Script Review: Cirque du Freak by Brian Helgeland
[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]
Awhile back, The Manager presented me with a treatment he had co-written with a writer I once ranted far too long and hard about. Somehow, he had gotten the ear of Warner Bros. president Alan Horn, and he used the opportunity to pitch one of the worst ideas in recent memory: a live-action trilogy based on a mid-’80s Saturday-morning cartoon. Actually, in this era of remakes and comic-book franchises, trying to revive this series isn’t a horrible idea commercially. It just doesn’t quite lend itself to live action. I don’t really want to give away the name of the property, but it’s the sort of thing that would just look silly if presented in a non-animated form, like Fat Albert or Vincent Gallo’s upcoming Fritz the Cat*.
At any rate, The Manager sent me the treatment for part one of a proposed trilogy, looking for feedback. I had could distinctly recall two things about the original cartoon: the name of the main character, and the name of the planet on which the action took place. Reading the treatment, the lack of these names took me aback. I wondered if I had misremembered the show, until I got to the last page of the treatment. At the end of the story, the main character is born, and refugees flee to the planet I remembered. He had sent me a treatment for a movie that was 100% backstory.
Adding insult to injury, the story concentrates on political machinations that have no bearing on anything except why the refugees left their home planet (something that plays a small, inessential role in what happens in the cartoon — certainly nothing worth devoting an entire feature film to explaining). It also has a Romeo & Juliet-esque subplot focusing on two characters who will die at the very beginning of the second film. When I sent him the feedback, I compared this to the first 20 minutes of Superman, except for the part where they clear up Superman’s backstory in 20 minutes, then get on to two hours of throwing buses into buildings and shit. Could you imagine having a comic-book movie where the entire thing isn’t even the origin story of the hero — it’s the story of the parents? I argued that audiences will have zero interest in a movie portraying the origin of two characters they won’t remember from the cartoon and feel betrayed by an ending where the hero they do remember is merely born. I also argued that one of the (many) flaws of the Star Wars prequels was Lucas’s insistence on concentrating on the made-up political minutiae that led to the rise of the Empire and the formation of the Rebel Alliance — without actually showing any of that cool shit. You have endless Galactic Senate meetings instead of spending two hours in the fray of an orgy of destruction called the Clone Wars. Audiences were unhappy but put up with it, because it’s Star Wars, a franchise ever-so-slightly different than a long-forgotten cartoon.
The Manager sent me a curt reply telling me all the things that stuck in my craw “could not be addressed.” I didn’t ask why, because I didn’t really care. But I held on to my belief that, while a franchise starter that contains little more than backstory can succeed financially, it’ll never succeed creatively. Why do you think so many franchise sequels surpass their originals these days? They skimp on the story and characters in favor of reams of tedious exposition introducing things that will only pay off in future films. To me, that’s a rip-off.
So, here we have Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, the first in a theoretical franchise that sort of hybridizes Harry Potter, Twilight, and crap. Brian Helgeland’s script is based on the first three novels in a seemingly endless series by Darren Shan. I haven’t read these novels, so I have no idea how faithfully he adapted the material. Frankly, that doesn’t interest me. Neither does the possibility of sequels. I read this script, not knowing it was designed to launch a franchise or based on a novel series, and simply judged it — as any script should be judged — on whether or not it worked on its own merits.
It didn’t.
Here’s a rundown on the storyline: middle-schoolers Darren and Steve are best buds. Darren is described as well-liked and friendly; Steve is not so well-liked and a bit of a troublemaker. During the script’s terrific first act, Helgeland loads the story with eerie but not-too-scary moments that reminded me of my misspent youth, in that I misspent my youth reading crappy R.L. Stine books and awesome Ray Bradbury stories and fantasizing about getting into frightening misadventures of my own. Unfortunately, most of my frightening misadventures involved trying to feel up girls and getting my ass kicked. By the girls. In this script, their scary misadventures lead Darren and Steve to a freak show called Cirque du Freak. It costs $20 to get in, but thanks to the $60 Steve stole from Darren’s mom’s purse, they have no problem getting in to see the show. Well, except for the part where Darren sneaks out his window after his parents forbid him from “sleeping over” at bad-influence Steve’s house.
Cirque du Freak is an odd spectacle in a rundown theatre. It features an actual Wolfman, a beautiful woman who can grow a full beard with the snap of her fingers, a deadly semi-giant spider, and the main attraction: a real, live vampire. Steve suspects the man, Crepsley, is a vampire after he finds several old flyers for Cirque du Freak (dating back to the ’20s), each featuring photos and drawings of a man who looks just like Crepsley. Darren laughs it off, but Crepsley’s pale skin, frightening demeanor, and apparent ease with hypnosis/mind control makes him wonder. After the show, Steve tells Darren to go home and sneaks backstage. Instead, Darren follows his friend. He hides in the shadows as Steve approaches Crepsley’s coffin. Steve begs Crepsley to make him a vampire. He offers his blood to Crepsley, who spits it out like poison and declares Steve evil. Frightened and enraged, Steve runs away. Darren, too, runs away, but not before snatching the caged spider.
Over the next few days, Darren hides the spider in his bedroom. At one point, Darren’s privacy-invading younger sister causes the spider to get loose. It bites Steve, who immediately goes into anaphylactic shock. Darren provides the hospital with a photo he snapped of the spider, but when they send it to poison control’s entomology experts, they tell the doctors it must be Photoshopped. With no one left to turn to, Darren makes a deal with Crepsley: in exchange for giving Steve the antidote, Darren will become Crepsley’s assistant. Why? Crepsley chalks it up to a combination of needing an assistant and believing it’s Darren’s destiny to become a vampire.
I loved everything up until this moment quite a lot.
Per his agreement, Crepsley saves Steve, then helps Darren fake his death. Feeling betrayed as betrayed by Darren as I felt by the second and third acts of this script, Steve tries to “hunt” his vampire best friend. Darren and Crepsley escape him and leave town. Helgeland spends most of the middle of the script explaining the Cirque du Freak universe’s take on vampires in detail I found a bit tedious. I love vampire stories, and I love new spins on the old tropes, but not when nothing else happens dramatically.
Here’s the rundown on this world’s vampire lore: humans become vampires in stages, starting out as assistants to full vampires. Over time, as they learn the ropes of the vampire world, they can become full vampires. They need blood to live, but they also need real food. They also don’t need to kill their victims. Crepsley basically knocks his victims out for a few minutes, drinks what I’d assume is a pint or so of blood, then disappears before they wake. Vampires also age one year for every 10 human years; in other words, Crepsley has lived 211 years as a vampire but has only aged 21. Half-vampires like Darren age one year for every five human years. These little details intrigued me on a vampire-fan level, but nothing interesting happens while Crepsley explains it. They just keep moving to different locations to talk.
Anyway, the vampires have split into two rival factions: regular vampires, who don’t kill their victims, and the vampaneze, who do. I liked this bit, because it creates an interesting moral dilemma that Helgeland has no interest in exploring. The regular vampires didn’t stop killing humans out of any real moral obligation; they simply didn’t like the heat it put on them. They had a harder time passing among the humans when the humans kept mysteriously dying, so they stopped. The vampaneze are less interested in passing among humans, who they see as cattle for vampires to slaughter. This conflict of interest has created a great many wars between the vampires, many of which are fought alongside human conflicts.
So, for 40 or so pages, Crepsley and Darren just kinda hang out. Eventually, the vampaneze villains (Mr. Tiny and Murlough) show up, menace Crepsley without really doing anything interesting, and confuse Darren. Crepsley decides to lay low, so he and Darren rejoin the Cirque du Freak. (I’m no expert, but it seems to me like this would draw more attention to Crepsley’s whereabouts.) Darren learns the ropes of the freak show and makes some friends, including local humans Sam and Debbie (who has a crush on Darren). During one of the circus shows, Mr. Tiny and Murlough show up. Along with Steve — who returns as a vampaneze — they grab Crepsley, with the intent of destroying him. Turns out, Crepsley was once a great Vampire General, the greatest killer of vampaneze who ever lived. Or, um…didn’t. Murlough wants him dead, because he’s preparing for another war against the vampires.
Darren vowed he would never drink human blood and has grown somewhat sick as a result. He doesn’t have the strength to battle Mr. Tiny, Steve, and his minions. However, when he finds out Crepsley is in trouble, he drinks a metric assload of Sam’s blood (Sam was conveniently injured by Steve), and there’s a tonally jarring Popeye moment as he gains half-vampire strength. He takes on Steve and Murlough — killing neither of them, naturally — and saves Crepsley. Crepsley makes plans to take Darren to the Vampire Generals. Now that Darren has accepted his destiny, it’s time for the Vampire Army to re-form and take on the vampaneze.
The end…?
Yeah, that’s the end. I don’t usually “spoil” the ending in these script reviews, but face it: THAT’S NOT AN ENDING. Here’s the thing: any story can have an identifiable three-act structure if you try hard enough. Cirque du Freak does have a vague, somewhat lumpy structure in there. First act: finds out about the circus, gets Steve bit by the spider, makes the deal to save his life. Second act: learns the ropes of the vampire world, then the ropes of the freak-show world. Third act: Bad guys come, compelling Darren to scare them off to save Crepsley. However, that doesn’t make it any less than one gigantic first act.
Think about a movie like Star Wars. Let’s break down the first act into its own three-act structure. First act: Luke buys the droids, and their odd behavior and crazy holo-message leads him to seek out Old Ben Kenobi — after all, he is their only hope. Second act: Kenobi explains part of his role in this whole story. In the Stormtroopers’ search for the missing droids, Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed. He has nothing left going for him, so he goes with Kenobi. Third act: Kenobi takes Luke to the Mos Eisley Cantina to secure passage off Tatooine. We meet Han Solo and Chewbacca and discover they have problems of their own with a certain Jabba the Hutt. They narrowly escape both Stormtroopers and gangsters as they set a course to Alderaan. The end!
Actually, it’s even worse than that. George Lucas made three long movies that serve as nothing more than leaden backstory to a much more interesting story. Nevertheless, imagine Star Wars established all this intrigue with Princess Leia, Darth Vader, the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, Old Ben Kenobi, Han Solo, Jabba the Hutt, and then ended with the gang fleeing Tatooine on their way to rescue the princess. Would anyone have seen that movie? Would word of mouth have built to the point that it turned into one of the most popular movies of all times? Would they have made even one sequel to this story? The answer is no. There’s a big difference between the cliffhanger at the end of The Empire Strikes Back — which tells a complete story, even with the cliffhanger ending — and making a movie that consists of nothing more than exposition and setup for a movie that’s potentially much better than what you’ve just sat through.
That’s really a shame, because this script squandered the potential of its first 40 pages and, by virtue of its half-assed structure and the fact that nobody has heard of this book series, will probably never become the franchise the filmmakers obviously desire.
*Just kidding! [Back]
Posted by Stan on October 19, 2009 6:34 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
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