The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A young woman with low-self esteem begins dating an extremely attractive man.
About: Purchased by Mandate pictures, The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. Mindy Kaling plays Kelly Kapour on The Office, a show she also writes for. Brent Forrester has an impressive pedigree behind him. He’s worked on The Ben Stiller Show, The Simpsons, King of The Hill, wrote an episode of one of my favorite extinct shows ever, Undeclared, and also works as a writer on The Office.
Writers: Mindy Kaling and Brent Forrester
Details: 121 pages - June 17, 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film's release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).


You know I kind of like Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapour on “The Office”). Here’s my only question for Mindy though. If she’s a writer on The Office, why doesn’t she write herself into more episodes? Kelly disappears for long stretches at a time, so much so that I’ll occasionally wonder if she’s still on the show. She’s a lot funnier than some of those people who get way more air time. That leads me to another question. In The Office, all Stanley does is sit at a desk all day. That’s his job. He never says anything or interacts with anyone. However long it takes to film those episodes, he just sits there. Does he consider himself the luckiest person ever to get paid to sit around and do nothing? Or is he frustrated that he’s basically a glorified extra?

I’m getting off track here. Okay, so, I always find it interesting when TV writers (specifically sitcom writers) cross over into features or vice versa. It’s a totally different beast, both ways, especially if you’re coming from the sit-com world. There’s some obvious crossover – the story element is similar and some of the character stuff is the same – but it’s a lot harder to build a story over a 110 minute period than it is 22 minutes. You have to know when to let the story breath, when to step on the gas, etc. It’s not as simple as writing longer scenes. So did Kaling and her writing partner, Brent Forrester, pull it off? Let us find out.

Lizzie’s never been the kind of girl to turn heads. She’s plump in a cute way, but you’d probably be stretching it to call her pretty. So it only makes sense that at some point in her life she made the decision to categorize all hot guys as unobtainable. As a result, Lizzie only dates dweeby dorky dudes who “look like Ira Glass.” I don’t know who Ira Glass is but with a name like that, I’m guessing he’s no Vin Diesel.

So one day, while taking her friend’s daughter to one of those cheesy low-budget Children’s Museum plays, she meets Patrick, who’s so good-looking he makes Brad Pitt self-conscious. Patrick’s a barely in-work actor (if you call children’s plays work) and also surprisingly humble. When Mindy bumps into him after one of his shows, the two hit it off in a weird way and agree to meet up later, amongst friends.

Lizzie thinks nothing of it because of her “never-believe-hot-guys-like-her” training. To her he’s just a dude who needs a friend. Her friends, however, are convinced he has the hots for her, and thus begins the awkward dance we’re all so familiar with you start hanging out with someone of the opposite sex and the signals get crossed and you’re stabbing yourself every night trying to figure out if it’s a friend thing or a let’s get jiggy with it thing. Thank God for Facebook flirting, right? Remember when you used to have to…gasp…call people to get an idea of how they felt?

Anyway, eventually the two end up together, and Lizzie has an entirely new set of problems, which involves combating her daily insecurities. For example, she refuses to get naked in front of Patrick out of fear he’ll think she’s fat. In case you were wondering if Lizzie has low self-esteem, she reminds you every chance she gets.

Then before she knows it, her insecurities get the better of her, and she inadvertently orchestrates her relationship’s demise. We’re left to wonder if it’s possible for a couple, whose looks are so far apart on the good-looking spectrum, to survive in an image-conscience world.

First, the good. Kaling and Forrester predictably have a knack for dialogue and character. All the characters here are memorable and fun. I wouldn’t call it a chuckle-fest but I laughed my share of times. For example, we get the most awkward dirty talk sex scene ever, (her previous boyfriend offers this weird commentary during some heated sex) “Are you my wife?” “Are you the mother of my kids?” And Lizzie’s friends are also pretty funny, such as when her best friend Maggie tries to cheer her up after Lizzie’s Ira-Glass-like boyfriend dumps her. He was a loser, she tells Lizzie. “Maybe he was a loser. But he loved me.” “He didn’t love you, he was sleeping with an anorexic vampire.” “Why would you mention how thin she was?”

But the problem here is exactly what I worried about from the beginning. There’s no real story to sink your teeth into.

Back in the day, most romantic comedies had a story behind them. In Pretty Woman, there’s the whole “he buys her for the week” angle. In Notting Hill there’s the whole “dating a movie star” angle. But then Judd Apatow came along and kind of changed the game, creating rom coms based more on ideas than on stories. 40 year old Virgin. Knocked Up. But see even those movies had something to hang their hat on. We want to see if Steve Carrell is going to get laid. We want to see if Seth Rogan can become responsible enough to raise a child. Here, the entire movie is based on the protagonist’s character flaw, Lizzie’s low self-esteem. Lizzie’s not really going after anything. She’s just living her life. And for a script that’s 120 pages, that’s not nearly enough to keep us engaged.

The characters end up wandering around a lot, and the above reason is why. If there’s no ultimate goal for our main character to try and achieve, no ticking time bomb pushing us forward, then there isn’t a whole lot for our characters to do but sit around and talk to each other. There’s really only one romantic comedy in history that got away with this and that’s When Harry Met Salley, which to this day is one of the biggest anomalies in screenwriting.

This script actually reminded me a lot of She’s Out Of My League, which I reviewed a long time ago and which I thought was a little better than this. The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie has some bright moments. Let’s just hope the next draft builds more of a story around those moments.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There are three types of goals you want for your characters. First is their story goal. What is it they’re after? This is the engine that drives your entire story so it’s the most important goal of the bunch. In The 40 Year Old Virgin, for example, Steve Carrel’s story goal is to get laid. The next type of goal is the immediate goal. This goal is constantly changing during the story and refers to whatever your character is trying to achieve right now. This is usually a subset of the main goal. Your character must get *this* (whatever “this” is) before they can get the final goal. Using 40-Year Old Virgin again, Steve Carrell first goes to a club to find a girl he can have sex with. His goal then, is simply to bring a woman home. A few scenes later, his goal is to try and ask the E-Bay store girl on a date. The final goal-type is one that’s the least utilized in movies, but important nonetheless. It’s your hero’s life goal. Beyond this story, what is it your character really wants? The reason a life goal is so important is because it often defines a person. When someone tells us what they want to do more than anything else in the world, that’s a pretty big indicator of who that person is. Lizzie has a nice life goal here. She wants to be a dramturge, which is the person who provides historical context at the beginning of a play. It’s weird and quirky and different, which are the same advectives you’d use to describe Lizzie. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A young woman with low-self esteem begins dating an extremely attractive man.
About: Purchased by Mandate pictures, The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. Mindy Kaling plays Kelly Kapour on The Office, a show she also writes for. Brent Forrester has an impressive pedigree behind him. He’s worked on The Ben Stiller Show, The Simpsons, King of The Hill, wrote an episode of one of my favorite extinct shows ever, Undeclared, and also works as a writer on The Office.
Writers: Mindy Kaling and Brent Forrester
Details: 121 pages - June 17, 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film's release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).


You know I kind of like Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapour on “The Office”). Here’s my only question for Mindy though. If she’s a writer on The Office, why doesn’t she write herself into more episodes? Kelly disappears for long stretches at a time, so much so that I’ll occasionally wonder if she’s still on the show. She’s a lot funnier than some of those people who get way more air time. That leads me to another question. In The Office, all Stanley does is sit at a desk all day. That’s his job. He never says anything or interacts with anyone. However long it takes to film those episodes, he just sits there. Does he consider himself the luckiest person ever to get paid to sit around and do nothing? Or is he frustrated that he’s basically a glorified extra?

I’m getting off track here. Okay, so, I always find it interesting when TV writers (specifically sitcom writers) cross over into features or vice versa. It’s a totally different beast, both ways, especially if you’re coming from the sit-com world. There’s some obvious crossover – the story element is similar and some of the character stuff is the same – but it’s a lot harder to build a story over a 110 minute period than it is 22 minutes. You have to know when to let the story breath, when to step on the gas, etc. It’s not as simple as writing longer scenes. So did Kaling and her writing partner, Brent Forrester, pull it off? Let us find out.

Lizzie’s never been the kind of girl to turn heads. She’s plump in a cute way, but you’d probably be stretching it to call her pretty. So it only makes sense that at some point in her life she made the decision to categorize all hot guys as unobtainable. As a result, Lizzie only dates dweeby dorky dudes who “look like Ira Glass.” I don’t know who Ira Glass is but with a name like that, I’m guessing he’s no Vin Diesel.

So one day, while taking her friend’s daughter to one of those cheesy low-budget Children’s Museum plays, she meets Patrick, who’s so good-looking he makes Brad Pitt self-conscious. Patrick’s a barely in-work actor (if you call children’s plays work) and also surprisingly humble. When Mindy bumps into him after one of his shows, the two hit it off in a weird way and agree to meet up later, amongst friends.

Lizzie thinks nothing of it because of her “never-believe-hot-guys-like-her” training. To her he’s just a dude who needs a friend. Her friends, however, are convinced he has the hots for her, and thus begins the awkward dance we’re all so familiar with you start hanging out with someone of the opposite sex and the signals get crossed and you’re stabbing yourself every night trying to figure out if it’s a friend thing or a let’s get jiggy with it thing. Thank God for Facebook flirting, right? Remember when you used to have to…gasp…call people to get an idea of how they felt?

Anyway, eventually the two end up together, and Lizzie has an entirely new set of problems, which involves combating her daily insecurities. For example, she refuses to get naked in front of Patrick out of fear he’ll think she’s fat. In case you were wondering if Lizzie has low self-esteem, she reminds you every chance she gets.

Then before she knows it, her insecurities get the better of her, and she inadvertently orchestrates her relationship’s demise. We’re left to wonder if it’s possible for a couple, whose looks are so far apart on the good-looking spectrum, to survive in an image-conscience world.

First, the good. Kaling and Forrester predictably have a knack for dialogue and character. All the characters here are memorable and fun. I wouldn’t call it a chuckle-fest but I laughed my share of times. For example, we get the most awkward dirty talk sex scene ever, (her previous boyfriend offers this weird commentary during some heated sex) “Are you my wife?” “Are you the mother of my kids?” And Lizzie’s friends are also pretty funny, such as when her best friend Maggie tries to cheer her up after Lizzie’s Ira-Glass-like boyfriend dumps her. He was a loser, she tells Lizzie. “Maybe he was a loser. But he loved me.” “He didn’t love you, he was sleeping with an anorexic vampire.” “Why would you mention how thin she was?”

But the problem here is exactly what I worried about from the beginning. There’s no real story to sink your teeth into.

Back in the day, most romantic comedies had a story behind them. In Pretty Woman, there’s the whole “he buys her for the week” angle. In Notting Hill there’s the whole “dating a movie star” angle. But then Judd Apatow came along and kind of changed the game, creating rom coms based more on ideas than on stories. 40 year old Virgin. Knocked Up. But see even those movies had something to hang their hat on. We want to see if Steve Carrell is going to get laid. We want to see if Seth Rogan can become responsible enough to raise a child. Here, the entire movie is based on the protagonist’s character flaw, Lizzie’s low self-esteem. Lizzie’s not really going after anything. She’s just living her life. And for a script that’s 120 pages, that’s not nearly enough to keep us engaged.

The characters end up wandering around a lot, and the above reason is why. If there’s no ultimate goal for our main character to try and achieve, no ticking time bomb pushing us forward, then there isn’t a whole lot for our characters to do but sit around and talk to each other. There’s really only one romantic comedy in history that got away with this and that’s When Harry Met Salley, which to this day is one of the biggest anomalies in screenwriting.

This script actually reminded me a lot of She’s Out Of My League, which I reviewed a long time ago and which I thought was a little better than this. The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie has some bright moments. Let’s just hope the next draft builds more of a story around those moments.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There are three types of goals you want for your characters. First is their story goal. What is it they’re after? This is the engine that drives your entire story so it’s the most important goal of the bunch. In The 40 Year Old Virgin, for example, Steve Carrel’s story goal is to get laid. The next type of goal is the immediate goal. This goal is constantly changing during the story and refers to whatever your character is trying to achieve right now. This is usually a subset of the main goal. Your character must get *this* (whatever “this” is) before they can get the final goal. Using 40-Year Old Virgin again, Steve Carrell first goes to a club to find a girl he can have sex with. His goal then, is simply to bring a woman home. A few scenes later, his goal is to try and ask the E-Bay store girl on a date. The final goal-type is one that’s the least utilized in movies, but important nonetheless. It’s your hero’s life goal. Beyond this story, what is it your character really wants? The reason a life goal is so important is because it often defines a person. When someone tells us what they want to do more than anything else in the world, that’s a pretty big indicator of who that person is. Lizzie has a nice life goal here. She wants to be a dramturge, which is the person who provides historical context at the beginning of a play. It’s weird and quirky and different, which are the same advectives you’d use to describe Lizzie. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A young woman with low-self esteem begins dating an extremely attractive man.
About: Purchased by Mandate pictures, The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. Mindy Kaling plays Kelly Kapour on The Office, a show she also writes for. Brent Forrester has an impressive pedigree behind him. He’s worked on The Ben Stiller Show, The Simpsons, King of The Hill, wrote an episode of one of my favorite extinct shows ever, Undeclared, and also works as a writer on The Office.
Writers: Mindy Kaling and Brent Forrester
Details: 121 pages - June 17, 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film's release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).


You know I kind of like Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapour on “The Office”). Here’s my only question for Mindy though. If she’s a writer on The Office, why doesn’t she write herself into more episodes? Kelly disappears for long stretches at a time, so much so that I’ll occasionally wonder if she’s still on the show. She’s a lot funnier than some of those people who get way more air time. That leads me to another question. In The Office, all Stanley does is sit at a desk all day. That’s his job. He never says anything or interacts with anyone. However long it takes to film those episodes, he just sits there. Does he consider himself the luckiest person ever to get paid to sit around and do nothing? Or is he frustrated that he’s basically a glorified extra?

I’m getting off track here. Okay, so, I always find it interesting when TV writers (specifically sitcom writers) cross over into features or vice versa. It’s a totally different beast, both ways, especially if you’re coming from the sit-com world. There’s some obvious crossover – the story element is similar and some of the character stuff is the same – but it’s a lot harder to build a story over a 110 minute period than it is 22 minutes. You have to know when to let the story breath, when to step on the gas, etc. It’s not as simple as writing longer scenes. So did Kaling and her writing partner, Brent Forrester, pull it off? Let us find out.

Lizzie’s never been the kind of girl to turn heads. She’s plump in a cute way, but you’d probably be stretching it to call her pretty. So it only makes sense that at some point in her life she made the decision to categorize all hot guys as unobtainable. As a result, Lizzie only dates dweeby dorky dudes who “look like Ira Glass.” I don’t know who Ira Glass is but with a name like that, I’m guessing he’s no Vin Diesel.

So one day, while taking her friend’s daughter to one of those cheesy low-budget Children’s Museum plays, she meets Patrick, who’s so good-looking he makes Brad Pitt self-conscious. Patrick’s a barely in-work actor (if you call children’s plays work) and also surprisingly humble. When Mindy bumps into him after one of his shows, the two hit it off in a weird way and agree to meet up later, amongst friends.

Lizzie thinks nothing of it because of her “never-believe-hot-guys-like-her” training. To her he’s just a dude who needs a friend. Her friends, however, are convinced he has the hots for her, and thus begins the awkward dance we’re all so familiar with you start hanging out with someone of the opposite sex and the signals get crossed and you’re stabbing yourself every night trying to figure out if it’s a friend thing or a let’s get jiggy with it thing. Thank God for Facebook flirting, right? Remember when you used to have to…gasp…call people to get an idea of how they felt?

Anyway, eventually the two end up together, and Lizzie has an entirely new set of problems, which involves combating her daily insecurities. For example, she refuses to get naked in front of Patrick out of fear he’ll think she’s fat. In case you were wondering if Lizzie has low self-esteem, she reminds you every chance she gets.

Then before she knows it, her insecurities get the better of her, and she inadvertently orchestrates her relationship’s demise. We’re left to wonder if it’s possible for a couple, whose looks are so far apart on the good-looking spectrum, to survive in an image-conscience world.

First, the good. Kaling and Forrester predictably have a knack for dialogue and character. All the characters here are memorable and fun. I wouldn’t call it a chuckle-fest but I laughed my share of times. For example, we get the most awkward dirty talk sex scene ever, (her previous boyfriend offers this weird commentary during some heated sex) “Are you my wife?” “Are you the mother of my kids?” And Lizzie’s friends are also pretty funny, such as when her best friend Maggie tries to cheer her up after Lizzie’s Ira-Glass-like boyfriend dumps her. He was a loser, she tells Lizzie. “Maybe he was a loser. But he loved me.” “He didn’t love you, he was sleeping with an anorexic vampire.” “Why would you mention how thin she was?”

But the problem here is exactly what I worried about from the beginning. There’s no real story to sink your teeth into.

Back in the day, most romantic comedies had a story behind them. In Pretty Woman, there’s the whole “he buys her for the week” angle. In Notting Hill there’s the whole “dating a movie star” angle. But then Judd Apatow came along and kind of changed the game, creating rom coms based more on ideas than on stories. 40 year old Virgin. Knocked Up. But see even those movies had something to hang their hat on. We want to see if Steve Carrell is going to get laid. We want to see if Seth Rogan can become responsible enough to raise a child. Here, the entire movie is based on the protagonist’s character flaw, Lizzie’s low self-esteem. Lizzie’s not really going after anything. She’s just living her life. And for a script that’s 120 pages, that’s not nearly enough to keep us engaged.

The characters end up wandering around a lot, and the above reason is why. If there’s no ultimate goal for our main character to try and achieve, no ticking time bomb pushing us forward, then there isn’t a whole lot for our characters to do but sit around and talk to each other. There’s really only one romantic comedy in history that got away with this and that’s When Harry Met Salley, which to this day is one of the biggest anomalies in screenwriting.

This script actually reminded me a lot of She’s Out Of My League, which I reviewed a long time ago and which I thought was a little better than this. The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie has some bright moments. Let’s just hope the next draft builds more of a story around those moments.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There are three types of goals you want for your characters. First is their story goal. What is it they’re after? This is the engine that drives your entire story so it’s the most important goal of the bunch. In The 40 Year Old Virgin, for example, Steve Carrel’s story goal is to get laid. The next type of goal is the immediate goal. This goal is constantly changing during the story and refers to whatever your character is trying to achieve right now. This is usually a subset of the main goal. Your character must get *this* (whatever “this” is) before they can get the final goal. Using 40-Year Old Virgin again, Steve Carrell first goes to a club to find a girl he can have sex with. His goal then, is simply to bring a woman home. A few scenes later, his goal is to try and ask the E-Bay store girl on a date. The final goal-type is one that’s the least utilized in movies, but important nonetheless. It’s your hero’s life goal. Beyond this story, what is it your character really wants? The reason a life goal is so important is because it often defines a person. When someone tells us what they want to do more than anything else in the world, that’s a pretty big indicator of who that person is. Lizzie has a nice life goal here. She wants to be a dramturge, which is the person who provides historical context at the beginning of a play. It’s weird and quirky and different, which are the same advectives you’d use to describe Lizzie. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A young woman with low-self esteem begins dating an extremely attractive man.
About: Purchased by Mandate pictures, The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. Mindy Kaling plays Kelly Kapour on The Office, a show she also writes for. Brent Forrester has an impressive pedigree behind him. He’s worked on The Ben Stiller Show, The Simpsons, King of The Hill, wrote an episode of one of my favorite extinct shows ever, Undeclared, and also works as a writer on The Office.
Writers: Mindy Kaling and Brent Forrester
Details: 121 pages - June 17, 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film's release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).


You know I kind of like Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapour on “The Office”). Here’s my only question for Mindy though. If she’s a writer on The Office, why doesn’t she write herself into more episodes? Kelly disappears for long stretches at a time, so much so that I’ll occasionally wonder if she’s still on the show. She’s a lot funnier than some of those people who get way more air time. That leads me to another question. In The Office, all Stanley does is sit at a desk all day. That’s his job. He never says anything or interacts with anyone. However long it takes to film those episodes, he just sits there. Does he consider himself the luckiest person ever to get paid to sit around and do nothing? Or is he frustrated that he’s basically a glorified extra?

I’m getting off track here. Okay, so, I always find it interesting when TV writers (specifically sitcom writers) cross over into features or vice versa. It’s a totally different beast, both ways, especially if you’re coming from the sit-com world. There’s some obvious crossover – the story element is similar and some of the character stuff is the same – but it’s a lot harder to build a story over a 110 minute period than it is 22 minutes. You have to know when to let the story breath, when to step on the gas, etc. It’s not as simple as writing longer scenes. So did Kaling and her writing partner, Brent Forrester, pull it off? Let us find out.

Lizzie’s never been the kind of girl to turn heads. She’s plump in a cute way, but you’d probably be stretching it to call her pretty. So it only makes sense that at some point in her life she made the decision to categorize all hot guys as unobtainable. As a result, Lizzie only dates dweeby dorky dudes who “look like Ira Glass.” I don’t know who Ira Glass is but with a name like that, I’m guessing he’s no Vin Diesel.

So one day, while taking her friend’s daughter to one of those cheesy low-budget Children’s Museum plays, she meets Patrick, who’s so good-looking he makes Brad Pitt self-conscious. Patrick’s a barely in-work actor (if you call children’s plays work) and also surprisingly humble. When Mindy bumps into him after one of his shows, the two hit it off in a weird way and agree to meet up later, amongst friends.

Lizzie thinks nothing of it because of her “never-believe-hot-guys-like-her” training. To her he’s just a dude who needs a friend. Her friends, however, are convinced he has the hots for her, and thus begins the awkward dance we’re all so familiar with you start hanging out with someone of the opposite sex and the signals get crossed and you’re stabbing yourself every night trying to figure out if it’s a friend thing or a let’s get jiggy with it thing. Thank God for Facebook flirting, right? Remember when you used to have to…gasp…call people to get an idea of how they felt?

Anyway, eventually the two end up together, and Lizzie has an entirely new set of problems, which involves combating her daily insecurities. For example, she refuses to get naked in front of Patrick out of fear he’ll think she’s fat. In case you were wondering if Lizzie has low self-esteem, she reminds you every chance she gets.

Then before she knows it, her insecurities get the better of her, and she inadvertently orchestrates her relationship’s demise. We’re left to wonder if it’s possible for a couple, whose looks are so far apart on the good-looking spectrum, to survive in an image-conscience world.

First, the good. Kaling and Forrester predictably have a knack for dialogue and character. All the characters here are memorable and fun. I wouldn’t call it a chuckle-fest but I laughed my share of times. For example, we get the most awkward dirty talk sex scene ever, (her previous boyfriend offers this weird commentary during some heated sex) “Are you my wife?” “Are you the mother of my kids?” And Lizzie’s friends are also pretty funny, such as when her best friend Maggie tries to cheer her up after Lizzie’s Ira-Glass-like boyfriend dumps her. He was a loser, she tells Lizzie. “Maybe he was a loser. But he loved me.” “He didn’t love you, he was sleeping with an anorexic vampire.” “Why would you mention how thin she was?”

But the problem here is exactly what I worried about from the beginning. There’s no real story to sink your teeth into.

Back in the day, most romantic comedies had a story behind them. In Pretty Woman, there’s the whole “he buys her for the week” angle. In Notting Hill there’s the whole “dating a movie star” angle. But then Judd Apatow came along and kind of changed the game, creating rom coms based more on ideas than on stories. 40 year old Virgin. Knocked Up. But see even those movies had something to hang their hat on. We want to see if Steve Carrell is going to get laid. We want to see if Seth Rogan can become responsible enough to raise a child. Here, the entire movie is based on the protagonist’s character flaw, Lizzie’s low self-esteem. Lizzie’s not really going after anything. She’s just living her life. And for a script that’s 120 pages, that’s not nearly enough to keep us engaged.

The characters end up wandering around a lot, and the above reason is why. If there’s no ultimate goal for our main character to try and achieve, no ticking time bomb pushing us forward, then there isn’t a whole lot for our characters to do but sit around and talk to each other. There’s really only one romantic comedy in history that got away with this and that’s When Harry Met Salley, which to this day is one of the biggest anomalies in screenwriting.

This script actually reminded me a lot of She’s Out Of My League, which I reviewed a long time ago and which I thought was a little better than this. The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie has some bright moments. Let’s just hope the next draft builds more of a story around those moments.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There are three types of goals you want for your characters. First is their story goal. What is it they’re after? This is the engine that drives your entire story so it’s the most important goal of the bunch. In The 40 Year Old Virgin, for example, Steve Carrel’s story goal is to get laid. The next type of goal is the immediate goal. This goal is constantly changing during the story and refers to whatever your character is trying to achieve right now. This is usually a subset of the main goal. Your character must get *this* (whatever “this” is) before they can get the final goal. Using 40-Year Old Virgin again, Steve Carrell first goes to a club to find a girl he can have sex with. His goal then, is simply to bring a woman home. A few scenes later, his goal is to try and ask the E-Bay store girl on a date. The final goal-type is one that’s the least utilized in movies, but important nonetheless. It’s your hero’s life goal. Beyond this story, what is it your character really wants? The reason a life goal is so important is because it often defines a person. When someone tells us what they want to do more than anything else in the world, that’s a pretty big indicator of who that person is. Lizzie has a nice life goal here. She wants to be a dramturge, which is the person who provides historical context at the beginning of a play. It’s weird and quirky and different, which are the same advectives you’d use to describe Lizzie. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Howl (Book 3: John Dead, Texas Ranger)

Ahhh, a day off. Remember when we used to have those? I mean sure, technically us in America have Memorial Day today and don't have work, but somewhere around 10 years ago holidays just became "get all the shit done you couldn't get done otherwise" days. There is no such thing as a day off anymore. And that's good news for you guys because it means that you still get a review! Yahoooo! So I'm going to leave the rest to Roger as he busts out a script with so many genres it needs its own multiplex. Here's "Howl..."


Genre: Time-travelling werewolf Western (Okay, okay: Adventure, Horror, Science Fiction, Western)
Premise: A time-travelling Texas Ranger has spent the past 500 years hunting a particularly nasty werewolf. When he finally corners him in modern-day Texas, he'll need the help of an unlikely posse to save the world from chaos.
About: This script was picked up in 2001 by Warner Brothers sans producer with Lemkin attached to direct. Back in October, I reviewed another Lemkin script, titled $$$$$$, about a modern day city war in Los Angeles. Lemkin's writing credits include Red Planet, The Devil's Advocate, and Lethal Weapon 4. Upon being asked about "Howl" and his opportunity to direct, "It still makes me laugh and I assume still terrifies them which is why it hasn't happened."
Writer: Jonathan Lemkin
Details: Third Draft

If I wasn't a fan of Lemkin after reading $$$$$$, well, "Howl" won me over a lot sooner than the moment when Wanda, an ex-stripper and Waffle House waitress who has been recruited into a posse of werewolf hunters by a time-travelling Texas Ranger, dons a scant Red Riding Hood outfit and black fuck-me pumps and lures an army of werewolves into a seedy alley that has been converted into a kill box by the posse.

That's a little over eighty pages into the script, but by then, I had already fallen head-over-heels for "Howl", which I read on a plane cramped between two linebackers.

The title indicates that this is the third installment in what's a nod to serialized adventure storytelling, and the next page serves as a warning to a particular type of reader:

If you don't read comic books, stop.

Don't bother to read this. It'll just confuse you.

Watch the Bloomberg channel or something. Trade some stocks on-line. Worry about the Nasdaq.

For God's sake don't read this and complain that it's not something else. It's not.

As a guy that not only loves this kind of material, but writes it himself, I turned the pages with gusto.

Who the hell is John Dead?

Professor Jane Hamilton is the New Texas gal who discovers our time-travelling gunslinger. When we meet her, she's arrived with her archeology team at a construction site in the middle of West Texas in the middle of the night. The foreman greets her, hopes that they haven't stumbled across Indian ruins, because he can't pave over that. A likeable woman, she's brought the crew a ton of road beers while she investigates the site. These thoughts tell you everything you ought to know about Jane, "There's no adventures anymore. We just dig up what's left. Everything's linked by cell phone, internet, alphanumeric pager. Your GPS tells you exactly where you are at all times. You can't even get lost. That's why there's no men. Only boys and toys."

Well, what Jane doesn't know, is that she's about to meet a genuine, honest-to-goodness, real man.

Using state-of-the-art seismic imaging equipment, she discovers a western town from the 1880s. There's even a graveyard. It all looks pretty typical, but then she notices the oddly-shaped crypt calling attention to itself amidst the usual headstones and caskets. It appears to be a hypostyle, hieroglyphic-covered burial crypt that seems to be a replica of a three thousand year old Egyptian building about thirteen thousand miles from home.

She writes it off as the burial site of a crazed Egyptology enthusiast, so she puts an underling in charge. Of course they discovered mummified remains, and the underling even breaks a wax seal on one of the bodies, something he's going to regret in a few minutes.

What appears to be a cowboy and his dog are also discovered in the strange crypt, and they transport all the remains to the University of Texas at El Paso Medical Center, where of course, the body of the dog disappears and people die horrible, horrible deaths.

John Dead is the cowboy, and he awakens, pretty pissed off to discover that the dog has escaped. Dead wears new-fangled Levi jeans from 1874. White shirt. A pair of seven and a half inch Colt .44-40 revolvers on a gunbelt, Bowie knife in a scabbard, and a Winchester 1873 lever action rifle over his shoulder.

Dude is vintage.

He's on the hunt. He blends into El Paso, Texas, because, well, the guy's a motherfucking cowboy. He realizes a hundred years have passed by picking up a paper, finds a coin shop that buys precious metal, which he has a lot of and exchanges for new money. He takes this money, goes to a gunshop, invests in cartridges, primers, powder, scales, bullet molds, crimpers.

In other words, everything you need to make your own bullets.

At a flop house, he boils silver, and proceeds to make a shit-ton of ammo. At the Texas Ranger Offices, he asks to see the ranking officer. He's brought to Ben McCulloch's office, where he shows his one-hundred year old Ranger badge and a leather-bound ledger.

McCulloch says, "I take it if you're here, there's trouble." He knows about John Dead, but he can't quite believe the man is real.

He opens up a safe for Dead, revealing more ammo in wooden boxes. Dead requests some Rangers, but McCulloch explains, "We ain't had any call for our original mission for the most of the last hundred years."

So, this mean Dead is going to have to form a posse. He needs outlaws, mean sons-of-bitches.

Who gets to be part of Dead's posse?

McCulloch sends Dead to a roadside café where we meet Lumber, former road captain of the Pagans MC. Dead tells him, "I want a man who when it comes to nut cuttin' time, knows how to die standing up. I want a man to watch my back. Pay is a thousand dollars a day. Ten days up front."

"What exactly is it you're doing?"

"Hunting a werewolf."

Well, ten grand is ten grand. He accepts.

Then there's Wanda, the local slattern waitress who Dead and Lumber save from a bunch of rowdy customers, although they can't save her from getting fired. She asks to tag along with them, and Dead agrees, as she seems to be a radar for when people don't seem like...people. In the old days, he used to recruit prostitutes for this task.

She asks, "So where're we goin'?"

"Looking for a dog."

They go to a ranch house, where a man is breeding and training pitbulls to fight. Dead, against the breeder's warning, steps into the yard, and stares down the alpha. The alpha backs off, and all the other dogs hang back, except one, who approaches Dead, curious.

"Won't fight. Friedrich."

"Shows his belly?"

"Won't pit."

"Dog ain't afeared. Just ain't stupid. We'll take him."

And last but not least is Jane, whom Dead sees on television talking about the mummies. In a moment of misunderstood sarcasm, she reveals that the thieves should return the bodies to her as there's a pretty terrible curse associated with them.

Dead hears this, explains, "She's either a fool admitting she can read the curse and a threat to them...or she's one of 'em and she let him go on purpose."

So who is this werewolf and what's his plan?

His name is Marrok. He's a follower of Anubis, and his goal is to unleash seven years of devastation and death on Earth. See, Marrok is gathering a pack, because he needs to "kill an entire town in the light of a full moon, drench himself in the blood, as the last scream echoes, the pack is annealed, protected from silver for seven years.

This is information they discover thanks to a guy named Lobo, a priest who was part of Cortez' expedition. He was bit but not killed as an insult to the Church, but the Indians took him on as a shaman.

Lobo tells them, "All of the great calamities...The Black Death, Khans sweeping out of Mongolia, Fall of the Roman Empire...They were fermented by a Were or a lie to cover up something a Were had done during a frenzy."

Crazy. Does it work?

Fuck yeah, it does. But look, it's not a character study. Dead's flaw is that he's a virgin. He can never get close to a woman, because whenever he does, Marrok kills her. It's his way of torturing Dead.

And his inner conflict is over his feelings he has about Jane, a woman unlike any he's ever met before. In fact, he even asks Wanda about love and she reflects, "It's like wanting to be with someone so bad, you'd cut your arm off to be with them. And not miss it."

And it's a cool, satisfying theme. There may even be a scene, that quite literally, embodies what Wanda says about love.

And although the characters are quirky, that's as deep as it gets, but it works anyways because it's just well-executed fun. It delivers everything you want to see in a Texas Ranger Posse Vs. Werewolf Pack movie, and there's some inventive set-pieces that don't disappoint.

How different is it?

Well, have you ever read a script with a werewolf hunting dog that tries to protect its masters by taking on a super-alpha, only to be bit and turned into a human male? It's strange, it's funny, it's surprising.

The carnage in this thing is not for the squeamish. Yes, entire busses full of people get eaten. Towns are massacred. A motorcycle gang is converted into werewolves and there's all out war on the Texas roads.

This baby is bloody. As any self-respecting werewolf movie should be.

What separates "Howl" from the rest of the pack?

For the record, my favorite werewolf movie is the Neil Jordan adaptation of Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves. That's followed closely by John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and then the original The Wolf Man.

"Howl" fits somewhere within that triumvirate, a pulpy and campy action-adventure that is easily the best werewolf script I've ever read. It cures the staleness that has settled over the genre as indicated by everything from the Underworld franchise to The Wolfman remake. We're used to watching men transform into hulking beasts. That's nothing new. Perhaps we've experienced all of the horror and subtext that's possible within that, so what's the point in making another movie about werewolves?

Lemkin has created an interesting mythology that's all about the invasion and violation of community and security. John Dead explains, "...wolf was the greatest threat to family, community...Lotta places wolf was the largest, meanest thing you were likely to run into...but different countries, different Weres."

And I love that.

As someone who values the need for community, this spoke to me. These monsters are creatures that have made a pact with evil and they've discovered a way to become invincible that is based upon the ritualistic destruction of a community. To me, that's disturbing.

And these things come in droves. A horde. A terror shared with the threat in 28 Days Later, which will be remembered for its fast-motion tweak on the zombie mythos. "Howl" kind of does the same thing, but where the above flick was full of despair, this tale is occupied by a badass comicbook hero whose presence creates a bottleneck against this evil.

John Dead and the quirky recruits of his posse presents an original heroism and spirit that would separate "Howl" from all the other werewolf projects out there if its unique mythos, invention action sequences and fun narrative drive didn't already make it the leader of the werewolf pack.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The final third act battle, the confrontation with the Jungian Shadow archetype, is a master class in raising the stakes and throwing obstacles at the protagonist. Everything about Dead's plan is turned on its head by Marrok, exploiting all the mythology set-ups Lemkin peppered the script with. The werewolf mythology here is that if a werewolf bites a human, the human has to kill the werewolf before the venom takes root, otherwise they become one. Now, that's not all. There are other rules that Lemkin sets up, but every single one is used against the hero.

Marrok explains, "Right about now, you're thinking if I could only kill the Were that bit me...and you know what's funny, you can't. Cause I'm pretty much impervious to everything. Except maybe fire hot enough to boil silver...But...the trouble with burning me is, that won't work now either. Cause you can't commit suicide. Cause self-destruction isn't an option for a Were, which you are about to be. So now you can't die and be my guardian forcing me into the afterlife. Cause you ordered the fire and now it can't kill you. And you can't leave cause you've bound in the followers of Anubis of which you are now one..."

John Dead finds himself in a situation that seems to have no escape. Which makes how he's going to get out of such a situation a mystery for the reader. Mystery and subverting expectation can keep the reader turning the pages. What's even better is when the solution, the escape, the last Hail Mary, is unexpected, satisfying and in-tone with everything that came before it.

Howl (Book 3: John Dead, Texas Ranger)

Ahhh, a day off. Remember when we used to have those? I mean sure, technically us in America have Memorial Day today and don't have work, but somewhere around 10 years ago holidays just became "get all the shit done you couldn't get done otherwise" days. There is no such thing as a day off anymore. And that's good news for you guys because it means that you still get a review! Yahoooo! So I'm going to leave the rest to Roger as he busts out a script with so many genres it needs its own multiplex. Here's "Howl..."


Genre: Time-travelling werewolf Western (Okay, okay: Adventure, Horror, Science Fiction, Western)
Premise: A time-travelling Texas Ranger has spent the past 500 years hunting a particularly nasty werewolf. When he finally corners him in modern-day Texas, he'll need the help of an unlikely posse to save the world from chaos.
About: This script was picked up in 2001 by Warner Brothers sans producer with Lemkin attached to direct. Back in October, I reviewed another Lemkin script, titled $$$$$$, about a modern day city war in Los Angeles. Lemkin's writing credits include Red Planet, The Devil's Advocate, and Lethal Weapon 4. Upon being asked about "Howl" and his opportunity to direct, "It still makes me laugh and I assume still terrifies them which is why it hasn't happened."
Writer: Jonathan Lemkin
Details: Third Draft

If I wasn't a fan of Lemkin after reading $$$$$$, well, "Howl" won me over a lot sooner than the moment when Wanda, an ex-stripper and Waffle House waitress who has been recruited into a posse of werewolf hunters by a time-travelling Texas Ranger, dons a scant Red Riding Hood outfit and black fuck-me pumps and lures an army of werewolves into a seedy alley that has been converted into a kill box by the posse.

That's a little over eighty pages into the script, but by then, I had already fallen head-over-heels for "Howl", which I read on a plane cramped between two linebackers.

The title indicates that this is the third installment in what's a nod to serialized adventure storytelling, and the next page serves as a warning to a particular type of reader:

If you don't read comic books, stop.

Don't bother to read this. It'll just confuse you.

Watch the Bloomberg channel or something. Trade some stocks on-line. Worry about the Nasdaq.

For God's sake don't read this and complain that it's not something else. It's not.

As a guy that not only loves this kind of material, but writes it himself, I turned the pages with gusto.

Who the hell is John Dead?

Professor Jane Hamilton is the New Texas gal who discovers our time-travelling gunslinger. When we meet her, she's arrived with her archeology team at a construction site in the middle of West Texas in the middle of the night. The foreman greets her, hopes that they haven't stumbled across Indian ruins, because he can't pave over that. A likeable woman, she's brought the crew a ton of road beers while she investigates the site. These thoughts tell you everything you ought to know about Jane, "There's no adventures anymore. We just dig up what's left. Everything's linked by cell phone, internet, alphanumeric pager. Your GPS tells you exactly where you are at all times. You can't even get lost. That's why there's no men. Only boys and toys."

Well, what Jane doesn't know, is that she's about to meet a genuine, honest-to-goodness, real man.

Using state-of-the-art seismic imaging equipment, she discovers a western town from the 1880s. There's even a graveyard. It all looks pretty typical, but then she notices the oddly-shaped crypt calling attention to itself amidst the usual headstones and caskets. It appears to be a hypostyle, hieroglyphic-covered burial crypt that seems to be a replica of a three thousand year old Egyptian building about thirteen thousand miles from home.

She writes it off as the burial site of a crazed Egyptology enthusiast, so she puts an underling in charge. Of course they discovered mummified remains, and the underling even breaks a wax seal on one of the bodies, something he's going to regret in a few minutes.

What appears to be a cowboy and his dog are also discovered in the strange crypt, and they transport all the remains to the University of Texas at El Paso Medical Center, where of course, the body of the dog disappears and people die horrible, horrible deaths.

John Dead is the cowboy, and he awakens, pretty pissed off to discover that the dog has escaped. Dead wears new-fangled Levi jeans from 1874. White shirt. A pair of seven and a half inch Colt .44-40 revolvers on a gunbelt, Bowie knife in a scabbard, and a Winchester 1873 lever action rifle over his shoulder.

Dude is vintage.

He's on the hunt. He blends into El Paso, Texas, because, well, the guy's a motherfucking cowboy. He realizes a hundred years have passed by picking up a paper, finds a coin shop that buys precious metal, which he has a lot of and exchanges for new money. He takes this money, goes to a gunshop, invests in cartridges, primers, powder, scales, bullet molds, crimpers.

In other words, everything you need to make your own bullets.

At a flop house, he boils silver, and proceeds to make a shit-ton of ammo. At the Texas Ranger Offices, he asks to see the ranking officer. He's brought to Ben McCulloch's office, where he shows his one-hundred year old Ranger badge and a leather-bound ledger.

McCulloch says, "I take it if you're here, there's trouble." He knows about John Dead, but he can't quite believe the man is real.

He opens up a safe for Dead, revealing more ammo in wooden boxes. Dead requests some Rangers, but McCulloch explains, "We ain't had any call for our original mission for the most of the last hundred years."

So, this mean Dead is going to have to form a posse. He needs outlaws, mean sons-of-bitches.

Who gets to be part of Dead's posse?

McCulloch sends Dead to a roadside café where we meet Lumber, former road captain of the Pagans MC. Dead tells him, "I want a man who when it comes to nut cuttin' time, knows how to die standing up. I want a man to watch my back. Pay is a thousand dollars a day. Ten days up front."

"What exactly is it you're doing?"

"Hunting a werewolf."

Well, ten grand is ten grand. He accepts.

Then there's Wanda, the local slattern waitress who Dead and Lumber save from a bunch of rowdy customers, although they can't save her from getting fired. She asks to tag along with them, and Dead agrees, as she seems to be a radar for when people don't seem like...people. In the old days, he used to recruit prostitutes for this task.

She asks, "So where're we goin'?"

"Looking for a dog."

They go to a ranch house, where a man is breeding and training pitbulls to fight. Dead, against the breeder's warning, steps into the yard, and stares down the alpha. The alpha backs off, and all the other dogs hang back, except one, who approaches Dead, curious.

"Won't fight. Friedrich."

"Shows his belly?"

"Won't pit."

"Dog ain't afeared. Just ain't stupid. We'll take him."

And last but not least is Jane, whom Dead sees on television talking about the mummies. In a moment of misunderstood sarcasm, she reveals that the thieves should return the bodies to her as there's a pretty terrible curse associated with them.

Dead hears this, explains, "She's either a fool admitting she can read the curse and a threat to them...or she's one of 'em and she let him go on purpose."

So who is this werewolf and what's his plan?

His name is Marrok. He's a follower of Anubis, and his goal is to unleash seven years of devastation and death on Earth. See, Marrok is gathering a pack, because he needs to "kill an entire town in the light of a full moon, drench himself in the blood, as the last scream echoes, the pack is annealed, protected from silver for seven years.

This is information they discover thanks to a guy named Lobo, a priest who was part of Cortez' expedition. He was bit but not killed as an insult to the Church, but the Indians took him on as a shaman.

Lobo tells them, "All of the great calamities...The Black Death, Khans sweeping out of Mongolia, Fall of the Roman Empire...They were fermented by a Were or a lie to cover up something a Were had done during a frenzy."

Crazy. Does it work?

Fuck yeah, it does. But look, it's not a character study. Dead's flaw is that he's a virgin. He can never get close to a woman, because whenever he does, Marrok kills her. It's his way of torturing Dead.

And his inner conflict is over his feelings he has about Jane, a woman unlike any he's ever met before. In fact, he even asks Wanda about love and she reflects, "It's like wanting to be with someone so bad, you'd cut your arm off to be with them. And not miss it."

And it's a cool, satisfying theme. There may even be a scene, that quite literally, embodies what Wanda says about love.

And although the characters are quirky, that's as deep as it gets, but it works anyways because it's just well-executed fun. It delivers everything you want to see in a Texas Ranger Posse Vs. Werewolf Pack movie, and there's some inventive set-pieces that don't disappoint.

How different is it?

Well, have you ever read a script with a werewolf hunting dog that tries to protect its masters by taking on a super-alpha, only to be bit and turned into a human male? It's strange, it's funny, it's surprising.

The carnage in this thing is not for the squeamish. Yes, entire busses full of people get eaten. Towns are massacred. A motorcycle gang is converted into werewolves and there's all out war on the Texas roads.

This baby is bloody. As any self-respecting werewolf movie should be.

What separates "Howl" from the rest of the pack?

For the record, my favorite werewolf movie is the Neil Jordan adaptation of Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves. That's followed closely by John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and then the original The Wolf Man.

"Howl" fits somewhere within that triumvirate, a pulpy and campy action-adventure that is easily the best werewolf script I've ever read. It cures the staleness that has settled over the genre as indicated by everything from the Underworld franchise to The Wolfman remake. We're used to watching men transform into hulking beasts. That's nothing new. Perhaps we've experienced all of the horror and subtext that's possible within that, so what's the point in making another movie about werewolves?

Lemkin has created an interesting mythology that's all about the invasion and violation of community and security. John Dead explains, "...wolf was the greatest threat to family, community...Lotta places wolf was the largest, meanest thing you were likely to run into...but different countries, different Weres."

And I love that.

As someone who values the need for community, this spoke to me. These monsters are creatures that have made a pact with evil and they've discovered a way to become invincible that is based upon the ritualistic destruction of a community. To me, that's disturbing.

And these things come in droves. A horde. A terror shared with the threat in 28 Days Later, which will be remembered for its fast-motion tweak on the zombie mythos. "Howl" kind of does the same thing, but where the above flick was full of despair, this tale is occupied by a badass comicbook hero whose presence creates a bottleneck against this evil.

John Dead and the quirky recruits of his posse presents an original heroism and spirit that would separate "Howl" from all the other werewolf projects out there if its unique mythos, invention action sequences and fun narrative drive didn't already make it the leader of the werewolf pack.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The final third act battle, the confrontation with the Jungian Shadow archetype, is a master class in raising the stakes and throwing obstacles at the protagonist. Everything about Dead's plan is turned on its head by Marrok, exploiting all the mythology set-ups Lemkin peppered the script with. The werewolf mythology here is that if a werewolf bites a human, the human has to kill the werewolf before the venom takes root, otherwise they become one. Now, that's not all. There are other rules that Lemkin sets up, but every single one is used against the hero.

Marrok explains, "Right about now, you're thinking if I could only kill the Were that bit me...and you know what's funny, you can't. Cause I'm pretty much impervious to everything. Except maybe fire hot enough to boil silver...But...the trouble with burning me is, that won't work now either. Cause you can't commit suicide. Cause self-destruction isn't an option for a Were, which you are about to be. So now you can't die and be my guardian forcing me into the afterlife. Cause you ordered the fire and now it can't kill you. And you can't leave cause you've bound in the followers of Anubis of which you are now one..."

John Dead finds himself in a situation that seems to have no escape. Which makes how he's going to get out of such a situation a mystery for the reader. Mystery and subverting expectation can keep the reader turning the pages. What's even better is when the solution, the escape, the last Hail Mary, is unexpected, satisfying and in-tone with everything that came before it.

Howl (Book 3: John Dead, Texas Ranger)

Ahhh, a day off. Remember when we used to have those? I mean sure, technically us in America have Memorial Day today and don't have work, but somewhere around 10 years ago holidays just became "get all the shit done you couldn't get done otherwise" days. There is no such thing as a day off anymore. And that's good news for you guys because it means that you still get a review! Yahoooo! So I'm going to leave the rest to Roger as he busts out a script with so many genres it needs its own multiplex. Here's "Howl..."


Genre: Time-travelling werewolf Western (Okay, okay: Adventure, Horror, Science Fiction, Western)
Premise: A time-travelling Texas Ranger has spent the past 500 years hunting a particularly nasty werewolf. When he finally corners him in modern-day Texas, he'll need the help of an unlikely posse to save the world from chaos.
About: This script was picked up in 2001 by Warner Brothers sans producer with Lemkin attached to direct. Back in October, I reviewed another Lemkin script, titled $$$$$$, about a modern day city war in Los Angeles. Lemkin's writing credits include Red Planet, The Devil's Advocate, and Lethal Weapon 4. Upon being asked about "Howl" and his opportunity to direct, "It still makes me laugh and I assume still terrifies them which is why it hasn't happened."
Writer: Jonathan Lemkin
Details: Third Draft

If I wasn't a fan of Lemkin after reading $$$$$$, well, "Howl" won me over a lot sooner than the moment when Wanda, an ex-stripper and Waffle House waitress who has been recruited into a posse of werewolf hunters by a time-travelling Texas Ranger, dons a scant Red Riding Hood outfit and black fuck-me pumps and lures an army of werewolves into a seedy alley that has been converted into a kill box by the posse.

That's a little over eighty pages into the script, but by then, I had already fallen head-over-heels for "Howl", which I read on a plane cramped between two linebackers.

The title indicates that this is the third installment in what's a nod to serialized adventure storytelling, and the next page serves as a warning to a particular type of reader:

If you don't read comic books, stop.

Don't bother to read this. It'll just confuse you.

Watch the Bloomberg channel or something. Trade some stocks on-line. Worry about the Nasdaq.

For God's sake don't read this and complain that it's not something else. It's not.

As a guy that not only loves this kind of material, but writes it himself, I turned the pages with gusto.

Who the hell is John Dead?

Professor Jane Hamilton is the New Texas gal who discovers our time-travelling gunslinger. When we meet her, she's arrived with her archeology team at a construction site in the middle of West Texas in the middle of the night. The foreman greets her, hopes that they haven't stumbled across Indian ruins, because he can't pave over that. A likeable woman, she's brought the crew a ton of road beers while she investigates the site. These thoughts tell you everything you ought to know about Jane, "There's no adventures anymore. We just dig up what's left. Everything's linked by cell phone, internet, alphanumeric pager. Your GPS tells you exactly where you are at all times. You can't even get lost. That's why there's no men. Only boys and toys."

Well, what Jane doesn't know, is that she's about to meet a genuine, honest-to-goodness, real man.

Using state-of-the-art seismic imaging equipment, she discovers a western town from the 1880s. There's even a graveyard. It all looks pretty typical, but then she notices the oddly-shaped crypt calling attention to itself amidst the usual headstones and caskets. It appears to be a hypostyle, hieroglyphic-covered burial crypt that seems to be a replica of a three thousand year old Egyptian building about thirteen thousand miles from home.

She writes it off as the burial site of a crazed Egyptology enthusiast, so she puts an underling in charge. Of course they discovered mummified remains, and the underling even breaks a wax seal on one of the bodies, something he's going to regret in a few minutes.

What appears to be a cowboy and his dog are also discovered in the strange crypt, and they transport all the remains to the University of Texas at El Paso Medical Center, where of course, the body of the dog disappears and people die horrible, horrible deaths.

John Dead is the cowboy, and he awakens, pretty pissed off to discover that the dog has escaped. Dead wears new-fangled Levi jeans from 1874. White shirt. A pair of seven and a half inch Colt .44-40 revolvers on a gunbelt, Bowie knife in a scabbard, and a Winchester 1873 lever action rifle over his shoulder.

Dude is vintage.

He's on the hunt. He blends into El Paso, Texas, because, well, the guy's a motherfucking cowboy. He realizes a hundred years have passed by picking up a paper, finds a coin shop that buys precious metal, which he has a lot of and exchanges for new money. He takes this money, goes to a gunshop, invests in cartridges, primers, powder, scales, bullet molds, crimpers.

In other words, everything you need to make your own bullets.

At a flop house, he boils silver, and proceeds to make a shit-ton of ammo. At the Texas Ranger Offices, he asks to see the ranking officer. He's brought to Ben McCulloch's office, where he shows his one-hundred year old Ranger badge and a leather-bound ledger.

McCulloch says, "I take it if you're here, there's trouble." He knows about John Dead, but he can't quite believe the man is real.

He opens up a safe for Dead, revealing more ammo in wooden boxes. Dead requests some Rangers, but McCulloch explains, "We ain't had any call for our original mission for the most of the last hundred years."

So, this mean Dead is going to have to form a posse. He needs outlaws, mean sons-of-bitches.

Who gets to be part of Dead's posse?

McCulloch sends Dead to a roadside café where we meet Lumber, former road captain of the Pagans MC. Dead tells him, "I want a man who when it comes to nut cuttin' time, knows how to die standing up. I want a man to watch my back. Pay is a thousand dollars a day. Ten days up front."

"What exactly is it you're doing?"

"Hunting a werewolf."

Well, ten grand is ten grand. He accepts.

Then there's Wanda, the local slattern waitress who Dead and Lumber save from a bunch of rowdy customers, although they can't save her from getting fired. She asks to tag along with them, and Dead agrees, as she seems to be a radar for when people don't seem like...people. In the old days, he used to recruit prostitutes for this task.

She asks, "So where're we goin'?"

"Looking for a dog."

They go to a ranch house, where a man is breeding and training pitbulls to fight. Dead, against the breeder's warning, steps into the yard, and stares down the alpha. The alpha backs off, and all the other dogs hang back, except one, who approaches Dead, curious.

"Won't fight. Friedrich."

"Shows his belly?"

"Won't pit."

"Dog ain't afeared. Just ain't stupid. We'll take him."

And last but not least is Jane, whom Dead sees on television talking about the mummies. In a moment of misunderstood sarcasm, she reveals that the thieves should return the bodies to her as there's a pretty terrible curse associated with them.

Dead hears this, explains, "She's either a fool admitting she can read the curse and a threat to them...or she's one of 'em and she let him go on purpose."

So who is this werewolf and what's his plan?

His name is Marrok. He's a follower of Anubis, and his goal is to unleash seven years of devastation and death on Earth. See, Marrok is gathering a pack, because he needs to "kill an entire town in the light of a full moon, drench himself in the blood, as the last scream echoes, the pack is annealed, protected from silver for seven years.

This is information they discover thanks to a guy named Lobo, a priest who was part of Cortez' expedition. He was bit but not killed as an insult to the Church, but the Indians took him on as a shaman.

Lobo tells them, "All of the great calamities...The Black Death, Khans sweeping out of Mongolia, Fall of the Roman Empire...They were fermented by a Were or a lie to cover up something a Were had done during a frenzy."

Crazy. Does it work?

Fuck yeah, it does. But look, it's not a character study. Dead's flaw is that he's a virgin. He can never get close to a woman, because whenever he does, Marrok kills her. It's his way of torturing Dead.

And his inner conflict is over his feelings he has about Jane, a woman unlike any he's ever met before. In fact, he even asks Wanda about love and she reflects, "It's like wanting to be with someone so bad, you'd cut your arm off to be with them. And not miss it."

And it's a cool, satisfying theme. There may even be a scene, that quite literally, embodies what Wanda says about love.

And although the characters are quirky, that's as deep as it gets, but it works anyways because it's just well-executed fun. It delivers everything you want to see in a Texas Ranger Posse Vs. Werewolf Pack movie, and there's some inventive set-pieces that don't disappoint.

How different is it?

Well, have you ever read a script with a werewolf hunting dog that tries to protect its masters by taking on a super-alpha, only to be bit and turned into a human male? It's strange, it's funny, it's surprising.

The carnage in this thing is not for the squeamish. Yes, entire busses full of people get eaten. Towns are massacred. A motorcycle gang is converted into werewolves and there's all out war on the Texas roads.

This baby is bloody. As any self-respecting werewolf movie should be.

What separates "Howl" from the rest of the pack?

For the record, my favorite werewolf movie is the Neil Jordan adaptation of Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves. That's followed closely by John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and then the original The Wolf Man.

"Howl" fits somewhere within that triumvirate, a pulpy and campy action-adventure that is easily the best werewolf script I've ever read. It cures the staleness that has settled over the genre as indicated by everything from the Underworld franchise to The Wolfman remake. We're used to watching men transform into hulking beasts. That's nothing new. Perhaps we've experienced all of the horror and subtext that's possible within that, so what's the point in making another movie about werewolves?

Lemkin has created an interesting mythology that's all about the invasion and violation of community and security. John Dead explains, "...wolf was the greatest threat to family, community...Lotta places wolf was the largest, meanest thing you were likely to run into...but different countries, different Weres."

And I love that.

As someone who values the need for community, this spoke to me. These monsters are creatures that have made a pact with evil and they've discovered a way to become invincible that is based upon the ritualistic destruction of a community. To me, that's disturbing.

And these things come in droves. A horde. A terror shared with the threat in 28 Days Later, which will be remembered for its fast-motion tweak on the zombie mythos. "Howl" kind of does the same thing, but where the above flick was full of despair, this tale is occupied by a badass comicbook hero whose presence creates a bottleneck against this evil.

John Dead and the quirky recruits of his posse presents an original heroism and spirit that would separate "Howl" from all the other werewolf projects out there if its unique mythos, invention action sequences and fun narrative drive didn't already make it the leader of the werewolf pack.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The final third act battle, the confrontation with the Jungian Shadow archetype, is a master class in raising the stakes and throwing obstacles at the protagonist. Everything about Dead's plan is turned on its head by Marrok, exploiting all the mythology set-ups Lemkin peppered the script with. The werewolf mythology here is that if a werewolf bites a human, the human has to kill the werewolf before the venom takes root, otherwise they become one. Now, that's not all. There are other rules that Lemkin sets up, but every single one is used against the hero.

Marrok explains, "Right about now, you're thinking if I could only kill the Were that bit me...and you know what's funny, you can't. Cause I'm pretty much impervious to everything. Except maybe fire hot enough to boil silver...But...the trouble with burning me is, that won't work now either. Cause you can't commit suicide. Cause self-destruction isn't an option for a Were, which you are about to be. So now you can't die and be my guardian forcing me into the afterlife. Cause you ordered the fire and now it can't kill you. And you can't leave cause you've bound in the followers of Anubis of which you are now one..."

John Dead finds himself in a situation that seems to have no escape. Which makes how he's going to get out of such a situation a mystery for the reader. Mystery and subverting expectation can keep the reader turning the pages. What's even better is when the solution, the escape, the last Hail Mary, is unexpected, satisfying and in-tone with everything that came before it.

Howl (Book 3: John Dead, Texas Ranger)

Ahhh, a day off. Remember when we used to have those? I mean sure, technically us in America have Memorial Day today and don't have work, but somewhere around 10 years ago holidays just became "get all the shit done you couldn't get done otherwise" days. There is no such thing as a day off anymore. And that's good news for you guys because it means that you still get a review! Yahoooo! So I'm going to leave the rest to Roger as he busts out a script with so many genres it needs its own multiplex. Here's "Howl..."


Genre: Time-travelling werewolf Western (Okay, okay: Adventure, Horror, Science Fiction, Western)
Premise: A time-travelling Texas Ranger has spent the past 500 years hunting a particularly nasty werewolf. When he finally corners him in modern-day Texas, he'll need the help of an unlikely posse to save the world from chaos.
About: This script was picked up in 2001 by Warner Brothers sans producer with Lemkin attached to direct. Back in October, I reviewed another Lemkin script, titled $$$$$$, about a modern day city war in Los Angeles. Lemkin's writing credits include Red Planet, The Devil's Advocate, and Lethal Weapon 4. Upon being asked about "Howl" and his opportunity to direct, "It still makes me laugh and I assume still terrifies them which is why it hasn't happened."
Writer: Jonathan Lemkin
Details: Third Draft

If I wasn't a fan of Lemkin after reading $$$$$$, well, "Howl" won me over a lot sooner than the moment when Wanda, an ex-stripper and Waffle House waitress who has been recruited into a posse of werewolf hunters by a time-travelling Texas Ranger, dons a scant Red Riding Hood outfit and black fuck-me pumps and lures an army of werewolves into a seedy alley that has been converted into a kill box by the posse.

That's a little over eighty pages into the script, but by then, I had already fallen head-over-heels for "Howl", which I read on a plane cramped between two linebackers.

The title indicates that this is the third installment in what's a nod to serialized adventure storytelling, and the next page serves as a warning to a particular type of reader:

If you don't read comic books, stop.

Don't bother to read this. It'll just confuse you.

Watch the Bloomberg channel or something. Trade some stocks on-line. Worry about the Nasdaq.

For God's sake don't read this and complain that it's not something else. It's not.

As a guy that not only loves this kind of material, but writes it himself, I turned the pages with gusto.

Who the hell is John Dead?

Professor Jane Hamilton is the New Texas gal who discovers our time-travelling gunslinger. When we meet her, she's arrived with her archeology team at a construction site in the middle of West Texas in the middle of the night. The foreman greets her, hopes that they haven't stumbled across Indian ruins, because he can't pave over that. A likeable woman, she's brought the crew a ton of road beers while she investigates the site. These thoughts tell you everything you ought to know about Jane, "There's no adventures anymore. We just dig up what's left. Everything's linked by cell phone, internet, alphanumeric pager. Your GPS tells you exactly where you are at all times. You can't even get lost. That's why there's no men. Only boys and toys."

Well, what Jane doesn't know, is that she's about to meet a genuine, honest-to-goodness, real man.

Using state-of-the-art seismic imaging equipment, she discovers a western town from the 1880s. There's even a graveyard. It all looks pretty typical, but then she notices the oddly-shaped crypt calling attention to itself amidst the usual headstones and caskets. It appears to be a hypostyle, hieroglyphic-covered burial crypt that seems to be a replica of a three thousand year old Egyptian building about thirteen thousand miles from home.

She writes it off as the burial site of a crazed Egyptology enthusiast, so she puts an underling in charge. Of course they discovered mummified remains, and the underling even breaks a wax seal on one of the bodies, something he's going to regret in a few minutes.

What appears to be a cowboy and his dog are also discovered in the strange crypt, and they transport all the remains to the University of Texas at El Paso Medical Center, where of course, the body of the dog disappears and people die horrible, horrible deaths.

John Dead is the cowboy, and he awakens, pretty pissed off to discover that the dog has escaped. Dead wears new-fangled Levi jeans from 1874. White shirt. A pair of seven and a half inch Colt .44-40 revolvers on a gunbelt, Bowie knife in a scabbard, and a Winchester 1873 lever action rifle over his shoulder.

Dude is vintage.

He's on the hunt. He blends into El Paso, Texas, because, well, the guy's a motherfucking cowboy. He realizes a hundred years have passed by picking up a paper, finds a coin shop that buys precious metal, which he has a lot of and exchanges for new money. He takes this money, goes to a gunshop, invests in cartridges, primers, powder, scales, bullet molds, crimpers.

In other words, everything you need to make your own bullets.

At a flop house, he boils silver, and proceeds to make a shit-ton of ammo. At the Texas Ranger Offices, he asks to see the ranking officer. He's brought to Ben McCulloch's office, where he shows his one-hundred year old Ranger badge and a leather-bound ledger.

McCulloch says, "I take it if you're here, there's trouble." He knows about John Dead, but he can't quite believe the man is real.

He opens up a safe for Dead, revealing more ammo in wooden boxes. Dead requests some Rangers, but McCulloch explains, "We ain't had any call for our original mission for the most of the last hundred years."

So, this mean Dead is going to have to form a posse. He needs outlaws, mean sons-of-bitches.

Who gets to be part of Dead's posse?

McCulloch sends Dead to a roadside café where we meet Lumber, former road captain of the Pagans MC. Dead tells him, "I want a man who when it comes to nut cuttin' time, knows how to die standing up. I want a man to watch my back. Pay is a thousand dollars a day. Ten days up front."

"What exactly is it you're doing?"

"Hunting a werewolf."

Well, ten grand is ten grand. He accepts.

Then there's Wanda, the local slattern waitress who Dead and Lumber save from a bunch of rowdy customers, although they can't save her from getting fired. She asks to tag along with them, and Dead agrees, as she seems to be a radar for when people don't seem like...people. In the old days, he used to recruit prostitutes for this task.

She asks, "So where're we goin'?"

"Looking for a dog."

They go to a ranch house, where a man is breeding and training pitbulls to fight. Dead, against the breeder's warning, steps into the yard, and stares down the alpha. The alpha backs off, and all the other dogs hang back, except one, who approaches Dead, curious.

"Won't fight. Friedrich."

"Shows his belly?"

"Won't pit."

"Dog ain't afeared. Just ain't stupid. We'll take him."

And last but not least is Jane, whom Dead sees on television talking about the mummies. In a moment of misunderstood sarcasm, she reveals that the thieves should return the bodies to her as there's a pretty terrible curse associated with them.

Dead hears this, explains, "She's either a fool admitting she can read the curse and a threat to them...or she's one of 'em and she let him go on purpose."

So who is this werewolf and what's his plan?

His name is Marrok. He's a follower of Anubis, and his goal is to unleash seven years of devastation and death on Earth. See, Marrok is gathering a pack, because he needs to "kill an entire town in the light of a full moon, drench himself in the blood, as the last scream echoes, the pack is annealed, protected from silver for seven years.

This is information they discover thanks to a guy named Lobo, a priest who was part of Cortez' expedition. He was bit but not killed as an insult to the Church, but the Indians took him on as a shaman.

Lobo tells them, "All of the great calamities...The Black Death, Khans sweeping out of Mongolia, Fall of the Roman Empire...They were fermented by a Were or a lie to cover up something a Were had done during a frenzy."

Crazy. Does it work?

Fuck yeah, it does. But look, it's not a character study. Dead's flaw is that he's a virgin. He can never get close to a woman, because whenever he does, Marrok kills her. It's his way of torturing Dead.

And his inner conflict is over his feelings he has about Jane, a woman unlike any he's ever met before. In fact, he even asks Wanda about love and she reflects, "It's like wanting to be with someone so bad, you'd cut your arm off to be with them. And not miss it."

And it's a cool, satisfying theme. There may even be a scene, that quite literally, embodies what Wanda says about love.

And although the characters are quirky, that's as deep as it gets, but it works anyways because it's just well-executed fun. It delivers everything you want to see in a Texas Ranger Posse Vs. Werewolf Pack movie, and there's some inventive set-pieces that don't disappoint.

How different is it?

Well, have you ever read a script with a werewolf hunting dog that tries to protect its masters by taking on a super-alpha, only to be bit and turned into a human male? It's strange, it's funny, it's surprising.

The carnage in this thing is not for the squeamish. Yes, entire busses full of people get eaten. Towns are massacred. A motorcycle gang is converted into werewolves and there's all out war on the Texas roads.

This baby is bloody. As any self-respecting werewolf movie should be.

What separates "Howl" from the rest of the pack?

For the record, my favorite werewolf movie is the Neil Jordan adaptation of Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves. That's followed closely by John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and then the original The Wolf Man.

"Howl" fits somewhere within that triumvirate, a pulpy and campy action-adventure that is easily the best werewolf script I've ever read. It cures the staleness that has settled over the genre as indicated by everything from the Underworld franchise to The Wolfman remake. We're used to watching men transform into hulking beasts. That's nothing new. Perhaps we've experienced all of the horror and subtext that's possible within that, so what's the point in making another movie about werewolves?

Lemkin has created an interesting mythology that's all about the invasion and violation of community and security. John Dead explains, "...wolf was the greatest threat to family, community...Lotta places wolf was the largest, meanest thing you were likely to run into...but different countries, different Weres."

And I love that.

As someone who values the need for community, this spoke to me. These monsters are creatures that have made a pact with evil and they've discovered a way to become invincible that is based upon the ritualistic destruction of a community. To me, that's disturbing.

And these things come in droves. A horde. A terror shared with the threat in 28 Days Later, which will be remembered for its fast-motion tweak on the zombie mythos. "Howl" kind of does the same thing, but where the above flick was full of despair, this tale is occupied by a badass comicbook hero whose presence creates a bottleneck against this evil.

John Dead and the quirky recruits of his posse presents an original heroism and spirit that would separate "Howl" from all the other werewolf projects out there if its unique mythos, invention action sequences and fun narrative drive didn't already make it the leader of the werewolf pack.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The final third act battle, the confrontation with the Jungian Shadow archetype, is a master class in raising the stakes and throwing obstacles at the protagonist. Everything about Dead's plan is turned on its head by Marrok, exploiting all the mythology set-ups Lemkin peppered the script with. The werewolf mythology here is that if a werewolf bites a human, the human has to kill the werewolf before the venom takes root, otherwise they become one. Now, that's not all. There are other rules that Lemkin sets up, but every single one is used against the hero.

Marrok explains, "Right about now, you're thinking if I could only kill the Were that bit me...and you know what's funny, you can't. Cause I'm pretty much impervious to everything. Except maybe fire hot enough to boil silver...But...the trouble with burning me is, that won't work now either. Cause you can't commit suicide. Cause self-destruction isn't an option for a Were, which you are about to be. So now you can't die and be my guardian forcing me into the afterlife. Cause you ordered the fire and now it can't kill you. And you can't leave cause you've bound in the followers of Anubis of which you are now one..."

John Dead finds himself in a situation that seems to have no escape. Which makes how he's going to get out of such a situation a mystery for the reader. Mystery and subverting expectation can keep the reader turning the pages. What's even better is when the solution, the escape, the last Hail Mary, is unexpected, satisfying and in-tone with everything that came before it.