How Not to Write a Screenplay Archives
January 5, 2009
Bad Twist
I just finished a script with one of the stupider twist endings I’ve seen. Leading up to the twist, the script told a serviceable but unexceptional story of a clever high school student tracking down an unusual serial killer. Also on the case is her father, the local sheriff. The killer has a strange M.O.: he goes to his victims and gives them a torturous choice, with either option generally resulting in the victim’s death. For instance, he offers a struggling pianist this choice: he can either never play music again (meaning he’ll chop off the pianist’s hands), or he can never hear music again (meaning he’ll deafen the pianist in some way).
I want to ridicule the script’s twist ending for undoing the goodness coming before it, but first of all, it wasn’t that good. Secondly, this M.O., and the father-daughter relationship that drives the rest of the script, both come into play in this twist. Here’s what it is: the killer turns out to be the protagonist’s BAD TWIN
Surprisingly, that’s not even where the story goes wrong. The twist itself sort of works — the backstory revolves around the father, whose wife died during childbirth. They didn’t know she was pregnant with twins, and he was a newly single father who had no clue about raising one kid, much less two, so he had to choose one to give up to the foster-care system. The son was tortured and abused to the point of insanity, and now he’s out for revenge. It’s about in line with the script’s overall just-above-mediocrity quality.
No, it actually goes wrong when the killer tries to “prove” to the daughter that he’s a twin. Because the explanation needs to happen quickly, we can’t exactly have a DNA test to solve the problem. They’re standing in the middle of a cemetery (don’t ask), and she has to make a bunch of snap decisions after her newfound brother “proves” the truth. Except… He uses as his proof a peanut allergy and a birthmark they both share.
Is it not common knowledge that male/female twins are fraternal and, therefore, don’t usually share traits like allergies and pretty much never share the same birthmarks? The script goes off the rails into Stupidtown, never to return. The daughter is surprised by the reveal, then reacts with thundering indifference, electing to kill the killer to save her father. It’s not unreasonable, considering he is a killer and she shares no bond of any sort with him (other than genetics), and the adrenaline fueling the situation, but what about the emotional rollercoaster after this happens? She (a) kills a man, (b) finds out her father gave up a kid and lied to her for decades about how her mother died, and (c) her BAD TWIN brother turns out to be a deranged serial killer. This has no impact on her at all?
You might think, “It doesn’t matter, because the story ends, right?” Wrong. It keeps going, flashing forward three months, where things with the daughter are not only fine — they’re even better than they were before. Then, there’s a second twist, the old “the killer’s still alive” thing, which doesn’t so much set up a sequel as suggest no sequel possibilities (it’s implied that the killer has already gotten the dad, so who would he have to terrorize in the sequel?).
This script led me to ponder one of the many problems plaguing the movies: twists for the sake of twisting. The kind of twist where you get to the end of the movie and you wonder why you just wasted your time watching it. It changes everything (in a bad way) or it causes the story to not resolve or it’s just plain stupid.
Actually, plenty of these twists mix and match from the bargain bin of problems associated with twist endings. Probably the worst twist-ending I’ve ever read occurs in another just-above-mediocre script, an action story culled from the age-old “let’s throw a bunch of guys in a pit and make them fight to the death, against their wills.” You’ve seen it in gladiator movies, you’ve seen it in at least one episode of every sci-fi television series in history — soon, you’ll see it on the big screen.
The script is light on sci-fi — it has some “technogeek” crap involving a pseudo-pirate Internet pay-per-view structuring so these battles can be streamed worldwide, and it has these boots that, when “activated,” lock the fighter’s feet in place — but heavy on action and, to my surprise, character development. The villains are all aimless morons, but three of the main characters had surprisingly decent dimensionality…
…or so I thought. Here’s the problem with the twist: it’s both mind-numbingly stupid and it changes everything. Toward the end, convinced he’s going to die, the protagonist begs his shifty-eyed love interest to call his brother. Turns out, his “brother” is a CIA handler, and her call alerts the agency to the protagonist’s exact location. Before he can get killed in the ring, a bunch of well-armed agents burst into the secret compound and take down the whole operation, all because the protagonist was an undercover agent the whole time. Pretty cool, right? Wrong again!
In one way, this script has a clever conceit — we learn, in flashbacks, that the protagonist is haunted by the murder of his wife and daughter. We’re led to think, at first, that the protagonist is a disgraced doctor who accidentally killed several patients, and that his family was killed as revenge for his medical misdeeds. The cleverly ambiguous flashbacks hold up just as well when it turns out he’s an undercover CIA agent. The whole doctor thing was his cover, but his family really did die, they really were revenge killings (for his CIA good deeds), and the protagonist really does suffer.
However, in the present timeline, the protagonist does a wide variety of stupid things that the twist completely undermines. See, he’s “kidnapped” by this group, imprisoned, and forced to fight for his life. On one occasion, he nearly gets both himself and another man killed by screaming that he’s been kidnapped and is not a willing participant (in the middle of a match streaming live across the world). A perfectly (in)sane action from a man with nothing to lose — it makes no sense from a CIA agent infiltrating the organization. In general, the story would have us believe that no man — until the protagonist showed up! — has survived more than three fights. The protagonist kills 11 men. Eleven. All of them innocent kidnapping victims, not bloodthirsty animals. The love interest is shown as taking a shine to the protagonist immediately, so it would not have been unreasonable in any way for him to beg her to call the brother before, say, his third match — the one where he’s destined to die. Of course, then the movie would be about 20 minutes long. Without the twist, though, none of that narrative doubling back is necessary. I bought the pain, the nothing to lose, the idea that he fights these men because he wants to punish himself. It all goes away when the writer introduces the twist.
Worse than that, the protagonist “honorably” kills one of his cell buddies. He wants to spare the buddy from suffering the indignity of this hell. Except the protagonist knows he’s an undercover CIA agent, and he knows the guy only has a few more days to suffer. But he kills him anyway. Again, it’s sort of a reasonable action if this guy wasn’t a CIA operative all along, but he was.
So why have the twist? The whole script builds to this fight against the über-badass villain — the one man who is there to fight willingly — and the deal is, if the protagonist wins, he gets to go free. Why not just let him fight, win, and go free? Why have this twist that undermines some decent stuff earlier in the script? What’s the point? The audience will react with five seconds of “mind blown” wonder, followed by an eternity of rage and disappointment upon realizing they’ve been had. A straightforward ending would work better. Despite the cleverly devised flashbacks, the twist doesn’t work at all. The only way to make it work sacrifices better material.
A few weeks ago, I ranted about a script called Hyperreal. I kept its big twist a secret because I knew I would eventually get around to writing this entry. So here it goes: the script is overloaded with voiceover narration and characters. If you’re too lazy to click the link, it also has this body-swapping conceit where people can swap their minds using a machine. I’m going to use the actual character names here, because it’s too confusing to give them generic descriptors:
You have Cray, a supposed master criminal who’s hired to lead a diamond heist. The script opens with Cray sitting at a diner with another guy (unidentified in the script) in a tense face-off. In voiceover, Cray gives a long Fight Club*-style monologue overloaded with pseudo-philosophical bullshit, and then it flashes back to the overly complicated story. Eventually, we come to find out that a man named Usagi was hired to retrieve a kidnapped little girl, and the diamond heist was just a cover to distract her kidnappers. In order to pull off the heist, Usagi and the little girl’s mother paid off Cray — who is famous in the criminal underworld — to swap bodies well in advance of the story. So basically, it’s been Usagi’s mind in Cray’s body since the beginning of the script. Meaning the thoughts in the narration are actually Usagi’s, not Cray’s.
It would spoil the twist to have Usagi narrating from the start, obviously, but shouldn’t that just be a sign that the twist doesn’t work? Or maybe that the framing device doesn’t work? Or the voiceover (really, really, for the love of all that’s holy) doesn’t work? I would even cut it some slack if Cray were the only narrator, but he isn’t. Several of the other characters narrate, and when they switch bodies, the narration still comes from their original characters’ voices. Ipso facto, Usagi should narrate. Or nobody should. Yeah, let’s stick with nobody.
Why can’t a story just be a story anymore? Why can’t it go from Point A to Point B, instead of a zigzag from Point A to Point Z, hitting all intermediate stops? How many of these twists actually work? One of the biggest — the one that arguably relaunched the “twist ending” craze — The Sixth Sense, doesn’t work at all if you bother to watch a second time. Once you know the ending, you’re like, “Wait, he’s been hanging around for six months and hasn’t figured out nobody talks to him, nobody sees him?” I could only buy that twist if Shyamalan explicitly stated that Willis’ character somehow fades in and out of existence without realizing it and only appears in the scenes dramatized within the movie. If you think about anything else — going grocery shopping or making a phone call or any of the things he’d have to do offscreen that involves interacting with people or objects — it doesn’t hold up at all. At least The Usual Suspects’ ending was gleefully nonsensical. It’s not a great movie, but they didn’t even try to make sense. (And for those of you thinking I’ve just hoisted myself on my own petard, after griping about people who think The Big Sleep makes no sense because they haven’t paid enough attention — trust me, I’ve seen The Usual Suspects more than once, I’ve paid careful attention, and it’s ending is just a twist for the sake of twisting. It makes no goddamn sense, and it’s only slightly different because nobody involved seems to care whether or not it makes sense. It’s almost a spoof of arbitrary twist endings.)
So why is Hollywood still twistin’? Well, aside from the fact that these movies still make money, I have to imagine it goes back to the belief that all stories have been told. The only way to keep going is to tell a familiar story with an unfamiliar ending. According to Hollywood.
According to me, applying a twist ending to a mediocre (or flat-out shitty) script just to give it a “gee-whiz” effect is as lazy as stealing jokes or masking your weaknesses with florid, hilarious-for-all-the-wrong reasons dialogue.
*Don’t even get me started on that movie’s twist. [Back]
Posted by Stan on January 5, 2009 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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:
- 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.
- 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 on December 31, 2008 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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 on December 25, 2008 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.”
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.)
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 on December 24, 2008 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.”
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.
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.
Posted by Stan on December 23, 2008 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.”
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.)
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 on December 22, 2008 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.”
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 they know nothing about it, and 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! 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.
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 on December 21, 2008 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.”
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 wi