The Saturday Night Live Movie
Revised First Draft
July 26, 1990

I think it is fair to say that the track record for Saturday Night Live characters making the transition from five-minute sketch to feature length film has been pretty spotty. For every Blues Brothers or Wayne’s World, there has been a Superstar or Ladies Man or even a Blues Brothers 2000 or Wayne’s World 2. Amazingly, the late night franchise’s strongest asset – a format that allows all sorts of comedy scenarios to be explored – has never been utilized on the big screen. But that’s not to say that it hasn’t been considered. In the summer of 1990, several of the show’s then-current writers collaborated on a sketch anthology movie called, appropriately enough, The Saturday Night Live Movie.

Not much is known about the development of this project. There’s no mention of it in Tom Shales’ otherwise authoritative tome SNL: Backstage History, and the only major online reference to the project is Drew McWeeny’s article on the script from two years ago and he seems to be at an equal loss for information on the aborted project.

Al Franken and Tom Davis

A look at the writers who contributed to the script reads like a list of established comedy veterans and rising stars in the making. Future Senator Al Franken, his writing partner Tom Davis, Greg Daniels and Jim Downey represent the old guard writers whose various associations with Saturday Night Live stretch all the back to the show’s earliest days while Conan O’Brien, Robert Smiegel and George Mayer represent the new young turks of the show. Interestingly, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels and writers Bonnie and Terry Turner are listed on the script’s title page though their names are absent from the page at the end of screenplay that breaks down each sketch’s individual writing credits. I can only assume that their contributions were more along the lines of editorial guidance.

Looking at that final page of writing credits, we can also see that many of the sketches are written by a mix of the old and new writers. Even though they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, it is not surprising that Franken and Downey collaborated on a piece called “Young Bush at Yale,” but it is interesting that they are joined by relative newcomer Smiegel, the guy who would create Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog for O’Brien’s future talk show. It is almost as if there is some sort of mentorship program going on. Mayer is the odd duck out here with his sole contribution being the solo-written “Tip Stealer.”

Perhaps appropriately enough, the script is about as scattershot as your typical SNL episode. Some sketches are home runs, most are at least solid base hits and a few are complete strikeouts, the kind that leave you wondering how they ever got past the initial table read, let alone dress rehearsal and onto the live show. But at 18 sketches and 133 pages, this screenplay is overwritten and it is easy to assume that some of the weaker material would have gotten trimmed out as it continued through development.

The film opens with “Welcome To The Movies,” a spoof of the animated “Welcome to our Theater!” spots that run before the trailers and the featured film at movie theaters in the 1980s. But rather than just animated reminders that “Smoking Is Permitted In The Lobby” and to “Please Place All Refuse In The Trash Receptacles,” it proceeds to also inform us that “It Is Illegal To Commit Bigamy” before going into an extended and drawn out thank you for coming to this particular theater. The words fly through space with great whooshes and the whole short piece acts as a silly harbinger of much of what is to come.

The film then kicks into high gear with “Young Bush At Yale,” the first of the screenplay’s two big set pieces. In this one we find a collegiate George Herbert Walker Bush attempting woo a beautiful co-ed by the name of Barbara who is also being pursued by the far more lecherous John F Kennedy. Not the slam piece one would like to expect with Franken being one of the credited writers, “Young Bush” actually feels like an affectionate throwback to screwball romantic comedies of the 1940s. Both Bush’s naivety and Kennedy’s reported girl-chasing tendencies are played up here for comedic effect. The third point of the triangle, Barbara, actually comes off the best, a smart young woman who fights off Kennedy’s advances while slowly falling for the far more innocent George. Ronald Reagan also makes an appearance in the story, as the announcer of the piece’s big football game finale, which JFK’s father Joe Kennedy is trying to fix. (Reagan casually mentions that he is 68. Since this story is set in 1940, I leave it to you to do the math.)

The next piece is “Cineplex” and would likely have irritated theater owners as it basically is a seventeen-minute tutorial shot in the style of old educational films on how to sneak into the movies. And yes, at seventeen pages it goes on much longer than it needs to. Hopefully, this would have been edited down somewhat if the project had continued.

Following “Cineplex” is the first in a trio of short parodies of another mainstay of the cinematic experience of the 1980s – the celebrity charity appeal. Lead by Christopher Reeves, the likes of Glenn Close, Carl Weathers, Charlton Heston, Robert Vaughn, Clint Eastwood, Mary Tyler Moore and Madonna implore the audience to give to the fictional Walter Sternberg Foundation for Childhood Diseases, even though they wind up bickering as to what exactly is the best reason why one should be donating. As the piece recurs through the rest of the film, Chris Reeves grow increasingly irritated at the audience over lack of donations until he snaps in the third installment and starts appearing in other sketches, showing up in the background to glare at the audience.

“Romance” is a sweet yet silly story of a woman’s whirlwind romance with a rather flatulant Italian movie star while travelling in Europe. Not so much a parody of Hollywood rom-coms but instead a riff on bittersweet European romances, the bit is unfortunately one joke stretched out to eleven pages.

“Crack Rap” is a short musical piece spoofing anti-drug Public Service Announcements. Perhaps the execution could have sold the joke on this, but there is no indication as to how do so. As it sits on the page it doesn’t read as funny at all and could have easily been eligible for the editor’s scissors.

“Dad’s Car” starts off as a riff on films like Risky Business where a teen is left at home while his parents go away for the weekend and predictable hijinks ensue. In this case, Turner is prohibited by his father from touching his expensive sports car. This doesn’t stop his friend Shitty from suggesting that they take the car out for a spin, but not without first smashing it with sledgehammers. When they realize what they’ve done – “It was an accident!” pleads one of Turner and Shitty’s friends who was in on the destruction – a phone call comes fromTurner’s Dad stating that they are heading back to the house to pick up their forgotten airline tickets and will be there in exactly 12 minutes! What follows is a hysterical deconstruction of the “racing against time” montage that features in many of these types of films. The kids manages to run to an auto parts store, have parts delivered via mail order from Italy and compete in a race in which the prize just happens to be one of the parts they need all in the alotted twelve minutes. One kid even manages to squeeze in a piano lesson into that time. It’s a ridiculous segment and one of the few portions of the script that left me laughing out loud.

Next is an “American Geographic” short film called “Bum Piss Canyon,” profiling the river of urine that winds through Manhattan before crossing the country to carve out the titular natural wonder. It’s another one joke sketch and the joke is not very funny. At least the script apologizes for the segment at its end.

The next sketch, “The E.T.s” is also pretty much a one-joke premise, but in this case it is a single joke that gets funnier with each retelling. A parody of Steven Spielberg’s film, this sees young Josh befriend a stranded alien only to promptly poison him by offering him some applesauce. The alien has some friends who comes looking for him and Josh and his family proceed to kill them off in an escalating, hysterical series of accidents culminating in a final shot that parodies ET‘s famous bicycle flying across the moon image but has the alien falling out of the bicycle basket to a splattery death.

“On The Farm” is an absurdly twisted idea from Smiegel, O’Brien, Franken and Downey in which the flavor of beef is enhanced by feeding cows delicious stakes. Silly in the way it parodies self-serving commercials from various industry self-interest organizations, it was obviously written long before the words “Mad Cow Disease” became commonly known and historical hindsight gives the piece an interesting, if dark, new level of resonance.

If you hated when Ted Turner decided to computer colorize old black-and-white films, you’ll probably find some laughs in “Wonderful Life,” in which Turner has evolved the idea to the point where he is re-dialoguing old films to add swear words in order to make them more appealing to modern audiences. The result sees Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey calling Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter a “Stupid fucking shithead” in the newly “vulgarized” version of It’s A Wonderful Life. Further examples how Rhett Butler telling Scarlett O’Hara that “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck” and Humphrey Bogart telling Ingrid Bergman “Don’t you see, the problems of two people like us don’t amount to a pile of shit.”

The film’s second and last big set piece is “Tip Stealer,” they story of a man who started stealing tips off of restaurant tables as a kid and is now pathologically driven to continue to do so as an adult. It is well constructed and I can see where the jokes are, but it didn’t really strike me as my cup of tea.

And with that, the film is basically over save for some scripted “bloopers” that are scattered through the closing credits in which we see the various sketch actors flub their lines, get hit by falling klieg lights and even spontaneously combust.

Expectedly, some of the jokes and parodies are very much rooted in the cultural zeitgeist of the time. But what’s interesting about the various pieces is that they all transcend the simple single-set restriction of the television show and really embrace the wider scope that a film affords. Despite the varied results, it is easy to see that all the writers stepped up to the challenge of writing for the broader canvas that film affords.

What’s really fun about reading the script is mentally casting each sketch from the then-current and past SNL players. Dana Carvey gets name-checked in the “Wonderful Life” sketch to provide his Jimmy Stewart impersonation,which he had already done in the classic “Lost Ending To It’s A Wonderful Life” sketch on the December 20, 1986 installment of the series. But Carvey could easily have played the lead in “Young Bush At Yale” as well.There are numerous parts that the versatile Phil Hartman could have filled but I see him most strongly as the dad in “Dad’s Car.” Perhaps Jane Curtain could have come back to play the mom in the “E.T.s” sketch or Loraine Newman could easily have been the girlfriend in “Tip Stealer.”

Of course, there is a caveat to this speculative casting. Outside of maybe Eddie Murphy, I doubt that Lorne Michaels would have used many of the show’s cast who appeared between 1980 and 1985. Michaels was not working on the show at the time and in various anniversary retrospectives those years have always seemed slighted even though they featured some good work from the likes of Billy Crystal, Martin Short and Harry Shearer.

It is not known why the project never came to fruition. Perhaps Lorne Michaels thought that the overall script wasn’t strong enough. Or perhaps he thought working on the project would pull focus away from the show and with a relatively new cast, a majority of whom only had one season under their belts at this time, he didn’t want to do that. Whatever the reason, the fact that the long-running comedy institution was even considering a film project like this makes for a fascinating, if unfortunately ignored, piece of its history.

White House Down
By James Vanderbilt
Draft dated March 1, 2012

When James Vanderbilt’s action script White House Down was sold for a record $3 million last month, it was described as “Die Hard in the White House.” And a read through of the screenplay reveals how accurate that description is. In both tone and story, this script owes much to John McTiernan’s 1988 blockbuster that elevated Bruce Willis from being a popular television star to movie megastar.

John Cale has skated through life mostly on good looks, charm and luck. He owes his current position as a Secret Service agent assigned to the Speaker of the House’s detail to having saved the Speaker’s nephew while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. When asked about the act of heroism he shrugs it off with a glib “He owed me money,” a comment that doesn’t sit well with Agent Carol Finnerty when she interviews Cale for a spot on the team guarding the President of the United States.

But Cale has been not been able to just get by in his family life. He is separated from his wife and ten-year-old, budding policy wonk daughter Emily, the latter with whom he is having a hard time establishing any sort of relationship. In order to try and make a connection with her, Cale scores some exclusive White House tour tickets. Unfortunately, they pick the absolutely worst time for their visit – the moment when a group of terrorists attack the home of the President with the intent of taking hostage its most famous resident. Separated from Emily and the tour group in the confusing first moments of the assault, Cale finds himself having to save the group of hostages that his daughter is a part of as well as the Chief Executive.

When you take a step back, there are indeed some broad similarities between White House Down and Die Hard that are pretty hard to dismiss. Let’s break some of the highlights down by bullet points-

• You have heroes who are in some branch of law enforcement – Willis’s John McClane is a New York City cop while Cale is a Secret Service agent.
• Both Cale and McClain have a strained relationship with a family member that they are trying to repair when the action of the movie happens and of course, both family members are part of a group of people taken hostage. It is the need to save that loved one that drives the motivation behind many of their choices in each story and helps to provide a strand of emotional involvement for the audience. Of course, the resolution of each story sees that relationship repaired.
• The hostage crisis manufactured by the bad guys is just a blind for their true intent, breaking into a computer/computerized vault in the building’s basement.
• Each story’s hero is on their own for a good portion of the film with their only contact to the outside world being another law enforcement officer. Where Die Hard’s McClane had Sgt Al Powell as personified by actor Reginald VelJohnson, Cale has Finnerty with whom he is in contact with via a sat-phone. Finnerty proves to be of more help to Cale than Sgt. Al was allowed to be to McClain.
• At one point in each story an assault team attempts to storm the building and is brutaly massacred with the hero unable to stop it.
• There’s even an escape attempt by limo, though the one here across the White House lawn is far more spectacular than short-lived attempt made in Die Hard.

Despite, or maybe even because of, I’m not sure, the similarities to Die Hard I found myself enjoying the hell out of White House Down. Many writers try to create a wisecracking hero and often in falls on the actor to try and bring some snap to limp lines. But all of the wisecracks that Vanderbilt gives to Cale crackle on the page and many had me chuckling out loud, a rare feat. Additionally, the wisecracks come out of Cale’s character, his way of coping with the insane and stressful situation he has found himself in. They don’t feel grafted on just for the sake of having a witty line cap a scene.

This is not the first time that Vanderbilt has used humor to temper the action in a screenplay. His adaption of the comic book series The Losers has a similar tone, though it leaned a bit more towards the jokes than White House Down. And Vanderbilt is careful to never let the humor overpower the story. The villains’ menace is very much real and Vanderbilt does not hesitate to kill some sympathetic supporting characters when the story needs the tension ratcheted up another degree or two.

Although the actual takeover of the White House doesn’t happen until page 29 of the 142 page script, Vanderbilt makes sure that every moment building-up to the attack is important. Virtually every scene, line and action will have a payoff later on either in terms of plot or characterization. When a White House tour guide mentions a factoid about the historic building it sets up a story moment later on that feels honestly earned and not something that the screenwriter pulled out of the air at that moment. This is some tight, economical writing with not a line being wasted. Vanderbilt also manages to sketch the layout of the White House out with enough detail that we always have a good idea of the location and flow of the action through the story.

I should note though that I hope that all of the White House and Presidential security procedures that Vanderbilt details in the opening of the film are fictitious given the way that the villains of the script circumvent them with relative ease.

So despite the similarities to Die Hard, White House Down stands on its own as a thrilling action story. It’s a throwback to the blockbuster action pictures of the late 1980s and 1990s, where heroes like Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford would cause untold amounts of property damage while trying to stop far more heavily armed bad guys. It has got a hero for whom the stakes are not only important but personal. Coupled with a smartly constructed script and you have a movie I can’t wait to see. The hiring of Roland Emmerich to direct the film certainly feels like a good move.

Let’s just hope if there are further cinematic adventures of Cale in the future, they don’t try and continue to ape the Die Hard franchise with our hero finding himself fending off terrorist attacks while visiting other famous seats of power like Buckingham Palace or the Kremlin in future films.

Autobahn
By F Scott Frasier
Undated Draft

Two thousand and eleven was a good year for screenwriter F Scott Frasier. He started it off by selling the thriller Line Of Sight to Warners last February for which the studio has lined Ben Affleck up to star in and direct. His CIA thriller The Numbers Station started shooting in the fall with John Cusack and Malin Akerman. And in November he sold a third thriller, Autobahn, to the British production company Between The Eyes for a reported “mid-six figures” sum. All three films were written “on spec,” that is without a studio assignment and no guarantee that they would sell. And of the three, Autobahn may perhaps be the most riskiest of the three in terms of how it tells its story, but it may also be the one with the chance to offer the biggest thrills.

The first page of Autobahn simply states “This movie is fast. This movie is relentless.” That’s a bold boast to make, especially with a title taken from the name of the German highway system known for its lack of speed limits. But Frasier manages to live up to that promise, delivering a solid and exciting exploitation script that could be described as Crank by way of 1971’s Vanishing Point minus the latter’s existential ending.

Autobahn starts off with a deceptive moment of quiet with the script seating its reader in a BWM parked in a large garage filled with high end automobiles. The calm is shattered by gunshots. The film’s hero, Casey Stein, comes charging in carrying a duffel-bag and being chased by gun-tooting goons. Casey dives into the BWM and thanks to the keys being in the ignition, revs the motor and tears out of the garage to reveal his escaping from a rather ornate home in the German Alps. With an army of armed goons in black SUVs pursuing him, Casey heads for the surest means of escape – the speed-limitless German highway system known as the Autobahn.

Through a series of cell phone calls, we learn that Casey and his friend Jeff have double-crossed a rather bad man by the name of Argrest. Their plan is to slip out of the country by catching a train out of Innsbruck, but when Argrest calls and threatens his girlfriend Juliette, Casey heads to Munich to save her from Argrest’s killers. But can he elude the killers that are on his own tail in order to make it there in time?

Like the titular motorway, Autobahn moves along at an accelerated pace, barely giving one a chance to catch their breath as it charges pell-mell for 84 pages towards its final Fade To Black.

But rather than letting this be just a straight-up car chase film, Frasier makes a couple of stylistic choices that help make the script feel more visceral and vital. Right away he tells us that we will never leave the BMW that Casey steals and indeed we stay in it until he crashes it on page 42. And while he doesn’t state it implicitly, it is hard not read those 42 pages as one long, continuous shot. On top of that, the entire script reads as if Frasier telling his story in real time. There are no cuts to “later on” during Casey’s race to save Juliette. We are with him every second of the script and we can’t help but feel his sense of urgency. And with that sense of urgency, every delay and obstacle placed in Casey’s way only serves to ratchet up the tension even further.

Now the danger to such a storytelling choice is that it might be limiting when it comes to characterization. Frasier manages to avoid that trap, though, doling out information about Casey, his relationships with Jeff and Juliette as well as the events leading up to the script’s opening moments.

I only have one real complaint about the screenplay and it is with the motive it gives a character in its last section. Throughout the script, Casey is barely able to keep one step ahead of the bad guys and at the beginning of the third act we learn that this is because someone has betrayed him. Due to the limited number of characters in the story, it was pretty easy to figure out before Casey does who that person is. I never like to feel smarter than a movie’s hero, but in this instance it comes off as an unfortunate but probably unavoidable byproduct of the script’s setup. However, I am not sure I really buy into the person’s excuse given for their betrayal of Casey. It feels a bit trite, more like a placeholder for a better idea to come along with a rewrite. For a script that makes a lot of interesting creative choices, this rather mundane one comes as a disappointment.

But that fixable point aside, Autobahn is a gripping read that with the right director could be turned into a rather exciting film. Here’s hoping that production company Between The Eyes can deliver on that promise.

As this week marks the release of National Lampoon’s Animal House on blu-ray disc as well as the 33r anniversary of the film’s release in theaters, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at the script for a sequel to the classic comedy that was written but never made.

National Lampoon’s Animal House II
Second Draft Screenplay by Matty Simmons, Michael Simmons, Andrew B Simmons
Draft Date May 6, 1982

The early 1980s were a troubled time for the National Lampoon magazine. In the previous decade the magazine burst into American pop culture with a slash-and-burn attitude towards comedy that perfectly suited the post-Watergate cynicism that was sweeping the country. In short time, it quickly became a household name and spun off a popular syndicated radio series. However, the magazine’s popularity didn’t really reach its zenith until the release of the film National Lampoon’s Animal House in the summer of 1978.

But as the cynical 70s gave way to the 1980s and Ronald Reagan’s vision of the country as a shining city on a hill, Nat Lamp (as it is often abbreviated) found its fortunes floundering. The magaine’s three founders – Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman – had accepted a buyout clause in their contract back as far back as 1975 and by the end of the decade, many of the magazine’s original staff had already moved on. Some, such as the brilliant Michael O’Donoghue and Anne Beatts, had gone to work in television, helping to launch a little weekend, late-night sketch show for NBC called Saturday Night. Others went west, lured by the big money to be found in Hollywood.

The magazine’s circulation was decreasing and it still hadn’t found a way to follow up on the success of Animal House at the movies. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), which screenwriter John Hughes based on one of his Lampoon short stories, was still a year away from being released when Animal House producer and Nat Lamp publisher Matty Simmons decided that the best way to reinvigorate the cinematic brand name of National Lampoon would be returning to Faber College for a second Animal House film.

This would not be the first time an Animal House sequel was considered. After the film became a hit in the summer of 1978, a follow up story was conceived. It was set five years after the events of the first film in 1967′s “Summer of Love” and would feature the Deltas coming together to attend the marriage of their fraternity brother Pinto in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. Animal House co-screenwriter Chrris Miller got as far as writing a treatment for the film with Lampoon writer John Weidman, but Universal passed on the idea, reportedly because the recently released American Graffiti sequel also had some similar elements concerning hippies and the Summer of Love and had died at the box office.

There was also an attempt to bring Animal House to television in 1979 as the series Delta House failed as well. Probably inspired by the success CBS had with bring Robert Altman’s anti-war comedy M*A*S*H to television, Delta House was a half-hour sitcom shot in the style of the original film and not on the rather flat, fake sets that most sitcoms were produced on. And while there was no studio audience, much like the early seasons of M*A*S*H, there was a laugh track, supposedly to cue the audience at home as to when they should laugh. The show featured the return of Animal House cast members John Vernon (Dean Wormer), Stephen Furst (Flounder), Bruce McGill (D-Day), and James Widdoes (Hoover) and the pilot episode (“The Legacy,” airdate January 18, 1979) was written by Animal House‘s scriptwriting trio of Harold Ramis, Doug Kenney and Miller.

But despite initially good ratings, and five of its 13 episodes being written by Nat Lamp alum John Hughes, the series only lasted four months. Reportedly producers Simmons and Ivan Reitman had quickly become burned out with arguing with network executives over the content of the show.

Perhaps looking forward to producing an Animal House project without the strictures imposed by television, Simmons decided to go ahead and start developing a sequel somewhere in late 1981/early 1982. There was just one problem- The original writers of Animal House were unavailable. Miller was off working on Anne Beatts television show Square Pegs, which, for better or worse, gave the world Sarah Jessica Parker. Harold Ramis was off working on SCTV. And Doug Kenney was dead, having died under mysterious circumstances with no one knowing if he had accidentally fallen or purposefully jumped off the side of a mountain in Hawaii where he was vacationing following the completion of his work on the comedy Caddyshack.

So Simmons, perhaps bolstered by the fact that he shared a writer’s credit for two episodes of Delta House, took it upon himself to pen the screenplay in conjunction with Michael and Andrew B Simmons. (These two might be Matty Simmons’s sons, but I can’t confirm that online anywhere. There was a Michael Simmons credited as being the singer of the Delta House theme song.)

It’s been five years since the brothers of Delta House wrecked havoc on the Annual Faber College Homecoming Parade and several members of the frat decide that it might be safe to venture back for a weekend visit to their old college haunts. Arriving, though, they are horrified at the changes that their beloved fraternity has undergone. After keeping it closed for half a decade, Dean Wormer has allowed Delta House to reopen, only to fill it with a collection of nerds and geeks – the type to never cause the problems that have been associated with the Deltas in the past. And so Boone, Otter, D-Day, Pinto and Flounder take it upon themselves to instruct their new frat brothers in their fraternity’s infamous history. They almost immediately run afoul of Wormer and the members of Omega House, lead by their old nemesis Doug Neidermeyer. Wormer wants to run the returning Deltas off campus before they sour filthy rich alumni Milton Vanderslaag on donating more money to the college. Things escalate to the point where the Deltas enter into a bet with Vanderslaag, Wormer and the Omegas which puts the future existence of Delta House at risk. To win the bet, all they have to do is best the Omegas in two out of three competitions, contests that the Deltas really aren’t suited for at all.

To be honest, when I started reading this I went in with severely lowered expectations. Animal House is a classic and is one of my few favorite comedies that doesn’t feature the Marx Brothers, another group of outsiders who frequently thumbed their noses at the uptight establishment. And there are moments where I found myself liking what I was reading. But when I put down the script at the end, I had to wonder if my positive response wasn’t because of the affection that I hold for the characters, because this screenplay has a lot of flaws.

Giving credit where it’s due, the Simmonses do manage to approximate the voices of most of the characters. A line from Flounder, Boone or Otter usually reads like something they’d say. Of course, this could partially be attributed to the fact some of the characters’ lines and actions are just reprises of favorite bits from the first film. When Boone and Otter are at center field at the start of the climactic football game, they once again do their “Eric Stratton, damn glad to meet you”/”That was Eric Stratton. He was damn glad to meet you.” bit from the first film’s opening rush party scene.

But this also leads us to the first of the script’s big failing – the pervasive feeling of familiarity. The Deltas trip to the honkytonk roadside bar is an obvious callback to the famous bar scene in the first film. And having your film’s heroes’ fortunes rest on the outcome of a football game is a cliche that dates back as far as the Marx Brother’s Horse Feathers and Harold Lloyd’s 1925 comedy The Freshman. One of Hughes’ Delta House scripts also centered on a football game and I have to wonder if Simmons partly pinched the idea from here.

The next of the big problems with the script lies in its comedic set pieces. Many of the original film’s comic moments were drawn from the screenwriters own college experiences or stories they heard from friends. For all their outrageousness, there’s still the element of reality to the proceedings. (Well, with perhaps the exception of elements of the Homecoming Parade at the end of the film, but by this point, we’re along for the ride.) But here, the writers are just pushing things a little too far past the realm of probability for the sake of a laugh. In the scene where the Deltas cut some wires to a radio transmitter tower owned by the college, electricity suddenly sparks everywhere and then the whole tower just collapses. In another sequence, D-Day laces the punch at a Homecoming function and soon everyone is shedding their clothes to skinny dip in the river or to have sex with each other along the shore. These feel too broad and come across as cartoonish.

The worst transgression in this category is when Dean Wormer and the Neidermeyer brothers set fire to the Deltas’ frat house all the while Boon and Katie are having makeup sex in a room upstairs, oblivious to the conflagration around them. They even continue after they realize that the House is on fire! It stretches believability so badly that if he had a mustache, I’d be expecting Wormer to be twirling its end.

The script is also too scattered and unfocused. It often loses some its characters for long stretches of time, most specifically the new group of Deltas. Also, it doesn’t seem to know what story it wants to tell. Is the film about about the classic Deltas once again besting their rivals at the Omega House or is it about the Deltas inducting their new generation of frat brothers into the fine traditions of partying and chasing girls? At 127 pages, the script is far too long by trying to do both and ultimately each storyline just feels diluted.

There’s also a question about the underlying logic of the script that I couldn’t get out of my head. At the end of the first film, the Deltas sabotaged the Homecoming Parade in retaliation for Dean Wormer flunking them out of Faber and getting their fraternity charter revoked. And yet, just a couple of years later they’re allowed to stroll back on campus for the Homecoming weekend? I would imagine that Wormer’s first act upon seeing anyone of them set foot on the college grounds would have been to pick up the phone and call the police. Certainly the statute of limitations on their actions (destruction of property, inciting a riot, etc) couldn’t have expired yet.

If you’re looking for just a pleasant reunion with the characters you grew to like and hate in the original film, you should know that there are some conspicuous absences amongst the returning Deltas and Omegas. Belushi’s Bluto is the most obvious, but also the most understandable as the actor died just a few months before the draft date on this script. (This leads me to believe that perhaps the more prominent role of D-Day in the script is the result of giving his character much of the action that may have originally been planned for Bluto.) Stork’s absence is similarly understandable due to Kenny’s death. With Miller not participating in the writing, the character he played in the film, Hardbar, is nowhere to be found. On the Omega side, Doug Neidermeyer’s right hand man Greg Marmalade (played by James Daughton) is also missing, his role filled by Doug’s younger brother Brad.

But at the end of the day and this script’s 127 pages the question remains – Is this a necessary story to tell? We already know what the future holds for the Deltas and the Omegas after the Fall of 1962. Do we need to see more reasons why no one will mourn Niedermeyer when he eventually gets fragged by his own troops in ‘Nam? Do we need to see Boone and Katie having marital problems or Flounder on his way to becoming a counselor? Not really. And while we may remain friends with those we meet in college for the rest of our lives, I think that this script teaches us that perhaps it is not the wisest thing to only dwell on one’s past glories.

We continue our celebration of the 35th anniversary of the American release of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a look at the script for the aborted sequel Revenge Of The Old Queen.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Part 2:
Revenge Of The Old Queen
A First Draft Screen Play Of A Musical For Film
With Book And Lyrics By Richard O’Brien
And Music By Richard Hartley
Undated Draft

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a film phenomenon like no other. A 1975 adaptation of the British rock musical that paid homage to 1950s science-fiction b-movie programmers and the then-current decade’s sex, drugs and rock and roll credo, it had failed in a traditional release only to find a new and continuous life on the midnight movie circuit. As THE decade was coming to a close and the popularity of Rocky Horror showed no signs of abating, studio executives at Twentieth Century Fox would turn to the musical’s creators Richard O’Brien and Richard Hartley for a direct to the big screen follow up. The result was 1981′s Shock Treatment, a film that wasn’t really embraced by Rocky Horror fans at the time.

It would be almost ten years before O’Brien and Hartley would take a second stab at a Rocky Horror Picture Show follow up. Where Shock Treatment followed the further travails of the now married Brad and Janet Majors without really referencing Rocky Horror in a story that was billed “Not a sequel but an equal,” this new attempt made it clear that it was a more direct sequel right from the script’s title page – The Rocky Horror Picture Show Part Two – The Revenge Of The Old Queen.

It has been a decade and a half since the events of that fateful evening chronicled in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the eternal night of the planet Transexual in the galaxy of Transylvania, General Riff Raff is found mourning over the coffin of his dead sister Magenta, and his mental disposition has not improved overtime. No one knows it was he who killed her in a fit of jealous rage over an alleged liaison she had with Lord de Lordy, second in line for the Old Queen’s Royal Deck chair after her son Frank N Furter. Magenta’s current deceased status, though, has apparently not put much of a damper on their “relationship.” Riff is summoned before the Great Furter herself, the Old Queen, who commands that he return to Earth and bring back her son Frank so he can assume his rightful place as her heir before she dies. It is apparent that Magenta’s murder isn’t the only one that Riff is hiding.

Meanwhile on Earth, Steve Majors, an agent for the Bureau of Investigation Into UFOs, has made a startling discovery. While reading an old file labeled “The Denton Affair,” he has uncovered the fact that the popular movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was based on actual events that happened to his older brother and his fiancee fifteen years ago. He confronts his boss Ray Ammbo with this information, plus the fact that there are still Transylvanians on Earth and that they have at least one safe house, hidden away in Fresno. Ray, whose son Sonny is a teen pop star with the song “The Moon Drenched Shores of Transylvania,” knows all this already, as he is obviously a collaborator with the Transylvanians. But he knows that the safe house has been abandoned for some time, so he lets Steve go and investigate in order to get him out of his hair.

Driving cross-country to Fresno, Steve is contacted by fellow agent Judy Brankmire, with whom he went to Denton High School. Judy has already arrived at the safe house and is waiting for Steve in order to begin their investigation. While waiting, she decides to freshen up with a shower, not knowing that the stall is a disguised transducer, a Transylvanian space and time teleporter. As she is soaping up, Judy is accidentally transported to Transylvania as Riff Raff teleports to Earth. Of course, the running shower soaks Riff. Judy arrives on Transylvania covered only in a bit of bubbles and is met by Lord de Lordy. The two are instantly smitten with each other.

At the Fresno safe house, Riff Raff has been alerted to Steve’s impending arrival by a phone call from the agent. Tricking Steve into believing that he is Judy’s brother George, Riff Raff bundles the agent into the transducer to Alaska. Riff then heads for Denton, only to discover that a housing development, Happy Homes, has been built on the land where the castle once stood. Returning to the local Holiday Inn, where a transducer has been hidden, he encounters Janet Majors, nee Weis, who is so far derelict that neither of them recognizes the other. Riff then teleports to the past.

Stranded at an Alaskan Holiday Inn, Steve takes a stab at figuring out the transducer’s controls, teleporting into Ray Ammbo’s office, joining Ray, Mary Lou, Sonny and the recently arrived Lord de Lordy and Judy, who are on the run from the Old Queen who has accused them of sedition. The group crams themselves into the transducer and teleports to the Denton Holiday Inn shower that Riff just used and then follow him back in time.

Everyone arrives outside the House but before Riff or anyone else can get inside to stop the younger Riff from murdering Frank, a firefight erupts between all the parties. Steve is knocked unconscious in the melee and Riff kills Lord de Lordy and Judy. The House takes off as it did at the end of the first film and the Old Queen’s soldiers are killed. Ray is also killed, but not before revealing that he is actually Sonny’s adoptive father – his real parents are Janet and Frank N Furter, making him next in line for the Transylvanian throne.

The Old Queen dies and Riff Raff pledges his allegiance to the new ruler, Sonny. Riff, Sonny, Janet and Mary Lou head back to the present and Transylvania for Sonny’s coronation. Forgotten, Steve regains consciousness. Heading back towards his childhood home, Steve tries to convince his mother that he is her son from the future. As she calls the cops, Steve shouts a warning that the Transylvanians are infiltrating the country and to “Keep watching the showers!”

The script’s title page states that the document is a “first draft screenplay of a musical for film.” What it should say is that it is a very rough first draft, one that only sketches out its characters and plot in the broadest of strokes. You can see where O’Brien is trying to feel his way through the story, having a rough idea of its form but not having it yet molded in to its final shape. The plot is the barest of bones with no strong narrative thrust outside of Riff Raff trying to cover up his being the murderer of Frank N Furter. Most of the song lyrics seem to be in place with the exception of the untitled one that Sonny sings in his introduction. (O’Brien notes that it goes “something or other like this” right in the script.)

Lots of ideas are hinted at but never get fully developed. For example, Steve Majors discovers that the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show chronicled events that actually happened to his brother and his fiance at the hands of a sexually libertine extra-terrestrial mad scientist. But the idea never has a life of its own beyond the scene in which it is introduced except for allowing Sonny to interject “asshole” and “slut” when Steve mentions Brad and Janet in his presence later on. But it raises questions whose answers could have lead to some interesting plot lines. How did the movie get made and by whom? Was it secretly put together by Transylvanians and if so, for what purpose? W. D. Richter’s The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eight Dimension used a similar “fictional story as part of a film’s reality” device, but with Orson Welles’ famous “War Of The Worlds” Halloween broadcast being the actual arrival of aliens. However, Buckaroo Banzai scripter Earl Mac Rauch twisted the concept back on itself and had the aliens hypnotizing Welles into saying that his broadcast was a prank to cover up their arrival. But the appearance of a movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show within the narrative of its sequel hints at many possibilities left unexplored.

Similarly, there are some characters who feel underdeveloped as well. Lord de Lordy seems to exist only to provide a reason for Riff Raff’s pre-film murder of his sister and to be the device to get the Old Queen to come to Earth. Once those two functions are done, author O’Brien, in the guise of his alter ego, promptly kills him off, along with Judy. Ray Ambo’s secretary Mary Lou has even less of a reason for being in the script outside of looking pretty in a short skirt.

Reading Revenge Of The Old Queen, it is hard not to try and interpret many of the choices O’Brien makes as reactions to criticisms of the previous Rocky Horror sequel, Shock Treatment. Where Shock Treatment seemed to distance itself from Rocky Horror in an effort to tell a new story about Brad and Janet, Revenge Of The Old Queen evokes Rocky Horror at every opportunity. By concentrating on Riff and the Transylvanians, it seems as if O’Brien was hoping to evoke the spirit of the early parts of Rocky Horror, specifically Brad and Janet’s arrival at Frank N Furter’s home and the “Time Warp” musical number. There’s some drugs and sex, and even the Transylvanians’ Earthling allies like Ray are hedonists of the first order. The film’s finale even takes place on the grounds of the first film’s phoneless castle while the finale of that film is going on inside!

Curiously, though, O’Brien does toss in a nod or two to Shock Treatment. During Riff Raff s opening soliloquy to his dead sister’s coffin, he exhorts her to come out so “we can play doctors and nurses,” an entreat that recalls the lyric in Shock Treatment‘s title tune that “Playing doctor and nurse can be good for your health.” The present day housing development built on the land formerly occupied by Frank N Furter’s castle is called “Happy Homes.”

It’s hard to completely be able to evaluate the new songs O’Brien has penned for the movie without hearing them performed. Reading the lyrics’ texts reveals that they do the jobs that songs in a musical are supposed to do – reveal characters’ emotions and motivations and move the plot along. They are also distinctly O’Brien’s work containing the internal rhymes, word play and sense of whimsy that can be found in the songs of Rocky Horror and Shock Treatment.

In “I’m A Mother (A Real Mother),” the Old Queen sings of her son Frank “Was ever a mother blessed with such a boy/ Was ever another’s breast pressed to such joy/ My one and only son was more libidinous/ Than any honeybun including Oedipus.” Later, some diner patrons warn us to “Never Let Your Daughter Date An Alien” by singing of “Creeping horror from the eerie depths of time and space/ Heaping horror on the fairer sex of a finite race.” There’s some definite rhythm to the language that is unmistakenly O’Brien’s.

But the biggest question concerning the script – Would Rocky Horror Picture Show fans have liked the movie that it would produce? – is hard to answer. While it certainly contains elements of the first film, there’s no real strong sense of theme or message. Rocky Horror extolled us to “Don’t dream it, be it.” (Even if that philosophy didn’t work out too well in the end for Frank N Furter.) In fact, given Brad’s off-screen fate and Janet’s boozy portrayal onscreen, it feels as if O’Brien is repurposing the end of Rocky Horror Picture Show into more of a cautionary tale. I don’t know how well that would have gone over with fans.

While I am unsure what the ultimate reasons were why this project was abandoned, I am sure that second pass through the script would have firmed it up and focused the story more.

By Elizabeth Wright Shapiro
Draft Dated March 2, 2009

The old saying about politics making strange bedfellows is apparently the springboard for Allie With Benefits. With perhaps the first Meet Cute to take place at the G8 economic summit, Allies With Benefits managed to squeak its way on to this year’s Black List with five votes. But even with its unique protagonists, Allies With Benefits is still a romantic comedy at its core and while it bends some of the genre’s rather stiff conventions, it does manage to succumb to its pitfalls.

Jo Brooks is the first woman President of the United States, a position she worked hard all her life to achieve. But she suddenly finds that it all might be in jeopardy when she realizes that the newly appointed Prime Minister of England, Alistair Chadwick, “Ali” for short, is a collegiate one night stand from 25 years earlier. Having a bit of a reputation as a lothario, Ali doesn’t recognize Jo out of the parade of women from his past at first. But once he does, it isn’t too long before sparks are flying between them again, and this time it is no one night stand. Of course, a personal relationship is the worst thing politically that could happen for the two of them.

There are some things that Allies With Benefits does that break with traditional rom coms. Refreshingly Shapiro doesn’t hobble Jo with a female best friend/ confidant character. While it doesn’t seem to be a major thing at first, it does serve to show her isolation in the Oval Office. The closest character to fill that role is her chief of staff Max, but the gender difference automatically dictates a different sort of dynamic between them. In fact, with the exception of two characters who only show up in a scene a piece, Jo is the script’s sole female character, a reminder that the halls of power are still pretty much a sausage party. It becomes a point mined for laughs when the G8 leaders get behind closed doors and away from advisors, aides and security. The atmosphere quickly devolves to frat house levels with good-natured ribbing of each other and drunken karaoke. It’s a funny scene, and it almost makes me wish for a spin-off with these world leaders getting into some crazy, Hangover-ish hi-jinks. But the scene also grows out of the fact that these world leaders carry burdens that no one outside of similar positions could really understand and the chances that they get to truly relax with peers are indeed limited.

While Shapiro manages to craft serviceable voices for the leads, outside of a few exceptions (Jo’s remark about a “nuclear arm candy race” being the most notable) it doesn’t have much verve. One particularly jarring moment comes when Ali tells Sidney that the drunken kiss he shared with Jo was “hardly second base.” Jarring, in that the baseball metaphor for how lucky one gets on a date is culturally distinct to America and seems wrong coming from a British character.

Probably much to the disappointment of conservative pundits who enjoy painting Hollywood as nothing but Republican-bashing elitists, Shapiro has made Jo a member of the party of Lincoln and Reagan. The specter of Reagan actually factors in to a subplot about the renegotiation of an environmental treaty and the reduction of pollution emissions. Ali points out to Jo that the Republican Party used to have a much stronger environmental stance by quoting a speech of Reagan’s. He then challenges her to use her political juice to get a Republican-dominated Congress to pass the new treaty calling for an unprecedented 50% emission reduction by 2020. This is about as far as the script dips into political wonkery, though. The fact that Jo is Republican is almost coincidental. She could just as easily have been a Democratic President trying to convince a Republican heavy Congress of the same thing with the same argument.

But while the script’s first two-thirds contains both good and bad moments, it goes totally off the rails when it enters into the home stretch, beat for beat unfolding directly from the rom-com instructional manual. Jo and Ali split. Jo mopes, then comes to a realization before speeding back to Ali’s side to declare her love, scandals be damned. Definitely romantic comedy boilerplate. But setting the big climax against the signing of the aforementioned environmental treaty and the high cheese factor of the confessional speech Jo gives to Ali in front of the world media pretty much dispelled the feelings of good will that the script, uneven as it is, had begun to engender in me.

I have to give Shapiro credit, though. Audiences have been inundated with work place set romantic comedies, but she came up with the ultimate (high) office setting. She even manages to do a few interesting things with the story and plays with the ideas of the loneliness of high office and the small, strange fraternity that world leaders share.

But for its moments of inventiveness, Allies With Benefits knuckles under the limiting structure of its genre, making it tough for its transgressions to be pardoned.

By Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Draft dated January 21, 2009

If ever there was a franchise in need of a reboot, it may just be the Highlander series, especially as it was never intended to be a franchise to begin with. The original 1986 film ended with such finality to its story of immortals battling for a vaguely-defined prize for the sole survivor that fans of the film were surprised and a bit perplexed when a sequel was announced. But the second film’s hamfisted attempt to retrofit an extra terrestrial origin on to the immortals was met with such derision that the producers saw fit to disregard the film when they went back to the well for a third installment. Although a spinoff television series featuring the equally immortal cousin of the film franchise’s main hero ran for six years, producers were never able to cross that popularity over to the movies when they tried to add the television character into the cinematic mix. The series finally ground to an ignoble halt in 2007 with Highlander: The Source. Originally intended as the first film of a new theatrical trilogy that would re-energize the franchise, it instead premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel before heading to home video. Fans’ negative reaction to the film was nearly at the same level as Highlander II, thus providing the last nail in the franchise’s coffin.

But despite the films that came after it, fans still hold the original Highlander in some regard, and when producers announced their intentions in following the James Bond and Star Trek franchises in starting over from scratch for Summit Entertainment, many thought it was entirely unnecessary and doubted that such an endeavor could bring anything new of worth to the material.

However, a read of Art Marcum and Matt Holloway’s January 21, 2009 dated draft of the proposed remake’s script actually shows the benefit of two decades worth of hindsight. The basic premise remains intact, though some tweaks have been made to them, nearly all the better. Certain aspects about the characters’ immortality have been expanded upon and the scope of the story has been opened up a bit. And best of all, no mention of other planets are to be found. (Although I have to admit that it would have been fun to see someone confronted with the facts of Connor MacLeod’s immortality ask him “What are you, some kind of alien?” only to have him roll his eyes and reply “Don’t be stupid.”)

But for all its new and positive spin placed on the material, the screenplay does make a couple of missteps, the first of which is its opening eight pages. The original film opened in modern times (the 1980s) with two men sword fighting in Madison Square Garden’s parking garage, one beheading the other before fleeing. We then flashback to the 1500s and the Highlands of Scotland where we see one of the two sword fighters just seen five centuries in the future! We learn his name is Connor MacLeod and on this day in battle with his clan’s enemies he will discover that he is immortal.

Rather than open with the exciting and mysterious hook of two men crossing swords in modern day New York City, Marcum and Holloway’s screenplay opens in 1503 Scotland with Connor and the rest of clan MacLeod readying to raid the nearby village of Clan MacDonald. However, when they arrive at the MacDonald’s village, they find that they have already been slaughtered. The only person left alive is a Russian warrior we will learn is called simply the Kurgan, and when Connor first sees him, his ears are filled with a pounding he can’t explain. The Kurgan attacks Connor, slashing his way through his fellow clansmen. The Kurgan manages to impale Connor with his sword, but before he can administer a decapitating, killing stroke, he is overpowered by members of Clan MacLeod, and forced to retreat.

As the mortally wounded Connor is placed into a boat to be returned to his village, we get the script’s only stylized transition from flashback to the main story’s modern day setting, a style that director Russell Mulcahy made a hallmark of the original film. Over this we get a quick explanation of the immortals via voice over. In a move that carries more than a faint whiff of desperately wanting to appeal to fans of the original film, the screenplay notes that the lines should be spoken by original film co-star Sean Connery, and are a direct lift from the opening title card in the original Highlander explaining how immortals have lived among us for centuries.

In 2009, we find Connor living under the name of Russell Nash, chair of the History Department at Fordham University, a Jesuit-run university. Anyone already familiar with the Highlander mythology knows that immortals are forbidden from attacking each other on holy ground. (This is a rule that will play an important role in the third act of this screenplay.) The fact that Connor has taken on an identity that gives him protection from his fellow immortals for a majority of his day is the script’s first hint that it has recast Connor not as a warrior grimly resigned to his fate so much as a man wearied by his immortality but still a wary and cunning warrior. This impression is immediately reinforced through a discussion he has with his students over the justification for a country to go to war in which he tells them-

“Do I have a choice?” That is the question. Is there another way? Because if there is and you don’t take it, sooner or later you lose everything you thought you were fighting for…

But Connor’s class discussion is interrupted by a man Connor recognizes, and a flashback fills us in that he was an officer in Napoleon’s army, in which Connor served. Things did not end on a friendly note between the two and the Officer is looking to settle the score. That evening, once he has left the campus grounds, Connor is attacked by the French Officer. It is here where we see the first major change to the standard Highlander mythology. Before, immortals only battled each other with bladed weapons, most typically swords. Here, however, the French Officer first attempts to ambush Connor with a gun. This is not a one-off aberration, either. Later in the script, the Kurgan uses a rocket launcher to blow up the home of an immortal, though he does enter the burning rubble to administer the coupe de grace beheading with a sword.

Through skill and an interesting piece of business involving a previous duel he was in during the 1980s, Connor manages to defeat the French Officer, and we are (re-) introduced to the concept of the Quickening- the transfer of all the defeated immortal’s power and knowledge to the winner in a flash of lightening. Although Connor disposes of the French Officer’s body in the Hudson River, but since it has been a long time since he fought another immortal, his body disposal skills are not what they once were and he soon finds himself the target of a police investigation after the headless corpse is discovered. Meanwhile, the Kurgan is just being released from a five decade incarceration in solitary confinement in San Quentin prison and is looking to finish what he started with MacLeod five centuries earlier.

It is from here that the screenplay follows the original film’s storyline, at least in broad strokes. The main conflict is still Connor’s and the Kurgan’s showdown, as immortals convene for the Gathering. Flashbacks are used to fill-in Connor’s backstory. Connor is schooled in the ways of the immortals – including the rules for the combat that they euphemistically call The Game – by another immortal named Ramirez. Connor still falls in love with a young woman named Brenda Wyatt. The police investigation comes close to discovering Connor’s secret, only stopped by their skeptical nature. But the devil is in the details and the screenwriters have changed things enough to keep it fresh without straying too far from the original. It is a tough mix to get right, but Marcum and Holloway manage it.

Instead of being part of the police investigation against Conner, modern day love interest Brenda Hyatt is now a dealer in antique jewelry. The two meet when Connor discovers that she has in her store a silver pin his wife Heather gave him back in the 1500s. It definitely changes the dynamic between the two, moving away from the cat-and-mouse relationship they share for the first half of the original film.

The reappearance of the pin some four and a half centuries after he lost it helps to reinforce Connor’s sense of loss at having lived so long. In addition to Connor, we see how virtual immortality has weighed on others. The script hints of weariness in Ramirez, who has seen centuries turn to eons. This tiredness adds additional fuel to his warnings to Connor about the dangers of relationships with mortals, driving a more solid wedge between the two characters.

Perhaps taking a cue from the television series, the writers have expanded a bit on the secret society of the immortals. Mention is made of how forensic sciences and computerized record keeping has made it that much more difficult for them to pass through the world undetected. To that end, there is one immortal who, in return for immunity from the Game until the time of the Gathering, supplies top notch forged identities.

The scope of the Gathering has been expanded as well. In the original film, we only saw two other immortals in modern times besides Connor and the Kurgan. Here, nearly twenty converge on New York City. And as the Game appears to be drawing to its conclusion, their adherence to the rules goes right out the window. When at the film’s midpoint, Connor and the Kurgan are battling it out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, several immortals show up, hoping to interfere with the duel and claim a head or two for their own.

But the strongest change that the writers have brought to the material is the fleshing out of the Kurgan. Before, he was just a brute force sweeping through the movie, wrecking havoc. Here, he is given intelligence and cunning, making him all the more dangerous and unpredictable. The old Kurgan would never have laid the diabolical trap the new one sets for several of his adversaries in the pages leading up to the film’s climax.

In spite of all the solid work the writers have done in the body of the script, they trip right at the finish line. The screenplay’s last four pages serve as a coda, coming after the Kurgan’s defeat from Connor’s blade. (That’s not really a spoiler, is it?) In it, a secret is revealed that at once sets up the possibility for a sequel and undercuts the finale of the film. While it is understandable that the producers are hoping and planning on this film being the launch of a new (and hopefully more coherent) Highlander series, it does jerk the rug out from everything that the audience was lead to believe about Connor’s struggles through the film. And that’s the problem. By sticking so close to the original’s model, the new screenplay leaves the exact same quandary that confronted producers when they decided to make the original film’s first sequel. And shouldn’t the point of a remake/reboot of a franchise like this be to avoid making the same mistakes the second time around? A more honest way would be to pull back on the finality of the Gathering, stating that it was just beginning. The real story here isn’t Connor winning the Game, it is Connor accepting his immortal heritage and that can still be accomplished without him being the last one standing. A judicial rewrite should be able to set this right.

But hey, at least there isn’t an alien from the planet Zeist to be found.

The comedy duo has all but disappeared from movies today. A holdover from the days of vaudeville, double acts like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and lesser knowns like Olsen and Johnson or Wheeler and Woolsey were in great abundance in Hollywood’s Golden Era and the concept survived up to the 1950s and early 1960s with the likes of Hope and Crosby and Martin and Lewis. Today, it seems as if the comedy duo, two comic actors appearing together in a variety of different roles across different films, has pretty much disappeared.

But if anyone could lay claim to that comedic heritage these days, it would be Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Almost immediately with their pairing on the British television series Spaced, the two have shared an on-screen chemistry that has guaranteed laughs. Together with Spaced director Edgar Wright, the pair have brought that dynamic to the big screen with the zom-rom-com Shaun Of The Dead and their buddy-cop/action film riff Hot Fuzz. And while each has done work separately, none of it has sparkled in the way that their work together does.

Pegg and Frost’s next pairing will be the movie Paul, and it will mark a couple of firsts for the two. It will be the first time that they are working without Wright, either directorially or on the screenplay. As Wright was busy directing Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, so Adventureland helmer Greg Motolla has stepped behind the camera for Paul. (Wright is serving as an executive producer on the project, so he at least retains a bit of a hand in the proceedings.) And where Shaun and Fuzz were jointly scripted by Pegg and Wright, Paul marks the first time that Pegg and Frost have sat down to collaborate on a screenplay. The result is a Hope and Crosby-esque road trip across America from the San Diego Comic-Con to Roswell, New Mexico and then points north.

Graham and Clive are two uber-science fiction/fantasy geeks from England to the famed San Diego Comic-Con to promote their recently published fantasy novel, Jelva- Alien Queen Of The Varvak. Unfortunately for them, their appearance doesn’t go very well, with them only selling three copies of the book. But the pair doesn’t let their bad luck at the convention deter them from the second half of their planned American adventure- renting an RV and driving out to Roswell, New Mexico and the fabled Area 51 in the hopes of seeing a real UFO. Graham and Clive get more than expected though, when they encounter a “grey alien” who has escaped from the top secret government labs there. Introducing himself with the unlikely name of Paul, the alien persuades Graham and Clive to drive him to Wyoming and a rendezvous with a spaceship to take him home. However, the government isn’t too happy with Paul’s travel plans and a pursuit of the alien is launched, headed by the relentless Agent Zoil.

Graham and Clive are, to be generous, not the most socially graceful people, but their geekiness gives them a common point from which to relate to each other. Their speech is peppered with Star Trek, Star Wars and Back To The Future references and they way they can complete each other’s sentences hints at more than a bit of a bromance. However, when it comes to dealing with someone outside of fandom, they aren’t as articulate, often stammering and turning red. But while these two characters definitely have some of the stereotypical traits of nerds that have become standardized tropes in Hollywood films for years, Pegg and Frost have managed to invest Graham and Clive with a degree of depth that keeps the characters from becoming caricatures, while also avoiding the more egregious cinematic nerd traits. No taped eyeglasses, underwear in heads or rubber Spock ears on these two just because they are science-fiction fans. If anything, Graham and Clive share a dynamic similar to Michael Cera and Jonah Hill’s characters in Motolla’s Superbad, so it is easy to see why the director was attracted to the material here.

But while reading the part of Paul the alien, it is hard not to visualize animated television series American Dad’s own sardonic, wisecracking, chain smoking Area 51 escapee gray alien, Roger. At least the script is smart enough to recognize the similarities and makes it fodder for a joke. When Paul speaks his alien name, the boys mistake it for “Roger.” And where American Dad’s resident extra-terrestrial must stay pretty much the same character week-in and week-out, Paul has an emotional arc he travels over the course of the screenplay, its surprising destination a lonely old woman living in a cabin in the woods of Wyoming.

As a comedy, Paul is not necessarily just funny bit of dialogue after funny bit of dialogue, although there is plenty of that. Much of the humor is also born out of Graham and Clive’s reactions to the situations that they find themselves in. In that way, the script has several moments that work as satire on various strata of American society. Also, I get the feeling that many laughs will come more from Pegg and Frost’s performances and physical reactions in these situations, than from just the scripted lines. Many of the jokes have ways of continually paying off throughout the script. A running gag about burnt out light bulbs makes a surprising appearance in the film’s closing moments, while an off-the-cuff joke involving Steven Spielberg stealthily serves to set up the film’s climactic location.

(AKA Dark Skies: First Strike)
By Stuart Beattie
Revisions By John Lee Hancock
And
Brian Koppelman & David Levien
Draft Dated November 3, 2007

For years, fans of the toy line turned cartoon and comic book series GI Joe have hoped for a live action movie featuring the adventures of their real American heroes. Studios had flirted with the project for years, trying to find the right way to bring the exploits of the covert anti-terrorist unit to the big screen. But it wasn’t until the success of toy-turned-cartoon series-turned live action film The Transformers in 2007 did the long in gestation project get its marching orders to get to the big screen as soon as possible. As both Transformers and GI Joe were popular cartoons in the 1980s, it was hoped that whatever nostalgia was generated by the former would only help the latter.

Unfortunately, GI Joe was ordered in to action without a strong battle plan. The script draft dated November 3, 2007, just two days before the most recent Writers Guild of America strike, is a disappointment, containing problems with tone, logic and structure. The film wavers back and forth from action-thriller territory to misplaced light comedy. The screenplay is an aggravating read, containing some interesting and exciting ideas, that are out numbered by stupid plot points, bad dialogue and several broad action scenes that play to all the excesses of director Stephen Sommers.

The script opens with Duke and Ripcord are military specialists in charge of protecting a convoy transporting a new highly classified weapons system. The convoy is attacked by a terrorist commando squad, who manage to steal the weapon. Quizzically, as punishment for this massive homeland security failure, the two are allowed to join G. I. Joe, an elite top secret, anti-terrorist unit. The Joe team is assigned to retrieve the stolen weapon, nano-machines that can destroy metal, but leave people unharmed. Rounding out the Joe team are Hawk, the commander, Scarlett, a red-haired weapons expert, Breaker, a communications officer and Snake Eyes, a mute martial arts expert.

The Joe team heads to Paris, where the terrorists have taken the nano-machines for a test. While chasing the terrorists through the Parisian streets, Duke discovers that they are being led by an ex-lover, Ana, now known as The Baroness. She is accompanied by a white clad ninja, Storm Shadow, who appears to share some history with Snake Eyes. The pair report to Destro, a weapons manufacturer who has contracts with the United States government. Although the Joe team manages to secure the weapons, Ana and Storm Shadow infiltrate the Joe headquarters and steal the warheads back, in the process, killing Cover Girl, Hawk’s secretary. The Joe team then must race to the terrorists’ secret base in the arctic to retrieve the nano-machines before Destro can unleash them. But Joe might not be Destro’s only problem, as another henchman, a hooded-man known as the Doctor, is also formulating his own schemes.

Over the years, the cast and scope of the GI Joe franchise has expanded to a nearly unmanageable level. While every fan has their favorite character they hope will appear in the film, it is a virtual impossibility that everyone will get that wish. But that hasn’t stopped the screenwriters from trying to shoehorn as many members of team Joe and Cobra as possible. A number of these fan favorites are reduced to essentially cameos and walk-ons. The villainous mercenary Zartan appears, though his scenes are strictly a set-up for a hoped for sequel, with the script boldly leaving his plot thread dangling in a rather intriguing cliffhanger by the final fade to black.

Less fortunate, is the Joe Team member Cover Girl, who has been effectively reduced to being Hawk’s secretary. While some fans will definitely howl over the fact that she is killed by Storm Shadow during a Cobra raid on the Joe headquarters, I think this is one of the script’s few bold and effective moves. In the 1980s Joe cartoon, no one ever seemed to get hurt, even the faceless Cobra troops, and this is one of the few moments where the screenplay actually plays things much more dangerously than one may expect.

Unfortunately, this edge is blunted by the script’s desire to be a little too cute for its own good at times. There are moments where the film knowingly winks to the audience. Sometimes these are effective, sometimes not. Having Hawk say “Knowing is half the battle” works in the context of the scene where he says it. But having another character saying something like “kung fu grip” as an almost non-sequitor, just feels as if the writers are going overboard in trying to service the fans.

But I think where the script gets too jokey for its own good is best exemplified in the action sequence that falls about midway through the screenplay, during the Joe team’s pursuit of the Baroness through the streets of Paris. Duke and Ripcord are fitted with “accelerator suits,” which enhance their strength for running and fighting. No sooner than Ripcord is warned that his accelerator suit is worth millions of dollars, then he promptly trips over the sidewalk and gets hit by a car. The car’s front end is smashed up but Ripcord is ok enough to get up and follow Duke in chasing Ana and Storm Shadow’s vehicle through Paris. Two pages later, Duke and Ripcord have to literally run through a building, using their suits to smash through the walls. Of course the building is a cocktail lounge and Beattie has Ripcord grab and down a martini as he runs through before smashing his way out through the other wall. I half-expected them to be leaving cartoonish, people-shaped holes in the walls they smash through. While not out of place in a Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny short, the gags here kills any sense of building excitement the scene tries to have. It is just cringe inducing.

The script also contains lots of military hardware, much of it bleeding edge technology. I can take some of the near future weaponry in stride, it is when Scarlett’s crossbow starts firing “smart arrows” that can turn corners in flight, the script lost me.

The finale of the script contains several reveals, but not all of them work. The surprise of the identity of the Doctor, though fairly obvious, is still a well scripted moment. But it almost immediately raises some questions as to how Ana did not figure out his identity. A hurried explanation has the Doctor controlling her through the nano-mite technology. A handy solution until one realizes that Ana not being in control of any of her actions renders any real moments of characterization she has through the story moot, reducing her character to nothing more than plot device.

Threaded throughout the script are two series of flashbacks, which serve to fill out the backstory of the relationships between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow and Duke and the Baroness. While they both work individually, taken together with the current day storyline as well as the unresolved Zartan plotline makes the script feel overcrowded. It will take some tricky work in the editing room to make film not feel like a jumbled mess of storylines. It will also take some tricky editing work to make the film’s climactic confrontation between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow comprehensible. The way it is presented here, it cuts back and forth between their showdown and the culmination of their flashback’s storyline in a way that is disruptive to the flow of both.

It is true that every script has problems. Hopefully, these problems are addressed through the development process. That’s what the process is there for. Previous to this draft, there was another screenplay which didn’t even feature the COBRA organization, and when fans found out, there were howls of protest. The producers responded by commissioning a new round of script writing, ultimately leading to the draft in consideration here.

Of course, one has to wonder if the current writers weren’t in such a rush to get the script in before the “pencil’s down” date of the WGA strike and get the production started before a potential Screen Actor’s Guild work stoppage, would some of the problems enumerated here have been addressed? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We may never know.

And knowing is half the battle.

Screenplay by Michael J. Bassett
Undated Draft

In 1928, a good five years before the first tales of a certain Cimmerian swordsman by the name of Conan saw print, the pulp magazine Weird Tales published a novelette by that character’s creator Robert E. Howard. Titled “Red Shadows,” it introduced the character of Solomon Kane, a Puritan swordsman from Devon, England who travelled the world of the sixteenth century fighting evil wherever he found it. As the world was still fairly unexplored at this time, the evil often took the supernatural form and Kane would find himself pitted against werewolves, witches, vampires, ghosts and even a Lovecraftian horror in one tale, making him one of, if not the first of, modern literature’s monster hunters. If one subscribes to the notion that all fictional characters reside in a shared universe (see Alan Moore’s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s appendixes for a better example of this) than it can be honestly said that Solomon Kane was kicking vampire butt long before Abraham Van Helsing was even a glimmer in his father’s eye.

Howard wrote twelve stories and three poems about Solomon Kane before his untimely death in 1936, but even some of those, such as “The Castle Of The Devil” And “Children Of Asshur” are just (unfortunately) unfinished fragments. These stories were collected into three volumes by Centaur Press in the late 1960s and again, with the inclusion of two other fragment stories, by Del Rey Books in 2004. During the 1970s, Solomon Kane enjoyed an existence as a backup feature in Marvel Comics’ Savage Sword Of Conan magazine and even got his own mini-series, The Sword Of Solomon Kane, in 1985, as well as a few independent comic company one-shots in the ‘90s. Although creators John Ostrander and Tim Truman have (to the best of my knowledge) never stated so, Solomon Kane would appear to be a major influence on their comic character Grimjack.

For the most part though, Kane seemed to be fantasy literature’s forgotten son, a guilty pleasure known only to diehard Howard readers and fans of esoteric pulp fiction. Motion pictures, which flirted with his literary brother Conan in the early 1970s and fully embraced him in the two 1980s films, pretty much ignored Kane. Granted, a few films came close. The 1973 Hammer Studios film Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter came the closest with its depictions of a swashbuckling hero (Horst Janson) fighting vampires with swordplay in 17th century Europe, although Janson’s blonde, womanizing Kronos is a far cry from the dark-haired, Puritan Kane. A silhouetted figure resembling Kane is seen gunning down the two title characters in the 1975 film Vampyres, Daughters Of Dracula, but its presence is never explained (like a lot of things in that film). The 1985 Japanese anime Hero D- Vampire Hunter (released in the US in 1992 as Vampire Hunter D) featured a main character whose look – black clothing and cape, wide-brimmed hat and long black hair – was clearly influenced by Kane, although Hideyuki Kikuchi, author of the series of books upon which the movie and its sequel were based and a self-professed Hammer films fan has stated that his D is a combination of Captain Kronos and Christopher Lee’s version of Dracula and has yet to acknowledge Solomon Kane as a visual model for D.

More recent films such as Brotherhood Of The Wolf and the first Pirates Of The Caribbean featured settings and scenarios befitting a Solomon Kane tale but without the presence of said character. Finally, in the winter of 2001, a film version of Solomon Kane was announced by the producers of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The plot of this film would deal with Kane, a descendant of Conan, seeking revenge on a shape-changing sorcerer for the murder of his family in colonial America. While Howard made a passing reference to Kane once visiting the Virginia colonies and fighting Indians there in one of his stories, the idea of setting the film in Colonial America just seems like a lazy way to explain Kane being a Puritan (rather than doing some research on the Puritans in England instead) and the idea of the shape-changing sorcerer villain seems recycled from a Conan movie, much like the bland Kevin Sorbo vehicle Kull The Conqueror (also based on a Robert E. Howard character). Also, making the solitary wandering Kane a family man and a descendent of Conan shows an obvious unfamiliarity with the source material. Fortunately, and perhaps fueled by League’s dismal performance, this B-movie camp version never came into being, and it looked like Solomon Kane would be ignored by the motion picture industry for good.

But it was not to be, because in January 2008, production started on a Solomon Kane movie starring James Purefoy in the title role. The film’s script by Michael J. Bassett solves what could have been an obstacle in creating an original first story about this character by basically giving an origin story to a character who previously did not have one. Granted Howard’s stories and poems have made references to Kane’s past, including his birthplace in Devon, serving in the British Navy against the Spanish Armada, running afoul of the Spanish Inquisition and even a brief career as a pirate captain, but they never tell why he came to be the man who is in introduced in “Red Shadows”- a Puritan swordsman (itself something of a contradiction as Puritans are often thought of as pacifists, not expert fencers who are also handy with flintlock pistols) who staunchly protects the innocent and is the eternal foe of all unexplained and supernatural evils. Bassett’s script shows how Kane gets to be this heroic figure and why he does what he does.

The script begins with Kane as a captain in the British Navy, but something of a bloodthirsty aristocrat (“a murderous dandy” as the script puts it) who delights in battle, killing and the gaining of riches by looting. On a rescue mission against native warriors on the North African coast, Kane and his crew stumble upon a castle rumored to be teeming with treasure. Fighting his way in, Kane instead discovers a gateway to Hell, whose demons kill his men. The demon’s leader, called The Devil’s Reaper, tells Kane that it has come for his soul, which has been sentenced to Hell for the Englishman’s life of bloodshed and killing, especially the murder of his own brother, Marcus. It was the accidental murder of this arrogant and brutish older sibling, as well as a falling out with his father, that caused the young Kane to abandon a life in the priesthood and flee home to join the Navy.

Kane narrowly escapes the Reaper’s castle and returns to England where he renounces violence and spends a year in the sanctuary of a monastery. During this time, he covers himself with tattoos and scars of protective spells and researches numerous arcane and religious tomes, always fearing that the forces of hell are waiting to snatch him up. Worried that this darkness will consume him and his monks, the monastery’s abbot politely orders Kane to leave.

With nowhere to go, Kane wanders the English countryside, finding it rife with wandering brigands. After being attacked by some of these bandits, he is found and nursed back to health by the Crowthorns, a family of Puritans fleeing religious persecution by going to America. Kane agrees to accompany them to the coast, but says he will not sail with them for a new life in America as he needs to redeem his old life first.

Their journey becomes hindered by a landscape of pillaged villages, rampaging witches and an ever-growing, and now-organized, army of raiders. Inscribed with mystical insignias and almost demonic in nature, they are conquering everything in their path. Evil, forces seem to be growing stronger and are massing in the west under the leadership of the sorcerer Malachi and his general, The Overlord, a masked being displaying a supernatural control over his troops.

When the Crowthorns are murdered and the daughter, Meredith, is captured by the raiders, Kane’s old person re-emerges and he slays the attackers. Vowing to her dying father to rescue Meredith, as that act may redeem his soul, Kane sets out into a haunted countryside of mad priests, ghouls and more demonic raiders. At some point, he is erroneously told that Meredith is dead and falls into a depressed drinking binge in a raider-occupied village. Kane is captured in this state and is crucified (!) before the villagers. He survives the ordeal, however, aided by the appearance of Meredith in the village, and is now gifted with the ability to see demons in disguise. This comes in handy when he is rescued and healed by a group of rebels.

Aided by the rebels, Kane makes a climactic raid on his ancestral home of Axmuth Castle, the center of the raiders power and the prison of Meredith. Here, Kane must face not only Malachi and the Overlord, but deep secrets from his past and the return of the Reaper, whom Malachi has summoned to drag Kane to Hell.

I’ve often said when asked what a proper Solomon Kane movie should be like that it should pretty much be a Hammer film with a lot of action. Bassett’s script does just that, although it adds the influence of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. The journey of Kane and the Crowthorns through the haunted English countryside reminded me very much of the journey of Max Von Sydow and the traveling actors through plague-ravaged Sweden. The mentions of bodies hanging from trees, old ruins and druidic circles also recalls some of the scenes of a young Gwynplaine (Conrad Veidt) trekking through the harsh wintery countryside in The Man Who Laughs. These are rather arty touches to a film that could have easily gone the route of a run-of-the-mill sword and sorcery flick.

The Hammer Studios influence cane be seen in later scenes involving a fight with villagers-turned-ghouls in a church’s catacombs, another with raiders in a moonlit graveyard and, of course, the tavern scene (a staple of Hammer films). I’m not sure if he’s dead or not, but it would be fun to see Ferdy Mayne as an innkeeper here.

Some people have grumbled on the internet about Kane not being portrayed as a Puritan. To that, all I can say is that while he’s not shown as being a Puritan at the start of the film, he is given Puritan garb by Meredith Crowthorn and his changed outlook on good and evil doesn’t exactly show that he isn’t a Puritan by the film’s end. Others may balk at Kane gaining the ability to see demons, something not in the original Howard stories, but I think this an acceptable “tweaking” of the character that is somewhat reminiscent of an ability possessed by the monster hunter class of characters in the World of Darkness role-playing games. So it makes sense that Kane, a monster hunter, would have this power. As he even tells Meredith at one point, “There are evil creatures walking this earth, Meredith. They bring such pain and suffering and there was never a man who could fight them. But I can. I can. It is my gift and I will hunt them down and send each and everyone back to hell.” That speech, for me, is very true to the nature of Howard’s creation.

Finally, some fans may complain that the film doesn’t adapt anything from Howard’s stories, especially Kane’s mystical cat-headed staff and the African witch doctor who gave it to him, N’Longa. To that, I have to say that most of the stories are pretty short and would need a lot of padding and tweaking to become feature length film material. Sure, I’d love to see film versions of “Red Shadows,” “The Hills Of The Dead” and maybe even a finished version of “The Castle Of The Devil” and “Children Of Asshur,” but that’s what sequels are for. And if this ultimately faithful script is followed closely than hopefully that’s what fans can expect and get.

Note: Rich Zeszotarski would like to thank Bret Blevins and Michael W. Kaluta whose conversations concerning Solomon Kane have certainly “fanned the flames” of his fervor for this character. Also, big thanks to Rich Drees, who knows what a huge fan Rich is and nudged him into reading this script even though he was afraid it would be crap.