HOLLYWOODSCRIPT.COM NEWSLETTER
Welcome to the latest edition of the Hollywoodscript.com Newsletter, which is published by script consultants Craig Kellem, Judy Kellem
(http://www.hollywoodscript.com)
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OUR CONTEST CONTINUES TO ROCK!
OUR LAST CONTEST WINNER, MICHAEL AMATO (“AFTER MIDNIGHT”) HAS BROKEN OUR RECORD FOR REQUESTS FROM HOLLYWOOD TO READ HIS WORTHY SCRIPT. TO DATE HE’S HAD AN AMAZING 34!! SEE BELOW FOR HIS GENEROUS TESTIMONIAL.
Dear Craig,
Winning the HollywoodScript.com Screenwriting Award is the best thing that ever happened to my writing career! Within 2 days of the announcement of my award in your excellent newsletter (that goes to agents, managers and producers), I received over two dozen requests for my script. And once the Scriptblaster part of the award was cashed in, I received another dozen requests. Although it has only been a few short weeks, I am already talking to two different production houses about a possible script sale!
HollywoodScript.com can't write my script for me, but it can put it in front of hundreds of quality agents, producers and managers. And HollywoodScript.com's promotion and coverage of my script gave me the credibility to make them sit up and take notice.
Thanks again!
Sincerely,
Mike Amato
JUST IN FROM MICHAEL-
BTW, In addition to the other leads, you can add that I got another 14 leads from the INKTIP announcement of my award through your contest! I am now speaking to a major company (voted one of the 5 best management companies for new writers in 2003 by Script Magazine) and two other companies who have read the script and are interested. My win at HollywoodScript has netted me almost FIFTY leads so far!
Best Regards,
Mike
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CHECK OUT THE COVERAGE!!
We thought that you might want to see what Michael’s coverage looked like (which was distributed to a large group of distinguished industry honchos). We thank Michael for allowing us to use this in our newsletter.
HOLLYWOODSCRIPT.COM CONTEST WINNER
Date: 1/13 /04
Title: "After Midnight"
Screenplay by: Michael Amato
Submitted by: Michael Amato
Format: SP
Pages: 90
Time: Present
Locale: Massachusetts
Genre: Drama/Mystery
Analyst: Hollywoodscript.com
PREMISE:
Michael Testa awakens in a park after being struck by lightning, with no memory of his past, and no evidence of his existence in the present. He hires a private investigator to uncover his identity and befriends the woman who found him, only to discover that the terrible visions that haunt him bear an uncanny resemblance to the unsolved murder of her husband four years earlier.
Concept Excellent
Characterization Very good
Dialogue Very good
Story Line Excellent
Setting/Prod. Values Very good
Freshness of Story Excellent
QUICK COMMENT- A gripping story that evokes comparisons to The Sixth Sense and Memento.
SYNOPSIS-
Michael Testa awakens in a park one night after being struck by lightning. He finds that he has no memory of his past, and no evidence of his existence in the present, except for an invalid driver's license found on his person. The only clues to his identity seem to come from his recurring dream - a collection of fragmented images that he cannot decipher: a mysterious clock that moves slowly between 12:01 and 12:02; a bronze statue of a ballerina, her arms stretched above her; a dark-haired woman in a black dress who looks up to him with tears in her eyes; a brutally beaten man bound to a chair, a towel over his head; a gun pressed to his temple, the trigger pulled.
But none of these images help to jog Testa's memory.
Discharged from the hospital, he goes to 15 Nolan Lane, the address listed on his license. He does not recognize the house as his, but in the living room, he finds something he does remember. A wall clock stuck between 12:01 and 12:02. The same one as in his dreams.
Soon, other images from the dreams seep into his reality. The bronze statue shows up repeatedly, first in his car, and later in his home. And the dark-haired woman turns out to be the same person who discovered his body in the park - a woman he has never met before, but whose name he somehow knows is Sarah Tate.
As his visions become more terrible and his health inexplicably begins to deteriorate, Testa hires Private Investigator Tony Messina to find out who he is. And while Messina searches in vain for clues to his existence, Testa befriends the beautiful but embittered Sarah, a woman with her own haunted past - her young son witnessed her husband David's brutal murder four years earlier.
Sarah recounts how David was killed after stumbling upon a burglary in the Tate's home. He was tied up, beaten and then shot execution-style, in a manner eerily similar to the murder in Testa's dreams. Her son Sam was found the next morning curled up next to his lifeless body, his voice silenced from the trauma of witnessing the crime. And despite vowing to catch the murderer, the investigating detective died before he could fulfill the promise.
David's killer was never apprehended.
Sarah is wary of Testa at first, but they eventually become uneasy allies, perhaps in part because they are both damaged goods. And when she experiences the same dream as Testa, she realizes that they may be connected somehow.
But Sarah has more pressing problems. For reasons unknown to her, she is being stalked and tormented by a vicious criminal named Kyle Rhodes. Testa attempts to help her, but finds that Rhodes is more than a match for him. He ambushes Testa and threatens to kill Sarah and her son if he goes to the police. It is at that moment that Testa has another vision - one with Rhodes' standing over the bound and bloodied man in his dream, beating him senseless just before he is murdered.
Meanwhile, Detective Messina runs into one dead end after another in his efforts to uncover Testa's true identity. There is no record of his license at the DMV, no valid credit cards, and no bank accounts to indicate that he even exists. And when he discovers that the house at 15 Nolan Lane does not even belong to Testa, Messina threatens to go to the police. But Testa convinces him to stay on the case.
When Sarah tells Testa that her husband had planned to give her a bronze statue of a dancer as an anniversary gift the night he died, he becomes convinced that she holds the key to his past. Moreover, he becomes convinced that he is there to protect her and her son somehow from Rhodes. He enlists the assistance of Messina to help catch him.
It is shortly thereafter, during another of his dreams, that Testa sees Rhodes hiding on Sarah's front porch. He calls her and, sure enough, Kyle is there, attempting to enter the house. His warning comes just in time to save Sarah's life, but when Rhodes escapes the police, they turn their attention to Michael Testa, the mysterious man with no memory.
Rhodes ultimately turns the tables and captures the weakened Testa in the house at 15 Nolan Lane, intent on killing him, when Messina arrives, seemingly in the nick of time. It is there, in that house, that Testa discovers his true identity, and his connection to Sarah Tate. It is there that he discovers the true identity of Detective Messina, and of Rhodes himself. It is there that he discovers the significance of the bronze statue and the identity of the bloodied man in his dreams. And it is there in the living room, as the clock strikes 12:02, that he discovers the horrible truth about what happened after midnight.
COMMENTS:
This script grabs your attention from the very start and doesn't let go. It reads like a barreling freight train. Nothing is extraneous or wasted. Every words counts. You're dying to know who's who and what's what and you have to keep turning those pages to find out.
The characters are richly drawn, from the enigmatic Michael Testa, to the emotionally-scarred, yet heroic, Sarah Tate. And in Kyle Rhodes, the writer has created a formidable antagonist.
The story keeps the reader guessing throughout, as each layer of the plot is revealed. Every item, character, and event has some relevance to the final outcome - the fun is in guessing how.
But in the spirit of The Sixth Sense, this is not just a typical whodunit. Through use of compelling dialog and vivid imagery, the writer connects us to the fate of the characters, forcing us to see the world as they see it. We care for Testa, even pity him, as he struggles to learn his true identity. We root for Sarah to overcome the tragedy that haunts her and pull together the shattered fragments of her life. And we hope that, in the end, they can heal each other.
In the tradition of other notable nail-biters the final act truly kicks butt.
AFTER MIDNIGHT comes from the award-winning screenwriter Mike Amato. In addition to winning First Prize at HollywoodScript.com, an earlier version of the script won for Best Story at the Rewind International Film Festival. Mr. Amato also recently won the Grand Prize at the New England Screenwriting Competition for another of his scripts, A House Divided.
To contact the writer by email:
mlamato@comcast.net
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CONGRATS TO OUR LATEST WINNER TORONTO’S, MATT GRAVER FOR “NO MONEY DOWN” (a Works in Progress client).” HIS SCRIPT IS WONDERFUL. It’s a Full Montyesque indie flick that takes us deep into the wild urban sub-culture of 'film security involving a motley crew of street punks as they do everything from barefaced lying to homeowners to obtain coveted shooting permits to hustling fat guys to play "tanned hard-bodies" while filming "surf" movies on the icy shores of Lake Ontario. What makes it grand is its concurrent sense of reality and heart. You can really appreciate what it must be like being on the periphery of money, power and prestige, yet so unnoticed, unappreciated and under acknowledged.
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PLEASE HELP SOLVE A MYSTERY--someone wrote to me recently with deep knowledge about some military commercials that were produced in the early days of SNL using the SNL gang. (I was with the show at that time and was involved in this odd venture). Anyway, I lost the email and now need the info as there will be a SNL retrospective on NBC in the fall and they’re trying to locate the guy who put them together. The commercials can’t be found anywhere and they’d be a hoot for this production. Any info would be most appreciated!!
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ADAPTATIONS AS WRITING INSTRUCTION
By JUDY KELLEM
Two truisms:
Most writers have great difficulty structuring their material, deciding what to include and exclude, knowing how to cinematically dramatize the big themes, feelings, nuances and subtext they long to communicate.
Most people avoid seeing film adaptations of their favorite books for fear that Hollywood's going to destroy what was --in prose --a true work of art.
Translating a novel to screenplay is an ominous task as many of you know and more often than not it seems the process of compressing hundreds of pages of deeply complex and textured content into pure dialogue in three acts is too tall an order.
Most of the time I'd agree.
But sometimes it’s not. And making a study of those exemplary films is a great way to improve one's own craft!
I recently rented "The Hours" (originally a novel by Michael Cunningham..one of my favorites), which though it had its problems, was immensely impressive in this respect. There is nothing simple about Cunningham's book. His characters are deeply dimensional, the structure jumps time zones and points of view, the themes are myriad and colossal in content. How do you squeeze that into ninety minutes of scene by scene dialogue and direction without reducing the content from Yorkshire heavy cream to deli skim milk?
The answer in this case was it’s possible. Stark, poignant dialogue that held volumes of subtext in just a few lines. Layered scene direction, which allowed for the film to self-reference and not only build heavy moods and tones, but capture the timeless, existential feel of the book. Careful use of cinematography and the power in an image ? the old, "a picture speaks a thousand words". These were the filmmaker's efforts and it worked.
What for the novelist required chapters of interiors, character description, poetry in prose and slowly detailed plot development over hundreds of pages, the film maker brought to the frame, the simple spoken word, the glance here and silent caress there. It is impossible to escape the derivative nature of movies from books, but the work here reflected how a film can capture the nuances and texture of a serious work of literature.
Seeing this left me with the desire to remind or suggest therefore the exercise to improve your own writing:
Find a couple books that YOU LOVED and have been adapted. Do or don't you like the movie version?
Write down:
What didn't work? And what did?
What did they omit that should have been included in the screenplay?
What did they include that was to your mind, superfluous?
How did the film version handle key moments in the book that touched you deeply? Was it again moving (this time to WATCH rather than READ)?
How did the movie render the characters? Was it accurate? Not accurate? Why?
How did the film handle developing the themes that made you love the book? Did the movie gloss over certain notions that in your opinion drove the pages of the novel?
Tear the film apart, understand how it was rendered from those beloved pages of the novel, and then begin to look at how YOU would have done it had YOU been paid six digits to do the adaptation J.
This exercise will force you to understand the components of screenplay writing and will give you insights that you can then bring to your own desk. For when you already know and love a fully imagined story, characters, other world and have formed ideas about HOW this fiction can work (i.e. the book version), then the example of how someone else has
brought it to screenplay format (the movie) offers a controlled arena for you AS A WRITER to understand good and bad technique.
And you may very well then find that later, your own struggles with what to write next, what to put in a scene, what to leave out may then be not quite as daunting
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DON’T FORGET TO DO WHAT YOU DON’T DO BEST!
by CRAIG KELLEM
We all like to do what we do best.
I have found that this is especially true of writers. For example, those of us who have the talent to make our fellows laugh will find ways to proliferate this skill. Sci-fi buffs tend to find satisfaction inventing other- worldly tidbits and the next amazing interplanetary hypotheses. Some of us do particularly well with dialogue or characterization and so forth.
But there can be a dark side to this aspect of creative life.
Often when push comes to shove, we use our natural talents to fill in blanks that would better be served by something else!
Although it's natural for writers to do what they do best, it's necessary to also use other methods to accomplish our creative tasks. The humorist may need to access real drama in order to steady his screenplay and give it a realistic foundation. The sci-fi aficionado might be Einsteinian in her imagery but still has to find a way to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. And so forth.
The point of this is simple. It’s imperative that you sometimes turn your back on your “A” weaponry and take care of business in areas of craft that may not be your first love. For many writers, particularly those who are not working under the lash of a producer or studio, this kind of discipline can be elusive.
Here’s my suggestions in this regard:
*Avoid exposure to the stuff that works which may distract you from what doesn’t.
*Don’t think about those things in the script that are going to “save you.”
*Instead, remove the high test material from your desktop and concentrate solely on the story that needs direction or the character who needs more oomph, or the plan to endow scenes with more strategies and angles.
*Make things work that you hate with the same devotion and pride that you use to make things work that you love.
*And most of all don’t try to solve problems with easy solutions that always go back to your security blanket. Isolate/compartmentalize the aspect of the script that needs work. Make the creative plan to fix and and go for it.
Some of us have great talents that get us on the creative freeways that we seek but it's often not enough to go the distance and sometimes we have to do the hard stuff as well just like everyone else.
It requires awareness and real discipline.
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NOTICE--SPAM CONTINUES TO PROLIFERATE. IT’S EASY TO MISS A LEGIT EMAIL. WHEN YOU WRITE TO US PLEASE MAKE IT CLEAR THAT IT’S REAL ON THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU DON’T HEAR BACK FROM US CHANCES ARE WE SIMPLY MISSED IT. WE ANSWER ALL LEGIT EMAIL!!
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HUMOR FROM OUR BUDDY MARK MILLER
Two goats are walking in the Hollywood hills and they find a tin of film. The first goat eats it. The second goat asks "How'd it taste?" The first goat answers,"Not bad but I liked the book better."
Mark Miller
markmiller2000@comca
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WE RECEIVE QUESTIONS--
Q
I found a thread w/ your address and a comment that relates to a dilemma I have. Namely I came up with a series idea and commissioned a writer to write the Pilot based on my ideas, I continued to contribute to the project through story editing. I don't know how to cinch the CREATED BY credit to myself.. is there some template of legalese that I can glean as we are now shopping the project with success and the chain of title is being drawn. I’m in Canada.
A-In the US that credit is determined by the Writer's Guild of America and it's contingent on the Guild examining the creative pages from the parties involved who claim credit.
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FROM HOLLYWOODSCREENWRITER AND DARTMOUTH PROFESSOR BILL PHILLIPS RE WGA REGISTRATION VS COPYRIGHTING
I have a couple opinions:
1) script registration. I've been a member of the WGA for 23 years, and I rarely use their service. They only record your registration for five years, then delete it. Plus, if someone steals your script (unlikely) you need to go to L.A. to sue them. For the same price, you can copyright your script (you can get all the info you need at the copyright website: www.loc.gov/copyright/forms/formpai.pdf ) This is good for your life plus 70 years. (A better deal.) Plus, if someone steals your script, you can sue in your local federal court... you don't need to go to the site where the theft occurs. I agree with your advice that one shouldn't copyright every draft... I only renew the copyright on a spec script every ten drafts or so, and only if the characters, dialogue and structure have changed considerably. For studio and network assignments, of course, I never copyright. It's their property, and they have an army of lawyers to take care of it.
The one good thing about registration is this: you can register an idea (and you can't copyright an idea). So if you have a three-page notion, say, you can register that.
Regarding titles: the only organization I know that meaningfully registers titles is the MPPA (Motion Picture Producers' Association) and you have to be a member. For about $25 per title, you can reserve a title for yourself. It's sort of a gentlemen's club. It's considered really tacky and unprofessional not to seek and get permission to use another member's registered title. But if you're not a member of MPPA, forget it. (By the way, Oliver Stone used ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAY without the permission of the owner, who could have sued him, but is too nice to bother. But it was an extreme embarrassment for the studio that he didn't seek and get the permission he should have.)
Also, regarding titles, you, too, could release a film called, for example, GONE WITH THE WIND. You would not be in violation unless the original movie's producers could prove that you were trying to mislead the public into paying to see your film, expecting to find Clark Gable in it. If you did a documentary film about air pollution, for example, you could call it that. Nothing illegal or unethical there.
Bill
THANX SO MUCH PROFESSOR PHILLIPS!
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MORE FROM MARK MILLER
I Love Being a Writer -- Except For the Writing
It's no secret that when it comes to sitting down to actually doing the writing, we writers excel at procrastination. If, anywhere within a five mile radius of the computer, we happen to notice an unsharpened pencil, a window, a refrigerator, a phone, unopened mail, a magazine, something needing dusting, the TV remote, a ladybug making its way up the wall, a freckle, a birthmark, a pimple, a scab, or even a stray thought -- that's more than enough reason to stop writing (assuming we've even started yet) and focus on that distracting alternative, at least until it suddenly occurs to us why we happen to have been sitting in front of that blank computer screen for the past forty-five minutes.
Sometimes, we take advantage of even longer periods of
procrastination -- and for each of these, in order to deal with the guilt,
we have invented a specific rationalization. It's not "meeting a friend for lunch" -- it's Networking. It's not "vacationing in Hawaii" -- it's Gathering Important Life Experience. It's not "having sex all afternoon with your lover" -- it's Getting In Touch With Your Emotions and Learning About the Opposite Sex. It's not "going to see a movie" -- it's "Research -- Hey, Come On, If I'm Going To Be Writing Them, I Have To Know What's Out There." My mother used to tell me, "You have an answer for everything, a solution for nothing," and
I'm starting to appreciate her wisdom.
Lately, however, I've become aware of yet another form of procrastination to which we writers fall victim. Okay, to which I fall victim; I won't drag the rest of you down with me. Because if you identify with me, you're doing a good enough job dragging yourself down. For this form of procrastination is perhaps the most disturbing and insidious of them all. It speaks to the very heart of who we are, what we do, what we want. And I'm really not sure I'll ever be able to overcome it. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow writers, I hope you appreciate the amount of courage it's taking me to come clean about this, but here goes: I have become addicted to the trappings of being a writer.
Yes, sadly, it's true -- I am passionately interested in and devoted to every possible aspect of being a writer, with just one exception -- doing the actual writing. Ironic, isn't it? Or better yet, crazy, irrational, tragic. How dare I presume to even call myself a writer? Would someone who watched the Food Channel all day refer to himself as a chef? Would someone who collected band-aids call himself a doctor? Would a woman who read all day long about famous architects call herself an architect? And yet, is what I am doing so very different from these professional wanna-bees? And I call myself a writer. Hah! I disgust myself.
Think I'm exaggerating? Check out all the writing-related activities with which I fill my time--time that could be spent actually writing:
a.. Books. I must have a hundred books on writing. 500 Ways to Beat the Hollywood Script Reader, Getting Your Script Through the Hollywood Maze, Screenwriting On The Internet, The Hollywood Creative Directory, How to Enter Screenplay Contests and Win, Power Shmoozing, The Script is Finished--Now What Do I Do?, The Craft of the Screenwriter -- Is there useful information in these books? Yes. Have I read even half of them? No. Would I be approximately 115 years old by the time I finish reading them all? Absolutely. Of course, by then, there'd be new ones to read.
a.. Conferences and Seminars. Screenwriting Expo, Independent
Feature Project, Learning Annex, Maui Writers Conference, Words Into
Pictures, Southern California Writers Conference, Sherwood Oaks Experimental
College. I've been to them all, keep attending them, and apparently just
can't get enough in-person information about "The Hero's Journey," "Story Brainstorming," "How to Write a Blockbuster," "Building Strong Characters," "Seducing the Studio Reader," and "Creating Narrative Tension." The
best thing about these conferences and seminars: while you're there,
you have a legitimate excuse not to be writing!
a.. Screenwriting Software. I was so jazzed to purchase
my current screenwriting software, which came with so many bells and
whistles I honestly wondered how Shakespeare was able to create without
owning it. Its Name Bank helps me generate character names. It has real-time
pagination, spell-check and auto-correction; auto-floppy back-up to protect
my work; Voice Readback, online collaboration with a partner, and a rave
from Francis Ford Coppola on the back. Heck, the box even proclaims, "Write polished professional scripts within minutes of opening the box!" Well,
I've had the box opened for months, not minutes, and apparently, as it
turns out, in addition to the software's impressive features, you also
need an idea, talent, and discipline. But do they tell you that on the
box? Noooooo!
a.. Writers Guild of America. I'm a member, so I can
attend the Film Society screenings, where I'm free to shmooze (see Power
Shmoozing, in Books section, above) with other writers who aren't working.
I have access to the Script Registration Department, where I'm free to
register scripts I haven't written. I can visit their library, where
I can read scripts other writers have written, or read about other writers
in screenwriting magazines. I can join writer-related committees. I can
offer my services as a mentor to another aspiring writer. I can become
involved in WGA politics. I can attend readings of works by fellow members,
tributes to fellow members, and a variety of "An Evening With." fellow
members, during which, though I'm not actually writing, I'm gaining insight
by finding out how someone else writes.
a.. Writing Paraphernalia. My mousepad has the design
of an old-fashioned typewriter. I have a baseball cap that says "Writer" on
the rim. One of my t-shirts proudly proclaims the fact that I survived
one of the Writers Guild strikes. My set of refrigerator word magnets
allows me to form sentences while waiting for my pasta to boil. I've
lost count of how many free pens I've accumulated from companies promoting
writing software, books, and script consultant services. I've decorated
the back of my door with photos of movies I wish I'd written. I have
an audiocassette of Steve Martin reading one of his short story collections.
Any half-decent detective might deduce that the owner of all this stuff
is a writer. That same detective would have a far more difficult task
acquiring evidence of actual writing on the premises.
Okay, you get the idea. It's procrastination, pure and simple. And granted, my procrastination is completely writer-related; it's not like I'm spending all day at the racetrack -- though mightn't that give me the Life Experience to write something wonderful about a racetrack? Still, it's clear that I've been doing a lot of things that fall into the category of Not Writing. I'm circling the writing area. I'm in the writing air space. I'm holding for writing landing clearance. But I'm not writing. And I'm telling you this so that the next time you see me reading a book on writing, attending a writers conference, power shmoozing with someone at a Film Society screening, or about to pick up a complimentary writer book mark -- you stop me, snatch the book mark out of my hand, shake me if you have to, look me straight in the eyes, and remind me that I should be at home, writing. I have been warned.
Mark Miller is a Los Angeles-based comedy writer, who has written and produced TV sit-coms, sold feature film comedies, been a humor columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, contributed to numerous national publications and websites, and has produced a weekly comedic relationships feature for America Online. He can be reached at markmiller2000@comcast.net
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