It’s time for Part 1 of our Tuesday Apocalypse Double-Header. That’s right, you get two apocalypse script reviews for the price of one! The first one I’m reviewing is called “Z for Zachariah.” Roger will review the second one, which should sound familiar to most, as it has a certain Oscar-winning movie star in the lead role.
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi/Coming-of-Age
Premise: A sixteen-year-old survives in a remote area after a nuclear war. But soon, she receives a visitor.
About: Finished with 11 votes on the 2009 Black List, same as The Sitter and Betty’s Ready. Z for Zachariah is being produced by Iceland-based Zik-Zak Filmworks.
Writer: Nissar Modi (based on the novel by Robert C. O’Brien)
Details: 107 pages (3rd Draft – December 2008)
Well here’s something you don’t see every day. A female coming of age story taking place in the post-apocalyptic countryside! We’ve had 16 year old girls waking up from comas. We’ve had 13 year old girls traveling around looking to build their first itunes playlist. Now we have a 15 year old girl trying to discover herself sexually in the aftermath of a future world war. Hey, why not?
The good news is, you’ve never read anything quite like Z for Zacharia before. Well, unless you read the original book, printed back in 1973. But otherwise, this is a totally unique experience of a young girl trying to find herself under the worst of circumstances. It covers weighty topics such as loneliness and dependency, and does so behind a rare post-apocalyptic persona – the 15 year old girl.
Ann Burden is either lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it. She and her parents survived the nuclear war by being out in the middle of nowhere. But what world have they survived into? One in which every day is a struggle, one in which society and community are non-existent, one in which they’re all by themselves, with nothing to do but tend to a farm and make it through to the next day.
To make matters worse, Ann’s parents inexplicably ditch her like a pumpkin after Halloween. Outside of her sheep dog, Ann is completely alone, a pulpy mass in a dying container. She copes as best she can, but it’s a challenge no 12 year old should have to endure. The unique situation stunts her intellect and personality, as society’s abrupt halt has put a halt on her growth. Although she’s 15 in the story, she’s still that 12 year old girl the day the war hit.
One day, while scanning the barren wasteland outside her valley, Ann spots a man in a strange skin tight green suit. She observes him from afar, intrigued but skeptical, not daring to call out lest he’s dangerous. The man carries a Geiger counter, and is apparently using it to lead himself to clean air. He hits Ann’s valley and voila, the air is finally pure. He celebrates by whipping off his suit and breathing it all in, the culmination of a long perilous journey.
But the man makes the fatal mistake of bathing in a nearby poisoned stream, and Ann is forced to intervene, telling him to hurry out of the water before it’s too late. She takes him back to the house, where he quickly gets radiation poisoning, and she must slowly nurse him back to health. To Ann, this man is her salvation from loneliness, and she prays to God every night that he will not die, that she’ll have someone to share conversation with, a companion.
The man, who we find out is named Loomis, does survive. Turns out he was a scientist before the war, and was working on mass producing these green suits, as they would protect Americans from the post-radiation fallout of a nuclear war. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. But the suit, which ended up being the only one of its kind, is probably the reason why Loomis is the only person from the war who survived.
The script then shifts gears, turning into a complex and challenging story about a 30-something scientist and a 15 year old girl trying to survive together. There is clearly something off about Loomis, something about his stories that imply a secret past, and yet because he is handsome, older, and the only human contact Ann has had in years, she finds herself attracted to him, hoping that he might see her as more than a little girl.
But be careful what you wiiiiiiiish for. It doesn’t take long for Loomis to move in on Ann, pushing her into a sexual relationship that she both desires and fears. This results in a constantly changing dynamic and a fraying of the lines that throws everything into disarray. This is where the strength of the story lies. These two need each other. The winter is coming and if they don’t work together, the consequences will be dire. But the closer Ann gets to Loomis, the more she realizes he is not the man he pretends to be, and in actuality could be much more dangerous.
What works in Z for Zachariah is its unsettling tone. I noticed myself shifting uncomfortably during several segments in the script. The relationship between Loomis and Ann is both improper yet necessary. All the statutory rape stuff and shit about being a minor is kinda thrown out the window when you’re the last two people on earth. What’s so sinister about Z for Zacharia is that it never allows you to take a side. At one moment, you peg Loomis as a slimy devil, in the next, a lost soul looking for love. Ann has similar reactions. She’s both attracted to Loomis and terrified of him. As a result, we never know who to criminalize, who to victimize, and the script forces you to think across lines you’ve been taught not to cross. It’s challenging stuff.
Yet Z for Zacharia almost lost me early on, when describing Ann’s predicament. Apparently, once the bombs hit, Ann’s parents up and left her to go “look for survivors.” Pardon me for asking a stupid question: But in what ridiculously inane world do parents, who have just experienced the most traumatic unimaginable event in the world’s history, up and leave their 13 year old daughter to fend for herself??? I mean give me a break. If I’m part of the last family in the universe, I’m not going to turn to my kids and say, “Seeya! Good luck!” However since it’s a simple fix, I got over it.
The real problem with Z for Zachariah is its ending. And this goes back to what I was saying the other day about screenplays that are light on plot. When push comes to shove, if your characters aren’t driving towards some obvious plot-related goal, you’re not going to know what to do with the ending. And Z for Zachariah falls squarely in that pitfall. I’m not even going to get into it because its randomness requires more explanation than it’s worth. But the point is, it’s clear they didn’t know how to end the screenplay, and as a result we have a lot of running around and absolutely no direction.
Luckily, the relationship story here between Ann and Loomis is so strong, that that alone outweighs the script’s problems. And I don’t think the fixes are that complicated. This script is worth the read for its engaging and challenging story.
Script link: Can’t post this but it’s part of the Black List package.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m a big fan of goal-oriented writing, which is just a fancy way of giving your characters purpose. In most scripts, there will be an overarching goal, a clear destination for the main character, and that goal will be your script’s plot. In The Terminator, the goal is for the Terminator to kill Sara Conner. In Escape from New York, the goal is to escape…from New York! Z for Zachariah doesn’t take that approach. There is no overarching goal. It’s more a movie where the story emerges as the script goes on. If you do not have a clearly stated overarching goal for your protagonist, it is absolutely essential that you give your characters smaller “mini-goals” along the way. This is never going to be as powerful as having a clear plot, but it will keep your script focused. If you have no overarching goal, and no miniature goals, your story will just sit there, and quite frankly be a boring piece of shit (sorry, have to be harsh here). So let’s take Z for Zachariah as an example. The movie starts out with Ann discovering this strange man invading her land. Her goal? Find out who he is. Once she makes contact with him, he gets sick. Her new goal? To keep him from dying. Once he’s healthy, the goal actually becomes two-fold. One, to get him to see her as a woman. And two, to get the farm up and running again. As you can see, these “mini-goals” keep the story focused, continue to give our characters purpose. So if you’re writing a character-driven film that’s light on plot, the mini-goal approach is your best friend. Use it dammit!
