Regimental Breakdown by Roberto Negron - Drama - When a teenager from New York City ships out for 13 weeks of bootcamp at Fort Benning, GA and ends up with a Drill Sergeant, who abuses his power, he starts to regret his decision to enlist in the Army National Guard and decides that he wants out. 108 pages - pdf, format 8)

Regimental Breakdown Notes:

It is obvious you put a lot of work into this script so it’s difficult for me to be brutally honest, but on the other hand there are some glaring deficiencies here that you need to address.

1. Title Page not filled out.  Just blank, with the Final Draft blanks on it.

1.  Beach Channel High School.  This is a small thing, but as I’m reading, at first I think I’m on the beach, then I think I’m in the water (channel), then I think I’m in High School.  Is this a real place you are familiar with?   Not everybody will have that benefit.

James should be all in caps like his friends.

Turn off the more’s and continueds.  They are old fashioned.

I thought it would be interesting if the kid recited the history of Puerto Rico in Spanish.  It wouldn’t even need to be subtitled.  Just the fact that he delivered it with passion would indicate he mastered the material.  

Page 6, Ever line has an exclamation point.  Noticed this a lot later too.

Asshole is one word.

Pg 11, How are the bills crisp if they are in a wad?

I was confused by the whole “planted the money on me” thing.  That seems like a lot of work.  If he doesn’t like the kid why doesn’t he just fire him?  Or did he not plant the money?  The kid stole it and is trying to blame the guy?  Not clear.

Pg 19:  Try this…

Recruiter:  What did you do?
Ruben:  Delivery boy.  It sucked.

Your dialogue seems pretty beefy.  Let the character’s emotional state infuse the words.  This is way too on the nose.

Plus it is a lot more interesting (for everybody) if characters just lie habitually.  Whenever characters tell the absolute truth it is really boring.  You could add a lot of subtext to this scene if Ruben is trying to convince the recruiter that he is a stand-up hardworking guy.  So he lies about his high school and previous work experience.  On the other hand the recruiter should be lying to about how great the Army is.  Bootcamp is a dream, and you’ll never go to Afghanistan.  Blah blah blah.

As Ruben lies you could intercut with flashbacks to his real situation.  This, in fact, would make a much stronger first scene and solve a lot of problems I’ll discuss later.

Pg 22.  You spelled God damn it correctly.  Lots of people get this wrong.

Page 24:  What is the point of watching him go back to get his transcripts?  What is the point of a lot of these scenes?

There are two g’s in faggot.

I’ve heard of coming late and leaving early but this is ridiculous.  The guy is going to bootcamp!  We don’t see him arrive.  We don’t see his first hair cut.  We don’t see the drill seargent yelling.  We don’t see nothing.  In fact, first time we see anything it looks like they’ve been here for weeks already.  Huge ripoff.

I like bootcamp movies.  A lot of people like bootcamp movies.  I was in bootcamp and I have a lot of great stories about it I can use to entertain my kids.  But the main rule of bootcamp movies is that even though your hero is a little bit of a screw-up he is still a pretty decent likable guy.

Your guy is a jerk.  Far better for the other guys to hate the homo but Ruben sticks up for him.  Helps them understand they are wrong about him.  Better for some other sad sack to be sick but the drill sergeant won’t let him go to the doctor.  Ruben sticks up for him too.  Goes to the drill sergeant to plead his case.  

Pg 43.  I think we can get more out of the impressions dramatically speaking.

48-51 More really on the nose dialogue.

I’ve never heard of soldiers in bootcamp being able to go home for the holidays.  They don’t let you leave for anything.  It’s really more like prison.

Pg 57.  If this was a real movie I would have been sitting in the theater for an hour.  He isn’t squad leader yet.  In the logline it says he’ll be squad leader.  When does that happen?  Look, if the logline says it is a movie about a kid becoming squad leader then the kid should be a squad leader well before page 20.  I give you 20 pages, (20 minutes) to GET TO THE POINT.  

I read til 57 and nothing yet.  Had to bail at that point.  Sorry.