CONGRATULATIONS if you are one of the 42 total writers to make it to the semi-finals of The Last Great Screenplay Contest! (Note: I miscounted the other day when I said there were 53 total – sorry!) For those who weren’t around when I started this contest back in 1897, The Last Great Screenplay Contest works like this: People sent me their script. I promised to read the first 10 pages. If I loved the first ten pages, the script advanced into my “YES” pile. If I really liked the first ten pages, the script advanced into my “HIGH MAYBE” pile. If I sort of liked the pages, it went into my “LOW MAYBE” pile, and if I didn’t connect with the pages, it went into my “NO” pile.
The semi-finalists – all of which will be listed today – are scripts that finished either in my “YES” pile or my “HIGH MAYBE” pile. What this means is that I will now read at least the first 60 pages of the HIGH MAYBES and the entire script for the YES’S. The plan is to announce the finalists in the first week of January and then, a few days later, the winner. The goal is to get the winner a manager and agent and I will also produce the project, for which I plan to keep the Scriptshadow community updated on, while we do everything in our power to get the film made.
Okay, now on to a couple of things I anticipate will be brought up in the comments. Yo Carson, where are all the female writers????? Part of the problem is that for every 12 men who entered, only one woman entered. I’ve been trying to figure out why that is and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something about my content, writing style, and/or types of scripts that I cover that don’t appeal to a lot of female writers. So I just don’t have as many female readers.
I still think, even with those numbers, that there should’ve been more female semi-finalists. But I can promise you that, once I started reading those pages, all I cared about was, is it good or not? That’s it. If it was good, I advanced it, if it wasn’t, I didn’t. I don’t think it would’ve benefited anybody had I graded on a curve. So as frustrating as the low female semi-finalist count is, I can’t do anything about it. Tell your female friends to start reading Scriptshadow!
On to loglines. I know – I JUST KNOW – that the “my logline is better than these loglines” brigade and the “Really?? This is the best you could do??” Club will be out in full force. So let me remind you, the first round of my contest was about one thing – the first ten pages. It didn’t matter if I loved the logline or hated it. All that mattered was if the first ten pages were good or not. If they were good, I advanced them. If not, I didn’t. So don’t get too caught up in logline drama.
Speaking of loglines, I came up with an idea over the weekend. I have almost 100 scripts that made the “LOW MAYBE” pile. I still plan to read at least 10 more pages of each of those in the hopes that the scripts get better. But I also thought it would be fun to take the 20 most promising of the LOW MAYBES and spend the next four weekends doing four Amateur Offerings with those scripts. Then, if one or two are really good, they would advance to the finals. I don’t 100% know if I can do this yet because not everyone likes their script posted online. So I’ll have to send some e-mails ahead of time and make sure everyone’s game.
Finally, if your script didn’t advance, please don’t get down on yourself or do anything drastic like quit screenwriting (I’ve gotten a few of those e-mails from people who didn’t advance in the past). A big part of finding success in screenwriting is finding the people who “get you.” Finding the people who like the genres you write in and the unique voice you bring to the page. There are so many people who work in this town that you have to get your scripts out to everybody in order to find those connections. Sure, drink some whisky. Feel sorry for yourself for a few days. But then get back to writing. I have absolutely NO DOUBT that some of the people who didn’t advance in The Last Great Screenplay Contest will have long fruitful careers as screenwriters. Hell, two Nicholl winners didn’t advance and a dozen plus writers who have produced credits didn’t either. So don’t give up. Definitely not on account of one guy’s opinion.
Thanks to everyone who entered. And congratulations to the semi-finalists!
EDIT: Since I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about this, everyone who made the semis can send me an UPDATED DRAFT if they want to. You must to do so by Friday!
FIRST, OUR HIGH MAYBES!
Title: White Lobster
Genre: Adventure romance
Logline: When a timid young woman winds up marooned on a deserted island; she’s forced to do battle with a fellow male castaway over a million dollars’ worth of cocaine found buried in the sand.
Writer: Stephanie Jones.
(Note: Long time Scriptshadow reader’s perseverance pays off!)
Title: Crescent City
Genre: Action-Horror
Logline: A woman with the ability to control ghosts is forced to protect a witness being hunted by supernatural assassins.
Writer: William McArdle and Andy Marx
Title: Severed
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: After receiving an item belonging to his mother who vanished 13 years prior, teenager Andrew Thompson returns to his hometown to finally uncover the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
Writer: Ryan Bliss
Title: The Bear
Genre: Magical Realist/Supernatural Drama
Logline: A young woman who has recently inherited her father’s ranch in northern New Mexico begins to suffer mysterious misfortunes after saving a bear from a trap.
Writer: Sarita Shera
Title: The Radix Unknown
Genre: Science-Fiction
Logline: Finding themselves prisoners in a government bunker during a global pandemic, a child prodigy and her estranged father must unite to not only save one another, but the future of mankind itself.
Writer: Alex Ross
(Note: A previous script of Alex’s, Hexen, won Amateur Friday years ago)
Title: Blind Trust
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Man orders hit on himself. Changes mind.
Writer: Michael Burke
(Note: Yes, I am well aware this is a bad logline. But what can I say? The pages were good!)
Title: DAYLIGHT
Genre: Horror/Contained Thriller
Logline: An Ivy League graduate who authored and profited from a popular blog on graduating college debt-free must fight for her life when she’s trapped in a hotel by a menacing woman and her cult-like following. They have one simple demand: the grad must reveal to the world that she paid for her education by moonlighting as a high-end escort or die before daylight.
Writer: Mike Morra
Title: The Last One Alive
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Logline: A bloodied, hysterical teenager emerges from the woods claiming that a masked man murdered her friends at a remote cabin. But as the local Sheriff starts investigating the mass killings, he begins to suspect the teenage survivor may not be telling the truth.
Writer: Joseph Davidson
Title: KINETIC
Genre: Action, Thriller
Logline: Following a harrowing phone call while out on the road, a long haul trucker with a tormented past must deliver a tank of liquid crystal meth before sundown in order to save his pregnant wife.
Writer: Chris Dennis.
Title: Gladiator Warrior Battle-Dome 3000!
Genre: Sci-fi Horror/Thriller
Logline: After a botched robbery leads to certain death, five dysfunctional criminals are given a second chance when they are transported into the future to become contestants on a game-show where they must battle against teams from different historical eras in a futuristic gladiatorial arena to win a second chance.
Writer: Paul Clarke
(Note: Previously won his genre category in the Page Screenwriting Competition)
Title: Roxbury Manor
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline: After her husband passes away, a stubborn elderly woman refuses to move from their rural farm. But when a group of thieves target her, she uses her intimate knowledge of the giant secluded manor and all its secret passages, along with a collection of ancient weaponry, to fend them off and prove her independence.
Writer: Paul Clarke.
Title: No Setting Sun
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: A hypnosis expert infiltrates a religious cult in an attempt to deprogram a young woman from the inside, but he quickly loses control as he and the formidable cult leader, who seems to have supernatural powers, fight for power.
Writer: Chris Rodgers
(Note: Chris Rodgers is one of three writers with two scripts in the semi-finals. Can you find the others?)
Title: Where Neon Goes to Die
Genre: One Hour Crime Drama
Logline: After losing her job, a single mother gets in over her head when she agrees to become the getaway driver for a vicious crime syndicate.
Writer: Keem Tory.
Title: Honey Mustard
Genre: Horror
Logline: After being stiffed, an unhinged waitress, hellbent on revenge, torments the customer who didn’t tip her and his surprisingly resourceful family. “Don’t Breathe” meets “Joker”.
Writer: Michael J. Kospiah
(Note: Writer of Austin Film Festival award-winning indie thriller, “The Suicide Theory,” on Amazon Prime, 79% Rotten Tomatoes Score)
Title: NANOPOCALYPSE
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline; A young couple with one hell of a pest problem: their new home is the battleground between two armies of evolved nanotechnology.
Writer: James Hutchinson.
(Note: This is up there as one of my favorite concepts entered)
Title: The Brink
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Thriller
Logline: A dying man takes his teenage son across country to avenge the murder of his wife on the brink of a societal collapse.
Writer: Henry Sullen.
Title: Mother Redeemer
Genre: Psychological Horror / Thriller
Logline: When Allie – a devout member of the Children of Ra – receives a sign from their God that she will soon be the mother of Earth’s messiah, she must find a way to protect herself and her divine child from the cult’s corrupt leader, who intends to use the newborn for his own malicious purposes.
Writer: Brian Accardo
Title: TIGHTER
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Logline: When a Japanese rope bondage workshop is taken hostage by masked intruders, a couple must find a way to escape their captors while tied together at the wrists.
Writer: Arun Croll.
Title: Lights on the way to Eastpoint
Genre: Sci-fi Horror
Logline: A headstrong tourist struggles to get his terminally ill father back home during an eerie alien encounter in Uruguay.
Writer: Federico Fracchia.
Title: Almost Airtight
Genre: Horror
Logline: When an airborne chemical attack causes widespread madness, a woman drives cross-country in an airtight van to rescue her son after his father becomes violently insane.
Writer: Jeff Debing
Title: Better
Genre: Psychological Thriller/Horror
Logline: After recently moving to a new home in the suburbs, a married couple discover a secret room above their garage, that becomes an obsessive project for the wife, driving a rift between the couple, as the husband grows more paranoid about the community they’ve moved into.
Writer: Rosario Pellerito.
Title: Tigers
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Two estranged sisters, trying to free tigers from captivity, instead get trapped aboard the ship of a deadly crew of animal smugglers… along with three man-eating tigers on the loose.
Writer: Tim Keen
Title: The Misery Index
Genre: Dramedy/Musical
Logline: A terminally ill, improvident father spends the last day of his life touring NYC with his estranged daughter, and has only a few hours to right a lifetime of wrongs…and make 1.2 million dollars.
Writer: David Burton
(Note: Made the top 50 of the Nicholl last year. Evolves into a musical: think Little Miss Sunshine meets La La Land)
Title: A Sacrifice For a Pregnancy
Genre: Folk Horror
Logline: After suffering from a miscarriage, an engaged couple putting off the marriage for 4 years travel to a rehab centre to help them recover – only for it to be controlled by the Irish Púca; bent on driving the couple apart and extracting the foetus.
Writer: Robert O’Sullivan.
Title: HOLLY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When a traumatized woman thinks she’s killed her abusive husband, she goes on the run with the help of a compassionate pregnant woman, while staying one step ahead of her violent husband and a relentless female Texas Ranger.
Writer: Jeff Williams
(Note: His script Pure won a Nicholl Fellowship and the Austin Film Festival in the same year)
Title: Killing Squirrel Creek
Genre: Comedy/Mystery
Logline: America’s favorite mystery author returns home for his father’s funeral and reluctantly teams up with his unhinged sister who believes their father was murdered.
Writer: Erik Howard.
Title: BORDERLINE
Genre: Drama / Survival Thriller
Logline: When she’s enslaved by a dirty border patrol agent, a provincial Guatemalan farmer’s wife must use her newfound English skills and survival wits to plot an escape and secure asylum in the U.S.
Writer: Kenyetta Raelyn.
Title: Artificial
Genre: Sci-Fi/Contained Thriller
Logline: An amnesia-ridden victim of a pandemic virus wakes up in a mysterious house with a woman who’s nursed him back to health. As the two grow close, he begins to suspect she isn’t telling him the whole truth, and must do everything he can to get out alive.
Writer: Jonathan Dillon
Title: Between The Raindrops
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Logline: Struggling with a tough decision, a teenage boy accidentally stops time and can’t figure out how to restart it. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND meets ABOUT TIME
Writer: Jori Richman.
(Note: Writer is repped at Verve)
Title: Black Friday
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: A troubled father and his teenaged daughter witness a murder at the local mall on the eve of Black Friday. Together they must set their differences aside to avoid the killers, survive the night and stop a terrorist attack on the biggest shopping day of the year.
Writer: Jonathan Dillon.
Title: Sepulveda Pass
Genre: Action Thriller
Logline: When an armored car transporting a captured drug lord is ambushed on the Sepulveda Pass, an off-duty CHP officer driving her junkie son to rehab must defend the gridlocked freeway against a ruthless cartel hit-squad.
Writer: George H. Stroud.
(Note: This might be my favorite title of the bunch)
Title: The Dead Hours
Genre: Anthology Horror
Logline: After being tasked with watching the police station overnight during a storm, two police offers are given a mysterious cache of interview tapes, which they decide to listen to. Each tape interview describes a tale of terror, and the two officers find how the tapes they are listening to are related to them personally.
Writer: Luke Hutchinson.
Title: Cul-De-Sac
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: The newly crowned Chair of a ritzy neighbourhood’s Strata Council will stop at nothing to eliminate a defiant neighbour who threatens the street’s chances at maintaining its dynastic hold on a home & garden magazine’s annual award for the city’s ‘best block’.
Writer: Paul Vaughan.
Title: Family Forever
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Logline: Following a Yoruba Myth where the dead return to unsuspecting loved ones to lure them to the afterlife, a family of six must figure out whom amongst them is dead, before they all meet their end.
Writer: Gbolahan Akitunde
(Note: Have read one of Gbolahan’s other scripts – House Boy – which was quite good! Nigerian writer.)
Title: Demonology
Genre: Horror/Action
Logline: A former criminal turned priest relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has gone missing in the seedy and supernatural underbelly of Los Angeles.
Writer: Adam Simmons.
(Note: Winner of the ‘First 10 Pages’ contest last year with ‘The Woman Who Disturbed the Rat’.)
Title: And the Light Shines In
Genre: Contained Drama/Thriller
Logline: The video diaries of a woman facing terminal cancer who suddenly becomes a national phenomenon when the fame of her live-stream unexpectedly skyrockets.
Writer: Maya Suzuki.
Title: Shelby
Genre: Comedy/Dark Comedy
Logline: A small town Sheriff unwittingly becomes an internet meme after killing a childhood acquaintance in the line of duty.
Writer: Derek Williams
AND NOW, OUR FIVE YES’S! (THESE ARE ‘FIRST TEN PAGES’ ENTRIES THAT WOWED ME)
Title: Osculum Infame
Genre: Contained Survival Thriller
Logline: Logline: A young woman is about to be hanged in the middle of nowhere. She’s already tiptoeing with the rope tightened around her neck, when her executioner dies unexpectedly. So now she’s literally hanging on for dear life. ‘Buried’ meets ‘The Revenant’.
Writer: Bernhard Francis Brookman
(Note: Writer is from Germany)
Title: MASKED
Genre: Horror
Logline: A suicidal woman who literally can’t kill herself finds a reason to live after befriending an unusual teenage boy.
Writer: Ryan Kirkpatrick
(Note: Ryan won my very first Scriptshadow Screenplay Contest with “OH NEVER, SPECTRE LEAF!”, and now here he is primed to possibly do it again in the final one!).
Title: Wish List
Genre: Thriller/Action
Logline: An Amazon delivery man is ambushed in Mexico by a group of gangsters who mistake him for a drug mule, and must survive using only the packages inside his van.
Writer: Joseph Fattal.
(Note: Is this the most clever logline in the semi-finals?)
Title: SB-3
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: When an earthquake and tsunami trap them in a sub-basement of their research facility, a trio of workers must escape through the labyrinth of air vents while being hunted by genetically-altered predators.
Writer: Sam Kerr
(Note: Won last year’s Halloween Showdown with entry, “Genesis”)
Title: That Wind Come Down
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After taking the fall for a horrific crime and spending twenty five years in prison, a neurologically disabled ex-con must confront his troubled past as he desperately tries to find a kidnapped young woman whose disappearance may be connected to his past transgressions.
Writer: Chris Rodgers
