Ever since I saw Neill Blomkamp’s short masterpiece, “Alive In Joburg,” I became obsessed with him. I googled the shit out of everything that even remotely sounded like “Blomkamp” and when I found out he was doing the Halo movie, it was a bit like I imagine heroin must feel like. Or your first Krispy Kreme donut. Well we all know how that fell apart and Bloomkamp seemed to disappear off the planet. I was so bummed because I felt like we were missing out on a unique new voice who was totally going to change the way Hollywood made movies. Then the announcement came that he was turning “Alive In Joburg” into a feature film called “District 9” and it was a little bit like I imagine crack must feel like. Or your first animal style double-double. Because these days trailers tell us the entire movie and since this was so low on the summer radar, I knew the marketing team would be forced to show every great shot in the film, I avoided it all. And today, I went into District 9 knowing absolutely nothing about what I was going to see other than that giant ship in the sky and a lot of South Africans.

Even after all that hype, I still walked away amazed. We’re looking at the next James Cameron here folks. Sci-fi like this has never been done before. Within two minutes I actually believed this was happening. That aliens had landed on our planet. — I’m not even going to get into all the unique choices Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell made. I’d just like to highlight a clever screenwriting move of theirs and how it affected the entire movie. Without it, the movie wouldn’t have been the same.

In the film, the very first shot we get of the aliens is in their ship, all huddled up, cowering away from the light, malnourished, sick, and terrified. It’s 3 seconds of screentime and yet it sets the tone for how you’ll perceive them for the entirety of the film. You feel sorry for them. In other words, you sympathize with these creatures. Without us sympathizing with the aliens, without us wanting their life to be better or wanting them to get back home, the movie doesn’t work. So that single shot has a huge impact on us.

This can be applied to any character in any screenplay. Introduce them in a terrible situation and we’ll want to root for them. Human nature is that we don’t want bad things to happen to people who don’t deserve it.

And oh yeah. If you’re even remotely interested in sci-fi, go see this movie!

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young financial whiz tries to take down one of the world’s biggest hedge funds from the inside.
About: This is of course the follow-up to the 1987 Oliver Stone film, “Wall Street.” Michael Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko. Shia LaBamBam will continue his streak of starring in every hot movie that’s being made. Vietnam vet Oliver Stone is back at the reigns, helming his most noteworthy picture since the invention of the personal computer.
Writer: Allan Loeb

This script has been burning a hole in my hard drive for months and to be honest, I was never going to review it. I was never a fan of the first film. It always felt to me like a movie that wanted to be better than it actually was. Of course, I was pretty young when I saw it. All I knew about the stock market was people yelling and throwing pieces of paper at each other. But I figured with the way the economy is wreaking havoc on our lives, Wall Street 2 might have something timely to say.

So I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that Oliver Stone is directing the film. I have nothing against Mr. Stone. When he re-edited Alexander 18 times, I said ‘the more the merrier.’ Is Jared Leto gay? Is he not gay? There’s an app for that in the Alexander films. It’s just that the man hasn’t inspired confidence in awhile. The *good* news is that Alan Loeb is the writer. You may remember Alan from my review of The Only Living Boy In New York, a “Graduate”-like tale of a confused 20-something desperately trying to keep his life in order. I liked that script quite a bit, so I was intrigued to see what he would do with the Wall Street franchise (is it really a franchise now?)

Jacob Moore is pissed. Why is he pissed? Because someone just killed his boss. Well, that’s not entirely true. Someone started a rumor about his boss’ investment firm that eventually sank the company’s stock price, which led to the company going under, which led to the boss playing chicken with a subway train…and losing. Luckily, Jacob was given a 1.5 million dollar bonus just days earlier, enough to secure the most extravagant engagement ring money can buy for the woman he plans to spend the rest of his life with. “Take me to the Fuck You room,” he tells the jeweler.

You see Jacob’s stuck on the bubble. His boss was a bit of a father figure and after a few days away from Wall Street he’s beginning to think maybe it isn’t worth it. Why not dance off to a quaint little town in the middle of Americana and build a family? We’ll never know how close Jacob came to making that choice because Jacob’s fiance just happens to be the daughter of Gordon Gekko – yes, Michael Douglas’s character from the first film. Gekko got out of jail a few years back and spends his days broadcasting economic doom-and-gloom to anyone who will listen. He’s even got a new book explaining how the American economy is a time bomb waiting to explode. A little side note is that Gekko can ony talk about the economy. He can’t trade in it anymore. The SEC won’t let him within a hunred miles of a broker.

So when a still sore Jacob comes to Gekko for his blessing, Gekko calls him out. You don’t want my blessing, he tells Shia. You want advice on how to take down the man that “killed” your boss. Gekko makes a serious if contrived deal that only happens in Screenplay Land: He’ll help him take down the bad guys if Jacob helps him reestablish a relationship with his daughter. Jacob realizes this is a chance to learn from the best, get some revenge, and lose the audience.

The man who destroyed his boss’ fund is an eccentric billionaire hedge fund manager named Bretton Woods (gotta give it to Loeb – cool name). He’s the kind of guy that flies in the world’s biggest piano prodigy for some afternoon entertainment. He lives by the mantra: “The only thing worse than death is becoming irrelevant.” Gekko’s plan is for Jacob to get a job with Bretton, gain his trust, then make a whole bunch of bad trades that bankrupt his ass (my words, not his). Gekko will be advising him from the sidelines, telling him when and what to move.

Unfortunately this all plays out about as well as it sounds. The more contrived your story, the harder it is for the audience to buy into. Money Never Sleeps plays out like a dramatized version of today’s news headlines, giving us no new or behind-the-scenes information, and does so with a story that doesn’t have any bite. The face of the franchise, Michael Douglas, plays a neutered down role for 90% of the story, feeling more like an assistant coach than the power hungry face of the team.

It wasn’t lost on me that a movie all about money feels like a desperate attempt to make money. Just because you don’t have ninjas with a kung-fu grip on your poster doesn’t mean you’re cinematizing a story for a noble cause. I pose this question to you: Is this story worth telling? I don’t think I need to answer that question to answer it. Stone and Douglas clearly see this as a way to get back in the game. And that’s fine. Vin just did it with The Fast And The Furious franchise. But we all know what kind of movie results from a project without any passion behind it.

Luckily “Money Never Sleeps” has a saving grace. And that saving grace is its ending. Without giving too much away, a role that looked pretty thankless for Douglas comes roaring back up the charts like a hot stock. Loeb’s previous 105 pages were all a carefully constructed set-up to give us a shocker of a finale. And I have to admit, it worked. But the end result feels like a government bailout. Sure we feel okay now. But does it solve the underlying structural issues in the system? I’m afraid not. The best final 30 pages in history couldn’t have saved this sequel.

[ ] Bear Sterns
[x] Sell
[ ] Hold
[ ] Buy
[ ] Gold

What I learned: You have to make the connections in your story as direct and personal as possible. Jacob’s doomed boss is not his *actual* father. He’s merely a father *figure*. Bretton didn’t kill Jacob’s boss. He started a rumor that led to the downfall of J’s boss’ company which led to his boss’ choice to commit suicide. The connections here are too loose. Imagine if the boss*was* Jacob’s father and that Bretton *actually* murdered him, but Jacob couldn’t prove it in court. So the only way to take him down was to work for Bretton and destroy him from the inside. Sure you’d have to figure out a reason why Bretton would hire him under those conditions, but it’s still doable. And because things were direct (murder) and personal (his father), we’d be so much more in to the Jacob revenge storyline.

I’ve been meaning to put a review of this up forever. Luckily, Roger has rescued me with this in-depth look at “Killing On Carnival Row.” As you can see, he absolutely loves the script. And I know another long-time reader who thinks it’s a masterpiece as well. I haven’t read it. But if you’re into this kind of world, chances are you’ll react the same way these guys did.

Genre: Dark, urban fantasy. Murder Mystery. Horror. Science Fiction. Crime noir. Adventure.
Premise: In the city of The Burgue, a police inspector pursues a serial killer who is targeting fairies.
About: Sold to New Line Cinema in late 2005. Immediately attracted the attention of Guillermo Del Toro and Hugh Jackman. Del Toro dropped out of the project and Neil Jordan is currently attached to direct. This is Beacham’s first spec script. Written in his early 20’s. Beacham was hired to write “The Clash of the Titans” remake and is also writing “The Tanglewood” for Arnold and Anne Kopelson.
Writer: Travis Beacham.

The Burgue. A Third Man Vienna-esque city. Separated into four separate zones that are controlled by one central zone, Oberon Square.

We’ve got Argyle Heights, otherwise known as the Academic District. There’s the Docklands, center of industrialization and shipping. Thirdly, Finistere Crossing. The human zone.

Then there’s Carnival Row.

The Fairie Quarter.

Home to the sordid fairie brothels.

Someone’s murdering fairies and leaving their broken and exsanguinated bodies on display, clipped of their wings. No. Scratch that. Their moth-like wings have been sawed from their torsos, leaving torn alabaster skin and the rawness underneath in their absence. And of course, there’s the twin tell-tale puncture wounds in their necks.

The Burgue.

City of soot and sorcery. Humans and monsters. Fairie whores and drug peddlin’ dwarves.

An urban fantasist’s wet dream, told in Art Noveau-scope.

Guys, this script is amazing. It’s a mordant phantasmagoria. A Victorian penny dreadful, its hard-bond pulp pages soaked in absinthe and hallucinogenic fey blood and set ablaze with the fire from an exploding gas-lamp. It’s Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” theurgically amalgated (or twined) to Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”.

It’s Marlowe trying to solve a murder mystery in Bas-Lag. (And if you get this reference dear, astute readers, I tip my hat to you.)

And guess what?

It fucking works.

So who’s our Philip Marlowe, Rog?

Inspector Rycroft Philostrate, of The Burgue Metropolitan Constabulary. Fairie sympathizer.

Yep. With a city census that reads like an AD&D Monster’s Compendium, the writer capitalizes on his setting and its inhabitants and deftly weaves in social criticism as part of his theme. With the focus on racism and sexism.

Magnify the thematic lens and you’ll find a character struggling with the difficulties that revolve around a compelling interracial romance in an unforgiving city such as The Burgue.

It’s like Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever” had inter-species babies with characters out of a China Mieville novel. The anti-human propaganda pamphlet, The Screaming Banshee, details the crimes and wrong-doings of the human government in Oberon Square against the fey race.

Most humans look down on the fairies. Completely happy to make sure they’re confined to their little Tirnanog ghetto. But to Mayor Montague Boniface III’s wife, Dame Whitley Boniface, the fair, winged race deserve equal rights. After all, the fey are painters, poets and musicians. They are a cultural treasure. The Dame is what you might call a fairie activist.

But in the mayor’s mind, their art is not so much the skilled performance artistry of the courtesan, but the wet and sloppy fellatio one can procure for five guilder from the down-on-her-luck pix street-walker inside of a black, horse-drawn carriage.

The tension in The Burgue is as palpable as the Gothic fog that covers its streets.

And our guy, Philo, is not only a detective for a homicide department that is mostly staffed with pix-hatin’ sergeants, but a human who is in lust and love with Tourmaline La Roux, a fairie courtesan employed at Le Chambre De Madame Mab.

He’s torn between rescuing her from her life as a fairie escort and the risk that comes with it: Being ridiculed and slandered by his mates and fellow inspectors and constables if he were to be seen hand-in-hand with a pixie. It could mar his reputation, his career.

But when Tourmaline is de-winged and turned into a husk by Unseelie Jack, the case becomes a quest for salvation. Philo charges recklessly into The Burgue’s underworld, consumed with vengeance and guilt, obsessed with finding his lover’s killer.

A ticking clock hovers over Philo as he becomes a suspect, and he not only must exonerate himself as the suspected killer, but he must do something he was never able to do while Tourmaline was alive…

Stand up in courage for her. Show the world that he loves her by finding her killer…whatever hesheit is…and bringing hesheit to justice.

What’s so great about this script?

The invention. The imagination. The elegant world-building. The social commentary. The murder mystery and how it plays out. The characters. The dialogue. The action. The monsters. The magic. The gore. The humor. The emotion.

All rendered through the pen of a screenwriter who has uncanny control of his craft. This is a seamless screenplay. And it’s that much more impressive when you think of the sheer spectacle of all the ingredients bubbling in this witch’s pot.

It requires a delicate balance on precarious scales to tell a tale that is such an ambitious confluence of genres.

Especially when Fantasy is one of these genres.

If one setting on your control panel is slightly off, you can lose all sense of verisimilitude. You have to know your conventions in-and-out, and above all, you have to write your characters like they are real people.

This is exciting. Not only has someone turned to the genre of what China Mieville has dubbed Weird Fiction, the mash-up of science fiction, urban fantasy, sword-and sorcery, horror, gothic romance, et al., but they did so with such effective execution.

In screenplay format.

Screenplays are a whole other ball-game. These are the type of stories normally told in prose fiction, in sprawling novels and the odd collection of short stories put out by the independent press. In some YA fiction.

What Peter Straub calls The New Fabulists.

Go into the bookstore and look for authors like Neil Gaiman, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jim Butcher, Alan Campbell, Charlie Huston, Richard K. Morgan, Kelly Link, Gene Wolfe and look at the stories. It’s smart genre fare that can’t always be easily shoved into categories because it attacks all genres from all sides.

“Killing on Carnival Row” is Dark Fantasy done well. Something we don’t see a lot of, but something we’re bound to see more of.
Tell us about some of the novelties, the flights of imagination you like.

1.) The Special Loupgarou Unit. In our world, the police have K-9 Units. Well, in The Burgue, the constables have young men manacled to control leashes. Syringes are inserted into IV tubes in their wrists, and suddenly eyes turn yellow and teeth sharpen as an induced metamorphosis transforms men into wolves. A Werewolf Unit. What’s not to love?

2.) The Drakes. In our world, the police have birds, or helicopters. In Philo’s world, the constabulary has Drakes. Giant mechanical dragonflies operated by a human pilot. On the back, a gunner mans a Gatling gun should they need firepower. Gatling guns and steampunk insects are always okay in my book.

3.) The Haruspex. A Macbethean soothsayer employed by The Burgue Metropolitan Constabulary. She can read minds. She sees the last memories of corpses. Her visions are just as valuable as an eye-witness testimony, and just as admissable.

4.) Mabsynthe. Iridescent green syrup distilled from the blood of fairies. Mabsynthe junkies are kinda like opium junkies. You pour the green treacle into a glass bottle affixed with a hose and pipe. A hookah. Then you light up and inhale the smoke through a pipe. Hallucinogenic. Most dealers combine the blood of several fairies to jumble up the visions. If you’re taking a hit from Mabsynthe that’s just from one fairie, you enter the present mind of the fairie. See what she sees. Feel what she feels. A really inventive plot device that comes into play later in the story.

5.) Twining. Theurgic Amalgamology. The manipulation of biology through advanced technology and ancient magics. One of the tools of twining is a magical black glove. Fueled by magic and science. The wearer wields it to manipulate biology. There’s some bodily havoc in the 3rd act when Philo’s side-kick, Vignette, dons the glove and proceeds to kick some villainous ass. With her fist. Fucking fantastic.

6.) Unseelie Jack. Okay, I’m not gonna spoil this. But I read this script before I went to bed. Mistake. I had nightmares about hesheit. Nightmares. The only thing I will say, this is a great creature feature villain. Like Maryann Forrester in True Blood, hesheit is something truly unique and new and cool. But it’s simple and old at the same time. And it’s a detail that probably helped the writer get a job on the “Clash of the Titans” remake.

Wow. This sounds insane. This insanity doesn’t drown out the story or characters?

Not at all. For the most part, when these novelties and oddities aren’t used as plot devices or as characters, this stuff is presented in snippets of detail to help create the atmosphere. It’s exquisite and balanced world building.

Philo and his journey is always in the foreground, always the center of the plot in this baroque world. And it’s a great journey. In Shane Black-fashion, Philo picks up a buddy at the beginning of the 2nd Act, and she’s a great character.

Vignette is a faerie Philo saves from Unseelie Jack. He finds her after her wings have been sawed off and right before she’s about to be drained. He nurses her back to health, and she helps him hide from the dragnet enforced by his former employers, The Metropolitan Constabulary.

After all, who knows the nooks and crannies, the secret places of this cobble-stone and gaslight city better than a fairie?

She’s also the anonymous star writer for The Screaming Banshee, and she uses the headquarters for its secret printing press, located in a mini-necropolis underneath The Old Fairie Cemetery, to hide Philo.

Together, their budding relationship is best described as a Murtagh-Riggs and Han-Leia amalgam. You’ve got the witty banter and the developing romance.

And it’s sexy as hell.

The character highlight for me was a surprising, revelatory character moment where Philostrate reveals the story of his past. What makes him who he is today. The stuff that’s forged his character. He’s a human refugee from Hy-Brasil, the city of flowers. His parents were officers in The Burguish Imperial Navy stationed in Tirnanog. They were part of the Human Concession in this foreign land. They perished in the Scourge that drove the fey from their lands, and Philo was saved by an old fairie opera singer.

It’s good stuff. It bonds to you.

What else was impressive?

Reading this script is like feasting on language. But it doesn’t feel over-written. There’s an economy to the lush prose, a restraint. I suppose what impressed me the most was what some of these passages evoked.

There were moments where I felt like I was reading something by Bradbury, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Byron and Mary Shelley. And I can’t think of any higher compliment than that.

Here’s a glimpse:

It climbs up onto a rock in the distance. Stretching, contorting, opening its mouth impossibly wide.

BOTTOM
This bit still gives me the creeps.

A human face pushes through the open mouth. A whole head emerges. Curly red hair. A hand. An arm. A shoulder.

The girl underneath pulls off the dark sealskin as if she’s sliding out of a tight leather skirt.

MOIRA stands on the rock in her “human” form, completely nude. Slim fair-skinned body flecked in a blizzard of light pink freckles. Her ears pointed like a faerie’s.

Philostrate politely turns away. Bottom stares slack-jawed with a mix of morbid fascination and disgust.

EXT. BOULDER ON THE BEACH — MOMENTS LATER

Moira dresses herself from a heap of clothes strewn on the rock. Philostrate and Bottom approach.

PHILOSTRATE
Good morning Miss Moira. I’m Inspector Philostrate.

She meets him with sharp eyes, bright as emeralds. Inhuman.

PHILOSTRATE (CONT’D)
You found the body, did you?

Moira nods. She picks up the shed sealskin, singing softly as she pets it. The soft pelt purrs back. Bottom grimaces.

BOTTOM
A separate creature, is it?

Another curt, silent nod.

PHILOSTRATE
Let’s not waste the lady’s time.
(to Moira)
You can feel free to talk. I’m not fluent in selkie-speak, but I can muddle through.

Finally, she speaks. Her language, a song, a dozen voices in one, flowing eerie harmonies.

MOIRA
Corpse caught in backwards currents/moth caught in the cobweb of creation/clipped wings plucked from silken firmaments/ sticky strands clinging/sinister spider spinning/ poor poor singless wingless pixie

BOTTOM
You want me to write this bilge down?

The 3rd act is intense. Satisfying. A gory, noir-infused Hammer Horror extravaganza.

And most of all…our hero not only gets what he wants at the end of his journey, the writer gives him what he needs. Redemption.

Script link: No link

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

What I learned: Um, what a unique and brilliant spec script looks like? Seriously, this script should be required reading for anyone who is interested in writing smart genre fare. The attention to detail, the focus on character, the rising action, the tight scenes and transitions, the seamlessly woven plot and sub-plot and how they orbit around each other like twin satellites, broadcasting the overarching story. Read this script. Get a feel for the foundation, the architecture. You’ll get suspense, horror, action, melodrama, dread, love, passion, guilt, and salvation. How to balance spectacle with quiet character moments. But most of all, enjoy its many wonders.

Wow! Genius. I actually wrote Roger back and told him, “You understand that I haven’t given a single ‘genius’ review on the site yet, right?” I explained that I’ll probably only give 1 or 2 geniuses a year. Was he positive he wanted to go with a perfect rating? He reaffirmed his stance. So there you have it. The first official genius rating on Scriptshadow. (although I haven’t reviewed them, the top 3 in my Top 25 all carry ‘genius’ ratings). Enjoy the script!

Just a reminder. If you’re a repped writer and still haven’t made your first sale, you have til the end of tomorrow (Saturday) to get your script in to me. Some writers/agents have expressed reservations about sending in material as the exposure of the script would make it difficult to sell. Obviously, this is something that’s never been done before so you have no idea what the response will be. But even if that concerns you, maybe this is a strong script you already went out with at a bad time in the marketplace. Maybe it’s a script you – the writer – think is your best work but it’s a hard sell. Maybe something similar got snatched up, preventing your own sale, even though your script was immeasurably better. This could be that second chance you’re looking for.

Anyway, here’s the original post (oh, it’s now FIVE scripts instead of four):

So I’m doing something different next week. I want to give five writers a chance to get some exposure. The only catch is you have to have agency representation and not yet have sold a script. If you meet those requirements, send me your script, your agency, and a logline. I’ll take the five most interesting loglines and review those scripts Monday-Thursday. If you don’t want your script posted or you won’t be able to take a potentially negative review, then you shouldn’t participate. I know a lot of you unrepresented writers are crying foul here but there’s a reason I’m only allowing represented writers. First, I don’t want to be inundated with 10,000 e-mails. But more importantly, this is an exercise to review scripts from writers who *were* able to land representation, but have not yet been able to sell a script. What’s the difference in quality between a represented and an unrepresented writer? What’s the difference in quality between a represented writer and a represented writer with a sale? Is the difference merely a matter of luck? That’s what I want to explore. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find something great. Send the scripts to this e-mail: Carsonreeves2@gmail.com. There is no guarantee your script will be chosen but you have my word that I will delete all scripts I don’t use. Deal?

Okay, now let’s make one of you guys a millionaire.

Edit: I’ve decided to allow Manager representation as well. Though the choices will be weighted to favor agency representation.

Accepting submissions until: Saturday, August 1st, 11:59pm Pacific Time

Roger Balfour is backfor another review. This time it’s cult writer/director Richard Kelly’s third film, “The Box.” Kelly has a tall order ahead of him, trying to follow-up the cinematic masterpiece known as “Southland Tales.” Let’s hope he didn’t employ the 1980s casting director of Saturday Night Live this time around. There are very few guarantees in Hollywood, but one of them is that your movie is always better without Jon Lovitz.

Genre: Conspiracy Thriller, Science Fiction, Horror
Premise: A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a married couple, who open it and become instantly wealthy. Little do they realize that the box also kills someone they don’t know…
About: Adapted from the Richard Matheson short story, “Button, Button”. Cameron Diaz and James Mardsen will star. Richard Kelly calls it the most personal film he’s ever made.
Writer: Richard Kelly (writer-director of “Donnie Darko” and “Southland Tales”).

Ask any burgeoning screenwriter what scripts they cherish, which scripts they consider holy not only as tutorial tomes, but as illustrations of the form, and I’m sure you’ll get a laundry list of titles. And I’m sure you’ll find titles like “Pulp Fiction”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Little Miss Sunshine”. Stuff you can pick up at Barnes & Noble. What I like to call the Screenwriter’s Starter Kit. Then there’s other stuff, stuff you have to go out of your way to find because it’s not as simple as taking a stroll to the nearest Big Chain Bookseller.

For me, that script is “Donnie Darko”.

I found my copy at a used bookstore about 40 miles away from where I live. And it was at a time when I was first starting to take my writing seriously. I had just written my first two sprawling scripts, and because I had no idea what I was doing, each was 200+ pages long, written by hand with felt-tipped markers (Why? Because that’s how Tarantino did it, that’s why) and had enough plot strands and ideas that would have been better suited for 20 different, individual screenplays.

But whatever, the only way to write is just to do it, and you either catch up to the learning curve or you don’t.

Anyways.

It’s an important movie to me for reasons that I won’t get into here, and despite the criticisms concerning the narrative and plot clarity, I’m in love with the tone and feel and the characters of the movie.

It’s an atmospheric attraction.

And I cradle the script like a conspiracy theorist fondles their sacred Salinger paperback copy of “Catcher in the Rye”.

Quick word about the other stuff Richard Kelly has done. To give you a sense of my palate. I’m not a fan of “Southland Tales” and I think “Domino” is a fun movie, if entirely schizophrenic. But I have a predilection for all things Tom Waits and the movie is so bombastic and Tony Scott-sleazy it’s hard not to love.

Get to it Rog, what’s up with The Box?

It’s Richard Kelly’s adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story, “Button, Button”. It was previously adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, which was called “The Box”. Interesting info nugget: Matheson used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for the teleplay because he disapproved of the ending.

Do you think Matheson would willingly attach his name to Richard Kelly’s version, or would he go with the Logan Swanson nom de guerre?

You got me, guys. Can’t speak for the man himself. But when I finished reading the script I wandered around my house puzzled. I felt like the Valet from Sartre’s “No Exit” was leading me around my own house on a leash, except there were no mirrors or doors and Richard Kelly was sitting on a barstool laughing at me, taunting me with the key to this narrative puzzle box.

Only problem was, he would never let me lay hands on it.

I don’t know what that means. Explicate.

Takes a deep breath. Okay.

Reading the first 40 or 50 pages of “The Box” is like settling down in your favorite comfy chair in front of the fireplace, while an old friend, who you haven’t seen in a while, sits across from you. While you guys catch up, you realize how much you missed your friend’s voice. How much you’ve missed their presence in your life.

Or, it kinda feels like being a kid again.

It’s after bedtime and I’m under a tent fashioned out of bed-sheets reading the script by flashlight. Devouring the story like it’s a creepy EC Comic.

But then…

Your friend produces a packet of mind-altering drugs and informs you that, to continue, consumption will be necessary. And as you’re dropping acid the comic book turns into a manifesto on existentialist philosophy.

Um. What?

Exactly.

Can you at least tell us what the story is?

Richmond, Virginia. 1976. Arthur and Norma Lewis are seemingly nestled in comfortable suburbia. Norma is a teacher at the Collegiate School, a prestigious private school. Incidentally, their nine-year old son, Walter, is a student at the school. This is important because the School Board has officially canceled the faculty tuition discount.

The Lewis family will no longer be able to afford their son’s tuition.

Arthur works for NASA.

He’s an engineer for the NASA Langley Research Center. He designed the 360-degree camera that’s mounted on the landing module that was sent to the surface of Mars.

When we meet the Lewis family, it’s before Christmas. And someone in a black Sedan, under cover of night, has just deposited a 1’ x 1’ x 1’ cardboard box on their front porch.

And inside of the cardboard box is a wooden box.

Its dimensions are 8” x 8” x 8”. White oak. A clear glass dome is attached to the top on a hinge mount. Inside of the dome is a cylindrical metal button.

The next day, a gentleman in a crisp wool suit and black hat arrives at the Lewis house like a door-to-door insurance salesman. When Norma finds him on the doorstop, he stands in profile. But when he turns, introducing himself as Arlington Steward, the other side of his face is revealed.

We see gums, molars.

Arlington’s face is horribly disfigured. The flesh burned away, forever providing a window into the pink innards of his jaw and mouth.

Although Norma is momentarily repulsed, she feels an overwhelming pang of pity and sadness for this strange gentleman. Why? Because, she too, possesses traumatic physical scars.

However, because it’s her foot that is disfigured, she can easily hide, cover up her shame. It’s as simple as putting on a shoe. Her deformity concealed save for a limp her students whisper and wonder about.

Kelly sometimes it’s hit out of the park with his montages and his cross-cutting sequences. His parallel scenes. And his writing in “The Box” is no exception. There’s a sequence where we are told the origin story behind Norma’s disfigurement, and it’s a tender and poignant series of moments that establishes Arthur’s love for his wife.

Kelly cross-cuts between Norma and Arthur telling this story. Norma tells a class full of curious students, calmly defusing what could have been an ugly situation by, just for a moment, transforming herself from a figure of authority into a storyteller. She becomes transparent, vulnerable, an adult who honestly tells her secret to a room full of teenagers. Arthur tells Norma’s story to a co-worker, his method of the tell framed by the prosthetic he is building for her foot.

And it’s a powerful sequence.

In Norma’s youth, her brother accidentally dropped a barbell on her foot. And while she was having her foot X-rayed, the doctor was negligent and left her alone for way longer than she should have been behind the X-Ray machine. Four toes had to be amputated because of the radiation.

Which is all to say…

Norma Lewis feels a connection with Arlington Steward.

And Arlington Steward feels a connection with Norma Lewis.

The box belongs to Arlington.

And this is not a good thing.

There’s something Mephistophelean about Arlington. And he has a Faustian proposition for Norma, “If you push the button one of two things will happen. First someone…somewhere in the world…who you do not know…will die. Then, you will receive a payment of two-hundred thousand dollars…tax free.”

He opens his briefcase, shows her the money, then leaves.

Obviously, Norma is spooked. But, a seed of temptation has been planted in her soul, and she goes through the next few hours grappling with the possibility and the ramifications of the question, ‘What if?’

Arthur, the consummate engineer, takes the box apart.

It is completely empty.

Does Norma push the button?

Yes.

And…does someone really die?

Yes. The next few pages after Norma pushes the button are INTENSE. It’s actually really cool. We get descriptions of the lingering Kubrick camera floating through the 911 Dispatch Center and we experience the 911 call…and we’re rocketed through the telephone lines and the atmosphere…arriving with the police officers at a house where there is a child, barricaded in a bathroom…screaming her lungs out.

And there’s a corpse in the kitchen.

Does Arlington keep his end of the bargain? Does the Lewis family receive two-hundred thousand dollars?

Yep.

The furious beating heart of the story is exposed as Kelly cracks its rib-cage open when Arlington tells them that the box will be reprogrammed, and delivered to someone else. Norma asks, “So now what? Are you gonna go and make the offer to someone else?”

“Why yes. That’s how it works, Mrs. Lewis. (beat) And I can promise you that the offer will be made…to someone you do not know.”

And his meaning is clear.

Norma’s life is in danger.

Because someone she doesn’t know is going to push the button on that box.

She’s become part of a twisted cycle, a creepy metaphysical experiment with life and death consequences. And in order to survive, her and Arthur have to find out who Arlington Steward really is and who he works for. And the story jumps into conspiracy thriller mode as they dig for clues and discover answers. As they put the puzzle together, they discover enemies and allies; more people, ranks and titles who are caught in Arlington Steward’s chilling web.

Wow. The first half of the script sounds kind of awesome! Does the second half hold up?

Not in this draft. The concepts are really interesting though. I won’t spoil the mystery, but I’ll give you guys a hint. Richard Kelly seems fond of mining Philip K. Dick. Particularly “Valis”. I’m not certain, but he maybe drew inspiration from the fabled, unfinished PKD novel, “The Owl in Daylight”. Just speculating here, though. Arlington does have a sort of witch’s familiar, an owl that watches several of our main players and seems linked to the creepy gentleman. Consciousness-travelling is also a major concept and device.

There are hints throughout the script to Arlington’s true nature. For example, in one scene, the son Walter is reading an Edgar Rice Burroughs-like comic-book at one point and the thematic implications are eerie as hell.

NASA may or may not be hiding photographs from the Viking Project. Photographs taken by Arthur’s camera on the surface of Mars. Photographs that may be major clues to Arlington’s true nature.

Sounds cool. What’s your beef with this draft of The Box?

The execution. How Kelly shoe-horns what should only be a reference to Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit”, but becomes a frustrating, distractive tangent when characters become obsessed with the work like it’s the codex to the encrypted mysteries of the main story and start repeating lines from the play. There’s even a bizarre Jodorowsky-like dream sequence where Arlington is dressed like the Valet from “No Exit”, and the players are trapped in Hotel Hell.

I feel that it muddles up a story that starts out as a cool little thriller and takes it to the realm of obscurantism.

It gets really confusing as characters start to deliver cryptic lines of dialogue about Pandora and Prometheus. I feel like that it may be a substitute for unclear characterization, because, in the first half of the story you have a good feel for who these people are, but once we derail into bizarro world it’s like we’re no longer dealing with characters so much as automatons that recite and reference other works of literature.

Kelly has been recorded as saying, “My hope is to make a film that is incredibly suspenseful and broadly commercial, while still retaining my artistic sensibility.” Does he succeed?

I’d say so. But my quibble is that it feels like two different movies. I’m positive there have been rewrites, as there’s stuff in the trailer that isn’t in this version of the script. My hope is that his artistic sensibilities will lean more towards the coherent in the finished movie.

Look, sometimes I think that Kelly is less interested in telling a coherent narrative than in creating a feeling. A tone poem. He seems more interested in conducting emotions and atmosphere than telling an easy-to-follow story.

Does an audience really need a primer in existentialist philosophy and mythology to understand a story about a box that kills people when you push a button?

I understand the appeal of dropping references. I’m a fan of retelling myths and classical stories.

But the story should stand on its own as well. Sans references.

Think about viral marketing. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). This is supplementary material that may broaden the worlds of tv shows like “Lost” or movies like “Cloverfield”, but it’s never an intrinsic part of understanding the plots. You could enjoy those stories without even knowing that the supplementary material existed.

Kelly treats it the other way around. All the supplementary material with “Southland Tales” actually becomes an answer key as you try to understand what the hell you just watched. It’s almost the same way with “The Box”. I really hope he boils his witch’s brew of interesting concepts into something easily digestible.

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

What I Learned: Atmosphere. Kelly is superb at creating a suburban eeriness. Reading his clean prose, I could actually envision and feel the crisp gloom of Steven Poster’s photography. A good eye and ear for spacial and audio details helps not only create an atmosphere, but a time period. Snippets of talking heads on the radio, newspaper headlines, architecture. I not only felt like I was in 1976, the eerie atmosphere made me feel like I was reading an actual Richard Matheson or early Steven King short story. Atmosphere, when melded with voice, can go a long way into making a script an enjoyable read.

For an interview with Kelly about the film, go here.