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June 3, 2010

Script Review: Five Killers (a.k.a., Killers) by Bob De Rosa, Ted Griffin and Michael Brandt & Derek Haas

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

Without having seen the movie, I speculate that everything that’s gone wrong with Five Killers can be traced to the title change: from the fairly specific (or, at least, enigmatically intriguing) Five Killers to the generic, not-at-all-compelling Killers. I say this based mainly on promos that fancy this a wacky, action-packed romance a la Date Night or Did You Hear About… God, I’m bored before I even finish the title of that piece of shit. They don’t get into what the script is actually about, which is disappointing, because it’s actually a funny story. I’ve complained a lot about the spy scripts I had to endure during the last half of 2008 and first half of 2009, but Five Killers was among the cream of the crop.

Even though I mostly liked the script (and The Spy Next Door, for that matter, although it turns out I read a different one than the script that actually got made), it got me thinking about the whole spy thing again. Much like changing from Five Killers to Killers, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the spy scripts I had to read were comedies — even if they’re good comedies — speaks volumes about the hackery that has slowly corroded Hollywood. I think the prevailing mentality is, “Every story’s been done, so there’s no sense in trying to engage an increasingly aloof audience with pathos and drama in a story they’ve already seen.” Writing a spy comedy is easier. Conventional (wrong) wisdom tells you the spy plot doesn’t matter, and if it gets so hole-filled it resembles John Holmes’s underwear circa 1979, you just insert a quick scene of characters trying to figure out the plot and lapping themselves. Pointing out the shortcomings of your script is way easier than fixing it.

More than that, you can hide from real emotion and suspense by undercutting anything serious with a wacky, unexpected moment. It’s sort of like Hollywood is now catering to the “nervous giggle” reaction many people have to visceral moments in horror movies. Now, the audiences don’t have to feel like depraved/confused monsters laughing at graphic depiction of murders, because the movie says it’s okay to laugh. Maybe I’m off-based on that assumption, but I do know that inserting cheap laughs just when the characters are about to feel and/or express genuine emotions like “fear” or “manimal lust,” the writers back away from it and slide in a joke. Maybe it goes back to the mentality in the previous paragraph: why bother inserting (so to speak) a genuine romantic subplot or legitimate suspense when everybody’s just going to call it hackneyed and predictable? That’s fucking lame, guys. Sac up and go for emotional truth, not ironic detachment.

But maybe I’m just too cranky. Like I said, I actually liked Five Killers, so I don’t know why this review has already descended into a sea of vitriol and disdain. Here’s the basic story: Spencer (to be played by Ashton Kutcher) is a super-secret spy, more on par with Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies than James Bond. The script opens with him attempting to balance work and pleasure: he’s on vacation in Corsica with his girlfriend, Jen, and her family, but he also has to blow up the yacht of a powerful, Blofeld-esque supervillain — his last official act as a spy. He’s retiring so he can propose to Jen and settle down.

Three years later, Spencer’s settled down, all right. He runs a successful architectural design firm and lives in a McMansion development called New Ealing. Jen — well, she’s married to Spencer, but she doesn’t matter as much as she should. Her main issue throughout the script is that she may be pregnant, but she isn’t sure how to tell Spencer — see, he’s busy and stressed, and he’s frequently chastising Jen for the amount of time she spends with her parents (who retired to New Ealing). Here’s where things get weird: I was ranting about the lack of emotional truth, so here the writers try to slide in some pathos, but it feels all wrong for this story. Maybe because it’s so familiar, maybe because something so leaden and serious doesn’t fit the light, breezy tone, maybe both. Strangely, the writers have a much stronger, less exploited problem for Jen to overcome — her dependence on her parents. The writers use this to allow Spencer to pick meaningless fights with Jen, and for Jen to dump exposition on people who aren’t Spencer, but it never feels like a real component to her character. There’s a twist ending involving the parents, which I won’t reveal here, but it would allow for an interesting way for a married 20-something to break free from parents with whom she’s fully enmeshed. More than that, it’d add a bit of nuance to the twist — which is inevitable but not predictable, narrowly avoiding the bad twist category — and give Jen a real arc instead of a cheesy conflict that’s ultimately meaningless.

Back to the first act: on his birthday, while Jen eagerly plans a surprise party, Spencer receives a call from his ex-handler, Holbrook, who speaks mostly in code. Holbrook intimates that a man above their faux Blofeld may have been identified. Spencer reminds Holbrook that he’s out, but he’s warned to keep his guard up. When Spencer returns home to a dark, empty house, his suspicion is raised. He draws his gun, and — surprise! It’s the birthday party. Never seen that before.

So you might be wondering, “Why the fuck did you like this script, Stan?” Well, here’s where it gets good: the script takes its time establishing the friends/neighbors/employees. These include: cougar Olivia, UPS man Milo, real-estate agent Don Nootbar (no, really — this is Jen’s asshole boss), the Baileys (Mac and Lily, who run a rival design firm), architect Henry, creepy construction guy Manuel, intern Yasuko, stoned delivery guy Josh, secretary Mrs. Tomlinson, and annoying next-door neighbor Jackie. This also includes Jen’s parents, the Kornfelds, and her best friend, Maggie. After taking time to introduce each of these characters, Spencer is attacked by Henry the morning after his birthday. Spencer’s both shocked and baffled. During a lengthy fight, Jen comes home (after an early visit to her parents). She’s shocked and a little horrified. While he attempts to kick Spencer’s ass, Henry dumps out the relevant exposition: he’s a sleeper assassin who got the “green light” to kill Spencer today. There’s a $20 million bounty on his head, and Spencer’s not the only assassin looking for him. A car chase follows, as Spencer and Jen try to flee town, with Henry on their tail. During the chase, Spencer reveals everything about his past to Jen, then lures Henry to a construction site, where he crushes Henry with a bulldozer. Jen is horrified.

Spencer decides it’d be a good idea to meet up with Holbrook, but he’s dead in a nearby motel room. He has one clue: five numeric codes. Spencer tries to convince Jen to leave town with him, but she refuses. She thinks they should go back and ask her father for advice. The ensuing argument causes Jen to blurt out that she may be pregnant. She’s been too afraid to take a home pregnancy test. They both go to a supermarket to buy one, but both are jumpy. Spencer nearly pulls his gun on an innocent stock boy. Spencer explains that “the Leopard” is a mysterious arms dealer who likely wants Spencer dead for killing his right-hand man. Because they can’t go home, Spencer takes Jen to his office (it’s Saturday, so it’s empty) to take the test. If you’re wondering why he’d think assassins wouldn’t come looking for him at his business, so am I. And, apparently, so are the assassins, one of whom (Yasuko, Spencer’s intern) shows up while Jen is busy taking the test. Ironically, Manuel, the creepiest and most terrifying of his employees, turns out to be legitimate (the assassin has him tied up in a closet). It’s an easy joke, but I laughed.

When Spencer realizes the numeric codes are bank account numbers, Jen realizes she can trace them through the realty office where she works — if all the assassins settled into New Ealing, they’d have to buy property. While Jen looks through records at the real estate office, cougar Olivia and UPS man Milo show up. Both are assassins, and Spencer dispatches them with relative ease (compared to Henry and Yasuko). I was ready to be angry at the whole “bank account” development, but it turns out to be less of a plot hole than it seems. Any rational person with a vaguely criminal mind would instantly say, “Wouldn’t successful assassins be smart enough to not buy property using the same bank accounts they use to receive illicit money?” Well, Jen ends up finding nothing in the real estate office. It’s basically just a bland suburban location to serve another wacky fight sequence. In Olivia’s pocket, Spencer finds a business card for the Baileys’ design business. This arouses their suspicions — the Baileys are way too classy for Olivia. This forces Spencer and Jen to infiltrate the Baileys’ big block party, which pretty much occupies the full extent of the third act. Who is the fifth assassin? Who is the Leopard? Were the direct-deposit accounts just a red herring? Go see the movie and find out. Hopefully they didn’t chuck the script completely.

You might still be wondering, “Why did you like this script, Stan? For the love of Christ, it doesn’t sound funny at all.” Well, that’s kind of the point: the story is a straightforward thriller with jokes. Some are funny, some aren’t, but overall, the script clicked with me. It doesn’t tread too much on unfunny suburban satire — the suburban setting becomes a familiar playground rather than a source for cutting-edge humor involving pink flamingos and bowling. I also appreciated the overall sense of paranoia — in a world where literally everyone is suspect, Spencer’s itchy trigger finger becomes a frequent running joke. Mainly, I’m just a sucker for stories that thrust average people into the spy world. Not talking about Spencer here — I actually wish this story had been told more from Jen’s point of view. Lose the boring pregnancy subplot and give the audience the same disorienting feelings she’s having, thinking she knows her husband, realizing he’s been lying (or, at least, hiding the truth) for as long as she’s known him, but she’s forced to adapt or else she’s dead.

A much more significant problem comes from the assassins. They don’t really have personalities so much as over-the-top traits. That sort of makes sense, because they’re living, breathing cover stories, and as master con artist Stephen J. Cannell always says, people are less likely to suspect you of being a fraud if you’re comically over-the-top. I don’t know how well that plays out in the real world, but it sure seems to work for Jim Rockford and the A-Team. However, they continue to adopt their cover personalities long after their cover is blown. There are some amusing observational jokes, but they don’t actually make any sense because these assassins are not their cover identities.

It occurred to me halfway through the script that this is a blown opportunity. This really sprang up through the combination of these ill-fitting jokes and the fact that Spencer dispatches four of the five assassins with relative ease. So you have five trained assassins adopting disparate cover identities to lay low in the suburbs for reasons they don’t even know, to pursue a target they won’t know, all with the hopes of earning an eventual $20 million payout. They’re not working other jobs — they’re fully committed to waiting for this job to pay out. Humans are adaptive creatures. They get used to things pretty quickly and easily. Initially, these assassins descend on New Ealing without much concern for their fake homes or their fake jobs, but it’s their real job to adapt. They have to get to know their neighbors and coworkers, they have to be good enough at their jobs to not get fired. At a certain point, they’d start to get invested, and before long, they stop being cold-blooded assassins and start being the bland suburbanites they were originally pretending to be.

This kills two birds with one stone: the fact that they’ve gotten soft explains why Spencer (who legitimately is soft, since he gave up the trade) has so little trouble dispatching the world’s best assassins, and it also allows for the weirdly entertaining, distracted asides from assassins who seem more interested in their lawn or their clothes than meeting their objective. Maybe the writers were going for this angle at a certain point but decided to cut it in favor of pregnancy histrionics. Bad choice.

Overall, though, I liked the script enough to refer to it as a “perfect date movie” in my coverage. I’ll probably live to regret that overstatement, but the script is fun enough and decent enough to warrant it, despite its flaws.

Posted by Stan on June 3, 2010 4:58 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 18, 2010

(Late Edition) Script Review: Harry Brown by Gary Young

Sometimes I get busy. Longtime readers know my comically inconsistent posting routine is one of the few charms of Stan Has Issues™. I did like the habit of posting one script review a week. That was something I figured I could handle, because even if I got busy, I could write several when things were slow and post them when I anticipated getting busy. I had it all planned, on an assembly line, with spreadsheets and dates and I’ll do this script for this week and that script for that week.

It all fell apart when (a) release dates for films whose scripts I’d already read professionally kept getting pushed back, (b) I had zero interest and negative motivation in reading different scripts to substitute my original picks, and (c) my planning went to shit, so I suddenly stopped preparing reviews in anticipation of getting busy, and instead posted pathetic rants about women. I’m okay with the pathetic rants. In fact, as you may have noticed from the disclaimer, I don’t really consider these script reviews to be actual “content.” I much prefer either ranting about general screenwriting trends or chaotic broads, idiot friends, and why nobody but me knows how to drive. I just find myself lacking the time to accomplish the feat of writing about what’s going on with me. Not to sound glib, but I’m 100% serious when I say I’m too busy living life to blog about it. I know — weird, huh?

So what am I up to? Does anybody really care? Don’t you all just want to skip ahead to where I eviscerate Harry Brown and ridicule Michael Caine’s personal politics? Well, too bad. Agenda #1: reading shitty scripts. Yes, it’s my job, and it’s been busier than usual. More than that, my goofy coverage service has taken off despite a lack of advertising and competence, so I’ve been deluged with scripts to read. And, hand to God, the stuff you guys are sending me is way better than the shooting drafts of in-production films I’m reading professionally. If I ran Hollywood, I would much rather make your movies, and I sincerely believe they’d do better than most of the shit Hollywood tells us we want to see. I also made the mistake of collaborating with Amelia on a script. It’s turned out to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever agreed to do, but that’s a story for another post. (I swear, I’ll actually post it when it’s all over. I’m writing it in little fragments so I can capture the lightning-in-a-bottle freshness of my rage as it happens.)

Instead, it’s time for a little Harry Brown. Let me use this script as a little pulpit for why I hate Law-Abiding Citizen was way too stupid to have the grim pretension of serious drama, and that having a little fun with its idiocy would have improved it greatly? Harry Brown does the exact same thing, yet Young makes it work. Why is that? Is it because those crazy Brits make movies for adults instead of semi-retarded teenagers who think things like, “He was crawling through a hole in the toilet the whole time? AWESOME!!!!”? (Some of you may be thinking, “But Britain lets Guy Ritchie make movies, and his are way stupider than ours!” You’re right, but even his worst movies — yes, even Swept Away — have that sense of goofy fun that our brooding, deadly serious yet laughably stupid action movies lack.)

If I were to pin a reason to any one element of the script, I’d choose “point of view.” Gary Young keeps the action in Harry Brown closely tied to its main character. Everything is filtered through the way he sees the world, so the cartoonishly over-the-top gangs and the unabashed fear of technology all works, because it fits the way Harry views the world. On the contrary, Law-Abiding Citizen doesn’t limit itself in any way, so the stupidity of its plot can’t be traced to a brilliant point-of-view tactic. It might have worked if the script had been written solely from Jamie Foxx’s perspective as the world’s worst/stupidest prosecutor, but nope — they went all omniscient on us.

Harry Brown owes a massive debt to Death Wish. I’m talking “Based on the screenplay/novel” massive. Aside from the London setting, its few changes to the model of the original Death Wish are, in fact, lifted from the Death Wish sequels: Harry is inspired to take action when an old friend/war buddy is murdered by a teen gang (this, I believe, was the setup to Death Wish 3, which contains a genuinely spectacular urban warfare sequence in its third act), and his military background means he doesn’t need extensive weapons training courtesy of Angel from The Rockford Files (which is pretty much how all the Death Wish sequels pan out — Bronson loses his urban left-wing pacifism in a hurry once he finds out how easy it is to be a vigilante).

These changes enhance the script, to some extent. Most people would say, “Raise the stakes — a war buddy he hasn’t seen in 50 years isn’t strong enough to motivate Harry’s change,” but Young makes it work. Through the first act, he portrays Harry as tiring of his forced fearfulness. He’s sick of having to choose alternate routes to avoid teen gangs. He’s sick of his neighbors being attacked. He’s sick of the general lack of respect shown to the elders. So when he, himself, is assaulted by a young punk, Harry’s Marine training kicks in, and he kills the kid with his bare hands.

This sets Harry on a trajectory that, as I mentioned, follows the Death Wish model pretty rigidly: his vigilante antics escalate, arousing the suspicions of a detective (to be played by super-hot Emily Mortimer, guaranteeing it will be seen and possibly masturbated to by yours truly) who struggles with enforcing the law. She suspects Harry, but she can’t exactly prove it — and, on some level, she doesn’t want to. Ignoring my embarrassing infatuation with Mortimer, I sort of appreciated Young for bringing a bit of femininity into the script with her character, DI Frampton. More than that, he tries to hit on that tricky gray area I love so much: Frampton ultimately becomes a vigilante of a different sort, investigating of her own accord when she’s removed in favor of a pathetic violence task force (the kind of thing that looks good on TV but accomplishes virtually nothing). The third act escalates with a Deash Wish 3-esque gangs vs. cops riot, during which Frampton finally finds Harry. The script takes all the expected turns in the third act, but as I ranted before, it allows the audience to have that satisfying emotional release.

Just like Death Wish, it goes awry with Frampton’s pursuit. She’s more compelling than Vincent Gardenia, and I liked the idea of her working against her superiors’ wishes, but she’s not a strong antagonist. It’s a combination of her secretly supporting Harry’s agenda and simply never being able to find him. She does very little to impede his vigilante progress. Similarly, Young paints Noel — the thug who killed Harry’s war buddy — as Harry’s ultimate nemesis, but it’s not exactly a taut game of cat and mouse. It’s mainly Harry hearing Noel might show up somewhere, then arriving a few minutes after ignorant Noel left. The script could have benefited greatly from strengthening both Noel and Frampton as villains, which would give Harry more palpable opposition from both sides of the law. For instance, if Noel knows what’s motivating Harry — that he’s Public Enemy #1, and Harry’s killing people in pursuit of him — he could react to that a little more rashly and violently, making it more difficult for Harry to get at him. Same deal with Frampton: make her a stronger investigator, somebody who’s always on Harry’s ass, just waiting for him to slip up. Also, give her several full-frontal nude scenes. Germane to the plot, of course — changing in the police locker room, masturbating while bored on a long stakeout. Plenty of opportunities for tasteful yet explicit nudity.

Sorry, I got lost in thought for a minute. At any rate, Harry Brown is derivative but decent, and they could have done much worse than casting Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer in the lead roles. As long as the director doesn’t get overbearing with the grim tone — I’m fine with grim, but there’s no purpose in getting relentless with it — this could be an entertaining, effective thriller.

Posted by Stan on May 18, 2010 7:45 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 24, 2010

Script Review: Hot Tub Time Machine by Josh Heald and Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel & Steve Pink

Is funny enough?

I’m not trying to blow your mind. I just think that’s Hot Tub Time Machine’s unintended central dramatic question. Because, honestly, it is funny…but it’s not much more. It’s filled to the brim with what I call “empty laughs.” I frequently use the pilot of How I Met Your Mother as an example. I sat there and laughed my ass off for 22 minutes, and when it ended, I shrugged and said, “That wasn’t very good.” The characters ranged from bland (Ted) to irritatingly over-the-top (Barney), the episodic story wasn’t terribly compelling, the premise seemed extremely limited (I’m amazed they’ve sustained it this long), and the “surprise ending” (Aunt Robin!) blew ass. Although it consistently made me laugh, it didn’t really make me do much else (and not for a lack of trying). Frankly, I want more than that, even in a crappy CBS sitcom. I know I’m a creepy alien in the current culture, but I like entertainment that makes me think and feel — not a string of cheap laughs predicated on ironic detachment and obvious pop-culture references. I don’t even mind cheap laughs like that as long as they’re entrenched in something with a bit of depth. Maybe I’m missing something special in How I Met Your Mother, but based on the fact that promos show they still use “suit up” (a gag that came close to getting stale before the pilot episode ended), holy shit am I glad I didn’t stick with it.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a lot like that. It’s one of the rare comedy scripts that’s actually funny on the page, but to get back to the opening question, is that enough? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

That pisses me off, because the script has a terrific first half. It follows three main characters and one superfluous character through a world of chronic failure and disappointment. In a potentially clever nod to High Fidelity (this movie is loaded with references to other John Cusack movies, including Better Off Dead and Say Anything…), the script opens with Adam (the Cusack character) in the midst of a relationship that’s collapsed. His girlfriend is moving out. Meanwhile, Lou drives home (drinking) when “Home Sweet Home” by Mötley Crüe comes on the radio. The song so distracts him that he parks in his garage, closes the door, and sits with the engine running until the song ends. This is misinterpreted as a suicide attempt by his wife, who rushes to the hospital and contacts Adam and Nick (who is described in the script as “Craig Robinson,” limiting the casting possibilities slightly), his only friends. Nobody in the trio has seen each other in years, making the fact that they’re Lou’s only friends all the more pathetic. Adding insult to injury: Lou’s family hates him, so his doctor urges Adam and Nick to show him a good time to keep his spirits high until he moves past whatever caused him to attempt suicide.

Adam and Nick come up with the ingenious plan to go to Kodiak Valley, a ski town in the mountains where they had tons of great memories from high school. For some reason, the writers attempt to ruin the script by forcing them to take Adam’s college-aged nephew, Jacob, along for the trip. He’s the aforementioned superfluous character. He’s given nothing interesting to do and is fucking annoying from beginning to end. I guess the writers probably thought bringing a “contemporary” teen into the past would make the story more palatable to the teen audience, but that barely makes sense from a commercial standpoint and it never makes any narrative sense. They never make it believable that these three guys would want or let Jacob tag along, and they insist on giving his worthless subplot equal time with the others. Come on, guys. I’ve seen High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank, so I know you’re better than this. Then again, I’ve also seen Accepted and Serendipity, so I know you’re also worse than this. I guess it’s a wash.

At any rate, going to Kodiak Valley makes all three of the guys even more depressed. It’s a dilapidated husk of its former mid-’80s glory. The only thing worth doing is getting drunk and talking pathetically about their failed lives, and how deeply rooted their paths were in one fateful 1986 weekend. Lou cracks open some booze, which includes what he calls “Russian Red Bull,” known as “Chernobly.” If you guessed this mystery substance and a malfunctioning hot tub were on a collision course for wackiness, congratulations! Dumb as it is, I found it funny that spilling a black-market Soviet drink on the hot tub’s working parts cause them to travel through time.

The guys wake up back in time. Although we continue to see them as middle-aged losers, their mirror reflection shows their teen selves — with the exception of Jacob. Further proving his uselessness in this story, he’s shown exactly the same, because he wasn’t born in 1986. Guys, that’s not clever: it’s a wake-up call. EXCISE HIM. Oh shit, I forgot the movie comes out this week. It’s a little late to fix that problem.

The start of the second act has the guys figuring out what happened, and it derives plenty of laughs from their feeble-minded attempts to figure out why it happened. Mostly, they rely on their knowledge of previous time-travel movies to piece together. At first, they all decide to replay the weekend exactly as it happened, to avoid any horrible “butterfly effect” scenarios. However, the instant Adam sees his old girlfriend, it occurs to him that maybe changing the weekend is the best thing for his miserable present-day life. As the guys start to encounter old wounds (like Lou running into a ski patrol flunky who once kicked his ass), they all start to think changing the past is the best solution for all their present-day problems.

This should be a great way to set up the second half of the film, but instead it’s the script’s fatal flaw: the moment the guys separate to pursue their own separate goals, the story loses momentum rapidly. There are many reasons for this, and unfortunately all of them are rooted in sloppy writing.

Adam’s dogged pursuit of Jenny, a girlfriend he dumped in the original timeline, is funny because she reveals herself to be vapid, slutty, devious, and violent — and Adam realizes this, but he continues to rationalize the behavior and convinces himself she really is the key to his future happiness. The writers lose focus on this when he meets April, who becomes his real love interest. This relationship is nowhere near as interesting or entertaining as Adam and Jenny. Aside from being the inimitable Craig Robinson, Nick has zero character development until too late. Following him seems meaningless until we learn, late in the second act, that his wife has been cheating on him for months, and he’s upset and looking for revenge. His overreaction (which ultimately includes calling the nine-year-old version of his future wife to apologize for cheating on her) provides some good laughs, but the subplot and character don’t have arcs so much as big, isosceletic bursts as the second act shifts into the third. As the script’s most pathetic character, Lou’s obsession with a meaningless fight is arguably the script’s most entertaining yet endearing subplot. Saddling him for most of the script with superfluous Jacob hinders that, however, as does Lou’s apathy when he gets his ass kicked (again) and immediately moves on to figuring out how to make himself rich in the future. Aside from all that, the script devotes far too much time and energy to two subplots that are even more superfluous than Jacob: Lou obsessively trying to have a threesome (because his present-day wife refuses), and a couple of non-time-travelers hunting Commies after they find the Chernobly cans.

All of this builds to an ending that I won’t spoil, but let me just say this: it’s way too upbeat. I’m not looking for a grim ending where they come back to find themselves slaves of giant half-man, half-insect overlords. Just remember Back to the Future’s solidly middle-of-the-road ending: Marty’s parents’ lives aren’t that shitty in the “original” timeline, and they aren’t that great in the “alternate” timeline — but things are very definitely better, and they’re all happier. Hot Tub Time Machine goes too far, making the characters’ happiness (relative to where they started) far greater than any of them deserve.

Hot Tub Time Machine is never better than when it’s pondering the possibilities of time travel. It’s great that it isn’t just a bunch of geeks nerding out about how time travel may or may not work, but the script just dies in the second half of the second act. It never recovers, despite a few clever moments in the third act and strong comedy throughout. The characters are saddled with too many goals and too little jeopardy. It disappointed me because so many clever ideas and funny jokes are wasted in this subpar script. That fact disappointed me when I started seeing trailers and promos: great cast, okay script, but holy fuck does this look like a turkey. I’m astounded by how fucking awful the trailers are. I know they’re misleading by design, and let’s be honest: has there ever been a comedy trailer that’s actually funny? I know people often say things like, “All the funny scenes were in the trailer,” but come on. Comedy trailers are all wacky record scratches and elderly people making dick and shit jokes. If you’ve ever laughed at a comedy trailer, you need to kill yourself. (Exception: if you, without ever doing anything more than smiling, look at the cast and the alleged premise and think, “That could be good, even though nothing in this trailer comes close to being funny,” you’re still okay in my book.)

Just like Hot Tub Time Machine, I’ve lost focus on what matters. Bottom line: I can’t figure out what the hell went wrong here, but a script with a lot of potential ends up with a shoulder shrug and a “weak consider” (the coward’s “pass” — pro-tip from the sausage factory: never pass on a script with major stars attached, even if it’s dire) from yours truly. The opening question was not rhetorical: unless your goal is to make bland, forgettable crap (*cough*Seth MacFarlane*cough*), funny alone is not enough. A screenplay is always funnier when it’s firing on all cylinders. Once the story is solid, the characters are compelling, and the themes are clear but not heavy-handed, that’s when you go back and start punching up the jokes. (And, let’s be clear, if you have all your authorial ducks in a row but the shit ain’t funny, you still have a problem.) Unless you’d rather make Good Luck Chuck than The Apartment.

Posted by Stan on March 24, 2010 1:09 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 3, 2010

Script Review (Odds ‘n’ Ends Edition): The Spy Next Door by Joe Ballarini

Has it been almost a month? Jeez, my combo of laziness and apathy sure make the time fly. Here’s the problem with February: with the exception of Dread and most of Frozen, I didn’t get paid to read any of those scripts. Not a single one. And honestly, I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to read the copies of The Wolfman, Shutter Island, and A Couple of Dicks (a.k.a. Cop Out) that I’ve had sitting on my hard drive for months, specifically for last month. I just said, “Fuck it.” When I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to want to see these movies, imagine how hard it is to get me the scripts when you aren’t waving a check in my face. And even that bites me in the ass. (Yeah, I just finished doing my taxes — I always forget what a shit-ton I end up having to pay because I’m technically “self-employed” and, therefore, my pay isn’t taxed until I get my 1099-MISC, fill out all those stupid forms, and shout obscenities when I see the amount I owe.)

I’ll be honest: March probably won’t fare much better. The majority of scripts I planned to review got delayed. Hot Tub Time Machine is the lone exception, so those of you who are into these reviews can look forward to that in a few weeks. I also read a script that’s a lot like Brooklyn’s Finest, but it’s not Brooklyn’s Finest, so maybe I’ll toss that up for shits and giggles. Otherwise, I’ll either be dusting off odds ‘n’ ends like I am today, or I’ll actually produce real content. By that, I mean I’ll do my Andy Rooney schtick about current Hollywood conventions that I don’t like. I’ll probably also talk a little more about masturbation and/or why my friends are all idiots.

Anyway, enough of my bullshit… Let’s enjoy a review of a script you’ll probably never read, which in no way resembles the film it turned into!

Remember the basic setup to Action? (Hint: not to alienate you, gentle reader, more than usual, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’re interested in screenwriting, something in your life has gone awry.) Dorky nobody writer suddenly finds himself approaching the A list simply because one of the biggest producers in Hollywood confuses him for an established writer? I had a similar situation crop up about a year ago, when I received the screenplay for Joe Ballarini’s The Spy Next Door. I thought little of receiving it, because I’d been deluged with not just spy scripts but wacky, In-Laws-esque spy comedies. But something weird happened. As I often do, I Googled information about the movie shortly after finishing the coverage and disocvered, to my surprise, that Jackie Chan had signed on to star.

“Huh,” I thought. “He doesn’t seem like a very good fit for either of the main characters.” I prepared to dismiss it, assuming they’d done some rewrites to adjust the role to Chan (after all, the draft I read was dated 2002 — a lot of development may have happened since then), when I noticed something even odder: the plot described Chan as a spy who agrees to babysit his next-door neighbor’s kids.

“The fuck?” I thought. This description had virtually nothing to do with the script I’d read, other than the title. More than that, the IMDb didn’t credit Ballarini at all (nor, would I eventually learn, did the film itself) — in fact, the only reference I could find was a USC alumni magazine interview with Ballarini in which he briefly mentions selling the script. I don’t have a clue if this script went through such a long, arduous development process that it bears no resemblance to its source, or if two completely different scripts just happened to have the same title. It made me wonder if my bosses had simply requested the wrong script from the wrong people — and that’s still a possibility. I don’t know all the details, and I don’t have much interest in researching it.

Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at this script, because whatever the story behind it, it’s essentially an unproduced script that likely won’t see the light of day. However, unlike the many legendary unproduced scripts floating around by the likes of Shane Black, Ron Bass, and Joss Whedon, this incarnation of The Spy Next Door comes from a relative unknown. That makes it a little bit special. It’s not a script that sold because it treads on the name of a well-known writer. It sold because someone, somewhere, for some reason, decided not that it was good, but that it could make money.

So what’s this mystery script about? It starts with the straightforward story of British lothario/superspy Ian Sterling (would it shock you to learn he looks and acts a great deal like James Bond?) going undercover as a suburbanite. He moves in next door to Roy Banner, a bored accountant and family man who’s looking for a little adventure. Ian moves in next door to the Banners with his “wife” (another spy) Moira, but he instantly rubs Roy the wrong way. Suspicious (and a little jealous) of the too-suave, too-debonair Ian, Roy pays careful attention during an awkward welcoming dinner thrown by Roy’s cheerful wife, Ellie. Roy notices Ian wearing a shoulder-holstered gun and Moira’s precision and apparent enthusiasm for vegetable chopping. He does some digging at work and finds neither of them have filed income taxes, ever, despite their claims of living in the U.S. for 15 years. The pieces don’t add up, and Roy’s not smart enough to suspect what’s going on.

When a noise from next door awakens him, Roy sneaks out of his house and follows Ian, who’s taking his dog out for a midnight stroll. When the dog starts spewing fire, Ian is forced to incapacitate Roy and bring him into the fold: he and Moira are spies, their handler is a genetically engineered 10-year-old (posing as their son), and the dog is a surveillance robot. After having groused about Ian’s incompetence in assimilating to the suburban lifestyle, Wolfgang takes this opportunity to pair up Roy and Ian. Roy can teach Ian to be a regular guy, so as not to blow his cover. This turn of events — the cleverest in the entire script — lasts for approximately half a scene. Really, pairing them up has little to do with a wacky odd couple scenario and has everything to do with bringing Roy in as an official partner. He wants adventure? Well, he’s got it.

From here on out, the plot grows exceptionally convoluted: Roy has to balance his normal work and home life with secret spy adventures. See, Ian and his pals have traced a Blofeld-like master spy to the neighborhood, and it turns out the place has been a hotbed of master-criminal activity for years, unbeknownst to the Banners. All of this is a little bit like the Hank Scorpio episode of The Simpsons, minus the hammock jokes and hilarious theme song. Ultimately, Roy outs the master spy as Jerry, his longtime friend and coworker. Jerry has a death ray, and both sides fight with the help of spy gadgets (most prominently, a set of sentient Pokémon-like stuffed animals and some robotic pink flamingos). Between this is a second act that layers on one weird, unnecessary plot twist after another, until the final showdown at the local lodge hall.

As you may have noticed, the script derives most of the comedy by combining clichés of suburbia (many of them — pink flamingos, lodge meetings, Howard Johnson’s, Tupperware parties — dated when The Flintstones satirized them 40 years ago) with spy-movie clichés. It also seems as if Ballarini has made his plot as outlandish and complicated as possible for comic effect, but all of this stuff has been done better elsewhere (including in some of those other spy scripts I read that haven’t come out yet).

On a related note, it’s sort of interesting to note how quickly the pop-culture landscape changes: it wasn’t long ago that The Ricki Lake Show and Pokémon were cutting-edge, topical references. Think about that the next time you’re working on a script that attempts to mine laughs from topical references: will they hold up? Let’s say you sell the script tomorrow — best case scenario, the movie won’t be released for 2-3 years. I bet you’re regretting that Sylar joke, aren’t you, comedy writers visiting from March of 2007? It’s never easy to tell whether or not a topical joke or reference will hold up, so here’s my advice: just don’t do it. I think that might be why so many kitschy ’80s references are “in” now: if it’s 20 years old and the cultural zeitgeist still remembers New Edition, that’s a safe reference. Well, that and the fact that most of the retards running Hollywood now came of age in the ’80s, so they laugh like hyenas any time someone says, “Pass the Dutchie on the lefthand side.”

I think I might be getting off topic.

The Spy Next Door is not a bad script. It’s also not an exceptional script, but it has a decent enough concept. That’s the thing I can’t figure out: if this is the same Spy Next Door that morphed into the Jackie Chan movie, then why did they buy it? I can understand buying a script for its concept and then gutting everything except the concept — but with this, it seems like the gutted everything but the title, and the title isn’t particularly strong.

The main flaw with the script is that Ballarini tries too hard to make the plot funny, without spending much time on making the characters funny. We pretty much have two bland straight men in a wacky, over-the-top plot. The first act gives us the Cliff’s Notes on who they are, but who they are doesn’t seem to matter as much as where they are and why they’re there. Did that make any sense? Let me put it another way: nothing about either of them matters except that one is an exciting James Bond and the other is a bored suburbanite looking for adventure. This only matters because of the wacky “spies in suburbia” plot. It tries to pass itself off as an odd-couple story, but the “couple” is pretty evenly matched, in terms of temperament and intellect — they just happen to have different areas of expertise. The script doesn’t even mine this for comic potential.

This became my biggest issue with the script: I know I’ve never seen talking dolls come to life and attempt to kill spies, but that doesn’t mean I want to, and the weirdness of developments such as that do little to mask the fact that this is a straightforward spy comedy in an unusual setting. It’s just not as interesting or as sharp as it could be, and that infuriated me because Ballarini presents a golden opportunity for a much more interesting story that hasn’t been overdone: the story of a suave British spy/playboy/gadabout who simply cannot blend in to American life, but (for reasons it’s not my job to make up) it’s crucial to his mission to do so. Enter Roy, the world’s most average guy — a guy who wants a little adventure and is kind of irritated to learn he’s only needed because he’s so boring. Just try to imagine Sean Connery circa 1964 trying to blend in to the modern suburbs; the mental picture is funnier than anything in this script, so it’s a big disappointment that the “Roy teaches Ian how to act like a suburbanite” development goes nowhere — in fact, most of the second act focuses on Ian teaching Roy how to act like a spy, not the other way around.

Similarly, Roy’s loosely defined “arc” seems to follow this trajectory: he resents his family, who prevent him from going on the adventures he seeks. Over the course of the story, he learns two things: (1) once he gets a taste of adventure, he decides it’s not for him, and (2) when his family is inevitably placed in danger in the third act, he realizes how important they actually are to him. This is solid, conceptually, but Ballarini never really digs into it. He’s too busy focusing on how wacky and complicated the story is to take a step back and show how the characters feel about the plot developments. I’d rather go one step further and eliminate 60-70% of the plot twists in favor of more natural, character-focused comedy as Ian struggles to assimilate and Roy sees a pathetic reflection of himself in this man who’s so resistant to transforming into a lazy, bourgeois bore.

See, there’s a lot under the surface of The Spy Next Door, but there are too many distractions for it to go in a truly satisfying, unique direction. This may be why it went from a flawed but not awful depiction of a superspy and an everyman…to a story about Jackie Chan babysitting a bunch of annoyingly precocious kids and surprising pets while spies invade the premises. Development’s a funny process: sometimes, it can greatly improve a script (have you actually sat down and read Chinatown? Very different from the movie, and not in a good way…), but sometimes, executives just head in the absolute wrong direction.

Posted by Stan on March 3, 2010 9:04 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

February 9, 2010

Script Review: Clive Barker’s Dread by Anthony DiBlasi

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, but I did tell myself, “Make an effort to blog more in 2010.” Careful readers will know how well that’s going so far. I’ve just been swamped, and unlike the last time I anticipated a swampy future, I didn’t stockpile a bunch of boring script reviews to autopost so I could ignore my blog. Instead, I’m making do with the hallmark of the blogosphere: infrequent posts of dubious quality. I’m starting with the promised script review of Clive Barker’s Dread, a movie that came out on the 29th for an extremely limited engagement as part of the fourth annual After Dark Horrorfest (as I understand it, after the theatrical engagements it’ll be shuffled onto DVD fairly quickly).

Before I get to that, though, I’d like to toss out a cautious recommendation for Adam Green’s Frozen, which opened over the weekend. As usual, I haven’t actually seen the movie. However, I did read the script awhile back and was blown away — except for the part where the third act was missing. Not like it was a complete, 120-page script that simply, structurally, lacked a third act. This was a 70-page script that ended with TO BE CONTINUED… right as it geared up for the third act. What a tease! So maybe the third act is a disaster, but the first two acts are as solid as the frozen urine that soils the characters. Might be worth checking out, despite the limited release, minimal promotion, and middling reviews.

On to Dread…

Let’s start with the twist ending that I don’t want to ruin for those of you who might actually take the time to see this (don’t worry, I’m just going to draw an analogy to a movie you’ve seen). Longtime readers know that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of twist endings. I don’t get angry at every movie that has a twist ending — but I do have a problem with twist endings that either come out of nowhere or are too telegraphed. Twist endings require a delicate balance of elements in order to achieve an “inevitable but unpredictable” moment of surprise, instead of a frustrating mindfuck or an eye-rollingly obvious moment.

Dread suffers from a twist ending that’s obvious from, I dunno, page 20 or so. See, it opens with a flashback sequence in which a family comes home, unaware a killer is in their house. The lone survivor is a young boy, who may or may not grow up to be one of the main characters. The way the script is structured, though, it’s clear early who the young boy has grown up to be, yet it wants us to believe this is a great, unsolvable mystery. Finally getting to that analogy, it’s like if Psycho opened with a scene of young Norman killing his mother. Except for that one addition, everything else is exactly the same — first trying to make us think it’s some kind of thriller about stolen money, then trying to make us think the killer is Norman’s mother before the big twist that she’s long dead and Norman is dressing up like her and murdering people. Would you be happy about a movie that reveals its own big twist in the first scene but still tries to make a suspenseful mystery around it?

Dread even has the semi-subtle genre switch that Psycho has. Ignoring that opening scene, it starts out as a straightforward dramedy about college students struggling to move toward adulthood. Then, it shifts into a sort of bland combo of psychological thriller and torture porn fest. The story follows Stephen and Quaid, a pair of college students who form an awkward friendship in a boring ethics class. The first act isn’t much more than pretentious philosophizing from the two of them, which I bought into because the endless pretentious philosophizing I both endured and espoused during my first two years of college. It’s not terribly compelling, but at least it’s believable. We find out the most relevant information about the characters: Stephen is an introverted nerdy type who’s tethered to routine. Quaid is also pretty nerdy, but he’s more extroverted and pompous about it. Stephen is quietly in awe of Quaid’s misguided confidence, and that sets up the early conflict: Stephen wants to be more like Quaid but can’t figure out how to make it happen.

Quaid catches on to this and decides to teach him, starting with a prank. After a night of drinking, Quaid walks Stephen to his modest suburban home. While Quaid fixes himself a drink, he sends Stephen upstairs to his room to grab a DVD. In it, he finds a husband and wife sleeping. They wake, terrified to see someone in their house. They don’t know Quaid. Naturally, Stephen panics and runs. Quaid follows, amused. He explains this was a psychological experiment on both of them: when Stephen’s afraid, he simply reacts — that’s something he needs to harness to get what he wants. Meanwhile, the couple will spend years in sheer terror as a result of two harmless idiots breaking into their house. Quaid’s pleased with himself, but Stephen starts to see the cracks in his personality’s façade.

Nevertheless, they team up with Zooey (a hot girl from their ethics class) on a class project that seeks to study the long-term effects fear has on people. Stephen and Zooey just want to interview subjects about their greatest fears, but Quaid is obsessed with taking the research to the next level. He begins playing terror-inducing pranks on the other two, which escalate to horror-movie proportions in the third act. Can you guess who the little boy was in the opening scene? Can you?!

Dread has a number of third act problems beyond the twist that isn’t a twist. I don’t want to get into them with too much specificity because of spoilers, although maybe I shouldn’t care because the movie’s already on DVD in the U.K. and is out in theatres here. But I do care, so no spoilers. The main thing is that the script pusses out on completing Stephen’s character arc. Remember, he’s the one who spends most of the script afraid to go after what he wants. Stephen doesn’t overcome this — in fact, the script brings in a red-herring character to do the things Stephen is too wimpy to do himself. This really undermines the script, but it’s clear the writer was more interested in a nihilistic torture porn ending than allowing the character to finally stand up for himself.

That leads me to one of the more interesting aspects of the script, though. It portrays Stephen as the protagonist because, well, it follows him around and leaves Quaid an unmysterious mystery. And, of course, Quaid is the antagonist because he’s nuts, right? Well, think about the protagonist-antagonist relationship, which in its simplest form is defined thusly: a protagonist has a goal that he struggles to achieve, mainly because the antagonist hurls obstacles in his way. In Dread, Stephen has some weak, ineffectual goals (mainly, wanting to get laid), but it’s Quaid who has the real goal: he’s hellbent on “experimenting” on innocent people. Stephen inhibits Quaid’s goal by being a total puss.

It’s an interesting reversal of expectations that would have been made much more interesting if the writer hadn’t tried so hard to make Quaid an enigma. If the writer had laid Quaid’s backstory out in the first act, let his behavior start escalating in the second act, the trajectory from “weird, semi-depressed nerd” to “psychopath” wouldn’t feel so rushed. Building a mystery out of whether or not Quaid’s really crazy, followed by building a mystery out of why he’s crazy, doesn’t do much for the story, and it does literally nothing with the themes about how fear can either cripple a person or force them into action. As mentioned, Stephen the scaredy cat is never really compelled into action, but it’s not his fear that prevents him — it’s the machinations of the writing, which lets the character down. Maybe the writer, ironically, was too afraid to have his “hero” sac up and kill the “villain,” because that’d make him just as bad, right? (Hint: wrong.)

Because Quaid is the true protagonist of the story, it simply feels like his character doesn’t have the proper development. Whatever the protagonist/antagonist relationship, the script focuses on Stephen as the main character. Keeping the point of view with Stephen limits our understanding of Quaid, and the audience’s inability to empathize with whatever Quaid’s going through is the source of all the script’s problems. When the writer finally reveals the essential information late in the game — well, as mentioned, it’s no surprise, which makes it all the more frustrating that he spends so much time trying to hide it. Quaid will never be the true hero of the story, but his character drives the narrative. Obfuscating his personality does the script no favors — in fact, it’s the script’s fatal flaw.

I will reserve judgment, though. Producer/writer/director Anthony DiBlasi has had varying success bringing other Barker stories to the big screen (by which I mean the giant plasma TV on which you watch your favorite direct-to-video content), ranging from the meh The Plague to the pretty good Midnight Meat Train. I have no doubt DiBlasi remains faithful to the source material, which contains a lot of Barker’s trademark grim atmosphere and unsettling imagery, but like many of the adaptations I’ve reviewed, it’s the sort of thing that probably works better as a short story than a film.

Posted by Stan on February 9, 2010 3:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 12, 2010

Script Review: The Book of Eli by Gary Whitta and Anthony Peckham

The Book of Eli tells a pretty straightforward western story: one taciturn man shows up in a town controlled by a power-hungry madman. Captain Taciturn (hereafter known as Eli) has something the madman wants, and the madman is confounded when Eli won’t give it up immediately. He’s not used to a fight, but a fight is exactly what Eli intends to give him. Does any of this sound familiar?

The amazing thing about The Book of Eli is that it uses genre tropes so damn effectively. It paints a startling, “a few years after The Day After” nightmare world, but aside from that, it’s your standard western plot. More than anything, it shows the importance of developing characters. Audiences are much more willing to go along with a plot they’ve seen before (and what plot haven’t they seen before?) if the characters within that well-worn storyline breathe new life into it.

The script opens with a surprisingly subdued sequence that establish the script’s world, tone, and protagonist more effectively than any script I read in 2008. In a decaying California forest, a disgusting feral cat scavenges for food. It finds a corpse. Eli is tracking the cat, himself scavenging for food (the comparison between the man and the animal is much subtler in the script than in my summary). He’s a careful, practical hunter with a small but varied arsenal (bow and arrow, samurai sword, and shotgun). Based on the condition of his clothes, it’s evident that he’s been a nomad in this world for many years.

After successfully catching the cat, Eli moves out onto a two-lane highway. He comes upon an old corpse, checks it for new boots, and is annoyed when he finds none. Later, he finds a woman whose shopping cart has overturned. She offers Eli a can of pet food to keep him from hurting her, but he has no interest in hurting her. When she asks for help fixing the wheel of her cart, Eli senses an ambush — and when he sniffs the air and smells the post-soap stench of a pack of bandits. They want Eli’s rucksack, but he won’t give it up. He explains this to them calmly, but when they get a bit insistent, he kills them all in a blur of sword strikes and blood. Then, he takes their water and moves on, refusing to take the woman with him.

Eli searches the ruins of an abandoned town until he finds a dead man hanging from a rope in his house (whether he was hanged by others or committing suicide is unclear). Eli takes the man’s shoes and spends the night in the house. He builds a fire, cooks up the cat carcass, and shares a bit with a squatting mouse. He reads from a thick, leather-bound book protected by a big, brass lock (Eli wears the key on a St. Christopher necklace around his neck). He plugs an old iPod into a car battery and plays Mozart’s D-minor piano concerto, and it takes Eli away.

That’s Eli: a man who refuses to give up his desire to return to a world that no longer exists. He arrives in Sacramento looking for help recharging his battery. While waiting, he manages to inadvertently piss off a man working for the town’s big cheese, an asshole slave-driver named Hawthorne (this has since changed to Carnegie, apparently). Hawthorne has his men searching the ruins of the city for one particular book, but the illiterates keep coming back with crappy bestsellers and self-help books. Are Eli and Hawtorne on a collision course for wackiness?

Maybe, but first, Eli gets Hawthorne’s attention by killing nearly everyone in the water bar he owns. Hawthorne recognizes Eli’s intellect and skill with a weapon. He tries to offer Eli employment, and to coax him into saying “yes,” he plies Eli with sex with a 16-year-old bar wench, Solara. Eli turns her down. The next day, Solara shocks Hawthorne by saying grace before a meal — as she saw Eli doing the night before. Solara tells Hawthorne she assumed Eli got it from “his book.” That’s right: for those of you who haven’t already figured it out, “The Book of Eli” is the Bible. It’s only a low-level surprise in the script — not portrayed as a mind-blowing shock like several events that occur in the third act and shall remain unknown.

From the point Hawthorne discovers Eli has a Holy Bible, and Eli discovers Hawthorne wants his Bible, the story moves in a pretty straightforward progression. Hawthorne fights to take the Bible, and Eli fights to keep it. Nothing extraordinary, narratively —

— and yet, the vivid descriptions of setting and action by the writers help to elevate the script. Part of this is because they spend a lot of time describing subtle character moments. Eli and Hawthorne are incredible characters, and much of that comes as a result of these descriptions. This script is a great example of using observable actions to develop characters. More than that, the writers do a great job of establishing not so much a “good vs. evil” conflict as a “tricky gray area” conflict. Eli’s intent on getting his Bible to a library that, as the script goes along, might be a figment of his imagination. He realizes the importance of the book, and he’s willing to kill anyone who wants to stop him or take his book. On the other hand, Hawthorne has dim recollections of the time before Armageddon, and he remembers the power religion once wielded — if he can bring it back, he can control more than just Sacramento. Despite the ease with which the writers could slide into hokey religious clichés, the script isn’t purely about religion: it’s about the value of hope, faith, and the power of the written word (all three foreign concepts in this universe, and one might argue in ours, as well). However, as lead characters go, Solara is a bit weaker than the two men. She’s given similarly compelling actions to reveal who she is, but the writers didn’t do nearly as good a job of selling her Big Decision (whether or not to abandon her Hawthorne-fucking mother to follow Eli, whom she starts to see as a father figure) as they do in selling the motives and behavior of the others. It’s a minor complaint in a great script, however.

The florid writing also gives detail to the third act’s extensive action sequences. Many scripts lack this vividness, and I can never figure out if it’s terrible writing or a result of just writing “placeholder” actions that the director and/or stunt coordinators and/or special effects artists can flesh out. I’m always a bigger fan of writing like this, though. It might step on toes in other aspects of the production, but it allows for immersion that the majority of scripts I read lack. Personally, I always want to be immersed in the story, even if it’s a schlocky romantic comedy. It’s especially important in a script like this, though. The writers are developing a post-Apocalyptic vision from the ground up. The more they describe, the easier it is to see a place that feels real, with a consistent set of rules governing its characters. More than that, when the script descends into an orgy of violence and explosions, my eyes don’t roll quite as hard when the sequences have visceral, suspenseful descriptions. Take this random example plucked from the middle of the script:

INT. WRECKED 747 - CONTINUOUS ACTION

The aisles are full of debris, human and otherwise. Slow going.

Solara climbs onto a seat, works her way towards the back of the plane, using the seat backs as stepping stones and the forest of downed oxygen masks as hand holds. A ray of sunlight indicates a hole in the fuselage. She heads for that.

The Hijacker Leader pursues her, churning through the debris like a bulldozer, blood pouring from his nose.

Solara reaches the ray of sunlight, looks up at the hole. It is small and jagged and high. Bad idea. She looks around wildly — sees something.

Solara leaps for the EMERGENCY EXIT DOOR at the back of the 747, takes a quick, intelligent look at the diagram.

Breaks the glass. Rips the handle down. Pushes.

Nothing happens. The Hijacker Leader closes in.

Desperate, Solara kicks the emergency door. Then slams her entire body against it. Once. Twice. The Hijacker Leader’s hands are actually on her when she charges the door a third time.

The EMERGENCY DOOR GIVES WAY suddenly, bright light shafts into this aluminum mausoleum —

— and Solara plummets out.

EXT. WRECKED 747 - CONTINUOUS ACTION

Solara lands hard next to the emergency door, drags herself to her hands and knees, winded, looks left and right.

Sees one of the other hijackers (with a rifle) coming at her over the wing of the 747.

Still winded, she levers herself to her feet, takes one step away —

— when the HIJACKER LEADER LANDS ON HER BACK, having jumped from the emergency exit.

Solara goes down hard, stays down.

Compare that to a “fight sequence” from next week’s review selection, Warrior: The bell rings and White Lightning comes out possessed, rocking Thunder back on his heels with an arsenal of punches and kicks. I guarantee you that sentence will play better than it reads, but that’s kind of the issue for green screenwriters. I’m sure the guys who wrote Warrior didn’t give a fuck about impressing some hotshot reader, but most of you reading this are not in their position. You need to impress the reader or assistant so he or she passes your script along to his or her boss, right? Well, the excerpt from The Book of Eli may not change the way you think about the world, but it’s much more absorbing than Warriors.

More than anything, the attention to detail makes the script feel fresher and more unique than it really is. I don’t mean that to sound insulting — part of the reason I flat-out loved this script is because it manages the a sizable feat. Especially in the third act, the story goes in the expected direction in very unexpected ways. As a random example, Eli pissing off Hawthorne’s toady is a scene that appears in countless westerns. However, it doesn’t generally tend to happen because said toady is insulted by a perceived slight against his mangy pet cat. The bizarre details of this world and the characters in it elevate what could have been a pedestrian script.

(Incidentally, for those of you crybabying that this is just a big knockoff of The Road, you’re wrong: it’s actually a knockoff of Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney, only with the Bible instead of a creepy astronaut DJ trapped in a satellite orbiting the post-Apocalyptic hellscape. I think the Bible was a better choice.)

So what’s up? I loved the script, and I still love it after giving it a second glance. It stars Denzel Washington and was directed by the not-untalented Hughes brothers. Why did they bury it with a January release? Why did they cut a trailer and TV spots that make it look like a shitty movie that’s already been made five times in the past year? Is Hollywood still afraid of the Bible, or did the Hughes brothers botch it? I’ll find out this weekend — that’s right, this is the rare script I liked enough to actually see the movie in a timely fashion. Even Whip It is languishing in my Netflix queue.

Posted by Stan on January 12, 2010 1:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 5, 2010

Script Review: Daybreakers by Michael & Peter Spierig

Here we are in the world of Daybreakers, in which vampires have become the majority (after some sort of viral pandemic) and the few humans left (5% of the total world population) are hunted for their delicious blood. After establishing this offbeat world and its central conflict — that vampire numbers increase while the “food” supply dwindles — the writers focus on hapless vampire hematologist Ed Dalton. He works for a pharmaceutical magnate, Bromley, who farms humans to provide blood for vampires. Ed, who’s conflicted about using humans, has the moral-balancing task of coming up with a feasible substitute that can sustain vampires without requiring them to kill humans.

One night, Ed comes upon an erratically driving car, which narrowly avoids hitting his sunlight-proofed Escalade. The car’s on the run from the police, because it’s filled with humans (including AUDREY, the de facto love interest). Ed surprises the humans by allowing them to hide in his Escalade while he lies to the police about where they ran off to. Once the police get a safe distance away, the humans leave — but not before Audrey notices Ed’s work ID badge, which identifies him as a hematologist. Ed continues home, where younger brother FRANKIE has returned from military service (in this world, the military simply hunts for human camps). It’s Ed’s birthday — which Ed deems meaningless, considering his immortality — so Frankie surprises him with a premium bottle of 100% human blood. Ed and Frankie argue about the righteousness of killing humans to feed on their blood.

Before the argument can get too heated (though it does get heated enough for Frankie to smash the bottle against the wall), they’re attacked by a “subsider” — a freakish sort of vampire who feeds on other vampires (and/or themselves). This is the sort of world they live in. Frankie and Ed dispatch the subsider. After the police sweep the scene, they discover the subsider was actually a neighbor who disappeared. Ed is incredibly disturbs and feels increased pressure to come up with a substitute. Later that night, Audrey sneaks into Ed’s house, announces that the vampire world is falling apart (citing, among other things, the opening scene — a child vampire committing suicide after deeming an ageless body pointless). Ed tells Audrey he can’t help her, but she gives him a note with a meeting place and time. After Audrey leaves, Frankie hears the commotion and wonders who it was. Ed says it was nobody, but Frankie is quietly suspicious.

The next day, Ed asks Bromley about whether or not a substitute will guarantee the humans’ freedom. He receives an unsatisfactory answer, so Ed decides to meet Audrey — at a wooded creek in midday. He’s introduced to ELVIS, a vampire who reverted back to human form. How? While driving during the day, he got into a car accident that caused him to plunge through the sun-protecting windshield and into the daylight. The combination of the sun hitting him just right and landing in some sewer run-off (which immediately squelched the flames) helped him to survive. Somehow, the sun restarted his heart. Ed is amazed. Audrey, Elvis, and the other humans beg him to help them recreate this “cure” in a lab.

Before Ed can respond one way or the other, the arrival of Frankie and a military unit answers for him. Now on the hunt as an enemy of the state, Ed is forced to flee with the humans. They take him to their hideout, an abandoned winery, where he meets more humans, some of whom are on their way out to pick up humans from a large group they recently came into contact with. In the script’s single least believable moment, a vampire senator shows up at the winery to encourage the humans’ exploits, because he believes a cure for vampirism is better for humanity than any other solution. A senator who cares about humanity? Such imagination!

While Ed performs tests to figure out what caused Elvis’s transformation, Frankie accepts reassignment to a unit headed by Bromley’s personal friend, a general. As a pseudo-loyalty oath, Frankie is sent on an assignment to pursue the convoy of humans moving through the desert (chosen because vampires fear the desert’s lack of cover and delicious human food), which carries Bromley’s daughter, ALISON. As Alison calls the winery to announce they’re under attack, Ed hones in on the cure. He refuses to leave, even though the vampire squadron has the drop on them. He forces Audrey to experiment on him. It basically works like a defibrillator, except the electric shock is a sun-reflecting mirror aimed at his heart. The third jolt gets Ed’s heart beating again — he is human. But Frankie’s nabbed all the humans and returned them to Bromley. Will Ed manage to bring the cure to the masses, or will the blood-loving vampires continue their reign of terror?

Take a wild guess!

Daybreakers is one of those scripts that revels in its own cleverness, going overboard with explanations because the writers want to show us they’ve thought it all through and covered all the bases. They create a vampire-dominated world that sometimes feels real but becomes frequently confusing — because, shock of all shocks, the writers didn’t think of everything. I jotted down a variety of interesting questions this script raises unintentionally (and, as a consequence, has little interested in answering):

Why doesn’t vampirism have much effect on these people’s lives aside from them (a) requiring a blood food source, (b) not being allowed to go out in daylight, and (c) becoming surprisingly pro-human-murder upon transformation? I know there are a number of schools of thought on vampire lore — ranging from “eh, I’m not much different” to “I am literally a soulless killing machine” — but in this script, what was once humanity seems to take the sudden transformation of the planet in benign stride. This allows for little more than a few jokes (Starbucks mixing coffee with blood, cable news debating the merits of human farming, an ad for a Cadillac Escalade pimped out with the latest sun-blocking technology, etc.) that toe the line between “satirical commentary on America’s pathetic preoccupations” and “no social commentary, just some cheap jokes.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer any real insight into how the planet might react if 95% of the human population found themselves turned into vampires — possibly because it’s set in the not-too-distant future when vampires already run rampant, the script doesn’t concern itself with the immediate reaction so much as the complacency several years after the immediate reaction has been quelled. But is it really acceptable to think people would just settle in and accept their fate? Which ties right into…

Why hasn’t anyone else attempted a cure? The “solution” is to simply create a viable substitute for blood. Ultimately, Bromley has a clear reason for wanting a substitute instead of a cure (I won’t spoil it, but you can probably predict it if you understand the mind of a stock “glowering capitalist” character), but Bromley can’t be the only game in town… Can he? Nor can Ed be the only one sympathetic to humanity… Can he? Considering the way this script revels in its own details, the script is surprisingly careless about its portrayal of society as a whole. In the minds of the writers, nobody but the people who have dialogue exist. But those people matter to the story — when you’re building a complete world, these details are important. What, exactly, is the infrastructure of the blood farming industry? Which ties right into…

Why did these idiots let the human decimation get so out of hand? We’re supposed to believe this is a not-too-distant future version of our world, right? A world with thousands of years of agrarian society under its belt? A world that turned livestock farming into a fairly disturbing industry to serve the greater good of mankind? Yet these vampires — whose “night-to-night” lives remain virtually unchanged — don’t understand any of the policies of rationing and forced breeding? They can’t grasp that they have a finite supply of humans, and the only way to make that infinite is to make them last? As in, you don’t have to kill people to “farm” them — you can bleed them in moderation, allow the blood to regenerate, and then bleed them some more. If the vampires were portrayed as more animalistic, I’d be able to accept the notion that they inadvertently turned billions of people before realizing they’d need a food supply. That, at least, would be sort of an intriguing concept for a story. They don’t go into that at all, aside from showing the “subsiders” as the “animal” versions of the vampires.

The problem traces back to our lack of understanding of the vampire infrastructure. How much blood do they need? How many times do they feed per day? Giving even a passing sense of how much they need to feed versus how much they have to go around would greatly heighten the suspense and Ed’s own desire to come up with a substitute. Just saying “5% of humans remain, which gives us six months before we’re out!” doesn’t help at all — and even if it did give some sort of meaningful picture, it still doesn’t forgive these idiots for letting so many humans die. Unlike oil (the finite substance most analogous to the fight for precious human blood in this script), the blood is renewable ad infinitum if the vampires played it smart. I feel dirty for putting this much thought into how to properly store humans for the purpose of regularly bleeding them, but hey — these are the sorts of thoughts a script like this inspires.

Why does the vampire subject, on whom Ed tests his blood substitute, scream “Owe!” before dying?

Do vampire brains continue to develop even though they can’t age? Early scenes show us “child” vampires (ages 8-10) attending high school, to signify the length of time they’ve been vampires. The opening scene shows a young girl dressed in woman’s clothes committing suicide because life as an ageless vampire seems so pointless. This sort of reminded me of the Fasano/Ward draft of Alien 3. It’s flawed narratively but endlessly inventive, and one of its inventions is of an Alien-universe droid whose brain so perfectly mimics a human’s, it becomes “insane” and prone to hallucinations because a droid cannot sleep, yet its brain requires sleep.

To that end, the human brain develops biologically in tandem with experience. This is why certain experiences (like sex) have profound impacts on the brain if they are experienced before maturation. But if a child vampire’s brain can never “ripen,” how would they live with their increasingly adult experiences? That fascinates the shit out of me, but the script doesn’t take much interest in it.

Late in the script, a military recruitment poster is defaced with the phrase END TIMES, a phrase I associate with religious types. That made me wonder: what happens to religion in a world where so many are vampires? I mean, when you’re dead but you retain immortality and the power of a dozen men, what do you believe? You certainly can’t embrace the standard values of most religions, because you’re kind of on the wrong end of their moral stick. What happens there? On some level, this ties into the idea that the vampires’ lives just don’t change enough to make this script truly interesting, but I find the idea of vampire theology fascinating. I’m guessing writers before me have come up with something like this. If anybody knows of any examples of vampires worshipping some sort of new (or ancient) religion, I’d love to hear about it.

Another infrastructure question: within (rough guess) five years of the vampire majority’s existence, car manufacturers have overhauled their designs to accommodate them, the government is tackling vampire rights issues, houses have been designed and constructed to avoid sunlight… I remember reading some article about Minority Report that talked about its infrastructure (particularly the vertical highways that ran right over buildings). Although they speculated that such infrastructure changes/improvements are within our grasp (or will be in the near future), the amount of time and money required for such drastic overhauls made it implausible that any such construction projects would be finished by the time the movie takes place, assuming said projects were approved and budgeted tomorrow.

Daybreakers reminded me a bit of that. Everything has changed, yes, but it all seems so quick and painless. Set it 20 or 25 years in the future, and I’d probably buy it. Better yet — set it in the present day but in a parallel universe where this vampire “virus” plagued mankind centuries ago, and we’ve progressed to a certain degree, but things are bad. I just can’t accept that, within the span of 10 years (I’m being generous in assuming the “2017” date implies this draft was written in 2007), a vampire plague would transform most of mankind, they would all pick themselves up and dust themselves off and revitalize the planet with vampire-centric improvements on current human technology, and they would find themselves careening toward a world-destroying food shortage. Maybe it’s not so much the time factor as much as the remarkable efficiency of the construction/manufacturing ends of it don’t sync up with the stupidity involved in the food supply.

If you read this far, you might be wondering why I’ve gone off on tangents about what amounts to backstory without addressing the narrative itself or the characters. The short answer: this script gave me nothing else to think about.

The story is becoming a Hollywood nuisance: a generic action script that tosses in horror movie tropes to make it seem a little more inventive. I love horror movies. I love action movies. I’d probably love an action-horror movie if someone ever made a good one. The problem is — nobody’s trying to combine the genre. They just want to make shitty action movies, and they think grafting an obvious horror gimmick onto it will make it seem unique. (Man, I can’t wait to rip into David Hayter’s Wolves, assuming it ever gets made. Spoiler alert: it’s the embodiment of this shitty sort of writing. Holy fuck is it a flaming turd.) So, to that end, there really isn’t much story, or much character. Everything’s just a bunch of gaudy jewelry to disguise how bland and unappealing the action sequences dominating the script are. (And can we declare a moratorium on shitty horror/action scripts using the “viral pandemic” thing as its “ripped from the headlines” explanation for How It Happened? It’s as sloppy and stupid as the many ’50s B-movies that used radiation as the default explanation.)

To put it another way: you know things are bad when one character has to ask another if Audrey is the love interest. They have no chemistry on the page, and no relationship develops. It’s one of those situations where Ed is the male lead, and Audrey is the female character with the most screen time — therefore, she’s the love interest. On the plus side, at least the writers didn’t devote any time to explaining the nonexistent chemistry in the action block or having Ed and Audrey banter about how “real” their relationship is.

But things get worse: throughout the script, the writers toss in boldfaced, underlined, italicized statements like BIG JUMP, SHOCK, or (my personal favorite) BIG SCARE MOMENT. Instead of, you know, actually shocking or scaring us. Really? This passes for writing these days?

Go through the synopsis, or read the script yourself (or see the movie), and tell me if there’s anything — other than the setting — you haven’t seen before, and better. Maybe that’s not such a big deal, because this script seems more interested in its setting than anything else. A script needs more than a unique setting, but the only thing Daybreakers has going for it is the relatively novel universe — and they even fuck that up. What a colossal disappointment.

Posted by Stan on January 5, 2010 4:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (9)

December 25, 2009

Black List 2009 – Black Christmas Wrap-Up

To recap:

The Muppet Man — A dreadful script that manages to dramatize much of Jim Henson’s life without ever providing any insight into what drove him to create.

The Social Network — A quick, compelling read thanks to Sorkin’s ease with generating conflict and suspense almost entirely through well-written dialogue. The script also wisely focuses on Mark Zuckerberg and the other people involved in the foundation of Facebook more than the story of its founding.

The Voices — A flat-out great script — funny, insightful, tragic, and brilliant. One of the best scripts I’ve ever read. If it can make it through development unscathed, it’ll be one hell of a movie.

Prisoners — Too much intricately plotted story, too little anything else.

Cedar Rapids — A mild-mannered but genuinely funny comedy. As a frequent visitor of Cedar Rapids, it’s nice to see a story set there that doesn’t condescend to what idiots assume “flyover country” responds to.

Londongrad — One hell of a dull docudrama, telling an interesting story in a remarkably lifeless way.

L.A. Rex — A convoluted yet hackneyed look at policing in South Central L.A. Full of everything you’d expect and little you wouldn’t (I didn’t see the pit sequence coming, so they have that going for them): gangsters with ties to celebrities, dirty cops, a veteran partnered with a rookie.

Desperados — A bland but genial comedy that suffers from an overdose of Idiot Plot.

The Gunslinger — Dull Country for Old Men

By Way of Helena — An historical drama that manages to combine three of my favorite subjects (religious battles, post-Civil War America, and hunting men for sport) without making any effort to make the subjects compelling

The Days Before — A sci-fi comedy that gets off on its own cleverness, which is particularly irksome because the script is not as clever as it thinks it is. It’s pretty much just Independence Day with a darker edge and time travel.

It’s not easy to draw any conclusions about why these scripts were as well-received as they are. Some (The Social Network and The Voices) are legitimately great despite the possible marketing problems in the future. Some flat-out sucked (The Muppet Man and By Way of Helena), which makes me question the politics of the whole List, as I did last year. Except, unlike last year’s flawed List, I can’t figure out why anyone would expect something like By Way of Helena to make money. It’s as esoteric as it is bad. At least The Muppet Man, for all its flaws, has a sizable built-in audience.

Other than the ends of the bell curve, the remaining scripts — for all their strengths and weaknesses — are pretty much genre fare, with all the trappings (Idiot Plot, convolution in place of real thrills) that usually make big movies sort of suck. Why film executives would like these scripts makes sense, but it shakes my faith in the development process.

Of course, my trending-positive feelings about the development cycle are no match for my utter confusion about the writing itself. As I’ve said many times, I’m under the (apparently misguided) notion that writers always put their best foot forward — it’s development that saps originality and causes a once-tight script to turn into an unwieldy mess. Because, of course, the writers have to accommodate the input of dozens of people, making them all happy without ever making the audience happy. That’s fine, and I respect that process…

But if what I just spent two weeks reading are selling drafts, as they allegedly are, then I consider it a problem. That’s before the crush of development, the pristine scripts that writers moan and complain about when the final product doesn’t match their original vision. Maybe they had to hastily revise the script in order to get it sold, but that doesn’t say anything positive about the sellers or the buyers. Even so, if you go to a Honda dealership and say, “Hey, do you have that Civic in yellow?” they don’t go to Lowe’s, buy a bucket of house paint, and slap on a coat so they can sell you that particular car. They take the time (and service charges) to painstakingly customize your car, giving you exactly what you want with the highest possible quality. In part, it’s because they want you to buy it for the highest possible price, but the reward is obvious: if you see a Civic with peeling canary-yellow house paint, you don’t just judge the idiot who bought it — you judge the dolts who sold it looking like that. It’s a poor reflection on that particular salesman, or his dealership, or Honda in general.

Maybe it’s a deadline problem. I don’t know. To stick with the Honda/housepaint analogy, even if they were on a deadline, wouldn’t they try their best to hide such a low-grade scam? Brushing on some cheap paint but taping the fuck out of it and maybe spraying it with some kind of sealing polymer to make it slightly less noticeable? In other words: even with finite resources (such as time and money) available, do the best possible work. Given the sold products of some of these scripts (Prisoners, I’m looking at you), if this is the best possible work, no wonder nobody has any respect for screenwriters. Unless they cobbled a rewrite together during a caffeine-fueled all-nighter, to paraphrase Billy Wilder, “This is shit, Mr. Chandler.”

Posted by Stan on December 25, 2009 7:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

Black List Script #10B: The Days Before by Chad St. John

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

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

Logline (provided by The Black List): “A man who possesses a time travel device uses it to go back in time to prevent an alien invasion.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Around 7PM on December 26, 2011, JAMES SMITH and girlfriend RILEY (who records everything on a small camcorder) speed through Washington, D.C., in an old tank of a Bonneville, chased by the police. Smith has a timer on his watch that has about an hour left on it. The Bonneville races toward the White House, using its unwieldy size and weight to smash through barricades. The car ends up flipping, allowing the police to get at Smith and Riley. They demand that the police look in the car’s trunk. Later, an angry Smith is interrogated by COLONEL BODETTE, who wants to know how Smith got an XM-97 prototype, his weapon of choice. Smith explains they’re all over the place where he comes from. Later, Bodette discovers a second James Smith — not a twin; the same person — is sitting in a D.C. jail. The bomb squad opens the trunk. What’s inside remains a mystery, but it’s surprising and impressive enough to get the attention of DEFENSE SECRETARY KRONAU and PRESIDENT MALLOY, who immediately requests the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Space Command, and NASA. Thunderstruck, they all turn to Smith for advice…just as his watch alarm beeps. Smith demands to know where Malloy was 48 hours ago. Malloy is too shaken to respond. Meanwhile, in Riley’s (empty) interrogation room, she hears an eerie sound, like metal scraping. As it grows louder, Malloy is led away without answering Smith. Meanwhile, Smith has been holding a Blackberry that abruptly powers on.

From inside the interrogation room, things outside seem to be going badly. Smith and Riley hear gunshots and screams. The shadow of something disturbing and unseen creeps into Smith’s interrogation room, but he plays dead. Riley climbs up into the ceiling to hide. Smith comes after her. Together, they move through the underground interrogation room, seeing signs of violence but no bodies. Bodette, Kronau, Malloy, and a bunch of Secret Service move through the White House. Smith tells Riley nothing matters but getting to Malloy. He tells her to tell him if she sees “him.” “Him who?” “Him, him,” which doesn’t make sense but terrifies Riley. Malloy and Kronau are the only ones to make it to a safe room, but the blast door has been torn apart and the place is drenched in blood. Smith and Riley find Malloy, who’s dying. Smith demands to know every detail of what was happening with Malloy 48 hours ago. Malloy dies as something huge — ostensibly “him” — arrives, coming after them. They rush outside, trying to get away from the White House. He kills Riley, and as Smith takes back the camcorder, he pushes some buttons on the Blackberry that suddenly wink him out of existence…

…and into 48 hours ago, December 24th. Exhausted, Smith staggers into a nearby bus station and collapses. The next morning, Smith goes to a coffee shop where Riley works. She doesn’t seem to know Smith at all. He apologizes and promises he won’t let her die again. Riley’s baffled. Smith leaves. Meanwhile, Malloy and Kronau attend a funeral for the First Lady and Malloy’s daughter, who died in an unexpected plane crash. Smith steals a taxi and hauls ass to a D.C. street. At a tenement building, he manufactures low-grade napalm and “paints” something on the side of the building. As the Presidential motorcade drifts by, they stop. Written in flames is the President’s top-secret distress code. They arrest Smith, who has come bearing gifts: a blood sample and finger belonging to Malloy, plus alien tissue samples. His camcorder is both tiny and can hold 300 terabytes of data, containing years of footage depicting a horrific alien attack. Bodette’s XM-97 prototype is accounted for, meaning whatever Smith has told them — ostensibly that he’s a time traveler warning of an impending attack — checks out.

Malloy, Kronau, and Bodette interrogate Smith. They want to know what’s going on. Smith explains that aliens will invade Earth for the first time seven years from now, but they have a keen strategy to make humans an unending food source: they gorge on humanity for 24 hours, then jump back in time 48 hours and start over again. When they arrive, Smith uses his own time-traveling Blackberry to travel back and spends 24 hours trying to warn the proper officials before they attack again, and he jumps back again. He can’t travel earlier than 48 hours because his Blackberry is actually an alien device written in an undecipherable language. If the aliens are so secure with their technology, Malloy asks how Smith got his Blackberry. Smith explains that, seven years from now, an old man randomly gave it to him, showed him the five-button sequence to press, then threw himself in front of bus. Smith demands to speak to a scientist, Dr. Constantine Oro, which Malloy approves despite Kronau’s lack of enthusiasm. Looking at the global panic situation, Malloy scrambles military throughout all the major cities. Smith explains to the military how to attempt to fight them. The White House press secretary explains that the country is at its highest alert but tells people not to panic and gives no further details. Riley is pulled out of her coffee shop by Secret Service and taken to the White House. On the ride over, she’s joined by DR. ORO, who’s effectively Brent Spiner’s character in Independence Day.

Smith tries to convince Riley that, in the future, they’re married. She doesn’t buy it. Malloy calls them both into the war room, where Riley sees the horrific footage of alien attacks and suddenly finds herself believing every word Smith says. Kronau asks Smith if he becomes President in the future. Oro examines Smith’s Blackberry, stunned that such a small device could provide the energy required to create a wormhole through time. Smith knows Oro has a particular project, so the convoy heads out to Oro Industries, an abandoned factory in a dumpy part of D.C. In Oro’s basement lab, a huge contraption built around an intricate mirror array waits for them. He built the device for the military, which would have allowed them to send brief warning messages a few minutes back in time if it had been completed (funding was cut before he could see it through). If they had the right amount of energy, the device could theoretically send anything and everything back in time at least 15 years — when he first built the prototype — so Smith offers up his Blackberry, suggesting they use its power source (the alien ships) to send something back in time, to give them more advance warning. Oro doesn’t believe he has nearly enough time. It’s already 3PM, and Smith says the aliens arrive like clockwork at 8PM — on rare occasions, they show up earlier, but it’s almost always eight. Oro is terrified about the ramifications of sending a message to the past, which will change everything. They all realize they don’t have a choice.

Oro and Bodette watch video footage of the invasion. They realize all the ships are synced somehow, so they don’t accidentally crash. Whatever one ship does, the others do — there is no leader, just a big swarm of like-minded vehicles. Oro’s also shocked to discover that these aren’t exactly spaceships — they’re designed to operate in our atmosphere. President Malloy addresses the nation, alarming them with an honest account of what’s to come (which includes video footage). Smith concocts a message to send to the past, which a lab tech converts into binary code. Later, he sees Kronau altering the message somehow. Meanwhile, Oro tears apart Smith’s trusty Blackberry in order to power his own time machine. Riley and Smith share their first real romantic moment, but it’s interrupted when the Blackberry hums to life with a shower of sparks, followed by the groan of metal heard earlier. Smith checks his timer, but there are two hours left. He announces that they’re early.

They have to adjust their schedule, so Oro tries to send the message — and trips a breaker. It’s not the time machine, powered by the ships, but the laptop that has the message in it. Somebody has to reset the breaker — and that somebody is Smith. He races through the lab, resets the breaker, and is pleasantly surprised no aliens have attempted to kill him — until one appears. Smith kills it with his XM-97. He returns to the basement, and they hide, fearing the cacophony they hear outside. Oro sends the message, he thinks, but nothing has changed. Smith orders Oro to put his Blackberry back together. They decide to flee the basement, and not a moment too soon — the “silhouetted dragon” seen earlier (a.k.a., him) arrives. It eyes the mirror array with obvious intelligence. It understands what they’ve done. Smith tries to use the Blackberry to send himself and Riley back in time, but it’s no longer working. As aliens descend on them, Smith realizes Oro put one of the components in upside-down. He flips it, the Blackberry powers on, and he and Riley go back in time, to December 23rd. (Incidentally, they leave Oro behind when he becomes overwhelmed by what’s happening.)

Smith and Riley are already surrounded by soldiers — and Kronau, who is now the President. Malloy is now a vice admiral, Bodette is a general, and Oro…is exactly the same. The world has changed significantly — D.C. is an urban war zone, glutted with military. The Pentagon has expanded exponentially. Hundreds of millions died during riots that followed the initial panic after the message was announced. Military technology has improved to the point that these people are prepared for an attack. They strap Smith into something uncomfortably similar to Farscape’s Aurora Chair, which extracts Smith’s memories and displays them on computer monitors so Kronau and the others can see what they’re up against and strategize. The memory videos are instantly processed by the computer to give vital information about the alien infrastructure. As Riley is dragged to a similar chair, she’s surprised to see a display of Smith’s memories of her — sweet, yet she dies over and over again. Later, Kronau and Malloy plan to send Smith and Riley to the front lines. They need everyone to fight if they stand a chance.

Inside a military chopper, Riley is pissed. Among other things, she’s noticed Smith doesn’t have a wedding ring. Smith makes excuses. He notices Riley nervously fingering something — the laser mirror array. She explains the silhouetted dragon dropped it just before they left. Smith panics and demands they turn the chopper around. They refuse, so Smith and Riley fight back — resulting in the chopper inadvertently spinning out of control. Riley falls out of the helicopter and onto the roof of a building where Oro awaits the end of the world. Smith is also thrown out of the helicopter, landing on another roof, before the chopper crashes. Smith rushes toward Bodette and convinces him that one of the aliens has uncovered their plan, and the only logical thing to do in that scenario is attack sooner, to gain what little surprise element they can. Kronau and Malloy gripe about this hitch in their plans — their strategy was based around a coordinated surprise attack, to catch them off guard. They can’t just change the strategy. Outside, the groaning metal sound starts again. Ships and dragon aliens appear. This time, they’re even more heavily armored than usual — they know what to expect and have prepared for it. The streets of D.C. are instantly filled with carnage. The silhouetted dragon, no longer in silhouette (and revealed as a one-eyed dragon), appears, sniffing around for something. Reports come in that major cities have fallen or are falling.

Riley drags Oro into the building. Smith, injured, meets her in the same building. Smith operates under the assumption that when Kronau confiscated his Blackberry, he destroyed it. Dr. Oro knows he didn’t. Kronau is at Oro’s lab, using the Blackberry to send yet another message back, feeding him more information he can use for political gain. Smith, Riley, and Oro try to sneak through the streets of D.C. They come upon a fire station and steal a truck. Oro flips the siren on, drawing the dragons’ attention. One climbs on the roof. Riley shoots it, and it falls, pulling the roof off with it. As more dragons approach, it looks like they’re done for — when they all suddenly stop. They’re suddenly deferential — because 60-foot dragon queens have descended from something resembling a mothership. Smith, Riley, and Oro get down to the basement lab, but the one-eyed dragon is on to them. Threatening Riley, the one-eyed dragon orders them to “undo” the messages they’ve sent back. Oro sends a message back to himself to disregard all the other messages, which will revert the timeline. Despite complying with his order, the one-eyed dragon still squeezes Riley’s neck and begins shooting blades at the others. General Bodette suddenly appears, worse for wear, and shoots the one-eyed dragon. This knocks him away from Riley but doesn’t kill him — so Riley grabs some live wires and jams them into a puddle of water, which fries the one-eyed dragon’s electronic brain implant.

Smith takes the Blackberry, and they flee. Rather than simply going back another two days to warn the others, Smith and Oro hatch a scheme. Realizing a low voltage overloads their brain implant, they wonder what would happen if they overloaded the computers in one of the ships. Since all the ships operate together, if one goes down, they all go down. Bodette leads them to a blood-spattered lab filled with high-tech equipment, which allows them to analyze the ships. They map the ship and find the location of its control computer. Oro points out that it’s a suicide mission — if they go into a ship 2000 feet in the air, overload the computer, and then jump back in time, there will be no ship, which means they’ll fall to their deaths. They decide to go with it. As Smith, Oro, and Bodette prepare to leave, Riley is angry — she’s finally found him, and now he’s going to kill himself. Smith doesn’t care. He hugs her, secretly duct-taping his Blackberry to her back, which he activates. She shoves him away and disappears through time, pissed when she realizes what is happening.

Smith, Oro, and Bodette hitchhike on floating bodies to get inside the ship. They’re forced to walk through a “scary dark corridor” in order to get to the computer control area. Several times, they’re almost spotted, but they manage to hide long enough. They get the drop on one, which they kill, but not before it kills Bodette. They finally get to the computer, which Oro realizes is protected by a rudimentary containment field — all they need to do is turn it off, and the electrical energy will overload the computer’s circuits. Only — they can’t figure out how to turn off the containment field. Finally, Smith is forced to punch a hole in the floor, which he tosses Bodette’s body through. Bodette’s body, in turn, punches a hole in the containment field, overloading the ship. As energy amasses, threatening to destroy them, another one-eyed dragon appears, ready to kill them. He does kill Oro, but Smith flees. In his attempts to escape, Smith tumbles right out of the ship, followed by the one-eyed dragon. Smith clings to a floating person, a soldier. Smith grabs his pistol, shoots the one-eyed dragon in his one eye, and grabs his Blackberry as he falls. Smith does a swan dive, entering the sequence as he goes, disappearing through time four feet from the ground.

Two days earlier, Riley runs through D.C. to Oro Industries, where she finds Smith in a pool of his own blood. Smith admits she never married him, that he couldn’t even get her to go out with him, but he fell in love with her and forced himself to continually save her, whether she loved him back or not. She cradles Smith as he dies. On Christmas, Riley sits at the café, watching a news report about the First Lady and Malloy’s daughter skipping their helicopter flight, avoiding catastrophic failure. Another report shows Oro getting arrested for charging a Presidential podium and demanding he allocate a grant for SETI. Smith arrives at the café, surprised that this total stranger bailed him out of jail. He asks if he knows her. Riley says, “Not yet.” She asks him to go on a walk with her. Arm in arm, they stroll into a D.C. Christmas portrait. All the while, Riley’s Blackberry lies in a trash can. It powers on.

Notes

In writing, time travel is a bloodsport. If it isn’t played exactly right, it can turn a decent story idea into a complete fucking disaster.

The Days Before isn’t played exactly right.

Let me describe the problem with the time travel logic. It’s pretty convoluted, so bear with me. Okay, so you have the aliens. They have these Blackberry devices that are preprogrammed to travel 48 hours into the past. They eat and pillage for 24 hours, then jump 48 hours in the past. Then, there’s Smith. He travels 48 hours in the past the instant they arrive. So let’s say 12/26 at 8PM is the first-ever time Smith traveled. He goes back to 12/24 at 8PM. The aliens eat and pillage until 12/27 at 8PM, then jump back to 12/25 at 8PM. Smith immediately jumps back, to 12/23 at 8PM. The aliens eat and pillage until 12/26 at 8PM, then jump back to 12/24 at 8PM. Smith immediately jumps back, to 12/22 at 8PM. The aliens eat and pillage until 12/25 at 8PM, then jump back to 12/23 at 8PM. So there’s a pattern, and believe it or not, the pattern pretty much works if you’re going for the “free will” interpretation of time travel. I.e., that time travel is not a predetermined course of action, meaning if you travel back in time and step on a butterfly, it will have dire ramifications on the future; whereas, in the “predetermined” variation on time travel that makes things a lot less messy, you go back and step on a butterfly and it has no effect, because it was always supposed to happen, because you were always there. Did I just blow your mind?

The cracks in the façade start to appear right around the time they decide to send the message 15 years into the past. The aliens travel back 48 hours for every 24 hours of slaughter, which means the men of the past lose 48 hours for every 24 hours they spend planning a counterattack…right? This where things get complicated and started to lose logical traction with me. Because, yes, in a free universe, sending a message to the past saying, “The world will end on December 23, 2011 — here’s how to prepare,” seems like it would make sense. It’s more complicated than that, though. If they have all the information — nobody really ever says what’s in the message, other than Kronau tampering with its content, but it seems strongly hinted that they know enough to be prepared — wouldn’t a smart person draw the conclusion that the end of the world could actually occur anywhere between 7.5 and 15 years from the date the message was received? Because the aliens are barreling at them twice as fast as time is occurring, right? I know a tangent universe is supposed to be an instantaneous change to the timeline, but time isn’t completely fluid, either… Is it?

Whether it is or isn’t, doesn’t the new world fragment everything, creating that universe-destroying paradox Doc Brown warned about in Back to the Future Part II? Because if the entire universe changes, that means Smith changes. It means what will happen seven years in the future changes. If hundreds of millions died in riots, how do we know Smith, the old man, or someone integrally related to the most important moment in the script (Smith receiving the Blackberry) isn’t affected? How do we know the new circumstances of Smith’s military-dictatorship lifestyle won’t change the way he reacts to receiving the Blackberry? Maybe he won’t be the type of person who’s interested in saving the world. This, then, is the problem with the “free will” time travel story: if one moment has permanent ramifications on the universe, those ramifications continue through the present and into the future. Smith and Riley should not be isolated from it, because that just doesn’t make sense. (And yes, it’s a super-cheat to not show any “effect” of the message until Smith and Riley jump again, thus sticking “our” unaffected Smith and Riley into a totally separate tangent universe.)

Even if this, in and of itself, didn’t at least call this plot point into question, here’s something that may: ultimately, the script comes down to overloading the ship fleet’s computers. In the second act, Dr. Oro and Smith decide based on no concrete evidence that they have an “unlimited” power supply — obviously it’s limited by the amount of power the ship needs for propulsion, human-snatching, etc. — to tap into in order to get Oro’s machine working. Oro says that, theoretically, if they can harness the power of the Blackberry, he can send “anything” through time… So why is it that they’re hellbent on sending nothing more than binary code messages? Why not send a person through time, just as Smith himself came back prepared with fingers and tissue samples and video? Not just for the sake of that being a little more dramatically interesting than sending what amounts to a telegram, but for the sake of their own preparedness. They’re relying on a little too much the assumption that they can nab Smith on a particular day, analyze everything he has with him, and magically be able to fight back within 24 hours, despite their plan resting on a coordinated attack among billions.

This concludes the super-nerd dissection portion of the screenplay. On to the normal shit, like story and character…

Strip away the time travel element, and this is just a gorier Independence Day. Not much wrong with that, except for the part where Independence Day already exists and isn’t the terrible movie certain people allege. Maybe this script asks headier questions than ID4 — most of them related to the partially broken time travel concept — but it’s asking the wrong questions. Here’s the #1 question I asked: why are these aliens here? “To eat people” isn’t good enough. What kind of civilization needs to feed so much that they raze a civilization not once, not twice, but in perpetuity until, as far as we know, they get so far back in time that the human race diminishes from billions to a few million? What happens when Earth no longer provides a sustainable level of food? Granted, we never find out why the aliens in Independence Day showed up, but guess what? Those aliens didn’t have a diabolical scheme in place to (a) eat everyone and (b) travel back in time to eat them again. The only thing we learn about The Days Before’s aliens is that they’re apparently feeding enormous queens. Why do they need so much? Is this the preparation for some sort of extended hibernation? Do they need to eat constantly like sharks? Who the fuck knows? St. John doesn’t take the time addressing questions like this.

In fact, he spends a little too much time being coy. That whole “Him, him” style of writing drove me slightly insane, because it smacks of a writer being clever for the sake of cleverness, and frankly, it’s not clever. It’s just coy, which is like an annoying version of clever. Examples of this abound: hiding the aliens the audience knows are aliens, hiding what Malloy initially tells Smith (or even the fact that he tells him anything) from the audience — most of this stuff hinders the story rather than helping it. When it doesn’t hinder the story, it feels more like St. John is being saucy by pointing out things he assumes the audience is thinking about without addressing them with any real substance. Movies are inherently about manipulating audiences, but audiences don’t generally want a movie to manipulate them into feeling frustration. When The Days Before isn’t reveling in the flawed execution of its convoluted time travel mechanics, it’s offering up annoying moments like these.

As an unfortunate result of this tendency toward adorable coyness, the relationship between Smith and Riley is basically one huge macrocosm of why the coyness doesn’t work. The script tries so hard to be edgy and ironic and post-post that it forgets the audience is supposed to get somewhat invested in them. It just backs away from real emotion, opting instead for pithy dialogue that violates one of the central tenets of comedy writing: it’s always funnier when the characters don’t know they’re in a comedy. Smith and Riley both know it, and so does St. John, so he tries so hard to subvert clichés that the relationship isn’t interesting, which makes it hard to care when one of the characters ends up in jeopardy and the other either dashes off to help or preemptively mourns them. Worse than that, St. John doubles back into creepy sincerity with Smith’s disconcerting declaration that Riley wouldn’t give him the time of day and only fell in love with him — multiple times — because he convinced her she would someday marry him. How does that make him, or the relationship, in any way likable? It’s the sort of weird explanation that sheltered men believe makes women melt, when in reality any female with a shred of sanity and/or fewer than three cats would file a restraining order. As opposed to, say, finding the still-alive version of Smith and forcing the relationship to blossom.

Throughout the script, I kept waiting for something unexpected to happen. The first act presents itself as a theoretically inventive script, so why is it that the best it has to offer is a warmed-over Independence Day with a variation on the familiar “time-loop” sci-fi plot and, even better, the “I’ve changed history so we’re all sinister pseudo-Nazis” sci-fi plot? Simply tossing familiar ideas into a blender doesn’t make a story unique. And I wouldn’t care much if it were unique or not if it had something else to sell (like strong characters and/or compelling, if familiar, relationships).

And there are still more crazy sci-fi questions, because I am that much of a nerd:

If the aliens figured out the ingenious scheme hatched by Smith and Dr. Oro, why wouldn’t they simply travel to an earlier, unexpected point in time and start anew? Why would they, instead, prepare for a battle they’re so uninterested in fighting that the one-eyed dragon sashays up to the humans and says, “Deus ex machina” — whoops, I meant to write, “Undo.”

Since the ultimate plan is a deus ex machina (on par with Independence Day’s “let’s send them a computer virus,” Signs’ “they’re allergic to water,” and War of the Worlds’ “hey, our microscopic germs are too much for them to handle”) that involves shorting out their power, couldn’t they do the same thing from afar? Remember, the mystical Blackberry draws on their power, and Oro states that they could theoretically send more through time, as long as they had more power — again, this is a concept that is introduced but dropped without any legitimate explanation or dismissal — couldn’t they do something completely insane like try to send a building back through time, drawing so much power that the ships can no longer operate? Better yet, couldn’t they amass as many people as humanly possible to send them all back 15 years to re-prepare, and then give it the ol’ Serling twist (since we’re already mining an ass-ton of sci-fi tropes) that the effort to save humanity really saves humanity (by drawing so much power away from their ships, they all crash)? It’s not art, but it’s off the top of my head and I’d still qualify it as more clever as what actually happens.

Since when are there outdoor cafés in Washington, D.C., in late December? I’m seriously asking. If D.C. residents, or anyone else living in a cold-weather climate, have seen such a thing and can provide photographic evidence, I’ll gladly shake St. John’s hand. So far, though, this is the most innovative sci-fi concept in the script.

Once they get the Blackberry back (after Kronau claims to have destroyed it), why don’t they simply jump again — the aliens have already arrived, remember — and warn themselves to make sure to anticipate the “surprise” attack? (The answer is not, “Because the one-eyed dragon told them to ‘undo’ what they did,” because they could just as easily undo the undo. And besides, who in his right mind would receive messages from the fucking future and then just say, “Oh, future me is telling me to disregard the bit about a massive, civilization-destroying alien attack — I guess I should listen”?) The problem doesn’t have a thing to do with the fact that they want to end this once and for all, in case that’s what you were thinking. Nobody in the script mentions the “jumping two days back” thing as an alternative, and nobody ever really acknowledges wanting to overload a ship’s computer to end the invasion permanently rather than just stalling for some more time. It’s simply accepted that this is the only way to go, but even if they wanted to roll ahead with that plan, jumping back to prepare might allow them to pack these nifty things they call “parachutes” so they won’t plunge to their deaths.

At the very end, Riley is sent back 48 hours. A few minutes later, Smith is sent back 48 hours. They meet, he gives his creepy speech about lying to her and semi-stalking her, then dies. But there’s still another Smith — the one who was in jail — so Riley bails him out and they share a sappy moment. It’s a nice ending, except for the part where there’s another Riley in this timeline. What happened to her?

Look, The Days Before moves like a motherfucker, but it’s another one of those scripts that keeps hurling shiny objects so the audience won’t notice the total lack of substance. What the hell do you do with that? You can either love it because all the distractions make your eyes boggle at its invention (because you’ve apparently never seen a sci-fi movie and, as a result, convince yourself that this script actually is inventive), or you can take a minute to think about what you’re reading and realize it doesn’t add up to anything substantial.

The Bottom Line

Well, you can’t get rid of the time travel without turning this into a remake of Independence Day. The easiest ways to make this script work is to drop the coquettish attempts at cleverness, make Smith’s relationship with Riley more believable and interesting, and (obviously) shore up the holes in the time travel logic. Based on the numerous explanations, St. John seems to think the complexities are airtight, but they’re just not. This project would be a lot better off if audience members didn’t go to some dumpy diner afterward to discuss it and realize it doesn’t make any actual sense. But it has some fun moments and St. John keeps the pace flying, so the fixes are honestly a bit more minor than they seem. They just require a great deal of thought.

Posted by Stan on December 25, 2009 7:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

Black List Script #10A: By Way of Helena by Matt Cook

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 Texas Ranger and his wife move to a frontier town to investigate the disappearance of Mexicans in the area, and soon find themselves caught in the cult of personality that rules the area.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Helena, Texas. 1857. ABRAHAM BRANT (20s), a tall, muscular, hairless man, stands opposite JESSE KINGSTON (30s), with supportive crowds gathered on either side. An ill man, SAUL, introduces the conflict: godly Abraham and godless Jesse are to fight a duel. Muttering scripture, Abraham kills Jesse rather easily. Among the spectators is a small boy, who 30 years later grows up to be DAVID KINGSTON (30s), a Civil War hero and Texas Ranger tasked by the governor to go to the small village of Mount Hermon, because dead Mexicans keep washing up downriver of that town, and one of the latest corpses turned out to be the nephew of an influential Mexican general. The governor warns David about Abraham, who runs the town. David doesn’t remember him from the past, and he doesn’t believe the legends that now float around about him — that he’s a fearless Indian killer who is still right enough with God to heal the sick like Jesus.

David goes home to his Mexican wife, MARISOL (20s), to tell her he’s leaving on the trip. She insists on going with him. They stock a wagon and ride off through hill country and into the desert. Nestled in the Davis Mountains is Mount Hermon, which they arrive at after a brief respite at Fort Davis. A mile outside town, they reach ISAAC riding with a few men. He tells them they need to see the Preacher — Abraham. Isaac leads them through the small, pristine town to the Town Hall, where he introduces them to Abraham. He’s a gregarious, seemingly friendly man who introduces the significantly less friendly Isaac as his son. Abraham offers them a fine cottage for lodgings. He asks them about their religious beliefs — Marisol claims to be spiritual but not religious, while David doesn’t exactly answer the question. Left alone, the couple unpack. David marvels at the sturdy construction of the cabin. Marisol feels uneasy — Abraham sort of creeped her out, acting is if he knew them both and knew they were coming. David tries and fails to comfort her.

The next morning, David rides through town. He comes upon Abraham and Isaac. Isaac prepares to lead a hunting expedition with several men. Abraham shows David around and asks how they ended up in Mount Hermon. David says he and Marisol wanted to get away from it all. Abraham asks how long they’re staying, and when David says only a few days, Abraham asks David to stay longer and offers him the position of town sheriff to secure his stay. David is reluctant, but Abraham, convinces him. Marisol is visited by a gaggle of women from town, who already know David is the sheriff. David examines the stretch of river where the corpses keep washing up. He finds rifle shells nearby. When he returns home, Marisol is still creeped out and feeling ill. She complains about the town and wants to leave. David insists they need to stay a short while longer, until he’s figured out what has happened. If Marisol wants to leave, she can return to Fort Davis. She says she’d never leave him. They make love.

The next day, David is examining his new digs at the jailhouse. He finds a rifle that matches the shells he found by the river. Meanwhile, Marisol gets a surprise visit from Abraham. After some initial awkwardness, Marisol is charmed by Abraham. David stops by Hoot’s brothel. Outside, Isaac makes the stern suggestion that David won’t like it there. David won’t listen to him — unafraid of dickish Isaac, he stands up to him, and Isaac allows him to move past. One of Hoot’s prostitutes, beautiful redhead NAOMI sidles up next to David. She warns him about the town, saying things like “you can’t just leave” and that Abraham both prophesied David and Marisol’s arrival and can hear every word uttered in Mount Hermon. David excuses himself, and outside he runs into Abraham. David talks with him about Isaac. Abraham laughingly agrees when David suggests Isaac needs a serious beating. A shopkeeper gives Abraham some chickens, which Abraham hands to David. When David returns home, Marisol is excited by the food. She’s less excited by how strange she feels. She tells David about Abraham’s visit, which he finds odd because Abraham never mentioned it. He tells her to be careful what she says. Marisol tells him she’d like to go riding tomorrow.

The next morning, Marisol looks sicker, but she insists on riding. Abraham, Isaac, and Naomi arrive. In offering them the opportunity to come to his Sunday service, Abraham is careful to point out that David and Naomi have already met, displeasing Marisol. David thanks them. David and Marisol go riding. Her condition seems to worsen. That night, she starts coughing and vomiting. The following day, at the sheriff’s office, David looks over marked maps of the area when Naomi bursts in, having been beaten by one of her “clients.” David demands to know who did it; Naomi tells him. He goes to Hoot’s, pistol-whips some of the men — despite Hoot’s protestation that Abraham takes care of these things — and drags the assailant back to the jail (all the while yelling at some townspeople to get the doctor). Meanwhile, Marisol wanders the streets, stopping in front of the town hall. Inside, Abraham gives a cult like sermon to most of the town. He sees Marisol, invites her in, and hands her a snake he’s using as a prop. He tells her if the snake bites her and she dies, her salvation is assured. She hands off the snake but does start to get into the sermon.

While the doctor treats Naomi, Isaac storms into the jail, displeased with David’s violence. When Isaac makes an unsavory comment about Marisol, David drags him out to the street and beats the shit out of him. Abraham and others arrive, watching with amusement. David takes Marisol back to the cabin. She’s still ill and behaving strangely, talking about Abraham like he’s a god of some sort. The next morning, David announces to Abraham that he and Marisol are leaving. Although Abraham makes veiled threats in Latin (which David doesn’t understand), he acts sort of pleasant about it. David documents what he’s learning in a journal he keeps. Naomi appears, warning David of danger and asking him to meet her at a creek on Sunday. The doctor visits Marisol. David asks if she can travel, but the doctor says it will kill her. The doctor mutters some scripture suggesting that she will be healed by a savior.

David meets Naomi. She says she’s running away to California and urges David to go with. Naomi tells him that Abraham says he knew David would come, that he knew David’s father, and that David would bring him a wife. David is alarmed by this, but he doesn’t understand it. He gives Naomi his horse and a compass, which he shows her how to use and points the way to California. He tells her to go quickly before the townspeople realize she’s gone. She goes. Disheveled, Marisol wanders into town, looking for Abraham. She collapses. One of the shopkeepers holds on to her. Meanwhile, in Hoot’s, Abraham, Isaac, and a bunch of men surround three newcomers: WILLIAM (50s) and his twin sons, JOHN and GEORGE. Abraham tells them about his time in the Civil War, meeting General Lee. As he describes a quaint scene in which he and his men arrived at the battlefield to help the soldiers, what is actually shown is Abraham and his men pillaging and scalping Union soldiers, to the disgust of General Lee and the other survivors. William and his sons are impressed. David is unimpressed, especially with the strangers’ obsession with killing. His take is that reading about killing has become a substitute for it, and that people who don’t fight in battles wonder what it would feel like to kill. Abraham offers that David seems to have an overburdened conscience; David suggests that Abraham should, as well, but Abraham argues that he’s doing God’s work.

David returns to the cabin to find it in disarray. Marisol holds a knife. She’s cut herself in several places and lies in a pool of blood. David cleans her cuts and bandages them, then announces they’re leaving in the morning. As he prepares the wagons the following morning, he realizes he’s left his journal at the jail. He heads into town to fetch it when he finds Abraham, Isaac, and others leading George, John, and William out of the jail, all holding rifles from the armory. They don’t see him, so he uses that to his advantage, following them deeper into the mountains. Abraham has a group of Mexicans living in what’s effectively a concentration camp. William, George, and John have paid to hunt them for sport. David is horrified, and although he’s a little terrified when Abraham appears to make direct eye contact with him and smile, Abraham never lets on that he’s actually seen David. Once William and his boys have made the kill, Isaac is left to bury the body. Instead, he pretends to shovel until Abraham and the others are out of sight, then dumps the corpse in the river.

Upon returning to the cabin, David finds most of the town is there. Inside, Abraham has tied Marisol to the bed and appears to be exorcising her or…something. David demands to know what’s going on, but Abraham merely says Marisol is no longer his. The crowd beat him and shove him outside. David heads back into town, where he pillages the general store, makes a bunch of molotov cocktails, and hurls them at most of the buildings in town. David goes to Hoot’s, where William and his boys are with Isaac, bragging about the hunt. He shoots and kills George to get their attention. David orders some prostitutes to get everyones guns. David demands to know how much William and John paid to hunt the Mexicans. David orders John to shoot one of Isaac’s men, or else David will kill William. Quivering with fear, John does as he’s asked. Abraham enters the bar. He explains what happened with David’s father in Helena, that he was an awful man and David has turned out better not being raised by him. Abraham is surprised to learn David hasn’t come to town for revenge. David explains his true purpose: that he’s a Texas Ranger investigating Mexicans who have washed up downriver. Abraham condescendingly points out that they bury their victims. David points out that Isaac merely tosses the bodies in the river, surprising Abraham.

Abraham brings David and Isaac outside to a knife duel, mirroring the duel between Abraham and Jesse 30 years ago. David kills Isaac with some difficulty. It takes enough of a toll on him that he falls unconscious. He wakes in the cabin, where Marisol redresses his stitches. She’s cold and distant. David tries to encourage her to remember their love. He dreams of their first meeting, making love, etc. Two days later, Abraham has found his journal and discovered some of David’s romantic poetry. Abraham offers David the opportunity to escape — if he can outlast a group of three hunters who have just arrived from Africa. David is in no condition to do this, but he has no choice. The hunters go after David, but they’re inept. David manages to make out two of the three, and Abraham is so disgusted by the third that he kills him himself. It’s just Abraham and David now. When Abraham runs into a ravine, David manages to unwedge a boulder, which pins Abraham to the ground. Refusing to kill him, David simply secures him to the ground with boulders, hoping nature will take its course. Abraham tries to draw a comparison between Marisol and the men David led in the war, suggesting that David thrives on people needing him to lead and help them. He jams a knife into Abraham’s arm, telling him to kill himself. Abraham tells him that’s a path to Hell, then tells Abraham he will see David again — they are bound to their fates. David returns to the Mexican camp and releases the prisoner, which include a helpless young woman named MARIA, whom David knows needs help.

Six months later, the Texas governor condescendingly explains to the Mexican general that no evidence of the freed Mexicans’ story of a prison exists, so therefore there’s nothing to investigate. The general asks about Abraham Brant; the governor explains that they found him, but he was in no condition to have done what the Mexicans accused. The general asks about David; the governor says he never heard from him, and he’s either dead or missing. The governor refuses the general’s request to send his own men to search for David. Somewhere in the mountains of Colorado, wealthy men arrive in a small town. They come upon Abraham reading David’s journal, leg missing above the knee. Marisol emerges from the house, with a new child. In a Mexican villa, David wakes from a bad dream. He’s now living with Maria, carefree.

Notes

Ugh.

So let’s see… “The Most Dangerous Game” in the Wild West, a religious conflict that makes There Will Be Blood seem subtle, and a repetitive subplot involving a character writer Matt Cook never compels us to care about? That’s By Way of Helena in a nutshell.

What scares you more? A guy who firmly believes in his own God-endowed self-righteous bullshit, or a guy who’s completely full of crap and invokes God as a limp justification for his horrendous actions? If you picked the latter, you might enjoy By Way of Helena. To me and others who aren’t idiots, this becomes the fatal flaw of the script. Part of the problem is that we never really get to know these people or what the fuck, exactly, is going on, but ultimately Abraham Brant seems like a man with too much self-awareness to really believe in his own Godliness. Part of this stems from the scene where he weaves a tale of bullshit about meeting Robert E. Lee when, in reality, he and his followers just pillaged and scalped — if he really believed that every action he takes is justified by the Lord, he’d tell the honest (if alarmingly contorted) truth rather than a complete lie. Because what Abraham tells them isn’t spun or distorted — it’s just horseshit. So if that’s horseshit, doesn’t that make everything else horseshit? This certainly explains his oddly good-humored view of the godless David or his tolerance of a decidedly un-fundie house of ill repute in his town, but it doesn’t make him into the pseudo-mythical walking terror this script is clearly aiming for. He’s just kind of a douchebag.

That’s not to say I’d rather have some sort of Unsolved Mysteries faith healer roaming about. All I want is a guy who really, with all his heart, believes his own hype. That seems to be the great debate with cultists: are these guys great bullshit artists who crassly manipulate people so they can bang a harem of underage girls, or is the reason they’re so convincing because they completely buy into their own full-of-shit beliefs, which compels others to believe? Here’s my cheat sheet, which comes with absolutely no psychological training: if he’s been on TV for 30 years, he doesn’t believe a goddamn word he says; if he leads a group of followers to an isolated compound that will ultimately result in the deaths of every member of the cult, including its leader, chances are he believes he talks to God. Make sense? Thought so.

So if Abraham isn’t a real threat, what does this script hinge on? The “mystery” of who’s dumping Mexicans? The one plus here is that writer Matt Cook gives us the “why” — something he neglects with the two other subplots (David vs. Abraham and Marisol’s descent into…whatever the fuck that is) — and although it’s deplorable, it’s also a storyline familiar to anyone who enjoyed John Leguizamo in The Pest. Or, you know, anyone who’s read “The Most Dangerous Game” or seen the thousands of adaptations and variations (The Pest among them). Now, there’s a reason this story has perpetuated for so long, so I guess I can’t complain about Cook using it here. It’s just that, with so little else to offer, a rehash of a 95-year-old story (that, itself, was probably lifted from somewhere else) isn’t much to hang one’s hat on.

So, then, I guess we’re left with David and Marisol. David, the taciturn “hero” who defies all dramatic sense by not having any clear desires or interests. Yes, he writes love poetry; yes, he was good in the war. But what does he want? He’s assigned the task of investigating the dead Mexicans. He doesn’t have any real desire to do anything but a good job, which is not exactly a riveting character trait. He makes no decision to take any action except what’s required of him, until it reaches a point where any man would be forced to take action. Also not riveting.

To put it in a different context, think about similarly structured western: Unforgiven. Like By Way of Helena, Unforgiven starts with a heaping helping of backstory, followed by the introduction of a taciturn hero who doesn’t explicitly state his motives. The explicitly part is important, because while he never says it allowed, it quickly becomes abundantly clear through conversation and that he wants at least one of three things: the reward money, redemption for his dark past, and/or to protect a woman who may share some similarities with his deceased wife. One of the most interesting parts of the story is seeing Munny reveal more and more of himself until all the cards on the table, allowing us to understand exactly why Munny has decided to take this on (as well as exactly what he’s capable of).

By Way of Helena eventually fleshes out David’s character, but he’s still never ascribed reasons for his behavior. In passing, Abraham suggests that David has a caretaker personality, but not much is made of it, and David’s actions don’t quite match Abraham’s speculation. Aside from that brief moment, no mention whatsoever is made of David’s internal motivations. A little would go along way toward explaining why he doesn’t just get the fuck out of Dodge at the first sign of Marisol’s illness. “Dutiful,” while a practical explanation, just isn’t terribly compelling.

Because of this massive problem with David’s characterization, his issues with Marisol are a flat-out bore. The scenes are repetitive — she shows increasing signs of illness and increasing signs of loyalty toward Abraham, while David non-reacts — but they add no dimension to either character. If Marisol refuses to come into her own, the least she could do is provide a reflection of the things David would never say aloud. Problem is, David would say them aloud — he writes and recites love poetry, for fuck’s sake. An interesting character trait predicated on explicitly stating, in blunt language, one’s feelings, and I still ran through 118 pages without having any idea who this person is or why he acted the way he did throughout the story. Some of his behavior is simple common sense; what isn’t just comes across like bizarre puppet theatre.

The Bottom Line

Let’s see… A pseudo-spiritual battle that is neither spiritual nor much of a battle, a romantic subplot that’s neither romantic nor meaty enough to qualify as plot of any kind, and a cheesy mystery that becomes vital to the cheesier third act? Overall, this year’s Black List scripts have been better than last year’s, because I’m at #10(A) and this is the first one that just completely flatlined, without any redeeming qualities or any suggestions on turning this into a story worth telling. The best choice here is to fly to a safe distance and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

Posted by Stan on December 25, 2009 5:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 24, 2009

Black List Script #9: The Gunslinger by John Hlavin

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 tough ex-Texas Ranger has unfinished business with the Mexican gangsters who tortured his brother to death, and when they kidnap his brother’s young son, he comes after them with everything he has got.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Texas Ranger PHIL ELCO (50s) is called to the scene of a murder. The victim: fellow Ranger Danny Hensley, who was tortured by drug dealers (who also kept him alive with medication so they could torture him longer). Phil calls Danny’s brother, Ranger SAM LEE HENSLEY (30s), who is shocked and upset. At the funeral, Sam Lee consoles Danny’s widow, DEBORAH. Sympathetically, Phil gives Sam Lee a tip from the DEA on the down-low: the house where Danny’s body was found is owned by a thug named BILLY FLIP. Strapped with guns, Sam Lee goes to a bar where Flip’s known to drink. He demands to know who killed his brother. Flip is reluctant to tell him until Sam Lee, a crack shot, shoots clean through the bartender’s security baseball bat while looking at him through the reflection flips glasses. Flip tells Sam Lee it was a man named DIEGO DELA, who frequents a whorehouse. Sam Lee pistol whips him for good measure, then heads out to find Diego. Sam Lee waits outside the house until the whores leave, then bursts in, guns blazing. He wants to know who Diego’s boss is, but when Diego refuses to tell him, Sam Lee murders him — along with most of his companions. Phil is rousted out of bed early the next morning by DEA agent STEVE KENNEDY (40s), who explains that one of Diego’s men was an informant who brought the DEA closer than ever to finding out who ran the Tarto drug cartel. Unhelpful, Phil tells Kennedy to prove Sam Lee’s involvement. Kennedy points out that Phil had access to the confidential DEA file that led Sam Lee to Flip, and then to Diego, but not even that convinces Phil to help Kennedy.

Seven years later, Sam Lee is released from prison. His old Ford Bronco waits for him, maintained and tuned by Phil, who now owns a gas and service station in town. After thanking Phil, Sam Lee goes to his isolated ranch house and starts working on repairs and security measures (including motion sensors and a panic room). One night, an attractive Mexican, ESTELLA, shows up on Sam Lee’s doorstep. She claims to be the father of Danny’s illegitimate child, who was kidnapped by a man named Emilio. She begs for help. Sam Lee refuses. He goes to Phil’s garage to see if Phil has an information about Emilio. Phil refuses to help him, fearing Sam Lee’s planning to kill again. Sam Lee explains the bit about Estella fathering Danny’s child, but Phil still won’t help. Sam Lee goes to the motel where Estella is staying and tells her to arrange a time and place to meet Emilio. Sam Lee will get her the $10,000 ransom. On the way to the Mexican bar where they’ve arranged to meet Emilio, Sam Lee meets up with Phil, who has dug up the information on Emilio: he’s known for kidnapping, he’s dangerous, and he always brings backup.

At the bar, EMILIO and his thugs hang around, keeping close watch over the kid, CARLITO. Sam Lee hands off the money, at which time Estella reveals she’s working with Emilio, who claimed he’d pay her half the ransom. Instead, Emilio kills her. They tie up Sam Lee and take him away. He goes quietly. In the basement of a Spanish hacienda, Sam Lee is tortured by FRANCISCO MORELES, the leader of the Tarto cartel. He claims to have protected Sam Lee during his prison sentence because one of the men Sam Lee killed was his nephew, so he wanted the pleasure of killing Sam Lee himself. He also tells a long story about how he got into the trade: he was a Mexican doctor making a low wage and working with inferior equipment. One night, a man came in with abdominal pain but refused to say what he had eaten. Because Moreles couldn’t care for him properly, the man died. When Moreles performed the autopsy, he learned the man had three condoms filled with heroin in his digestive tract. One had burst, but the other two were intact. Moreles took the intact condoms and changed careers. Moreles threatens Sam Lee with a deck of cards: if he cuts the deck and finds an ace of spades, he will kill Sam Lee. If not, he’ll just torture him. Moreles falls back on his medical training to torture without killing. He pulverizes Sam Lee’s shooting hand, detaches one of his corneas, and leaves Sam Lee to await further torture. Later, when somebody comes in to give him more medication, Sam Lee kills the man, takes his gun and all his medical syringes, and flees the seemingly empty hacienda.

He manages to get to Deborah’s house, begging for help (coincidentally, she’s a doctor). She wants to call an ambulance, but he refuses to let her. Sam Lee tells Deborah to call Phil, then passes out. When Phil arrives, Sam Lee has regained consciousness. He tells Sam Lee he knew it was an ambush but let it happen so he could be led to the man responsible for Danny’s death. Phil’s surprised to hear Moreles’s name — by this time, everyone knows who he is. Sam Lee asks for a favor, which Phil arranges: a sham funeral made real with proper paperwork. With everyone convinced he’s dead, Sam Lee can take some time to recuperate. He begs Deborah for help getting to Moreles. She’s reluctant to help — she doesn’t want Sam Lee to end up dead, too — but agrees when Sam Lee tells her about Danny’s kid. She takes Sam Lee out to practice shooting, but he has a hard time with his loss of depth perception and bad hand. When Deborah removes his cast, Sam Lee demands that she cut out the clotting areas that are making his hand swell.

Phil comes over to Deborah’s house. He subtly implies that Sam Lee should leave Deborah out of this. Sam Lee tells Phil it’s not over yet. That night, Sam Lee tries to test the grip of his bad hand. Deborah tells him he doesn’t need to do this — Moreles thinks he’s dead. Sam Lee reminds her about Carlito. Deborah tells Sam Lee she knew Danny was messing around and blames herself for pulling away when she found she couldn’t have kids. Sam Lee has a dream/memory of Danny getting involved in a hostage negotiation involving a child. Sam Lee sneaks into the scene and shoots Danny in the ass in order to get a clear shot at the perpetrator. Afterward, Danny yells at him for not allowing him to negotiate. Sam Lee tells Danny that when he dropped his gun (in order to gain some trust), all bets were off. The next morning, Phil helps Sam Lee rig his shoulder holsters so he can reach both guns even with his bad hand. He warns Phil about various traps he’s set around his ranch house and tells Phil to pick up Deborah and take her to the motel to wait it out. Deborah wakes up and finds a note from Sam Lee, telling her to go with Phil when he comes and giving her his bank account information just in case.

Sam Lee sets up a sniper perch on Moreles’s hacienda. He waits, staking out the place until the right moment. When the time is right, he wedges a stick on his Bronco’s accelerator and aims it at the hacienda. With the men distracted, Sam Lee takes most of them out from his sniper perch. Then, he moves in closer, where he kills the remaining people and gets to Carlito. Sam Lee promises Carlito safety and asks if he wants to come with him. Carlito goes. Sam Lee spreads out a deck of cards, all aces of spades. Moreles and his top men return to the hacienda and find all their men dead and the aces. Moreles tells his men to call any available mercenaries and offer a reward — on Phil and Deborah.

Sam Lee brings Carlito to the ranch house. He prepares for what he knows is coming and shows Carlito the panic room. He tells Carlito to lock himself inside and wait until he hears the password. Phil picks up Deborah and takes her to the motel. He leaves her in the room and goes to the attached diner to get some coffee. Billy Flip works the grill. He sees Phil; Phil sees him and knows what to expect. He returns to the room, where Deborah’s showering, and insists they must leave immediately. Deborah doesn’t understand and won’t give up her shower. It’s a moot point, because it’s too late — Phil only has time to call Sam Lee and warn him before SUVs full of gangsters show up. Sam Lee rushes to the motel. A wild gunfight ensues. Phil manages to hold his own against the many thugs, but it’s not enough — he’s fatally wounded. Sam Lee shows up in time to take out the remaining men, including Billy Flip, whom he kills in cold blood.

Meanwhile, Moreles and his mean have been waiting outside Sam Lee’s ranch house for him to leave. When he does, they go in and find the safe room. Sam Lee drags Deborah back to the ranch house, where he’s set up a sniper perch. Sam Lee’s annoyed to find that Moreles and his men are already there. He tells Deborah to call the sheriff, but Deborah doesn’t have a cell phone. He sends her to go and get the sheriff and bring him back. When she leaves, Sam Lee starts sniping. Moreles tells his men to cut the power. Sam Lee starts firing blind. Moreles knows Sam Lee can’t see anything, or else he won’t be missing. Two of Moreles’s men find the sniper perch. It seems like Sam Lee’s done for — but as they take one of his guns, he comes at them with another, killing them both.

Moreles instructs his men to set a small C4 charge to blow the safe room door. It doesn’t exactly work — the door opens slightly, enough for one man to get a hand through, but Carlito stabs him with a paring knife. Annoyed, Moreles decides to go with a larger charge — if it kills Carlito, so be it. His men set up the charge. Sam Lee moves closer to the house. He manages to kill everyone but Moreles, who grabs the detonator and threatens Sam Lee. Since they’re all in such close quarters, they all die if Moreles detonates the charge. In response, Sam Lee gives Carlito the password. Carlito fiddling with the locks momentarily distracts Moreles, giving Sam Lee the opportunity to shoot Moreles’s detonating thumb. Then, he shoots Moreles in the head. Carlito comes clear of the safe room just as the sheriff’s department surrounds the ranch house. Sam Lee sends Carlito out, telling him to find a woman named Deborah, who will take care of him. Then, still in the house, he detonates the charge, blowing the house sky high.

Carlito is introduced to Deborah. The sheriff is fine with this, seeing as how they’re pseudo-kin. They figure the explosion of the house means Sam Lee is really dead — but he’s not. He watches Deborah and Carlito’s awkward introduction before walking unnoticed into the night.

Notes

Another year, another low-rent No Country for Old Men knockoff.

Like last year’s The Low Dweller, The Gunslinger aspires to be some sort of heady, thought-provoking rumination on violence. Also like The Low Dweller, it’s relentlessly violent but doesn’t provoke much thought on the subject. It knows the notes and not the music, so it features a leaden pace that lacks suspense and a lot of theoretically meaningful conversations that don’t mean much. It’s pretty much a stock revenge action flick that’s desperate to be more. I’m getting a little sick of scripts like that. Remember when friends and family would get killed, and the big hero would go down to the basement, come back with a dufflebag full of guns, and the next hour would be a maniacal yet eminently satisfying killing spree? Why does everything have to be so plodding and pseudo-thoughtful? It’s probably more frustrating because many of these scripts — The Low Dweller and The Gunslinger included — are not thoughtful. They simply plod along, as if the deliberate pace of molasses alone constitutes deeeeeep meaning.

One disadvantage of The Gunslinger is that we only get to know Sam Lee’s brother — the one he’s fighting to avenge, also known as the most important person in this story — through sometimes on-the-nose dialogue and artless flashbacks. None of this works particularly well, feeling more like writer John Hlavin is trying to write himself out of a corner than anything else. It’s too little, too late. It’s easy enough to buy into Sam Lee’s thirst for revenge, but it might have been nicer to get to know these characters before Danny dies. Not just Danny himself, but also Phil and Deborah. We get a few glimmers of what Phil was like before the seven-year jump in time, but what about the others? Were they always so depressing and lifeless? (I say this knowing full well that The Low Dweller actually does use the first act to introduce us to all the notable characters, then kills off the brother and lets us watch the way each character changes as a result of his death. And I didn’t like that, either. Maybe the solution is just a dufflebag full of guns.)

No, no. Get out of the parenthetical, dufflebag full of guns. We need you. I’m not going to sit here and pretend this script had any redeeming qualities. It’s the sort of fucking script where the big villain rattles off James Bond villain speeches the protagonist doesn’t need to know but the audience does, the sort of script where the big villain uses the blood-curdling menace of playing cards in order to threaten the protagonist, and even that truly terrifying display of thin plastic rectangles serves as little more than a moment to lazily call back to during one of Sam Lee’s cheesy action-movie badass moments. How in God’s name did this script get so dull? Why does it refuse to just be a dopey, mindless shoot-‘em-up? It’d be a hell of a lot more fun, and it’s already pretty well dopey and mindless. Just accept it and blow shit up instead of bringing in kids for treacly sentimental moments or focusing on long sequences of people driving around, looking depressed.

Really, the only positive thing I can say about this script is that it shows the Mexico I remember, the one sorely missing from Desperados, but it’s all too brief. This is not the world’s worst script, but it’s yet another example of a script that’s trying to be something it isn’t.

The Bottom Line

Because this bears such eerie similarities to the problems of The Low Dweller, the fix is exactly the same, so I’ll just quote what I wrote then:

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

Posted by Stan on December 24, 2009 5:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

December 23, 2009

Black List Script #8: Desperados by Ellen Rapoport

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): “After a woman sends an indignant email to her new beau, who’s gone radio silent postsex, she discovers he’s comatose in a Mexican hospital and races south of the border with her friends in tow to intercept the email before he recovers.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

[Removed by request.]

Notes

Ah, the Idiot Plot. Believe it or not, I haven’t read a script with Idiot Plot elements in a very long time. I’ve read a great many scripts with idiotic plot elements, but it seemed like Hollywood was finally getting away from that old, stupid chestnut: the storyline that only works if every character in the movie is a complete fucking dunderheaded moron.

Honestly, Desperados isn’t a terrible script. It has a genial tone and more than a few smile-worthy moments. Some of the humor reminded me a bit too much of Nancy Pimental’s script The Sweetest Thing. Remember that? The halcyon days of 2001 when Pimental, a South Park writer who rose to mild on-camera prominence as the replacement host of Win Ben Stein’s Money, was poised as a female Farrelly brother, when everyone thought The Sweetest Thing would mark the dawning of a new genre: female-targeted gross-out comedies. Then it bombed, and that was kinda the end of that. Nevertheless, Desperados is filled with similar gross-out gags and, honestly, a few similar story beats. (But it bears more striking resemblances to 1998’s Overnight Delivery and 2000’s Road Trip.)

Despite several amusing moments, the script relies far too much on Three’s Company-esque misunderstandings that, as mentioned, require each character to be an idiot. On Three’s Company, that worked because most of the characters were idiots, and the writers (and actors) used that stupidity for comic effect. That seems to be the norm these days for Idiot Plot movies: make the characters as stupid as the story. It sort of works. (See also: Superbad, one of my favorites of 2007.) Desperados doesn’t do that, though. Desperados gives us a lawyer and a doctor who are portrayed as emotionally retarded, but I don’t think we’re supposed to believe (based on their occupations) that they’re mentally retarded. So when, for instance, Wesley determines Jared must be cheating based primarily on a VoiceMail she doesn’t listen to completely, and knows she doesn’t listen to completely, that makes her an idiot. It’s sort of worse at the end, when Huck draws the mistaken conclusion that Wesley is getting artificially inseminated — because Wesley’s assistant stupidly reenforces that by saying particular things in particular ways that no human would ever use to describe where Wesley is or what she’s doing.

Those are small examples, but the entire plot hinges on one big, steaming pile of Idiot Plot: the sending of the e-mail. In fact, I think this moment in the script shows a pretty clear distinction between regular plotting and Idiot Plotting: Wesley’s increasing neurotic frustration about Jared not calling her is perfectly understandable; her wanting to send an angry e-mail to him four days later is perfectly understandable; even the setup for why she leaves her apartment to talk on her cell phone, and accidentally talking to Jared (whom she’d presumably ignore out of anger if she knew) — perfectly understandable! When she picks up the phone, and it’s Jared, and he has a bizarre yet logical explanation for why he never called, complete with apology, here’s how an idiot would react to that situation: by pantomiming at people who are clearly too stupid to understand, then running into the room screaming at the last possible second. Here’s how a neurotic but intelligent young lawyer might react: “Hold on a sec, Jared. (to Kaylie and Brooke) It’s Jared — he’s okay, do not send the e-mail. I’ll explain when I get off the phone.” Or maybe she doesn’t want to interrupt Jared in his time of need. A neurotic but intelligent young lawyer might, for instance, reenter the apartment after the phone conversation and say, “That was Jared, whose perfectly rational explanation negates any need to send that e-mail.”

Examples abound of more Idiot Plotting: buying up every newspaper in town (what is this, I Love Lucy?), the sex-toy/Ambien misunderstanding, virtually everything involving Nolan and Debbie… It sort of frustrated me because the script has plenty of good ideas for comic set-pieces, but too many of them arrive as a result of moments that just make everyone seem too dumb to have control over their bowels, much less have high-powered careers that require a great deal of education. (And on that note — what the hell is up with Quintano condescendingly insulting UCLA? “State school” or not, it boasts one of the best law schools in the country, and Quintano works at a fucking hotel. In Mexico. Even if he graduated top of his class for Stanford with a major in hotel management, he doesn’t have a lot of room to gloat. Sorry, random tangent — but seriously, what the fuck?)

Worse than the Idiot Plot beats, perhaps, is the conclusion that this script does not need to take place in Mexico. Mexico serves as such a generic backdrop, it could be set in any vacation spot: Hawaii, the Bahamas, Mackinac Island, Orlando, any of our fine national parks. Look, I’ve been to Mexico, and I didn’t stay in any luxury resorts. It’s a place rife with comic possibilities (both racist and not), and it’s decidedly a foreign country. One of the alleged selling points of Desperados is that much of the action involves three American women getting into crazy situations south of the border. But none of it screams, “This could only happen in Mexico.” Not even the bribing of local police. You could easily transpose the action to another vacation resort by only changing the names of locations and maybe three lines of dialogue. Many of the Idiot Plot problems could easily be resolved if the story relied a little more on the natural fish-out-of-water humor that comes from a neurotic, decidedly American woman trying to navigate the unfamiliar customs of a foreign country. Instead, it seems like writer Ellen Rapoport is hedging her bets in case, let’s say, financiers decide they’d rather the script took place on the French Riviera. Setting’s important, and the comic possibilities of this setting is wasted, big-time.

Aside from the excruciating Idiot Plot and the poorly exploited setting, this is standard romantic comedy fare: familiar plot, stock characters, obvious conflicts. It’s not the worst romantic comedy script I’ve read (Fuckbuddies and the alleged anti-rom-com I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell are infinitely worse), but it’s a frustrating read. What does work shows that Rapoport understands comedy and understands relationships. She just relies too much on people who are supposed to be smart acting stupid for no clear reason.

The Bottom Line

I think the key for Desperado’s success lies in really digging into the Mexican setting and deriving natural comedy from that fish-out-of-water concept instead of people acting like idiots and/or trying to catch flights. If it sticks with the Idiot Plot, it’ll end up as yet another forgettable romantic comedy, with or without the “edgy” “gross-out” humor.

Posted by Stan on December 23, 2009 5:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

December 22, 2009

Black List Script #7: L.A. Rex by Will Beall

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 author’s book of the same name. A young gangster goes to work in the LAPD as a mole investigating a crime against the head of the Mexican mafia but learns more about justice than he expected from his seasoned partner.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Rolling through the streets of South Central L.A., badass beat cop MIGUEL MARQUEZ (50s) and his rookie partner, RAMOS (20s), observe a bank robbery. They call it in, then move in on the robbers’ van — which is rigged with explosives. A wild action sequence follows. The robbers are clearly armed and well-trained. In the melée, Marquez is severely injured and Ramos is killed. An opening credits montage follows, intercutting the deplorable history of the LAPD with clean-cut 20-something BEN HALLORAN’s progression through the LAPD academy. After the montage, Ben arrives for his first day in the 77th district, where he’s paired up with an unenthusiastic Marquez after LT. VINTNER gives a morning roll-call speech about the increasing racial tensions in the area. Marquez tells Ben he looks soft and asks if he played any sports in high school. Ben says he was on the fencing team. Marquez shows Ben his many guns, including a non-issue .44, and suggests that Ben improve his weaponry. They roll up on TONY T, a wino. Marquez tells Ben to arrest him for public intoxication. Ben tries, but Tony T starts beating on him. It’s quickly evident that this is a setup to initiate Ben. Ben responds to the assault by pounding Tony T in the crotch. Marquez is impressed.

Meanwhile, crooked patrolmen RISLEY and MAPES cruise around MacArthur Park, collecting money from the prostitutes they pimp and drug money from dealers like DEADEYE. Deadeye’s friend and ex-cellmate, WIZARD, got high and killed one of Risley’s hookers — his “cash cow” — which pisses Risley off. In retaliation, Risley breaks Deadeye’s dope-dealing hand. On Crenshaw Boulevard, Ben tries to convince Marquez that he’s a good officer. Marquez refuses to believe it — any skills that Ben may have mean nothing in South Central. Among a bunch of black gangstas, they notice a guy, DEANDRE (20s), hanging back a bit. Marquez explains that he’s the type to inform. Trying to look casual, Deandre steals a car that, it turns out, had already been stolen earlier that day. They chase him. Eventually, he abandons the car and Ben is forced to chase him on foot. Marquez also chases him on foot, and before long they corner him on a pedestrian bridge over a freeway. Left with no alternative, Deandre scales the fence and jumps onto the freeway. Against Marquez’s orders, Ben follows him. Before long, they’re up on rooftops, and Ben tackles Deandre. They crash through a skylight — right into Wizard’s apartment, where his bloated corpses lies slumped over the sink.

After they both vomit from the stench and the workout, Ben cuffs Deandre. Marquez shows up, trailed by their elaborate backup, and chews out Ben for ditching him. Later, homicide detective CHUIN examines the scene with Marquez. They find a ledger that indicates Wizard was the “tax collector” to drug kingpin JOE CARCOSA. Back at the station, Marquez and Chuin pore over the ledger and learn Deadeye has been short for the past several weeks. While the two of them interrogate Deandre (which results in Marquez beating him with a phonebook), the ledger mysteriously goes missing. Marquez finds out Deandre saw combat in Iraq and is an expert in explosives, which makes him realize Deandre was at the bank robbery in which Ramos got killed. Chuin presents Marquez with a theory about what happened to the ledger: Ben took it. Marquez doesn’t believe it.

Marquez takes Ben to a club where Deadeye is known to hang. It’s crawling with gangsters. When they’re threatened by some of Deadeye’s thugs, Ben pulls out his gun and shouts at them in perfect Spanish, surprising Marquez. They get into Deadeye’s office. First, Deadeye denies knowing Wizard; then, he denies skimming off Carcosa’s money; then, he denies that Carcosa would have Wizard killed, because Deadeye would have heard about it. He offers the MS-13 gang as the possible culprits. Meanwhile, Deandre calls his pot-growing pal GET SOME for help with his criminal troubles. Get Some says he’ll handle it.

Marquez and Ben roll into MS-13 territory, Ben speculates that the best way to find Wizard’s killer is to figure out who would benefit from his death. Marquez ignores him. They arrive at an abandoned building where an MS-13 gang member, SOMBRA, holes up. It’s a creepy, filthy, booby-trapped place. Marquez and Ben have to fight their way through a bunch of MS-13 warriors in order to get to Sombra, but after a convoluted action sequence, they both end up on the bed of a flatbed truck. Sombra pursues, getting into the truck cab, and they all end up in the L.A. river. For some reason, Sombra recognizes Ben, but before anyone can make anything of this, Marquez shoots Sombra. Marquez asks why Sombra would be crazy enough to attempt to murder cops. Sombra tells him there’s a “green light” on cops since cops “crossed the line” by killing Wizard. Then he dies. As the site of Sombra’s death is turned into a crime scene, Ben is introduced to BEACHAMP, the head of Internal Affairs. Chuin speculates that Beachamp and Ben are in bed.

BIG BEN KAHN (50s), a charismatic attorney, arrives to bail Deandre out and ask him some questions. When Deandre mentions the bank heist, Big Ben takes pause. Big Ben visits DARIUS (20s), a gangster who also heads a notable hip-hop record label. He asks Darius if he had any involvement with Wizard’s death, but Darius denies it. Nevertheless, Big Ben warns Darius that Carcosa may come after him anyway. Back at the 77th station house, the difficulty of the day has taken its toll on Ben. Marquez gives Ben a Glock .45 that belonged to Ramos and officially welcomes Ben to the district. Ben returns home, where he reveals that he did indeed take the ledger. A gangster thug shows up at Ben’s apartment tells him “he” wants to see Ben.

Darius asks Risley, who has come calling seemingly as a friend or business associate, who was responsible for the Wizard’s death. Risley says the rumor is that it was cops. Darius is uneasy — he doesn’t want to end up in a war with Carcosa. Risley and Big Ben admire a sword Darius owns that allegedly belonged to Nat Turner. Ben shows up at Joe Carcosa’s house, asking about the ledger. Ben says they didn’t find a ledger. Carcosa tells Ben he needs to find the cops who killed Wizard and, most importantly, find the ledger.

The next morning, Marquez, Ben, and Chuin learn that Deandre turned up dead shortly after getting released on bail. After dismissing Ben, Chuin tells Marquez he went through Ben’s personnel file and found it so clean, Ben may not have existed prior to entering the academy. He urges Marquez to get rid of Ben. Marquez doesn’t: if he’s not dirty, Marquez will be hanging him out to dry for no reason; if he is, Marquez would rather have him close than far. Ben runs to the bahtroom and flashes back to a quinceañra at Carcosa’s house. At the party, he and Darius are close friends. Carcosa and Sombra torture a man into signing some papers while Ben watches with some amusement. Later, in private, Big Ben complains that his son — Ben — should not be a part of whatever they have planned. Carcosa insists that he must.

In the present, Marquez and Ben visit the home of C-LOVE, a petty thug who posted bail for Deandre. Marquez grills C-Love until he gives up the name of the person who gave him the money: Get Some. C-Love warns that Marquez will never get near him. Marquez tells C-Love to get his pregnant girlfriend and be ready later that night, so Marquez can put them on a train to Barstow until the heat dies down. Big Ben warns Risley that Carcosa may have a man on the inside. Marquez and Ben surveil Get Some’s crib. They spot an ice cream truck that drives around, only it doesn’t sell ice cream: it’s a mobile gun repair station. Marquez and Ben hold up the driver and force him to go to Get Some’s crib. They use the ice cream truck to ambush Get Some’s security force. After a wild action sequence in which Get Some nearly kills Ben, Marquez finally gets to Get Some. He threatens him, but Get Some is not easily intimidated. Get Some shows Marquez the business card of his attorney — Big Ben.

Ben flashes back to a launch party for Darius’s hip-hop magazine. Big Ben and Ben argue. Darius tells Ben he’s going legit, until he’s attacked on the red carpet. Ben, Darius, and his security force retreat. Later, they show up at the hotel of someone called CERTAIN DEATH, whom Darius blames for the attack and wants to kill. Ben tries to get Darius to listen to reason, but Darius lashes out on Ben. Ben knows where this is headed, so he disappears. The next day — the day of the bank robbery — Carcosa offers Ben a deal: if Ben enters the police academy and informs for him, Carcosa will make Ben Kahn, Jr., disappear.

In the present, Marquez and Ben have arrested Get Some, but Risley and Mapes show up and tell Lt. Vintner that he’s their informant. Marquez tries to beat the hell out of Risley in the middle of the squad room. Marquez and Chuin explain the chain of evidence that led them to Get Some, and while Vintner believes them, he wants to proceed by the books. Marquez balks that there isn’t time for that, but Vintner doesn’t want to hear it. Later, C-Love and his girlfriend, RAYNEECE, are gunned down by men in a passing patrol car. On the way to pick up C-Love, Marquez outright accuses Ben of being IAD. Ben denies it. They discover the shooting — and the crowd that has gathered, all aware that the police did this, none happy about it. Marquez and Ben call for backup. Rayneece is still alive, so she’s rushed to the hospital. Chuin points out that Ben is one of the only people who knew Marquez’s plan for C-Love. At the hospital, Ben is forced to comfort Rayneece’s grieving mother. He reluctantly promises to make her killers pay for their crimes.

When Ben gets back with Marquez, Marquez sees something different about him — after what he’s seen, he’s a real cop now. Ben speculates that Risley killed C-Love. Marquez tells Ben that Risley was the best rookie he ever trained, but he’s gone bad. Marquez didn’t believe it — until he saw Risley at the bank robbery. Marquez says he hesitated when he recognized Risley, but he won’t hesitate again. Ben wonders why they wouldn’t just arrest Risley. Marquez explains that Risley has been involved in so many arrests, if he went down for his crimes, everyone would be turned loose on appeal. The LAPD wouldn’t risk that. Marquez demands to know who Ben is. Ben explains he’s the son of Big Ben Kahn and he was a mole for Carcosa — until yesterday. Marquez tells Ben he needs to decide which side he’s on.

Marquez and Ben pay Get Some another visit. This time, they torture him for information. Eventually, Get Some admits that Risley found out about Wizard’s skimming, threatened to rat him out, so Wizard tried to bribe him with dope — but it wasn’t enough. So Wizard told Risley about the bank where Carcosa launders his money, they put a crew together and hit it. Marquez wonders where Risley could find such a well-trained crew, and Get Some explains that gangsters have been sending soldiers to Iraq to learn tactics for urban warfare. So they intend to pin the robbery on Darius so Carcosa will take him out, allowing Get Some to take control. An LAPD cruiser pulls up outside — it’s Risley, leading a pack of Crip commandos. They go after Marquez, while Ben attempts to follow and defend. After another wild action sequence, Marquez is seriously injured and Ben is attacked from behind.

Ben awakens in a creepy warehouse, filled with gangsters. Risley and Mapes appear just as Marquez regains consciousness. Risley tries to justify his criminal activities by offering that if he didn’t do it, somebody else would — and they wouldn’t have the best interests of the city at heart. Ben tries to fight his way out, and when that fails, he announces he’s working for Joe Carcosa, who sent him to find out who robbed the bank. That gets their attention, but it does little to save him. They hang Ben and Marquez over a pit filled with angry pit bulls and a jaguar. They’re tied together on a pulley, so the heaviest one (Marquez) will be lowered into the pit first, followed (after he’s torn to shreds) by Ben. Marquez is killed in grisly, leering detail. In an effort to save himself, Ben wraps his legs around Marquez’s mangled body as it rises out of the pit. He retrieves Marquez’s secret .44 — which the Crips didn’t find — and starts blasting at Risley and the gangsters as he swings furiously in the hopes that the chain will break and release him. Eventually, it does, and Ben manages to narrowly escape to the trainyards outside. He leaps onto a freight train, waits until the tracks go over the freeway, then dives into a modular home traveling on the back of a flatbed. Risley and Mapes witness this. They scramble for their patrol car and pull the truck over, tasing Ben, arresting him, and claiming he’s on PCP.

Risley and Mapes drag Ben back to Darius’s place. They’re surprised Darius knows him. Darius says they used to be friends, and Big Ben is his lawyer. This surprises Ben, but all the pieces fall into place: Big Ben was the one who told Risley to rob the bank, and he’s the one holding Carcosa’s money. Risley shoots Darius’s security, then Darius. Ben manages to free himself, although he’s still handcuffed, and Ben is quickly cornered. Before he dies, Darius grabs Nat Turner’s sword and runs it through Mapes. Risley pulls another sword off the wall. He and Ben fight; thanks to Ben’s fencing skills, he kills Risley.

At Marquez’s funeral, Lt. Vintner gives a stirring speech about his courage and honor. Ben is surprised when Big Ben shows up. Ben flashes back to the previous night. He goes to Carcosa, tells him he’s out, and hands him Wizard’s ledger. He goes to a car where Chuin and Vintner wait. Ben’s wired: they have Carcosa’s confession on tape. Back in the present, Chuin and a couple of other detectives arrest Big Ben for his role in the bank heist and its aftermath. Despite what’s happening, Big Ben feels some amount of proud redemption that his son is a better person than he is.

Notes

I don’t know what I expected after violating one of my own rules. In doing a mild amount of research on the novel L.A. Rex, I discovered that author (and adapter) Will Beall is, in fact, an LAPD officer working out of the 77th district. After reading that, I can’t honestly say I expected something like The Wire, but I did expect more than what L.A. Rex delivered. It both surprised and disappointed me that an actual officer working out of South Central doesn’t have a more unique take on the cop thriller.

The end result of L.A. Rex is pretty much what you’d get if you jammed The Departed, Heat, and Training Day into a blender and topped it with tiny dollops of every other crime movie made in the past 25 years. I’m not generally one to harp on originality, but this script constitutes little more than a well-written series of genre clichés folded into a convoluted story that doesn’t come close to satisfying. Keeping the list brief, here are the top five: wacky mismatched partners, the rookie paired with the veteran, the screaming lieutenant, the dirty cop who’s convinced of his nobility, and the dirty cop who gains a conscience after What He’s Seen.

I haven’t read the novel, but I have a feeling the problem here is a result of distilling a dense narrative populated by dozens of characters into a script that, although it’s both on the long side (127 pages) and cheating its length (with no rhyme or reason, 90% of conversations in this script are set as two-column dialogue, which makes it very difficult to read but also likely makes the true page count more in the 160-180 page range), is still about half the length of its source material. Novels have their own sets of clichés, but it’s a little easier to get away with movie clichés when you can fill out the characters and the setting to create the illusion of uniqueness.

In a screenplay, it’s harder to cheat that way. Beall’s diction — the words on the page — is great, making this a quick read despite its length, but when you strip away the glitz, you’re left with a steaming pile of moments lifted from many, many better movies. Worse than that, the elements Beall’s novel may have used to make the cliché-ridden situations seem a bit more original — compelling characters with offbeat points of view, for instance — don’t come across in the script at all. It’s too dense for any individual character — including the two leads, Marquez and Ben — to stand out in any way. Hell, I’m shocked to discover Ben’s supposed to be the protagonist. The story is so much about Marquez, and Beall finds himself forced to bury Ben during the first half because of the secrets his character hides, that it becomes somewhat disorienting when we learn Ben is the person we’re supposed to be rooting for. At any rate, Beall introduces each of these characters with flashy, florid descriptions, but beyond that, they’re just the familiar cardboard cutouts filling up a familiar storyline. They don’t have any individual moments to shine, and they never rise above their stereotypical foundations.

In fact, like the similarly convoluted Prisoners, the characters feel more like plot point dispensers than real people. One of the surprising and unique character traits given to any of these people is Ben’s fencing background — but that goes from interesting trait to lame plot device when it becomes necessary for Ben to fence his way to freedom with a sword whose presence is acknowledged so clumsily early on, it could only mean foreshadowing.

To sum up, this script needed more dinosaurs.

The Bottom Line

The only way I can see this script working is if Beall peels back the narrative density that might work in a novel but feels, in this screenplay, like a well-written mess. The story isn’t so mind-blowingly complex that it will elude audience members; rather, the script gets so wrapped up in the story that it loses sight on making the characters into three-dimensional people. The story can remain complex and have the same denouement, but excising about five or six characters will allow the remaining characters more breathing room to develop into natural, interesting characters instead of cardboard clichés.

Posted by Stan on December 22, 2009 5:15 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 21, 2009

Black List Script #6: Londongrad by David Scarpa

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 book by Alan Cowell. The story of the life and subsequent poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

In voiceover, SASHA (Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko) explains that someone intentionally poisoned his tea with twice the radioactive dose endured by people standing at the center of the Chernobyl meltdown. A spectrograph view of what happens dramatizes this poisoning. Flash to London, a short time later, as Sasha struggles in a cab on the way to the hospital. His wife, MARINA, attempts to comfort him. In the emergency room, Marina declares Sasha has been poisoned. Per the laws, hey send a police inspector, BRENT HYATT, to file a report on Sasha’s poisoning case. Doctors insist Sasha is suffering from food poisoning, but Sasha knows better. Hyatt asks who poisoned him. Sasha tells him it was the KGB. Hyatt tells him “all that” ended 20 years ago. Sasha disagrees and begins to narrate his story…

…which begins in 1984, in Siberia. Sasha climbs to a rooftop, attempting an assassination — but in the Arctic weather, the metal of the gun sticks to his hand, and his struggles to get free give away his position. Fortunately, it turns out to be an exercise by the KGB. As Sasha explains in voiceover, every young Russian dreamed of joining the KGB. Even as an adult, Sasha would watch old movies dramatizing the glories of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, enraptured. In voiceover, Sasha explains the lifestyle of the late-period USSR: those who had power would take whatever they want; those who didn’t knew better than to complain. Money didn’t matter, so an integral part of their KGB training was learning the American way of doing things — foreign, esoteric concepts like bank cheques and credit references baffled them. A mystery organization of powerful men, the Siloviki (“Men of Force”), were effectively the Illuminati of the USSR: they had their own private subway in Moscow, their own department stores selling American merchandise, and they have the power simply walk into a nice apartment and tell its tenants to leave.

After his training, Sasha is disappointed not to be assigned to the First Directorate — the elite group who were sent to the U.S. to spy. Sasha’s training colonel explains that he’s actually too smart for his own good — he’d end up getting undesired attention. As a result, he’s assigned to the Third Directorate, which does counterintelligence within the Soviet Union. One night, while living it up at a KGB nightclub, Sasha sees his ex-training buddy MISHA has returned from America. He’s drunk and talking up the American lifestyle, trying to convince his comrades of its superiority. Sasha and his new friends humor him until they pull over along the side of a highway and shoot him in the head. Sasha is sort of horrified at first, but he buys into the thinking that Misha had fallen prey to the enemy and deserved this.

In the present, a doctor tries to convince Sasha that all his tests show a case of mild food poisoning. Sasha pulls out hair and asks if that’s a symptom of mild food poisoning. The doctor condescendingly offers that it’s a symptom of middle age. Unnerved, Marina calls a mystery man known only as Boris, looking for help. Frustrated, Sasha returns to his story. He bitterly explains in voiceover that one morning in 1993, they woke up to found they had no country, and while the capitalist West perceived this as a victory, the Soviets found the loss of their empire tragic. Money became worthless, citizens starved, all prisoners — even the ones who should have been imprisoned — were released, and before long hundreds of organized crime syndicates sprouted up. Sasha remains with the KGB in an effort to clean up Russia. He and his friends wander Moscow attempting to defend poor businesses who are forced to pay protection to the various syndicates. One is a ballet studio, forced to pay protection to a corrupt police lieutenant. After talking with the lieutenant, Sasha starts to realize he must have the blessing of someone above him.

He accompanies his friends to a birthday party for one of the ballerinas—future wife Marina, who’s annoyed and embarrassed by the presence of a KGB (now FSB) agent at her party. People start leaving, in fear of the KGB. Sasha dances with Marina and quickly wins her over, despite his abrasive attitude. She complains about the problems of the day, notably her inability to pass a driving test because the examiner expects a bribe that she refuses to give. Sasha accompanies Marina on her next driving test. He holds a gun to the examiner, who immediately agrees to give her a license. Perturbed, Sasha explains that he doesn’t want him to give her one; he wants the examiner to do his job. Marina takes her test and gets her license fairly.

In the present, BORIS BEREZOVSKY arrives with bodyguards, a publicist, and a poison specialist. Sasha is grateful. Boris tells him he will never forget that Sasha saved his life. Back in 1995, Sasha saves Boris’s life. After nearly dying in a car bomb, Boris decides he needs help. In voiceover, Sasha explains that Boris had quickly became an enemy of the old ways. A well-regarded mathematician, Boris embraced capitalism after the fall of the USSR and — after struggling his entire life during the reign of the communist empire — became one of the richest men in the world in five short years. This displeased the Siloviki, who couldn’t adjust to a world where money mattered more than political power. As a result, attempts on his life became rather frequent. After the car bomb, Sasha arrives to help. Boris doesn’t want to help, but Sasha offers that he’ll need a cop eventually.

Not long after this, Boris is holed up in the office of his nightclub while the Moscow police attempt to arrest him. Sasha intervenes, sending the cops away. Boris attempts to pay Sasha to return the favor, but Sasha refuses. Sasha introduces Boris to Marina (to whom he is now married) and their new baby. Boris explains why the capitalist model is failing in Russia and how he strives to make it work. He believes Russia needs great men like Boris himself, but also great men like Sasha — uncorrupted men to oversee the nation’s security forces. Boris asks Sasha what he wants, and Sasha realizes Boris can make it happen: he owns enough media companies to force people to listen. After Boris leaves, Marina doesn’t want Sasha to have anything to do with him. Sasha tells him he can’t quit, so the only thing do is change things.

When the FSB finds out Sasha has befriend Boris, they order him to kill him. Paranoid, Sasha decides the only solution is for someone to speak out. He gathers a large group of ex-KGB agents he believes he can trust and explains what they need to do: go public with what they know about the corruption and atrocities being committed against their countrymen. Sasha has already made the decision to do this, but he leaves the decision to join him up to his friends. Many of these people do join him at a national TV news agency owned by Boris. However, the bulk of them disguise themselves — all except Sasha, who bravely lays out the murdering, drug/weapons trafficking, extorting, torturing, and robbing state officials commit on a daily basis.

After the news report, Boris contacts Russian president BORIS YELTSIN for a face-to-face meeting. Boris wants to encourage Yeltsin to allow Sasha to run the FSB. Yeltsin agrees that they need an uncorrupted man to run things, but he’s found his man — VLADIMIR PUTIN. Yeltsin does allow Sasha to meet with Putin. After an awkward initial meeting, Putin orders the tapping of Sasha’s phone. Shortly thereafter, police burst into Sasha’s apartment, arrest him, and force him to endure a kangaroo court in which a shopkeeper alleges Sasha extorted money from him. Sasha manages to get the witness to recant, which forces the judge to dismiss the case. That doesn’t stop the authorities, though — immediately, still in the courtroom, they arrest Sasha again on a new charge, of extorting a can of sweet peas. Sasha sarcastically confesses and demand that they execute him. He scoffs at them, fully aware that they need to keep him alive because he’s too famous to vanish. In voiceover, Sasha explains how difficult prison is for a member of the FSB — prisoners’ family members were killed, raped, and tortured.

After a few years, Sasha is released. He looks horrible — emaciated and sickly. Sasha explains to her that he used the prison to his advantage, first doing all he could to try to get killed in general population, then starving himself in solitary confinement. They had no choice but to release him, because they couldn’t let him die. Sasha gets his FSB friends to inform on him and leads a straight-arrow life, knowing he’s now untouchable. One night, Marina receives a phone call informing her that either Sasha or their child (Tolik) will be murdered. Marina seeks help with some of Sasha’s ex-colleagues, but she’s told that he’s reckless and she’d be smart to take her child and keep her distance from him.

After witnessing an alleged terrorist attack in Moscow, Sasha explains to Marina what he’s pieced together through various international newspapers — in short, the Russians executed these attacks to justify an invasion of Chechnya that would renew a spirit of patriotism in Russia. Marina doesn’t care. She wants Sasha to play ball in order to save himself or Tolik. Sasha refuses. Instead, he flees to Turkey and sends for her. Marina refuses to leave Russia. Boris comes to plead Sasha’s case, winning Marina over by pointing out that if she doesn’t go to Turkey, Sasha will come back for her, and he’ll undoubtedly be killed.

When they’re finally together, Sasha tries to get political asylum at the American embassy. He’s turned away. Finally, Sasha books a return flight to Moscow, insisting on a layover in London. While in London, Sasha seeks political asylum, and British law requires that he and his family get it. Meanwhile, Boris and several other capitalist oligarchs meet with Putin, who announces he’s taking 50% of their resources. Because he claims everything they own belongs to the state, he feels 50% is a generous offer. Putin wants to know why Boris insists on weakening him with his media outlets reporting negative things about him. Putin quietly freezes all of Boris’s assets to stop him.

In London, Sasha writes a tell-all book laying out everything he witnessed and tying Russia to the alleged Chechen terrorist attacks. Marina pleads with him not to release the book — they’re living a happy, anonymous life in England. If he publishes the book, the FSB will come after him relentlessly. Sasha tells her it’s his job to put this book out. He has help from Boris and an underground syndicate, but to no avail — they publish hundreds of copies, but Putin has them destroyed before anybody can read them. Left with no choice, Sasha is forced to find a real job. As a montage shows his efforts, Sasha explains in voiceover that the Soviet Union forced people to feel a sense of community by cramming them all together, while in the western world, he is finally able to feel alone — and he doesn’t like it.

In the present, Sasha is rushed into a quarantine area, where doctors wear radiation suits to protect from his poison. DR. HENRY, the man Boris brought with him, interviews Marina about Sasha’s potential risk of exposing others. Marina doesn’t believe anyone but her came into serious contact with him. Knowing Marina isn’t long for the world, she visits Sasha in his private room. His hair has completely fallen out, and he’s on a morphine drip. Sasha complains that nobody tells him anything, but he knows from her facial expression that it’s not good news. Marina explains that he was poisoned with Polonium-210. Sasha knows the radioactive substance well — back in the Soviet era, they used to manufacture it in an off-books, unmapped town, where the KGB quickly discovered its mostly untraceable effects as a poison.

Hyatt arrives with other police, trying to figure out the jurisdiction. Ultimately, they decide to pursue it as a murder case — to Marina’s consternation, considering her husband is not (yet) dead — and a secret service agent, ACKERLEY, comes up with a surprisingly plausible theory. The poisoning was far too obvious and sloppy to be FSB. Since the amount of Polonium-210 ingested would have cost $10 million on the black market, they can think of only one person with the money, the connection to Sasha, and the personal grudge against Putin: Boris. Hyatt and the other cops troll the streets of London looking for evidence. They find nothing, so Hyatt is sent back to learn the details of Sasha’s last days.

In the morning, Sasha leaves his apartment after a brief argument with Marina about where he’s going — he has a new job, but she doesn’t like it. Sasha stops at a sushi joint, where a friend there informs him that he’s on a KGB list of targets to kill. (As Sasha narrates the story, it’s intercut with present-day police investigating crime scenes, talking with perps, making sure they aren’t also poisoned, etc.) Sasha goes to Boris’s London offices to wait for a fax, which he’s tasked to deliver at a hotel. LUGOVOI — ex-KGB and Boris’s former security chief — sits among a group of wealthy Russians. Sasha hands off the dossier and shares a drink with Lugovoi — only Sasha doesn’t drink alcohol. He insists on green tea.

Back at home, Marina insists Lugovoi is still one of the Siloviki and is not to be trusted. Sasha is determined to get into Lugovoi’s good graces — he has an opportunity to support his family, and he must take it. The following day is a duplicate of the opening scenes, minus the spectrograph: Lugovoi offers Sasha the poisoned tea, Sasha gladly takes it (although he comments about its bitterness), and they say traditional Russian toasts. After Sasha leaves them, he starts to feel weak and knows instantly that they’ve poisoned him. He stumbles home and forces himself to vomit it up.

In the present, a Scotland Yard delegation goes to Russia to interrogate Lugovoi. His prosecutor, BARSUKOV (it should be noted that Barsukov is the man responsible for imprisoning Sasha earlier in the story, but he didn’t really merit a mention aside from the fact that he reappears here), explains to the police why Sasha’s story makes no sense. Barsukov subtly implies that Sasha may have been a terrorist trying to kill Lugovoi and his men (as evidence, Barsukov points to a man named DMITRY KOVTUN, who is the only one they can find who has suffered at all from the Polonium-210), but Hyatt doesn’t believe it — especially after positively testing Lugovoi’s hotel and Kovtun’s plane for the radioactive fingerprint of Polonium-210.

Sasha, delirious and suffering from dementia, has a moment of startling lucidity. He realizes exactly how the plan worked: Kovtun was sent to London with the poison in a lead vial. He was tasked with merely delivering the package somewhere, but curiosity got the better of him — he opened the vial, and thus was exposed to a small amount of radiation. Sasha insists that both the efficiency of the plan and the inability to factor in human nature are hallmarks of KGB tradecraft. Hyatt brings his evidence to Barsukov, but they will not extradite Lugovoi, Kovtun, or anyone else. Hyatt gripes about this to Boris, who explains that Russians won’t change. They’re more afraid of their own people than the international community; they know someone will take them down, but they don’t know who, so everyone must die.

Sasha dictates his last words to Marina and has a photo taken to show what they’ve done. Shortly thereafter, he dies. In Russia, Putin explains that there is no evidence of foul play in Sasha’s death. Marina prepares to address a phalanx of reporters. Hyatt cautiously tells her that she doesn’t have to. Marina announces that the Soviet way of doing things was to rob everyone of joy, then imprison and/or kill those who were unhappy — but they can’t take her unhappiness away. She will fight to keep it and won’t rest until the world understands why she’s unhappy. She goes out into the crowd.

Notes

I’ve said it before: biopics and docudramas are pains in the ass to write. The reasoning is simple: in many cases, you have to boil down somebody’s life into a short, coherent dramatic story. It’s no surprise that the best of the bunch frequently take extreme liberties with reality. For all the people who balk, “Why don’t they just make it about fictional people if they’re not going to stick to the real story?” — well, I don’t have an answer. I guess it’s just a lurid part of human nature that we’d be more interested in Mozart fondling some tits than some guy named Wolfsbane Nozart.

So far in my ill-conceived run of Black List analyses, I’ve read one bad biopic and one great docudrama. Londongrad falls somewhere between the two.

In a story like this, a writer has the well-nigh impossible task of toeing the line between documenting the facts of the story and delivering a compelling human drama. It seems like it’d be easy — just lay it out like any other screenplay. You already have your elaborate backstory, and you know the events that occur in the story, so it’s just a matter of structuring it effectively, right? Wrong. In a work of fiction, you control everything (until it gets to someone who tells you to change everything). If that elaborate backstory doesn’t work, you can tweak it or just throw it out and start over, reshaping everything until you have a nice story.

You can do those things in a fact-based work if you have no interest in actually basing it on fact. If, however, you want to keep it mostly truthful, everything that should be freeing becomes a constraint, and cobbling together a dramatic story culled from years of research (on the part of The New York Times’ Alan Cowell, whose book is credited as the source for David Scarpa’s screenplay) turns into a daunting, unenviable task.

I’m saying all of this to assuage some guilt for what’s going to happen next: unadulterated bagging on this script. I understand how difficult it must have been to write, and it’s certainly more understated and less obnoxiously manipulative than The Muppet Man. But, as I said about The Muppet Man: just because it’s hard to write doesn’t make the final product any better.

The screenplay falls into possibly three unfortunate traps. One is a byproduct of the genre; the second is just kinda bad writing; and the third may exist only in my mind.

The first: the dreaded “surface-skim” plotting, touching on notable moments in post-Soviet Russia and their effects on Sasha rather than feeling like a natural narrative progression. (Look at movies like the fictional Scarface and fact-based Raging Bull as examples of films that span many years but feel like one cohesive story.) It’s hard for Sasha to emerge as a truly compelling protagonist because the script doesn’t read like the story of a Russian hero — it reads like a series of set-pieces some executive told Scarpa needed to be in the script, whether it makes sense to have them or not.

The second: Sasha’s relentless voiceover narration. Voiceover narration is justifiably considered verboten among newbie screenwriters, although many of them carry it too far and decide any movie that features even a single line of voiceover is a complete disaster. Some writers can use it very effectively (Woody Allen springs to mind, if you ignore the bad narration in the otherwise good Cassandra’s Dream), but it’s pretty common for green writers to use voiceover as a lazy crutch. Rather than finding more interesting ways to tell the story and/or express the characters’ inner thoughts, they can just pop in a quick voiceover to explain everything. It’s a clear violation of the “show, don’t tell” adage.

Sasha’s narration here is 100% lazy, on-the-nose drivel. Ostensibly, it bridges the gaps in time, but the voiceover technique is not used effectively. I’ll give you a key example within this script that distinguishes the difference: early in the script, Sasha narrates, “In 1984, if you were a young Russian, there was no greater dream than to become a member of the KGB. These were the men who single-handedly defeated the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. These were heroes.” At the exact same time, Scarpa describes a younger Sasha sitting in a movie theatre, watching his childhood KGB heroes in a movie he’s clearly seen enough times to memorize the dialogue. Doesn’t this scene illustrate exactly what’s in the voiceover in a much more compelling way? Doesn’t that, then, render the narration unnecessary? Unfortunately, most of the voiceover cluttering the script is not accompanied by such compelling visuals, but the point is, a better way could be found to express everything that Scarpa lazily leaves to voiceover.

The third problem, the one that may exist only in my mind, might explain the first two problems: with no evidence whatsoever (I didn’t read the book it’s based on and only have a passing familiarity with the source story), I speculate that Scarpa tried way too hard to stick to the facts, and as a result presented a fairly uninteresting docudrama. As I mentioned, the rigid adherence to reality marks the death knell of too many biopics and docudramas. The truth just isn’t that interesting. (And for those of you saying, “What about documentaries?” — are you high? Has any documentary ever been 100% true?)

This, then, becomes the ultimate problem: Scarpa presents the truth, but does he provide us with any information we don’t already know? Everything I know about the USSR, I learned from a combination of Red Dawn, Simpsons jokes, and that Head of the Class two-parter where they go to Moscow. That’s to say, I don’t know much. Despite my ignorance, this script contains few revelations: the Russians had a hard time transitioning to their new society?! The country filled up with corrupt mobsters?! Vladimir Putin is evil?! Scrape me up off the floor. Honestly, the only interesting revelation in any of this is the notion that KGB agents really believed in their society, and really believed they were doing good work. The Western perspective on this is that, at the very least, the people at the top knew they were doing bad things but didn’t care. Did the lower ranks really believe in the cause, or were they brainwashed with propaganda? Heady concepts that the script sort of touches on but never explores with much depth — too much voiceover, too little insight.

The other problem with sticking with the truth is that sometimes it’s just not terribly clever. Scarpa takes his sweet time dramatizing Sasha’s daring escape from Russia, but is there a single moment in that escape that anyone hasn’t seen in other spy movies? The rest of the script is a similar pastiche of moments that could have just as easily come from James Bond or reruns of Mission: Impossible. It’s hard to call the material “unoriginal” if Scarpa has indeed stuck to the facts — but, really, the only thing that distinguishes this script from hundreds of others is the fact that it’s based on a true story.

So what happens when the true story is much less interesting than one that’s made up? Is that when the writers of docudramas start to stretch the truth, in an effort to make the overall product better?

The Bottom Line

I can see only one option for Londongrad: embrace the fake and make shit up. Otherwise, it’s bound to languish as more compelling projects emerge (whether they’re fact-based projects or not). Of course, all of this is predicated on the possibly erroneous thesis that everything in Scarpa’s script is true. If he’s already stretched the truth, then it’s purely a disaster on par with The Muppet Man.

Posted by Stan on December 21, 2009 5:15 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 18, 2009

Black List Script #5: Cedar Rapids by Phil Johnston

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.

Comically Long Logline (provided by The Black List): “After his co-worker dies from auto-erotic asphyxiation, an emotionally stunted insurance salesman from small town Wisconsin takes the man’s place at the division insurance convention in Iowa City, IA, only to find himself coming out of his shell as he bonds with his fellow conventioneers and gradually uncovers a money laundering scheme involving his employer.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Mild-mannered (some might say too mild-mannered) insurance salesman TIM LIPPE (mid-30s) lives in the shadow of friend and coworker ROGER LEMKE — a well-respected family man who is the face of Northlands Insurance, a company serving northern Wisconsin. Tim’s good at his job, but he can’t quite get anyone to recognize that — including his depressed middle-aged fiancée, MILLIE, whom he showers with regular gifts (little trinkets like Beanie Babies) despite her evident lack of interest in the relationship. When Roger turns up dead in some sort of sex game involving autoerotic asphyxiation and lederhosen, Northlands founder BILL KROGSTAD (60s) has only Tim to turn to — because Bill has to attend his daughter’s wedding, he needs a representative to go down to the AMSI convention in Cedar Rapids, win a “Two Diamonds” award (their fourth in as many years) in order to restore the company’s good name. Why? Because Bill wants to retire, and he’d intended to sell Roger the company, but the value has tumbled in light of Roger’s unwholesome death. Winning another Two Diamonds will allow Bill to sell the company for enough to retire on. Tim is a little nervous about this proposition — he’s never been out of the state — but when lays a guilt trip about hiring him at 16 and priming him for a career that hasn’t achieved its full potential, Tim agrees to go.

At 6 a.m. on the day of the trip, Tim goes to Millie’s house to say goodbye and is surprised to find WADE — a more age-appropriate suitor — with her. They claim he’s there because his cable went out and he wants to watch ESPN’s morning program, but it’s evident that they’re having an affair. Millie treats Tim more like a son than a lover, which is appropriate since she was both a middle school teacher and Tim’s deceased mother’s best friend. At the airport, Bill shows up to give Tim a thick guidebook that will help him navigate the convention — who to talk to, who to avoid, what to see, etc. Tim notices one name under “avoid” — Dean Ziegler. Bill says he tried to poach one of Roger’s clients immediately after his death. Bill encourages Tim to stick with the roommate Bill paired him with. On the plane, Tim is incredibly chatty and friendly. It’s his first plane trip. At first, he annoys his seatmate, but by the time they arrive in Cedar Rapids, Tim has made a friend and new client.

After taking in the breathtaking Cedar Rapids skyline, Tim takes a cab to the Holidome. On his way inside, a somewhat skanky young woman, BREE, tries to bum a cigarette from Tim, but he doesn’t smoke and warns her to do the same in order to keep her premiums down. The desk clerk asks Tim for a credit card, but Tim prefers to pay with traveler’s cheques — they’re insured. The desk clerk insists on seeing a credit card, just to verify his legitimacy. Wary, Tim allows it. On the way to his room, Tim brags to Millie about the classy hotel on his cell phone. Tim fumbles with the keycard at his room and is surprised when an African-American man opens the door. This is RONALD WILKES, his nerdy roommate. Tim is initially terrified, but once Ronald introduces himself, he calms down and mistakes Ronald for a hip, cool brother man. Tim marvels at the junior suite, but his happiness is short-lived — budget cuts have forced them to take on a third roommate, DEAN ZIEGLER (mid-40s). He’s foul-mouthed and obnoxious, and neither Tim nor Ronald like him. They excuse themselves to watch the opening remarks of the AMSI president, ORIN HELGESSON (late 60s), who wants to “build a bridge to the 22nd century” through e-commerce.

Tim starts panicking when he learns 15 agencies are competing for the Two Diamonds, including Ronald and “shark” MIKE PYLE, who owns the largest Allstate agency in the upper Midwest. He calls Millie for encouragement, but Wade picks up the phone. He goes to the hotel gym to work out, where a sarcastic conventioner (JOAN) teases him. She’s a little flirty, but she can’t help taking advantage of Tim’s gullibility to amuse herself. In the gym’s showers, Tim runs into Orin, who passes along condolences about Roger and tells Tim somebody has started a petition to rescind their previous Two Diamonds awards, in light of Roger’s sordid personal life. He invites Tim to stop by his suite at any time. Tim goes to a bar where all the conventioners are supposed to meet. Dean calls him over to the bar. He tries to convince Tim that Orin wants to buy his vote for president of AMSI. Ronald shows up, and Dean wonders why the two of them aren’t interested in getting any tail. Just as Tim denies he’d ever get involved with a woman other than Millie, Joan arrives. Everyone starts drinking except Tim (who drinks straight grenadine because of his ignorance), and the drunker Joan gets, the more she flirts with Tim. Nervous, Tim excuses himself, bumping into Bree on his way out.

Tim calls Millie for reassurance — again, she treats him like a child while she relaxes with Wade. Tim practices his big presentation while sitting on the toilet. Dean bursts in, insisting they need to speak in private. Disgusted by the foul stench, Dean says he’ll meet him in the stairwell. When Tim joins Dean on the stairwell, he gets an earful about the petition and Mike Pyle being behind it all. Tim confronts Dean about trying to poach Roger’s client. Dean explains that was a misunderstanding — she called him, just so she could exploit the situation to get a lower rate through Northlands. Surprised by how much sense that makes, Tim hears out Dean’s conspiracy theory that Mike wants to drive the price down as low as possible so he can buy it on the cheap. Further, Dean believes Orin’s in on it, though he doesn’t know why.

The next day, Tim gets an angry call from Bill, who’s on his way to his daughter’s wedding. Orin called Bill to say Tim has been seen with Dean. He threatens to detour to Cedar Rapids, but his wife won’t let him. Instead, Bill simply says Tim cannot let Bill’s company collapse, so he needs to get on the right track. Tim goes out to get some air and finds Joan, smoking. He opens up to her about everything, and she encourages him to break away from Bill. Tim explains the story of how he got involved in insurance: his father was killed in a sawmill accident, and Bill was the one who made sure that Tim and his mother were taken care of. Tim has always seen Bill as a hero, and he sees insurance as a noble calling. She half-jokingly calls him a hero for making selling insurance sound cool. Back at the hotel, Tim runs into Orin, Ronald, and Dean. Dean’s friendly in his brash way, but Tim coldly tells Dean to leave him alone. He goes with Ronald and Joan to Mike Pyle’s seminar. He’s an engaging, vibrant speaker. Halfway through the seminar, he’s called out with an emergency phone call. Dean, doing a horrible and stereotypically offensive Chinese accent, informs Tim that Millie has been killed in an accident. Tim’s pissed when he realizes it’s just Dean.

Tim calls Millie for reassurance, but she’s preoccupied with her dog and practically hangs up with him. Frustrated, Tim decides to sign up for an insurance scavenger hunt — and registers Joan as his partner. He awkwardly tells Joan about this, and she’s surprisingly excited about it. Orin leads the scavenger hunt, telling him they’ll be given a series of clues that lead to additional clues, which will ultimately lead to a physical challenge that will determine the winner. Together, Tim and Joan find the first clue easily, thanks to Tim collecting a lot of Cedar Rapids trivia prior to his trip. The scavenger hunt itself is a tourist trip through Cedar Rapids: the Czech district, a dairy farm, a competitive eating “pork shrine,” etc. They’re the first to reach the meeting place for the physical challenge, “Silo Adventure Park,” featuring several ice-covered silos. Orin presents the physical challenge: whoever’s the first to scale an ice silo wins. Joan and Tim argue about who should do the climbing. Despite his fear of heights, Tim ends up doing it… But the task is so difficult, none of them can get more than a few feet off the ground. After a few hours, Orin calls it, making Tim and Joan the default winners because they reached Silo Adventure Park earliest. They’re presented with a $75 gift card for the Westdale Mall.

On the way to the mall with Joan, Tim discovers 11 missed calls from Millie. He calls her back, and she’s panic-stricken about his eight-hour disappearance. Tim gets annoyed by her treating him like a child. He takes Joan to the Olive Garden, which is painted ironically as a sort of vaguely romantic Italian restaurant. Joan convinces Tim to drink actual alcohol — a cream sherry, which he’s delighted to report does taste like communion wine. Joan asks about his hopes and dreams. After initially saying he’d like to take over for Bill, Tim settles on a desire to have a family. Joan jokingly says he can have her kids. Tim is floored by the fact that she’s married with two kids. She gives a sob-story about her crappy life and proclaims the ASMI convention her “fantasy-land” — for a few days, she can be who she wants to be instead of who she is. Tim is baffled.

They go back to the hotel, where Joan talks Tim into one more nightcap at the bar. One nightcap turns into several, and before long they’re smashed, and so is Dean. Even Ronald stays too long, but when they decide to break into the closed pool area, he says his goodbyes. Joan skinny-dips, and Tim loses control — they start making out while Dean leers, but it’s interrupted by a disgusted Orin, who threatens to call security. They flee. Tim goes back to Joan’s room, laughing, and make love. Afterward, Tim starts out very clingy but quickly falls asleep. The next morning, a seemingly different Joan talks on the phone with her kids and her husband — very serious, focused, and maternal. Tim wakes to find Joan looking at his Two Diamonds proposal. She tells him it’s solid, and he gives most of the credit to Roger. Joan tells Tim that she and Roger were together. Tim’s shocked and a little disgusted — and disappointed that, once again, he’s in the shadow of Roger. Joan tells him that he’s a better person than Roger ever was. Tim admits to being confused, now that he’s come to Cedar Rapids and fallen in love. Joan’s a little alarmed. She reaffirms her “what happens in C.R. Stays in C.R.” mantra and says this can’t go any further.

Tim apologizes to Ronald for his behavior, and while Ronald claims to not care, he’s exceedingly disappointed in Tim. He’s not the only one: Bill calls, livid after hearing from Orin about Tim’s tryst in the pool, which violates the ASMI morality clause and could lose them this year’s Two Diamonds and the previous years’, retroactively. Tim freaks out — everything’s falling apart. Dean has a heart-to-heart with Tim, using an example from his own disturbing life. Bottom line: if this shit is really important to Tim, he’ll step up and find a way to redeem himself. Tim vows to do just that — by begging to stay in the Two Diamond competition. Orin takes Tim up to his suite and explains this is a scam by Mike Pyle — just as Dean said. He tears apart Mike’s petition and talks to Tim about a plan he and Roger worked up to take their companies into the new millennium. Rather than printing ASMI newsletters, they’re saving $4000/year putting them online. Only Orin and Roger have been funneling the money into a secret PayPal account, which he doesn’t know how to use (Roger was the brains of the operation). Orin tells Tim he’ll ensure Northlands gets their Two Diamond rating as long as Tim plays ball with him. Tim agrees to it.

Feeling guilty about his compliance, Tim can’t bear to look at Ronald, Dean, or anyone else at the conference. He escapes to the Applebee’s across the street, where he gets drunk on cream sherrys. Before long, he excuses himself to the bathroom, where he finds Bree screwing a john in one of the toilet stalls. Tim reintroduces himself, offering her a butterscotch. She tells Tim he needs to relax and asks if he has any money. Tim tells her he has $90 and some traveler’s cheques. She asks him for $100 so they can party. He gives it up. Meanwhile, Orin continues to scheme with Mike to broker the sale of Bill’s company. He assures Mike that he’ll only need to keep the clients — not the employees or Northlands office. Orin calls Bill to tell him the deal’s set. Meanwhile, Ronald, Dean, and Joan watch the keynote speech and the lame entertainment (an incongruous Jack Nicholson impersonator). Dean has just learned of Mike Pyle’s evil plan. When he realizes Tim’s nowhere to be found, Dean tries to convince the others to help him look. They’re not interested.

Tim rides with Bree and UNCLE KEN (40s, violent, Applebee’s employee). Bree hands him a meth pipe, which Tim inhales, assuming it’s marijuana. It energizes him in the worst possible ways. They arrive at Ken’s farmhouse, full of bikers and speed freaks, where Tim has a drug-fueled freak out — and he loves it! Meanwhile, a waitress at Applebee’s calls Dean on Tim’s phone, which he left at the restaurant. Dean, Ronald, and Joan go to Applebee’s, where the waitress tells them Tim left with Ken, whom she labels a dope dealer who’s “real different.” She tells them where Ken’s farmhouse is. Meanwhile, in a speedy stupor, Tim opens up to Bree about his sheltered life, how his mother overprotected after his father died. Bree convinces him he’s not living his own life, and he needs to break free. She also offers him anal. Before he can take her up on it or run and hide, Uncle Ken bursts in, looking unhappy.

Dean, Ronald, and Joan arrive at the farmhouse. They wade through the circus of freaks until they find Uncle Ken pounding the shit out of Tim (because he paid for the meth using traceable traveler’s cheques, which Tim protests are 100% insured). Ronald, falling back on his community theatre training and love of The Wire, portrays an effective badass without having to do anything legitimately tough. Ken is afraid enough to let Tim go. They return to the suite, where Tim is bummed out by the details of Mike and Bill’s deal. He’s also a little too drugged out to properly process the information, so Joan maternally puts him to bed. Later that night, Tim is awake again. He gets into Orin’s suite and attacks the man. In the wee hours of the morning, Tim deposits a bound and gagged Orin in the middle of a hog farm. He explains that the Two Diamonds mean something to the people at the convention, so he’ll come back for Orin after a legitimate winner is selected. On his way back to the Holidome, Tim starts cold-calling all of his clients.

Tim arrives back at the hotel just in time to give his presentation — despite the fact that he’s disheveled and covered in mud and hog shit. Just as Bill arrives in Cedar Rapids to seal the deal with Mike, Tim divulges everything — the entire scam — to the audience, then explains that insurance is about love — love for clients and a legitimate desire to help them, rather than selling them down the river to the highest (or lowest) bidder. To that end, Tim has called every one of his clients, informed them of the impending sale, and poached them for his own, independent insurance agency — meaning Mike’s buying a business that’s just lost half its client base. Just as that sinks in, Orin leads police into the banquet hall and has Tim arrested. Before he’s led out, Tim tosses a piece of paper to Dean.

In a holding cell, Tim sells an enormous black man insurance. The police release Tim from jail, and Dean waits for him outside. He explains that Orin was more than willing to drop the charges in exchange for Dean not revealing his scam — the piece of paper was Orin’s PayPal account information. Tim, Dean, Ronald (winner of the Two Diamond award), and Joan ride together to the airport. The three men make plans to meet at a cabin in Canada that belongs to Dean’s cousin. Joan and Tim part ways, vowing to keep in touch.

The following day, back in Brown Valley, Wisconsin, Tim and Millie have an awkward dinner at Old Country Buffet. Tearfully, Millie removes her engagement ring and returns it to Tim. He doesn’t argue. Before either one can say a word, Wade sits down with a plate of food. Tim’s neighbor tells him he’s decided to switch to Tim’s company now that Bill’s selling him out to “some fella down in Milwaukee.” He’d rather do business with a man he can trust than a stranger. Tim is touched. In voiceover, Tim explains that the purpose of insurance is to create a safety net that allows people to take risks and live life to its fullest. It turns out this voiceover is actually a poorly made commercial for Tim Lippe Insurance. At the Canadian cabin, Tim presents the commercial proudly to their friends, who good-naturedly mock him about it.

Notes

As I waded through the first act of Cedar Rapids, I feared I’d entered another Butter. I couldn’t imagine anything worse, so I was tempted to give up and simply abandon the entire Black List coverage project. I stuck with it, though, and I’m glad I did. Although it initially treads on some of the more common small-town stereotypes, Johnston does a wonderful jobs of taking the clichés and twisting them in interesting (if not unexpected) ways. Tim is presented initially as the sort of naïve optimist who would make Frank Capra roll his eyes, but Johnston is smart enough to gradually develop this character into a nuanced, almost tragic figure.

It’s that little thing I keep talking about called “empathy.” As I learned more about Tim, I stopped caring that the script’s a little light on plot. It doesn’t pretend to be a complex corporate thriller, but by the end of the script, the fact that Johnston made me care about Tim, and Tim cared about Bill’s backdoor shenanigans, I found myself caring about the plot by proxy. I wanted Tim to grow a pair and succeed, but the plot could have just as easily been about a put-upon gas station attendant. It’s more important to understand the character’s struggles — even if we can’t exactly to relate to them (as in The Voices) — than it is to have a plot that’s all concept, no substance. Johnston understands that, and it’s heartening to see that some film executives do, as well.

This sense of character permeates every moment of the script. Johnston never violates who these people are in order to mine for laughs — he understands his characters and allows the comedy to develop naturally from their clashing personalities or their naïveté or their sheer prickishness. Sometimes the humor falls flat, but I’d rather not laugh at a joke than get angry at it because, whether it’s funny or not, it doesn’t seem like a thing the character would say or do. Wouldn’t you?

It’s because of this keen awareness of character that the script is not entirely plot-driven. Yes, it has a distinctive three-act structure, but 70-80% of the movie is just characters hanging out, having witty conversations and doing amusing things that seem to drive the plot only tangentially. The story really works because Johnston sells Tim’s arc so well. The plot hinges on his change from good-natured doormat to mostly good-natured assertive superhero, instead of the traditional (and frustrating) sudden 180° turn that occurs in the protagonist when Robert McKee says he should change.

Plus, he gets the little things right — the meth barns, the Czech district, the Westdale Mall. The only thing it’s missing is the stench of the Quaker factory. Even the shit he makes up feels appropriate. That’s verisimilitude, folks. I knew at least one writer in Hollywood had it! Unlike Iowa-set Butter’s seeming confusion about whether or not Iowa City is a large rural town or a suburb, Johnston writes about the Cedar Rapids I know and love. It’s possible that Johnston’s never set foot in the city, but that’s kind of the point: he understands the mindset and customs of the rural Midwest well enough to make even the weird stuff (the Silo Adventure Park) seem so plausible, I had to rack my brain to remember whether or not such a place existed.

The Bottom Line

While neither the funniest nor the cleverest comedy I’ve ever read, Cedar Rapids is one thing a lot of comedies aren’t: enjoyable. Through the combination of Johnston’s smart, witty (but not necessarily gut-busting) humor and strong, nuanced characters, it’s a compelling read that doesn’t need much work. I eagerly await Hollywood removing all the interesting things about the characters in order to strengthen the flagging C story that’s only notable because of those characters.

Posted by Stan on December 18, 2009 5:14 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 17, 2009

Black List Script #4: Prisoners by Aaron Guzikowski

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.

Comically Long Logline (provided by The Black List): “After his six-year-old daughter and her friend are kidnapped, a small town carpenter butts heads with a young, brash detective in charge of the investigation. Feeling failed by the law, he captures the man he believes responsible, holding him captive in a desperate attempt to find out what he did with the girls, whom he’s convinced are still alive. But the further he’s forced to go to get the man to confess, the closer he comes to losing his soul.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

KELLER DOVER (37, a well-built carpenter) takes his son, RALPH (15), hunting. Ralph bags his first deer. They drive back home, to a sleepy blue-collar town in Massachusetts. Along the way, they listen to the Bible on cassette and Keller explains the importance of preparation for whatever’s on the horizon. When Ralph talks about buying a used car, Keller gripes about money. Ralph asks why Keller doesn’t fix up Keller’s father’s old apartment house and rent it out. Keller says it’d cost too much to fix. Keller and Ralph arrive at home, where wife GRACE and daughter ANNA (6) wait. They go across the street to the home of their friends/neighbors, the Birches (FRANKLIN, 36 and soft-spoken; NANCY, 32 and tough; and daughters ELIZA, 15, and JOY, 7). The women prepare the deer while the kids go outside, walking around together. Ralph and Eliza flirt, ignoring Joy and Anna. The younger girls see an old, disgusting RV parked in front of an empty house and start playing around it. Ralph and Eliza pull the girls away; nobody notices a shadow lurking inside.

After a nice Thanksgiving meal, Anna asks Grace if she can take Joy back to their house to look for her long lost red whistle. Grace okays it, but only if Ralph and Eliza go with. However, Anna and Joy don’t ask Ralph and Eliza. Before long, Grace realizes she can’t find the girls. Keller goes back to the Dover house, but they’re gone. Both families wander around the neighborhood in search of the girls. They find nothing, but Ralph realizes the RV is now gone. Meanwhile, DETECTIVE LOKI (33) gets an Amber Alert call — the RV was spotted at a nearby rest stop. Loki and other police get to the RV and arrest ALEX JONES (34, disheveled). Loki doesn’t get any answers from Jones, who is spaced-out and seems more like a 10-year-old than an adult. He goes to Jones’s aunt HOLLY’s house, which is where Jones usually parks his RV. He pokes around but finds nothing. Holly offers to sell him her husband’s Trans Am. She explains that her husband disappeared five years ago, after a fight. She takes care of Jones because his parents died in a car accident when he was six. Forensics examines the RV and finds nothing. Keller, Franklin, and their families form search parties to try to find the girls.

Loki drops by to explain to the Dovers where he’s at with the case. Grace is optimistic — legend has it that Loki has solved every case he’s worked — but Keller is frustrated when he finds out they have to let Jones go. Loki promises to keep him in custody, but his captain, O’MALLEY, is having none of it. They have nothing to charge Jones with, so they have to let him go. Loki decides to interview local sex offenders. At St. Ann’s Church, FATHER DUNN — a convicted child molester — lets Loki search the premises. Loki notices a refrigerator has been moved, positioned in front of the door. He pulls it out of the way. Inside the door is a basement with no stairs leading into it. An old corpse with a maze-like pendant hanging around his neck is tied to a chair, surrounded by statues of saints. Loki immediately arrests Dunn, who claims he doesn’t know who the man was. He says the man came to the church years ago, bragging that he’d killed 16 children and intended to kill more. Dunn felt the only solution was to kill the man.

The next morning, Keller is infuriated when he hears on the radio that Jones is being released. He goes to the police station as Jones is being released and confronts him. Under the din of reporters, Jones whispers, “They didn’t cry. Not until I left them.” Keller takes this to O’Malley, but neither he nor Loki exactly believe Keller. Loki says he’ll talk to him, which isn’t good enough for Keller, but it’ll have to do. Jones clams up when Loki talks to him, seeming confused and disoriented. Loki gives Keller the bad news. After being confronted with Grace’s anger and Ralph’s sadness, Keller decides to take matters into his own hands. He follows Jones, who’s walking his dog, and when he hears Jones whispering “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” — the very song the girls had been singing the night they disappeared — Keller threatens Jones at gunpoint. The dog wanders off.

Keller picks up Franklin, who has been instructed to pack a change of clothes. Franklin wants to know why, so Keller shows him: he has Jones chained up in the abandoned apartment house he conveniently owns. Franklin’s horrified, but Keller reminds him that this animal has their daughters, who may still be alive. Meanwhile, Loki discovers the church corpse is still unidentified, and the priest is sticking to his story. He finds a newspaper article dated 1982, describing a boy who went missing — who happened to live at the address of the empty house in front of which the RV was parked. He visits the Milland family, who moved a few years ago, after neighbors kept complaining about the matriarch going after their children. They’re cooperative, but it’s evident that the disappearance of young Eddie has destroyed MRS. MILLAND. Her adult children, KIM (37) and SCOTT (35), show Loki around. Scott explains more about the incidents that drove them to move — it’s all pretty innocent. Mrs. Milland is a drunk who can’t get over her son’s disappearance.

After a night of interrogating Jones, Keller and Franklin are surprised by how disoriented he remains. He won’t say a word. Keller starts beating on him, but it has no effect. As he attends a candlelight vigil, the emotional toll of keeping Jones locked up catches up with Franklin, who behaves strangely. In the crowd, Eliza notices someone leering at the Birches. The following day, Holly’s dog turns up dead, hit by a car. This leads Loki to find out Jones has been missing and was last seen taking the dog for a walk. Loki interviews a department store clerk with a tip. She describes a man similar to the one leering at the vigil and says he keeps buying kids’ clothes, all different sizes, and was recently fondling child-sized mannequins. Meanwhile, Franklin ends up spilling everything to Nancy. They go to the apartment, where Nancy demands to see Jones. She unties him and shows him drawings from Joy. Jones attacks her, begging for help. Keller and Franklin struggle to subdue him.

Keller decides to build a creepy cell he built to house Jones, hidden behind a false wooden wall. Their only connection to him is through a PVC pipe. Keller shows Franklin and Nancy the contraption, and they’re horrified. They try to pry the wood away when Jones grabs at Franklin. Instead, he and Nancy leave. Keller boards him back up. Later that night, a mysterious intruder moves through the Birch house (where Franklin and Nancy are discussing whether or not to call the police on Keller — ultimately, they decide not to). They hear noises and fear Eliza’s missing — but she’s not, and the intruder leaves before anyone really knows he was there. He moves on to the Dovers’ house, where Grace — who’s developed a Xanax-popping habit in the wake of Anna’s disappearance — finds a window hanging open and becomes convinced Anna has come back. Ralph makes her call the police. Loki takes notes. Grace shows him the basement, and Loki’s disturbed by the scope of the emergency provisions. He also notices a half-used bag of lye, at which point he becomes a little disconcerted that Keller isn’t around. Loki begins following Keller, but Keller catches on to him and drives in circles until he reaches a liquor store. He confronts Loki, who demands to know what he’s been up to. Keller makes a convincing case that he’s been drinking and driving around in circles, and it’s too embarrassing to share with Grace, so he’s convinced her that he’s helping with search efforts.

Inspired by his trip to the liquor store, Keller gets bombed and has a dream that Anna found her red whistle — at the bottom of their neighbors’ pool. Keller leaps out of bed and storms to the home of the BREWERS. They’re baffled by him leaping into their semi-frozen pool in the dead of winter. He finds nothing at the bottom. Loki finds an article about Keller’s dad, who committed suicide in the old apartment building. He takes a drive out there and realizes somebody’s inside. He tries to get in, but Keller hears him. Just before Loki can enter and find out what’s really going on, Keller intercepts him on the first floor landing, feigning a hangover. Loki grills him about Alex Jones and the survivalist gear in the basement, but Keller denies everything. Before Loki can get too thorough, he gets a call from the department store clerk — the guy came back, and this time she got plate numbers. Loki tracks them to a man named BOB TAYLOR. Bob wants so much to keep Loki out of the house that he slams the door hard enough to break Loki’s foot. Loki pursues Bob through the house, where there are mazes all over the place. He finds a small room containing 16 steamer trunks. He breaks one of the locks and finds a bunch of bloody kids’ clothes — and snakes. Same deal with all ther other trunks — except the last one, which has a homemade maze book.

Loki calls Keller down to the station. He says that, while Bob confessed and the Birches positively identified some of Joy’s clothes, they didn’t find any bodies. Keller flips out on Loki, accusing him of wasting time stalking Keller instead of finding Anna’s kidnapper. Keller goes home, where he finds Ralph has learned everything from Eliza. Keller insists that Anna is still out there, and he’s going to find her. Bob draws Loki a map to the bodies, but it’s an impenetrable maze. Pissed, Loki starts beating on him. Uniformed officers try to pull him off, and Bob gets one of their guns. Rather than shooting any of them, he kills himself. Nancy tries to convince Keller to end his torment of Jones. She gives him some syringes she uses at her animal clinic to euthanize animals. Alone, Keller contemplates it. Just as he’s about to put Jones out of his misery, Jones whispers that “they’re in the maze.” Keller demands to know what that means, but Jones clams up again.

Keller visits Holly Jones. He claims that he feels bad — partly responsible for Jones “disappearing,” and she invites him in. He subtly lays out clues, testing Holly’s reactions. More importantly, he’s looking for a weakness to get to Jones, and she reveals one: snakes. Before he leaves, Keller notices a newspaper article reporting Bob’s suicide. He’s pissed. Meanwhile, nobody at the police station can figure out the maze — until Loki realizes the pendant on the church corpse was the exact same pattern. Forensics tells Loki all the blood at Bob’s house was from a pig, all the clothes (except those identified by the Dovers and Birches) were brand new, and that more evidence they uncovered suggests Bob was oddly “playacting,” based on a book written by an ex-FBI agent. Forensics also matches up the map to a supposedly unsolvable maze in the agent’s book.

Friction in both the Birch and Dover households lead both Ralph and Eliza to get away from their families for a little while. They run into Loki, creeping around outside the Dover house. He’s found footprints and one of Anna’s socks — evidence of Bob being the “intruder” not-quite-seen earlier. At the apartment house, Keller torments Jones by sliding live snakes he bought at a pet store into the PVC pipe. Terrified, Jones tries to claw his way out and starts saying something. Keller stops his torment and listens, but Jones gives no relevant information and pretty much blanks out.

Meanwhile, inside a mystery room, Joy and Anna are still alive. They’re being drugged and kept by someone seen only in silhouette, forced to solve a variation on the homemade maze book seen in Bob’s home. As the Keeper comes in to check on them, they pretend to be asleep — and they run out past her. They hear the Keeper following them, and as Anna lags behind, Joy realizes she’s disappeared. Undaunted, Joy keeps running until she reaches a busy street, where she’s found. Grace hears the news and yells for Keller and Ralph (neither of whom are home) before storming out of the house, where Keller is arriving. She explains what happened and said Joy is at the hospital. They go down there, and Loki lets them through the police cordon. Grace demands to speak to Joy immediately, but she’s too drugged to be coherent. Keller starts shouting at her, demanding to know where she was being held, when Joy stops her cold by saying, “You were there.” Keller rushes off — to Holly’s house.

Still claiming to feel bad about everything, Keller offers to do any home improvements Holly wants. She invites him into the house — and promptly holds a gun on him. She forces him to drink the same drugged grape-aid she gave to the girls and leads him out to the backyard. As she leads him to the load Trans Am, Holly unspools the entire story: she and her husband kidnapped Alex — he was their first — and they did it not so much to kill as to “declare war on God” — the disappearances shatter the faith of those who are taken as well as everyone their lives touched. They also kidnapped Bob, which she claims to have forgotten about until reading about him in the paper. She complains that she’s had to slow down since her husband’s disappearance. Alex had nothing to do with kidnapping them — he just wanted to give them a ride. Holly forces Keller into the car, has him drive a few feet forward, which reveals a deep, grave-like hole in the ground, filled with children’s skeletons and snakes. She forces Keller into the hole by shooting him in the thigh. Keller sees Anna’s red whistle in the hole with him. Holly covers the hole, then backs the Trans Am over it again.

Ralph and Eliza go to the apartment house. When they find broken syringes and hear noises, Ralph assumes it’s a drug addict and goes in deeper to shoo him away. They find the cell, hear the movement inside, and see a picture of Anna and Joy. They leap to the conclusion that this is where the girls are being kept and immediately dial 911 — but they pull away the wood and discover Jones. Holly watches a news report unraveling Keller’s role in imprisoning Jones, and she’s livid. O’Malley demands that Loki notify Holly of what happened before he makes any effort to find Keller.

As Loki arrives at Holly’s house, Holly readies to finish off Anna while Keller figures out a way out of the hole. Keller rushes into the back entrance of the house and finds Anna — but it’s all a drug-induced hallucination. He’s never left the hole. Loki moves through the house, seeing a photo of Holly’s husband, who wears the same maze pendant as the church corpse. Loki confronts Holly, but not before she injects Anna with Keller’s own syringes. Loki and Holly fire at the same time; he kills her, but ends up with a missing eye. Nevertheless, Loki grabs Anna and drives her frantically to the emergency room. Some time later, Anna — who was saved thanks to Loki’s courage — and Grace greet Loki in his hospital bed. They share a moment of silent connection. Loki looks at a newspaper that announces Eddie Milland (a.k.a. Alex Jones) has finally been reunited with his family — but Keller remains missing. Anna has a new red whistle. Grace dismisses her so she and Loki can talk. She insists she hasn’t heard from Keller. Loki claims he believes her. Grace tells him, whether Keller’s found and sent to prison or not, she believes he’s a good man.

Some time late, a bandaged, cane-carrying Loki surveys the crime scene at Holly’s house. The Trans Am has been gutted but not moved. The lab techs say the frozen ground will slow their progress. The techs leave for the night, but Loki stays behind to look around. In the silence, he eventually hears something coming from the Trans Am, a noise — a whistle. Faintly, but it’s real. Loki rushes in the direction of the Trans Am.

Notes

But fundamentally it is the same careful grouping of suspects, the same utterly incomprehensible trick of how somebody stabbed Mrs. Pottington Postlethwaite III with the solid platinum poniard just as she flatted on the top note of the “Bell Song” from Lakmé in the presence of fifteen ill-assorted guests; the same ingénue in fur-trimmed pajamas screaming in the night to make the company pop in and out of doors and ball up the timetable; the same moody silence next day as they sit around sipping Singapore slings and sneering at each other, while the flatfeet crawl to and fro under the Persian rugs, with their derby hats on.
—Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”

As Mr. Chandler argued in his 1944 essay, the chief problem with the popular British whodunits of the day came as a direct result of focusing on the what and the how and not the gut-wrenching why — which, if the authors addressed it at all, usually ended up a half-assed afterthought. He then observes that Dashiell Hammett led a wave of hardboiled pioneers who “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.”

Granted, murder doesn’t drive the mystery in Prisoners (it’s more of an unfortunate byproduct), but it contains the same sort of structuring that’s predicated entirely on convoluted plotting instead of why people do the things they do. “We’re Satanists who want people to lose faith in God” simply isn’t good enough, even when Guzikowski injects a lot of haughty, ill-fitting religious symbolism into the script. It reminded me a little of Law-Abiding Citizen, which is most certainly not a compliment, in the way it layered the rich sauce of pretension over a fairly schlocky locked-room procedural that would have fared much better had Guzikowski simply embraced the ridiculousness and gone ahead full bore.

Because, at the end of the day, it makes no real effort to define these characters as anything beyond constructs of a dense plot. Every moment in the script feels like a frustrating, arm’s-length calculation designed to further the plot without doing much to make the characters feel like real people doing things for believable reasons. The script is just a series of “seeming” red herrings that add up to a goofy denouement. The corpse at the church and the over-the-top weirdness of Bob seem to be nothing but dead ends, yet Roger Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters (not to mention my Law of Economy of Goofy Procedural Storylines) tell us well in advance that this will all mean something. Somehow, I managed to shake myself loose from the edge of my seat and find myself annoyed that the more I learned about the plot, the less I seemed to know (or care) about the characters involved in the plot.

What could have been a fractured morality tale in the vein of Gone Baby Gone ends up a cheap, pulpy thriller that, ironically, gives pulp detective novels a bad name. As I mentioned, Guzikowski ladles a soupçon of religious symbolism onto this script, but it never quite adds up to more than vaguely creepy moments and bland, ineffectual character traits. So Keller’s fond of listening to the Bible on tape. Is this supposed to imply some sort of moral righteousness that allows him to do vile things to Jones while Franklin cowers? If so, that never comes through as a motivating factor in anything Keller does. It’s really just a conclusion I’m jumping to in order to give it a semblance of meaning. Otherwise, I’d just have to say it’s another plot device — gotta show the Dovers are Christians so audiences don’t assume they’re Satanists, which would negate Holly’s master plan. I don’t want to say that. Please don’t make that be the real explanation. For the love of God…so to speak.

In a script where a detective is given the laughably unsubtle name “Loki” (I’m surprised the captain wasn’t named Odin) and Keller is a carpenter in the world’s laziest homage to Jesus, it’s hard to accept that the proliferation of Christian-themed moments can simply exist to serve the plot. Then again, I can’t exactly figure out how a Norse trickster god figures into this story in any symbolic or literal way, so maybe Keller’s just a carpenter for the plot-based reason that he has to be good at building stuff ‘cause eventually he builds a prison cell. And while I’m bagging on the half-assed attempts at “deep” symbolism, I give Guzikowski some points for not using “chess” as the world’s laziest metaphor for the thrilling game of cat-and-mouse (like the aforementioned Law-Abiding Citizen, among thousands of others). However, I deduct points for choosing a maze motif, which may not be as popular but is equally cheap.

Ignoring the characters and their general lack of humanity for a second, let’s focus on the story. Prisoners has a tight plot in a theoretical way — everything adds up in the end, Guzikowski doesn’t ignore a single loose end, and the script moves from one setpiece to another with relative ease. But when the relative ease comes from the fact that this feels less like a tightly plotted story than a series of loosely connected “cool moments” in a movie, the end result is an empty, frustrating experience — and that, my friends, all comes back to the characters. Without anything to hang our hats on, how can anyone expect us to go along for the ride?

To recap: how does any single character in this script feel about the things that are happening at any given time? Other than, let’s say, “confused and/or angry”? Guzikowski answers that question by largely ignoring anyone other than Keller and Loki, but he also gives these two characters the short shrift. “I have to find my daughter”/”I’m a master detective”/”Get off my plane!” — it’s all so trite, and the lack of any real depth on these two characters in particular (and the menagerie of supporting players in general) takes a moderately interesting concept and flushes it down the toilet. When Holly makes her eye-rolling, Bond-villain confession, what little goodwill anyone has left for this story will drain out completely.

The Bottom Line

In other words, this is the Black List I remembered. At the risk of sounding like a total prick, I don’t see much hope for this creatively without abandoning the cheesy “twisty thriller” elements and grounding everything in something resembling believability. To paraphrase Mr. Chandler, Guzikowski needs to give kidnapping back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons. Otherwise, it’s going to remain like that crappy Poirot story where the guy has already committed a murder and rigs a room so that furniture will crash and a crazy pig-noise toy will imitate the sound of a scream to create the impression that the murder actually occurred when he was not on the premises. That’s not a good thing, guys. Not at all.

Posted by Stan on December 17, 2009 5:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

December 16, 2009

Black List Script #3: The Voices by Michael R. Perry

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 disturbed man attempts to walk the straight-and-narrow while receiving advice from his ‘talking’ pets.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

A sinister cat, MR. WHISKERS, clashes with the idyllic small town of Veedersburg, Ohio, when he kills a mockingbird just to watch it die, then bats it around with evident pleasure. The cat’s owner, JERRY HICKFANG (29), works in the shipping department of Veedersburg’s economic mainstay, a bathroom fixture factory. He’s approached by DENNIS from the personnel department; after congratulating Jerry on his good work, Dennis informs Jerry that, as the newest employee in the shipping department, he’ll have to spend his off-hours helping to plan a company picnic with members of the factory’s other departments. Jerry is cheerful and enthusiastic about this responsibility, further impressing Dennis. Jerry returns to his home — an apartment above an abandoned bowling alley — and greets his two pets (Mr. Whiskers and BOSCO, a friendly dog) on his way to his bedroom. Inside his bedroom, an offscreen ROOMMATE badgers Jerry about his station in life, ridiculing him and announcing that the factory employees only keep him around for a laugh. Finally, Jerry exits his bedroom to confront the roommate — Mr. Whiskers, who can talk in the same CGI/animatronic way the animals in Babe talked. Mr. Whiskers and Bosco become the devil and angel perched on Jerry’s shoulder: Whiskers is hostile and evil, while Bosco is very pleasant and reassuring.

During the picnic-planning process, Jerry makes some awkward attempts to socialize. Nobody really cares. KATIE, the cute new girl in accounting, is put in charge of the music. She immediately pitches the idea of doing “The Macarena.” Nobody’s terribly enthusiastic, but eventually they agree to allow it. After the group is assigned responsibilities, they break apart. Katie approaches Jerry, who’s in charge of the sound system, to ask if it’ll work with an iPod. Jerry isn’t sure, so he tells her to come by tomorrow to test it out. As requested, she drops by the following day and is surprised and amused to find Jerry rocking out to speed metal. They plug in her iPod, and she turns on “The Macarena.” They joke about possible meanings to the song, and Jerry finds himself smitten. He comes home, walking on air. Bosco’s thrilled at the prospect of Jerry with a girlfriend, but Mr. Whiskers doesn’t share the dog’s boisterous enthusiasm. Jerry ignores the cat.

Jerry visits his court-appointed psychiatrist, the attractive DR. WEST, who’s very supportive about Jerry’s excitement over the company picnic. She asks him about his medication, and Jerry intimates that he hasn’t been taking it with any regularity. West stresses the importance of the meds and asks if he hears voices. Jerry tells her no and complains that the question reminds him of his mother, who claimed to hear the voices of angels calling to her. West explains that this was his mother’s way of coping with her psychiatric issues. Jerry asks her what to do about Katie — he likes her, he wants to be honest with her, but he’s afraid of scaring her off. He decides to only say something if the subject comes up, and West reassures him in that decision.

At the picnic, Katie innocently asks Jerry to dance “The Macarena” — they do, and he’s entranced. He comes home that evening feeling great, muttering the word “macarena” over and over. Bosco’s thrilled that his master is happy, but Mr. Whiskers chides Jerry for not being able to get laid. At work, Jerry walks on air, listening to an off-brand MP3 player with “The Macarena” on an endless loop. He dances and annoys his coworkers. At the end of the day, Jerry comes to visit Katie in accounting (at the picnic, she told him to “come vist [her] some time”). She’s hooched up and ready to go out drinking with her girlfriends. LISA, a slightly sluttier coworker, eagerly invites Jerry along with them. Katie’s unenthusiastic about it, especially when — after a night of drinking — Lisa volunteers Jerry to drive Katie home. On the way home, Jerry invites Katie to the State Fair. She half-heartedly agrees to meet him there. Jerry goes home and excitedly tells Bosco the news. Mr. Whiskers is more interested in Jerry opening a can of cat food for them.

The next day, Jerry drops by the accounting department and runs into Lisa. He has a State Fair pig-racing schedule to drop off for Katie, who isn’t there. Lisa assures Jerry she’ll get it to him, but it takes him awhile to get the hint and actually leave. When he does, Katie emerges, telling Lisa she agreed to meet Jerry at the fair. Lisa reminds Katie it’s karaoke night. Katie says she’ll wait until the office closes and leave him a cancellation VoiceMail. Jerry wanders the fair alone, looking at all the loving couples, dejected. It begins to rain. Still waiting for Katie, Jerry sits in his truck, in the parking lot, until a security guard forces him to leave. Depressed, Jerry drives by the park where the company picnic was held, blasting “The Macarena”; he goes to TGI Friday’s and drinks alone. Meanwhile, Lisa gives Katie a ride back to the factory (where her car is parked) because it’s too rainy to walk. Katie’s car won’t start, and the storm is getting worse. Her cell phone is damaged in the rain, so she can’t call for help. Finally, she flags down a truck — Jerry, who perceives Katie as an angel he was fated to love thanks to the glow of the lightning creating a halo backlight around her. Katie apologizes for ditching him. They agree to have dinner together.

While driving to the diner, Jerry and Katie talk about themselves — Jerry’s a lifelong Veedersburg resident, but Katie only moved there a few years ago. Another lightning strike makes her look angelic, and Jerry’s starting to spin out. He starts asking her about heaven. She explains she grew up in Gary, Indiana, which is closer to hell. The talk of angels and hell reminds Jerry of a nugget of trivia: only four Biblical angels have names. He names three and asks her to name the fourth. Katie doesn’t know the answer, and before Jerry can tell her — he hits a huge buck. Katie screams as his antlers shatter the windshield and Jerry swerves on the rain-slick, winding road. He finally stops and kills the engine — and the buck begins thrashing. Like his pets, the buck talks to Jerry, telling him he wants to die. Jerry respects the buck’s wishes and slits his throat, drenching Katie in blood. Katie is horrified, especially when Jerry gets back in the car and cheerfully launches back into his trivia: Lucifer was the fourth angel.

Katie panics and runs into the woods. Jerry follows her, trying to explain it was an accident. He catches up to her, and after she thrashes, punching and kicking him, he pulls her into a close embrace — then she pulls away, and he realizes he has stabbed her. Aware she’s suffering, Jerry puts her out of her misery. Jerry returns home, pulls off his bloody clothes, and tries to get his bearings. Bosco tries to convince Jerry to go to the cops, which Jerry is ready to agree with until Mr. Whiskers points out the naïveté involved in that plan. Bosco tells Jerry it’s okay because it was an accident, but Mr. Whiskers speculates that Jerry is a born killer. Jerry goes to the police station and asks to speak with a Detective, WEINBACHER, with whom he has some sort of history. Jerry tells Weinbacher he screwed up and needs advice. He leads Weinbacher to his truck — and reveals the buck he hit. Weinbacher suggests Jerry clean it and save the meat before it spoils. Jerry takes the buck back home and carves him up. Mr. Whiskers urges Jerry to do something about Katie’s body before someone finds her.

The next day at work, Dennis panics Jerry by announcing he saw him on Friday. He means at the fair, then immediately asks if Jerry has seen Katie, who didn’t show up to work and won’t answer her phone. Jerry unconvincingly denies any knowledge. This, and another conversation with Mr. Whiskers, convinces Jerry to go to the woods and get Katie’s body. Just as he’s wrapping her body in plastic sheeting, Dr. West calls to remind Jerry of his appointment, which he’s currently missing. Jerry tells her he’ll be right over. Once again, Dr. West reminds Jerry of the importance of taking the medication. His prison release was conditional, so if he’s not doing everything he’s told, he could end up back in the slammer. After the appointment, Jerry returns to his truck, where Katie’s body waits. At home, he carves up her body. Bosco is sympathetic to the emotional difficulty Jerry is having, but Mr. Whiskers is more concerned about Jerry’s pills. He warns Jerry against taking them. As a counterpoint, Katie’s severed head — stored in the refrigerator — demands that Jerry take them. Jerry listens.

By morning, he has reached a transitional point — things are still sunny and optimistic, but Mr. Whiskers and Bosco no longer “talk.” Rather, the bark and meow in a combination of human and animal voices. While at work, the pills really kick in — the color drains out of the image, and the widescreen narrows to a square. The sound gets tinny and distant. Jerry’s dull-eyed and disinterested instead of raring to go. After work, he returns to his apartment, and for the first time we — and Jerry — get an “objective” view of it: it’s a complete sty, and that’s not just because it’s covered in deer and human blood. It’s full of insects, rotting food, etc. The “real” Mr. Whiskers is scrawny and poorly tended; Bosco has out-of-control mange and some sort of disgusting ocular disorder. Katie’s severed head rots in the fridge, gray and disgusting. The next morning, Jerry’s mirror image — still residing in the sparkling, colorful world we previously lived in with Jerry — demands he gets rid of the pills. Jerry flushes them. As the drugs wear off, the image and sound is restored, as is Jerry’s mood.

A group of birdwatchers discover Katie’s blood-soaked purse and a chunk of her intestine. Police are called. That night, Jerry and his pets watch an Animal Planet show emphasizing animal-on-animal murders. Mr. Whiskers encourages Jerry to kill someone else, but Jerry doesn’t want to. Bosco comes to Jerry’s defense, getting into a fight with Mr. Whiskers over whether or not Jerry should continue killing. Jerry gets lost in contemplation. The next morning, while Jerry eats breakfast, Katie’s severed head begs him for a friend. Jerry reluctantly agrees. At work, he cozies up to Lisa and asks her out. They have an after-work drink, where she grumbles about her divorce and brings up her cat. Jerry describes the difficulties of cat ownership, and Lisa agrees. She invites Jerry to her place to meet her cat. Jerry agrees. He drives along a rural, winding road and misses the turn to Lisa’s apartment. He says he has a surprise and takes her to an old, long-abandoned farm — the place where he grew up. He follows Lisa inside, carefully hiding his knife.

Inside his childhood home, Jerry sees himself as a teenager, showing his mother DENISE (40s, intense) and stepfather MACK (30s, brawny and violent) a sock puppet he believes is real. Mack tries to beat the delusion out of him, but teen Jerry won’t relent, so Mack tears the sock into ribbons. He snaps out of the memory, and Lisa sees he’s shaken. She’s sympathetic. They go upstairs, where Jerry flashes on his teen self with Denise once again — she’s in bed and looking worse for wear, terrified that “they” are coming for her, because she told “them” that the angels talk to her and they don’t believe her. Jerry says he believes her, because he hears them, too. Denise begs him for help as police cars arrive. Jerry kills her. In the present, Jerry tells Lisa that his mother died in this room. Lisa opens up, too: she had an abusive father and a methadone-addicted mother. Feeling truly sympathetic, Jerry drops the knife as they leave the room. They go back to Lisa’s apartment and make love — awkwardly yet tenderly.

The next day, both Jerry and Lisa are all smiles. When he gets home the next morning, Bosco’s thrilled to “smell” that Jerry got laid, but Mr. Whiskers is pissed — he left them alone all night without any food. Now that Jerry’s in love — really in love — he’s a little nervous about the things he’s done. Mr. Whiskers advises him to keep ignoring it. At work, Jerry and Lisa make out in the copy room and are interrupted by ALISON, another coworker. Jerry feels awkward, so he leaves. Alison thinks Jerry is cute. Lisa asks Alison to find Jerry’s address in the payroll information so she can surprise him. At home, Jerry intently watches a news report about the alleged “serial killer” who killed Katie. As a reporter interviews Weinbacher, he addresses Jerry directly. Jerry gripes that he doesn’t want to be a serial killer. Katie’s severed head asks to be let out of the refrigerator so they can discuss his problems. Jerry, Bosco, Mr. Whiskers, and Katie’s severed head all discuss Jerry’s killing and why he does bad things. Jerry quickly realizes that pets and severed heads don’t talk, which means they must be figments of his insane mind, so when he blames Mr. Whiskers for encouraging him to kill, he’s really blaming himself.

The doorbell rings, frightening them all. It’s Lisa, with a cake. Jerry quickly goes out on the landing to meet him, inadvertently locking himself out in his frantic effort to keep her from entering the apartment. Jerry thanks her for the cake and tells her he can’t let her in because it’s a mess. He climbs up to the skylight to let himself back inside. But Lisa, who frequently forgets her keys, is an expert lock picker — she gets into the apartment before he does, but Jerry’s fumbling on the roof so preoccupies her that she doesn’t notice the squalid living conditions or severed head (which Jerry covered with a windbreaker). When she finally takes in the scene, she’s horrified. Jerry comes into the apartment, horribly disappointed in himself. He wants to explain, but before he can, she bumps into the windbreaker, revealing Katie’s severed head. Lisa starts screaming, and Mr. Whiskers demands Jerry kill her. Lisa runs out into the woods. She darts down a ravine, but Jerry’s clumsy and falls — right on top of her, seriously injuring her. He strangles her to finish the job, then drags the body to his apartment and dismembers it.

Worried about Lisa after a coworker points her to a newspaper article revealing that Jerry was imprisoned for killing his mother, Alison drives out to the bowling alley, where she finds Lisa’s car. Jerry comes outside to meet her and smoothly talks his way out of it, by implying Lisa’s in his apartment and there in the middle of a lovemaking session. Alison is ready to go when Jerry turns back to his apartment, revealing the knife in his back pocket. She screams and runs into the field behind the bowling alley. Jerry follows, kills her, and dismembers her. Bosco informs Jerry that he no longer thinks Jerry is a good person. Jerry sinks Alison’s car into the river. DANA, Alison’s (male) coworker, comes to the bowling alley looking for her. Jerry’s gone, and he left the door unlocked. Dana takes one look inside, one whiff of the carnage, and vomits immediately.

Jerry gets another call from Dr. West — he’s late for yet another session. Jerry races over, soaking wet and looking disheveled. Jerry tells her Mr. Whiskers made him stop taking the drugs, and that he killed three people and feels terrible about it. West decides to call 911, but Jerry assaults her, smashing the phone and tying her up with packing tape. He drags her to his childhood farmhouse and complains about God — if God didn’t want him to kill, why would He force Jerry to have such a rotten childhood? He agrees to remove West’s gag if she can answer and put him on the “fast-track to mental health.” West says God is so complex, the human mind cannot understand Him or His motivations; in order to help them, He sent Jesus to show what He wanted in a way humans could understand. Jerry cites bowling a perfect game as another example of God showing perfection in a way humans can understand. Jerry asks why he hears voices. West says many people hear voices for many different reasons — he’s not alone, but the key is that he doesn’t have to act on the voices. This is a startling revelation for Jerry.

Dana reports Jerry’s crimes to the police. Jerry brings West back to his apartment, where Bosco greets her enthusiastically and Mr. Whiskers ridiculous her psychotherapy skills. West, who does not see the animals talking, is baffled and terrified. West begs to make a phone call — not to call the police, but so she won’t have to be alone. Jerry honors her request by bringing Katie’s severed head into the room to keep her company. West screams, prompting Katie’s severed head to scream. Mr. Whiskers and Bosco join. Jerry silences them — and notices the police emergency lights flashing outside the window. He grabs his pets and drags them into the bathroom, where he removes an access panel leading down into the bowling alley. Mr. Whiskers flees before Jerry can drop him in, so he and Bosco crawl down into the bowling alley. Meanwhile, West attempts to dial 911 when a SWAT team bursts into the apartment.

Down in the bowling alley, Jerry sees JESUS bowling a perfect game. Jesus tells Jerry he can be forgiven as long as he forgives himself — and others, like his stepfather. Jerry refuses, but Jesus points out that Mack tried the best he could, however imperfectly. If Jerry can’t forgive a man like that, how can he expect his murder victims to forgive him? Mack appears, still a dick, but Jerry finds it in his heart to forgive him. Mr. Whiskers reappears as Mack disappears. Jerry wants to know why Jesus put him through this life, but Jesus simply says it’s part of a bigger picture and that it was not a mistake. The SWAT team descends on the bowling alley.

As they try to enter, the police accidentally set the bowling alley on fire. As toxic smoke cuts off the air supply to Jerry’s brain, he seems to be dying — when suddenly everything turns into an MGM musical. The bowling alley is in mint condition, the smoke has turned into a “tasteful fog,” the SWAT team has turned into Vegas dancers (in dance-friendly variations on SWAT uniforms). Jerry finds Mack, Denise, Lisa, Katie, and Alison looking vibrant and healthy. Jesus appears, too, as do Mr. Whiskers and Bosco. Together, they dance “The Macarena.”

Notes

Remember last year, when I kept ranting about believability? Tons of scripts with great concepts, executed poorly because the writers had no interest in keeping their scripts grounded in believable behavior. The argument is pretty simple: you can offer up the weirdest movie ever made, and I’ll gladly buy into it as long as the characters — weird though they may be — have clear motivations for their weirdness, the weird things they do, and the weird circumstances in which they live. Do not confuse believability with realism. I don’t give a shit about realism. I just want to be able to both understand why characters do what they do, feel what they feel, and believe it. I think, even when movie fans have a hard time articulating why they disliked a movie, it all ultimately goes back to believability.

Lazier writers than me seem to feel like the issues with believability will work themselves out through a combination of acting and directing. While that might be true to some degree, isn’t it still just flat-out bad writing to ignore such things? Especially when you’re trying to sell it — if, as I argue, part of selling a project has as much to do with The Concept as “selling” readers on the story, characters, and universe you’ve created, doesn’t a lack of believability add up to poor salesmanship? Obviously not, considering the shitty scripts topping last year’s Black List were bought and paid for, but I’d still like to believe in a better world. Wouldn’t you?

This brings me to The Voices, a batshit-crazy story that nevertheless delivers pretty much everything I want as a screenwriter and lover of the written word. True, it has its share of problems — primarily, a somewhat repetitive first act and a running gag about “The Macarena” that starts to get a tad eye-rolling before bringing it back for a legitimately hilarious final moment — but it has subtle, well-crafted characters; a thoroughly engaging, frequently hilarious story; and the Jupiter-sized balls to ask tough questions and answer them in irreverent yet insightful ways.

I wasn’t sold on this script at first. Although Perry does a pretty nice job with the slow build of Jerry’s abundant mental problems, the repetitive first act is a little bit too cutesy and coy. Although the writing itself was significantly better right off the bet, I nevertheless found myself girding my loins for another Butter or The Beaver. However, the first act (aside from “The Macarena” joke going stale after approximately the second reference to it) retroactively becomes great in light of what happens afterward. Perry is less interested in The Concept than the complex, difficult character he has created in Jerry. After his murder of Katie and subsequent moral confusion, the script turns into a dark, fascinating portrait of a serial killer (even putting Henry to shame).

The second act complications don’t revolve around the expected (Jerry’s wacky attempts to hide the murder). Rather, Perry depicts Jerry’s struggle to be “good” despite having a severed head in his refrigerator that he thinks has the ability talk to him. With visually arresting detail, he contrasts Jerry’s bubbly-yet-insane personality with the drab, leveled-off medicated Jerry. Equally fascinating is Jerry’s flashback-laden trip to the family farm. I’ll give you that heading out to the family farm might be a sort of cheap plot device in order to further develop Jerry’s character, but it works because (a) Perry sets up Jerry as the sort of dumbass who would come up with the plan to lure someone to a place associated with him and him alone in order to commit a murder, (b) what we’re shown of Jerry’s past is as disturbing as it is fascinating, and (c) it allows Lisa to make an emotional connection with him, further enhancing both of their characters and sending the story down yet another (mostly) unexpected road.

When things really go off the rails in the third act, the story is already humming along so well that it’s easy to ignore Alison and Dana’s lack of development or the weird pseudo-plot hole with Detective Weinbacher. (Seriously: in such a small town, with one well-known semi-psychotic killer who has confessed to his court-appointed shrink to taking his meds inconsistently, he never turns up as a suspect? Why even have Weinbacher in the story? Why not just paint it as an inept county sheriff’s department who couldn’t solve a murder if the killer confessed?) Things get really interesting when Jerry starts debating with Dr. West (and his pets) about the nature of God, why He would sentence Jerry to such a rotten life, and the ultimate question: does a person have to listen to that voice, whether it’s the voice of crippling self-doubt or an extremely moral conscience or pets telling you to kill people? Does ignoring that voice lead to a better life, or does it lead to worse behavior? Perry supposes it depends on the person, and I don’t disagree.

Amid all these questions comes a sequence that’s sure to generate controversy: although it’s evidently a hallucination induced by toxic chemicals and oxygen deprivation, Jesus appears with a bit of tough love that ultimately leads to forgiveness. It’s a gamble, and the full-on absurdity of all the dead players gathering with Jesus and Vegas dancer SWAT officers is a risky ending that, in a weaker script, would have sent me on a rant to end all rants — but here, it works exceptionally well. As Perry has written it, this is the only way to end the story, and it’s remarkably effective (especially in its portrayal of Jesus as a benevolent and forgiving sort — a lot of religious retards seem to forget that part).

So the next time you see me bitching about believability — especially in comedies — just think about The Voices and remind yourself, “This is what Stan’s talking about. He doesn’t just hate everything because he’s a bitter, jealous troll. He’s a bitter, jealous troll because everything’s shit but The Voices, yet all the shit still sells while he toils in obscurity describing memories of beating off.”

The Bottom Line

Here’s all The Voices needs to go from “pretty fucking great” to “insty-classic”: fewer “Macarena” jokes early on (less is more!), either an emphasis or de-emphasis (it’s up to Perry) of Weinbacher, and a production team willing to go ahead with a challenging, intelligent script. No matter how tiny or seemingly insignificant, any attempts to dumb it down or make Jerry “more relatable” (having both Lisa and Katie’s deaths as “mercy killings” is about as “nice” as he should get) will fuck it up. He’s plenty empathetic, despite his insanity, because Perry imbues the character with remarkable depth. Do we really need to “relate” to him in the sense that his killings are justified or he’s a friendly guy who’s fingered for murders he didn’t commit? It concerns me deeply that Hollywood will fuck this up, because this is too good a script to be ruined by focus groups or retarded executives who attempt to justify their existence by giving story notes. I’m usually not that against The Machine, but this is one of those cases where the development process is destined to fuck a script up rather than improving it.

Posted by Stan on December 16, 2009 5:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 15, 2009

Black List Script #2: The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin

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): “The story of the founders of the social networking website Facebook and how overnight success and wealth changed their lives.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

Fall, 2003. At Boston college bar, 19-year-old MARK ZUCKERBERG discusses his strong desire to get into a “final club” (from the context, I gather this is the Harvard equivalent of a fraternity) with his girlfriend, ERICA. The conversation is a bit circular and frequently absurd, but the bottom line is: Mark wants to get into a final club but doesn’t exactly know a way to make himself stand out enough to get into one. The other bottom line is: after Mark arrogantly announces final clubs will help Erica, as well, by allowing him to introduce her to people “she’d never meet otherwise,” Erica dumps him on the spot. Mark tries to recover by condescendingly making light of her school - Boston University, which obviously lacks the prestige and influence of Harvard - which only makes things worse.

Angry, Mark returns to his dorm and continues drinking. While he blogs nasty things about Erica, Mark notices the Kirkland dorm’s facebook and hatches a scheme to get revenge against all womankind. Within a few hours, he hacks into servers for each of the Harvard dorms (because the school doesn’t have a centralized facebook, only one for each dorm), finds digital copies of all the girls’ photos, and cobbles together a website called “FaceMash,” which is similar to Hotornot.com, except (a) it’s only Harvard girls, and (b) students don’t judge the hotness on a 10-point scale, they judge the relative hotness of two women. In order to get it working, Mark enlists the aid of his best friend, business student EDUARDO SAVERIN, who worked up an algorithm for a different application that will work for Mark’s site. Mark hacks together the code and launches the site. Within a few short hours, it becomes so popular on campus that Harvard’s intranet crashes. Eduardo reacts fearfully, but Mark’s both impressed with himself and a little amused.

The action cuts to Mark, a few years later, listening to a lawyer read back Erica’s deposition. It irritates Mark that she told so many lies. Mark sits across a table from Eduardo and his attorneys. Eduardo is suing him for unknown reasons. As Mark clarifies his side of the story and proudly announces that 80% of Harvard’s male population had visited FaceMash within two hours of its launch, we’re back in 2003 and introduced to CAMERON and TYLER WINKLEVOSS, athletic twins involved in Harvard’s rowcrew team. Their friend, DIVYA NARENDRA brings them copies of Harvard’s student paper, which carries a story about Mark’s scandalous FaceMash site. Impressed with Mark’s skills, they decide “this is [their] guy” — but for what? Another future deposition involves Mark against Tyler, Cameron, and Divya - they’re also suing him, for separate currently unknown unknown reasons.

Back in 2003, Mark faces a board of administrators for his FaceMash stunt, but Mark successfully talks his way out of it by observing that, in addition to already apologizing to any groups he may have offended, his stunt revealed many security holes in Harvard’s system, so they should be thanking him. He’s sentenced to six months’ academic probation. Afterward, Eduardo’s sympathetic. He points out that, on the plus side, everyone knows his name. True, but potentially bad: the abuse from female classmates is such that he’s forced to bail on lectures and hide in his dorms. Soon enough, Cameron and Tyler approach Mark. They invite him to the exclusive clubhouse of the Porcellian final club, where they introduce him to Divya. They go over his impressive credentials: in addition to FaceMash, he created a website called CourseMatch that allows users to find out what classes their friends are taking and an MP3 player Microsoft wanted to buy (before Mark released it for free on the Internet). They pitch their site idea, HarvardConnection, a social networking site that differentiates itself from competitors by being Harvard-only. Mark tells him he’s in, but in the future depositions, he denies ever having said that. The lawyers grill Mark on when he came up with “theFacebook” — before or after he learned about HarvardConnection? It was after, right around the time Eduardo announces he’s been “punched” to join the Phoenix final club. Mark pitches an idea that’s eerily similar to HarvardConnection, getting his attention when he describes it as an exclusive club — their own version of a final club, only one where they’re in charge.

In the deposition, Mark explains he approached Eduardo — instead of his suitemates, who are programmers — because he had the money and business sense to help pull it off. They agree to split the profits 70-30. Lawyers ask Eduardo if he had any awareness of HarvardConnection during this time; Eduardo did not. The lawyers begin reading e-mails from Mark to Cameron, Tyler, and/or Divya. All sound enthusiastic and strongly imply he’s working on building the site without much trouble, but soon enough he starts putting the others off. A simultaneous montage shows Mark working his ass off on theFacebook while Eduardo works his ass off to get into the Phoenix club. Just as Mark’s preparing to finally launch the site, his suitemate DUSTIN sheepishly asks Mark if he knows a particular girl and whether or not she’s single. This leads Mark to a final brainstorm — a “relationship status” feature that also allows users to describe what they’re interested in (friendship, romance, etc.). He excitedly tells Eduardo about the idea as he implements the code, and that’s it — they go live. Mark demands a list of Phoenix members’ e-mail addresses to start generating interest in the site. Eduardo’s unsure, but he ultimately gives them up.

The site takes off immediately, and before long, Divya, Cameron, and Tyler catch wind of it. They’re all pissed, especially when they can’t get ahold of Mark or anybody who knows Mark. Divya and Tyler vacillate between wanting to sue Mark or beat the hell out of him, but Cameron calms them down, urging them to let Mark respond to it. Ultimately, they compromise and have the Winklevosses’ father’s in-house counsel draft a cease-and-desist order for Mark. In the deposition, lawyers ask Mark if he knew the Winklevosses were wealthy at the time he started the site. Mark dances around it but eventually admits he did. Back in 2004, Mark (and to a much lesser extent, Eduardo) becomes a big man on campus, garnering attention from attractive women, including JENNY (who will eventually become Eduardo’s girlfriend). In addition to women, nerds and student entrepreneurs want a piece of Mark, but he’s having none of it — he wants the recognition but doesn’t seem to have much interest in cultivating any actual relationships, business or otherwise.

Not long after, Eduardo announces it’s time to monetize the site. Mark doesn’t want to put ads on it, because it’ll lose the “cool” factor. Eduardo notices the C&D from the Winklevosses and freaks out. Mark tells him to relax, arguing that he didn’t steal any of their code and that “a guy who builds a really nice chair doesn’t owe money to everyone who’s ever built a chair.” Eduardo demands to be let in on everything in the future, good or bad. In the deposition, things get heated between Cameron, Tyler, and Divya, in part because billionaire Mark is more interest in running his business from the deposition room than answering lawyers’ questions. He’s sarcastic and condescending, despite the fact that his accusers are sitting across a table from him. In 2004, as things get hot and heavy between Eduardo and Jenny, Mark sees Erica at a bar and approaches her. He offers an insincere apology and brags about theFacebook. Erica’s still pissed about the many insulting blog posts Mark published about her. She sends him away acidly and unintentionally twists the knife by offering him good luck with his “video game.” Immediately, Mark announces to Eduardo that they must expand to additional schools — Columbia, Yale, and most importantly, Stanford. He hires Dustin to help program in exchange for 5% of the business (from Mark’s share) and brings in suitemate CHRIS to work on publicity — starting with planting an article in the Boston University student newspaper.

The deposition breaks for lunch. Mark doesn’t eat, so an associate, MARYLIN, offers Mark some food. He turns her down. She asks if he hates the Winklevosses, but Mark says he knows they’re only suing him because they can’t accept that life can be unfair. Back in 2004, Divya informs Tyler and Cameron that theFacebook is expanding. Their rage renewed, Tyler realizes they can get to him through the school — by stealing their “property,” he violated the rules of Harvard. Cameron and Tyler agree to meet with the president of Harvard.

In Palo Alto, California, currently broke Napster founder SEAN PARKER bangs a Stanford coed, then borrows her laptop to check his e-mail. When he sees theFacebook, his interest is piqued. He decides he needs to meet with Mark Zuckerberg. Back in Cambridge, Cameron and Tyler have their meeting with LARRY SUMMERS, the intimidating president of Harvard. He scoffs at their claims, stating that this is not a Harvard issue and he won’t lift a finger to help them. Over spring break, Mark and Eduardo take a trip to New York to lure prospective advertisers. Mark humiliates Eduardo with his evident disinterest (he wears worse-than-casual apparel — flip-flops, a hoodie, and track pants, and spends most meetings staring at the floor), but Mark comes alive when they meet with Sean Parker at a trendy restaurant. Despite his youth, Sean can work a room and talk up a storm. Mark already views Sean as something of a hero, so he hangs on every word. Eduardo thinks he’s pompous and mostly useless. Taking the social cue, Sean focuses on Mark and largely ignores Eduardo. As he leaves, Sean instructs them to drop the “the” from “theFacebook,” which Eduardo states in a deposition was the only good thing he did for the burgeoning company.

Soon enough, scandal erupts, driving a wedge into Mark and Eduardo’s already raw friendship. After so much time spent trying to convince Mark that Sean’s no good, an issue of Harvard’s student paper reports that Eduardo has been connected with “torturing animals.” (In reality, the Phoenix club forced Eduardo to spend a week caring for a chicken as part of his grueling initiation. Eduardo ignorantly fed the chicken some…chicken from the cafeteria, to the disgust and consternation of animal rights’ activists declaring “forced cannibalism.) Eduardo’s humiliated, and Mark’s lack of sympathy doesn’t help — especially in light of the fact that Mark has secretly used Facebook to cheat on a final exam. As this argument takes place, Dustin monitors the number of subscribers as it rolls over to 150,000. Mark announces his decision to go to Palo Alto for the summer, rent a house, and bring along interns. He asks Eduardo for money, but Eduardo’s angry — he sees this as Mark wanting to get too close to Sean. Mark won’t relent. The next night, he holds a “group interview” for interns — 60 students gathered around a CS classroom in a hacker drinking game. The first ones to jump through Mark’s hacking hoops get the internship slots. As an apology, Eduardo drops by and tells Mark he opened an $18,000 account for Mark’s summer plans. In the deposition, lawyers grill Eduardo on this point — why would someone so against the plans help Mark out? Eduardo wants to be a team player.

Mark, Dustin, and the interns move into a Palo Alto house, only to discover Sean and his girlfriend living across the street. Sean is enthusiastic about Mark’s plans. He shows Mark around Silicon Valley and actively tries to expand the rift between Mark and Eduardo (who is spending the summer at a New York internship). Sean convinces Mark that he hasn’t been thinking big enough — Mark wants to make a million-dollar company, but Sean thinks it can be a billion-dollar company. As a gesture of good faith, Sean makes plans to take Facebook global. In England, Cameron and Tyler take part in an international rowing race, narrowly losing to a Dutch crew. PRINCE ALBERT of Monaco hosts the awards ceremony; despite his royal stature and relative politeness, Tyler is angry and belligerent after the loss. Later, Cameron and Tyler review footage of the race with their father and Divya. Another man, KENWRIGHT, pops along to relate an amusing anecdote about a new website, Facebook, which his Cambridge-attending daughter is using to discuss the race results with her friends at universities all over England, in realtime. Cameron, Tyler, and Divya are appalled. Cameron finally agrees that it’s time to take legal action.

Sean is angry that he can’t get ahold of legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Michael Moritz — the man is flat-out ignoring him, which prevents him from making good on his many promises to Mark. Eduardo arrives at the Palo Alto house and is shocked — it’s a pig sty filled with novelty-sized bongs and half-naked women. He’s pissed that Mark didn’t pick up him at the airport, as promised. Mark apologizes and takes Eduardo away from the chaos so they can catch up. Eduardo gets pissed at Mark’s questions — asking things he should already know the answers to, like when and why Eduardo quit his internship, and that Jenny has become too needy and demanding for him to tolerate. Eduardo is horrified that Mark has let Sean set up meetings with venture capitalists without his knowledge. He returns to New York, angrily. Mark and Sean meet with venture capitalist PETER THIEL, who offers them $500,000 and questions them about Eduardo’s role in the company.

Jenny breaks into Eduardo’s New York sublet. She’s pissed that he didn’t call her the moment he got back, and that he ignored all her calls and text messages while she was gone. A phone call from Mark interrupts the fight. Mark’s pissed because Eduardo froze the bank account. Eduardo says he was trying to get Mark’s attention — and speaking of getting attention, Jenny angrily sets fire to a gift Eduardo brought back with him. Eduardo puts him on speaker phone while he takes care of the fire. Mark tells Eduardo freezing the account was childish, then tells him about the $500,000 investment from Thiel, so Eduardo needs to get back to Silicon Valley ASAP. Eduardo hangs up and dumps Jenny. At Facebook’s new Silicon Valley offices, lawyers walk Eduardo through his contracts. Because of the change in the corporate structure, Eduardo’s ownership stake has risen to 34.4% (instead of 30), which Eduardo helpfully explains will accommodate them on the off-chance they need to dilute the stock for new investors. In the future deposition, Eduardo is livid about having signed these contracts. Why? Because when Mark invited Eduardo back to Silicon Valley under the guise of business meetings, Facebook attorneys inform him that a new capital investment from Michael Moritz has diluted the shit out of the stock — because of the shady contracts Eduardo signed, his ownership stake went from 34.4% to 0.03% overnight.

Eduardo confronts Mark and Sean about this ambush, but Mark points out that Eduardo that he hasn’t been a part of the company for a long time (bear in mind this is the fall of 2004 — at the latest, six months after the site launched), so he deserved to get screwed. Eduardo accuses Mark of planting the “animal cruelty” story in the Harvard paper and announces his intention to sue Mark; more than anything, Eduardo is pissed that Mark would let himself lose his only friend over something as petty as the credit for founding the site. Security escorts Eduardo out of the office, just as the subscriber base hits a million. Sean flirts with an intern (ASHLEIGH), which leads him back to a sorority party, where Sean, Ashleigh, and another couple snort coke and attempt to have a foursome — hindered by Sean’s obsession with talking about himself and his plans for Facebook. He’s so distracting, it takes them too long to realize the cops have busted up the party. They manage to hide the coke — but not the fact that Ashleigh’s only 17. Sean is arrested. Out on bond, he explains the situation to Mark, who makes it clear that Sean’s outlived his usefulness. It’s easily implied that, just as Mark planted the animal cruelty story, he also called the cops on the party. Mark pulls open a box of brand new business cards, which say “I’m CEO…Bitch.”

In the deposition room, Marylin shakes Mark out of his fog. Everyone’s left. He asks her out to dinner, but she turns him down — because his team of lawyers will be pulling an all-nighter to draft a settlement agreement. Mark is disappointed about the settlement. He decides to stick around for a little while longer. He gets onto Facebook, finds Erica Albright’s profile, and adds a friend request. As he waits, staring at the screen, wanting a response, titles explain that the Winklevosses settled for $65 million, while Eduardo settled for an unknown amount and had his “co-founder” status restored on the Facebook masthead. It further explains that Facebook has a user base of 180 million in 60 countries and is valued at $15 billion, making Mark the youngest billionaire in the world.

Notes

Preamble to the actual script notes: I love a lot of what Aaron Sorkin does. He’s a writer with a great many flaws — wild fluctuations in consistency (as evidenced in the four seasons he served on The West Wing, with episodes ranging from superb to shit), an apparent disinterest in long-term story or character continuity (not an issue in a feature script), and, most frustratingly, a penchant for sanctimonious dialogue above all else. When he’s firing on all cylinders, he has done some truly brilliant work (see also: the West Wing episodes “17 People” or “Two Cathedrals,” or pretty much any episode of Sports Night), but when he’s not, it’s amazing how far down he can plunge. Did anyone other than me tune in for the full run of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? What a shit heap that show turned out to be — great pilot, great Christmas episode, all sandwiched by utter, utter dreck, easily the worst writing of his career.

So with two recent creative and commercial failures (the aforementioned Studio 60… and 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War, which made some money and garnered a deserved Oscar nomination for Philip Seymour Hoffman but sucked some pretty major balls for many of the same reasons Studio 60… did *), I was eager to read this script to see if Sorkin had redeemed himself. Short answer: yes.

Slightly longer answer: whether he made the choice himself or not (I’m too lazy to look up if he wrote this on spec or was hired to write it), Sorkin made a wise decision in writing an apolitical script. Much as I enjoyed significant chunks of The West Wing, his personal politics started to invade every pore (especially after 9/11), which got preachy and annoying. This carried on to Studio 60… and, obviously, Charlie Wilson’s War — but now he’s back, baby, with the politically neutral story of Mark Zuckerberg’s quest for success. Although it’s not a straight-up biopic, reading this script alongside The Muppet Man is a terrific case study. Virtually everything The Muppet Man got wrong (passively nerdy subject, thin supporting characters, endless montages), The Social Network gets right, starting with motivation: Sorkin incorporates a bit of the old Adam Carolla philosophy that when guys stop getting laid, they start designing skyscrapers in showing Zuckerberg’s motivation — his desire for fame and power, under the misguided notion that this will lead to love from one special girl. Erica’s subsequent appearances hammer the point home, but she pops up infrequently enough for it to seem relatively subtle.

More importantly, Sorkin quickly and easily makes every character — from Mark and Eduardo to bit players like Peter Thiel and Marylin — into distinctive, flawed, fully dimensional characters. Much of this occurs through his usual strong dialogue — in fact, typical of a Sorkin script, dialogue drives much of the story and character development, The Social Network zips through surprisingly long scenes (the first scene alone is 9 1/8ths pages, all dialogue) and a mammoth 161 pages on the strength of Sorkin’s banter. Unlike certain other writers of stylized dialogue, Sorkin never hits a false note with these characters. He doesn’t get too cutesy or clever, and each character has a distinctive speaking rhythm and diction. That much is a bit of a surprise — much as I enjoy his previous work, one consistent and deserved criticism is that everybody sounds pretty much the same. Not anymore.

The story itself isn’t quite as strong as the characters or the dialogue. The structure is designed around the collapse of Mark’s friendship with Eduardo — instead of merely telling the tedious story of Facebook’s rise to prominence — which is a great idea implemented reasonably well, but in the end, other story threads (notably the scheming Winklevosses and the rise and fall of Sean) feel oddly superfluous. Fortunately, the characters are interesting enough for this not to frustrate me as much as it could. As is frequently the case in the docudrama/biopic genre, the story just kinda peters out in the third act, but Sorkin does provide some nice moments here and there, including satisfying resolutions to the main beats of the story (the total destruction of Mark’s friendship with Eduardo, and a nice moment taking Mark back to Erica).

As for the nitpicky stuff — I don’t have much of it, and usually the nitpicky stuff doesn’t bother me nearly as much when the rest of the script is solid. Still, Sorkin’s self-proclaimed ignorance about all things technology is evident in the early “Mark Zuckerberg: master hacker” scenes, and the story seems so well-suited to the screenplay treatment that I’ll speculate (with no evidence to back me up) that he took plenty of liberties with the true story. Finally, and perhaps the only nitpick that genuinely annoyed the shit out of me, Sorkin downplays the influence of Friendster and MySpace on Facebook. He has a well-written scene in which it suddenly dawns on Mark that he’s forgotten an important element of the site — relationship status. An important element that was already on MySpace, and you’re nuts if you think a direct competitor would not have paid enough attention to MySpace’s features to realize that. A later, not-quite-so-well-written scene shows Mark coming up with the “idea” for “the Wall” — another concept that, at least in its earliest incarnation, was identical to MySpace’s profile comment board. Little things like this make me wonder if Sorkin got little details wrong among the things I don’t know anything about, like Harvard’s elaborate social structure, but I dunno… It all goes back to the issue of verisimilitude. The Muppet Man bugged me because it felt extremely inauthentic — The Social Network, on the other hand, could very well be wall-to-wall bullshit, but it felt real.

The Bottom Line

Despite my nitpicks and its overall length, The Social Network is a quick, compelling read. With a polish to iron out the kinks, it’s easily ready to go, even though I sort of think the MySpace story is more compelling (especially with its now-tragic ending). Read Julia Angwin’s even-more-gripping book Stealing MySpace and see if you agree.

*I don’t want to leave this without something resembling a full explanation/mini-review, but I don’t want to pull too much focus away from The Social Network, so those of you wanting to know my opinion on Studio 60… and Charlie Wilson’s War, read on; those who could give a fuck, go back up to the review and just accept that these two pieces of work were flawed at best.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — The chemistry-free “will they or won’t they get back together?” relationship between Matthew Perry and Sarah Paulson killed this show before it had a chance to start. Easily the weakest subplot in the pilot, investing so goddamn much time on what should be, at best, a romantic subplot did the show no favors. Add to that the frequent West Wing Lite political subplots, wildly unfunny examples of Perry’s allegedly brilliant sketch comedy (the show would have benefited more from not showing the sketches at all than from Sorkin hiring great people like Mark McKinney to help him out), and the same “I’ve changed my mind on who/what this character/storyline is” sloppy writing that plagued The West Wing’s first season all added up to a dismal series.

Charlie Wilson’s War — An interesting story, unfortunately told mostly through Sorkin’s unsubtle, sanctimonious political dialogue. Drawing the obvious parallels to contemporary foreign policy problems would have worked fine if Sorkin could just rein himself in a little bit. Honestly, though, a bigger problem came from the actors (Tom Hanks in hammy Ladykillers mode, Julia Roberts completely phoning it in) and Mike Nichols’s suspiciously lugubrious directing. I don’t want to go too deep with my philosophies about Sorkin’s writing, but it seems to live and die on the strength of his collaborators. When they get it, it can frequently turn out well despite flaws. When they don’t, it turns out like this. Still, bonus points for Philip Seymour Hoffman, the only one in a large cast of people I typically like who understood he was in a screwball satire instead of a pompous docudrama. [Back]

Posted by Stan on December 15, 2009 5:12 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 14, 2009

Black List Script #1: The Muppet Man by Christopher Weekes

Download PDF: The Muppet Man

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): “The life story and tragic early death of Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets.”

Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line

Synopsis

An old, disheveled KERMIT THE FROG wakes from a drunken nightmare in a fleabag hotel in “Moo York” — a sort of Toon Town for Muppets. He looks mournfully at an invitation from Miss Piggy’s wedding. In 1990, JIM HENSON (53) wakes looking much the same as this middle-aged Kermit. He takes some aspirin, stares mournfully at a photo of his wife JANE and their fie children, and watches a promo advertising the 20th anniversary of Sesame Street. This turns into a musical sequence intercutting Jim and Kermit singing “Mahna Mahna” as Jim prepares for a recording session and Kermit rushes to Miss Piggy’s church for the wedding.

Jim attends a meeting with a core group of Henson Company employees. His erratic behavior and apparent ill health concerns them all. Jim insists he’ll be fine. While on a private jet heading toward Los Angeles, Jim starts seeing muppets on the plane with him. One of them looks very much like his grandmother, known only as “Dear.” Jim flashes on his childhood. Washington, D.C., 1950. Jim’s engrossed in television, to the consternation of the real DEAR (60s), who warns that he’ll develop “square eyes” from sitting too close, and further warns that the “box sure ain’t gonna help [him] get anywhere in life.” Jim makes a cardboard cutout featuring “square eyes” to amuse his older brother, PAUL JUNIOR, and his mother, BETTY. He wakes father PAUL SENIOR, who starts yelling, and that brings Jim back to the private jet in 1990. They’ve arrived in L.A.

Jim makes an uncomfortable appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. He’s painfully shy, and as he did in the meeting, he behaves somewhat erratically and, worse than that, can’t quite perform the Kermit voice. Behind the scenes, Henson Company puppeteer KEVIN CLASH starts freaking out. Suddenly, Miss Piggy bounds out from the audience, disorienting Jim, who flashes back to the fall of 1954 — “Teen Jim“‘s freshman year of college. In a puppetry class, he spots a cute older girl, JANE NEBEL (20). He tries to impress her with his skills and humor, but he’s too shy to ask her out. At home, Paul Senior arranges a date for his son, much to Teen Jim’s consternation. This motivates him to finally ask out Teen Jane, but she already has a boyfriend. Disappointed, Teen Jim has his date with JENNY. She’s a little confused by Teen Jim’s puppetry, even after he and Paul Junior demonstrate for her. Teen Jim takes Jenny to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon, more because he knows that’s where Teen Jane and her boyfriend will be than out of any real desire to see the movie. Afterward, Teen Jim flirts with Teen Jane. Jenny feels embarrassed for even going on the date with him, since he’s clearly not interested.

That night, Teen Jim comes home and learns from Paul Junior that somebody from a local TV station saw one of their puppet shows and wants to talk to them about a TV show. Jim and Paul Junior demonstrate for the head programmer, MAX, who shows no emotion whatsoever — then immediately hires them to make their own show. Teen Jim uses this opportunity to impress Teen Jane, by bringing her in as a volunteer puppeteer for his very own TV show. Teen Jane is bewildered by the chaos, but she is, indeed, impressed. A montage, set to “That Old Black Magic,” follows, chronicling both the rise in popularity of Teen Jim’s Sam and Friends show and in Teen Jim’s education of how he can use the medium of television to innovate his puppetry. Within two years, he’s being commissioned to do muppet sketches for The Jimmy Dean Show — but tragedy strikes. Paul Junior is killed in a car accident. Grief-stricken, Teen Jim immediately drives to Teen Jane’s house, explains what happened, and makes a move. Teen Jane tells him he can’t, because she and her boyfriend are now engaged, but Teen Jim declares his love and kisses her.

Back at Arsenio, Kevin insists Jim must see a doctor. He puts Jim into a cab, and Jim tells the cabbie to take him back to his hotel. In 1959, 23-year-old Jim returns to Rome, where he both grieved and studied European puppetry. He immediately seeks out Jane, who’s still working at the TV studio, and asks if she got his many letters. She tells him she called off the engagement. Max welcomes Jim back with open arms, immediately getting him into the world of advertising. Jim and Jane work together on a coffee commercial, but Jim can’t keep his hands off her. Jim pitches the commercial idea to a stone-faced executive — who immediately bursts into laughter and gives Jim money to produce 20 spots. Jim takes Jane to a boardwalk where he awkwardly proposes, but Jane says it’s too soon after her breakup. It’s too late, though — Jim has arranged for fireworks to spell out MARRY ME JANE? Her affirmative response leads to another muppet musical number, featuring Kermit, Miss Piggy, and a bunch of ’50s-style wooden puppets singing “He’ll Make Me Happy” from The Muppets Take Manhattan. This musical number also accompanies a montage as Jim and Jane move up in the world — they get married, lease their own studio in New York, and begin creating more elaborate muppets.

In 1990, Jim has dinner with FRANK OZ, who takes him back to his family. Jim spots Frank’s son playing with some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures and wonders why he and Frank didn’t come up with that. Frank urges Jim to call Jane. Jim refuses. In 1963, a much younger Frank (then 19) is telling Jim the same thing: call Jane. Jim’s distracted by what’s happening with DON SAHLIN (35, his head designer) and JERRY JUHL (25, his head writer). Don pulls a prank on Jim, hiding some creepy monsters in the bathroom. But Jim has already loaded Don’s desk drawers with spring-loaded snakes. Everyone laughs. Jim introduces his Rowlf puppet to The Jimmy Dean Show. Together with his brain trust, they figure out a sketch to do with Jimmy. Jim returns home to Jane — who now has two children — and apologizes for not keeping in better touch. He says he wants to get out, but Jane tells him he just needs to slow down. Jim tells her the more he does now, the sooner he can get them everything they want, and they can be happy. Jane was under the impression that they were happy. Jim drags his brain trust out to make an experimental short film, “Time Piece.” The others are puzzled by it, but soon enough it nets him an Academy Award nomination. He and Jane go out to celebrate. Jane expresses an interest in taking some art courses, but Jim’s too drunk to pay much attention.

In 1990, Jim returns to New York. He picks up his daughter, CHERYL (29), and the two drive down to North Carolina together. She chastises Jim for going on a well-publicized date after he and Jane separated. Jim tells her it didn’t mean anything. He falls asleep, and “Movin’ Right Along” from The Muppet Movie begins to play. Jim dreams that he’s riding with Kermit and Fozzie Bear. Cheryl fears that Jim didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out, but Jim reassures her. In 1968, Jim and his brain trust mournfully watch the news as Dan Rather reports the assassination of Martin Luther King. At home, Jane tells Jim to stop watching the coverage, because it’ll traumatize the kids (who now include Brian and John). Jim attends a lecture in Boston where JOAN COONEY (39) explains that her organization, the Children’s Television Workshop, wants to use the same tools to teach children that are used to sell them toys and breakfast cereal. She illustrates the possibilities by playing a clip of muppets on The Ed Sullivan Show. The audience is unimpressed, but it piques Jim’s interest — and his imagination.

Jim is suddenly brainstorming a plethora of new muppet designs, characters, and settings for Sesame Street. He shows the skeptical brain trust (which now includes Joan) a sketch for Big Bird. Once they design the bird, though, everyone realizes how well this can work. A pseudo-montage follows, as Jim demonstrates characters like Bert & Ernie, Grover, The Count, and Oscar the Grouch (whom they modeled after a grouchy bartender). After showing the setup to his family, Jane rushes out, bursting into tears. Jim follows her outside, baffled. Jane’s concerned because she feels she doesn’t measure up to Jim, and therefore he’ll leave her and the kids, because “[i]t’s the way [her] life works.” Jim reassures her, but she walks away. Some time later, Jane is pregnant again. He’s a little nervous about the upcoming premiere of Sesame Street. This time, it’s Jane’s turn to reassure him. Jim admits that, since Paul Junior died, he’s been “chasing the time [he’s] lost,” but that she’s the most important part of his life. Jim and the Henson Company folks picture-lock their pilot, and within a few weeks it’s the most popular kids’ show on TV, racking up Emmy awards and international syndication packages with ease. As Joan hands Jim a royalty check for over half a million dollars, Kermit creeps up behind him and starts singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” This leads to another musical number, with Kermit accompanying Jim on the long, snowy ride home, where he collapses, exhausted. Across the street, Jim can see kids in several apartments watching Sesame Street, smiling.

It’s 1990 again. Jim and Cheryl arrive at a North Carolina farm owned by Paul Senior and Betty — both still vivacious and gregarious. They have a nice, energetic dinner, but ill Jim sort of puts a damper on it. Later, Paul Senior tells Jim that he and Betty think Jim is depressed. Jim disagrees, but Paul Senior nevertheless urges Jim to call Jane. Jim simply stares out at the sunset, seeing a Landstrider from The Dark Crystal drifting past on the horizon. In 1975, Jim and ALICE TWEEDY operate muppets on Saturday Night Live performing a sketch that gets no laughs. A worried LORNE MICHAELS considers inserting a laugh track. Afterward, Jim and Alice watch with frustration as an even-less-funny Chevy Chase sketch gets more laughs. Jim gripes to his agent, BERNIE BRILLSTEIN, about the SNL experience, saying they should write their own material. Bernie tells him he’s close to closing a deal for a muppet-based primetime show. At home, Jim watches The Sonny & Cher Show with Jane and the kids. The kids beg for a muppet show. Jim and Jane break out Kermit and “Hoggy,” a precursor to Miss Piggy, singing along to “I Got You, Babe” to the kids’ amusement. Jim, the brain trust, and Bernie visit a wealthy British producer, LEW GRADE. Jim fears it’ll be a tough sell, but Lew understands exactly what they want to do and gives them carte blanche — as long as they shoot the show in England.

Not surprisingly, Jane doesn’t take the news well. She doesn’t want the kids to have to split time between New York and England, but she knows she doesn’t exactly have a say in the matter. Some time later, Jim brings young Cheryl and Brian to check out the filming of the first Muppet Show episode. Jim explains to them that it’s a lot like Sam and Friends, and he wishes Jane would be a part of it. Cheryl surprises Jim by observing that Jane frequently talks about how much she hates performing. A few weeks later, Jim and Jane have an awkward dinner at an upscale restaurant. After Jim describes how successful the show is, Jane announces she wants to take the kids back to New York. Jim insists he’ll slow down now that the show’s off the ground, but Jane knows it isn’t true. Jane tells Jim that she did a “silly little painting” and sold it, quite by accident, but Jim wasn’t there to share in this moment of her life. Jim grumbles that he’s been busy lately, but Jane observes that she made this sale six years ago, and has made several subsequent sales — more than enough to earn her own income and support the children. Jim wants to make things right, but it’s too late. Jim watches a Swedish Chef rehearsal, in obvious pain. Frank tries hard to make Jim laugh, but it’s just not happening.

At the Henson farm in 1990, Jim watches an Entertainment Tonight profile that glosses over Henson’s many failures since The Muppet Show: Ghost of Faffner Hall, The Storyteller, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and Fraggle Rock. Jim stares at the TV mournfully when Betty comes in and tells him to stop watching. Cheryl and Jim retreat to a nearby motel, where Cheryl catches Jim hiding under a blanket, shivering, clearly sicker than he has been. When she leaves him, the disheveled Kermit from the opening sequence arrives. Kermit sympathizes about the collapse of Jim’s marriage, now that Miss Piggy has gone off and married someone else, because he waited too long to tell her how he felt. Jim calls Jane, but when she answers, he waits a beat and hangs up.

Jim and Cheryl return to New York by plane, and Jim spots Kermit drinking in the bar. Cheryl brings Jim home. Jim tries calling Jane again, but again he says nothing and hangs up. Later, Jim lies in bed, looking deathly ill. Kermit shows up again, this time with a box of chocolates. Kermit gives Jim a little tough love, noting that the end is coming, and he’s going to be alone. Jim’s about to pick up the phone — when there’s a knock at the door. It’s Jane. He invites her in, and after some initial awkwardness, they fall back into an easy rapport. It doesn’t last long: he starts coughing uncontrollably, hocking up blood. After yet another refusal to see a doctor, prolonged coughing and Jane’s haranguing finally convinces him to go. It’s too late, though — he has an extremely advanced form of a relatively simple infection (the script doesn’t go into too much detail, but the always accurate Wikipedia reports that it was Streptococcus pyogenes, which is easily treated with penicillin but can become extremely severe if left untreated, like that episode of Sliders where everyone’s dying of strep throat because penicillin hadn’t been invented). The doctor tries to pump him full of antibiotics, but anybody with even a cursory interest in Sesame Street knows the story won’t end well.

But Jim does get the chance to tell Jane he loves her one last time before Kermit takes over, singing “I’m Going Back There Someday” as Jim starts coding. Jane hastily gathers the children, and everyone else catches wind of it. The bulk of the Henson Company (including, obviously, his longtime brain trust) have showed up to pay him a visit — but he’s gone. Days later, a somber crowd gathers for an attempt at an upbeat memorial service. Fighting back tears, Brian reads a loving, letter Jim had written while in the hospital (under the assumption that the kids wouldn’t make it before he died). As Brian reads, it’s clear that this memorial service does not just include humans — hundreds of muppets sit right alongside them. His puppeteers perform various songs as muppets, culminating in a huge group performance of “Just One Person.”

Meanwhile, back in Moo York, Kermit’s still depressed and eating chocolates. Directly to the camera, he says, “You didn’t think we’d end like that, did you?” Kermit storms out of his fleabag hotel along the streets of Moo York, to the mansion where Miss Piggy now resides. She answers the door, and after a long staredown, Kermit tells her he loves her. Miss Piggy immediately goes into the mansion and tells her new husband, Link Hogthrob she no longer loves him. Hogthrob isn’t terribly interested. Together now, Kermit and Miss Piggy duet on “The Rainbow Connection” — joined quickly by Fozzie, Gonzo, and tons of other muppets as Kermit and Piggy marry. Animal tears the church apart, revealing a giant soundstage, then punches a hole in the ceiling, allowing a rainbow to shine down on Kermit and Piggy. Statler and Waldorf gripe about the quality of the ending.

Notes

I feel like I have both the best and worst qualifications to analyze this script: ignorance and apathy. I know exceedingly little about Jim Henson and the muppets, and I don’t really care. Like most, I grew up with them; unlike most, I don’t have fond memories of kneeling inches from the television to watch Sesame Street or The Muppet Show. The best I can muster is an extremely foggy memory of watching Fraggle Rock and Labyrinth with my sister, and a slightly less murky recollection of getting the flu and my grandma checking out Follow That Bird from the public library. I have more specific memories of later projects that had little to no Jim Henson involvement: the Star Wars movies, the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, the (better than is generally recognized) sitcom Dinosaurs, and the sci-fi classic Farscape.

On the level that I understand their contributions to entertainment, puppetry, and society as a whole, I respectfully acknowledge the place in history that Henson and his creative team deserve. But I don’t really care. I feel neither the yearning to recapture childhood memories nor the compulsion to seek out or embrace the more adult Henson material. If pressed, I could come up with a laundry list of things I’d like answered in a Jim Henson biopic. Chief among them: why the shift from kids’ shows to the more adult-themed (but still kid-friendly) Muppet Show to the fucking crazy-as-shit Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, which are both nightmare fuel for adults and kids alike?

The Muppet Man makes no real effort to answer this question. True, writer Christopher Weekes occasionally touches on Henson’s vague, ill-defined desire to not allow people to pigeonhole him as a children’s entertainer, but rather than making that the semi-tragic arc of his story (man wants success in one realm, finds it another, uses that power to finally pursue what he originally wanted but fails to succeed), Weekes is content to mention it offhandedly, then distill the entire “adult” phase of Henson’s career with a comically brief Entertainment Tonight profile.

That speaks to the larger problem of the biopic. To make a two- or three-hour movie that encapsulates a person’s entire life is an extreme challenge. I don’t envy the task Weekes took on, but that doesn’t make me like this script any more. It’s shockingly shoddy (shocking only in that 47 allegedly high-powered executives elected this their favorite script uniquely associated with 2009). To put it bluntly: after 138 pages, I feel like I know a lot about what Henson did in his life but virtually nothing about why (or, in some cases, how) he did it.

At the end of the day, it’s a cookie-cutter biopic, relying on every cliché in the playbook as it moves through the beats of Henson’s life (clumsy childhood foreshadowing, the same awkward early romance the future wife, the marital strains frequently found in the “career-obsessed genius” category of biopic, endless musical montages showing the passage of time and increase in success, and so on). The unfortunate fact is that biopics are generally reserved for highly successful, famous people, and when you hit the main beats of successful, famous people’s lives, they all come out pretty much the same. Weekes spends too much time glossing over the details that should make Henson’s story unique. What drove him? How did he assemble his brain trust and learn to rely on them instead of doing everything himself? As mentioned before, did he always have a strong desire to do adult-themed material, or did that somehow come later in life? Or did it even come from him? The script portrays him as exceptionally introverted and easygoing, so did the brain trust pretty much walk all over him and push him into areas he didn’t really want to explore?

The answer to all those questions and many more are: I don’t have a fucking clue.

However, the script has more problems than a simple lack of relevant, interesting details about Henson’s career. The Jim-Jane relationship, which Weekes tries unsuccessfully to use as the lynchpin of the movie, suffers immensely from the “gloss over” approach to biopics. It also suffers because, in order to create the surprise moment that Jim hardly knows a thing about his own wife, Weekes keeps her hidden from the audience. Early on, she seems happy. Shortly after their marriage, she actually states that she’s happy (it’s Jim who isn’t). Several years later, when she has her meltdown upon seeing the elaborate Sesame Street display, Jane has a sort of breakdown that took me completely aback, hurling all these half-crazed statements about people “just leav[ing her], because that’s just the way [her] life works.” Where the fuck did that come from? I have no doubt that this argument actually took place, but nothing we’re ever shown of Jane suggests this sort of fragility or insecurity. In fact, the only other character she interacts with — other than her children — is the guy she got engaged to before she fell for Jim. The guy she broke it off with.

So who the hell is Jane? What’s her story? Understanding her might help make Jim clearer; even if it doesn’t, it’ll at least make her more interesting, and maybe make the breakdown of their marriage a little less cliché-ridden.

The last major problem is the big elephant in the room: the muppet sequences. These sequences did nothing for me but piss me off, for two reasons. First, from the moment we see a disheveled, middle-aged Kermit in Moo York, the sequences felt like nothing but a calculated attempt to bring a combination of nostalgia and “uniqueness” to the script. Like Man on the Moon, The Muppet Man tells a familiar story in a familiar way but periodically tosses moments of subject-appropriate absurdity to create the illusion that it’s not familiar. That’s fucking annoying.

Secondly, it’s a distraction. Remember all that stuff about Weekes glossing over the actual compelling, unique details of Henson’s life? Well, part of the reason he has to gloss over it is because so much time is spent drawing a parallel between the Jim/Jane relationship and the Kermit/Piggy relationship. It’s a parallel that doesn’t even work particularly well. My dim recollection of their characters tells me that Kermit faced Piggy’s aggressive advances with a combination of ignorance and disinterest — this just doesn’t fit with the Jim/Jane dynamic at all. Maybe I’m misremembering the Kermit/Piggy dynamic, but it felt like a poor fit to me.

That’s it for the significant, story-destroying problems. I don’t know enough about Henson to construct my own version of how his biopic should go, which is probably for the best, but I’d start with giving him some basic screenwriting 101 crap like “goals” and/or “obstacles.” For someone so career-driven, he doesn’t seem to have much interest in his own life, and his progress is only impeded by the untimely death of his brother, and then only briefly. He’s pretty much on Easy Street from the moment Sam and Friends hits the airwaves. That may reflect the reality of the situation, but it’s not dramatically compelling.

On to the nitpicky stuff, which I’ll try to keep brief.

Now, I understand that what I’ve read is allegedly a selling draft of the script. I also understand that Hollywood is all about The Concept. However, I hope I’m not beating a long-dead horse by wondering, yet again, why such a sloppily written script has garnered so much goodwill? I mentioned my ignorance of most things Henson, yet even I recognized frustrating inaccuracies *. I suppose some of them would be forgivable if not for the rampant, Australianisms, which, like Britishisms, shatter my suspension of disbelief more quickly than anything else. Recognizing that it’s more about The Concept than the writing — shouldn’t some of it still be about the writing? Am I misguided in my belief that absorbing a person in your story is of equal importance to having a killer concept and/or a killer pitch?

Examples abound of flat-out bad writing that don’t involve this lack of verisimilitude (see also: any one of the musical montages), so this is the irritating icing on the shitty-tasting cake. “Right-o,” “unspoilt,” “Chinese takeaway,” “air con,” “bloody hilarious,” “X is meant to Y” (example: “a sea monster is meant to breath [sic] through gills,” as opposed to “a sea monster breathes through gills”), and those are only a few of them (I didn’t write down all of them and stopped counting on page 67, but trust me — this script is loaded with them). It both surprises and disappointed me that this is acknowledged as the overall favorite; however, it heartens me a little to learn that the Henson Company bought the script with the intention of pretty much burying it (at best, they may incorporate some of its ideas into an existing biopic script).

I suppose I should also comment briefly on the ending, since certain other bloggers have decreed it’s emotionally devastating and that “[i]f you don’t need a towel to clean off your keyboard at the end of this scene, there’s a good chance you don’t have emotions.” Now, I have bawled like a baby at movies, and I have no problem admitting that to anyone other than good-looking women. The last act left me pretty cold, though. Henson’s death was indeed tragic, but I feel no emotional connection to him in my private life, and since Weekes didn’t create an emotional connection to him within this screenplay, I felt nothing during the memorial service and subsequent Moo York sequence. I’m sure I would have felt the proper emotional response in a better script, or if I really felt strongly about Henson and/or his work.

The Bottom Line

Jim Henson is the sort of person who deserves a biopic: an undeniable genius who changed the entertainment landscape permanently, yet someone I assume general audiences don’t know much about. So, in terms of The Concept, I can’t think of a better biopic. In terms of the script itself — holy fuck does it need work. From the story to the characters to the minutiae of its diction, this cannot and should not be made without a page-one rewrite.

Update, later on 12/14/09: Just stumbled across a bile-inducing blog post from the L.A. Times:

They soon found he had written, entirely on spec, a script about one of the most enigmatic and private of contemporary artists without having ever met or even read much about him (there exists no major published biography about Henson).
Instead, Weeks [sic] conjured the story mostly out of his imagination, basing it on a series of photos he’d studied and whatever strands of information he could find on things like Wikipedia. “Even though I was just 10 when he died, Jim Henson had been this Walt Disney-like figure in my life, and I wanted to create a version of him as seen through these kind of rose-colored glasses,” Weekes said Friday from Australia.

The funny/annoying thing is: while I perused Henson’s Wikipedia page for more detailed information about his death, I looked over the beats of his life story and thought, “Holy fuck, did Weekes just copy/paste the Wikipedia entry and add dialogue?” Apparently the answer is “yes.” Still, it infuriates me that he’s being rewarded for what amounts to robbing a bank, then returning the money and receiving a 10% reward instead of a prison sentence. (I’m inferring from the article that Henson Co. bought the script to avoid potential lawsuits for infringing on his widely circulated script — despite the fact that Weekes’s script infringes on their copyrights and trademarks — with any attempt they make themselves. I could be off-base in that assumption, but Lisa Henson doesn’t sound terribly enthusiastic about Weekes’s script, and, well, “Weekes is no longer actively working on his script — he, in fact, has not written a new draft since the original was sold to the Henson Co.” So it is a happy ending!)

*Sesame Street, in this script, debuts in 1970 instead of 1969; just days before his death, Jim sees Frank Oz’s son playing with a Ninja Turtle and doesn’t know what it is, despite the fact that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie — with which he was involved in designing the puppetry — was made in 1989; Cheryl drives Jim to North Carolina, but they fly back with no explanation; I’m sure there are others; and, more often than not, the years indicated in the sluglines fluctuate for no discernible purpose, as if Weekes restructured scenes but forgot to change the years. It makes it difficult to read, when reading, to think years have passed, only to discover in context that it was supposed to be days or weeks after the previous scene. [Back]

Posted by Stan on December 14, 2009 5:10 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (4)

December 11, 2009

Surprise Script Review: A Single Man by Tom Ford and David Scearce

Script Download Link: None Available (sorry, kiddies, I’m not risking my neck just to placate you, and I couldn’t find a download anywhere else online) [Although I mostly agree with John August, I am offering this script download because my not-entirely-captive audience has threatened to abandon me if I don’t start “offering downloads like Carson.” It is not for educational purposes. It’s for the purpose of placating people who want to feel good that they know more about an upcoming movie than their plebeian friends and coworkers. If anyone affiliated with this production requests that I remove the link, I won’t lose any sleep over it. Just send an e-mail to the address on the sidebar.]

Note: I would have posted this earlier than the date of its release, but I honestly forgot about this project until I saw a bunch of reviews pop up last night, which doesn’t bode well, right?

Adapted by legendary fashion icon Tom Ford (who, apparently, self-financed the entire project) and David Scearce from the semi-iconic 1964 Christopher Isherwood novel, A Single Man is one of those scripts that lives and dies based solely on the actors selected to play the roles. Ford (who also directed) could have done worse than Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, but still, I feel compelled to examine this phenomenon of “the right actor” saving an otherwise dismal project.

That’s pretty much what A Single Man is: dismal. I haven’t read the novel, and I don’t exactly plan to, but the screenplay is a moody character piece where protagonist George spends most of his time brooding and looking indecisively at his pet handgun. The leaden 88-page script doesn’t have much story to tell: Briton George is a lonely gay literature professor in Southern California, whose beloved Jim died in a car crash a year earlier. Since Jim’s death, we gather, George has spent the bulk of his time drinking, staring mournfully at the Pacific, and having casual sex with grad students. His best friend, Charley (a woman), is a haggard old rummy who has stuck by George because she’s quietly in love with him.

Flashbacks reveal what can’t be told through the power of grim staring: George met Navyman Jim shortly after the end of World War II *, they spent 15 happy years together, and then Jim was killed. Shocking revelations at every turn, right?

In the present, George casually drifts through his (spoiler alert!) last day on Earth. In one of its few effective moments, he goes to Charley’s place, and the drunker she gets, the angrier she gets — blaming George for destroying her life, because she’s spent so many years waiting on him, wishing he’d decide to go straight and hook up with her. Meanwhile, George’s unsubtle lecture on homophobia (buried in analogies to Brave New World) stirs the heart and loins of grad student Kenny, who tries to follow George like a lost puppy. It has no effect, until George runs out of liquor and coincidentally runs into Kenny at the same seaside bar where he met Jim 16 years ago.

Despite drinking and talking with Kenny, George still isn’t terribly interested in or attracted to Kenny. Nevertheless, he accompanies Kenny on a beach stroll, which turns into an awkward skinny-dipping session that grows more awkward when George attempts to drown himself. Kenny pulls George out of the water, takes him back home, and there’s not much left to the story other than George’s death, which I’ll leave a mystery: did he finally commit suicide, or was it…murder?

Actually, one other nice thing happens in the story, although it’s as subtle as it is marginalized: Ford and Scearce draw a nicely depressing parallel between George and Charley and Kenny and his “friend,” Lois, who’s clearly smitten with Kenny in the same way Charley is with George. Look forward to the sequel, A Double Man, chronicling Kenny’s ultra-depressing middle-age in the coke-fueled ’80s, where he undoubtedly falls victim to GRIDS and becomes an early martyr of the burgeoning “not gay cancer” movement. In a The Life of David Gale-style twist ending, Lois will allow Kenny to infect her so she can illustrate the flaws of a prejudiced society.

But I’m getting ahead of myself… Despite its relatively few nice moments — all of which, you’ll note, involve character interaction and not glassy-eyed grief — A Single Man struggles like hell to justify its existence. Like The Lovely Bones, it probably achieves more as a novel than it can accomplish through this adaptation, by virtue of the fact that it’s frequently more interesting to read about a character doing uninteresting things than watching them do uninteresting things. Even if it doesn’t, the subject matter and time of its release justifies its place in history… But does it reflect in any way on contemporary society? Does it have to?

Maybe I’m alone in this thinking, but if a script doesn’t really have anything going for it, shouldn’t it at least have some insightful, thought-provoking thematic elements in play? If its story contains relatively little drama, a mostly impenetrable protagonist whose most interesting character trait is being British, and a metric shit-ton of sad stares, shouldn’t it at least do us the favor of operating at another level, to keep the audience engaged? Keep in mind I tear through Dickens and Thackeray novels like an obsessed maniac, so this isn’t a product of a “Why can’t this be more like Transformers 2?” short attention span mindset: I like the slow build, and I like moody character pieces. But “slow build” implies…an actual build, of some kind. A Single Man doesn’t build. Instead of making a slow, Toyota Prius fuel-efficiency-maximizing acceleration from 0-60, it spends its 88 pages coasting from, let’s say, 15 to a dead stop.

However, I can’t parse this script thematically, either. At best, it’s another example of “Hey, gay men are just like regular people” — they love and grieve and contemplate suicide just like mourning straight people! To that end, this could be a legitimately subtle blow (so to speak) for gay rights, by showing that a gay man’s grief is just as watch-checkingly tedious as a straight person’s (see also: 21 Grams, The Shipping News). However, the non-homophobes who would see a movie like that would respond thusly: “Duh.” It’s not going to change the opinions of those who are somehow unaware that people are people, because as soon as they find out it’s the study of a gay man, their shriveled units will retract and their body will shudder and they’ll either avoid it or protest its existence. Either way, I’m operating under the assumption that this has something to do with the script’s “necessity” to be made, because I can’t come up with anything else based on what I’ve read. Because of its dearth of story, character, and theme, the script felt like a ponderous, three-hour “epic,” despite it being one of the shortest scripts I’ve ever read professionally.

Though I do tend to speculate on whether or not the script will work as a film, I don’t usually comment on reviews of the movies themselves, because the goal is to make a subjective assessment of the script with as much objectivity as possible. This is a different case, though: as I mentioned, I only remembered that I read this script after seeing a bunch of reviews pop up on criticism sites I frequently read — and it sort of surprises me that it’s getting unanimous raves from critics whose opinions I trust. It just goes to show how much directorial style and high-quality performances can mask narrative flaws (or even eliminate them, since I imagine the singled-out-for-likely-justified-praise Firth probably captures a lot about George that may be in the novel but doesn’t appear on the script page, either textually or subtextually).

So it goes from a dull, forgettable script into a well-regarded movie. That, to me, makes it an interesting case study. (Frequently, in my experience, good scripts turn out shitty and shitty scripts turn out shittier, but it’s surprisingly rare for a bad script to blossom into a great movie.) That makes me wish I could offer a download. Alas, it’ll have to wait until I find a copy elsewhere online.

*I’m going to give this script the benefit of the doubt and assume “gay man associated with the Navy” was less of a cliché in the original novel than it is now. [Back]

Posted by Stan on December 11, 2009 5:20 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

Black List 2009

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

As I did last year, I intend to cover the top 10 on this blog over the course of the next two weeks — one a day, starting with The Muppet Man (because I love biopics!), ending with By Way of Helena. This schedule assumes, of course, that these scripts don’t disillusion or enrage me to such a degree that I give up on life altogether.

THE BLACK LIST was compiled from the suggestions of over 300 film executives, each of whom contributed the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, 2009 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year.
This year, scripts had to be mentioned at least five times to be included on THE BLACK LIST.

All reasonable effort has been made to confirm the information contained herein. THE BLACK LIST apologizes for all misspellings, misattributions, incorrect representation identification, inelegant loglines, and questionable “2009” affiliations.

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

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

I see little reason to list all the scripts mentioned when you can just download the PDF.

Posted by Stan on December 11, 2009 2:29 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 8, 2009

Script Review: The Lovely Bones by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson

Like Fight Club, The Lovely Bones reads like the kind of thing that would be aces as a novel but might not exactly work on film. Plenty of people argue with me, but I stand by it: the “o btw i r u” “twist” in Fight Club just doesn’t work on film. You can do a lot in cinema with point of view, but I find more often than not that attempts at “unreliable narrator” stories in film turn out more like a cheap betrayal than a legitimate shocking twist. A novel can provide a true first-person narrator experience, allowing the reader to take the journey through the eyes of a single person. If that narrator discovers he has a second personality that he happens to believe is a real person, the reader discovers this right along with them, and it’s a shocking twist. Movies with unreliable narrator twists frequently portray it in exactly the same way: a long-winded explanation accompanied by an unintentionally hilarious montage with people/objects flitting in or out of existence to illustrate the fragile mental state of the character. Fight Club makes it even more hilarious by including eye-rollingly ridiculous moments like Edward Norton beating himself up while confused onlookers watch…and for some reason decide to follow a man who’s clearly out of his mind? Ugh…

Face it: no matter how you tell the story, short of making it a 90-minute POV shot loaded with internal-thought voiceovers, no film can tell a first-person story. At best, it’s third-person limited, but more frequently it’s third-person omniscient. Even with voiceover narration, it’s virtually impossible to sell an unreliable narrator story on film. (The Usual Suspects comes closest by showing its unreliable narrator’s non-insane motivations to weave a bullshit tale.)

The Lovely Bones, thank Christ, does not attempt an unreliable narrator story. Like Fight Club, though, it’s more about the concept than character and story. Don’t get me wrong — it does contain a plethora of interesting, well-drawn characters, which is more than half the battle for a screenplay. But no matter what sort of visual flourishes the writers insert into the script, the concept remains cinematically flawed and subsequently hobbles what could have been a truly great script.

“What, pray tell, is the concept?” you non-book-reading or -trailer-watching heathens might ask. It goes like this: in early-’70s Pennsylvania, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (no, really) is brutally raped and murdered by a hideous neighbor. She goes to a place described as “heaven” in the script, but it seems more like an odd, interstitial netherworld halfway between heaven and earth. Neither limbo nor purgatory, it’s more like a ghost world where the dead can interact with each other in an idealized version of their own world, and if they desire it with enough force, they can “reach” the living through the traditional spiritual methods.

In this way, it resembles a more visually sumptuous Ghost, only with an unsolved murder instead of a crazy Wall Street conspiracy. Unlike Ghost, Susie doesn’t go to much trouble to get anyone in the world of the living to solve the murder. It lacks wacky psychics or Demi Moore with a hideous hairstyle. For most of the script, she just observes the decay of her family and friends over the course of the four or so years after her murder.

It goes like this: Susie has a close bond with her entire family (parents Jack and Abigail, siblings Buckley and Lindsey). All she wants out of life is to become a successful wildlife photographer and to marry (or, at least, share her first kiss with) Ray Singh, the smartest boy in school. Her unassuming yet still sort of creepy neighbor, Mr. Harvey, has other plans. After spotting her at a block party, Harvey (who makes his living creating handmade dollhouses for little girls, which should be enough to get a search warrant any time a neighborhood girl goes missing — damn ACLU!) uses his design and carpentry skills to create what’s described as “the ultimate kid fort” (I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to look it up) in a dirt hole isolated in a cornfield. He lures Susie there, rapes her, kills her, and hides the body in a girl-sized safe. After initially suspecting Ray Singh — on account of his Indian heritage and alleged close relationship with Susie — the police have few real leads. Soon enough, they find the “fort” drenched in blood — so much that, even without a body, the police assume she’s died.

Jack becomes so consumed with finding the killer that he makes plenty of enemies in the town. Suspecting everyone, especially his neighbors, he digs up all manner of closeted skeletons, but the police don’t have the resources or energy to track down all his leads. It’s a moot point, though, since it takes him a few years before he even suspects Mr. Harvey. In the intervening years, Jack’s relationship with Abigail deteriorates, and she leaves to work on a California vineyard. No, really. Ray forms a close bond with Susie’s pseudo-friend, Ruth, over their mutual grief. Everyone but Jack tries to move on with their lives, but reminders of Susie cripple them.

Ironically, Susie watching this unfold (and frequently narrating in voiceover to gloss over the passage of time) with her heaven-friend Holly (a Vietnamese murder victim the same age as Susie) is the least compelling part of the story. Simply telling these characters’ stories would have more than sufficed in a dramatic sense, but the script is more about the concept than what works dramatically. However, the material chronicling the lasting effects of Susie’s death is so good, it doesn’t really matter…

…until the third act, when Susie not only takes action (finally), but her narration goes from an inoffensive explanation of certain details to an incredibly preachy, borderline-annoying screed announcing that Mr. Harvey’s actions were wrong. I guess the audience wouldn’t have known that without a last-minute reminder before he’s forced to face the consequences of his actions.

I know this review skews negative, but about 75% of this script is great. It’s just, like many scripts, the 25% of the script that doesn’t work totally ruins what does. In fact, it’s even more disappointing because what’s good here is so fucking good that the last 10 pages alone becomes a Fight Club-like betrayal of the expectation-building quality that came before it. It all goes back to the problem of the concept: I can easily see the idea of a dead girl narrating the story of her loved ones’ grief and her eventual attempts to bring her killer to justice working well in a novel. As a screenplay, it would simply work better if the script omitted the whole “Susie watches from heaven” sequence, which would both allow the ensemble a little more breathing room and totally eliminate the preachy third act. After her death, Susie’s appearances add surprisingly little to the story. Her voiceover narration does a bit of heavy lifting that could just as easily be parceled out in more inventive ways.

In other words, she’s the script’s primary weakness, but she’s also the embodiment of The Concept. (And, yes, for the sake of argument, I’m willfully ignoring the fact that betraying the concept would deviate from the novel more than those involved in this production would feel comfortable, I imagine.) Without her, it’s just an ultra-depressing movie about grief, loss, and justice. Except it’s not — it’s a solid ensemble drama with some eerie moments, some thrilling moments, and a core story that’s worth telling. It just doesn’t need the ghost of Susie.

Posted by Stan on December 8, 2009 10:29 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 3, 2009

Morality and The Next Three Days

This post exists primarily to expound, in spoiler-tastic detail, on a comment I wrote in response to ScriptShadow’s review of Paul Haggis’s latest script, The Next Three Days. For those too lazy to click the link, The Next Three Days focuses primarily on a character hellbent on breaking his wife out of prison in order to reunite his family. Whether or not his wife actually committed the crime — the murder of her boss — remains a mystery throughout the script.

[The spoilers start after the jump, so don’t say I didn’t warn you…]

As Carson rightly observes, the central dramatic question is this: can an ordinary man perform increasingly deplorable actions in the name of something righteous (springing his wife from the clink)? It’s an interesting question, although not an unfamiliar one to anyone who enjoys hardboiled detective fiction. Haggis has the opportunity for a more interesting question along the way: about halfway through the script, the wife (Lara) announces to her husband (John) that she did, in fact, commit the murder. She goes into a scandalous amount of detail, making quite a convincing case. John leaves the hospital in a daze, shocked by what he’s learned…

…and then he goes back to his escape plan unabated, seemingly unaffected by what she’s told him. Rather than allowing this development to lead to more interesting moral questions regarding the utilitarian righteousness of John’s immoral actions (such as, “Is it really a good plan to break your wife out of prison so your son can be raised in a third-world country with no extradition laws by two murderers?”), Haggis uses this more as a cheap plot point to justify John’s later actions: he follows a drug dealer to a stash house, kills all the dealers in the house, and steals their money to finance his family’s, ahem, “retirement plan.”

This is where the script really crosses an odd, uncomfortable line. John stops feeling like a sympathetic, ordinary guy and starts feeling like a sociopath. Although I expected a reversal later in the script, Haggis gives no inkling that maybe Lara lied to John so he wouldn’t feel bad about the failure to get her released legally. Based on textual evidence (rather than the conventions of a mainstream Hollywood movie, which is the only thing that made me assume she’d eventually come up innocent), this stops being a story about two ordinary people and turns into something like Bonnie & Clyde, if that pair had spent most of the movie trying to hide their criminal tendencies from each other. Even that wouldn’t be a bad thing if Haggis embraced the idea that ordinary people harbor dark secrets.

He doesn’t. The script’s breathless pace goes from strength to fault, because Haggis never slows down long enough to acknowledge the dark road he’s taken. He simply barrels ahead full-stop, with a cliché-ridden escape sequence in the third act that leads to an ill-fitting closing scene where the original detectives who worked Lara’s case go back to the scene of the crime and realize she was innocent all along. By the time the script is over, this feels more like a cheesy deus ex machina than the story’s logical conclusion.

Even in the end, Haggis never questions the moral righteousness of a character who’s murdered, stolen, broken somebody out of prison, and fled the country. He merely questions whether or not an “ordinary” person can stomach committing numerous crimes against municipalities and specific people, in the pursuit of a righteous deed. That thematic choice made me very uncomfortable, and it strikes me as the antithesis of Crash’s heavy-handed message.

Posted by Stan on December 3, 2009 5:23 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 30, 2009

Script Review: Armored by James V. Simpson

Over the long holiday weekend, I watched 30 Days of Night for the first time. (I know, I know… But I TiVo’ed it around Halloween and haven’t had a chance to watch it until now.) While I haven’t exactly made it a high priority, I’ve wanted to see the movie since it came out because, really, is there a better idea for a vampire movie than setting it in permanent-night Alaska? (Answer: no, there isn’t. Not even The Twilight Saga.) I came away from the movie with one thought: “Great concept, horrible execution.” As longtime readers of this blog know, I have a bigger problem with poorly executed great ideas than I am with movies that unabashedly suck balls.

Here’s the central problem with 30 Days of Night: every single character repeatedly does mind-bogglingly stupid things. I wouldn’t even mind that if the script acknowledged that this is a group of bumbling idiots who can’t formulate a plan, can’t agree on a leader for the group, and/or don’t understand what they’re up against until much later than they do. Some of those conflicts exist, but the audience is supposed to believe the characters’ actions are clear, well-motivated, and the wisest possible thing given the circumstances. Up to and including protagonist Eben injecting himself with vampire blood in order to fight them. With a few hours before sunrise. What the fuck? The vampires are pretty stupid, too: they come up with the ingenious plan of exploiting this tiny town on the edge of Alaska because it’ll give them 30 solid days to feed without ever feeling the vulnerability of hiding from the daylight…yet they blow their wad on the first night and then have to scavenge for an extremely limited number of survivors during the remaining 29 days. The movie’s sole clever moment is when the vampires bust open the nearby oil pipeline, flooding the town with crude oil so they can burn it to the ground. Yet even that is done for fairly stupid reasons.

A secondary problem — not as severe as the characters’ stupidity, but still pretty frustrating — is the fact that the writers don’t do a good job of exploiting their brilliant premise. (As noted in the previous paragraph, not even the vampires exploit the concept particularly well — and it’s their fucking plan.) Once the vampires show themselves, the movie goes from a creepy, atmospheric horror movie to a cheesy, gore-filled action flick. It has a few good moments here and there, but they’re all undermined by poor narrative choices and inconceivable character decisions. (As a quick example that’s just one of many: the group spends the first seven days holed up in the darkened attic of an abandoned house. The writers could have used the characters’ claustrophobia and mounting terror to motivate their stupid decision to leave the attic, but they don’t. They never acknowledge how it’d feel for a group of people to spend a week in the dark hiding from vampires. They just want to move briskly to the next plot point, whether it makes sense or not.)

Why am I ranting about 30 Days of Night when this is allegedly a script review of the upcoming Armored? Because they have problems in common. Armored is a heady mixture of poorly developed characters making stupid decisions for unclear reasons and poorly exploiting a somewhat novel “Die Hard in an armored car” premise.

Armored spends its first act with Ty, a straight-and-narrow working stiff who’s barely making ends meet. The combined income of Ty and his girlfriend, Dana, barely affords them enough to keep utilities on, much less support Ty’s troubled teen brother, Jimmy. See, their father walked out on them a number of years ago, forcing Ty to drop out to support his brother, who has grown up angry and lashes out by intentionally failing every single class he’s taking, including gym. No word on what happened to their mother, so I’ll go with “scarlet fever.” At any rate, Ty and Dana are very much in love despite their relative poorness, and Ty and Jimmy have conflict because Ty doesn’t want Jimmy going down the same road he was forced down. He currently works at a ghetto grocery store, and he doesn’t have much on the horizon: he’s a probational armored-car transporter, with only a few days left before becoming a full-fledged driver. When he looks at his crew — old-timer Cochrane and good-natured sociopath Baines — Ty sees his bleak future.

So when Cochrane and Baines offer to bring Ty in on a robbery scheme, he surveys his destitution and makes the not-so-difficult decision to join them. The plan is deceptively simple: Cochrane and the crew from another truck will pick up a total of $10 million (five per truck) from the Federal Reserve Bank a few days before Christmas. They’ll have an hour to report in, so they’ll spend that time hiding the money in a safe location, then staging a robbery before finally reporting it. They’ll sit on the money until the police and insurers close their investigations, by which time Cochrane will have reached retirement age and the others will fake post-traumatic stress that will cause them to lose their jobs. And then they’re on easy street!

The plan goes off without a hitch — until Cochrane’s sudden but inevitable betrayal. You see, he set Ty up as a patsy: once they arrive at an abandoned factory (the predetermined hiding spot for the money), they need a corpse to show how hard they fought to save the money. You might be wondering, “Why not just shoot a few people with non-lethal wounds to create the same impression?” Well, Cochrane and his boys are also bad at math, and $10 million divides more easily by 5 than 6. So there you go. You might also ask, “Say, if they need a corpse, wouldn’t it be wiser to shoot him wherever they’re staging the robbery, because even a non-CSI police detective will be able to tell just by looking at it if a body’s been killed elsewhere and moved?” I agree with you, but the script doesn’t sweat the details. Deal with it.

Ty’s not going down without a fight, though. He locks himself in one of the trucks, which is chased by the other through the abandoned factory until it’s incapacitated. Ty’s locked in the impenetrable truck with $5 million. Here’s where a better script would focus on the many facets of an armored truck that make it unique in this familiar storyline. Instead, writer James V. Simpson takes the bizarre narrative tack of focusing almost entirely on Cochrane and his gang’s efforts to get inside the truck. Ty doesn’t do much except look worried and helpless, two excellent qualities in an alleged hero.

See, Simpson has kind of backed himself into a corner. Cochrane’s men disable the truck’s motor and the fuses, leaving Ty with no options inside the truck. He can’t operate any of the electronics (including the sirens and gun turrets), so this might as well be “Die Hard in one of those 1950s-era silver tuna-can motor homes that coincidentally has a bunch of money in it and was fortified by a paranoid Montana survivalist” rather than “Die Hard in an armored car.” The only time the armored car setting is decently exploited is when Ty takes a strobe light from an emergency kit (this is also where he gets the flares) and wires the siren to the strobe’s battery, alerting the nearby police.

“Nearby police?” you ask. “Didn’t Cochrane specifically choose this factory for its isolation?” He did, but apparently he underestimated the overwhelming desire of today’s youth to smash abandoned factory windows, which draws police to the factory. A plucky but slightly inept patrolman named Al Powell arrives to investigate. Wait, I’m thinking of a different movie. In this one, it’s Eckehart and his not-long-for-this-world partner Leon, who’s killed almost immediately after Ty blasts on the siren. In a particularly brilliant move, Ty shoots a flare at the other $5 million — which has been removed from the other truck — burning it all. Shockingly, this only makes Cochrane and the others redouble their efforts to get into Ty’s truck to get the rest of the money. But the temporary smokescreen allows Ty to slip out of the truck and grab Eckehart before Cochrane can kill him, too.

Earlier, while Ty begged for his life, he announced that he wrote a letter to Jimmy detailing their crime. Cochrane suspects he’s bluffing, but he sends the other truck to find him and the letter. They find Jimmy but not the letter, although the audience sees that the letter does indeed exist. They bring Jimmy back for some predictable third-act dramatics. Also, Eckehart helps Ty escape from the truck and run for help, but Cochrane catches him — so Ty holds him hostage and drags him back into the truck.

I don’t want to ruin the third act, even if it is fairly obvious how the story will turn out, but I’ll list the numerous questions I wrote down as I read it: “Ty knows he can’t kill Cochrane or Jimmy’s as good as dead, yet he feels secure sticking a lit flare into Cochrane’s mouth in the hopes that he’ll order his men to let Jimmy go? Seems risky and stupid…” “Speaking of risky and stupid, Baines — now the de facto leader — reach an impasse, which Baines himself acknowledges. See, Baines has Jimmy, whom he threatens to kill if Ty doesn’t give up the money, which Ty threatens to burn if anything happens to Jimmy. So Baines and Ty agree to make a trade…then immediately shoots Jimmy? Because that’s the best way to get the money?” “Baines turns into a full-on sociopath in the third act, ostensibly because he’s overcome with greed… So why try so hard to risk everything to save Cochrane? At best, they’re only going to get half the expected money, so one less person to split it with will only benefit him.” “Lame, dunderheaded deus ex machina with Dana finding the letter.” Okay, that last one isn’t a question, but still… (And if you didn’t see that coming, you deserve to have the third act spoiled.)

There you have it. A pretty good concept (not nearly as good as 30 Days of Night, but still pretty good) marred by inconsistent characters making nonsensical decisions and the writer failing to do anything inventive with his own concept.

Most of the problem lies in the characters: with the exception of Ty, we don’t get to know anything about anyone. What’s at stake for Cochrane or Baines or any of the other guys? If they’re going to repeatedly do stupid, risky things for the money, the audience has to know why they need the money so desperately. The vague “they get paid shit” excuse will only take them so far. It would have been nice to see them at home, in addition to Ty. Especially since the script focuses so much on them (instead of Ty) during the second act, it’d be nice if they had more dimension than generic villains.

So that’s it: either acknowledge their stupidity and exploit it in the story, or…make them smarter. Those are the options. I’m told the draft I was sent is old and fairly outdated (for instance, apparently later drafts excised Dana altogether, which I’m not convinced is the wisest choice, but whatever), so maybe the shooting draft addressed and improved the many problems.

Posted by Stan on November 30, 2009 5:22 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 23, 2009

Script Review: Ninja Assassin by Matthew Sand & J. Michael Straczynski

Teachers of screenwriting and alleged screenwriting gurus consider two techniques verboten for green writers: voiceover narration and flashbacks. Anybody who has ever seen a good movie knows there are a plethora of examples in which both voiceover and flashbacks are used quite effectively (Election leaps to mind as a movie that uses both devices extremely well). While I’ve never personally cautioned any fellow writers against voiceovers and flashbacks, I can understand why beginners are cautioned against it. It’s very easy to use these techniques to lazily distribute information about character and backstory instead of finding a way to integrate the necessary information organically into the story you want to tell.

Ninja Assassin is a great example of how not to use flashbacks effectively. It uses its flashbacks in a desperate attempt to function as both a thinking-man’s action movie and a probing character study of the world’s least interesting ninja. Raizo, the ninja in question, spends the first half of the script looking haunted and lonely and flashing back to pivotal moments in his life: being raised in a ninja orphanage, allowing the ninja masters to brainwash him into the sociopath he’s become, and falling in love with a girl named Kiriko. I’m not a huge fan of martial-arts flicks, yet even I know the writers are mining just about every available cliché from these movies, including the surprising perennial dextrocardia (a birth defect where the heart is on the right side of the thorax instead of the left — in addition to being used in Metal Gear Solid 2 and World War Z, I’ve seen two other Asian-influenced action flicks pop up that use this as a significant “twist”). Deep into the third act, the writers make endless use of flashbacks to allegedly shape Raizo’s personality and fill out his backstory. It’s all for naught: they’ve created a character study of a cliché. The flashbacks contain no surprises and little insight into his present-day behavior that we couldn’t pick up from his present-day actions and dialogue. The fact that they keep happening well after they’ve lost their welcome makes Raizo less interesting as the script progresses.

The writers entangle Raizo’s dull revenge story with the not-quite-as-dull-but-still-mostly-crappy story of Mika, a Europol researcher who stumbles on some information that suggests an unstoppable ninja squad is responsible for a series of brutal political assassinations. She digs deeper — providing a metric shit-ton of information that’s also revealed in flashbacks, rendering them even more pointless — and soon enough finds herself a target of both ninjas and Europol higher-ups who want her stopped. When they send a ninja assassin to kill her, Mika’s shocked when Raizo appears from the shadows — and kills the other ninja! Because, you see, it’s surprising that he’s not doing the assassinating but killing the ninja assassins one by one. That surprised you, right?

So Mika and Raizo are pretty much the main characters, but the script doesn’t give them much to do once they get together. There’s an awkward “he has no sense of propriety and so almost sees her naked in the shower!” scene that I guess is supposed to exude some sort of chemistry or charisma, because immediately after this, Mika has decided she trusts Raizo more than enough to risk her life repeatedly for his. The writers do an exceptionally poor job of building this relationship into anything interesting or believable. I almost want to praise them for not giving in to one cliché — thrusting two mixed-gender characters together under stress and having them fall into something resembling love — except for the part where, once together, they mostly just run away from bad guys and explain more of the plot to each other. They never have a real connection — loving or otherwise — because the script doesn’t give them enough breathing room to give them one.

In fact, the story itself doesn’t have much to it because it’s so preoccupied with those fucking flashbacks. Mika spends the first half gathering information, operating as what I’ve heard called a “cabbagehead” — someone whose ignorance provides with a reason to deliver hamfisted exposition; Raizo spends the first half brooding and flashing back. They get together; Raizo continues to brood and flash back, while Mika tries to coax information out of him. The third act is just one fight sequence after another, mixed up with obvious “twists” and more boring flashbacks. I know it’s hard to quantify “obvious” or “predictable” moments in a story, because that’s completely subjective. If it gives you an idea of how predictable this crap is, though, I’ll tell you that I’m usually a big sucker for moments others see coming a mile away. I think The Rockford Files and Raymond Chandler taught me that, in a mystery, it’s much more interesting to get into the head of the character and let the revelations wash over you rather than keeping the story and characters at arm’s length because you’d rather be the one who solves the overarching mystery in the first act. Whatever the explanation, I’m an easy mark, yet I found this script eye-rollingly predictable.

As a quiet side note, this script opens with a scene involving a tattoo artist and a character only known by the name “Hollywood.” He gets no physical description and is killed rather quickly, but I just consider it bad form to open your script by reminding me of Meschach Taylor’s, ahem, “flamboyant” character from the Mannequin movies. It does a horrible job of setting the grim tone.

As another quiet side note, you’ll notice that, despite my nerd status, I made no mention of screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, neither lamenting the fact that the brilliant creator of Babylon 5 could stoop so low nor prematurely defending this project as a somehow worthwhile evolution of his career. So here’s the brief story of me and Babylon 5: long after the series had run its course, the Sci-Fi Channel began airing reruns. Friends encouraged me to watch it because it was, according to them, the best sci-fi series ever made. So I watched the two-hour pilot and thought it sucked. “No, no,” they said. “It starts slow. Give it time to set everything up, and then it’ll get really good.” So I watched half of the first season and thought it sucked. “Well, you know,” they said, “it doesn’t really start to come into its own until the end of the first season.” So I kept watching until the end of the first season, and it never came into its own. “That’s because J. Michael Straczynski hasn’t fired the writing staff and started writing all the episodes himself. That happens midway through season two.” So I plugged along through season two, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t like anything about it — characters, setting, or story. It did nothing for me. Honestly, I’m a pretty patient guy, and I generally like slower paced stuff, but when it takes more than 1.5 seasons for your TV show to even approach something interesting? You’ve done something seriously wrong. I don’t care who good it allegedly gets. These same people who told me to be patient also told me I could pretty much skip the fifth season and all the follow-up movies because they sucked balls. So there’s pretty much two good seasons of television that aren’t good unless you muddle through two bad seasons, and then there’s the approximate equivalent of two additional seasons that undermine the goodness of the two good seasons. On the whole, I’d call that a shitty series. But hey, maybe the highs really are that high.

The bottom line, I think, is pretty clear: I don’t have a hero worship of Straczynski, so I’ll neither defend nor detract. The writing in Ninja Assassin made no impression on me, aside from the fact that it had more correctly spelled words than most scripts I read.

Anyway, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for this finished product improving on the screenplay. It’s the second film by James McTeigue (who directed V for Vendetta, a fact that should excite nobody) and it stars Korean pop star Rain, whose presence in Speed Racer (which, by the way, is underrated and unjustly maligned — I’d rather tell people to rent Speed Racer than see Ninja Assassin) wasn’t entirely disruptive. He wasn’t actually good, though.

Posted by Stan on November 23, 2009 5:38 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 16, 2009

Script Review: Planet 51 by Joe Stillman

Even now, I don’t spend much time thinking about a prospective audience. On some level, it’s both naïve and misguided to completely ignore the idea that producers and executives (a) need to know who a script might appeal to and (b) receive too many to waste time running your piece of crap by a marketing department to see if they can sell it. Frankly, though, now that I’ve dealt with the issues of working the weirdness out of my scripts, potential audiences have become less elusive. However, potential sales remain just as elusive as always, but that’s a story for another day…

I bring up the problem with prospective audiences because it’s a question I deal with on a daily basis in reading terrible scripts — who will go to see this movie? With Planet 51, I don’t exactly have an answer. The CGI animated films made by Pixar and Dreamworks frequently have a clearly delineated “adults-only”/”kids-only” separation policy. I’ll be honest: I don’t like it. I sort of prefer the classic Disney structure, which told stories suitable for kids but enjoyable by adults. Pixar has increasingly adopted that concept with their films, which is fantastic. Planet 51, a Spanish-British co-production released through New Line Cinema, has kept its story beats segregated, which is ironic since the bluntly stated theme of the story is about tolerance and understanding.

However, rather than tossing in a variety of “adult” jokes — such as classic movie spoofs and bawdy double entendres — that will sail directly over the heads of the youth audience, Planet 51 takes some unfortunate stabs at adult humor that, even if kids ignore them, plant somewhat disturbing subconscious seeds. I don’t want to come across as overly sensitive, because this blog and my typical views are not exactly on the level of CapAlert, but Planet 51 features a bizarrely homophobic running gag involving anal probes. These aren’t subtle allusions — the phrase “anal probe” is uttered frequently, and one character goes so far as to distribute corks to prevent from getting probed, which includes a joke where he gives our hero a used one. Writer Joe Stillman (I…think — he’s credited on the IMDb, but the script I received had no title page) specifically states certain anal probe-related jokes are to be played as homoerotic for comic effect (notable example: “The anus is the key to everything!”), and I dunno… Overly sensitive or not, I don’t think movies aimed at kids should indoctrinate them with homophobia before they’re even aware of sexuality, much less homosexuality. Of course, to paraphrase Woody Allen, it’s worse than not sensitive — it’s not funny!

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the basic story. Young astronomer Lem has the perfect life: a beautiful girlfriend, a cushy job at a planetarium (where he espouses facts about outer space like: the universe is 500 miles wide, containing over 1000 stars, some of which are three feet long!), and an idyllic life in a suburb intentionally modeled after the 1950s sitcom view of the world. It all turns upside down when Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker lands on the planet, making the paranoid citizens of this unnamed town panic and call in the military. Through convoluted circumstances, Chuck ends up hiding out in Lem’s room a la E.T., but he has to enlist Lem’s help. Chuck has to get back to his landing module — confiscated by the military and sent to Area 9, this planet’s version of Area 51 — within a few days, or it’ll take off without him, stranding Chuck on this hostile planet forever.

Subplots abound, mostly revolving around the themes of paranoia leading to intolerance and minor differences in physical appearance leading people to draw spurious conclusions. Lem’s girlfriend, Neera, is horrified when a Three’s Company-esque misunderstanding leads her to conclude Lem is working for the army, so she immediately hooks up with Glar, an early Beatnik who’s still trying to figure out how, exactly, to stage successful protests. (Hint: find corporate sponsorship.) Fueled by the erroneous conclusions of scientist/pervert Professor Kipple, military leader General Grawl becomes more and more convinced of Chuck’s deviant purposes and ability to control minds. Lem’s friends, meanwhile, run around spreading comic-book-fueled rumors about what this “alien” is capable of.

All of this culminates in bizarre setpieces like the one where Chuck makes a general announcement to the press from the safe confines of the local comic book store in which he starts by quoting from the peaceful Star Trek but escalates to impersonations of Darth Vader and The Terminator. Combined with the cardboard cutouts of vicious aliens that surround him, this escalates the panic. Eventually, Chuck is captured by Grawl. He willingly gives himself up, claiming he hypnotized Lem into helping him, so Lem can return to the normal life he’s spent the entire script complaining Chuck has ruined. Touched by Chuck’s actions, Lem enlists his friends’ help in busting into Area 9 and helping Chuck get back to his ship. Disappointed when Glar proves to be a wuss, Neera returns to Lem and discovers he’s willing to go up against a vast army to save Chuck. From there, it goes exactly where you’d expect.

Planet 51 is peppered with sporadically amusing one-liners, but the entire plot hinges on flawed logic that distracted the shit out of me. In short, we’re presented with an alien world where nobody — especially not the scientific community — believes in alien life. Nobody. They believe space is too tiny to travel through and exists primarily for their amusement. The idea that, despite the fact that the entire planet agrees that aliens do not exist, alien-invasion movies and comics would thrive…just doesn’t fit. Keep in mind that on Earth, we’d known about the existence of other planets for centuries before the 1950s. Long before Sputnik launched, contemplation of alien life made sense. In a world that has made no such discoveries in space and operates under the impression that stars are the rough equivalent of a fresnel, the contemplation and fear of alien life makes about as much sense as modern sailors fearing dragons or falling off the edge of the planet.

Some of you might think, “Hey, lay off, man. It’s a kids’ movie, for Christ’s sake! They don’t need to be logical.” I’m all for flights of fancy, but one key thing that separates old-school Disney and current Pixar from all the shitty knockoffs is that, despite the talking animals and musical numbers, they dig into emotional and psychological truths that make everything relatable to audiences of all ages. When the flawed logic comes from a place of hard-to-believe psychology, I have no choice but to get pissed off and consider it an irritating flaw. This is especially the case when the flaw in the plot underscores the theme — acceptance and tolerance of those who are different. I’d be all for the paranoia and fear, despite the general lack of subtlety (it’s about as subtle as Alien Nation or Asimov’s robot books), if not for this one blatant, impossible-to-ignore problem in the story.

The characters are sort of a mixed bag that vary between annoying and uninteresting. Lem isn’t so bad, but he doesn’t serve as a sly riff on the bland unintentional hero of ’50s sci-fi movies so much as an embracing of the clichés that phased such a lead out. Chuck is just Zapp Brannigan in a NASA suit instead of a skirt. Most of the other characters are just stereotypes who serve up jokes, although Kipple goes oddly and intriguingly dark in the third act. That doesn’t go anywhere interesting, unfortunately, but man, I was close to forgiving this script for its many flaws if the man had really sawed Chuck’s head open and claimed his brain (spoiler alert!). The relationship with Lem and Neera is uncomfortably adult — too adult for kids to identify with, yet too cutesy and stereotypical for adults to buy into. Getting rid of her might improve the script marginally, but she’s the least of its problems.

Overall, Planet 51 — like too many comedies and kids’ movies — exists as little more than a lazy clothesline for jokes, but the script doesn’t have enough good material to allow audiences to ignore its myriad story and character problems. Per usual, if they took the characters and story more seriously, it might balance out and end up decent if not truly great. Unfortunately, the lack of originality and coherence will ultimately do in Planet 51. Even its alleged “unique twist” — that a human lands on an alien planet and is treated like, har har, an alien!!! — has been done to death in sci-fi. As a result, Planet 51 is likely to end up in the forgotten CGI bargain bin with Doogal, Fly Me to the Moon, and Barnyard (that shitty Steve Oedekerk movie where a bull has udders).

Posted by Stan on November 16, 2009 5:33 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 10, 2009

Script Review: 2012 by Roland Emmerich & Harold Kloser and Matt Charman

The script for Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster spectacle, 2012, is exactly what I expected. I can’t figure out if that makes it a disappointment (because it wasn’t very good) or a triumph (because it could have been worse).

Full disclosure: I unabashedly love Independence Day. Some people consider Armageddon to be the biggest, dumbest, funnest star-studded disaster movie, but it doesn’t do anything for me. Armageddon just has seizure-inducing editing and a shitty Aerosmith song. Independence Day has everything a super-nerd like me wants in a movie like this: shit blowing up, Area 51, drunk Randy Quaid, and treacly yet suspiciously affecting interpersonal relationships. In the pantheon of high-quality filmmaking, Independence Day doesn’t rate highly. However, it aims low and succeeds at exactly what it seeks to accomplish: being a semi-hokey but mostly fun “Irwin Allen of the ’90s” flick.â€¨

Since Independence Day, Emmerich has attempted to repeat its formula for success with Godzilla (1998) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). 2012 is yet another attempt to retell the same crowd-pleasing story. Instead of aliens, monsters, or weather, Emmerich sets his sights on the alleged Mayan apolcaypse, set to occur on the day of the winter solstice in 2012. Unfortunately, what Independence Day got right, 2012 mostly gets wrong: a strong “villain” presence (let’s just lump the entire alien invasion as one central villain, shall we?) and a sense that the characters aren’t just constructs designed to tug at our heartstrings.

2012 begins, conveniently enough, in 2009, with a lot of ineffectual and inconsequential scientific babbling that amounts to this: “the end of the world is coming.” Adrian, the new science adviser to President Thomas F. Wilson (careful readers will note this is the name of the actor who played, among other notable roles, Biff Tannen in Back to the Future and Coach Fredericks on Freaks & Geeks), learns of the mysterious threat and attempts to report it immediately. Anheuser, Wilson’s smarmy chief of staff, refuses to allow it…until 2010, when Wilson announces their findings in private at the G8 summit. With the help of other major world leaders, a mysterious plan is hatched to avoid the destruction of the human race. Emmerich and Kloser don’t reveal it just yet, but for some reason it involves tricking Tibetan villagers into volunteering to build a dam. It turns out 2011 is a fairly uneventful year: an MI-6 agent extorts €1 billion from the Saudi prince for some reason, and Wilson’s daughter, Laura, helps an organization called the “World Heritage Foundation” store priceless art while big-time museums like the Louvre replace the works with exact replicas made by Laura herself.â€¨â€¨

How does any of that tie into the plot? We find out…in 2012!

After front-loading the first act with exposition that runs the gamut from “clunky” to “eye-rollingly retarded,” the script settles into a pretty straightforward disaster flick focusing primarily on three disparate subplots: Adrian, Laura, and Wilson’s attempts to first solve the problem and then run quickly away from it; Adrian’s father, a grizzled old ex-drunk jazz musician, wandering around for no other reason than to appeal to old people; and unsuccessful novelist/divorcée Jackson Curtis’s wild adventures using Armageddon to reconnect with this family. It’s familiar material, especially if you’ve seen previous Emmerich movies. I want to dig a little more into the plot, though, before I dump on this script.

At the end of the day, Jackson is the heart of the story. The bulk of the peripheral characters exist for one of two reasons: (1) exposition delivery and (2) padding the story out with more characters to give it an “epic” feel. That’s a bit disappointing, because for all its faults, Independence Day didn’t have any truly superfluous characters. Brent Spiner didn’t do much more than chew scenery and disseminate information about aliens, but at least he had the information. What the hell does Harry Helmsley, Adrian’s father, contribute to the story?

I’m getting ahead of myself. Because Jackson is the heart of the story, most of the plot revolves around him. So here’s the deal: he takes his kids on a camping trip to Yellowstone. In a move that’s as sweet as it is creepy, he wants to camp on the lake where he and his ex-wife, Kate, fell in love…but the lake’s dried up and fenced off by the government. Jackson hops the fence—encouraging his kids to do the same, in a bold parenting choice—and is quickly ejected by the military, but not before he sees a lot of creepy military tents and Adrian Helmsley, science adviser extraordinaire. Listening to the radio, Jackson stumbles on Charles Frost’s pirate-radio broadcast. He’s a low(er)-rent Art Bell knockoff spouting exposition disguised as crazy conspiracy theories. After what Jackson’s seen, he sort of believes Frost. He finds the mobile home from which Frost broadcasts. Frothing at the mouth (figuratively), Frost tells Jackson the government’s hiding the end of the world. All the leaders plan to converge on China, who has coordinated with other world leaders to build a bunch of spaceships that are effectively futuristic Noah’s arks. Careful readers will have guessed that, yes, this is where the precious artworks Laura is “securing” are headed, and it’s the reason the Saudi prince is paying a metric ass-ton of money to a British MI-6 agent. I love it when a story comes together!

Meanwhile, in the world of science and politics, Adrian discovers the end of the world is coming much more quickly than anticipated. Only four of the nine Chinese spaceships are ready for action, which means further belt-tightening for the already tight squeeze of those who have the money, power, and connections to flee the planet.

But what of regular-guy Jackson and his family? Turns out, Jackson conveniently makes ends meet by driving a limo. Among others, he’s in charge of driving Yuri, a wealthy Russian mobster who Knows Too Much. Right around the time Jackson has made his frantic arrival in L.A., fearing that Kate would be in danger (based on, among other warning signs, the sudden 10.1-magnitude earthquake that splits Kate’s local grocery store in half), Yuri gets a text message telling him to gas up his private jet and head on down to China ASAP. Yuri calls Jackson to drive him to the airport, which seems like a poor strategy in an emergency situation. Fortunately, Jackson drops everything—angering Kate and amusing her smarmy plastic-surgeon boyfriend, Gordon—to drive Yuri to the airport. There, Jackson gets the brilliant idea to rent a plane of his own. Barely outrunning the natural seismic events plaguing the city, Jackson convinces Kate and company to go to the airport with him. When he arrives, they find the rental pilot has fled. Conveniently, Gordon has had “a few lessons,” which is apparently more than enough to successfully outmaneuver a runway-destroying earthquake and take off.

Where to? Yellowstone! Jackson is desperate to get Frost’s map, but Frost has decided to move his trailer to the edge of a dormant volcano that’s now active. Jackson gets the map and returns to the airport. When he realizes it’s a map to China, Jackson realizes “we’re gonna need a bigger plane” (get it?!). They escape Yellowstone as the volcano erupts and fly to a mostly destroyed Las Vegas, where Yuri has also landed to refuel. His plane is destroyed, so he teams up with Jackson and friends to steal a huge cargo plane loaded with cars for the upcoming auto show. While en route to China, Jackson and his family each share sweet yet obvious moments of connection with Yuri and his family.

Back in the world of science and politics, President Wilson decides to “go down with his ship” in a very stoic moment largely ripped off from Deep Impact. (And, as a side note, it’s kind of hilarious how this script lays out the introduction of Wilson—for the first few scenes, it explicitly notes that we don’t see his face, and when we finally do, the fact that he’s black is a allegedly a shocking reveal. Because apparently Emmerich missed Deep Impact and 24 and, um, reality.) Anheuser capitalizes on the destruction of Washington, D.C., by declaring himself President. He also notices Adrian is romantically involved with Laura, but he doesn’t do much with this information other than make a few veiled insults. In China, Adrian is dismayed by the political leaders’ mistreatment of the passengers on the five grounded ships. This eventually leads to a stirring speech that attempts to capture the same hippy-dippy “citizen of the world” togetherness vibe as Bill Pullman’s rousing speech near the end of Independence Day.

That’s about as much of the plot as I want to spoil, but if you’ve seen an Emmerich movie, you know what to expect: more shit blowing up, heroic sacrifices, ex-lovers rekindling the embers of their failed relationship, and a mostly unearned happy ending that relies on a fairly ridiculous deus ex machina involving the offscreen rescue of previously superfluous characters.

The script isn’t awful, but things start going wrong on the title page. Because the alleged 2012 Apocalypse predicted by the end of the Mayan calendar is little more than an urban myth that’s been debunked, details on how, exactly, the end will come are sketchy at best. Unlike more ridiculous and awesome Christian-themed Apocalypse movies, this has no “Book of Revelation”-style baseline to show iconic images of creepy foreshadowing. Emmerich chalks it up to solar flares working some bad hoodoo on Earth, which as explanations go is pretty lame. Even worse: the story’s big villain is the sun. The speechless, emotionless, hive-minded aliens of Independence Day worked a little better as an evil force, because the story’s officially sanctioned “run ‘n’ hide” section gave way to a spirited “now that all the characters are together, they’ve added up two and two and come up with a plan to stop the invasion” third act.

2012 has no such invention. The entire story is “run ‘n’ hide,” making unstoppable natural phenomena into the de facto antagonist and the only course of action to use jets to narrowly outrun clouds of ash and tidal waves. Had Emmerich played into the overall hopelessness of this storyline and given the story a bit of a darker edge than his previous fare, this script could have been very interesting. He doesn’t, though, so the stirring moments don’t stir and the last 10-20 pages are just one unearned moment of inexplicably joy after another.

The characters have the same basic problem. Emmerich tries so hard to cover every available demographic, he eschews the underlying darkness in certain pairings. For instance, Jackson and Kate have the same basic “divorced but still secretly love each other” deal as Jeff Goldblum and Margaret Colin in Independence Day; however, while the split in Independence Day is semi-amicable and career-oriented, Kate dumps Jackson because he’s a loser, a failed writer who can’t hold a steady job. So she shacks up with a plastic surgeon who gave her a post-childbirth boob job. Both of these revelations about Kate are sort of fascinating and, on some level, a little pathetic. Why not dig in to the type of woman who would find a dynamic loser like Jackson attractive, then glom on to a wealthy but sleazy plastic surgeon who reshaped her into a better-looking woman. There’s something odd going on there, but Emmerich doesn’t dive into it: Gordon’s occupation is a cheap excuse for tired plastic-surgery gags and an auto-vilification technique more than a statement on Kate’s choice in romantic partners. Similarly, Kate’s decision to get a boob job is portrayed as a hilariously normal decision, which I guess fits with the fact that she’s based in L.A., but will it play in Peoria? I guess, considering the alarming nationwide proliferation of women with body-image problems, maybe it will.

That still doesn’t make up for the fact that Emmerich makes no effort to delve into the reality behind the odd decisions Jackson and Kate have made; when they aren’t plot-oriented (like Jackson’s limo-driver gig), Emmerich makes decisions seemingly at random to give variety to the characters. Not a bad instinct, but the pieces rarely fit together in believable ways.

That’s not even diving in to the plethora of characters who exist solely for the sake of width (not depth) and disparity. Starting with Harry Helmsley and his elderly Latino bandmate, this script has a veritable army of characters who have nothing to do. Look at previous disaster movies: maybe some of the characters seemed like they had no purpose, but they end up fitting into the story in unexpected ways. For instance, in Independence Day, Vivica A. Fox’s stripper pal, who initially does nothing more than provide exposition about Fox’s character, gets to show up at the “alien welcome party” and have that “oh fuck!” look on her face when they realize the aliens aren’t of peace, always. 2012 doesn’t have any nice, small moments like this. It’s just a lot of big, loud goofiness.

I know it feels like I’ve spent this entire review comparing 2012 to Independence Day. I try to avoid doing stuff like that, but in this case, the similarities (up to and including the co-writer and director) are astounding, and I feel like Emmerich’s only goal in 2012 is to recapture the things he got right in Independence Day. He didn’t do that, so why shouldn’t I examine how he got things right before and wrong now?

2012’s breezy, lightweight tone might allow audiences to forgive the…crappiness. Overall, it’s a bit of a mess, but it’ll probably turn out to be fun, forgettable fluff. I will not begrudge anyone who reads this review but sees the movie anyway; I probably will, too.

Posted by Stan on November 10, 2009 5:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 2, 2009

Script Review: The Box by Richard Kelly

Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story “Button, Button” would be most easily described as a meditation on greed and the consequences of money for nothing. It describes the story of a married couple, Arthur and Norma, whose lives are turned upside down when Norma receives a box from a creepy stranger. The box houses a button, and the creepy stranger (Mr. Steward) tells Norma that if she pushes the button, she will receive a no-strings-attached payment of $50,000 — but wait, there’s one string attached: someone she doesn’t know will die. After debating the pros and cons with her husband, Norma pushes the button. Arthur is hit by a train, and Norma receives $50,000 as an insurance payment. The Serling twist is: per Steward, Norma “never really knew” her husband, which I guess adds an additional theme about what a person will sacrifice (intentionally or unintentionally) to get some money. It doesn’t exactly break new ground with any of its themes (John Huston’s adaptation of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is probably the best exploration of all these themes and more), but it’s a nice story, typical of Matheson’s Twilight-y stories.

Now, Richard Kelly has updated and greatly expanded the story. He’s moved the setting to 1976, added a son (among a plethora of other new characters), and upped the stakes to $200,000 (though, according to the trailers, the final film has upped this to $1 million). In expanding the story, Kelly made quite a few choices that I initially disliked quite a lot. I still sort of dislike most of them, but at least I finally have at least some understanding of why he made them. Before I get to that, let me get into the plot a little bit.

Like the original story, the early beats follow Arthur and Norma after Norma has received the box. Arthur works as a NASA engineer; among other things, he designed the 360-degree camera in the Viking probe that is photographing the Martian surface. Norma teaches science at a private school, which Walter, her nine-year-old son, attends at a discount. Norma also has an odd, unfortunate foot deformity that is given so much early attention, I expected it to pay off in a much more satisfactory way than it did. You see, when she was younger, her brother accidentally dropped a barbell on her foot, and her distracted doctor left the X-ray machine on while he examined another patient. The result: massive overexposure to radiation, leading to the amputation of all but her pinky toes. Norma deals with chronic pain, a limp, and an alarming skin deformity in her inner thigh (the pre-grafting days are described as if the doctors used a cheese grater to remove skin and duct-taped it to her stubby foot).

Now, on to this box business. Norma receives it in the middle of the night, along with a note from “Mr. Steward”: he’ll drop by at 5 p.m. to explain the details. Arthur and Norma examine it but are confounded. True to his note, Arlington Steward drops by at 5. For reasons unknown, half of his face has been burned off, leaving an eerily immobile, skeletal appearance. Arlington drops some plot science on us: if she pushes the button, gets $200,000, but someone she doesn’t know will die. Arthur misses this meeting because of work, so Norma fills him in on the way to a wedding rehearsal dinner. The rehearsal is for Norma’s sister, which means Kelly shoves about 75,000 new characters and 30 years of backstory into this sequence. Like the foot, none of these characters really pay off in the long run. I suppose they exist to fill out Norma’s characterization, which would ordinarily make me happy; here, it left me cold.

At any rate, Arthur and Norma agree that Steward’s deal is most likely some sort of depraved insurance scam (a cute homage to the source material; the conversation also includes them pseudo-philosophically wondering what it means to truly “know” someone), so they decide to ignore it and not push the button. Norma has her doubts, though — Steward seemed awfully sincere.

Things change when Norma learns her school’s policy regarding discounted tuition for faculty has changed. Left to pay full tuition — which, Norma explains, they wouldn’t be able to afford even if they sold her car and moved to a smaller house — she becomes severely tempted to push the button. In the end, her pushing the button hinges entirely on Walter’s welfare. We’re supposed to like this about her, but it’s one of the moments of the script that left me cold. Are public schools really that bad? Maybe they were in Richmond, Virgina, circa 1976. I can see the other side of the argument, but as someone who endured a public education and came out relatively unscathed (admittedly, I went to school in one of the better districts in my state…), it seems kind of bizarre and cold to potentially sacrifice a stranger just so my son can continue going to an elite private school.

Even though the first half of the script has Arthur and Norma talking in circles about whether or not to push the button, Kelly doesn’t dwell much on the morality issue when the button actually gets pressed. I’ve ranted about this before, but I’ve grown very wary of using children as a cheap, automatic shorthand to motivate characters. After pondering philosophically for a day, the sudden jeopardy of Norma’s son changes her mind, and we’re to accept that as a perfectly rational act. It isn’t; most parents would do anything for their kids, but that doesn’t make it rational. Since that actually turns into the crux of the third act, it surprises me that Kelly glosses over the selfishness of Norma’s actions.

Maybe Kelly glosses over it because the script goes from creepy-but-straightforward narrative to batshit insane right after the midpoint (pushing the button). Simultaneously, a man (Robert) in a nearby home murders his wife for unclear reasons. Steward arrives at Arthur and Norma’s home to retrieve the box. Arthur, who may or may not have recognized Arthur, gets Steward’s license plate number and gives it to Norma’s father, a police sergeant, to get the dirt on him. Norma’s father responds with a name and phone number. They call the number and get a creepy woman rambling about Prometheus giving Pandora her famous box, then gives them a Dewey decimal number for a book that will reveal the answers to their many questions.

Arthur and Norma go to the library, where they find the book: No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential play about menage a trois trouble and/or hell and/or purgatory. Norma has a dim recollection of reading the play in high school, and they’re both effectively creeped out by its subject matter. A date has been marked in the book, so they ask the librarian to view microfiche from the newspaper with that date.* The newspaper, chronicling the Mars photos downloaded by NASA, jogs Arthur’s memory: he does know Arlington. The man worked for NASA until he was struck by lightning — on the same day the photos were downloaded! Things get weirder: Arthur and Norma separate within the library. Arthur’s cornered by the librarian, who turns out to be the creepy lady they called at Arlington Steward’s number (she’s his mom), while Norma is cornered by Steward. The librarian spouts more oddness about Prometheus flying too close to the sun, while Arlington grills Norma about (a) how much she loves Arthur and (b) how she feels about Steward.

Both the librarian and Steward hypnotize Arthur and Norma into a dreamstate reminiscent of No Exit. They wake up at home, with only a couple of hours to get ready for Norma’s sister’s wedding. This leads to the third act, where things start to get really weird. I don’t want to ruin it, but I’ll give a basic rundown of the significant events: huge government conspiracies, hostages, evil twins, telekinesis, extortion, car chases, flaming wrecks, the possibility that this entire story takes place not on Earth but in purgatory, and Steward offering Arthur a Sophie’s Choice between Walter and Norma.

When the script hits its dreamy weirdness in the second half, the story and characters almost defy criticism. It’s gleefully nonsensical, which makes it difficult to pin down things like arcs and resolutions. I’m not even sure I can nitpick some of the smaller things, like the doctor who deformed Norma getting invited to her sister’s wedding or Steward’s librarian mother (who has allegedly read nearly 24,000 books) butchering the Prometheus myth twice (he didn’t give Pandora the box, and Icarus was the one who flew too close to the sun), because that may have been intentional. I will say the resolution — Arthur’s choice, which ends the story — is deeply unsatisfying, in part because it relies on the same cheap “parents will do anything for their kids” (spoiler alert?) device that convinces Norma to push the button. Kelly gets too distracted by his own weirdness to give us the proper level of insight into Arthur to make it clear why he makes the decision he does. But I guess Kelly, like a dozen or so other screenwriters over the past year, feels a parent making horrifying sacrifices for his or her child does not need any sort of motivation or explanation. It’s a move both parents and kids can relate to, which I guess is why it’s become the easy, hacky gimmick of the ‘09-‘10 movie season.

If the plot devolves into bizarre, Southland Tales-esque incoherence, Kelly has to have thematic elements operating to give it some kind of pointed political/philosophical/huminatarian message, right? Right?! As I mentioned, he discards Matheson’s themes so he can ape No Exit, and he takes the Donnie Darko tack of questioning the world in which the characters live. Is it reality, or is it purgatory? As in Donnie Darko, Kelly leaves it to the viewer to answer the question, but he also never makes the question as intriguing as anything in Donnie Darko.

The third act turns into some kind of half-nightmare, half-spoof action flick, and because of the weird smorgasbord of conspiracies, chases, and existential philosophy, it reminded me a lot of Repo Man. However, whereas Repo Man had a very specific message about the distractions created by politics and religion, The Box doesn’t seem to have any agenda other than weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Yes, Kelly uses No Exit to tap into questions about purgatory, existentialism, and fatalism, but he also brings in a number of incongruous elements that don’t add up to anything. They don’t reflect or oppose the questions; they just hang there, as red herrings or misleading clues or any number of other things that mean “randomness.” To put it another way, we get 50 examples of Donnie Darko’s fat jogging guy with no examples of Donnie creating chaos in the world.

However, after I read the script, I decided to have a conversation with a friend of mine who has a degree in philosophy and a keen understanding of French existentialism (his understanding: “They just ripped off German existentialists about 50 years later”). First, I explained the plot of the original story — which he hailed as extremely existential — and then, I explained the plot of the movie, which confused and amused him as much as it did me. Then, he pointed out something that made me rethink everything I believed about the script. He said, “It might be significant that they’re doing all this in order to finance their son’s formal education.” He observed that Nietzsche made the hilarious observation that Socrates, who was sentence to death for “corrupting children,” deserved his fate. So, in a story that on some levels pits science against faith, it does become significant that not only does Norma push the button to finance her child’s secular education — she, herself, is a science teacher at the school.

This got the ball rolling on all the other weirdness. As I understood it (and I probably didn’t), two of the founding principles of existential thought are self-delusion and the creation of one’s own morality. Nietzsche’s whole deal was that Christianity had developed an outdated morality that people followed more out of obligation than a real desire to be a good person. In other words, in a universe governed by God, the moral choice is always clear: do whatever will get you into heaven. Kierkegaard used the example of God forcing Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: if Abraham believes in a good God, then he’s just going through the motions. He knows God’s just fucking with him, that he’ll never really have to kill his son.

I started to wonder if this is the same sort of morality tale, only with characters who don’t believe in a good God, or any sort of God at all. The equivalent to Abraham feeling a strong compulsion to kill Isaac. He knows it’s wrong, but he feels it so strongly that he falls into a trap of self-delusion, coming up with a plethora of reasons why it’s a good, just idea. If God exists and is testing Abraham — without revealing himself — then He will punish Abraham if he doesn’t stop himself from killing Isaac.

In the world of this script, Mr. Steward may or may not be working directly for the Big Man, and this may or may not be their test to get into heaven. However, neither Norma nor Arthur lead God-fearing lives. In fact, both of their occupations are in direct opposition to God’s will (according to the crazy fundies!). Moreover, one could look at Norma’s seemingly extraneous foot injury as an earlier test from God, one that essentially told her, “Scientific pursuit has destroyed your foot, so now you have a choice: understand this is a test, reaffirm your faith in me, and enjoy a fruitful life — or get pissed off, disavow God, and pursue the science that destroyed your foot.” She failed the test, but the test itself — like God calling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac — is a Catch-22: if this was a test from God, then God caused “science” to ruin her foot, and how does one reconcile a good God with one who can do something like that?

I have to imagine some of this existential masturbation entered into Kelly’s mind while writing the script. Considering the original story’s existential roots, the significance No Exit plays, and the general attention to detail Kelly puts into his scripts — whether they turn out well or not — it stands to reason that the seeming randomness isn’t so random. However, while I developed a bit more respect for the script after having this conversation, I still just don’t think it works all that well. The third act is just too much of a mess — note that I made sense of pretty much every weird detail except the unexplained Martian conspiracy. That’s never made clear, and neither my friend nor I could come up with a suitable explanation that ties into existential thought in any way.

Like Southland Tales, The Box starts out well, but when Kelly loses his focus, the story loses its momentum and ends up falling apart long before he tries to patch it back together in the last few pages. I really wanted to love this script, but it just doesn’t live up to the potential Matheson’s original story. What a shame.

*I don’t want to get too nitpicky, but here’s my dilemma: the date was September 3, 1976. The story takes place in late December of 1976. At this time in history, would the library of a mid-size city like Richmond have already archived a three-month-old newspaper on microfiche? I sincerely don’t know the answer, but it bugged me because it just feels too fast. Pretty much every library I’ve done tedious research at has had hard copies for the past 9-12 months; when they finally do archive the older papers, it takes them forever. [Back]

Posted by Stan on November 2, 2009 2:44 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 26, 2009

Script Review: Gentlemen Broncos by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess

I guess Jared and Jerusha Hess don’t really need to learn anything. After all, their modestly budgeted debut, Napoleon Dynamite, made assloads of money and developed a small army of devoted, quote-happy friends. Their formula (combine hateful characters with zero empathy and self-consciously arty, Wes Anderson-lite mise-en-scène) obviously succeeded, so why deviate from it? Here’s why: it sucks. Compare Napoleon Dynamite to Rushmore, the film it so desperately wishes it could be. Rushmore’s Max Fischer has a very well-defined arc, starting as a self-absorbed prick with little regard for friends and family. By the end of the film, he’s realized the importance of others and has become relatively selfless. Even though he’s not entirely likable, Anderson gives us more than enough information about Max for us to understand why he’s so awful. On the other hand, Napoleon Dynamite starts the movie a self-absorbed prick, things happen to him, then the movie ends with him still self-absorbed and still a prick. He doesn’t do anything, and he doesn’t change. Totally inert. But, hey, who cares? It’s funny, right? …right.

Now, the Hesses have delivered Gentlemen Broncos, which continues the trend of following a plethora of unpleasant characters who exhibit no emotional growth. It focuses primarily on Benjamin, a teenager who writes sci-fi and fantasy stories. Other than this and some mild anger issues, we learn nothing about him. Oh, I guess he was also home-schooled. That’s how the script starts: his creepy, religious mother Judith drives him to a bus, where a group of home-schooled kids are going to some sort of creative-writing conference. Benjamin is initially portrayed as a gullible rube, but then he’s suddenly not, with no real reason or natural progression to explain this change. So, this led me to believe that his gullibility came less from his home-schooling than from an attraction to Tabatha, the offbeat vixen he keeps giving money to simply because she asks. Yet, their romance is founded on her endless manipulation and his inability to say no (don’t mistake this for attraction), so it doesn’t go anywhere once Benjamin outlives his usefulness to her. In reality, Tabatha is sort of shacking up with Lonnie, an alleged filmmaker with connections to the publishing industry. If “angry writer” and “manipulative vixen” are cheap, two-word descriptors for Benjamin and Tabatha, then Lonnie’s would have to be “arrogant prick.”

Stuck together at this conference, Tabatha “manipulates” Benjamin into letting her read his manuscript, Yeast Wars. She loves it but feigns indifference for no clear reason other than wanting to be sort of bitchy. Seriously, if all you did was use your feminine wiles to bum money off someone, wouldn’t you compliment the shit out of his work? It seems like the Hesses want us to believe she’s playing hard to get, but… She doesn’t honestly seem interested in getting got, so it’s just more meaningless crap. Anyway, when the opportunity arises, Tabatha swipes Benjamin’s manuscript and submits it to the contest that will close the conference, which will give Benjamin the opportunity to get published if he wins.

Angered by both older, experienced writers running lame workshops and what he correctly perceives as a relationship between Tabatha and Lonnie, Benjamin ditches the conference early. Meanwhile, noted “sci-fi” author — and Benjamin’s hero — Ronald Chevalier reads the manuscripts entered in the conference. He gets a call from a random character whose purpose is unclear. Oh wait, I’ll let one of the worst lines of dialogue I’ve ever read explain: “As your publisher, it’s not a bad thing to get in touch with your audience once in awhile.” (Break down that sentence. On top of using one of the weakest examples of on-the-nose dialogue known to cinema — using “As a/your/the…” to quickly explain who this character is — one clause has nothing to do with the other.) The publisher tells Chevalier that his last several submissions are unmarketable, and he needs to get back on a commercial track or risk total failure. It’s at this moment that Chevalier does get in touch with his audience: he stumbles on Yeast Wars and steals it.

At the same time, Tabatha ropes Benjamin into writing an adaptation of Yeast Wars for Lonnie to shoot as a film. In a rare moment of motivation, the Hesses make it clear that Benjamin only does this because Tabatha offers Benjamin $500 to option the rights to his story, and he needs money to help his struggling mother. I find it odd and distracting that the Hesses choose to give Benjamin motivation for this moment, when none of the other characters have any clear motivation to do any of the things they do. (Even Chevalier’s reason for stealing Yeast Wars never makes sense — why can’t the world’s most successful fantasy writer just write another fantasy novel? It’s suggested that Chevalier’s problem is not a lack of ideas — it’s that he abandoned his successful fantasy franchises to pursue more serious work. They never make any sort of hint or intimation that he moved on to serious work because he’s run out of fantasy ideas.) It’s especially distracting because they don’t follow up on Benjamin’s mother’s money woes at all. Despite the $500, Benjamin and his mother continue to struggle, but it stops being a plot point.

I’m getting off-topic. Back to the plot: Lonnie’s movie debuts at roughly the same time as the release of Chevalier’s slightly altered Yeast Wars, and Benjamin is wounded when his hero (a) steals and repurposes his story and (b) turns the tables by accusing Benjamin of plagiarism. I won’t ruin the ending, except to say it’s predictably upbeat and relies on an awful deus ex machina.

As I read this script, I struggled with the “Why?” question. I’ve mentioned this before. The first question you ask before starting your next script: why does this story need to be told? Gentlemen Broncos never comes close to justifying its existence. It seems to me that the audience is supposed to hate the characters. My only evidence is that this script is all about struggling creative types, yet the action block constantly reminds us of how ugly/bad their art is when it’s exhibited — and this includes Benjamin’s awful story, which is periodically dramatized so we can laugh at our protagonist’s incompetence. This open, intentional disdain for the people we, as the audience, should allegedly care about takes me back to my main problem with Napoleon Dynamite: I hated the characters, and the Hesses never compelled me to care about any of them. Now, I find the reason: the Hesses don’t like them, either. None of us need to like them, but we do need to understand why they do what they do and feel as if their journeys mean something. The characters in Napoleon Dynamite just slid around like annoying chess pieces, and then the movie ended. What’s the fucking point?

Gentlemen Broncos also lacks a fucking point. As I struggled to make sense of this story, I started to feel a faint undercurrent of symbolism. By that, I mean the story felt like the Hesses were attempting to satirize or, at least, fictionalize something very specific from their own lives that will remain indistinct to readers/audiences. Rather than feeling like a coherent story with real characters doing things for well-defined reasons, each character felt like a construct moving through a narrative designed to, I dunno, get even with somebody who ripped off one of their scripts or something. Maybe it’s meeting them more than halfway to assume the bad writing comes from something like this. Considering Napoleon Dynamite and, according to a reliable friend, Nacho Libre (which I skipped because I want to continue liking Jack Black) had the exact same pointless chess-piece problem, I suppose I shouldn’t assume anything about the Hesses’ purpose for writing the script.

That puts me into an uncomfortable existential funk, though. If a story has no reason to be, why does it exist? If its characters behave less like people than surrogates to convey a grander point, why doesn’t that point ever reveal itself? This isn’t a David Lynch movie. It’s a fucking shitty comedy that, in order to adhere to the most basic tenets of good drama, needs to have something going for it. Its poorly written characters leave a lot to be desired (and that’s by design), its story ambles with all the direction and purpose of driftwood, and its “jokes” may result in a class-action lawsuit for injuries sustained from excessive eye-rolling. The only thing left to redeem it is some sort of theme or symbolic purpose to make it rise above the “complete waste of fucking time” vibe radiating from its every (symbolic) pore. I’m not a genius, but I spent half of college writing 20-page essays deconstructing 10-line poems. If any deep meaning exists in a screenplay by the fucking retards who wrote Napoleon Dynamite, I think I’d pick up on it.

So that leaves…nothing. Worse than merely being unfunny or poorly structured, this script is a vacuum. It has no purpose for existing, other than some asshole producer deciding he or she wants to be “in the Hess business.” Call me crazy, but that’s not enough for me.

Honestly, I’m at a loss. This script got made. It comes out this fucking week, and yet I’ve never read anything this empty. Not even a Bret Easton Ellis novel. I’ve read around 300 scripts, probably more at this point, and an unfathomable number of books. I’ve disliked a great many scripts, but none of them have confounded me with their unadulterated meaninglessness. Even the worst ones have some sense of purpose — cashing in on a recent craze, lazily adapting a well-written novel into a poor movie — but not Gentlemen Broncos. It’s even more pointless than the spec script I read where the main character dies on page 80, and the next 30 pages consist of shakycam, pseudo-vérité footage of characters we’ve never met before and will never meet again describing how wonderful and misunderstood the protagonist was.

I can’t fucking get over it. You idiots who liked Napoleon Dynamite should be fucking ashamed of yourselves. You’re the reason something this shitty got made.

Posted by Stan on October 26, 2009 11:09 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

October 19, 2009

Script Review: Cirque du Freak by Brian Helgeland

Awhile back, The Manager presented me with a treatment he had co-written with a writer I once ranted far too long and hard about. Somehow, he had gotten the ear of Warner Bros. president Alan Horn, and he used the opportunity to pitch one of the worst ideas in recent memory: a live-action trilogy based on a mid-’80s Saturday-morning cartoon. Actually, in this era of remakes and comic-book franchises, trying to revive this series isn’t a horrible idea commercially. It just doesn’t quite lend itself to live action. I don’t really want to give away the name of the property, but it’s the sort of thing that would just look silly if presented in a non-animated form, like Fat Albert or Vincent Gallo’s upcoming Fritz the Cat*.

At any rate, The Manager sent me the treatment for part one of a proposed trilogy, looking for feedback. I had could distinctly recall two things about the original cartoon: the name of the main character, and the name of the planet on which the action took place. Reading the treatment, the lack of these names took me aback. I wondered if I had misremembered the show, until I got to the last page of the treatment. At the end of the story, the main character is born, and refugees flee to the planet I remembered. He had sent me a treatment for a movie that was 100% backstory.

Adding insult to injury, the story concentrates on political machinations that have no bearing on anything except why the refugees left their home planet (something that plays a small, inessential role in what happens in the cartoon — certainly nothing worth devoting an entire feature film to explaining). It also has a Romeo & Juliet-esque subplot focusing on two characters who will die at the very beginning of the second film. When I sent him the feedback, I compared this to the first 20 minutes of Superman, except for the part where they clear up Superman’s backstory in 20 minutes, then get on to two hours of throwing buses into buildings and shit. Could you imagine having a comic-book movie where the entire thing isn’t even the origin story of the hero — it’s the story of the parents? I argued that audiences will have zero interest in a movie portraying the origin of two characters they won’t remember from the cartoon and feel betrayed by an ending where the hero they do remember is merely born. I also argued that one of the (many) flaws of the Star Wars prequels was Lucas’s insistence on concentrating on the made-up political minutiae that led to the rise of the Empire and the formation of the Rebel Alliance — without actually showing any of that cool shit. You have endless Galactic Senate meetings instead of spending two hours in the fray of an orgy of destruction called the Clone Wars. Audiences were unhappy but put up with it, because it’s Star Wars, a franchise ever-so-slightly different than a long-forgotten cartoon.

The Manager sent me a curt reply telling me all the things that stuck in my craw “could not be addressed.” I didn’t ask why, because I didn’t really care. But I held on to my belief that, while a franchise starter that contains little more than backstory can succeed financially, it’ll never succeed creatively. Why do you think so many franchise sequels surpass their originals these days? They skimp on the story and characters in favor of reams of tedious exposition introducing things that will only pay off in future films. To me, that’s a rip-off.

So, here we have Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, the first in a theoretical franchise that sort of hybridizes Harry Potter, Twilight, and crap. Brian Helgeland’s script is based on the first three novels in a seemingly endless series by Darren Shan. I haven’t read these novels, so I have no idea how faithfully he adapted the material. Frankly, that doesn’t interest me. Neither does the possibility of sequels. I read this script, not knowing it was designed to launch a franchise or based on a novel series, and simply judged it — as any script should be judged — on whether or not it worked on its own merits.

It didn’t.

Here’s a rundown on the storyline: middle-schoolers Darren and Steve are best buds. Darren is described as well-liked and friendly; Steve is not so well-liked and a bit of a troublemaker. During the script’s terrific first act, Helgeland loads the story with eerie but not-too-scary moments that reminded me of my misspent youth, in that I misspent my youth reading crappy R.L. Stine books and awesome Ray Bradbury stories and fantasizing about getting into frightening misadventures of my own. Unfortunately, most of my frightening misadventures involved trying to feel up girls and getting my ass kicked. By the girls. In this script, their scary misadventures lead Darren and Steve to a freak show called Cirque du Freak. It costs $20 to get in, but thanks to the $60 Steve stole from Darren’s mom’s purse, they have no problem getting in to see the show. Well, except for the part where Darren sneaks out his window after his parents forbid him from “sleeping over” at bad-influence Steve’s house.

Cirque du Freak is an odd spectacle in a rundown theatre. It features an actual Wolfman, a beautiful woman who can grow a full beard with the snap of her fingers, a deadly semi-giant spider, and the main attraction: a real, live vampire. Steve suspects the man, Crepsley, is a vampire after he finds several old flyers for Cirque du Freak (dating back to the ’20s), each featuring photos and drawings of a man who looks just like Crepsley. Darren laughs it off, but Crepsley’s pale skin, frightening demeanor, and apparent ease with hypnosis/mind control makes him wonder. After the show, Steve tells Darren to go home and sneaks backstage. Instead, Darren follows his friend. He hides in the shadows as Steve approaches Crepsley’s coffin. Steve begs Crepsley to make him a vampire. He offers his blood to Crepsley, who spits it out like poison and declares Steve evil. Frightened and enraged, Steve runs away. Darren, too, runs away, but not before snatching the caged spider.

Over the next few days, Darren hides the spider in his bedroom. At one point, Darren’s privacy-invading younger sister causes the spider to get loose. It bites Steve, who immediately goes into anaphylactic shock. Darren provides the hospital with a photo he snapped of the spider, but when they send it to poison control’s entomology experts, they tell the doctors it must be Photoshopped. With no one left to turn to, Darren makes a deal with Crepsley: in exchange for giving Steve the antidote, Darren will become Crepsley’s assistant. Why? Crepsley chalks it up to a combination of needing an assistant and believing it’s Darren’s destiny to become a vampire.

I loved everything up until this moment quite a lot.

Per his agreement, Crepsley saves Steve, then helps Darren fake his death. Feeling betrayed as betrayed by Darren as I felt by the second and third acts of this script, Steve tries to “hunt” his vampire best friend. Darren and Crepsley escape him and leave town. Helgeland spends most of the middle of the script explaining the Cirque du Freak universe’s take on vampires in detail I found a bit tedious. I love vampire stories, and I love new spins on the old tropes, but not when nothing else happens dramatically.

Here’s the rundown on this world’s vampire lore: humans become vampires in stages, starting out as assistants to full vampires. Over time, as they learn the ropes of the vampire world, they can become full vampires. They need blood to live, but they also need real food. They also don’t need to kill their victims. Crepsley basically knocks his victims out for a few minutes, drinks what I’d assume is a pint or so of blood, then disappears before they wake. Vampires also age one year for every 10 human years; in other words, Crepsley has lived 211 years as a vampire but has only aged 21. Half-vampires like Darren age one year for every five human years. These little details intrigued me on a vampire-fan level, but nothing interesting happens while Crepsley explains it. They just keep moving to different locations to talk.

Anyway, the vampires have split into two rival factions: regular vampires, who don’t kill their victims, and the vampaneze, who do. I liked this bit, because it creates an interesting moral dilemma that Helgeland has no interest in exploring. The regular vampires didn’t stop killing humans out of any real moral obligation; they simply didn’t like the heat it put on them. They had a harder time passing among the humans when the humans kept mysteriously dying, so they stopped. The vampaneze are less interested in passing among humans, who they see as cattle for vampires to slaughter. This conflict of interest has created a great many wars between the vampires, many of which are fought alongside human conflicts.

So, for 40 or so pages, Crepsley and Darren just kinda hang out. Eventually, the vampaneze villains (Mr. Tiny and Murlough) show up, menace Crepsley without really doing anything interesting, and confuse Darren. Crepsley decides to lay low, so he and Darren rejoin the Cirque du Freak. (I’m no expert, but it seems to me like this would draw more attention to Crepsley’s whereabouts.) Darren learns the ropes of the freak show and makes some friends, including local humans Sam and Debbie (who has a crush on Darren). During one of the circus shows, Mr. Tiny and Murlough show up. Along with Steve — who returns as a vampaneze — they grab Crepsley, with the intent of destroying him. Turns out, Crepsley was once a great Vampire General, the greatest killer of vampaneze who ever lived. Or, um…didn’t. Murlough wants him dead, because he’s preparing for another war against the vampires.

Darren vowed he would never drink human blood and has grown somewhat sick as a result. He doesn’t have the strength to battle Mr. Tiny, Steve, and his minions. However, when he finds out Crepsley is in trouble, he drinks a metric assload of Sam’s blood (Sam was conveniently injured by Steve), and there’s a tonally jarring Popeye moment as he gains half-vampire strength. He takes on Steve and Murlough — killing neither of them, naturally — and saves Crepsley. Crepsley makes plans to take Darren to the Vampire Generals. Now that Darren has accepted his destiny, it’s time for the Vampire Army to re-form and take on the vampaneze.

The end…?

Yeah, that’s the end. I don’t usually “spoil” the ending in these script reviews, but face it: THAT’S NOT AN ENDING. Here’s the thing: any story can have an identifiable three-act structure if you try hard enough. Cirque du Freak does have a vague, somewhat lumpy structure in there. First act: finds out about the circus, gets Steve bit by the spider, makes the deal to save his life. Second act: learns the ropes of the vampire world, then the ropes of the freak-show world. Third act: Bad guys come, compelling Darren to scare them off to save Crepsley. However, that doesn’t make it any less than one gigantic first act.

Think about a movie like Star Wars. Let’s break down the first act into its own three-act structure. First act: Luke buys the droids, and their odd behavior and crazy holo-message leads him to seek out Old Ben Kenobi — after all, he is their only hope. Second act: Kenobi explains part of his role in this whole story. In the Stormtroopers’ search for the missing droids, Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed. He has nothing left going for him, so he goes with Kenobi. Third act: Kenobi takes Luke to the Mos Eisley Cantina to secure passage off Tatooine. We meet Han Solo and Chewbacca and discover they have problems of their own with a certain Jabba the Hutt. They narrowly escape both Stormtroopers and gangsters as they set a course to Alderaan. The end!

Actually, it’s even worse than that. George Lucas made three long movies that serve as nothing more than leaden backstory to a much more interesting story. Nevertheless, imagine Star Wars established all this intrigue with Princess Leia, Darth Vader, the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, Old Ben Kenobi, Han Solo, Jabba the Hutt, and then ended with the gang fleeing Tatooine on their way to rescue the princess. Would anyone have seen that movie? Would word of mouth have built to the point that it turned into one of the most popular movies of all times? Would they have made even one sequel to this story? The answer is no. There’s a big difference between the cliffhanger at the end of The Empire Strikes Back — which tells a complete story, even with the cliffhanger ending — and making a movie that consists of nothing more than exposition and setup for a movie that’s potentially much better than what you’ve just sat through.

That’s really a shame, because this script squandered the potential of its first 40 pages and, by virtue of its half-assed structure and the fact that nobody has heard of this book series, will probably never become the franchise the filmmakers obviously desire.

*Just kidding! [Back]

Posted by Stan on October 19, 2009 6:34 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 12, 2009

Script Review: Law-Abiding Citizen by Frank Darabont and Kurt Wimmer

When I first started Law-Abiding Citizen, I quickly concluded the writers had decided to make a Death Wish for the new millennium. When I finished it, I decided I’d much rather have a shitty Death Wish knockoff than Law-Abiding Citizen. The screenplay suffers from a common problem with many of the scripts hitting the market over the past year or so: genre confusion. It thinks it’s a talky psychological thriller; in reality, it’s a schlocky actio