The last time Michael Stark (real name) reviewed a script for me was the Freeman/Willis action project, “Red.” Well Michael is back again with a script by screenwriting legend William Goldman. There was a time when Goldman sold every piece of paper that came out of his typewriter. And some of those were grocery lists. As for Michael, he’s no chopped liver either. He sold a couple of specs to Hollywood a decade ago, then up and left. Only recently, after finding Scriptshadow, was he inspired to start writing again. Hey, that’s why I started this thing. To get you guys writing dammit. Now sit down, read this review, then read the script. You can work on your script some other time. :)

Genre: Swashbuckler
Premise: Basically Butch and Sundance as buccaneers.
About: Unproduced William Goldman script from 1978. Sean Connery and Roger Moore once attached. Part one of a three-picture deal with legendary producer, Joseph E Levine. None got made at the time. Goldman, Hollywood’s Go-to-Guy for over three decades, did not get work for five years after that.
Writer: William Goldman

Okay, Shadow Poppets, Professor Stark has set the Hollywood Way Back Machine to 1978, a simpler time when screenwriters were no longer mere schmucks with Underwoods, but yet to command the hyper-inflated, paychecks of the Shane Black Era. It was an age when Scribbler Gods like Robert Towne and William Goldman walked the Earth and our planet was a much better place for it.

William Goldman, for those born after the Bruckheimesozoic Period, was the master craftsmen behind Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men, The Princess Bride, Magic, Marathon Man and Misery. In those frontier days before Syd Field nailed his 95 theses on the studio doors, Goldman’s published screenplays and autobiography, “Adventures In The Screen Trade”, were the only compasses out there for us young scripters. He was, for many of us, our first mentor.

According to legend, The Sea Kings would have teamed up Sean Connery and Roger Moore as the famed pirates, Blackbeard and Bonnet, a rather neat, doubled Bonded hook if they had pulled it off. Unfortunately, this swashbuckler never set sail because the producer, Joseph E. Levine, financed all his movies out of his own pocket. By the time this script was budgeted, movies just became too expensive (damned cattle salaries) and Levine refused to go begging the studios for assistance.

I’ve always wanted to read this script. Thanks to loose lips, Xerox machines and Script Shadow’s vaster than the Vatican’s network of spies, I finally got my hot little mitts on it! For a fan, this was like finding buried treasure.

But, alas, like the Legend of Curly’s Gold, some treasures were meant to stay buried. I ain’t saying The Sea Kings is bad, it’s just not the perfection I expected from one of my idols. It’s kinda like a bootleg album: quite good — great maybe if you are an obsessed collector — but probably left unpolished, unproduced and unreleased for a reason. And, like much of the other works of art in Script Shadow’s storehouse, who knows what draft I’ve even read.

I had pretty sky high expectations for Goldman tackling the sea-faring genre. Wouldn’t you? Hell, the man wrote The Princess Bride, one of the most romantic, quote worthy, fantasy, adventure flicks of all times.

So, why am I disappointed? Well, the first real spot of action scene doesn’t take place till 30 pages in. The first sword fight doesn’t happen till page 52. And, the first wench doesn’t even appear till page 60. Now, pages 100 – 132 are totally golden and magnificent and redeems the earlier flaws, but one wishes Richard Lester had given Goldman some Musketeering notes for the first two acts. There just really needed to be some more swashbuckling!

Okay, remember that this is 1978. The language of both film and screenwriting was different back then. Goldman didn’t employ the shorthand we’ve since grown accustomed to. He uses long, long paragraphs to describe the main characters, their ships and all the geography around them. There are so many historical sources referenced, you wonder if he’ll eventually resort to Ibids and Op. cits at the bottom of the page.

He uses almost a whole page to describe our first encounter with Blackbeard. I know this breaks all the rules your books and teachers and script coverage services have taught you. I don’t care. I totally ate it up! I’m not gonna reprint his intro here, so, please, download the link and at least get to page 4. Yup, it’s way too much information. Today, the young tots who wrote Medieval would merely have said: “He was a bug fucking dude with a big fucking sword and a fucking big beard.” Goldman is a wee bit more classy. Such were the 70s.

The Sea Kings is a tale of two buccaneers. Blackbeard, the notorious menace of the high seas and Major Steed Bonnet, who turned to piracy pretty much out of misplaced romanticism, a near death experience and simple boredom. Give a rich guy a beautiful but mean wife that withholds sex and constantly degrades him, no doubt he’ll buy an eye patch, build a ship and head for the Barbary Coast too. Now, according to legend that was exactly the reason Bonnet turned to the Pirate’s Life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem too believable. Sometimes truth is too far damn whimsical then fiction.

Today, all action movies start with a nice set piece to get the blood pumping and the sphincters kept on the seats. Although we get a mystical money shot of Blackbeard’s empty ship scaring a trading vessel into surrender by his terrible reputation alone, the first action sequence doesn’t come till the second act when the sea sick novice Captain Bonnet actually commits his first act of plundering.

Bonnet’s beginner’s luck is simply amazing as he takes down five ships pretty much in a row. Then, he tries to steal some Pirate’s Booty away from Blackbeard himself. The Beard spares Bonnet’s life for no better reason than pure whimsy. For a pirate that was pretty historically cruel, this doesn’t ring quite right. But, Black, tired and broke, sees a way to turn a profit off his pesky new competitor, thus the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Sea Dog Mentor and Sea Dog Protégé.

They become fast friends like Butch and Sundance or Michael Caine and Sean Connery In The Man Who Would Be King. They get along splendidly. Too splendidly perhaps. I mean, Blackbeard was a total, psychopathic badass. There would have been more tension if we really believed that Black could turn on his new best friend at any moment. Thus, our first missed opportunity at some really high stakes.

Both pirates are just a bit too cute. Cuter than Captain Jack Sparrow. Cuter than Geena Davis in Cut Throat Island. Cuter than Graham Chapman in Yellowbeard. Cuter even than Jean Lafoote’s Cinnamon Crunch. I imagine pirates to be far more treacherous, lecherous and fugly.

Black’s Fence in none other than the Governor of North Carolina and we are given another detailed history lesson about colonial life with again too many Ibids and Op. Cits. Blackbeard may be a ferocious buccaneer, but he’s not the hottest businessman, so Bonnet saves his ass as they auction off their stolen goods and even helps get his buddy laid later that night by posing as a pastor. There is blue skies, clear sailing and zero tension till an aside mention that the colony of Virginia has put a bounty of the Beard’s infamous head. AHHHH, we finally spy in the distance the black flag of conflict!

The boys stay a wee bit too long on dry land and when they finally return to the Atlantic near page 80, they kidnap some rich Virginians and must return to those hostile shores to collect their ransom. Here, we get some much needed swordplay and Blackbeard’s scorpion and Frog betrayal of Bonnet.

It is this betrayal and Bonnet’s subsequent revenge that makes the last 30 pages of this script so action-packed and awesome. If the whole picture had that kinda juice. I would have given Sea Kings an impressive rating. Or, as it was 1978, a few shots of Jacqueline Bisset walking the plank in just a T-shirt might have worked too.

I guess I would have liked a little less high jinks on the high seas and a lot more Captain Blood. Thankfully, Goldman would get the mixture perfect a few years later in The Princess Bride.

How perfect?

“Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles… “ Peter Falk, The Princess Bride

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

So, what did I learn? I love to do research. In the old days, I would camp inside the New York Public Library and order many rare, out of print books that took weeks to arrive. Now, with Wikipedia, I have everything I need in the matter of seconds. Seems kinda unfair, but I can now write period pieces in less than a century.

Research is fun, but don’t knock that inkwell over all your pages. We don’t have to know why pirates swabbed their desk so often or what kind of wood was used for someone’s wooden teeth. Goldman’s factuals would be great in a novel and totally a coup for the set designer, the costume maker and the DP, but it really bogs down the script’s readability.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A family takes over a vineyard, only to find out that it may be haunted.
About: This spec was purchased by Craven/Maddalena Films in 2006. The sale allowed the writer to land the scripting job on the two Boogeyman sequels.
Writer: Brian Sieve

I must admit, setting a ghost story on a vineyard is a great idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horror film set on one before, and yet the large empty space of wine country seems perfect to throw a few ghostly occupants onto. But is that the only unique angle that Ambrose Fountain brings to the wine and cheese table? Or is this just another horror flick with a vendetta-bound dead wet girl?

If I told you what film Ambrose Fountain most brings to mind, I’d basically be giving away the entire movie. So you’ll have to figure it out yourself (it’s not hard). The good news is, the movie in question is over 30 years old, and since they’re remaking horror flicks from 3 years ago these days (In Hollywood, the word “reboot” – even for a film that came out last week – practically guarantees a green light), I’m not going to get too upset that Ambrose is borrowing liberally. In fact, in some ways, this is a nice update to that classic.

Carter Harding is a 38 year old husband and father. He, his wife Kathleen, and their 15 year old daughter, Lisa, have travelled from the bright lights, big city, to live the dream of owning their own vineyard. Well isn’t that sweet. But as we all know, before a vine can grow, it must start in the dirt, and there’s plenty of dirt in this seemingly perfect family. Back in the city, it was Kathleen, owner of her own photography business, who was the big breadwinner of the family. Carter’s purchase of the vineyard may have more to do with stifling his wife’s career and proving himself then it does any romantic view of crushing grapes and hosting wine tastings.

As for the vineyard itself, Carter got it for a steal because the previous occupants all died due to a gas leak. But did he bite off more than he could chew? The vineyard was known as one of the best in the valley, where “I’m trying my darndest” doesn’t cut it. The quality has to live up to the distributor’s reputation. So when the distributor comes along and drops Carter like a cheap Merlot for his bad grapes, Carter finds himself with a lot of wine and no one to sell it to. Since he already put every penny into renovating the estate, he now faces his biggest fear: Maybe he *is* incapable of taking care of his family. Even worse, maybe he’s dragged them into a hole they can’t climb out of.

Faced with failure on a catastrophic scale, Carter comes across some old diaries left by the previous owner, a man named Richard Freemont. Freemont mentions that he started each day by throwing a penny into the vineyard fountain for good luck. He believed that that was the key to his success. On a whim, Carter gives it a shot and the very next day, the previously broken Harvester starts right up. He continues throwing coins in the next day, and the day after that, and each day, the vineyard performs better than the day before.

But feeding the fountain comes with a price apparently. Occasionally the fountain will bubble up blood (totally normal I hear), and of course Carter starts seeing people walking around the vineyard at night. But not just any people. The dead people who lived here before him.

Carter’s obsession with “feeding” the fountain begins to take a toll. His wife thinks it’s strange and orders him to stop. But Carter continues on, and those old family troubles bubble up to the surface, resulting in a series of ongoing arguments, testing the family’s resolve. As if that weren’t bad enough, people from town (like the neighbors and the sheriff) start disappearing after heated discussions with Carter. Carter’s definitely going a little nutty. But we know he wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Or do we?

Your enjoyment of Ambrose Fountain depends on one thing: Buying into the idea that a fountain can haunt an estate. I’ll admit I had a hard time accepting this at first. But once I did, I found Ambrose to be pretty enjoyable. The whole diary thing was definitely cliché, but once that storyline’s established, it becomes one of the best plotlines in the script. It’s fun trying to figure out if Carter is responsible for the disappearances of these other people or if it’s the ghosts on the estate that are taking them out.

One thing I liked about Ambrose that helps it stand apart from typical horror fair, is the treatment of the family, particularly Carter’s relationship with his wife. The inherent conflict there, the struggle for a man to live up to *being* a man, and how he would destroy his own wife’s career to achieve that goal, as well as his response when things start to fall apart, make for some great drama. This wasn’t just about a family running into some ghosts. It was about a family that is forced to deal with their issues because of the arrival of ghosts. That integrated approach to the story gave Ambrose Fountain depth where many horror films have little.

What didn’t work was the daughter character. She’s disgruntled about being torn away from her city friends, but that’s about as deep as her character goes. When she comes back late to play a key role, I’d kinda forgotten about her, so I felt a little cheated. The script is not immune from a few clichés along the way either. I definitely rolled my eyes when I saw the diaries (in Joss Whedon’s “Cabin In The Woods,” where they make fun of all the horror clichés, one of the planted “cliché” props from the control room is a diary) but Sieve found a way to make it work.

Ambrose Fountain is like a really great grocery store wine. It’s tasty, but it lacks the extra punch of something you’d find at an expensive restaurant.

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

What I learned: At times, Ambrose Fountain pushes the boundaries of exposition. On page 17, Sieve really takes liberties in telling you everything about who the family was, who they are, and who they want to be. It’s extensive enough to bring attention to itself. Once the reader starts thinking, “Man, this is a lot of exposition,” you’ve taken them out of the story. And you never ever want to take the reader out of the story, unless your name is Robotard 8000. Some writers just like to get all of their exposition out in one scene so they don’t have to worry about it anymore. And that seems to be Sieve’s approach here (except there’s still even more exposition later). But I think that’s a lazy approach. You should look to spread your exposition out naturally, hide it inside a number of scenes. Know that the more you try to pack into one area, the more likely we are to notice.

I’d like to welcome everyone to the First Annual Scriptshadow Logline/Screenplay Contest. I know you guys are eager to get going so let me explain how this is going to work. Starting today, you have two weeks (deadline: November 9th 11:59pm Pacific Time) to send your logline to this e-mail address: CarsonReeves3@gmail.com. On Monday, November 16, I will publish the Top 100 loglines, along with the writers’ names, on the site.

These 100 contestants will be notified and have two weeks to send me either a one-page synopsis of their screenplay or the first ten pages. On December 21st, I will announce the top 25 from that list. These 25 will then have three weeks to send me their full script. On February 8, 2010, I will announce the winner, as well as the first and second runner-up.

FIRST PLACE – A review on Scriptshadow, which will likely garner (but not guarantee) requests from agents, managers, and producers.

SECOND AND THIRD PLACE – Second and third place finishers will have their loglines posted on the site, as well as a contact e-mail, in addition to receiving coverage from me.

RULES
1) Anybody can enter.
2) The contest is free.
3) Limit 1 logline per contestant
4) Loglines are limited to 50 words or less.
5) Loglines WILL be posted on the site.
6) Synopses WILL NOT be posted on the site.
7) The winning script will not be posted unless the writer would like to do so.
8) Anybody who uses multiple e-mail addresses to submit extra loglines will be disqualified. Remember, this contest costs nothing so please be respectful of the rules.

HOW TO SUBMIT
1) Send your loglines to CarsonReeves3@gmail.com.
2) Submissions should contain your NAME, the TITLE, the GENRE, and the LOGLINE.
3) You will receive confirmation within 3 days. If you don’t receive
confirmation, feel free to check back in with me.

So how do you write a good logline? Well, there’s a great website dedicated to just that. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, this is a great place to start. As per the site, here are a couple of examples for reference…

JAWS
After a series of grisly shark attacks, a sheriff struggles to protect his small beach community against the bloodthirsty monster, in spite of the greedy chamber of commerce.

THE FUGITIVE
A doctor – falsely accused of murdering his wife – struggles on the lam as he desperately searches for the killer with a relentless federal agent hot on his trail.

THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
After a luxury liner is capsized by a tidal wave, a radical priest struggles to lead a group of survivors to escape through the bow before the ship sinks.

I know I originally discussed giving multiple loglines to each contestant, but I’d like to keep this first contest simple and fast. For that reason, you’re strongly advised to only send in a logline for a screenplay you’ve finished. You don’t have that three months, as initially reported, to write the script should you make it into the next round. As for what kind of loglines will do well, there are two: Flat outright good loglines, and loglines that appeal to my sensibilities (see my Top 25 if you’re curious about what those might be). Finally, if the above timeline is confusing, don’t sweat it. Just get your loglines in before November 9th and if you make it to the next round, detailed instructions about subsequent rounds will be sent to you. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

Many of you know sweet, caring, cute and insightful Kristy over at MSP. Although she’s in the thick of a college semester, she’s found enough time to give a female perspective on a lot of the latest scripts in town. Also, she has a library of scripts on her blog where you just may be able to find some of the script links I’m not able to post. Kristy and I agreed she should do a guest review and it was up to me to decide what script to give her. I thought long and hard and finally settled on M. Night’s first sale script, “Labor Of Love.” Why? Well because what film geek doesn’t like discussing M. Night? It’s like Yankee fans reading an article about A-Rod. Everybody’s got an opinion.

I’m one of those people who thinks that each of Night’s films has been worse than the previous. The Sixth Sense, in my eyes, is pretty much the bar for spec scripts. It would fall into the genius category without question. Unbreakable didn’t cater to my sensibilities. Signs showed his first huge miscalculation on an ending. The Village insulted my intelligence. Lady In The Water felt like I’d been transported to an apocalyptic Candyland after being injected with a week’s supply of LSD. And then of course there was The Happening. Maybe my favorite theater moment this decade was when Marky Mark and his group tried to outrun the wind. My entire theater couldn’t stop laughing. Then a dozen people got up and left, then someone in the back yelled out, “You can’t outrun no wind!” and then a few more people left, one of them declaring, “This is bulllll-shit.” During the rest of the movie, an old lady sitting next to me had a running commentary with her friend about how she didn’t understand what was going on. It was way more entertaining than if I had just seen the movie.

But see here’s the weird thing. I went to see *all* of these movies. And I will go to see the next M. Night movie. And the next one after that. Despite everything, in some weird way, I still care about what M. Night makes. So he’s gotta be doing something right, right? Whatever the case, I’d always heard about this script but never knew anything about it. 750k is quite a sale, even back at that time, so the script had to be special, right? Right Kristy?

Genre: Drama
Premise: After his wife’s death, a man sets out on a 3,200 mile journey across country on foot to show his love for her.
About: This was M. Night Shyamalan’s third script, and the first he sold to Fox back in 1993, for 750k. The project failed to get off the ground reportedly because they were unwilling to put M. Night in the director’s chair (I have other theories why it didn’t get made). The script sale led to work on the film “Stuart Little,” which was then followed by his masterpiece, “The Sixth Sense.”
Writer: M. Night Shyamalan
Details: 119 pages

So I told Carson I wanted to do a blog entry for Script Shadow…he was letting everybody else do one and we go way back so it was only fair that I get a shot. My demands were met with a script by a writer who I wouldn’t care a thing about if he didn’t come up with The Sixth Sense and a script written and sold when I was the ripe age of 5. The night before, I was actually discussing to a friend how much we really didn’t care for M Night. That’s karma I guess. To my surprise this has no elements that I’ve seen from MNS in the past. No dead people, no people lying down in front of lawn mowers for no reason, no mermaids, no contained villages. It was just a regular character driven drama.

Labor of Love is about Maurice Parker and his wife Ellen. The script opens up in a way we’ve seen many times before. It uses a shocking flash-forward scene and then skips back so that we have to read and find out how we ended up there. We fade in on Ellen’s fatal car wreck, but we skip back a few weeks earlier to her and Maurice’s seventeen year marriage. Maurice is very much a man settled into his marriage, it’s the same routine day in and day out. Ellen wakes up, walks ¼ one way to get a loaf of raisin bread for Maurice every morning while Maurice fails to tell Ellen how much she means to him. Ellen is basically STARVING for some affection. Sure Maurice says he loves her, but as a female, I know words can only go so far before we start doubting them. Is it too much to ask for someone to show their love every now and then? Apparently it was for Maurice. He got by on the words “I love you” for seventeen odd years to the point where it was just background noise. She wanted flowers, chocolates, anything tangible to represent his love. She asked him once if he would walk across the country for her and Maurice of course says, sure. But how do we know he would? We wouldn’t unless he physically did it.

Maurice decides to have a celebration one night, he just bought a bigger space to move his classic book store into. Just friends, family, Ellen, for a nice relaxed evening. That’s until he gets the news that Ellen was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver, which we already knew. Maurice’s world instantly falls apart. This story very much reminded me of the Garth Brooks song, If Tomorrow Never Comes. The lyrics go a little something like:

If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That shes my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face the world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes

Well Ellen won’t ever know how much Maurice loved her. He didn’t do his best everyday to show her. This eats at Maurice from the inside out. She begged for his love and he couldn’t give her an ounce of tangible evidence…until now. Here is a scene between him and an old lady in the park that pretty much confirms his future decision:

MAURICE
Where did he go?

OLD WOMAN
He’s getting my sweater from the car. I said there was a breeze.
(shaking her head)
I told him not to go.

Beat.

MAURICE
May I ask you a question that might sound strange?

OLD WOMAN
Yes.

Beat.

MAURICE
How do you know he loves you?

The old woman looks at him oddly.

MAURICE
I mean besides… time — how did you know ten years ago — twenty years ago?

She thinks hard… tough question. No answer for a moment

then –

The old woman sees something out of the corner of her eye — her husband is walking up the path with her white lace sweater over his arm…

She smiles as the answer comes to her.

OLD WOMAN
Because he shows me… he’s not much for words, but he shows me.

It’s like that scene in The Break Up where Jennifer Aniston tells Vince Vaughn she wants him to want to do the dishes. In other words we shouldn’t have to beg for love, or ask you to do the dishes, you should want to do them because you know it will make us happy. I’m not being gender specific when I say you…but yeah men…you J.

So after 22 pages of me not sure where this story was going, Maurice decides he’s going to walk across the country to show Ellen how much he loved and would do anything for her (umm now that she is no longer in existence). This journey starts in Philadelphia and will end in Pacifica, California, that’s over 3000 miles. It doesn’t say at the beginning why Pacifica, CA, but we find out at the very end through a flashback that Ellen once told Maurice that Pacifica was her “heaven.”

Maurice closes up shop. He gets his stuff together and just leaves, heads out west. He’s in his late forties, not technically physically fit, so you can imagine how this is going to go. So it’s a basic struggle itself just to make the trek across the country. Maurice does make some encounters along the way. Nothing strong enough, not for me anyways. He walks by this liquor store and sees these drunks getting into their trucks to drive. Maurice politely asks them not to drive drunk. This pisses the guys off. Not a page later guess who’s coming up behind him? They beat the pulp out of Maurice but luckily a police “happens” to be nearby and stop them. He runs Maurice’s name to find out his niece is looking for him. She is a psychologist and thinks Maurice is a danger to himself and needs to be in better condition before attempting this crazy adventure. She uses her frequent flyer miles to drive all the way to Indiana and pick him up. Well she stops at a gas station, when she gets back in her car she tries talking to Maurice but he’s silent. She figures he’s sleeping (long journey and all). But when she gets back to PA, she realizes she’s been duped. There’s a homeless man in her backseat in place of Maurice.

This journey is mostly about him walking. At one point Maurice does save a woman and her daughter after a car wreck in a snowstorm. This makes him feel a little better about Ellen’s wreck, as he saved someone. It’s not long before words gets out all over the country. Maurice’s friend used to be a newspaper writer and starts writing little columns about Maurice’s story. Maurice isn’t even aware how big a celebrity he’s becoming. In the final stretch he falls off a ledge in Nevada, breaks his ribs, has a minor stroke, ruptures his spleen, and has some bleeding of the brain. He is hospitalized but glad to find out he is still in California. Doctors tell him that if he doesn’t have surgery he will die. Well of course Maurice is determined to finish the last 60 miles. He HAS to feel that California water on his skin or nothing that he did before matters. He sneaks out of the hospital and keeps on truckin’. He’s on his deathbed as he walks. His side is bleeding through his shirt, he can barely walk. It’s a bit sad and strung out. And the ending? Well…let’s just say if it didn’t end this way I’d be mad because the ending was the only real thing in my mind that had an emotional impact. And I don’t mean the fact of whether he makes it or not. I guess you’ll have to read to find out how it ends.

So like I said I got almost 20 pages in and was wondering where in the heck this was going. I thought Ellen’s death would be something that was strung out the entire story and we would find out why at the end, much like Famous Last Words did. By the way, in my mind it is kind of a short cut, some say cheat, by putting a shocking scene in the first few pages to grab the reader then skip back and reveal the events leading up to it. This hooks the reader in for a bit so they keep reading to find out. The problem is with L.O.L , after that wreck scene it takes 15-20 pages to materialize into the rest of the story. My ADD mind starts to wander by then.

So I was for sure getting a MNS script it would be along the lines of what he does now…but a drama? Where did you pull this one out of MNS? In reports it said this didn’t get made because MNS wanted to direct but they wouldn’t let him. I suspect it didn’t get made because the story is boring and uneventful. That’ just my honest opinion. No offense but I don’t want to watch a man walk across the country and every 15 pages something “comes up” putting doubt in our minds that he will make it. The events used were weak and didn’t have the emotional impact that I think MNS was going for. I knew they’d pass the instant they came up. I’m not sure what others would say about this script…maybe the fact that it is 16 plus years old says something. Maybe this was original back then. Now we got people who walk across country, ride their lawnmowers, horses, etc. So maybe that has something to do with the story.

I had a hard time buying Maurice’s journey. Sure his wife’s death was sad, death always is, but I couldn’t latch on to him. I was never in it when she was alive. I didn’t feel any connection with either character or their relationship. The scenes with them together, including the flashbacks, were very OTN and expositional. It’s like they were saying what they needed to say to go along with the story. Maybe it’s me but I don’t know anyone who talks like that. It was almost as if I didn’t care he was walking across country. In my mind, the way their relationship was presented it was more of a, well you had your chance to show her but you didn’t. I know that sounds bad but that’s how I felt. It was hard to buy Maurice’s sudden revelation and arc.

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

What I Learned: If you are going to do a character driven story then make sure we are on board with the actual character. If we have to sit through their journey for an hour and a half, make sure we care enough to want to listen to them and not because we are forced to. If we don’t feel their needs, wants, emotions then you basically have nothing for us.

Genre: Action/WarPremise: (from IMDB) America relies on 1940’s technology to defend itself against an invasion after an electromagnetic pulse leaves the country vulnerable for an attack.
About: This spec script was sold a few years ago. There is some information on IMDB like the fact that Ericson Core (The Prodigy) is the director and Chris Moore the producer, but I’m not sure how recent or accurate the information is. Core is also listed as director on the XXX threequel, “The Return Of Xander Cage,” though that may be a tough movie to direct, since as of today, Xander Cage has announced he’s not returning.
Writer: Sean Bailey, Revisions by Andrew W. Marlowe

I have to admit, I love movie ideas like this. I like movies with worldwide consequences. Not necessarily disaster movies, but any movie where the world or a country is threatened by some force that’s greater than anything they’ve dealt with before. My interest always peaks when the projects take preview form because these movies were born for the trailer medium. When Trailer-Voice Guy goes home to practice at night, these are the movies he practices to. Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day. Even the trailer for 2012 leaves me smiling. Destruction on a mass scale can be a beautiful thing on a 900 square foot screen.

Here’s the problem though…

These movies never turn out any good. They can’t possibly live up to their galaxy-sized expectations gleaned from their eye-popping trailers. And I think I know why. It is my contention that the wide-scale destruction/action movie is the hardest genre to write. You must tell a story that focuses on the effects of millions (sometimes billions of people) while at the same time focuing on a core group of characters in a localized place. And you must do so in two hours. If our characters are in New York City but you want to show the Golden Gate Bridge getting flattened, someone has to get a phone call and go, “My mom’s in San Francisco. She says the Golden Gate Bridge is about to buy it!” Cut to the Golden Gate Bridge buying it. Cut back to our characters in New York and continue our story. There’s no emotional connection to the event because it doesn’t have any immediate effect on our characters. You can cut to Tibet or Brazil or Niagra Falls or the Hoover Dam and show them all blowing up in unique wonderful ways, but since our characters can’t possibly be in all these places at once, the shots become exploitation. Destruction porn. Unconnected sequences ideal for a TV spot but unimportant to our main character’s journey.

That’s one problem but there are many. The dialogue is another issue. Most of the time the movies are supposed to be “realistic,” requiring you to write your characters in that vein, yet because these films are “event movies,” the characters must add a “grandiosity” to their words. Everybody’s forced to talk in overly dramatic tones that nobody on earth talks like. This creates a weird overly serious melodramatic fog that just hangs over every scene, making it impossible to buy that you’re watching real life.

For these reasons, we’ve never really had a perfect destruction movie. They’re almost all disappointments. Which is why I was both excited and cautious when I heard about Liberty. First of all, why more people don’t write movies about a modern day America getting attacked is beyond me. That idea alone is cool enough to get me in the theater. But the cherry that pushes this sundae over the top is its twist: What if the biggest army in the world was forced to defend itself with 1940s weaponry? The irony in that premise is just too juicy not to love. So is this just like every other “destruction” film that doesn’t live up to its potential? Or does Liberty discover the secret ingredient to success?

General Ivan Galkin has just pulled a coup on the Russian government and declared martial law. Ivan misses all those separated Soviet states that left his great country and would like for nothing more than to bring them back together. In a time where it’s difficult to come up with an enemy for the United States, this take feels oddly believable. We saw the Soviet Union fall apart in a day. Why couldn’t it come back together in that time?

Back in the U.S., Maggie Heflin, the Secretary Of The Interior (yeah, I don’t know what that means either) is coaching her little girl’s soccer game and having quite a hard time leading the team. A few minutes later, a couple of serious looking men show up and tell her she’s needed immediately. She jumps in a car and is ushered to the White House, where she’s placed in a room with all the other members of the cabinet. She asks around, speculating on what this means. Well, this tends to happen under only one condition – the president (who was visiting Russia) has been assassinated.

Uh oh.

If that weren’t bad enough, satellite radar has detected a large mass of ships blazing through the Pacific Ocean towards Santa Monica. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this fleet is headed up by General Galkin. Galkin gives his Yankee comrades a call and lets them know that he’s not coming to catch the latest performance of Wicked. The U.S. laughs off the attack because, well, even a huge Russian fleet is no match for the United States’ army. They probably shouldn’t have laughed it off. Five seconds later, using advanced electro-magnetic pulse technology, the Russians shut down every single electric and computerized piece of equipment in the country. The United States has just been transported back to the 1940s.

In one of the better twists in the story, the president, vice-president, and numerous top officials have been assassinated by the Russian government. As the White House scrambles through the books to figure out who is supposed to lead them, it turns out that Maggie Heflin, the little woman who couldn’t lead her daughter’s soccer team to victory…is next in line to become the leader of the United States.

The fun in the script comes from both us and the characters trying to figure out how to defend a country when all the technologies we’ve become so dependent on are stripped away. “I want an analysis of our options when the country’s electrical grid goes down.” “I can’t get it,” the aide says, “All that info is on my laptop.” If you don’t have computers, if you don’t have e-mail and internet, if you don’t have TV or cell phones or transportation…how do you accomplish *anything*?? To give you an idea of just how dire and desperate their situation is, if this really happened, there would be no Scriptshadow updates! There would be no Scriptshadow website!! Yes, I know.

Eventually Maggie figures out that the only way they can defend themselves is by scrounging up all the pre-computerized military equipment in the U.S., which basically amounts to cars, planes and tanks used back in World War 2, and use that to defend the west coast. A radio call is sent out to any veterans who fought during the 2nd war who know how to operate this ancient machinery. All these young Air Force hotshots have to learn how to fly planes that actually require you to *fly them* (as opposed to do all the work for you).

Overall, the script is fun, but it does run into those requisite cheesy problems these types of movies have trouble avoiding. For instance, the old highly decorated codger comes back to fight one more battle. The writers try a little too hard to make you love the guy and therefore his journey doesn’t ring true. Cliché isn’t avoided either. There’s the Top Gun ace who’s a cross between Tom Cruise and Die Hard Bruce Willis. His every utterance screams, “I’m in an action movie and I’m badass.” I would’ve liked to have seen a more original human side to both these characters, but they do their job.

The final battle is intricate and elaborate enough that no amount of scriptwriting can do it justice. A director with a strong vision has the tools here to create one of the most action-packed drool-inducing battles of all time. 1940s American army vs. the state of the art Soviet army – how cool would that be? Even though it didn’t blow me away on the page, I fully recognize that seeing it would be a different experience.

A couple of cliché main characters keep this from being exceptional. I thought the writers could’ve taken more chances as well, dived into some areas we haven’t seen in this kind of movie before. They’re almost too cozy, resting on an idea that they know is going to smooth over a lot of the problems. But for the most part, I dug what I saw. This script isn’t ready for its close-up just yet, but it’s on its way.

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

What I learned: It’s really hard to make elaborate action/car chase scenes pop off the page. It’s not that it can’t be done, but most filmmakers recognize that the director is going to choreograph these scenes anyway, and therefore speed-read through them. I know some professional writers are so sure of this, they merely write: “Big action/chase scene here” instead of writing everything out. Not that you should take that approach on a spec script. My advice to you on writing good action scenes actually has very little to do with the action at all. Make us obsessed with your character. Make us care about him/her more than we care about members of our own family. That way, even if you place your character in a straightforward no-frills sidewalk chase, we’ll be gripping our seat hoping he makes it out alive.