Genre: Buddy Cop
Premise: Two veteran LAPD detectives attempt to track down a stolen, mint-condition, 1952 baseball card.
About: Kevin Smith became interested in directing this which makes it – I believe – his first directing gig on a film he didn’t write. Once Smith hopped onboard, Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis signed on. Yes, you heard that right. Tracy Morgan.
Writers: Robb and Mark Cullen

10 years ago they were cloning sheep. Now they’re cloning buddy cop movies.

The generic buddy cop movie has a very simple structure. Give two cops something to do for 90 minutes and while they’re doing it, have them make fun of each other. Ideally you’d like a story or something new in there but if you don’t care about such pithy things, A Couple Of Dicks is for you.

Hey, look. I understand that not every script requires an original idea. But if you’re going to use a template that’s been used before, you have to fucking nail the execution. You have to hit it out of the park. And I laughed during A Couple of Dicks. I did. I thought the stuff about Paul thinking his wife was cheating on him was funny. But that’s not the same as feeling an emotional connection to what you’re reading – which should be every writers’ goal.

So what is this about, you ask? Jimmy (Willis) and Paul (Morgan) are partners who get along but not really. They’re more interested in bickering than solving most of the crimes they go out on. In order to pay for his daughter’s wedding, Jimmy must sell his most prized possession, an extremely rare baseball card. Except while he’s selling it, the store is robbed and his card stolen. Him and Paul find the thief, a Mexican Gang Lord, who has lost something of his own, a Mercedes with a very important payload. He’ll give Jimmy and Paul their card back as long as they find his car within 24 hours. When they do find the car, they also find an extremely attractive Mexican woman in the trunk. The woman explains to them that the reason she’s in the trunk is because she witnessed the murder of a high ranking Mexican official. So there’s your story.

But as I already mentioned, you didn’t come to A Couple of Dicks for the story. You came for the lol banter between the cops. So let’s read some, shall we? Here, in one of the funnier scenes, the two are transporting a robber whose signature move is shitting in people’s houses before he robs them. Paul is calling is wife, who he’s convinced is cheating on him.

[scrippet]

JIMMY
Come on, Paul. You gotta stop thinking like this. It’s making you nuts.

PAUL
I know. I know.

DAVE (THE ROBBER)
Does she vacuum a lot?

PAUL
What…?

DAVE
Vacuum. Does she always have the vacuum out.

Paul looks at Jimmy.

PAUL
Everyday.

DAVE
Then she’s doing something. My buddy used to vacuum his bed all the time to get his bitch’s hair off the sheets and stuff before his old lady came home.

PAUL
Is that what they do?

DAVE
I don’t know. That’s what he did.

PAUL
I’m looking for answers from a guy who shits in people’s houses.

DAVE
It’s my calling card!

JIMMY
Shut your mouth…

DAVE
I’ll be quiet.

Silence then…

DAVE
Hey, maybe your wife suffers from that CCD thing I heard on the news.

PAUL
What’s CCD?

DAVE
Cock Craving Disorder. It’s when they crave the cock, any cock, every cock. She’s probably in the middle of a DP right now.

Paul looks to Jimmy not knowing what “DP means.

JIMMY
Double penetration.

Paul spins aorund again to Dave.

PAUL
I’ll…I’ll kill you! I will shoot you right fucking now!

DAVE
OK, OK… I’m sorry. I’m just playing. I’m going to jail for chrissake.

PAUL
Not another goddamn word.

Dave “locks” his lips and throws away the key. Silence, then…

DAVE
Knock, knock…

Jimmy can’t resist.

JIMMY
Who’s there?

Paul shoots Jimmy a “What are you doing?” look.

DAVE
Orange…

PAUL
(angrily)
Orange who?

DAVE
Orange you pissed your wife is taking it in the ass from some other guy right now?

PAUL
That’s it! Pull the car over!
[/scrippet]

So yeah, it’s not a stretch to figure out why Smith connected to the material. Besides the, um, highbrow humor, if you’ve ever listened to Smith’s interviews, he’s one of the most insecure dudes on the planet and openly believes his wife is fucking around on him.

I’m going to reserve judgment on this as a film until I see a trailer because there’s always the chance that Morgan and Willis will have unbelievably awesome chemistry together. Sort of similar to what happened on Rush Hour. My fear is that it’s become acceptable to treat these buddy cop movies as templates and leave it up to the actors to elevate them. The script has to stand on its own! And for me, the damn thing kept falling over!

[ ] trash
[x] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Maybe I made myself out to be the third Dick here, but I want to point out that I don’t think the Cullens are bad writers. They didn’t win the originality contest this time around, but fundamentally they know what they’re doing. One thing I liked about this script is that by page 15, we know both these characters’ problems. Paul thinks his wife is cheating on him and Jimmy needs to come up with 28 grand for his daughter’s wedding. This is not to be confused with the overall goal, which is to get the baseball card back But I want to point out that I read a lot of screenplays that don’t give their main characters problems. As a result, the characters just sit there with nothing to do. Do the characters in your current screenplay all have problems? I would make sure they do.

Genre: “Comedy” – important to note the quotations
Synopsis: I couldn’t even fucking tell you.
About: I’m shaking my head as I write this. This…script…sold for 850k against 1.6 million (dollars, not pesos)!!!
Writer: Jack Amiel & Michael Begler

Welcome to script 3 of 5 of our top selling scripts of 2008 list. I know there are some new visitors to the site. Let me just say this. I’m not normally this angry. I swear. Go to the backlog of reviews if you don’t believe me. But yesterday’s experience of reading this script was……….it was……..it was not good. I have no more words. Enter at your own risk:

Wedding Banned made me do something I rarely ever do. I stopped reading after 30 pages. Because I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t understand what I was reading. I couldn’t comprehend the fact that this script sold for 8. Hundred. And. 50. Thousand. Dollars. My brain would not accept it. I know comedy is subjective but this had nothing to do with subjectivity. This had to do with common sense. Amiel and Begler literally robbed a bank here. They robbed the bank of my soul. I would not have paid 25 cents for this script. I’m not kidding. I actually want money back for the time that it took me to read these 30 pages.

The “story” revolves around a female lawyer who’s desperately searching for the perfect man and unexpectedly finds him except he just so happens to work in an ice cream truck.

Now that right there? That premise? That actually sounds kind of funny. But Amiel and Begler find out every possible way to make it unfunny. I’m not even sure if what I was reading would be considered jokes. I think they were supposed to be. They were crafted in such a way that it appeared as if jolliness was meant to be had. But nothing behind them was even remotely funny. I would really like to know the circumstances behind who bought this and why. Was this like a bet between studio executives? Like “I bet I can buy a worse screenplay than you”? Seriously, there’s got to be more to this.

For those who are curious, it appears that this is some sort of “Meet The Fockers” ripoff where the bride and groom’s conservative and liberal parents are forced to spend a weekend together. So let me get this straight… You had a choice to ripoff either Meet The Parents or Meet The Fockers…and you chose…………….Meet The Fockers? The shitty stupid slapped-together sequel?

I’m besides myself. I don’t even want to go on anymore. The fact that this sold is why your average Joe walking down the street thinks anybody can write a screenplay. This is their ammunition. I have nothing against Amiel and Begler personally. I congratulate them on their sale. But this should not have been sold. Without question it should not have garnered any monetary outcome unless it was for a fund to find, collect, and burn all the known copies of Wedding Banned around the world.

script link: Wedding Banned (Download if you feel like murdering yourself)

[x] trash
[ ] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned from Wedding Banned: You don’t have to break into somebody’s house to rob them.

Genre: Teen Horror
Synopsis: A high school cheerleader becomes a flesh-eating spawn of the devil.
About: This is the much talked about follow-up to Diablo Cody’s Oscar winning screenplay, Juno. Megan Fox to star. Coming out in September of this year.
Writer: Diablo Cody

There’s a real temptation here to tear this to pieces. There’s a temptation to lol at the sound bytes of dialogue that are way too cute to be uttered by any human being, regardless of age. There’s a temptation to call Diablo Cody’s career a sham, based on her decision to to do what every other wanna-be celebrity does to get famous: take off their clothes. But one thing is very clear: Diablo Cody is making millions of dollars writing screenplays. I am not. Well, not yet anyway. The point is, she’s clearly doing something right. For that reason, I’m going to pretend that I never saw the first 30 minutes of Juno, that I never heard the phrases “You’re preggo with my eggo” or “Oh my blog”, and I’m going to do what nobody in this world has been able to do since Juno was released. I’m going to judge Diablo Cody’s screenplay objectively.

See here’s something I’ve got to give Diablo credit for. Cause when I first heard this was going to be her follow-up to Juno I thought, “You’re stupid.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how genius it was. Horror gets bad reviews no matter what. Doesn’t matter if Sucksy McSuckums writes it or Quentin Tarantino. Critics bash horror. So by writing a horror film, you effectively exonerate yourself from criticism. Cause when the bad reviews come in you can simply throw up your arms and say, “What I am supposed to do?? Critics hate horror.” And thus Diablo Cody doesn’t have the pressure of following up an Oscar effort. Although I don’t particularly like Diablo’s writing style, I admit she’s one smart chicky.

Enough of this shit. Let’s talk about Jennifer’s body. Now as some of you may know by now, Jennifer is being played by super-douche Donna’s boyfriend from the old 90210’s current ex-girlfriend Megan Fox. Jennifer is your typical perfect high school cheerleader princess. She’s got the body, she’s got the face, and she’s got the attitude. So it’s a little confusing why her best friend is Needy, the artsy girl who works at the school paper (no not “needy”, but her actual name is Needy, for real). A little bit of a stretch there but since it’s early on in the script, you go with it.

Jennifer’s clearly in control of the relationship. It’s Thora Birch – Mena Suarvi Bff-ship in American Beauty territory. So when Jennifer informs a busy Needy that she has to come with her to see this new totally blog-like Emo band, Needy reluctantly agrees. Well not even 2 minutes into their first set, the club catches fire and nearly everybody dies. Except for Needy, Jennifer and the band (clearly inspired by the Great White fire that killed all those people in the Rhode Island club a few years back).

The emo band invites Jennifer along for an after-party to which, despite dozens of people just dying, she accepts. And after that night, Jennifer is never the same. Mainly because she’s possessed by the devil and needs to feed on able-bodied male teenagers to get through the day.

This is going to surprise some of you but I didn’t think Jennifer’s Body was that bad. It was silly but Diablo isn’t aiming for greatness here. I would say that there were a few times that the Jennifer character seemed to enjoy the act of dismembering boys a little too much – to the point where I’d be a teensy bit scared to meet Cody in an alley – but it was still funny.

There are Diablo-isms that will definitely test the patience of non-fans. For example, instead of a character saying “You’re jealous” they’ll say “You’re jello.” And if you say you’re not jello they’ll counter with, “Yes you are! You’re key lime green jello!” Personally I plan on never using the word jello again because of this and I would recommend to the people at Webster’s Dictionary that they remove the word “jello” so that Diablo can never use it again either. But what are you gonna do? It started with a chair.

Another curiosity I found was that whenever Jennifer killed someone, Needy became Obi-Wan Kenobi. She would have to sit down and take a moment to process a “terrible feeling.” I mean I know these two are besties but does that mean they also have The Force?

Hey look, I admit it, I thought the first 30 minutes of Juno were shit. But I look forward to Cody’s EW column every week. And as many of you have pointed out, exposure for any writer is a good thing. I sorta kinda didn’t mind Jennifer’s Body. It was somewhat not-unlikeable.

[ ] trash
[ ] barely kept my interest
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned from Jennifer’s Body: So towards the end of the movie, the story becomes about Jennifer seducing Needy’s boyfriend, Chip, who she obviously wants to kill. Needy starts to sense this, of course, and must delicately persuade Chip to avoid Jennifer, all the while not being able to tell him that she’s a flesh eating satan-beast. It works but not nearly as well as it could have. Why? Because Needy didn’t love Chip. She *says* she does late in the script. But everything Cody’s shown us up to that point suggests that Chip is a big teenage sex-hungry oaf and played him for laughs. But those laughs came at the expense of us really caring about the final outcome. If we knew that Chip and Needy were desperately in love Romeo and Juliet style, do you know how powerful that final act could’ve been? How terrified we would be of Jennifer stealing away and killing Needy’s soul mate? That would’ve made for great drama. As of now, it still works, but just barely. We don’t really care if Chip is killed. Are a few laughs during the screenplay worth that? That’s up to you to decide.

It happened. I don’t know how it happened but it happened. Everybody brace yourselves. There’s no easy way to say this…………………

I joined Twitter.

I have been avoiding this for about four years now. I am a techy guy. I love technology. I once took apart my entire laptop and put it back together without instructions. I was one of the first people to say “You gotta check out this new video on Youtube.” I joined Myspace, left Myspace, joined Facebook, enjoyed Facebook. But this Twitter thing. I didn’t get it. It’s like a mini version of Facebook. My friend said it best: “What’s next, micro-Twitter? Where they only allow you to use one word?” It’s funny but is it really that far away?

Alas, everybody loves Twitter and I’m not going to be left behind. In a week I’ll probably love it. I probably won’t be able to do anything but tweet. Right now though? All I can think is “Someone’s going to buy this program for 500 million dollars” ??? Baffling.

For you Twitterers, you can follow Scriptshadow updates here: @Scriptshadow. I think that’s how you say it, right? Somebody help.

Genre: Sci-Fi Thrilla
Synopsis: A sci-fi Bourne Identity, Broken Amber is about a man who realizes that his life isn’t what it seems.
About: A spec that I believe came extremely close to being purchased by Warner Bros. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
More: I’m keeping the synopsis vague as it kinda spoiled the script for me. My suggestion would be you read it before you read the review.
Writers: Oliver Butcher & Stephen Cornwell

Soccer moms are hot. I mean honestly, who wouldn’t want to be with a soccer mom? Men, women, boys. We all want to be with a soccer mom in some way. Oh, except for one person. That would be Lucas Hall, who just got murdered by a soccer mom in the first 5 pages of Broken Amber. And if that weren’t bad enough, Soccer Mom comes over to Lucas’ house and KILLS HIS FAMILY TOO, Stepfather-style (the original John Locke). Bad Soccer Mom! This is not the kind of behavior I expect from a soccer mom. I like my Soccer Moms to be a little less…murdery.

Lucky for me Soccer Mom disappears, at least for the time being, and we meet a new family. Clay, his wife Nancy, and their two children. They’re the typical suburban family except for one problem: Clay ain’t happy (well, I guess that still makes them the typical suburban family – heh heh). He’s unmotivated, confused, moody, watches Dancing With The Stars (yes, I made that last one up). Everything about his life seems to be based in this odd pseudo-reality. Something is wrong but he can never quite figure out what it is.

Answers start to come when Clay goes in for his yearly check-up. Two tweakers have taken the clinic hostage and aren’t leaving without a body count. That is until Clay becomes Neo and Bruce Lee all-in-one and takes out the Tweak Twins like they were a couple of developmentally challenged 4 year-olds.

Either Clay’s got the Bourne trilogy on repeat or there’s something deeper going on here. A hunger is triggered. A hunger to find out who the hell he is. He starts making calls and asking questions which lead him back to his past. Or is it………..his fuuuuuutuuuurrrrrreeee???

Yes. We discover – spoiler alert (isn’t my whole site a spoiler alert?) – that Clay’s been placed in the past, his mind partially erased and reconfigured so he will forget his previous life. The truth is, Clay is a soldier from the year 2054 and he witnessed something so awful, so terrible, that they had to send him away. And what better place to send him than the past? ………….. Right?

….ummm…not so sure about that one but I’ll get to that in a second.

Anyway, the rest of the script is basically one giant chase sequence that features Clay running from the future government, who want to kill Clay in order to cover up their secret program, appropriately named… you guessed it: Amber (and, you know, he like, “broke” it).

So here’s the problem you run into and it’s a problem everybody who writes one of these sci-fi conspiracy movies has to address: Would the government really spend all this time and money (and resources) and endure the incredible risks involved with this kind of program – which probably costs hundreds of millions of dollars – when they could’ve just used a ten cent bullet to kill this guy and hide the body? I mean, wouldn’t that be just a smidgen easier? Problem solved. I just saved the government of 2054 millions of dollars and all I’m asking for in return is to send me back a hot 25 year old brunette who won’t call me lazy when I lay on the couch all Sunday.

The one other thing that bothered me about Broken Amber was that it relied too heavily on its twist (which is a good twist). But since it’s included in the original logline (which I took out), the movie for me rested on its characters and story. And Clay was never a compelling enough character for me to worry about whether he was caught or not.

Despite these faults Broken Amber has its moments and is worth the read.

[ ] trash
[ ] barely kept my interest
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned from Broken Amber: If you have a big twist in your script, make sure the reader’s enjoyment doesn’t rest too heavily on that twist. In other words, you still want to make sure the rest of the screenplay is compelling. A big mistake beginning writers make is thinking their twist (or concept) is so awesome that a monkey can write the rest of the script and they’ll be fine. WRONG! Challenge yourself and approach each scenario as if you don’t have that twist to fall back on. Put the same amount of effort into your characters and story as you would any other script.