Appendix

 B

Sample Coverage

 

 

Now we open the vault! As promised, here is an example of the production company coverage that is generated once a script makes it into “the pile.” Remember, it’s a story analyst’s job to prepare a CE for detailed meetings about this script and to protect the CE from reading a script that is not production-worthy. Can your script pass this test?

 

 


"VERY BIG PRODUCTION COMPANY"

 

MATERIAL:  screenplay, book, etc.

TITLE:  title

 

 

NUMBER OF PAGES:  ##

AUTHOR: author’s name

 

 

PUB/DATE: for books

GENRE: drama, comedy, etc.

 

 

SUBMITTED BY:  rep, if any

CIRCA: time period

 

 

SUBMITTED TO:  CE’s name

LOCATION:  city or setting

 

 

ANALYST: reader’s name

ELEMENTS: attachments

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 

LOG LINE: A young boy is shuttled via Amtrak between his two separating parents.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 

COMMENT SUMMARY: A passive protagonist with no focused objective wades through a piecemeal approach to the same old situation: Neglected Child of Divorce.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 

 

EXCELLENT

GOOD

FAIR

POOR

Idea

          

 

 

             X

Story Line

 

 

           

             X

Structure

 

 

             X

 

Characters

 

     

 

             X

Dialogue

 

 

             X

 

 

Budget:            High         X    Medium              Low

 

PROJECT RECOMMENDATION:  PASS

WRITER RECOMMENDATION: PASS

SYNOPSIS

When 13-year-old geek ROBBIE FRENCH’s parents separate, he’s dragged off to Newport with his weak-willed dad MARTIN FRENCH. In the course of being shuttled by train between his dad and his mom (ABBY FRENCH), Robbie has only a pissed off kitty and some comic books for company until he meets another bad parenting-product, 14-year-old MARK HERBERT. After an inexplicable brawl through the aisles of the train, the two boys become friends. Meanwhile Robbie’s loser dad loses job after job and his libidinal mom hops from guy to guy.

 

Robbie parents his dad, feels like an outcast in his neighborhood and silently resents his mom’s boyfriends. He even gets a tattoo, only to discover the shady biker tattoo artist couldn’t spell – but no one notices the tattoo. When his dad loses yet another job and can’t make rent, Robbie toys with designing his own comic book to earn some money. In the midst of one of their shared train rides, Robbie and Mark carjack a cab from a stringy-haired pothead, and Robbie crashes a major comic book company to pitch his first story. He’s booted out of the publishing offices, only to be stuck in the middle of an unfamiliar city when Mark is hauled away for the carjacking.

 

When Robbie’s newly divorced mom chooses to stay on her second honeymoon rather than rescue her son, his dad cancels his own pity party to save Robbie, finally accepting responsibility for his child. The two start to take the train back together, leaving Mark unaccounted for, until they both realize neither has the money for a return ticket. Now they both are stranded in an unfamiliar city, but at least they are together.

 

COMMENTS

When faced with a “child-of-divorce” piece, the first instinct is to search for a new twist. This script, however, offers nothing beyond the most basic beats: parental selfishness and neglect, child-as-misfit in new environment, child resenting parent’s new loves, child becoming parent. The main weakness, therefore, is its lack theme, inspiration and originality. Moreover, it fails to tell a coherent story, however unoriginal, in the course of too many (140!) pages.

 

This script doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it the story of a youngster who finds identity and escape through comic book art? No. Robbie’s comic book obsession is just a geeky quirk to justify his having no friends that becomes a niggle halfway through the script, is dropped, then becomes a full-blown mission at the end of the story. It should have been established as the mission at the top of the screenplay if it’s going to be utilized in the climax.

 

Unless, of course, this is a coming-of-age story. The script does include Robbie’s first fight, first train ride, etc. But he doesn’t change or mature in the course of any of the script’s events, so that negates that possibility.

 

All of Robbie’s scenes with his father are the role reversing beat of son-as-father. All the scenes of Robbie and his mother are the beat of a fun-loving-but-inept mom who can’t choose between being a lover or a parent. At the end, the dad does grow up, and the mom does choose (badly), but Robbie, the Main Character, remains the same. So what you ultimately get is a series of snippets glued together by train trips and a lot of talking.

 

Structure, of course, is a lost cause without story. Still, there’s no detectable initial change – even if you cheat and go to the end to see what the story was driving towards. Robbie doesn’t start out wanting to create comic books, so the meeting at the publishing company isn’t a climax. Robbie’s parents are already separated when we begin. And the character who “turns” at the end of the script is his dad--who has held one pitiful, job-losing, repeating beat throughout the script until this moment. But he is sacrificing nothing (he has nothing), so it means nothing. With neither a beginning nor an end for the protagonist, the middle of the script has no meaning either. Robbie isn’t fully embracing or rejecting anything because there is no issue driving Robbie to do anything in the first place.

 

Robbie is not just stagnant; he is completely unbelievable in his actions. On his first train trip, Robbie’s fear of leaving home alone is compounded by fear of the foo-foo cat trying to kill him through the gate of his gazillion-dollar carrying case. Robbie never moves, fights back or complains or even mentions this trauma to his mom when he arrives, nor does the incident trigger any future events in the story. In fact, none of Robbie’s actions have consequences – he tattoos his foot with a typo, but no one notices, and the tattoo never comes up again. He tells off his mother’s boyfriends but doesn’t get in trouble, and he resolves every frustration with his dad by getting on a train to return to his mom, despite her neglectful parenting.

 

At home, Robbie consistently takes care of his loser dad and never gets fed up or rebels. The few choices he finally makes – carjacking a cab? – hardly connect him to the audience or demonstrate any signs of growth or change. Between his inexplicable actions and the unrealistic way his parents deal with him (bedtime stories and boogeyman checks for a 13-year-old?), he is impossible to relate to or root for. Meanwhile, his father messes up in job after job without ever growing or worsening from the experiences. He clings to his ex-wife in e-mail after e-mail, never giving up or becoming angry enough at her indifference to actually try something new. Most incredibly, neither Robbie nor his dad hold his mother accountable for leaving Robbie alone in a strange city at midnight – the one time rejection and a raging tantrum would have been appropriate. In fact, that was the one last shot at a climax the script had…and nothing happened. Instead, there were just two idiots in the train station instead of one.

 

The dialogue is as flat as the characters and is written too on-the-nose.  Also, at one point the author switches into voice-over mode (never to recur) which takes us completely out of the script.

 

In short, this screenplay offers nothing new: no new story, new twists, new characters, new voices or new revelations. It’s not even a funny or moving journey through an old story. It’s a story that needs not be told – and, in fact, isn’t.

 

******

At this point, it is probably clear that neither this script nor this writer is moving forward at this production company – unless it was written by Mega Star’s entire entourage (or your CE’s brother-in-law…or a power agent’s favorite client…). In the absence of a connection like that, the writer will not even get detailed notes on why the script was rejected. Instead, the script will be filed away in the company library, and both the screenplay and writer will be databased as a “Pass.”

 

Commit to The “1-3-5” for your first submission to any potential buyer. Then commit to it again for the next.

 

Happy writing, pitching and selling!