally, truly fight for his life when he’s thrown into the Battle Room without his suit as Madrid and his henchman try to kill him. This is a sanitized version of what actually happens in the book, and I think it falls short.
Not a good thing, as this is a major turning point in the novel and it’s one of those character-changing and character-defining moments that defines the theme of the story.
OK. So what about this war with the Formics?
Ender survives his ordeal with Madrid and graduates to Command School. Mazer takes him to one of the moons of Jupiter, to the ruins of the command center the Formics used for their invasion against Earth. It is inside the moon where we find the Ansible, a giant blue sphere covered in intricate geometric designs, “It’s how they communicated with their home world –- faster than light. We don’t know how it works, but we figured out how to use it.”
By using the Ansible, they can instantaneously control their entire fleet with no lag. The Ansible is one of those classic science fiction tropes, like Unobtainium in Avatar, that readers of the genre will recognize. Coined by Ursula K. Le Guin, it’s derived from the word “answerable”, meaning it’s a device that will let its users receive answers quickly across interstellar distances.
Ender is taken to the Command Simulator, where he is told that actual Admirals train. Coincidentally, it operates in almost exactly the same way as the Game Room’s RTS game (You know, the one he was so good at).
The only fishy detail is that the fleet’s ships appear to be models that are thirty years old. Ender is suspicious and confronts Mazer about this detail. He is told, “The prototype craft are great public morale boosters for the air and space shows. This is what we’ve really got. Learn how to use it.”
So all of this is just a simulation, right?
Well, that’s what Mazer tells Ender. That it’s a training sim, a game to prepare the boy for the real deal.
Upon his first match, Ender thinks he’s playing against AI. Remember, this is his first time playing this game. He’s still learning. But he seems to be doing well. He’s victorious upon his first try.
And apparently, he wasn’t playing against AI.
We learn that he just defeated another of Mazer’s star pupils, Andrei Karpov. And not only that, he also defeated all four of Karpov’s subcommanders. At the same time.
Who the hell is Karpov?
Good question. He’s not in the novel. As far as I can tell, he’s just a plot device to make an allusion to the competitive chess world, and his existence tells us that Ender is like a chess prodigy.
The final thirty or so pages are Ender and his subcommanders engaged in their final exam on the simulator.
Ender thinks he’s playing against Mazer.
He’s not.
What? So who’s he really playing against it?
Formics.
Ender is controlling the fleet that’s, in actuality, an attack on the Formic home world. He doesn’t know he’s killing a race of sentient creatures.
To the audience’s horror, we gain this knowledge when Bean gains it. As Bean hides this newfound knowledge from Ender, we share his guilt and culpability as Ender sacrifices human beings like pawns to try and best Mazer.
But we know it’s not Mazer, it’s the Formic Queen.
And to add to the horror, the Formics are ultimately presented as a peace-loving race who travelled to Earth out of curiosity.
Understand: They never shot first. We did.
Damn. That’s rough. So, does this screenplay do justice to the novel and its fans?
D.B. Weiss’ draft is a fascinating read, but I don’t think it’s the movie fans are waiting for.
I’m not holding anyone at fault here, far for from it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but even Orson Scott Card himself hasn’t written a draft he seems to be pleased with, and I think he’s written like fifteen or so.
I also don’t think he’s ever been satisfied with any of the drafts attempted by other screenwriters, as the closest anyone has come to translating the novel to a visual medium is comic-book scribe, Chris Yost, who has done a bang-up job with the Ender’s Game: Battle School mini-series for Marvel Comics (Yost’s approach is to pretend he’s writing for the HBO mini-series, and he tries to include everything from the novel.)
There are four elements that make this particular from-book-to-screen adaptation a true screenwriter’s challenge:
(1) Ender’s Game is a bildungsroman with a protagonist who is a child of few words. Much of the novel is Ender’s internal narration. And since Ender’s mind is that of a brilliant tactician who is trying to understand not only his emotions, but the complicated world around him, it’s simply hard to take that internal monologue and give it a visual treatment. Might be good to take a nod from Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind or Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and create visual sequences that exploit what Ender sees when he thinks. Merely an idea. And maybe a bad one at that…
(2) Ender’s Game requires a large child cast. When Ender is recruited by the IF, he is six years old. When the novel ends, Ender has exterminated an entire race of creatures. He is twelve. I think it’s a bad idea to skew the characters towards older teenagers, as it destroys the innocence lost aspect of the story that it is known for. Already, many fans of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series are upset that the characters in the movie version are older than they are in the books. I can understand why Hollywood would want older actors. It’s a difficult thing, finding talented child actors, but for Ender’s Game, it is essential.
(3) Ender’s Game has child-on-child violence. Nowhere near the gory exploitation of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale, but there’s ugly stuff (cruelty) in it that’s not going to settle easily into the consciousness of a mass audience. But it’s also the type of stuff that gives other coming-of-age novels like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and John Knowles’ A Separate Peace raw emotional power. It’s the type of stuff that sings of nostalgia and loss. In the book, Ender fights Madrid in a shower, ultimately sending him back to Earth in a body bag.
(4) Ender’s Game has a purity and perfection to it that’s only going to be muddled with multiple cooks in the kitchen. The egos of multiple filmmakers, from producers to screenwriters to directors, are going to do nothing but scathe a narrative that already works. Sure, find a way to translate Ender’s narrative visually, but when you sanitize the story and try to change it, you’re already making the adaptation more difficult than it has to be. In this sense, Ender’s Game is a novel that may never be turned into a movie fans will be satisfied with.
It’s been a while since I read the novel (I was probably around 12 or 13), but one thing that stuck with me all these years was the sense of bonecrushing fatigue Ender experiences as he takes his “final exam”. It’s a novel that really beats you up, and you feel a loss when you close its pages.
Those feelings, those emotions, are absent from this script.
That’s how you know it’s not the same.

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

What I learned: This script really made me think about theme and character development.
There was some dissonance concerning Ender’s character development. Something felt missing, something felt off. I thought about the novel. Sure, it’s about innocence lost, but Ender’s characterization in the novel was concrete. He was a kid who had to learn how to take care of himself, even if it meant hurting another human being in self-defense. The message wasn’t so much that violence is sometimes necessary (if we learn from Bean and Achilles, we know that there are other solutions besides violence), but that Ender had to make a stand and confront aggressors.
But…in the script, it’s almost the opposite. The lesson that he must learn to take care of himself is buried under the message that, perhaps, yes, violence is the answer. Is that really the theme? And I think this muddling of theme can be traced to Ender’s character development. His set-up. Like we’re not being presented with the correct scenes to establish Ender’s presence as an empath. There’s a lot of talk about how unaggressive and empathetic he is. Almost too much talk that tends to work against the showing.
So I guess I learned that showing is always better than telling, and that theme is best expressed through clear character development. And how do you achieve that clarity? Through structure and scenes that show rather than tell.
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The Darkest Hour

Posted on February 3, 2010 | by admin

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A group of strangers must band together in Moscow after a mysterious alien force invades the city
About: This project has been in development for awhile and, as far as I can tell, is waiting for someone or something to breathe new life into it. The original draft was written by M.T. Ahern & Leslie Bohem four years ago, and now Spaihts has given his take on the material. Spaihts, for those who don’t know, wrote the Avatar-sounding space thriller, “Shadow 19” back in 2006, which won the admiration of Keanu Reeves. Reeves (no relation) then hired Spaihts to pen “Passengers,” his weird idea about a guy who wakes up early on a 100 year space journey. The script wowed Hollywood and finished Top 3 on the 2007 Black List. Suddenly Spaihts was a big name and interviewing for all the big sci-fi assignments. That’s when he landed this job, rewriting “The Darkest Hour” for controversial director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted). That in turn landed him a writing assignment for Disney’s “Children of Mars,” and of course, the biggest deal of his career so far, the Alien reimagining for Ridley Scott.
Writer: Jon Spaihts
Details: 118 pages (November 30th, 2008 draft)


When you look at the writers out there today, there really isn’t anyone who’s churning out consistently good sci-fi, which is probably why Spaihts (a name I couldn’t pronounce with a blaster to my head) surprised everyone by landing the Alien reboot. But is it that surprising? Roger definitely loved Shadow 19. And Passengers is one of those scripts it seems like everyone loves (except for one person, notably). So I decided to momentarily forego all this touchy-feely Sundance fare and finish up the Spaihts trifecta. Let’s get our hands dirty with a little sci-fi, shall we?

Rex Halley is an American entrepreneur trying to take advantage of Moscow’s new influx of wealth. Or, at least, Moscow’s new influx of wealth two years ago, when this script was written and people had wealth. Equal parts eager and naïve, the 27 year old Trump aspiree cracks the deal of a lifetime, making him a millionaire within seconds, only to have it sucked away when his company’s board of trustees, all Russian, unanimously vote to fire him. A few minutes later and he’s just as unemployed as the guy who stands in front of your local Jack In The Box.

In the meantime we meet Natalie, an American abroad looking for some fun, Vika, a waifish 16 year old Russian girl, Sean, a dorky American video game developer, Skyler, a dickhead lead singer for an American metal band, and Matvei, a “don’t fuck with me” Russian policeman as big as the horse he rides on. Each is experiencing Moscow in their own way, working in it, enjoying it, enduring it. None of them know each other yet, but they will.

Cause on that very night, small golden meteor type rocks start falling from the sky, crashing all over the city. Emerging from these meteors are alien beings called “Spooks.” Seemingly driven by light and energy, these evil E.T.s are nearly invisible except for the dense glow they give off when moving around. As everyone spills outside to see what this strange phenomena is all about, the phenomena starts ripping them to pieces. These “things” are made up of a bunch of small furiously rotating metallic shards. These shards are to a human being what a juicer is to an apple. And let’s just say that after that night, Moscow could supply enough apple juice to make sure Mott’s would never have to plant another apple tree again.

We slam forward a few weeks to see our heroes, who have found each other and are nestled up inside a makeshift bunker, jumpier than a trampoline full of kangaroos. The entire city is dead, 28 Days Later style. No electricity. No society. Not another soul in site. Their days have been relegated to scavenging for water. But most of the stores have been ransacked, and leaving the bunker is always risky. There are spooks around every corner. These guys are somewhere around Plan W. They’re running out of alphabet.

Luckily a beacon of light appears halfway across the city – a highrise with an entire floor lit up. The revelation confuses and excites them. Someone else is alive! But why are they broadcasting their location to the Spooks? Could it be a trap? They decide to take a chance and go to the building because…well, because what else are they going to do? The owner of the highrise is Sergei, a Russian Einstein who’s a whiz with electronics. He’s figured out that the Spooks don’t see like we do, so as long as you protect your place with lead lining, you can run as much electricity as you want and they won’t spot you. Sergei is the first sign of hope for this desperate group. Someone who sounds like they actually know what they’re doing.

But the party is short-lived. A greedy Skylar uses the opportunity to steal all of Sergei’s food. As he sneaks out the door, the knucklehead leaves it open. This alerts the Spooks to their location, and pretty soon the Spooks are upon them producing more Spook Meat. Hmm, I don’t know why but that sounded dirty in a weird way.

Anyway, only a few of members of the group survive, and now they’re worse off than they were to start. They’re stuck in the middle of the city with nowhere to hide. Will they live? Will they die? You’ll have to read to find out.

It’s funny. You can see Timur Bekmambetov’s influence on the material right away. I’m guessing this was originally set in an American city. But Timur moved it to Moscow, most likely because of familiarity. Even though that choice came from a selfish place, it actually ends up really helping the screenplay. We’ve seen the American-City-gets-invaded thing a billion times before. By throwing these Americans into Russia, making *them* the aliens to this country, it adds a whole new dynamic when the invasion hits. Anyone who’s been away from home when something bad happens knows how alienated you feel, how unfamiliar everything becomes, how desperately you pine for home. Watching Rex and Natalie and Sean and Skyler creep through this foreign land, it’s not just about coming out alive, it’s about getting back to where they belong.

I also really liked the aliens. While they weren’t perfect, they were at least original. They’re not bug like or reptile-like, the kind of aliens I see in 99% of the scripts I read. They’re a mix of light and energy and metal. And that weird combination inspires all sorts of questions. Why are they built that way? What are their needs? What are their intentions? It was a cool choice and one I thought worked well.

Unfortunately the final act takes a bit of a nose-dive. It makes that mistake of trying to do too much in too little time. How can you take down an alien race in 30 minutes when in the opening 90 pages you haven’t killed a single one? This results in a lot of rushing, a lot of warped logic (i.e. “Well if we do *this*, then they’ll go over there and then we can bomb all of them together!”), an entirely new location we have to learn about, new characters we have to file. In fact, the final act has so much going on that you could conceivably build an entirely new screenplay out of it.

But there’s easily enough stuff here to make it worth the read. It’s a fun script that tackles an age-old story from a slightly different angle

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

What I learned: Spaiths does a perfect job describing his characters. Like any good writer, he has a hierarchy for his descriptions, cluing us in on which characters are here for the moment, which are here for a few scenes, and which will be key characters in the story. If I have a pet peeve, it’s writers who don’t have any system for describing their characters. For example, they’ll describe their main character with a single word: “cool.” Then describe a waitress in scene 48 who has one line as, “dripping with sex, the waitress wears a uniform that’s several inches too high. Her lips are naturally ruby red, and her eyes are caked in mascara. An exotic beauty.” I’m expecting that woman to be on every page of the screenplay! So be smart in how you describe your characters. If it’s a main character, give them 2 or 3 lines of description. A secondary character, 1 line of description. A minor character, a couple of descriptive adjectives is fine. And if it’s someone only making an appearance in that scene, simply give us their profession or describe them in their name (ie. “Waitress” or “Asshole Lawyer”). Let me give you an example of why this is important. Matvei, the horse policeman, appears early on in the script, but only for a moment. He won’t appear again for another 40 pages. However, since Spaihts took two full lines to describe him, I knew he was going to be a key character later on, so I paid attention. You don’t necessarily have to have *this* description hierarchy system, but you should have some system.

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Blue Valentine

Posted on February 2, 2010 | by admin

Genre: Drama/Love Story
Premise: A couple struggles to keep it together on the last leg of their marriage.
About: I know I said l was finished with Sundance script reviews but people kept pushing me to review more, so I’m pumping out a couple extra this week. Derek Cianfrance and his writing partners have been trying to make this movie for 12 years. Their hard work was rewarded when Ryan Gosling chose “Blue Valentine” over Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” (and left poor Jackson with the 3rd rate Mark Wahlberg in the process), new “serious actress fave” Michelle Williams joined him, and the Weinsteins bought the film at Sundance. While this may be a 2004 draft, from every review I’ve read of the film, it sounds almost identical to the shooting script.
Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis & Cami Delavigne
Details: 121 pages (2004 draft)


I know everyone loves Ryan Gosling, and I think he’s a fine actor, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the material he chooses. The double-dip combination of Half-Nelson and Lars And The Real Girl is about as enjoyable as sneaking into your local pizzeria and crawling into one of their ovens for the afternoon. I have a real issue with indie films that hit you over the head with their relentless depression for all 100 minutes of their running time, and I have a particular issue with actors who choose to only appear in these types of films. It’s as if they’re so desperate to be taken seriously, that they’re willing to sacrifice any semblance of a good story in the process. I mean, okay, you’ve moped, you’ve screamed, you’ve argued, you’ve cried…wonderful. Here’s your Oscar. But what about us? What about the people who actually want to sit down and ENJOY a film?? To me, Gosling is the poster child for that type of actor, and it’s why I don’t get excited for his projects anymore.

Blue Valentine is the third in his “slit your wrists” trilogy. Whether you love it or hate it, this is not the kind of script you enjoy. It is simply something you endure – a no holds barred look at a miserable couple trying to make it through their miserable existence. No film coming out of Sundance divided audiences more than this one. This Movieline review implies it’s one of the worst films ever made. Yet this Firstshowing review seems to say it’s one of the most authentic experiences the reviewer has ever had at a theater. Where do I come out on all this?


Well, I can’t comment on the finished film. But I can say that this draft was one of the most unpleasant reading experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I could get into the fact that there’s no real discernible story. I could talk about how the flashback device seems designed to distract us from that fact. I could get into how terribly unlikable the characters are. I could talk about how absolutely nothing happens for long stretches at a time. I could talk about how the same emotional note is hit over and over and over and over again. I could talk about the lack of character development, the stilted dialogue, how all the flashbacks could’ve been wrapped up in a single one minute scene. I could basically talk about how I had no idea what this script was about until one of the characters spelled it out for me on page 90.

BUT

The movie DID sell. The movie DID work for some people. So why?

One word. Emotion. If you’ve had a recent traumatic break-up where someone fell out of love with you, this script will hit you hard. I think the empty helpless crushing pain of being left is so powerful that it renders all of my above problems moot. It sounds like in Derek’s review on Firstshowing, that that’s exactly what happened. It was a very personal experience for him. And I get that. It’s the one thing I always say. The X-factor in your script is your subject matter. You never know who’s going to be into it, and who isn’t. But man, I mean, as a screenplay, I don’t think this works at all.

So what happens in Blue Valentine? Not a lot. But I’ll try and give you the Cliff’s Notes. David Periera is “35 years old and 35 pounds overweight.” His wife, Cindy, is beautiful. The two have a 5 year old daughter named Frankie. There seems to be an unhappiness in their relationship but we’re not told what that unhappiness stems from. The first 30 pages are basically different variations of giving us this same information.

It was this plodding approach to the story that first turned me off. I’m okay when things move slow if *something* is building. But from what I could gather, this wasn’t going to be that kind of experience. In fact, the focus appeared to be put on the most random things, characters or moments that added nothing to the screenplay. For instance we learn that Cindy had a bit of a strange family. But their introduction didn’t seem to have any point. We’d read a scene where one of the family members flipped out and then…that was it. That moment or the effects of that moment or the result of that moment never ever played into the screenplay at all. Which leaves you wondering…well then why show it in the first place?

Then there was the daughter, who also fell into this category. Why was she here? Whatever was wrong with these two had nothing to do with her (even when we reveal a “secret” about her later on, one that’s supposed to be shocking – it has no effect on the dynamic of their relationship). After a lot of passive-aggressive bickering and weird conversations between the two, David gets the idea that they should go on a weekend trip together. It’s clear Cindy doesn’t want to go but she does anyway.

Gosling at a Q&A, talking about the film, smiling more in one answer than he did the entire movie.

During their trip, we occasionally jump back six years to the period when they first met. David was the son of a logger who dreamed of bigger things. Cindy was hoping to be a doctor and was also engaged to a guy named Bobby. Somehow their paths collided, they fell in love, and they got married.

The flashback structure is supposed to be there to contrast their past with their present, not unlike a more depressing version of 500 Days Of Summer. Although as I mentioned before, nothing happens in the flashbacks that warrants them. For example, during one present-day sequence, Cindy runs into Bobby, her old fiancé, while she’s at the grocery store. They speak for a few minutes, and it’s clear Cindy and Bobby had a past together and that Bobby doesn’t like David. Cindy gets back to the car and tells David about the meeting. We can see he’s not a fan of Bobby’s. Right then we know all we need to know about Bobby and David. There was a past – the two probably fought over her – and David won out. Yet nearly 20 minutes worth of flashbacks are given to showing us this scenario, even though it’s exactly as we assumed it had been. I’m a big believer in that you don’t use flashbacks unless they add some critical piece of information or move the story forward in a way that you couldn’t in the present. And I just didn’t see that here.

Anyway….

From an objective point of view, this device of jumping from the beginning to the end of a relationship SEEMS like it could be interesting. But since the past holds so few surprises, it feels more like an obligation. You’re predicting every word five minutes before it comes out of the characters’ mouths. She’s going to yell at him here, you say. Sure enough, it’s a scene of her yelling at him. It’s as if we’re watching those fake animals at Chuck-E-Cheese’s exchange pre-recorded lines with each other. I guess that was my biggest problem with the script, is it was so predictable. I wanted more than two people who were unhappy with each other in 50 successive scenes.

And the characters. Oh the characters. You had David, who was nagging clingy jealous and annoying. And you had Cindy, who was cruel heartless bitchy whiny and a sociopath. Not to be flippant but who wants to spend their evening with two people like that?

There’s not much more I can say about this script. I’m trying to find some positives here but it’s like trying to find positives in a plane crash. I guess one thing it’s got going for it is I won’t forget it. They say the worst scripts/movies are ones you forget 2 minutes after you finish them. If it stays with you then it at least had an impact. Well, I can say with certainty that I will never forget Blue Valentine.

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

What I learned: A couple of things here. A gimmick is not a substitution for a story. Jumping back and forth in time isn’t going to distract your reader from the fact that your characters aren’t growing, that the script only hits one note, that the goals are vague, that the focus is put on meaningless scenarios/scenes/characters. If you’re going to use a unique way of telling your story (like Blue Valentine, like Eternal Sunshine, like 500 Days of Summer, like Pulp Fiction), make sure you put just as much effort into your story as you would if you were telling the thing straight up. In addition to that, in my interview with Stacey Menear, he made a great point about how good movies hit multiple emotional notes. You’re scared, you’re happy, you’re sad, you’re angry. Blue Valentine hit the same note over and over and over again – sadness – just suffocating us with depression. Make sure your script hits multiple emotional notes, WHATEVER the genre is!

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Edge of Darkness

Posted on January 27, 2010 | by admin

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A straight-laced but depressed cop goes on a mission to find out who killed his daughter.
About: On the eve of the announcement that Mel Gibson is reteaming with Shane Black, we get his thriller, Edge of Darkness, an adaptation of an old BBC mini-series, in theaters this Friday. This is the first project Mel’s starred in in a long time, and there were whispers it was because he was blacklisted in Hollywood after his drunken rant a few years ago. For awhile, DeNiro was actually attached to this project, but dropped out a few days into shooting because of “creative differences.” Usually, we never find out what these “creative differences” are, but in this case, we learned that it was because DeNiro didn’t memorize his lines! How cool would that have been, seeing Gibson and Deniro work together? Aww man, what could’ve been.
Writer: William Monahan
Details: 127 pages (undated)

Monahan holding up the little gold guy, looking as uncomfortable as I’ve ever seen a man.

Let me start off by saying I have no idea which draft this is because there’s no title page. Its 127 pages implies it’s a draft from earlier on in the process though, so this is likely a little different from the final film.

Surprising as it may sound, I’ve never read a William Monahan script before. “Surprising” because if there’s one writer who I’m continually told other writers are in awe of, it’s Monahan. The thing is, I haven’t been impressed enough by his movies to seek out any of his scripts. Despite a few nice scenes and a couple of good performances in The Departed, I thought the story was all over the place. I know some people think I’m batty for saying so, but look at Kingdom of Heaven, which also supports the case that his stories are unfocused (and yes, I saw the extended cut as well – which turned unfocused and short into unfocused and long). Body of Lies would’ve been a bad direct-to-video title had it not been for Scott, Crowe and DiCaprio’s involvement. So I was struggling to figure out just why people were so impressed with this guy.


Ten pages into Edge of Darkness, I found out. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but Monahan has a command over his words that brings even the most mundane passages alive. The thing about Edge of Darkness is it’s so relentlessly depressing that you want to give up by the end of the first act. But Monahan’s writing – the way he builds mystery, the way he builds character, the way he writes dialogue – keeps you pushing down deeper into the darkness…and enjoying it. Make no mistake, this script is about one thing – death – and never has the subject matter been so exciting.

Craven is one of those salt-of-the-earth blue collar honest Boston guys who happens to be a cop. Problem is, he’s Irish. And us Irish aren’t very good with emotions. So when his beautiful MIT-educated daughter, Emma, comes home, there are echoes of an un-nurtured relationship there, but neither of them are able to express it because of that damn Irish DNA. The irony is, this is the last chance they’ll get to break the code, to give in and emote, because there is something wrong with Emma, something very wrong.


Less than a few hours after getting home, she’s vomiting worse than a coed after her first keg party. Even now, Craven can’t muster the courage to ask her what’s wrong, and it isn’t until she’s barely able to walk that the two realize, maybe we should get you to the hospital NOW. The two make it on to the front porch when a man in a ski-mask and a shot gun screams out “Craven!” and pumps a couple of shots into Craven’s daughter. She dies instantly. He runs.

Initial investigation presumes a botched attempt on Craven’s life. Happens to cops all the time. Criminals they put away come back for their own brand of justice. But there’s a problem. Craven doesn’t have any enemies. He’s one of the good ones. As Monahan writes in his dialogue, Craven could “put you away for life and you’d agree that he had a point.”

But Craven knows what these men don’t know. His daughter was the target. They did something to her. But why?

It’s no coincidence this script is titled Edge of Darkness. As far as Craven is concerned, his life is over. He just has one more thing to do before he crosses over to the other side – find out who killed his daughter, and make them pay.

The reason a non-procedural fan like myself enjoyed this procedural is because it’s not another Mel Gibson driving around kicking the shit out of a bunch of deadbeats snoozer. The mystery here, which involves Emma’s employment at a secret nuclear government facility perched atop Boston, clashes blue collar with big government, and watching a nobody cop take on an establishment that normally eats nosy guys like Craven for dinner, is, for lack of a better phrase, funner than shit.

Come on! There are clearly too many edges and too much darkness in this picture.

Some of the story devices used here are as old as the medium itself, but boy do they work. These government officials are used to being able to make one phone call. “Chief, tell your guy to back off.” But Craven’s not answering to the Chief anymore. He’s gone rogue. So watching him inch his way up the company ladder, discovering the truth behind why his daughter was on the verge of dying when she came back to him that day, and outsmarting everyone in his path, is like watching dawn turn into daylight.

Now I’ll be the first to admit, what they were covering up wasn’t as cool as I wanted it to be. (Spoiler) My advice to anyone writing this kind of story. Please, for the love of God, don’t include tree-hugging environmentalists in your conspiracy. The second you involve any sort of environmentalist group into a hardcore thriller, it’s like asking the Backstreet Boys to play halftime at the Super Bowl. It weakens everything. But in the end, it doesn’t matter, because the real reason we’re here is to watch Craven get revenge, one asshole at a time. And in that respect, Edge of Darkness is a 70 yard touchdown.

“You talking to him? You talking to him??” ‘Uh no Mr. De Niro, it’s “You talking to me?”

Lots of things to like in this script. A risky but neat device Monahan uses is to have Craven talk to his daughter during the mission, even though she’s not there. We hear her voice, helping him along, and it’s a great little tool that both strengthens our understanding of how much he loves her, and constantly reminds us why he’s doing this.

Also, Monahan’s style reminds me of Esztheras’ in that once he hits a conversation, he doesn’t gum it up with unnecessary description. When a reader says, “It was 125 pages but it read like it was 90,” this is what they mean.

Edge of Darkness is still hard to read because of the thick stench of death around every Bah-stan corner. Everybody here is either dead, dying, wants to die, or trying to avoid death. It’s a little overwhelming at times and would probably be too much to take if the story weren’t so entertaining. I guess I should be happy that I’m still alive after reading it. And I am. It’s a tough and depressing script to get through, but worth it.

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

What I learned: Edge of Darkness combines two key storytelling devices that work extremely well. Revenge and the Underdog. We like to follow characters who fight back after they’ve been wronged (Taken, Gladiator, Kill Bill). And we love watching an underdog take on a much stronger opponent (Rocky, Braveheart, Die Hard). Combine that with a highly sympathetic character (he just lost his daughter), and you’ve got a winning formula.

Watch only if you want to see the entire movie.

Completely unrelated comment of the day: I do not have a single solitary need for the Ipad. It would not improve my life in any noticeable way whatsoever. I don’t even understand why it was made. It doesn’t do anything that other devices can’t already do. And yet, I want one. I hate my consumer side.

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Interview with Stacey Menear (writer of "Mixtape")

Posted on January 27, 2010 | by admin

I am so happy to be able to share this interview with you today. Stacey Menear is the author of one of my favorite scripts of the last few months, “Mixtape,” a coming of age story about a young teenage girl who finds a mixtape that belonged to her deceased parents. When she accidentally destroys it, she uses the song list to go on a search for all the music. For those who read my review of Mixtape, you’ll remember Stacey’s script was on 2009’s Blacklist with 14 votes. But more importantly, it’s number 19 on MY LIST. This is probably my favorite interview so far because Stacey gives some great advice. Stacey is managed by Jim Wedaa and repped by Valarie Phillips and Ida Ziniti. I’ll shut up now so we can all learn something.

SS: First of all, how long have you been writing? How many scripts had you written before you wrote Mixtape?

SM: I visited my parents over the holidays and my mom reminded me that before I could actually write I would dictate stories to her about the further adventures of Indiana Jones. I don’t remember the particulars, but apparently in my version Indiana befriends a talking snake and the two of them travel the world together going on exciting archeological adventures. Sounds like a good reboot for Indian Jones, if you ask me. So I guess I’ve been making up stories as long as I remember and while I haven’t been writing screenplays all that long I’ve always written short stories and stuff like that. I’d written around 3 screenplays before Mixtape – with various starts and stops and other projects along the way.

SS: I’m sure I’m not the first one to erroneously assume that because your name was Stacey and because the script was about a 13 year old girl, that you were, in fact, female. Two questions. Do you think that assumption helped you (i.e. gave you more credit for understanding what a 13 year old girl would go through?) and what inspired a grown man to write a 13 year old female coming-of-age story?

SM: My name definitely throws people off. Though my mom denies it, my dad, who is a very manly logger living in Oregon, claims the name was a sort of “Boy Named Sue” attempt to make me grow up rough and tumble – an attempt that failed. But I’ve had more than one person tell me that my name is a benefit. I think its surprising when, instead of a 21 year old girl, this sort of nerdy looking guy with a receding hairline walks in – and if I surprise people hopefully they’ll remember me. Every little bit helps, right?

As for the inspiration…I think it came from a lot of different places. I grew up in the Northwest and I remember thinking that the Riot Grrrls were the COOLEST thing ever. I still do actually – in fact, I’m listening to Cadallaca as I write this. Unfortunately for me, I was decidedly uncool back then. I played sports, stayed at home doing homework and rarely, if ever, stuck it to the man. But I’ve always been interested in the movement/era and in girl bands in general. I also knew I wanted to do something about music – and a specific kind of music that you don’t necessarily hear on the radio. And, as you might guess, I’m a big fan of mixtapes. I still have a box full of mixtapes given to me over the years – many of them are broken, but I still have the cases and the amazing art work that someone obviously spent hours on. It was really fun over the course of Mixtape to go back and listen to some of them. They really are these frozen moments in time that capture events and emotions. One of my favorites is a break-up mixtape and on the cover is this really simple drawing of a broken heart and then the tape is just “Forever Young” playing over and over. As for why, specifically, a 13 year old girl? I just kept picturing the girl, Beverly Moody in my head; this chubby, awkward looking girl with big headphones on. I could hear her voice really clearly and it just went from there.

SS: I’ve recently received some e-mails about writers stuck in a rut, thinking their current screenplay sucks, and unable to muster up the enthusiasm to work on it. How long did it take you write Mixtape? Were there any tough times where you thought it wasn’t working? And how did you get through them?

SM: I usually work on two scripts at once – I’ll be doing the actual writing on one while doing the early outlining/brainstorming for the next one. The actual writing for Mixtape took around a month. It was really quick and easy by the time I sat down to write it. Most of my tough times on a script come in the outlining/earlier phases. My writing method includes feeling so anxious that a story won’t work that I stay up all night in bed unable to sleep and just go over the story again and again in my head. And then waking up the next day, still feeling anxious and doing a lot of pacing and mumbling and eating many bowls of cereal. How to get through the tough times is something I’m still working out. I think doing two scripts at once is one solution. It takes some of the pressure off. If you’re having trouble with one, simply go to the other one. I also don’t write scenes in order. I write the scenes that I’m excited about first. If I’m having trouble on a scene it usually means there’s a piece of the puzzle missing, so I’ll move onto something else and come back it later. For me there’s always at least one scene, character, detail that I’m excited about writing. If I focus on that one part I can keep going. It’s when I start thinking about the script as a whole – and the parts that aren’t working – that that I lose enthusiasm for the story.

SS: As everyone in filmmaking knows, music rights are expensive. Was using rare music in Mixtape purely a creative choice, or were you thinking about keeping the budget low to make the script more appealing to buyers?

SM: The musical choices were almost entirely chosen for creative reasons. I wasn’t writing this script for anyone but myself – not a studio or producer – and so I thought I might as well choose the music that I liked and that I thought the parents in the story would have actually listened to and put on this mixtape. In some cases the songs were taken from mixtapes that people made for me, like the Bikini Kill song, and in other cases they were songs that I researched. For the Blue Hearts song I knew that I needed a song in a foreign language, but it took a while to find a song that I thought worked well and fit the story. I never really thought about budget concerns during the course of writing it. I always figured that if someone was really interested in the story I could change the music to fit their tastes.

SS: The thing I like best about your script is the emotional component, which resonates very powerfully in places, yet never goes over the top. Can you tell me how you approach the emotion in your screenplays, and what the key is to not tipping over into melodrama?

SM: That’s nice of you to say. I don’t know if this is a good answer, but my approach is this: I write a scene, then I read it over and ask myself, “Is this cheesy?” And I do that over and over. I was aware that Mixtape could wander off into terra-melodrama – and so, I think just being aware of what kind of story you’re writing is one of the keys. Also, I think that when we talk about melodrama, what we’re actually talking about is monodrama. The film is hitting the same emotional beat again and again. The best films – and most emotional films in my opinion – are the ones that take you through a whole range of emotions. E.T. comes to mind. It’s scary when Elliot first meets E.T. It’s somber when they mention that dad is in Mexico (a scene I love). It’s sad, of course, when we think E.T. is dead. And then unbelievably joyful when he’s not and the boys all fly away on their bikes. And so when you get to the end and E.T. is leaving, you’ve been through all these different emotions – you’ve been up and down and all over – and, if you’re not crying at this point, then you simply don’t have a soul. If the movie was just an alien dying for an hour and a half the movie would suck, for one, but also wouldn’t resonate emotionally the way it does. And so I think if you’re going to do an emotional story you need to hit on a variety of emotions.

SS: How did it feel to land on the Black List? And did getting on the Black List open any previously closed doors for you?

SM: It felt great. Honestly, I had never heard of the Black List until about 2 months before it came out, so it was a pleasant surprise for me. And it feels pretty rad to see your name on the same list as people like Aaron Sorkin. It’s also generated some additional interest in me. There was a first wave of interest when Mixtape first began to leak out and get passed around and being on the Black List has helped keep the momentum building, as well as generate another round of meetings.

SS: I was informed in the comments section of my review that your script won the Zoetrope screenwriting competition. I feel like with you winning, the answer to this question is obvious, but do you support screenwriting competitions? Had you entered a lot of them before? Was Mixtape rejected by any notable competitions?

SM: I love them! When I finished Mixtape I really didn’t know what to do with it. I was living in Los Angeles but didn’t know anyone working in film. This always seems to surprise people, but it is, in fact, possible to live in L.A. and be completely outside the film industry. So, without any idea of how to get Mixtape in someone’s hands, I entered it into Zoetrope (and another competition that I never heard back from). My manager, Jim Wedaa, found the script through the competition and then hooked me up with my agents Valarie Phillips and Ida Ziniti. I’m very thankful to Zoetrope for helping me along – and, from my experience, would highly recommend people try it out if they think they have a good script.

SS: In one of the greatest interviews I’ve ever listened to about screenwriting, Christopher McQuarrie noted that when he wrote his Oscar-winning screenplay, “The Usual Suspects,” it was really a patchwork effort just to get through the thing, and he really had little idea what he was doing. It was only afterwards that he learned the “rules” of screenwriting, and although he doesn’t say it, he implies that he’s still never written anything as good . What are your thoughts on the rules? Do you follow a set structure when you write? Do you break the rules? Should writers follow rules at all?

SM: This is actually something I’ve thought about quite a bit and here’s what I’ve come up with: for geniuses rules are obstacles, and for the rest of us rules are helpful. I feel like rules and limitations in what I can and can’t do in a script frees me up to be creative. Having said that, I don’t necessarily use the rules I’ve read online and from books. I’ve made up a lot of my own rules as I’ve gotten better at writing. And I think that’s what it’s about – the rules should fit your story and they should fit what you do as a writer. I tend to write in four act structures and always build stories around, what I view, as three premises that could stand on their own as films. I can imagine that as McQuarrie was writing “The Usual Suspects” having little idea of what he was doing was perfect. It helped create this hugely surprising and satisfying twist in the film because not even the writer saw it coming. But I imagine that same style wouldn’t work in doing something like adapting a novel. Anyways, the point is – unless you’re a genius it’s probably a good idea to use the rules. But find the ones that work for you and your writing style.

SS: What is that one thing in a script you try to get right above all else, and what’s your process for achieving it? (ie, plot? character? dialogue?)

SM: I have a sign above my desk (I’m looking at it as I write this) that says, “Character, Dialogue, Motivation, Archetypes, The Unexpected and A Hook”. So I guess those would be the aspects that I focus on. To that list I would add simplicity. I really like simple, elegant scripts. I like scripts that let me know a clear goal, the obstacles, etc. And I like my scripts to read quickly. One of the best compliments I can get for a script is, “I read it in one sitting.” I always think of the person reading my scripts. They’ve read tons of scripts, they don’t want to read mine – so how can I keep them reading?

SS: Let’s go back to the day you decided to pursue screenwriting. When having an agent or a manger seemed a million miles away. If Present You could go back and give that young buck advice on the fastest way to breaking into the business, what would you tell him?

SM: I would pass on this article to my past self http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp02.Strange.Attractor.html. My first script was pretty much the most lugubrious, melancholy and hopeless script ever written by man. I would let you read it, but I’m pretty sure it would make you lose the will to live. Not only was it depressing, but it had no real hook at all, no premise. It was just this embarrassingly personal exaggerated account of living in a small logging town. And the worst part was that I worked my ass off on that script. I spent hours and hours writing it and re-writing it. So, if I could go back and to talk to my past self, I’d give him that link and tell him to work on things that at least have some small chance of ever getting made. And also, something that I strangely only learned after writing two full scripts, write the kind of movies you like watching.

SS: Care to tell us what you may be working on next?

SM: Right now I’m finishing up a spec script that will hopefully done in the near future and will be a much different – and much bigger – story than Mixtape was. I’m also sorting through open assignment and trying to find something that I can really get excited about and that I feel fits my writing style. It’s actually a really interesting place to be in – and one that I haven’t heard many people talk about. There are lots of websites and books about writing, but not much about the process of choosing projects and doing pitches etc. So I’m enjoying learning about the next stage and hopefully you’ll be hearing from me again soon.

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