Somebody got there first

I had this idea, see, about a woman who fantasizes about killing her boss, because I figured everybody can relate to that and it would be a big hit, except I'm a little late. Horrible Bosses, a comedy about three buddies who decide to band together to murder their despicable bosses, is already slated for production.

I just read it and yeah, there's a lot of overlap. So back to the drawing board.

I love the original idea, but at some point I got stuck on it taking place at work because of the aforementioned thinking about killing the boss as being relatable. But the story doesn't have to take place at work because there are plenty of other people we fantasize about killing during the day.

So I've decided not to scrap my script, but to use this as an opportunity to get really creative. I went for the obvious - cube farm frustration and an irritating boss, but this is actually going to force me to come up with a scenario that hasn't been done.

It happens to everybody eventually.

Son of a bitch

There is a new untitled comedy making the rounds that will apparently star Kevin James as a teacher who moonlights as an MMA fighter to pay for classroom supplies.

I have spent the last 8 years trying to figure out the right way to make an action star out of a teacher. I also happen to LOVE MMA. It's the only sport I give a shit about.

A teacher who fights in MMA matches to pay for classroom supplies. Dammit to hell. Why the hell didn't I think of that?

What are you reading?

So as it turns out, work is a lot of work. I miss vacation but I have to say that so far this batch of kids is fantastic. Some of them even know what a stanza is already. So yay.

I'm working on a new script but first I have to read the screenplay for Horrible Bosses to make sure I don't overlap that too much with one of my projects. The Manager always reminds me of this. One of her regular questions to me is "What are you reading?" I get the impression that she has dealt with a ton of new writers who never read anything. I make sure I can always tell her the latest scripts I've read and which ones I liked.

Last week I was getting ready for the start of school, but I still had time to read the remake of The Thing and 127 Hours. This week even though I'm starting back to work I'm still going to make sure I have time to read Horrible Bosses and another script I've been eager to read.

As much as I like Carson's Scriptshadow site, reading his reviews is no replacement for reading the scripts themselves.


What have you read lately? What did you think of it?

How to piss off a woman reader

Yesterday I read a screenplay by a new writer that offended me so much I was physically angry when I finished it. Nevermind why I was reading it, I was and I had to finish it. And it made me very very angry.

There was a woman in this script who was severely beaten by several men in a warehouse. She begged and pleaded constantly, and when she got the chance to escape she needed a man's help to get out. She was the only female character in the story. In the end her only escape from her predicament was to get married to her knight in shining armor.

If you enter a contest or submit your work to a studio or a rep, do not assume your reader will be male. You might end up with a woman - you might end up with someone like me. And there is no way in hell someone like me would EVER put through a script that offensive to women.

It's more than just the Bechdel test John August talked about last week, although this particular script definitely failed that test because there was only one female character. But it's also about the personality you give your female characters. I can't tell you how many times I've read a script that describes every female character by her hair color and not much else, or simply says she's hot. Or she has no sense of backstory, or her entire reason for existing is to give the big hero someone to save. This is not okay.

Personally I take just as much time developing my male characters as I do my women. I see them each as individual people who have desires and insecurities and interact with each other in ways that reflect their past experiences. It doesn't matter what sex you are, as a writer you should be able to do this.

Imagine if you read a script where it was all women characters except for the one man in the story, who they all tie to a chair and beat while he whines and prays for them to stop. Think about what kind of reaction you'd have.

Do not assume a man will be the only audience for your script. What happens if the reader is a woman? Look at your script. What does it say about women? How would it make you feel if you were a woman reading this?

I don't need every female character to be a badass with a gun, but every woman has skills, even if her skill is to use sex to get what she wants. When you have a weepy woman who does nothing but wait to be saved by a man, especially when she's the only female character in your story, you have not done your job as a writer.

In this particular screenplay I kept waiting for the woman to take matters into her own hands. I hoped that her story arc was to realize that she wasn't helpless, that she had to fight to defend herself or use whatever skills she has to escape. Instead she just kept on waiting for someone to save her while she took her vicious beatings.

If that was your script, punch yourself in the face right now and never pull that misogynistic shit again.

Thoughts on the script: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Last night I read Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach's script for Fantastic Mr. Fox, a Roald Dahl book I absolutely adored as a child. I've been meaning to read it for a while, but the recent appearance of trailers around the web have rekindled my interest, so last night I got all nostalgic and cracked the thing open. What I read surprised me. Now the draft I read was dated 2007 and it's obvious from the trailers that things have been changed, and I get why.

As I watched the trailer the first time I wondered why this hadn't been made in a Pixar style. Why the stop motion? I get it after reading this draft. This is not a kids movie.

Kids movies these days have adult content sort of snuck in under all the silliness so that parents have some inside jokes waiting for them in the theater. Might as well entertain them while they're there. This film works in the opposite way. This script has jokes for kids snuck in under the radar of a story for their parents. Might as well entertain them while they're in there with their folks.

Mr. Fox drinks booze. In fact, one of the things he's so keen on stealing is very alcoholic cider. Was that in the book? I mean, I know he stole cider, but I don't remember him talking about how drunk it got him.

The content is pretty adult too. There are a lot of sophisticated jokes and a few serious adult problems the Foxes have to work out. And the most surprising is a character who's never really explained but apparently evil. He dies in a somewhat brutal way at the hands of our hero.

It's obvious from the preview that they turned that character into a goofy ally, most likely to lighten this thing up for the kiddies. The character needed fleshing out anyway, but it's interesting to see that they took him in a whole different direction.

On the one hand, I'm a little dissapointed to think they took some of the bite out of the story by making it more family-friendly, but then I remember being a kid. I loved this story. I would not have loved this version of the movie because I wouldn't have understood a lot of it.

Besides, my favorite line in the trailer was not in the script, a line that definitely appeals to kids. "I can fit through there. Want to know why? Because I'm small."

I like that kind of hyberbolic overenthusiastic humor. I like when people get excited about stuff they shouldn't get excited about, and conversely I like it when one person is completely unfazed while everybody else is freaking out. And that's the kind of humor in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Mr. Fox is a sane fox in a crazy world, or maybe sometimes he's a crazy fox in a mundane world. Either way he's a terrific character. I guess that's why he's so fantastic.

The draft I read definitely needed work, but the framework was there and the characters were engaging. I even stayed up an extra half hour to finish it before bed. It kind of reminded me of Chicken Run, and that's a good thing. And George Clooney is perfect casting. I'll be seeing this one, even if there are kids there.

Thoughts on the script: Zombieland

Gentle reader Tavis said people are probably wondering what I think of the screenplay for Zombieland. I guess it's because I love zombies so much and I talk about them all the time. The odd thing about that is I hadn't seen that many zombie movies until I thought up the plot for Not Dead Yet.

It was only after I thought up a zombie story that I learned anything about zombies, but once I did I researched obsessively and that's how I discovered how much fun zombies are. You can stab them in the throat repeatedly and you can set them on fire and they just keep on coming.

So at first people did keep asking me if I read Zombieland and I would get out the screenplay and then get distracted and forget I was supposed to read it. But a couple of months ago I finally got to it.

MINOR SPOILER WARNING

I imagine they've changed quite a bit since the spec went around because Patrick Swayze is nowhere in the cast list. I'm wondering if they replaced his character with Bill Murray.

Let me explain. Zombieland is clever. Like really clever. Maybe too clever. It wanders back and forth between being action and comedy, which I love for my own selfish reasons. My script is a lot of action and hardly any horror, and this script is a lot of action and not really any horror. But where Zombieland replaced the horror with comedy, I replaced it with a storyline so depressing you might not want to go outside for a while.

The story follows this guy in a post zombie-apocalyptic world who is kind of a wimp but hooks up with this badass redneck type. They get into some hijinks with a vicious mother/daughter conman team and end up at Zombie Patrick Swayze's house where they make like eight hundred thousand references to Dirty Dancing and Roadhouse. You can kind of tell at that point that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were just enjoying themselves immensely by imagining all the fun they could have if they broke into Patrick Swayze's house found his zombie corpse wandering around.

That's really what this screenplay is - loads of fun. I laughed, I shouted, I pumped my fist. It's just a terrific combination of badass mixed with dry humor. And I loved the way it ended. This is a limp off into the sunset kind of story. It just sort of stops, which I actually adore. I'm not overly fond of movies that tie up all the ends in a neat little bow.

There's this one scene where the two guys have to break into a grocery store to get a Twinkie - let me tell you, the great Twinkie quest is just awesome - and it's just one big zombie free for all. There are a zillion zombies all over the place and only two guys with guns just shooting the shit out of everything. It's pretty much my version of heaven.

It's an imperfect script, of course. The Patrick Swayze thing is a little too cutesy for its own good and it's a little insulting to the man. I found myself wondering how they ever thought he would do it. Maybe they didn't. Maybe that's why they got Bill Murray.

My only worry is that it doesn't make my screenplay quite as original. I wrote the first draft before I ever heard of Zombieland, but now my screenplay may look a little derivative. At the time, I thought I was very clever with this zombie script that was more action than horror, and I thought my only competition was World War Z. But now, here's a post-apocalyptic zombie comedy action movie with some really cool action scenes and a movie star. I don't have a movie star.

But I do have a flame thrower, and that's something they ain't got.

Thoughts on the scipt: Medieval

You know when you read a screenplay or see a movie or something and you want to run out and tell everybody how much you loved it but everybody’s already talking about how terrible it was?

Yeah, well.

Carson Reeves at Script Shadow and Scott Myers from Go Into The Story decided to make today a challenge for readers. We were to read the screenplay for Medieval and post our reviews as a discussion in the comments based on their reviews. Not one to back down from such a challenge, I read the script this morning when I was supposed to be making photocopies and lesson plans, which is why my lesson plan for today is “Hey, fill out this thing and see what you know.”

So I read Medieval. And I fucking loved it. And apparently nobody else did.

Medieval is the story of seven different warriors - a Samurai, a Knight, a Gypsy, a Zulu, an Arab, a Viking (easily the most forgettable and unnecessary of the group), and a Monk - who are rescued from prison supposedly to steal the king’s crown, but soon find they were set up to take the fall for the king’s assassination,. Now the king’s brother, presumably the assassin’s boss, has sent his entire army of comic book warriors after our seven reluctant heroes. Also, there’s a girl.

Here are the problems:

They need to up their character development. A few characters are a tad anemic, but a pass or two will fix that problem, since all they really need is an extra moment here and there, a moment they could fold into the existing narrative.

This script has waaaaaay too many allusions. These guys obviously love movies and action movies in particular, so every couple of minutes they use a line from Star Wars or Cool Hand Luke or whatever, which is annoying because it takes me out of the script and makes me groan. I’d rather they just use their own words, because when they do it’s excellent.

Except that they use their own words just a tad too much. Now I love a good aside as much as anybody, but these guys are trying way too hard.

The story is reminiscent of many others. This is The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen and The Usual Suspects all over the place. I don’t think they were trying to hide it.

All that said, I don’t give a shit. I loved this script.

I loved it because it never stopped moving. This is the kind of momentum movies like Crank strive for, a constant rush from beginning to end, with just enough downtime to let you catch your breath. The action scenes, although at times a bit confusing, are straight up badass. Watching a Monk fight a Sumo wrestler and a Knight go to town on some Teutonics - cool. The set pieces here are amazing, and the writers make full use of their locations and the skills of their characters.

And the twist ending surprised me in a good way. I didn’t see it coming and I loved the way I’d been tricked. It kind of petered out after that, so on a rewrite they definitely need to finish on a stronger note, but all in all I was pleased as hell. It was a fast read and a strong story. There are some historical inaccuracies they need to clear up, but they left themselves a window when they put these characters in this time period and gave them modern language right from minute one - they established that this is a modern world inside an old world.

Anyway, I thought it was fucking fantastic overall. Nobody else did except the people who paid all the money to buy it. I’m not sure what that says about me.

Thoughts on Benjamin Button, Johnny Quest and Felon

The Beefcake and I went to see Benjamin Button finally. Holy frijoles, what a brilliant piece of film. I have the bladder or a tiny little bird, yet after drinking a large limeade at the taco stand, I didn't have to pee once during the 3 hour movie. That's how good it is.

I cried so hard I started hyperventilating, but silently because you can't be wailing at the top of your lungs in the middle of a sold out theater. But the lady next to me was totally crying too, and the Beefcake - well the Beefcake is just too manly to cry. He had some allergies or something.

Lots of stuff has already been said about Benjamin Button, but I just wanted to point out one thing that made it work so well: theme. Every single moment of this film was reflective of the theme of age and time. It was about opportunities lost and won, chances taken and not, fear that we've missed our lives, fear of death. It all goes back to watching time pass and there is not a frame of film that doesn't explore the idea of time slipping away in one way or the other. I don't think I've ever seen a film so steeped in theme before. Yet it's not preachy. Nobody ever turns to the camera and says, "Hey you, don't waste your time." It's all implied, and implied beautifully.

I also read the screenplay for Johnny Quest this weekend. It was on the Black List, but I found it kind of a generic script. Dan Mazeau wrote some terrific action scenes that race all over the world as the characters collect each other and investigate the great mystery at hand.

The problem with the script is that the action scenes are all it has going for it. The script felt like it was jumping from one badass sequence to the next and paying lip service to the plot just enough to get us to the next kickass fight. I know this problem. I've had this problem many times, but nobody has paid me a bazillion dollars to do that in an adaptation of a loved cartoon.

As a result of this shell of a story, I didn't feel like I got to know the characters very well. They seemed pretty uncomplicated. I actually think this could easily have been an extended episode of the show, not a feature length film.

I also watched the film Felon, a straight to DVD movie starring Stephen Dorf and Val Kilmer and Harold Perrineau. According to the prison guard I watched it with, it's the most accurate prison movie he's seen so far in his life. It won't win any Oscars, but the film does a terrific job of letting us sympathize with the bad guy. We don't like what he does, but we understand why he does it and that's enough to make this an engaging film.

So there you go. One for the theater, one for the DVD player, one to maybe not read.

Thoughts on the script: Gaza

I love stories that take a situation I've always taken for granted and flip perspective. Today I read the Black List script Gaza by Frank Deasy because - well, because that giant clusterfuck in the desert is sort of prominent in the new right now. And it definitely flipped the switch on perspective.

We hear all the time about how important it is that we stay good friends with Israel and everybody in America knows Hamas is a bunch of terrorists and Arabs are evil and plan to kill us all if they ever get the chance because they hate Peace. As they hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.

It's also possible I'm thinking of Tybalt.

It looks like Gaza has been picked up by the BBC, which makes sense. I very much doubt an American studio would produce this film without some major script changes. We can't have a script that makes Palestinians look like the victims.

Not that Gaza is all woe is me, I'm Arab. There is just as much stupid violence coming out of the Palestinian side in this screenplay as there is from the Israeli side, but since the protagonist spends most of the story inside the Gaza strip, we get the unique perspective of a culture of people who feel trapped within their own ghetto of a country.

The story is about Ruth Haas, a British lapsed Jewish doctor who journeys into Gaza to retrieve the body of her journalist daughter who has been murdered by Fatah soldiers. She learns about her daughter and the conflict that has consumed what used to be a beautiful, free country. Needless to say, she comes out a lot more aware than she goes in.

The writing is okay. The style is pretty standard and the character descriptions are terrible - for a long while at the beginning I was confounded in my attempt to figure out which character was Rose and which character was Ruth - but the story is just solid. The character relationships feel real and developed and full of complications.

But the best part about this script is how many thoughts ran through my head while I read it. It doesn't really try to answer any questions or find any permanent solutions to the problem in Gaza, but it does put forth a shitload of questions we all need to ask ourselves about our capacity for inhuman behavior.

It's got a mixed bag of an ending. There is optimism for certain characters but Gaza is fucked. I guess the point is, if you don't want to die in Gaza you have to get the hell out.

It's not an uplifting story. Especially since the second I closed the file I flipped on CNN and watched the fallout right there on my television, but it really helped me understand what the hell is going on in that Godforsaken land. I wish we could send Cher over there to smack every single one of those people in the face. Snap out of it!

Thoughts on the script: Butter

Yesterday I read the Black List script Butter by Jason Micallef. It's a script near the top of the list - it got 44 recommendations.

For a reason. This script was fantastic to read.

Butter is a relatively short script at a 105 pages, and it's a story about a group of people who engage in underhanded dealings to win a butter carving contest in Iowa. You can sort of sense the comic potential already, don't you think?

I'm a professional multitasker, so usually when I read a script I am also watching a movie, checking email, cleaning my apartment and eventually falling asleep. I started out that way, but after about five minutes I turned the movie (Dial M for Murder) off. Then I stopped checking my email. My house was a mess and I was wide awake. I was just enraptured by this adorable little screenplay.

What makes this screenplay so fantastic is its sense of personality. The characters were so clear and well developed and each had his or her own voice, but the voice of the script as a whole was the bonding factor. It wasn't over the top and it wasn't out of place. It felt organic to the script.

Here are some examples of action lines that made me chuckle:

AND THEN, as the fog parts, a woman emerges. This is LAURA PICKLER and her age is none of your business.

Bob is surrounded by adoring women. He’s like a chubby, diabetic Zac Efron.

Laura looks around: Hummel Figurines, a painting of a crying bald eagle hovering over the Twin Towers on 9/11, a picture of a few of Orval and Helen’s fugly-ass children. We just know what Laura is thinking: these people are disgusting.

A 19-year-old woman works the pole (NOTE: no nudity, please, it’s not that kind of movie) to Lulu’s “To Sir, With Love.”

Fantastic stuff. It didn't get in the way of the story and it didn't feel forced. It felt like the writer really captured the essence of these people and the community they live in. I feel like I really know these people.

I've been reading such downer material lately that this was a breath of fresh air.

Reading these cute little one liners helped me in my rewrite too. Yesterday one of my missions was to trip my action so that I say more with fewer words. I thought about the way Butter does it with a flirty little aside and decided to use that technique in a few places - not too many because I'm not trying to be cutesy, but here and there where it adds a little something to the tale. I hope it makes my script a more fun read.

If you get a chance, read Butter. It's a terrific example of how to put voice into a screenplay.

Spellcheck is for losers

This is a grammar rant that could very well come back to bite me in the ass some day but I don't care. I'm an English teacher and a writer and I can't let it go without speaking my little piece.

A few days ago I read Tarantino's latest, Inglorious Basterds.

Why is it spelled like that? Because Tarantino is too important and busy to run spellcheck.

By now you may have heard about the typos. The script is riddled with them - apostrophe errors, spelling errors, misused words, awkward sentence structure - it reads like an essay written by a smart, lazy 12-year-old.

Okay first of all, Tarantino has done some amazing work. Reservoir Dogs will always be one of my top ten films of all time and Pulp Fiction is brilliant. I confess I didn't love Kill Bill. In fact I think as you go backwards in his career Tarantino's films get better. He had some great ones right at the beginning.

And to be honest, Inglorious Basterds is an interesting story. It's sort of revisionist history: A group of Americans and a Jewish French girl independently conspire to assassinate Hitler and other lead members of the Reich.

It's got its moments, but it's a Tarantino world. He loves mixed race relationships so he put one in here. A Jewish girl in hiding falls in love with a Negro man who wanders freely during the day. In occupied France. Because apparently while Jews were forced to hide, black Europeans were free to roam the streets as Goebbels talked about their glorious culture in admiring tones.

In case you're wondering, there were about 600 or so black Europeans in the occupied territories and as far as I know none of them made it to the camps. They were mostly shot and dumped into pits. It's not as easy to hide if you're black as it is if you're Jewish, and Goebbels certainly didn't think the Negros of the world were swell beings.

(And in case you're wondering what makes me such an expert, the home front during WW2 was the subject of my masters thesis. I don't know everything, but I've done a shitload of research.)

But this is Tarantino land, and the story changes history anyway, so maybe we can pretend Nazis liked black people.

There are some cool scenes in the script. There's good tension and there's a pretty cool standoff in a bar that I enjoyed very much. I'm not so fond of the ending because I feel like it sort of fizzled out a bit, but the story isn't a bad one.

No, the big problem here is the grammar and spelling. He spells gun "gunn" for instance. Basic stuff. I mean hell, he misspelled the title of his own movie.

Some have said it's no big deal. It's just spelling, the story is the important thing. Everybody makes mistakes.

Well, yes and no. Everybody does make mistakes and I usually hate people who correct minor grammar errors in others' work, but the mistakes in Inglorious Bastards are ridiculous in number. And it's a problem for two reasons.

One: for God's sake, the man's a professional writer. The least he can do is run spellcheck, just for integrity's sake. I doubt very much that Bill Goldman sends out screenplays covered in typos like this, but I guess since Tarantino has gotten older and can make anything he wants, he doesn't have to slum like the rest of us saps who are expected to make our work look professional. He can turn in his screenplay written in crayon and he'll still get funding for his next picture.

But that only works as long as his films keep making money.

It's not just about professionalism, it's also about readability. There is a scene in the beginning of the film where a Nazi officer speaks to a French family in French, but in the script it's written in English. The officer continually says "purpose" instead of "propose."

Now here's the problem: Is he doing that because his French is bad? Is that an intentional mistake? Or is this another Tarantino typo? It's impossible to tell. How are the actors supposed to know? There are places all over this script where I had to halt and go back to reread something because the words didn't make any sense.

And before anybody rushes to exclaim that this is probably just a draft Tarantino sent to his agent that got leaked, I heard from a medium level reliable source that this is indeed the version being used on set.

If this is true, it means Tarantino did not even bother to have someone proofread his script before sending it to the actors, the producers, the location manager, the thirty thousand other people who have to read and understand this script to do their jobs. So instead of taking a couple of hours to spellcheck and proofread, or pay a couple of bucks to an assistant to do it for him, or even ask a friend - hell I'd do it for free - he allowed his script to go public as a working document riddled with mistakes.

He's eccentric, see. He doesn't have to use spellcheck because he's a rich genius.

He has every right to do what he wants of course. As long as people keep seeing his movies he can write how he wants. But it's pretty rare you see a prima donna writer, you know? The least you can do is run spellcheck on your title.

Thoughts on The Wrestler, Once Upon a Time in Hell, and Grand Theft Auto

Saturday the Beefcake and I went to see The Wrestler at the Arclight.

There's this really, really long moment after the film fades to black before the credits come up and it is completely necessary so we can all gain our composure before we have to start concentrating again.

"That was a good movie," was pretty much all I had to say when we left the theater. I didn't want to ruin the film by overanalyzing it.

But then a little while later we started to talk about it and I said there was a bit of point-of-view violation. And then I couldn't think of anything else to complain about. It's just a fucking great movie. Much like Mikey, The Beefcake hates everything that isn't Robocop, but he loved the hell out of The Wrestler.

This weekend I also tore through three screenplays. I'll get to Inglorious Bastards later, but I also read Once Upon a Time in Hell and Grand Theft Auto because I really enjoy being depressed about the human condition.

Both of these scripts were well constructed and both were really violent tales about revenge and greed and women whose men treat them like shit. Once Upon a Time in Hell is not quite as clean a read - there were parts where I was a little confused as to what was going on, mostly because Brian McGreevey & Lee Shipman change people's names regularly depending on how they've been described. For instance, they'll start out by calling a guy "MAN" then later somebody will call that guy "PORKY" so they'll change his name to that, then later on we'll learn that his real name is "BOB" so they'll start calling him that. That's not literally what they did - nobody's named Porky - but that's sort of how it reads. Once Upon a Time in Hell also flips back and forth between past and present so frequently that it gets hard to follow the timeline.

Very mild spoilers follow.

The story itself is pretty good - really gritty and violent, as the title would imply. The young son of a mobster is ready to begin a promising career as a lawyer with his beautiful fiance at his side when his brother betrays him and takes everything he had. Which of course leads to some pretty nasty revenge.

The movie has one of those "happy" endings that's sort of like "Oh. Everybody's fucked but they're kind of okay-ish for now. yay."

I also read Grand Theft Auto.

Dude.

Usually when you get a video game adaptation it blows big fat goat chunks because they either have to blow off the game aspect to make a good story or they try too hard to make it feel like the game so that the story sucks (*cough* Doom *cough*).

But Grand Theft Auto, written by Jason Dean Hall, felt like both a solid story and a transfer of the video game. Our protagonist, Emile, is a reformed criminal and drug addict trying to make it right by working a legitimate job as a repo specialist, but it seems like everything in his life is in foreclosure, so he gets back into his old life for one more job.

Then the shit hits the fan. Drugs, gunfire, lots of stolen cars, a helicopter, a naked lady, cops, Yakuza, Mongols, decapitations, betrayals, suicides, you name it the shit's in there. But somehow it all feels organic to the story.

I think what works here that felt a little forced in Crank - it has pacing like Crank or Shoot 'Em Up, fast as fuck - is that our protag is not just trying to get away or maintain, he's actually on a mission, a mission with a clock. This film is GO GO GO from the second you hit the first page. Usually when I read a screenplay I get sleepy in the middle and have to break before I can finish it. Not this one. This puppy was rock 'em sock 'em.

I'm not sure which one I want to read next. Maybe Butter.

The Wickity Wickity Wackness

So obviously the big movie this weekend will be Hancock. It's going to make thirteenty billion dollars and entertain most people and I'm probably going to be one of them. After all the fuss I've been making about Tonight, He Comes I can't very well not go see the movie.

But if I have time to see another movie, I'll go see The Wackness.

Now I'm not a big fan of stoner comedies usually. I liked Half Baked and I liked Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, but most of the time the stupid pot head prat falling every thirty seconds doesn't really do it for me.

Fortunately this is not that kind of film. I haven't seen it yet but I read the script when it circulated on the Black List many months ago and I loved it, and from what I can tell the film is fairly true to the source material.

The story is about a kid named Luke who wants to smoke pot and get laid and figure out what the hell he's going to do with his life back in the '90s. His analyst, played by Ben Kingsley, is an even bigger mess who trades sessions for some of Luke's pot. It's not a pot film; it's a film about people who need a purpose and smoke pot to forget about the fact that they haven't found it yet. And it's funny. Luke's view of the world in particular is funny. I honestly didn't expect to like the script, but I laughed in spite of myself.

It's only playing in NY and LA this weekend but it goes wide pretty soon, in case you're looking for something a little more mellow to see once you've gotten your fill of Will Smith careening into trains.

Reading is hard

I have some really cool screenplays on my computer that I haven't read. Thanks to some of you and your awesomeness and the general awesomeness of other people, I've been lucky enough to have about 100 screenplays on my laptop right now. I've read about 5 of them. Some of them I've been wanting to read for ages.

I think the reason I haven't read most of them is that they're just so time consuming. It's easy to read a novel when you're waiting for your oil change or sitting on the toilet or generally bored or getting ready for bed. You can read one chapter or two and stop whenever you're ready, picking up right where you left off the next day.

But for some reason I can't do that with a screenplay. You're not supposed to watch a movie in half hour increments, you're meant to plant your ass in a chair for two hours and glue your eyeballs to the screen. And since a script is usually terse and only includes necessary information you kind of have to pay attention.

And that means devoting at least an hour of your time to reading it.

I try reading them at work sometimes but it's hard when you have five bored seniors eating lunch in your room and drawing rainbows and shit all over your paper covered desks while they giggle and flirt.

They want me to tell them which girl in their class I think is most likely to get pregnant. They also eat a lot of Cheetos with lime.

I really want to read the new Will Smith movie about the alcoholic superhero but it seems that every time I settle in to reading something comes up. And it's just so hard to understand what's going on when your attention is sapped every two minutes by some kid who wants to know if you've seen his textbook.

My yearbook staff is working on an art project they seem pretty pleased with. It's a Project Runway style thing where I had them choose an image in a magazine and use that as inspiration for a two-page spread. So far they have done some really creative shit.

But they really only need me to walk around periodically and make suggestion, so I think I'll attempt to read that screenplay during fourth period today. I hope it's good.

Thoughts on the script and the movie: Gone Baby Gone

I really liked Gone Baby Gone - both the script and the film. The script was adapted by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, whose only previous credits include assisting Affleck and Matt Damon on previous films.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

The script is pretty powerful, but there are some significant differences from the film. For one thing, the entire first five minutes or so is completely different. The script opens with Patrick (Casey Affleck) tracking down a deadbeat dad. The film trades that entire sequence for a voice over from Patrick while we see shots of his Boston neighborhood.

Normally I'd be wary of a film that traded a scene full of action for a scene full of talking, but in this film it was a wise decision, as are all the other decisions Affleck made to change from the script to the screen.

I'm guessing all the changes were made for the same reason. At the end of the film Patrick must choose between leaving a little girl with the man who kidnapped her and will probably raise her with love and compassion or returning the girl to her coke-head drug mule mother. And I think the majority of us feel like he made the wrong decision. Certainly his girlfriend does.

In the script it's very clearly the wrong decision. It's almost an absurd decision. The mom is so clearly a horrible parent who will never change, but for some reason Patrick feels obligated to bring her back the child, who is named Amanda. It doesn't make sense to any sane person.

So to understand why Patrick makes that decision, you have to give Patrick a reason for making it and you have to understand Patrick. He's already kind of a little guy who gets picked on a lot throughout the story so we need a better reason to love him besides his clever dialogue.

To that end, the voice over was added. Instead of watching Patrick ride around chasing some dude down - which he does kind of easily and without any really heroic behavior - we hear his voice explaining his philosophy of life. So we start the film understanding a bit of Patrick's motivation, the motivation that will affect his decision later.

For the same reason Helene, Amanda's mother, is softened. In the script she's pretty much a selfish bitch the entire time and nobody in their right mind would give her a child to care for, but in the film she goes to Patrick in one scene, telling him she'll change, making it clear that despite her failings as a mother, she really does love her child. It's not until the last few minutes that we realize how temporary her love was when it's clear she didn't even know the name of her daughter's favorite doll.

There's also a great deal of dialogue added to the end where Patrick explains his motivation. In the script, Patrick says he must bring the girl back simply because Helene is her mother. He never gives a more detailed answer than that for taking her away from a man who will love her.

In the film, however, he and Doyle (Morgan Freeman) have a battle of words over what Patrick plans to do with his knowledge of where Amanda is.

Doyle tells Patrick he doesn't want to explain to the Amanda's future children why their mother is so screwed up. And Patrick responds that he'd rather do that than explain to grown-up Amanda that he knew where she was living with her kidnappers and did nothing to bring her home.

From that perspective, the decision he makes goes from being an obvious mistake to being a genuine moral quandary. It's a stronger film as a result.

Thoughts on the script: The Darjeeling Limited

First, a disclaimer. I love Wes Anderson's work. I loved The Royal Tannenbaums and I loved The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and I am very excited to see what Fantastic Mr. Fox looks like since it was one of my favorite books as a child.

It's no secret that I love action movies. I love stories that start with a bang and move with incredible speed from one place to another, bullets whizzing by as the stakes continue to rise until you can't breathe over the sense of urgency.

This is not like that at all of course, although there are a few funny fights. But there are no bullets of crazy martial arts moves in The Darjeeling Limited. But the dialogue is so quick and the emotional urgency is so thick the film feels just as urgent as any martial arts fest.

But quieter.

Anderson didn't write it himself, of course. Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman share the credit for this script. And I love them for it.

SPOILERS!!!

The Darjeeling Limited is a little comedy about three brothers on a spiritual journey across India to find their mother after their father's funeral. Each brother has his own issues they try to deal with in between dealing with the issues they have with each other.

There's not much of a plot and there doesn't need to be. It's only 107 pages and it's chock full of dialogue because this is a story about bizarre family dyanmics, about how we deal with grief in different ways and what it means to need each other. The story itself is the relationships. Just like all Anderson's other films.

What this script does with amazing skill is something so many new screenwriters have difficulty with: making each character a distinct person.

The older brother, Francis, is frantic to control the itinerary, the divvying up of his father's belongings, even what his brothers eat on the train. Peter resents his brother's urge to control and continually tries to assert his independence. And the third brother, Jack, find himself caught in the middle and escapes by nailing an Indian stewardess in the bathroom.

The brothers speak differently. They act differently. They have completely different motivations in every scene, and since the plot is so thin that's a necessity in a story like this. I think any writer who has difficulty making their characters individuals would do well to read this script.

By far my favorite scene in the script and a good example of the way the writers differentiate between the boys is this scene right after Francis gets pissed at Peter for using his dad's razor, which sets of a series of insults as the boys use their father's memory as a weapon against each other. Peter throws a belt at Francis who was already injured in a motorcycle accident and is covered in bandages. This sets off a clumsy fight in the middle of the train cabin:

Francis holds his cane around Peter's neck in a strict headlock, squeezing vigorously while Peter's face turns bright red. Peter digs his fingers under the bandages on Francis' head. The two brothers buck fitfully on the floor, banging into things, shouting, grunting.

FRANCIS
You don't love me!

PETER
Yes I do!

JACK
I love you too but I'm going to mace you in the face!

Francis and Peter ignore Jack and continue fighting. Jack takes a deep breath and holds it. He fires the pepper spray at his brothers. It makes a pop and hiss.

Silence. Francis and Peter erupt into crazed screaming, pawing at their eyes and gasping for breath. Jack looks pained and scared. Francis grabs at Jack's ankles. Jack throws open the compartment door and retreats into the corridor. He watches as Francis and Peter slowly stagger to their feet, coughing and wheezing. Francis looks at Jack, squinting:

JACK
I had to do it.

Francis lunges at Jack. Jack kicks him. He runs to the end of the car, throws open the door, and heads into the next coach.

Jack turns around to face the door. He takes a step backwards. He inserts a fresh capsule into his can of pepper spray. He raises the cannister and waits. The door opens, and Jack maces Francis and Peter again. Francis and Peter scream and choke, clawing at their eyes. Jack shouts:

JACK
Stop including me!

Absurd and hilarious, particularly that line Jack says as he's about to mace his brothers, which made me have to stop reading because I was laughing so hard. But this scene is also significant for character development. Jack is tired of always being caught in the middle of Francis' constant need to be in control and Peter's constant need to rebel. And here he finally asserts himself.

But just like every other time the members of this family hurt each other, it's meant with love. The boys need each other. If Jack wasn't there to stop them with immediate pain Francis and Peter would have kept fighting until one of them really got hurt. They don't want to need each other, but they do.

It's just about the sweetest story I've read in a long time. I don't have brothers and I haven't lost anyone close to me but I still felt a deep connection to these boys simply because of their need to cling to each other through hardship. Anyone can relate to that I think.

As soon as I finished the script I jogged up to Blockbuster and rented the film. I hope it's as good on screen as it was on the page.

What's a screenplay for, anyway?

The last post spawned some discussion about the purpose of a screenplay. Obviously if it's a screenplay by the Cohen brothers, they know it's going to get produced and they'll have a great cast and blah blah blah awesome.

But the rest of us usually don't get so lucky.

So what is a screenplay for, anyway? If you're not already an A-List writer, I mean.

There's that old "blueprint" theory. It's a blueprint. It's a document for building your movie with all the pieces listed in clinical description so all the construction workers can follow along and do their part correctly under the watchful eye of the contractor. If the blueprint is off, the house will fall unless the contractor does some quick calculations on the spot to fix it. And if a construction worker decides to ignore the blue print he might create a cool new breakfast nook or an unstable support and the whole thing could come crashing down.

That's a pretty good metaphor right there.

But a screenplay also has to be read. It's not a novel, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't still feel like a story. I feel like a script is good if I can see the events in my head. If I have such a good grasp of the characters that I laugh at the jokes on the page or I get nervous over the possibility of death around the corner.

If you're directing your own material of course it doesn't have to be as exacting as a spec you're hoping to pass around town, but even then you still want your actors, your DP, your prop guy, your costume designer and everybody else to be able to read it and understand it and hopefully also feel passionate. Movies are always better when every person involved is there out of love. And if your script is simply a scientific document - well, it's kind of hard to love a script written by the numbers.

The best screenplays I've read - Little Miss Sunshine, Sideways and The Matrix being in the top three, give you a very clear sense of what's going on and a ton of personality. When I read those screenplays I feel the right vibe coming off of them. I sense not only what the story is, but what attitude it has. I know exactly what this film should be when it's all put together.

So I think a good script should stand on its own to some degree. Obviously it's mean to be produced just like a play. Even without the actors Romeo and Juliet is still moving, but it's inspiring enough to want people see the possibilities and want to put the thing together. A good script should do the same no matter who you're writing for.

Thoughts on the script: No Country for Old Men

I've been trying to get in the habit of reading at least one screenplay each week. I'm going to try to set aside at least one day each week on the blog to talk about that screenplay and maybe share anything I may have learned from it. We'll see how long that lasts.

A few days ago I finished the first draft of Not Dead Yet, and since I'm waiting until Sunday to start my first revision just to give me a little distance, I quelled my zombie jones with a little World War Z. It's a really good script, scary and tragic in parts and with a clear sense of theme, but it doesn't beat you over the head with the point.

But what I really want to talk about is the screenplay for No Country for Old Men.

I have not seen the film, but I'm sure it's a fine piece of cinematic spectacle. The action is constantly pushing the story forward and the characters are interesting and there's plenty of cool dialogue.

BIG OLD SPOILERS AHEAD

For example, check out this scene with CHIGURH* (The Bad Guy) and some road side PROPRIETOR:

Chigurh is digging in his pocket. A quarter: he tosses it. He slaps it onto his forearm but keeps it covered.

CHIGURH
Call it.

PROPRIETOR
Call it?

CHIGURH
Yes.

PROPRIETOR
For what?

CHIGURH
Just call it.

PROPRIETOR
Well -- we need to know what it is we're callin' for here.

CHIGURH
You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't even be right.

PROPRIETOR
I didn't put nothin' up.

CHIGURH
Yes you did. You been putting it up your whole life. You just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?

PROPRIETOR
NO.

CHIGURH
Nineteen fifty-eight. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails, and you have to say. Call it. A long beat.

PROPRIETOR
Look... I got to know what I stand to win.

CHIGURH
Everything.

PROPRIETOR
How's that?

CHIGURH
You stand to win everything. Call it.

PROPRIETOR
All right. Heads then.

Chigurh takes his hand away from the coin and turns his arm to look at it.

CHIGURH
Well done..


Here's the thing that's pretty brilliant about that scene. Chigurh is flipping the guy for his life. You know enough about this guy to know that he's letting this coin toss determine whether or not he comes back to the house later tonight and murders the Proprietor. But he never has to say a word about it. That's terrific characterization.

However....

I have a major problem with this script. Half the time I have no idea what the hell is going on. I assume this is a Cohen thing - I've never read one of their scripts before - but the exposition tends to be a bit hard to follow at times. For one thing there are places where a character we've been introduced to is listed as MAN for a while for no real reason since I'm assuming we'll know it's the same guy when we see him on screen.

Speaking of which, there are a LOT of characters and dead bodies listed as "Man," which gets mighty confusing since half the time I thought two people were one person and vice versa.

But it's little stuff like this I had the hardest time with:

The truck stops and Moss opens the passenger door and swings the case in and climbs in after. The driver, an older man, gapes at him, frightened.

MOSS
I'm not going to hurt you. I need you to-

The windshield stars.

A quick second round pushes part of the windshield in.

"The windshield stars"? As clever as that may sound, it's confusing. I had to stop a second and reread the line because I wasn't sure what it meant. So I was like, huh? Wha.... oooh.

Or this:

Wells looks at Chigurh, waiting for a decision.

The low chug of the shotgun.

Aside from his finger on the trigger, Chigurh hasn't moved. He sits staring at Wells's remains for a beat.

Again, very poetic and in the moment, but it took me a second to figure out what happened. I was like, did he just.... was that.... oh, okay. He's dead.

There are also scenes where I have a hell of a time trying to figure out where the characters are in relation to each other or the geography of a room in a scene where that information would be immensely useful.

Part of me wants to chalk that up to style points and get over it. But part of me does not like the way I had to constantly pay close attention to understand what the hell was going on in this script. The story should flow like a story, not feel like an assignment for my college English class.

Is it just me?



*Isn't Chigurh a great villain name? It's memorable, different and it reminds me of chiggers. And for those of you who didn't grow up wandering barefoot in backwoods North Carolina, chiggers are tiny little bugs that crawl in your skin and make you itch.