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December 1, 2008

Torture Porn

I can’t say that I’ve ever seen an example of torture porn, a budding subgenre that’s like a more nihilistic version of slasher movies. There are apparently two distinctions between torture porn and slasher movies: (1) the killer always gets away with it, and (2) nobody survives, but in the unlikely event that someone does, nobody believes their story and they get sent to the nuthouse. This is almost a complete reversal of standard slasher fare, where usually all but one character dies, and the one left takes an axe or something to the head of the killer. Even if they have the old “you think he’s dead and then his eyes pop open” ending, there’s still a moment of triumph. Torture porn lacks that moment of triumph, relying instead (for the most part) on moments of queasy hope that maybe these people will escape their attackers; if they ever do, the attackers chase them down and re-catch them rather quickly.

Why would anyone watch a movie like this? I can dig watching a movie where a bunch of people get killed, but I draw the line at one where everyone gets killed and the villain is victorious. Without ever receiving a satisfactory answer to my question, I never even dipped my toe in the bloodied waters of torture porn.

That is, until I received Wichita.

“Inspired by True Events,” the title page helpfully announces, Wichita tells a story very loosely based on the Wichita Massacre. Until I reached the third act, the script unsettled me. It still didn’t explain to me why anyone would want to watch torture porn, but I did start to gather some ideas about the conventions of the genre and why a movie like Hostel or Turistas might theoretically succeed where Wichita repeatedly fails. Those movies have a certain “they had it coming” element — springing up in the wake of September 11th, those movies in particular are driven by the ethnocentric (or possibly xenophobic — or, hey, maybe both!) notion that if any American leaves the country for any reason — especially to fuck around and have a good, sex- and drug-fueled time, they will die.

Where Wichita goes wrong is with the idea that these people have nothing to feel bad about except being moderately well-off. Rather than traveling to some exotic location in pursuit of vice, these people simply decide to have a Christmas party. How dare they! You might think the writer is trying to make a statement about consumerism or class or race or something else, but trust me, you’re wrong; I just haven’t gotten to the laughable ending yet.

The writer introduces us to a racially diverse group of men and women — which eliminates racism and sexism as motives — before one is mugged and killed outside a gas station, then the muggers decide to invade his home (where the party’s being held). Nothing follows but rape, torture, abuse, and sadism. It doesn’t quite have a plot, aside from some initial personality differentiation there’s no character development, the attempts to humanize the villains are laughable at best, and worse than that, the villains are stupid. Ignoring the fear factor for a second, how hard is it for a group that includes two doctors and other well-educated professionals to outwit a couple of bumbling thugs? Also, stop trying to humanize them for a second to give them a real motivation — if they just want money, why do they torture and kill these people? What prompts this torture? Fear that they will be outwitted or overpowered if they don’t subject the victims to perpetual humiliation and degradation?

To find answers, I did some light research on the actual Wichita Massacre and found…surprisingly little. No information on the actual motive, except that prosecutors discounted a racial motive in favor of robbery — but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t racial, just that it wasn’t prosecuted that way. “But wait,” you’re undoubtedly asking, “didn’t you just say this is a racially balanced group?” In the screenplay, yes. In reality, all five victims were white and the killers were black. Because I couldn’t turn anything up in my research, I couldn’t say if race played into any of it. The defense of the brothers involved is so pathetic, I couldn’t even read between the lines and manufacture what I believe to be the motive.

So maybe it was both. Or maybe it had less to do with race than with class, or maybe it was a heady combination of the two — one of the more unsettling elements of the massacre is the killers’ growing discontent with the lack of piles of cash. I could buy the motive being robbery, but when they bust into a big, ritzy house and discover ATM cards instead of cash and a big-screen TV instead of a safe, they get angry. Maybe the anger manifests itself in the form of psychosexual torture because they don’t want to kill them — not yet, when they have no actual money — but they have no real ideas on how else to torment them. All of this is pure speculation, of course. It’s just that, from what I read, these guys come across like misinformed idiots whose anger and adrenaline frazzled them, not jackass thugs trying to teach some yuppies a confusing lesson.

In the script, that’s the motive the villains are ascribed. But that’s not ridiculous enough; it reaches its nadir when one of the brothers announces that he’s a veteran of the Iraq war, and the motive has nothing to do with robbery or class struggle or anything else — it’s because he wants people to understand they’re never really safe! I don’t care how you feel about that particular war — if you don’t find that laughable or offensive or embarrassing, congratulations! You are the target audience for a movie this stupid.

It never stops getting worse. The younger, non-Iraq-vet brother has a girlfriend who actually is a sociopath. She’s the kind of person who believes it’s the height of romance when her boyfriend steals an engagement ring from a hog-tied prisoner and uses it to propose to her. The kind of person who wants to girl-talk with a group of women who were beaten and raped hours earlier. Her behavior is so bizarre, I can’t figure out if she was supposed to be comic relief or something worse. She’s written in such a way that makes me think the writer finds her actions acceptable — normal, even.

But wait, there’s more. After going around to ATMs and killing a few random strangers for no discernible reason (he doesn’t rob them, and they aren’t bothering anybody or even witnessing anything they could perceive as a crime), the older brother takes one of the female hostages to the convenience store at the gas station that started it all. There, the SUV he stole is recognized by the clerk, who knows something’s up. So the guy takes him hostage, along with two video-game-playing teenagers. He shoots the clerk a few times for fun, then forces the teens to give each other blowjobs, then kills them all. Seriously.

Back at the house, the hostages have banded together and used a cutlery set (one of the Christmas gifts) to attack the other brother. This is the script’s single clever moment, but true to the genre, it’s short-lived. The older brother bursts in, forces someone to drive the wounded younger brother to the hospital, then forces the rest of them into the backyard swimming pool, where he shoots them all. I should point out that the swimming pool is not only filled — it’s unfrozen. On Christmas Eve. In Wichita.

You think that’s the end, don’t you? Bleak moral: stop doing anything. How dare you strive to professional success and moderate wealth! Really makes you think —

Oh God, there’s more. See, earlier in the script, the younger brother throws a puppy into an oven — but he forgets to turn it on, har-har! So the surviving brother pulls the dog out and takes it with him. He drives to a nice, suburban subdivision, enters a reasonably large home, drops the puppy onto his sleeping daughter as a surprise Christmas gift, kisses her on the forehead, then gets into bed with his wife. After a moment, he gets up and keys in a code for his alarm system. Fade to black.

Are you fucking kidding me?! I know the writer’s trying to get deep on us, but this is like if a non-humanoid alien received a news report of the Wichita Massacre and, with no knowledge of human biological or psychological imperatives, decided to write a story about How It Happened.

What are we to take from this? Was this guy the hero all along? Are we supposed to believe what he did — his goal and his fucktarded reasoning for it — is just or worthwhile? Good God, I can understand dramatizing the actual events of this case, but the artistic license taken has created such a trainwreck that nobody should call it Wichita, film it in Wichita, or associate it with that city or the massacre that took place there. I’m not generally big on moral responsibility within the movies, but this is a different case — merely “inspired” or not, this purports to be a true story that is almost comically disrespectful to the actual victims and their family members, not to mention the lone survivor.

So I go back to my initial question: why would anyone want to watch something like this? What the hell does it offer? Whatever message it tries to deliver makes about as much sense as its hero/villain’s motives. Whatever statement it might want to make about the human condition gets buried under a mountain of bizarre, inhuman behavior. Whatever dramatic tension it wants to cull from the circumstances fizzles because, whether you know the true story or not (I didn’t), you know by page 20 they’re going to lose — it’s just a question of how many failed attempts the writer can use to pad the story out to feature length. Does it want to make a point about the possible psychological trauma veterans face? Does it want John Q. Poorman to feel a little better because, hey, they ain’t dead — but if they’d gone to med school, they almost certainly would be? What’s the goddamn point?

I think this is why they call it “torture porn.” Like sexy porn, it’s not about getting anything meaningful from the experience — it’s about getting your rocks off as efficiently as possible. But wouldn’t you rather watch cartoonishly giant, round breasts flopping around instead of people getting stabbed and raped? I guess it takes all kinds, but seriously, what the fuck?

Posted by Stan at 5:05 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 3, 2008

Diseased Freaks

Sometimes I feel like the quirky-character police. I don’t mind quirky characters, mind you — everyone’s a little off, which makes people interesting. However, there’s a fine line between “lovably eccentric” and “frighteningly psychotic.” Sometimes, it’s an intangible argument — why did I love the oddball characters in Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, but I felt the ones in The Life Aquatic were “quirky for the sake of being quirky” rather than feeling like real people? I’ve thought about that more than any sane man should, and I’ve come to no conclusions. Why did I think Juno and Napoleon Dynamite verged on creating stereotypes of the “quirky character” by applying well-known, overused peculiarities? Since the recent notion of “quirky characters” stems from the ’90s indie world’s frustration with mainstream fare, which started to rely increasingly on stereotypical (in many cases, outdated) characters and situations, does this mean we’ve finally lapped ourselves? Have the ’00s defined themselves as the decade of capricious-cum-crazy? It’s already given birth to the manic pixie dream girl archetype, so why not just go whole-hog and admit writers and filmmakers no longer have a clue what separates oddballs from nutjobs?

In the case of one quirky comedy script I read, things get a little more interesting. It was adapted from a novel, and while I haven’t read it (I’m not that dedicated to my work), I’ve gathered that the screenplay is pretty faithful to its source. The reviews are a mixed bag of folks praising Bender for poetic imagery and wonderful absurdity and denigrating her for irritating characters and a cutesy, overly precocious style. Taking for granted that many reviews of the book are favorable, and it sold enough to generate interest in a film version, the adaptation problem reminded me of Roger Ebert’s review of Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Her big competition: trailer-park cutie Amber (Kirsten Dunst), whose alcoholic mother, Annette (Ellen Barkin), is burned in a fire and spends much of the movie with a beer can permanently fused to the flesh of her hand.

Now there’s an example of how a mental image can be funnier than a real one—how a screenplay can fail to translate. You possibly smiled as you read about Annette’s hand being fused to a beer can. I did as I wrote the words. But the image of the charred can embedded in scarred flesh is not funny, and every time it turns up, it casts its little pall.

It reminded me of a similar passage in William Goldman’s Which Lie Did I Tell? I’m too lazy to dig out the book and quote from it, but paraphrasing from memory: he and Rob Reiner had long, vicious arguments about whether or not to include the feet-chopping-off in Misery. Goldman argued it’s essential to the story, but Reiner felt like visualizing that took things way too far. They compromised with the now-famous sledgehammer sequence, and when Goldman screened the film for the first time, it was so harrowing, he realized Reiner had been right.

How does that apply to this script? It seems to me that, in a book, it might be a little easier to accept the notion of a guy who spent 20 years wearing wax numbers around his neck to indicate his mood (higher numbers mean a better mood). Trying to imagine that on the screen… I’m about to go a long way for an analogy so bear with me. In high school, I was briefly on the speech team. The incident that caused me to quit was fairly simple: I was rocking ass at one tournament, doing Original Comedy, and if I broke to finals and did well, I would have made it to regionals. The first two prelims went great. Even the third — I knew I was on, like I’d never been on before. Then I made eye contact with the judge, whose face bore a look confusion and horror I would not see again until I lost my virginity. That tournament, I went 1-1-5, didn’t make it to finals, regionals, sectionals, or state. That was it. In a rage, I quit the team at the end of the run.

Getting back to the analogy, the look that judge had on her face? Probably the closest thing to the look on my face trying to visualize some of this “humor” on the screen. Maybe, like me versus the judge, it’s just a difference of opinion regarding what good comedy is. I won’t discount the possibility. However, from where I’m standing, the humor style and the characters do a disservice to the story, yet they’re the only thing differentiating it from any other romantic comedy.

See, at the end of the day, a guy with wax numbers around his neck? Not a big deal. The real problem, and perhaps the most significant adaptive flaw, is Our Heroine. A math lover inexplicably hired as a teacher despite a total lack of qualifications and experience (this, to the writers’ credit, does turn into a plot point), Our Heroine pulverizes the fine line between “adorable” and “terrifying.” It’s made all the worse by the notion that she’s let loose around kids. Everyone ignores her strange behavior, that she’s suffering from some kind of uncomfortable hybrid of depression, OCD, and borderline-personality disorder. She’s suffering, which is theoretically sad and relatable, but we never understand (a) why she’s suffering or (b) why she refuses to do anything to help herself. It’s made all the worse by the notion that she just turns it off like a lightswitch at the end.

I’ve ranted before about how both how much more fluid time can be in a book and how much more ground can be covered, and one or the other could account for the failure to gain any sort of real insight into Our Heroine. I didn’t find any of the characters’ quirks endearing, but Our Heroine is an unchecked wreck. I just wanted somebody to either tell her, “Hey, there’s no reason for you to act this way, so stop it!” or “Hey, you need help — follow me to the mental ward of the ‘Blue Hospital.’” If it sounds like I’m not sympathetic to her problems, it’s because the writers don’t make her sympathetic. They want us to believe everything she does, no matter how weird or frightening or inappropriate in front of seven-year-olds, is adorable. It’s not.

It’s worse than not adorable, though. Because we never fully understand anything about her but the tics — which seem to exist to keep others, and by extension the audience, at a distance — she turns into an inert protagonist. She has no particular goals — her mom throws her out and forces her to get a job, the school hires her because they have no one else, and she seems only to succeed because her weird, child-like behavior appeals to the kids. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind this — a character thrust into an environment outside her comfort zone who had to make a theoretical decision to succeed. Like everything else, though, we never learn that she’s made this decision. She succeeds because of plot mechanics more than an internal drive.

The only times Our Heroine takes an active role, she does something mind-boggling — eating an entire bar of soap to avoid intimacy, breaking into an old man’s house after leaping to the puzzling conclusion that he’s died, buying the aforementioned axe on a whim and bringing it to school. Because she’s too passive to let us gain insight from other actions, and the writers don’t dig deep into who Our Heroine is and what she feels, the rare moments of actions become stark, disturbing moments when the writers seem to be going for “adorably precocious.” This also contributes to the problem of her turning on a dime and abandoning her (psychosomatic?) craziness.

All of this leads to the creep-out ending where she gets so completely normal, she’s allowed to adopt one of her students. This made it go from a weird but possibly salvageable script into just a complete disaster. I can understand the structural mechanics that should be in play here — it’s the story of a woman who does not have her shit together, who discovers something more important (a child in need) and realizes she needs to clean up her act. But both story and character get lost in the overbearing eccentricities, to the point that nobody — least of all Our Heroine — resembles a human being. The conflicts don’t make sense, the actions and reactions are creepy, and the heartwarming ending left me unsettled. I feel bad, because maybe the novel’s great, and maybe there’s some hope for this script, but it’s missing huge chunks of important information.

Contrast this with a dramedy adapted from another novel. It has stumbling blocks of its own, but I found them easier to overlook because it gets plenty of things right that the quirky comedy gets wrong.

Here, you have a compulsive, suicidal bird-watcher and his creepy, codependent girlfriend. The writer doesn’t try to apologize for their behavior, and in fact, as it escalates, it becomes more apparent — both to the audience and the characters — that things are getting worse and will not end well for anybody. Like Art School Confidential, it goes from sharp character study to bizarre mess in record time, as the third act deals with the protagonist shooting a guy and eluding the police; the end result is his girlfriend committing suicide and leaving a note saying she killed the man, the ultimate act of codependence.

I wish the girlfriend had a bit more development leading up to the suicide, and I wish Our Hero (insane or not) had felt a bit more guilt over what he did. It’s one of those situations that’s played as an “accident” — and therefore he has nothing to feel guilty about — but he was chasing the guy with a gun, he fired without realizing the safety was on, then played around with the safety until the gun accidentally “went” off and killed him. What, was he just shooting to maim? Like the other script, I have to wonder if the novel goes into more intimate detail of this incident, so we understand full well how Our Hero feels.

I’m not enthusiastic about the ending, but the story did work for the most part — even sorta worked in the third act, whether I agree with the direction it took or not. More than not apologizing for their behavior, the writer doesn’t ignore it like the quirky comedy did. Maybe “ignore” is the wrong word — at the very least, those writers presented a great deal of strange behavior without giving any believable indications of where it came from and why it went untreated. This script fully acknowledges the weirdness but has the wisdom to not make it Our Hero’s defining trait.

What’s the solution? Not all “quirky comedies” want to be about the weirdness, so having them play up the legitimate mental problems of their characters won’t work. In the case of the quirky comedy, since Our Heroine’s major hurdle is overcoming said problems, maybe it would work. Most movies, though, want to imbue characters with some unusual qualities to differentiate them from every other movie character.

Writers just need to recognize two things: (1) the fine line between “quirky” and “crazy,” and (2) the difference between “believably quirky” and “nonsensical, inhuman behavior.” A woman who sees numbers in everyday objects and has trouble with intimacy? Quirky! A woman who brings an axe to a bunch of third-graders because she sees a “7”? Fucked up and impossible to believe without accepting she suffers from a crippling mental illness that should prevent her from working within 500 feet of children.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world, but anybody who’s taken a few bottom-rung psychology courses and/or understands male and female biological imperatives should be able to overcome this obstacle.

Posted by Stan at 2:11 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 5, 2008

Stylistic Choices

I shouldn’t have to explain “style” in screenplays. I know I shouldn’t, but I keep reading these Shane Black wannabes who have no idea what their edgy, post-genre ironic detachment does to people reading their screenplays. Now, before I get a bunch of e-mails from people too cowardly to insult me in the comments (that’s why they’re there, people — I hurl enough insults, I may as well receive my own public shaming), I should have you know that I love Shane Black’s work. He’s great, but writers with a desperate desire to be him suffer from the age-old problem of knowing the notes but not the music. Because, you see, the ironic detachment and laugh-out-loud asides that populate scripts like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang come from the fact that the scripts are irony-drenched comedies. Just because Lethal Weapon treats its characters like real people and has a serious third act doesn’t mean it stops being a crazy satire of the Joel Silver action empire — Richard Donner may have reigned it in a bit, but at the end of the day Lethal Weapon is every bit as nuts as The Last Boy Scout.

Black’s style works for what he writes because he matches the tone of the piece. In screenwriting, tone is really what style is all about. Dialogue has some stylistic leeway, but when you’re talking about action blocks (or body copy or copy block or any of the thousands of other names for script paragraphs indicating action), if you want the story taken seriously, they have to be serious — almost style-free, generic descriptions of people, places, and things. Every action block has to convey the tone of the moment. If you’re writing a tender, sincere love story, Shane Black’s ridiculous sex scene description (which satirizes other writers’, ahem, detailed attempts to capture the act on the page) will not work. At all. It makes no stylistic sense.

If you’re writing a suspenseful action sequence, you don’t want to break it up with some self-parodying sarcasm unless it’s a moment in the script. If it’s something along the lines of Indiana Jones shooting the sword-fighter, go with it. It matches the tone. If it’s something like the third act of Marathon Man, it’s inappropriate nonsense. Everything is about using the words on the page to make sure — without dreaded “directing on the page” accusations — you’ve captured the desired tone. If you can do that, you don’t need to direct on the page. The director will pick up your cues and roll with them; more importantly for a bottom-rung wannabe, the one-rung-above-bottom interns reading your shit will recommend it.

What happens when the style doesn’t match the tone? It’s easy enough to suss out, but it’s not going to win you any points with anyone. Recently, I read a screenplay — a very straightforward horror script — that is just nothing but wannabe Shane Black-isms. Every moment in the goddamn script is just endless hyperbole and sarcasm for no discernible reason. Here’s a brief example from the opening:

I want to give it bonus points. Hyperbolic or not, “an image that would give Ansel Adams a hard on” paints a definite picture, as do the first three sentences of the second paragraph. But what about every goddamn other thing? Sadly, this isn’t even the worst example of the tonal oddities. It’s just a grabber that prepares you for one thing and delivers something else entirely. You expect some kind of funny, weird, untrue tale from some asshole warrior-poet murmuring at the edge of a bar. Instead, you get a straightforward horror flick where the biggest surprise is its stylistic inability to convey the proper tone.

Like so many scripts, I actually enjoyed this one until its disastrous third act — the “biggest surprise” thing is my own example of hyperbole, because the story does contain a decent number of surprises. However, because of the style the writer uses, the entire story felt an arm’s length away from me — it never quite grabbed me, because I never lost the sense that I was just reading a script. One of the ways I measure a good script is whether or not I can get lost in the world or feel a legitimate emotional connection with the characters. As I said, this script isn’t terrible, but I never felt anything for anyone. The writer wouldn’t let me.

I understand it’s common for horror movies to treat deaths as frequent occurrences with little emotional impact on the remaining characters, but consider a scene in which two new characters appear — in gas masks, with one bleeding from a gunshot wound and just about at death’s door. This scene has enough melodramatic dialogue to make me think we’re supposed to take the death seriously, yet here’s the introduction of these characters: “The man is DWIGHT. A local. His wife’s name…well, it won’t matter in a minute so I won’t bother telling you.” Yeah, thanks for not bothering! I guess that gives me license to not bother giving a shit on the several occasions, later in the script, when Dwight gives her guts a mournful glance.

I hope this demonstrates today’s lesson: style = tone. Comedy? Make me laugh. Harrowing adoption-themed drama? Bum me out. Action? Make my pulse pound. Or maybe this is where you can exercise some of the Palahniukian masturbation seen above — assuming there’s an element of satire or, at least, philosophical ruminations on the genre archetypes. Horror? Scare me shitless. And on and on through all the genres. Oh hell, genres don’t even matter — you could write an action-psychological thriller-comedy-drama-horror-mythological-adventure and it doesn’t matter much. Just know what feeling you want to give audiences — until it’s a produced movie, anyone reading counts as your audience — and make sure you get that across verbally.

Posted by Stan at 2:12 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 8, 2008

Shotguns Spray

I’ve had another of those “final straw” moments. I just read a description in which a hunter blasts his shotgun at a girl, who manages to duck out of the way and avoid the shot by “a quarter of an inch.” Now, I’m not a gun expert, and I’d never claim to be. I write shitty movie scripts that, because they’re shitty movie scripts, often involve guns and gunplay. Even in a comedy, the type of gun is important — some guns just aren’t that funny (I’m looking at you, mini-Uzi).

I’ve touched one actual, bona fide gun in my life, and the experience didn’t do much for me. That doesn’t matter, though. I know there’s a difference between reality and movie-style unreality, but here’s some pretty basic knowledge about shotguns (knowledge I had even without doing any sort of in-depth gun research): shotguns spray. You don’t duck or scamper out of the way of the “bullet” (no seriously, I’ve seen shotgun shells described as bullets, and I’ve laughed), because unless you move at the speed of sound, the spread will at least maim you.

How hard is it to learn these basic truths? A writer — especially one of a genre that involves more guns per film than, say, a Renaissance-era costume drama — should know these things, and if he or she doesn’t, the writing reflects their idiocy and/or sloppiness, which in turn reflects badly on the screen. I’m all for suspension of disbelief in a work of fiction, but I have trouble accepting the fact that a writer of movie screenplays wouldn’t do basic gun research.

Posted by Stan at 3:55 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 10, 2008

Face to Face

‘Tis the season of giving, so I feel like an asshole trashing kids’ cartoons about Santa Claus. Who wouldn’t? I didn’t even rip it a new one like that torture porn script — nothing’s that bad, but when you combine painful mediocrity with words like “forgettable” and phrases like “sporadically amusing,” it ends up sounding like a big-time pan. My guesstimation? If these writer/producers are lucky, they’ll hit the 5-9 age range. They’ll be lucky to get kids as old as nine to enjoy the movie, but I tried to be nice and give it a wider bracket. Adults will hate it. It’s too creepy for kids under five. Anyone old enough to stop believing in Santa Claus will outgrow it. So that’s it.

I feel terrible, though. When you read a script, there’s a barely tangible, inexpressible difference between stories written from a place of passion and love and those written to maximize demo saturation by appealing to the lowest common denominator. This Santa Claus story had all the signs of a passion project — whether I think it sucks or not, the people making it have loads of obvious, misguided faith in it. This intrigued me, so before I started writing the notes, I made the mistake of Googling the writers.

Here’s a note to any readers out there: never do this. I learned my lesson the hard way — twice. The first time was several months ago, when I read the bad, quirky comedy. The title page noted that it was based on a book, so I Googled the title, and one of the first hits came from a movie website announcing Jessica Alba as the star of the film adaptation.

I don’t want it to sound like I wish Jessica Alba any ill will; I just don’t think she’s a very good actor, and like fellow sci-fi-TV-star-turned-mediocre-movie-star Sarah Michelle Gellar, she started out super-hot and then lost about 20 pounds too many and just looks emaciated and awful. (She looks maybe 10% better after having the baby, but I’m sure the healthy weight gain and the enormous breasts will disappear soon enough.) I point this out because I’m much more willing to accept mediocre acting from somebody who makes my man-parts go sproing. Dark Angel-era Alba had that effect; Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer just makes me shrug. The franchise-required bad blonde dye job doesn’t help, either.

Where was I going with this? Right, Jessica Alba isn’t very good. As I mentioned, the script paints the character as so creepy and crazy, you’d need a great actress to add the appropriate level of warmth and vulnerability — none of which exists in the script, as text or subtext — and they get Jessica Alba, whose vacant-eyed stare makes her seem creepy and crazy even when the screenplay repeatedly points out what an absolute dreamy sweetheart she’s supposed to be. Not a good sign, and although I want to say this didn’t color my judgment of the script, I read every scene picturing Alba in the role… It had an impact.

Consequently, I made the decision to stop looking up writers and titles before doing the coverage. Afterward, anything goes. Lucky for me, I’ve only recognized a few writers and projects from the title page alone. It’s easier to read scripts and trash them without the burden of even more badness hanging over my head.

This Santa Claus script was sort of the opposite scenario. I Googled the writers and the production company and found a group of warm, optimistic folks who spent literally decades working on many of the popular Saturday-morning cartoons of my youth. Even though I Googled them after I’d already read (and disliked) the script, I immediately felt worse. This was compounded by the production company website’s adorably upbeat blog laden with pictures of smiling folks (and their dogs) having a ball working together.

I was torn: look, this is a script that has a romantic subplot involving Santa and the woman who raised him from birth. Not his mother technically, but still… Just because the Oedipal ickiness will sail right over the heads of the target audience doesn’t mean it’s not there. All the good things the script does is plagued by uncomfortable moments of weirdness like that, so I felt like simply calling it “mediocre” and “cute but forgettable” had already overtaxed my generosity.

Seeing all those smiling faces made me want to submit a scan of a Crayola drawing of Santa Claus surrounded by hearts and smiling flowers in lieu of actual criticism. I’m sure I’ll feel guilty about my — shudder! — honesty for weeks or months. I learned a lesson: don’t be nicer about shit that doesn’t deserve it… Just stop Googling the people involved with these scripts.

Posted by Stan at 4:00 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 31, 2008

Mythological Action-Adven… Zzzzz

Nothing bores the shit out of me faster than the genre I will lazily identify as “mythological action-adventures.” This genre also encompasses the general, non-mythological “historical” action movies because, frankly, they might as well be mythological for all the historical accuracy they preserve. Now, I don’t really care much about accuracy if they tell a good story, but nine times out of ten, they tell a story that bores the shit out of me. Gladiator? Troy? Alexander? 300? Christ, how could 300 bore me? It’s specifically designed for the ADD generation. I am convinced there’s not a scene in that movie longer than 30 seconds or an individual shot longer than 0.25 seconds. And don’t get me started on anything older than Gladiator — the older you go, the slower the pacing, which means they get progressively more tedious. Spartacus? Ben-Hur? Never made it through them, and this is from a guy who thinks 1941-1952 and 1968-1981 are the golden and silver ages of cinema. I have a very high tolerance for movies not directed by Michael Bay, but this particular genre is just the height of tedium for me.

The weird thing is, I like history and I like mythology. What are these movies doing wrong? Maybe, because of my familiarity with history and mythology have led me to a point where these movies don’t show me anything I don’t already know. Actually, once in awhile they do, but it’s usually wrong. Not to say I’m some sort of genius historian/theologian/anthropologist or anything — it’s more like, “These movies are so goddamn braindead, even an idiot like me has culled more knowledge from History Channel documentaries than the jackasses who wrote the script.”

This idea of getting bored by the lack of new, interesting information makes some sense to me. Many of these movies exist as bland, generic action movies with bland, generic stories and bland, generic characters, and theoretically the only bright spot is the “unique” historical setting, or the “unique” presence of strange, mythological creatures and/or gods. I liked the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance. The movies are long, but (ironically) I could never get through the books, so everything after the first ten minutes of Fellowship of the Ring was news to me. These movies visualize a made-up mythology that I’ve never seen before and populating the world with compelling characters and interesting stories, so even when we aren’t watching badass action sequences, we’re engaged.

However, thanks to the unfortunate success of 300, I’ve read a glut of shitty mythological action-adventures script. 300’s influence is evident in every shitty story much more than the superior Lord of the Rings movies. They’re all boring action stories, using either significant historical or mythological events to drive boring action sequences. I love action movies, but I don’t love them when they don’t add any kind of new, ridiculous spin to the genre. If the best you can do is craft a plodding Seven Samurai retread around the signing of the Magna Carta, congratulations! You’ve just bored the shit out of me!

It’s funny, too, because as a budding screenwriter trying to find my way in the world, one of the early lessons I received was, “Make sure to make your script between 100 and 110 pages.” Everyone had a thousand different reasons why this had to be the sweet spot — 111-119 are too close to 120, and anything over 120 is way too long. Similarly, anything under 99 is double-digits, so even if it’s 98 or 99 pages, the psychology of the reader will tell them, “It’s too short.” I always thought this was sort of ridiculous, but now I understand… Except I sort of think differently. I don’t give a shit how long the script is. I read one that was only 73, and I was damn happy the jackasses didn’t waste my time for 103. I’m not gasping at the lack of professionalism, because that’s not my job. I get paid to read the shit, no matter how long it is, so shorter is always better.

When I see a script that goes over 120, I pray to God the first ten pages don’t have any explosions or long Greek names. I’d rather read the worst 135-page comedy ever written than the best 135-page mythological action-adventure. That’s all there is to it. The comedy might be horrible and unfunny, but 90% of comedies have brisk, snappy paces that I can breeze right through. Mythological action-adventures don’t have that; in fact, many of them go overboard on period detail, making already-leaden scripts into a new form of torture.

In the past month, I’ve read five mythological action-adventure scripts. These include:

• The aforementioned Seven Samurai retread surrounding the signing of the Magna Carta, whose chief problem is its portrayal of King John as an incredibly one-dimensional villain. Plus, it has a failed attempt at a romantic subplot. Sounds like every shitty action movie ever made, doesn’t it? Well, you’re wrong! This one has ancient English politics! Different!
• A Greek mythology Star Wars knockoff with the world’s most passive protagonist. (Seriously, nothing motivates him to do anything. Zeus keeps having to whisper things into his ear to move the plot forward. I am not making that up.) It plunges to depths of silliness rarely seen in deadly-serious action movies when the gods descend from Mt. Olympus to fight. Maybe this will come across differently when visualized, but I can’t imagine anything funnier than oiled, white-bearded musclemen doing battle in a pit that makes me think of a wrestling arena more than anything godly.
• A retread on every creature feature ever made, from the 1931 Dracula through something like S.S. Doomtrooper or Dinocroc 2: Supergator. I came closest to liking this one, because it tried to explore the unstable relationship between Druids in what is now Scotland and the Christian Romans who conquered England. Despite what could have made for an interesting conflict, the entire first act is devoted to introducing us to what feels like a cast of thousands, many of whom die. Who cares? They don’t impact the story in any way, their deaths mean nothing to any of the characters, so why not just concentrate on the core group of people and develop them into interesting people. They waste too much time, so the whole story suffers.
• A Nicholl Fellowship pick almost as inexplicable as Butter. In fact, until I read Butter, I was willing to assume the badness of this script came from it being a later draft. All bets are off now — this draft could very well be the Nicholl draft. Anyway, it’s basically The Treasure of Sierra Madre, with a few changes. Replace 1920s Mexico with post-Plague France, replace a group of American bums with Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, replace gold with a witch, and replace insight into greed and its decaying effect on the psyche with action-movie clichés and a bland “religious crisis” that’s solved by the protagonist realizing this girl is of the Devil, and if there’s a Devil, there must be a God. Next!
• And finally, the Conan remake, which I reluctantly admit I sort of liked. Maybe I liked it because it makes up its own mythology and is very different from the original movies. Or maybe I liked it because it’s a pretty great vehicle for mindless action, if you ignore the awful romantic subplot and the weird “twisty for the sake of twistiness” problems in the third act. I blame Shyamalan for this idea that every non-comedy has to have 15 different mind-blowing twists in the third act. I’d rather know pretty much what’s going on with maybe one well-thought-out twist. Instead, you get a bunch of really goofy, nonsensical twists to create the illusion it’s one-upping the last hit action movie.

What’s the point? I know, I know. “Making money.” But bear with me for a second. You’re a writer. You have a story rooted in ancient mythology or history, but rather than making it something interesting about the time of the people involved in the myths, you make it into a cheesy action movie. No interesting characters, a story you’ve seen done better 1000 times before, and as far as accuracy… Like I said, I’m not a stickler, but why would you change the history of, say, the events surrounding the signing of the Magna Carta when what actually happened is infinitely more interesting than an action movie?

This script, in particular, would have you believe that it’s all about freedom! It makes some of the least subtle comparisons to the Bush administration that I’ve seen in quite some time, but that just makes everything way too simplified. The guys who banded together to force King John to sign the Magna Carta had more complex reasons for their actions. It was more about not wanting to pay taxes than it was about civil liberties or having some sort of say in government. Remember, this was over 500 years before “no taxation without representation.” This was just “no taxation ‘cause I don’t want to pay.” Isn’t that a more interesting motive than freeeeeeeedommmmmm? Wouldn’t the Magna Carta, which forced an early Parliament-type group of representatives on the hitherto unquestioned divine right of the king, cause some trauma for him? I mean, what a legacy: the first question who got his balls stuck in a vise by a group of bitter farmers. You don’t think that would upset him? Nah, you’re right. It probably is just about cartoonishly evil tyranny to prevent his royal subjects from having any individual freedoms.

The other scripts have more of a fantasy/horror tinge to them, but they’re equally rife with interesting, human material that gets sacrificed for been-there-done-that action-movie plots. Why do these stories always miss so many opportunities?

Maybe I’m just bitter about this genre in particular because, in addition to finding it boring as shit, I can’t help thinking of my friend Ryan. Some years back, he wrote the best script I’ve ever read in this genre — one of the best scripts I’ve read, period. And I’m not saying that because I’m his friend. I barely knew him when I wrote it and, in fact, decided I’d force him to be friends with me. I like hanging around with people like that in the hopes that their talent rubs off on me. (It doesn’t.) At any rate, he pitched it to the Big-Shot Producer, who almost literally laughed in his face. Actually, he merely laughed at him in a press release after dollar-optioning a different script Ryan wrote.

Why wouldn’t that piss me off? The Big-Shot Producer, for those too lazy to read it, said of that script, “He [originally] pitched me some giant-epic-action-biblical-save the universe from a flood type thing (or something like that).” You can practically hear the smug chuckle accompanying that statement. Little did he know, a year later 300 makes a shit-ton of money and suddenly “giant-epic-action-biblical-save the universe from a flood type thing[s]” are the flavor of the month, and he could have been sitting on the king of them all. Instead, he opts to laugh and indenture Ryan to do free punch-ups on scripts for movies that will never get financing. And when I tried to convince him he was sitting on a goldmine, he just reminded me he has a job, three kids, and a mortgage in Chicago and can’t do much to sell a script in L.A.

Looking back at Ryan’s script, it occurred to me how to solve the two major problems in these scripts:

1. Getting bogged down in ancient mythology

   Old mythology is insane and complex. Writers need to realize that few people care about the details and mechanics of mythology. The writers need to know all of this valuable information for their own background information, but in all these scripts (including Conan, the one I liked), huge chunks of exposition and even entire subplots could go away without affecting anything. They exist to flesh out mythological backdrops that have very little to do with the characters or story. Who cares? Writers need to remember to approach fantasy stories the same way they’d write any other — draw people into the world, establish rules, but don’t go overboard on exposition and backstory. The recent failure of Delgo shows just how severely convoluted mythology can affect an otherwise affable flick.

2. Trading real people for archetypes (or stereotypes)

   Many of these scripts — especially the ones that feature actual gods and goddesses as characters — tend to treat the people in the story as symbols rather than people. It’s not just the mythological action-adventure that has this problem — it’s actually one of the reasons I’ll never stop railing against Butter. They do things for inexplicable, plot-driven reasons and have few (if any) believable or relatable qualities. Myths have endured, even after the religions associated with them have died out, because they portray the gods as having human flaws. I guess people ignore that because, in the Christian Bible, only the human characters have flaws. Portraying them as people, with the same problems as any human, makes them relatable. If they audience can relate, they might actually care. Isn’t that the goal?

Conan works, at the start, because it models itself as a revenge movie. Conan’s entire civilization is wiped out, and he sets out on a mindless quest to kill the people responsible. The first several pages establish Conan’s relationship to his family and his people, so we actually care a little bit when they all die. For all its flaws, his quest is a lot easier to relate to than Zeus whispering in his ear the whole time.

I guess, when I think about it, Conan’s success has less to do with its original, semi-unique attempts at mythology and more to do with it operating as a story on a human level. None of these other scripts, including the non-fantasy Magna Carta script, accomplish that. So which of the screenwriting gurus is running around saying, “The rules of drama don’t apply when you’re writing a mythological action-adventure”? Because I’d love to punch that guy in the scrotum.

Posted by Stan at 11:27 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 29, 2008

Screwing the Pooch

Amelia called to warn me that work was about to dry up. It’s like having an inside man at a company I already work for, but it’s helpful. She told me nobody at the company would tell me when scripts dried up, and she was right, but at least I had some warning. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but they don’t even soften the blow by easing off. It went from a steady three scripts a day to a steady zero scripts a day.

Amelia mentioned that, because of the dealings Murdstone & Grinby has with other companies, they may help me find freelance work elsewhere when our work slows down. It sounded great to me, so I told her I’d ask as soon as they stopped sending scripts.

“Hang on,” she said. “That might not be such a good idea.”

Zuh?

She gave me more warnings: if Murdstone & Grinby like me — and they do — they won’t want to lose me. If I asked for help, she said, Jim Taggart (the Director of Development, a.k.a. my boss) would be cordial and understanding and promptly do nothing, because they don’t want to lose me. She added, “They’ll probably just come back at you with the excuse that if you’re reading scripts for, say, Endeavor, and they get an Endeavor script they want you to read, that’s a conflict of interest.”

“But wait,” I retorted, “couldn’t they just send those scripts to someone else — like you?”

“Yeah, but they’d forget and —”

“Trust me,” I said, “I wouldn’t forget. Couldn’t I just reply to them that it’s a script from a place I’m working for, so they should send it elsewhere?”

“Well, yeah,” Amelia said, “but it’s just an excuse they’ll be using.”

“But if they give me an excuse and I tell the same things I just told you, wouldn’t they be a little more understanding?”

Amelia sighed. “I think maybe I should talk to Jim for you.” Initially it sounded like she was changing the subject, but it occurred to me that she was not-so-subtly suggesting that me talking to Jim myself would end badly. I mean, I guess it makes sense: if they want to make up excuses but I have an answer to all of them, it’s just going to piss them off. They want me to swallow the shit and slink away. Amelia was a little more tactful than that, mentioning that she’s worked with them longer and more closely. She felt if she broached the subject — not asking directly but just feeling out how they feel about it — she’d come across as someone concerned about a friend rather than someone trolling for information or asking on my behalf.

The following afternoon, I got an e-mail from Jim. The first paragraph thanked me for my hard work. The second paragraph said that Amelia mentioned I had some scripts she thought he should look at, and he’d be more than happy to once things settled down. Everything was going according to —

Wait — what?!

I called Amelia and asked what the hell happened. She told me that, when it came time to talk to Jim, it occurred to her that the business all but shuts down during the holidays, so Murdstone and/or Grinby could troll around for people to hire me and it wouldn’t amount to anything. She told me I should wait until the post-holiday flurry dies down and then ask. I started to wonder why any of this strategizing mattered when she insisted they wouldn’t even help me.

That was neither here nor there. Where did this script thing come from?

“I’m trying to help,” Amelia said. “I was straight-up honest with him. I said you have a great sense of characters, dialogue, and comedy, but you write horrible, tedious second acts.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

“It’s true,” she grumbled.

I don’t know that it is true — she read what many others regard as my best script and hated what she felt was a “pointless diversion,” even though in my mind it’s essential to the protagonist’s development from stunted manchild to adult. It works for others as well as it does for me, but I don’t dismiss her point. It makes sense, but the only ways I can think of to “fix” it are really contrived and hacky, and since nine out of ten readers agree it works, I just left it alone. I do love how, in her eyes, my entire body of work suffers from second-act problems when she only griped about it in the one script. Although I guess she griped about the whole story in another script, so that’s two bad apples. Anyway…

“So based on that rousing recommendation, Jim sent me an e-mail saying he wants to read ‘some of my scripts,’” I said.

“Are you shitting me?”

“…no?”

“What a fucking asshole,” she snapped. “I talked you up for at least 20 minutes, and he acted like he could give a fuck. And then, as soon as I leave, he turns around and e-mails you.”

“Yeah, so… What the hell did you think I should send him?” I mean, she hated one of my scripts and has been a bit more critical of the others than anyone who’s read them. I like that — maybe the others who read them are lobbing softballs, or maybe she just has a different point of view. Either way, I haven’t had someone as tough on my work since Callie, and I’ve always held the opinion that that’s the way to make someone a better writer. But it left me wondering what, exactly, she thought the company would like.

“Send them your most commercial script,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be good. They hate good. It just has to make money. I know Jim says to send him more than one, but it’ll take him forever to read one. It’ll take him even longer to read more than one, and he’ll just feel guilty about it and resent you.”

What? This is one of those things I’ll never understand about the industry. I know nobody has any respect for writers — especially writers with no credits — but why ask someone for something and then not read it? Is this some sort of perverse power trip, or has it become so ingrained in the industry that I should just roll with it? I mean, when I send them coverage, they don’t wait six months to read it — they read it as soon as they get it. Because it’s time-sensitive. Well, what if I’ve written the glossiest, most commercially appealing piece of shit on the planet? What if they sit on the script for so long that, before they know it, a bidding war has broken out to get this script, and they could have had it for a rock-bottom price? I know I’m not a great writer, but they don’t know that. They think I’m a great reader, which theoretically translates to great writer. It’s not like I’m some asshole off the street. I do related work for them, and they claim to love it. So why do I have to wait? And why does Jim get to resent me because he feels guilty for not doing something he should have done instead of just doing it?!

None of this matters much. I just think it’s retarded. I know it’ll take forever to read my script, and I don’t care. I thought about the right script to send, and seeing their track record with action (including one action-comedy), I elected to send my action-comedy script. It may not be my most commercially viable, but it seems more up their alley. I don’t know what I expect, though. Not to get it sold or even optioned. Maybe they’ll respect me 5% more. I don’t know.

I have this lingering fear — the reason I felt so apprehensive when I received Jim’s e-mail — that he’ll read the script and decide it’s so terrible, they should question my skills as a reader. In their mind, I’ll be the guy who can build a compelling case about anything but is so clueless about all the important elements of a screenplay, who cares how compelling my case is? I’m just full of shit.

I’m sure it won’t go down that badly, but I’m not exactly pressuring Jim to give it a read.

Posted by Stan at 2:29 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)  | Career-Based Rambling, Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

December 12, 2008

Black List 2008

Say, these aren’t the best scripts. They’re just the “most liked.” Because why would anyone like the best scripts the most? That’s crazy talk!

I’ve made the bold decision to cover the top ten on this blog over the course of the next two weeks — one a day, starting with The Beaver, ending with Our Brand Is Crisis. This schedule assumes, of course, that these scripts don’t disillusion or enrage me to such a degree that I give up on life altogether.

THE BLACK LIST was compiled from the suggestions of over 250 film executives, each of whom contributed the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, 2008 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year.

This year, scripts had to receive at least four mentions to be included on THE BLACK LIST. All reasonable effort has been made to confirm the information contained herein. THE BLACK LIST apologizes for all misspellings, misattributions, incorrect representation identification, and questionable “2008” affiliations.

It has been said many times, but it’s worth repeating:

THE BLACK LIST is not a “best of” list. It is, at best, a “most liked” list.

Click here for the slightly more detailed PDF.

67 mentions:

THE BEAVER by Kyle Killen
“A depressed man finds hope in a beaver puppet that he wears on his hand.”

61 mentions:

THE ORANGES by Jay Reiss & Ian Helfer
“A man has a romantic relationship with the daughter of a family friend, which turns their lives upside down.”

44 mentions:

BUTTER by Jason Micallef
“A small town becomes a center for controversy and jealousy as its annual butter carving contest begins.”

42 mentions:

BIG HOLE by Michael Gilio
“An old cowboy goes on a mission to recover his money after a million dollar sweepstakes scam cleans out his entire bank account.”

40 mentions:

THE LOW DWELLER by Brad Ingelsby
“A man trying to assimilate into society after being released from jail discovers that someone from his past is out to settle a score.”

39 mentions:

FUCKBUDDIES by Liz Meriwether
“A guy and a girl struggle to have an exclusively sexual relationship as they both come to realize they want much more.”

34 mentions:

WINTER’S DISCONTENT by Paul Fruchbom
“When Herb Winter’s wife of fifty years dies, the faithful but sexually frustrated widower moves into a retirement community to start living the swinging single life.”

29 mentions:

BROKEN CITY by Brian Tucker
“A New York private investigator gets sucked into a shady mayoral election.”

24 mentions:

I’M WITH CANCER by Will Reiser
“A autobiographical comic account of one man’s struggle to beat cancer.”

22 mentions:

OUR BRAND IS CRISIS by Peter Straughan
“Based on the eponymous documentary. James Carville and a team of U.S. political consultants travel to South America to help Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (aka ‘Goni’) become President of Bolivia.”

21 mentions:

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS by Quentin Tarantino
“American soldiers, French peasants, French resistance, and Nazis collide in Hitler occupied France.”

20 mentions:

UNTITLED VANESSA TAYLOR PROJECT by Vanessa Taylor
“After thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged couple attends an intense counseling weekend to decide the fate of their marriage.”

16 mentions:

GALAHAD by Ryan Condal
“A revisionist twist on the King Arthur legend from the knight Galahad’s perspective.”

THE WEST IS DEAD by Andrew Baldwin
“During the Great Depression, a group of semi-outlaws go on the run from the law when forced to vacate a town as the Hoover dam is constructed.”

15 mentions:

MANUSCRIPT by Paul Grellong
“A contemporary thriller about three bright, young New Yorkers with boundless literary ambition who will stop at nothing to get what they want.”

THE TUTOR by Matthew Fogel
“A twenty three year old recent graduate decides, at his mother’s insistence, to tutor his ex-girlfriend’s younger sister for the SATs. When they begin a romantic relationship, his ex-girlfriend moves back home for the summer and begins to fall back in love with our anti-hero as well.”

14 mentions:

THE DESCENDANTS by Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
“A newly widowed father — also one of the richest men in Oahu, Hawaii — takes off with his two rebellious daughters to track down his Kauai.”

SUNFLOWER by Misha Green
“Two young women struggle to escape from and exact revenge on the deranged college professor who holds them hostage.”

GOING THE DISTANCE by Geoff LaTulippe
“A couple tries to maintain a long-distance relationship.”

13 mentions:

THE AMERICAN WAY by Brian Kistler
“Two brothers are affected by their parents’ murder, leading one to the FBI and the other to a life of crime.”

NOWHERE BOY by Matt Greenhalgh
“The story of John Lennon’s rise from lonely, Liverpool teenager to iconic rock star.”

RAINDROPS ALL AROUND ME by Reed Agnew & Eli Jorne
“A socially awkward high school teacher learns to ‘dumb it down’ in order to fit in with those around him.”

SEQUELS, REMAKES & ADAPTATIONS by Sam Esmail
“The outlandish journey of a young man in search of love and what he’s meant to do with his life.”

12 mentions:

A COUPLE OF DICKS by Mark Cullen & Robb Cullen
“Two veteran LAPD detectives attempt to track down a stolen, mint-condition, 1952 baseball card that one of the detectives hopes to sell in order to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding.”

THE MANY DEATHS OF BARNABY JAMES by Brian Nathanson
“A teenage apprentice in a macabre circus for the dead yearns to bring his true love back to life, but not before encountering the many dangerous and mysterious gothic characters that stand in his way.”

GAY DUDE by Alan Yang
“A comedy about the friendship of two high school seniors that’s torn apart after one comes out of the closet.”

UNDERAGE by Scott Neustadter & Michael Weber
“A seventeen-year-old seduces a twentysomething man and then blackmails him into being her boyfriend in order to exact revenge on her high school aged ex.”

11 mentions:

CODE NAME VEIL by Matt Billingsley
“Based on actual events. A young CIA agent struggles to maintain his morality while navigating dangerous and absurd conditions in 1980s Beirut.”

THE FOURTH KIND by Olatunde Osunsanmi
“A woman investigates an extraordinary number of unexplained disappearances from one small town in Alaska.”

EVERYTHING MUST GO by Dan Rush
“A relapsed alcoholic loses his job and his wife and decides to live on his front lawn while selling all of his belongings in a yard sale.”

FOXCATCHER by E Max Frye & Dan Futterman
“Based on the true story of John du Pont, a paranoid schizophrenic who was heir to the du Pont fortune. After building a wrestling training facility named Team Foxcatcher on his Pennsylvania estate, Du Pont shot and killed Olympic gold medal-winning grappler David Schulz.”

THE PHANTOM LIMB by Kevin Koehler
“A troubled private detective uncovers a blackmail scam involving a gangster who runs a brothel that caters to amputee fetishes (and other taboo sexual interests) and the doctor who performs the body modifications.”

10 mentions:

THE APOSTLES OF INFINITE LOVE by Victoria Strouse
“When an upper class dysfunctional New York family learn their youngest daughter has joined a cult in the midwest, they recruit a cult deprogrammer and go on the road to save her while both parents and siblings confront their issues with one another.”

THE F-WORD by Elan Mastai
“Two best friends struggle with falling in love without ruining the bond between them.”

UP IN THE AIR by Jason Reitman
“A ruthless human resources executive, whose job is to fire people, looks forward to the only joy he has in life, his millionth frequent flyer mile, a goal he pursues with zeal as the rest of his life falls apart around him because he is constantly on the road.”

9 mentions:

BACHELORETTE by Leslye Headland
“Ten years out of high school, three unhappy single friends come together as bridesmaids at a classmate’s wedding, get drunk, get high, and trash the wedding dress while romancing new and old loves and settling old business.”

KNIGHTS by Nick Confalone & Neal Dusedau
“A kickass British adventure where knighted celebrities (an entrepreneur, a soccer player, a musician, and an actor) are called upon to defend their country.”

JONNY QUEST by Dan Mazeau
“Young Jonny Quest travels the world with his scientist father, adopted brother from India, Bandit the bulldog, and a government agent assigned to protect them while they investigate scientific mysteries.”

THE KARMA COALITION by Shawn Christensen
“A professor embarks on a quest to uncover the truth behind his wife’s death before the world ends.”

KEIKO by Elizabeth Wright Shapiro
“A white teenage girl, who was adopted and raised in Japan by Japanese parents, travels to America to find her long lost father, comedian Dana Carvey.”

TWENTY TIMES A LADY by Gabrielle Allan & Jennifer Crittenden
“Based on the book by Karyn Bosnak. After realizing that she has had twice as many sexual partners as the national average, Ally swears off new guys and decides to go back and visit the previous twenty guys and find out if she overlooked anyone.”

8 mentions:

CLEAR WINTER NOON by John Kolvenbach
“A hit man released from jail in his seventies tries to make amends for the innocent life he took.”

FIERCE INVALIDS HOME FROM HOT CLIMATES by Eric Aronson
“Based on the novel by Tom Robbins. An irascible, world-weary CIA operative is duped by his boss into helping re-place a listening device back in Russian hands that is vital to spying on them.”

ROUNDTABLE by Brian K Vaughan
“In modern day, Merlin attempts to assemble a bunch of knights to battle an ancient evil.”

7 mentions:

PLAN B by Kate Angelo
“A woman sets out to be artificially inseminated and falls in love.”

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF THE MONOGAMOUS DUCK by Neeraj Katyal
“A writer struggling with drugs and his girlfriend’s death leaves New York for Los Angeles where he falls in love with a teacher and straightens out his life.”

THE LAYMAN’S TERMS by Jeremy Bailey
“In the midst of the Great Depression, a prodigal son returns home to face his demons and resurrect the dust bowl town he left behind. But the arrival of a mysterious woman soon threatens his way of life when he discovers she is being hunted by the very same Chicago gangsters he used to run with.”

THE MALLUSIONIST by Robbie Pickering & Jace Ricci
“A wannabe illusionist travels cross country with his young son to compete against his archnemesis in a Vegas magic show.”

THE GARY COLEMAN-EMMANUEL LEWIS PROJECT by Dan Fogelman
“Emmanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman save the world from an evil madman.”

WHAT IS LIFE WORTH? By Max Borenstein
“Based on the memoir of Kenneth Feinberg, a dramatization of his involvement in the 9/11 victims compensation fund.”

6 mentions:

ACOD: ADULT CHILDREN OF DIVORCE by Ben Karlin & Stu Zicherman
“A grown man finds himself still caught in the crossfire of his parents’ divorce.”

BAD TEACHER by Lee Eisenberg & Gene Stupnitsky
“After being dumped by her boyfriend, a foul-mouthed, gold-digging seventh-grade teacher sets her sights on a colleague who is dating the school’s model teacher.”

CHILD 44 by Richard Price
“Based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith. An officer in Stalinist Russia’s secret police is framed by a colleague for treason. While on the run with his wife, he stumbles upon a series of child murders and launches his own rogue investigation.”

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY by Charles Randolph
“The true story of former Assistant United States attorney Stanley Alpert’s kidnapping by petty thieves and how he bonded with them in a Queens, NY apartment in 1998.”

INFERNO: A LINDA LOVELACE STORY by Matt Wilder
“The story of Linda Lovelace, the first mainstream porn star who eventually overcame her past, found happiness in suburbia and led a crusade to stop pornography.”

EASY A by Bert Royal
“A good-natured high school student uses the rumor mill to personal advantage by pretending to be the school slut.”

GRAND THEFT AUTO by Jason Dean Hall
“Facing foreclosure on his repo yard, a young ex-con resumes a life of crime only to get blamed when his uncle’s coke deal gets hijacked. Caught in double crosses between Russian mafia, Yakuza, and the ATF, the young ex-con kidnaps a crime boss’s daughter and steals car after car on a Vegas bound suicide mission to retrieve the stolen drugs.”

HELP ME SPREAD GOODNESS by Mark Friedman
“When an email predator dupes a man out of his son’s college fund, the man travels to Nigeria to confront those who ripped him off.”

GIANTS by Eric Nazarian
“A teenager with Marfan Syndrome comes to terms with his estranged father, his overworked mother, and the possibility that he very well might die during his upcoming procedure.”

LONDON BOULEVARD by William Monahan
“Based on the book by Ken Fruen. Fresh out of prison, Mitchell lands a legitimate job as a handyman for a rich actress who’s eager to reward him with cash, cars, and sex. But Mitchell can never truly escape his violent past or the dangerous world of loan sharks, drug addicts and other bottom-feeders.”

SHRAPNEL by Evan Daugherty
“Two mortal enemies square off on a hunting trip to the death.”

YOUR DREAMS SUCK by Kat Dennings & Geoffrey Litwak
“An awkward teen with no self esteem regains his self-confidence after joining a Dance Dance Revolution team.”

MEMOIRS by Will Fetters
“Two college students who’ve experienced recent loss fall in love and heal their fractured families.”

GREETINGS FROM JERRY by John Killoran
“Jerry seems to have it all — money, women, and a ridiculously easy job as a greeting card writer — until a tiny mistake at work unravels his life. Having lost everything he had — but never earned —he’s forced to confront who he really is and start again from scratch.”

5 mentions:

AFTER HAILEY by Scott Frank
“Based on the novel by Jonathan Tropper. After a twentysomething man’s older wife dies, he remains in suburbia and struggles to raise her teenage son from a previous marriage.”

THE BLADE ITSELF by Aaron Stockard
“Based on the novel by Marcus Sakey. Two former childhood friends, who made their reputation committing petty crimes, are reunited years later, forcing one of them to decide how far he will go to protect his past.”

FRESHLY POPPED by Megan Parsons
“A teenage girl who works at a movie theater tries to decide to whom she wants to lose her virginity.”

GAZA by Frank Deasy
“A British woman goes to Gaza to recover the body of her dead daughter and comes to understand her daughter’s political ideals.”

BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE by Adam Cozad
“Two orphans, raised by a CIA operative to be assassins, become targets themselves.”

MAN OF CLOTH by Josh Zetumer
“When an English minister’s family (wife and youngest son) are unjustly punished and sent off to a prison colony in Australia, the minister and his oldest son travel to Australia to re-unite the family. Upon arrival though, the minister is informed of their death, and quickly vengeance is the only thing that can quiet his hurt.”

GROWN MAN BUSINESS by Justin Britt-Gibson
“An older man who was a gangster in his youth returns to his neighborhood after a long absence to find the boys who murdered the son he abandoned years previous.”

HOW TO BE GOOD by Cindy Chupack
“Based on the novel by Nick Hornby. A woman having second thoughts about her husband is pleased when he begins following a guru, but when her husband invites the guru to live with them, her point of view changes entirely.”

IRON JACK by Johnny Rosenthal
“A renowned novelist’s comic quest for hidden treasure in the 1930s.”

THE HERETIC by Javier Rodriguez
“The Roman Catholic Church asks a former inquisitor to assassinate rebel monk Martin Luther.”

UNLOCKED by Peter O’Brien
“A female CIA interrogator is duped into getting a terrorist to provide key information to the wrong side, thrusting her into the middle of a plot to plan a devastating biological attack in London.”

SLEEPING BEAUTY by Julia Leigh
“A haunting erotic fairy tale about Lucy, a student who drifts into prostitution and finds her niche as a woman who sleeps, drugged, in a ‘Sleeping Beauty chamber’ while men do to her what she can’t remember the next morning.”

STOP HUNTINGDON ANIMAL CRUELTY by Adam Sachs
“A lonely journalist finds love and inspiration in a quirky, unlikely manner -covering the misadventures of a young boy’s ‘protest’ of an animal rights movement.”

A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Beau Willimon
“Based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Set in Paris and London during the French Revolution, English aristocrat Sydney Carton sacrifices his own life for his unrequited love Lucie Manette and Frenchman Charles Darnay.”

THE SPELLMAN FILES by Bobby Florsheim & Josh Stolberg
“A family of private investigators use their gumshoe skills to crack cases and pry into one another’s personal lives.”

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED by Hanna Weg
“The tumultuous and doomed love affair of Jazz Age icons F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre.”

WHAT WOULD KENNY DO? by Chris Baldi
“A seventeen-year-old high school kid meets a ‘hologram’ of himself at thirty-seven-years-old and benefits from their friendship.”

4 mentions:

47 RONIN by Chris Morgan
“Forty-seven samurai seek vengeance upon a regional lord who is responsible for the death of their master.”

THE ZERO by Stephen Chin
“Based on the novel by Jess Walter. After a New York City policeman shoots himself in the head following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he is assigned to work for a shadowy agency at ‘Ground Zero’ and quickly finds himself drawn into a sinister government plot.”

BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER by Rich Wilkes
“Based on the book by Julian Rubinstein.”

THE DEBT by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn
“Based on the Israeli film HaHov. Three Israeli Mossad agents discover that a war
criminal is still alive and set out to pursue him.”

A BITTERSWEET LIFE by Mark L Smith
“A crime boss asks his trusted lieutenant to determine if his young mistress is having an affair (and to kill her and her lover if she is.) The lieutenant confirms the affair but, entranced by the girl, chooses to let them live. Discovering this, the crime boss orders the lieutenant killed, only he escapes and seeks vengeance.”

BOBISM by Ben Wexler
“A shy college student discovers that life in one thousand years will be based on his blog — and he has to stop aliens from the future who want him dead.”

DEADLINE by Soo Hugh
“A discredited journalist navigates dangerous politics to find a missing aid worker.”

BOBBIE SUE by Russell Sharman, Owen Egerton, & Chris Mass
“A hard charging female ambulance chaser becomes the face of a prestigious law firm when an important client is sued for sexual discrimination.”

A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY by Susan Walter
“A female clothing designer struggles to find love and success after turning thirty.”

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH by Chris Terrio
“Based on a true story. The controversial love affair between an oil baron and his adopted daughter destroys the empire they built together.”

THE HOW-TO GUIDE FOR SAVING THE WORLD by BenDavid Grabinski
“A loser discovers a book on how to stop an alien invasion and is thrust into action to stop a real one.”

I KILLED BUDDY CLOY by Nick Garrison & Chase Pletts
“When a terrible act of violence shatters Ray’s hum-drum existence, his sociopath uncle lures him down an absurd, vengeful path.”

HEARTSTOPPER by Dan Antoniazzi & Ben Shiffrin
“A romantic comedy, with a serial killer.”

JAR CITY by Michael Ross
“Based on the film by Baltasar Kormakur. A police detective’s investigation of a murder leads to the uncovering of secrets in a small town.”

SAMURAI by Fernley Phillips
“Set in Japan during the 150 Year War, a ronin out for justice teams up with a ninja and a green-eyed English boy to rid Japan of an evil Lord. Their partnership becomes the stuff of myth.”

THE MOST ANNOYING MAN IN THE WORLD by Kevin Kopelow & Heath Seifert
“A man travels across the country with his annoying brother in order to get to his own wedding.”

THE MURDERER AMONG US by Lori Gambino
“Based on true events. Legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang contends with a mounting police investigation into the death of his first wife, the growing threat of the Third Reich, and a caustic relationship with his female collaborator; all leading to the production of the film M.”

MOTORCADE by Billy Ray
“The President of the United States and his motorcade are attacked during a visit to Los Angeles.”

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HELL by Brian McGreevy & Lee Shipman
“A gritty, contemporary retelling of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO set in the underworld of the Hell’s Kitchen Irish mob.”

‘TIL BETH DO US PART by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
“The friendship of two twentysomething men is put to the test when one of them becomes engaged.”

THE SCAVENGERS by Nate Edelman
“Based on the play Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge. A ne’er-do-well Irish twentysomething becomes infamous when he commits a haphazard murder and catches the fancy of a brazen barmaid who, bored with her small town existence, sees him as the rebel he always wanted to be and follows him on the run.”

SHERLOCK HOLMES by Tony Peckham
“A dark, sophisticated take on Sherlock Holmes and his trusted number two, Dr. Watson.”

SERIAL KILLER DAYS by Mark Carter
“A dark comedy blending stories of teen love and municipal corruption set against the backdrop of a town plagued by a serial killer that decides to profit the only way it
can — by creating a festival and economy around the fact that they have a serial
killer.”

SWINGLES by Jeff Roda
“After their best friends get engaged, a dedicated bachelor and a high-strung lawyer team up to help each other get dates by giving revealing insights into the opposite sex (thus inventing ‘swingling’) but complications ensue when they fall for each other.”

UNTITLED CHANNING TATUM PROJECT by Doug Jung
“A Los Angeles cop escorts a Korean gang leader back to South Korea. When the gang leader escapes, killing the cop’s partner in the process, he teams with a young Korean gangster in a bloody pursuit of revenge that takes them through the dangerous and exotic underworld of Seoul.”

Posted by Stan at 4:15 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay

December 15, 2008

Black List Script #1 – The Beaver by Kyle Killen

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A depressed man finds hope in a beaver puppet that he wears on his hand.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

THE BEAVER, in voiceover, introduces us to WALTER BLACK, mid-40s, a depressed man at the end of his rope. Appointed to CEO of a toy company — a position well beyond his abilities — he’s led the company to the verge of bankruptcy, his youngest son (HENRY, 8) is depressed and withdrawn himself, his oldest son (PORTER, 18, “emo kid”) wishes his parents would divorce, and his wife (MEREDITH, late 30s) spends much of her time weeping openly. Now, The Beaver continues to explain, Meredith is at the end of her rope and has finally taken it upon herself to throw Walter out.

At school, jock JARED tries to convince Porter to write papers for him. Porter explains that it’s a gradual process of building the grade up over a series of weeks, so he’ll only help Jared if he commits for the long haul. Jared reluctantly agrees and pays him. NORAH, a good-looking cheerleader, approaches Porter for roughly the same reason. Porter’s surprised because, academically, she’s smarter than he is. Norah says she needs help writing her valedictory speech.

Meredith picks Henry up from school and finds out a classmate threw him in the Dumpster. Aghast, Meredith encourages him to be more social so he stops being a target. Henry asks about Walter, but Meredith says his being gone is the best thing for all of them. At a liquor store, Walter emerges with a full stock. His car is loaded with crap. In a fit, Walter tosses all his possessions into a Dumpster. Surveying the refuse, Walter notices a beaver puppet. He tosses the liquor into the trunk, followed by the beaver puppet. At his hotel, Walter drinks and weeps as he watches Dr. Phil. He hugs the television.

Porter, Henry, and Meredith share an awkward meal, apparently their first at the dinner table. When the “conversation” thing doesn’t work out, they switch to the living room, where they watch television. Back in the hotel, Walter eyes the beaver puppet. He puts it on, and The Beaver begins to speak. He gives Walter a long, obscenity-laced pep talk about how Walter’s searching for answers in the wrong places — self-help books, medication, alcohol — but if he follows The Beaver’s guidance, he’ll save Walter’s life.

At school, Porter reads from a medical journal about genetic psychology as Norah approaches. She asks about the magazine, and he treats her like crap. When she calls him on it, Porter apologizes, saying the defense mechanism for “unattractive people” is to reject the beautiful and popular before they reject him. Despite the apology, he continues to hurl hostilities at her until she blows up and tosses an enormous stack of papers — writing samples for Porter to peruse — at his feet.

Meredith arrives at school to pick up Henry and is surprised when the teacher informs her that Walter has already picked him up. At home, Walter and The Beaver teach Henry woodworking in the garage. They show Meredith a memory box they carved together. Meredith’s baffled when only The Beaver speaks to her. Walter hands her a 3x5 card explaining his radical, new therapy treatment. She’s dubious yet somewhat pleased at Walter’s initiative. He’s allowed to stay for dinner, which enrages Porter (who eats by himself, watching TV, as the others chat in the kitchen).

Henry asks where Walter learned woodworking. The Beaver tells a long story about Walter’s youth. Walter’s father died, so he had nobody to teach him anything about tools. He had to carve a Pinewood Derby racer, and even though it looked like shit, it was faster than the other kids’. They didn’t care, however; the car was The Turd, whether it won or not. Enraged, Walter spent the next year reading books about tools, carving, woodworking, and engineering — he came back with a beautiful car, but the kids still called it The Turd II. It never raced because Walter told the other kids to go to hell and left. This story bowls over Henry and Meredith.

Later, Meredith wishes The Beaver goodnight and urges Porter to do the same. Porter runs into his room and blasts music. The Beaver shrugs it off as typical teenage rebellion. When The Beaver mentions going to work, Meredith is surprised and concerned. Porter calls Norah to tell her he’s been reading her stuff, and he wants to talk more about the speech. She invites him over the following day, after school. Seeing Walter and The Beaver going to his car, Porter freaks out and angrily pounds his head into an already-dented wall (covered by a poster).

The next morning, Walter and The Beaver go jogging, shower together, get all decked out in nice clothes, leave the explanatory 3x5 index cards on every employees’ desk, and host a company-wide meeting. To the surprise of the employees, The Beaver lays out a complete overhaul of corporate strategy. He asks the employees to give him two weeks to see how the changes affect them, and if anyone wants to quit at that time, he’ll give them eight months’ severance pay and a glowing recommendation, no questions asked.

Norah leads Porter into her bedroom. He’s impressed by her various awards. Norah complains that she’s been on a certain track for so long, she can no longer relate to the average student. As they talk, while Porter continues to act like a dick, he’s surprised and intrigued to learn she was expelled from junior high. Prior to her turnaround as an academic goddess and popularity queen, she went through a “rebellious artist” phase to get attention from her parents, who preferred her older brother’s overachieving. She did a complete turnaround when, after a floor-mural prank gone bad, the brother drove off to get a bunch of floor-repair material, had a car accident, and died. Norah shows Porter some of her paintings. He’s surprised by how good they are.

A montage, narrated by The Beaver, follows, explaining that his new initiatives turned the company around. The Beaver/Walter have eased their way back into the Black home, which continues to anger Porter and cause him to pound his head into the wall. Porter learns HECTOR — another student who pays Porter to write papers — has won an essay scholarship. His crush on Norah heightens. The Beaver/Walter renew their romance. Despite how well things are going, both Meredith and the company executives are a little concerned about how to present The Beaver to outsiders. Henry, meanwhile, becomes obsessed with wood and woodworking.

After the montage, Meredith goes to a gossipy book club full of Soccer Moms, who warn her about Walter’s “role-playing therapy,” offering that “people don’t put on a disguise unless they’ve got something to hide.” Even more concerned, Meredith asks The Beaver about Walter’s therapist and a possible timeline on ending the treatment. The Beaver shrugs off the notion of a timeline — you can’t rush treatment like this. Later, Meredith wakes The Beaver and sends him to the garage, where Henry is woodworking long past bedtime and refuses to move. Henry and The Beaver have a discussion about his disobedience, but The Beaver reluctantly lets him continue. It suddenly dawns on him how interested Henry is in woodworking. He immediately dashes off to work to orchestrate a new plan, which he pitches to the rest of the company the next morning: they’re going to drop their traditional middling toy lines in favor of a brand new woodworking kit and beaver puppet.

At school, Porter tries to work damage control with Hector. Porter’s “personal” essay went into detail about Hector’s own family, but when it became apparent that Hector doesn’t know any of the details about his own family or their lives, the family realizes he didn’t write the paper. They want him to confess to the principal. Porter promises he’ll set up a dummy paper-purchasing website that can’t be traced to either of them; getting caught writing others’ papers could lead to expulsion. Norah arrives, and Porter tells her he has an opening on the speech. They make a pseudo-date after school to discuss it.

The Beaver and Meredith go out to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Meredith demands to spend the evening with Walter, not The Beaver. The Beaver allows this, but the whole evening is awkward and miserable. Meanwhile, Porter and Norah discuss the speech. Porter continues to hype up Norah’s great paintings, which frustrates her. Despite this, he leans in for a kiss and notices one of his father’s mannerisms popping up — twisting a lock of her hair in his fingers. He freaks out and starts bashing his head again, confounding Norah, who talks him down so they can continue to make out. At the evening’s game, Norah’s parents notice she’s not among the cheerleaders. Just as The Beaver takes over to yell at Meredith about Walter’s condition and lack of progress — blaming her and the family for his problems — her cell phone rings. It’s Porter.

Porter and Norah wait at the police station as Norah’s parents talk to the cops. They’ve apparently been arrested (or at least detained) after getting caught making out, after Norah’s parents called the police to say she was missing. Porter’s parents arrive as Norah’s parents drag her away. Porter tries to keep eye contact with her, but she ignores him. At home, Porter pounds his head so hard against the dent in his wall, he breaks through. He pounds so hard, he knocks himself out.

After school, Meredith refuses to allow Henry’s many new friends to pile into their SUV. She also demands that he stop his excessive woodworking. He becomes sullen and withdrawn once again. Meanwhile, Porter makes sure Hector has the website address for his meeting with the principal. As Hector pleads that Porter doesn’t understand the situation, Porter blows him off for Norah. She’s not very friendly. He hands her a draft of the speech. She’s polite about it, offers him money, which he refuses. Norah gives him a kiss-off speech.

Meredith has called Walter’s therapist and knows he and The Beaver are lying — Walter hasn’t seen his doctor in nearly a year. The Beaver is so enraged by Meredith’s meddling, he finishes the insults he began on their anniversary and throws Meredith, Porter, and Henry out of the house. Alone, Walter wanders the big house and gets depressed again.

Some time later, a news reporter explains what a huge hit the “Mr. Beaver Woodchopper” toys have become. The Beaver forces his executives to book him on the morning shows. They agree but encourage Walter to get rid of the puppet. The Beaver laughs at the suggestion, nothing that Walter can’t. He’s not a mere puppet — he’s literally fused to Walter’s arm. The VP doesn’t believe it until he fails to pull the puppet off.

Norah’s ignoring Porter, who confronts her at school and demands to talk to her. Porter tells Norah it’s not her job to replace her brother. This enrages her. Porter presses on with his point until Norah shouts a few choices obscenities at him and storms away.

Walter and The Beaver appear on The Today Show and, after a lengthy treatise justifying his own existence, The Beaver becomes an instant hit. Another narration-infused montage follows, with The Beaver explaining the new phenomenon as the woodworking kits sell like hotcakes, average people all over the country begin wearing their own puppets, The Beaver gets a book deal and writes the same sort of self-help book he initially shunned, graces the cover of every popular magazine, appears on TV and radio shows across the country. As things go well for Walter and The Beaver, Hector puts on a puppet and tells the principal the truth, Porter loses his college acceptance.

As the montage ends, it becomes clear that, while The Beaver eats up the attention, Walter has become more depressed and disillusioned. Walter calls Meredith in the middle of the night, tries to talk to her, but The Beaver hears and forces him to hang up. Walter and The Beaver have a knock-down, drag-out brawl.* Afterward, a bruised and bloodied Walter is awakened by The Beaver, who complains about Walter’s lack of gratitude. Walter decides to do some woodworking to rebuild the team, when he notices the table saw. The Beaver realizes what Walter has up his sleeve, but he can’t stop the man. Walter saws his own forearm off.

An undisclosed time passes, and the fads of both child woodworking kits and adult self-help puppets have ended. Meredith drags Henry to a psychiatric hospital to visit Walter, who’s been fitted with a prosthetic hand and is making good mental progress. Despite this, Meredith is uninterested in having Walter released into her care.

At the house, Norah shows up to talk to Porter. He asks about the graduation ceremony — which he was not allowed to attend — and Norah tells him it was boring, but she decided to go with a different speech. Hers was about a concept where, with every breath a person takes, they inhale two atoms of everyone who’s ever lived. And so, therefore, her brother is still with them, and he’d want to tell them that each breath is a chance “to put [their] own signature on a trillion little pieces of the future.” Porter is impressed. Norah hands back Porter’s original speech and tells him the only reason she didn’t use it is because, whether he tried to write in her “style” or not, the content came straight from him. She tells Porter to read the speech.

Porter does, and over this extremely long narration (which basically just states, in bleak and blunt terms, the themes of change coming from within and our ability to control a very limited part of our own destiny — the way people perceive and remember us), a montage reveals Norah packing for college, Porter making reluctant amends with Walter, Meredith releasing Walter into her care, Henry quietly whittling… Norah blasts off down the highway. Porter sits on his driveway, waiting for something with a big backpack. Norah arrives, and he hops in. Together, they ride off.

Notes

I wanted to love this script. It’s loaded with interesting ideas, but the shoddy execution undermines every single one of them. Tonal inconsistencies, unbelievable characters (and/or actions), endless reams of redundant expository dialogue, and a theme that doesn’t exactly say anything new or interesting about the human condition despite having a perfectly weird platform? The script has significant problems.

At a certain point (around page 45 or so), I started to wonder why this screenplay isn’t titled The High School Nerd Who Got Hired to Write a Valedictory Speech. I haven’t tallied up the number of pages devoted to each storyline, but I swear this “subplot” got more attention, priority, and overall length than the “main” story of Walter and The Beaver. Maybe it just felt that way because the subplot was so fucking boring, repetitive, and unconvincing. I don’t care if this script is supposed to be a fantasy (or, at the very least, “fantastical”), very little about either character is believable or relatable. They don’t speak to each other like people; they speak like psych-101 sock-puppets, spewing therapy lingo as they profile one another and try to effect change despite barely knowing one another. I can buy them both as damaged goods — although the notion of a “forgotten” youngest child who has to rebel to get attention is, to put it politely, fucktarded — but the psychobabble would have felt a lot more convincing if both kids had spent most of their teen years in therapy.

Worse than that, the main story has very little impact on this cumbersome subplot (and vice-versa). The best we get is Porter’s anxiety over turning into his depressed father, which doesn’t amount to much. Porter catalogues traits he shares with Walter but does nothing to consciously break these habits and distance himself. He just whines about it and bashes his head against the wall (another supposedly inherited trait).

On a related note, possibly the worst reveal in the script is the development that Walter and The Beaver really are separate entities, with separate minds and goals. The idea of The Beaver as a construct of a damaged mind makes Walter fascinating, and you start to wonder how he’ll overcome this crutch and strike some sort of balance that allows him to function. The Beaver fusing itself to his arm and becoming its own thing destroys all of that. Instead, it forces us to the realization that we know very little about Walter aside from his depression. The woodworking story about his childhood was a little bit touching and shows the kind of drive, ambition, and loneliness that would both lead him to business success and depression. Even this is undermined by the throwaway joke that Walter doesn’t deserve his position and only received the promotion because the founder and CEO choked to death (roofles!) while on the town with an escort (DOUBLE ROOFLES!!). So… What? He doesn’t work hard, has no business acumen but was promoted beyond his competence… Because he’s so charming and witty? He loves toys? The original CEO owed him a favor? Without knowing anything about him other than “depressed,” this single, half-assed joke throws a massive wrinkle into the character. Why’d he get promoted? If he really didn’t deserve it, why aren’t the embittered executives gunning to have him committed as soon as he introduces The Beaver? It might seem like a minor detail to get hung up on, but if it’s so minor, why is it in the script? And why doesn’t it make any goddamn sense?

Since Porter does nothing to distance himself from Walter, couldn’t Killen at least have used the younger version of the same man to provide a window into Walter’s hidden-by-The-Beaver soul? Shouldn’t we see the early cracks in the façade that will lead Porter down Walter’s road of depression if he doesn’t change? Wouldn’t that make the dull resolution a bit more satisfying? Walter has to chop off his forearm and get committed to find peace, but Porter can avoid those pitfalls with the love of a woman who takes his verbal abuse with gentle good humor. Good times!

The frequent appearance of lazy, narration-saturated montages in place of real action and drama don’t serve this story well. We’re treated to dozens of pages of largely on-the-nose dialogue between Porter and Norah, but every time something interesting happens, a montage kicks in and The Beaver spoonfeeds everything to us — what’s happening and why, along with a dramatization of the events he’s describing. I don’t mind voiceover narration, and I don’t mind montages, but this script uses neither device effectively.

Tonally, the script clearly wants to be a genre-bending experience along the lines of Being John Malkovich (the movie it most closely resembles, despite lacking that film’s depth and insight), starting as a weird but bleak comedy and moving into something akin to drama. The tonal shift in Being John Malkovich came as a result of the natural evolution of the characters; in The Beaver, the characters spin plates for 100 pages, then change on page 101 and reflect on the change until the end. It does start with a few comic bangs — the introduction to Walter and his depression is pretty funny, and the opening montage quickly goes from funny to dire (which does, I must admit, hint at the jarring shifts later in the script).

The problem is, after the opening it pretty much stops being funny for virtually the entire script. The Porter-Norah mega-subplot is about as humorless as you can get, and the comedy in the absurd visual image of The Beaver disappears after the second time we see him. Beyond that, it just sort of struck me as lazy that the puppet has to be a beaver. Why a beaver, as opposed to any other small, rodent-like woodland creature? Because every time somebody says the word “beaver,” it’ll get laughs from the cheap seats. This kind of lazy comedy frustrates the crap out of me in general, but it’s more frustrating here because a solid dramatic story could come from some of these elements if Killen set aside the gimmicks and the hacky yuks — or at least made better use of them as reflections of his characters.

The Bottom Line

Right now, The Beaver is pretty much a disaster area. The development process gets a bad rap among outsiders, but this is a clear-cut case where sticking a script into the development wringer might yield a better product. A fresh take from a writer with greater insight into these characters could turn this from a bottom-rung chuckle-hut middle-act to something bordering on a dark masterpiece.

I can’t tell you how surprising it is that this received so many Black List votes — remember, this is the #1 pick with 67 votes. Considering the tepid loglines of the other top-ten contenders, it makes me worry about my sanity first and the state of the industry second.

*In case you’re wondering, the script kindly explains the tone: “If this plays with any humor at the start it very quickly disappears. This isn’t Liar Liar. Walter is truly self destructive and the damage he does is real.” [Back]

Posted by Stan at 3:34 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 16, 2008

Black List Script #2 – The Oranges by Ian Helfer and Jay Reiss

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A man has a romantic relationship with the daughter of a family friend, which turns their lives upside down.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

[Removed by request.]

Notes

Here’s the problem with Christmas movies: they’ve already made all the good ones. I wish Hollywood would stop trying, because when was the last time anyone made a truly outstanding Christmas movie? (Answer: 1983.) I don’t think everything has been said about the holiday, but Hollywood certainly hasn’t bothered to say anything interesting or unique. I noticed most of the characters in The Oranges have incongruous, Jewish-sounding names (for people hellbent on celebrating Christmas). It made me wonder if this would be a better script if it abandoned the overused Christmas holiday in favor of the less-exploited Hanukkah. That made me further consider other less-exploited holidays that are common for family reunions. Some of my most exciting and traumatic family experiences have occurred over Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day. Why not tap these reservoirs to at least create the illusion of uniqueness?

That rant aside, I’ll pretend for a moment that this isn’t a Christmas movie and say that The Oranges still doesn’t work. At all. I can see why Hollywood likes it — it suffers from the exact same problems as 2007’s inexplicably successful Juno. I’ll go out on a surprising limb and say that even Juno has more nuanced, believable human behavior than this one.

Let’s start with the Paige problem. We’re supposed to like David and Nina, which turns Paige into the de facto villain. In her early scenes, she and David get into mild, ineffectual arguments that I guess the writers think justify David’s “I’m just not happy in this marriage” mantra and his eventual infidelity. Then, she disappears from the script for what feels like 60 pages. She’s referenced a couple of times by Vanessa during the lazy, narration-infused montages this script apparently inherited from The Beaver, but we don’t see or hear much from her (and when we do, it adds nothing to the plot or her overall characterization). When she does return, she sort of acts like a psychopath. If we knew more about her or saw her in the intervening 60 pages, maybe this change would make some sense. It’s just another example of unbelievable human behavior by writers who know plot mechanics but don’t understand people.

The Oranges gets weighed down with examples of the writers’ unwillingness to explore actual relationships. What’s really at the heart of this failing marriage? What’s up with Nina dropping out of college to party her way around the world, fucking every imaginable man along the way, then returning home and getting involved with a man twice her age that she’s known for her entire life? Why would anybody in his or her right mind react to David’s galling speech (the one about how it doesn’t matter what kind of chaos he brings into the lives of his family members and neighbors/best friends so long as he’s happy) with quiet awe, followed by polite acceptance of this arrangement? Even minor things like a prospective employer being impressed when the applicants cell phone rings in the middle of the goddamn interview go a few steps beyond ringing false — half the scenes in this script don’t make any goddamn rational sense. Any attempt, no matter how half-hearted, to create some semblance of relatable behavior (starting by answering some of those nagging questions) would make the script infinitely more palatable.

The script’s fatal flaw, though, is the unbelievable way in which the relationship between David and Nina develops. Let’s ignore the male-fantasy notion that a 24-year-old party girl would be totally into a middle-aged guy whose idea of a good time revolves around watching television and eating. Just put that out of your minds. Instead, consider that, in nearly every early scene as their “relationship” blossoms, the writers have to make special notes of how sexy and intense certain moments are. Consider that, in later scenes after their affair is in the open, David and Nina either have to remind each other how much they love one another or remind the other characters of how “real” the relationship is. The writers have to do this because nothing about their actions or dialogue, aside from the on-the-nose stuff, suggests that this relationship is believable in any way.

I know some women go for older men; I know plenty of men go for younger women. I also know that such desires have rational psychological and biological explanations. In this script, this relationship doesn’t come across as believable even once. Every character suffers from something akin to the Paige Problem (or the Juno Problem), as the writers eschew genuine conflict and real insight into their characters in favor of uninspired, unfunny gags. Problems with the characters lead to problems with their interactions lead to problems with the believability of the relationships. End of story (literally).

I don’t want this script to transform into a dark, brutal exploration of families in turmoil. Funny movies have been made from bleak subjects like collapsing marriages (The War of the Roses, Husbands and Wives), infidelity (every other Woody Allen movie made before 1998), dysfunctional families (Home for the Holidays, Moonstruck), and May-December romances (Murphy’s Romance and The Graduate, which this movie namechecks as embarrassingly as Overdrawn at the Memory Bank does Casablanca). The thread connecting all of these movies is that the comedy comes from who the people are, not the mere fact of them doing unexpected, vaguely taboo things for unknown, unmotivated reasons.

Now, let me bring the holidays back into it for a moment. Why does this story have to take place during Thanksgiving and Christmas, other than the fact that it’s the world’s laziest shorthand for “dysfunctional family” (in the first two acts) and “treacly sentiment” (in the third)? Nina comes home because he relationship fell apart and she has nowhere else to go. Toby disappears from the script not because he lives elsewhere but because his job took him out of the country. These across-the-street neighbors are also best friends, so it’s not like they don’t spend any time together outside of holidays.

And then there’s Paige’s over-the-top Christmas obsession, an idea that could be funny if the writers ever addressed what she does from January to, let’s say, early November. I sort of love the idea of a woman who’s hellbent on organizing all her Christmas stuff as early as February, but these writers don’t put any thought into the concept since anything beyond November and December doesn’t happen in this script and is therefore irrelevant to them.

The Bottom Line

This script is terrible. Everything it tries to do has been done better elsewhere. I didn’t like The Beaver, but I feel sort of bad for trashing it so much when this is infinitely worse. At least The Beaver had some interesting ideas at its core; The Oranges has nothing.

Posted by Stan at 12:38 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 17, 2008

Black List Script #3 – Butter by Jason Micallef

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A small town becomes a center for controversy and jealousy as its annual butter carving contest begins.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Dueling voiceovers introduce us to the two main characters, LAURA PICKLER (40s, shrill, trophy wife) and DESTINY (12, black, orphaned). Laura narrates the story of her husband’s success. For the past 15 years, BOB PICKLER has won the blue ribbon in the butter-carving competition at the Iowa State Fair. His most recent sculpture was a life-size take on Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Destiny narrates the story of her struggles in the foster-care system, which has led her to a number of bad parents. After visiting the butter-carving display, Destiny goes to a nearby 7-Eleven to buy a stick of butter. She takes it back to the Last Supper display and carves a perfect replica of Jesus’ chalice. Bob notices this and is genuinely impressed by her talent.

Destiny is introduced to a new set of foster parents, yuppies ETHAN and JILL. They awkwardly introduce Destiny to her new home. At the State Fair butter gala, committee judge ORVAL ANDERSON makes a jokey speech, then plays a video tribute to Bob Pickler. He congratulates Bob on 15 years of wonderful service to this art form. After bedtime, Destiny sneaks to the beautiful, modern kitchen and searches the refrigerator for butter. All she finds is soy spread. After the speechmaking section of the gala, Orval approaches Bob and Laura. He gracelessly suggests that Bob should step down and let someone else have a chance to win. Bob’s fine with it, but Laura is not, so Orval has to put his foot down and ban Bob from competing.

At the Pickler home, daughter KAITLEN (16) watches Laura flip out about the decision. Bob tries to gently calm her down and make her see reason, but Laura wants to take a petition to the governor. She accuses Bob of not standing up for himself, says she should have married the more ambitious BOYD BOLTON because he would have fought for this. Laura storms over to the Andersons’ home, where Orval and wife HELEN watch Deal or No Deal. Hearing her bang on the door, Orval hides in the basement and forces his wife to cover for him. Much later, Orval sneaks out and drives away. Laura roars that this isn’t over.

At a strip club, Bob gets a lap dance from BROOKE, who’s clearly manipulating him for money. As Laura drives, babbling paranoid rants to herself, she notices Bob’s minivan outside the strip club. She cautiously approaches and finds Bob and Brooke having sex inside. Laura plows her SUV into Bob’s minivan. She drags her husband home, insisting that he’d better get a good night’s sleep (on the couch) because tomorrow they need to get butter. Bob reminds her that he’s not competing. Laura tells him she is.

A month later, Ethan takes Destiny for her first day of school. (He’s a teacher at the school.) HAYDEN, a blond boy, takes an immediate shine to her, as does the art teacher. Destiny’s weirded out by all the white people treating her so well. After school, Destiny asks Ethan for butter. Ethan chuckles that Jill means well with her soy spread and other assorted healthy, organic foods, but if Destiny wants butter, Ethan’s more than happy to buy some. Destiny asks for 200 pounds.

Laura springs the notion of her competing on Kaitlen, who mocks the idea, reminding Laura she’s never made a butter sculpture in her life. Laura notes that she’s stood by Bob for 20 years, so she thinks she’s more than capable. She goes upstairs, and there’s a knock on the door. Bob answers — it’s Brooke. She wants more money and thinks she’s entitled because she let Bob do it with her. Kaitlen catches sight of her briefly and asks who she is. Bob says, “Nobody,” which Brooke overhears. Enraged, she pounds the minivan with her purse, which Laura sees from upstairs. Bob rushes out and tells Brooke that Laura controls his money. Brooke is baffled that Bob would dare let his wife come between them. She delivers some vague threats before leaving.

Laura signs up for the county butter-carving competition. NANCY tells her she’s the first to arrive and that registration ends at noon. It’s after 11. As Ethan drops Destiny off, he notices she’s nervous. He tells her to think of all the bad things that could happen — the absolute worst thing — and then consider the likelihood of any of them really happening. Then he asks about the worst thing that could really happen — she could lose. How bad does that seem compared to racist ninjas or a mass murderer who only kills little girls? A little more hopeful, Destiny hops out of the car.

CAROL ANN STEVENSON, a heavyset Pickler sycophant, registers for the competition. She’s thrilled to see Laura there. Neither are thrilled to see Destiny sign up, but since they don’t know who she is, they assume she’s no real competition. Just before noon, Brooke shows up to register. Before leaving, Brooke informs Laura that Bob owes her an additional $600, then chastises Laura for getting between her and “her man.” Laura laughs, noting she’s just one in a long line of whores. Brooke seems genuinely hurt by this remark, but she’s going to stay in the contest because it clearly enrages Laura. Laura and Carol Ann try to convince Nancy to ban Brooke from the competition, but Nancy refuses.

A montage follows, showing the three days of the competition as each character works on her sculpture. Laura’s intense, Destiny’s laid back, Carol Ann quickly realizes she’s out of her league and doesn’t finish, and Brooke doesn’t even show up until the last day, where she makes a few cursory carvings in a hunk of butter before leaving. Destiny’s sculpture is of a train and Harriet Tubman, symbolizing the Underground Railroad. In voiceover, Laura ridicules Destiny for playing the race card. Laura’s sculpture is also fairly well done — it’s of a happy family at a dinner table, praying.

At the judging, Nancy introduces each competitor and allows them to give a brief speech. Carol Ann’s is all about kittens. Brooke arrives in a surprisingly dainty Sunday dress, looking not-at-all stripper-like, and talks about how an absentee father led her down the path of sin, but she is now born again. Next, Destiny’s long, wise-beyond-her-years speech describes the greatness of the Iowan people and the greatness of a country that allows a poor orphan to participate in such a prestigious competition. The audience is blown away. Laura’s speech to the crowd is all about family, but afterward, she delivers an impassioned, vaguely racist tirade to the judges, about how this is about butter and talent, not overcoming adversity. Despite this (or maybe because of it), Destiny wins the contest, which means she gets to compete in the state fair.

Afterward, Laura’s racism is no longer vague. Kaitlen calls her on this, which leads to Laura hurling insults at her daughter. Kaitlen, upset and angry, wants out of the family. Hayden shows up at Destiny’s house the next day with body lotion for Destiny, as a gift in honor of her winning. Meanwhile, Laura vandalizes the house with a spray-painted YouTube URL. The video shows Jill, in 1991, vandalizing a Land O’ Lakes (sponsors of the state competition) dairy farm for PETA. Later, Laura goes to Boyd Bolton’s Ford dealership under the guise of replacing the minivan. Instead, she makes lewd advances until he sleeps with her. Back at Destiny’s house, Jill and Ethan try to scrub off the paint. Jill breaks down, afraid she can’t handle motherhood. Destiny overhears the whole conversation.

Kaitlen gets high as Brooke throws rocks at her bedroom window. She asks to come up. Brooke asks Kaitlen if she knows where Bob keeps his money. Kaitlen insinuates she might tell Brooke if they played a game of Truth or Dare, but before Brooke can ask anything, Kaitlen dares Brooke to go down on her. She raises her price to $1200, which Kaitlen says she can get as long as Brooke doesn’t stop.

Nancy calls Ethan and asks them to come down to the county moose lodge. There, they’re greeted by Laura, Bob, Orval, some judges, and a rep from Land O’ Lakes. The rep asks if Destiny denounces Jill’s actions. Destiny refuses, noting that, although she wouldn’t do what Jill did, Jill is entitled to express herself however she wants. The rep is moved and allows Destiny’s win to stand. Laura brings out the big guns — Boyd Bolton, who reads from an index card explaining that he snuck into the moose lodge late at night to sculpt Destiny’s butter on her behalf and that he’s coming forward out of guilt. This puzzles everyone, but they have no way to prove it’s a lie, so the win is up in the air. Laura suggests a butter-carving rematch. Destiny agrees immediately, flummoxing Laura.

At home, Bob tries to talk Laura out of her proposed butter sculpture — it’s far too ambitious for a novice like herself. Meanwhile, Destiny pitches a variety of concepts to Ethan, Jill, and Hayden. In the midst of that, Carol Ann shows up to apologize for supporting Laura. She throws all her support behind Destiny and gets involved with the pitching process. Eventually, Destiny comes up with an idea that impresses all of them.

After another sapphic tryst, Kaitlen finally hands Brooke the money. Brooke peels out and seeks Destiny. She drives her to a Williams-Sonoma store and presents her with a very expensive set of knives. Brooke gives a speech about how she could spend $1200 on Victoria’s Secret, but she thinks it’d be put to better use helping Destiny beat Laura. Destiny thanks her. Later, a woman from Human Services arrives at Destiny’s house to inform them that they’ve finally located Destiny’s biological mother. Although she’s passed on now, they did manage to track down a single photo — taken shortly after giving birth, cradling Destiny. She’s suitably touched. That night, Destiny prays to the spirit of her mother, showing forgiveness and understanding for her abandonment and hoping that, if she’s not too busy, she has time to watch Destiny kick Laura’s ass.

As Laura and Destiny carve, sculpt, and mold, an ever-increasing crowd gathers. Destiny’s final sculpture is of a new mother cradling her baby a la Da Vinci’s Madonna with Child, obviously inspired by the photo. Laura’s carving, on the other hand, depicts a frame from the Zapruder film, with JFK’s head in mid-explosion as Jackie O. crawls behind the limo. Laura herself wears a pink Jackie O. dress and pillbox hat. The crowd hates its tastelessness, which nobody but Laura finds surprising. Mysteriously, before the judging, “somebody” sabotages Destiny’s sculpture by melting it with a blowtorch.

Despite this, Destiny wishes Laura good luck. Laura’s rude, noting that Destiny’s young but this is all Laura has — how dare she take it away. Orval announces the winner, Destiny. In front of the entire crowd, Destiny thanks Laura for making her a better competitor. She hugs Laura, who breaks into a genuine smile for the first time in 20 years. Laura narrates a parable about a penniless, elderly loser who went on to become Colonel Sanders, over a montage of Bob divorcing Laura, Kaitlen trying to rescue Brooke from her strip club, and Boyd throwing his blowtorch into a pond. Destiny narrates a montage of her getting second prize at the state fair and being permanently adopted by Ethan and Jill.

In the end, Destiny and Hayden ride their bikes through a cornfield cluttered with cows. The camera hangs on a cow as we fade out.

Notes

Setting is important. Remember that, because I’m about to attack Butter’s choice of setting. It’s important to note that Micallef writes, more than once, that Iowa City (apparently) qualifies as suburbia. It’s a very important distinction, because parts of these story and some of these characters could work in a story set in a bona fide suburban environment. But let me ask: if Iowa City is a suburb, what exactly is the urb? Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s second-largest city, is 30 miles away (and that 30-mile stretch contains little more than cornfields and little shithole towns, not suburban sprawl). The Quad Cities are 80 miles away. Des Moines is over 100 miles away. I’ll be exceedingly generous in describing towns like Coralville and North Liberty as suburbs of Iowa City, but they aren’t, really. Iowa City is reasonably large by Iowa standards, but Iowa’s a funny place: its larger cities are basically just small towns with lots of people. In attitude and values, in architecture and politics, Iowa City has much more in common with Tiffin than Chicago.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Iowa, which instantly affects my opinion of this script. It has many problems beyond its setting, but for me, choosing Iowa as the location is a big sticking point. Micallef didn’t choose Iowa because he hails from the state or has spent any time there. No, upon reading the script, anyone who’s ever set foot in Iowa — even for 30 seconds — will spot how off everything feels. It serves as a lazy, generic shorthand for “Middle America,” and he could have just as easily substituted Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin… Any Midwestern state. Even though the script still suffers from numerous problems beyond the choice of setting, the attitudes and behaviors of the characters would feel a lot more at home in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Chicago, or the Twin Cities than it does in any square foot of any rural environment.

Little things add up: Destiny goes to a 7-Eleven instead of a Kum ‘n’ Go (that’s not even a matter of preference — there are no 7-Elevens in the entire state of Iowa), everyone’s driving SUVs and minivans instead of pickup trucks, both Jill and Laura shun all dairy products for health and political reasons, a strip club is empty except for Bob and its employees… I don’t want to generalize too much, but Butter is little more than an over-the-top, verging-on-slapstick satire that treads largely on suburban stereotypes. So if we’re gonna talk stereotypes, Micallef could at least get the small-town stereotypes right. Helen’s appalled by the idea that Orval would be fishing at night (that’s his excuse when Laura shows up unannounced)? Night fishing is incredibly popular in the Iowa City-Coralville area. Even if Orval doesn’t do that, it’s not like it’d be some ridiculous, unheard-of excuse. Possibly worst of all, the last shot hangs on cows grazing in a goddamn cornfield. I’ve never set foot on a farm in my life and I know how retarded and wrong that is. All this bugs me because, hey, I don’t even live there and I know these things. Thirty seconds of cursory research would solve 80% of problems like this. Iowa is a state with three million people, and probably three million more who have spent significant time there (attending college and/or living and/or working). Screenplays don’t have to be 100% realistic, but let me tell you, nothing alienates an audience more than filmmakers getting little details wrong when the audience knows better. The script’s imperfect, but I probably would have suspended much of my disbelief had the setting felt even a little authentic. It never does. Ever. You wonder why Hollywood has such a bad rap among conservatives, who accuse the industry of being nothing but liberal elitists who pander to Middle America? Screenplays like this lend credibility to that belief.*

That rant aside, Butter has bigger problems. It’s an incredibly unsubtle take on the Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama primary duel. How unsubtle is it? Consider, first, the character names. “Destiny.” Subtle! “Pickler” is almost subtle, but think about it for a moment. Think about a cucumber. Think about a pickle. Think about Bill and Hillary Clinton, then about Bob and Laura Pickler. Yeah. Subtle.** Then there’s the amazing Destiny-Christ imagery: when we first see her, she buys a stick of butter and, presumably for the first time, has the talent to shape it into an exact replica of the Holy Chalice (which, I’ll casually point out, isn’t even in Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting! — see, setting isn’t the only thing Micallef couldn’t get right). At the end, Destiny is inspired by a photo of her birth mother and her newborn self to create a butter rendition of Mary and the newborn Jesus. Subtle! (On a semi-related tangent, holy fuck should all these “Obama is Jesus” people be shot. I voted for him and hope he’ll do a good job, but that’s the problem: those people make people like me seem like fucking nutcases.)

So when Micallef isn’t ripping off the vastly superior Election, we’re treated to obvious yet inept symbolism and caricature surrogates of real political figures who can’t quite stand on their own two feet. If you strip away the obvious metaphors, you’re left wondering why Laura is so obsessed with this butter-carving contest? Other than reflected glory, what’s in it for her? I can understand her desire to keep the legacy going, I can understand her overly assertive tendency to defend her husband at all costs, but I can’t figure out why this — more than anything else in her life — is so important. We don’t find out much about her life outside the butter contest, so we never get answers about what drives her. Because she has no motivation, I spent the entire script just waiting for an explanation or, even better, a depiction of her otherwise-empty life. Instead, she tearily admits this contest is “all she has.” Why?!

Destiny has similar problems. I don’t know if anyone other than Spike Lee is allowed to use the phrase “super-duper magical Negro,” but if any movie character is one, it’s Destiny. In addition to the unsubtle name and the Christ imagery, she has near-supernatural artistic talent, alarming insight for a 12-year-old of any race or gender, and she spends about 80% of the script silent, looking poised and wise. On the rare instances when she speaks, she says exactly the right things in exactly the right way. I know she’s supposed to be a metaphor for Obama, but I’m pretty sure the man didn’t come out of the womb giving elegant, off-the-cuff speeches. His eloquent speech on race relations, which is parodied in this script, certainly was nice, but it wasn’t off-the-cuff. I understand it makes no sense to give a 12-year-old butter sculptor speechwriters, but imbuing her with such gifts, without any explanation for where they came from, forces Destiny to fall prey to this stereotype. (Another random tangent: I always love it when writers assume that, because someone is gifted in one art form, it’ll automatically translate to another. Like a guitarist who’s magically an expert violin player just because they’re both stringed instruments, or a sketch artist who can perfectly sculpt butter and make brilliant collages. Artists can excel in multiple media, but it takes a shitload of effort.)

The Bob-Laura dynamic could have been interesting, especially once Brooke comes along, but I had a hard time buying any of it within the context of their relationship. Bob fucks a prostitute because Bill Clinton’s a horndog. Laura is a frigid shrew because that’s the way Hillary Clinton is perceived. Why doesn’t Bob pursue “artificial” women like strippers and prostitutes so he can regain the power in the relationship? Or because he wants somebody who listens to him without browbeating? Maybe Laura’s masking the intense insecurity that comes from being the assertive half of the relationship without getting the glory for Bob’s success. Micallef doesn’t give us anything like this, so the Picklers never feel real. Same goes for bit players — calling Brooke “inconsistent” is a polite understatement, Ethan’s effectively Bob Saget’s Full House character, Jill’s a liberal hippie, and none of the other characters matter much. Everyone just has to fill a role so the story can chug along as an analogy to the primary battle.

The entire second half of the narrative feels like wheel-spinning. Gripping the real events so tightly, Micallef doesn’t seem interested in how boring and pointless the “rematch” is. Of course, without the rematch, the script would be about 65 pages long, but maybe he could re-inflate the page count with novel concepts like character depth and real conflict. This is one of those stories where a bunch of shit happens at such a frenetic pace, you’re almost tricked into noticing it lacks anything resembling drama, aside from its treacly Full House moments and the laughable “Destiny’s big heart wins over Laura” scene.

Maybe it would help if Micallef had any sort of satirical aim. Butter is overstocked with broad jokes and toothless social commentary, but I can’t even figure out the overall agenda. Is he trying to say that politics in general and primaries in particular are as pointless as a county butter-carving competition? Any election year in which two old white dudes face off to see who can bore America into political apathy, I could buy it. Not this election. Not even this party, as the first viable female and African-American candidates duked it out for the nomination. Based on the hostile portrayal of Laura, it seems as if Micallef believes Hillary Clinton is outrageous for daring to stay in a competition against Jesus II. I did not support Clinton and, on a couple of occasions, she did seem to play a little dirty… But not nearly as dirty as Laura Pickler, so if that’s the aim, he stacked the deck more than a little unfairly.

Maybe Butter, like Election, wants to show how petty and juvenile people can act in a competition like this. Despite lifting from Election on several occasions, I don’t think Micallef lifted the theme because, well… Nobody in the script acts juvenile or petty except Laura. Everyone else, including Bob (whose real-life counterpart said much harsher things about Obama than Hillary did — whether she put him up to it or not, feel free to face that reality), is all about order and fairness and “may the best man win.” Going back to Destiny’s absurd “magical Negro” qualities, she has a few moments of anxiety but never has a moment of anger, pettiness, irritation, or disappointment. Again, Obama’s a politician, and a charismatic one, but to think he never felt any of those things during this election season is absurd. The most even-tempered people on the planet don’t just let shit roll off their back. Either they internalize everything and explode, or they follow this much healthier course of action: bottle it up in public, shout obscenities behind closed doors, then calm down, then go out publicly and give articulate speeches to win back favor. Despite what you may have read, Obama’s only human. If nobody saw his clear irritation during the debates with McCain, they weren’t paying close enough attention.

So what is it? What’s the goddamn point? Figure that out, and maybe this script can work.

The Bottom Line

Despite how much I hated it, this script can work. Election wisely took a look at its characters and made them people, eschewing the obvious parallels to the 1992 campaign (which are much more prevalent in the novel) in favor of just telling a story. Since Butter lifts enough from that movie already, maybe Micallef can take it a step further and fashion it into a story about slightly crazy people with believable reasons for doing the things they do. Locking the narrative to real events prevents any of these characters from being more than a chess piece participating in one of those one-man games they print in the newspaper: they can’t waver in their plot function because the real events have preordained the narrative path. Fuck the real events. There’s a start here, but now it’s time to go back and make it work on its own merits. Dig deeper, find out who these people really are, and let them behave like something more than a symbolic construct. Oh yeah, and set it in Generic Suburb, U.S.A. Pretty please!

*For those of you questioning my professionalism — and you should be — if I were writing this coverage professionally, I may have ignored the setting completely. It personally offends me, but it’s not the worst thing about Butter. It just adds insult to injury. If I mentioned it at all, I would have taken a sentence or two to note that the rural setting is unconvincing. [Back]

**To give Micallef some credit, he isn’t the only one falling prey to the “least subtle names imaginable” problem. Let’s not forget Walter Black from The Beaver, and Winter’s Discontent features an elderly main character named Winter. Subtle! [Back]

Posted by Stan at 10:27 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 18, 2008

Black List Script #4 – Big Hole by Michael Gilio

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “An old cowboy goes on a mission to recover his money after a million dollar sweepstakes scam cleans out his entire bank account.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

FRANCIS LEE, SR. (78), is a curmudgeonly old Montana ranch owner with a simple ritual: on the first of each month, MAYA (30s, Blackfoot Indian) comes to clean his house and take him into town. In Glass Valley, Lee gets a trim at Dutch’s Barbershop, picks up his prescriptions and buys his groceries from the Cole Mercantile, does his banking at Wachovia, and has lunch at a restaurant called the Steak Knife. His lunch has a ritual of its own: the waitress brings him a thick, juicy steak and a plate of French fries. He cuts up the steak, savors the juices, and spits out each piece, then sucks the salt off the French fries.

In September, the routine goes off without a hitch, despite the minor irritation of DEAN (Dutch’s technophile son) acting like an idiot, young bank teller LORETTA ignoring him as he philosophizes, elderly checkout clerk ALMA griping that the Cole Mercantile is struggling against a competing warehouse store, and seeing HECK — a mysterious man who once knew Lee very well — at the Steak Knife. Also, Maya gets stuck behind a long freight train and is late picking Lee up. Irritated, Lee threatens to fire her. Maya acts like this is a normal thing and pays it no mind.

Back at Lee’s ranch house, he’s left alone. He impulsively dials an unknown phone number but hangs up before completing it. A moment later, the phone rings. It’s a polite, young, male voice informing Lee that he’s won a $1 million sweepstakes. Lee doesn’t react with any surprise at first — he’s sent away for hundreds of sweepstakes over the years. Gradually, it sinks in. He’s so overcome with emotion, he begins to open up to the voice on the phone, a Canadian calling himself JEFFREY SMITH. Lee rambles about his plans — among other things, he’ll go on a fishing trip at Big Hole. The last time he went was years ago, with Heck. Jeffrey asks about Heck, but Lee just says it was a happy time and asks Jeffrey about fishing — since he’s in Canada, he must fish. Jeffrey doesn’t, though. He’s polite, but he edges Lee toward giving him his banking information in order to deposit the winnings. Lee does so, then invites Jeffrey to come down to Jackson for a prime rib dinner, on Lee. Jeffrey continues to be polite but gets off the phone quickly. Lee excitedly tells his parakeet — his only companion in the house — that they’re millionaires.

October. Still happy, Lee invites Maya and her family to dinner. This shocks her, and she says she’ll think about it. Lee goes to Dutch’s but finds Dean’s the only one there. He’s set up a plasma TV on the wall in front of the barber chairs, and he doesn’t know or care much about Lee — doesn’t even know his usual cut. He tells Dean that Dutch passed away in September, and he told Heck assuming Heck would pass it along to Lee. Lee tells Dean they don’t talk anymore.

Lee passes by the Cole Mercantile, surprised to find a FOR LEASE sign in the window. He goes to The Corner Store, the bulk warehouse store that crushed the mercantile, to buy his groceries and pick up his prescriptions. His inability to find anything in the huge store flusters him, and the discompassionate sales clerks piss him off. He goes to the pharmacy, explains that he used to get his prescriptions from Cole’s, but the pharmacist explains that if he wants medication, he needs a new prescription from his doctor. Lee doesn’t know what to do — his doctor’s in Great Falls, Lee can’t remember his name, and he needs the prescriptions. The pharmacist’s apathy infuriates him, so he leaves the pharmacy empty-handed. At the grocery checkout line, the cost is much higher than Lee anticipated. He doesn’t have the cash. The clerk asks if he has a debit card, which he does, but he hasn’t activated it yet. He’s forced to leave the cart of groceries.

Lee goes to Wachovia to get the card activated. ICKE, a young CSR, tells him he’s activated the card, but it can’t be used because Lee doesn’t have enough money in his account. Lee questions this — he has nearly $35,000 in his account. Icke tells him that he only has $130. Lee tries to argue, but Icke refuses to help. Despondent, Lee visits the Steak Knife, but he’s both lost his appetite and his money. He simply stares out the window at the rain.

November. Maya arrives at Lee’s ranch, but she finds an unsettling sight: a month’s worth of mail still clumped together in the box, a dank mess inside the house, Lee’s banking information littering the table. The lights and heat are out, not because Lee’s stopped caring but because the respective utilities have been shut off. Lee demands that she leave. She tries to give him the mail, but he wanders away without taking it. Maya notices many of the letters are from Wachovia Bank. She opens them and starts reading. Later, she tells Lee the bank is conducting a fraud investigation, that they recovered some of his money — $1500 — but the rest of it isn’t looking good. These people didn’t just take his money; they wrote unsigned, personal checks and cashed them. Most of his money will not be recovered. Lee doesn’t get enough to live on from Social Security or his military pension. That’s it. Lee tells Maya that when you’re old and make a mistake, there’s no time to learn from it — you simply are it.

Maya gently suggests Lee sell the ranch, which throws him into a such a rage that he both fires her and throws her out of the house. Maya’s disappointed, but she respects his wishes. Later, Lee dials that mystery phone number again. A woman named SISSY answers, but the line goes dead before Lee can get to the point. The phone company finally cut him off. Lee wanders the kitchen when he realizes no chirping is coming from his parakeet’s cage. DUKE lies dead at the bottom.

That tears it. Lee bursts into the barn, where he collects his saddle and its bag, shotgun, buckskins, boots, duster, and hat. He empties what’s left of his canned goods and water into the saddlebag; loads up with ammunition; saddles up FLICK, his old, ailing horse; and sets out for Glass Valley, a real old cowboy. A kerchief covering his face, Lee goes to his Wachovia branch, where he berates and browbeats the MANAGER, demanding to know if they accept unsigned checks. The Manager reluctantly admits that yes, they do. The Manager tries to calm Lee down, but Lee raises his shotgun and demands his money. A security guard has called the police and has his own gun trained on Lee. Lee tells the Manager to tell “Jeffrey Smith” that he’s coming for him. The Manager’s baffled.

Lee crosses the town square to the Corner Store, where he fires his shotgun at a huge wall of display-model TVs blaring Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue.” Everyone in the store freaks out. A security guard trails Lee as he arrives at the pharmacy and demands his various medications from the pharmacist. As he moves to leave, the security guard starts firing. He misses. Lee shoots blind, not hitting anything. He grabs a road atlas and runs out an emergency exit, through the back lot to a children’s playground, where Flick grazes. Lee rides away.

FRANCIS “HECK” LEE, JR. (50s), the Glass County sheriff, arrives at the Wachovia Bank to investigate. DEPUTY RANDOLPH (late 20s) is already on the scene. According to the eyewitnesses, an elderly man calling himself “El Toro” attempted to rob the bank after claiming they ripped him off by accepting unsigned checks. Heck talks to the still-rattled Manager, who mentions the puzzling “Jeffrey Smith” remark. Before Heck can get more information, Randolph tells him about the Corner Store.

Heck talks with the security guard and the pharmacist. Based on the medication the old man demanded, Heck tells Randolph to search for someone with heart disease, diabetes, and stents. Randolph wonders why Heck would knows these things — Randolph doesn’t even know what a “stint” is — and Heck explains he “used to know someone” afflicted by these ailments. They freeze the security tape, and Heck recognizes Lee but says he has no idea who this old man is.

Lee rides through barren valleys deep into the night. Eventually, he makes camp. He consults his map and spiral notebook for the address of Wachovia’s headquarters in Edge City, then studies the map of northern Montana and Alberta. Heck goes to Lee’s ranch house and finds it empty. Going through the house, he notices Lee’s investigative papers — Wachovia Bank, Jeffrey Smith, Alberta, Windfall Investments. Heck moves on to his old bedroom, presumably left exactly as it was when he left home. In an old box, he finds more mementoes of his childhood — including photos of her mother, photos of him as a sullen teenager, photos of he and Lee fishing at Big Hole. He’s a little overwhelmed by it all, so he calls his wife — Sissy.

Later, Heck goes to a saloon in town for a drink. The bartender questions whether or not Heck really want this. Heck ignores him, calling Maya to set up a time to interview her about Lee. He meets her at Maya’s trailer home, where she lets slip with her nickname for Lee (“El Toro”) and tells Heck everything she knows about the fraudulent sweepstakes, the problems with Wachovia, etc. After learning all of this, Heck recalls everything he saw in Lee’s house and considers the probability of Wachovia’s headquarters being his next move.

Lee continues through an open meadow. In the distance, he spots vaqueros driving cattle. Lee approaches, but they don’t speak English. Their Spanish irritates Lee, but he picks out a few English words and identifies which ranch they work for. He explains he’s from the Lee Ranch Company. He says he’s headed toward Edge City. Although Lee doesn’t immediately understand, they’ve offered to let him ride along with the drive. Heck meets with Randolph privately to explain his theory that “El Toro” is heading for Wachovia Headquarters in Edge City, beyond their jurisdiction. Heck wants Randolph to go with him but keep the whole thing under his hat. Randolph’s reluctant, but he wants to stop “El Toro” as much as Heck. They go.

Edge City is little more than a series of corporate towers incongruously set in the middle of barren prairie land. While Heck stakes out the parking lot, he sends Randolph in to wait in case Lee gets past them. Security guards are immediately on Heck, wondering why he’s loitering. Before Heck can explain the situation, he hears a low, distant rumble. He spots the brown cloud of dust indicating the cattle drive. Heck barely makes out the image of Lee leading the pack before he vanishes in the dust once again. Heck leaps into his patrol cruiser and heads toward the cloud.

Heck comes upon the vaquero TRAIL BOSS, who keeps a poker face and denies any knowledge of the mysteriously absent Lee. Randolph, meanwhile, encounters Lee face-to-face and preps the guards to take him down. Lee lives up to the “El Toro” name, terrifying them just by standing there. He demands to see the bank president, forces them to hand over their weapons, then takes the elevator up to the top floor. As soon as he leaves, Randolph radios. The Trail Boss suddenly commands his men and the cattle back in the other direction, confusing Heck, who accidentally hits the lights and sirens — causing an immediate stampede in the direction of his cruiser.

The bank president’s assistant, KELLY, insists that he’s gone and almost never at the bank in the first place. Lee doesn’t believe her, bursts into the office — and finds it empty. He demands everything she has on Windfall Investments. Shaken, a bloodied Heck falls out of his car as Randolph radios again. Heck gets to his feet and walks toward the bank as Randolph brings him up to speed on “El Toro.” Kelly returns with a thin manila folder, which disappoints Lee. He waits for Kelly to leave, and in a fit of anger, he shoots up the office. Heck sees the glass hit the street below. He goes inside and tosses Randolph a shotgun, telling him not to let Lee leave the building — and not to shoot him.

Lee asks Kelly for an alternate exit. She leads him into the service elevator, and he tells Kelly to tell Jeffrey Smith that “he can’t stop what’s comin.” This confuses Kelly. After he’s gone, Kelly leads Lee to the service elevator and tells him it goes to the back alley. Heck radios to Randolph, who leads the security guards to the alley. Lee’s prepping Flick to ride when Randolph approaches. Unafraid, Lee simply rides away. Heck arrives just in time to see Lee riding off. He shoots in the air, but Lee doesn’t follow. Heck goes back upstairs and gets a copy of the Windfall Investments information from Kelly, who asks if he is Jeffrey Smith. Just then, the BLAINE COUNTY SHERIFF arrives, displeased with Heck overextending his authority. As it starts to snow, Heck reluctantly asks for a ride home.

In the open range, Lee faces a veritable blizzard. He manages to get Flick to an abandoned flour mill, where he sets up camp for the night. The Windfall Investments file isn’t thick, but it does contain the company’s address in Bradston, Alberta. With a Sharpie, Lee traces the route from Edge City to Bradston. Out on the plains, Heck’s all bandaged up and watching them tow away his damaged cruiser. Randolph arrives with more information, then questions Heck’s sketchy thinking about the situation. Heck turns hostile — as hostile as Lee was with Maya — but Randolph gives as good as he gets, leaving them at a stalemate. Heck decides to go it alone, renting a car and hitting the road for Canada.

Meanwhile, Lee continues to ride through a full-on whiteout. Flick doesn’t make it. Saddened, Lee puts the horse out of his misery and starts walking. He makes it to Bradston, a tiny rural town. He finds the address easily, and it leads him to a tiny, sleazy office. Lee pulls a gun on the only man working there. The man first denies any knowledge, then amends it to say he didn’t know until recently that they were doing anything wrong — he was just an office manager. He hands Lee a massive pile of incriminating papers in exchange for his life. Lee demands to know the whereabouts of Jeffrey Smith. The man is baffled, but he looks through the payroll documents and can only find a Jeffrey Somers. Lee asks for his address and for a ride to Jeffrey’s house. He leaves the file behind, which Heck finds when he arrives at the Windfall office.

There, Lee’s surprised to find a woman in her late 30s. She calls to JEFFREY, her son, who shouts for her to send the visitor downstairs. He’s 18 or 19, a polite kid who’s baffled by this shotgun-toting cowboy. Lee demands to know why they ripped him off. Jeffrey says he only worked there for a couple of months, but he felt so guilty, he quit. He needed the money to pay for community college. Lee repeats: why him? Jeffrey tells him his name was on a list. Lee’s extremely angry — he told him personal things, things he never talks about to anyone. Jeffrey claims he doesn’t remember, but Lee badgers him until he blurts out, “Big Hole.”

Lee slaps Jeffrey hard. Jeffrey begins to cry, apologizing all over himself. Lee collapses on the bed. That night, Jeffrey’s mother makes a great meal — a big plate of steaks, mashed potatoes, biscuits. Lee’s freshly showered and shaved. He cuts off a piece of steak, takes a bite, and swallows, savoring it. Lee realizes he only has one pill left in each of bottles. He keeps eating, like a king. Later, Lee sleeps in a recliner. Jeffrey’s mother notices his frostbite-blackened feet. Lee tells her not to bother. He puts his boots back on and walks into town. He goes into a saloon and asks for a shot of straight-up Jack Daniels. He downs the shot, stares at a wallet-sized photo from his saddlebag, considers. He goes to the bar’s phone booth and dials that mystery number. A teenage girl’s voice answers. Lee tells the girl, Chloe, it’s her grandpa. She says Heck isn’t there. Lee tells her he has some important things to say. He tells her Heck is a good man, better than Lee, and that he loves Chloe and he loves Sissy, too. He also tells Chloe to let Heck know that Lee’s proud of him, and he loves him. Chloe says she will, and Lee breaks down, insisting, almost pleading that he’s a good man. Baffled, Chloe asks if he’s all right. Lee tells her everything will be fine and hangs up.

Lee walks out of the saloon, leaving his saddlebags behind. He trudges off, disappearing into the wilderness. Heck enters the saloon, where he finds Lee’s saddlebags. He asks the bartender about them, then rifles through until he finds the empty prescription bottles with Lee’s name on them. Heck finds the wallet-sized photo and picks it up. It’s an old family portrait — Heck with Sissy, who’s black, and Chloe at age three, all smiling. Heck goes outside, staring into the darkness, screaming for his father.

Notes

Up until the ending, I loved this script. I had a few minor nitpicks (e.g., why would Lee, anonymously robbing the Corner Store, have his name printed on the prescription bottles?), but this is a well-observed character study about a dying breed of man. Maybe it’s because I recently watched a double-feature of Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Furies, but I couldn’t help picturing Walter Huston as Lee — all fire and rage, with that cackling, sardonic, old-timey prospector laugh masking contempt for everyone he meets. Gilio does a nice job laying out the rift between Lee and Heck, hinting at it without ever spelling out what happened until the last two pages. More than that, he does a great job of painting these two men who have very similar personalities but stand at opposite ends of the law. That’s the stuff of classic Westerns, and Gilio stays true to the archetypes even as he makes the story feel authentic in the modern world.

This old man is one of the last of his kind. They don’t make them like that anymore, and the story seems to lament this fact. It also mourns the way the modern world no longer cares about him. The apathy contributes to his loneliness and the desperation that eventually drives him to fairly insane circumstances. Tonally, Gilio manages to toe the line between comedy and tragedy. He acknowledges the absurd image of a Wild West cowboy wreaking havoc on a warehouse store, but because he’s painted such a relatable, well-developed character, we still buy into the tragic circumstances that led to this ridiculousness.

The ending doesn’t work because it undercuts the sorrowful theme. Although it’s loaded with funny-yet-bleak moments expressing the problems with aging, loneliness, and the Wild West mythology, for me the most powerful image was that of Lee — a real cowboy — taking a shotgun to a wall of Toby Keith-blaring plasma TVs. That says it all. The family portrait reverses this by kinda saying, “We lament the passing of this type of iconic, archetypal American personality, but don’t forget what a bunch of racist dicks they were.” It turns Big Hole from a tragedy into an “Eh, no big loss” type of story, which does a disservice to Lee. This script could honestly be about the same from cover to cover without ever showing us that photograph, and it’d still work. In fact, it would have more of an impact. We know there’s a rift between Lee and Heck, we know it has something to do with the family, but we never have to know the details. It could have something to do with Patty, the woman he keeps screaming for in his sleep (ostensibly his deceased wife), or it could be some stupid teenage argument that got out of hand or Heck’s law-abiding choice of occupation or his decision not to take over his father’s ranch. Gilio’s provided more than enough material for us to draw our own conclusions, so why not let us? If someone wants to conclude the racism ending, that’s their prerogative. I don’t like it, so that’s not where I’d go with it, but the script gives me no choice.

Nonetheless, it’s a great story, well-told, and not nearly as ridiculous or over-the-top as it probably sounds stacked up next to the other ridiculous loglines in the top five. This is not Butter. This is a movie that should be made.

The Bottom Line

I came very close to giving up after the disastrous top three, but I figured I’d plow through the first act and keep reading if it was good. I’m glad I did. I’ve regained a tiny amount of faith in Hollywood.

Posted by Stan at 1:39 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 19, 2008

Black List Script #5 – The Low Dweller by Brad Ingelsby

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A man trying to assimilate into society after being released from jail discovers that someone from his past is out to settle a score.”

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Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

CHARLIE “SLIM” HENDRICK (late 20s), identified in the script as the low dweller of the title, wakes up disheveled, under a tree on a summer night. Sheriff’s deputies, led by MULBY NOLAN (late 20s), tries to get the disoriented Slim to talk. When he doesn’t, Nolan cuffs Slim.

FOUR YEARS LATER. 1986. LOWLANDS. SOUTHERN INDIANA.

Slim is released from prison. He walks to a roadside diner, where the owner automatically knows the story — anyone passing through this town on foot could only come from one place. The owner invites a fat trucker to give Slim a ride into nearby Easton. Slim refuses it. He makes the 23-mile walk into Easton and arrives at his brother’s home. CORMAC, Slim’s younger brother, lies in bed next to an obese girl when Slim shows up. Cormac welcomes his brother home by yelling for him to shut the bedroom door.

A month later, Slim is working a farm. He asks the owner for more hours. He goes home to Cormac’s, offers to go out with him for a burger. Cormac tells him he already ate, so Slim goes alone. He eats in silence at a tavern frequented by local day-laborers. Days later, Slim goes to a restaurant, Jilly’s, run by JOHN O’RILEY (60s, also the local bookie), and asks where Cormac is and “who did it.” Cormac got his ass kicked over a woman, and he lies in a bloodied heap out back. After taking a look at him, John warns Slim that Cormac changed when Slim “left,” and also that he’s into John for a lot of money. Slim offers to pay half in a few days, which John grudgingly accepts.

GABBY O’RILEY (30s) comes out back. She and Slim share a meaningful glance, then Gabby berates John about keeping her late. When he still won’t leave, she wordlessly climbs into Slim’s truck. As Slim shoves Cormac into his pick-up, BUD DEAKINS (50s) arrives. A mystery man stays inside Bud’s shadowy car. Slim drives away as Bud walks into Jilly’s. Inside the car, the mystery man’s hands move skillfully as he slices into a pepperoni log with a box-cutter. He gives the slice to his dog. Inside Jilly’s, Bud menaces John, insinuating he’s skimming off the top to pay for medical bills owed by his late wife. Bud leaves the restaurant, and a moment later the mystery man enters. He is SAM NEBRASKA (40s and unattractive). John hides a knife up his sleeve, but Sam’s too quick for him — he stabs John with the box-cutter.

Slim and Gabby share a long, awkward silence, broken by Cormac’s unconscious farting. Slim apologizes for not dropping by sooner. She says nothing, going inside her house, where Slim sees her greet a five-year-old son, BEN. Slim drives Cormac home and flops him on the couch. Meanwhile, Bud and Sam drag John out into the middle of a cornfield. Bud is a little unsettled by how many “accounts” they’ve had to “close” lately. He examines John’s business log and sees Cormac Hendrick’s name on the top of the list.

Early the next morning, Nolan (now sheriff) is awakened by a phone call. He’s disheveled, an angry, functioning alcoholic with a chronic cough. He looks 10 years older than he is (now 30). He takes care of his elderly mother before leaving. At Cormac’s house, Slim carefully chastises Cormac over his drinking and gambling. Cormac tells Slim that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who taken and those they take from. Cormac accepts his fate. Slim hands Cormac some of his farming earnings, which enrages Cormac. He tells Slim he has a party to go to that night so not to expect him, then storms out of the house and drives away.

Nolan comes upon BRADY O’RILEY (22), who lies naked and unconscious in some shrubs outside a woman’s house. Nolan awakens him, and Brady insists this was a prank. The woman who owns the house is not pleased. Nolan drags Brady away, and Brady asks Nolan if he plans to tell Gabby (his sister) about this. Gabby watches Ben play catch with himself as Nolan arrives with a now-dressed Brady. Brady goes into the house without a word. Nolan talks to Gabby, who woke him up in the first place, because John’s missing. Nolan wonders who saw him last. She says Slim, which immediately rubs Nolan the wrong way. Nolan says he’ll check around for John, then confesses he went out on a date with another woman. Gabby doesn’t care — she just wishes he’d stop telling her. Nolan leaves.

After work, Slim finds Brady waiting in his pick-up. Brady punches him in the jaw for “what [Slim] did ta [his] sister.” He promises whatever comes next will be for what Slim has done to John. Slim shrugs and tells him to check with Gabby — he didn’t do anything. Brady claims he remembers “what happened down in Rittsfield.” Slim doesn’t want to hear this, so he throws Brady out of the truck and drives off. Late at night, Cormac staggers out of the party and to his car. Sam Nebraska, .45 in one hand and box-cutter in the other, waits. Sam slices open one of Cormac’s hands and urges him to drive into the backroads.

Nolan waits for Slim inside the Hendrick house. They have an awkward, angry conversation about John. Nolan suggests a motive — the money Cormac owed John. Nolan asks where Cormac is; Slim doesn’t know. He tells Nolan to check with Gabby, because they left together. Nolan leaves. In the middle of the field, Bud watches as Sam pounds the crap out of Cormac. In the end, Sam kills him. Meanwhile, Slim waits up for Cormac, who never shows up. The next morning, a passing police cruiser sees Cormac’s car sitting in the middle of the field. As Nolan and the deputies speculate on what may have happened, rain begins to pour.

After Cormac’s funeral, Slim goes to the basement to seek out his old 12-gauge shotgun. He gets into the pick-up and finds Brady at a burger joint. Slim demands to know if Brady knows John’s business. Brady says he doesn’t know much, but he gives Slim the name of a collector, who once worked for his dad, who will most likely no more. Slim heads in the direction of the collector, dragging Brady along for the ride. Outside a diner, Slim and Brady confront CULLEN the ex-collector. After some fisticuffs and gun-based threats, Cullen coughs up a name (Terry Adams) and a town in Ohio.

On their way back into Easton, Slim and Brady visit JONAH FINN (60s), who runs a shop for antique gun repair. Slim catches Jonah up on the situation as he attempts to stock up on weapons. Jonah volunteers to go with them, since he’s dying of asbestos poisoning and doesn’t have long to live. Slim wonders about LEENY, Jonah’s 18-year-old deaf daughter, but Jonah shrugs her off, claiming she takes care of herself better than Jonah could. They make plans to leave the following morning.

That night, at Cormac’s house, Gabby confronts Slim. Brady told her everything, and she is not happy he’s going on what’s effectively a suicide run (it’ll either leave him dead or in jail). She slaps him and tells him that, while Slim may have ruined what they had, she won’t let him ruin Brady, too. Then she leaves. The following morning, a farmer finds John’s body in his field. As he leaves to pick up Jonah, Slim notices a sheriff’s cruiser parked nearby. He picks up Jonah. As they head out of town, they find a cruiser parked across the road, blocking the path. Slim gets out, and Nolan confronts him about the situation. It immediately turns into a conversation about Gabby, not the potential crimes, which leads Slim to attack Nolan. Jonah gets out to try to calm Slim down. They get back in the truck and move past Nolan’s cruiser.

Jonah regales Slim with old-man stories until Slim parks at a rest stop. Brady’s waiting for them, pissed that they left without him. Even more pissed that they found John’s body. Together, the three of them drive into Bowenville, Ohio, and head to the local diner to ask around about Terry Adams. They get resistance from one man until Slim shoves his head into a used, unflushed toilet. The man tells them Terry runs a drive-in theatre at the edge of town. The three men head to the drive-in, where they’re ready to assault Terry Adams in the projection booth. He’s a little more even-tempered, asking them to wait until the movie’s over, and then they’ll talk. After the movie, Terry tells him he used to collect for a Philadelphian gangster named RICHIE NEBRASKA, and that the men they’d be looking for are his muscle — Bud and Sam. Terry warns them about Sam by telling them about an experience he had collecting with Sam once. He ended up killing an entire family — husband, wife, teenage children, grandparents. Terry gives them the name and location of Richie’s Pennsylvania bar, Cooz’s. He says Bud and Sam live upstairs at the bar.

Later, Slim and Jonah sit in the back of the pick-up, watching Brady flirt with one of the drive-in employees. Jonah asks about Gabby, and about whether or not Slim is up for what’s coming next. Slim tells Jonah he feels like he failed Cormac, so he has to do this to make up for that. The next day, the three head up to Coatesville, PA. That night, at Cooz’s, JIMMY PERCY (40s) tends bar and gripes about the leaky roof. CC and ELLIOT HARDINGS, twins in their 40s, have a “That boy ain’t right”-type argument about an unknown kid, then wander out of the bar. DOC BARSTOW comes from the bathroom, and the two of them discuss the same kid, named “Magwynn.” Upstairs, RICHIE NEBRASKA (50s) mentions to Sam (his brother) his intentions to retire. Outside in the rain, Slim, Brady, and Jonah load their weapons and discuss the plan to bust inside. Slim excuses himself to urinate, and Brady asks Jonah what it’s like to kill somebody — if the guilt haunts you. Jonah tells him the haunting thing is knowing you’re capable of murder.

Slim and Brady enter the bar from the front. Jonah goes up the rear fire stairs. Two separate shootouts ensue: upstairs, Sam gets the drop on Jonah, shooting him twice; downstairs, Slim and Brady kill Jimmy, Doc, and Richie. Bud, meanwhile, is in a bedroom receiving oral sex from FRANCIS, a crackhead transvestite. Bud jumps into the fray as Francis lights his pipe, oblivious. Slim tells Brady to go into the bathroom and hide out. On the stairs, Sam spots Bud and kills him. Downstairs, Jimmy Percy is still alive. He tries to shoot Slim, but Slim gets him first. High as a kite, Francis heads downstairs, turns on the jukebox, and begins to dance. Creeping back upstairs, Slim enters Sam’s room. He finds Jonah on the floor, dying. Jonah indicates the upstairs bathroom. Slim bursts into the bathroom, where the tub water overflows but the faucet still runs, and a struggle ensues.

After Slim gets the upper hand, Sam dives out the window just as Jonah aims to shoot him. Slim calls for Brady to get upstairs. He tells Brady to stay with Jonah, then heads downstairs after Sam. Slim doesn’t spot Sam until it’s almost too late, but before either man can do anything, the ceiling collapses from the bathtub water. Sam divebombs Slim, knocking his gun away, and tries to cut him with the box-cutter. Brady, who fell through the ceiling, manages to shoot Sam before he can do any serious damage to Slim. Police sirens rise in the distance. They grab Jonah’s body and get the hell out.

Back in Easton, Slim and Brady try to go back to business as usual. They go to the Easton Folk Festival, a modest fair. Brady gripes about trouble sleeping. Leeny approaches Slim for a dance. Gabby sees this and is unhappy. After the dance, Leeny sits near Brady and Ben. Brady flirts with her, not realizing she’s deaf. Slim picks Gabby out of the crowd and goes to her. Now it’s Nolan’s turn to be unhappy. He watches them dance. Slim watches mournfully as Gabby leaves him. He goes home, gets loaded, and stumbles into the bedroom — where Gabby waits. They make love. Afterward, she tells Slim she knows he killed the people who killed her father, but she doesn’t care. She tells Slim that Ben isn’t hers — he’s Nolan’s. She laments the fact that Nolan loves her but she can’t love him because she loves Slim, who doesn’t love her. Slim doesn’t say a word.

The next morning, Nolan’s waiting for Slim. As before, a conversation that begins with Nolan menacing Slim about the incident at Cooz’s turns into a brawl over Gabby, whom Nolan loves. This time, the fight is interrupted by Gabby, who consoles Slim instead of Nolan. This makes Nolan even angrier, and he mentions that if anyone comes after him because of what happened at Cooz’s, Nolan won’t stop them.

At a hospital, Sam Nebraska has survived. He tells doctors and detectives he doesn’t remember anything, but the fiery glint in his eyes suggests otherwise. When he’s discharged, Sam immediately gets a gun, rounds up the Hardings — CC, Edward, and Magwynn (17) — and they head out for Easton. At the O’Rileys’ house, Brady asks Slim what he remembers “that night…down in Rittsfield” — the incident that landed him in jail. Slim remembers nothing — just drinking and waking up, covered in blood, under a shagbark hickory tree. Nolan arrives to tell Gabby that he’s going to Pennsylvania to question Sam Nebraska. When Slim and Brady find out he’s still alive, they’re petrified. Slim charges Brady with the task of protecting Gabby and Ben while he’s gone. Sam and the others kill Terry Adams in Ohio, then move on to Easton. Along the way, Sam gets so irritated with Magwynn, he starts cutting on him with his box-cutter. CC does nothing to intervene.

In Easton, Sam gets the O’Rileys’ address by intimidating a pharmacist. At the farm, Brady starts packing suitcases and prepping to leave. Slim, meanwhile, has gone to Leeny’s and packed a suitcase for her. They head out. Before Brady can even get to Gabby, Sam and the others are there. Sam shoots Brady, demands to know where “the other one” is. He follows Brady’s gaze outside to Gabby. From the other direction, CC and Elliot descend on Gabby. Slim returns to the O’Rileys’ with Leeny and finds the wounded Brady. He tries to get information, but Brady can’t speak. While Leeny discovers Ben (apparently unharmed, just terrified) in his dark bedroom, Slim finds Gabby upstairs, in a bloody-water-filled bathtub.

That night, Nolan arrives at the farmhouse and sees the blood on Slim’s shirt. He’s terrified for Ben, but when Slim says he’s safe, it dawns on Nolan, who blames Slim for her death. They have yet another fight, interrupted by the return of Sam, CC, and Elliot. Slim and Nolan come after the three men, guns blazing. They manage to hit CC on the first go-around. Elliot gets the drop on Slim, shooting him twice. Slim drops. Nolan kills Elliot. As Nolan tries to move Slim into a safer part of the house, Slim begins to see something resembling heaven — a golden wheatfield where Cormac, Jonah, and Gabby wait. Nolan pulls Slim back to reality as Sam enters the house. Slim gets to his feet, barely, as Sam comes upon Nolan. He kills the sheriff. As Sam reloads, Slim shoots Sam, this time killing him. Slim’s adrenaline drops, and he collapses again. Magwynn is the only one left, relatively unharmed. Slim tries to walk away from the scene, but he collapses. Fade to black.

“Years later,” Ben is now seven, walking through a wheatfield. Slim, looking serene, emerges from the wheatfield, as well. They walk toward the O’Rileys’ farmhouse, which has now been painted and refurbished. Brady sits with Leeny on the porch swing outside.

Notes

The Low Dweller has a low-rent Cormac McCarthy vibe to it, which makes it easy to compare it to the Coens’ treatment of No Country for Old Men. Eerie similarities abound, in pacing, moral ambiguity, and taciturn main characters. It also features characters speaking in an oddly cadenced, faux-Southern patois more at home in Tennessee or West Texas than southern Indiana. Even the fact that it’s inexplicably set in the 1980s is kind of similar.

The main point of comparison, however, is its primary difference: while No Country for Old Men is about the nature of violence and humanity, The Low Dweller is about…? It escapes me, but I’m sure it’s about something. Although I can’t call it anything special, The Low Dweller is not a bad script, and the story is so plodding and aimless it just has to be some kind of deep exploration of… Something. Or somebody. Pass?

Slim feels he has a duty to uphold, to avenge the death of his brother. He feels he screwed up Cormac (McCarthy shout-out?), so he has to clean up the mess…by making a bigger one. I guess it’s sort of about a screwed-up family loyalty, but it doesn’t quite work as a meditation on the subject because… Well, there’s no actual meditation. Multiple perspectives on the topic are not explored through its subplots or other characters. Everyone on the side of killing Sam Nebraska and his men agree; everyone on the other side is opposed, and these dueling perspectives don’t meet until each side is aiming guns at the others’ faces.

What does that leave? A drawn-out action movie with all the pretensions of epic drama but none of the insight. Stock action characters and relationships, none of them even reaching the depth of Raw Deal (whose classic “You should not drink and bake” exchange says more about those two characters in one action and one sentence than The Low Dweller spits out about its characters in 123 pages), following a standard revenge story. It meanders to create the illusion of depth, poignancy, and drama, but it’s nothing but a mirage that makes the script as tedious to read as it will be to watch.

There are two obvious but opposite ways to fix it: (1) embrace the fact that it’s an action movie by making it big, dumb, and overblown, or (2) take a step back, look at the way the story unfolds and what happens to the characters, figure out what you’re trying to say with the theme and the subtext, and rewrite it as a heady drama with a few intense, stomach-knotting action sequences. It depends on what Ingelsby (or whoever produces it) wants the story to be. As it stands, The Low Dweller isn’t bad so much as an excruciating example of mediocrity masquerading as something more. Embrace the mediocrity and have fun with it, or work hard to make it great. That’s it.

The Bottom Line

Legend has it that Leonardo DiCaprio and the Scott brothers will produce this script, which could still go either way. Ridley Scott is the king of ambitious, pretentious Oscar bait (some of it good, some of it awful), while Tony Scott is the king of schlocky yet efficient action movies. DiCaprio, too, has had a mixed-bag career of misguided epic drama (Gangs of New York, Blood Diamond) and confounding, mediocre action flicks (The Quick and the Dead and Body of Lies, which was also directed by Ridley Scott). It’ll be interesting to see where they go with it, but it’ll probably still hover around “mediocre,” never rising to its full potential but, at least, not getting worse.

Posted by Stan at 10:45 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 20, 2008

Black List Script #6 – Fuckbuddies by Liz Meriwether

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A guy and a girl struggle to have an exclusively sexual relationship as they both come to realize they want much more.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

EMMA FRANKLIN and ADAM KURTZMAN lie in bed together, discussing the word “fuckbuddies” and trying to find an alternative to it.

In 1994, a group of 13-year-olds at summer camp sneak to watch the girls dance — specifically, the one girl in the group whose recently developed breasts bounce with each movement. Adam is among them, but he’s not looking at this girl — he’s looking at Emma, tall and scrawny. He asks her if she wants to “freak.” Moments later, they’re freaking to TLC’s “No Scrubs.” Emma doesn’t understand the song lyrics, so Adam attempts to explain in a faux-black patois. Annoyed by the noise from other campers, Emma invites Adam to “the Dumpster.” Adam’s surprised. We discover this is a mysterious make-out spot because of the moderate privacy it affords. Adam and Emma talk about themselves — Emma’s “life is pretty fucked up,” Adam’s parents are getting divorced, Emma believes marriage is bad and that people aren’t meant to be together forever. A couple of other campers ask for their spot since they aren’t even making out. Instead of leaving, they make out, which causes Adam to cry. Emma’s not very sensitive to the situation.

In 2001, Adam is at a University of Michigan frat party with his friends SCOTTIE (athletic) and ELI (unknown). Adam makes out with his girlfriend, VANESSA. When she goes to get a beer, Eli gripes that Adam’s never going to have sex with Vanessa. Adam doesn’t mind. Eli observes that Scottie, who’s dancing shirtless, has a gay nipple. This prompts Eli to mention that he was raised by two gay dads and he’s proud of them. Adam catches sight of a girl walking into the party — it’s Emma. He hasn’t seen her since camp. Adam approaches her, and she knows exactly who she is and where they met, immediately. Surprised to see her, Adam asks if she goes to the school. Emma says she goes to MIT but grew up in nearby Ypsilanti.

Adam and Emma flirt with each other until Emma asks if he has a girlfriend. Adam points out Vanessa, whom Emma describes as “fat” and having a “McDonald’s face.” She asks why Vanessa won’t sleep with him; Adam is surprised she guessed that but denies it. Adam’s baffled, but Emma explains she’s pre-med and is, therefore, comfortable talking about the human body. Also, she’s kind of a slut, so she knows a lot about the genitalia in particular. Adam reluctantly confides that he and Vanessa are waiting until they’re ready. Emma doesn’t understand this logic. They go out to her car and have sex. In the midst of it, Adam feels a little uncomfortable about cheating on his girlfriend. He starts to ramble, so she gives him his pants back.

Walking around campus, Emma explains that, while she doesn’t regularly sleep around, she doesn’t have a problem with it because people just want to have sex, so why deny those feelings? Emma invites Adam to go to “this stupid thing” with her tomorrow. It turns out to be her father’s funeral. At the wake, a neighbor approaches Emma to share sympathy, and Adam claims to be Emma’s “baby-daddy,” much to her amusement and the neighbor’s confusion. Emma has a conversation with her mother, SANDRA, about what a bastard her father was. Sandra wonders why she loved him, and Emma insinuates it’s Sandra’s belief in hopeless causes. Sandra wonders why Emma doesn’t believe in anything that’s hopeless. Sandra decides to go inside and watch Bambi and cry. Inside, Sandra watches the movie and sobs. Adam also watches and cries. Emma sits between them, dry-eyed. Emma drops Adam off at his dorm, telling him he’s wonderful and she hopes she never sees him again.

Los Angeles, 2007. Adam plays personal assistant to a precious child sitcom star. After a taping, he goes to his father’s huge house. ALVIN is in his late 50s, but he’s tan and muscular. He tells Adam that he’s now dating Vanessa, with whom Adam broke up eight months earlier. Adam’s enraged. He goes and gets drunk with Eli and Scottie. Once he gets drunk enough, Adam decides to call every woman he knows and tell them how wonderful Vanessa was. Eli and Scottie try to stop him. The next morning, Adam wakes up…in Emma’s apartment. He’s confused, because she doesn’t live in L.A., but she tells him she just moved. Adam apologizes for the state he must have been in when he called. They have sex. Emma gripes about Adam’s Nixon-esque “sex face.” When he orgasms, Adam tries to impersonate Nixon, which disturbs Emma.

Afterward, Emma’s all business. She’s okay with Adam having meaningless but safe sex with her, as long as they lay out some ground rules. A montage follows, during which they have sex amid endless quips and banter. The only relevant information delivered is that Emma is now at UCLA Medical School and Adam has a strong desire for a career in standup comedy. While at the teaching hospital, Emma discusses the notion of fuckbuddies with friends SUMAIRE and CONNIE. Connie is puzzled as to why Emma doesn’t long for more, while Sumaire’s unhappy marriage is a textbook example of why she doesn’t long for more. DR. METZNER, their good-looking mentor, sends them back out to work. Scottie, Eli, Emma, and Scottie’s gay dads watch Adam’s standup debut. It’s awful. A fat woman throws jalapeño poppers at him. When Emma isn’t around, Scottie double-checks to make sure Emma and Adam aren’t really “dating,” because he wants to ask her out.

Adam asks Emma if she sleeps with other guys, even though asking such a question violates their rules. Emma asks why he’d ask, and Adam tells her that Scottie wants to ask her out. Emma gets mad that Adam already told Scottie “no,” so Adam gives her Scottie’s number and they get into a passive-aggressive argument about seeing other people. Some time later, Adam notices a cute assistant making eyes at him. While having sex, Emma gives Adam some pointers on asking the assistant out. Adam humiliates himself in front of the assistant and a bunch of others. Alvin comes to work to invite Adam out to dinner with himself and Vanessa. Adam goes to the teaching hospital, where he tries to hit up Sumaire for some drugs that will numb him mentally for this dinner. For some reason, Sumaire does, so Emma is forced to take Adam to the restaurant for the dinner. Throughout the dinner, Adam’s lowered inhibitions prompt him to say a variety of stupid and/or bizarre things, while Emma tries to explain his behavior as symptoms of an allergic reaction “to his own hair.” Adam tries to pick a fistfight with Alvin, at which point Emma drags Adam out of the restaurant. Later, while coming down at his apartment, Adam tells Emma this arrangement is no longer working. He tells her he loves her and begs her to be his girlfriend. Emma leaves.

At the teaching hospital, Emma loses her first patient. She calls up Adam and asks to come over, but Adam’s on a date (with CARMEN, the assistant he humiliated himself in front of earlier). She finally responds to Dr. Metzner’s subtle flirtations, going with him to a hotel room for sex. She doesn’t respond well to his bailing on her afterward, the way she usually does. Meanwhile, Adam tries to inject his and Emma’s cutesy sex talk into the act, but Carmen doesn’t respond to it. Adam’s immediately bored and going through the motions. Later that night, Emma and Adam talk to each other on the phone, each griping about their respective sex partners. When Emma hears Adam had sex, she gets jealous. When Adam accuses her, she denies it, but Adam knows better. He dedicates the next few days to intentionally trying to make her jealous by describing outlandish, untrue sex acts. He goes to an improv class where he meets an actual woman, who finds him funny. They make out in the parking lot when Emma calls. For some reason, Adam answers. They snipe at each other, then Adam hangs up. When he and Joy arrive back at his apartment, they discover Emma waiting. She claims to be Emma’s doctor, who performed a testicle transplant on Adam. Emma and Joy get into a verbal girlfight, until Joy gets pissed off and leave. Adam and Emma have sex. Afterward, Emma gives Adam a belated birthday present — a rubber chicken. They discuss the many uses of a rubber chicken.

Adam convinces Emma to go on a real date with him. He dresses up nice, buys her a flower bouquet, takes her to a museum to look at art and a meditation garden. In the middle of the garden, Emma freaks out. She hurls dozens of hypothetical “bad” scenarios at Adam, who has a rational and/or “funny” and/or “cutesy” solution to all of them. Nonetheless, it descends into an obnoxious argument that results in Adam dropping Emma off at the hospital and telling her he can’t see her anymore. She agrees, so he follows her into the hospital, repeating over and over that he’ll never see her again. Adam gets wasted and decides to embrace Emma’s fuckbuddy philosophy, getting laid multiple times in the process.

He performs his standup act, which has improved significantly enough to garner the attention of a talent agent. The agent claims Alvin told him to go to Adam’s show. Adam goes to Alvin’s house and thanks him sincerely. At the hospital, Emma robotically breaks the news of breast cancer to an older woman. Angered by Emma’s emotionlessness, the woman forces Emma to just sit with her, holding her hand, and then maybe she can try again. Dr. Metzner approaches Emma in the hall, but Metzner blows her off. She gets a VoiceMail from Adam — ostensibly for the first time since they broke up — inviting her to his standup act. Emma shows up and watches him with pride.

After the show, Emma seeks out Adam but sees him talking confidently to a bunch of girls. She panics and leaves; Adam, meanwhile, scans the crowd for Emma but doesn’t see her. Emma goes on a date with MIKE, an obnoxious financial guy who’s the grandson of the cancer woman from earlier. Emma tells Mike she wants to take it slow. Emma picks up Sandra from LAX but is embarrassed when her mother acts like an obnoxious, rube-like tourist. Sandra also surprises Emma with a new boyfriend, TUCK, whom Emma immediately hates. Mike calls and invites Emma out to meet her friends. She’s uneasy but agrees to it. Before the date, Emma and Sandra talk about men. Emma demands to know why Sandra feels the need to be “taken care of.” Sandra explains that she wanted to be their for Emma’s father and wanted to raise Emma, and now she just wants to be loved and taken care of. Emma doesn’t agree with this mindset, but Sandra argues that Emma doesn’t have much room to talk, since she’s never experienced love.

Thanks to his agent, Adam has a one-line guest spot on a crime show. A makeup artist works up a massive head wound. Emma meets Mike, his friends, and their girlfriends at a bar. They’re all vapid and obnoxious. On the sound stage, a P.A. hands Adam his cell phone — it’s Emma. She’s drunk, stoned, and irritated by everyone talking about weddings. Immediately, Adam bails on the job, races to the bar. Still in his bloody wardrobe and head-wound makeup, Adam baffles the bar patrons as he approaches Emma and they make out. Emma confesses that she loves him, and they have sex. It’s different — intense, intimate. Later, Emma suggests they have breakfast. Adam’s scared. When Emma wakes up the next morning, Adam’s gone.

Before leaving for the airport, Sandra gives Emma some sage advice: Emma was forced to grow up tough, but now it’s time for her to stop being so strong. She can let herself hurt. Emma sees them off, then goes to another of Adam’s standup performances. He’s surprised to see Alvin and Vanessa in the audience, laughing loud at his bits about them. Afterward, Emma tries to run away when she sees Adam chatting up yet another girl, but this time Adam sees and goes after her. He apologizes for not staying and explains that she can’t just decide everything’s different after he spent so much time trying to get over her. He suggests that they might have blown it — their timing is off. Emma says maybe that’s true, but she’s still in love with him, and she’s sorry she spent so much time pretending not to care. Somebody in the comedy club whisks Adam away. He asks Emma to wait; she leaves.

After everyone’s cleared out, Alvin and Adam have a heart to heart that basically amounts to: Adam’s not an asshole, so he should stick with Emma since he clearly loves her. Emma goes to have some meaningless sex with Dr. Metzner, but it depresses her. Emma calls Sandra to tell her she thinks she finally gets it. Adam rushes to the hospital in search of Emma, who’s not there. Suddenly, she calls him and tells him to turn on channel 27. Adam changes the waiting room TV. Bambi plays. Getting it, Adam rushes to Emma’s apartment, where she’s finally mourning the loss of her father. Adam holds her, and they both bawl. Then they have sex. Then they discuss how great things will be now that they’re really a couple — they’ll break all their rules. The next morning, Adam wakes her up and asks what they’re going to have for breakfast.

Notes

I have a theory about how this script came into existence. Maybe it’s wrong, but it feels right. Screenwriter Liz Meriwether tape-recorded an improv group whose main game involved asking the audience for three things: a generic scene from their favorite romantic comedy, a non-sequitur not commonly associated with romance, and five or six “shocking” obscenities the troupe has to work into the scene. After taping these improv scenes, Meriwether transcribed the dialogue and cobbled together Fuckbuddies, 124 pages of schlock masquerading as sharp, edgy wit. I want to give it points for trying so damn hard to be funny. Unfortunately, any points I would have rewarded for effort would get canceled out by how severely it fails.

Picture 124 pages of dialogue like this:

Crammed into the confines of a bland romantic comedy that hits all the typical beats, Fuckbuddies lacks the psychological and biological insight of the movies it’s most obviously ripping off (Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally…, mainly, but there’s also a heady dose of the Seinfeld episode “The Deal”). The foundations of their respective relationship perspectives work for me. Emma’s fear of intimacy stems from an abusive, alcoholic father, and Adam’s obsession with rescuing his partners is a direct result of his philandering, drug-addicted father forcing him, as a child, into a caretaker role with possibly both parents. However, it seems like Meriwether picked up these plausible motivations through cultural osmosis rather than genuine understanding of human behavior. My only evidence is the rapid, nonsensical character changes in the third act, which misidentify the characters’ hang-ups and solve them in dumb, inorganic ways. Oh, also, this line of dialogue (Emma justifying why she’s attracted to jerks): “There must be some biological reasoning, like assholes used to be the better hunters or something.” Careful readers will remember that Emma is supposed to be a doctor, and yes, there is a biological explanation, and she would know what it is and probably be in therapy to work through the problems. This is why screenwriters shouldn’t be allowed to give people any profession more advanced than retail “customer associate.”

The plot lingers far too long on backstory and the “fuckbuddying” section of the script. Because it adheres to the most generic possible formula, the story needs to move past the “gettin’ along, fuckin’ fine” section much more quickly. It lacks conflict, which in turn causes it to lack momentum, which means we’re watching a flabby, overlong Saturday Night Live sketch with Tourette’s syndrome and even fewer funny jokes. Because of this, the script is about 30-40 pages longer than it needs to be, and much of that extra page-count comes from aimless, conflict-free scenes that mostly involving rhyming, repetitive dialogue peppered with pop-culture references (most egregious example: “Not even if you’re a Care Bear giving me a care-stare”). Meriwether is the first screenwriter I’ve seen that makes Diablo Cody look like Woody Allen.

The inevitable “we no longer get along” section isn’t much better, but at least it has some forward motion. Still, allow me to linger on the “fuckbuddying” stage for as long as Meriwether does. After all, it’s the title of the script, so why not? Look, I don’t want to get on my soapbox about what’s wrong with romantic comedies, but this script just plays into all the typical problems — juvenile, unbelievable romances; hacky rehashes of scenes lifted from better movies; generic conflict/plot/resolution; and so on. Yet, it has… Well, I can’t call it a “fresh” concept, but it’s hitting the culture at the right time. When Harry Met Sally… is better in every conceivable way (and it’s a movie I don’t particularly like, which should illustrate Fuckbuddies’ overall quality), but in the intervening 20 years, the “fuckbuddy” concept has become more of a social norm. Rather than using that to her advantage, Meriwether is content to pilfer reliable but overused ideas and offer simplistic solutions instead of facing the real challenges her characters need to overcome.

The disaster area Fuckbuddies calls its third act undoes what little the script has going for it. Meriwether’s evident but poorly developed “female-empowerment” subtext works fine until she decides Emma’s only problem is being too tough to cry. The overall message goes from “if you can make it work, fuckbuddying is A-OK” to “the only way for a woman to make it in a man’s world is to turn into a puddle of mush and let the man take care of you.” The less said about Adam’s quick change-and-change-back bullshit, the better, but I’ll say this: Adam’s a rescuer. This is evident in everything he does — until he ditches Emma for breakfast. It’s evident from the first moment we see him, attracted more to the sullen, damaged girl in the corner than the perky girl with big tits. It’s part of who he is, so the instant — the very second — the words “I love you” escape from Emma’s lips, he’d be attached at the hip. What’s with the crisis and the false drama? Meriwether never even tries to make it coherent, but if she wants to give him a crisis, why not have him identify his “rescuer” tendencies during that brief broken-up period? Maybe he goes for a little therapy, maybe he just reads a psych-101 textbook, and he says, “Hey, I’m that guy,” and works on trying to fix it. So Emma tries to work her way back into his life, and that’s where the conflict comes from. It’s more believable than whatever the hell his crisis is supposed to be the way it’s written now. I still don’t know. Feel free to drop a comment explaining it to me. Nevertheless, something like this could lead to roughly the same treacly, happy ending with maybe 10% more satisfaction.

Anatomy of an Unfunny Joke

This special section is devoted to one particular scene in Fuckbuddies that drove me nuts. It takes place in 1994, when Adam and Emma are 12-13.

What’s wrong with this picture?

1. “No Scrubs” came out in 1999, but this scene takes place in 1994, the year of their breakthrough CrazySexyCool (which didn’t come out until November, long after summer camp). I’m not even a TLC fan and I knew that off the top of my head. Okay, I didn’t know the November part, but you know what? It took me ten seconds to look it up. Why is basic research so difficult for writers?!
2. The lyrics aren’t even transcribed correctly!
3. Extremely white people talking like black people hasn’t been funny since Silver Streak.
4. The joke exists solely to turn the idea of “freaking” into a bland sex joke and make a stale pop-culture reference. I’ve already gone into the fact that the pop-culture reference is almost as anachronistic as Juno’s Blair Witch Project reference, but how is this even a punchline? “It sounds like he’s propositioning her, but they don’t cuz it’s innocent cuz they’re 13.” LOLOLOLOL!!!!! I see where the funny is supposed to be, and yet it’s not there. Maybe my sense of humor is not sufficiently drenched in retarded irony.
5. I hated this script. Worse than Butter, if you can imagine (I couldn’t).

In fairness, Fuckbuddies did have one dialogue exchange that made me laugh (which is more than I can say for Butter and The Oranges (even though those are still, in terms of story/structure/character, better scripts — we’re talking varying degrees of shit, of course):

The Bottom Line

It’s not an original idea, but as I said, with some good, insightful writing, it could fit nicely into the current cultural zeitgeist. It could even remain relevant in the future, the way the movies Meriwether rips off have, by concentrating more on believable human behavior than cheap jokes and clichés. Human behavior won’t change in the next 25 years; how people respond to a “No Scrubs” joke will. Hire someone else to rewrite this. Someone with a better understanding of the psychology and biology of both genders, someone who can play with the conventions of romantic comedies instead of just adhering to them, someone with insight into the current generation of 20- and 30-somethings… Or maybe just somebody who’s funny.

Posted by Stan at 10:41 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (2)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 21, 2008

Black List Script #7 – Winter’s Discontent by Paul Fruchbom

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “When Herb Winter’s wife of fifty years dies, the faithful but sexually frustrated widower moves into a retirement community to start living the swinging single life.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

On HERB WINTER’s 75th birthday, he attends his wife’s funeral. In voiceover, he gripes that, while he maybe didn’t want her to die, he hasn’t had sex in decades. He’s been faithful, but now it’s time to get some. At the wake, Herb talks to mourners and his best friend JULES ROSENBAUM, described as “a Jewish Mister Rogers.” Throughout his conversation, voiceover continues, providing ironic commentary to the relatively innocuous things Herb says. (This device continues intermittently throughout the script.) Herb bugs Jules for details on Spruce Gardens, a retirement community with a 4:1 woman:man ratio. Jules sarcastically plays it off and grumbles about Herb’s lack of compassion for his own wife. CHERYL (40s), Herb’s good-looking real estate agent, approaches, and Herb thinks lewd things while discussing the sale of his home.

When Herb arrives at Spruce Gardens, KATE BENTLEY (late 50s) gives him a grand tour. She shows Herb the music room and asks if he plays an instrument. Herb tells her piano, years ago. She shows him the gym and asks if he works out; Herb says he hasn’t since he served in Korea. Kate says her dad was in Korea, which stings Herb. WANDA NEWTON (70s) walks by, “eye-fucking” Herb as she passes. Kate asks what Herb used to do for a living; Herb sold typewriters, and not very well. Kate suggests it was a good fit — piano and typing.

Later, in the cafeteria, Herb tries to discuss all the feminine potential at Spruce Gardens, but Jules has no interest. Instead, Herb finds like minds in ELMER WILLIAMS and CHARLIE HASSELBACK, longtime residents who have a good thing going with the women at Spruce Gardens. They immediately welcome Herb to the fold, as they discuss fond wartime memories of women. Elmer and Charlie give Herb the lay of the land, describing each woman and her foibles. Herb’s really interested in Kate, but the others believe she’s too young — there’s no way she’ll give him the time of day. Herb asks who he should approach instead. They ask how long it’s been since he’s had sex. Herb can’t even remember. Elmer and Charlie suggest Wanda Newton.

Later, Herb watches TV in his room. EVA JANIKOWSKI arrives, offering him a carrot cake while make lewd advances. The process repeats with IRISH SHALOV and homemade toasted almonds, PATTY DELANO and a meatloaf, and Wanda Newton and…nothing. She just volunteers to have sex with him. Wanda asks if Herb has a condom, but Herb is baffled by the suggestion. Fortunately, Wanda has one for him. Herb goes into the bathroom to get it on but is unable. Wanda has extras. After several unsuccessful attempts, he finally gets a condom on…only to lose his erection a few seconds into it. The next day, Charlie and Elmer chastise Herb for not taking Viagra and not having his own condoms. Herb takes their abuse, but the others agree to help him. That night, he has some pills, some condoms, and an illustration of how to put one on properly. Everything’s going according to plan… Except Wanda dropped dead.

Kate, waiting with some paramedics, is surprised to see Herb there. They have an awkward conversation, during which Kate politely consoles him. The next day, Herb is enraged that Wanda dared to die before Herb could sleep with her. Charlie and Elmer tell him it could be worse — she could have died during the act, which would cause Herb to get blackballed in Spruce Gardens. Women don’t want to take chances. Jules is offended by the course the conversation has taken, but the others ignore him. They tell the detailed story of one man who “killed” a woman through sex, then suggest to Herb that Eva might be his best bet now that Wanda’s out of the picture. They tell him to wait a couple of days, and then things should be back to normal.

The instant he says that, MIKE MILLER arrives. A tan, well-muscled Lothario in his mid-60s, Mike’s an instant hit with the ladies — witty, charming, loaded with stories and life experience. Charlie, Elmer, and especially Herb see their chances dwindling before their eyes. They try to convince Mike that Spruce Gardens is filled with frigid women at death’s door, but Mike doesn’t fall for it. That night, through the thin walls, Herb overhears the sounds of Mike having sex with Eva. Weeks later, Herb is livid, even more than the others — after all, they had their fun before Mike arrived. Herb never got his chance. Jules uncovered that Mike used to work in pharmaceuticals and has access to experimental, unapproved drugs that provide super erections. They’re all angry, but they have no recourse. Mike has them beat.

Late one night, Herb has trouble sleeping. He gets up and pounds out the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. He stops suddenly when Kate arrives, telling Herb one of the residents complained about the noise. They have a drink together, during which time Kate talks nonstop about Herb’s wife. Later that night, Herb once again pitches the idea of sleeping with Kate to Charlie, Elmer, and Jules. They agree it’ll never happen; while Charlie and Elmer suggest that Iris remains untouched by Mike, Jules knows better. Herb is ready to bust, though — he needs to sleep with somebody. Instead, they start masturbating and smoking again.

Herb proposes a plan for them to recondition themselves in order to compete with Mike, but neither Charlie nor Elmer is interested. For some reason, Jules sticks by Herb. They start walking, which Herb suggests will eventually build up to running. Meanwhile, Mike blows by them, running along the jogging trail. Herb decides they can’t compete in stamina, so they should try technique. They drive to a dilapidated house. Jules explains he found a sexpert on the Internet who offers a training course.

JACKSON JOHNSON, a scruffy loser in his 30s, invites them inside. Jackson tells them he usually likes to take things slow, but he can tell they’re motivated. He says he’ll skip nipple play and clitoral stimulation, because he assumes they already know how to do all that. When Jules protests, Herb subtly kicks him and agrees that yes, they do. Jackson moves them to more advanced techniques. He produces some sex dolls for them to practice various positions and techniques. That night, Jules is concerned he slipped a disk. Herb grumbles that he shouldn’t be so negative, suggesting they just stretch next time. Herb is pleased with the results of their tutoring session.

Next on the agenda, Herb decides they must get involved in some form of cultural appreciation, to create the illusion of sensitivity and “outclass” Mike. Herb and Jules go to a painting class, run by Kate. Herb’s work isn’t very good, but Kate compliments it anyway. Kate presents a live, nude model, exciting Herb — until he finds out it’s Mike. And he’s hung like an horse. And he’s shaved. Herb breaks the bad news to Charlie and Elmer.

Late one night, Kate comes to Herb’s room. She tells him she was thinking about her (deceased) husband’s old piano and wants to take some lessons. Herb is surprised and a little deflated. He says he’d be happy to teach her, but he’s mainly interested in classical music that’s too advanced for a novice. Kate shrugs, suggesting she’d rather learn something more modern, like the Beatles. Herb’s never heard of them, but he agrees to give her lessons anyway. Herb borrows some Beatles records from Jules and is surprised by how good they are. Jules is surprised that he’s never listened to the Beatles. Herb gripes that there are a lot of things he hasn’t done, but nothing’s going to stop him this time — he’s going to fuck Kate. He gripes about his dead wife, whom Jules tries to defend, but Herb won’t hear it. He wants sex.

Herb goes to a record store and buys Beatles sheet music. He preps for Kate by practicing with a sex doll, practicing the Beatles songs on the piano, shaving his pubes, buying some penile enlargement pills, but everything screeches to a halt when Herb catches sight of Mike and Kate waving at each other and having a conversation that almost seems romantic. Some time later, Herb realizes how to take Mike out of the equation — they engineer a situation to get his cock blackballed at Spruce Gardens. Herb asks Jules who’s the most decrepit, at-death’s-door woman in the place. Jules suggests ROSE CHANDLER. Herb gives Mike some “friendly advice” about Rose. That night, Herb eavesdrops and hears what he assumes is Mike fucking Rose to death. The next day, they all discover that not only is she alive — she looks and acts 20 years younger.

Kate has her piano lesson. Herb teaches her to play “Let It Be,” and as she sings along with the music, Herb leans in. He’s ready to make a move when Kate stops, declaring piano playing better than sex. Herb offers another piano lesson. He goes back to the record store and asks the clerk for sheet music for a song that’ll get a girl to sleep with him. Herb gets ready for the next lesson — Viagra, condoms, looks. He plies Kate (and himself) with some gin, then teaches her to play “Faithfully” by Journey. As she plays, Herb leans in to make his move —

— and Kate’s horrified and offended. Herb’s embarrassed, especially when she tells him to go and Herb has to ask for a ride home. Herb goes to Jules to tell him about what happened, but he and Jules get into it about Herb’s wife. Jules is very passionate on the subject, and Herb slowly figures out that Jules was in love with her. He never crossed the line, but he spent decades in love with Herb’s wife. Before he can react to this, Jules collapses. Some time later, Christmas is arriving and rumors have floated around Spruce Gardens, and suddenly Herb is blackballed — and not just his cock.

Mike Miller sits with Herb and tries to extend an olive branch, as a thanks for his tip on Rose Chandler. They go to a bar and get loaded, and eventually Herb confesses that he’s never even gotten a blowjob. Mike’s aghast, so he drags Herb to a “gentlemen’s club” — as a Christmas gift. Mike gives Herb one of his secret pills, and the effect is instant. Herb gets into a room with a prostitute and realizes this isn’t what he wants. Before he has the chance to say anything, Mike drops dead in another room. Herb attends Mike’s funeral and gives a nice eulogy about him. This puts him back in the good graces of the Spruce Gardens folks. After the funeral, Herb lies next to his wife’s grave and recalls a few happy memories, but he realizes she loved Jules all along, as well. He apologizes for that. He wishes he had died, so she and Jules could be happy. Kate catches Herb lying on a grave, talking to himself. He explains the situation and apologizes for the incident at the piano lesson. Kate suggests maybe they could have another lesson, and then they start to kiss.

They go back to Kate’s apartment and make love. In the middle of it, Herb tries a complex maneuver and they both end up in the hospital with back injuries. While at the hospital, Herb visits Jules and apologizes for never treating him like a friend. Jules asks why Herb’s in the hospital, but Herb’s reluctant to tell for fear of giving him another heart attack. Jules insists, and he nearly has one after the shock of learning Herb and Kate had sex. Herb says that as he collapsed, he had a near-death experience and couldn’t help thinking that all the good times in his life involved hanging around with Jules. Later, Herb and Kate have an awkward reunion, but Kate mentions a “next time,” which encourages Herb. At his 76th birthday, everyone’s at the party, and Kate marches out with his birthday cake — and he’s never been happier in his entire life.

Notes

Dear Advertisers,

I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television. We are not all vibrant, fun-loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals who remember the good old days when entertainment was bland and inoffensive.
     — Grampa Simpson, “Bart the General”

Although much better than the other Black List comedies (so far), Winter’s Discontent nonetheless suffers from the usual problem — believability. I’m sure I sound like a broken goddamn record at this point, but too many sloppy moments shatter my suspension of disbelief.

A man who would have only been 30 in 1964 has never heard of the Beatles? This is not “never listened to” or “never liked,” both of which are reasonable explanations for Herb’s ignorance. But to have never heard of them? The Beatles weren’t just a moderately popular band like, let’s say, Coldplay; they were a phenomenon that changed the face of music forever. And as someone who prefers the Beach Boys to the Beatles, that’s tough to admit — but it’s true. This inconsistency speaks to a larger problem, however: these characters are elderly, but it doesn’t feel like they have any history. They mention the Korean conflict on occasion, but aside from that, they don’t feel like people who have lived. Big Hole is not a masterpiece, but its elderly protagonist feels like a real man who really lived for 78 agonizing years.

The larger problem of the lack of believable life history manifests itself both in the dialogue and the attitudes of its characters. I’d overlook the “attitude” part, because half the joke is the idea that these elderly men are acting like drunken frat brothers, and that’s actually a funny concept. However, the dialogue gets me riled — not the obscenities or the casual nature of their sex banter so much as the diction of their speech. They sound like 20-year-olds in addition to acting like them. Nobody uses outdated slang or expressions, they knowledgeably drop references to things like MySpace… Not only is it not convincing, it diminishes the comedic possibilities. Isn’t it funnier to hear somebody called a “slattern” instead of a “whore,” “nancy” or “queer” instead of “gay,” “bishop” instead of “cock”? The dialogue basically turns the whole concept into a one-joke story (“Isn’t it funny how these old dudes act like the guys from Porky’s LOLOLOL?!!!!!”), which does a disservice to the occasional legitimately clever joke or idea.

The idea of them finding a sex guru on the Internet is funny, if you ignore the fact that Jules has no business — and no believable motivation — for going along with Herb’s plans. The fact that Jules is savvy enough to instantly navigate to Craigslist is neither funny nor believable. Look, my grandfather — approaching Herb’s age — worked with computers for the bulk of his career. He was a nerd, but he retired right on the cusp of the Internet revolution and completely stopped caring. Now, he can’t figure out how to send an e-mail to save his life. He wouldn’t know Google, MySpace, or Craigslist from any other site in the Internet. Jokes about old people using the Internet have become somewhat of a cliché, but I don’t think the idea has been mined for its full potential. I could imagine a lot of good comic hijinks coming from two horny old men with no Internet savvy seeking out a sexpert and ending up with a dumpy, unshaven, chain-smoking 30-something.

What about that scene, though? Two elderly guys with obvious homophobia are A-OK with a creepy, male stranger walking them through sexual techniques? Without a single moment of terror or discomfort? It’s almost refreshing that Fruchbom doesn’t make the inevitable homophobia joke, but in this scenario it becomes an elephant in the room. Why wouldn’t these particular characters say something, or behave in a certain way that suggests their awareness of this strangeness? Even worse than that, the goal of getting lessons from Jackson Johnson is to outdo Mike Miller in the technique department, so why in God’s name would they turn down a chance to learn foreplay techniques? They admit (to the audience) they know nothing about it, but it’s not a pride thing because the guys hunker over sex dolls in front of this dude, so a kind-of funny moment turns stupid in record time. Come on!

Last word on the humor: the voiceovers are hit-or-miss, used too frequently, and are way too reminiscent of — but not nearly as impressive as — Kevin Nealon’s “Subliminal Man” bits on Saturday Night Live. It’s not that they’re not funny (sometimes they’re not, though); it’s just lifting a well-known gag without using it as cleverly, sort of like the condom scene that rips off The 40 Year-Old Virgin. It’ll probably still be funny, but it’s the exact same joke. And my last word on the ridiculous, persistence-of-disbelief moments: I know he’s going for a sort of bookend idea by having it start with birthday/funeral and end with birthday/happiness, but here’s the problem I had: it’s not like funerals happen on the same day as the death. If she died on his birthday, it’d be dramatic. Having the funeral on his birthday is just dumb and kind of melodramatic, especially when he gripes about how it’s his birthday, as if it’s his dead wife’s fault he scheduled the funeral on that day. Come on!

The plot isn’t bad. Fruchbom does a good job of introducing variety in the gags — some clever, some tired — and raising stakes every couple of pages. The romance with Kate and Herb’s slowly changing feelings are solid, although the notion of a guy learning relationships are about more than sex at age 75 is a lot more pathetic than learning the same lesson at age 25. Nonetheless, it worked for me, in part because it was so pathetic…

On the other hand, the impetus of Herb’s horn-dog outlook did not. I wanted to buy into it, but Herb comes across as such an asshole by page two, he has a long, long road to redeem himself. Basically, “I want to get laid because my dead wife wouldn’t put out” isn’t good enough for me. It’s a plausible motivation, which is more than I could say for the characters in Butter or The Oranges, but it makes the guy we’re supposed to like into somebody we don’t like. Call me crazy, but I’m not going to automatically root for the guy who’s talking about banging retirees at his late wife’s wake. Meanwhile, Jules is supposed to be the old fuddy-duddy, described as “the Jewish Mister Rogers” — he’s just no fun, Fruchbom wants us to believe. It’s never that simple. It’d be much more interesting if Herb’s newfound obsession with sex came from a deeper place. Maybe his wife isn’t simply uninterested in sex; maybe she’s shrew-like, withholding both physically and emotionally, and her death makes him feel free. Maybe he’s using sex to fill that sense of loss he feels for a wife he legitimately loves.

I don’t know. This isn’t my script, but this whole believability issue traces back to yet another tiny moment — a little throwaway moment at the funeral, where Herb mentions his wife was too liberated to take his name, a rather shocking and interesting character trait considering they would have married at some point in the early ’50s. Without having more information, I can’t accept that someone this liberated wouldn’t just divorce her husband. We’re supposed to buy into the idea that Jules loved Herb’s wife and vice-versa, even though neither acted on this impulse. I could buy generational mores as an explanation, but it all goes back to that “liberated” thing: if she’s so liberated and so unhappy, what’s the problem? Even if she were devoutly religious and part of a denomination that frowned on divorce… If they frowned on divorce, chances are, in the early ’50s, they also frowned on wives keeping their last names. Why stick with one tenet and not another? Maybe if we got more development from Jules, this “why didn’t they divorce?” issue would reveal itself. Maybe Jules sticks with the male code of ethics, which states (in part) that if your best friend has dated a girl for more than six contiguous months, you’re not allowed to get involved with her when they break up. (The rule compounds the deeper and longer the relationship goes — married for 20 years, you’re not allowed to speak to the woman if they divorce.) Or maybe Jules loved his own wife just that much more. Maybe he and his wife had kids and stayed together for their sake. I don’t know — I’m spitballing ideas because Fruchbom doesn’t provide enough information. He should.

The Bottom Line

The plot works. Much of the character stuff works. Even a lot of the humor — comic premises and the occasional one-liner — works. The dialogue doesn’t. The aspects of the characters that don’t work certainly trump those that do, and this nearly sinks the whole script. It’s salvageable with a solid, thorough rewrite.

Posted by Stan at 1:43 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 22, 2008

Black List Script #8 – Broken City by Brian Tucker

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A New York private investigator gets sucked into a shady mayoral election.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

At the Bolton Village housing project, Detective BILLY TAGGART (mid-30s) stands over the dead body of a 16-year-old kid, MIKEY TAVAREZ, who has been shot in the head. Sirens approach. Some time later, Taggart’s murder trial has become a zoo, the courthouse steps flooded with protesters and media. Mayor NICHOLAS HOSTETLER, 50s, discusses the possible outcome with police chief COLIN FAIRBANKS. Fairbanks tells Hostetler a witness came forward with a videotape of the shooting. Hostetler wants a copy, which Fairbanks says will arrive later; meanwhile, the original is being “misplaced” in evidence control. Billy’s verdict comes back innocent, and as he descends the courtroom steps, Billy hands his badge to Mikey Tavarez’s father.

Eight years later, Billy is bathing with his attractive, long-time girlfriend, NATALIE BARROW. She’s an actress and is flirting with the idea of moving to L.A. to pursue more lucrative work. Billy’s willing to go with her, but he’s concerned about how quickly these changes are coming. He offers to fool around; Natalie tells him no. The next morning, the media is buzzing with news that the city has sold the Bolton Village project to “Solstein Donagan” for $6 billion. HENRY LUDLOW, a convicted stalker, rejoices at an early release. Others involved in the parole hearing console Billy, who testified to keep Henry in prison.

Angry, Billy drives back to his rundown office. KATY BRADSHAW, 26 and madly in love with Billy, works as his secretary. Billy’s landlord grumbles that Billy’s four months behind on rent. Billy writes a bad check and gives the landlord football tickets. After the placated landlord leaves, Billy tells Katy to stop payment on the check. He calls various old clients trying to get a payment but to no avail. Then Mayor Hostetler calls and offers Billy a job. Meanwhile, Hostetler’s election rival, ADAM VALLIANT (mid-30s), gives a rousing speech about the injustice of selling Bolton Village.

Billy and Hostetler catch up, but neither is particularly pleasant to the other — Hostetler feigns politeness, but Billy insults the mayor and reminds him he’s behind in the polls. Hostetler offers Billy $20,000 to find out who’s sleeping with Hostetler’s wife and photograph them in the act. Billy agrees. At a tech rehearsal for her play, Natalie receives a phone call and breaks, but she looks a little guilty. Billy trails JUSTINE HOSTETLER from a reading-to-sick-children photo op to a black-tie fundraiser to SoHo. This is where Katy, on the street, gets into the act. With her help, Billy manages to lift Justine’s cell phone, find out who she’s calling, and get it back to her without Justine knowing. Back at the office, Billy and Katy investigate the number. It belongs to ZACHARY ANDREWS, City Council President. Billy tells Katy it’s a good lead, but it’s not enough.

That evening, Billy and Natalie have a cutesy but suspiciously snooty conversation about fish, followed by an awkward conversation about premiere apparel. Natalie wants multiple dresses but is indecisive, irritating Billy. Billy mentions RYAN, a fellow actor who’s supposed to be arriving in town for the premiere. The conversation suddenly gets awkward, and the awkwardness increases when Billy finally mentions the parole hearing, that Henry’s out. Billy promises it’ll be different — Henry won’t come near her. Natalie’s not so sure.

The next day, Billy waits outside the mayor’s mansion for Justine. He tails her all day, until he finally ends up at a beach house on Long Island. Meanwhile, a fellow named SAM LANCASTER comes to Hostetler with grave concerns about someone figuring something out. It’s all very ambiguous, but it has to do with the Bolton Village deal — Lancaster is a contractor whose business depends on this deal going through. Billy makes Katy come down to Long Island and assist while he snaps photos of Justine and Andrews. At a hotel, Natalie meets up with the aforementioned RYAN BLAKE; they have sex. Billy hears moaning and whimpering from inside the house, but they have it “fool-proofed” — he can’t take any pictures. Billy and Katy wait it out. When Andrews gets back in the car and leaves, Billy’s confused — why is Justine still inside? Katy suggest waiting, but Billy decides it’s time to leave. Inside the house, a mysterious off-screen voice suggests to Justine that something ambiguous is “not enough to go on.”

That night, Billy and Natalie have dinner with Ryan. Billy takes an immediate shine to Ryan. Natalie feels awkward. The next day, Valliant is angry that Hostetler is handling his attacks so well. They have nothing substantial to pin on him. Andrews, working with him, says they’re working on it. The Lancasters — Sam, SAM JUNIOR, and TODD — meet with HARRIS SARGENT at Solstein Donagan. They ink a contract for Lancaster’s construction company to tear down Bolton Village. For an unknown reason, Todd looks guilty. Billy and Katy flip through their developed photos. Katy reassures Billy their evidence is solid, but Billy’s not so sure. Billy goes to a black-tie engagement to meet Hostetler and hand off the photos. He bumps into Justine and they flirt — it becomes clear she knows he was photographing her, but neither lets on. Justine slips a business card into his jacket. Billy also has an awkward run-in with Fairbanks, who seems to still like and respect Fairbanks.

When he meets with Hostetler, Billy’s suspicious enough to think there’s more involved than just an affair. Hostetler refuses to answer, just asks for the pictures. Reluctantly, Billy gives them up. Hostetler’s surprised. Afterward, Billy pulls out the card Justine gave him — it’s Harris Sargent’s. Billy gets ready for Natalie’s premiere when Katy calls with some news. Immediately, Billy rushes out the door. Andrews is dead; nobody knows a thing, but a detective named JANSEN wants to know what it has to do with Billy. So does Fairbanks, who knows this has something to do with the work Billy did for Hostetler. Meanwhile, Natalie and Ryan dance at the premiere after-party. Fairbanks tries to get Valliant — who was with Andrews — to tell him exactly what he saw happen. Valliant accuses Fairbanks of being dirty. He claims he knows everything. Billy shoves Valliant’s head into cold water repeatedly until he breaks out of his shock.

Valliant tells them Andrews was going to meet Todd Lancaster, that he was late and rushed out the door. Valliant heard the shots, knew it was Andrews. That’s it. Billy and Fairbanks dress Valliant like a uniformed officer, and Billy drives him home. Natalie and Ryan sleep together again, but Natalie decides to break it off. She can’t handle this anymore. She goes back to the apartment, where Billy apologizes for not showing up to the premiere.

The next day, Billy wakes up. He realizes this is all about Bolton Village but doesn’t know how all the pieces fit. He puts Katy on some research, then goes out to City Hall. Hostetler exploits Andrews’ death for his own political gain. Afterward, Billy demands to know whether or not Hostetler had Andrews killed. Hostetler gives Billy a cashier’s check instead of answers. Billy and Jansen reconnect, and Billy fills Jansen in on everything. They visit Harris Sargent, who tells them of their intentions to tear down Bolton Village and redevelop it as commercial property. Billy is stunned. Jansen tells Billy that if Lancaster & Sons is involved with tearing down those buildings, it will make the Lancasters rich. Billy goes back to his office, where Katy hasn’t found much. Solstein Donagan is mostly clean, but as Billy goes through a last of old city contracts, he finds several for Lancaster & Sons.

Billy seeks out information at Lancaster & Sons, but instead the shit is beaten out of him. It turns out to be Sam Junior and Todd, but Billy can’t do anything about it in his condition. He wakes up in the hospital. Hostetler and Valliant have a televised debate, where Hostetler plays the part of the wise, experienced mayor and paints Valliant as an inexperienced rube. In the audience, Fairbanks and Justine are both dumbstruck that Hostetler has turned the electoral tide in one evening. Jansen provides Henry with a tape recording of Billy laying out some “rules” for him — he’s to go take care of his grandmother and never come anywhere near Billy or Natalie. Jansen adds that if Henry is that stupid, and Jansen gets called in on Henry’s murder, he’ll murder Henry again.

At the hospital, Natalie stays with Billy. She tells him she took the week off to be with him, but Billy wants her to go. She does. Later, Katy shows up. Billy asks her if she found out who owns the Long Island beach house. Katy says Natalie told her Billy’s thinking of quitting. Billy tells Katy she should find a new job. Katy tells him the information on the beach house doesn’t matter, then leaves. That night, Todd Lancaster shows up to apologize to Billy for beating the hell out of him. He explains that he was tricked into the beating thanks to a guilt trip, but Todd knows shady things are going down and wants them to stop before his family gets in too deep. Todd hands Billy a few papers. Billy looks at them — founding articles for Lancaster & Sons, which cite Hostetler as a silent co-owner of the company.

Armed with this knowledge, Billy leaves the hospital and finds Justine. He accuses her of being a significant part of this, selfishly getting Andrews killed to save her husband so they could make more money. Fairbanks emerges, training a gun on Billy. Enraged, Billy leaves. He shows up at Natalie’s theatre. She’s surprised to see him out of the hospital. Billy tells her his phone’s dead; he needs to borrow hers. Just as he calls Katy and gets her VoiceMail, a call rings — Ryan. Natalie promises she ended it, but Billy’s livid. He simply walks away, telling her something came up and it’s not safe to go home.

As Billy makes copies of the Lancaster papers and seals them into various envelopes, Natalie returns to Ryan, and they resume their affair. Billy confronts Hostetler, giving him an ultimatum: Hostetler can resign and withdraw from the campaign and Billy will keep silent forever… Or Hostetler can try to keep going with this, and Billy will send out his envelopes. Hostetler wants to negotiate, but Billy laughs…until Hostetler shows him the videotape of Billy murdering Mikey Tavarez. Hostetler demands the original contract, gives Billy time to think it over and come to a decision.

Billy seeks out a puzzled Henry. They go to a hotel — the same hotel where Ryan and Natalie are making love — and Billy gets a room for Henry, room 1912. He ties Henry to the bed, as Henry pleads that he’ll live by Billy’s rules. Billy shoves some vodka down Henry’s throat. Half an hour later, Henry’s untied and passed out on the floor. Billy goes to a pay phone and calls Fairbanks, who’s already at the mayor’s mansion, preparing to arrest him. Billy tells Fairbanks he owes him for this; Fairbanks agrees. Cryptically, Billy tells Fairbanks, “Your shooter’s in room 1912.” He bursts into Ryan and Natalie’s hotel room, where they make love in the shower. Billy shoots Ryan dead. Natalie’s horrified and enraged. Fairbanks and Jansen storm the hotel, where they find Henry vomiting in the toilet. Seeing Henry, Jansen realizes exactly what has happened, what Billy has done.

The next morning, the news is flooded with word that Hostetler was arrested for the murder of Andrews and that successful actor Ryan Blake was murdered in his hotel room. Billy and Fairbanks share a drink, toasting Adam Valliant. In City Hall, Valliant finds the videotape of Billy murdering Mikey Tavarez. An aide questions whether or not to destroy the tape, but Valliant suggests they keep it — they may need to use Billy in the future. Valliant takes a meeting with Solstein Donagan.

Notes

Broken City wants to be film noir, but it makes the mistake of not understanding or embracing the classic noir antihero archetype. Those antiheroes became compelling characters because they had more interest in justice and righteousness than money, personal happiness, or even the law. In their world, the punishment has to fit the crime, and the crime would have to be pretty severe to respond with murder. For instance, I can’t think of a single lead character from a film noir (or any good, hardboiled fiction from the ’30s and ’40s) who would be cool with the idea of walking into a hotel room, emptying a clip on the man his girlfriend is sleeping with, and pin the murder on the terrified, pathetic lowlife who once stalked her.

In the first place, the usual antihero is a little too cool for that — doesn’t let his emotions rile him to such a degree. In the second, she’s having an affair. Does this justify murder? It might justify a break-up and kicking the dude’s ass, but anything beyond that is overkill — literally. Henry, himself, is sort of a pathetic deus ex machina character who exists only to make the ending neat-‘n’-tidy. The framed murderer could have been a random bum off the street for all the difference it makes to the story. The existence of Henry is, I guess, supposed to create the illusion that Billy isn’t such a bad guy. He may have murdered Ryan right in front of Natalie, but at least she won’t have to worry about that pesky stalker. In the same vein, what could Mikey Tavarez have possibly done that warranted getting shot in the head? We only know that, according to Billy, Mikey “fucked him, and now [he’s] fucking lying to [Billy].” The details are left to our imaginations, but considering the reasoning for shooting Ryan, I could easily imagine Mikey as an uncertified accountant who made a mistake on Billy’s discount tax return, and Billy got mad because the IRS chose to audit him.

Another fatal character flaw: a real antihero would have never, ever handed over the photos. Hell, considering the history with Hostetler, a real antihero wouldn’t have even taken the job. “I need money” is a pathetic excuse. Philip Marlowe would go broke before he’d hand over photos of a man he knew would suffer severe, undeserved consequences. Maybe he’d hand them over if he didn’t know, but that’s the problem: Billy knew. Billy knew the whole time. Billy’s reluctance to hand over the photos stemmed from an obvious awareness that harm would come to Andrews. And then, after Andrews gets killed, Billy has the gall to whine and bitch and moan throw hissy-fits to everyone involved. Film noir protagonists don’t whine. They crack wise and lean against walls with aloof, sarcastic grins that tell everyone they meet, “Hi, I’m a badass. Don’t fuck with me if you don’t want to get fucked with.”

So it’s settled: Billy is not an antihero. He’s an asshole. By the end of Broken City, what little sympathy we might have for him has evaporated. I’m all for movies about irredeemable assholes if I understand where they’re coming from, but the script tries to have it both ways: Billy’s an enigma, but he’s also a normal guy trying to work on a troubled relationship; he has a moral code, but one that isn’t strong enough to withstand substantial sums of money or jealous rage. I have no clue who this guy is or what drives him, and even before the last 20 or so pages — where he turns into a real asshole — I didn’t have much interest in getting to know him better. I can totally understand why Natalie would cheat on Ryan to flee this disaster of a relationship.

The character doesn’t work. How about the plot? It manages to be both convoluted and head-slappingly obvious at the same time, which is an impressive feat, I guess. Look, nothing infuriates me more than the people who criticize Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep film for not making any sense. It’s complicated and doesn’t spell anything out, for sure, but it makes perfect sense if you pay attention. Part of the unwillingness to spell things out is that the film, like the novel, limits its perspective to Marlowe. We find out what Marlowe finds out when he finds it out. This is a common film noir storytelling choice, especially with detective stories — the limited perspective keeps the filmmakers from tipping their hands. Broken City is nothing but tipped hands. We find out pretty much everything well in advance, but I took no joy in waiting around for Billy to catch up. It would be serviceable (but kinda dull) if Tucker eliminated every scene that doesn’t involve Billy in some way. However, if he did that, the script would be about 20 pages long. (Not because there’s so much else going on, but because Hostetler and Valliant never shut their fucking mouths.)

Like Fuckbuddies, Broken City tries way too hard and suffers for it. It doesn’t try to be funny — though some levity could have helped break up the tedium a bit — but it does try very hard to be gritty and complex and raw. It didn’t do much for me. It felt too artificial, especially when I realized I hated Billy and had nothing to focus on but the attempts at atmosphere and drama. Instead of grit and rawness, we get melodrama and kind of a stagey theatricality to the grit — everything is two or three shades over the top.

(As a minor stylistic note, I found myself irritated by the endless use of gerunds in the action. Billy doesn’t get out of the car. “Billy getting out of the car.” I guess in some ways it cuts down on the passive voice, but holy shit is it grating. The dialogue, too, has kind of a poor-man’s Mamet quality to it, which some people like but it’s not really my cup of tea. I’m not usually put off by the writing itself, but in this case, it got under my skin by about page 25.)

The Bottom Line

To make the obvious joke, Broken City is broken. Its problems aren’t insurmountable, but it seems two or three rewrites away from being worthy of any real accolades. It surprises me that this was well-liked. It could end up turning into a good movie, but I don’t have my hopes high.

Posted by Stan at 11:40 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 23, 2008

Black List Script #9 – I’m with Cancer by Will Reiser

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A autobiographical comic account of one man’s struggle to beat cancer.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

On a gorgeous San Diego day, ADAM SCHWARTZ (26) is forced to go to the hospital. A receptionist who treats Adam like dirt gives him a gown to get into, and he’s greeted by JOANNE, a cheery nurse leading around a group of students who observe his behavior. She gives Adam a sample cup for urine — he has trouble with that. By the time he gets through the lengthy process of a full-body X-Ray and MRI, Adam has to pee. The next day, Adam’s alarm clock/white noise machine goes off. Adam finds himself unable to turn it off — it merely switches from a braying alarm to various forms of white noise. This wakes his girlfriend, RACHEL, who’s irritated by it. By the time she gets it off, he’s fully awake. She runs her fingers through his hair and spots a gray one. Adam freaks out and investigates it in the bathroom. He smiles when he finds it.

After showering using Rachel’s shampoo/body-wash, Adam is picked up by his longtime best friend, SETH (25), who rolls down the windows to get rid of the girly scent. Waiting in line at a coffee shop, single Seth wonders why a couple ahead of them can’t keep their hands off each other. Adam laments that he and Rachel used to be that way, but the relationship has slowed down. Adam thinks Rachel is waiting for him to take the next step by asking her to move in. Seth suggests Adam dump Rachel, but Adam loves her. Seth doesn’t care — Adam’s good-looking and could get laid easily. To prove it, Seth asks the gay baristas if they’d sleep with Adam, given the opportunity. They’re all enthusiastic.

Adam and Seth go to work at the San Diego Museum of Natural History, where Adam is the nerdy intellectual obsessed with historical accuracy, Seth is apathetic, and their friend GREG is the kind of idiot who puts a velociraptor fossil into a diorama of early man because people like dinosaurs. Later, Adam returns to the hospital, where DR. ROSS has the results of his tests: he has a malignant tumor as the result of a rare gene mutation. Dr. Ross claims it’s risky to operate on, so he wants Adam to start chemotherapy ASAP. When Adam starts freaking out, Dr. Ross suggests Adam start seeing a psychologist to help him work through this experience. Adam goes to the public library to use the Internet, where he looks up more about his specific cancer: “Neurofibrosarcoma Schwannoma.”

At home, Rachel has made a meal of vegetarian goulash. She’s cute and perky and alarmed by how unenthusiastic Adam is. When she asks what’s wrong, Adam gently broaches the subject by asking if she’s seen the movie Beaches. Once Rachel puts together that Adam has cancer, she’s upset and a little terrified — even more when Adam remembers his parents are coming for dinner. EDITH (a bundle of overbearing energy) and ART (a little strange and not quite himself since suffering a stroke 10 years ago) arrive. Edith is immediately unimpressed with the goulash, specifically its lack of meat. Adam tries to break the news to Edith and Art by asking if they’ve seen Terms of Endearment. Rachel tells him just to come out with it. Adam does, and Edith panics. She goes to make him green tea, citing the belief that it reduces the risk of getting cancer. When Adam notes that he already has cancer, she pulls a wide variety of pills out of her fanny pack — none of which have a thing to do with cancer treatment — and tries to convince him to take them. She wants to move in, but Adam talks her out of it. Rachel chimes in that she understands how Edith must feel, but she’ll take care of Adam.

At the coffee shop, Seth ogles a woman while Adam impatiently waits for Greg to decide what he’s going to order. Seth wonders why Adam’s suddenly so impatient. Adam tells Seth about the cancer. Seth is hurt that Adam didn’t tell him immediately. On the bright side, Seth realizes Adam can take this time to do everything he always wanted — plus, he’ll get plenty of trim. Adam goes to a therapy session with a young doctor, KATIE (26), who has no apparent sense of humor. In fact, she accuses Adam of repressing his emotions and using humor to mask his fear.

To compensate for the cancer, Rachel buys Adam a gift: a tiny shih-tzu. At first, Adam’s disappointed; then he’s angry, but Rachel guilt-trips him into keeping the dog. The museum workers throw a party for Adam, who will not be able to work during the chemo. Everyone tries to warn/help him, and Adam leaves feeling dejected. Afterward, Rachel reassures Adam that everything will be okay. At home, they attempt to make love, but the dog starts scratching and barking, demanding to be let out. Adam takes the dog for a walk, and when he gets back, Rachel’s already asleep. At their synagogue, Edith uses Adam’s cancer for sympathy points. Their RABBI urges Adam, in his time of crisis, to consider looking toward religion. Adam is disinterested.

At the hospital, Adam watches an outdated cancer-awareness film starring ALAN ALDA, designed to help new patients acclimate to chemotherapy. Waiting for his treatment, Adam meets MITCH (85) and ALAN (84), two cancer patients with different perspectives on life — it can’t end fast enough for Alan, but Mitch hangs on to dear life. They introduce Adam to the wonders of medical marijuana. Adam has a dream. He’s at an amusement park, but the carny won’t let him on a roller coaster because Adam has cancer. Adam tries to deny he has cancer, but the carny points to Adam’s t-shirt, which reads I’M WITH CANCER. Next to him is a huge, bald, fat man with a shirt labeled CANCER and an umbilical cord attached to Adam. Adam wakes in terror and rushes to the bathroom to vomit.

Katie asks Adam how he feels after the first treatment. Adam tells her he doesn’t feel well. At all. Katie tells Adam he needs an outlet for the emotions he’s experiencing. She recommends a list of books to help him deal with it. Adam and Seth go to a bookstore. Seth decides going to Mardi Gras would be a better emotional outlet. Adam has no interest, so Seth decides if Adam won’t use his disease to get laid, Seth will. He continues to hang around the cancer self-help section, where he spots a cute girl and tells her how profoundly affected he has been by his best friend’s cancer.

Adam buys a 50” plasma TV and gets high with Seth. Meanwhile, Rachel is in the process of moving in — boxes everywhere. She yells at Adam for getting high, then yells at him for the placing the TV where she intended to hang one of her paintings. She takes the dog for a walk, and Seth tries to argue with Adam that Rachel’s lack of sympathy suggests she’s not into the relationship, and they should go to Mardi Gras. Adam insists they’re just going through a rough patch.

Adam starts to read some of the books Katie recommended and is surprised that they make sense. Katie’s so excited, she decides to recommend alternate forms of therapy. Seth accompanies Adam to a laughter therapy session, which is strange but effective. A time lapse shows Adam begin to wither as his health deteriorates and his hair falls out. At a chemo session, Mitch asks why he and Alan have never met Rachel. Adam offers that she’s been stressed and bringing her to something like this would just make that worse. Alan thinks women are a waste of time, but Mitch has been married for decades. He shows Adam a photo of his wife. Alan, meanwhile, contends the day his wife left was the best day of his life. Adam considers both points of view.

After his session, Adam waits for Rachel to pick him up, but she never shows. Eventually, Katie sees Adam and offers him a ride home. Her car is cluttered with junk she won’t throw away. Adam explains he never got a driver’s license, because he failed the test by driving into a garden full of endangered plants. Adam makes her stop the car. He throws away her junk for her. When they get to Adam’s house, he invites Kate inside. She refuses, then relents. They play video games until Rachel comes home. She’s not happy to find another woman in the house, even after the explanation. After Katie leaves, Adam and Rachel fight about her not picking him up. Rachel gets sympathy points from Adam because she’s having as difficult a time watching Adam fall apart as Adam is. They try to have sex, but Adam can’t get an erection.

At Adam’s next chemo session, he asks Mitch where Adam is. He passed away. Adam and Mitch attend his funeral. Adam dreams of the afterlife — a Boca Raton retirement community where there’s still a 45-minute wait for frozen yogurt. In his waking life, Adam visits his rabbi to ask about the afterlife. He asks if he’ll go to heaven, and when the rabbi says probably, Adam asks if there’s any way to just die with no afterlife. The rabbi suggests Adam find a new religion. At a therapy session, Adam confesses to Katie his fear that he’ll die. She tells him helplessness is normal. Adam decides therapy isn’t working and leaves. Adam reminds Rachel of his next doctor’s appointment — “the big one.” Rachel ignores him, frustrating Adam. After repeating himself, she promises she’ll be there.

Left alone, Adam is bored out of his mind. He decides to try to go back to work. There, he creates a truly disturbing diorama of Pompeii during the Vesuvius eruption, then passes out. His boss, PHIL, likes and respects him, but they both agree Adam just can’t work until he gets through this. Adam waits for his ride to the doctor, but Rachel doesn’t show up and isn’t answering her phone. Adam tries Seth, who also doesn’t answer. Reluctantly, Adam dials Edith. Edith and Art accompany Adam to the hospital. While they wait, Edith’s nitpicking overwhelms an already-stressed Adam, who blows up at her. Edith tells Adam how difficult things can be — she loved Art more than anything in the world, but since he’s stroke, she’s “lost” him. She’s terrified of losing Adam, too.

Dr. Ross arrives to tell Adam the MRI shows the chemo has been ineffective — the tumor is still growing, and they have to perform a risky operation that could result in lower-body paralysis. Adam and Edith are terrified, but what else can they do? Trying to look on the bright side, Adam asks if he’ll also get handicap parking. Adam comes home to find Rachel has cooked a nice meal. Her phone vibrates with a text message. Adam asks who it’s from, and he doesn’t believe the response. When she sets down the phone, he checks the texting history and finds it’s from a guy named “James,” and many of his texts seem vaguely romantic. As he questions Rachel about this, Adam continues to scroll through, finding a variety of “artistic” nude photos of her. Angered, Adam throws Rachel out of the house.

Seth takes Adam to the Yacht Club, where they get drunk and reminisce. Adam decides he should drive home; despite his lack of license, Seth is too drunk to drive. Also, Adam wants to do something new before he dies. Seth reluctantly gives in, and Adam slams into a statue of Neptune before turning the wrong way down a one-way street. Freaked out, Seth starts to argue with him. Pissed, Adam throws Seth out of the car and sits in the street, where he calls Katie and lets out all these fears. He apologizes for storming out on her. Katie tells him she believes Adam is brave, and Adam suggests going on a date if he doesn’t die. Katie doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Adam passes out while still on the phone. Seth manages to get Adam back to his apartment. As Seth shoves Adam into bed, he notices a book on Adam’s table: Coping with Your Loved One’s Cancer. He’s touched and realizes he had Seth all wrong.

Adam prepares for his funeral — buying a suit, picking out a plot and casket. Dr. Ross schedules his surgery. He goes through the surgery, which is mostly successful — they got the tumor, but they had to remove enough that his mobility is hindered. Katie arrives while Adam is in recovery. Two months later, at a beach house, Mitch’s wife, MARGARET (80), knocks tentatively on the door. A wheelchair-bound but glowing Adam answers the door. He was sad to hear about Mitch but is thrilled she’d come for what may or may not be Thanksgiving dinner. Katie’s inside, playing video games with Seth. Edith serves dinner, and they all gather around.

Notes

This script took me by surprise, because my feelings on the other Black List comedies have ranged from utter contempt to mild disappointment. I’m with Cancer isn’t perfect, but it’s second to Big Hole as the best of the top ten. Even if Our Brand Is Crisis unseats it, it’s still in the top three. Not bad.

Reiser does a nice job of laying out the gags. Some of them don’t work, but the conceptual ideas are there. In fact, the museum material surprised me because, in that initial scene, I didn’t feel like the gags about Adam’s nerdiness or Greg’s dinosaur worked at all — but they dole out the necessary setup for Adam’s return to work, in which Adam builds the laugh-out-loud funny Pompeii diorama. Still, the gags that don’t work could use some more polish, but the plot is there, and the characters are mostly there…

I wish Rachel had received a little more development. In a possible unfortunate byproduct of the “based on a true story” aspect of this script, Reiser writes the relationship as very one-sided. I know Adam has cancer, and overall the beats of their disintegrating relationship work dramatically… But Reiser sort of hangs it on, “She cheated on Adam and therefore must move out,” after which she disappears from the story. Despite building it up and tearing it down reasonably well, Reiser doesn’t give us nearly enough of Rachel’s perspective. There is a very slight, subtle suggestion that their relationship isn’t working even before the diagnosis. I wish Reiser had addressed this more, because cheating on a cancer patient without a satisfactory explanation paints her as a monster.

Somehow, though, the way Reiser built the relationship with Katie worked well for me. I didn’t expect it to, but she gets just enough depth and development to remain interesting, and the arc of their relationship feels natural. Same goes for Adam and Seth’s friendship, as well as Adam himself — going from sunny yet cynical to soul-shattering depression. Every change, no matter how subtle, feels natural.

Overall, it’s a comedy with actual, funny scenarios and actual, funny behavior within those scenarios. That’s more than I’ve gotten from any other Black List comedy. Besides that, I’m with Cancer has a certain affable nature that makes it easier to look past its flaws — unlike a wall-to-wall disaster like Butter, I want I’m with Cancer to succeed in spite of the occasional misstep.

The Bottom Line

Going into it, I already knew this was being developed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, but I’d like to think that even if I had no idea, the ramshackle but deceptively complex story has the feel of a Judd Apatow-style comedy. The Rogen/Goldberg pair are a good match for this script, and if anyone can polish the gags that don’t work, it’s them. Hopefully this will turn into a solid movie.

Update, 3/23/09 — A new draft of I’m with Cancer came across my desk today, and I have to say, I still like it. Mainly because it’s the exact same script, with a couple of changed scenes and teensy snippets of new dialogue here and there.

The new scenes change Adam’s job from a museum employee to an NPR producer. Although I sort of bagged on the work scenes from the older draft, I acknowledged that they built to a more-than-satisfying punchline. I just sort of hoped they’d go back and polish or shorten the earlier scenes, not completely change his career. NPR producer is a much lamer endeavor, and Reiser doesn’t come up with much material. In fact, there is no third act “Adam returns to work” punchline. It’s just a rewritten version of the scene where Phil’s uneasy about putting chemo-ravaged Adam back to work — only this time, he tells Adam no. What a stinger!

There’s also one new scene, where Adam and Seth seek medical marijuana from a general practitioner who’s described like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The humor comes from the disparity between the quaint environs and their impure motive for visiting the kindly old doctor. It’s an okay scene, but it doesn’t add a thing to the story and feels tonally out of place — a little too surreal. Then again, maybe the Pompeii diorama that made me laugh out loud was a little too surreal. At least that had something to do with expressing Adam’s blackening mood.

Posted by Stan at 2:15 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 24, 2008

Black List Script #10 – Our Brand Is Crisis by Peter Straughan

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.

Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.

Logline (provided by The Black List): “Based on the eponymous documentary. James Carville and a team of U.S. political consultants travel to South America to help Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (aka ‘Goni’) become President of Bolivia.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

PEDRO IGNACIO GALLO maneuvers triumphantly through a joyous crowd after winning a presidential election in Bolivia. Fifteen years later, the nation is crumbling. He walks through a supermarket in what’s supposed to be a photo op, but the store has no customers because nobody has any money. His campaign manager, HUGO, is angry about this. He tries to get Gallo to leave, but he won’t. EDDIE CAMACHO, 20s, enters the store and approaches Gallo. Hugo gets between them and forces Gallo to leave.

Pollsters BENJAMIN CARVER and MAX TALBY goes to rural Virginia to seek out WILD BILL BODINE, supposedly the best political strategist alive. At the moment, he doesn’t look so wild — he mostly looks depressed. Carver tries to convince Bodine — known as “the King of the Comeback” — to join the campaign, noting that Gallo has made some mistakes but he won his first victory handily. He can win again. Bodine contemplates this and agrees to go with them. In Bolivia, they regroup with SCOTT BUCKLEY, a media consultant. They drive through La Paz and find their path blocked by protesting Indians marching in the street. When they arrive at the president’s mansion, the group hears what sounds like gunfire. It doesn’t alarm Gallo, who leads them inside and asks about his chances. With 100 days left in the campaign, Gallo has 8% and his primary opponent, River, has 36%. Carver, Buckley, and Talby restate the obvious, all of them subtly looking toward Bodine for insight. He has none — in fact, he seems a little out of it, dispirited.

They try to be understanding, citing jetlag and altitude sickness. But Bodine’s in something akin to depression. Four days later, he’s barely left his hotel room. Gallo is sent out to a debate, where he accuses the moderator of stealing his watch. Buckley observes Gallo’s smile — it’s a terrifying sneer. They ask Bodine for advice, and he’s still a little useless. Eddie Camacho shows up to campaign headquarters, looking to do volunteer work. Buckley jokingly suggests they make him a strategist — at least he wants to work. Buckley has arranged for a commercial shoot where they can exploit the Bolivian people’s obsession with llamas. Gallo, with a lovely pet llama, describes their multiple uses — meat, wool, milk, even their dung can be used for fuel. As he rehearses, Carver, Talby, and Buckley discuss Bodine’s issues. Buckley tells them he’s heard rumors that Bodine has gone off the deep end. Since he has the room next to Bodine’s, he can confirm hearing strange, animal moaning coming from Bodine’s room. Suddenly, a truck blasts through the shoot, running over the llama.

At their hotel, Max Talby tells Bodine what happened, and Bodine recognizes the work as Pat Candy’s, a rival strategist. He explains — and we see in flashback — that as a kid, he learned to fight dirty when a Kennedy-supporting female schoolmate beat him up for wearing a Nixon button. He also told himself that he would always triumph over his enemies, no matter what. (This statement is shown as a young Candy watches Walter Cronkite announce Kennedy has been assassinated, resulting in a small smile from Candy.) He won student government presidency in college by doctoring photos that made it look as if his opponent marched in a gay-rights parade. Bodine mentions that if he’d known what Candy would become — and what he would have made Bodine become — he would have killed him.

In the present, Bodine seeks out Pat Candy, to make his presence known. Candy is as much of a dick as we would expect, which kind of lights a fire under Bodine’s ass. After a debate, a man in a devil mask accosts Gallo. Eddie rushes to get between them, but before he can, Gallo pounds the crap out of the man. Carver decides they’re finished and tried to draft an apology. Bodine tells him not to, assuring them that the man was set up by Candy. Instead, he explains to them all about Lyndon Johnson’s famous “Daisy” ad. Gallo is feared and unliked, so rather than trying to change his image, they have to change the narrative. They have to play Rivera as an inexperienced blind optimist, they have to show Gallo as a strong leader able to navigate Bolivia through difficult times. If they can scare the Bolivians, they can wind the election. They have to create a crisis. “Our brand is crisis.” Bodine runs into Eddie, thanks him for his attempt to help with the devil man, and hands him a bottle of Newman’s Own steak sauce as a reward. Buckley and Carver coach Gallo on diction.

With 70 days left in the election, Rivera’s up 39% to Gallo’s 10%. Bodine brings in an operative named HAROLD LEBLANC, known primarily for digging up dirt on candidates. Bodine tells Gallo and Hugo they have to go negative. Hugo protests that Bolivians don’t like negative campaigns, but Bodine doesn’t believe they have a choice. Bodine wants LeBlanc to dig into Gallo’s shady past in addition to Rivera’s. Gallo refuses, saying he already knows about himself. There’s nothing to find out. After some cursory digging, LeBlanc finds that Rivera’s mayor’s office paid $35,000 apiece for 27 Ford Explorers but claimed them each at $40,000. Bodine suggests getting photos of their occupants using them for personal activities.

Rivera’s wife gives birth to twins, immediately raising his polls. Bodine sees this as despicable — they’re blocking the Gallo campaign’s ability to go negative. Meanwhile, flyers have been distributed by the Rivera campaign that insinuate an affair between Gallo and a staffer. Although it’s true, it’s both ancient history and something Gallo’s wife already knows about. Bodine feels like this gives them carte blanche to go negative. They create a TV spot about the extra, unaccounted-for Ford Explorer money, juxtaposing the cost figures with Rivera’s multiple homes throughout Bolivia.

Bodine and the rest of the consultants offer Eddie a ride home. He lives in a poor neighborhood with his brother, PEPE, and a couple of friends. Pepe and his friends hate Gallo and hate the yanquis, and it occurs to Bodine that these are the people they need to win over. They all get hammered together, and by the end of the evening, they’re getting along. The next morning, one of Rivera’s staffers announces that Bodine has undergone psychotic treatment, including electroshock therapy. Rivera spins this as having had the information for a long time but not wanting to use it — until Gallo went negative.

Bodine admits that it’s all true. He also admits that he’s taken on Candy before — and lost every time. Carver urges Bodine not to let it get personal, but Bodine says it’s too late. Bodine describes losing an election ages ago because Candy played dirty, while Bodine respected his candidates’ wishes to play it straight. This culminated in Candy planting a bug in his own candidate’s office and accusing the other camp of doing it. This is what led to Bodine’s institutionalization and subsequent problems with depression and alcoholism. After hearing this, Gallo decides if his strategists want to play dirty, they can get as dirty as they want.

A montage follows, showing Gallo trying to hold his own in the campaign despite his increasing discomfort. After his staff preps him for a radio interview, the host asks Gallo questions about things he might have done differently in the past. Following his staff’s orders, Gallo admits he’s made mistakes. When the interviewer asks for a specific example of a mistake, Gallo freezes up — they didn’t give him this information, and Gallo doesn’t believe he’s made any mistakes. Carver thinks it’s a disaster, but the worst is yet to come. Talby discovers Candy has distributed flyers showing Gallo in some goofy robes, standing with a well-known quack of a minister underneath a steel-framed pyramid. Gallo grumbles that he visited his son in California. His son’s a member of this church, they forced anyone who visited to wear the robes. Bodine wants to use that information, but Gallo doesn’t want to bring his family into the campaign.

As a result of this, Gallo becomes the subject of ridicule. People show up to rallies wearing tinfoil pyramids on their heads. Gallo begins having nightmares about the man in the devil mask, and he simply cracks up — stops speaking, is barely aware of his surroundings. The team tries to hide this while they resolve the situation. When he realizes he’s needed, Gallo snaps out of it and becomes a suspiciously charismatic, compassionate leader. Bodine puts Gallo on a talk show, where he’s charming and witty and able to play off his associations with the Cult of the Cosmic Wind. More than that, he becomes genuinely emotional when the host veers the conversation to his son. The interview alone raises him five points.

With 30 days left, Rivera’s at 41%, Gallo’s at 15. Rivera continues to play up his “man of the people”/hope/change image, as well as his twin sons, which infuriates Gallo’s staff. Suddenly, LeBlanc finds something resembling a smoking gun. He drags the entire staff out into the middle of the rainforest, where he shows them a photo of Rivera in military fatigues. He explains that Rivera didn’t merely join the army — he enlisted to become a part of an elite group of Panamanian assassins with Nazi ties. Bodine wishes he could find a photo of Rivera standing with Klaus Barbie, who was in Panama at the same time; instead, he offers up the next best thing, citing a Lyndon Johnson campaign strategy: no one will believe it, but it puts Rivera in the awkward decision of having to deny it.

The strategy succeeds — Gallo doesn’t get a significant gain, but Rivera suffers a significant loss. Driving along a treacherous road, Bodine spots Rivera’s campaign bus. He tells the driver of Gallo’s bus to pull up alongside it. Bodine hurls insults at Pat Candy, then bribes the bus driver (who is afraid it’s too dangerous) to pass the Rivera bus. Talby realizes “Wild Bill” has returned. With ten days left, Gallo is up to 17% and Rivera is down to 26%. Candy responds with a manufactured illness-related crisis with Rivera’s twins. Bodine’s angered because they’re so close, but they just can’t close the gap. They decide, since it’s difficult to bring Gallo’s points up even more, they simply have to get Rivera down — by helping another candidate, Campero. Bodine has some friends at the State Department convince the Bolivian ambassador to the U.S. come out in support of Campero. As his team questions him, Bodine contemplates in voiceover what he’s become and insists he’s trying to shield the others from turning into someone like him. As he speaks, a flashback reveals that Bodine actually did bug Candy’s office way back when, behind a framed picture of Richard Nixon. As Bodine replaces the photo, his face blends with Nixon’s.

In the present, Bodine has a run-in with Candy. They compare strategy. Bodine is reading Goethe and quotes what he’s reading. At the final debate, Rivera uses the quote Bodine supplied. Bodine tells them everything Rivera has said is easily spinnable and sends the team down the press room. As they leave, he mentions offhandedly that he must have accidentally misattributed the Goethe quote — it was actually said by Joseph Goebbels. On Eleciton Day, there’s a montage of people voting as the campaign staff agonizes. The final tally comes back: Gallo with 21.5%, Rivera with 20.8%, and Campero with 19.9%.

Everyone’s thrilled with the results — except for the Bolivian people, who riot in protest. The American team barely makes it to the airport. Gallo finds he’s lost without the team engineering him. After the election, Eddie is tossed aside, his help with the campaign disregarded. In the midst of the riots, his happiness that Gallo won turns to rage. He picks up rocks and begins to hurl them at the soldiers trying to quell the rioters. The Americans watch from the plane as the country crumbles below.

Notes

This script isn’t bad from a writing standpoint, although it’s a little talky for my tastes. Straughan does a nice job of giving each character just enough depth and balancing a large group of characters in a complex but tight story.

My only sticking point is with the main theme, which strikes me as a bit redundant. Does anyone raised in a post-Watergate world believe anything good can come from a political election in any country? Hell, has anyone in a post-“smoke-filled room” world believed that? Maybe we think we’ve gone from a culture of “may the best man win” to “eh, let’s just vote for the lesser of two evils,” but we probably haven’t. Nonetheless, especially in the current political climate, the fact that political strategists are a bunch of low-down muckrakers will come as a surprise to no one.

I wanted to pin all my hopes and dreams on the other theme, about American globalization destroying the rest of the world, with us fleeing the scene rather than staying to clean up messes that we create. I like that… I like it a lot. It’s a theme that’s more relevant today than it has been in awhile, yet not many (good) films seem interested in tackling it. Unfortunately, Straughan doesn’t pin all his hopes and dreams on these theme. It’s underplayed in favor of the “what lows won’t these guys stoop to?” attitude that prevails throughout.

I guess the unique spin is the idea that American strategists do work in foreign elections. Still, it concentrates more on the muckrakers and their spin than on the way the Bolivians respond to it, an essential component of making this script feel fresh instead of superfluous. It also downplays the real-life truth that “Gallo” (in reality Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada) was raised and mostly educated in the United States. This important dimension illustrates something the script misses — Gallo’s never portrayed as having much desire to win, aside from the fact that he’s willing to pay Americans to win for him. If we understood his American-educated foundations, we would understand that he might feel this is the only way. Americans, from his perspective, know how to win elections. Hugo’s just a rube.

Still, it’s not a bad script. I just wish the story concentrated more on the things we haven’t seen than on the things we have.

(As a stylistic side-note, the rampant Britishisms drove me nuts. Nothing shatters the suspension of disbelief more than a lack of verisimilitude. Things like spelling words with “s” instead of “z” or “ou” instead of “o” don’t bug me nearly so much as using expressions like “good job” instead of “good thing,” “at University” instead of something like “in college,” “chat show” instead of “talk show” — none of these will matter in the long run, because if it’s produced and somehow this draft goes from sold spec to shooting draft, one would assume the Americans involved in the production will iron out these details. Purely in terms of reading, though, each instance of a Britishism took me right out of the story.)

The Bottom Line

Not bad, but not great. With some more polish and an A-list (or at least B-list) cast, this movie could do very well. Without that, it’ll end up among the hundreds of other bland, forgettable political movies out there. George Clooney is supposed to produce this, and despite what some might think, he’s basically been a quality magnet ever since he got some control over his career. I have no doubt that this script will reach its potential within a draft or two, go into production, and end up a solid movie. (I’m one of the few people on the planet who didn’t hate the Ocean’s… sequels, though, so your mileage may vary on the quality of Clooney’s choices.)

Posted by Stan at 10:17 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 25, 2008

Black List 2008 – Black Christmas Wrap-Up

To recap:

• The Beaver — A disaster of a script that the development process may or may not redeem.
• The Oranges — Terrible. Everything it tries to do has been done better elsewhere.
• Butter — One of the worst scripts I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of bad ones.
• Big Hole — This is a movie that should be made. Not a perfect script, but pretty great despite its few flaws.
• The Low Dweller — Decent writing but boring as hell. If this embraced its schlocky action-movie roots rather than trying for “pretentious meditation on tedium,” it could be very enjoyable.

• Fuckbuddies — One of the most inept and grating scripts I’ve ever read. Holy Christ, why would anyone favor this over some of the other stuff making the rounds?
• Winter’s Discontent — A winning but wildly uneven screenplay that needs to undergo a major rewrite before it’s worth considering.
• Broken City — Boring as shit — like Fuckbuddies, it tries way too hard and suffers for it. All the rawness feels completely artificial.
• I’m with Cancer — Shocking: a comedy in the top ten that’s consistently funny. I know — I couldn’t believe it, either. Like any comedy, the humor is hit-or-miss, but unlike the other scripts in the top ten, the hits overwhelm the misses. It has some story and character problems, but it’s in much better shape than 90% of the scripts on this list.
• Our Brand Is Crisis — A fictionalized version of the documentary, it’s a decent enough script but feels aimless, content to tell us things we already know instead of giving us something interesting or challenging to think about it.

I read these scripts not (entirely) to entertain and enrage the blogging (m)asses, but to gain a better understanding of the market. I wanted to find throughlines, or some kind of consistency, so I could gain a better understanding of what Hollywood wants. Rumors abound that over the years, the list has been tainted by politics. After reading the scripts, I find it hard to argue with those rumors. However, if film executives do like these scripts more than anything else out there, it’s important to understand why.

So why? I haven’t got a goddamn clue. Much as I want to hone in on derivative concepts like Fuckbuddies and Our Brand Is Crisis (hate to single that one out since it’s not a bad script, but it is a remake that doesn’t quite justify its existence) and call the industry on its unwillingness to look at new ideas, I can’t quite do that. I don’t think The Beaver is particularly original or clever, but it’s clear that Hollywood does — it suggests, no matter how misguided, they’re trying. Besides which, two scripts I didn’t hate (Big Hole and Winter’s Discontent) are clever reinventions of standard formulas — inching toward actual creativity. I’m with Cancer has a certain Judd Apatow vibe, but it also has an unusual story that gives it an edge of uniqueness.

I guess that’s it: Hollywood wants a regurgitation of something that’s already been done successfully, only with a thin veneer of originality they can hopefully buff out during the development process. Also, they want the concept, not the words on the page. (If all they wanted were shooting-draft-quality scripts, there would not be a development process — never has this been more clear than in reading the top ten Black List scripts.) Not surprising conclusions, but I guess it was inevitable.

Looking at the scripts from a qualitative standpoint — not necessarily the Hollywood way — I noticed something fairly interesting. I can’t speak to the genesis of Big Hole, hands down my favorite of the ten, but I know I’m with Cancer is inspired by actual events, and Will Reiser’s connection to the material is evident. In addition to its unexpected verisimilitude, it had a certain current of “passion project” flowing through it. This is an almost indefinable quality in a script, but if you read enough of them, you can feel the difference between “labor of love” and labor of work.” Only Big Hole and I’m with Cancer felt like labors of love. The others felt like writers trying to cash in with high-concept, low-quality shit sandwiches.

Most of the time, I found myself ranting about believability. Characters are the engine that drive the story, but they have to follow something like railroad tracks or, at least, a paved, well-marked road. If they veer off the beaten path of plausible human behavior, audiences won’t buy the story. It could be the most straitlaced, realistic story in the world, but if the things the characters do strain credibility, the whole script suffers. At the same time, I’m more than willing to buy the story of a depressed guy who betters himself with the help of a beaver hand-puppet if the writer gives believable reasons for this behavior. Most of these scripts suffered from impossible-to-believe actions and reactions, and I have to believe this is part of the “cash-in” mentality. These writers have not observed anything like the situations they’re writing about firsthand, and they’re not good enough writers to fake it with any sort of plausibility. That’s a problem.

I can’t help wondering where this leaves the state of Hollywood. The answer might be, “Nobody knows anything.” I prefer, “Forget it, Stan. It’s Tinseltown.”

Posted by Stan at 2:29 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Reviews

December 26, 2008

Dentist Chick

Here’s the deal: when I went for my dental check-up back in September, they had a new billing girl. She had a dim, familiar look about her, but I figured that’s just because she wasn’t that new, and I’d probably seen her six months ago. I discovered, as she started talking to me, that she was new, but I apparently knew her from high school. I didn’t remember a thing about her except, very vaguely, her face, but she remembered assloads about me and started asking a bunch of strange, loaded questions, like we knew each other really well. I remember plenty of people from high school, but she’s not one of them. I speculated initially that she was the wallflower best friend of some hot girl I chased, but she was really hot, so I didn’t know for sure. Some girls blossom later. I remember distinctly running into a girl I tutored when she was a freshman — gawky, undeveloped, kind of an idiot. When I ran into her five years later, she was probably still kind of any idiot, but holy shit was she ever not gawky and undeveloped. I don’t often have a hard time keeping my libido in check, but it’s a little different when someone you know pulls a Winnie Cooper.

So Dentist Chick was hot and, based on the increasingly leading questions she asked, showed signs of being into me. I don’t always respond well to attention like this, because my track record has shown me there must be something as wrong with them as there is with me, and I don’t want to subject either of us to the torture of dating me. Instead of asking for her phone number, I spoke politely while getting creeped out, then left and forgot about it. She told me to look her up on Facebook as I dashed out the door, but I couldn’t even remember her name. I was convinced that, despite the hotness, things would be better this way.

Three months later, my mom came home from her dental checkup all effusive and excited — Dentist Chick was there, she recognized my mom (how?! — I hope just from the name on the bill) and started talking me up again. My mom got a name and some more information. After Dentist Chick gushed about me, she asked my mom what I was up to. My mom mentioned the reader job, and Dentist Chick said, “Ooh! I’d love to have him read one of my scripts.” Now, I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t tell you if this had the tone of innuendo, but either way, it piqued my interest.

Now, this is a girl who had no clue I had an interest in movies, or screenwriting at any rate. Usually, when you mention to a starry-eyed Midwestern tramp that you read high-profile scripts for low-profile money, they say, “Oh wow, do you know any stars?” And you say, “I fetched water bottles for Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley once.” And they say, “Who?” and you lose all respect for them. Girls who don’t know any better want you to be hobnobbing with Zac Efron or Christopher Atkins or something. If they’re interested in the business and find out you’re on the embarrassing, coffee-stained fringes of it, their main interest is in stars. If they’re skanky and reasonably attractive, usually they start talking about wanting to pursue a career in acting or modeling. I’ve never had a girl outside of the industry say something like, “You should read one of my scripts!” When not faced with utter disinterest, I usually get, “Can you show this headshot to your boss?”

This development intrigued me. For two reasons, actually. Right now, I have no interest in anything resembling an actual relationship. In addition to trying to work on my own problems before I subject any unfortunate women to them, there’s this whole “job” thing looming over my head. Sure, I have this reader job, and it pays me in money when there’s work, but I’ve dug a deep hole of debt that I need to get out of before I stop feeling like a loser. In fact, I have to get a good, workable chunk of savings and move back out to L.A. before I feel like anything better than a loser. Women can smell the stink of failure on me — even women who are drawn to the “in the biz” mystique I pathetically play up to get them to talk to me. They might not notice it at first, but over time, it raises a Pigpen-esque cloud of filth.

So if I’m not interested in a relationship but I am interested in an amateur screenwriter, what does that leave? The one-night stand, a thing that has never interested me much, and when it has, I’ve never been good at it. But here’s this hot chick who all but threw herself at me, who has something I can exploit for my own unseemly gain. It was the perfect plan, but I figured I should know a bit more about her. Things would degrade rapidly if I go into pretentious, Jean Cocteau-talking mode when the movie her scripts most resemble is Must Love Dogs. I had to do some careful recon before attempting anything.

Armed with her name, I looked her up on both Facebook and MySpace and found private profiles with hot, hot pictures. The pictures told me two things: (1) this might be easier than I thought, and (2) she’s what I derisively refer to as “club trash.” I don’t know how widespread this phenomenon is, but a lot of girls that I went to high school with — some of whom were even, at one time or another, willing to bad-touch me — spend much of their free time these days trolling clubs. It’s not for fun or enjoyment, though: they have a desperate desire to launch modeling careers, and most of them are pretty hot in a skanky way (I know this because there are plenty of local websites that provide alluring cheesecake shots of the previous night’s clubbing indiscretions), so they troll these clubs wearing next to nothing willing to go down on any guy with a camera slung around his neck because he might make them the next big thing. You might wonder why I’ve never slung my camera around my neck and gone club-hopping. You should examine the part above about my not handling one-night stands well. Masturbation might not be quite as fun, but the aftermath isn’t nearly as complicated.

Both of these photos of Dentist Chick had the distinct feel of “club trash” to them; in fact, the one gracing her MySpace profile had the logo of one of the local “photography” websites on it, christening her official club trash.

What an interesting dichotomy, I thought. Club trash who wants to write movies. I’m not trying to sound condescending — I just don’t ordinarily associate club trash with any sort of ambition beyond getting soused and becoming a supermodel. But I thought about something else I’ve noticed. Getting back to the old “hot girl/ugly girl” dynamic, several girls who would have fallen into the wallflower category in high school have… Well, not all of them have “blossomed,” per se, but they certainly have clothes and makeup that desperately want to prove otherwise. I always wondered if these girls only went to the clubs because they’re still tethered to the hot friend. Unlike the girls who go to college and can blossom physically and/or emotionally and/or intellectually without their hot friend, these girls remain in the shadow of their hot friends until one of them gets pregnant or gets married.

Yet, even if they weren’t college bound, the “ugly” girl usually has a certain level of intelligence or insight — they’d pretty much have to, spending all their time passively watching their hot friend. This kind of person would breed a writer of desperate, depressing prose about wasted lives and hollow victories. Picture Breaking Away set in a nightclub. So not only was I interested in her physically — I was interested in her spiritually, fascinated by the kinds of things she must see that make her want to write.

I had no concrete information, though. Her profiles were private, I knew nobody who knew her, so I had no other recourse but to add her as a Facebook friend — as she initially suggested way back when. I did this after two or three days of intense internal debate, wondering what she’d think knowing I didn’t add her until, ostensibly, my mom harangued me into it. I decided to let it be — she seemed into me enough to make me believe (or want to believe) that she wouldn’t think twice about it. So a few days later, she added me back, and after jerking it to some of her more salacious photos, I started digging around for real insight into her.

She’s into some movies that maybe aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, but they’re of reasonably high quality yet unpretentious. Good! One of her favorite TV shows is Roseanne, and even though she spells it “Rosanne,” I can’t complain about her taste there. She doesn’t read, she loves classic rock, and she’s only interested in a guy with a sense of humor. I can work with this!

Then I found out she has a kid. A little squirt who’s maybe three or four. He’s cute as a button, but she has a goddamn kid and she’s two years younger than I am.

I spent a little bit of time thinking about how I could make this one-night stand thing work, but I knew there was no way. She has a goddamn kid. You know what would happen? I would go into it saying, “This is just a one-night stand — maybe a two-night stand. Three max.” And suddenly I’d find myself taking care of her kid as a surrogate stay-at-home dad while she’s out making money. Christ, I wouldn’t even take care of my own kid, much less somebody else’s, much less the kid of a person who’s basically a stranger I want to bang.

I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in signs — signs from life that suggest I need to take a certain course. Signs that pop up when I stray and decide to pursue a route that I don’t belong on. Signs like a goddamn kid clinging to the shin of an exceptionally hot chick whose dreams I intended to exploit for my own slimy end (I mean that both figuratively and literally).

I just wish this whole thing could be easier. Why can’t we live in a world where we can all have sexbots that can look and act like any girl we’ve ever wanted to sleep with, but without the fuss of maintaining a relationship or worrying about the fact that she has a fucking kid or the fear that my bad relationship habits will creep in and alienate her? I’m moving to Japan.

Posted by Stan at 8:08 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (1)  | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships