And Roger makes three! This week we have an unprecedented THREE impressive scripts, one that even joins the coveted Top 25. That just doesn’t happen. Especially lately. The other two scripts are…ehhh, not very good. As for where to find it, this script has been around for forever (get it, cause it’s immortal?), and I know plenty of people have it. Maybe they’ll pop up in the comments section. Anyway, here’s Roger with his review!

Genre: Supernatural comedy
Premise: (from Hollywood Reporter) A slacker discovers that he is the latest in a long line of immortal warriors, a la Highlander, and must fight to achieve his destiny.
About: “Jeff the Immortal” was on 2007’s Black List and it was picked up the same year by Universal. From Rope of Silicon: “Apparently Bishop got the idea for the film after watching Highlander, the 1986 fantasy tale starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery, and wondered what he and his buddies would do if they got such powers.” Bishop was a writer on the Drew Carey Show and is also the author of Hardly Working at Relationships: The Overachieving Underperformer’s Guide to Living Like You’re Single When You’re Not. Bishop is also the writer on the American adaptation of the German comedy, Night of the Living Dorks.
Writer: Chris Bishop

Hehehe.

Like I do with Terry Pratchett novels, I made that sound a lot while reading this script. And, that’s kind of what this script reads like. Imagine if Terry Pratchett was an American screenwriter who was obsessed with arcade games like Dragon’s Lair and musicals like Wicked, then imagine him writing a script that parodies the Russell Mulcahy cult classic, Highlander, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from “Jeff the Immortal”.

I haven’t seen Highlander, Rog. What’s this sucker about?

Jeff Seagal has spent a decade or so just hanging out, and now he finds himself on the cusp of thirty, anxious to marry his girlfriend Scarlet. Jeff used to want to be a chef, and in fact he even got into culinary school once-upon-a-time, but he could never afford the tuition. Instead, he finds himself working at the Bullseye Department store, a job that requires him to wear a nametag. Marrying Scarlet is his attempt to reclaim the American dream of doing something with his life and owning a house by thirty.

When we meet him he’s playing a videogame with his jaded co-worker LaQuinta who warns him that marriage means the end of oral sex, “My Rodney said ‘I do,’ but the rest of the sentence should’ve been ‘n’t eat any more pussy.” Later in the day, Jeff notices a balding heavy-set white dude dressed in sweat pants and a ratty old FUBU shirt peeking at him. Soon after, Jeff is victim to a paper cut. Then, he notices something weird.

He watches the wound heal before his eyes.

When he looks back up, the strange, old dude is gone.

Undettered by LaQuinta’s ominous warning of no more oral sex, Jeff arrives at his home to discover that Scarlet is leaving him. Apparently, she has been cheating on him for months. With the mailman. And then the UPS guy. Then she had a three-way with the FedEx man and the milk man. “Milk man? There are milk men left in America?”

“It’s a dying profession. His name is Logan. I think I love him.”

Jeff goes to a bar with best friend Russ for consolation. Russ’ life is all ice cream and blowjobs. He tries to cheer his buddy up, “Look, it isn’t as glamorous as it seems. I sell RVs for a living. I live with my Great Aunt. I drive a piece of shit yellow Saturn. Sure I’ve had my fair share of notches on the futon, but am I truly happy?” The funny thing is, Jeff realizes that he’s not so torn up about Scarlet. He realizes he’s been dating a bitch who hocked all his DVDs, cleaned out his bank account and slept with every dude who wore a Flyers jersey.

When they get back to Russ’ Great Aunt’s house, they are surprised by the creepy guy in the FUBU t-shirt. They mistake him for a homeless man but he screams at Jeff, “Do you want to live forever? DO YOU?!”

Russ goes to town on the guy with a frying pan, breaking his neck. Supernaturally, the guy’s neck straightens back out. Russ goes after him some more with the frying pan, but the old guy is mostly just annoyed, “That. Doesn’t. Work. Asshole.”

Who is this old guy, and why can’t he die?

His name is Angus, and he’s the first character in the script we meet besides Jeff. He’s an eleven-hundred year-old cantankerous immortal, and in the first five pages of the script, we learn that he’s the man who invented the longbow in the 1400s. He’s a Scotsman hanging out in the French countryside when he’s accosted by King Henry V, who steals his longbow, “Lord in Heaven, we will destroy the French with this weapon. Make haste and reproduce this ‘longbow’ for our archers.”

“No, that’s for hunting purposes only. Or possibly killing the Spanish.”

The Britons run him through, leaving him for dead, but that’s pretty much when we learn the guy is invulnerable to death.

In the present day, he’s been stalking Jeff, and we also learn that his life hasn’t been too much different than Jeff’s. While Jeff has been a slacker for a decade, Angus has been a slacker for centuries. In fact, he’s an immortal who waits tables at Applebee’s, and is content to be demeaned by his twenty-something manager, Kaley. Angus is obsessed with not bringing any attention to himself, and as a result he’s a guy who has managed to live through several centuries without ever taking any chances.

Back in Russ’ Great Aunt’s kitchen, Angus humors our heroes as they test his claim of immortality. There’s a time cut and we see that the kitchen is covered in blood, gore and even sinew. “Okay, you’ve poked out my eye, chopped off my leg, stabbed me in the gut, strangled me, held my head under water, burned me –- Gave me something called a suplex, and made me yell the n-word at your neighbor. Are you convinced I’m incapable of dying?”

So Angus is here to tell Jeff that he is immortal, too?

Although there’s a humorous scare that Angus might have the wrong protégé, we do in fact learn that Jeff is immortal. He’s a descendant of the McConnor Clan, a group of Scotsman who were cursed with immortality by a dark wizard from a rival clan. The whole death-proof curse kicks in on their thirtieth birthdays.

Because Jeff is tired of working at a job with a nametag, he decides this new immortality thing is just the shot in the arm he needs. Angus gives him a dire warning, telling him that he must not bring attention to himself. But Jeff blows him off. Burned by Scarlet and his minimum-wage status, his new goal is to get as rich as possible. Russ convinces him, “We gotta think of the most lucrative job for an immortal.”

Well, what is the most lucrative job for an immortal?

They’re kind of unsure, but Russ decides that being a daredevil and landing in the Guinness Book of World Records is a good start. Meanwhile, Jeff begins courting Liz Johnson, his old prom date from high-school. She’s a recent divorcee who has moved back to town to start anew. Apparently, all her ex did was play videogames all day and get hammered with his buddies, and Jeff does his best to hide the fact that he owns an XBOX and a bong.

But, you know, this his chance to change things for himself.

Jeff the Javelin attempts to jump a shark tank on a motorcycle at Big Joe’s RV Emporium, but the news crews gathered for the event capture a horrible accident and the miraculous death and resurrection of Jeff on their cameras.

Uh oh. Lemme guess. His high profile catches some unwanted attention?

You got it.

In Venice, Italy, we meet Gargomel of the McDonald Clan. No, I’m not making this up. The villain’s name is Gargomel. Yes, it’s from The Smurfs. He watches Jeff’s footage, suddenly a man possessed. He tosses the scantily clad Italian whores from his bed and pulls a gigantic sword out of a chest. He tells his Peter Lorre-like assistant, named Pierre, “Get me the next flight to America.”

As Jeff considers his next move, which is either lion tamer or man-on-man porn, Gargomel arrives in town, donned in his Wicked t-shirt and wielding his giant ass-kicking sword. He enters the Bullseye Department store and punches out the elderly greeter. And, that’s when we’re treated to some Highlander-esque mayhem in what is pretty much a Target, with Angus arriving to save Jeff’s ass. It’s pretty gory as whole torsos are dismembered and regenerated, and several civilians are possibly poked with stabby objects.

So, Jeff isn’t one-hundred percent immortal?

Right again.

Turns out that Gargomel is from the rival clan that cursed the McConnor’s. Because of the magic involved with the curse, the McDonald’s gave the McConnor’s eternal life, but they accidentally cursed their own progeny to die at age thirty.

Gargomel is approaching his thirtieth birthday, and the only way for him to reverse his curse is to kill an immortal from the McConnor Clan. He wields the Sword of Braemar, a blade tipped with a rare yellow diamond mined from the Glen Braemar Mountain. “If this stone pierces your heart, you will cease being immortal. You will die.”

Jeff also learns that Gargomel’s parents killed his own parents.

To complicate matters, Liz’s life is also put in jeopardy.

Sounds fun! Does it work?

I thought so. I think this script is a perfect example of how to write a fantasy comedy (or a horror comedy). It’s funny, without losing sight of the story. It’s adventurous, without going off the rails. It’s silly, but it’s smart in how it exploits and parodies the genre. It has a simple mythology, that never once feels convoluted, confusing or complicated.

And it does all this while providing a satisfying emotional journey for the protagonist.
But calling “Jeff the Immortal” just a parody film would be like calling Shaun of the Dead just a parody film. Sure, it pokes fun at the genre, but never at the expense of respect to that genre. It’s a genuine fantasy story with an honest-to-God emotional arc that is about stepping out of your comfort zone, taking chances and claiming your destiny as a hero. It’s kinda like an Apatow flick, but with swords. Hollywood, can this please star Jay Baruchel?

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

What I learned: Villains are rarely the villain in their own minds. Yep, I’m pretty much quoting Warren Ellis on this one, but there’s a scene in “Jeff the Immortal” that perfectly illustrates this idea. Jeff banters back and forth with Gargomel, “This isn’t over. The hero will triumph.”

“Yeah! I know.”

“You…want me to triumph?”

“You? I’m the hero.”

“No, you’re the villain. I’m the hero.”

“No…I’m the hero.”

“How are you the hero?”

“I die at 30. I’m fighting for my life here. That makes me the hero.”

Gargomel is the hero in his own story. Gargomel doesn’t want to die when he turns thirty. To achieve this goal, he has to kill Jeff. And, Gargomel is pretty much willing to do anything to prevail. So, let me quote Warren Ellis again, “The difference between a ‘hero’ and a ‘villain’ is often the ruthlessness and extremity they’re prepared to go in order to achieve what they want.

Watch Scriptshadow on Sundays for book reviews by contributors Michael Stark and Matt Bird. We try to find books that haven’t been purchased or developed yet that producers might find interesting. It’s been a few Sundays since we’ve had our last one, and that’s mainly my fault, but Stark is back, and he’s doing something a little different – a look at the best characters in crime fiction. Check it out!

Welcome back to another edition of Scriptshadow’s Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy Book Club. While we hardly wield an ounce of Oprah’s mighty literary clout, we do hope a few trolling producers and story editors listen to our glowing endorsements. May there be little rest for their reading department as they write massive tons of coverage over this holiday weekend.

Today, we’re gonna talk about some of our favorite crime fiction characters and wonder aloud (Insert dirigible-sized thought balloon here) why the hell they haven’t been brought to the big screen yet. Now, all but one of ‘em are from best-selling novelists. All have had their rights quickly snapped up. And, mysteriously, all seem to be languishing in some dreaded level of development hell.

But, at Scriptshadow, we don’t fear the reaper. Let’s pay the damned boatman, throw Cerberus off our scent with some strategically placed Omaha steaks and try to free a few of the damned good reads held captive here.

1. Harry Bosch by Michael Connelly

“Everybody counts or nobody counts.” – Harry Bosch

I am indebted to Michael Connelly not only for nearly 20 years of excellent reading pleasure, but for introducing me to the classic, Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section, one of his character’s favorite albums and now one of mine. The recording session of that historic slab of wax is pretty damned worthy of a movie in itself — Pepper, a smack-addict, played through all of it with a broken reed and it’s still bloody brilliant — But, as usual, I digress…

Connolly went from cub crime beat reporter to one of America’s most respected novelists with over 23 bestsellers to his name. So far, there’s only been one film adaptation of his work, Clint Eastwood’s Blood Work. We have yet to see his most famous and beloved character, Harry Bosch, hit either the big or small screens.

And, that’s a crying shame!

Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch was named after the 15th Century Dutch painter known for his surreal landscapes of sin, punishment and hellfire. This pretty much mirrors this LA cop’s beat — and life. His mother was a prostitute who got murdered (shades of the Black Dahlia) when he was 11. He bounced around various orphanages and foster families till he finally ran away and joined the army, serving a still-soul-scarring-stint in Vietnam as a sewer rat, navigating the enemy’s deadly mazes of underground tunnels.

Even above ground, and in the light, Bosch still works the same way through LA’s toughest cases, meticulously and stubbornly, with little regard that it all might suddenly blow up in his face.

Bosch’s mission is to speak for the dead. He is a relentless case closer, even if it means defying authority. Following his career and character arc for the past 14 books, we’ve watched him age, find and lose love, become a father, make new enemies and rise through the ranks to Homicide Detective.

He’s even been thrown off the force, working unsolved cases as a P.I.
In The Last Coyote, he’ll solve the 30-year-old murder of his mother, the motivation for his profession and his dogged persistence. He’s worked many of the city’s politically sensitive cases, still hounded by the schmucks from internal Affairs and still getting in the face of his higher ups.

Much of his life is a something of a mess. His romances with both cops and civilians are strained and complicated. Even the house he bought working as a cop show’s technical advisor is condemned after the Northride quake. Confrontational to the end, he ignores the yellow tape and keeps sneaking back inside.

Where to start? From the beginning. His first book, The Black Echo, won Connolly an Edgar award. Follow Bosch through to the most recent, Nine Dragons, where he’s way out of his element, rescuing his daughter from Triad leaders in Hong Kong. To watch the author segue from journalist to novelist, I recommend Crime Beat, a collection of his articles from the Sun Sentinel and The LA Times.

Connelly is case and point that Hollywood purchasing your novel can be a mixed blessing. He is currently suing Paramount, trying to get the rights back to his first three Bosch books. After 15 years of non-action, he should be able to buy his babies back. But, beware of studio accountants and their evil abacuses. His bill got padded by years of “Out of pocket” development costs and pricey producer fees.

2. Jack Reacher by Lee Child

“Lee Child’s tough but humane Jack Reacher is the coolest continuing series character now on offer.” – Stephen King

Highly prolific, Lee Child has written 14 bestsellers in 13 years. So, why is his vastly popular creation, Jack Reacher, taking so much damned time getting to the silver screen?

We’re talking international best sellers here!!! Published in 51 countries and 36 languages!!! Uh, I thought foreign markets were supposed to be a good thing?!! Where are those studio accountants with the evil abacuses when you actually need them?

Instead, Hollywood fast tracks a comic book which sold a grand total of half a baker’s dozen copies, a board game that no one has played in over thirty years and a 3-D animated feature based on a breakfast cereal no sane parent would ever feed to their kids.

Do we really need Cookie Crunch – The Movie? Probably not. Do we really need a Jack Reacher series? Yeah, you’re darn tooting we do!

Lee Childs a British television director. has created the ultimate, iconic, American action hero. Reacher is James Bond with just a toothbrush and the shirt on his back. He’s Jason Bourne but with memory (of stuff he’d rather forget). He’s Bill Bixby’s Incredible Hulk, a knight-errant, wandering the countryside helping out fair damsels and regular joes who coincidentally just happen to be in distress. Guess Reacher has some serious when-shit-is-gonna-come-down radar going on.

He doesn’t look for bad luck and trouble. It just kinda finds him.

Reacher is a former Army MP Major who grew disenchanted with all the bureaucratic military bullshit and retires to an uncomplicated life of aimless drifting.
Raised as a military brat, the dude comes with some major assets – premium fighting skills, lighting fast reflexes and near bionic powers of observation. He relies every now again on some of the brass he knew back in the day for a little intel.

He also doesn’t come with much baggage. Worrying that actually washing his clothes might lead to needing more possessions like a suitcase or a house, he keeps his life zen-monk simple. The guy travels the country either by bus or by thumb, buys new clothes when the ones on him get too ripe and resorts to manual labor (or ripping off a bad guy’s stash) when his wallet gets empty.

Many of the Reacher books have the same MO. He ambles into a small town, smells trouble, takes care of trouble, leaves a lonely, local beauty quite satisfied and unceremoniously drifts away. Nothing wrong with a little familiarity. It’s a damned good MO.

According to Child’s website, all of the Reacher books have been optioned. Yet, there’s only one currently in any form of pre-production — One Shot, with Josh Oslon (A History of Violence) as the hired scribe.

Note to Paramount. Listen to the fans on this one. Hell, I think if you’d give Josh Holloway a shave and a haircut, you’ll have yourself a nice franchise. With MGM’s James Bond on hold, we need Jack Reacher more than ever.

3. Gabriel Allon by Daniel Silva

“He is the prince of fire and the guardian of Israel. And, perhaps most important, Gabriel is the angel of revenge. “ Daniel Silva on naming his protagonist.

We asked for a thriller. We asked for political intrigue. We asked for an awesome Mossad agent that comes out of the cold.

What we got was You Don’t Mess With The Zohan.

Oy!

There are nine books in this series Silva launched back in 2000. Universal acquired the rights to the entire catalogue in 2007. But, again, there’s only one in any stage of pre-production, The Messenger with Pierre Morel (Taken) tapped to direct.

Daniel Silva was the Middle East correspondent for United Press International – the perfect background for one about to embark on a career of writing spy thrillers.

His creation, Gabriel Allon, comes with much of the same skill sets as Reacher, but with a truckload of more baggage. His cover is also damned fascinating. The spy happens to be one of the world’s most renowned art restorers. Thus, we know the man is patient, deft and has a keen eye for detail. Guess it takes some of the same talents to kill a well-hid terrorist as it does to touch up an aging Caravaggio.

He’s the son of two Holocaust survivors and grew up in the Jezreel Valley of Israel. German was his first language. Languages would be one of his many giftings. The other is art. It’s in his blood — his mother being one the country’s most famous painters. Recruited back in art school, Allon becomes an assassin for the Israeli Secret Service, killing six of the twelve Black September members responsible for the 72 Munich Olympic murders.

But, payback can be a bitch. Exacting a few eyes for an eye, the PLO retaliates years later in Venice, killing Allon’s son and disabling his wife with a car bomb meant for him.

Allon is a spy that would rather stay out in the cold. He is an able killer but conflicted with a conscious and the ghosts of his past. His wife has been confined to a mental hospital all these years. He’s rather concentrate on saving the great works of art decaying in the old, damp cathedrals of Venice. Yet, current events keep bringing him out of retirement. The world keeps needing saving as well.

One of my favorite recurring characters is the spymaster who recruited him, Ari “the Old Man” Shamron, a legendary operative himself who captured Adolf Eichmann back in the day. He basically created Allon and pretty much won’t allow the unhappy spy to ever retire and live in peace.

Allon’s missions have dealt both with both “unfinished” Nazi business (looted art, the Vatican’s involvement and war criminals) and terrorism (the PLO, Saudi Arabia’s role in al-Qaeda and the rise of militant Islam in Europe). These thrillers are timely, taunt, globe trotting and nearly impossible to put down. They’re everything you want for a good summer read and — ahem — a summer blockbuster.

With a new book, The Rembrandt Affair, coming out later this month, Allon will be – luckily for us — laying down his brushes and picking up a Beretta one more time.

4. Angela Gennaro by Dennis Lehane

“Now, would you like to eat first, or would you like a drink before the war?” – John Cleese in Faulty Towers

Okay, technically, the low rent, south Boston PI team of Kenzie and Gennaro have already made it to the big screen in Ben Affleck’s Gone, Baby, Gone. And, although the movie had some awesome, Oscar-worthy performances, Gennaro’s character was pretty much sidelined for almost all of it. And, how did this spunky, Italian fireball become so damned Monaghan cute, quiet and Irish all of a sudden?

Gone, baby, were their sexual tension, their wisecracking, her mobbed up family members and all the psychic damage from her abusive marriage.

I’d love to see these guys a bit truer to the books in an HBO series. Think of it as Southie Moonlighting with the infamous, gritty Lehane edge.

Growing up together on the blue-collar streets of Dorchester, Patrick and Angie have always been friends, sometimes been lovers and seem to work pretty well together in cracking a case. They run their agency out of the belfry of a church where “all manners of unholiness cross their threshold”.

At times, they rely on a little help from their old friend, Bubba Rugowski, an arms-dealing ultra-violent psycho — A dude even Spenser and Hawk wouldn’t tangle with.

Lehane seems to experiment a bit with each of the books in the series. Darkness, Take My Hand is a search for a serial killer. Sacred is a bit of a surreal, screwball updating of Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Gone, Baby, Gone, as you know, gets pretty dark and grim. Not all of their cases end up with Dave and Maddie popping open champagne bottles and speaking in iambic pentameter.

Fans of the six Kenzie-Gennaro novels will be relieved to hear that after an 11 year hiatus, they’ll be back sleuthing this November in Lehane’s latest, Moonlight Mile.

5. Allen Choice by Leonard Chang

“The key is character. Chang works like a painter, carefully brushing strokes of truth and depth on all of his characters.” – Michael Connelly

So, our past four have all sprouted from the Underwoods of best selling authors. Here’s the one character you probably don’t know about, but should. So, buy the books now and thank me later.

Choice is a Korean-American, Kierkegaard-reading executive protection expert, who by the third installment of the series, becomes a full fledged, hard-boiled, private investigator.

Unlike most PIs, he doesn’t crack wise too often. Unlike Spencer (My gumshoe standard), who passes the time during stakeouts making mental lists of his favorite baseball players and ranking the gals he’s seen naked, Choice seems to worry a lot, brood and doubt almost every decision. I like that. I identify with that. It sets him apart from most of crime fiction’s overconfident detectives, making him and thus the stakes that much more real.

He also deftly dispels the stereotypical baggage of the inscrutable Asian sleuths of yore like Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto. Choice doesn’t know any karate and he can’t fix your fucking computer. He also doesn’t speak a word of Korean and knows very little about his heritage, which is a huge stumbling block when meeting his girlfriend’s extremely traditional parents.

At one point he calls himself “an ethnic dunce”.

He’s both assimilated and alienated at the same time. Everything about Choice seems in conflict. Orphaned at a young age, he doesn’t have much of a compass when it comes to family or relationships. He tries to compensate by reading the great philosophers. I think it just mixes him up more. Imagine the soul of 60s stand-up era Woody Allen sucked out and transferred into the body of a former linebacker.

The third book of the series, Fade To Clear, would make a pretty neat, little flick. The plot, in some ways a distant relative to Gone, Baby, Gone, involves a bitter custody battle with the abusive father abducting his daughter. Choice is hired to find the girl. The case is far more complicated than it appears.

First off, the mother is something of a bitch. Her ex-husband is involved with some rather shady shit. The ex-husband’s brother is a professional psychopath. And, the worried mother’s sister happens to be Choice’s old (but not completely burned out) flame.

Treating it like a routine skip tracing case turns out to be a big mistake when we learn that he wasn’t the first PI they’ve hired. Seems the sisters neglected to tell him that his predecessor ended up quite dead.

Like Lehane, these streets (These Streets of San Francisco this time) get dark and gritty and noir to the bone. It’s good work. I hope Chang returns to this character real soon.

Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) has optioned the first two Allen Choice novels. But, like all the books we’ve mentioned here, this project needs a Get Out of Limbo card stat!

So, my case is finally drawing to a close. I’m optimistic though. Warner Brothers has just recently resurrected one of my favorite books, Carter Beats the Devil. Hopefully, other studios will follow suit and go back to their libraries, refocusing on some of the books that they’ve already paid damn good money for.

More of Stark’s naughty kvetchings can be found on his blog — http://www.michaelbstark.blogspot.com

Genre: Drama
Premise: A 17 year old New York girl witnesses a bus crash that kills a woman and battles with the secret that she may have been indirectly responsible.
About: This has got to be one of the craziest stories to ever come out of Hollywood. “Margaret” had a great cast: Matt Damon, Anna Paquin, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, and Olivia Thirlby. They shot and finished the movie all the way back in 2005. But guess what? It’s never been released! Why? Well, it appears that Lonergan (who wrote and directed the film) can’t finish the edit! Apparently, he and the producer can’t agree on a cut of the movie. Numerous other producers have tried to come in and help, but no matter what anybody does, a consensual cut of the film has not emerged. This has, of course, resulted in tons of lawsuits. Making this even more mind-boggling is that Martin Scorsese watched a 2006 cut of the film and dubbed it a masterpiece (it should be noted that Scorsese directed Lonergan’s “Gangs of New York.”) – The Los Angeles Times did a nice lengthy article on the troubled film here. Fascinating stuff.
Writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Details: 185 pages – July 15, 2003 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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 have never read a script like this one in my life. To give you an idea of what you’re in for, the script is titled “Margaret,” yet there’s nobody named Margaret in the script. It’s also 185 pages long. Back up, read that again. It’s not a misprint. The script is 185 pages long. Here’s the thing though. Numerous people have told me the script is awesome. Someone even went so far as to call it “brilliant.” All of this just adds to the mystique of the project. And Lonergan, for those who don’t know, wrote and directed the great “You Can Count On Me,” one of my favorite indie films of all time. He also wrote the respectable “Analyze This” and “Gangs Of New York.” But this script is in an entirely separate class. It’s an epic tale about…a girl who witnesses a bus crash?? What the hell is going on?

Lisa Cohen is a 17 year old New York girl butting heads with her emerging adolescence. Emotions converge with confusion and create this dark uncertain path which Lisa’s been walking down, blind as a bat. She lives in New York, goes to a private school on scholarship, has a commercial director father who lives in L.A. and a struggling theatre actress mother who lives with her and her brother in their small New York apartment.

In anticipation of a horse-riding vacation she’s been planning with her dad, Lisa goes out to find a cowboy hat. The search yields a big fat donut hole but just as she’s on the verge of giving up, she spots a bus driver wearing a cowboy hat worthy of a John Wayne film. She tries to flag him down but he’s already on the move. Eventually he spots her and engages in flirty back and forth wave. As a result, he misses the red light, and plows into a woman crossing the street, who dies soonafter.

Feeling partly responsible for the accident, Lisa doesn’t reveal the blown red light to the police, which gets the bus driver off the hook. But as time goes by, Lisa begins to feel more and more uncomfortable about what she’s done, and decides to change her statement. She gets in touch with the woman’s best friend, the bus driver himself, and a team of lawyers, and brings a lawsuit against the MTA to try and get the bus driver fired.

But this is not all Margaret is about. Oh no no no. There are tons of secondary storylines going on here. These include her mom dating a semi-creepy foreign guy , Lisa’s crush on her teacher, Lisa’s friend’s crush on her, Lisa losing her virginity (to yet a third character), Lisa’s phone relationship with her father, countless private school classroom debates about racism and terrorism (keep in mind – this was written 2 years after 9/11), Lisa’s friendship with the bus victim’s best friend, a school play, and probably a few others I’m forgetting. In other words, there’s a lot going on in Margaret.

If I’m being honest, I don’t know how you *couldn’t* have problems in the editing room with this script. Let’s call a spade a spade. A story about a girl who witnesses a bus crash and tries to get the driver fired is not worthy of 180 pages of script. It just isn’t.

I mean yeah, all these additional story threads tell us more about Lisa, but there’s so many sides to her, and these sides are so disconnected and random that it’s nearly impossible to grasp what she or the movie is about. For example, we have these long drawn out debates in the classroom about Israel and Palestine, or terrorism and the middle east. Yet what does any of that have to do with a girl who wants the truth to be known about a bus accident? If there was some connection – any connection – between the two worlds, then I could buy it, but there isn’t. For example, if the bus driver were Middle Eastern, there’d be a physical link between the 30 minutes of terrorism debates they have at school and the personal problems she’s having outside of school. But each storyline is so compartmentalized, it feels like it could be its own movie.

Her mom’s relationship with the strange admirer is another example. I couldn’t find any connection between that relationship and Lisa’s situation. The long calls with her father and this phantom horse-riding trip also perplexed me. I honestly believe that had you taken these storylines out of the script, absolutely nothing would be lost. The core of the story here is Lisa’s desire to release the truth. Anything that doesn’t have to do with that isn’t necessary.

There are other things that bothered me too. Lisa acts completely retarded at times. She keeps saying she doesn’t want to get anybody in trouble, yet she’s filling out police reports accusing a man of killing someone. In what dimension does she think nobody gets hurt here? Also, her motivation is constantly changing. One moment, all she cares about is taking down the bus driver, and the next she’s hellbent on losing her virginity. These segues are so jagged I felt like we were cutting between different dimensions.

Strangely, despite all this, I found myself compelled to keep reading. I wanted to find out what happened. I wanted to see the bus driver fall. I wanted to know how all these threads were going to come together. The fact that they didn’t was upsetting, but you can’t discount the fact that you just read a 185 page script in one sitting. From a pure writing standpoint, that’s really hard to do. So I give Lonergan some dap for that.

It’s just…I guess I’m shocked that this script was even made in the first place. These problems they’re rumored to be having in the editing room – well of course they’re having problems. How do you edit a movie where you can make the argument that 9 of the 12 subplots aren’t necessary to making the story work?? Editing a film is about serving the story. You’re supposed to get rid of anything that doesn’t push the story forward. The issue here is that Lonergan had no intention of making the kind of movie that lived by those rules. This is one of those “trust me, I know what I’m doing” deals and it looks like they didn’t trust him.

If this were my story, I’d chop it down to a reasonable 2-3 subplots and allow the bus crash plot to drive the film. Cause do we really need to spend 25 minutes watching a man court Lisa’s mom? Does that add enough to the story to warrant its existence? I’m assuming they’ve already asked these questions a thousand times. So I’ll take my opinion train to the next stop.

A fascinating screenplay but man was it all over the place.

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

What I learned: While long screenplays are risky as hell, they’re okay IF the subject matter warrants the length. A biopic that spans 30 years? I can buy that as a 3 hour movie. A fantasy film with dozens of characters sprawled over a huge geographical landscape. You can make an argument for needing 200 pages to tell that story. You can’t convince me that a movie about a girl seeking justice after a bus accident warrants a 3 hour running time. You just can’t.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A down-on-his-luck architect hired to build a skyscraper in Dubai learns that he’s actually a pawn in a much larger game.
About: The Architect was making waves in Hollywood way back at the beginning of the year. Recently, it found its buyer in RKO. The script has been presented as a mash-up between the Hitchcock classic, North By Northwest, and the Liam Neeson thrill ride, Taken.
Writer: Craig Stiles
Details: 109 pages – February 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

Out with the old, back in with the new. The Architect sold to RKO Pictures a month ago but before I get into my review, can I just ask a question? Didn’t RKO stop making movies in 1959? Did the ghost of Orson Welles pop out of the ground a la Thriller and start singing: “It’s close to miiiiid-nite. Time for me to restart a studio-oooo.” I mean what’s the product placement going to be like in this film? Nehi grape soda and S and H Green Stamps?

Oh man, a long weekend it’s been indeed!

So Mitch Avery is an architect. Unfortunately, his company doesn’t appreciate his awesome architectural abilities. On the day he picks out the gigantic ring that he’ll sling around the future ball and chain, Nick gets word that his big job, the one that’s essentially paying for this ring, has been ixnayed. All of a sudden this carefully orchestrated career, the one he’s been piecing together since he decided to become an architect, is crumbling right before his eyes. Brooklyn Bridge here we come.

Well lucky for Mitch, someone else does appreciate his vision. A distinguished British gentleman in his 50s named Walsh remembers a building Mitch entered in a high-profile competition 5 years ago. The building lost, but Walsh never forgot Mitch’s style, a style he believes was ahead of its time. Walsh runs the UK branch of one of the largest architectural firms in the world and he wants Mitch to jump ship to his company.

The reward? A brand new hulking skyscraper job in the new gem of the Middle East, Dubai. There’s one caveat. Mitch must convince a wealthy Sheikh to pony up 500 million dollars to start the thing. It’s a risky proposition but there’s something Mitch likes about this Walsh guy – something trustworthy about him. So after getting his fiancé, Carlie, to quit her job, the two fly over and prepare for the biggest meeting of their lives – one that makes these LeBron sit-downs look like drill team tryouts.

But things start going wrong immediately. Upon walking into his hotel, a boy SNATCHES his laptop – the laptop he’s giving his presentation on, and darts off — It turns out to be a minor inconvenience because he has the presentation backed up, but it’s an omen for more bad things to come.

The next day, Mitch is inside the conference room staring down a small group of wealthy men, including the Sheikh himself. Mitch begins his presentation, which seems to be going well. But then a series of slides mysteriously come up empty. He’s able to improvise through it but notices the concerned looks on everybody’s faces. It’s not a look of embarrassment, but rather a look of grave concern. As if this was a carefully acted out play and one of the actors had forgotten his lines.

The next day Mitch calls Walsh to check on the status of his pitch…but no one answers. Mitch goes back to the presentation building…but no one’s there. In fact, the entire floor’s been cleared out! Mitch calls the architecture company that hired him. They’ve never heard of Walsh. He runs back to his hotel room. It’s been ransacked. There’s no worse feeling than knowing you’ve been had. And boy has Mitch been had.

The shitiness continues. Mitch’s fiancé, Carlie, gets kidnapped by the men, who aren’t giving her back until they get what they want. The question is, what do they want?? Mitch isn’t sure but figures that it has something to do with that computer, a computer that’s probably in a random dark room somewhere in the city of Dubai. So Mitch goes on a mission to find the computer while these men go on a mission to find him.

Along the way he meets another team of people who claim to be playing for his team. But after you get duped, you’re suspicious of everyone. Unfortunately Mitch has to trust someone because the police and even his own government won’t give him the time of day. Survive. Save Carlie. Survive. Get the hell out this godforsaken country. In that order. Can Mitch do it?

I like “stuck in a strange land” thrillers because they already carry a wealth of built-in conflict. When you go to a strange country, you don’t know the geography, you don’t speak the language, you don’t know the people, you don’t know the police system. If something truly bad were to happen, you’d be at a severe disadvantage. I had this friend who went to South Africa and was held at gun point and robbed. The police refused to do anything about it. All he talked about was how helpless and trapped he felt and how quickly he wanted to get out of that country. That “trapped” feeling is conveyed well here in The Architect. So right away I was enjoying myself.

I also dug the middle portion of the script, when Mitch is shipped back to America against his will by a group of Americans who inform him that everything he believes happened was imagined. He never got this job. He never even met Carlie. All of that was a figment of his rapidly declining state of mind. As we’re grasping for straws and trying to make sense of this madness, the script is hitting on all cylinders and we’re totally engrossed in the story. I was marbles in.

But I had a few problems with The Architect as well. First, the base mechanics of the plot were confusing at times. For example, the laptop-stealing was suspicious enough that I believed the bad guys were responsible. But if that’s the case, then the bad guys had already gotten what they wanted. Why go through the façade of the presentation the next day if they already had the info?

A big deal was also made out of the missing files in the presentation. Yet I couldn’t grasp what that meant. Were those files the files that the bad guys needed? Is that why they went after Mitch later? And how was it that only those particular files were not backed up but the rest of the presentation was? And why would they need the files if they’d already stolen the laptop that had the files in the first place? Unless, of course, the person who stole the laptop was indeed a completely random third party, in which case, isn’t that a bit of a coincidence? Eventually, that’s the explanation I went with because it’s the explanation that made the most sense. But the confusion there definitely affected my enjoyment.

I also wanted the love story to be better. I never felt like I knew Carlie (I only knew who she was in relation to Mitch – I didn’t feel like she was her own person). In the end, their love becomes a pretty significant part of the story, so you really needed to feel that bond and that electricity between them. Because Carlie was such a mystery to me, I didn’t feel that.

And while I think The Architect did a solid job working within the boundaries of the genre, I think we’ve reached a point where a new approach is needed for these paranoid thriller scripts. They all seem to follow the: everything’s great, then something bad happens, they question what’s real and what isn’t, then the last 60 pages are complete on-the-run chaos. That’s one of the reasons I liked the spec “Umbra,” so much, despite its catastrophically lousy ending. It had a very unique take on the genre, telling the story from a single point of view, and that was enough to give the genre a fresh feel.

The ingredients are here. And the similarities to Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest” are fun to admire. I just get the feeling that this isn’t where it needs to be yet. So we’ll hope that future drafts clear up the storyline and explore the relationship more. I also wouldn’t mind more of that crazy “what the hell is going on” middle, which I thought Stiles did an excellent job with. Some of you will enjoy this, but it wasn’t there yet for me.

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

What I learned: There was one missed opportunity here. I’m a big believer that your protagonist’s unique identity should help him at some point in the film. So here you have an architect, someone adept at angles and math and building construction and physics – that’s gotta come into play at some point. He needs to be trapped in a situation (a unique building or room) where it looks like he’s screwed, and the very thing that got him into this mess (being an architect) is what gets him out. So in a movie like The Fugitive, Richard Kimble being a doctor allows him to go into a hospital, stitch himself up, and get the medical records of the one-armed man (there are actually several other places where it helps him as well). These scenes always work because of how clever they come off. And the audience always feels like they’re outsmarting the elements along with the hero.

It’s Unconventional Week here at Scriptshadow, and here’s a reminder of what that’s about.

Every script, like a figure skating routine, has a degree of difficulty to it. The closer you stay to basic dramatic structure, the lower the degree of difficulty is. So the most basic dramatic story, the easiest degree of difficulty, is the standard: Character wants something badly and he tries to get it. “Taken” is the ideal example. Liam Neeson wants to save his daughter. Or if you want to go classic, Indiana Jones wants to find the Ark of The Covenant. Rocky wants to fight Apollo Creed. Simple, but still powerful.

Each element you add or variable you change increases the degree of difficulty and requires the requisite amount of skill to pull off. If a character does not have a clear cut goal, such as Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate, that increases the degree of difficulty. If there are three protagonists instead of one, such as in L.A. Confidential, that increases the degree of difficulty. If you’re telling a story in reverse such as Memento or jumping backwards and forwards in time such as in Slumdog Millionaire, these things increase the degree of difficulty.

The movies/scripts I’m reviewing this week all have high degrees of difficulty. I’m going to break down how these stories deviate from the basic formula yet still manage to work. Monday, Roger reviewed Kick-Ass. Yesterday, I reviewed Star Wars. Today, I’m reviewing The Shawshank Redemption.

Genre: Drama
Premise: Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.
About: Often at the top of IMDB’s user voting list for best movie ever, The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994 and subsequently bombed at the box office. It later became an immense hit on home video.
Writer: Frank Darabont (based on a Stephen King story)

Degree of Difficulty: 5 (out of 5)

Why the degree of difficulty is so high:

The producers of The Shawshank Redemption along with Frank Darabont expressed shock at how badly their movie fared in theatrical release. Sometimes I wonder if anybody in this business understands how the public thinks. If you give us a boring title, throw two actors on a poster who we don’t know very well, set them in a gloomy shade of gray, have them look depressed and confused, then avoid giving us any clue of what the movie’s about…chances are no one’s going to see your movie.

And even if you did find out what Shawhank Redemption was about, did that help any? A couple of guys wallow in a prison for 25 years. Wonderful. Opening Day here I come.

Besides the depressing subject matter, the movie embraces a 142 minute running time. While that’s not in the same boat as Titanic, it’s a questionable decision due to just how relaxed the movie plays. In fact, this wouldn’t be a big deal except that The Shawshank Redemption is missing the most important story element of all: PLOT. That’s right. A nearly 2 and a half hour movie has no plot! There’s no goal for the main character. Nobody’s trying to achieve anything. There’s no inherent point to the journey. Contrast that with another long movie like Braveheart, where William Wallace is on a constant quest for his country’s freedom. He’s beheading Dukes. He’s taking over countries. That’s why we’re able to hang around for 3 hours. We want to see if he’ll achieve THAT GOAL. What is it the characters are trying to get in The Shawshank Redemption? Pretty much nothing.

So when a movie doesn’t have a clear external journey, the focus tends to shift to the inner journey. This usually takes place in the form of a character’s fatal flaw. A fatal flaw is the central defining characteristic that holds a person back in life. Gene Hackman’s coach character in Hoosiers is bullheaded. He does things his way and his way only. Through his pursuit of a state basketball title, he learns the value of relinquishing control to others, which helps him become a better person.

Neither Andy nor Red have a fatal flaw. They’re not forced to overcome any internal problems. I guess you could say Andy keeps to himself too much and eventually learns to open up to others, but it’s by no means a pressing issue. Red speaks his mind at the end and it gets him parole. But refusing to speak his mind never hindered him in other parts of the movie. In other words, there’s no deep character exploration going on with the two main characters. That’s pretty nuts when you think about it. You have an overlong movie with no plot and no significant character development. That would be like Rocky already believing in himself and not having to fight at the end of the movie. He’d just walk around Philadelphia all day hanging out. So the question is, how the hell did Shawshank overcome this?

Why it still works:

One of the main reasons The Shawshank Redemption works is because its characters are so damn likable. Let’s face it. We love these guys! There’s a segment of writers out there who break out in hives if you even suggest that their characters be likable. But Shawshank proves just how powerful the likability factor is. Andy and Red and Brooks and Tommy and Heywood. We’d kick our best friends out of our lives just to spend five minutes with these guys. And when you have likable characters, you have characters the audience wants to root for.

On the other end of the spectrum, Shawshank’s bad guys are really bad. I’ve said this in numerous reviews and I’ll continue to say it. If you create a villain that the audience hates, they’ll invest themselves in your story just to see him go down. Since Shawshank has no plot, Darabont realized he would have to utilize this tool to its fullest. That’s why there’s not one, not two, but three key villains. The first is Bogs, the rapist. The second is the abusive Captain Hadley. And the third, of course, is the warden. Darabont makes all of these men so distinctly evil, that we will not rest until we see them go down. If there’s ever a testament to the power of a villain, The Shawshank Redemption is it.

So this answers some questions, but we’re still dealing with a plot-less movie here. And whenever you’re writing something without a plot, you need to find other ways to drive the audience’s interest. One of the most powerful ways to do this is with a mystery (sound familiar?). If there isn’t a question that the audience wants answered, then what is it they’re looking forward to? The mystery in Shawshank is “Did Andy kill his wife or not?” Now it doesn’t seem like a strong mystery initially. For the first half of the script, it’s only casually explored. But as the script goes on, there are hints that Andy may be innocent, and we find ourselves hoping above everything that it’s true. The power in this mystery comes from the stakes attached to it. If Andy is innocent, he goes free. And since we want nothing more than for Andy to go free, we become obsessed with this mystery.

And finally, the number one reason Shawshank works is because it has a great ending. The ending is the last thing the audience leaves with. That’s why some argue that it’s the most important part of the entire movie. And it’s ironic. Because Shawshank’s biggest weakness, the fact that it doesn’t have an actual plot, the fact that virtually nothing happens for two hours, is actually its biggest strength. The film tricks us into believing that the prison IS the movie so escape never enters our minds. For that reason when it comes, it’s surprising and emotional and exciting and cathartic! There aren’t too many movies out there that make you feel as good at the end as The Shawshank Redemption. The power of the ending indeed!

When you think about it, Shawshank actually proves why you shouldn’t ignore the rules. Doing so made the movie virtually unmarketable. It’s why you, me, and everyone else never saw it in the theater. Let’s face it, it looked boring. Luckily, all of the chances Shawshank took ended up working and the film was one of those rare gems which caught on once it hit video. I’m not sure a movie like Shawshank will ever be made again. That’s sad, but it makes the film all the more special.

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

What I learned: Shawshank taught me that you can lie to your audience. If you can trick them into thinking one way, you can use it to great effect later on. When Andy asks Red for a rock hammer, the first thing on our minds is, “He’s going to use it to escape.” But Red quickly dispels that notion when he sees the rock hammer himself and tells us, in voice over, “Andy was right. I finally got the joke. It would take a man about six hundred years to tunnel under the wall with one of these.” And just like that, we never consider the notion of Andy escaping again. So when the big escape finally comes, we’re shocked. And it’s all because that damn writer lied to us!