Screenplay Review - The Outsider

Genre: Period/Crime
Premise: In post World War II Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war rises in the yakuza.
About: "The Outsider" finished 4th on last year's Black List.  Writer Andrew Baldwin hasn't done any major work that I've heard of up until "Outsider," but he did script a draft of the in-development remake of "Logan's Run."  The last rumor had "Safe House" helmer Daniel Espinosa directing "Outsider" with a dream-casted Michael Fassbender starring as Nick.
Writer: Andrew Baldwin
Details: 125 pages, June 2011 draft

I must confess, I don't know much about the Yakuza other than that they have a really cool name: THE YAKUZA!  I like it so much, in fact, I'm thinking of naming my first kid after it.  "Yakuza!"  It has such a nice ring to it, don't you think?

But here's the reason this Yakuza script has been sitting near the top of last year's Black List and 10 months later I still haven't reviewed it: I don't connect with the crime genre.  When a bunch of tough guys are trying to out-tough each other with toughness - when that's the focus - I can't get into it.  I need some heart.  I need something to relate to in the characters.  And the crime genre is more about honor and codes and stuff that really doesn't interest me.  Every once in awhile, if a writer can come at the genre from a unique angle, I can be entertained for a couple of hours, but that's about as much as I can hope for.  I'm never going to think of one of these scripts as amazing.

With that said, The Outsider is one of the few crime scripts that does come at the genre from a different angle.  We're not dealing with the 15 hundredth movie about the Italian mafia.  We're dealing with the first movie about a guy rising up through the Yakuza in 1954.  Was it a little too familiar?  Ehhhhh, probably.  There were times where you could've laid in scenes from Goodfellas, Casino, Carlito's Way, etc., and no one would've noticed.  But there were also moments where I genuinely felt like I was learning about the unique culture that is the Yakuza.

The Outsider begins on a train in 1954 Osaka, Japan (hey, just like yesterday's script!).  The car we focus on is filled with prisoners being transported to their new prison.  One of those prisoners stands out, as he is the only Caucasion in the bunch.  His name is Nick.  He's 30 years old.  And what's spooky about the dude is that he actually seems okay with where he's at.

There's a reason for that.  Nick has gone AWOL since the war after murdering his commander who did something terrible (you'll have to take Baldwin's word for it since we never find out what the commander did).  But the American military sees it differently.  They see Nick as the bad guy, and they want to try him.  Which is why Nick's fled and is now hiding out in Japan.  In a prison.  In a Very. Bad. Prison.

It's at this prison where Nick gets all Mike Tyson on some big Japanese oaf who dares test him in front of the other prisoners.  Nick gouges his eyes out, blinding the man, and just like that he has the respect of everyone in prison.  But it's Nick's cell mate, Kiyoshi, who pays the incident the most mind.  You see, Kiyoshi is part of one of the biggest crime families around, the Matsuoka Family, and he decides it wouldn't hurt to have a crazy-ass motherfucker like Nick around to do some dirty work.

So when Nick's released, Kiyoshi snatches him up, and pretty soon Nick's hitting up the locals for the Matsuokas, unafraid to beat them into a pulp to get his point across.  He soon becomes feared in the real world as well, and as a result becomes one of the rare Americans accepted into a Yakuza family.

It would be nice to celebrate such a feat, but the nature of living in this reality is that your'e never safe.  And the Matsuoka's much bigger and badder rivals, the Seizus, start getting a little testy when Nick begins throwing his weight around town.  They blame Akihiro, the leader of the family, and pretty soon, the two sides find themselves on the eve of war.

As if inadvertently leading your new employers into a war they didn't want wasn't bad enough, Nick also ends up falling in love with a beautiful but dangerous woman named Miyu, who happens to be the sister of Kiyoshi, Nick's biggest ally.  Kiyoshi only had one rule when he brought Nick into his world: Don't fuck my sister.  So a big fat "oops" on that count.  This means Nick will not only have to figure out a diplomatic way to end this war, but if he doesn't, he'll need to protect Miyu from the Seizus, protect himself from Kiyoshi, and protect the Matsuokas from his big ass mistake.   I'm not going to give anything away here, but the nature of this genre is that things end badly, and I'm guessing The Outsider is no exception.

I'm glad this one popped into my reading pile because it takes a storytelling angle I didn't talk about in my "Storytelling vs. Writing" article.  If you remember, I said that most stories are run by either two engines: character goals or mysteries.  If you aren't using one of those, your story probably isn't very interesting.

The "Rise Up/Crime" genre is one of the exceptions to this rule.  There's rarely a concrete goal in these scripts.  And there's rarely a mystery either.  It's more about watching a protagonist rise up through the ranks of an organization.  Goodfellas is another example.  Or Scarface.  There's something about watching someone rise to power that's exciting.  I can't exactly explain why - maybe it's because we know that sooner or later they have to fall - but it definitely works.  

Except you know me.  I need those goals and those mysteries to keep me going.  I need more of a story than "guy rises up" to get my juices flowing.  And The Outsider didn't have that.  It had a unique backdrop.  It had authenticity.  And I guess there was a little mystery as far as our main character's past.  But other than that it was pretty straightforward.  Guy rises up in Yakuza.  No twists.  No turns.  That was it.

To Baldwin's credit, however, he did infuse his script with TONS of conflict - essential for this kind of movie.  Remember, you're always looking to make things tough for your hero (have them encountering conflict).  If you're not doing that, then you're not entertaining us.  We had the Seizu, the rival family pushing up against Nick.  We had Nick's past (his court martial) pushing up against him.  We had Orochi, a brash young member of the Matsuoka family who doesn't like Nick.  And we had Miyu, the girl he falls in love with who he can't fall in love with because he'll betray his only friend in the family.  Conflict leads to drama.  Drama leads to entertainment.  So The Outsider was strong in that respect.

But yeah, where The Outsider fell apart for me was the third act.  And it's not surprising.  When you don't have a goal or a mystery, you don't have a clear-cut finale.  Think about it.  If your protagonist isn't going after something (i.e. the Ark in Raiders) then you don't have anything for him to do in the third act.  Or if there isn't some big mystery we want answers to, then there's nothing to reveal in the third act (what the Ark does).

This is what really hurt The Outsider.  Its characters are basically reacting - waiting for the other crime family to make a move.  And making reactive characters interesting is a lot harder to do than making active characters interesting.  Don't get me wrong, it can be done.  I think this is similar to how Goodfellas ends, but it's just not my thing.  I like characters who are active, who are going after things (goals) and there just wasn't enough of that here.  For that reason, despite recognizing this as a very well-written script, I couldn't personally get into it.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[x] wasn't for me

[ ] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: The power of the Underdog in this genre.  Without a goal or a mystery,  you're stacking the storytelling odds against you.  However, if you can give us a protagonist we love, we won't mind as much that there aren't any goals or mysteries.  Why?  Because we'll follow a likable hero through anything.  And what's the easiest way to make a likable character?  Make them an underdog!  Audiences LOVE underdogs.  Nick is as big of an underdog as they get.  An American prisoner in a Japanese prison - someone everyone hates, despises, wants nothing to do with.  You'll see this underdog quality in all of these types of movies, from Goodfellas to Scarface to The Godfather.   If you're going to write one of these "rise up" movies, make your lead an underdog.  I promise you it will pay off.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Genre: Drama
Premise: Based on a true story, in 1971, a Stanford professor initiated one of the most controversial university experiments of all time, recreating a simulated prison environment with volunteers. Within hours, the experiment spun out of control.
About: The Stanford Prison Experiment is a 2006 script written by Christopher McQuarrie and Tim Talbott for McQuarrie to direct. McQuarrie had assembled a great cast that included Channing Tatum, Giovanni Ribisi, Ryan Phillipe, Jesse Eisenberg, Paul Dano, Jamie Bell, Ben McKenzie, and others, but just as the project was getting ready to go, Valkyrie emerged, and McQuarrie had to make a tough decision on whether to produce that film or direct this one.  It was a difficult choice but he ultimately went with Valkyrie. You might remember I reviewed a more recent McQuarrie screenplay, One Shot, a couple of months back.
Writers: Tim Talbott & Christopher McQuarrie
Details: 122 pages – August 7, 2006 Draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).

So I’d been hearing about how good this script was for-evvvvv-er but the reason I hadn’t picked it up is because I’d seen “Das Experiment” (A German film covering the same territory - it was pretty good) and figured I already knew the story, so what was the point? But this script had a nasty habit of not going away. It just kept popping up on my radar. And due to the recent slate of less than stellar scripts here on Scriptshadow, I decided to read something I knew was going to be a quality screenplay.

Whereas Das Experiment took the subject matter and went all “creative license” with it, Chris and Tim seem to be more interested in exploring how things *really* went down on that fateful week in 1971. The event centers around an arrogant Stanford Professor named Dr. Philip Zimbrado who thought it’d be interesting to study the effects of how prisoners and guards interact with one another in a prison setting.

So he put an ad in the paper and narrowed the applicants down to 30 people, most of them in the 19-25 age range. 9 of them were made guards and the rest prisoners. Zimbardo then set up a make-shift jail and began the experiment.

Immediately, things started getting weird. The volunteers were led to believe this was going to be a fun little experiment they could leave at any moment. Zimbardo had another plan, however. His goal was to strip away every “prisoner’s” humanity, make them feel like dirt, and study how this affected them. So right when they arrived, the prisoners were literally stripped naked and de-liced. They were then given smocks that barely covered anything. The experience was humiliating but they still went along with it, figuring things would get better.

They didn’t.

One of the guards, a cocksure 18 year old sociopath named David Eshleman, decided to take his role very seriously, to the point where he changed his Northeastern accent to a Southern one. He took on the persona of a meaner creepier version of himself who didn’t take shit from anybody. He began harassing the prisoners with a vengeance. And if any of them got out of line, he’d send them to “the hole,” a box so tiny you couldn’t even stand up in it.

One of the prisoners, 22 year old Doug Corpi, quickly realized that if the prisoners didn’t stand up for their rights, they were about to experience two weeks of torture. So he began rebelling, refusing to eat food and barricading the cell entrances so the guards couldn’t get inside. Eshelman didn’t back down. He told the other inmates that unless Corpi started abiding by the rules, they wouldn’t eat. They wouldn’t get bathroom breaks.

It was a standoff. A hatred began building between the two sides, fueled by Corpi and Eshelman, and it was clear that only 48 hours in, things were out of control. But did Zimbardo stop? No. He was too fascinated by the interaction. He wanted more.

Soon, the psychological exhaustion of dealing with the relentless guards began to take its toll, and the prisoners started breaking down. They went to Zimbardo, begging for help, but since they never specifically asked to leave, he wouldn’t let them go. He’d force them right back into their cells to endure more psychological terror.

His biggest fascination, however, was Eshelman. He wanted to see how far he would go. The problem with that was Eshelman wanted to see how far he could take it. So he just got worse and worse and worse until he was a bona fide monster. But since no one was telling him to stop, he kept going. He devoted his entire shifts to torturing the inmates.

At a certain point, things became so ridiculously out of control, that Zimbardo had no choice but to stop the experiment, a mere six days in. It was not due to any sympathy on his part. It was only because his staff couldn’t bear it anymore. And just like that, it was over. The prisoners were released from their cells and told to go home.

Man, I don’t even know if I can talk about this script in screenwriting terms. I was just so fucking…..ANGRY at Zimbardo and Eshelman. These people were tortured for six straight days and there were no consequences for their torturers! They just got to smile and shrug their shoulders at the end and call it a day.

I think this is why this script leaves such an impression. There aren’t many movies where the bad guys get to mercilessly torture the good guys without any payback. It just feels so…unfair.

Especially in the case of Zimbardo, the smarmy piece of shit who came up with the idea. He just watches the whole thing with this evil little grin on his face, allowing these men to be berated and humiliated. I wanted to find out where he lived and conduct my own little experiment on him.

And you want to talk about a script with awkward mechanics. You know our hero? Corpi? Yeah well he goes insane and leaves the movie at the 65% point. So our main character is just gone. It’s a little like Psycho in that sense. After Corpi leaves, we’re sitting there going, “Who is it we’re now supposed to follow? Whose story is it now?” And at a certain point we realize it’s Zimbardo’s. We’re stuck with this manipulating douche-bag monster for the rest of the film.

You’ll also notice the script has a ton of characters, which I thought I’d bring up because last week I went off on Cities of Refuge for having too many characters. First of all, it’s important to remember that McQuarrie was directing this himself. So the only person who had to remember all these characters was him. But he and Tim also do something unique with the characters at the beginning of the screenplay. They tell you they're going to name them, but to pay no attention to their names. Because they’re not people in this movie. They’re rats in a maze. They’re nobodies.

Truthfully, the only people we have to remember are Korpi, Eshelman, Zimbardo, and a few minor characters.

This isn’t a GSU movie either. The driving force behind the movie is not a goal – it’s a question. What’s going to happen to these people? What’s going to happen in this situation? And because the situation is so compelling (every single scene is packed with conflict), we want to find out.

The thing about the script that baffles me most, though, is the lack of stakes. Going into this, I thought for sure I wouldn’t care because the stakes were so low. It’s just an experiment – and an experiment at a prestigious University at that. You knew nothing could get *too* bad. I mean any of the prisoners could get up, say they had enough, and walk out without any consequences.

And yet despite this, I was still riveted by their predicament. I’m still not sure how Talbott and McQuarrie managed to do this. I think part of it may be that humans always respond passionately towards a) people being taken advantage of, and b) people abusing their power. Since both of those scenarios were on full display here, we were invested in the story from the moment those prisoners walked into their cells.

I’m still pissed off there were no repercussions for Zimbardo and Eshelmen though. I wanted somebody to go down at the end of this. But you’ll have a tough time finding another screenplay out there that pulls you into its story as effectively as this one.

[ ] What The Hell Did I Just Read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: A lot of writers are looking for that perfect “save the cat” moment, the thing that’s going to make the audience fall in love with their main character. They forget, however, that an often more effective way of making us like the main character is to “kick the owner.” If we see the bad guy beat down our protagonist, a much stronger “sympathy” bond is created between us and the character, resulting in our steadfast support of him for the rest of the movie. You see that here in spades (you also saw it in The Shawshank Redemption). So remember, saving the cat isn’t your only option. Kicking the owner creates a similar – and often – more powerful effect.

SCRIPTSHADOW READER FAVORITES 26-50

Come all, come one, to the second half of the Reader Favorites List, the best unmade scripts out there voted on by you. Last week we did 1-25. Today, we’re doing 26-50. Since I didn’t originally know I was going to publish this group, I erased the points, but I remember all of them being relatively close. Here they are!

#50 Brad Cutter Ruined My Life Again
Writer: Joe Nussbaum
Premise: A successful business man is forced to relive his miserable teenage years when the cool kid from his high school is hired at his company.
About: I’m not sure what’s happening with this project. I know that Joe recently directed the Disney film, “Prom,” so he’s certainly in a position to push projects forward. But it may no longer be a priority of his. I still think with an ending change this could be a classic.

#49 Flight
Writer: John Gatins
Premise: An alcoholic pilot becomes a reluctant hero when he saves a crippled plane from certain catastrophe.
About: Wow, you guys are just a bunch of depressing little emos aren’t you? I was kinda shocked to see this on so many lists. It never scored a top spot, but consistently fell into people’s 8 and 9 holes. I suppose if addiction is a problem in your life, this script will probably resonate with you.

#48 Shimmer Lake
Writer: Oren Uziel
Premise: The aftermath of a bank robbery told backwards.
About: One of the few backwards-told stories where the backwards-ness isn’t just a gimmick. It’s not quite Memento. It’s more of a comedy. But it keeps you guessing until the end. An Austin Screenplay Contest winner. And a reminder that specs that play with time often do well in the spec marketplace.

#47 Pandora 
Writer: Karl Gajdusek
Premise: The residents of a small Texas town are shocked when 7 local residents are killed in a bank robbery gone wrong. Although the culprits are immediately captured, they are kidnapped from the local jail and held for ransom –- the town now has to buy back their killers –- and this is when things really start to go awry.
About: I’ll be honest. I didn’t even know what this one was. Thank God when I checked the archives, I learned that I hadn’t read it, but rather Roger had.

#46 – Kashmir
Writer: D.B. Weiss
Premise: Three ex-mercenaries stumble upon information concerning the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist. They journey into Kashmir, the dangerous and disputed territory between two nuclear powers in order to claim the $50 million bounty on the terrorist's head.
About: Here’s another one I still haven’t read. But I remember when it first came out as a spec. People were going nuts over it. I guess it’s another one of those titles I can’t get past. Like Sunflower or that other script I reviewed recently whose title is so forgettable I’m forgetting it right now. So this script is good then?

#45 – Maggie
Writer: John Scott 3
Premise: A high school girl has been contaminated with the zombie virus. However, in this treatment of the zombie dilemma, the change takes months to complete.
About: Ah yes, one of the more controversial scripts on the site this year. A zombie movie where the main character lays in a bed for the entire movie. Some thought it mundane. Others inspiring. It was definitely a different take on the zombie genre. And I’m still not sure if the thing ever sold (it originally sold and then the sale fell apart a few days later).

#44 – At The Mountains Of Madness
Writers: Guillermo Del Toro and Matthew Robbins
Premise: In the early 20th Century, a group of Arctic Explorers head off to Antarctica to look for a lost boat. What they find instead is too horrifying to grasp.
About: At The Mountains Of Madness may be looked at in future years as the project that changed the game. The script was really good. The film had Del Toro directing, James Cameron producing, and Tom Cruise starring, and still the studio got cold feet. You know it’s bad when Hollywood’s favorite source for mining movies – pre-existing material, isn’t good enough anymore. Then again, James Cameron did produce Sanctum, which runs neck and neck with “Skyline” as the worst screenplay of the year.

#43 – Winter’s Discontent
Writer: Paul Fruchbom
Premise: A sexually frustrated widower moves into a retirement community with one objective in mind: to get laid.
About: I love Dan Fogelman but Last Vegas doesn't hold a candle to Winter’s Discontent, clearly the number one “old fogey” script floating around Hollywood at the moment. As far as I’ve heard, I don’t know if they have a single actor attached to this yet. I mean seriously, how many good projects are out there for 70 year olds? Whoever’s producing this needs to step on the gas.

#42 – The Mighty Flynn
Writer: Lorene Scafaria
Premise: After a cruel heartless efficiency expert gets fired, he meets a strange 16 year old girl who unexpectedly helps him turn his life around.
About: Yes, it’s the script I went ga-ga over and put in my own Top 10. How dare you bastards banish it to Number 42. We’s gonna have words I say. While Flynn has been blacklisted (in the bad way) ever since Up In The Air came out, I still contend it would be a better movie. The characters are more interesting and there’s a lot more heart. And opium.

#41 – Cylinder
Writer: Jared Romero
Premise: Seven teenagers head into the Louisiana forest to celebrate a birthday. But when one of them is accidentally killed, the rest must figure out what to do with the body before the night is up.
About: When Cylinder was first reviewed on Scriptshadow, it had yet to be purchased. It has since been bought. For those who don’t know the story behind this script, I first read it in a screenplay competition I held before Scriptshadow. I thought it was great and through a friend of a friend, I was able to get it to Diablo Cody’s agent, who ended up signing Jerod. Very cool. Let’s hope this goes on to be made soon.

#40 – Will
Writer: Demetri Martin
Premise: What if the world was a play and all of us were the characters?
About: This is one of the few scripts which although I didn’t connect with it on an emotional level, I still gave it an impressive due to its inventiveness. It was just weird and different and out there. This is a great script to study if you consider your voice strange and unique and want to make the Black List.

#39 – Untitled Michael Mann/John Logan Project
Writer: John Logan
Premise: A noir drama that takes place on the old MGM lot in the 1930s. A private detective often hired by the studios to clean up its star’s messes, is hired to investigate whether a starlet murdered her husband.
About: A detective story that takes place on the old Wizard Of Oz sets does sound pretty cool. THAT’S a story that could only be told in Hollywood. Comparisons to L.A. Confidential are also good news. But I think this one’s been around for awhile. So I’m wondering why it all of a sudden is so hot. Can somebody provide an answer? Still haven’t read it myself.

#38 – Medieval
Writers: Mike Finch and Alex Litvak
Premise: The Dirty Dozen in medieval times.
About: I found Medieval soulless, ridiculous, plotless, and pretty entertaining. This goes against everything I preach on the site – it’s empty storytelling at its best – but what saves it is that you can imagine the movie. You can see these different fighters facing off, like a giant 17th Century Mortal Kombat fiery furious Fight Club orgy. This will be fun. Assuming your brain no longer works. McG at the helm for the win.

#37 – Fahrenheit 451
Writer: Frank Darabont
Premise: In a dystopian future, firefighters start fires instead of put them out.
About: Ah yes, who can forget my rant against this script due to its inclusion of….ROBOT DOGS. Darabont’s an amazing writer but I’ve never seen a script set in the future feel so dated. There’s no internet in this world. There never HAS been an internet! I don’t know how we’re supposed to wrap our heads around that. It’s like pretending that nothing over the past 20 years happened. I don’t get the love for this.

#36 – Better Living Through Chemistry
Writers: David Posamentier & Geoff Moore
Premise: A pharmacist whose wife regularly questions his masculinity starts an affair with a tortured trophy wife, who encourages him to explore the “fruits” of his profession.
About: Of all the scripts trying to dethrone American Beauty as the de facto “secrets of suburbia” King, this one probably comes closest. It takes some wild chances what with turning its main character into a crazed self-medicating maniac, and has a hell of an ending. Still wondering what the hell Judi Dench is doing in it though. I guess Entourage has ensured that every movie will now be populated with a celebrity cameo.

#35 – Dead Loss
Writers: Josh Baizer and Marshall Johnson
Premise: A crew of crab fisherman rescue a drifting castaway with a mysterious cargo.
About: Every thriller these days seems to take place in some predictable or uninspired location. This one takes place on a crab-fishing boat. It’s tense. It’s raw. It’s got non-stop thrills. This is one of those rare spec scripts that is a movie from the very first page. It needs to be made pronto.

#34 – I Wanna ____ Your Sister 
Writer: Melissa Stack
Premise: When his sister joins him at the New York Stock Exchange as an intern, Drew thinks it’s going to be the best summer ever – until he realizes that every single guy at the company wants to _____ his sister.
About: You try to get away from the flashiest title ever to hit the spec market, but you can’t. I think this is on the list due to the sheer number of people who have read it due to its title. Word is that it’s now been re-set in college, which isn’t a terrible idea since it’s a more relatable situation. Whether the new writers executed that premise though is anyone’s guess.

#33 – Pawn Sacrifice
Writer: Steve Knight
Premise: The life story of chess legend Bobby Fischer leading up to his historic world championship match against Boris Spassky.
About: I’m shocked that so many people like this. There must be a lot of screenwriting chess fans out there. I still think our hero looks like a total whiney douchebag at the end of the story, refusing to play unless the rest of the game could be moved. So the lesson here is what? Win by whining? Someone help me out here.

#32 – Imagine
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Premise: A lost letter written to him by his idol, John Lennon, inspires an aging musician to change his life.
About: (Spoiler) Double cancer-itis is still my big beef with Imagine. But it still shows us what Fogelman does best – write comedies with heart. And not write comedies where the only laughs come from comedian-of-the-moments hamming it up for the camera. Whether that style will land with audiences is yet to be determined. Crazy Stupid Love did okay but not great in its opening weekend. But Imagine has a much better hook. So we’ll see how it goes.

#31 – Prisoners
Writer: Aaron Guzikowski
Premise: When his daughter and her friend are kidnapped and the police fail to solve the crime, a father takes matters into his own hands.
About: Million dollar spec baby. Prisoners is supposed to be the next Seven (even though the plot is totally different). But I’m still not sure what’s going on with the thing. There was that weird two week period where Whalberg was attached and then Bale was attached and then they were both attached, and then they both left and then some director came on, then they both came on again. Is this still moving forward? Can someone shed a little light on Prisoners? I vaguely remember Antoine Fuqua being involved?

#30 – Shrapnel
Writer: Evan Daugherty
Premise: Two war veterans play a deadly game of cat and mouse up in the mountain wilderness.
About: Lots of votes for this one. I had no idea it was so popular. My question is, is this the right Shrapnel? I coulda swore there was another project out there called Shrapnel that I haven’t read yet. If that’s the case, this entry may be Shrapnel Squared. A combined Shrapnel. A double dose of Shrapnelopia.

#29 – Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close
Writer: Eric Roth (based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer)
Premise: A young boy goes on a journey through New York City to find the truth about how his father, who disappeared in 9/11, died.
About: Of all the scripts on this list, I’m thinking this one has the best chance for Oscars. Man does it tug at the tear ducts. The only problem with it is that it’s too long in its current state. Roth loves writing long so if he can get to the story a little faster, this could be awesome.

#28 – Sunflower
Writer: Misha Green
Premise: Two women are held hostage in a prison-like farmhouse.
About: Since it landed on the Black List, a new script was commissioned with new writers but after developing it extensively, Friedkin, the director, decided to ditch it. So Sunflower is looking for a new field to grown it. Any takers?

#27 – My Mother’s Curse
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Premise: A struggling entrepreneur takes his mother on a cross-country roadtrip to reunite with an old flame.
About: You guys LOVED My Mother’s Curse. So much love for this one I’m shocked. I mean I thought it was a pretty decent road trip movie. Definitely different. But there must be a lot of mama’s boys out there cause this killed in the voting.

#26 – Home
Writer: Adam Alleca
Premise: A paranoid delusional man is left on house arrest out in the middle of the woods.
About: I’ve learned from sources VERY close to the project that Alleca turned in a new draft of this that’s supposed to be even better than the one we all read. Now whether that pushes the project on its way, I don’t know. But I still think this guy’s one of the more talented “unknown” writers out there. I’m betting he starts making a splash soon.

Thoughts?  Where's Babe In The Woods?

10 Screenwriting Mistakes To Avoid Courtesy of Alien 3

So last week I gave you ten screenwriting tips to take away from Aliens, one of the best sci-fi action films ever. This week, we’re looking at the sequel to Aliens, Alien 3, which a young David Fincher directed. Now originally, I wrote this long impassioned opening about how terribly directed this movie was. The setting was beyond boring. The casting was uninspired. For some reason Fincher had every character whispering to each other. I’ve since done some research and learned that Alien 3 had an extremely complicated development period even by Hollywood standards. 30-some takes were written over the course of six years and when they finally hit production, they were still rewriting the script. Fincher was so upset about the experience that he parted ways with the project and left the studio to cut the film. Does this mean I’m going to take it easy on the script? Hell no. They had six years to write this thing. They made the choice to go ahead with it before it was ready. Casablanca was rewritten during production, right? No, I’m not going to be easy on it because even with these excuses, Alien 3 is still terrible beyond comprehension. With that in mind, here are ten mistakes to avoid when writing your next screenplay.

PASSIVE STORY
You’ve heard about passive heroes a lot – characters who let everything come to them, who let outside forces dictate their actions instead of taking charge and doing it themselves? Well there’s another passive activity you want to avoid – passive storylines! Alien 3 spends the first half of its running time with absolutely NOTHING going on. Where is the goal? Where is the story? Where is the DESIRE from any of the characters (alien included!) to do ANYTHING?? It’s just a bunch of people sitting around with occasional cuts to an alien growing up. Contrast this with Aliens where there’s always a strong goal for the characters (go in and kill the aliens). Or even in the first Alien, which is closer in spirit to this one, the alien itself was active (searching out and killing its prey). Here, no one’s pursuing anyone. Even when they decide to catch the alien, they do it in a passive way (they try to lure him to a spot on the base – forcing them to run away from it the whole time). Reflecting on this film, I can’t remember a single active pursuit by anyone. This alone killed any chances the movie had of being good.

ACTING OUT OF CHARACTER
In the real world, people act out of character all the time. In the movies, the rules are different. If someone who’s perennially shy busts out the Dougie on the 3rd Street Promenade, the audience is going to be really confused (unless it’s properly set up of course). One of the quickest ways to lose a reader is to have your character act completely out of character, as is the case here with Ripley. Let’s recap, shall we? Ripley survives her entire crew being killed by a crazy ass alien. Ripley goes into cryo-sleep for 57 years. Ripley is asked to come help some marines dispose of some more aliens. She does, kicking ass and being one of the only survivors. She again goes into cryo-sleep. Her ship crash lands on a prison planet, and everyone onboard besides her dies, including the little girl she’s unofficially adopted as a daughter. After a few minutes of crying, what does she say to the big creepy ugly personality-less weird dude taking care of her? “Are you attracted to me?” Yes, all of a sudden Ripley wants to fuck!!!! Despite us not seeing Ripley have a single sexual urge for two movies, now she’s a nymphomaniac! Seriously, who the hell wrote this?

YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY WITH LAZINESS
For some weird reason, certain writers believe they can skimp on the details and we’ll just go with it. We will not go with it. We will always spot when a writer is lazy. Let’s look at the prison here in Alien 3. This is supposed to be a maximum security prison right? So then why are there NO RULES!?? Why is there NO STRUCTURE!?? Prisoners can walk around wherever and whenever they want. There are no prison cells…IN A PRISON! There is no structure besides an occasional meal in the common area. It’s unclear who the warden is. It doesn’t even look like a prison. It looks like a series of interconnected tunnels. If you’re going to write a movie about a prison, learn how prisons operate so that your script will at least be somewhat plausible. Laziness gets you nowhere.

LOGIC MISTAKES EVERYWHERE
I’m always disappointed when writers ignore logic. But especially in a sci-fi movie. The rules are much more precarious in sci-fi because you’re already asking your audience to make a leap and believe in a world that doesn’t exist. Throwing a bunch of logic holes into that story is like shining multiple spotlights on the illusion. We are asked to believe, in Alien 3, that in a maximum security prison with the most lethal prisoners in the universe, that there isn’t a single weapon in the entire prison??? This is such a preposterous notion that it alone could be used as a legitimate excuse for hating the movie.

TRUST YOUR GUT
I have a theory I’ve formulated over time and I think it’s a solid one. When it comes to key decisions in your story, trust your gut. If your gut tells you it’s bad idea, it’s probably a bad idea. Even if it feels right from a logistical-standpoint. Even if it feels right from a character standpoint. If there’s that little voice in the back of your head saying, “This doesn’t feel right.” Trust it. To prove this theory, go back to all those reluctant choices you made in your previous screenplays. Chances are on an overwhelming percentage of them you turned out to be right. They didn’t work. I bring this up because while Ripley getting pregnant with an alien and having a special cross-species relationship with it may have sounded cool in the room, it’s one of those things that, at a gut level, you know isn’t right. Ignoring this gut feeling led to one of the dumber storylines we’ve seen in the franchise.

ALL THE CHARACTERS LOOK AND ACT EXACTLY THE SAME
There are a lot of reasons for you to differentiate your characters. One of the most important ones is that the more different your characters are, the more they bring out the differences in the other characters. If a person is nice, for example, we’ll obviously see that they’re nice. But we’ll see that niceness more clearly if we put them in a room with a mean person. Their qualities are exaggerated by being in proximity to their opposite. In Aliens, Burke’s sliminess is brought out in large part by what a good person Ripley is. In Alien 3, every single character looks the same and acts the same. They’re all a variation of annoyed, twitchy, and angry, except for maybe the doctor, who’s so boring in his own way that it doesn’t matter. You need variety in your characters. If you were to ask what’s the biggest reason for why Aliens is so great and Aliens 3 is so terrible, the unique cast of characters would likely come up as the top answer.

NO HUMOR
This is a common beginner mistake. Someone wants to make a dark film. So they make every single stinking frame as dark as humanly possible. Dumb move. Emotions are like anything in life. If you get too much of one, you’re going to get bored. I love cake. But that doesn’t mean I want to eat it three times a day. When it comes to emotions, you need to bring the audience to the other end of the spectrum every once in awhile to mix things up. Again, look at Aliens. There’s some bleak ass shit in that movie. But it’s peppered with a lot of humor (and plenty of hope as well). Alien 3 is one long bleak-fest. I counted a single joke, one joke!, in the entire movie (“No need to get sarcastic”). It could be as simple as adding a comedic relief character (Hudson) or throwing in a reasonable amount of gallows humor. Don’t think of it as selling out the darkness. Think of it as reminding the audience what darkness is.

IDENTIFY THE CENTRAL PROBLEMS – FIX THEM
At some point in the writing process, you should note the major problems in your script (the things that don’t quite make sense or aren’t yet working) and formulate a plan to fix them. Bad screenwriters allow many of these lingering issues to stay in the script, figuring they won’t be a big deal. If you aren’t striving for perfection, why even bother pursuing screenwriting? Let’s take a look at a really lazy mistake in Alien 3. In the final act, where they confront the alien, it’s established that the alien won’t hurt Ripley, because she’s impregnated with another alien. So let me get this straight. The only person on this entire base that we even halfway care about – your HERO no less - CAN’T BE HARMED BY THE ALIEN????? How stupid of a story decision is that? Identify your major problems and fix them. Or else you get ridiculous situations like this one.

WOE-IS-ME
Let me make something clear. Audiences hate woe-is-me characters. They hate them more than any other character you can possibly put in your screenplay. Whoever was dumb enough to turn Ripley from an active intelligent ass-kicking take-charge protagonist into a whispering, whiny, mousey annoying whisperer who can’t shut up about how awful she feels should never be allowed near a copy of Final Draft again. There are very VERY rare occasions where woe-is-me protagonists work (Mikey from Swingers comes to mind) but my suggestion would be to avoid them like the plague. The audience will hate your hero, and by association your movie.

BEWARE OF CLICHÉ/PREDICTABLE MOMENTS
Audiences are savvy. Many of them have seen enough television and film to have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen next. However, if your script is packed with scenarios where the audience can predict EXACTLY what’s going to happen next, chances are you’re being too cliché and need to make a better choice. There’s a moment deep in Alien 3 where Ripley asks Rock (I don’t even know his character name so I’m using his real life one) to chop off her head because she’s pregnant with an alien. She turns away and puts her hands up on the bars, waiting for him to do it. There is then a 60 second build-up where he brings the axe back and prepares to kill her. Oh no! Is he going to do it??? I’d say of the 5 million people who saw this film, 4,986,000 knew Rock would deliberately swing and miss, making the loud dramatic “THONK” on the bars, we'd stay on Rock’s face so as to momentarily wonder if he'd killed her, we'd show that Ripley was indeed still alive, then give Rock a rah-rah speech about how much he needs her. What do you know? That’s exactly what happened! You can’t always avoid your audience being ahead of you, but with a little effort, you can avoid cliché moments and at least keep them guessing.

IN SUMMARY
I don’t know what else to say. I guess if there are great screenplays like American Beauty and Dogs Of Babel out there where every single choice the writer makes is perfect, there can also be screenplays where every single choice the writer makes is disastrous. Such is the unlucky distinction of Alien 3. But maybe it was a nice reminder to the studios that you can’t fake it. That even the death of some of your biggest franchises is one bad script away. I’ll finish this breakdown with another question for all you Alien nerds. To this day, I’m still confused about the Alien 3 trailer that came out promising aliens coming to earth. What the hell was that? Why would they play a trailer that had nothing to do with the movie? I guess it’s just one more nonsensical thing associated with this catastrophe of a film.

Exit Plan (The Tomb)

Genre: Action
Premise: A man with an unusual job gets stuck trying to escape from a secret black ops prison.
About: Mixed rumors on this one. Bruce Willis is supposedly attached. But Arnold Schwarzeneggar is also said to have taken an interest in Exit Plan. Either way, it looks like Antoine Fuqua is going to direct. Summit bought up the spec from Miles Chapman back in 2008, whose previous credits include the straight-to-video “Road House 2.” They brought in a slightly hotter writer, Jason Keller, who wrote Tarsem Singh’s upcoming Snow White picture, “The Brothers Grimm: Snow White,” to do the rewrite, but then went back to original writer Chapman. What’s happened in the 2 years since is anyone’s guess.
Writer: Miles Chapman (with earlier revisions by Jason Keller)
Details: 102 pages - 1/06/09 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).

Sandwiched in between a couple of slooooowwww screenplays, we’ve got ourselves a good old fashioned high-concept escape spec today. The question, however, is the same as whenever I read a high concept screenplay. Does the execution live up to the idea? The inclusion of Bruce Willis did not instill confidence. The man seems to be on his way out, and not just because he’s an asshole to everyone he comes in contact with, but because he just doesn’t seem to give a shit about movies anymore. I’m not sure I’d be much different if I’d starred in a hundred films. I mean, who cares if my last one was any good? As long as I get my check baby! The point is, his attachment is usually a sign that 20 other actors have passed, and that’s never a ringing endorsement for the material.

(Spoilers follow) Exit Plan starts in a top level prison with a felon named Ray Breslin, a hard-ass with an attitude problem – hey, this is actually sounding like it’d be perfect for Willis! Anyway, Breslin appears to be a little brighter than the rest of the rats in this cage, and we soon figure out that he’s planning an escape. After getting himself thrown into isolation, he cleverly creates a fire raid which allows him to sneak out of the prison as one of the firefighters.

Cut to Breslin in an office – receiving a check. Ahhhh, now we get it. Breslin does this for a living. He gets hired to go into prisons under aliases and design an escape meant to expose security flaws. And Ray does the job every single time.

Suffice it to say, he wants a challenge. But his handlers remind him that he’s broken out of every major prison in the U.S. There aren’t any challenges left. What about internationally, he asks. And that’s where things get interesting. There’s a mysterious businessman who wants to purchase Breslin’s services for a secret prison, one that’s so far off the map and so top secret, that he won’t know of its location until he gets there. Breslin can’t sign on the dotted line fast enough.

Big mistake.

After being drugged and thrown into the jail, Breslin realizes that this is unlike any jail he’s ever seen. Cells are stacked on top of each other and see through, with a ring-shaped platform allowing guards to see everyone at all times. Escape demands privacy. Here, there is none. But it gets worse. The warden, a bloodless man named Roman Steffes, doesn’t seem to know who Breslin is. Which means Breslin’s failsafe, being able to tell the warden his real identity, is off the table. And the topper? Breslin finds building schematics based on his OWN STUDY OF PRISONS. This prison was built specifically to withstand every weakness Breslin has ever found in a prison. Uh oh.

Breslin’s only ally is a quick-witted man name Church, who rightfully thinks Breslin’s crazy for even mentioning escape. It’s impossible. Plus Church has his own set of problems. He seems to know one of the most notorious terrorists in the world, and therefore is being watched 24/7 by the guards. How will Breslin ever break out of here, much less with this attention-grabbing buddy of his? And where is “here” anyway?

 

Yesterday was all about the characters. The inner journey is what drove the story. Here, it’s the plot that’s the star. It’s the twists and turns and surprises and reversals that keep you reading, and boy are there a couple of doozys. I’ve read a lot of scripts, so it takes a lot to trick me or make me wonder what’s going to happen next. And while I definitely had some suspicions, I was genuinely surprised a few times. There’s a late 3rd act reveal in particular that I did not see coming, and it was a good one.

What’s cool about Exit Plan though is that it still cares about its characters. They might not be as well-rounded as, say, the characters in The Godfather, but Breslin is someone with a real past, believable motivation, and crippling flaws. Breslin’s parents were murdered when he was younger and the killers were able to escape prison. Breslin’s set on the bad guys never finding a way out again. And that’s why he does what he does. It’s a great reminder that you can come up with a cool idea for a movie, but you still have to make the hero interesting enough that some bankable star will want to play him.

There’s a lot of writing skill on display here for an action flick actually. I took note of this towards the end, as in every action thriller, you want to up the stakes to draw out the most amount of tension and excitement possible. If the stakes and the time frame are the same as what they were in the second act, then there’s no real difference between then and now, and the third act fizzles. This is kind of what happened yesterday in Great Hope Springs. So in the third act of Exit Plan, Roman meets with Breslin and gives him 24 hours to get the location of Church’s terrorist buddy, or he’s going to keep Breslin in this prison on 24 hour surveillance for the rest of his life. From that moment on, the story takes on a considerable amount of urgency. And it’s all because the writer knew he had to up the stakes in the third act.

Another great thing about the script is just how impossible it makes Breslin’s mission seem. Again, this is what writing action-thrillers is about. You want to make the hero’s goal seem as impossible as you can so it looks like there’s no way to succeed. You do that and we’ll be at the edge of our seats the whole time. In Exit Plan, there’s never any privacy for the prisoners. The warden doesn’t care about Breslin’s real identity. The prison was built specifically to hold him in. The location makes an escape impossible. I mean, we really have no idea how he’s going to pull this off, and that’s what makes each step he takes so dramatically compelling.

However, I did have a few issues. First of all – and I find this to be a problem in a lot of “escape” films/TV shows, not just this one – not everything Breslin does is as clever as it needs to be to sell his genius. For example, he uses a heat reflection pad to de-oxidize screws to escape through some floor panels. I have no idea if this is possible in real life or not, but I do know that to the average audience member, it sounds made up. This is why Shawshank is the best prison movie ever made. The escape was not only clever, but it was simple. We just “got it.” I’m not sure that de-iodizing screws is going to do anything but confuse an audience. And there were a few other less than stellar choices in the steps he took to escape as well. So I’m hoping they came up with better choices in the rewrites.

On top of that, Chapman may have dug himself into too deep of a hole. Like I said above, it’s important to make things as impossible as you can for your hero. But only if you can write yourself out of those impossibilities in a believable way. There were some things that I had a hard time buying. For example, they know Breslin’s dangerous. They know Church is dangerous. Why not just assign two guards to watch both of them the entire time? They seemed to have the manpower to do it, and it was definitely necessary with how dangerous they knew them to be, so the fact that they didn’t and Breslin was constantly sneaking around the prison was hard to buy.

But overall, there was a lot more good here than bad. I’ve always liked these “get paid to go in and find faults in a company” films and doing it for a prison seemed like a logical extension of the idea. The added hook of placing Breslin in an impossible-to-escape-from prison where his secret status no longer mattered, was likewise a nice twist. Plot-wise, this was perfectly paced. And I loved the unexpected twist at the end. Easily one of the better “escape” scripts I’ve read in a long time. Hey, what do you know? Two really good scripts in a row this week!

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

What I learned: The easier your hero’s journey is, the more boring your movie will be. Your job, as a writer, is to make your main character achieving his goal as difficult as possible. Doesn’t matter if it’s an action movie or a romantic comedy. MTDD! Make things difficult dammit! (I promise this will be the last acronym I use for “What I Learned”).

Tripoli

Genre: Historical Epic
Premise: In 1804, before America has any cachet in the world, a rogue U.S. diplomat arrives in the savage city of Tripoli to demand the release of American prisoners.
About: Tripoli was famously about to begin production in 2003 (2004?) when at the last second the studio pulled out. Ridley Scott, the director of the project, immediately moved on to another Monahan scripted endeavor, “Kingdom Of Heaven.” Tripoli has made waves in screenwriting circles since, with many proclaiming its awesomeness. As I’ve found this to be standard practice when it comes to deserted high profile projects, I decided to read the script and decide for myself. Monahan is pretty much the go-to guy when it comes to historical-based screenplays and is one of the better writers in Hollywood overall (I really dug his underrated screenplay for Edge of Darkness). He actually sold this screenplay on spec.
Writer: William Monahan
Details: 129 pages – 4/11/02 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).

Historical-related plots are so hard to pull off. They’re always walking that line between maintaining the historical accuracy of the times and keeping things entertaining enough for a modern audience. The problem is that the speed of life back then was so damn slow, and if you violate that pace, if you try to speed it up Michael Bay style, it feels false, necessitating that you move your story along at “Sunday afternoon” speeds. This requires the writer to dig deep into his bag of tricks to keep the story moving - conflict, mystery, suspense, tension, plotting – all of them must be used to “trick” the audience into thinking things are moving faster than they actually are. The problem is, there aren’t many writers who can do this. But since Monahan is about as skilled as they come, maybe Tripoli would be different.

Or…maybe not.

I didn’t like Tripoli. In fact, I had a harder time getting through this than I did a day at Sunday school. I don’t know if this movie was built for me because it is looooooong and drawwwwwwn out and not much happens and I don’t know if the subject matter is big enough for an entire movie. It’s basically about a guy walking around for a couple of hours. Let me lay out the plot for you.

The story starts off in the Barbary Coast of Africa in 1804. America isn’t a major player yet. To the point where places like Tripoli scoff when Americans show up in their city and demand the release of American prisoners. This is exactly what happens as our hero, Eaton, an easily frightened American diplomat on his way to another country entirely, but who gets roped into Tripoli after local pirates seize his ship, sees other Americans there and asks for their release.

This was the first sign of trouble for me, that our hero wasn’t even specifically headed to Tripoli in the first place. He was going somewhere else and only upon noticing a few of his other countryman being held did he decide to make a stand. When the situation was so meaningless that our hero wasn’t even going there to address it in the first place, it just felt like a second rate problem. And indeed, the Americans aren’t in any imminent danger. They’re just sequestered to their ship in the port. So right away, the stakes feel low.

To the script’s credit, there is one great sequence in this opening act, and that’s when Eaton demands to speak with the city’s ruler, a barbaric man who skins people alive, pokes their eyes out, and forces them to live in cages in his throne quarters. And we thought Charlie Sheen had issues. Just the anticipation of this meeting between Eaton and the ruler was great, and when they do finally have their showdown, and Eaton stands up to him, it was easily the best moment in the script. I still had high hopes for Tripoli at this point.

Unfortunately, Monahan takes the story in another direction entirely. After the ruler denies Eaton the release of his countrymen, Eaton finds out that the king has a brother who’s been exiled to Egypt, and that this brother is a way cooler cat who doesn’t skin people alive and put them in cages. So he gets this idea that he’ll go to Egypt and convince the brother to come back and rule Tripoli.

And thus begins an endless trip where Eaton finds the brother and the two walk back to Tripoli, debating how they’re going to take over the city with so few men. As you know, for any “road trip” scenario to work, the characters have to be interesting. And both Eaton and the brother are – I hate to say it – but really boring. They sound like two college professors debating 200 year old world affairs for two hours. I mean it’s really hard to get through.

I suppose the final battle to take the city back could be epic with Ridley Scott directing, but because I didn’t care about any of the characters involved, in particular the American soldiers who I barely knew, the battle didn’t matter. To make things worse, there’s a huge anti-climactic moment that interrupts the battle at the end that basically makes everything that came before it (aka the entire movie) meaningless.

Tripoli’s faults come down to that most basic pillar of storytelling – stakes. I just didn’t feel the stakes. I didn’t really know or care about the Americans being saved. I didn’t understand why replacing the leader of Tripoli was so important. It seemed like our main character was set on it only because of principle, because the ruler was bad and his brother was good. I get principle but I don’t know if I believe that someone takes a months-long trip to Egypt to find a replacement king then goes back and tries to take over the city simply on principle. In Braveheart, if William Wallace loses any of those battles, his country loses their fucking freedom!! Now THOSE are stakes. Replacing the ruler of a mean but small group of savages who annoyingly interrupt European trade routes with their piracy? I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about that.

Also, I didn’t like the recruiting of the replacement brother. Mainly because the CITY IS WHERE ALL THE FUN IS! Tripoli, with this barbaric insane leader who kills people for sport….THAT’S WHERE I WANT MY MOVIE TO BE. That’s where all the conflict is. When we’re in this city, we feel like Eaton could be skinned alive at any moment. When he’s off wandering around Egypt, we feel no danger for him whatsoever. Why not have Eaton stay in the city and plan his takeover there? I suppose the answer to this has something to do with that’s not how it happened in real life. So then maybe you focus the story on one of the other characters, possibly one of the Americans stuck in the city?

To be honest, this is why I get worried whenever I open a period piece. Many of them seem to be geared towards historical nerds who love the details yet aren’t that interested in telling a rip-roaring story, which I guess brings us back to Monday’s script review, Repent Harlequin. The details are definitely necessary to making a script great. But a script’s laurels can’t rest solely on historical details. It has to be based on some kind of unique entertaining hook, and I’m still struggling to figure out what the hook of Tripoli was.

So if William Monahan, one of the best writers in Hollywood, is struggling to make an historical epic work, then let that be a word to the wise for all you amateur writers out there thinking you’re going to break into the spec market with an historical/period piece yourself. It’s really damn hard!

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

What I learned: If you refuse to listen to me and still want to write your period piece, seriously consider starting your screenplay with an opening crawl that highlights the relevant details of the time. One of the reasons I had such a tough time getting into Tripoli was that I had no knowledge of this time period or this city. If there are some important details about why Tripoli is the way it is or what stage America is at right now, the reader needs to know (i.e. “In 1807, pirates out of Tripoli were wreaking havoc on the surrounding countries, severely crippling the most important trade routes in Western Europe, which in turn crippled America’s commerce…”). Set up for us why this story is relevant.

Amateur Friday - Iris Of The Garden

Genre: Western
Premise: Appalled by the lack of concern following a brothel worker's murder, a young prostitute in the Old West sets out to find the killer while searching for her own escape from the world's oldest profession.
About: Iris Of The Garden is a 2010 Nicholl Quarter-Finalist. That tag has gotten Shaarawi some requests for her script, but so far nothing’s come of it. She wants to know what it’s missing. -- Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted.
Writer: Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi
Details: 100 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).

Photo from the movie "Brothel" by Amy Waddell

When I finished “Iris Of The Garden,” I really took Shaarawi’s question to heart. “What’s missing here?” “Garden” had done pretty well at Nicholl and she’d gotten some read requests from the placing, but how come that’s where the trail ended? What is it that’s holding this script back?

It’s an important question. If you don’t understand why another script isn’t working, how can you understand what’s wrong with your own script? I mean sure you can just say, “I didn’t like it,” or “It was boring,” but that doesn’t help you become a better screenwriter. So I really had that question on my mind when evaluating Iris Of The Garden.

It’s the Old West. Iris, a pretty 19 year old young woman, has just finished her first “job,” which would be fucking the mayor of this town. Yes, Iris is a prostitute.

Her career path wasn’t by choice (it rarely is). Iris was simply coming to town to get some honest work, and found herself out of money with no place to turn. So now she’s here, in a brothel, the last place in the world she wants to be.

If that wasn’t depressing enough, her arrival is quickly followed by the killing of one of her co-workers. Petal, barely 17 years old, was a recluse, a one-time good girl who had since gone nuts.

Iris is shocked that nobody seems to care about this brutal killing, so she bestows it upon herself to figure out who was responsible. She eventually teams up with her best friend in the house, 17 year old Fern, to seek out clues that will lead her to the killer.

At first the assumption is that it’s Indians, then one of the customers, but over time it spreads to the owners of the brothel and beyond. The chief suspect is Mr. Donner, the big shot owner of the General Store and one of Petal’s main customers. Donner is notorious for being violent in bed, so Iris and Fern are certain he’s involved in this somehow.

Along the way we meet a few other suspects as well one of Iris’s customers, the loner Jimmy Wayne, who falls in love with her, proclaiming her “his girl” and promising that one day he’s going to take her away from here. Iris must also fight off Violet, the evil “queen bee” of the house who’s clearly threatened by Iris’s beauty, and who may be in cahoots with a couple of other main suspects.

There’s a few twists and turns along the way, and Iris is also seeking a possible escape from the brothel, but this is basically a simple story about one woman trying to solve a murder.

So back to that question. Why isn’t “Iris of The Garden” able to find a way past that “good but not great” label? I think there are a few factors to consider here, and it starts with the genre. Despite the amazing success of True Grit, Westerns are a tough sell, and rarely find their way up the development ladder. The only reason why Grit was made was because the Coen Brothers decided to make it. It was not a spec script that was brought to them. It was all them.

You have to remember that 99% of the people you give your script to are thinking, in one form or another, can this script or this writer make me money? Writers don’t think about that for some reason. The agent? The producer? The manager? These are all people with families, with mortgages, with car payments, with “Hollywood image” upkeep. So when these people receive a Western, they know immediately it’s going to be a writing sample, not a script they can sell, and that puts it low on the priority list.

Now that’s not to say a Western can’t start someone’s career or that I’m saying “Never write a Western.” Craig Zahler, who wrote The Brigands Of Rattleborge, got himself a ton of assignment work from that one screenplay. The point I’m making is, becoming a professional screenwriter is hard as it is. But it becomes even harder when you handicap yourself with a genre Hollywood's reluctant to embrace.

But I think the bigger problem with this script is in the setup, and it’s a problem that pops up a lot in this kind of story. For investigation scripts to work, the person investigating has to have a strong reason to do so. In most of these films, it’s a detective or a cop doing the investigating, which makes perfect sense because that’s their job. Over the course of the story, as they learn more about the murdered or kidnapped person, they become more attached to them, making their motivation even stronger.

When you don’t use a cop or a detective, you have to find some other reason why the protagonist would be strongly motivated. So in the million dollar spec sale, Prisoners, about a man whose daughter is kidnapped, he may not be a cop, but it makes perfect sense why he begins his own investigation. Because it’s his daughter!

I never once understood why Iris was trying to solve Petal’s murder. She never knew the girl. I don’t even think she spoke to her. So for her to become obsessively involved so quickly didn’t feel natural. It bordered on flippant, the way Nancy Drew might decide to investigate the random disappearance of her classmate’s favorite red scarf.

There’s certainly a sense of connection here, that these two girls are stuck in the same horrifying position. But no matter what twist or turn came up in the story, I always kept saying to myself, “Why is she doing this? Why does she care so much?”

The other big problem I had was that there was no urgency in the investigation, no ticking time bomb. One of the things that works so well in serial killer screenplays is that the killer is going to strike again. This results in both high stakes (another potential death) and a ticking time bomb (the impending next kill). We don’t have any impending doom in this story. There’s nothing dictating that our protagonist find out who this killer is RIGHT NOW. And there’s no stakes involved in whether she solves the case. Nothing will really change whether she finds the killer or not.

I realize it would make a different movie, but I think it might be more exciting if Iris showed up at this whorehouse with three of four girls recently murdered instead of one. Now she’s not just investigating a murder out of curiosity. She’s trying to prevent her own murder, to save the lives of herself and her friends in the house. I think that would be way more exciting.

As for the rest of the script, it was pretty good. You know, if you ignore the story problems I listed above, the writing itself is solid. It’s a nice sparse easy-to-read script. The prose is pleasant. The dialogue feels authentic. I felt like we were really in a whore house back in the old West, which is by no means an easy feat. Some of the characters were really well drawn, including the nasty Violet and the nastier Donner.

I thought the “romantic interest” could have been better handled, as it never seemed like Lizz-Ayn was truly committed to it (and the whole “I’m really rich” surprise at the end felt like a reality TV reveal, not a serious twist in a dramatic Western), but for this script to get where it wants to go, the whole motivation thing needs to be worked out, and I think there needs to be more danger involved in the pursuit. We have to feel like people don’t want Iris digging. We have to feel like more killings are coming. This thing just needs to be a little grander in scope.

Some good writing here, but the story definitely needs some work.

Script link: Iris Of The Garden

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

What I learned: Motivation is so important. Why is your main character doing what they’re doing? If there isn’t some strong reason for their actions, your entire script is doomed. Shrek’s going on his journey to get his swamp back. Colin Firth in King’s Speech goes on his journey because he has to give the most important speech in history. Even in the movie I didn’t like, Winter’s Bone, I admit that the main character had a very strong motivation for going on her journey – to save her house and her family. So make sure your protagonist’s motivation is rock solid in your screenplay.

Red Leaves

Genre: Mystery/Drama
Premise: When a young girl goes missing after a teenage boy babysits her, the boy’s family must endure a town who’s convinced that the boy killed her.
About: Nathan Parker is best known as the writer of the critically acclaimed sci-fi feature from Duncan Jones, Moon. Moon was Parker’s first produced credit but not his first assignment. It appears he was tasked with adapting this book, Red Leaves, a year before Moon made its way into production. Parker wrote another feature after Moon for Lionsgate, a little known film called “Blitz,” about a serial killer who slowly picks off London police officers. A motley crew of cops must track him down before he strikes again. While Red Leaves made this year’s Blood List for some reason (it’s now 3 years old), it’s not a horror film, which makes you wonder what the criteria for the list is.
Writer: Nathan Parker (based on the book by Thomas H. Cook)
Details: 122 pages – sept 15, 2007 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).

One of my favorite films from 2009, which I unfortunately didn’t see in time to rank in my Top 10, was Moon. I’ve seen a lot of “trapped in a small location” films before and they almost always run out of ideas by page 40. Seeing two Sam Rockwells in the trailer also made me cringe. It felt gimmicky, a cheap trick to land a name actor (allowing the actor to play multiple roles).

But man, that movie unfolded beautifully, never overstepping its reach, coming up with just the right amount of mystery to keep the story fresh while never insulting your intelligence. It was endlessly engaging, everything the Soderbergh Solaris remake should’ve been. So I was excited to see what Parker had written before that breakthrough script.

Red Leaves introduces us to the Moore family. We have Eric, the practical father, Meredith, the frustrated mother, and teenager Keith, the rebellious son. The family threw it on autopilot a long time ago and like a group of zombies, stumbles mindlessly through each day. This is exactly what Red Leaves wants to explore, that we’re all on autopilot until tragedy strikes, until something comes along and forces us to face the issues we’ve been sweeping under the rug.

Well that rug’s about to be lifted up.

Amy Gardino is a pretty nine year old girl who Keith babysits every week. He heads over on a Saturday evening  and does the job just like he’s always done, except the next morning Eric gets a call from Mr. Gardino asking him if Keith knows where Amy is. Eric checks with Keith, who seems more annoyed than scared, and when it’s confirmed that, no, he does not, the town begins a frantic search to find the girl.

While at first it seems that Keith is merely someone with information that could help the search, it becomes clear that detectives believe he’s the number 1 suspect. This forces Eric to hire a lawyer for Keith, which in turn convinces the town that Keith has something to hide.

As the mystery unwinds, it appears that Keith is hiding something. Eric watches as the events Keith recalls to the cops are not the same events he knows to be true. Just like that, Eric finds himself lying to protect his son and his son’s lies, in a rapidly descending situation.

Of course, what this event really does is force the family to face those issues they’ve been putting off. Meredith has been drifting away from Eric for years, and may or may not be involved with a co-worker. She must inform the detectives of this in order to avoid any suspicion that she’s hiding something.

The real crack in the family, however, is Keith, who has become a social recluse, for which Eric has been in complete denial about. His son has needed help, needed someone to reach out to, and he hasn’t been there as a father. Figuring out the events of that night is going to tell Eric who his son really is, and it’s looking like that person may be a monster.

As if that isn’t bad enough, Amy’s father, Bill, is 100% convinced Keith killed his daughter. When the cops won’t arrest Keith because they don’t have enough evidence, Bill decides to take the law into his own hands.

What I liked about Red Leaves was that it approached its story from a realistic point of view and from an angle we haven’t quite seen before. While I liked Prisoners (another script about a disappearance), that script sensationalized its story, basking it in what might be considered cheap serial killer conventions. In contrast, Red Leaves is more interested in how things would really happen, so we get the first questioning by the cops, we get the more intense second questioning, we get the hiring of the lawyer, we get the search warrant.

And we see this all through the eyes of the kid’s father, not the kid himself, which allows us to worry about things that we wouldn't normally worry about in these movies. For example, the father must struggle with the question of if his son is guilty or not. He has to do his own investigating into his son’s case, but in such a way that he doesn’t draw suspicion from the town. He has to make some tough decisions. Does he force his son to go back and tell the cops the truth, or will that truth lead to his son’s arrest, in which case he’d be better off keeping it to himself? I think that’s what makes Red Leaves so compelling, is all this inner conflict going on inside Eric’s character.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of things holding this script back. The first is a glaring plot hole that almost ruined the entire story for me. Eric gets the call the next morning from the Gardinos, who say they just checked Amy’s room and she’s gone. This means that the Gardinos would’ve been the first family in the history of babysitting ever – we’re talking hundreds of millions of families here – who came home from a night out and instead of checking if their daughter was in her room, they went straight to bed.

Wait a minute. WHAT???

When has this ever happened?? This is really poor storytelling because if there’s one part of your script where you can’t have holes, it’s in the premise. The setup has to be airtight or else we’re not going to believe anything that comes after it.

I also thought Parker made a poor choice by including Eric’s voice over. Over the course of the story, Eric has very intense dramatic observations about what’s going on such as, (not actual dialogue) “Our children are our lifeblood. We raise them, coddle them, protect them. What does one do once they leave the nest? Do you pull them back in or do you let them fly and figure out their problems on their own?” It was just way over the top melodramatic and gave the otherwise realistic-feeling story a hammy center. I just felt like we already knew all these things through observing Eric’s actions. For him to say them out loud was superfluous.

Finally, the ending was a little too easy. I’m not going to get into spoilers but I’ll just say everything came together rather conveniently at just the right time. You’d like your finale to be challenging for you characters. If it’s too easy we feel cheated.

Maybe the biggest testament to Red Leaves is that despite these problems, I was still eagerly reading along, excited to see what would happen. Parker does a nice job increasing the stakes and building the drama until the climax. One of the more common mistakes I see in amateur screenplays is the story petering out as we approach the ending. Here we really feel like all of the sides are closing in on us, and that we're truly building, so even though the ending was kinda disappointing, it was fun getting there. 

The script also excels by not making the plot the main focus. This becomes about the characters, and specifically the characters inside this family, who are now being forced to deal with each other - which is in many ways just as horrifying as dealing with this accusation. So overall, despite some pretty big problems, I’d still say this is worth the read.

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

What I learned: I think this is a prime example of how voice over can hurt a script. Voice over is best used to make jokes in a comedy and for expositional purposes in overly complicated stories (At the beginning of Braveheart, we get some voice over to tell us where we are in history, who the main players are, and what this has to do with the story we’re about to read). If you’re using voice over to hear the thoughts of a person whose actions are already telling us the same thing (as happens in Red Leaves) then it’s going to feel superfluous. The only exception to this rule is if Morgan Freeman is performing the voice over, in which case it will always work. I want to say that’s a joke but I don’t think it is.