JLichtenberg
member since 03/12/2009 |
last login 07/25/2010
Jacqueline Lichtenberg, a life member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, (http://www.sfwa.org ). She is creator of the Sime~Gen Universe with a vibrant fan following (http://www.simegen.net), primary author of the Bantam paperback Star Trek Lives! which blew the lid on Star...
Bio
Jacqueline Lichtenberg, a life member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, (http://www.sfwa.org ). She is creator of the Sime~Gen Universe with a vibrant fan following (http://www.simegen.net), primary author of the Bantam paperback Star Trek Lives! which blew the lid on Star Trek fandom, founder of the Star Trek Welcommittee, creator of the genre term Intimate Adventure, winner of the Galaxy Award for Spirituality in Science Fiction with her second novel, and one of the first Romantic Times Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel with her later novel Dushau. Her fiction has been in audio-dramatization on XM Satellite Radio. She has been the sf/f reviewer for a professional magazine since 1993. She teaches sf/f writing online while turning to her first love, screenwriting focused on selling to the feature film market. Screenwriting: http://www.slantedconcept.com
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Reviews by JLichtenberg 19
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A review of Unconditionalby JLichtenberg on 06/26/2009"Unconditional" might not be the exactly right title for this as a screenplay. It is the theme, though. Unconditional Love is what runs the world, and it's the highest Value we have. I expect other reviewers more experienced than I at screenwriting will tear into this draft for the novelistic narrative style, and the way objects are inserted where the character reaches... "Unconditional" might not be the exactly right title for this as a screenplay.
It is the theme, though. Unconditional Love is what runs the world, and it's the highest Value we have.
I expect other reviewers more experienced than I at screenwriting will tear into this draft for the novelistic narrative style, and the way objects are inserted where the character reaches for them, rather than earlier in the scene description. In screenwriting, you can't just invent things as you go along.
I just got hammered for a bit of sloppy narrative-style description, for describing too much, specifying too much.
How much is "enough" and exactly how that white-space requirement is to be met, how much to leave to the producer's imagination and how much to specify -- oh, that's a steep learning curve, and I can't say I'm ahead of you there.
However, what I did note is that I was very happy reading your narrative style, and that's a very bad sign. I found myself filling in the background as if I were reading a novel, not as if I were preparing to produce a filmable scene.
But what I imagined, I liked. This is a good story, and might actually sell.
But I couldn't find the B-story, the characters who at the climactic ending actually provide the "save" -- the missing piece of the puzzle.
I just saw the new TERMINATOR movie and went WOW over the little mute girl who is always handing things to principle characters. That's B-story work at its best.
The B-story is where you get to explicate your theme. UNCONDITIONAL's theme is in the A-story and the Title. The screenplay title is not supposed to come from the theme, as a book's title must, but rather from the Concept.
Since I generally read focused on theme, once I found the Unconditional Love theme, I couldn't sort out a B-story thread for this script. Maybe it's there, and I couldn't see it.
The theme is so prominent in this screenplay that I'm going to assume it's telling us the story you want to tell.
I see 2 things to fool around with to get this theme fully into the beats. Toy with these ideas.
A)Maggie has to teach Gerry (by example, not words) that his fans are pouring unconditional love out -- OK, it's pulled out of the fans by his Image not by Himself, but these fans are releasing pure unconditional Love into the world at large. The fan who attacked him is simply an abberation, a sick person. (perhaps you need a confrontation-action-shooting scene between the Crazed Fan Girl and Maggie?)
Maggie exhibits all kinds of physical abilities, balance, command of dogs (even, one presumes top dogs or alpha-male dogs). Let's see those abilities applied to Gerry's problem WITH UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and see it change the Crazed Fan Girl into something a bit better (not a total turnaround as in a comic book story; just progress toward sanity)
B) Gerry is not at peace with his innate talents and the meaning of bearing such a Gift into the world. Gerry is not exhibiting unconditional love FOR HIMSELF, which is why the Crazed Fan's attack freaks him out and makes him run.
So we need to see Gerry presented with an offer he cannot refuse -- an offer to make a film about Service Animals and the funding problems and the destruction of lives the lack of a service animal can create. (I know such a person who has epilepsy; since he lost his dog to financial problems, his attacks have gone out of control.)
It is the film about Service Animals that garners him the Oscar Nomination (recent news about there being 10 films on the short-list now supports the probability of this happening).
I'd say that Gerry should write a song about the Service Animal business (he needs to interact more on-screen with customers, and one has to be a truly over-the-top fan of his who doesn't recognize him and can't stop talking about him) while he's at Maggie's, and that song is used in the movie, and that's what he's up for an Oscar for. (then he can change careers from on-stage actor and teen-idol to songwriter cloistered in the wilds of Georgia).
So Gerry learns from this over-the-top fan who needs a Service Animal that fans are actually supplying unconditional love to the world at large, which then floats around and does good -- and that's what his song is about.
The over-the-top fan of his would be your B-story character, and her foil would be a guy who might be one of Maggie's donors? over-the-top fan comes onstage on page 20 or so, maybe delivering something to Maggie with her guy when Gerry arrives. She has an accident that causes the need of the Service Dog (or starts to have epileptic episodes?) and during her training, -- say the TV cameras arrive to film over-the-top fan's Service Dog training? -- is when Gerry gets his lesson about fans being a world-wide source of unconditional love.
The fan who tried to kill him, however, had a condition to her love, that he return it in kind, and that attitude ruined her life.
By then, over-the-top fan has heard the whole story of Crazy Fangirl and babbles on about her not being a trufan, etc., planting your theme via the B-story.
To make it symmetric, Maggie would need a slight shift in career, too. The other event I kept anticipating and was disappointed when it didn't materialize was seeing Maggie get money for her Service Dog foundation by training other dogs for film and TV.
There were these 2 setups with no payoff that bothered me -- Gerry not making a Serice Animal movie, and Maggie not training stage and screen dogs. So maybe Maggie gets to supply the Service Dog for the star of Gerry's Service Dog movie who will be in a wheel chair (which Star is of course, Gerry?)
OK, I've done a total re-imagining of the story you are telling here but I don't know any other way to describe the almost-but-not-quite screenplay I read in your words. When I got to the ending, I was vastly disappointed because I kept expecting the offer to do a Service Animal film (or one he could negotiate into becoming a Service Animal film)
My total re-imagining is sparked by your narrative style which is so novelistic that it made me read as if reading a novel, reading "between the lines" and making the whole story my own rather than yours.
So to sink the Unconditional Love into the B-story and arc the characters to a new place in their lives would take a lot of work. Along the way, you'd discover a new title in your Concept.
Lots of scenes would have to be deleted, lots and lots of scenes added, but implementing A) and B) above puts the theme into a B-story and Arcs both Maggie (who gains a husband because she opens herself to Gerry with unconditional love) and Gerry (who gains a new career and inner peace because he learns to love himself unconditionally and therefore is able to bond with Maggie).
Consider your B-story and Concept and find other ways to the moment of the bonding of Gerry and Maggie besides what I've rambled on about here. There are dozens of solutions. Pick one that suits the story you wanted to tell.
I'd want to see more movies of this type be made and draw bigger crowds than Transformers 2! read -
A review of Damaged Goods (revised)by JLichtenberg on 06/23/2009Damaged Goods shows us the real, and human, toll on lives and relationships that a traumatic experience can demand. Damaged Goods is ostensibly about an Iraq war veteran with psychological trauma, but it could be about anyone who's survived a psychological blow. The script is a nice, smooth read for someone used to reading novels not scripts. But that's actually a negative... Damaged Goods shows us the real, and human, toll on lives and relationships that a traumatic experience can demand.
Damaged Goods is ostensibly about an Iraq war veteran with psychological trauma, but it could be about anyone who's survived a psychological blow.
The script is a nice, smooth read for someone used to reading novels not scripts. But that's actually a negative in the screenwriting world.
The narrative reveals too much of the internals of the characters while mis-placing (in the sentences or paragraphs) the props, the items that must be there. If it's not on the page it's not on the stage.
At one point someone grabs a knife out of a sleeve sheath -- OK, fine, good dramatic show-don't-tell move. But a bit before that, where the character was introduced, the KNIFE was not established. It's inserted where a narative writer would put it.
Only a couple of questions stopped my eye as I read. One was the flashback to where Danny is at his homecoming party where he freaks out and takes after a couple of kids with cap guns. He has a real gun on him and pulls it.
He's discharged? Even if he were in uniform and on duty -- why would he be carrying a loaded gun to a PARTY in his honor?
Also, there's a characterization gliche or two with Danny that might be just detritus from rewriting. The opening establishes he's a corps medic (doesn't actually say he's a doctor or trauma surgeon, but that kind of talent wouldn't be on field ops, so I'm assuming he's a trained field medic.)
WHY would an essentially non-combatant type person like that carry a gun to his homecoming party? It's out of character without an explanation (yes, being spooked by the trauma flashbacks might be a reason, but no reason is given and it's a key plot-moving point).
Danny's characterization also falters where there are injuries. OK, he finally calls 911 on the injured woman -- but why did he try to deal with that wound half-assed to begin with? It isn't enough that he was running scared and not in his right mind. He shows a basic character that's really decent, and medic field training that would have made him drop her off at an emergency room.
Next, Danny himself falters a bit in believability because of the way he suddenly comes to himself after one shock treatment. I liked the way you showed modern shock treatment practices (didn't beleive tylenol though it may be true in Vet hospitals).
We never learn why his experience of being captured and having his captor shot dead right over his head hit him in his psychologically unprotected place, why he reacted like that to trauma. I saw a research item on PTSS recently that indicated they're beginning to develop means of telling which people will crack under that type of stress, and which won't. But now I can't remember the characteristic that indicated vulnerability.
But without some talking-head explanation of why that happened to him, I don't believe it. I don't know enough about trauma and shock treatment to know whether that's usual, possible, or fantasy-land far-fetched, and there's no hint in the dialogue.
I'm not sure such things should be inserted in this story, though.
It just seems as if you changed Danny's profession and his response to the trauma that put him in the hospital to begin with.
I can't quite make the connection between the trauma you showed in the initial action scene, the incident on the street whose name I can't recall except it starts with a T (and I hope that's not in the test for this review!), and his near cataleptic state when in the hospital.
If he wasn't so cataleptic when he came home, why did the incident with cap guns make him so totally detached from the world he might as well have been cataleptic?
See? My ignorance of the subject matter is distracting me from the story you're trying to tell. So I think more education has to be presented somehow in this script. You might want to consider using Blake Snyder's "Pope In The Pool" technique if you want to devise such a scene. (SAVE THE CAT! blackesnyder.com )
The rewrite scars seem to make Danny's character inconsistent. That's fixable.
Danny's wife Jacinda falling for his rescuer and probably best friend Jason is the real story here. The TV show THE DEAD ZONE uses that dramatic twist, and so do many famous films. It's a classic and so classic it's not even a cliche.
The whole center section of DAMAGED GOODS reads very well, and works very nicely as Danny makes his way across country under the protection of angel's wings - with one improbable escape after another. I liked that -- it worked solidly.
I liked the way you used bits of a scene here and a scene there -- it developed suspense and kept the action rolling while revealing character.
The final action sequence is likewise a neat escalation of the "action" portion of the center section.
But here we come to a problem that I don't know how to solve and I'm not sure I can explain.
The ending seems (SEEMS mind you!!!) weak.
And I don't think it is weak, I think it only seems weak next to the rest of this screenplay.
If you look at the magnitude profile of the "action" you see something odd that I haven't actually seen in other screenplays -- though I may have just not noticed it.
Generally speaking, a screenplay is at most a novella worth of story. The action profile has to start low and small, and rise smoothly or by sudden steps, to a creshendo at the end BAM!
But you've got a WHAM-BANG military magnitude action sequence at the open, and I'm sitting there popcorn in hand, expecting to watch a war movie. If this is the opening, the ending has to be an atom bomb! Or Krakatowa.
But then suddenly we're in civilian pace and mode, hospital, suburban household, all calm and peaceful with all the tension and violence in the psychological space.
Then Danny breaks out (or sneaks quietly out) and there's some "action" as he uses martial arts and war training to solve city type problems.
Now if he was a MEDIC where did he get the martial arts training to such a level that it still operates when he's basically out of his mind and memory? Where did he get such ingrained war skills training that he's still using it by reflex?
He was cargo not combattant.
Now, after 3 years in a mental ward where he's about able to stare at a calendar and maybe feed himself but probably not do pushups and track running -- how come he's in such good shape he can out-run the police? And beat up on gangsters whose business requires them to stay in shape? How did that happen?
But putting all that character-rewrite aside, we have the center section which I like very much as is having a violence level LOWER THAN the opening. Then it escalates properly into the third-act BANG.
But the third-act BANG is a pop-gun next to the opening scene. We never get back to the opening level of violence.
So the graph of the violence level is U shaped with the right branch of the U lower than the left branch.
I don't see that in produced movies or published books.
But that's why the ending SEEMS weak.
It's not weak, it's just weak in comparison to the opening and even to the middle.
Danny getting his family to visit him -- that's a grand ending. But it wasn't his goal, nor was it Jacinda's goal or Jason's nor Shane's.
So even though the last scene is fabulous, there's this feeling that the film just peters out rather than ends. That's rather true to life, to be sure, but I wonder if it could be an impediment to selling this script.
I had this exact problem with my second novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER, and my editor demanded (I mean demanded, in an office consultation!) that I rip out one chapter, move the events to near the end of the novel, and totally FLATTEN the opening so that it wouldn't overshadow the ending. I didn't want to do it because it made no logical sense in the story. But I did it (what writers do for money!) and got paid, and the book won my first writing award.
I've gotten to be almost as good as that editor, but I can't solve this problem of yours because the opening is so relentlessly logical. What else would you open with other than the event that traumatized Danny?
So the classic solution that I know and know very well (if the ending is low-key, then flatten the opening to match), does not seem to work with this story.
And I like it. I'd like to see it made into a film. There's a lot of people who need to see this film.
When you do solve the problem, please let me know. I'd learn something. read -
A review of Undergradsby JLichtenberg on 06/15/2009Hey, guys, now that I've finally posted a screenplay, you can get backsies! I really tore into the earlier version of UNDERGRADS, and I can't say I'm sorry I did. This rewrite is giant lightyears ahead of the previous. I can see some very hard work and serious decisions went into this rewrite. The squishy flat-toned mid-section of the original now has a snappy pacing,... Hey, guys, now that I've finally posted a screenplay, you can get backsies!
I really tore into the earlier version of UNDERGRADS, and I can't say I'm sorry I did. This rewrite is giant lightyears ahead of the previous. I can see some very hard work and serious decisions went into this rewrite.
The squishy flat-toned mid-section of the original now has a snappy pacing, a hint of a sense of direction, and some escalation from party to party.
Unfortunately, the improvement now makes the opening flat by comparison, and the ending isn't an ENDING (i.e. a climax) but just a petering out of the energy driving the story.
So, overall, this script shows a real talent for writing, lots of hard work, and even a professional level ability to take editorial suggestions and re-tailor them to your own purposes.
But it's still far, far from a saleable screenplay -- not that I can claim to know anything about what it takes to sell a screenplay because I've never sold one, just novels.
You have a touch for comedy, and I wouldn't want to spoil that. You are making people LAUGH here. But you have a lot to learn about building the framework to support those laughs.
Since the "party" is the central element in this story, you need to study the whole subject of "party" much more closely, both on an academic level (anthropology, psychology) and on the artistic level of how to "write" a "party."
Two sources for how to learn to write a "party" come instantly to mind. First is Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, which is still available on Amazon. Not every novel in that long series has a party in it, but where there is a party, it is TOTALLY integral to the plot. Two to pay special attention to are the original SWORD OF ALDONES (later rewritten as SHARA'S EXILE a totally different story; alternate universe in her own univers!) and STAR OF DANGER.
Study the novels where there is no party, then the ones where there is, and puzzle out why certain novels need a party scene and others DON'T. The bedrock behind the party scene is the PLOT and the CHARACTER ARC driven by the encounter with the ADVERSARY.
Next, you should dissect almost page for page, the huge novel ATLAS SHRUGGED. That book contains a number of party scenes that are absolutely WONDERFUL bits of writing craftsmanship, so subtle, so exquisite, so fine, that you can actually transpose them into the comedy genre and they'll work there, too.
No two authors could be farther apart in philosophy than Ayn Rand and Marion Zimmer Bradley. And that's what makes the contrast/compare study of these two author's party scenes the most efficient key to learning how to construct a party scene.
Your parties are college kids blowing off energy, lights, music, shouting, maybe some drinking, and that's fine BUT.... Think what it would cost to create that in a movie (cheaper than most things, but still it's expensive scenery). In order to carry that freight of cost, the scene has to advance the plot, become a SET PIECE that can be used in the trailer.
Your parties, except for the one where they take money at the door, do not advance the PLOT. They just happen. The kids drift through them pointlessly. The parties are decoration, not scene.
There's no setups that are paid off at the parties (no reason those setups have to be paid off at the parties), no suspense, no anticipation of future events, no REVEAL of the depths of these characters, no CONFLICT advancing toward a RESOLUTION.
I can see you worked on the dialogue, and you trimmed and focused this whole script on the party scenes, and the work that was done is splendid. You've made artistic sense out of splattered chaos. It's good work.
But it barely scratches the surface of the work that would need to be done. You haven't failed. You've achieved what you set out to achieve. But your goal needs adjustment to the commercial marketplace if you're going to sell.
And yes, I'd like to see you selling this zany stuff. You have a genius for it. But there are basics of storytelling that seem to be in your blind spot, and those basics are the key to selling. You CAN write screenplays, no doubt about it. You're good at it. But you can't (yet) write a story, and without a story the screenplay is worthless commercially.
Your CONFLICT in UNDERGRADS is almost non-existent, which is why your parties don't "work" as dramatic devices. The gangster is not using the parties to attack, manipulate, sell drugs, create campus drug runners, or anything.
The gangster is the threat, the adversary, the villain, and is not present.
The kids got themselves into owing the gangster BY ACCIDENT (a no-no in plotting -- accidents happen at the beginning of a story, not the middle). You changed the accident to be stopping to girl-watch, which is artistically a vast improvement, and helps clean up this script. It's a good choice if you insist on using an accident -- but insistence on an accident is an anti-commercial fiction choice.
Read some of McKee's screenwriting books, and Syd Field's. One of the bits of advice they HAMMER into students is DON'T LET THE MAIN CHARACTERS DISAPPEAR FROM THE PAGE.
So as I said originally, the gangster/$5,000 part of this plot just sits on top like oil on water and the two just don't go together. The gangster DISAPPEARS FROM THE PAGE.
This is a main difference between screenwriting and narrative fiction. In screenwriting, you must consider actor's egos and agent's demands, and the whole career of all the participants in flinging your screenplay onto the screen. The MAIN CHARACTERS must not disappear from the screen. It's a cardinal rule. Even in comedy you can't violate that rule and get away with it.
If your screenplay does get options, then "in development" they'll change everything and you won't recognize this story anymore because that villain MUST appear in that big vacant hole in the middle of this screenplay.
That absense is a major, major flaw.
And yes, I realize that's not the story you want to tell. You want to focus on these wastrels doing nothing to advance their lives. That's your story. What you haven't grasped yet is that nobody can sell that story when it's told from the point of view of the wastrels.
Aimless drifting lives aren't STORY MATERIAL. But you can tell that story if you take another point of view, or start in a different place in the character's arc.
Last time I suggested you skip over their childhood in college and pick them up 40 years later fighting it out for control of Las Vegas' party scene. That's the solution suggested by "start in a different place." If that doesn't work, the only cure is INVENT A NEW CHARACTER and tell the story from that point of view. (Dean of the college; parents; gangster himself -- anyone who must act and take the consequences of their actions, and change because of the consequences.)
This draft still suffers from most of the problems I highlighted in my review of the previous draft. The re-titling though is excellent work. The tightening of the middle is good work. You still must do something about the oil-and-water non-mixture of the gangster plot and the party scene, and you must craft your party scenes to advance the plot.
"Advance the plot" is writer-code for bringing the protagonist and the antagonist into direct conflict so that the protagonist makes a move, and the antagonist must respond. Each party has to be an encounter -- not a mere threat but a real encounter -- in which the protagonist conflicts with the antagonist (you could improve this by picking someone other than the gangster and the missing money as the antagonist).
It's possible you don't understand what I'm talking about here. You may get some insight if you read the blog post I'm going to be putting up on 6/16/2009 at http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/ where I co-blog with a bunch of famous Alien Romance novelists. I post on Tuesdays. In the June 16, 2009 entry, I'll be discussing the film MR. AND MRS. SMITH (the 2005 version) and why it works so very well, and what writers can learn from it.
That film illustrates is the effect you need to create with this party-through-school concept where your gangster-money thread is like the action-violence level of SMITH, and your parties are like the marital-counselling level of SMITH. My blog post may give you the hint you need to weld the two levels of your script together into a comphrehensive whole.
Once that skeleton is in place, I think your problems with the characterization and dialogue in UNDERGRADS will evaporate, because you do know HOW to do character and dialogue, you just don't HAVE any characters that have anything to say to each other yet.
With a plot and a conflict, they will have plenty to say and the audience will hang on every dialect-ridden word of it. You can't create the twists, flips, and unique cliche-busters until you have the levels of plot and conflict aligned. read
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Submissions by JLichtenberg
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Reviews by JLichtenberg 19
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A review of Unconditionalby JLichtenberg on 06/26/2009"Unconditional" might not be the exactly right title for this as a screenplay. It is the theme, though. Unconditional Love is what runs the world, and it's the highest Value we have. I expect other reviewers more experienced than I at screenwriting will tear into this draft for the novelistic narrative style, and the way objects are inserted where the character reaches... "Unconditional" might not be the exactly right title for this as a screenplay.
It is the theme, though. Unconditional Love is what runs the world, and it's the highest Value we have.
I expect other reviewers more experienced than I at screenwriting will tear into this draft for the novelistic narrative style, and the way objects are inserted where the character reaches for them, rather than earlier in the scene description. In screenwriting, you can't just invent things as you go along.
I just got hammered for a bit of sloppy narrative-style description, for describing too much, specifying too much.
How much is "enough" and exactly how that white-space requirement is to be met, how much to leave to the producer's imagination and how much to specify -- oh, that's a steep learning curve, and I can't say I'm ahead of you there.
However, what I did note is that I was very happy reading your narrative style, and that's a very bad sign. I found myself filling in the background as if I were reading a novel, not as if I were preparing to produce a filmable scene.
But what I imagined, I liked. This is a good story, and might actually sell.
But I couldn't find the B-story, the characters who at the climactic ending actually provide the "save" -- the missing piece of the puzzle.
I just saw the new TERMINATOR movie and went WOW over the little mute girl who is always handing things to principle characters. That's B-story work at its best.
The B-story is where you get to explicate your theme. UNCONDITIONAL's theme is in the A-story and the Title. The screenplay title is not supposed to come from the theme, as a book's title must, but rather from the Concept.
Since I generally read focused on theme, once I found the Unconditional Love theme, I couldn't sort out a B-story thread for this script. Maybe it's there, and I couldn't see it.
The theme is so prominent in this screenplay that I'm going to assume it's telling us the story you want to tell.
I see 2 things to fool around with to get this theme fully into the beats. Toy with these ideas.
A)Maggie has to teach Gerry (by example, not words) that his fans are pouring unconditional love out -- OK, it's pulled out of the fans by his Image not by Himself, but these fans are releasing pure unconditional Love into the world at large. The fan who attacked him is simply an abberation, a sick person. (perhaps you need a confrontation-action-shooting scene between the Crazed Fan Girl and Maggie?)
Maggie exhibits all kinds of physical abilities, balance, command of dogs (even, one presumes top dogs or alpha-male dogs). Let's see those abilities applied to Gerry's problem WITH UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and see it change the Crazed Fan Girl into something a bit better (not a total turnaround as in a comic book story; just progress toward sanity)
B) Gerry is not at peace with his innate talents and the meaning of bearing such a Gift into the world. Gerry is not exhibiting unconditional love FOR HIMSELF, which is why the Crazed Fan's attack freaks him out and makes him run.
So we need to see Gerry presented with an offer he cannot refuse -- an offer to make a film about Service Animals and the funding problems and the destruction of lives the lack of a service animal can create. (I know such a person who has epilepsy; since he lost his dog to financial problems, his attacks have gone out of control.)
It is the film about Service Animals that garners him the Oscar Nomination (recent news about there being 10 films on the short-list now supports the probability of this happening).
I'd say that Gerry should write a song about the Service Animal business (he needs to interact more on-screen with customers, and one has to be a truly over-the-top fan of his who doesn't recognize him and can't stop talking about him) while he's at Maggie's, and that song is used in the movie, and that's what he's up for an Oscar for. (then he can change careers from on-stage actor and teen-idol to songwriter cloistered in the wilds of Georgia).
So Gerry learns from this over-the-top fan who needs a Service Animal that fans are actually supplying unconditional love to the world at large, which then floats around and does good -- and that's what his song is about.
The over-the-top fan of his would be your B-story character, and her foil would be a guy who might be one of Maggie's donors? over-the-top fan comes onstage on page 20 or so, maybe delivering something to Maggie with her guy when Gerry arrives. She has an accident that causes the need of the Service Dog (or starts to have epileptic episodes?) and during her training, -- say the TV cameras arrive to film over-the-top fan's Service Dog training? -- is when Gerry gets his lesson about fans being a world-wide source of unconditional love.
The fan who tried to kill him, however, had a condition to her love, that he return it in kind, and that attitude ruined her life.
By then, over-the-top fan has heard the whole story of Crazy Fangirl and babbles on about her not being a trufan, etc., planting your theme via the B-story.
To make it symmetric, Maggie would need a slight shift in career, too. The other event I kept anticipating and was disappointed when it didn't materialize was seeing Maggie get money for her Service Dog foundation by training other dogs for film and TV.
There were these 2 setups with no payoff that bothered me -- Gerry not making a Serice Animal movie, and Maggie not training stage and screen dogs. So maybe Maggie gets to supply the Service Dog for the star of Gerry's Service Dog movie who will be in a wheel chair (which Star is of course, Gerry?)
OK, I've done a total re-imagining of the story you are telling here but I don't know any other way to describe the almost-but-not-quite screenplay I read in your words. When I got to the ending, I was vastly disappointed because I kept expecting the offer to do a Service Animal film (or one he could negotiate into becoming a Service Animal film)
My total re-imagining is sparked by your narrative style which is so novelistic that it made me read as if reading a novel, reading "between the lines" and making the whole story my own rather than yours.
So to sink the Unconditional Love into the B-story and arc the characters to a new place in their lives would take a lot of work. Along the way, you'd discover a new title in your Concept.
Lots of scenes would have to be deleted, lots and lots of scenes added, but implementing A) and B) above puts the theme into a B-story and Arcs both Maggie (who gains a husband because she opens herself to Gerry with unconditional love) and Gerry (who gains a new career and inner peace because he learns to love himself unconditionally and therefore is able to bond with Maggie).
Consider your B-story and Concept and find other ways to the moment of the bonding of Gerry and Maggie besides what I've rambled on about here. There are dozens of solutions. Pick one that suits the story you wanted to tell.
I'd want to see more movies of this type be made and draw bigger crowds than Transformers 2! read -
A review of Damaged Goods (revised)by JLichtenberg on 06/23/2009Damaged Goods shows us the real, and human, toll on lives and relationships that a traumatic experience can demand. Damaged Goods is ostensibly about an Iraq war veteran with psychological trauma, but it could be about anyone who's survived a psychological blow. The script is a nice, smooth read for someone used to reading novels not scripts. But that's actually a negative... Damaged Goods shows us the real, and human, toll on lives and relationships that a traumatic experience can demand.
Damaged Goods is ostensibly about an Iraq war veteran with psychological trauma, but it could be about anyone who's survived a psychological blow.
The script is a nice, smooth read for someone used to reading novels not scripts. But that's actually a negative in the screenwriting world.
The narrative reveals too much of the internals of the characters while mis-placing (in the sentences or paragraphs) the props, the items that must be there. If it's not on the page it's not on the stage.
At one point someone grabs a knife out of a sleeve sheath -- OK, fine, good dramatic show-don't-tell move. But a bit before that, where the character was introduced, the KNIFE was not established. It's inserted where a narative writer would put it.
Only a couple of questions stopped my eye as I read. One was the flashback to where Danny is at his homecoming party where he freaks out and takes after a couple of kids with cap guns. He has a real gun on him and pulls it.
He's discharged? Even if he were in uniform and on duty -- why would he be carrying a loaded gun to a PARTY in his honor?
Also, there's a characterization gliche or two with Danny that might be just detritus from rewriting. The opening establishes he's a corps medic (doesn't actually say he's a doctor or trauma surgeon, but that kind of talent wouldn't be on field ops, so I'm assuming he's a trained field medic.)
WHY would an essentially non-combatant type person like that carry a gun to his homecoming party? It's out of character without an explanation (yes, being spooked by the trauma flashbacks might be a reason, but no reason is given and it's a key plot-moving point).
Danny's characterization also falters where there are injuries. OK, he finally calls 911 on the injured woman -- but why did he try to deal with that wound half-assed to begin with? It isn't enough that he was running scared and not in his right mind. He shows a basic character that's really decent, and medic field training that would have made him drop her off at an emergency room.
Next, Danny himself falters a bit in believability because of the way he suddenly comes to himself after one shock treatment. I liked the way you showed modern shock treatment practices (didn't beleive tylenol though it may be true in Vet hospitals).
We never learn why his experience of being captured and having his captor shot dead right over his head hit him in his psychologically unprotected place, why he reacted like that to trauma. I saw a research item on PTSS recently that indicated they're beginning to develop means of telling which people will crack under that type of stress, and which won't. But now I can't remember the characteristic that indicated vulnerability.
But without some talking-head explanation of why that happened to him, I don't believe it. I don't know enough about trauma and shock treatment to know whether that's usual, possible, or fantasy-land far-fetched, and there's no hint in the dialogue.
I'm not sure such things should be inserted in this story, though.
It just seems as if you changed Danny's profession and his response to the trauma that put him in the hospital to begin with.
I can't quite make the connection between the trauma you showed in the initial action scene, the incident on the street whose name I can't recall except it starts with a T (and I hope that's not in the test for this review!), and his near cataleptic state when in the hospital.
If he wasn't so cataleptic when he came home, why did the incident with cap guns make him so totally detached from the world he might as well have been cataleptic?
See? My ignorance of the subject matter is distracting me from the story you're trying to tell. So I think more education has to be presented somehow in this script. You might want to consider using Blake Snyder's "Pope In The Pool" technique if you want to devise such a scene. (SAVE THE CAT! blackesnyder.com )
The rewrite scars seem to make Danny's character inconsistent. That's fixable.
Danny's wife Jacinda falling for his rescuer and probably best friend Jason is the real story here. The TV show THE DEAD ZONE uses that dramatic twist, and so do many famous films. It's a classic and so classic it's not even a cliche.
The whole center section of DAMAGED GOODS reads very well, and works very nicely as Danny makes his way across country under the protection of angel's wings - with one improbable escape after another. I liked that -- it worked solidly.
I liked the way you used bits of a scene here and a scene there -- it developed suspense and kept the action rolling while revealing character.
The final action sequence is likewise a neat escalation of the "action" portion of the center section.
But here we come to a problem that I don't know how to solve and I'm not sure I can explain.
The ending seems (SEEMS mind you!!!) weak.
And I don't think it is weak, I think it only seems weak next to the rest of this screenplay.
If you look at the magnitude profile of the "action" you see something odd that I haven't actually seen in other screenplays -- though I may have just not noticed it.
Generally speaking, a screenplay is at most a novella worth of story. The action profile has to start low and small, and rise smoothly or by sudden steps, to a creshendo at the end BAM!
But you've got a WHAM-BANG military magnitude action sequence at the open, and I'm sitting there popcorn in hand, expecting to watch a war movie. If this is the opening, the ending has to be an atom bomb! Or Krakatowa.
But then suddenly we're in civilian pace and mode, hospital, suburban household, all calm and peaceful with all the tension and violence in the psychological space.
Then Danny breaks out (or sneaks quietly out) and there's some "action" as he uses martial arts and war training to solve city type problems.
Now if he was a MEDIC where did he get the martial arts training to such a level that it still operates when he's basically out of his mind and memory? Where did he get such ingrained war skills training that he's still using it by reflex?
He was cargo not combattant.
Now, after 3 years in a mental ward where he's about able to stare at a calendar and maybe feed himself but probably not do pushups and track running -- how come he's in such good shape he can out-run the police? And beat up on gangsters whose business requires them to stay in shape? How did that happen?
But putting all that character-rewrite aside, we have the center section which I like very much as is having a violence level LOWER THAN the opening. Then it escalates properly into the third-act BANG.
But the third-act BANG is a pop-gun next to the opening scene. We never get back to the opening level of violence.
So the graph of the violence level is U shaped with the right branch of the U lower than the left branch.
I don't see that in produced movies or published books.
But that's why the ending SEEMS weak.
It's not weak, it's just weak in comparison to the opening and even to the middle.
Danny getting his family to visit him -- that's a grand ending. But it wasn't his goal, nor was it Jacinda's goal or Jason's nor Shane's.
So even though the last scene is fabulous, there's this feeling that the film just peters out rather than ends. That's rather true to life, to be sure, but I wonder if it could be an impediment to selling this script.
I had this exact problem with my second novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER, and my editor demanded (I mean demanded, in an office consultation!) that I rip out one chapter, move the events to near the end of the novel, and totally FLATTEN the opening so that it wouldn't overshadow the ending. I didn't want to do it because it made no logical sense in the story. But I did it (what writers do for money!) and got paid, and the book won my first writing award.
I've gotten to be almost as good as that editor, but I can't solve this problem of yours because the opening is so relentlessly logical. What else would you open with other than the event that traumatized Danny?
So the classic solution that I know and know very well (if the ending is low-key, then flatten the opening to match), does not seem to work with this story.
And I like it. I'd like to see it made into a film. There's a lot of people who need to see this film.
When you do solve the problem, please let me know. I'd learn something. read -
A review of Undergradsby JLichtenberg on 06/15/2009Hey, guys, now that I've finally posted a screenplay, you can get backsies! I really tore into the earlier version of UNDERGRADS, and I can't say I'm sorry I did. This rewrite is giant lightyears ahead of the previous. I can see some very hard work and serious decisions went into this rewrite. The squishy flat-toned mid-section of the original now has a snappy pacing,... Hey, guys, now that I've finally posted a screenplay, you can get backsies!
I really tore into the earlier version of UNDERGRADS, and I can't say I'm sorry I did. This rewrite is giant lightyears ahead of the previous. I can see some very hard work and serious decisions went into this rewrite.
The squishy flat-toned mid-section of the original now has a snappy pacing, a hint of a sense of direction, and some escalation from party to party.
Unfortunately, the improvement now makes the opening flat by comparison, and the ending isn't an ENDING (i.e. a climax) but just a petering out of the energy driving the story.
So, overall, this script shows a real talent for writing, lots of hard work, and even a professional level ability to take editorial suggestions and re-tailor them to your own purposes.
But it's still far, far from a saleable screenplay -- not that I can claim to know anything about what it takes to sell a screenplay because I've never sold one, just novels.
You have a touch for comedy, and I wouldn't want to spoil that. You are making people LAUGH here. But you have a lot to learn about building the framework to support those laughs.
Since the "party" is the central element in this story, you need to study the whole subject of "party" much more closely, both on an academic level (anthropology, psychology) and on the artistic level of how to "write" a "party."
Two sources for how to learn to write a "party" come instantly to mind. First is Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, which is still available on Amazon. Not every novel in that long series has a party in it, but where there is a party, it is TOTALLY integral to the plot. Two to pay special attention to are the original SWORD OF ALDONES (later rewritten as SHARA'S EXILE a totally different story; alternate universe in her own univers!) and STAR OF DANGER.
Study the novels where there is no party, then the ones where there is, and puzzle out why certain novels need a party scene and others DON'T. The bedrock behind the party scene is the PLOT and the CHARACTER ARC driven by the encounter with the ADVERSARY.
Next, you should dissect almost page for page, the huge novel ATLAS SHRUGGED. That book contains a number of party scenes that are absolutely WONDERFUL bits of writing craftsmanship, so subtle, so exquisite, so fine, that you can actually transpose them into the comedy genre and they'll work there, too.
No two authors could be farther apart in philosophy than Ayn Rand and Marion Zimmer Bradley. And that's what makes the contrast/compare study of these two author's party scenes the most efficient key to learning how to construct a party scene.
Your parties are college kids blowing off energy, lights, music, shouting, maybe some drinking, and that's fine BUT.... Think what it would cost to create that in a movie (cheaper than most things, but still it's expensive scenery). In order to carry that freight of cost, the scene has to advance the plot, become a SET PIECE that can be used in the trailer.
Your parties, except for the one where they take money at the door, do not advance the PLOT. They just happen. The kids drift through them pointlessly. The parties are decoration, not scene.
There's no setups that are paid off at the parties (no reason those setups have to be paid off at the parties), no suspense, no anticipation of future events, no REVEAL of the depths of these characters, no CONFLICT advancing toward a RESOLUTION.
I can see you worked on the dialogue, and you trimmed and focused this whole script on the party scenes, and the work that was done is splendid. You've made artistic sense out of splattered chaos. It's good work.
But it barely scratches the surface of the work that would need to be done. You haven't failed. You've achieved what you set out to achieve. But your goal needs adjustment to the commercial marketplace if you're going to sell.
And yes, I'd like to see you selling this zany stuff. You have a genius for it. But there are basics of storytelling that seem to be in your blind spot, and those basics are the key to selling. You CAN write screenplays, no doubt about it. You're good at it. But you can't (yet) write a story, and without a story the screenplay is worthless commercially.
Your CONFLICT in UNDERGRADS is almost non-existent, which is why your parties don't "work" as dramatic devices. The gangster is not using the parties to attack, manipulate, sell drugs, create campus drug runners, or anything.
The gangster is the threat, the adversary, the villain, and is not present.
The kids got themselves into owing the gangster BY ACCIDENT (a no-no in plotting -- accidents happen at the beginning of a story, not the middle). You changed the accident to be stopping to girl-watch, which is artistically a vast improvement, and helps clean up this script. It's a good choice if you insist on using an accident -- but insistence on an accident is an anti-commercial fiction choice.
Read some of McKee's screenwriting books, and Syd Field's. One of the bits of advice they HAMMER into students is DON'T LET THE MAIN CHARACTERS DISAPPEAR FROM THE PAGE.
So as I said originally, the gangster/$5,000 part of this plot just sits on top like oil on water and the two just don't go together. The gangster DISAPPEARS FROM THE PAGE.
This is a main difference between screenwriting and narrative fiction. In screenwriting, you must consider actor's egos and agent's demands, and the whole career of all the participants in flinging your screenplay onto the screen. The MAIN CHARACTERS must not disappear from the screen. It's a cardinal rule. Even in comedy you can't violate that rule and get away with it.
If your screenplay does get options, then "in development" they'll change everything and you won't recognize this story anymore because that villain MUST appear in that big vacant hole in the middle of this screenplay.
That absense is a major, major flaw.
And yes, I realize that's not the story you want to tell. You want to focus on these wastrels doing nothing to advance their lives. That's your story. What you haven't grasped yet is that nobody can sell that story when it's told from the point of view of the wastrels.
Aimless drifting lives aren't STORY MATERIAL. But you can tell that story if you take another point of view, or start in a different place in the character's arc.
Last time I suggested you skip over their childhood in college and pick them up 40 years later fighting it out for control of Las Vegas' party scene. That's the solution suggested by "start in a different place." If that doesn't work, the only cure is INVENT A NEW CHARACTER and tell the story from that point of view. (Dean of the college; parents; gangster himself -- anyone who must act and take the consequences of their actions, and change because of the consequences.)
This draft still suffers from most of the problems I highlighted in my review of the previous draft. The re-titling though is excellent work. The tightening of the middle is good work. You still must do something about the oil-and-water non-mixture of the gangster plot and the party scene, and you must craft your party scenes to advance the plot.
"Advance the plot" is writer-code for bringing the protagonist and the antagonist into direct conflict so that the protagonist makes a move, and the antagonist must respond. Each party has to be an encounter -- not a mere threat but a real encounter -- in which the protagonist conflicts with the antagonist (you could improve this by picking someone other than the gangster and the missing money as the antagonist).
It's possible you don't understand what I'm talking about here. You may get some insight if you read the blog post I'm going to be putting up on 6/16/2009 at http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/ where I co-blog with a bunch of famous Alien Romance novelists. I post on Tuesdays. In the June 16, 2009 entry, I'll be discussing the film MR. AND MRS. SMITH (the 2005 version) and why it works so very well, and what writers can learn from it.
That film illustrates is the effect you need to create with this party-through-school concept where your gangster-money thread is like the action-violence level of SMITH, and your parties are like the marital-counselling level of SMITH. My blog post may give you the hint you need to weld the two levels of your script together into a comphrehensive whole.
Once that skeleton is in place, I think your problems with the characterization and dialogue in UNDERGRADS will evaporate, because you do know HOW to do character and dialogue, you just don't HAVE any characters that have anything to say to each other yet.
With a plot and a conflict, they will have plenty to say and the audience will hang on every dialect-ridden word of it. You can't create the twists, flips, and unique cliche-busters until you have the levels of plot and conflict aligned. read -
A review of The Pirate Treeby JLichtenberg on 05/28/2009This is a refreshing, wholesome story I would recommend to parents of 10 year olds everywhere. This is a good, well-scrubbed draft with few typos (I didn't notice any!) I read it in a Doctor's waiting room, almost finished, could hardly wait to get home and finish it. The suspense works, the setups are there, the payoffs satisfying, and the imagery vivid. Also, it doesn't... This is a refreshing, wholesome story I would recommend to parents of 10 year olds everywhere.
This is a good, well-scrubbed draft with few typos (I didn't notice any!)
I read it in a Doctor's waiting room, almost finished, could hardly wait to get home and finish it. The suspense works, the setups are there, the payoffs satisfying, and the imagery vivid. Also, it doesn't look to me like it would cost too much to make. The location might be difficult to acquire, and could make the company rewrite a little -- or given the budget, they could MAKE 3 Redwood trees together and build a ship in the tops.
I think this draft could use some touching up, though. The ending, while it enchanted me, really needed more build-ups.
Essentially, there's a mystery left hanging -- the old Reverend who presumably created the ship (where did he get the gold? Or was that an illusion, too?) The Reverend is supposed to be a ghost (I think) -- so why isn't the father's ghost there, too?
To set up this ending, you need a bit more emphasis on Eddie's escape artist secrets -- he needs some kind of telekinetic talent, or inter-dimensional magic, or something to explain all this without belaboring it.
The script is about the right length at 90 pages. I wouldn't want to see it expanded, and there isn't much you'd want to cut.
So the ending of the Fire Chief not being able to find the steps inside the burned out tree, or the BODY (which is why we think it's a ghost, or somebody from another dimension) isn't a "surprise ending" but rather a kind of cheating. So we have to know ghosts and magic are part of this universe for real, even though adults don't know it.
Jake has to know his father had a mental "Talent" but not maybe that he might have inherited it, or if he did that it would be a good thing.
You can CHEAT in the middle of a story a little, but you can't cheat on the ending.
Your mid-point is great -- the stakes get raised by public exposure, and that brings help, good practical help. Perhaps you should explain why the adults don't try to take this task away from the 10 year old.
Maybe it's a Scout Troop project? Maybe Jake uses his budding Talent to keep the adults from spoiling his project by doing it for him?
I liked calling the steps he created on the outside of the tree Jacob's Ladder -- one of my favorite images, and it hints broadly at the otherworldly ending. That's good.
Perhaps the ghost-Reverend should be an Angel instead of a dirty vagrant?
Or that might be too broad.
I pondered a bit whether Clayton or Dane is the B-story main character. I decided it's Dane because Dane brings Jake through the trauma of realizing his Dad really is dead. Psychologically, that's good as it comes before the climb itself -- story-wise you might want to consider making that trauma-scene the ending.
I'd have put the Police at the final climb scene for crowd control -- I couldn't tell from the script if they were there, somewhere.
Also I had a problem with the Fire Chief -- this is supposed to be a tiny-small town, so why would their fire department have a High-Rise style ladder?
I think you should make a point of the local Fire Chief enlisting the Fire Chief of the adjacent town that does have some high rise apartments and just got a new Ladder Truck and their volunteer firefighters need the PRACTICE so they volunteer to help Jacob climb.
I see why you put in the little scene where Ichabod Weathersby lurks in an alley and accosts Jacob. Jacob sees Ike, and sees the gold -- the way it's written, it makes it REAL not Jacob's illusion.
And there's the question of, if Jacob resolves the psychological problem of his father's death before climbing, then why would he still be seeing the Ghost if it's not REAL.
Following the subtext is a bit confusing for grownups, I think -- but might not be so much so for children who aren't as critical.
To sell this, though, you must sell it to adult Producers -- and they must sell it to parents to get them to bring their kids to see it. So it needs story-logic touch-ups.
That shouldn't take much tweaking here and there.
Oh, I also decided that Dane is the B-story because the "magic" that Jacob invokes gets him back together with Jacob's grandmother -- that's a very NICE B-story. And it works out without any supernatural component, which is good.
So you need something for Clayton to come to at the end, a realization, a turning over of a new leaf, a standing up to the bullies? As written, the bullies just leave him alone because Jacob got a cut on his face. A lot of kids won't believe that, especially if they've been bullied.
So you need a quick scene where Clayton stands up to the bullies -- and to show that Clayton is NOT going to turn into a bully (which is where bullies come from; they were bullied), you need a scene where Clayton is kind to a littler kid.
So maybe the "stand-up" scene is one where Clayton protects a little kid? Or maybe make Jacob a SMALL 10 year old, so that Clayton (who is big for his age) can finally discover a reason to stand up to the bullies -- finally understand that those big kids have no business attacking him.
If Clayton is a big kid, it follows his parents have been teaching him to be very careful around smaller people, and NOT to fight back, because he could do real damage.
Finally, he breaks that rule (parallel to Jacob breaking rules to solve his mystery) and defends the small-kid Jacob.
This script raises the kid-issue of bullying but does not actually give a show-don't-tell guidance to kids who are being bullied about how to handle it without getting into a fist fight and making life worse.
The script isn't about bullying, but about striking out on your own to solve a mystery, to find out what you want to know by research.
So if you can't think of a way to "pay-off" the "set-up" of the kids in the cafeteria stealing Clayton's lunch, you should probably just delete that whole thread on bullying.
I can see it was put in there as a "save the cat" scene to produce sympathy for Jacob, and indicate why he chose to go sit with Clayton in the cafeteria, and why he chooses to confide in Clayton.
I think that if Clayton were, say, the tallest guy in his class, he'd probably be ostracized just for that -- and Jacob's befriending him could be based on something Clayton confided when they first meet at home. Maybe Clayton's middle name is Jacob? Or Eddie? Or maybe Clayton, being such an overgrown out-cast, is trying to ingratiate himself by learning stage magic, and Clayton is really excited to meet the son of the town's legendary magician?
If you do that, you can change Ike from a Vagrant into an Angel, make the climb of Jacob's Ladder and the fall back to earth the point of change in Jacob's emotional maturity, and put the scene with Dane where Jacob cries for his father after the fall down the middle of the tree, then the changed Jacob takes center stage before the news cameras and introduces Clayton as the engineer of his tricks?
That's a totally different story, and I'd doubt you'd want to do that. This draft is really tight and very good as it stands, but it sets my imagination sizzling. read -
A review of Room Temperature (rev. 6)by JLichtenberg on 05/18/2009The first thing I noted about this script was the huge expanse of "white space" -- it's almost all dialogue and very little description or action. I've been told this would bounce it out of the to-read piles at contests, and even at production companies, maybe agents too, without a word of it being read. A real loss. This is a nice script. After reading it all, I find... The first thing I noted about this script was the huge expanse of "white space" -- it's almost all dialogue and very little description or action.
I've been told this would bounce it out of the to-read piles at contests, and even at production companies, maybe agents too, without a word of it being read. A real loss. This is a nice script.
After reading it all, I find that I have no clear visual impression of what the background of this town looks like, the decore of the rooms, and other visual clues to the mood and theme.
It's almost as if I'd just heard a radio play, not read a movie script, and simply filled in everything with my own imagination. Being a fan of radio, I don't find that distressing. Perhaps as a screenwriter, I should be distressed by it.
The next thing I noted was that it was a very good thing that I had been clued in this was a comedy.
Being a Science Fiction/Fantasy novelist, I kept wanting the character motivations and plot-connections filled in and, you should excuse the expression, fleshed out.
But since it's comedy, the opening with arms boring up out of graves makes sense as a send-up of typical zombie/vampire horror movies.
But comedy is not my specialty. So I kept telling myself I didn't need to see the animated corpse inside the dark coffin breaking the (nearly unbreakable) modern coffin and pulling dirt down on itself to move the hole up through nearly 9 feet of packed clay.
See, not knowing exactly where this town is, the viewer has no clue what kind of dirt they have. If I were filming it, I think SW Texas would be my choice with lots of sticky red clay.
Since it's a comedy, we skip right over the horror-movie scenes where the zombies lumber into town and everyone runs screaming. There's no discussion of the reality-adjustment of live people accepting that corpses can reanimate with the personality intact.
Being a Fantasy writer and fan, I kept getting stuck on that logic of how the living accept the dead and deliberately ignoring that question because the story hurtles onward with a crisp velocity that makes this a page-turner -- I could really see this movie on the 2AM insomniac channel.
The lead character, the Sheriff, at first seemed unreal to me. I think a really good actor might bring the character to life sooner than I caught on. But I have a soft spot in my heart for Philosophy.
The classic Philosophy references all made sense to me. Here Philosophy is used the same way that Science is used in Science fiction -- and this interesting technique totally enthralled me.
I have often said that the difference between SF and Fantasy is that SF uses the physical sciences to springboard a story, and Fantasy uses the psychological sciences, the mythical.
Here you've used Philosophy, which is the discipline that pre-dates both Science and Psychology. Philosophy is at it's core, the basis of MAGIC -- and this plot is about scientific magic.
The idea that accidental fermentation of a beer product produced the zombies is artistically brilliant and just non-sensical enough to qualify as a comedy premise. It mocks science.
Now I come to where I got somewhat confused. I wasn't able to track the character motivations, or maybe I was distracted by all the irrelevant questions that kept popping to mind (I became intrigued by the premise and the mystery of finding out how the zombies happened and who was murdering them!).
But I couldn't figure out why they were being murdered. People just didn't like them? There was one religious cult that might have had a motive, but they weren't influential enough in the town.
The Undertaker apparently is a hapless victim of all these circumstances, guilty only of keeping his secret about the accidental beer-embalming, and then trying to duplicate it and patent it as immortality.
His death signals that there won't be sequels. Frankly, in this type of movie, the hint of sequels yet to come would be a selling point for the script.
Professor Lee is a good character (OK, told you I'm partial to Philosophy) and I was sorry he turned out to be guilty.
The structure of this script emphasizes the comedy at the expense of the underlying mystery. I'd have enjoyed it more if the mystery (how did the zombies happen; who's killing them and why) were laid out more like a Columbo or Murder She Wrote, with the whole formula in place, together with clues and all the classic scenes.
But I'm a Mystery fan. *sigh*
So Professor Lee's confession was too easily obtained to suit me. More intellectual (a sure killer for comedy) jousting between Lee and the Sheriff would have pleased me.
Which brings me to the Sheriff. At about the halfway point, I felt I began to understand the Sheriff. He's a memorable character, and I think it'd be a plum role for a character actor looking for a starring role.
I think the delay in understanding the Sheriff was due to the variety of purely comic scenes involving other sets of characters. Each is funny in its own right, a clear sendup of the classic films, but I found it hard to follow.
I felt more setups were needed so the "surprise" action developments (like the dogs in the bowling alley) are payoffs, with anticipation building to a shout of laughter.
At every one of these surprise interruptions, I asked myself "why did that happen" -- and concluded, "oh, yeah, someone's trying to murder zombies." But I felt I should be guessing why and who is doing the murdering.
So how to improve this script without destroying the rollicing pace and tongue-in-cheek parody?
1) add more description and instead of relying entirely on dialogue for the quips, put in some action. You need props for the actors to handle, and an object that appears and disappears through scenes -- something VISUAL -- to rivet the attention and clue the audience in to what the characters don't know.
2) The pitch line says this is about an "overly philosophical sheriff" who strives to stop the zombie murders to save his son. But that nice, clean plot-line gets lost in the razzle-dazzle humor. Let's see the Sheriff sweat more. Let's see him (at the 2/3 point) LOSE FAITH IN HIS PHILOSOPHY. Then regain that faith as philosophy reveals the solution.
Tim should become the B-story character who ultimately does something out-of-character that saves the day. So as the Sheriff loses faith in Philosophy, Tim should gain it.
Make the issue over which Tim committed suicide, the ongoing argument between father and son about going to college -- maybe majoring in philosophy would be too "on the nose" but majoring in something intellectual. But Tim is a jock, and all he wants is a football scholarship? He committed suicide because he failed to get that coveted scholarship which his father didn't even know he was up for?
So as the Sheriff gives up Philosophy as a way of life, the son, Tim feels the pain of his father and rushes to try to shore up his father's faith, and gradually adopts the study of Philosophy (maybe his girl gives him Spinoza? Tim's the right age for Spinoza but if he's a jock, it's a real stretch to see him even getting past page 1. Maybe he gets a kiss per page for reading it?)
Then Tim gives the Sheriff the clue that it's the Philosophy Professor who's decided to exterminate the zombies, and gives him the philosophical reasoning which the Sheriff understands as a reaffirmation of his own reason for existing. This would be the major bonding moment between father and son, a pause and then a plunge back into the rapid-fire absurdities?
One big thing I kept tripping over - a realism thing - that goes with the inablity of live people to accept the fact that zombies are possible and all that it would mean to "reality" if they were -- is that this little town didn't attact all the media -- CNN CHOPPERS PLUS ARMY ON THE GROUND.
Now, one of Blake Snyder's "rules" for writing a good script is "Keep The Media Out" and it's a good rule. You pulled off all the laughs at a good pace by keeping the story away from serious considerations like that and showed how Blake's rule actually works.
But the premise - zombies - throws this script into the realm of Urban Fantasy, where today one of the big themes is "keeping it secret from the mundanes" and the opposite one made famous by Laurell K. Hamilton, "equal rights for the arcane beings under the Law."
You played the anti-zombie prejudice thread just right - kept it light and laughable while poking fun at all our current prejudices. Nice work. And the media would be an intrusion.
But still, the lack of media (or dealing with the secrecy around the town somehow) just blew the plausibility for me, and plausibility is half the battle in drawing someone into an urban fantasy.
Of course, since it's a comedy, you're not supposed to be drawn in.
I hope these observations help you decide what to do with this script. I think it could sell because it's not expensive to make considering the size of the possible audience. And I doubt any of my suggestions would help to sell it!
As I said, comedy isn't my field. But I do enjoy a good laugh, and this script is replete with laughs. read -
A review of Cocked & Loadedby JLichtenberg on 05/14/2009"Cocked & Loaded" is a great title by itself, and a very apt title for this screenplay. It has depths of allusions within it, but is absolutely literally true of the screenplay. It's about guns, live ammunition, and being "cocked" -- i.e. ready to fire at an instant. This describes both the weapons and the personality of the lead character, Clive, whose personality is... "Cocked & Loaded" is a great title by itself, and a very apt title for this screenplay.
It has depths of allusions within it, but is absolutely literally true of the screenplay. It's about guns, live ammunition, and being "cocked" -- i.e. ready to fire at an instant.
This describes both the weapons and the personality of the lead character, Clive, whose personality is "cocked and loaded" -- he's not sane, or well balanced or in any way "stable."
The people who gravitate to him are likewise unstable, and his prime enemies (Mobster family) seem to be likewise unstable. They're not sane, level headed businessmen/mobsters. They're insane, powerful and dangerous.
This script is an in depth character study of one man (Clive) and the congomeration of personal quirks that make him tick. And its very well done. I can think of a dozen actors who would lust after this part.
It's the kind of part you might see in a stageplay and I think it might have a chance to make it "on Broadway" too because it's so complex, textured, and well drawn.
All that said, what we're looking at here is a character study, a "portrait of a wasted guy" or what might be great material for a prose-poem.
It's a slice of reality screenplay, and really makes a dynamic philosophical statement about our world and how it's run. It is richly themed.
And it's a very well constructed screenplay that tells the story in pictures, vivid images, set pieces and gritty dialogue. I can't find anything in the screenwriting per se that needs improvement.
I think it might even have a good chance of selling to a production company looking for something dark, but not too repulsive for a wide audience -- and something fairly cheap to make considering the size of that audience. It isn't so hard to film on New York's streets, and a couple of Long Island sound stages. This is a do-able project.
HOWEVER. The plot and the story violate a couple of cardinal rules of screenwriting and of novel writing too (which is where my credentials are).
One important rule is that during the screenplay at least one (preferably several) of the characters must "arc" or change in some fundamental way. A splendid and vivid example is SPIDERMAN. The bigger the superhero, the bigger the inner angst that must be faced.
Clive has plenty of inner angst and "acts out" about his moods. But he doesn't CONFRONT his angst, and the results of his actions don't teach him anything.
Clive is the same at the end of the story as at the beginning, and he's the main character.
The Pitch I read is misleading as it focuses on the woman Clive rescues from an abusive husband by killing the husband while Clive and Lou are robbing a liquor store. This is not her story. She dies (pointlessly and in a set piece which ought to be a payoff of a prior setup but is not). And the story wanders on after that.
Here's the genius in this script, and the reason I don't think it ought to be rewritten but that it has a very limited audience.
The plot has a number of these SURPRISE twists of violence blasting into Clive's life as he wanders unsuspectingly through his bland existence.
But that "wandering through bland existence" is the whole THEME of this piece, and it's extremely well done. It is not at all "on the nose" -- it's a statement within a statement under the subtext. Beautifully done.
This screenplay illustrates vividly how it is that we have crime in our world, and what it means.
But it's existential and bland as entertainment. So it might be made as an art film, but not an "opens everywhere" film.
Cocked & Loaded is just that -- cocked and loaded but not FIRING.
It is a portrait of Clive, a man with only one firm principle he lives by, don't hurt women. And he really lives by it, which is the only reason to keep watching this play. Clive definitely gains and holds our sympathy.
But the play is a static portrait of this man, a pose that doesn't move. Clive doesn't arc, nor does he teach anyone a lesson about how to avoid the kind of blind-alley trap he's in.
To put a character into the lead of a story, the writer needs to pick out the ONE POINT in the character's life when events force them to change, to adjust or die, or put it all on the line in a leap of faith.
COCKED & LOADED stars Clive. He's in every scene, and his actions cause the villains to react (if only offstage). But oddly, this bit of urban fantasy is not Clive's STORY.
This is not the point in his life when he wakes up, has an epiphany, acts to change his life, to leap out of the blind alley he's in.
So this sequence of events is not a story at all.
These events sum up to an EPISODE in his life, not his story, and not any other character's story.
Except maybe the final mobster Lorrette brother left standing.
Suppose you took this exact sequence of events and told the story from that last brother's Point of View? Perhaps he wanted to take over the mob family and transform the business into a legal enterprise? Suppose he used Clive and Lou and even Clive's women to get Clive to take down his brothers because he despised his evil brothers but still wouldn't kill them himself?
If we saw things from that mobster's point of view, it would be a different story, and it might encompass the point where this younger mobster decides to leave the crime business and take the Organization legal (sort of).
The only problem with this script as it stands is that it's static.
Despite the drive-by shootings and mugging, car wreck, etc etc nothing happens. It's a psychological study with no spiritual lessons learned or applied to create a slam-bang action ending.
You could change that by changing the POV character to the mobster or someone who doesn't die. But I don't think you should because as it stands, this is great material.
So I think you should regard this as BACKSTORY in Clive's life. This is the episode in his life from which his eventual epiphany stems.
Skip forward 15 years and drop in on Clive when he's an LA POLICE DETECTIVE with a wife, a dog, kids, and a whole new life with this horrid secret of his past wiped away by a computer nerd and some really grand spiritual counsellor.
I could just see Peter Falk playing Clive all the way through, though that may not be what you intended.
Now a case comes along that cracks open his past, and bits and pieces of this script appear as flashback where needed. The story is about how Clive changed, and what he must confront now about his past to make his change real and permanent.
But of course, the theme of Cocked&Loaded is that people can't change. When a theme is so clearly stated, it begs to be challenged!
read -
A review of Tarot Justiceby JLichtenberg on 03/23/2009Tarot Justice I think it's splendid that Tarot Justice has gotten real interest from a production company. It deserves consideration, but will require a number of rewrites, I suspect, and possibly a new title, before going into production. I chose to review this script, though, based on the pitch -- it's a powerful pitch, a real grabber. I have an extensive background... Tarot Justice
I think it's splendid that Tarot Justice has gotten real interest from a production company. It deserves consideration, but will require a number of rewrites, I suspect, and possibly a new title, before going into production.
I chose to review this script, though, based on the pitch -- it's a powerful pitch, a real grabber.
I have an extensive background in Tarot, including having written books on the subject for a paper publisher that will soon be out as e-books. So the title instantly caught my eye.
For someone with a background in Tarot, the title and pitch are truly High Concept. I instantly saw the whole movie flash before my eyes.
But not the movie I read in this draft. So I don't know whether to comment on the pitch and title, or this particular draft.
Let's look at the draft though.
First notable problem is the way action, description and character introductions are made. Here's one quote:
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TERRY and VINCE are the "odd couple" of the homicide squad. Terry is fastidious to excess about both his appearance and everything he does, while Vince is a disorganized slob. Apart, they are both disasters. Recently partnered together, their unorthodox methods has given them an incredibly high clearance rate.
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This is an excellent description from a character sketch or even for a novel. But it doesn't work in script format because it is telling about things that are not shown. It doesn't instruct the set designer, wardrobe people, or casting director in how to illustrate these qualities of this "odd couple".
They need to be instructed in precise detail, but without belaboring the details and yet at the same time leaving them a lot of room for their own creativity.
So "Terry is fastidious" is all that can go here unless you want to specify the kind of suits he wears to work. (eschews polyesther -- or buys at Men's Warehouse). Or Wears only Arrow Shirt&Tie sets.
Vince is a slob in wrinkled polyester and a stained tie.
Then maybe: "Both wear Officer of the Month lapel pins." or something like that -- something about them that MAKES them a pair. It has to be something viewers can SEE, not something you hint to the crew.
That particular stylistic quirk is repeated consistently throughout this draft, and whoever buys it will have to have a clerk re-draft those descriptions.
Next, just running through the script's PDF, it seems to have way too much "talking heads" and not enough business for the actors - not even enough action despite the chase scenes.
I've just recently been studying the art of creating slug lines, so as I read this it became clear why they made up a set of rules for "clean" slug lines. These are styled too long. And some of what belongs in DESCRIPTION is encoded into the slug lines. It makes for awkward reading.
Here is a blog article that explains not only slug lines, but what I meant by "action" not being sufficient.
http://rougewave.blogspot.com/2007/03/slugging-your-script.html
This blog is a rich source of lore like this.
Quoting from this blog entry on slugging your script:
EXT. JACKSON BROWN’S JACUZZI – NIGHT
Mr. Brown tosses back the rest of his margarita and rises from the steaming water. He throws on a kimono.
INT. JACKSON’S BEDROOM – SIMULTANEOUS
A beautiful blonde grabs a hunting knife and hides in the closet
INT. JACKSON’S OPULENT BEDROOM – MOMENTS LATER
Jackson tosses off his kimono and falls face down onto his bed.
Note how the entire STORY is implied by and carried on ACTION.
That's what I meant is missing in between your talking heads. And the dialogue craft behind what the heads say needs improvement. It's OK, but not splendid enough to let the simple talking-heads effect work dramatically. You need to give the actors things to DO that underscore or add subtext to their interchanges.
The whole plot is carried on speech rather than action. The distribution should be about even, I think, for this type of intellectual thriller. I happened across the slugging-your-script blog entry and the few lines about JACKSON just leapt out at me as an example of the "right" way to do what you've done here in a workmanlike but bland way, possibly too much "on the nose" where script readers expect more colorful metaphores, half-sentences, verbal sparring. See if you can spot what I'm trying to explain here.
There's another odd quirk I found my eye tripping over. The main character's name is repeated in full at every instance -- in slug lines, in description -- even his WIFE refers to him by given and family name! And that oddity is never addressed in the script.
All this above is nothing but styling -- it's just how you present the story, not the story itself. It's very superficial, but also very critical in the industry.
I couldn't discover the theme -- it's not highlighted by a statement on page 5 where I would expect to find it.
OK, now to the mystery itself.
Overall, the mystery is well turned, the scenes dynamic and to the point.
I found one really bad soft spot in the middle where the second murder related to his brother's death turns up -- and nobody mentions he's the obvious suspect and if they didn't know him etc. But then they would have to treat him as a suspect, just to keep the case tight. At that point, I suspected he was the perp, too. But I also suspected the psychologist because even at the 3/4 point I could not find any reason why Tarot was included in this script.
When I got to the end and discovered the "twist" you inserted, revealing the real perp -- I was vastly disappointed. I had trouble sorting the red herrings from the clues.
So as an inveterate mystery reader and professional reviewer, I wouldn't have reviewed this if it were a novel. I found that the writer was not playing fair with the reader. The clues to the actual solution, what really was going on, were all too obscured. The red herrings (such as the Tarot cards on the psychologist's wall) were not clearly connected to the crime well enough.
OK, yes, the murder victims were arrayed as figures in a Tatot deck - and Richard West did fool around with a Tarot deck, but not until after the murders started. But there was no thematic connection to Tarot -- it's as if the author did some research but wasn't a master of Tarot.
What the mystery needs is a set of clues that indicate that the real solution is definitely not possible. *trying to avoid spoilers here* The motive, method and/or opportunity of the perp should be derived from Tarot (or the Tarot references could be deleted without harming the script.)
Or you could reverse matters with a good twist -- and have the final scene reveal that the REAL criminal (the psychologist who had Tarot images on her wall) gets away clean while the wrong person is marched away to the psych ward.
Or the perp getting away clean while the wrong man is convicted would make a terrific break into Act Three - and another reversal at the end where the framed perp proves (from the psych ward) who the real murderer is.
It's a good read as a mystery, but not quite good enough in this draft. Lots of possibilities though.
I also think that the characterization could be sharpened, and that would help the long expository dialogue lumps come to life. If the psychiatrist is supposed to be your B-story character, then her characterization needs more detailing. And of course, she wouldn't be the B-story if she becomes the perp.
The B-story character should provide the necessary information to save Richard West in the end - whether the ending stays as written now, or shifts into a double-twist as I suggested and he's imprisoned falsely and has to get himself out. The B-story character is there to provide that final clue or insight - which should be a Tarot card (if you keep the Tarot in the next draft.)
This script has many possibilities, and it just might sell in this early draft because many production companies love the inspiration of a script like this, using it as a springboard into their own area of expertise. read -
A review of THE PROTECTOR (Final Draft)by JLichtenberg on 03/17/2009I found a number of problems with this draft, mostly on two levels: A)The script formating B)story flow or story logic and plotting. The formatting problems, I'm not qualified to advise on, but I've read a very large number of screenplays both produced and by students. I had problems following the slug lines in this draft - finding and visualizing the location. And then... I found a number of problems with this draft, mostly on two levels: A)The script formating B)story flow or story logic and plotting.
The formatting problems, I'm not qualified to advise on, but I've read a very large number of screenplays both produced and by students. I had problems following the slug lines in this draft - finding and visualizing the location.
And then there's the formatting of the description and action paragraphs. Some information that should head a scene is buried in the middle. The characters are not introduced with name and visual -- the usual clues to the actor -- right where I'd expect them to be.
And maybe the dialogue is too on-the-nose. There are scenes that are not structured to change the emotional pitch as I would expect.
My solution to that is usually to cut the scene. If a scene doesn't advance the plot, you don't need it. Take the characterization presented in that scene, and put it inside an action scene.
Then there are problems with the story itself (as apart from the plot; the sequence of events that happen). The story seems to be a rebelious boy decides to follow his father's advice and finish school -- whereupon his father decides not to send him.
That isn't a reversal or a twist, it's a delay or an abort in the story.
As I've always taught my novel writing students, the essence of story is conflict. And you must resolve that conflict in the end. The boy vs. father conflict over education is not resolved here -- nor is the boy vs. father over protecting Earth from itself conflict resolved. It's left hanging.
Although there's a lot of strife and vivid action in this draft of THE PROTECTOR, there's no conflict and thus no resolution at the bedrock.
The story (the character's arc is essentially the STORY) and the plot (who does what and who responds by doing what -- who thwarts whom) have to be welded together by a clearly stated theme.
The theme in a screenplay is usually stated first on page 5. Page 5 of this draft is an (apparently at that time) totally pointless sex scene and murder.
The theme in a novel is reflected in the title, but that's not how titles are formed in screenplays. THE PROTECTOR could be a theme -- but "protection" per se is not reticulated throughout all the incidents in this draft. The boy wants to PROTECT Earth from itself -- but he makes one clumsy, half-hearted swipe at it without direction or goal.
So protection isn't the theme -- and a single word like that, "protection" isn't a theme. A theme would be something like, "Never protect someone from himself or you risk stunting his growth."
Blake Snyder (blakesnyder.com) is my favorite scriptwriting teacher, and his beat sheet sets out just where and how to introduce the characters. (download free from his tools section to see what I'm looking at)
The writer needs to introduce all the A story characters in about the first 10 pages, before the catalyst blasts the main character out of his comfort zone and into the story. 15 pages or so of debating what to do, and the main character should take decisive action about page 25, starting the second act.
THE PROTECTOR has new characters popping up throughout in a totally confusing (and very high budget) way.
I don't see the catalyst clearly here, and I don't see the debate -- except a kind of puddling around within teen angst about obeying or not obeying the Captain/Father's wishes.
The B story would, I expect, be Rand's friend, I think the name was Khyber, who was put in charge of Rand while his father was gone (and who failed). But I don't see the B story role of the confidant who drives the theme home.
In other words, what I do see in this piece is the makings of a fair narrative story that's trying to be converted into a screenplay and just not hitting the marks.
I suspect, though I may be wrong because I don't know the author at all, that most of the problems with this script stem from the author not quite knowing WHO the scripted page addresses.
At some points, the narrative seems to address a READER -- someone reading a novel for fun -- who needs to be teased along and made curious before you reveal the expository lump of backstory.
At other points, it's addressing a producer, trying to convince someone to make a buy decision. That's like a novel writer addressing the narrative to the editor, not the book-buyer.
If this same story was written to address the movie studio crew that has to use it to create the sets, costumes, lighting, and visual angles, pacing, -- cast the actors -- etc. then all the style problems with the slug lines and description and action would be solved automatically. It's a question of where you stand to tell the story.
Would that solve the problems with the theme, plot, story, and conflict? No. It wouldn't begin to address any of that. And I can't puzzle out enough from this draft to figure out what to suggest the theme and conflict should be. I can't tell what story the author is trying to write.
Lastly we come to the substance of what is included. I couldn't tell why we bounced from scene to scene, whole new sets of characters here and there doing unseemly things.
The Titanic element with the girl Rand falls for -- that's been done, so why was it in here?
The bar scene where a barfly turns out to be Gene Roddenberry -- well, I'm the primary author of STAR TREK LIVES! - the Bantam paperback that blew the lid on Star Trek fandom. I've spent many years reading Star Trek fanfic, and I knew GR. He wrote a forward for Star Trek Lives! I've advised MANY ST fanfic writers to turn various ST fanfic novels into professional SF novels.
The test for whether a ST fan novel should be turned into an SF pro-novel is the same as the classic test for whether a story is SF or not.
"If you can take the Science out and still have a story, it's not SF. Find another genre to sell it in."
"If you can take the Star Trek out and till have a story, it's not a Star Trek story at all and you should sell it in another genre."
And that's what I see here with the thinly disguised Starship crew. There are even typos where Starfleet becomes Spacefleet I think it was. The transporter renamed. The half-breed bridge officer.
The excuse is one of the oldest ST fanfic story ideas -- that GR got the idea for Trek from an encounter with an actual alien. It's been done in so many variations it's a cliche.
And as far as the worldbuilding behind THE PROTECTOR is concerned, there's no reason it HAS TO BE TREKISH.
The premise -- or CONCEPT -- is that Earth is the science experiment of some galactic civilization where at least some of the people look very human.
That's strong enough to stand on its own.
The main character is a kid rebelling against finishing his galactic education -- "home" on his father's ship on patrol around Earth's solar system. The kid was born on Earth, and likes humans (like a young Doctor Who).
This is a concept that has legs. But in this script, it doesn't walk.
You could sort it all out into Kid vs. Captain/father over GOING TO COLLEGE.
Since the Kid (Rand) is the main character, then in the end, he has to WIN AGAINST HIS FATHER. That is he gets to NOT go to school.
If the father wins, then the father has to be the main character.
All the murder and sex, Star Trekishness, and the sinking of the Titanic, is just decoration splashed around the main concept -- and artistically it doesn't FIT.
How do you invent decoration to surround a concept so that it all goes together artistically?
You use the THEME to sort out the few perfect incidents to go into your set-pieces. Since I don't know the theme here, I can't guess what might fit.
I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, but it looks to me like there are at least 3 main stories chopped up and interwoven here in a very confusing hodge-podge, and the source of the hodge-podge effect is the lack of a master theme.
I'd suggest you ditch the Titanic, and ditch Star Trek, and just tell Rand's story straight through. And I can't see why you'd need the sex and murder thread of this thing at all. I can't imagine what theme having to do with Kid vs. Father over Education would go with sex/murder.
And I didn't think the sex/murder thread was noir at all. For noir, you'd have to have the kid murder the father after raping him or maybe getting him injured so the father has to face his own worst nightmare and go TEACH AT THE ACADEMY where his son is a smug student.
Another possible ending (resolution to the conflict is the ENDING) would be if the kid (Rand) one-ups the father over the issue of school by testing out of all the courses, or secretly doing the courses by correspondence.
I loved the A.I. character, and he could be a conspirer to do an end-run around the father by teaching all the courses then arranging for the kid to be tested and get commissioned or whatever. Maybe to complete some major the father furiously disapproves of.
There's a lot of good material buried in this script, but it's all buried so deep and so confused that even the best material seems lackluster. read
Comments About JLichtenberg 24
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JLichtenberg on 11/27/2009
In case anyone is wondering, I'm still here and working hard on several screenwriting projects. -
JLichtenberg on 07/02/2009
snipped some quotes to answer:
tarboy wrote:
Some very interesting points. Wheel, Wow! Never heard of them?
I think you liked it, but judged it
The GOLD is hollywood. But one rare vein of Gold would not be impossible, that only the Indians knew about. History teach us what people will to other for GOLD. So the fears to protect the Indians are very real.
For me ACTION speak to the heart deeper than the spoken word. It you acted out every word I have written the emotion is there.
I will change the name of the city. any suggestions?
Like so: X did this. Y did that. Q did something else.
The problem I had understanding these passages came from the disconnect between cause and effect. What Y did wasn't entirely and obviously connected to what X had just done, nor did it seem to cause what Q did next.
There are more variables age, race (three), sex, the sick, FAMILY and death so this approach wouldn't work.
;)
Excerpting your comments to comment on them.
Yes, I liked it, (actually loved it if I did understand what you were trying to do) but didn't judge the STORY -- only the craftsmanship.
Unfortunately, ONE VEIN OF GOLD would indeed be "impossible" in the geology of the area I know as Texas of today, and even Hollywood would not accept that without explanation. That's why there was a "California Gold Rush" in 1849-- because GOLD is only found in certain types of rock formations. It is found all up and down the Americas in the Siera Madre, and along the streams that carry rock down from those high mountains.
None of those streams reach Texas (note the CONTINENTAL DIVIDE). And you are postulating a vein embedded in a rock, not a wash.
If you insist on putting a natural vein of gold in what we know as Texas today, you have to EXPLAIN the geology. All Western fans know there is no gold in Texas. Nor silver either. SILVER is Nevada. The Wealth of Texas is OIL and open grasslands. That's why all the cattlemen vs. sheepherders wars over water are set in Texas!
So before you rename the town -- figure out where this ranch is set.
I did think of one way to do it. You could turn this into a WESTERN FANTASY -- a spinoff genre of the URBAN FANTASY -- and attribute to the Native American tribe a cave which has its OTHER END (magically through a warp or something a Shaman does) in the Siera Madre right into the MOTHER LOAD that has to this day never been found.
That way the gold is not in Texas at all, but where one would normally expect to find it.
If you move the ranch to the BONANZA TV show's ranch "The Ponderosa" which actually is a real ranch in Nevada, you are right on the border of Lake Tahoe and you could postulate a real long cave with its other end in gold country. But the Ponderosa is located near Carson City. Remember the map they always opened with?
That's why I also thought of the WHEELERS which also used a map for the opening scene, showing how the USA grew and changed during the multi-generation story (very graphic illustration of time passing and where each story-segment took place).
Funny how I remember so much about the STORY and many of the vivid set-pieces -- but couldn't actually nail the TITLE. After some googling, I have it for you!!!
The REAL TITLE of this mini-series saga is INTO THE WEST, an ever so forgettable title. The story is all about the WHEELERS family, a multigenerational saga just like yours is going to be. WHEELWRIGHT is the name you would normally think of for a title here -- that's the concept, that WHEEL MAKERS allowed US history to develop as it did. Without the Connestoga Wagon, there would be no USA!!! France, Russia, Spain, and even England would own our West! The Wheel Wrought this country.
You can get the DVD on amazon, and you should read the rest of the description of this miniseries you apparently missed (I can't imagine how any Western fan could have missed it! You'll probably remember it from the description because I didn't describe it well.)
----------QUOTING AMAZON-------------
Spanning 65 years and several generations, Into the West succeeds as an ambitious compendium of authentic American history. Originally broadcast in the summer of 2005 as a six-part miniseries on TNT, it's the kind of well-intentioned epic that can't possibly satisfy everyone, and some critics complained that it covers too much territory, with characters functioning more as archetypes than full-blooded human beings. Criticisms aside, Into the West admirably achieves the goal of executive producer Steven Spielberg, who envisioned this expansive project as an accurate and corrective history lesson with long-term educational value. Placing important emphasis on the Native American perspective, it follows the Lakota Indians as they are gradually overwhelmed by the white man's irrevocable westward expansion. As conceived by playwright/screenwriter William Mastrosimone, the drama uses two primary symbols--the wagon wheel and the Lakota medicine wheel--to join the Lakota story with that of the Wheelers, a Virginia family of wheelwrights who witness many of the 19th century's pivotal historical milestones.
-----------------END QUOTE------------
There's lots and lots more on Amazon and Wikipedia -- this thing is monumental and if you absorb all the tricks and bits they used to make it your saga can become just as monumental. INTO THE WEST is replete with the screen craft techniques you need to use.
Here is a nice Wikipedia entry on the miniseries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_West_(TV_miniseries)
And here's the DVD on amazon -- read everything there, including a lot of the reviews and comments. THAT is the audience response you are aiming for, and you can't achieve it without doing your research in depth.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AQ6A9E?ie=UTF8&tag=keybooks-20&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B000AQ6A9E
Copy and paste the link into your browser.
It even tackles the racial issues with intermarriage and children of that intermarriage growing up against prejudice. If you don't remember it, get the DVD and study study study before your next rewrite.
ADDING THE NARRATOR -- that's good. That may clarify a lot. See how Spielberg handled the narration issue. Copy from the best.
You offhandedly said 2 things I have found to be signatures of the forever amateur writer (novel or screenplay).
1) For me Action Speaks To The Heart
Well, of course it does! The problem with this is the "For Me" -- you are a professional when you begin to understand you are not writing FOR YOURSELF but FOR YOUR AUDIENCE, and to reach that audience you must go through the "gatekeepers" (first readers who will toss the script in the trash after 3 pages if that; producers who have no time to teach you to write, or pay you and give the script to a writer to finish).
What these gatekeepers require is characterization through dialogue. The version I read (and the snippets you offered here) are not cinematic dialogue. You are using spoken words to inform the audience. What you need to do is let the characters talk to EACH OTHER -- have a conversation. Remember the conversations in the Roy Rogers films? Remember the Clint Eastwood conversational interludes?
Action speaks but it's meaningless until someone RELATES to someone else what it all means. The dialogue must advance the PLOT, not convey expository lumps.
If the term "expository lump" isn't excrutiatingly familiar to you, please read my blog post(s) on that subject. Start here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html
Then read Blake Snyder's 2 books SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES -- pay particular attention to his explication of a technique he names POPE IN THE POOL -- that's what you need with your exposition, but you need to understand what I've explained in my blog before you'll be able to execute the POPE IN THE POOL technique gracefully. At least that's what I surmise from your writing craftsmanship so far demonstrated.
2) "There are more variables" you say and therefore my paradigm of cause and effect in action can't be done.
Well, since you see that, you're more than halfway to solving the problem. I could have skipped the detailed XYQ explanation and gone right to "cut some of these variables" -- the number of variables you've included is what makes this story not-fit the feature film structure.
Unless you work through those two attitudes, you probably aren't going to be able to figure out how to present the story you want to tell in a way that will get past the first readers at production companies.
Other than that, you do have an excellent attitude and I think you can go very far indeed in this craft if you do your research on geology, and do the craft reading I suggested. And even if you now remember INTO THE WEST, (gee I blew it on the title!) I think you need to see it again after having struggled with your Texas story. You need to study it, not just enjoy it (and that's hard -- it's a Spielberg after all; it's great entertainment).
You want your story to be as entertaining and internationally famous as INTO THE WEST. Do your homework.
-
tarboy on 07/02/2009
You are killing me LOL!!!
I glance over your review. I will be finished editing in a week. Some very interesting points. Wheel, Wow! Never heard of them?
You are soooo COOL!! Good lord.
I think you liked it, but judged it The next version will be beautiful. I added more dialogue to offset the notion of a Novel feel. I add more history (timeline) people can look up and read about the events.
The GOLD is hollywood. But one rare vein of Gold would not be impossible, that only the Indians knew about. History teach us what people will to other for GOLD. So the fears to protect the Indiana are very real.
You do understand my story
I liked the way the story tackles the 1800's attitude toward mixed-breed people -- black, Indian, whatever. The prejudice theme and the plot element of a solution created by a homesteader who had a huge amount of land and solved the racial problem by generous giving and adroit wheeling and dealing -- I liked that.
For me ACTION speak to the heart deeper than the spoken word. It you acted out every word I have written the emotion is there.
I want YOU to understand and LOVE this script. It is very important.
I will change the name of the city. any suggestions?
The Gold has not been found.
Added scenes.
High grass. The rhythmic sound of metal clinking.
Spoken with an Irish accent.
BIG JAKE (V.O.)
Like the hundreds of Europeans that read the stories and saw the pictures Wilhelm had described of this country. I...
BIG JAMES “RED” FINCH (19), red thick beard, mountain man, wears a helmet and mid-evil metal gloves, the rest of his body is covered with fabric, pulls a mule as he walks.
BIG JAKE (V.O.)
I came lookin’ for my piece of the fortune. Since many had died, I was prepared... Or at least I thought I was.
THOMAS
No. Why didn’t you come to the funeral?
Elizabeth swings her hand at Thomas' face. Thomas catches her hand.
THOMAS
I know you better than Prince.
Elizabeth swings her free hand. Thomas catches her hand. He bends both hands down to Elizabeth’s waist.
Elizabeth wrenches her hands away. She rubs her wrist.
INT. BIG RED’S MANSION - STUDY - NIGHT
Next to the entrance, Big Red smokes a cigar. He puts his fingers into the holes of the body armor.
BIG RED
Forty-seven arrows. Not one arrow hit the damn mule.
Big Red smiles.
In front of the fireplace, Prince.
BIG RED
Bear said if it took that many arrows not to kill a man, he should live.
Like so: X did this. Y did that. Q did something else.
The problem I had understanding these passages came from the disconnect between cause and effect. What Y did wasn't entirely and obviously connected to what X had just done, nor did it seem to cause what Q did next.
There are more variables age, race (three), sex, the sick, FAMILY and death so this approach wouldn't work.
Thank you for being you.
;) -
bthielke on 06/24/2009
Hey Jacqueline- thanks for the good comments. I'm thankful that you took the comments in the spirit that they were offered. I'm sure that you'll figure this all out and really nail the next draft. It's a lot of work though, isn't it!!
Be well
Bob -
LBelch on 06/24/2009
Hi,
Thanks for your review of "Damaged Goods". You made several excellent points I hadn't thought of. In particular, how my beginning has so much more "bang" then the ending. I'm gathering up as many reviews as I can right now, then I'm diving into the next rewrite. Your review will be most helpful. Best of luck to you!!
Regards,
Linda -
SdotWilson on 06/11/2009
Jacqueline
I appreciated the review that you gave me on my first submission of Freshmen. I recently uploaded the rewrite entitled Undergrads and I would be honored if you would read it and let me know what you think. I took everything that you said into account and I I've increased the conflict, strengthened dialogue, and improved the plot in order to have a more complete script. I know this isn't exactly your type of movie, but your previous advice guided and inspired us. Any advice you could give would be great, thank you for everything. -
JLichtenberg on 06/05/2009
Cat Bistransin wrote:
Hey Jacqueline,
Your review was most excellent. I didn't agree with the styles of karate (Mickey uses his intellect), and the differences in weather (T&M wouldn't know about the weather in the past). But all your comments were useful in some way.
I've scheduled the SP for deletion so I can revise the First Act. If you have time, and only if you have time, would you take a look at it?
Cat
Yes, I'd take a second look at it, but of course fresh eyes see more. Drop a note here when you're ready to re-post.
To clarify my shorthand comments, yes I got it that Mickey uses his INTELLECT which is why I suggested Aikido which is defensive and thoughtful-meditative in practice or Tai Chi which is very VERY intellectual at the upper end of the scale. But yes, rewrites often require total revision of a character's basic traits. I suggested the adjustment because of the title and because the entire story can collapse on you when you change the opening because it will alter the basic conflict. You need the characters to arc, so the main characters need to display their different points of view, and one has to change because of it.
T&M might not know the weather in the past, but they'd know it ISN'T what they expected. Take Britain for example and the difference between now and Roman times.
You've made some good calls here.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com -
Cat Bistransin on 06/05/2009
Hey Jacqueline,
Your review was most excellent. I didn't agree with the styles of karate (Mickey uses his intellect), and the differences in weather (T&M wouldn't know about the weather in the past). But all your comments were useful in some way.
I've scheduled the SP for deletion so I can revise the First Act. If you have time, and only if you have time, would you take a look at it?
Cat -
JLichtenberg on 06/03/2009
OH PHOOEY!!! I MADE A BIG MISTAKE ON REVIEW OF TIME-RIFT!!!!
My fingers typed DIRTY HARRY but the film I was THINKING about is TRUE LIES, the Schwartzenager vehicle!!! Also with a Harry lead character. I think your character Michael kept wanting to be Harry in my mind.
Actually, DIRTY HARRY isn't a bad fit, but the ILK you need from the Blake Snyder sorting of films is BUDDY LOVE EPIC LOVE.
TIME-RIFT with a love spanning dimensions of time, is EPIC LOVE. and TRUE LIES is a good model for your B-story concept. But you still have only part of the pattern and need the WHY DUNNIT dimension if you keep this A/B story structure. WHY WHY WHY is so totally missing from TIME-RIFT, and what is offered as motive just doesn't make sense. It's like watching 2 different films at the same time, picture-in-a-picture.
The Time-Rift A-story is pretty much ALIEN, to be sure.
My issue with mix-matching A and B stories from different ilks still holds, point by point.
It was just the title of the film I mis-typed. I don't know why my eyes didn't see what I said, but eyes do that to one, and it's a good example of WHY we do this vetting of screenplays among peers.
No writer can see what they said.
Still, sorry I didn't catch that on proofing! -
JLichtenberg on 05/31/2009
kmwriter wrote:Thank you so much for the kind and helpful review of "Pirate Tree." I appreciate the great suggestions. I vacillated between making it a full-out fantasy and grounding it in reality with a hint of mystery, so your perspective was enlightening.
Interestingly, I had Jake's 'moment of truth' nearer to the end originally, but reasoned the adult characters would never permit the climb knowing he was still in denial. Maybe he should fib to convince them and break down later - good ideas!
I'm grateful for your time and opinion, many thanks.
--KM
Thank you. I'm glad you found my remarks thought provoking. The edge of fantasy/reality is a misty place indeed! Take it where the market is! I think making it a fantasy from the kid (hero and audience) POV and a reality from the adult perspective might work.
A flashback to his father telling him he has ESP and the kid has inherited it, but it's a secret from his mother -- might work.
You're right, I saw your battle with making it plausible the adults would allow the climb, and you're right the adults have to be satisfied before they'd allow it.
So either he does it secretly, not in front of the cameras, and against adult orders -- or he gets their permission.
I don't think it's good (in a kid movie) to have the kid get what he wants by lying. Remember, the kids who will see this movie will need parental permission.
So you can rely on the oldest film-maker's technique (even Shamanistic storytelling technique) of the REVERSAL to pull it off.
Remember the formula for the Western -- the good guy gets the drop on the bad guy; another bad guy gets the drop on the good guy, the bad guy who the good guy had the drop on picks up his gun, and another good guy gets the drop on the now re-armed bad guy, and so on until someone fires a gun.
Do that with the adults convincing the kid that his Dad really is dead. The kid keeps being convinced, then new evidence changes his mind, he hides it, gets caught, gets convinced, gets new evidence, changes his mind etc -- that will keep the kid and adult audience glued to the screen with suspense. The "someone fires a gun" scene is the kid climbing the tree with the public help of the fire ladders.
After the climb, the kid understands that his Dad is dead, but the Talent lives on in him -- or the ESP Gift, or whatever you decide on.
This is a good story, and if you turn the ending just right, it could generate some strong sequels.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com
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Comments About JLichtenberg 24
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In case anyone is wondering, I'm still here and working hard on several screenwriting projects.
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snipped some quotes to answer:
tarboy wrote:
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You are killing me LOL!!!
+ more commentsJLichtenberg on 11/27/2009
JLichtenberg on 07/02/2009
Some very interesting points. Wheel, Wow! Never heard of them?
I think you liked it, but judged it
The GOLD is hollywood. But one rare vein of Gold would not be impossible, that only the Indians knew about. History teach us what people will to other for GOLD. So the fears to protect the Indians are very real.
For me ACTION speak to the heart deeper than the spoken word. It you acted out every word I have written the emotion is there.
I will change the name of the city. any suggestions?
Like so: X did this. Y did that. Q did something else.
The problem I had understanding these passages came from the disconnect between cause and effect. What Y did wasn't entirely and obviously connected to what X had just done, nor did it seem to cause what Q did next.
There are more variables age, race (three), sex, the sick, FAMILY and death so this approach wouldn't work.
;)
Excerpting your comments to comment on them.
Yes, I liked it, (actually loved it if I did understand what you were trying to do) but didn't judge the STORY -- only the craftsmanship.
Unfortunately, ONE VEIN OF GOLD would indeed be "impossible" in the geology of the area I know as Texas of today, and even Hollywood would not accept that without explanation. That's why there was a "California Gold Rush" in 1849-- because GOLD is only found in certain types of rock formations. It is found all up and down the Americas in the Siera Madre, and along the streams that carry rock down from those high mountains.
None of those streams reach Texas (note the CONTINENTAL DIVIDE). And you are postulating a vein embedded in a rock, not a wash.
If you insist on putting a natural vein of gold in what we know as Texas today, you have to EXPLAIN the geology. All Western fans know there is no gold in Texas. Nor silver either. SILVER is Nevada. The Wealth of Texas is OIL and open grasslands. That's why all the cattlemen vs. sheepherders wars over water are set in Texas!
So before you rename the town -- figure out where this ranch is set.
I did think of one way to do it. You could turn this into a WESTERN FANTASY -- a spinoff genre of the URBAN FANTASY -- and attribute to the Native American tribe a cave which has its OTHER END (magically through a warp or something a Shaman does) in the Siera Madre right into the MOTHER LOAD that has to this day never been found.
That way the gold is not in Texas at all, but where one would normally expect to find it.
If you move the ranch to the BONANZA TV show's ranch "The Ponderosa" which actually is a real ranch in Nevada, you are right on the border of Lake Tahoe and you could postulate a real long cave with its other end in gold country. But the Ponderosa is located near Carson City. Remember the map they always opened with?
That's why I also thought of the WHEELERS which also used a map for the opening scene, showing how the USA grew and changed during the multi-generation story (very graphic illustration of time passing and where each story-segment took place).
Funny how I remember so much about the STORY and many of the vivid set-pieces -- but couldn't actually nail the TITLE. After some googling, I have it for you!!!
The REAL TITLE of this mini-series saga is INTO THE WEST, an ever so forgettable title. The story is all about the WHEELERS family, a multigenerational saga just like yours is going to be. WHEELWRIGHT is the name you would normally think of for a title here -- that's the concept, that WHEEL MAKERS allowed US history to develop as it did. Without the Connestoga Wagon, there would be no USA!!! France, Russia, Spain, and even England would own our West! The Wheel Wrought this country.
You can get the DVD on amazon, and you should read the rest of the description of this miniseries you apparently missed (I can't imagine how any Western fan could have missed it! You'll probably remember it from the description because I didn't describe it well.)
----------QUOTING AMAZON-------------
Spanning 65 years and several generations, Into the West succeeds as an ambitious compendium of authentic American history. Originally broadcast in the summer of 2005 as a six-part miniseries on TNT, it's the kind of well-intentioned epic that can't possibly satisfy everyone, and some critics complained that it covers too much territory, with characters functioning more as archetypes than full-blooded human beings. Criticisms aside, Into the West admirably achieves the goal of executive producer Steven Spielberg, who envisioned this expansive project as an accurate and corrective history lesson with long-term educational value. Placing important emphasis on the Native American perspective, it follows the Lakota Indians as they are gradually overwhelmed by the white man's irrevocable westward expansion. As conceived by playwright/screenwriter William Mastrosimone, the drama uses two primary symbols--the wagon wheel and the Lakota medicine wheel--to join the Lakota story with that of the Wheelers, a Virginia family of wheelwrights who witness many of the 19th century's pivotal historical milestones.
-----------------END QUOTE------------
There's lots and lots more on Amazon and Wikipedia -- this thing is monumental and if you absorb all the tricks and bits they used to make it your saga can become just as monumental. INTO THE WEST is replete with the screen craft techniques you need to use.
Here is a nice Wikipedia entry on the miniseries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_West_(TV_miniseries)
And here's the DVD on amazon -- read everything there, including a lot of the reviews and comments. THAT is the audience response you are aiming for, and you can't achieve it without doing your research in depth.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AQ6A9E?ie=UTF8&tag=keybooks-20&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B000AQ6A9E
Copy and paste the link into your browser.
It even tackles the racial issues with intermarriage and children of that intermarriage growing up against prejudice. If you don't remember it, get the DVD and study study study before your next rewrite.
ADDING THE NARRATOR -- that's good. That may clarify a lot. See how Spielberg handled the narration issue. Copy from the best.
You offhandedly said 2 things I have found to be signatures of the forever amateur writer (novel or screenplay).
1) For me Action Speaks To The Heart
Well, of course it does! The problem with this is the "For Me" -- you are a professional when you begin to understand you are not writing FOR YOURSELF but FOR YOUR AUDIENCE, and to reach that audience you must go through the "gatekeepers" (first readers who will toss the script in the trash after 3 pages if that; producers who have no time to teach you to write, or pay you and give the script to a writer to finish).
What these gatekeepers require is characterization through dialogue. The version I read (and the snippets you offered here) are not cinematic dialogue. You are using spoken words to inform the audience. What you need to do is let the characters talk to EACH OTHER -- have a conversation. Remember the conversations in the Roy Rogers films? Remember the Clint Eastwood conversational interludes?
Action speaks but it's meaningless until someone RELATES to someone else what it all means. The dialogue must advance the PLOT, not convey expository lumps.
If the term "expository lump" isn't excrutiatingly familiar to you, please read my blog post(s) on that subject. Start here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html
Then read Blake Snyder's 2 books SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES -- pay particular attention to his explication of a technique he names POPE IN THE POOL -- that's what you need with your exposition, but you need to understand what I've explained in my blog before you'll be able to execute the POPE IN THE POOL technique gracefully. At least that's what I surmise from your writing craftsmanship so far demonstrated.
2) "There are more variables" you say and therefore my paradigm of cause and effect in action can't be done.
Well, since you see that, you're more than halfway to solving the problem. I could have skipped the detailed XYQ explanation and gone right to "cut some of these variables" -- the number of variables you've included is what makes this story not-fit the feature film structure.
Unless you work through those two attitudes, you probably aren't going to be able to figure out how to present the story you want to tell in a way that will get past the first readers at production companies.
Other than that, you do have an excellent attitude and I think you can go very far indeed in this craft if you do your research on geology, and do the craft reading I suggested. And even if you now remember INTO THE WEST, (gee I blew it on the title!) I think you need to see it again after having struggled with your Texas story. You need to study it, not just enjoy it (and that's hard -- it's a Spielberg after all; it's great entertainment).
You want your story to be as entertaining and internationally famous as INTO THE WEST. Do your homework.
tarboy on 07/02/2009
I glance over your review. I will be finished editing in a week. Some very interesting points. Wheel, Wow! Never heard of them?
You are soooo COOL!! Good lord.
I think you liked it, but judged it The next version will be beautiful. I added more dialogue to offset the notion of a Novel feel. I add more history (timeline) people can look up and read about the events.
The GOLD is hollywood. But one rare vein of Gold would not be impossible, that only the Indians knew about. History teach us what people will to other for GOLD. So the fears to protect the Indiana are very real.
You do understand my story
I liked the way the story tackles the 1800's attitude toward mixed-breed people -- black, Indian, whatever. The prejudice theme and the plot element of a solution created by a homesteader who had a huge amount of land and solved the racial problem by generous giving and adroit wheeling and dealing -- I liked that.
For me ACTION speak to the heart deeper than the spoken word. It you acted out every word I have written the emotion is there.
I want YOU to understand and LOVE this script. It is very important.
I will change the name of the city. any suggestions?
The Gold has not been found.
Added scenes.
High grass. The rhythmic sound of metal clinking.
Spoken with an Irish accent.
BIG JAKE (V.O.)
Like the hundreds of Europeans that read the stories and saw the pictures Wilhelm had described of this country. I...
BIG JAMES “RED” FINCH (19), red thick beard, mountain man, wears a helmet and mid-evil metal gloves, the rest of his body is covered with fabric, pulls a mule as he walks.
BIG JAKE (V.O.)
I came lookin’ for my piece of the fortune. Since many had died, I was prepared... Or at least I thought I was.
THOMAS
No. Why didn’t you come to the funeral?
Elizabeth swings her hand at Thomas' face. Thomas catches her hand.
THOMAS
I know you better than Prince.
Elizabeth swings her free hand. Thomas catches her hand. He bends both hands down to Elizabeth’s waist.
Elizabeth wrenches her hands away. She rubs her wrist.
INT. BIG RED’S MANSION - STUDY - NIGHT
Next to the entrance, Big Red smokes a cigar. He puts his fingers into the holes of the body armor.
BIG RED
Forty-seven arrows. Not one arrow hit the damn mule.
Big Red smiles.
In front of the fireplace, Prince.
BIG RED
Bear said if it took that many arrows not to kill a man, he should live.
Like so: X did this. Y did that. Q did something else.
The problem I had understanding these passages came from the disconnect between cause and effect. What Y did wasn't entirely and obviously connected to what X had just done, nor did it seem to cause what Q did next.
There are more variables age, race (three), sex, the sick, FAMILY and death so this approach wouldn't work.
Thank you for being you.
;)