WEDNESDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:

THAT'S YOUR HERO?

A few years ago I was at the American Film Market in Santa Monica climbing the stairs, checking out what's hot (and what's not) and going to parties celebrating movies that you've never heard of. In the lobby I was talking to a fellow screenwriter at one of these parties, and he was telling me about his new script titled "Give Them The Axe". The hero hated people - and the writer admitted he did, too. When someone cut off the hero on the freeway, he would follow that person home, grab the axe from the trunk of his car, and hack the bad driver to pieces. If someone didn't let the hero get his way, he'd go to his car for the axe and remove that person so that he could get his way. If a waitress spilled a drink on the hero, he would grab the axe from the trunk of his car. (I was very careful with my drink around this writer - I also told him this was the greatest idea I'd ever heard). This guy's brilliant script (he may be reading this) went on to have his hero fall in love with a woman - who does something to bother him - and he can't decide if he should give her the axe or not. He decides to spare her - and the audiences loves him for it. The writer believes if this is ever made, the end will get standing ovations.

I think the audience will be standing long before the end... after about ten minutes they'll stand up and leave the theater.

The day after hearing this writer's pitch for "Give Them The Axe" I bumped into a producer I used to work for in the halls at AFM. His new film 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND was opening on Friday, and he thought it was his best project to date. So it won my "Friday Night Fight" and I paid $9 to see it.

The commercials made it look like a light hearted heist film - sort of an All Elvis version of OCEAN'S ELEVEN. Heist movies feature a team of organized professional crooks who live by a strict moral code (THE WILD BUNCH is all about the importance of keeping your word) - but one of the members of the team doesn't subscribe to the code and betrays the others (becoming the villain). In Walter Hill's THE DRIVER a cop becomes the villain by "breaking the rules" and endangering innocent bystanders. The genre is about a society of people who live outside of society - A Band Apart - and how they deal with the outsiders within their midst. But 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND took a major wrong turn about ten minutes in...

Kurt Russell is one of a team of thieves out to rob the Riviera Casino during Elvis Week. Hundreds of Elvis impersonators will be in the casino - so they'll dress like Elvis and blend in, and that will create a cool way for them to escape - it will be like Cary Grant dressing like a Red Cap in NORTH BY NORTHWEST and the police have to figure which of the dozens of Red Caps they are after. Great idea! Except they NEVER try to blend in! They never use the Elvis Week thing as a cool idea - they throw it away in the first minute of the film! Upon entering the casino Kevin Costner punches a guy and breaks his nose. A few minutes later, they are machine gunning innocent people in the casino! They seem to have no plan at all to get away - except to kill everyone between them and the door! Guards, cops, cocktail waitresses, slot machine players, craps dealers - all killed by "our heroes"! When one of the gang (Bokeem Woodbine) kills a few dozen innocent people, a cop shoots him - and when he dies a few minutes later it's supposed to be a big emotional moment for the team... except this guy is a mad-dog killer, so we're HAPPY that he's dead!

In fact, it's impossible to root for our protagonist Kurt Russell during the rest of this movie because he's shown as a mad-dog killer ten minutes into the film! How can you like the guy after he kills innocent people? The rest of the film was one violent exchange after another - but we don't care. No standing ovations for this bunch!

Though Kurt Russell was supposed to be the *good* bad guy, when put in a situation where innocent people were being riddled with gunfire, he did nothing. No protest. He doesn't try to stop innocent people from being killed. Nothing. He's part of the gang that kills a bunch of people minding their own business in a casino. And throughout the rest of the film there were no scenes that showed how he was really any different than the bad badguy, Kevin Costner. The closest thing we get is Russell hooks up with a single mom while he's hiding out - but why wouldn't Costner do the same? We needed a series of situations that contrasted the two characters to show us how Russell was *not* like mad-dog killer Costner.

Many people in the audience were standing long before the end... after about ten minutes they stood up to leave the cinema. There were lots of walkouts, and the film didn't break any box office records. It was yet another flop from Franchise Films.

Today, Franchise Films has been sued into bankruptcy... but they still have some films sitting on the shelf waiting for release. Something to look forward to!

Though the distinction between Russell's character and Costner's character may have been made clear in the script, and just ignored by the director (who seemed more interested in slow motion machinegun hits), we want to make sure those scenes are on *our* pages. We want to make sure that our good bad guys are understandable and involving, so that the audience wants to spend two hours in the dark with them.

JUSTIFIED

When you're dealing with "criminal heroes" make sure you have enough "hero" to balance the "criminal" - and NEVER go over the line into villain territory! Never let your lead character do something the audience can't forgive him for doing. As they said in RESERVOIR DOGS - "Did you kill any real people?" "No - just cops." I imagine if you are a police officer, you may not still be siding with these guys... but the point of that line of dialogue is that they only killed armed people actively opposing them. They didn't kill that little old lady at the slot machine like the robbers did in 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND. The guys in DOGS only shot people who were shooting at them - which we can understand. It's "justified" behavior... even if they shot first. We understand the protagonist defending themselves against the antagonist... even though in a heist movie the antagonist may be the "good guys". What we wouldn't be "justified" is shooting some innocent bystander - those people in the GRACELAND casino are not actively doing anything to stop the robbery... they're just people on vacation. If your story is Cops & Robbers they aren't even playing. Audience identification is difficult enough when you are dealing with Bad Guy Leads, the last thing you want to do is make it more difficult by killing innocent bystanders!

THE CRIMINAL CODE

When the authorities (police, FBI, etc) are the *antagonists* in a story, often what separates them from the criminal antagonists is the lack of a code of honor. In Walter Hill's THE DRIVER Ryan O'Neal is a getaway driver for armed robbers, and has rules - he doesn't work with trigger-happy lunatics. He doesn't work with robbers who kill innocent civilians. He refuses to work with killers or screw ups or people who use guns instead of brains. He's the protagonist, and has clear rules (shown when he refuses to work with a bunch of gunslinger idiots). The antagonist is Bruce Dern as a cop who will stop at nothing to catch O'Neal... and *breaks any rule* to catch him. Dern is like Dirty Harry - but we accept a cop who throws away the rule book when he's going after a criminal who has no rules (like in DIRTY HARRY). Here we have a cop who breaks the rules to go after a crook who sticks by his own rules - which makes him an antagonist. The audience can easily see the difference between O'Neal and Dern. One has a strict mortal code, the other has no code at all. Dern ends up springing that bunch of gunslinger idiots from jail in order to catch O'Neal and actually sets up an armed robberies with his inside information. The idiot gunslingers kill a bunch of innocent people - just so he can catch O'Neal. Dern is obsessed, driven, maybe even crazy - in his zealous pursuit of O'Neal. The protagonist may be breaking the law for a living, but the antagonist will sacrifice innocent people to catch him - the antagonist may wear a badge, but he's worse. That's why we side with the armed robbers in these films - there is a dark fantasy element (we all want to do the wrong thing) and the antagonists are worse. The problem with GRACELAND is that there is no difference between Protagonist crook and Antagonist crook - both will machinegun a bunch of innocent folks in a casino.

If you are writing a script with a criminal protagonist, make sure he (or she) lives by a strict code of conduct - that they have rules of behavior that the audience can understand. If someone breaks these rules, we will understand if they are dealt with violently... they knew the job was dangerous when they took it. Films with a criminal protagonist still have antagonists - those who get in the way of the protagonist and their goal. They may be the authorities like Bruce Dern in THE DRIVER or they may be fellow criminals. One of my favorite movies, POINT BLANK, has Lee Marvin killing anyone who gets between him and his stolen $92 thousand.... but he never kills an innocent bystander... and all those who die are *worse* than he is. They are the antagonists. The double crossers who killed him and stole his money. Oh, and Marvin may be the bad guy, but he gives all of those worse guys a chance to live... if they just give him the money that was stolen from him. He has a motivation that we understand, a justification for killing the people who tried to kill him, and when those guys with his money *double cross him again* and *try to kill hm again*, they die. Hey, we understand that.

One of the basics of a film about criminals, with criminal leads - is that criminal code. Films about armed robbers are often really about society and morality - using character we usually think of as being bad to illustrate honesty (among thieves) or morality or integrity. From ASPHALT JUNGLE to FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE to RESERVOIR DOGS, movies about bad guys are often used to explore a moral code, the way Mafia films are often about the code of honor and the importance of family. If your script has robbers versus cops, we must understand that the robbers are living by a set of rules and the cops are not... the cops must be "worse". And the focus on your script is on what makes these two factions different... it is *illustrating* that moral code.

Audiences love flawed heroes and bad guy leads - but the flaws have to be something that we can understand, and might imagine having ourselves. No matter how bad the protagonist is, they still have to be understandable and "justified" in their violence... plus be doing something that fits one of the audience's dark fantasies like revenge. Whatever you do, don't have your protagonist do something we can't imagine ourselves doing given the same set of circumstances. Don't have them do anything unforgiveable. Especially not in the first ten pages when the audience is trying to identify with them. Give us time to get into their skin before they do anything really wrong, so that we can *worry about their choice* rather than just be repulsed by their actions. Remember that the audience imagines themselves as your protagonist...

Killing people who cut you off on the freeway with an axe... I just can't see myself really doing that!

I look deeper into Bad Guy Leads in my book SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING, which is available as an e-book for both Kindle and Nook.

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THE BUISINESS SIDE

*** BREAKING IN BLUE BOOK *** - For Kindle!

Should really be called the BUSINESS BLUE BOOK because it covers almost everything you will need to know for your screenwriting career: from thinking like a producer and learning to speak their language, to query letters and finding a manager or agent, to making connections (at home and in Hollywood) and networking, to the different kinds of meetings you are will have at Studios, to the difference between a producer and a studio, to landing an assignment at that meeting and what is required of you when you are working under contract, to contracts and options and lawyers and... when to run from a deal! Information you can use *now* to move your career forward! It's all here in the Biggest Blue Book yet!

Print version was 48 pages, Kindle version is over 400 pages!

$4.99 - and no postage!

FINAL DRAFT SOFTWARE

Use your creative energy to focus on the content; let Final Draft take care of the style. Final Draft is the number-one selling application specifically designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays. Its ease-of-use and time-saving features have attracted writers for almost two decades positioning Final Draft as the Professional Screenwriters Choice. Final Draft power users include Academy, Emmy and BAFTA award winning writers like Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, Alan Ball, J.J. Abrams, James Cameron and more. * * * Buy It!

copyright 2022 by William C. Martell