Hip Hip Hooray! Oscar nominations day. Maybe I’ll get to my thoughts on that later in the week. As of now, Article Thursday has been moved up to today, and Thursday will become a review day. Also, I found a new draft of Dibbuk Box, so I decided to do something unprecedented: go back and remix my review. So if you want to see my review for the newest draft of Dibbuk Box, head back to yesterday’s review now. Now, it’s time to talk about the increasingly strange behavior of Kevin Smith.

What a strange day Monday was. I woke up and every single site I went to had some blogger ranting about how Kevin Smith had become the anti-Christ. At first I thought they were part of a viral marketing campaign for Smith’s new religious-themed horror film, but no, everybody seemed to be genuinely upset, though it was hard to figure out why. After digging around (and reading through 100-something tweets on Smith’s Twitter feed) I finally put it together.

To summarize it, Smith previewed his long in development horror film, Red State, at Sundance Sunday night. Apparently, he’d told the public for weeks that he would have a live auction for the movie after the screening. So all the major indie companies sent their people there to potentially bid for the film. Except afterwards, Smith went on a 25 minute rant (or so we were told – the actual footage is only semi-ranty) telling those very people that they sucked and he was tired of them stealing his money so they could suck his dick. He then proceeded to “sell” the movie to himself, subsequently pissing off a lot of distributors who could’ve used that time to target other Sundance material.

He then announced he’d be taking Red State on tour, one city at a time, and charging $70/ticket (presumably each screening would end with one of Smith’s famous extensive Q&As – so the cost would cover more than the actual film). Smith’s argument was that this old model of marketing movies, where you spend four times the budget of your film on advertising, forcing you to make five times what your film cost just to break even, was ridiculous, and he wanted to try something new.

So instead of traditional advertising, Smith was going to utilize the power of his Podcast and Twitter feed (which has over 1 million followers) to let everyone know where the film was playing and how to buy tickets. After the tour, he’d release the film more traditionally, but with himself distributing the film instead of some big money-sucking distribution company, giving theaters more lucrative terms as an incentive to work with him.

Now I know this isn’t technically connected to screenwriting, but it kind of is. People with 1 million dedicated “can contact them at any time” followers simply weren’t around two years ago. That gives a ton of power to the individual, whereas before the individual had to depend almost exclusively on the company who financed his film. It’s a different ballgame and it might be time to start thinking about things differently. To think that the old model is going to transfer over seamlessly in this ever-changing world of social media is kind of silly.

With guys like Ed Burns foregoing traditional distribution and selling his movie directly on Itunes (where we’ll likely be watching all of our rented films in two years) so that he could retain ownership of his film, rather than hand it over to some prodco, has both its pros and cons. You’re not going to get that big marketing push, and thus your movie won’t be grossing nearly as much money, but you’ll be receiving some hefty royalties from being the sole owner of your film for quite some time.

Back in the days of video stores (I can’t believe I’m saying that – “Back in the days of video stores”), where shelf space was limited, you wouldn’t have thought of that. Not having that juicy “Miramax” or “Lionsgate” tag on your film would keep corporate-minded Blockbuster from even glancing at your film. But a virtual porthole, such as Itunes or Netflix, where the system is intelligent enough to know which movies you like and recommend them to you, makes those companies excited about a small movie owned exclusively by Ed Burns. It doesn’t cost them anything to throw it up there, and targeted recommendations means people will keep watching it.

At some point I expect this to trickle down to the development stage. If you developed your script openly, providing numerous drafts on the internet and encouraged feedback from fans, it’s an easy way to build awareness for your film (not to mention improve your script) and thus create anticipation throughout the development process. A case can be made that the leaked scripts for Inglorious Basterds and Avatar helped make those films what they were, and I would anticipate that same kind of buzz would happen with any filmmaker who has a built-in fanbase. I know some form of this is going to happen soon. I’m just not sure which major name is going to do it first.

So I’m really interested in what happens here with Smith. What sucks, and what’s turning out to be a distracting factor in this giant experiment, is that Smith may be heading off to Crazy Land. The guy is curling himself up into a cocoon of safety in order to protect himself from any sort of negative reaction whatsoever. First he takes on critics for hating a movie that was truly awful and says he’s not going to screen his movies for critics anymore. And now he’s giving a big fat middle finger to studios and production companies, which is allowing him to try this unique experiment, but creating an unhealthy amount of insulation in the process.

What he doesn’t realize, is that he’s effectively becoming the low-budget version of George Lucas. Just make movies in his own back yard and nobody’s allowed to tell him if they’re any good or not. This is the absolute worst way you can approach writing, and almost always leads to subpar work. If you have any doubt about that, go read The Phantom Menace.

It’s a weird scenario, and I don’t know if Smith’s post-modern Howard Huges-like behavior is going to get in the way of determining whether this is a viable option or not. Which sucks, because if it does work, it could be a game-changer. It could give birth to an entirely new generation of writer-directors, guys like Gareth Edwards and Neil Bloomkamp, who have a unique voice and realize that with emerging technology, they can make their movies on the cheap and distribute them outside the studio system, building followers on social media outlets through teaser scenes, short films, and word of mouth, then use those outlets to directly advertise screenings, whether they be in real theaters or online.

I think what Smith is doing is cool. I’m just worried that his questionable red state of mind may screw up the test. What do you think?

On a day where they’ve announced that they’re remaking Lethal Weapon (remaking Lethal Weapon?? Really?) you’re probably wondering why I’m writing yet another article telling you what you SHOULDN’T do. But here’s the thing. I was reading away last weekend, burning through script after script, each one in a different genre, becoming more and more frustrated as each script ended. And I was wondering why I was getting so worked up. I go through bad stretches of scripts all the time. It eventually turns. So why was this bothering me more than usual?

And I realized that in each script I’d read, some basic common mistake was being made. These weren’t unique problems that only pop up once every hundred screenplays or so. These were genre-specific mistakes that I see over and over again. So I thought, hey, if I knew the number one mistake to avoid when I started writing a screenplay, wouldn’t that give me an advantage over other writers?

So lo and behold, that was the genesis for this article. I marked the 15 most popular genres and the most common mistakes I run into while reading those genres. Other readers may have different experiences, but this is mine. So either silently curse me for pointing out, once again, what NOT to do in a script, or use this advice to topple your competition. Here we go!

PERIOD PIECES – Number one mistake I see in period pieces is writers getting lost in their work. We’re cutting to a king in France and a peasant in Russia and a little known uprising in Austria and dozens of years pass and the old characters die and new characters are born and blah blahblahblah blah blah blah. Jumping around to 15 different characters in 18 different countries for 2 and a half hours isn’t going to entertain a reader. It’s going to frustrate them. Instead, find the focus in your period piece. Make the main character’s journey clear. The King’s Speech is about a King who must overcome his speech impediment before giving the most important speech in the country’s history. It’s clean and it’s simple. If you do want to go “sprawling,” remember this: The more sprawling you get, the clearer your main character’s goal has to be. So the story of Braveheart encompassed dozens of years, but the goal (obtain freedom for his country) was always as clear as day.

DRAMAS – Many writers believe drama is a license to lay everything on thick as molasses. Cancer, death, car crashes, disease, abuse, addiction, depression. If you have more than a couple of these going on in your drama, consider taking them out now. Dramas are at their best when they pick and choose which moments to explore, not just hurl it all down in one giant depression sundae. It’s a delicate balance and by no means easy to navigate, but I always subscribe to the theory that less is more in drama.

ZOMBIE/SERIAL KILLER/ROM COMS – What the hell are all three of these doing in one category? That’s easy. All three inspire the same problem. Writers never do anything fresh with these genres. Zombie: Group of people gets chased by zombies, usually in a city. Rom-Coms: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. Serial Killer: Serial killer leaves cryptic puzzle behind for detectives to try and figure out. I see these plots over and over and over again. You have to come up with a fresh angle! Look at Zombieland. They added comedy, silly rules, a voice over, and a road-trip story to the genre. It was fresh. Look at 500 Days of Summer. It mixed the whole damn relationship up. As for serial killers, I don’t have an example for you because since Seven NOBODY has done anything new with the serial killer genre (NOTE TO ALL SCREENWRITERS: IF YOU WANT TO CASH IN, FIND A FRESH ANGLE FOR THE SERIAL KILLER GENRE). Remember, all three of these markets are super-competitive. So beat em by coming up with something new.

SCI-FI/FANTASY – Most new writers get into sci-fi and fantasy for the wrong reasons. They’re more interested in the macro than the micro. In other words, they care more about the world than their hero’s journey. I remember reading a really ambitious incredibly detailed sci-fi script that didn’t have a lick of story to speak of, and the writer’s one big question to me afterwards was, “Do you think the disappearing mech suits on page 25 are realistic?” Of all the questions they could’ve asked, they didn’t want to know, “Was my main character’s motivation strong enough?” Or “Do you think the connection between these two characters worked?” but if a singular tiny sci-fi geeky machine that had nothing to do with the rest of story was realistic. This is representative of how writers think of these scripts. They’re focusing on the wrong things. Focus on the character’s journey first (The Matrix is more about Neo believing in himself than it is about cool wire-fu) and everything else will follow.

COMING-OF-AGE – Coming-of-Age is a commonly encountered amateur genre because most writers are in their 20s when they begin writing. Naturally, they start writing about their own confusing directionless lives. Unfortunately, this confusion almost always translates to NO STORY! The writer feels content to just let their character wander about, experiencing life and all its eccentricities, believing that the “realness” of the journey will be enough to capture the audience’s imagination. It isn’t. It just makes everything directionless and boring. If you want to write coming-of-age, give your script a hook and a story just like any other genre. A perfect example is Everything Must Go – very much a coming of age story, but structured so as to keep the story on track and so we always know what’s going on.

COMEDY and HORROR – I’ve said this a million and one times on the site. The biggest mistake comedies and horror films make, is to focus on the laughs and the scares as opposed to character development. Comedy and Horror plots don’t tend to be that complicated, which is fine. As long as you have a good hook, you’re okay. But the characters in these scripts are a different story. The audience *has to connect* with them in order for the script to work. Yet writers refuse to dig any deeper into those character’s lives than the width of a tic-tac. So figure out what makes your hero tick. What are they afraid of? What’s their biggest flaw? Then use your story to explore that flaw. Happy Gilmore had major anger issues. The story was just as much about him learning to overcome that anger as it was about winning at golf.

WESTERNS – Back in the heyday of Westerns, the world moved much slower. People had more patience, more time. That’s not the case anymore in this information-overload Twitter-centric multitasking world. So you have to update the way you approach the genre. By far, the biggest problem I see in Westerns is that they move too slow. So speed things up a little bit. Develop your characters faster, get to your story sooner, add a few more twists and turns to keep the audience interested. I’m not saying you have to use Scott Pilgrim pace (though that might be interesting), I’m just saying that the Westerns I read these days assume the patience of yesteryear.  Guess what?  It’s not yesteryear anymore (and yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy of this statement, seeing as I’m such a Brigands of Rattleborge fan, however I’m going to call that script the “When Harry Met Sally” of the Western world – a great big exception to the rule).

ACTION – The big thing with action flicks is the propensity to depend on clichés. Action writers are almost by definition uninterested in character development, and luckily the action genre is the least dependent on that area of writing, so you can actually get away with it. But if your script is just rehashing all the clichés we’ve seen in action movies of the past (a snappy line when disposing of a bad guy, the girl gets kidnapped by the villain in the end, the bad guy is bad for no reason) then you’re not trying hard enough. Some of these things can be done tongue-in-cheek effectively, but even that’s becoming cliche. The reason that the Bourne movies became so popular was because they updated the creaky action formula of the James Bond films, adding a mystery (a character who didn’t know who he was) making the story more sophisticated and taking itself more seriously. It was different, and that difference lured us in.

SPORTS – Cliché endings. Amateur sports scripts always end up with some variation of being down by 3 runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and the bases loaded. Then our hero hits the grand slam. It’s sappy, it’s predictable, it’s stupid. You have to find some other way. Look at Rocky. Rocky didn’t knock out Apollo to win the heavyweight championship of the world. He just lasted 15 rounds with him. Bull Durhum and Field of Dreams are considered two of the best sports movies of all time and yet there’s no “last at bat” scene. Find a unique way to end your sports story that doesn’t rely on the cliché last minute goal or home run.

BIOPIC – You’ve heard me drone on about this before. Biopic writers notoriously get caught up on the “best of” or “key” moments of the title character’s life, instead of looking for the most *dramatically compelling* moments of that person’s life. In addition to this, the biopic, more than any other genre out there (since our hero IS the genre) needs to have a *compelling character flaw.* Focus on the events in that person’s life that challenge that flaw and that’s where you’re going to find your story. So if your subject’s flaw is a fear of connection, then place him in a bunch of situations where he’s forced to connect with others. If doing this means leaving out the 3rd most famous moment from that person’s life, then leave that moment out.

THRILLER – The amateur thrillers I read don’t have enough story developments. The writer erroneously assumes that keeping the pace of the story up is all he has to do. But if you don’t throw us for a loop every once in awhile, if you don’t up the stakes, bring in a new character, force your character to deal with unexpected problems, then your thriller’s going to run out of steam. Just try to make sure something interesting happens every 15 pages or so. In Buried, we have the bad guys wanting him to make a video, we have the good guys needing his help to find him, we have snakes, we have sand seeping in. Some new story development is always happening to keep the story alive. Make sure you’re packing the same amount of story density into your thriller.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Four best friends in their 70 head to Vegas for a bachelor party.
About: Dan Fogelman, screenwriter of Scriptshadow favorite Crazy Stuipid Love and recent Black List entry, Imagine, sold Last Vegas earlier in the year. In related news, Fogelman also sold his Wednesday Jack In The Box receipt for high six figures to Warner Brothers. Speculation is rampant about what was on the receipt. My sources tell me it was 2 tacos, a Jack’s Crispy Chicken with cheese, and an Oreo Milkshake. Receipt review to come. The producers of Last Vegas seemed to have moved on from Fogelman and handed the script over to Rom-Com scribe Adam Brooks. Brooks has penned such films as Definitely Maybe and Practical Magic. It looks to be a certainty that Jack Nicholson will be cast in the lead, and you should expect Morgan Freeman to be there as well.
Writer: Dan Fogelman (rewrites by Adam Brooks)
Details: 111 pages (Oct. 5, 2010 draft) (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

In my endless pursuit of everything Dan Fogelman, I finally got my hands on Last Vegas. However of all Fogelman’s projects, this was the one I was the most wary about. Seeing as I don’t yet depend on adult diapers, a movie about a bunch of old fogies reliving the golden days at a Vegas bachelor party sounded like it could be kind of good, but also kinda of bad. But with Fogelman (and now Brooks) at the helm, I was pretty confident they’d make it work.

Those not familiar with Brooks’ work should go rent Definitely, Maybe when you get the chance. It’s easily the most mature romantic comedy I’ve seen in the last decade. The problem with the movie is it has that big goofy Ryan Reynolds smirk on the cover coupled with Little Miss Sunshine Girl doing her post Sunshine musical chairs run, making a really good movie look positively terrible. But I’m telling you, if you’re even mildly into romantic comedies and you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Now when you write comedies with old people in the leads (Space Cowboys, Cocoon, The Bucket List), there’s a lofty hurdle to overcome: Not letting the story get too depressing. Inevitably, death is a strong theme in these movies, and if every ten pages the audience is reminded that they’re going to die, there’s a good change word of mouth is going to die as well.

This is why I was so pleasantly surprised with 2008 Black List script, Winter’s Discontent, easily the best “old folks” movie not yet made. The whole film is about one thing: getting laid. It’s told with a zest for life that most teenage flicks would envy. I had the same high hopes for Last Vegas. Personally, I think Bucket List meets The Hangover is a winning combination. Unfortunately, that’s not what we get in this draft of Last Vegas. At all.

The biggest surprise about Last Vegas is that it goes almost exactly how you think it’s going to go, except a lot slower. It’s like our characters are stripped of their tap shoes and dropped into a vat of quick sand. The character introductions are too long. The story takes forever to set up. The initial Vegas scenes have nothing going on. The character conflict is too basic. It’s like the script has been raped of fun.

And that’s when I sat back and realized, “Oh boy, this is like the worst writing assignment ever.” Old folks going crazy in Vegas *could* be good. But after writing in all two minutes and thirty seconds of trailer moments (Getting wasted at a club, partying like Entourage at the pool, old guys macking on chicks, and Jack Nicholson involved in some Viagra joke) what the hell do you do with the other 108 pages? I think Fogelman and Brooks were asking the same question.

Oh yeah, what’s this movie about? Well, we have have eternal ladies man Bill, stick up his ass Paddy, wisecracker Sam, and voice of reason Archibald (who will be played by Morgan Freeman of course). The four have been friends forever and at the ripe old age of 70, Bill is getting married for the first time (to a 30 year old). So they go to Vegas for a bachelor party.

The main source of conflict is between Bill and Paddy, which began because Bill didn’t show up for Paddy’s wife’s funeral a couple of years ago. So Paddy spends the entire trip bitching at Bill, and this may be the script’s biggest problem. Paddy is so effing annoying. It’s bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch. He just will not stop whining. He’s like that friend at work who can’t shut up about how much he hates the job, yet he never quits.

Anyway, the two meet an older female singer named Diana (who I’m willing to bet a thousand dollars on will be played by Susan Sarandon) and they both fall for her, which of course only adds to their existing conflict.

Sam, in the meantime, has received a “hall pass” from his wife for the weekend, and I’m sorry but I’m putting a moratorium down right now for all writers. If a girlfriend or wife gives your main character a hall pass, THEY HAVE TO USE IT. They can’t meet someone at the last second, sparks fly, get two seconds away from sex, then decide that they love their wife too much and no longer want to use the hall pass. I’ve read that ending in about ten different scripts.

There is one winning moment in the script, and that’s in the first act when Billy interrupts a eulogy he’s giving to propose to his girlfriend – a true Jack Nicholson moment – but it’s unfortunately the only memorable sequence in the screenplay. Everything else is very basic Las Vegas staples.

I am not giving up on Last Vegas, but someone needs to slap the electric paddles on this corpse and jolt the fucker to life. Everything here needs to be bigger. That’s what Winter’s Discontent figured out. In movies like American Pie or The Hangover, the energy is so over the top with the young characters that we’re practically begging for slow moments. With old people we’re limping from the get-go. So we don’t want to slow down.  Yet we slow down numerous times for character moments here and it brings everything to a dead stop. 

You know me. I’m Mr. Character Development. But the character development here just felt like a bunch of old guys complaining with each other. Maybe if those moments were more compelling than Paddy bitching the whole time, they would’ve worked, but my feeling is that if this thing is going to sing, it needs its characters to want to have fun.

The script also got me thinking of a mistake a lot of intermediate and even pro writers make. Sometimes a premise is so obvious that you give it an obvious treatment. And even though everything’s right where it needs to be and the structure would give Robert McKee a hard-on, it’s plagued by an obviousness that kills it. When these guys meet George Maloof and he sets them up in his best suite, I felt like I’d fallen into a pit with every discarded Vegas script ever written. You definitely want to give the audience what they want (the promise of the premise) but if it’s exactly what they want, they’re going to lose interest.

That’s why The Hangover was so popular. You have tigers in bathrooms and naked Chinese men flying out of trunks and chickens and babies and Mike Tyson. You got everything you wanted out of the premise, but not exactly how you thought you were going to get it. I’m just not seeing any imagination in Last Vegas, and that’s contributing to why it reads so slow.

This project has a lot going for it. You put Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Chirstopher Walken and Dustin Hoffman in an old man’s Hangover, people are going to show up to see it. But if all it is is a bunch of old guys complaining with each other, the box office might be looking at an early funeral.

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

What I learned: Is the treatment of your idea too obvious? Stories are a bit like train rides. You take a bunch of people from point A to point B. However sometimes you gotta stop the train and let the people explore a little bit. Have’em get stuck in a town overnight or lose their luggage or get robbed. The most memorable thing about a trip is never the stuff you planned ahead of time. It’s the unexpected things that are always the most exciting.

Genre: Horror-Thriller
Premise: (from writers) After a member of their expedition sustains an open flesh wound, a group of mountaineers find themselves being stalked by a vicious high-altitude Snow Beast.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted.
Writers: Art McLendon & Beau McLendon
Details: 93 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

First thing’s first. We need to address this logline. You don’t want to be too specific in your logline with a detail that’s ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of your story. In other words, you don’t want to say, “sustains an open flesh would.” If you’re going to get specific, it needs to be about the character or a really important piece of the plot that’s part of the hook. Otherwise, leave it out.

But as far as the idea goes, this is a good one. Being trapped up on a mountain with a giant snow monster hunting you, is not only an idea I can see selling but one of the rare scripts that goes on to get made as well. Who can’t imagine a dozen great moments where a group of climbers is getting hunted by a Yeti?

Now that doesn’t mean you can just throw anything on the page. You still gotta execute. So do Art and Beau execute?

Simon Trudeau is a British Journalist who mysteriously wears a black ski mask when he does his news stories, the latest of which is about a hiking team that disappeared up in the remote Himalayan Mountains a couple of years ago. His cameraman is constantly annoyed by Simon’s insistence on wearing the mask, and its integration into his presentation is a regular point of contention.

Cut to 2 years ago where we meet the team that disappeared. We have Paul Brody, the leader, barrel-chested Gus Osborne, the tomboyish heart and soul of the group Anabell Cross, and her handsome sun-beaten boyfriend Mitch Russell.

The thrill-seekers are trying to hike their way to the peak of the 6th highest mountain in the world, but are upset to find out they’re not getting the Michael Jordan of guides like they expected. Instead, they’re getting new kid on the block, Nima, a 19 year old Tibetan who’s more nervous about screwing up than his group is about making it to the top.

But they’re all big tough guys (and girls) so they shrug it off and start up the mountain. Unfortunately things go wrong quickly. Mitch gets injured, and even though his wound isn’t that bad, it seems to coincide with a series of roars that follows the group up the mountain. Not your typical mountain lion roars either. These roars are decidedly more…angry.

Lima looks skittish, and when the roars get closer he admits that this may be a monster that hangs around on the mountain. His people call it a “Dzu-teh” which is pronounced “Psycho Snow Monster.” Naturally our team is pissed and wants to know why the hell they weren’t told about this BEFORE they went up the mountain. Uh, well duh, because it’s bad for business! (my assessment, not Lima’s)

Eventually, they run into this snow beast, and without hesitation it grabs Mitch and runs off. The group wonders what they should do now and after some heavy discussion, they decide to go after Mitch (I’m sorry but I would’ve been running down that mountain faster than Usain Bolt). Since snow beasts get plucky when you stroll into their lair, this turns out to be a bad idea.

During this time we keep cutting back to our British journalist Simon, who updates us on what they know about the disappearance through hindsight, all the while refusing to take off his ski-mask. Dzu-teh ends up picking off our doomed hikers one by one until there’s only one left – and it becomes a battle to the death.

“Ascent: Day 3” has some intense and really fun action sequences, taking the simplistic “Descent” approach to its story, where a group of adventurous people do something adventurous only to get stuck battling their worst nightmare.

However the Descent approach only works if you have a group of compelling characters and those characters are legitimately stuck, and I’m not sure the characters in “Ascent” are either. In Descent, once they were down there being stalked by these “whatever-they-were,” they had nowhere to go. There only choice was to fight for their survival. In “Ascent,” there seemed to be a lot more choices, since they are out on this huge mountain.

I liked the idea of Mitch getting taken, and the team having to make that decision of whether to save him or head down the mountain and save themselves, but I didn’t know anything about Mitch other than that he was Ana’s boyfriend. So sure, in the story world it makes sense that you’re going after your boyfriend, but to me, the audience, I don’t care about this guy because I know nothing about him.

Contrast that with a movie like Aliens, where when Newt was taken, we know a whole boatload about her situation and her struggle. She may have been annoying at times, but you never questioned Ripley’s desire to save her amidst an almost certain death if she does.

There just needed to be more going on with these characters. The action genre does not give you license to ignore flaws and backstory and personality and secrets and family situation and ideology and motive and everything else that adds to a character’s weight. I brought up Pitch Black in my Ark review and I’ll do it again here. Look at Johns. The guy had a secret (he wasn’t a cop – he was a bounty hunter), he had a past (he’s been chasing Riddick for a long time), he had problems (he was some kind of drug addict). You got the sense that there was really something going on with the guy. Outside of Anabell (and Simon – who I’ll get to in a second) I didn’t see that here.

And even though there *was* something going on with Ana, it didn’t seem to stem from her character. We had this whole backstory about how she always wears a whistle because her sister didn’t have a whistle or something and her sister died because she didn’t have a whistle. It’s there to give the character depth, yet it doesn’t have anything to do with the character. It’s backstory for backstory’s sake.

Good backstory is born from who a character is – and that’s usually identified through her flaw. The character of Lana in Risky Business is a hooker. Her flaw is her inability to trust or get close to people. That’s why she’s a hooker. Because it’s all business. Later, when Joel asks her, “Why did you run away from home?” She just looks at him and says, “Because my stepfather kept hitting on me.” The reason that backstory resonates with us is because it’s born out of her flaw. She doesn’t trust anybody because the person she was supposed to be able to trust the most tried to take advantage of her. So when you’re digging into that backstory moment for your character (which I recommend keeping as short as possible – like Lana did here), make sure it’s born out of your character’s flaw. If you do, your character will feel a lot more authentic.

The other big problem I had was with Simon. This whole idea of him having to wear this mask felt kinda gimmicky and didn’t make a lot of sense. Had he really spent the last couple of years as the masked news reporter? Or was this more recent? If it was recent, and his (spoiler) burn injuries had just happened, why would his cameraman be clueless about them? When a newsperson gets into a horrifying burn accident, people usually find out about it, especially people you work with.

Also, when he takes off the mask at the end, it’s supposed to be this cathartic character transformation but Simon is the least important character in the movie, so it makes no sense that he’s getting the most attention when it comes to a character arc.

In addition, Simon poses problems for the fear-factor of the screenplay. Instead of being stuck up on this mountain with our characters scared out of our wits, we get these nice cushy time outs with Simon that allow us to catch our breath and feel safe. Imagine The Descent or Paranormal Activity with us cutting outside to a news reporter every fifteen minutes. The movies wouldn’t have worked. The whole point is that we’re stuck in the same situation that our characters are stuck in.

I’m being pretty harsh on Ascent but that’s only because I see a lot of potential in the script. I could totally see this as a movie if a few things were changed around and more effort was put into the characters. Yeah this is one of those fun movies you simply sit back and enjoy, but you can’t enjoy a film, no matter how relaxed it is, unless you have that connection with the characters.

So good luck to Art and Beau on the next draft. Hopefully I’ve given them some ideas on how to make Ascent better. :)

Script link: Ascent: Day 3

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

What I learned: It’s so important to have conflict between your characters in these kinds of films. If everyone likes each other (which seems to be the case in Ascent), you’re going to put the audience to sleep. Remember, it’s not so much the monster that should cause the fear. It’s how the adversity caused by the monster brings out the conflict within the group. Read The Grey to see what I mean.

Genre: Indie Dramedy
Premise: After sabotaging another family vacation, a travel agent who’s afraid to fly battles his irrational phobias in order to win back his wife and daughter.
About: Paper Airplane landed in the middle of the pack of the 2010 Black List. Karger has written and directed a few shorts over the last five years, but this is his breakthrough script.
Writer: Sid Karger
Details: 104 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Paper Airplane, it’s in the logline, specifically the easy to identify ironic component: “After sabotaging another family vacation, a travel agent who’s afraid to fly battles his irrational phobias in order to win back his wife and daughter.” Not every story has an ironic hook or character, but I’ve found ones that do get a lot of reads. There’s no guesswork involved because the meat of the conflict is right there for an exec to see.

However as a screenplay, I had some problems with Paper Airplane, and part of that has to do with high expectations. See The Black List is renowned for finding and championing quirky material. You might even call it the preeminent source for doing so. The Beaver finished atop the Black List two years ago. Muppet Man last year. We have The Voices and Butter and Juno and Everything Must Go and Little Miss Sunshine and The Oranges and The Ornate Anatomy of Living Things. These scripts take quirky characters and dysfunctional families to another level. But what’s often forgotten, despite the contradictory nature of the declaration, is that quirky can easily become cliché. And for me, I think that’s what happened here.

Henry Tripp is Mr. Risk Averse. He’s settled into that middle-aged safety-net phase where you’re aware of every possible thing that has the potential to end your life. And for that reason, he avoids it all. There is nothing he avoids more vehemently however, than flying. Getting on one of those long metal tubes and barreling through the air six miles above the earth for hours on end is the equivalent of repeatedly stabbing yourself with a rusty fork as far as Henry is concerned.

And it’s killing him. Or more specifically, it’s killing his family.

His selfish powder-keg of a wife, Joyce, is sick of all the fear. She’s sick of Henry being such a fucking wuss. And his cute but dark 17 year old daughter, Carolyn, has been around this for so long that she’s in danger of actually thinking it’s normal.

So one day, Joyce says she’s had enough and reads a letter to the family explaining that she’s decided to leave. So she takes her things and moves out. Henry and Carolyn are jaws-to-the-floor shocked. Didn’t see that coming. If only that were all they had to worry about.

In one of the more original choices of the screenplay, it turns out that Joyce, the wife, is the one who has the mid-life crisis. In a desperate bid to find that freedom and that happiness she had before her marriage, Joyce makes a play for Ethan, Carolyn’s overly pretentious artsy boyfriend. Ethan, who believes he’s an adult anyway, is all too eager to take Joyce up on the opportunity, and so starts banging his girlfriend’s mom.

In the meantime, Henry believes that if he can just overcome his fears and find the courage to fly, that Joyce will fall back in love with him and he can save the family before it’s too late. So he joins an “afraid to fly” Support Group and makes one last desperate bid to destroy all his phobias.

Paper Airplane plays out as an amalgam of a lot of quirky scripts and movies that you’ve seen before. In fact, it almost feels like it’s competing against them. The problem is, it’s really hard to compete against what came before you. The Monkees never measured up to the Beatles. Remo Williams never measured up to The Karate Kid. And Paper Airplane never quite reaches the heights of its successors, most notably the gold standard in the dysfunctional family genre, and its biggest influence, American Beauty.

Part of my problem with the screenplay is that it’s so….cruel. A mom who steals her daughter’s boyfriend?? I mean how unlikable can you make a character? Even if the point was to make her unlikable, the problem is that the driving force behind the story is Henry trying to get Joyce back. So if we don’t want Henry to achieve that goal because his wife is so despicable, then what’s our incentive to keep reading?

I think I might’ve been able to stomach this if Ethan came on to Joyce first.  But she clearly is the hunter in this scenario.  And the only word I can think of to describe it is…disgusting.  This is your own daughter we’re talking about!  And Carolyn isn’t even the person you have the problem with.  It’s Henry.Why would you hurt her? 

But that’s only part of the problem. The biggest pitfall you can fall into when writing one of these scripts is focusing too much on the quirkiness and dysfunction-ality of the universe and not enough on the reality of the characters. In essence, you say, “Okay, what fucked up thing can I add next?” instead of building your characters from the inside out so that their actions stem from reality as opposed to a need to shock the audience. And I saw too much of that going on in Paper Airplane.

A perfect example (spoiler) was later in the script when Carolyn was spending a lot of time with her girlfriend. And I kept saying to myself, “Please don’t realize you’re a lesbian. Please don’t realize you’re a lesbian.” And sure enough, a few scenes later, a goof-around session results in them making out and Carolyn realizing she’s a lesbian. The problem was, there was nothing previously set up in Carolyn’s character to indicate she had any interest in girls whatsoever. But it was shocking and dysfunctional, so it was used.

Contrast that with a film like “The Kids Are All Right.” Julianne Moore gets absolutely zero positive feedback from her wife. She starts working with Mark Ruffalo and he’s Mr. Positive Feedback, the exact quality that she’s missing from her partner. On top of that, he’s the biological father of their kids. So there’s a natural intrigue and chemistry and connection and curiosity between the two. That way when they start having an affair, it makes sense, because it was born out of character.

Anyway, there were some things here to admire. While I didn’t enjoy the wife storyline, I totally admired Karger for creating such a daring female lead. I’ve definitely never read a character like this in a script before so that was different. And there was something quietly likable about Henry. His dogged determination to get his family back together, no matter how misguided it was, was fun, and slightly inspiring, to watch.

In the end though, this just didn’t do it for me.

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

What I learned: In the eternal struggle to “show” and not “tell” in your screenplays, pictures can be your best friend. Instead of building a whole scene where your characters argue about how good things “used to be,” just show your hero catch a glance of a picture on the fridge showing the family in happier times. In fact, look to use photographs in every aspect of your script to convey quick easy backstory about your characters (i.e. need to convey that one character is adventurous? Show a picture of them rock climbing).