Here’s number 2 in our Tuesday Apocalypse Double-Header. This review originally aired a few months ago but we had to take it down. Now, with Book Of Eli screening, we’re putting it back up! Here’s my quick take on Book of Eli. It’s the perfect way to approach a spec script. You have a high concept easy to understand story with a badass hero and lots of martial arts type mayhem. Where Book of Eli gets bogged down is probably in its ambition. It bites off way more than it can chew and the pieces come spitting out of its mouth all over us. Even its more basic ambitions – like the town sequence, which makes up most of the script – left me wanting more. And don’t get me started on the “twist” ending, which makes absolutely no sense. I had a hard time digesting this. Let’s see what Roger has to say about it.

Genre: Post-apocalyptic action-adventure.
Premise: In a post-apocalyptic world, a lone hero guards the Book of Eli, which provides knowledge that could redeem society. The despot of a small, makeshift town plans to take possession of the book.
About: Produced by Joel Silver. The directorial return of the Hughes brothers, whose last film was 2001’s From Hell. This was a big spec sale in 2008 from Gary Whitta, who hadn’t sold a screenplay before this. So first timers trying to break in, this is your reference point.
Writer: Gary Whitta, former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer. Presumably this script scored him a writing gig on the (now dead) live-action adaptation of the manga-epic, Akira.

Say this mantra with me.

Story is the heart, Story is the soul. Story is the heart-soul of a screenplay.

Now, get ready, because we’re about to…

FADE THE FUCK IN:

Eli backs away, but TWO MORE ARMED BANDITS drop from hiding in the trees behind, cutting off his escape, surrounding him.

BANDIT LEADER
What you got there in your pack?

ELI
Nothing.

BANDIT LEADER
Yeah, that’s what they all say. How about you take it off real slow and tip it out so’s we can take a look.

BANDIT #2 notices the shotgun strapped to the pack.

BANDIT #2
He’s got a gun.

BANDIT LEADER
Shit, it ain’t loaded. They never are. Ain’t that right, old man? (beat) Open the fucking pack or die. ELI I can’t do that.

The bandit leader steps forward aggressively. Now within striking distance of Eli. He grins, teeth filthy and rotten.

BANDIT LEADER
Want us to do it for you? We can get it off real easy after we’ve hacked your fucking arms off.

ELI
No. I mean I can’t die. I’m on a mission from God, and under his divine protection. You stand in my way, you stand in his. And he will strike you down, through me, his faithful instrument.

WOOOOAAAAAH! Who the fuck is this Eli character, and is he really that bad-ass?

They call him the walker. But he is many things. A watcher. A scavenger. A saint. A killer. A samurai. A gunslinger. He’s a mad prophet that wandered out of the Old Testament and armed himself with a shotgun and a samurai sword. He wears threadbare Converse All-Stars he found on a mummified corpse. He never takes his tinted goggles off. He’s a man of few words but when he speaks it’s the Biblical voice emanating from the storm, the fire, the burning bush. He doesn’t start fights. But he finishes them. And the Spirit of God’s Wrath may or may not be hovering over him, brooding over him, infusing him with supernatural combat skills. And his best friend is a pet rat that lives in the folds of his iconic duster. And yes, he is a man on a mission.

What’s the mission?

To travel West. And to never stray from the road, for he is to deliver a book to an unknown destination, but a destination that he believes to exist based solely on faith.

He is the keeper and protector of a book…

So what’s The Book of Eli?

It’s a bible. A King James Bible battered by the elements, worn from wear and tear.

That’s it? Just a Bible? We can walk into a motel room, open the night-stand drawer, and get one of those for free. What’s the big deal?

Oh, did I mention that this is the post-apocalypse? Did I mention that a guy named CARNEGIE is looking for this book? Did I mention that this demented tent-pole-revival-crooked-preacher-faith-healer-like manipulator of men is to be played by Gary Oldman? And did I mention that his First-in-Command and Sergeant-at-Arms, a burly dude named REDRIDGE, to be played by Ray Stevenson, will do anything it takes to retrieve this book once they find out Eli is the owner?

No?

Oh. My bad. Because all this is true. And the conflict between these characters is the palette and brush that’s gonna paint this monochrome tinted world bloodbath-red.
Niiiice. Does it work?

I want it to…I really want it to…

God, I’m torn about this script, guys.

We have all the ingredients to make a smart and epic post-apocalyptic yarn. But…I hate to say it, man I do…but something’s off.

The first 10 pages: I’m all in. I’m invested, alright? Never mind that the writer is taking a risk by having no dialogue in the first four minutes. The first four pages is a quiet character-establishing sequence, a prosaic sequence of world building that seems like it was ripped right out of McCarthy’s “The Road”. I enjoy dry, sepia-toned slugs of description. I’m into that kind of shit. But when the protagonist, whom we just met, proceeds to tell a group of bandits that it’s impossible for him to die because he’s on a mission from God? And when the bandits laugh this off, and attempt to rob him anyways, only to be sliced-and-diced to ribbons by a dude who moves with uncanny, preternatural speed?

Count me the fuck in.

Look, the first act is interesting. We have downtrodden wanderers who are pushing buggies with wobbly wheels along desolate highways in a scorched-earth world, remnants of a lost civilization just trying to survive. Something we’re going to see in another movie come Oscar season, but I digress. It’s still cool. We have Eli watching a man and a woman, presumably husband and wife, from afar. When they get attacked by a motorcycle gang, Eli debates whether he should get involved. When they rape the woman, Eli decides it’s not his concern. He listens to them kill the couple, catches a glimpse of them rifling through the dead couple’s belongings. The obligatory Mad Max in “The Road Warrior” scene.

Keep this image in mind: Eli arrives at a fork in the road. One road continues West. One road leads to a town. The road that leads to a town is a diversion, a rabbit-trail. Which way is he going to go? Which way should he go?

Eli has a dilemma. His ancient iPod has no juice, no power. That’s right. Eli has an iPod. It’s one of his prized possessions. Not as prized as his Bible, but it provides him with moments of peace, moments of joy, moments of hope as he listens to Mozart’s Concerto No. 20 in D Minor. To charge it, he hauls around a car battery in his backpack. The problem is…his car battery is dead.

He thinks the town might have an “engineer” who might be able to help him out and charge the battery.

So…he takes the rabbit-trail.

And when he gets to town, there’s definitely some weird shit going on.

There’s a bizarre, craven and idol-like statue fashioned out of clay erected in the center of the road. There’s a chain-gang of emaciated, blind men and women roped together at the waist, being led to a destination where they will be required to perform some kind of back-breaking work. The kind of work that ostensibly requires lashings from a brutal chain-gang boss.

Enter the world according to Carnegie.

I’m intrigued. What’s the problem?

Dissonance. That bothersome whisper trapped in the hollow of your skull while you’re experiencing story. The further the story goes along, the louder the whisper becomes, “We’ve been led astray.” It’s a domino effect of characters in the story struggling with their Creator like Jacob wrestling the angel. Except the difference is that these characters want to follow the road less travelled. But instead they are forced onto the rabbit-trail, shoved past the road marker that’s labeled “DETOUR”. And soon the Story is submerged, chained to anchors that pull it towards the bottom of an obscure pool.

There are moments where you feel the Story trying to push its way back to the surface.

You can feel the characters wanting to say, “Based upon everything you know about us, we want to make this decision. In fact we would make this decision,” and the characters point at the screenwriter, “but this guy needs us to be in this action sequence over here.”

They might give us other examples:

“He needs us in this house for the Act 2 break, with this cannibalistic couple who look like they crawled out of Grant Wood’s painting, American Gothic.”

SOLARA, Eli’s cub to his lone wolf, might say:

“I know we’re repeating the same note within 15 pages of each other, but there needs to be another cool scene of Eli saving me from bad men. I know, I know. He saved me from Carnegie. Then abandoned me right after. But the writer says we can have another cool scene of Eli slaughtering brigands if he has to save me again.”

Carnegie delivers a lengthy monologue where he reveals why possessing the King James Bible is so important to him. And there’s dissonance, because you wonder if such a monologue is necessary. And if this information is necessary, is a monologue really the best way to communicate it?

Act 2 feels like a labyrinth of rabbit-trails. Decisions made that go round-and-round the heart of the story (and the other more interesting possibilities). And the concentric circles don’t lead to the center, the heart. Instead, they take you farther and farther astray.

Okay, okay. I get the point. Was there any good stuff after the first act?

Holy shit, yes. After emerging from the muck of Act 2 and the beginning of Act 3, I was blindsided by the ending. It was like going zero to sixty, from disappointment to…being drop-kicked by awe.

There’s a sequence tucked into the tail-end of the 3rd Act that felt like a fist was plunging into my soul; God plunging his hand into Adam and plucking out a rib.

No, I’m not talking about the final scene, the epilogue.

I’m talking about the moment Eli completes his pilgrimage and arrives at his destination and enters its walls. I’m talking about the scene audiences are going to be talking about when they walk out of theaters come January.

It’s like the writer laid his head on the stone in the desert, and Jacob’s ladder unfurled out of the heavens and he ascended its rungs, only to return clutching this sequence in his hands like Prometheus stealing fire.

At a recent writing session, I tried to tell one of my co-writers about this script. I was having trouble because my voice kept cracking. But when I finished he said:

“Just hearing about that gave me chills.”

I have a roommate that watches the shit out of Edward Zick’s “Glory”. One of her cherished movies. She wanted to know about the new Denzel joint, and I attempted to tell her about this script. About the ideas behind it. And I was weeping halfway through my attempt, much to her embarrassment and horror. The last time this happened to me was a few years back, and I was reading the novel, “The Kite Runner” and was burning through the last 100 pages when my girlfriend at the time asked me why I was crying like a little bitch, curled up underneath the sheets.

Some things have power.

And there are story elements, themes, and concepts in “The Book of Eli” that have real power. And they need to be woven together like a fine tapestry in order for the denouement, the revelation, the end to work. And I’m sad…because right now…the tapestry needs to be rewoven.

And it only feels like it’s half done.

Some threads aren’t bright enough, aren’t clear enough, are muddled and frayed and need to be taken back to the loom. Given back to the weaver.

There’s a concept that concerns who Eli was before he set out on his mission. And when I first read the detail, I was confused. It wasn’t clear. But then I realized what the writer was trying to convey.

And it’s this: If you look at the Judeo-Christian scriptures, there’s a pattern that emerges. When it comes to divine tasks, God always chooses those who are the least among us to perform these tasks. It’s like taking a beggar and showing him that he is really a King. It’s like taking a prostitute and showing her that she is really a Queen.

It’s much more than…”ordinary guy discovers he’s a hero.”

This is not Neo in the Matrix.

This is the guy you would fuckin’ ignore on the streets if he came up to you asking for change. This is the disabled man working at the local Wal-Mart who helps other people with disabilities to their scooters. This is the guy on your periphery who might as well be an automaton.

When you look at who Eli is at the end of the script, and think about who he might have been before we met him…it has the power of a parable. And it’s heart-wrenching.

But – these moments are not clear. And I don’t mean they’re just subtext, stuff you have to dig for. These are character moments, themes, emotions…the good stuff that makes up Story. And the way they read, the way this story is structured, the choices made for each scene…creates a domino effect that muddles these elements when they should be translucent. There should be no confusion whatsoever. All of this stuff should shine. But sadly, they don’t.
So that’s the damage? It reads like a first draft?

Yep. Look. There’s some great prosaic lines in this thing – “Deadwood filtered through the eye of an apocalypse.” There are lofty ideas: Restoring freedom, hope and joy to a lost, enslaved and downtrodden people. A great tone. Wonderful atmosphere. Cool action. A killer ending.

But, beautiful wordsmithin’ cannot hold up story. Story is the heart. Story is the soul. All the beautiful language in the world cannot camouflage a story that lacks proper cornerstones.

Cool action should not be duct-tape. An audience knows when a house of cards is about to tumble. If it hasn’t been built correctly in the first place, even a fragile whisper can knock the house off its foundation.

Pretend you’re in a fantasy world. What beefs would you address?

The time-line of this story. I might be wrong, but I think the script spans only three days. If that.

This puppy is going to be advertised as an epic journey across a post-apocalyptic America.

Which would be false advertising.

This movie focuses on the final three days of an epic journey. And we don’t travel across America. We travel through a section of California. On foot. So there’s not much mileage traversed in this thing.

And it’s frustrating, because you feel like you’re missing out on tons of cool shit. With this kind of world, with this kind of backdrop, why not open up the timeline? Show us the beginning, the middle, and end of Eli’s two-and-a-half decade trek/adventure. Or, be ballsy, and keeping with the Biblical theme…structure this like the 40 Days of Eli (taking a cue from The 500 Days of Summer).

I’m just day-dreaming here, but there are lines in the prose passages that describe Eli as an avenging angel, and I thought it would be cool if they gave him a preternatural antagonist. An Anti-Eli (forgive me, “Lost” junkie here). Someone who also can’t be killed and is sent by whoever to stop Eli.

The point is, a story like this is brimming with possibilities, and it’s confined by its (chosen) dimensions of narrative time and space.

So…are you glad this thing’s almost in the can?

I’m glad that this script sold and is being made into a movie with great actors…but my hope is that a veteran screenwriter took a look at this thing, diagnosed the symptoms, gutted what needed to be gutted, and put in shiny new parts that makes this thing run like a beautiful, savage beast.

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

What I Learned: You guys wanna know why this script is now going to be a movie with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, with Joel Silver as a producer? It’s like what Brian Cox says as Robert McKee in Adaptation: “I’ll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit. Find an ending, but don’t cheat, and don’t you dare bring in a dues ex machine. Your characters must change, and the change must come from them. Do that, and you’ll be fine.”

Hmm, some complications resulted in me having to take the “Hungry Rabbit Jumps” (Nicolas Cage and January Jones to star – 5 votes on this year’s black list) review down. In short, I liked it. I’ll work on seeing if I can get it back up. In the meantime, here’s everyone’s favorite incredibly modest but painfully beautiful reviewer , Erica (she reviewed an earlier draft of Black List script “Swingles” here), coming to rescue me. She’s reviewing a tiny script aimed at the “A Walk To Remember” crowd.

Genre: Drama
Premise: After a diving accident, a 16-year-old girl enters a coma for five years. When she comes out of her extended stupor, she finds a crumbling family, but is armed with wisdom and knowledge.
About: Emma Roberts was set to star and Anna Sophia Robb to co-star in this film but the project is not listed anywhere so I’m wondering if it’s fallen apart. Someone will have to revive it if we are to ever see Julia Roberts’ neice in the role.
Writers: Charlie Craig with revisions by Liz W. Garcia and Lisa Barrett.

I had the urge to stop and check my twitter feed every few pages of this because it’s a story about a wholesome teen girl, presumably aimed at The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants set, a demo I would not fall into at this stage of my life. Or ever. I was never the peppy teen who would, like, try out for stuff. I was the girl who turned down offers to go to the prom three years in a row because I thought the concept of prom was bogus. My favorite teen movie? Carrie.

But that is why I was happy to do this review. It forced me to adjust my cynical lens (or at least try to) to examine how something like this is done. And I felt like I learned (a small technical) something on the first page of this script, literally first scene.

The setting is early morning Nashville at Hennessy Lake. The main character, Bryce Graham, a 16 year old athlete in her prime, appears out of the fog but I wasn’t sure at first if she was … rowing or swimming? Her father is standing on the “prow of a Boston whaler” so I’m picturing her swimming and Dad in a boat, right? Or is she rowing and they’re both in the boat? Only after googling “Boston whaler” (which I only did because I knew I was reviewing this) did I realize that was not the type of boat in which you could row. I vaguely understood that the “prow” was either the front or back but didn’t know which (it’s the front), so my visual on this whole opening scenario was very poor. By the last paragraph it says her arms are “slicing through the water” but throwing a “swim” in there somewhere, or calling her a swimmer instead of athlete, would have made life much easier. Especially since this is the first I’m meeting this chick, I haven’t acclimated myself to this world and in the very next scene, she IS on a rowing machine indoors.

The reason this really struck me is because I’m a novelist and a lot of my script edits are of the “arms slicing through water swims” variety. It’s like a bad habit I’m always trying to kick. I also notice that sometimes a character or scene can be so clear in my mind’s eye that I don’t put some very basic information on the page that the person who knows nothing about the script needs to read. And that’s what I felt happened here. In trying to be evocative, they didn’t lose me at hello but they had me wondering if I had missed my exit. (Or if I was a total idiot, not a good feeling going into this.)

But this same evocative writing drew me in as Bryce rushes off to her high school swim meet, with her proud parents and smart alecky kid sister in tow, then winds up banging her head on the diving board and sinking to the bottom of the pool, blood swirling around her. Bummer.

By page 8, she’s unconscious in the hospital, getting an emergency head shaving, and since we know she’s the star of this show, it’s clear that she’s going to survive but first she’s in for a really, really long nap.

Aaaaaand five years later…

Kid sister, Sydney, is a blue-haired, boundary-testing 17 yr. old, Dad is sleeping in the barn where he used to train his athletically-gifted daughter and Mom is still trying to remain upbeat though shit is clearly not right up in the Graham house. On one of Mom and Dad’s regular visits to the hospital we meet Carter Lynch, a 20-something resident who has the time and the inclination to entertain the comatose patients by playing music or reading Danielle Steele to them. Yes, he really does this. His too saintly-to-not-be-annoying behavior and one-way banter (those comatose patients, not great conversationalists) had me rolling my eyes but I was only on page 17 (OMG, there’s 100 more pages of this?) so I kept rolling with it.

Maybe I’m too hardened by life to connect with “heart monitors beeping softly” or maybe I’m just too impatient to let a story unfold in due course but I was actually hoping a madman would break into the hospital, take Carter hostage and shoot up the place. That didn’t happen.

What did happen: Bryce suddenly wakes up. To the shock and jubilation of the medical staff, her parents and kid sister who is the recipient of Bryce’s first words in half a decade: “You’re…old?”

I liked how they describe her first moments of consciousness after she asks to be alone in her hospital room: the sound of a plane flying overhead makes her duck, a woman scolding her child in a park across the street sounds like screaming in her ears, the sun burning through her retinas. This is where I started to develop a mild interest in knowing what was going to happen next though I was still hoping Carter would have a freak diving accident and spend the next five years in her old bed, listening to an endless loop of Lil Weezy like I had to do when my boyfriend drove me to a book signing in Connecticut last week.

Soon Bryce is up and about, walking tentatively in the physical therapy room, a fascination to the doctors and a ray of hope for the visitors whose loved ones are still unconscious. And now she…knows things she can’t possibly know.

Even though the doctors want to keep her in the hospital for observation, she demands to go home where she mostly hangs with her sister, a bug freak whose cicadas literally accompany her everyfuckingwhere. Though the Graham house doesn’t feel like the homey home Bryce remembers since the stressed-out family has allowed it to fall into disrepair, Mom and Dad are basically living separate lives (Bug Freak suspect Mom may be cheating) and, most tragically, the shimmer of the pool doesn’t reflect on Bryce’s bedroom ceiling anymore because the pool is now empty and filled with leaves. (Maybe she should’ve stayed in the hospital, I thought. They waited on her hand and foot there and the singing doc was always roaming around, taking requests.)

Back at that hospital where she doesn’t want to be, we find out that one of the comatose patients, Sam, is actually Carter’s brother and their father, a depressed unemployed grouch that Carter lives with, won’t even visit the kid anymore. At which point, I started to feel a bit of sympathy for the guitar-strumming resident. A bit.

And it turns out that Bryce doesn’t just know things about her family and friends, she knows every answer on Jeopardy, shit like that. Which is quite upsetting for her though I was wondering why she didn’t just roll to Vegas, Rain-Man style. I mean, it’s been 5 years. She’s 21 now. It’s legal.

But it seems she only knows things that happened in the last 5 years because Carter read all this stuff to her while she was “asleep”. And she’s pretty pissed at him because why does she need to know who won the pennant for the last five years when she doesn’t even like baseball? I know Carter meant well but I sorta felt her on that one. Of course the two are bonded now and their little spat is like adolescent foreplay. In no time she’s swimming again in the lake, with him, and Dr. Do Good seems to have no qualms at all about fooling around with his Sleeping Beauty though this is obviously a MAJOR breach of protocol.

Neither does her family seem to mind that the young doc is now dating Bryce because he’s all up in the family mix like he couldn’t be brought up on charges at any second. I guess they’re all just heady with joy now that they have their daughter back and everyone seems to be figuring out their own problems, thanks to Bryce’s newfound and readily dispensed wisdom.

There are plenty of clues, i.e. the giant tumor spotted on her X-ray, that this good life won’t last. Bryce, inevitably, ends up back in the hospital and once they all know she’s going to die, Carter busts her out and then grants her last wish by popping her cherry by the lake! Don’t expect any of you will be reading this so no need to announce a spoiler alert before I say —> I actually liked that it ended with her diving into the lake, never to be seen again. So long, Mystical Mermaid.

Okay, I’m being very snarky about this script because I thought that would be more amusing for the Script Shadow crowd than simply saying this is movie that will probably kill (oops!) with teen girls, esp. if Carter is played by a cute boy (which we know he will be). I could have done with a few less cicada shout-outs but the cicadas turned out to have some symbolic meaning related to Bryce’s brief awakening, a payoff I felt I was due after enduring them for so long. In terms of telling the story and delivering on the premise, this script did that quite well, IMO. Nothing too interesting or unexpected happened but thirteen year-olds dreaming of their first kiss will probably go see this multiple times. Especially those thirteen year-olds who have already given blow jobs at rainbow parties which probably makes them romanticize that first real kiss from a cute boy that actually cares about them even more. Even the title “Anything but Ordinary” which sounds like it was cranked out of The Generic Generator, therefore making it a kind of titular oxymoron, will probably make teen girls swoon.

No one over the age of 19 would want to see this or should but I have to say I wound up feeling something for Carter once I found out his mother was killed by the drunk driver who put his brother in the hospital and he has fantasies about murdering the guy. Alright Doogie!

And you know what? I could see this being useful for an adult purpose. If your guy had done something that really pissed you off, you could say, “I heard about this really good supernatural thriller called Anything but Ordinary. Got amazing reviews. Friday night, let’s go see that, honey.”

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

What I learned: Set up your premise quickly and efficiently and give yourself room to tell your story. They had this chick in a coma by page 8 and I already had a feel for most of the major characters and relationships.

Know your audience. None of the cynicism or sarcasm that I would want to stick in this script belonged there. Of course, that’s why I wouldn’t write something like this because I know I could never maintain this level of wholesomeness. But good on Charlie Craig for being able to dive into (stupid pun intended – you see I can’t rein in my sarcasm for one last line!) this sappy teen girl world and emerge with something that will have a valued demo texting “OMG, u gotta go c ABO!”

Genre: Paranoid Thriller
Premise: A man becomes entangled in a secret society that forces him to murder.
About: Finished with 5 votes on the 2009 Black List. Will star Nicholas Cage, Guy Pearce, and January Jones. Shooting right now. Directed by The Bank Job’s Roger Donaldson and produced by Toby Maguire’s production company.
Status of project: Production
Status of this draft: Unknown
Writer: Robert Tannen (Story by Todd Hickey & Robert Tannen)
Details: 106 pages (undated)

Forgive me for not expecting more out of Nicholas Cage these days. Since the guy seems to be having more money problems than all seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, I figure his choices are motivated more by bags of money than his desire for challenging material. Even before our country’s gold stash had deteriorated to a point where even Michael Moore had to make a movie about it, Cage was dangling precipitously on the wrong side of quality. Most of the movies he’s been making seem designed for the 1980s direct to video market. I mean, was Banqkok Dangerous a real film? That was a joke, right? Needless to say, I wasn’t jumping at the idea of reading The Hungry Rabbit Jumps. It was more like a slow crawl, hoping someone would spot me before I made it and pull me back. But this furriest of escapades turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Maybe Cage hasn’t given up afterall.

Our hero, Nick (a little presumptuous weren’t we?), is a teacher at an inner city school. He’s a good guy who occasionally takes his wife, Laura, a violinist in the local symphony, for granted (don’t we all?). This will end up costing him, however, as when Nick skips out on drinks with Laura and her friends, she’s assaulted, raped, and nearly killed on the way to her car. Nick is immediately haunted by his selfishness and is horrified that this monster, whoever he may be, is still out there, roaming the streets.

Later, however, Nick is approached by a mysterious man named Simon. Simon gives Nick a choice. He can wait for this to play out in the creaky inefficient justice system, or he can deal with it here and now. All he has to do is say the word, and the man who raped his wife will be “dealt with.”

Oh, there’s only one catch. There may or may not be a point in the future where these people – whoever they are – will call on Nick to do something for them. Most likely, Nick will never see them again (yeah right) but in case “bad guys” shows up on his caller ID, the implication is, he should answer. Nick is told to take solace in the fact that if he is called upon, the task will be easy (double yeah right). Still fresh off the emotional devastation of his wife’s assault, Nick hears himself saying ‘okay’ and a half an hour later, the man who raped his wife is brutally murdered.

Cut to 18 months later.

Nick is now the exact opposite of his old self. He’s obsessed with his wife’s safety. He’s around her as much as possible, and when he isn’t, he’s constantly phoning her and making sure she’s okay. But that’s not the only obsessive component to Nick’s life. Nick still remembers what Simon said about needing help one day. As a result, Nick is a 24 hour bucket of nerves. He’s constantly on the lookout, convincing himself that he sees the men that were there that night, the men who may or may not be a part of this vigilante justice organization.

Turns out Nick’s instincts rock. Simon indeed strolls back into his life and reminds Nick of that little favor he owes. And just like he promised, it’s a harmless one. All Nick has to do is kill a man. If he chooses not to? Well, Nick may find himself the unwitting victim of someone else’s “favor” they owed. If it makes you feel any better, Simon points out, the man he’s supposed to kill is a horrible human being. But for some reason that doesn’t brighten Nick’s spirits. As he tries to decide what to do, and hide this secret second life from his increasingly suspicious wife, he slowly unveils the secrets of an organization that takes justice into their own hands.

One of the strengths of Hungry Rabbit Jumps is the predicament it puts its main character in. Never forget that the audience loves to watch your main character make choices. Choices are when we truly learn about a character. The more difficult you make the choice, the more entertaining it is watching them choose. Ideally, you’ll put your character in a position where both choices are “wrong.” For Nick, that moment is when he’s told, “either kill for us or we’ll try and kill you.” Nick can either a) kill a man, get caught and later executed, b) run away, fearing for the rest of his life that the organization will find him, or c) fight back and try to expose these men. Each choice presents its own set of problems and you can’t wait to see which one Nick chooses. The answer to that one choice will tell us more about Nick than 15 scenes of dialogue ever could. Never forget that.

But let’s be honest here. Hungry Rabbit Jumps isn’t the Godfather. It does sort of have that direct-to-video feel to it. The thing is, it’s an exciting direct-to-video feel. The pages turn faster than a flip book and the twists and turns, while occasionally cheesy, satisfy the same dirty side of you that occasionally needs to binge on a bag of barbeque Ruffles or a Sunday Night mini-marathon of Jersey Shore. You definitely feel filthy afterwards, but it’s satisfied filthy, like you’ve gotten away with something you’re not supposed to.

If you want to get nit-picky, Hungry Rabbit definitely provides you with some ammunition. This organization has been operating for years essentially by employing non-killers to kill. Since it’s hard enough to kill someone if you *do* know what you’re doing, throwing clueless suburbanites into the line of fire and having them come away unscathed for countless years isn’t realistic. People are going to get caught. People are going to spill the beans. But the thing about “Hungry Rabbit” is, it establishes a tone that conditions you not to worry about these petty details. It’s a fun surface-level thriller and just like all surface-level thrillers, if you dig too deep, it probably doesn’t add up. Even North By Northwest has some fatal logic holes, right?

Hungry Rabbit Jumps was a nice little diversion and definitely worthy of its five votes on the Black List.

Script link: Hungry Rabbit Jumps (This script is meant for educational purposes only. If you are the writer or copyright holder of this script and would like it taken down, please e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I will do so immediately)

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

What I learned: I learned that therapy sessions have become a place for writers to cheat. By that I mean, you’re never supposed to have your characters say exactly what they mean. It results in the dreaded feedback that your dialogue is too “on-the-nose”. Why is on-the-nose dialogue considered so terrible? Well A) it’s much more interesting if your character talk around their feelings and b) people rarely say what’s on their mind, so when they do it doesn’t feel realistic. Yet I realized something as Nick and his wife were in couples therapy, working through their reaction to the assault. As they bickered with the therapist, he simply said, “Talk to each other.” And they proceeded to tell each other *exactly* how they felt. They got to speak those “on-the-nose” lines that are considered a dialogue death sentence . And yet it didn’t feel fake or forced because it made sense within the context of the scene. It’s a total cheat, but it’s a great tool for you to use if you need it. (Like any tool though, don’t *overuse* it)

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A guy decides to stalk his ex-girlfriend.
About: Carnes & Gilbert were on Variety’s “Top Ten Screenwriters To Watch” list of 2005. They sold “Stalker: A Love Story” to Paramount for 1.75 million dollars. The two also wrote Mr. Woodcock. More info here.
Writers: Michael Carnes & Josh Gilbert

For those of you who have read a significant number of scripts, you know how it is when you’re smack dab in the middle of something that just ain’t working. Now for those of you who read scripts casually, the reaction to such a situation is easy. YOU STOP READING. I don’t have that luxury. Quitting in the middle of the script means I just wasted 45 minutes and now have to start all over again. It’s for this reason that I can’t solely post positive reviews. And that’s too bad. Because I wish Scriptshadow could be a place of celebration and candy and rainbows and the occasional unicorn (no leprechauns though). I hold no ill will towards writers and I get no satisfaction from pointing out when something doesn’t work. But man, I have to be honest with you, “Stalker: A Love Story” was not good on many levels. And it really is confusing when you’re talking about a near two million dollar sale. “Am I missing something?”, you think. I’d assume the most common response to being stalked is feeling violated. And I felt very violated reading this script.

My basic complaint is this: The setup makes absolutely no sense. David and Amanda are in a relationship. Fine. Sounds good to me. But David, an architect, is a workaholic and isn’t very into Amanda. He doesn’t like to do things with her. He’s the kind of boyfriend you say something to and then, forever-later he looks up and slurs “Whah?” So to be clear: David loves his job and doesn’t love his relationship. Amanda finally realizes that he’s never going to change and dumps David. She’s through. How does David react? Eh. Shrugs his shoulders and says, “Oh well”, then moves on. Let me reiterate: David doesn’t seem to like Amanda at all.

So then we get a “Six Months Later” title and David is still happily plugging away at his job. In fact, things are going so well he’s just been offered a contract on a new building. Hooray. Once again, Amanda isn’t even a blip on David’s radar. He probably doesn’t even remember her name. One night while David is pulled out for drinks, he runs into Amanda’s friend, who informs David that Amanda is in a new relationship. And in a span of about 3 seconds, David decides that he’s always loved Amanda and is going to stalk her until he gets her back.

Uh…..WHAT???

How does this even make a remote amount of sense? I don’t like you. Now I’m infatuated with you?? I’ve seen Fraggle Rock episodes with more logic. It was so outrageous of a character change, I scrolled around to make sure I hadn’t accidentally opened another script. I can MAYBE see this working if David realized what he lost the second Amanda broke up with him. But six months later? After we’ve established he doesn’t even like the woman?? Someone had just sent me a one-way ticket to Bizarre-o World.

From that point on Carnes and Gilbert had no chance with me. If characters could just turn into different people without explanation, why not add wizards and dragons while you’re at it? But it was the missed opportunity of “Stalker” that ate at me most. Why didn’t the writers go for an edgier comedy? Having your main character be a stalker is something that’s never been done before in a comedy. You could’ve created something truly groundbreaking here, which is exactly what the title implies will happen. And I’m sure that expectation had plenty to do with my disappointment. But man, I feel like they really missed the boat. Instead of doing something different, this turned out to be one of the most standard of standard romantic comedies I’ve ever read.

As for the rest of the script, David turns to his Indian neighbor, Pumpang, for support. Pumpang is actually *the* most broken up about the dumping of everyone. He loved David and Amanda together and when their relationship ended, he spent days on end crying (as opposed to David – who didn’t cry at all). When David’s amateur efforts at stalking fail, Pumpang introduces him to a spy store, where the two buy all sorts of gadgets and listening devices so they can more accurately stalk Amanda. Now when I say “stalk”, I use that term very loosely. Because every stalking scene is played purely for laughs. There are no consequences or stakes to what they’re doing. We know that even if David gets caught, he’ll be fine. Without any sense of danger, none of the stalking scenes held any tension.

Anyway, David lets his co-worker, Karen, in on the whole plot. Karen has seen every romantic comedy ever made and is constantly using examples from them to get David to move on. It turns out Karen might be a bit of a stalker herself though when it’s eventually revealed she’s infatuated with David. Although she never felt like a real person so I couldn’t get into her. And to complicate matters, Amanda’s new boyfriend is also David’s client for his new building. Except it doesn’t really complicate matters at all. It just feels like an interesting coincidence. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else to the story but I’m coming up blank.

In the end, David gives a big long speech to Amanda about perfection. Her current boyfriend may be perfect. But David is imperfect, which, he points out, is exactly why she fell in love with him. Since the theme of perfection or even the hint of its importance was never once mentioned in the screenplay, this speech comes out of nowhere. Luckily for David though, it’s enough to convince Amanda, and the two live happily ever after.

Was there anything positive about the script? Well, I thought the title was great. It was the reason I was excited to read the screenplay in the first place. Pumpang’s obsession with getting David and Amanda back together was kind of cute. But in the end, there were an avalanche of negatives with Stalker. I congratulate Carnes and Glibert on a great sale. But for me, personally, I couldn’t get into it.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There’s a scene in the middle of “Stalker: A Love Story,” where David is pressured into going to an Asian Massage Parlor. I won’t get into how many Asian massage parlor scenes I read in a week, but what upset me so much about the scene was that it had absolutely nothing to do with the story. In other words, you could’ve taken the scene out and nobody would’ve been confused as to what was going on. If your scene isn’t essential to the screenplay, don’t write it. And if you have a really funny scene you’re dying to put in your movie but it isn’t essential to the story, take the extra time and FIND A WAY TO MAKE IT ESSENTIAL TO THE STORY. Now you have a funny scene and it makes sense. Everybody wins.

Genre: Drama/Coming-of-Age
Premise: A thirteen year old outcast finds a mixtape that belonged to her deceased parents, accidentally destroys it, and uses the song list to find all the music.
About: Finished with 14 votes on this year’s Black List. Mixtape may have finished even higher had it officially gone out. If there’s a script that truly embodies the spirit of the Black List, this is it. It’s the “I’m a Loser, Baby” or “Paranormal Activity” of the screenwriting world, a script that found success purely through word of mouth. Stacy Menear, the writer, doesn’t have any previous sales or credits. The film will be directed by “King of Kong” helmer Seth Gordon. Playing the part of Beverly will be Chloe Moretz (“Hit Girl” in Kickass, as well as the lead in the remake of “Let The Right One In”)
Status of Project: Securing Financing
Status of this Draft: First draft
Writer: Stacy Menear
Details: 119 pages (August 14, 2009)

Whoa. If you had told me that one of my favorite scripts off of this year’s Black List would be an emotional drama about a 13 year old girl cobbling together random songs from a broken mixtape, I would’ve expected you to also inform me that you were a robot from the future sent to save mankind. I’m still in shock after reading this, as I’m amazed that Menear even attempted the story. Its subject matter is a literary mine-field, the kind of graveyard where scripts go to die. Over-sentimentality. Saccharine. Melodramatic. One wrong step and you can fall perilously into any of those. By blinking you could be My Sister’s Keeper.

As if that wasn’t difficult enough, Menear bases the story around music, which basically nuclear charges every one of those mines. Music is one of the hardest things to write about in a screenplay because a) the reader can’t hear the music, and b) a song you love very well may be a song the reader hates. Mention an old Richard Marx tune to a metalhead and there goes your audience. Looking at this script before reading it, I anticipated a 2012 like disaster (you can use either the movie or the expected disaster for that analogy – both work).

But Mixtape is anything but a disaster. It’s an anti-disaster. It’s an antaster.

Beverly Moody has it as tough as any teenager can have it. She’s an overweight poor 13 year old girl without any friends who lives with her ultra-conservative grandmother. In other words, she was born to be bullied. In one of the many instances you know you’re dealing with a unique writer, Menear doesn’t paint Beverly’s nemesis as the typical Adonis blond-haired jock you remember from all those 80s flicks, but rather a wickedly cruel boy in a wheelchair. A bully in a wheelchair? Talk about turning a cliché on its head. I knew I was in good hands immediately.

The only thing that keeps Beverly going is the threadbare memory of her parents, who died in a car accident when she was a baby. Her grandmother never speaks of them, and so all Beverly has to go on is a single picture of the two when they were younger. This picture is the source of much of Beverly’s confusion and misdirection. Her parents are the complete opposite of her. Hip, cool, punk-rockers – clearly music lovers and proud rebels. How did *she* come from *them*? Beverly wants nothing more than to find out the answer to that question.

One day, while rummaging through some old boxes, Beverly comes across a mixtape made by her parents. Excited, she throws it in an aging walkman, only to accidentally destroy the tape. All that’s left is a list of odd sounding songs from the most obscure bands imaginable. If names like Bikini Kill and The Quick don’t ring a bell, you better hold your breath. They’re actually two of the more popular groups on the list. Beverly decides that through hell or high water, she must find every one of these songs.

Eventually she teams up with a fellow outcast named Ellen, a Korean girl who just moved in down the street, and Nicki, the chain-smoking “freak” girl at school that everyone is both repulsed by and terrified of. Ellen’s got a computer, which allows them to locate some of the songs, and Nicki’s a walking music encyclopedia, which allows them to find songs that even the internet doesn’t know about. Throw in Anti, the aging hipster who owns a run-down version of a High Fidelity record store, and Beverly is able to peck her way through the list.

A side effect of this journey is her connection with the music, which, to her grandmother’s chagrin, starts to change her. Beverly starts to punk herself out, if only to get closer to these people she never knew. One of the great story touches Menear uses, is he places one impossible song on the list – a song listed as “The song that reminds me of that day in the park.” It becomes the ultimate impossible goal for Beverly. To find the single song that truly defines her parents,’ the song which will allow her to understand who they really are. But how do you find a song without an artist or a title? How do you find a song that you’ve never heard before? Watching and wondering if Beverly will ever find this song is both heartbreaking and riveting, as we end up wanting her to find closure just as much as she does.

As people struggle to compare this to something for reference, I think the obvious example is going to be Ghost World. However in that film, the girls were under the delusional perception that they were hip and cool. Beverly and her friends have no such delusions. They know they’re the outcasts, the losers, the wannabes. And it’s that angle that gives them and the script so much charm. They’re the true underdogs, and we desperately want for them to win.

There’s so many things I loved about this script. Like the contrasts. For instance, how this awkward nerdy girl had a pair of the coolest parents ever. Her attempts to change, to become like them, in order to understand them, and not quite understanding what she’s doing along the way. Like paying lip service without knowing how to sing. It works perfectly. Even the grandmother, who could’ve been a throwaway character, has a vested interest in the journey. She already lost one daughter to that lifestyle. Now she must watch idly as her granddaughter eases into that world as well, knowing that she’s helpless to stop her.

I’m still trying to figure out why this script resonated with me so much when so many others like it fail. Maybe it’s the exploration of people through music. Maybe it’s the obvious love Menear has for his characters. Maybe it’s that he’s not afraid to put those same characters through hell. Whatever it is, it worked. I’d probably say this is the best script I’ve ever read about music. And that’s coming from someone who hates punk-rock.

This is one of those rare scripts that gets it all right. I have no choice but to put it in my Top 25. (by the way, here’s another take on the script)

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

What I learned: Although it’s not done here in Mixtape, I’m seeing it done more and more these days. Back in the old world, it was considered script suicide to list actual songs in your screenplay. For various reasons (mainly that the writer ain’t gonna be the one choosing the music when the movie comes out, but also who’s to say that the reader even knew what song you were talking about) it was one of those rules you simply didn’t break. But Youtube has changed all that. Nowadays, you can list a song with a note (“check it out on Youtube”) and allow the reader to instantly hear the song you have in mind. You still run the risk of turning the reader off if they hate the song, but now they at least know what song you’re talking about. I know I’m in the minority, but I’m one of those people who believes that as more and more people read PDFs on their computers and ebooks, that multimedia writing will become more common (which I favor). That means music, pictures, and videos embedded right there in the document. I’m interested to hear what you guys think of this practice? In favor of it? Or would you rather stay old school?

note: If you look to the Top 25 list, a few of the scripts near the bottom half have moved around. Some of these scripts just stay with me while others fade away, forcing me juggle them around. The Voices is up there too now.