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Hey Joe! Congratulations on finsihing this in 7 weeks. That's a real accomplishment.
This one was kind of a mixed bag for me. The logline had me really excited. Sadly, it never really delivered. But, as Brian said, I think you're in the ball park of a really good story.
I love the idea of a thriller with an eco terrorist. I just never really got the feeling that Jillian was an eco terrorist. She just seems like a girl being manipulated by her boyfriend and his weirdo German friend.
This does take a little while to get started. I like the beginning, her on thew ay to the meeting, but that takes too long and then nothing really happens for awhile.
This is a personal thing, but I hate when writers write out dialects.
It may just be me, I'm not that bright, but I really have no idea what the terrorist plot is here. They're manufacturing the disease, but also producing the vaccine? And what's the fallout between Ulrich and Tom?
Not real sure about Jesse, who he is, why she falls in love with him, why a recovering alcoholic would keep beer in the fridge. I think he has weird reactions to the things that are happening around him.
WHen Jillian gets back to Tom's, things start to fall apart for me. Would Cobalt really fall for the false seduction attempt? Especially with the bosses girl?
Toms long explanantion of JIllians life seems a bit false to me.
What happens to Emilio needs to be more explicitly linked to the plot.
THe fight between Jillian, Talon, and Ulrich is hard to follow.
I still have no idea what the plot is, and how Jillian thwarts it.
Get's gored by a bull? Really?
SO, here's what I would do with this. I would make Jillian an unwitting pawn in the larger plot beween Ulrich and Tom. Opening scene, her walking out of a lab as it blows up. The amesia comes when she's going to blow up another lab, but Ulrich has it blown up while he's in there, trying to get rid of her. Bring the outbreak in earlier. Jillian figures out what theyre really up to and has to stop it.
Anyway, this is a good start, a nice first draft, and well done for seven weeks. YOu should be proud of what you have here!
For anyone who cares, here's an example of the crib sheet I compile at the beginning of anyone's feature. Whenever I see a name in all caps I highlight, guess at relevance and dump at the top of my notes in a gmail.com compose mail file (gmail autosaves, whereas yahoo does not!). I don't ever get confused by sh!t with this approach. My memory sucks. I know it, so I plan accordingly.
JILLIAN McDONALD, early 20’s hair long, black and wavy, with a shock of peroxide Tom LOCKWOOD, Late 30’s, with thick black hair and executive grey around the sideburns, ELDRICH/Ulrich KRAUSE, 40’s and equally well-dressed and handsome MARCUS ROSS, 60’s, a tall, Congressman African American man JIM “SCARECROW” HARDEE, 75, tall, long, stringy hair and grey stubble, wrinkles on his aged face JESSE THIBIDEAUX, a handsome guy in cargo shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt Detective DAVID LEACH CLANCY FRENCH, early thirties with sculpted hair and a perfect manicure
EMMA, a pretty teenager in a Westshore uniform. MISTER FROST, a small man with wire rimmed glasses Congressman Ross' assistant TALON and COBALT, climb out of the van Talon appears to be Asian, with two dragon tattoos-one on each side of his face. Cobalt is a tower of muscle and pain. He wears a seventies era ‘fro and a horseshoe mustache. PATRICE, late fourties and eternally bored BETHANY, a heavy-set woman in her 30’s, thinks SHE is the money, not Ulrich GALEN PARKS, an armed gaurd DR. NORWOOD, tall and handsome, late fourties with thick grey hair and a wispy beard
DAPHNE, a gorgeous twenty one year old in a slinky red dress Bethany talks with YOUSEF (late 20’s) and JEAN-PAUL, (30’s) and JABARI (30’s) all who appear to have walked straight out of a men’s fashion magazine. A group of young ladies, CHLOE (punky up-do), TRISH (a cute blonde) and APRIL (dazzling redhead) , all twenties and dressed to impress
PDF Page 2 She sighs and takes out a brush from her glovebox. Her hair is long, black and wavy, with a shock of peroxide that seemed like a good idea at the time. I don't mind these things, but many folks have ducks over it. strike that seemed like a good idea at the time. I think we already know Jillian's an inconsiderate b!tch by now.
PDF Pg 3 ELDRICH Marcus Ross will be here any minute and I have no tolerance... TOM Look at the bright side. If that's supposed to be an interruption rather than a suggestive ending replace ellipses to two dashes and I have no tolerance --
PDF Pg 4 Cars are merging left, past the accident to the freedom that awaits, just beyond it. There is barely enough room to the right of the wreck. Once again, you might need a referee call on "to the freedom that awaits, just beyond it."
PDF Pg 5 JILLIAN (O.S.) (Laughing) Sure. V.O. She's not in the room next door, out of sight, speaking.
PDF Pg 6 ULRICH Ross is caught in the same mess that Jillian is...said he’ll be here in a half hour or so. First, have your software find and change all ELDRICHs to ULRICHs. Second, Jillian just spoke with Tom over the phone about the traffic snarl. Ulrich doesn't know what her hold up is because... no one has told him. Just after Tom states "That happens. Everything according to spec?" to Jillian, on pg 4, have Tom put his hand over the phone and state to Ulrich "She's stuck in 275 traffic" as Ulrich looks over the top of his laptop then returns to his work with a grimace of disapproval.
PDF Pg 9 JILLIAN Jillian McIntyre, sir. Pleased to meet you, although... have your software find and change all McIntyrs to McDonalds. Or whichever. (There was an Ulrich Eldrich just a few paragraphs above, as well.)
By page 10 I like all of these characters you've developed.
Pg 13 Steel tables are covered with test tubes, beakers and glass pipes that gurgle and pop and appear to be doing something important. Great for B&W movies. However, modern labs are more likely to have vented hoods and rows of automated assay equipment. http://images.google.com/image.....amp;oq=&gs_rfai=
Pg 14 The set-up of the room is identical to Room #3. Same bed, same machines, but a very different Patient #4. strike but a very different Patient #4.
Pg 18 Tom opens the front left door to Jillian’s desk and removes a .357 Beretta 8000 Cougar and flips off the saftey. Have Tom toy with or toggle (whichever) the safety off and on several times. He's not going to "send her to Vegas" now.
By page 19 I'm not real clear on the subterfuge of Talon and Cobalt with the spool of blue wire and why the receptionist remains clueless. UPDATE, Pg 23: That was some helluva special kind of det cord they used.
Pg 20 INT. OLD MEDICAL BUILDING ROOM 5 - DAY Gotta standardize slugs between that or INT. L&G COVERT MEDICAL - ROOM #4
Pg 22 Same VO instead of OS correction to be made.
Pg 23 Her limp arm draped around his neck, Scarecrow carries her away, into the woods. Mmm. Burger with fries. Juss jokn'.
Pg 28 Change Sunshine shrugs back to Scarecrow.
Pg 28 JESSE Why’d you bring her to me? SCARECROW Sumtimes...late at nigh’, you hear screams...loud, painful screams...comin’ from them buildings... Not that semi-homeless people aren't completely whack, but he didn't answer the question asked. Frankly, I'm wondering the same question myself. Awfully bold of Jesse to start the young lady an IV in his "small house in a very run-down neighborhood."
Pg 29 EXT. LOCKWOOD & DAY BUILDING Gotta standardize all these slugs Same with CLANCY/REPORTER CLANCY
REPORTER CLANCY There was a car left in the parking lot. Any word on the owner? Are they considered a suspect at this point? Is the public at risk? Damn it, David...Give me something! On air reporter wouldn't swear like that in a microphone. Maybe newspaper reporter less concerned with her presentation. Also near the end of the script have the reporter be this same chick.
Pg 31 You can probably call it just plain old C4. It's ubiquitous enough.
Pg 32 DAVID (CONT’D) Any reason to suspect she may be alive in there? At the moment? NO! LOL! Okay okay okay. Replace may be alive with have been.
TOM I don’t know a Jillian McIntosh. We have a lot of homeless that camp in the woods. Might belong to one of them. WTH kinda answer was THAT?
JESSE You have some retrograde amnesia going on...It’ll be like that for a little while. In the meantime, I suggest you get some more rest. Jessetor’s orders. That was a little spot on for lacking any diagnostic facilities or qualifications. How about Jesse "suggest" that it "may be" some retrograde amnesia and that it "might" or go on for a awhile or improve. And... Jesse has zero intentions of seeing that a burnt, brain damaged woman get to a real live medical facility? Odd. Mighty odd. That's okay. In Black Snake Moan I was totally hip with WHY Lazarus chained and kept Rae rather than what d@mn near every other normal person would have done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Snake_Moan_(film) Often I have to remind myself that a lot of these stories are NOT about what WE would do (which more often than not would be boring as dirt for their sanity). But rather, these are the stories of the non-standard DECISIONS that someone ELSE made.
A tall, modern and thoroughly generic skyscraper filled with suits, greed and lies. Love it. Works for me.
Pg 36 JILLIAN It...hurt...the pig!!!! Interesting. I'm genuinely interested in seeing where this goes. Too bad this isn't a SciFi challenge!
Pg 37 It’s a graphical representation of the synthesis of interactions of the PIA 35 vaccine, broken down into it’s molecular structure. A colorful, cleaned-up print-out of that diagram needs to be something she was reviewing and making a stink over back around pg 13 allowing the audience to see she's putting things back together again.
Pg 39 Jillian nods in agreement and puts the chain around her long and supple neck. Stop it. You're givin' me a woody. strike long and supple, leave it at her neck, horn dog.
Pg 40 DESIGNER I told them specifically, Mr. Lockwood. I don’t know what language lavender translates into heather, but evidently... A: replace trailing though ellipses with two dashes to denote a cut off interruption. B: since the designer and valet are un-named you might want to consider de-naming the armed security guard, Galen Parks.
Pg 41 I like the intra-team dissension you've created.
Pg 42 Cobalt takes the phone out of his pocket. It’s a picture of Him and Jill talking outside of Lockwood and Day. Gotta love that movie magic! (PS: shoot first, confirm ID later. Nice.)
Pg 45 Although this Jessetor/patient relationship is absolutely preposterous to me I do think you've done an excellent job making them a cute couple through their conversations.
Pg 46 JESSE That phrase...the way you said it, like you’ve used it a thousand times. See? It’s in there. Either this better have a payoff later or it needs to be inserted back earlier, say in Tom's hotel room to Congressman Ross.
Pg 51 Poor ol' Jess. Unlucky in life. Unlucky in love. Lost his dog, his friend, his girl and now his progress.
Are there dinner parties going on at both Tom & Ulrich's mansions at the same time? Pg 52 Nope. Fix the pg 47 slug.
Pg 55 He’s surprisingly good on his feet for a government tool. Again, I don't mind these things, but many folks have ducks over it.
Pg 56 Jillian strikes a seductive pose. JILLIAN Y’know...I’m a little...hot. Do you mind if I... Seems to be the beginning of a rather less than clever escape attempt.
Pg 57 JILLIAN (CONT’D) Very cool... (without sincerity) Indeed. I know, I know, I know... You gotta show the girl getting her memory back somehow, it's just a bit too much movie magic for me. Since she's going to get stopped by Tom in a moment anyway, just have her snatch the keys off a wall peg right next to the car.
Pg 58 KELDON TROY < coughs > Yeah. That...
Pg 62 He opens the top drawer, pulls out a large caliber handgun and puts in his belt. You do an excellent job of making the twists and turns increasingly complex. I don't think this "return of Jillian" during the banquet is working together at the same time. Separately they are fine. I'm just not seeing how she wouldn't comment on the big to-do outside as she blithely proposes to take a shower. However, in the subsequent scene with Tom in his bathrobe and the staggering Bethany I'm guessing the dinner party has concluded and the guests have largely gone. If so, some clarification needs doing. Make it more "the banquet wraps up" before "Tom goes to the garage".
Frustrated, he slams a book shut and rubs his eyes. Is dead Scarecrow still on the kitchen table?
Ulrich, shirtless but with pants, enters from another room, followed by Chef, also somewhat undressed. LOL! Alright Ulrich and Chef! Glad someone's gettin' some action!
Pg 64 Like Jerry Rice, she leans over and grabs it before it shatters on the ground. Again, I don't mind...
She opens the window and climbs outside. No reason given why she wouldn't just run down the hall and steps then out the front door. Have voices of angry men, including Tom, approaching up the stairs.
Pg 65 She peeks into the window...He has the alternative formula up on the screen... A: Wow! Jill has some kind of movie magic peepers! B: The "alternative formula" will need a set up earlier. Again, likely back on pg 13. Okey doke. I see why she's outside. This all ought to be reworked. It's teetering on preposterous.
Pg 67 TOM Perhaps she was a genetic anomoly. We suspected that during the tests. D@MN! I hate it when that happens! LOL!
Pg 68 She wears one of his shirts and panties, he sits in boxers and a ribbed t-shirt. ONE OF HIS SHIRTS AND PANTIES?! Sh!t, Jess... LOL! Fix that, pleeeease?
Pg 69 The original drawing is now frayed and wrinkled. WTH has Jess been doing with it since he took it off the fridge?
Pg 73 This is reading a lot like a screen adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel, which is fine. It's meant to be a well intentioned observation. There are certainly less credentialed writers to be compared to!
Pg 75 Kimmy, a piece of yellow paper in her hands, runs over and gives Jillian a hug. What's the yellow paper?
Pg 76 DAVID We have evidence that you were at Lockwood and Day shortly before it exploded... Make sure to go back and clean up all the name changes.
Pg 78 Cobalt clicks a gun and pushes it in the back of her head. < groan and shakes head > I hate it when people do that. Or, rather, I hate it when the audience demands that the director demand that. Ugh. Or Argh!
Pg 79 HOBO Why’dja do it, sol’ja? Why’dja go an do tha’, sol’ ja? F#cking hillarious! Love it!
Pg 80 It is something they are willing to kill for. I'd specify L&G rather than the nebulous "they".
Pg 84 ULRICH (CONT’D) I spent over four point five million dollars,... Chump change. Make it at least fourteen if not forty mil.
Pg 86 JESSE Where? The mansion of death? Needs prior conversation in kitchen or patio.
SERIES OF SHOTS - JESSE AND JILLIAN WORK ON THE FORMULA God I love an afternoon of movie magic!
Pg 88 ... believed to have been carried here as a result of illegal immagration... Cursed immigrants!
Pg 90 Whoosh. Those Shurikens come in handy. Again, I don't care... blah blah blah...
Pg 93 JILLIAN Did you know that he had a daughter in Chicago? Every month he sent her almost every penny he earned... A wee too much puppy sugar. Just make it "a family".
Pg 95 Only to be run through by the horns of the bull. Those are some lucky cows to have a real bull like that around.
JESSE What about Ross? He’s going to come out of this smelling like a god damn rose... Need to establish how they know about the Ross connections.
Fantastic
I like your story a lot. It's perhaps my favorite of this 7WC. I really dig the style in which your write. The characters are all stock and fine, plenty of varied settings and scenery, nice action and gun play. A lot of SS readers are having trouble across multiple 7WC entries for having "too many characters" or "I'm confused by all the characters" I don't know whatsupwidat. I keep a crib sheet and do just fine with everyone you have.
You'll need to establish why Bethany "deserves" to be essentially murdered for whatever wicked things she's done in the past. Make the irony of her funding her own demise more apparent. I'd somehow expand the scope of the red meat eating issue beyond the feel of just Miami or Florida ranchers. Give it a global economic cut to it. Looks like if you just clean up a surprising number of name and slug guffaws, and sew-up some story holes you'll have this one bagged and ready to shop around on the market. I'd be excited.
Could easily be shot as a PG-13. Definitely big budget action schlock cheezeburger (and I mean that in a respectful, nice way) fare. I tire of everyone expecting every screenplay to be GDeffin' Kubrick. ARGGGH! Definitely an audience for this. (You and I are shooting for the same kind of directors and audience with our 7WC entries, BTW!) Big studio $30 - $60M budget.
Tom kept reminding me of Lambert Wilson's character The Merovingian in Matrix Revolutions.
Jillian could be almost any 'pretty young thang' the studio wants to push. Barack Obama kept leaping to mind as Congressman Ross. HA! Scarecrow - LOL!
Seems like this is going to be a good story, I think the more details you put in about why the disease was manufactured and how it works, the better. Maybe have more people in haz mat suits, more signs of panic in the streets.
Jillian, Jesse, Tom and Scarecrow are all distinct characters and when developed more will make the action even more interesting.
Jillian's change of heart about eco terrorism maybe could be made more convincing -- she didn't seem so very different to me before and after she loses her memory.
Lots of nice creepy touches, like the revulsion when Bethany tries to share a piece of meat.
Oh, and I'd lose the Fireman Sam name. "Fireman Sam" is a hugely popular children's TV show in the UK, even through the last episode ended many years ago. I had the toys... everything, when I was a kid. Everytime you mentioned his name, all I could picture was the cartoon character.
I've never heard of him. I'm familiar with Bob the Builder, though.
That being said, I do agree with the majority of comments that seem to echo that this draft really wasn't very good, was little more than a series of thoughts cobbled together with little more than duct tape (God's adhesive) and the inkling that somewhere in this mound of doo there is story lurking in there.
I do agree also that the main thrust of the eco-terrorism needs to be first and foremost. It takes too long to get to that point.
The fact that Jillian is a mastermind behind this plot (Manufacture a meat borne disease; convince an investor that he will make billions selling the vaccine to counteract it; take his money and give him a vaccine that doesn't work- until Jillian has a change of heart and decides to tweak the data to make the vaccine viable after all.) It is pretty confusing, no doubt; however it has precedent in the whole bird flu/mad cow scare a few years back. Need to simplify it, though.
Lots of screwups with Tom/Troy, Ulrich/Keldon, and the locations. The dinner party was at Tom's Mansion. Ulrich and Beth were guests who were staying there for the meeting with Congressman Ross. It lasted long into the night and was just wrapping up when Jillian arrives.
Wanted Tom to be killed by a bull as irony...I'll try to rework it so that it's not stupid. It's also the point that Jillian escapes death from the bomb because she wants to release the rabbit, her "STC" moment.
It's meant to be a popcorn, summer at the multi-plex kind of movie, filled with a monster budget, hot chix and cool guys with muscle cars.
I didn't think that Ulrich was all that weird.
Overdid it with the cookout names. Had some of those characters stick around, but those scenes got cut.
The description of the food on the grill was to give an indication that carnivores were a distinct minority in the group.
Scarecrow was based on a guy I used to work with. Ray's photo could be the "why'd ya do it sol' ja" guy.
Definitely time to walk away from this project for a while, but I do greatly appreciate the input and thought given to the comments, of which all will be considered when the muse strikes again.
Thanks, ya'll!
Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Dove Chocolate Wrapper
Hey T Joe! Congrats on completing the 7WC! I don't think I would be able to pull it off.
That being said, I got real lost by page 34 and dropped out. The opening sequence with the traffic jam and congressman is GREAT! I'm in the moment and it seems like we're going for a real ride here. After that I felt the story went way out of focus. All the patient numbers and exploitation movie henchmen and doctors galore. The Village People reference did may me giggle, guilty as charged! I lost patience with the random stats and clipboards and techspeak. Introducing amnesia at the beginning of act two felt strange to me. Your characters have some quirks for sure, but they don't seem to go anywhere. Lots of hallway walking and window peaking and stat reading but.... I haven't learned a thing about your characters after page ten.
I think there is a good story here, its just buried under buckets of exposition. Thanks so much for the read and good luck in the future!
Regards, E.D.
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