A re-posted old review of the screenplay that recently played at 2013 Sundance with Natalie Portman and Shia LeBoeuf in the leads.
Genre: Comedy/Crime
Premise: After his mother dies of cancer, Charlie takes a trip to Budapest. On the flight, he meets a man and promises to deliver a gift to his daughter, who, when he meets her, he promptly falls in love with.
About: Matt Drake has been writing a long time for someone who’s just now breaking through. He wrote the 2000 independent film, “Tully,” as well as an episode of “Spin City” in 2002. But for the next five years, Drake disappeared off the radar. Then, in 2007, all that persistence paid off when he landed on the Black List with this script, which received 14 votes (Top 15). Another 3 years went by where Drake presumably did a lot of assignment work, then a week ago made noise by writing Todd Phillips’ mysterious new super-comedy known only as “Project X.” I’m reviewing today’s script in hopes of getting someone to send me that script. So if you’ve got it, dammit, send it!
Writer: Matt Drake
Details: 119 pages – June 2007 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).
Budapest!It isn’t often you open up a script and meet your main character dangling upside down off a bridge in Eastern Europe to the sounds of a Zsa Zsa Gabor voice over, who’s pontificating about love, specifically the woman this man has fallen in love with, who’s standing in between two gangsters, pointing a gun at our hero’s heart, which she then proceeds to pull the trigger on in order to kill said hero. Then again, there’s nothing quite like reading “The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman,” a script as unique and unpredictable as a 3 a.m. visit to Jack In The Box. Whether you’re into this kind of thing or not, “Necessary Death” is a script you’ll be compelled to finish, and that’s, at the very least, a big achievement in this distraction-plagued world.
Charlie Countryman is a confused young man to begin with. But when he and his stepfather are forced to pull the plug on his brain dead mother, his grip on reality slips into the ether. And if that soap opera hasn’t fried enough circuits, Charlie’s better half hightails it out of Relationshipville, citing Not-interested-itus (I hate when girls come down with this btw). And so, lost, the last traces of normalcy and home sucked away by that cruel darling called Life, Charlie makes the perfectly valid decision to fly off to Bucharest, a country he knows nothing about, in hopes that the foreign-ness of it all will make his memories disappear.
However, on the plane to Budapest (the first leg of the trip to Bucharest), Charlie meets a jolly old man whose combination of broken English and unbridled enthusiasm make him adorable on eight levels. The man just spent a week in Chicago courtesy of his daughter – a gift which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream, to see the Cubs play at Wrigley field. Despite Charlie’s attempts to ignore him, the man continues to tell Charlie about his beautiful daughter, and shows him the gift he’s purchased in return, one of those silly batting helmets with beer cup holders attached. Finally the man shuts up, clearly petered out by his nonstop chattering, and falls asleep on Charlie’s shoulder. And doesn’t wake up. Ever. Yes, the old man dies napping on Charlie. When Charlie informs a stewardess about this little snafu, he’s told they’re in the middle of the Atlantic and there’s not much they can do. And since the flight is full, Charlie will have to remain this dead man’s pillow for the next five hours.
As if the trip weren’t weird already, just before they land, the old man turns to Charlie and asks him if he can deliver that wacky beer hat to his daughter. Oh, I didn’t mention? Charlie can occasionally speak to the dead.
Now in Budapest (he didn’t make it to Bucharest), Charlie goes searching for this young lady. And when he meets her, well, she’s so gorgeous he can barely form words into coherent sentences. The two are drawn together by their recent tragedies, and somewhere within the first ten minutes of the conversation, Charlie falls in love.
Unfortunately, Gabi turns out to be a little more than Charlie bargained for. When she was 17, she fell in love with a man named Nigel who operated a business which, although unspecified, seems to involve killing people. The relationship didn’t last, but Nigel never technically accepted the resignation papers. Besides all the killing he engages in, he also makes it a priority to ensure that no men get to enjoy the company of his quasi-wife. So obviously, when Nigel sees Charlie following her all over the city with his tongue lapping up street debris, he pops in to warn Charlie to go find some other avenue of entertainment. But what Nigel doesn’t realize is that it’s already too late. Charlie is in love, and he’ll go to the ends of the world – or, in this case, Budapest – to be with her. And that includes enduring the ongoing Zsa Zsa Gabor voice over chronicling his misfit adventures. But wait, how the hell did this love affair end up in Gabi killing Charlie? That is the reason, my friends, to read the screenplay for yourselves.
“Necessary Death” was tailor made for the Black List. It’s odd. It has a strong voice. You’re never sure what’s around the corner. And it’s well-written. But at a certain point the script struggles to decide if it wants to embrace its oddness, or salvage some kind of traditional storyline. I love scripts that are different. I love scripts that are weird. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The weirder your script is, the harder it is to finish. Because the whole point of structure, is that it sets the story up for a proper climax. Without said structure, it’s all just a lot of crazy wacky sequences. This almost always results in the writer trying to be even crazier and wackier in the final 30 pages, and the third act subsequently comes off as desperate as a result. “Necessary Death’s” saving grace is that it eventually commits to the love story, which gives the screenplay a purpose, but it still feels like it has one foot squarely in each of the two worlds (traditional and crazy) and that lack of commitment had a neutering effect.
I really went back and forth on this, trying to decide how much this bothered me. Then I remembered – I’m a story guy, first and foremost. I like a good well-crafted tale. And only having that single thread – Why does Gabi kill Charlie – to look forward to, wasn’t enough meat for me. I wanted the two tacos, the chili fries, IN ADDITION to the Jumbo Jack, you know? But for those writers out there who want to see how to stand out, how someone emerges with a unique voice, they may want to check “Necessary Death” out. It’s definitely interesting. It just wasn’t for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the more heavily debated mechanical details in the screenwriting world is the use of the word “We” in your description paragraphs. Such as “We turn around to see…” or “We slide forward where it’s revealed…” There are writers out there whose heads will explode at the mere mention of another writer using this style. Some will want to murder you. They will argue with you in screenwriting messageboards until you hit triple-digit thread replies. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen. And the thing is, I don’t have the slightest idea what the big stink is. I suppose it’s because it puts the reader in the position of the camera (“we” implies the “camera”) and that’s technically a no-no. But I’m here to tell you, I see this style in professional screenplays ALL THE TIME, including in this one. So rest assured, if you like to do it, keep doing it, and ignore anyone who tells you your script has no chance of selling if it’s included.
