Dived into the first 40 of Outside the Wire.

It reads very well, despite the overly familiar tropes it covers.
I'm never bored or confused. But I'm not super invested in the characters.

However, this script does do just about everything reasonably well.
I suspect it's too conventional for a Haggis to consider...
And not gun happy enough to get McG on board!

Regards,
E.D.

Just read his bash of "Looper". A film I very much enjoyed. There are flaws in some of the logic of this film, but I sometimes think we forget to just try and enjoy the movie experience after studying the craft of writing in this format.

I didn't side with his review and, just scanning the 220 plus comments, I see I am not alone. Carson says your character should never have to wait for the fight to come to them? It's boring? That was one of my favorite parts of the film. A little slow down, a little revelation about the characters before the climax (Btw he's talking about when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's young self waits for his old self to come so he can kill him)

I guess three guys sitting on a boat talking about their old battle scars, waiting for a shark to show up, is pretty boring too?

Not a fan of this cat or his blog, but I can see he has pull in the industry.

James

A huge thing for me was getting to see the scripts. I kept hearing what a script is supposed to look like, what the "rules" are, but I didn't have legit spec scripts to look at. Maybe I just didn't know how to find them. But getting several a week has really helped me.

As far as his reviews, I don't always agree, but he does bring up a lot of useful points. And what's cool is he does not seemed much influenced by film theory or conventional wisdom. He just talks plainly about what he thinks works.

Quoted from Electric Dreamer Dived into the first 40 of Outside the Wire.

Is it possible that one of you fine gentleman who have the script would be so kind to send me a copy so I can have a butchers?

It will be much appreciated. Thanks

Quoted from CoopBazinga Is it possible that one of you fine gentleman who have the script would be so kind to send me a copy so I can have a butchers? It will be much appreciated. Thanks

Wish granted.

Regards,
E.D.

Me too, me too, ED.

Quoted from sniper Me too, me too, ED.

The Wishmaster abides!

Regards,
E.D.

If it's no trouble, can anyone wing it over to me, as well? Interested to see the quality of a nicholl's finalist.

Thanks in advance...

email me

leitskev@gmail.com

Done, cheers Kev.

Only requirement: you have to post your thoughts here after reading!

JK, but we'd love to hear what you think.

Today Carson gave The Promised Land, co-written by Matt Damon, an impressive. Opinions seem to be running positive on his blog. I think the film is scheduled to come out soon, and I've heard Damon considers it Oscar material.

I don't get it. At all. Things like this really make me question if I'm barking up the wrong tree in this business.

Unless one has some personal interest in the fracking side of the natural gas industry, this is a character driven story. As such, the characters should either be likable, or interesting. They are overwhelmingly neither here.

Damon's character is established as the unlikely hero who is selfish and shallow, and must transform by the end in order to save the day. For that well established formula to work, the character has to be interesting. And, hey, that's hard to do in a script with no action.

So what they tried to do was make the character clever and witty. But it just comes off as obnoxious.

They establish the character's ambition and need to get ahead, to rise above his less than wealthy roots, but none of this intrigues us enough to want to follow him on his journey.

In the first half of the script, there is limited conflict, in fact nothing at all of interest happens. The story engines are weak, with no mystery, nothing compelling that makes us want to see what happens next.

There is a late twist, which maybe works, but also feels grafted on, like it was not how the writers initially saw the character. Maybe the studio asked for a twist as they were writing. Something feels off.

Then there is the fact this story is about fracking. I remember the 60 Minutes stories, with the burning tap water and all that stuff. I consider maintaining clean water supplies one of our biggest problems, so I was concerned when I saw these things.

But it turned out to be basically a hoax. Fracking has been under development for literally decades, and numerous government agencies have been studying and monitoring it, many no doubt eager to find issues. And they should continue to monitor it, as should the public, but so far it's turned out that the people burning water were frauds and environmentalist huxters.

The communities where these wells have been established are quite pleased with how things have gone. There has been no pollution or contamination, the money has helped, and the country benefits from energy independence and cheaper prices. It's one of the bigger positive stories of the decade, actually. It is now estimated that the US will largely achieve energy independence in many ways within 10 years, and it will be a huge boost to the economy.

Knowing this robs the movie of its premise, which makes an already weak movie even weaker.

Anyone who wants the script, message me.

I skipped out on today's script.
The movie's coming out soon, seen the trailer already...



Eh, I'm not sold.
Feels like they're trying to amp up something into an anti-establishment frenzy.
For some reason these type of pictures seem to do better with chick protags...

Norma Rae. Silkwood. Erin Brockovich. Anyone?

E.D.  

Hey Kev!

Did you snag those 2012 Nicholls finalist scripts before they got yanked down?
If so, I'd love to snag them for you!

Regards,
E.D.

I've glanced at a few, and they seem pretty darn good. But Phil's script was at least as good. He must have been close.

I have the feeling these things are all close. From the posts on Nicholl's website, you needed a score of 84 to qualify for a 3rd read. After the 3rd read, they take the top scores to get down to the quarter finalists.

And there was another post that said, I think, that this was the first time a script had 2 scores in the 90s from the quarter finals judges.

So it seems that all these scripts are bunched with scores in the high 80s. One point might make all the difference in the world.

When I see no difference in quality between Phil's script and the finalists, I know it's that close.

I think the best way is to enter 3 scripts, which is the max, and hope to get lucky. I'm shooting for that this year. Maybe. Too much else to do, so maybe 2 this year.