Webshow: Worst Query Submission Ever

A fairly popular question when people find out what I do for a living is "What's the worst script you ever read?"  Honestly, after a decade in L.A., the vast majority of scripts I've read have faded far from memory.  There are the ridiculously awful ones that are impossible to erase, though.  This is the story of perhaps the most memorably awful of those.

The Long, Troubled Future History of Back to the Future Part IV

November 12, 1955 - a seminal date for film fans, as that's the date of the famous Hill Valley lightning storm in Back to the Future.  It's the night that Marty McFly invents rock-and-roll at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance after getting his parents together and before using the Delorean to go back home to 1985.

It's also the date that Old Biff returns to when he delivers a sports almanac from the future to his younger self, and act that is responsible for an alternate 1985 that Marty and Doc have to undo in Back to the Future Part II.

So to celebrate that monumental day, I've written a piece over at Film School Rejects called "The Long, Troubled Future History of Back to the Future Part IV."  Yes, it's a look at the production history of the future sequel, 2015's most anticipated tentpole - Back to the Future Part IV.

Also, I neglected to plug this last week, but I had another piece up there recently called "Must There Be a Wonder Woman Movie?"

Check out Eric Heisserer's "150 Screenwriting Challenges" on Amazon Kindle

Feeling like you need to flex those creative muscles a bit to get them in shape for your next script?  Friend of the blog Eric Heisserer has just released a Kindle book called "150 Screenwriting Challenges."  You might remember Eric as the screenwriter of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot, FINAL DESTINATION 5 and THE THING reboot.  He also penned one of the most popular posts on my blog - an inside look at the path a screenplay takes through the development process.

These challenges began life as Twitter exercises Eric devised to sharpen writing skills.  A sample assignment:

Take a talky scene of yours and rewrite it so that no character speaks more than ten words total. If you want, you can instead borrow a talky scene from a movie or TV series. The point is to discover the bare essentials that must be said.

And then this one:

Write a monologue by a prophet whose prediction of a major event didn't come true. This is the "day after" speech.   How characters deal with shame, guilt, and betrayal through their own words is a crucial key to knowing how they will speak on more mundane topics. Are they confessional? Are they snide and vindictive, in search of a scapegoat? Are they in denial?

Eric's come up with a variety assignments that end up being a unique way to explore many of the fundamentals of screenwriting.  A lot of them actually remind me of some assignments from my screenwriting classes.

As of the time I'm writing this (10:45pm PST), 150 Screenwriting Challenges is listed as the #1 Best Seller in Screenwriting on Amazon, besting even Save the Cat!

It's only $4.99 so pick it up if you get a chance.

J.J. Patrow and Michael Palascak's "Interrogation" on Funny or Die

Longtime readers of the blog might remember the excellent guest post "The Same Old Three Acts" from J.J. Patrow where he essentially proved that all screenwriting gurus are basically saying the same thing in different words.  Well, Patrow recently directed a short called "Interrogation" which just went live on Funny Or Die.  The short was written by Michael Palascak, and I'd love for you to have a look at it.

It's only a minute long, so especially if you enjoyed Patrow's guest post, I'm sure he'd appreciate it if you check it out.

Interrogation - watch more funny videos

12 YEARS A SLAVE is not just an important film, but a necessary one

I don't know if I've ever seen a film deal with slavery in the way that 12 YEARS A SLAVE does, and that's a good thing.  The film is based on the 1853 autobiography of the same name by Solomon Northrup, a free black man from New York who in 1841 is abducted and sold into slavery.  Here Solomon is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose expressive eyes are this film's secret weapon.  Ejiofor establishes an immediate connection with the audience.  We feel his pain in every scene - even when he doesn't speak.  Ejiofor is probably a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination and after seeing this, he might have even displaced my previous front-runner, Tom Hanks for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS.

12 YEARS is an unsettling film because of how it's the rare film about slavery that feels first-person from the perspective of the oppressed.  Usually, films set in the Civil War manage to center on a white protagonist who is of course, on the side of the righteous.  Even when evil white slavers abound, those films manage at least one prominent progressive thinker.  There's always a white man there fighting for what's right, metaphorically nodding his head at the antagonists and going, "These hillbilly assholes, amiright?"

We get no such relief in this film. The character we identify with is not some crusader who maintains a safe distance from the ugliness. Slavery is an evil, to be sure, but we're usually kept from the worst of it. John Ridley's screenplay and Steve McQueen's direction unfortunately don't afford us that separation.  The film is told exclusively from Northrup's perspective.  When he's given his first beating - the raw, brutal introduction to the fact that his life as a free man is over - we experience it almost as much as he does.

It's the sort of moment that makes one realize just how easy it is to have your own liberties taken from you.  It's impossible to watch that scene and not put yourself in Northrup's shoes.  The man beating him won't stop until Northrup ceases protesting that he's a free man.  All he has to do to make it stop is admit he's a slave.  In an action movie, our tough-guy hero would refuse to break, preferring death to debasing himself before his foe.  But here, where every lash makes us wince in empathy, we understand why Northrup realizes it's futile to fight, even as we understand we'd have given in ourselves.

The film chillingly captures how quickly a life in bondage meant keeping one's head down, looking out for oneself, and not rocking the boat, even if it means turning a blind eye to the suffering of a fellow slave.  Early on, Northrup is put on a boat bound for the south with several other slaves who have been wrongly kidnapped.  At first, it appears three of these men might work together, realizing their mutual plight.  However one of those slaves doesn't even make it to port alive.  The other is reclaimed by his legal master almost as soon as they dock.  Northrup calls after him as he rushes away, desperately hoping that the slave will tell his master that one of the other shackled men is a freeman.  But it's futile, the slave's know they have no rights and so they have no inclination to stick out their necks for each other.

This scene is echoed throughout the film, first when a female slave - hysterical after being separated from her children - is led away into the woods by two of the slave overseers. By then, we know that a best case scenario for her fate there is pretty unpleasant.  Northrup watches.. and does nothing. He continues going about his work. This is life on the plantation.  If a slave wants to survive, he doesn't cause trouble for himself.  It's an unconventional move for a film like this. It's the rare movie with the guts to show its hero standing by idly while a woman is dragged off to be beaten, raped and murdered.

This underlines another conceit of the film. Because we remain wedded to Northrup's experience throughout the film, we're not grated the respite of visiting life outside the plantation. There are no scenes of honorable men working to outlaw slavery. There are no scenes of Northrup's family trying to find it.  In short - there is nothing that allows the audience hope that we will see a conclusion to this living nightmare.

In a movie like TAKEN, though we might understand it's a horrible fate for the teenage daughter to be sold into sexual slavery.  As much as that might be the catalyst for the plot there, I don't know if the audience ever feels for the character.  Indeed, the threat of sexual slavery is played like an abstract concept in TAKEN. It doesn't feel as unflinchingly visceral as Northrup's enslavement here does.

There is no escapism here.  This is no fantasy.  Last Oscar season I praised DJANGO UNCHAINED for providing a cathartic revenge fantasy against slavers and those who collaborated with them.  This season I'm left to praise 12 YEARS A SLAVE for the opposite reason.  We don't get to see the slave owners beaten and humiliated.  There is no retribution against those who have gleefully dehumanized those they see as their "property." We feel every ounce of futility in the situation.  In the rare moments when Northrup shows some defiance, our first impulse isn't to cheer, but to be concerned that he's putting himself at risk.

Indeed, the time comes when he does cross some of the slave overseers and they promptly lynch him. Though his attackers are chased off before he's fully strung up, the noose is pulled tight enough that Northrup must stand on his toes to get any slack.  In an agonizing unbroken shot, we see him struggle to maintain his footing while the many other slaves continue to go about their business nearby.  They willfully ignore his plight, for making trouble would only land them in the same predicament.

The film starts off being a study in how slave masters dehumanize their "property" and in this scene, it's fully demonstrated how effective that is. The slaves come to even see each other as unworthy of help or human decency. There is no empathy for him, and as we watch in horror, we remember how earlier, Northrup himself turned a blind eye to similar suffering.

I couldn't help but think that the hypothetical "studio version" of this concept would have Northrup as a man of great resolve who never breaks, always does the right thing, and who spends the movie actively planning how to escape.  After all, cinematic narrative demands an active protagonist, doesn't it? There needs to be change in the character, a goal he's actively working for. Isn't that what we are lead to believe.  Think of this version as "The Shawshank Redemption of slavery."

But that's not what we get at all. Northrup breaks.  He surrenders to his circumstances because to do otherwise would provoke his death.  It's a critical storytelling decision that that really drives home the enormity of the living hell of being a slave.  McQueen wields that facet of the film with great care. If you don't walk out of this film moved by Northrup's experience, you might not have soul.

It would be simplistic to say this makes the film an extended exercise in the message "slavery is bad."  I imagined some hardened cynics might claim the script isn't more profound than that, and it is here where I would counter that a film is "about" more than it is about.  Years ago, I was quite critical of Crash, which for me, did amount to little more than a pretentious expression of the idea "Racism is everywhere and it's bad."  The film was about as unsubtle as a jackhammer wielded by Ace Ventura.  Every character seemed on the verge of breaking out into "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from Avenue Q.

What keeps 12 YEARS A SLAVE from feeling equally heavy-handed is how personal it is. Crash proceeded from the extremely misguided notion that the only way to explore its theme was to show bigotry from all sides.  The main cast included over a dozen characters in interlocking stories, all united by the theme of race.  When that many characters share screentime, no one gets explored in depth, and thus everyone got reduced to an archetype (or stereotype if you're feeling ungenerous.)  There was less viewer empathy because the narrative kept switching gears like a web-surfer falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

12 YEARS A SLAVE is as deeply personal as any film I've seen this year.  GRAVITY had the IMAX presentation and the 3D cinematography to draw the audience into the experience emotionally.  This film accomplishes the same feat largely on the back of Chiwetel Ejiofor's performance.  In a world where school textbooks are white-washing the history of slavery, 12 YEARS A SLAVE is not just an important film, but a necessary one.

Five questions with Cassian Elwes about the Black List Fellowship

Continuing from yesterday's post, Cassian Elwes was nice enough to answer a few questions about the Fellowship he's created with the Black List.


My first question: Why the Black List? What makes Franklin Leonard's site an attractive partner for a producer who has four films being circled by Oscar buzz this year alone?

I love what the Black List is about - identifying material that should be made into films and hasn't yet for one reason or another. In a way it energizes the people involved to actually get their movie made and also helps highlight their project to people looking for things to finance. We're trying to take that notion and put brand new writers in front of 'Hollywood. ' I know there are new voices out there looking for as way in and the Black List is a proven entry point

The Black List is going to send you ten scripts. I'm sure every writer wants to know "Will Cassian Elwes read my script in its entirety?" Do these go straight to you, or will you have one of your development people do coverage on them as a way of culling that ten down to a smaller number first?

I'm absolutely going to read the 10 scripts myself. I love finding great scripts. Anyone who knows me pretty well knows when I find something I like I'm relentless in seeing it get made. I'm not committing to finance the movie of the winner but chances are good that I will.

How much direction does the Black List team have as to what sort of material you might be looking for? Obviously the first prerequisite is that the writing be strong, but is it worth submitting if the writer doesn't have a period piece or a prestige adult drama? Is there a scenario where you might end up attached to, say, a high-concept script like THE TRUMAN SHOW?

It really doesn't matter what the script is about or what genre it is. A good script is a good script if I can see the movie in my head and it's a movie I want to see. If you look through my work I've done almost every kind of movie there is.

The purpose of the Fellowship is, in part, to allow a young writer to be mentored by you. Could this mean you might use the winning submission as a writing sample and attempt to develop a new property with the writer, or is your intent to select a script that you can guide and develop?

I'm looking for scripts that could be great independent movies. I want material that directors and stars would jump at so no, it's not about development, it's about production

What exactly does mentoring from Cassian Elwes entail? Is it analogous to a writer working with you on development of a script, or do you foresee more frequent, hands-on interaction with the writer?

I'm really hoping that I get to mentor someone who I can help guide to a long career and that I can have a long term professional relationship with. I know I have a lot to offer in terms of knowledge, relationships and access to financing. I envision this fellowship generating great movies which is what I'm all about.

Franklin Leonard answers some questions about the Black List's Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellowship

You might have seen last week's announcement that The Black List has teamed up with producer Cassian Elwes (LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, ALL IS LOST, AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS) to create the Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellowship, wherein one unrepresented writer with lifetime earnings not exceeding $5,000 with a screenplay of indie sensibility will receive an all-expense paid trip to the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and mentorship from Elwes himself.

Writers with scripts on the Black List or who have had scripts on the site since their October 15, 2012 launch will be able to opt into consideration for the opportunity until December 1, at which time a short list of writers will be shared with Elwes who will decide on one writer to make the trip. The Black List and Elwes plan to award the fellowship annually.

Black List creator Franklin Leonard was generous enough to take some time to answer a few questions I felt some writers considering the fellowship might be curious about.

How did Cassian Elwes come to be involved with The Black List?

Cassian came to us and said that he wanted to do something to support writers from outside the system who are writing scripts with an independent spirit, folks who were writing for the love of storytelling and not in the hopes of making a massive spec sale to the studio. We were honored by the outreach, and it was easy to find a way to do something from there.

So tell me about what I have to do to get Cassian Elwes to pick my script. Do I have to pay to host my script from now until the deadline? Do I need to buy an evaluation from you in order to qualify?  If so, do I stand a chance if my evaluation comes back lower than an 8?

You have to do two things: 1. Have your script hosted on the site for at least one week before 12/1. 2. Opt into consideration for the opportunity via the site. You don't have to buy an evaluation in order to qualify, but we will be basing our decisions on the short list on the data that we have about the scripts and buying an evaluation is the easiest way to create some data and catalyze others viewing, downloading, and rating a script.

I want to mention to that all of the data we've gathered to date will matter. So if you had a script hosted on the site in October and rehost it before the deadline, all of the evaluations, ratings, downloads, etc. that that script has ever accrued will still be incorporated into our decisions.

Each evaluation (and each rating for that matter) is just one person's opinion on a script. One low rating (or one below 8 rating) doesn't make it impossible to get selected, but obviously a script with multiple high scores is more likely to be selected than one with multiple low scores.

We're told "a short list of writers will be shared with Elwes" on December 1. Has Mr. Elwes given you any direction as to what sorts of scripts he's most interested in?  Do I stand a better chance of making the list if my script reads like a prestige drama like THE BUTLER or ALL IS LOST?

We'll be sharing 10 scripts with Cassian that are highly evaluated and bear the marks of an independent spirit based on their genre, logline, and likely budget specs.

I'll let Cassian handle the question about how he'll be making his decision from the 10 script short list.

Are there any prizes for the runner-ups?  Will the rest of the short list be publicized as a way of making them known to the screenwriting community?

TBD, but in all probability, we will share the short list after the Fellow has been selected. It's also important that people don't think of this as a contest or a prize. The Black List is an ongoing platform, and Cassian is essentially identifying an individual on that platform for a fellowship. It will be conducted in an ongoing way. This is just the first year.

What if the winning script is written by a writing team? Will both their trips and expenses be covered?

Expenses will be covered up to $5K. If it's a writing team, we'll do our best to make arrangements.

And while I've got you, I'm sure my readers would love to hear any figures you have on the Black List's first year of operation.  For instance, how many writers got representation as a result of putting their work on the site, at least that you know of?

We know of between 40 and 50 signings at major agencies and management companies through our first year. About two dozens sales and options. One of those from Ireland and another two from Sweden. Richard Cordiner has a two script blind deal at Warner Bros. Pictures, and there's one produced movie, NIGHTINGALE, starring David Oyelowo.

Have submission levels remained rather steady over the course of the year?  Has the participation met your expectations for the first year of activity?

With the exception of the inevitable initial burst of submissions during the first month, submissions have been climbing steadily since we launched.  As for expectations, if you had told me that we'd have more scripts submitted in our first year than any screenwriting competition has ever reported in a single year (including the Nicholl) I would have hoped you were right and thought you were crazy.

That's what happened though.

Another quick thing, the launch of episodic content (TV, webseries) is imminent. Definitely by the end of the month.

Come back tomorrow for Cassian Elwes himself answering questions and giving a little more detail about his hopes for the fellowship!