Search Results for: F word
Genre: Comedy
Premise: When the wealthy owner of a fast food chicken franchise learns that his bitchy wife wants a divorce and is therefore entitled to half his money, he decides to spend it all so that she doesn’t get a dime.
About: Here was Kevin’s e-mail to me: “The main reason I want you to read and review this script is because if I’m not having people read my shit then it is really just a bunch of data taking up prime storage space for my illegally downloaded music and naughty videos. Naughty is a funny word. The other reason I want you to review this script is that I really like this concept and I think others will like it as well. Divorce is an enormous elephant in our society that really has become as common as birth and death. I find it absolutely absurd that just about half of marriages end in divorce. Don’t you think I should be able to ask for the return of the Crate and Barrel punch bowl I gave as a wedding gift to my best friend’s wife before she decided to leave her husband and move in with the neighbor? Why should they get to keep all the gifts, they certainly didn’t earn it, bunch of thieves if you ask me, especially since getting married outside a Ramada can’t really be described as a “wedding affair”. Besides, who couldn’t use an extra punch bowl for Superbowl Sunday? On a side note, I’m not the product of a divorce and have been happily married for eight years, or is it nine? The point being is that I’m not a misogynist, I didn’t write this screenplay to get back at anyone, and I certainly don’t hate women, you can even ask my cunt wife about that. Half of Nothing is a just comedy about a depressing subject.” — 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.
Writer: Kevin Restler
Details: 103 pages
That e-mail really resonated with me. My best friend married this girl and I bought them a $400 dollar painting specifically because she liked it. 8 months later she’s banging some doofus at work, leaves my best friend, AND kept the painting. And I’ll tell you what. I was furious. It’s one thing to steal things from the husband you left cause you cheated on him. But to steal from his friend??? That’s just low. This goes to show you, sometimes a query is simply making a connection with the person you sent it to. Not to mention I laughed a few times during the letter, which at least assured me that Kevin was funny. The question was, would he be able to handle everything else that goes into a script? Well, let’s find out.
Harold Zebulon has managed to turn his chicken franchise, Zebulon’s Big Ass Chicken, into a cash…err…chicken. In fact, so successful is his franchise that Saturday 3 a.m. Venice/Overland Carson Reeves mainstay (Jack In The Box) wants to buy him out. Harold’s not only rolling in the dough. He’s smothered in it.
The only downside to Harold’s life – which he fails to see as a downside – is that he’s married to Vanessa, the single biggest bitch on the planet. Take every bitchy ‘most popular’ girl at every high school across America, combine them, multiply them by 52, and you get Vanessa’s left pinky. Spend three minutes with this witch and you’ll feel smaller than that ant you just stepped on.
When Vanessa gets an audition for Alec Baldwin’s new reality producing gig, “L.A. Bitches,” she fucks him the night after and feels empowered enough to leave her husband (plus the only role left on the show is the “bitch divorcee” – and you can’t play the bitch divorcee unless you’re, you know, divorced). So she lets Harold know that it is Ov-Ah and she’s going to be taking half of everything he’s got.
After being consoled by his longtime cook and best friend Quentin, Harold gets a wild idea. He’s got 10 million bucks, of which he’ll have to pay half to that succubus. But if he had nothing, then he wouldn’t have to give her a penny! So what if he spent it all!? Quentin tells him it’s a horrible idea but the image of Alec Baldwin’s fleshy sweaty hairy body diving into his wife’s mystery area is enough for him to commit to the act.
So he hires Josilyn, the philanthropic director of his last TV commercial, to document this wild experience, and starts off by giving his nanny and all of her friends a mall shopping spree, where they can buy every and anything they want. This is followed by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to his alma mater, USC, so he can be Tommy Trojan for a day. He gets his dream foursome together: Bill Murray, John Daley, Quentin and himself, to play a round of golf. And he pays a series of since grown-up childhood stars to make sex videos with him.
During this time, Josilyn becomes more and more upset that Harold is wasting his money, and tells him he should use it for more useful purposes, like actually helping people. After awhile he listens, and starts giving money to charities and churches and orphanages.
But just as he’s about to run out of money and complete his plan, Vanessa realizes that he’s actually worth more to her as a husband than an ex-husband, so she changes her mind and decides to STAY with Harold, which of course totally sucks because by this time, Harold has started to fall for Josilyn. Whatever will Harold do? Will he find a way to divorce Vanessa and be with Josilyn? Or is he stuck in this miserable matrimony forever?
Half of Nothing is an interesting screenplay. I definitely think there’s a movie here – a modern day nod to Brewster’s Millions
I have this theory that you want to make your bad guy bad, but you don’t want to make them so bad that they’re beyond the realm of believability. Once you do that, they’re no longer a real person – just a writer’s combination of the most evil things they can think of. People aren’t mean to be mean. People are mean because they have issues going on in their lives that bring out that anger. If we don’t see some of that, even in a comedy, it’s hard to believe that the character is real.
This also leads to the question, why would Harold be with Vanessa in the first place? I mean being with someone who’s bossy and selfish is one thing (Ed Helms in The Hangover). Being with the Evil Empire is another thing entirely. You have to explain why your supposedly smart savvy protagonist would choose to subject himself to a life of torture.
I’m also going to make my plea one more time to comedy writers. One out of every two comedies I read nowadays has a celebrity showing up in them. It’s just a way overused joke. And even if this weren’t a common trend, is it really a good idea? It seems like anybody can write, “Sam Jackson comes in and steals Joe’s coffee.” The joke is too easy – too obvious . I’m not saying nobody else will like it. The right celebrity in the right scene could be hilarious. I’m just warning you. I see it way too often.
I think the script also gets lost in places. For example, Half of Nothing is about a man willing to sacrifice all his wealth to spite his wife. Then halfway through the script, it becomes about giving to charity and helping people out. What does that have to do with the concept of getting back at your wife? It just feels like a random choice, which results in an unclear vision. This is a place where a solid theme might have helped, so you could make sure everything in the script revolved around that theme.
I thought Josilyn needed work too. I was just discussing this with someone during a script consultation. When you have a romantic subplot, you have to nail two things. First, you have to give us some backstory on the love interest (in this case Josilyn). We have to feel like she’s a real person. That she’s got her own unique life. The only thing we know about Josilyn is that she’s a director and likes to give to others.
Next, you gotta give your two leads “moments” with each other. Something unique and interesting that we see them share together. Make fun of Titanic all you want. But those characters had memorable moments at the front of the boat, drinking below deck, drawing naked pictures of each other, running through the boiler room, having sex in a Model T Ford. Those moments ensured that when you needed to believe they were in love later, you believed it. Cause you experienced all those moments with them.
Now I know Half of Nothing is a simple comedy. But you still need those moments, and you need that backstory for Josilyn. Otherwise the character feels thin and by association the love story feels thin.
Like I said, the idea here is a good one, but the execution isn’t there yet. When rewriting this, I’d start by not making Vanessa so cruel. I’d make her more conniving, a gold digger who married him with the express intent of divorcing him a year later for half his money. No emotions involved. It’s pure business to her. This is what ignites his ire and convinces him he needs to prevent her from getting a penny.
I’d also find a better way to bring Josilyn into the story. Looking for someone to document his antics is kinda thin. Maybe he hires a lawyer to make sure that everything he does cannot be recouped or reclaimed by Vanessa, and that lawyer is Josilyn. That would make more sense. Then, drop the whole Josilyn wants to help the world thing. It feels out of place and forced. Focus more on her displeasure with her own joy-sucking job – being a divorce lawyer (her job has made it so she doesn’t believe in love). Maybe Harold is able to open her up and she starts believing again. That’s off the top of my head but you get the idea.
Anyway, this wasn’t for me but I think it has potential!
Script link: Half of Nothing
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you introduce a potential love interest, it’s a good idea to describe them as attractive, even if it’s just a quick adjective (pretty, cute, hot, sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, attractive). That simple description clues us in that we should be thinking of this person as a love interest. I know it sounds silly but I’ve found when you don’t do that (here, Josilyn is described only as “smart & L.A. savvy”), it can be hard for the reader to mentally move her over into “love interest” territory.
When you decide to jump into this unpredictable chaotic world of screenwriting, the first thing you’ll want to do is write some scripts. Bust out that copy of Final Draft 
However, once you’re ready for the race, it’s time to start thinking about which avenue gives you the best chance of breaking in. Everybody has their own path. Everybody “makes it” their own way. But what I’ve found is that there are a lot of talented writers out there who aren’t making it because they keep banging their heads up against the wrong door. When you’re jonesing for some ice cream, you don’t head over to the nearest Pizza Hut, do you?
The most common way into the business is still a good writing sample that gets you heat from low level agents, managers and producers, which gets you into meetings, which allows you to pitch other projects and interview for assignments, which allows you to start working, which – voila – makes you a working writer. However, let’s face it, that path is the least fun to walk. And it takes so damn long. So let’s discuss four quicker ways into the business and see if your style matches up with that avenue. If it doesn’t, you may need to reevaluate if the direction you’re taking is the right direction for you.
I’ve read a lot of Black List scripts and there are two common traits that permeate through the ones that end up on the coveted list: quirkiness and cleverness. The people voting on these scripts are used to reading the poor man’s versions of all those stinkers you see in the cineplex. That’s like trying to find refreshment in those generic supermarket colas (“Premium Cola!”) as opposed to drinking real coke. And you wonder why readers have a reputation for being bitter. Because of this, Black List readers like to be caught off guard. They like to be surprised with something as far away from the Hollywood groupthink as possible. A small-town butter-carving competition? They’re in. A depressed man who speaks through a British-accented Beaver puppet he’s found in the garbage? Touchdown. A serial killer flick about a guy who talks to his pets…and they talk back? Oh yeah. This is the place for all the future Charlie Kaufmans, the disciples of Michael Gondry, the guys who build “best of” Spike Jonez Youtube compilations. There are other ways to make this list for sure, but if you’re quirky and clever, if those are the kind of scripts that emerge from your hard drive, then the Black List is your destination.
There’s a little crossover between the Nicholl and The Black List, but the Nicholl, more than any other screenwriting avenue, gravitates towards depth. They want their scripts cerebral. Period pieces about the human condition, a recent politically charged event, a dark exploration of characters facing death…this is what these readers like. Theme is also a huge component of a Nicholl-winning script. If you aren’t trying to say something with your story, if there isn’t a moral or a statement about humanity, then chances are your script isn’t going to do well here. And that’s great for writers of slower character-driven screenplays. Because if it wasn’t for the Nicholl, there’d be no place where these writers could find acceptance. So stop sending that script about an 1875 Scottish wake to Michael Bay. Save yourself the trouble and enter it into Nicholl.
Selling a script for a million bucks is getting harder and harder to do these days, and usually only happens via high-profile agents who can use past sale prices from their top-level clients to negotiate that elusive seven figure sum. But does that mean we’re just going to give up? Hell no! Big price tags have notoriously come from four genres: Thrillers, Comedies, Sci-Fi and Action (and sometimes Horror). Why? Because these genres are the most receptive to the high-concept, and high-concept is still the most important component to making that big sale. If you don’t have a big idea, drop your dreaming ways and enter the Nicholl instead. High concept has been debated to death but basically, you know you have a high concept if you can put it on a billboard and people everywhere will get excited to see your movie. A bachelor party where they lose the groom told as a mystery the day after? High concept. A CIA spy who doesn’t know that they’re a double-agent (Salt). High concept! Someone keeps reliving the same time loop over and over again (Groundhog Day, All You Need Is Kill, Source Code)? High concept. If you’re hoping to sell your script for a lot of money and you’re not working with a big idea, you’re proverbially banging your head up against the wall, keeping your career in check!
What if I told you you could write a script that was guaranteed not to net you a single penny? Do I have your attention? Probably not. But trust me, you’ll wanna keep reading anyway. There’s a secret way into this screenwriting business and it’s through the back door. I’m talking about the “viral” script. Viral scripts have been around a lot longer than “viral” became a media buzz word. You might remember Blockhead about the Peanuts gang all grown up in New York, smoking pot and fucking each other like nobody’s business. Or Passengers, where the writer decides to tell the story in the first person. Or Van Damme Vs. Seagal, about the two once-famous action stars warring with each other in modern day L.A. The common thread here is that none of these scripts can be made into movies, one because of copyright issues, one because the actors would never agree to it, and one because the main reason it’s such a good read (that it’s in the first person) doesn’t translate to the screen. But each of these scripts received a ton of buzz, and really what it comes down to is getting your name out there so you can start getting into rooms and pitch your backlog of projects. This avenue is for the craziest of the crazy, the weirdest of the weird. If you’re a little bit nuts or notoriously think outside of the box, this is definitely a direction you’ll want to consider. A word of advice though. Make sure you have a couple of “real” scripts already written and ready to go when you write your viral script (they should preferably be in the same genre). There’s no use going through all that effort to get some meetings if you don’t have any product to sell.
I run into a lot of writers who don’t have a plan – who fall in love with their well-written but ultimately unmarketable script and haven’t yet figured out which avenue is their way in. As a result, they cling to scripts that don’t have a lot going on in them. I call these: “nothing happens” scripts. The most common “nothing happens” genre is the “coming-of-age” story. We all write them, particularly early on, but this genre is notorious for creating scenarios that are completely devoid of drama and conflict. Characters sit around and philosophize about life (“Death is like so…complicated”). 25 year olds are bitching about how difficult their life is (They’re 25!). There are no character goals, no point to the story, no forward momentum, no interesting situations. It’s just talking heads. Talking head talking heads talking heads talking about…whatever the writer thinks is interesting. And yet we write them. Why? Because that’s generally how our 20s go. If you want to write a character piece, that’s fine, but make sure there’s a hook to it. Everything Must Go is essentially a coming-of-age story, but it’s one with a clever hook – a guy is kicked out of his house so he starts living on his front lawn. I think the lesson here is, try to be exploring some unique angle in your screenplay – whether it’s the style, the hook, a character, a subject matter, the point of view, how you treat time – some aspect, no matter how tiny, that gives your script a uniqueness that sets it apart. Nobody wants to linger in obscurity but if you’re clinging to that idea where a bunch of people in their 20s are just trying to “make it in life,” there’s a reason no one’s responding to those query letters.
And that’s it folks. Now that you know which kind of scripts do best in which scenarios, you can start targeting that specific avenue. For example, if you’ve decided you’re a Black List writer, go back through all the old Black Lists and write down every agent and manger in the Top 30 and send them a query. And one more thing, which should be obvious but it’s worth mentioning. The caveat for all these scripts achieving their goal is that they’re well-written. They have to have structure, conflict, character development, sharp dialogue, story density. And they have to be good from page 1 to 100, not just in spots. So there you are. I’ve given you the blueprint for your success. What are you waiting for?
Genre: Drama
Premise: (actual logline from author) 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.
About: Well if there’s any good to come out of this huge snafu, it’s that Amateur Friday may start living up to its name and become a weekly feature. So, 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 on the site.
Writer: Robert Ducey
Details: 104 pages – undated (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).
A few reasons why I went with this today. The first is that this is a logline that actually made it into my top 100 loglines from the Logline/Script Contest a year ago. I also liked the drama angle. Most Bigfoot-related stories are comedies so I knew I’d be reading something different. But what put me over the edge was the writer’s attitude. He just missed the Quarterfinals at Nicholl and wanted to know why his script didn’t stack up. What was it he was missing? He genuinely wanted to improve. On a personal level, I also wanted to find out if my instincts were right for not advancing this after reading the first ten pages (in the contest, after qualifying for the top 100 loglines, I read the first 10 pages of all 100 of those scripts, of which 25 advanced – Bigfoot did not). In other words, can a script recover if it doesn’t blow you out of the water with the first 10 pages?
Ben Whitcomb is a pale skinny 9 year old boy who lives in the heavily forested region of Portland. The only thing that gets Ben through the day is his obsession with Bigfoot. He religiously studies the famous creature, and has all the stories and books and articles ever recorded about the beast.
None of this is probably healthy, as Ben’s Blazers-obsessed alcoholic father points out, but his mom is a bit of an enabler, constantly encouraging Ben to do the impossible – find the mythical beast and become world famous – which propels Ben into his daily search for Bigfoot.
On one of these forays into the woods, Ben runs into Alex, an older boy with an attitude, and Tuan, who’s Ben’s age and from Vietnam. The two invite Ben into their game and soon Ben is telling them all about Bigfoot. The boys like what they hear enough to join the search, and soon Ben has himself a Bigfoot Team.
Eventually the three run into a scruffy smooth-talker named Reggie. Turns out Reggie’s father is the man who shot that famous Bigfoot tape, and Reggie believes with all the recent activity in the area, that he can find Bigfoot once again. Picking up on Ben’s excessive knowledge of the creature, Reggie asks the boys if they want to help him.
However Reggie has some weird tactics he employs to lure in Bigfoot, including creating huge footprints in the forest via large fake feet as sort of a mating call to the monster. Right away Ben’s suspicious of this activity, but he goes along with it anyway. Reggie’s later able to secure a camera from a local news station and shows the boys how to use it. Almost magically, the next day, when left alone with the camera, Bigfoot appears, and the boys hurry up to tape the creature.
But when Ben goes chasing after the creature, he’s shocked and horrified to see it jump into Reggie’s van and drive away.
Reggie submits the footage to the news and quickly he and the boys become local sensations and national stars. But Ben is plagued with the knowledge that it’s all a lie, that this isn’t the real Bigfoot. And for Ben, that’s what matters the most. He doesn’t want money or fame. He just wants to know – needs to know – that Bigfoot is really out there, that he’s real.
So when the story starts falling apart and the backlash threatens to ruin the reputation of everyone involved, including Ben’s family, Ben makes a last ditch dash to find the creature, and prove once and for all that Bigfoot lives.
All right. This is a tough one. It’s actually the toughest kind of script to analyze because the writing is really good. The characters are all interesting (especially Ben). There’s a strong goal. There’s ticking time bombs, real stakes, villains, twists, turns, a theme – everything that a good movie is supposed to have. And yet I still understand why this didn’t make the Quarterfinals. There’s something missing here.
And I’m going to be honest. I don’t know exactly what it is. But here’s where I think the problem lies. Sometimes you finish a script and you say, “That was pretty good.” But that’s all you say. You don’t have any intention of telling other people about it. It didn’t hit you hard enough to inspire you to do so. It’s like a comfort food. You wouldn’t travel into the city to get it. But if it’s there, you eat it and it makes you feel good.
We’ll start with the first ten pages. The goal with any first ten pages is to hook your reader. When your script makes it up the ladder and finally into the hands of the big players (big producers, directors, stars), the guys who can really make a movie happen, their time is short, so they’re likely only giving you a little rope at a time. They say, “I’ll read 5-10 pages. If I like it, I’ll keep reading.” And they’ll continue to do that throughout the script, extending another 5 pages here or 10 pages there, like those old arcade racing games where you received extended time every time you hit a checkpoint.
So you have to rope them in over and over. You have to keep things moving. And right away with We Found Bigfoot, I sensed that Ducey was unnecessarily drawing moments out. In the opening pages, Ben is watching a Bigfoot special. He and his mom talk. Then his drunk father comes home and wants to watch the Blazers, kicking Ben off the TV. This whole sequence takes 6 pages when it shouldn’t have taken more than two.
Here’s all you have to do.
Show Ben watching the Bigfoot show (establishing his love of Bigfoot). Show Dad come home and change the channel without saying anything (establishing he’s an asshole and doesn’t care about his son’s interests). Have Mom point out that Ben was watching something (establishing his mom’s support) and show Dad ignore her (establishing that he doesn’t respect his wife either). That can all be done in a single page and we know everything we need to know about this family.
Now that’s not to say you can’t get into a little more detail, but you have to be careful not to get into TOO much detail this early on because like I point out, you’re on someone’s leash. If you want more leeway, you gotta prove you deserve it.
Another thing that slows down this opening is the friendship situation. Before we can start the Bigfoot story (what we came here for) Ben has to first meet his new friends, get to know their situation, ask them to join his cause, and that takes a good 10-15 pages to establish.
Here’s what I always say. Establish relationships before the story starts if you can afford to so you don’t have to waste precious screenplay real estate doing so. In other words, why can’t Ben, Alex, and Taun already be friends? I understand that Ben is a loner, but you can establish a character as kooky/weird/an outcast and still have him have friends. That way we can jump right into them looking for Bigfoot together and not have 3-4 scenes where they have to build up that trust before doing so (and the reality is, even with all those pages, we still don’t have a good feel for Alex and the mysterious Taun).
Imagine Goonies if all those boys had to become friends first before they went on their adventure. Or imagine how much longer Avatar would’ve been if there hadn’t been previous diplomacy attempts between the humans and the Na’Vi before Jake Sulley got there (You’d have to create a whole additional sequence, for example, where Jake Sulley taught the Na’Vi English).
If the story is ABOUT the relationship (When Harry Met Sally), then yes, you want to wait until your story to explore it. But if it’s just one piece of the story, consider establishing it before the movie starts.
A couple other things that bothered me were first, forgetting to tell us what year it was. I only knew the time period (the 70s) because it was mentioned in the logline, but there’s no guarantee a reader will read your logline before they read your script. And this script reads WAY differently if you think it’s happening in the modern day than in the 70s. This is one of those beginner mistakes you never want to make because if a reader realizes you forgot something this obvious, they’ll know you’re an amateur, lose all confidence in you, and start skimming through the rest of the script to get through their coverage.
I also thought the dad was way over the top here. I liked that he had a clear specific identity (in his basketball obsession) but he’s so relentlessly cruel that he almost becomes a cartoon.
On the plus side, I really loved Ben as a character and I thought the theme of losing one’s innocence was well handled. This script is strongest when it’s focusing on Ben’s struggle, specifically when he knows his footage is fake and can’t decide what to do about it. Unfortunately this comes into the story too late. I would’ve liked that conflict introduced earlier and to have seen Ben struggle with it longer. Again, this is the strength of the script, so let’s milk it.
Developed with the right producer, We Found Bigfoot could become one of those PG family films with a moral that does well in the family demo. I just wish I had a better idea of why this was an “almost” screenplay and not a “have to recommend it” screenplay. So I guess I’ll turn it over to you guys. Maybe you can help Robert. What’s missing here? Ideas?
Script link: We Found Bigfoot
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (very torn on this one so I’ll cheat)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I find that when you’re creating asshole characters – particularly fathers – that throwing in a positive trait to balance things out, or giving us some insight into why they’ve become the way they are – goes a long way towards the character feeling realistic. “All asshole all the time” never works.
Ugh, yesterday was not a fun day at all. As a lot of you already know, the mediafire library that PJ had posted has been taken down. The reason it’s been taken down is because Fox has sued PJ for 15 million dollars. It’s just a sad day, not because scripts will no longer be available or nobody can come to a consensus on whether what PJ was doing was right or wrong. It’s sad because I know PJ is a good person and gained nothing personally from having the library up. She just wanted amateur writers to learn the craft of screenwriting through professional writing. She wanted to help others. I think what a lot of you are wondering is, will this affect Scriptshadow? The answer is a definitive yes. I’m not sure how yet but it’s a safe bet that the format of the site will change significantly. While reviewing scripts isn’t illegal, when billion dollar companies put their foot down, you have no choice but to ask how they’d like their shoe tied. If you want to help PJ with her legal fees, I know they’ve started a collection fund over here on this site. If you feel that you’ve in any way become a better writer because of what she provided, please please help her out.
Genre: Drama/Heist
Premise: A group of thieves invade a small southern town during a weekend festival in order to rob the town’s lucrative mill.
About: If you know anything about the history of film, you know James Dickey. He wrote one of the great movies of all time, Deliverance, which he adapted from his own novel. Dickey actually came to prominence as a poet in the 60s, writing several compilations that became very popular. This led to him reading one of his poems at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Despite the popularity of Deliverance, it is Dickey’s only produced screenwriting credit. Gene Bullard was his follow-up screenplay, which was never made.
Writer: James Dickey
Details: 121 pages – 1975 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).
Deliverance is one of my favorite movies. I dare you to go home tonight and watch that movie and not fall under its spell. That film wraps its finger around you and pulls you in until you don’t even know which way is up. It’s that spellbinding. And yet, it’s a really strange screenplay. When you go back and watch a lot of movies from the 70s, you get frustrated with the drawn out deliberate pacing of anything but the classics. But even in its slowest moments, Deliverance still dazzles, and it’s not easy to figure out why. I mean, who would’ve thought that stopping the story for five full minutes while two characters have a banjo showdown would not only work, but become one of the most famous movie scenes of all time?
Needless to say, when I heard that Dickey had written another screenplay, I got excited. Why wasn’t it ever made? Was it bad? Was it too genius for others to wrap their heads around? What’s the story behind Gene Bullard? I wanted to find out.
Gene Bullard starts with four criminals driving into a small town. There’s Makens, the dangerous leader, Jimbo and Leon, his loyal sidekicks, and Joby, the young handsome outsider. Through their conversation we learn that Joby’s just gotten out of jail and is leading Makens and his crew to his old town, where he plans to help them rob the lucrative mill that employs most of the town’s residents.
The town itself is gearing up for a festival and the star of this festival (and the star of the town) is Sheriff Gene Bullard. Bullard is a jovial type who grew up in this town as a virtual pariah. He was a high school sports star and the person everyone wanted to be friends with. He also was a surrogate father to Joby, who he’s ecstatic to see back from jail. Joby introduces Bullard to Makens and the others and Bullard has no idea that this man is going to rob his town blind within the next 48 hours.
This is where Gene Bullard gets a little strange. Instead of getting to business right away, Makens and his buddies decide to enjoy the festival for awhile. They head over to the main bar and get drunk. They head over to the town hall and dance. They stalk out any woman who will have them. They figure, if we’re going to rob this town, we might as well have some fun in it first.
Concurrently with Makens mini-ratpack adventures, we’re cutting back to Gene Bullard, who seems to have involved himself in multiple female endeavors, some of which he keeps under wraps and some of which he’s quite open about. There is one woman he can’t seem to get a handle on however. That would be Joby’s twin sister, Lila – easily the best thing about this screenplay. Lila is a master loomer (loomstress?) whose movements and demeanor feel almost ethereal in nature, like she’s floating above the rest of the world. She’s weird, mysterious, and dangerous. Gene has no idea what to do with her.
If this is all sounding a bit random, that’s because Gene Bullard is very random. Between the moment we get into town and the moment when Makens attempts the robbery, we’re basically just watching a lot of characters enjoy a crazy festival. After all the festival stuff finally ends, Makens makes his way over to the mill to rob it, and in a very Coen Brothers like finale, a lot of things start going wrong, which results in a final showdown between Bullard and Makens.
This was a strange one. I think the most frustrating thing about Gene Bullard is the character Gene Bullard. This is a man who the screenplay is named after, and yet he has no goals, no real point – he’s just this passive character who stumbles around from situation to situation. I still don’t know how Dickey wanted him to be perceived, as he’s in some places popular, other places moronic, other places a clown, and other places a ladies’ man. If this script should’ve been named after any character, it would be Makens. He’s the one driving the story. He’s the one with the active goal (rob the mill). He’s the one who really sticks out as a character.
Dickey is almost able to overcome this deficiency with the inclusion of some Dickeyisms. I call them Dickeyisms since they’re strange Deliverance-like moments that only Dickey would write. For example, there’s a scene where Lila plays the harp that feels very similar in tone and mood to the famous dueling banjo scene in Deliverance. There’s also one scene in particular where, if this movie would’ve been made, would’ve been a classic that fans would still be talking about today. In it, Bullard is seduced by Lila, who, just before they’re about to have sex, pulls out a rattlesnake. It’s a bizarre scene where we don’t know if she’s going to kill him or have sex with the thing, but it was a great sequence that was impossible to forget.
I think where this script struggles to attain the greatness of Deliverance is in its point-of-view. Deliverance was awesome because our point-of-view was with the friends the whole time. We saw the hillbillies only through their eyes, allowing us to imagine for ourselves how dangerous they were. In Gene Bullard, we’re jumping back and forth between the good guys and the bad guys freely, to the point where we know Makens well, and therefore we’re not really afraid of him. I know this can work (it worked in No Country For Old Men) but it didn’t work here. Deliverance just had this overwhelming feeling of dread that Gene Bullard never attained. And I think knowing the bad guys too well is what caused it.
Obviously, this script is a product of its era. We have long wandering scenes that remind you of the wedding scenes in The Godfather or Deerhunter – scenes that just don’t work nowadays with people’s attention spans the way they are. There still might be a movie here (I’d love to see the character of Lila onscreen) but it would have to be rewritten considerably. Either way, it’s a fascinating look back at what could’ve been.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Splitting screenplay time equally between two main characters is hard to pull off. It’s advised that you focus on one main character and give the majority of time in your screenplay to him/her. However, if you want to split time between characters, make sure that each one is active, that each one has something going on. I think this script faltered because one of its main characters didn’t have anything to do. Gene Bullard just stumbles around from location to location until he’s called into action in the final act.
Genre: War
Premise: A private bent on saving his own ass in the forgotten Battle of Hurtgen Forest in World War 2, finds himself repeatedly promoted as those around him continue to die.
About: When Trumpets Fade 
Writer: W. W. Vought
Details: 116 pages – original 1996 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).
One of the cool things about Steven Spielberg and what’s allowed him to be on top of the movie business for so long, while so many others have faded into obscurity, is how much emphasis he puts on finding new writing talent. Spielberg realized a long time ago that writers are the lifeblood of the industry. Without their ideas, without their unique voices, without their stories, you have nothing.
And to you or I, who know what it’s like to stare at a screen for 10 hours a day, that may seem obvious. But there are so many other producers in this business who believe in shortcuts, who believe that all you need is an idea, the latest writer gun-for-hire, and a really good D.P., and you can slap together a 200 million dollar hit in six months. If you want to know why none of these guys have Spielberg staying power, look no further than that mentality.
I’m not sure how Spielberg’s operation works, but from what I can tell, he puts the same amount of effort into finding new writers as Apple puts into R&D. In other words, a whole lot. I can only imagine how much rough they have to trudge through to find those diamonds, but they eventually find them. And as long as they keep finding them, Spielberg will continue to stay on top.
So what was this script that got Spielberg and Nina so excited? Was it really that good?
Let’s find out.
Private Manning cares about one guy and one guy only. Numero Uno. Even in the heartpounding opening scene, as he carries a dying soldier to safety, the implication is that the only reason he’s alive and everyone else in his platoon except for this guy is dead is because he stayed back, hid out, stayed out of the fray in order to keep his own heart pounding. When he gets back, his superiors tell him as much. They call him a coward. A survivor only through fear.
Not that he doesn’t deserve to be scared. The Americans are located in an area known as the “Death Factory,” a forest so thick with Germans they might as well grow there. And they are massacring the Americans group by bloody group. With all the leaders dying, drastic measures must be taken. So Manning, who was hoping to go home, is instead promoted. The king of the chickens is now in charge of his own batch of chickens.
His platoon shows up a day later, a group of fresh-faced scared kids who have no idea what’s in store for them. The noobs are thrown into battle right away by Manning. And within minutes they’re getting shot at with real bullets, they’re being hunted by real Germans, they realize they could really die. And there’s nothing they can do about it.
After a few minor missions, Manning gets the news he’s been waiting for. If they can take out a few huge artillery guns that the Germans have perched up on the hills, Manning will get his wish to be sent home. So the normally passive Manning puts his game face on, and sets out to do what thousands of other men have been slaughtered trying to do.
When Trumpets Fade has some genius in it. Right off the bat you’re pulled in by Manning’s desperate attempt to keep this other soldier alive. We know the man’s going to die. He knows he’s going to die. But Manning tries his best to keep him calm, to keep him going. It’s not only an exciting way to open a script (make those first ten pages great!), but it makes us immediately like our hero – whose selfishness would otherwise make him hard to warm up to. I mean this is a really intense scene and even though we’ve seen it a hundred times before, there’s something real and authentic about their exchange. We don’t even know these people and yet we’re hoping against all hope that this guy makes it. After this scene, I was willing to go anywhere Manning took me.
Also, just like any good movie setup, you want there to be some irony in your story. In this case we have a guy who doesn’t want to lead who’s forced to lead. That right there is a compelling character whose very existence for the rest of the film is steeped in conflict. Conflict = drama. And drama is what keeps your audience’s interest.
The strange thing about When Trumpets Fade is that no real story emerges until after the midpoint (when Manning is given orders to take out the artillery guns). Up until that point, our characters are repeatedly sent out on minor missions that don’t really have anything at stake. This would normally result in a bunch of boring scenes. But there’s something honest and authentic about these missions that keeps us reading.
Even though we get all the cliché war moments where you look to your right and the guy you bunked with last night now has half his face blown off, the dialogue feels real, the missions intense, and our desire to see how Manning reacts to it all, if he’ll learn, keeps us engaged. To simplify it, even though I’ve seen dozens of war movies, this script made me feel like I was in the war.
But there are still a lot of mistakes that are made , and raw ones at that. I guess we’ll start with Manning, whose flaw, while interesting, was at times unclear. Manning is selfish AND a coward. Last time I checked those are two completely different things, and while that may work fine in real life, it’s confusing when a main character has two separate fatal flaws he’s battling. We’re not sure which one to identify him with, which alters our interpretation of the story. In other words, the script reads much differently if we’re assuming Manning is a coward as opposed to if we’re assuming Manning is selfish.
I thought the supporting characters could’ve been better constructed as well. Warren, who plays the second lead in the movie, is someone I know absolutely nothing about other than that he’s fresh-faced and wears glasses. There were 5-6 other guys whose backstories were even thinner. This was a big deal since whenever the group faced a dangerous encounter, the only character I cared about surviving was Manning. I cared more about that opening dying character than I did any of these guys.
The ending also needed work. Not only is there a manufactured plot twist where the other soldiers want to murder Manning (which doesn’t work at all) but the main story goal comes in so late, it’s hard to get into (I’m referring to the mission to take out the guns on the hill). Late-arriving story goals never have the same stakes attached to them as something that’s been set up throughout the story. I had the same problem with Saving Private Ryan. Once they found Private Ryan, they tried to tack on this supposedly big bridge finale. But the goal of securing the bridge came so late that we never really bought into its importance, and therefore didn’t care if they succeeded or not.
Despite these problems, the Manning character and the feeling of really being in this war won me over. I know that just a couple of weeks ago I harped on the staleness of World War 2 movies, but I have to remind myself that when something is written well, it doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. It’s going to work.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Stakes stakes stakes people. I know we can’t shut up about them here but writers are still making the same mi-stakes so we’re going to keep bringing them up. The success of your climax is directly related to how big the stakes are. The later you set those stakes up, the smaller they’re going to seem. Imagine Rocky 