Okay, now that we’ve calmed down some from the loglines announcement (I’m still getting e-mails questioning specific loglines. Please. Stop! I don’t know why I liked them. I just did!), I thought I’d introduce you to a new guest reviewer. Her name is Abby McDonald, and she’s a 24 year old British novelist and occasional entertainment critic. Her teen book, ‘Sophomore Switch,’ was published in the States in Spring, and her novel ‘The Popularity Rules’ just came out in the UK. You can learn more about her at her site, read her blog, or follow her on Twitter. Now you should know, Abby is an unabashed fan of chick flicks, so I think we know how this review’s going to go. But let’s listen in anyway.

Genre: Indie/Comedy
Premise: Recovering from her latest break-up, a woman and her best friend drive cross-country to Obama’s inaugeration, collecting the items she left with ex-boyfriends along the way.
About: A victim of Miramax downsizing, this green-lit project has apparently been scrapped before production started. Was due to star Rebecca Hall and Kat Dennings, directed by Richard Linklater. The writer, Emma Forrest, was born and raised in London with an American mother (TV writer Judy Raines) and a British father. She landed a column for the London Times when she was only 15. “It was supposed to be about my generation, but the problem is that I live with a melancholy for things I never experienced, so I would write about Leonard Cohen and pretend that’s what my friends were talking about,” she says. She wrote her first novel, “Namedropper,” at the age of 18 and has since published three more. The extremely talented author was picked by Variety as one of 2009’s “10 Writers to Watch.” (Variety) Emma, who loves to write about every man that comes into her life, says this one is no different. It’s inspired by her relationship with Colin Farrell.
Writer: Emma Forrest.

I love Emma Forrest. At least, I’ve loved her fiction, but it’s been four years since her last novel, and although I’ve heard plenty of tantalizing hints about her screen projects (a pilot for the CW, the rumored Brad Pitt Jeff Buckley bio-pic, a Blacklist script), I’ve never had a chance to read any of it. Until today, when I learned that ‘Liars (A to E)’ has been scrapped by Miramax as part of their roll-backs, and a hopeful email to Carson was rewarded with this script.

And oh, what a script.

Sure, I came to it with some bias, but that just meant I had high expectations– and private fears that maybe Forrest wouldn’t be able to pull off what is clearly something of a quirky story. We all know by now that the skills that work in fiction often don’t translate to the brutal confines of a script, and telling your story in 115 pages when you’re used to having 80,000 words to play around with is a challenge not many authors can meet. So did she?

Absolutely. That’s not to say this script is an easy sell: the Obama election backdrop and many obviously-outdated political references will annoy as many as they charm, there isn’t an easy structure–no clear rising tension, or high stakes– and the character development is subtle, rather than overdrawn. But I’ve read a lot of scripts over the past months: Blacklisted scripts, Top 25 scripts, scripts that sold, and scripts that inexplicably went steaming into production. So, when I say this is a joy to read, it’s not merely because I wanted to like it. ‘Liars (A to E)’ is genuinely engaging, delightful, whip-smart and – most refreshingly – a script about smart women that smart women will love.

In her fiction, Forrest shines via vivid prose, original characters, and crackling dialogue, and in ‘Liars (A to E)’ she distills those elements down to a truly entertaining mix (with, of course, her trademark Springsteen references). Bacall is a 29-year old failed bakery owner – “small, with 40’s fixtures”. We meet her zipping a plushy bunny outfit over a retro Playbunny costume to greet her fiancee, and that’s a pretty good indication of her character: not so much quirky in the traditional ‘manic pixie’ Kirstin/Natalie/Zooey mould, more an adult woman with flair and humor. Said fiancee, Mark, is a rock-star with a penchant for fingerless gloves and stealing chords from Dylan; he dumps her by page seven, prompting Bacall to drunkenly demand her blow-jobs back, and then embark on her quest to reclaim items kept by all of her ex-boyfriends as she and her friend drive cross-country to the Obama inauguration.

Having despaired for many years about the kind of women we end up seeing on-screen, I’m especially disappointed that I won’t get to witness Rebecca Hall as Bacall, and Kat Dennings as her 21-year old friend (a failed comedienne and author of an earnest (and graphic) book on feminism for the tween set). They’re smart, fun women, but their intelligence isn’t played for laughs, it’s just taken as a basic matter of fact – which shouldn’t even need mentioning, but given that the majority of scripts show women that bear no resemblance to anyone I’ve ever met, well, sadly, it does. There’s a humor in their dialogue that had me howling out loud, (and retyping the many, many choice lines to my own best friend as we read the script together via IM) but what I loved was that their friendship has both natural ease and an interesting dynamic brought on by the gap in age and perspective.

BACALL: Remember your last break-up?
ELISHIA: Yeah. I was nineteen. It’s why I don’t do relationships.
BACALL: So. It will be harder to get through when you’re twenty four. And harder than that at twenty seven. And at thirty, you may feel like you just can’t do it at all.

The men too have their moments. Rock-star Mark, who could easily have been written for Russell Brand-esque laughs, instead is given depth along with his “gay terrorist” keffiyeh, and his scenes with Bacall make us genuinely believe in their love – and her heartbreak. Some of the exes are more comic than finely-drawn (the Irish Catholic-turned-Jewish poet, the druggy former Rock n Roll Hall of Fame guide) but Forrest keeps their scenes brief, and doesn’t labor her jokes for long. In fact, the pace is swift right the way through, keeping you entertained despite the fact that there is little real tension implicit in their travels.

So what’s not to love? Well, the narrative arc of the script meanders through the women’s road-trip as Bacall visits to her various exes enroute to D.C, and while these encounters do eventually shed some light on her romantic history and current issues, the character development isn’t as defined as we’re trained to expect from these kinds of indie movies. There is no grand revelation, or final-act dash to the airport, just a few quiet moments of realization that are easily drowned out by the surrounding noise of inauguration night. And yes: the political content is pretty high. From election night partying (as someone joyfully cries “I’m never going to have to hear about Sarah Palin again!” Oh, how little we knew), to the final celebration itself, Forrest uses Obama, Bush, the idea of our past history and hope for the future as backdrop to Bacall’s quest. I found the political jokes—especially Bacall’s letter to Obama, admonishing him for parading his happy, and attractive domesticity– hilarious, but they might turn off some readers/viewers – particularly since the script is unashamedly left-leaning (as if the casual references to feminism hadn’t already clued you in). Also, the convenient encounters that pepper the script test our suspension of disbelief: a book editor they meet on Amtrack, an Obama staffer they run into in a bar in New Orleans. But since there’s nothing really at stake, the convenience isn’t an insult to any internal logic: more accidents on the road than a vital element driving the plot.

To me, those aspects didn’t diminish the script, and again, I have to underline just how much I enjoyed reading this. Some scripts punch through with the sheer force of their concepts, others click through artfully-constructed narratives and tension; ‘Liars (A to E)’ doesn’t really have any of those, but what it does bring is wonderfully smart comedy, nuanced emotion, and the kind of vivid, interesting women I wish I could read more often.

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

What I learned: That you don’t need to push characters too far in order to make them original and memorable. Bacall and Elishia aren’t the usual ‘quirky’ indie movie fare, full of odd habits and either drowning in angst or adorned with perky grins; they’re interesting, and their dialogue – while hilarious and smart – is still believable. Forrest resists the urge to give them clear-cut emotional ‘issues’ that need resolving; balancing development with realistic confusion.

 

It’s finally here. The Top 100 loglines for the Scriptshadow Logline/Screenplay Contest. If you see your logline below, that means you were selected from nearly 1000 loglines and have until Monday, November 30th, 11:59pm, to send me either the first ten pages of your screenplay, a one-page synopsis (a general rundown of the first, second and third acts), or both. If you want to send me the entire screenplay, that’s fine also, and I’ll only read to page 10. These submissions should be sent to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com (some of you sent loglines to Carsonreeves1 last time. Tsk tsk). The Top 25 will then be announced on December 21st, where further instructions will be given.

If you’re wondering why your logline wasn’t selected (or screaming because you know yours is better than the ones below), here’s a quick list of the possible reasons why I didn’t select you.

1) Spelling and grammar – My experience has been that if someone can’t submit a single sentence without making a spelling or grammar mistake, their script is going to be a chore to get through. Not to say it’s impossible. Just that the odds are highly favorable that that’s the case.
2) Genre – Just like everyone, I have my favorite genres. If you submitted something in one of my least favorite genres, you had an uphill battle.
3) Too vague – “A depressed guy opens a bookstore,” in most cases, isn’t enough information for a logline.
4) Too wordy – Some loglines tried to cram so much information into one sentence, they came off as confusing.
5) Subject matter – This is the big one and probably the most likely reason your logline didn’t get chosen because I’d say at least 75% of you sent in solid loglines. In the end, I had to choose stuff I felt like I would like. So if you didn’t get picked, it doesn’t mean your logline is “worse” than the ones I picked. It just means it wasn’t quite for me personally.

All that said, I made at least one exception to every one of those points. Comedy, Sci-Fi, and Thrillers did well because that’s what I like. But some horror, crime, family, and even a fairy tale, crept their way onto the list. Going through the loglines was both a blast and a learning experience. It reinforced just how important getting your logline right is. You only have a brief moment to catch someone’s attention, so you better make sure it’s perfect. It also reinforces the advantage of having a high-concept screenplay if you’re an unrepresented writer. It’s just so much easier to get people to request your script if you have a great hook.

Anyway, blah blah blah. You don’t want to hear any of that. You want to get to the loglines! So here they are, the Top 100 (plus an extra five I just couldn’t leave off). Who are you putting your money on? (p.s. Any spelling/typo mistakes were probably made by me during the transcribing process)

Title: SWINE HEART HORROR
Writers: Theresa Carey and Bruce Brochtrup
Genre: Sci-Fi Horror
Logline: A mild-mannered Jewish doctor struggles with bizarre personality changes, unfamiliar slaughterhouse memories and increasingly violent episodes after receiving an emergency heart transplant of unknown origin.

Title: Mo Mushi
Writer: Wade Barry
Genre: Dramedy
Logline: Two gay men from San Francisco move to a small Wisconsin town to open a sushi dance club.

Title: Keynote
Writer: Zach Asman
Genre: Dramedy
Logline: An Internet billionaire returns to his hometown to deliver the keynote speech at his old high school’s graduation.

Title: Two Can Play
Writer: Glen Delahave
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: After suspecting his wife is cheating, a bitter lawyer treats it like any other case and must begin an investigation to gather witnesses, obtain evidence and arrange for an extravagant dinner party at which to present his case to her family and friends.

Title: Antarctic.
Writer: Neil Dave.
Genre: Science-Fiction.
Logline: When an international team of scientists explore a cavern hidden deep beneath an Antarctic lake they discover an organism that predates biological life.

Title: Tasteless
Writer: Adam Conway
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A world renowned taste tester/food critic loses his sense of taste and struggles to discover who he is once his one defining characteristic is gone.

Title: Silent Night
Writer: James Luckard
Genre: Thriller
Logline: With a brutal serial killer stalking Nazi Germany at Christmas, the Berlin detective on the case gets reluctantly partnered with a Jewish criminal psychologist released from Auschwitz to profile the killer.

Title: Synapse
Writer: Matthew Sinclair-Foreman
Genre: Thriller
Logline: During a brain operation, a man has an out of body experience in which he witnesses a murder in the hospital. Debilitated by neurological post-op side effects, he must catch the killer before his investigation turns him into the next victim.

Title: Adult Camp
Writer: Kirk Lilwall
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In an attempt to save his childhood camp from being sold to a large corporation, Ryan changes the target clientele from children to adults. It’s going to be an interesting summer!

Title: Short Term Forecast
Writer: Brad Sorensen
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After discovering a fax machine that can send and receive messages one day into the future, an impossibly inaccurate weather man struggles for career advancement while trying to maintain the space/time continuum.

Title: The Professor’s Daughter
Writer: Josh Mason
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: In Victorian London, after Esther witnesses her genius father’s kidnapping, she sets out around the world, using only her wits and her fathers inventions, to rescue him and foil his kidnappers plan to misuse his latest creation. Can she prove that she’s more than just the Professor’s daughter?

Title: Hypoxia
Writer: Daniel Silk
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A woman under Witness Protection awakens on a 747 to discover the pilots and passengers unconscious, the plane depressurized and masked men hunting her. With oxygen and fuel rapidly depleting, she must grapple with surrendering herself to save the 242 people on board.

Title: For Your Eyes Only
Writer: Mukilan Thangamani
Genre: Comedy
Logline: On the eve of a career-defining product launch, a self-centred, misanthropic, food researcher finds her social and professional life turned upside down after the accidental leak of a salacious home video.

Title: Incision
Writer: Patrick Donohoe
Genre: Action/thriller
Logline: A black NYC coroner about to run for public office must struggle to prove his innocence when he is set up by white supremacists as the main suspect in a series of grisly murders.

Title: Valentine
Writer: Norman Szabo
Genre: Thriller
Logline: To escape from her self-destructive lifestyle, a hedonistic young woman impetuously marries a quiet backwoodsman, only to find herself in a primitive world where she must struggle to survive when her husband and the local community turn against her.

Title: Traders
Writer: Hugh Quatallebaum and Joe Graceffa
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Two best friends in a Chicago trading firm are starting to question their relationships with their live-in girlfriends and starting to wonder if maybe the other guy has it better. Then one day, they wake up in an alternate world where….they’ve swapped girlfriends.

Title: Dead Black Clown
Writer: Aaron Golden
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Three struggling funk musicians get framed for the murder of a circus clown, thrusting them onto the mainstage of an underground clown war.

Title: For You, My Love
Writer: Tess Hofmann
Genre: Drama
Logline: Despite being a closeted homosexual, an affluent New England family man lives for the health of his marriage — until his oldest son comes out and makes him reconsider his decisions for the first time in decades.

Title: The Fake President
Writer: Crawford Funston
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A whip-smart Senior Advisor — secretly running the White House for a
daft President — suffers a head injury, and wakes up under the delusion
that HE is the President. Denied access, he builds his own makeshift
White House, and begins running the country, setting up a showdown
with the real President.

Title: Give The Drummer Some
Writer: Debbie Boynes
Genre: Dramedy
Logline: A homeless musician rises above the despair of living in the streets
of a Chicago ghetto to become a jazz band leader and the first man of
color to own a luxury hotel in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Title: Fast Money
Writer: Angelle Haney Gullett
Genre: Drama
Logline: A young girl with a gift for numbers struggles to stay in private school and pull her family out of poverty by taking her first job – as the accountant for her neighborhood drug dealer.

Title: Two Compatible
Writers: Zach Hillesland & Kieran Piller
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: Two genetically related test-tube babies – with two radically different sets of parents – meet in college and start dating, unaware that they are brother and sister.

Title: Girl bites Donut
Writers: Jason Beck and Bruce DeGama
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: When a struggling pastry shop owner signs away her business to the world’s most evil donut company, she struggles to escape with her recipes – and her life – intact.

Title: Couples
Name: Edward Ruggiero
Genre: Comedy
Logline: The friendships and marriages of three couples are tested after they share a group sex experience while vacationing together.

Title: Fourth and Matrimony
Writers: Geoff Brown and Alex Ball
Genre: Romantic comedy
Logline: When a college football fan falls in love with a girl from the wrong side of their school rivalry, his only hopes of surviving her father’s deranged pre-wedding tests are his seedy best friend and a legendary half-human gridiron terror.

Title: In the Heat of the Dead of Night
Writer: Mike Rinaldi
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A Southern town divided by racism, intolerance, and William Faulkner
must come together to survive an invasion of the walking dead and the
only man who can unite them is a compulsive necrophiliac.

Title: The Legend of Nina Simone
Writer: Jeremy Rall
Genre: Family
Logline: After hearing a legend about the lost recordings of Nina Simone, a young boy teams up with his friends on an adventure to find the treasure in hopes of saving his dying grandfather.

Title: Oh Never, Spectre Leaf!
Writers: C. Ryan Kirkpatrick and Chad Musick
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: After a freak plane crash, an awkward teenage boy must enlist the help of a sexually frustrated dwarf, a smokin’ hot cyborg, and an idiot in a bunny suit to defeat the Nocturnal Wench Everlasting and restore sunlight to the bizarre land of Spectre Leaf.

Title: Senioritis
Writer: A.J. Marchisello
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: An over-the-hill Principal plays hookie to relive his glory days with a burnt-out high school senior.

Title: Art
Writer: Collin Chang
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When wannabe director Art West forgets his DV camera in the monkey cage he cleans for a living, Freddy, a chimpanzee, creates a “surreal, esoteric masterpiece,” catapulting the now red-hot director into the Hollywood stratosphere, where the only way back to earth is down.

Title: Is that your wife in that celebrity sex tape?
Writer: Kevin Via
Genre: Comedy
Logline: An insecure husband discovers a celebrity sex tape starring his soccer mom-wife and a rock star.

Title: Walking Underwater
Writer: Joe Johnson
Genre: Coming-of-Age
Logline: The disaffected son of a wealthy family comes of age after his father’s death, as he struggles with a complicated love triangle and the shocking delivery of a 23-year-old “dead letter” from the Post Office, which reveals that another man may actually be his real father.

Title: Got Heart?
Writer: Jack Sekowski
Genre: Action-Comedy
Logline: A neurotic organ courier loses the cooler that holds the donor heart for the world’s most popular dog movie star and now must confront all his anxieties, defeat a demented villain who wants the star dead, and locate the heart before the poor pooch is barking at the pearly gates.

Title: Absent
Writer: Tandyn Almer
Genre: Thriller
Genre: With the body count rapidly rising, a retired, cancer-stricken police detective is reluctantly lured out of retirement to assist his son, an ambitious small-town sheriff, with the investigation of a slew of gruesome murders that may be linked to an unsolved high school massacre a decade earlier.

Title: Cure This
Writer: Duré Ahn
Genre: Vampire/Comedy
Logline: A lonesome vampire finds that a cure to his blood-lust and sunny aversion is linked to a revolutionary new treatment for erectile dysfunction.

Title: The Future Prime
Writer: Glenn Forbes
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: Two women, one in the 1960’s and one in the present day, struggle to survive the same serial killer by using a psychological anomaly to communicate across a gulf of time and death.

Title: Belli
Writer: Will Helvestine
Genre: Drama
Logline: The true story of flamboyant trial lawyer Melvin Belli, whose bizarre
courtroom antics earned him million-dollar verdicts and worldwide fame
– and who put his lucrative career on hold to represent Jack Ruby for
free in 1963 Dallas.

Title: Brake
Writer: Tim Mannion
Genre: Paranoid Thriller
Logline: Trapped inside the trunk of a moving car, a newly-hired secret service agent must figure out if his kidnapping is part of a training exercise or an impending terrorist attack.

Title: Genretown
Writer: Omar Najam
Genre: Noir Musical
Logline: Detective Rand McCullens is on a routine investigation of a murder in the noir-borough but when bodies start showing up from the western, comedy, musical and scifi boroughs, McCullens stumbles upon a plot to destroy all of Genretown.

Title: Spying and Lying
Writer: Scott Lowe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A spy working for a broke Government agency must battle with mobsters, corrupt cops and the Accounting Department denying his expenses when investigating an assassinated diplomat.

Title: Kings of Compton
Writer: Steve Parady
Genre: Drama
Logline: When two brothers, struggling to leave their criminal days behind and stay straight, unknowingly rip off the Mexican Cartel, they rise from the inner city to become major players in the drug trade.

Title: My Two Moms
Writer: Cameron Creel
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Logline: Surprised by his mom’s turn to lesbianism, a popular teen battles his discomfort with her upcoming same-sex marriage and struggles over his crush, the daughter of his mom’s fiancée.

Title: Osiris Revivals
Writer: Anthony Jackson
Genre: Futuristic Thriller
Logline: London, 2045 – a desperate journalist must fight through corruption and hysteria to discover the truth about the world’s first human cryonic revival before he loses the love of his life forever.

Title: Wallaces
Writer: Jameson McCulloch-Faber
Genre: Comedy
Logline: An ambitious, but alcoholic young New York professional inherits his estranged father’s bar in Iowa just in time for the town to ban alcohol. Now he has set up a bootlegging ring in order to make money.

Title: Bible Con
Writer: Ashley F. Miller
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Bible Con — Comic Con for Christians — goes straight to hell when
Jesus and Mary Magdalene fall in love, the keynote speaker turns out
to be an atheist, and the event is besieged by DaVinci Code fans.

Title: The Intake
Writer: Rich Sheehy
Genre: Thriller
Logline: An overly-caring therapist is pulled into a deadly psychological war when a manipulative but needy client confidentially reveals details of actual murders – before they happen.

Title: The Rules of Cusack
Writer: Josh Penn Boris
Genre: Comedy
Logline: John Cusack helps a young man find love using advice from his films. However, problems arise when Cusack falls for the same girl and his perceptions of movie life and real life begin to blur.

Title: Get Motivated
Writer: Stephen Hoover
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a company motivational camping trip turns into a life and death struggle, a put-upon underling takes action and leads an uprising against his oppressive boss. THE OFFICE meets LORD OF THE FLIES.

Title: Heavenly Bodies
Writer: Ezra Siegel
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Three unlikely teen best friends, one Jewish, one gay, and one Arab Muslim, con their way into Christian summer camp to pursue their crushes.

Title: Marble
Writers: Julie Bourne & Richard Huvard
Genre: Period drama/romantic epic
Logline: Inspired by events of 1914 Marble, Colorado, a mining magnate falls in love with an ambitious newspaperwoman as he strives to deliver the world’s purest marble for the Lincoln Memorial. When labor agitators target the symbolic stone, his obsession to save his town threatens a tragic end to their love.

Title: When the Hurly-burly’s Done
Writer: Jonah Jones
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: Living people are turning to dust everywhere on the planet. A world-wide team of police, spiritualists and scientists, led by a British detective, tries to track down the source. They discover the purpose of life on Earth and the reason for its imminent conclusion.

Title: Untitled
Writer: Jahi Adu Mbwana
Genre: Drama
Logline: A bank computer operator is fired from his job of nearly ten years and finds employment at a local vegetarian health food cooperative.

Title: The Last Stand
Writer: Bruce Spiegelman
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: A banished Roman soldier and a desperate young prince lead a band of legendary warriors in a suicidal campaign against the Parthian army.

Title: High School Hero
Writer: Chris Fennimore
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a former high school football star on the brink of middle age can’t catch a break in life; he sneaks back into high school by claiming to have Rapid Aging Disorder in the misguided hope of reliving his glory days on and off the gridiron.

Title: Just Like Jesse James
Writer: Tim McGregor
Genre: Suspense thriller
Logline: Hearing of a folktale about outlaw treasure buried on the family farm, four cousins take up the hunt but the closer they get to the gold, the more each struggles to trust the others.

Title: Dear Professor
Writer: Jason Matthew Lee
Genre: Dramedy
Logline: At a small liberal arts school, a lonely, middle-aged college professor develops an intimate relationship with one of his female students.

Title: Do Not Delete
Writer: Amy Parrent
Genre: Sci-Fi/ Comedy
Logline: A jaded thirty-something gets her wish to time-travel back to her college days, hoping to change her life. But she must contend with a reluctant time-travel companion, her old roommate, who wants to stop anything from changing.

Title: Redemption
Writer: Matthew Leddy
Genre: Drama
Logline: A police officer who discovers she was adopted, a couple on the brink of divorce and a heroin-addict on the brink of death are all interconnected through one central relative who is ultimately instrumental in bringing them redemption.

Title: Secret Agent Mom
Writer: Dylan McFadden
Genre: Comedy; Action/Adventure
Logline: An assassin turned stay at home mom struggles to keep her former existence a secret from her family when a vengeful ex-associate infiltrates her suburban life.
Thanks!

Title: Stop Our Parents
Writer: CJ Whitehead
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Logline: Disgusted by the thought of becoming stepbrother and stepsister, two rival high school seniors grudgingly team up to break up their single parents’ re-kindled passionate college romance.

Title: Played
Writer: Deborah Peraya
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: A total womanizer transforms his female best friend from clinger to player, finds himself attracted to his new creation but has taught her a little too well.

Title: The King’s Beach
Writer: Andrew A. Paul
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Logline: After his plane crashes on an empty island, a young businessman finds himself fighting for his life in a fantasy tournament that has a beautiful mermaid as a prize, only to question his faith and the mechanism of his calculated life.

Title: The Murder at Cherry Hill
Writer: Joe Pezzula
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When murder strikes the oldest and wealthiest family in Upstate NY, the prime suspect’s confession reveals a stirring cross section of social class, corruption, and deceit, all of which explode across headlines, resulting in the last public hanging in the region’s history circa 1827.

Title: Gaspard’s Hollow
Writer: John Fischer
Genre: Science Fiction/Thriller
Logline: A disillusioned American army chaplain fleeing the trenches of WWI becomes embroiled in a conflict of a more paranormal sort when he comes across a mysterious village in the French countryside.

Title: Louisiana Blood
Writer: Mike Donald
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When five victims of JACK THE RIPPER turn up in a swamp more than a century after their deaths, thousands of miles from the crime scene, an English Detective and a Louisiana Sheriff form an unlikely duo to unravel the ultimate conspiracy and reveal the Rippers true identity.

Title: Elysium
Writers: Fredrik Agetoft & Magnus Westerberg
Genre: Science Fiction/Thriller
Logline: The world’s first in-orbit spa is on it’s maiden voyage, loaded with celebrities
expecting the pampering of a lifetime, when all communications are lost and
everyone on board has to work together to stay alive in the desert of space and
reveal the dark mystery behind what has happened.

Title: The Pandora
Writer: Najla Ann Al-Doori
Genre: Supernatural horror
Logline: Snatched from their normal lives, three strangers awaken in a mysterious, sinking yacht and must escape before an unknown entity kills them, one by one.

Title: The Mother Load
Writer: Alan Anderson
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Desperate to impregnate his baby-crazy wife; a sterile, wannabe dad carries out a heist at a luxury sperm bank.

Title: Placebo
Writer: Matthew Fuller
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Logline: When a Private Investigator is tortured by recent memories of a murder he doesn’t believe he committed, he must evade the authorities and follow a trail of broken thoughts to track down the organization that imprinted him with the false memories, to regain his sanity and prove his innocence.

Title: Humans!
Writer: Josh Eanes
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In a world populated by sentient zombies, an outbreak of humans threatens the lives of two ordinary zombie youths, as does an increasingly chaotic military response.

Title: The 8th Square
Writers: Ashley Griffin and Case Aiken
Logline: Post modern fairy tale
Logline: After her father’s devastating suicide, a whimsical 21 year-old “Alice” plunges into a subterranean New York Wonderland that could renew her innocence – or ensnare her in darkness.

Title: Double or Nothing
Writer: Nic Lishko
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: After losing his job, a father drags his family across the country to secretly compete on a game show to save the family from going bankrupt.

Title: Lazarus The Renegade.
Writer: Bryn Owen
Genre: Science Fiction/Adventure.
Logline: A man awakens after five years in a coma to discover the Earth has been conquered by an oppressive alien race.

Title: Volatile
Writer: William C. Martell
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Eddy lost everything: his job, his house, his wife. Spends his final
unemployment check drinking, wakes up with fresh stitches. Stolen
kidney? Implanted bomb. Anonymous caller gives him six one hour tasks:
Steal a car, steal a suit, steal a gun… assassinate executives from
the company that fired him!

Title: Welcome To Pizza Heaven
Writer: Mitchell Todorov
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After his career in journalism is sabotaged by a co-worker, Scott Streets is forced to reach a new low: working at a pizza place. With the help of his misfit, new co-workers, he decides revenge is the only option.

Title: The Conferencegoers
Writer: Ben Strand
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A dying business man asks his two best friends to join him in a final whirlwind search for love, frequent-flyer miles and free expo swag by attending each other’s business conferences.

Title: Damaged Goods
Writer: Linda Belch
Genre: Action/Drama
Logline: After suffering a traumatic brain injury, an Iraqi war veteran escapes from the mental hospital where he is being held and travels cross country to keep a promise he made to his son.

Title: Killer Parties
Writers: Ben Bolea and Joe Hardesty
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In the frozen Alaskan tundra, where the sun rarely rises, four best friends struggle against the most terrifying experience of their young lives…graduation.

Title: Suicide, Inc.
Writer: Laura Kelber
Genre: Thriller
Logline: In the not-too-distant future, a shadowy organization recruits desperate New Yorkers to become suicide bombers.

Title: Aftermath
Writer: Jared Waine
Genre: Drama
Logline: After a giant monster attack on Miami, three disparate people- a retired sailor, a burnt-out virologist, and a torn rescue worker- deal with love and loss amongst the ruins.

Title: Destination Yesterday
Writer: Dexter E. Williams
Genre: paranormal thriller
Logline: a sacramento businessman discovers – through information provided by a mysterious woman – that his recurring nightmares of a tragic plane crash could be repressed memories of a previous life.

Title: Fetalgeist
Writer: Greg Hart
Genre: Horror
Logline: After surviving a horrific car crash, a pro-life student group seeks shelter inside a long since abandoned yet very much haunted abortion clinic.

Title: We Found Bigfoot
Writer: Robert Ducey
Genre: Drama
Logline: At the height of the 1970’s Bigfoot craze, an obsessed, lonely 9 year old boy living in the heart of Sasquatch country becomes entangled in a hoax which threatens to shatter his family, new friendships, and his innocent belief in the mythic creature.

Title: Run-Off
Writer: Jordan Innes and Mo Twine
Genre: Adventure Comedy
Logline: A pair of mismatched deadbeats embark on an ill-fated rafting odyssey
down the urban toilet known as the Los Angeles River in search of
adventure and a fresh start.

Title: Year of the Octopus
Writer: Mark Bucciarelli
Genre: Drama
Logline: Steve Westly, a middle-aged, out-of-work, sex-addicted architect on the verge of suicide so the two children from his first marriage can collect the life insurance money, has a saving grace, once in a lifetime epiphany.

Title: Faithful
Writer: DN Luu
Genre: Psychological thriller
Logline: When a cocky advertising exec meets and falls for a mysterious woman in white on the Metro train, he soon discovers that she is not mentally well. What he doesn’t know is that his ability to remain faithful to her during this time will determine whether he lives or dies.

Title: The Man With One Arm
Writer: Stephen Fingleton
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A struggling filmmaker gets funding for his long-cherished spaghetti western, but is forced to make it in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Title: Tainted
Writer: John Henderson (adaptation of “Rising Phoenix” by Kyle Mills)
Genre: Drama
Logline: After the poisoning of the nation’s illegal drug supply leaves thousands dead, an FBI agent’s investigation is crippled by his own biases and the outpouring of public support for the murders.

Title: The Hour of the Hunter
Writer: Alex Gillman
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: A man sets out to avenge his family’s murder only to find out that his family never existed. MAN ON FIRE meets THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

Title: Thorne
Writer: Michael Sposito
Genre: Action
Logline: A lonely, tormented physicist hijacks the world’s most advanced particle collider traveling back in time to save the mother he lost in the 9/11 attacks, but attempts to warn her alert the hijackers to his presence and threaten the lives of millions unborn.

Title: Sea Gypsies
Writer: Kevin VanderJagt
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Logline: Separated across half of Thailand by the chaos of a devastating tsunami, two strong willed captains of an American colligate rugby team fight their better judgment as one struggles to reunite with his teammates while the other attempts to reunite the children of an indigenous gypsy population with their homes.

Title: Snow Blind
Writer: Dan Benamor and Matt Williams
Genre: Mystery
Logline: A man wakes up inside a crashed car in the Arctic Tundra, not knowing who he is, where the gunshot wound in his stomach came from, or why he’s wanted for murder.

Title: The Country On The Corner
Writer: David CC Erickson
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a debt-ridden 4th grade history teacher discovers his property was declared a sovereign nation after the Revolutionary War, he battles foreclosure and the State Department in a quest to recreate the American dream of independence on
an eighth of an acre.

Title: Swim Star
Writer: Cameron O’Hearn
Genre: Drama
Logline: After his single mother drowns, a detached high-school senior trains to become a swim star in order to ward off thoughts of suicide.

Title: Not Dead Yet
Writer: Emily Blake
Genre: Action
Logline: Twenty years after the zombie apocalypse wipes out life as they know it, a pair of survivors learns they are not alone, and must fix their issues to protect their warrior children on a dangerous journey by boat to save a woman who may be the key to reviving humanity.

Title: Moonsick
Writer: Mike Jones
Genre: Horror
Logline: After their car breaks down in an isolated German forest, two freelance journalists become increasingly divided between obtaining the greatest story of their careers or immediate escape, when the inhabitants of the only village for miles turn out to be werewolves.

Title: “Blade Runner”
Writer: Tormod Berge
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In a world where all Movies are made with pre-existing fanbases, the star of the “Blade Runner” remake, Zac Effron, is kidnapped. The studio sends the writer, Charles Gatsby, and their best team of actors on a rescue mission, taking them deep in to the jungles of South America.

Title: Chasing Hope
Writer: Miriam Adams-Washington
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Logline: After finding a captivating old photo of the grandmother she never knew, an urban teen journeys to the Deep South for answers and stumbles upon family secrets of forbidden love, lies and a fifty year old unsolved murder mystery.

Title: Mimes Of New York
Writer: Stephen Wegmann
Genre: Comedy/Action
Logline: After witnessing the mob murder a local street musician, a wannabe mime decides to master the art so he can exact revenge — little does he know, he is a pawn in a plan set into motion with the reappearance of a long lost mime master.

Title: Sammy Jingles
Writer: Patrick Bonner
Genre: Comedy
Logline: If John Lasseter, Bob Fosse, Weird Al Yankovic, and Santa Claus, each driving their own vehicle, were involved in a high speed, head on collision, this script about a celebrity obsessed toy factory tour guide’s attempt to save a kidnapped Santa would be what was scraped off the curb.

Title: Ground Work
Writer: Patrick C. Taylor
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: His flight from LA to NYC canceled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, an Arab-American hitman must travel across the country to complete a job, facing the most hostile environment possible for an Arab with a gun and a guilty conscience.

Title: The Alien Diaries
Writer: Glenn J. Devlin
Genre: Science Fiction
Logline: While appraising old and rare books at a restored colonial plantation, a book collector stumbles across a series of diaries that chronicle an alien visitation in 1781.

Title: The Devil’s Anatomy
Writer: Craig Feagins
Genre: Horror Thriller
Logline: A detective’s investigation of an insurance fraud in 1890s Chicago becomes a deadly game of cat-and-mouse when he stumbles across the nation’s first documented serial killer, the cunning and bloodthirsty Dr. H. H. Holmes.

Title: A Constant Variable
Writer: Chris Rodgers
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama/Comedy
Logline: A quantum physics professor finds himself on the outside of his own life, looking in, when he time travels twenty-four hours into the future and gets stuck there.

Title: The Cat Lady
Writer: Lisa Aldin
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: A reclusive young “cat lady” attempts to find new homes for her 22 felines after her uptight neighbor turns her in to Animal Control, but the mandatory cat evacuation could help her experience a meaningful human connection.

No time to chat. Busy putting together the Top 100 loglines. Announcement will be made tomorrow (Monday) at 12:00pm noon Pacific Time. Here’s Roger with today’s review!

Genre: Thriller, Crime Noir
Premise: A serial killer nicknamed “Blitz” is targeting cops in different beats around London, inciting the ire of the sociopathic Detective Sergeant Brant and his notorious anti-87th Precinct Unit.
About: The screenplay comes from Nathan Parker (“Moon”), adapted from the novel of the same name by Irish noir writer, Ken Bruen. Jason Statham has agreed to play Brant, a crude, sociopathic cop while Paddy Considine will be playing Sergeant Porter Nash, an openly gay cop that works with the homophobic Brant. The director is Elliot Lester (“Love is a Drug”). Bruen also struck cinematic gold with “London Boulevard”, which is being adapted by Oscar winner William Monahan.
Writer: Nathan Parker (based on the novel by Ken Bruen)

To continue along this crime and noir vein without looking at a Ken Bruen project would be a disservice to all you readers jonesing for a crime fix. After all, ask any modern crime writer who they’re paying attention to in the world of crime fiction, and they’ll all point their fingers across the Atlantic at Ken Bruen.

If you like journeying to the Jim Thompson dark-side every now and then (and believe me, you’ll want to space ‘em out, these babies are grim ), look no further than his Jack Taylor novels.

But if you want a hit of pulp mayhem followed by rails of dysfunction, casual violence, and black humour, then may I suggest the anti-87th Precinct (did you know that Shane Black sustained himself on a diet of Ed McBain novels) Tom Brant novels?

Because “Blitz” is an adaptation of the novel of the same name, just one in a series of short ammo-clip novels that all started with Bruen’s “White Trilogy”.

So what’s the skinny on Brant?

Detective Sergeant Tom Brant is the UK’s answer to Vic Mackey. Or maybe it’s the other way around, because Brant was created four or five years before Mackey, and he sort of makes Vic look tame and unstylish in comparison.

When we first meet Brant, the Southeast London police shrink is attempting to counsel him about his “violent urges”. As a matter of principle, Brant suggests the doctor is gay, physically assaults him, gains the psychological edge, and rubs salt in the wound by ratting out the alcoholic doctor to a Detective Inspector (whilst impersonating the nebbish constable, PC McDonald).

All this he does with brutish style and Celtic panache. Brant is the type of good bad cop (or bad good cop) who sleeps with prostitutes turned informer, murders criminals who escape the system, drugs fellow police officers for sport, and isn’t above watching pitbulls tear apart a man for the purpose of revenge. In other words, Brant is just undiluted, sociopathic fun.

Did I also mention that Brant’s breakfast is always two Club Milks and a tea with two sugars, which he calls a Sid Vicious because in “Sid and Nancy” there’s “this scene where Gary Oldman, wrecked on every chemical known to man, shouts at his record company rep, who’d asked him what he wanted to drink, ‘Cup a tea, yah cunt, and two sugars.’”?

The Bad Lieutenant could take lessons from a man like Brant.

And more importantly, Jason Statham now has a role to sink his teeth into where he doesn’t have to take off his fucking shirt. I’m sorry I’m not sorry, ladies.

The 87th Precinct has an ensemble cast. Who are the rest of our London players?

There’s Chief Inspector Roberts, whose wife dies in a car accident at the beginning of our story. One of the things that Bruen seems to do so easily, and which Parker captures perfectly in the script adaptation, is that he smudges the lines between comedy and tragedy. How many writers can take a sequence where a man whose wife of decades has just died and capture the blunt shock, pity, sadness and humour that humans are privy to in the face of life trauma?

Just look at the scene where someone steals his wife’s urn. It’s fucking brutal, but you can’t help but laugh.

This script shifts and weaves and paints in so many emotional tones you can’t help but marvel at the deft character brush-strokes. A master has been at work, and we know it because it all seems so effortless.

Porter Nash is the handsome, openly gay sergeant who takes the reins from Brant. He’s a new arrival, but he earns the respect of the men and Brant because he’s just that good. There’s an uneasy partnership of necessity and respect between the two men, and it’s cool to watch them work together.

There’s WPC Falls, a black female investigator who is trying to find her place in the unit. She’s failed to make sergeant, and she copes by drinking hard and relapsing into substance abuse. Her favorite past-time in the hellish third act is robbing dealers. Ironically, she’s protective of a teenage punk with the British National Party, AKA Hitler Youth.

PC McDonald is the Superintendent’s star pupil, but more entertainingly, he’s the squad’s scapegoat. It’s fun to watch him blunder. It could also be argued that it’s fun to watch his sanity and resolve disappear as he struggles to stay above water in the real world of cops and murderers.

When The Blitz crashes the party, our notorious unit is cast further into limbo and they all must embrace their personal demons if they want to stop him.
Who is The Blitz?

He’s a hammer-wielding serial killer that targets cops.

It’s bad business, killing cops. Not only are you going to incite the ire of an entire police force, but you’ll have to go toe-to-toe with Brant, and you better be fucking committed to your art if you have to deal with a wild Celt with a badge.

Yet this is the perfect recipe for entertainment, as there aren’t many things more entertaining than watching two psychopaths drunkenly chase each other around London with bullets and hammers.

Add Brant’s seriously disturbed co-workers to the mix, and well, if the resulting “investigation” doesn’t entertain you than I don’t know what will.

How’s it go down, Rog?

Like a shot of Jameson, straight up.

These are good characters, and they have a combustive family dynamic where they support each other’s addictions and bad behavior. They take care of their own, and you can’t help but bond to these people when their life outside of police work crumbles around them.

Or maybe all they have is their police work, their job, and when threatened with “leave”, “time off”, or “vacation” (which any normal person would take considering the personal circumstances), they snarl their way back onto the beat or the chase because life outside of their job is too rough.

It’s too scary to have to face those demons alone.

And capturing The Blitz is exorcism, it’s a grail that justifies their loneliness, their anger, their sadness. Their brokenness.

Brant suffers from some old-fashioned Tennessee Williams blackouts. There’s a scene in the script where he does nothing but stare at a blank wall, his mind and heart numb.

Blank.

A human being whose fuse has burned down on both ends and in this rare moment of vulnerability, where we see something other than the sociopathic bull, we realize that Brant really is human.

He’s paying a price for his sins, and he pays it gladly.

If “Blitz” can be criticized, it’s that at its heart, the plot is pretty familiar territory. This coupled with its ensemble cast makes it feel like an arc or storyline off “The Shield” (or the novel and movie, “Red Dragon”) or any other television procedural.

But this baby is about the characters. It’ll be Jason Statham’s best role and it should appeal to the “Layer Cake” and crime noir crowd. It plays like a crime procedural force-fed through a wood-chipper with a stack of pulpy Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Ed McBain novels.

Simply put, it’s lethal stuff.

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

What I learned: Shoot for ironic relationships between your characters. Blitz is full of ‘em. The most noticeable are the twin satellites of Brant and Nash. Brant is homophobic; Nash is openly gay. They have to work together. Instant conflict. PC Falls is black; yet she looks after a teenage Nazi. Instant depth. Brant kills with a badge; Blitz kills outside of the law. Instant battle of wills. Ironic relationships: They kick things up a notch.

Note: If you are a fan of both Scriptshadow and the Coen Brothers, I highly advise you not read the following review. There is a good chance you will never want to read Scriptshadow again. Please, I’m begging you, turn back now. You will hate me. As a result you will leave. Which means you won’t benefit from the future reviews and scripts that appear on the site. I know it’s tempting but I’m doing this for your own protection……..Still here? Okay, I warned you.

Genre: Drama
Premise: An American gunner for a B-29 bomber squad crash lands in Tokyo during World 2 and must find a way to escape alive.
About: This finished number 20 on the Scriptshadow Reader Top 25 List, which is pretty impressive when you consider it hadn’t been officially mentioned on the site. Joel and Ethan Coen adapted the novel over a decade ago, and many consider it to be one of the best screenplays not yet produced. James Dickey, who wrote the novel the script was adapted from, also wrote “Deliverance.”
Writers: Joel and Ethan Coen (based on the novel by James Dickey)

Remember the large group of friends you used to hang out with in high school and college? For the most part, everybody got along. Being in a large group of people who just “get you” is probably one of the safest most comforting feelings you can have in life. But in those groups, there’s always that one person, that one guy or girl you just don’t see eye to eye with. Both of you know it. Both of you do your best to work around it. But because there is absolutely zero crossover in your interests, zero crossover in your sense of humor, because there seemingly isn’t a single thing in life that the two of you agree on, all you can do is tolerate each other and not let your dislike of one another screw up the group dynamic.

That person for me was Eli. I hated Eli. And it was clear he didn’t like me either. I couldn’t even tell you the reasons why I didn’t like Eli. He was just one of those people that rubbed you the wrong way. So deep was our dislike for each other, that if ever a segment of the group couldn’t make it somewhere, I’d have to check to see how many others were coming. If it was five people and Eli, I could handle it. But once it got down to four or three? Which meant Eli and I would actually have to talk? No thank you. I was out. And I’m certain he did the same. Over time, Eli and I basically became experts at hating each other.

Well when you go off into the real world and grow up a bit, you look back at things and you think, “Maybe I could’ve approached that better.” “Maybe I helped contribute to the misunderstandings just as much as he did.” You gain some perspective, and wish you would’ve tried harder.

So a couple of years out of college and a good six years since I’d last seen Eli, I flew in for one of my friends’ bachelor parties. The whole group was back together again, and there was Eli, grown up, matured, nice, a seemingly different man than the character I remembered. I knew right then that we were going to be okay, that we could work things out.

Eli also had with him a harmonica, which he was busting out occasionally, playing for people. And he was actually quite good. Better yet, it was the perfect conversation piece. At the time, one of my favorite bands was Blues Traveler, which, for those of you unfamiliar with them, has a lead singer whose trademark is his unprecedented harmonica mastery. It was the perfect topic to bring us together. I was certain that if I could just get Eli alone, we’d end up talking all night, forgetting every issue we ever had with each other, and becoming better friends than Selena Gomez and Demi Lavato.

About an hour later, I saw Eli getting a drink and decided to strike. I approached him with a big smile and asked him what he’d been up to. There was still a trace of distance in his voice, but I focused on the positive. At least he was engaging me. Eli told me he had gone into real estate where he was quickly becoming a force. He also recently asked his girlfriend to marry him. Things were clearly going well for him. When there was a brief potentially awkward pause, I knew it was the perfect time to bring up the harmonica. “So how long have you been playing?” I asked. “About five years now,” he said. “I heard you playing earlier. You’re really good.” “Thanks.” “What kind of stuff do you play?” “I like a bunch of different kinds of music but mainly blues.” It was exactly the way I had planned it in my head. I threw him the moneyball.

“I’m a huge fan of Blues Traveler. I don’t know anyone who can play a harmonica like that guy.” And he paused, looked at me for a moment. I noticed his face becoming a deep shade of red. For the briefest of moments, he actually looked like he was going to kill me. Though I’ll never remember exactly how he said it, Eli responded to me with something like: “Blues Traveler is a fucking joke. I hate John Popper [the lead singer]. He’s everything that’s wrong with the harmonica. They’re a piece of shit pop-group that fucked up everything that’s pure about music. I hate them with a passion and wish that dude would die.”

I stood there for what I’m pretty sure was six years of silence. I then offered a forced smile, turned, and walked away. I have not spoken to Eli since, nor do I ever plan on speaking to Eli again. That experience taught me a profound life lesson: Two forces that aren’t meant to be will never be. Time will pass. You can keep trying. But you’ll never like each other. This is the reason why I know I will never like the Coen Brothers.

The Coen Brothers would probably never be as rude as Eli, but just like the harmonically angry one, I don’t get them. I just don’t. Everything they do exists on a plane outside of what I’m willing to consider entertainment. I got through ten pages of “A Serious Man,” and thought it was a rambling incohesive piece of shit. Burn After Reading? A desperate attempt to grab A-list actors by creating a stupid story with overtly outrageous characters. More like Burn Before Reading. Ditto for “O Brother Where Art Thou.” In fact, that’s how they seem to approach most of their movies. And don’t get me started about No Country For Old Men, which, based on a novel or not, decided to deprive the audience of a fairly important piece of information: THE ACTUAL ENDING. I couldn’t even tell you what they did for the seven years previous to that. Didn’t they remake The Ladykillers?

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the Coens aren’t talented filmmakers. They clearly have a vision – a unique eye, and they seem to have a pretty good grasp on the old “chase the guy with the bag of money” device. But I truly hate their writing. I will never ever get it.

To The White Sea is my Eli at the bachelor party moment for the Coens. I’ve heard about how good this script is many times, but when it scored so highly on the Reader List, I finally said, “I have to give this a shot.” So Wednesday I approached To The White Sea at the party, and had a conversation. Would the script prove my theory wrong? Or would I continue to lump the Coens in with Eli?

It’s March of 1945, roughly five months before the end of World War 2. A guy named “Muldrow” is supposedly the best B-29 gunner in his squadron. After we’re told a few times how awesome he is, he’s off on a mission to blanket Tokyo with more explosions than a Michael Bay movie (not including Bad Boys 2). As they’re flying along, their plane gets hit, he gets ejected, and falls, I think, right outside Tokyo. This coincides with the ending of all dialogue in the film, which I was really excited about, since it made a 90 page screenplay read like it was 180.

For reasons I’m still trying to grasp, we inexplicably flashback to Muldrow in Alaska(?) with a bunch of snow dogs. Neither Cuba Gooding Jr. or Paul Walker is nearby, so when Muldrow’s hands get a little chilly, he slices one of the dogs in half and shoves his hands inside to keep warm. I don’t know about you but I love me some dog killers. I was really warming up to this character.

Back in the present, Michael Vick wakes up, seemingly okay after the fall, and must now find a way out of Tokyo without being seen or killed. A few pages after the wonderful dog murdering scene, he slices the throat of an innocent civilian and steals his clothes and hat, which he then hides under so people won’t see that he’s American.

He then wanders through Tokyo and its outskirts – though it’s never clear to me where he’s planning to go, as the last time I checked, Japan was an island. In the draft I read, there were occasional pages that had been omitted. And I suppose this could’ve been explained in one of them, but I considered these deleted pages to be more a gift from God, a tiny favor from him to shorten my read. But even God himself could only do so much. Every endless page was hell. In fact, I started to wonder who was going to survive longer. Me or this character.

Muldrow continues to sneak around Japan, eventually finding his way into a house and murdering an old blind man. He also bludgeons and beats to death a goat, rips apart some birds, and if that isn’t enough animal death for you, a cute cub bear gets torn apart later. By this point I had broken out the pom-poms, such was my rooting interest for this wonderful man. Unfortunately, Muldrow never finds that deaf school of children to massacre. I guess we can always hope for a sequel.

There’s a big ironic moment when American bombers fly over and start bombing the very city he now finds himself in. Except I was less focused on the irony and more concerned about the bomber’s errant aim. I knew if they got him, the script would be over. Or, at least, I hoped it would. But alas, the idiots kept missing. I guess they shoulda hired Michael Bay.

Even with it being only a couple of days since I read the script, I can’t really remember the end, other than I was bored to tears. I do remember him getting captured though, I think. And maybe almost dying. Alas, for those kinds of details you’ll have to carve out four hours of free time for yourself. Cause yes, it takes that long to read. (I know forgotten Egyptian cave languages that read faster than this)

Um, is there a movie in here? I suppose so, though I thought it woulda been way cooler if it was about an army official crashing in Hiroshima who had knowledge that the atom bomb was about to be dropped there in an hour or something. Now that’s a movie I’d wanna see. Hmm, maybe I’ll pitch it to Eli.

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

What I learned: Having your main character kill a lot of animals will make him extremely likable. Kill as many animals as possible always in scripts. Puppies, chipmunks, bunnies, and baby deer are preferable.

In the spirit of fairness, I decided to give a friend of mine, Aaron Coffman, who’s a great screenwriter himself and a huge fan of To The White Sea, a chance to offer his thoughts on the script. Obviously, he’s wrong, but I’ll let him talk anyway. :)

When Carson first hinted that TO THE WHITE SEA may receive a ‘trash’ rating, I politely demanded the chance to offer a counter review, for I, like many of you, rather enjoyed the script.

A couple years ago, when a friend sent me the Coen Brother’s adaptation of the James Dickey novel, I tore into it, smiling at the sandpapered words first spoken by a hardened Colonel:

Fire. We are going to bring it to him.

Like the opening of PATTON, a commanding officer stands before his men, issuing orders that not only asks them to be absolutely brutal to the enemy, but to their enemy’s families and to their way of life. He’s not just asking his men to make the other poor bastard die for his country, he’s demanding they mutilate that country in the process.

…we’re going to put it in his dreams. Whatever heaven he’s hoping for, we’re fixing to make a hell out of it… no ammo, no gunners. All bombs. All payload. All fire.

And so begins TO THE WHITE SEA.

The opening image of a sea bird, flying against the bluest of skies, suddenly overtaken by the thunderous roar of a B-29 speaks volumes about what the script will set out to achieve. The constant battle between nature and man coarses throughout the eighty-nine page script.

The year is 1945. The war in the pacific is violently inching closer to an end. We meet Muldrow, the tail-gunner of a B-29, preparing for the hunt — or in this case, a bombing raid over Tokyo. The crews are told that in a few days the wooden city will be firebombed, but before that, regular bombs will have to do.

It’s on the great hunt that Muldrow’s plane is shot down and he is the lone surivor to jump from the plane’s gutted husk and make it safely to the ground. The only problem is that he’s in Tokyo, and in a matter days the entire place will be hit with white phosphorous and napalm.

And here is where the script started to win me over. In any other circumstance the plot of the film would use the firebombing as a ticking-clock. The script would become about Muldrow trying to escape before the American bombers return. He’d surely have to kidnap a Japanese citizen, but by the end of it they’d come to understand each other, and the Japanese captive would sacrifice himself so that Muldrow could flee to safety.

But not here. After spending the night in a construction vehicle, Muldrow starts North, where he can escape into the Aleutians, and by page thirty-four, Tokyo is on fire. Clearly this script isn’t as interested in standard conventions. There will be no Japanese captive with whom he can share stories of his past; nor will his captive-turned-friend be around to save his life.

Through a series of short flashbacks, done with some of the more interestingly executed transitions I’ve read, we learn about Muldrow’s past. We see him, years before, steering sled dogs through the Alaskan wilderness. When he tries to untie a frozen knot, Muldrow loses his gloves in the snow, and with the night quickly approaching, and unable to start a fire with his frozen hands, Muldow takes one of the sled dogs behind a mound, slices it open, and sticks his hands inside for warmth.

It is a scene that not only develops who Muldrow is as a character, but also the overall theme as well. Through his actions we see that Muldrow can and will to do whatever it takes to survive, and do it without any hesitation. The scene also begins to establish the thematic element of caged animals. Much like in RAGING BULL, when Jake LaMotta is thrown in prison and begins to bash his head against the cement wall, screaming that he’s an animal, here to we start to get a feeling that Muldrow himself has been caged, and that now the animal has been set free.

As Muldrow makes his escape, many might be put off by brutality in which Muldrow kills. However, I would counter by saying each murder allows him to find a way to survive.

He kills a construction worker for his clothes so that he can get out of his flight suit. During the firebombing of Tokyo he kills a man his size so that he can get out of his combat boots which clearly would give him away.

In one of my favorite sequences of the script, Muldrow kills a man who feeds a flock of swan in a pool outside a house. The murder seems unnecessary at first because even though he does eat the swan (the one which fought back), it’s unclear why he clubs a handful of the birds to death. We see him plucking the feathers, shoving them into a bag and then setting out again, and yet the question as to what he’s up to isn’t made clear. Later, when he discovers a blind man’s house, he waits for the caregiver to leave, then sneaks in. He quickly goes through the house, searching for something, ignoring the blind man. The blind man, realizing an intruder is in the house grabs a blade and nearly kills Muldrow before he himself is dispatched rather violently.

It’s the first time Muldrow has come upon a person who he doesn’t kill on sight, simply because the man can do him no harm. He can’t tell the authorities that Muldrow is an American. It’s only after the man attacks that Muldrow kills him. The sequence comes to an end as we realize why Muldrow came into the house. He uses a needle and thread to sew the swan feathers into his jacket to add insulation. It’s going to be cold on his trip, and again survival drives him.

To cover his tracks Muldrow sets the house on fire, but stops to let a song bird out of it’s cage. Once again the use of caged animals comes into play. Unlike Muldrow, though, the song bird flaps about the burning room only to return to its cage to await certain death.

When a small tribe takes him in, the looming threat that he might have to kill them all hangs heavy over the sequence and drives up the tension. During a celebration, two caged bear cubs are brought before Muldrow. The villagers kill one in a ritualistic manner. Later that night, on his way out of the village, Muldrow kills the man in charge, then sets the remaining cub free. It’s an interesting moment because we’re left to wonder if Muldrow did so to cover his tracks, or if he felt an animalistic need to free the caged bear. He doesn’t kill the entire village, which seems like something he’d do if his motive was to cover his tracks. Instead, he kills the man who allowed the bear cub to be slaughtered in its cage. Once the murder has occurred, and the bear has been set free, Muldrow’s own sense of survival kicks in and he murders several more tribe members on the edge of town to make it appear as though the bear cub was responsible.
[**major spoiler below**]

When he finally makes it north, Muldrow encounters another man, who shows him his prized hawks. During a trek through the forest, as the hawk flies high above him, Muldrow is shot and killed by soldiers as they stalk through the snow. It’s not made clear if they were after him specifically, but they’re dressed in white camo to disguise them in the snow, and we get the feeling that they too were on a hunt.

As Muldrow lies dying, he watches the hawk above him, in the blue sky, like the bird we saw in the first moments of the script. Muldrow’s voice echos the words:

I was in the place I tried to get. I was in it and had it. And will be everywhere in it from now on.

And so it is that Muldrow, once a caged animal, returns to nature from which he was born.

What I learned: This isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. This is clearly written by two people who have never really been interested in the standard conventions of a Hollywood story. The fact that the font is in Times New Roman will make some feel as though they’re reading a book, however, I think writer’s can take some important things from it. Without dialogue or a high concept plot to push the story forward, the writer’s must focus on theme. Seeing such a thing on display here might help you incorporate that element into your own scripts in a more powerful way.

The last time Michael Stark (real name) reviewed a script for me was the Freeman/Willis action project, “Red.” Well Michael is back again with a script by screenwriting legend William Goldman. There was a time when Goldman sold every piece of paper that came out of his typewriter. And some of those were grocery lists. As for Michael, he’s no chopped liver either. He sold a couple of specs to Hollywood a decade ago, then up and left. Only recently, after finding Scriptshadow, was he inspired to start writing again. Hey, that’s why I started this thing. To get you guys writing dammit. Now sit down, read this review, then read the script. You can work on your script some other time. :)

Genre: Swashbuckler
Premise: Basically Butch and Sundance as buccaneers.
About: Unproduced William Goldman script from 1978. Sean Connery and Roger Moore once attached. Part one of a three-picture deal with legendary producer, Joseph E Levine. None got made at the time. Goldman, Hollywood’s Go-to-Guy for over three decades, did not get work for five years after that.
Writer: William Goldman

Okay, Shadow Poppets, Professor Stark has set the Hollywood Way Back Machine to 1978, a simpler time when screenwriters were no longer mere schmucks with Underwoods, but yet to command the hyper-inflated, paychecks of the Shane Black Era. It was an age when Scribbler Gods like Robert Towne and William Goldman walked the Earth and our planet was a much better place for it.

William Goldman, for those born after the Bruckheimesozoic Period, was the master craftsmen behind Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men, The Princess Bride, Magic, Marathon Man and Misery. In those frontier days before Syd Field nailed his 95 theses on the studio doors, Goldman’s published screenplays and autobiography, “Adventures In The Screen Trade”, were the only compasses out there for us young scripters. He was, for many of us, our first mentor.

According to legend, The Sea Kings would have teamed up Sean Connery and Roger Moore as the famed pirates, Blackbeard and Bonnet, a rather neat, doubled Bonded hook if they had pulled it off. Unfortunately, this swashbuckler never set sail because the producer, Joseph E. Levine, financed all his movies out of his own pocket. By the time this script was budgeted, movies just became too expensive (damned cattle salaries) and Levine refused to go begging the studios for assistance.

I’ve always wanted to read this script. Thanks to loose lips, Xerox machines and Script Shadow’s vaster than the Vatican’s network of spies, I finally got my hot little mitts on it! For a fan, this was like finding buried treasure.

But, alas, like the Legend of Curly’s Gold, some treasures were meant to stay buried. I ain’t saying The Sea Kings is bad, it’s just not the perfection I expected from one of my idols. It’s kinda like a bootleg album: quite good — great maybe if you are an obsessed collector — but probably left unpolished, unproduced and unreleased for a reason. And, like much of the other works of art in Script Shadow’s storehouse, who knows what draft I’ve even read.

I had pretty sky high expectations for Goldman tackling the sea-faring genre. Wouldn’t you? Hell, the man wrote The Princess Bride, one of the most romantic, quote worthy, fantasy, adventure flicks of all times.

So, why am I disappointed? Well, the first real spot of action scene doesn’t take place till 30 pages in. The first sword fight doesn’t happen till page 52. And, the first wench doesn’t even appear till page 60. Now, pages 100 – 132 are totally golden and magnificent and redeems the earlier flaws, but one wishes Richard Lester had given Goldman some Musketeering notes for the first two acts. There just really needed to be some more swashbuckling!

Okay, remember that this is 1978. The language of both film and screenwriting was different back then. Goldman didn’t employ the shorthand we’ve since grown accustomed to. He uses long, long paragraphs to describe the main characters, their ships and all the geography around them. There are so many historical sources referenced, you wonder if he’ll eventually resort to Ibids and Op. cits at the bottom of the page.

He uses almost a whole page to describe our first encounter with Blackbeard. I know this breaks all the rules your books and teachers and script coverage services have taught you. I don’t care. I totally ate it up! I’m not gonna reprint his intro here, so, please, download the link and at least get to page 4. Yup, it’s way too much information. Today, the young tots who wrote Medieval would merely have said: “He was a bug fucking dude with a big fucking sword and a fucking big beard.” Goldman is a wee bit more classy. Such were the 70s.

The Sea Kings is a tale of two buccaneers. Blackbeard, the notorious menace of the high seas and Major Steed Bonnet, who turned to piracy pretty much out of misplaced romanticism, a near death experience and simple boredom. Give a rich guy a beautiful but mean wife that withholds sex and constantly degrades him, no doubt he’ll buy an eye patch, build a ship and head for the Barbary Coast too. Now, according to legend that was exactly the reason Bonnet turned to the Pirate’s Life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem too believable. Sometimes truth is too far damn whimsical then fiction.

Today, all action movies start with a nice set piece to get the blood pumping and the sphincters kept on the seats. Although we get a mystical money shot of Blackbeard’s empty ship scaring a trading vessel into surrender by his terrible reputation alone, the first action sequence doesn’t come till the second act when the sea sick novice Captain Bonnet actually commits his first act of plundering.

Bonnet’s beginner’s luck is simply amazing as he takes down five ships pretty much in a row. Then, he tries to steal some Pirate’s Booty away from Blackbeard himself. The Beard spares Bonnet’s life for no better reason than pure whimsy. For a pirate that was pretty historically cruel, this doesn’t ring quite right. But, Black, tired and broke, sees a way to turn a profit off his pesky new competitor, thus the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Sea Dog Mentor and Sea Dog Protégé.

They become fast friends like Butch and Sundance or Michael Caine and Sean Connery In The Man Who Would Be King. They get along splendidly. Too splendidly perhaps. I mean, Blackbeard was a total, psychopathic badass. There would have been more tension if we really believed that Black could turn on his new best friend at any moment. Thus, our first missed opportunity at some really high stakes.

Both pirates are just a bit too cute. Cuter than Captain Jack Sparrow. Cuter than Geena Davis in Cut Throat Island. Cuter than Graham Chapman in Yellowbeard. Cuter even than Jean Lafoote’s Cinnamon Crunch. I imagine pirates to be far more treacherous, lecherous and fugly.

Black’s Fence in none other than the Governor of North Carolina and we are given another detailed history lesson about colonial life with again too many Ibids and Op. Cits. Blackbeard may be a ferocious buccaneer, but he’s not the hottest businessman, so Bonnet saves his ass as they auction off their stolen goods and even helps get his buddy laid later that night by posing as a pastor. There is blue skies, clear sailing and zero tension till an aside mention that the colony of Virginia has put a bounty of the Beard’s infamous head. AHHHH, we finally spy in the distance the black flag of conflict!

The boys stay a wee bit too long on dry land and when they finally return to the Atlantic near page 80, they kidnap some rich Virginians and must return to those hostile shores to collect their ransom. Here, we get some much needed swordplay and Blackbeard’s scorpion and Frog betrayal of Bonnet.

It is this betrayal and Bonnet’s subsequent revenge that makes the last 30 pages of this script so action-packed and awesome. If the whole picture had that kinda juice. I would have given Sea Kings an impressive rating. Or, as it was 1978, a few shots of Jacqueline Bisset walking the plank in just a T-shirt might have worked too.

I guess I would have liked a little less high jinks on the high seas and a lot more Captain Blood. Thankfully, Goldman would get the mixture perfect a few years later in The Princess Bride.

How perfect?

“Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles… “ Peter Falk, The Princess Bride

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

So, what did I learn? I love to do research. In the old days, I would camp inside the New York Public Library and order many rare, out of print books that took weeks to arrive. Now, with Wikipedia, I have everything I need in the matter of seconds. Seems kinda unfair, but I can now write period pieces in less than a century.

Research is fun, but don’t knock that inkwell over all your pages. We don’t have to know why pirates swabbed their desk so often or what kind of wood was used for someone’s wooden teeth. Goldman’s factuals would be great in a novel and totally a coup for the set designer, the costume maker and the DP, but it really bogs down the script’s readability.