First thing’s first.  If you want to complain about the new look of the site, I’ve created a forum for you!  A lot of people have said to just go back to the old look but unfortunately that’s one thing I can assure you isn’t happening.  I’ve always despised the look of the site and while I’m clearly not an esteemed member of the design club, I’ll keep tweaking it until it’s acceptable.  If you’re a graphic design master and want to shoot me some tips, feel free to!  

You’ll also notice there are now ads on the site.  People have called me a moron for not monetizing the blog earlier and I guess you can say I finally came to my senses.  My adsenses.  Heh heh.  If you’ve spent countless hours here and always wished you could help out somehow, support the site when you see something that interests you. :)  It will definitely be appreciated.  

This week Roger starts us off with a Western.  I then review scripts for two movies that played over at Toronto, both of which are getting some early Oscar buzz (Oscar buzz?  In September??).  I’ll also review an enormous super-thriller that’s been kicking around development for awhile. And for those freaking out because I didn’t do Amateur Friday last week, fear not as I am doing one this Friday.  In my world, Friday is September 31st.  Now, here’s Roger with a review of a Richard Donner project.  Enjoy!  

Genre: Biopic
Premise: A look at the years leading up to John Wilkes’ Booth assassination of President Lincoln.
About: Booth is one of those scripts that’s been bouncing around Hollywood for a long time. Although all we have to go on is rumor here, it’s said that many who have read it loved it, and that the only reason it hasn’t been made is because it’s a hard sell. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the script with Dylan Kussman, has talked openly about his screenwriting career and about how winning an Oscar on only his second movie with “The Usual Suspects” put an enormous amount of pressure on him. He’s spoken about how freeing it was to write the script when he knew nothing about “the rules of screenwriting,” and how that allowed him to make choices he never would have made today. He talks about the subsequent decade long process of being stuck in development rewrite hell on numerous projects, which is why he seemed to disappear after Suspects, and he’s talked about wanting to quit the screenwriting business because of how difficult it is to get movies made (even for an Oscar winner!). Lucky for McQuarrie and us, Tom Cruise called him up one day and wanted to do a movie about Hitler, which has given his career a resurgence. McQuarrie’s favorite movies include, “Deliverance”, “The Verdict”, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “The Taking of Pelham 123”, “Die Hard”, “Electraglide in Blue”, “Lone Star”, “The Big Country” and “The Lives of Others.” Kussman is primarily an actor, appearing in such films as Leatherheads and X-Men 2.
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie & Dylan Kussman
Details: March 18, 2004 draft – 121 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).

I don’t know if Booth has hit “cult” status in the screenplay world yet but it is one of those screenplays that people say you have to read. I’ve been meaning to read it myself until hearing McQuarrie talk about it. I don’t know what it was but there was just this sense of…frustration when he discussed it. Maybe it was not being able to get it made but it sounded more like he knew the script had problems. I lost interest after that but finally decided to give it a read.

One of the things that drew McQuarrie to Booth was that he wasn’t your average mentally unstable weirdo stalker who thought killing a famous person would bring him closer to a higher power. He was actually a pretty levelheaded guy. In fact, he was quite popular, one of the more famous stage actors of the time. Booth toured from city to city, directing and acting in his own hit plays, charming any man or woman who stepped in his path. He was also frighteningly handsome, although if this picture below is anything to go by, there probably weren’t too many good looking people back in the 1800s.

We meet Booth on that infamous day, as he’s shooting Lincoln and jumping off the rafters, shouting those immortalized words, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” which is probably why we’ve always assumed he was a nut. Killing people and shouting out phrases in an ancient language usually means “crazy town.”

We then jump back five years to Richmond, Virginia before it all started. This portion of the story is somewhat Wikipediaish. Booth has a big family. He doesn’t have the best relationship with them. In particular he and his brother Edwin, also an actor, don’t see eye to eye. This conflict stems from their father’s passing, who apparently drank himself to death, which (I think) Booth believes Edwin is responsible for.

Around this time, the Civil War is gearing up, and after seeing a Union soldier hanged for freeing slaves, Booth has an epiphany and rededicates himself to becoming a great actor (I’m not sure what seeing someone’s death has to do with acting either. Though Tom Cruise has taught us inspiration comes from the strangest of places).

Eventually Booth meets up with his childhood friends Sam and Michael, who are off to the war. Booth promises to join them but then makes a second promise to his mother that he’ll never become a soldier. This leaves Sam and Michael pissed and is a critical turning point in Booth’s life, as he will never get over the guilt of abandoning his friends.

However, Booth gets another chance to help out the cause when the Confederacy comes to him and asks if he’ll secretly deliver medicine to the Confederate army on his tour stops. Delighted to be of use, he accepts, and this is probably the most dramatically compelling portion of the screenplay. There’s a great scene where some officers stop him and ask to check his suitcase for weapons, the very suitcase the medication is in. Watching him try and squirm out of it is fun stuff.

As Booth’s star rises, his side falls. It’s looking more and more like the Union is going to win the war, and for that reason, people are coming up with desperate ideas. Booth is no exception. He starts concocting a plan whereby he kidnaps the president in order to bargain for many of the captured Confederate soldiers.

This is actually what was supposed to happen all along until a few days before the kidnapping, when Booth’s conspirators changed the plan to killing Lincoln instead, something Booth was never totally on board with. And while he went through with the killing, his conspirators left him out in the cold. They were supposed to kill the entire presidential body, including the vice president and secretary of state, but they all choked and didn’t go through with it. Which kinda sucked for them, since they ended up getting hanged anyway. And that, my friends, is the story of Booth.

Whoa.

This was a tough read. There’s so much information packed into this novel-esque screenplay that every page you read feels like you’re reading four. Indeed, the student inside me wanted to highlight all the necessary passages for the test I would surely have to take tomorrow. When I do my whining on this site, it’s usually for biopics that make me feel like I’m back in school in the middle of a boring history course, and unfortunately, that’s how I felt here.

My big problem with Booth was that there wasn’t enough drama. There wasn’t enough conflict. In Valkyrie, Quarrie’s last film, there were so many scenes where people were clashing up against each other. You could feel the tension in each of the scenes. Here, it was just a person’s life unfolding before us, and that wasn’t enough for me. That’s why I loved the medicine-luggage scene so much. It was the only time where Booth’s journey was difficult – where his world was challenged and where something bad had the potential to happen.

The central conflict in Booth is internal – specifically his troubled relationship with his dead father. The problem is that the source of that conflict and the reasoning behind it are all very confusing. It’s somehow related to his brother and he’s mad at his brother for not stopping his father from drinking himself to death, so he blames his brother for killing his father but his brother also blames him for it I think and then he’s also trying to live up to his father’s name (who was also an actor) and I think somehow we’re supposed to make the connection between his unresolved relationship with his father and him killing Lincoln but I just didn’t see it. It was way too complicated.

I also found it a strange choice to put the assassination at the beginning. On the one hand, it makes sense. We all know what happens anyway. Why not start the movie off with a bang? The problem with this is, the rest of the story is so slow (and I think deliberately so), that we need something to look forward to. We need that exciting finale to pay off the huge investment we’re putting into this. But since we’ve already experienced the finale, we’re not sure what it is we’re driving towards, why we want to get to the end.

My question is, is Booth’s story worth telling in the first place? As far as I can tell, the bullet points of his motivation are, “He sympathized with the south, felt bad for not joining his buddies in the war, and eventually that guilt caught up with him which resulted in him killing Lincoln.” It’s almost as if what’s interesting about Booth as an assassin, the fact that he was pretty normal, is what makes his story so uninteresting. There’s no deep-set shocking reasoning for his actions. He was a normal guy and decided to do something stupid. I don’t know if that’s enough for a movie.

I think McQuarrie’s a great writer but this subject matter didn’t interest me.

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

What I learned: Now I know that some of you disagree with me on this but I believe, and will continue to believe, that telling a story where the audience already knows what’s going to happen severely handicaps one of your biggest advantages as a writer – the element of surprise. To me, when your audience is 30-40 pages ahead of you (or in this case, 100 pages), you have to work twice as hard to keep them entertained. Sure, if you have super-compelling characters, unlimited obstacles, and every scene is dripping with conflict, you can keep our focus so in the now that we don’t care that we already know what will happen (For example, we loved Apollo 13 even though we knew how it ended) but why make it so hard on yourself? I remember watching Toy Story 3 this year, probably my favorite film of 2010, when the toys are heading towards that incinerator (spoiler), and for the briefest of moments thought, “Oh my God. They’re really going to do this. They’re going to end these toys’ lives.” I was riveted in that moment, on the edge of my seat. Imagine if the opening scene of that movie was a flashforward showing us that those toys had made it out okay. How that would’ve eliminated every drop of mystery from the movie. How it would’ve stolen one of the best scenes of the year. Writing a good story is hard enough. Why handicap yourself?

Genre: Heist/Action
Premise: A group of famous magicians combine their talents to perform a trio of heists.
About: This is a spec sale picked up by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. See Me is written by Edward Ricourt and Boaz Yakin. Yakin wrote the 1989 version of The Punisher, The Rookie, and directed Remember the Titans. Ricourt’s career has been a little shorter. He was a member of Marvel Studios’ writing program and wrote last year’s Black List script, Year 12, about earth 12 years after of an alien invasion.
Writer: Boaz Yakin & Edwart Ricourt
Details: 117 pages – May 2009 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 the world of screenwriting, it’s becoming harder and harder to come up with a truly original high concept. “Aliens invade earth” can only be used so many times. Now You See Me is the most original high concept I’ve heard in awhile. I know this because I’m far from a “bank heist” guy, but boy did I get excited when I heard about this bank heist. Unfortunately the problem with these great-sounding premises is the writers usually screw it up within the first 20 pages by giving us the most obvious version of the story. Well I’m happy to announce that that’s not the case with Now You See Me. They don’t just come up with the concept – they execute it.

See Me opens up with a great scene. Our four protagonists are up on a Vegas stage performing their first of three limited engagements. There’s Michael Atlas, our illustrious leader, Roderigo, a master craftsman of magical devices, London Osborne, a testy hypnotist, and young Alex Hero, a sleight-of-hand master. They name themselves the “Four Horsemen” and because each has become the most popular magician in their field, the fact that they’re teaming up has the world buzzing.

After Atlas works the crowd with his disappointment over the fading economy, he invites a random audience member up on stage. Wouldn’t it be nice, he ponders, if they could get back some of that money that’s been taken from them? Behind them are a series of video screens displaying security camera feeds of a bank. But not just any bank, a bank in Paris, the very bank this audience member belongs to. Atlas’ cohorts perform some vanishing trickery, and the audience watches in shock as Atlas and the audience member APPEAR in the video feeds. In the bank. IN PARIS!

They march their way into the vault, take all the money inside, and the next thing you know, money is RAINING FROM THE CEILINGS of the auditorium. REAL MONEY. The audience scrambles about, grabbing as much as they can, and our magicians walk off stage amidst an air of mystery.

But it gets better. The authorities call up the bank in Paris. Indeed, their vault has been robbed of the same amount of money stolen in those security videos. The cops are flabbergasted. How can that have possibly happened?

Dylan Hobbes, an FBI agent who’s overworked his way right out of a marriage, is tasked with figuring that out. He’s dead set on booking these guys but that’s not going to be easy when our heroes have a couple of thousand alibis. I mean you can’t keep people in custody for teleporting to Paris, robbing a bank, and teleporting back, can you? So after a lot of strong-arming, he’s forced to let them go.

That’s when we meet Thaddeus Bradley, a broken down old curmudgeon who’s seen more magic than Harry Potter’s underwear. Thaddeus is a magician’s mortal enemy – one of those “exposer” types who peels back the curtain on magicians’ secrets to make a quick buck. It turns out he taught Atlas everything he knows. And he knows how he pulled off his robbery. The trick is catching him in the act of the other two. He offers his services and even though Hobbes hates him, he has no choice but to let him join the team.

We then follow the Four Horseman to Atlantic City, where they expose a greedy insurance scammer, and finally Los Angeles, where they try and pull off the biggest robbery ever.

Now You See Me has the kind of spirit summer movies used to have. There’s no sex-starved vampires, rushed sequels, or superheroes here. It’s big, it’s fun, and – gasp – even attempts to make you think a little. That’s not to say the script doesn’t have problems (it’s noticeably top-heavy) but the fun-factor helps it overcome them.

The strongest aspect to me is how they approached the story. If I told you I had a script about magicians who were bank robbers, the first thing you’d probably imagine is a group of magicians, some caped, some with masks, breaking into banks, throwing down smoke bombs, disappearing and reappearing inside vaults – in other words the most straightforward interpretation of the idea. The fact that the writers approach this in a completely different way – where the characters create a spectacle of their heists, performing them in front of hundreds, makes this way more interesting than anything I could’ve imagined. It’s a good reminder that whenever you have an idea, you want to sit down and look at all the ways you could execute it. The most obvious way is not always the best way, and that little extra effort you put into figuring that out, is going to pay huge dividends in the months (and maybe years) you spend on the script.

I also thought all the magicians were great. They’re not particularly deep but the mastery each has over their respective crafts gives them this heroic quality that really makes you want to root for them. Audiences like characters who are really good at what they do. I don’t know why but that’s always been the case. And to solidify the love-fest, it was a clever coup to not only have them steal the money, but give it back to the public. I mean who doesn’t like Robin Hood (unless, of course, Russell Crowe is playing him)?

Now You See Me does most of its character exploration with Dylan Hobbes, the workaholic FBI agent who never received the memo about ‘family time.’ This is probably the only character that fell flat. Dylan’s problems are generic and uninteresting and there don’t seem to be any stakes attached to them. There are all these scenes with him and his wife/ex-wife (I’m still not sure what she is), talking about how he works too much, but there’s never that ultimatum. He never gets that “It’s either your family or your work.” If you’re not going to challenge your protagonist’s flaw, then why have it in the first place?

I suppose the only concerning issue here is the progression (or I should say “degression”) of the performances themselves. The opening performance in Vegas is awesome. So much so that the other two can’t possibly live up to it. And they don’t. The second performance, in particular, which exposes a shady insurance magnate, doesn’t even set up the magnate ahead of time. So when he’s exposed, a mere 1 minute after we meet him, we don’t care. Had they set him up earlier as a true bad guy, that would’ve helped. I like that the third robbery takes place at a unique location, but that location is so cold and grey and dead, it doesn’t feel right. These guys are putting on a show. The final performance needs to be visual and cinematic and exciting. Not some ugly brick warehouse out in the middle of nowhere. Also, the order of the cities seems off. Vegas is the crown jewel. Shouldn’t it be saved for last?

But these problems are the equivalent of having bad food at a wedding reception. Who the hell cares about the food? You just wanna get drunk and have a blast. And “See Me” gets you wasted.

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

What I learned: Be careful starting your script out too big. True, you want to rope in the reader right away. But if your opening scene is the best scene in the script that means it’s all downhill from there. Spielberg has said that his only problem with Hereafter is that it starts with a bang and ends with a whimper. I couldn’t agree more. The movie starts with this awesome tsunami sequence and then doesn’t have a single scene that comes close afterwards. Now You See Me is not in that category, but I think it’ll have to raise the level of its second and final performances if it truly wants to be a great movie.

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) A master forger falls for a mysterious woman.
About: I can’t say I’ve ever read The Contortionist’s Handbook, the Craig Clevenger novel, but that’s okay because now it’s being turned into a movie starring Hollywood’s new bad boy, Channing Tatum. Robin Shushan, the writer who adapted the book, is probably best known for working on Taylor Hackford’s upcoming project, a biopic about the life of Tennessee Williams. Contortionist’s Handbook is apparently being shot on the cheap, as the producers are responsible for such films as Lars And The Real Girl, Charlie Bartlett, United 93, Adventureland, etc. Knock Channing Tatum all you want, but the man is putting movies into production left and right.
Writer: Robin Shushan
Details: 121 pages – May 23, 2008 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).

If Channing Tatum is trying to be the next James Dean, he’s certainly picked the right project. The Contortionist’s Handbook isn’t so much a movie as it is a commercial for Tatum’s bad boy appeal. He gets to play dangerous, rebellious, unpredictable, all those things young actors gravitate towards. The only problem is there’s no show surrounding this commercial. Tatum might be “tearing you apart” but he’s doing it without a story.

Handbook (which is what I’ll call it now because “Contortionist’s” is a weird word to write) starts out with our hero, John Dolan Vincent, being rolled out of a cheap motel by paramedics with a 40 year old hooker watching on. We’re guided by Vincent’s thick weathered voice over, as he tells us, “Rule number one, blend in. Rule number two, don’t stand out. Rule number three. See rules one and two.”

Vincent is a rules type of guy and he has many more observations about how to live that he’ll be filling us in on. But that’s not the only thing going on with Vincent. You see Vincent, right out of a page from Ellen Pompeo’s book, has a sixth finger. It’s not a freaky stub or anything but an actual moving operable finger. Imagine the possibilities.

Now experience tells me that wherever there’s a voice over, a flashback isn’t far behind, and indeed we jump back to Vincent’s childhood where we meet his no-nonsense dick of a father. As soon as daddy sees his freak son born, he gives up on him right there and then. 16 years of contentious childhood follow, and Vincent’s desperate bid to nab his father’s approval never pans out.

For reasons that still aren’t completely clear to me, Vincent sets off in a desperate bid to be anyone but himself. As a teenager, he learns how to make fake IDs, fake backgrounds. It’s intoxicating stuff for a young man who’s known nothing but disappointment. And so instead of just making these fake personas, he starts *becoming* these fake personas. This allows him to play a role other than himself, and that becomes addictive.

Strangely, these identities don’t seem to benefit Vincent in any way. True he’s always getting into trouble and being sent off to jail, and I suppose the changing identities clear his rap sheet, but he never uses any identity to, say, infiltrate the city’s upper crust or get a job he wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get. He just does it cause he doesn’t like being anyone for too long, which is kinda boring, don’t you think?

The good news is that Vincenet meets Keara, a stripper who doesn’t quite have a heart of gold, but she’s nice enough. Vincent saves her from a stripper breakdown and the two immediately fall in love. After some QT together, Vincent finally admits to Keara his true identity, something he hasn’t admitted to anyone since he was a teenager, which, in a way, forces him to come to terms with who he really is.

Along the way there are some nasty criminals who force Vincent into making identities for them. Vincent gets himself committed to a mental hospital in order to find the missing Keara, who’s also at that hospital (hence why he overdoses in the opening scene), but the changing of identities and the Vincent-Keara love story are the main thread.

Probably the most difficult thing about this read is that when I read it, I didn’t know what the premise was. I only checked afterwards, where the summary stated it was a story “about a forger who changed his identity to cover up his past.” I went, “Oh, *that’s* what this was about the whole time?” I thought the forger aspect was his *character*. I didn’t know it was the entire story! And that’s where Handbook failed for me. Yeah it did a good job detailing the fake identity world, but sixty pages in I was still going, “Uhhh, what is this supposed to be about again?”

I guess you could say the hospital storyline, where Vincent is desperately trying to find and be with Keara is the central story question. “Will he find her or not?” But the reason it didn’t hold my interest was because there were no stakes attached to it. At no time did I think, “This is his only chance to be with her! This is it!” It was more like, “Well if he doesn’t find her here he can just wait outside the hospital until she’s released.”

This left the heavy lifting to the cool-factor of the screenplay. The deep philosophizing voice overs (“Maybe you were slow to walk because you had nowhere to go”). The bravado male posturing. The angsty looks we’re sure to see from Tatum’s character. The stylistic flourishes (such as a flashback into a fetus! Yes, we get one of those). I think that can work with a young edgy male demo who likes to think they’re Channing Tatum, and the girlies content with staring at Tatum’s muscles for two hours, but I’m telling you, whenever you completely abandon story, you’re severely lowering the chances that we’re going to stay tuned for the whole show.

One other minor thing that bothered me was the sixth finger. I didn’t really understand why it was there in the first place other than as an odd character quirk. And just from a story perspective, it didn’t make any sense. We’re repeatedly told how often Vincent’s gone to jail and how many times he’s gotten in trouble with the law. When you book someone with six fingers, isn’t that something you remember? Don’t you mark down in a book, “six fingered man.” I mean everyone’s seen Princess Bride, right? So doesn’t that make it impossible to be an identity-changer? It’s not like they’re going to say, “Oh hey look, it’s *another* six-fingered man. That’s the fifth one this month! What are the odds??” I don’t know. It seemed like a strange choice.

No surprises here. I prefer a good story and this is more of a vanity project. Nothing wrong with that though. Clooney just had The American. Why can’t Tatum have The Contortionist?

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

What I learned: While it’s probably best to avoid voice over, the device does allow you to do some things you can’t do without it. The biggest thing is that we can get inside a character’s head and know EXACTLY what he’s thinking. This creates an intimate connection between the audience and the character that isn’t possible otherwise. I don’t know if the device was successful in Handbook though because Vincent speaks more in sound bites than actual thoughts (“Rule number one, blend in.”) but I’ve seen it work in other places, most notably Morgan Freeman’s voice over in The Shawshank Redemption.

Why a star chose to play this role: This is a simple one. Again, the actor gets to play multiple characters (the different identities he takes on). He also gets to play by his own rules, which is something we discussed with Damon and Green Zone. Actors love characters who shun authority and live by their own code of conduct.

A question I always like to ask people in the know is, “What kind of character should you write to give yourself the best chance to attract an A-List actor?” The reason I ask is because there’s no quicker way to get your script sold or made into a movie than to attach a star. Chances are that manager, agent, or producer who’s reading your script right now is wondering, “Who can I get to play this part?” Unfortunately, so far, nobody’s given me a clear-cut answer. Maybe that’s because actors, like anybody, are all different. They have different interests, different needs, different tastes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find commonalities in their choices. Maybe, if we can identify these common factors, we can write scripts that have a better chance of selling.

Now there’s no perfect way to go about this so this is how I’m gonna do it. First, we need to agree on what an A-List actor is. An A-list actor is someone who can open a movie to at least 20 million dollars on his name alone. People go to see the latest Denzel movie. People go to see the latest Will Ferrell movie. These are actors who get you to open your wallet. Shia LaBoeuf’s name can certainly scrounge up enough money to make a low-rent thriller, but no one out there says, “Man, I gotta go see the latest Shia LaBoeuf movie,” so he and other actors of his ilk are out.

I also needed a systematic way to choose the roles I’m going to break down. So what I’m going to do is take eleven A-list actors and dissect their last starring role. I know some of you are going to whine about the actors I left out but with 25 A-List Actors, I had to cut a few folks. These eleven represent the actors whose roles I know best and therefore can give the best breakdowns of.

Also, I am quite aware that actors sign onto movies for reasons other than the character itself. I think it’s a safe bet that Leo wanted to work with Christopher Nolan bad enough that he would’ve made a movie with him as a deaf librarian trapped in a meat locker. But even in cases such as these, it’s likely that the actor shaped the character into a part he wanted to play. So that character is still relevant to this discussion. Let’s not waste any more time. Here are ten stars, plus one, with the last role they chose to play and why.

Actor: Will Smith
The movie: Seven Pounds.
The part: A gritty role where a man wants to commit suicide to donate his organs to seven needy individuals.
Why he likely chose it: At first glance, this part simply seems like an opportunity for an actor to emote. He gets to cry, he gets to look depressed. It’s a serious role that on the surface gets an actor some street cred. But if we dig a little deeper we find something interesting: Smith is playing a role where he sacrifices himself to save others. Can you think of a more heroic act than sacrificing your own life to save other people? This may sound crazy but actors have big egos and what better way to massage that ego than to play God, which is what Will Smith is doing here.

Actor: Denzel Washington
The movie: Book of Eli
The part: A loner delivering the last bible in a dangerous post-apocalyptic world.
Why he likely chose it: Actors like to be the badass. They like to kick ass. And they like to look cool doing it. What’s cooler than a loner who cuts down his attackers in samurai-like stylistic flourishes? But that’s not the only thing going on here. Denzel’s character rarely speaks. Now younger actors always want a lot of lines. They equate more lines with more screen time. Older actors, particularly A-listers, like to occasionally tackle roles where they have very few lines, the reason being that it stretches their acting muscles. They have to act with their eyes and their bodies, which is much harder to do. Oh, and not to be outdone by Will Smith, did you notice that Denzel is also playing God? He’s delivering the bible in order to save the world. How much more heroic can you get?

Actor: Tom Cruise
The movie: Knight and Day
The part: A mysterious super-agent who must include a woman on his mission when he mistakenly involves her.
Why he likely chose it: First of all, actors love to play spies. The reason for this is that spies are inherently conflicted. They’re always lying to everyone. They’re always having to keep secrets from the people closest to them. That inner struggle is very appealing to an actor. On top of that, Cruise’s character is a cape short of a superhero. He’s capable of superhuman feats – jumping on cars, leaping out of planes, killing dozens of enemies without breaking a sweat – What actor wouldn’t want to play someone so badass? And the cherry on top? The role allows Cruise to be charming and funny, creating the ultimate movie star role.

Actor: Brad Pitt
The movie: Benjamin Button
The part: A man who ages backwards.
Why he likely chose it. Well in this case, we know exactly why Brad Pitt chose this role, as he’s talked on record about it numerous times. He chose the role under the stipulation that he get to play every single part, from Benjamin in his 80s to Benjamin as a baby. In the end, Fincher didn’t let him do this – but you can bet he told him he’d be able to. Out of all the characters I’m covering here, this one is probably the most unique, but it’s clear why Pitt chose it. It’s the ultimate acting challenge – playing a person at every age of their life. What actor wouldn’t be interested in that?

Actor: Angelina Jolie
The movie: Salt
The part: A CIA officer who’s accused of being a Russian spy.
Why she likely chose it: Again, we have another spy role. So the reasons for choosing it are similar to Knight and Day. The conflict of lying to those closest to you. The fun of performing superhuman acts of heroism. Indeed, it’s not surprising that Cruise was once attached to this role. It’s also of note that the actress gets to play a female part that isn’t typically cast for females (and in this case, was actually written for a man). I think that appealed to Jolie in an “I can do that too” way. The one difference between this and the Knight and Day role is that there’s no humor here. But that’s because Jolie doesn’t have a sense of humor. :)

Actor: Johnny Depp
The movie: Alice in Wonderland
The part: The Mad Hatter
Why he likely chose it: First off, you’re playing an iconic character. Every actor wants to play an iconic character. But outside of that, Depp’s reasoning was probably similar to Pitt’s. It’s another “ultimate acting challenge.” In general, actors like to play characters who are mad/insane because it allows them to go crazy with the character. Well The Mad Hatter’s the ultimate version of this. He’s got “mad” right there in his name! So to be able to have the latitude to go batshit crazy and challenge every fiber of your acting muscles is, indeed, the ultimate challenge. Also, a character this wacky and different doesn’t usually present itself in mainstream fare, so when it does, actors want to snatch it up. (see also: The Joker)

Actor: Leonardo Dicaprio
The movie: Inception
The part: A criminal who builds dream worlds in order to steal from others.
Why he likely chose it: More than most actors out there, Leo values the character arc. He wants to dig into a character and resolve some internal problem just as much as he wants to resolve the outer one. Indeed, it can be argued that the inner journey here is more important than the external journey. Cobb must come to terms with the loss of his wife before he can achieve his goal. Huge portions of Inception are given to his character battling this problem – most of which were ordered by Leo himself. Also of note is just how tortured Cobb is. Tortured characters always appeal to serious-minded actors as a lot of actors are tortured in some way themselves.

Actress: Sandra Bullock
The movie: The Blind Side
The part: A well-off wife who takes in a troubled homeless teenager.
Why she likely chose it: To this day, I don’t know why people liked this movie. I also have no idea how the role won Bullock an Oscar. The character isn’t a particularly complex one other than that she speaks with a southern accent. What I can gather is this. Women are more inclined to help those in need than men. For that reason, I can see why this role would appeal to Bullock. She gets to save someone who otherwise wouldn’t have been saved. Ahhh, wait a minute. Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye. Not unlike our friend Will Smith in Seven Pounds, Bullock is *saving* another human being. Maybe roles really are a chance for actors and actresses to massage their egos and play God. Before I get hit with a blind side myself, it should be noted that women rarely get offered roles where they’re not dependent on a man in some capacity. So actresses are going to jump on these roles when they pop up.



Actor: Steve Carrel
The movie: Dinner for Schmucks
The part: An obsessive clingy mouse taxidermist.
Why he likely chose it: In most comedies, there’s the straight guy and there’s the crazy guy. The more innovative you make your crazy guy – the more likely an A-list comedian is going to want to play it. Remember, there’s not as much range in comedy as there is in other genres, so comedians often play the same role over and over again. They yearn for something different. This role is different in that it’s not a character who’s overtly funny (a la Jim Carrey in Liar Liar) but more weird. Getting to play someone strange and “off” is probably a big draw to a comedic actor, because the character has more going on than the typical “Look at how funny I am!” character.

Actor: Matt Damon
The movie: Green Zone
The part: An officer in Iraq looking for WMD’s.
Why he likely chose it: It’s no secret that Matt Damon is a political guy. He forces it down your throat whenever he opens his mouth. So I’m guessing that was a big factor in why he chose this role. He basically gets to live out his dream – being the guy who *literally* discovers that there are no WMDs in Iraq. But that’s not all that’s going on here. There’s another trait that A-listers love in a character: The “My way or the highway” character. Characters that stand up to authority or refuse to follow orders will always appeal to actors because most actors are rebels themselves (they all rebelled against more conventional career choices when they gave acting a shot). You’ll notice that a lot of Matt Damon characters are like this, starting all the way back with Good Will Hunting.

Actor: Ben Stiller
The movie: Greenberg
The Part: A formally suicidal man who moves into his brother’s house.
Why he likely chose it: A lot of our funniest actors are also the most tortured. Judging by the roles Stiller plays outside the comedic arena, I’m guessing he’s one of these people. Greenberg is all about a character who hates the world around him, hates the people around him, hates his own life. He complains and whines about the most mundane of societal etiquettes. My guess is that Stiller is using this character as a surrogate to deal with similar feelings and frustrations. Indeed, a lot of actors use their roles as therapy, as a way to tackle things that they haven’t been able to resolve in their personal lives.

CONCLUSIONS
One of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is not seeing my story through an actor’s eyes. I just try to write the best story possible. That’s a problem because your script usually doesn’t get sold or made unless it has an A-List attachment. So you have to ask yourself when writing a script: Is this a role an actor would want to play? I’m not sure we can make any universal conclusions here, but I did pick up on some trends that might help us answer this question.

First of all, the role has to be challenging in some capacity. True, many of these actors are slapping down product in the middle of the summer where mediocrity reigns supreme, but that doesn’t mean they want neutered down roles. These thespians have gotten to the top of the heap by playing dozens if not hundreds of characters. They’re looking for something new and different. Brad Pitt plays a character not only at many different ages in his life, but plays those ages on a reverse timeframe. That’s challenging stuff. Denzel Washington plays a character who rarely speaks, who emotes only with his eyes and his actions. That’s a challenge. DiCaprio operates in a dreamworld where he’s imprisoned his wife. Every time he then goes into that dreamworld, he’s faced with a sea of conflicting emotions.

Next up, I think your character needs to be heroic. A lot of these characters are saving other people. I hate to state the obvious but actors are very egotistical. They want to play God and save others. There’s nothing more heroic than that. Just remember, heroism doesn’t always mean stopping an asteroid from hitting earth. It can mean delivering the last bible across a post-apocalyptic U.S. It can mean committing suicide to have your organs save seven other people. Whether you’re saving a nation or saving others, look for ways to make your characters heroic.

The last thing I noticed was that characters should have something going on inside of them as well as outside. Running around shooting people is fun but it’s not stretching any acting muscles. You gotta give’em some toys to play with upstairs. Benjamin Button has an ongoing physical transformation as well as having to deal with the realities of being different from everyone else. Denzel Washington gets to shred people into sushi yet must learn to open himself up to others. Tom Cruise gets to fly around on cars but still must learn to be selfless before he can find happiness. Note how in two of these cases (Cruise and Washington’s) the internal stuff is tied to the character arc and in Benjamin’s case, it’s more of a general internal battle that never arcs. That’s fine. Whether you’re arcing your character or not, at the very least, give them some kind of issue they’re struggling with internally.

Now by no means is this a conclusive study. The sampling is too small. I encourage you to look at some of your own favorite actors, the ones you envision playing heroes in your scripts, and break down their last ten roles like I did here. See if you can find any patterns in their choices. That could be the key to making them say yes to you.

The most important thing I take away from this is, before you write a single word in your next screenplay, ask yourself if an A-List actor would be interested in playing the hero. I believe this is such an important element to a saleable screenplay that from now on, I’m adding a new feature to my reviews. If the script I’m reviewing has an A-List attachment, I’m going to discuss why that A-Lister probably took the role. Now what are you waiting for? Get back to writing.