Billy the Bomb 3 by AtholForsyth A pimp a hooker and some cocaine, what could go wrong? 5 pages, PDF format

AtholForsyth writes, Hey there, a few months ago I wrote a script in here and said I would film it in the summer, I’d never wrote a script or filmed anything either. We made this film for free using things we had at our disposal like ice cream van, mustang ect.

The dialogue will be hard to understand if you’re not Scottish but I’m sure you’ll get the drift.

Discuss this script on the Discussion Board
Discuss the film on the Discussion Board

Over on the Unproduced Scripts page are sixteen original scripts for your reading pleasure.

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Carson Reeves over at ScriptShadow is having a vote for the top 25 amateur scripts.

Now, I’m not saying go vote for: WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU – Shawn (Ledbetter), WARNING SHOT – Breanne and PRIMAL – Ryan because these folks are your friends. I’m saying, go vote for top five or top ten scripts on the list of scripts on ScriptShadow based on the fact that you’ve read these scripts (some of you more than once) and they are entertaining and viable works.

After you have gone through the list of scripts, e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line: “VOTE”. Include your list from 1-5 or 1-10 of your favorite amateur scripts from the list. Voting closes at 11:59 pm Sunday, August 31st and he’ll announce on his site, ScriptShadow, following week.

For your convenience, below are the scripts up for consideration.

Note: Please go to the ScriptShadow website for the definitive information

PATISSERIE
Premise: A young Jewish woman in occupied France escapes the Nazis by changing places with a shop owner. But as her love grows for the other woman’s husband and child, so does her guilt.

LE PETITE MORT
Premise: An alcoholic stilt walker must save the small town that loathes him from an invasion of zombie midgets.

LORD OCKLEY AND THE ALIEN
Premise: A wanton English Lord hires a “hermit” to live in his garden (as was the trend in 18th Century England). An alien from another planet stumbles into this scenario, who the drunk Englishmen consider to be French.

360
Premise: After surviving a violent car accident, a woman is attacked in her home by a masked assailant and finds herself living out a time loop that has her experiencing the attack from several points of view.

SERVED COLD
Premise: A Detroit bank thief accidentally steals from the Canadian mob and is forced to lift a rare painting from the Detroit mob to pay them back.

HEMINGWAY BOY
Premise: Fatherless Copywriter, Nick Adams, uncovers a stash of immaculate love letters dated the year he was born and post marked from Key West and Havana, Cuba. Convinced he is Hemingway’s bastard love child, he travels to Key West with teenage son in tow to usurp his birthright.

OF GLASS AND GOLDEN CLOCKWORK
Premise: On the eve of the Third World War, a young soldier abandons his post to search out a robot claiming to have information regarding his father’s unsolved murder, only to discover these two are more connected than he ever could have imagined.

AESOP THE COURAGEOUS
Premise: When his mother is kidnapped and sold into slavery, the legendary fableist must overcome being a short, ugly mute and outmatch Greek philosophers and bloodthirsty kings to rescue her and save the kingdom.

ON THE CORNER OF RUE ST. ALOISE AND RUE DU CHEVAL
Premise: November 1944, Strasbourg, France. A Solider wakes up with amnesia in “La Zone Occupée”. The only thing he remembers is his duty to deliver a package on the corner of Rue St. Aloise and Rue Du Cheval at 10:30pm. No name, no date, and under no circumstances is the package to be opened.

BREAKING THE CHAIN
Premise: A gambler wins millions on a crazy bet, yet is unable to
 tell anyone. Instead, he resolves to secretly use the money to improve the 
lives of those closest to him, and win back the love of his long-suffering
 wife.

THE IMAGINEER
Premise: The life story of one of the most creative minds of all time, Walt Disney.

THE ALIEN DIARIES
Premise: A book appraiser working at an old farm mansion finds a diary that implies the family who used to live there 200 years ago may have come in contact with a crashed alien ship.

THE HOUSE THAT DEATH BUILT
Premise: A recently widowed cop reclaims an old property in a small southern town, only to discover that key figures in the town have been hiding a horrifying secret.

THE SLEEP OF REASON
Premise: After his wife goes missing, a man heads to the darkest reaches of Transylvania to find her.

I THINK MY FACEBOOK FRIEND IS DEAD
Premise: After receiving panicked messages from a girl he’s been Facebook-stalking, a meek agoraphobe wrangles together his closest internet friends and journeys into the real world to find her.

REAL MEN PLAY FUTEBOL
Premise: A teenage boy hoping to escape the poverty of his West African village finds the opportunity when a professional futebol scout comes to town.

TRIBUTE
Premise: A marginally talented tribute band finds itself magically/accidentally transported back to the year 1973 and seizes the opportunity to become actual rock stars by “stealing” the career of the group they’ve long made a living out of impersonating.

CAPTIVE
Premise: When a group of bank robbers kidnap his wife, an accountant must try and save her. But when they all end up in a strange Rube Goldberg-like trap-filled mansion, the kidnapping becomes the least of their worries.

THE HOSTAGE
Premise: (from writers) It’s a brilliant bank robbery plan. But there’s one contingency no one could have planned for: One of the hostages turns into a werewolf, turning the bank they’ve locked down to keep out the police into a deathtrap. And turning a criminal into a hero.

REUNION
Premise: At their ten-year reunion, a formerly bullied outcast decides to enact revenge on the cool kids who made his life miserable.

CHARMING
Premise: After beating out his twin brother for the throne, Prince Charming finally settles down with his new bride-to-be, Snow White. But when she ditches him for his brother, he will have to find a way to win her back.

THE AUGMENTED GEOLOGIST
Premise: (from writer) In Victorian England, a respected geologist studies a strange crystal artifact that grants him incredible powers, tears his life apart and sends him on a deadly chase to discover its unearthly origin.

REAL MONSTERS
Premise: The members of a small Irish town housing a supposed Lochness-like monster in their lake find their world turned upside-down when an American documentary crew arrives to find out if the monster is real.

MOVERS
Premise: A moving company specializes in moving humans.

EDEN’S FOLLY
Premise: A left-for-dead rancher wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is. He goes off in a search to find out what happened.

THE INCREDIBLE SHAVING MUG FRACAS
Premise: (from writer) A lost cache of Nazi gold could save the crumbling hometown of a failed actor. But the key to the treasure, an antique shaving mug, is also the key to his doom. He must outwit, battle and defeat weird and dangerous Nazi sympathizers who have skulked into town searching for him and the treasure.

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
Premise: After learning that his family is leaving the town he grew up in, a heartbroken 13 year-old boy convinces his best friends to go trick-or-treating one last time in a daring attempt to break their town’s unbreakable trick-or-treating record and become legends.

MAD DOGS
Premise: A repressed teen werewolf tracks down her estranged father — the sheriff of a resort that caters to the hedonistic pursuits of werewolves — but an outbreak of weaponized rabies turns their reunion into a fight for survival.

KEEPING TIME
Premise: (from writer) A for-hire time traveler who specializes in “preventing” bad relationships meets his match with a mysterious woman who claims to also be a traveler and is determined to stop him from completing his mission.

NINE TWELVE
Premise: (from writer) A man embarks on a relationship with a 9/11 widow after claiming to have lost his brother in the attacks.

ROSE IN THE DARKNESS
Premise: (from writer) A secluded boy’s way of life is threatened when he befriends Rose – the girl whom his parents have imprisoned in the family attic.

VERONA SPIES
Premise: (from writer) After landing a job at an escort service, a young woman learns that her first date is an international spy who’s just stolen a multi-million dollar pharmaceutical secret. She agrees to help him shake the assassins waiting outside of the hotel, and soon finds herself embroiled in a deadly game of corporate espionage.

GOODBYE GENE
Premise: (from writer) A demented 14 year old girl strikes up a weird relationship with a convicted sex offender. Shit gets crazy when they embark on a twisted road trip in a “rape van.”

INHUMAN
Premise: (from writer) After a radical exorcism leaves a possessed teen in a coma, a psychologist reluctantly helps the clergymen, who performed the rite, wake the child, but soon suspects foul play and finds himself trapped in a secluded monastery with only one person to turn to for help: his newly awakened patient.

WHITE LABEL
Premise: (from writer) When a young vinyl music store owner loses everything — love, friendship and vinyl records — he struggles to rebuild his life, hindered by pimp-like friends, a beautiful agent provocateur and an ex-girlfriend who refuses to let their relationship die until she finds a suitable successor. In the vein of HIGH FIDELITY and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.

THE THALLUS OF MARCHENTIA
Premise (from writer): Based on a true story, a group of college kids in the 60s pose as royalty from a made-up country (Marchentia). What starts out as innocent fun, spins out of control when the media turns their arrival into the most important visit in the city’s history.

THE TRAGIC LIFE OF DEXTER STRANGE
Premise (from writer): A colorful but washed-up bad boy recounts his epic rise and fall in Hollywood on an online video blog.

MARLOWE
Premise (from writer): P.I. Sam Marlowe shows novice writer Raymond Chandler the realities of detective work, juggling gangsters, corrupt politicians and movie star Jean Harlow to find out who’s burning farms on the Arroyo Seco Canyon.

THE SAVAGE SOUTH
Premise (from writer): When a professional contract killer discovers he’s become the target of an assassination himself, he teams up with the would-be killer to figure out who set them up.

THE DEVIL’S HAMMER
Premise (from writer): When an outlaw biker, and soon to be father, attempts to leave the sins of his old life behind, he is pushed by a vengeful Sheriff into the arms of an ancient cult of disease worshiping sadists.

PRIMAL
Premise (from writer): After survivors of a recent hurricane relocate to a quiet Louisiana bayou town, a creature goes on a nightly rampage of terror and carnage. Convinced it is the legendary werewolf known as loup garou, an intrepid teen vows to discover the beast’s true identity and destroy it.

BARABBAS
Premise (from writers): In 30 A.D., a charismatic stonemason bent on revenge leads a band of guerrilla rebels against the Roman occupation of his homeland.

A BULLETT FOR MY BEST FRIEND
Premise: When a young gang of girls kills her brother, Dakota, a former member of the gang, vows revenge.

SUNNY SIDE OF HELL
Premise: (from writer) When a woman is kidnapped in Texas during the Dust Bowl, her husband embarks on a harrowing odyssey where he’s forced to confront danger in the forms of Mother Nature and man and also the mysterious past he buried years ago.

SUBMERGED
Premise: (from writer) Trapped in a shrinking air pocket deep beneath the ocean’s surface, the survivors of a plane crash battle to stay alive long enough for the rescue teams to locate them.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU
Premise: (from writer) When a child killer is sentenced to death under dubious circumstances, the investigating detective discovers that the very man being executed holds the keys that can solve the crime.

WARNING SHOT
Premise: (from writer) A mother and daughter held hostage at an isolated farmhouse struggle to survive as one of their captors grows increasingly unstable.

ECHOVAULT
Premise: (from writers) When an elite team of Allied forces assault a top secret research facility, they become trapped underground with a sadistic Nazi Colonel and a mysterious Machine which allows him to switch bodies, turning the team against one another as they desperately try to survive.

GUEST
Premise: After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

PROVING GROUND
Premise: 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive.

FASCINATION 127
Premise: A group of men are hired by a mysterious client to remove Jim Morrison’s casket, give it to him for 24 hours and then return the casket into the ground before it is publicly exhumed to be moved to the United States.

FATTIES
Premise: When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

UNDERTOW
Premise: Unhappy with her life, a housewife visits a physicist who transforms the way she views the world – and her own mind.

A LOT OF BLOOD
Premise (from writer): After two friends leave the bar after a night of drinking, they discover their car missing from the parking lot, an RV in its place, and a woman trapped inside.

IN THE FLESH
Premise (from writer): A woman fights to escape an isolated home controlled by an Incubus, a demonic force that feeds on sexual energy. A task made more difficult by her co-hostages, who are content to remain under the creatures spell.

– Don

What Lies Beneath – December 1, 1999 production draft script by Clark Gregg – hosted by: Horrorlair – in pdf format

The wife of a university research scientist believes that her lakeside Vermont home is haunted by a ghost – or that she is losing her mind.

Information courtesy of imdb.com

More on the Movie Scripts page.

How do you do it?

Don’t worry, we’ll get to “Development Hell”. But this is something I’ve been meaning to write about for awhile, and after getting a few e-mails on the subject, I thought it was worth exploring (sooner, rather than later).

So I go on a great deal about querying; about what to say to production companies, managers, etc. There’s a lot of blogs that do that: talk about how to query or how not to query. But few talk about how to contact those you’re supposed to query. These blogs all assume that you just “know” how to do it, and I apologize because I have been no different.

When I got out of film school, I had no idea what to do with my first feature script. They sure as hell didn’t teach it in school, and when I tried Googling it, the results were vague. Why? Why don’t people like to talk about HOW to get ahold of these people? I have a theory: if you tell people your “tricks of the trade”, there will be just that many more sharks in the water. And who wants that? This field is already so damn competitive. So go figure it out yourself. (Or buy their list of production companies, for the low, low price of $100!! *Don’t do that.*)

Truth is, I should tell you. Querying is so damn hard already, and that’s just when you actually get ahold of them. Who cares if you get a slight leg up on finding out how to contact them?

So, here goes. You’ve got a brand spankin’ new script. What do you do? (After you’ve bugged your friends and family for a series of critiques, of course.)

First off, figure out what type of movie your script is and then make a list of others like it. Then, do some research and find all the people involved in making that movie: producers, production companies, agents, whoever. If they made a movie similar to yours (in tone or genre), odds are they’ll be more likely to give your script a shot. But how do you do this? Simple. GET A 2 WEEK FREE TRIAL TO IMDB PRO. I’ve done this on multiple credit cards with multiple e-mail accounts over the years. (Sorry, but that membership is too damn expensive for the small number of times I use it every year.) **NOTE: Remember to cancel it. I’ve forgotten a couple times, and it stings having to pay that membership fee.**

So, you start digging, and you make a list. But now you need to actually contact these people. **NOTE: Leave the big fish alone. Don’t go for studio or large production companies. Go for the mid-to-low level companies. They’re more likely to respond.** Problem is, most of them don’t list their contact information; just an info@companyname.com address. You can use this though. There is a pretty standard structure you can try out to most companies. Let’s say the person you’re trying to reach is John Smith (I’m a writer!). Here’s a few variations to try out:

Smith@companyname.com

JSmith@companyname.com

 John@companyname.com

JohnSmith@companyname.com

                You get the point. Just keep trying until something sticks. You can also try Googling “@companyname e-mail John smith” and see what bounces back. There are ENTIRE THREADS devoted to this on the Done Deal Message Boards. You can also use Done Deal to find out if the person you’re contacting is reputable, so you don’t waste your time.

Once you exhaust your list, you can broaden your search and start querying other companies, managers and agents. Keep it short and sweet. No big paragraphs. Don’t try to be cute and market your film either: “It’s (blank) meets (blank) and will make 52 million”. They just want to hear your logline and maybe a couple other enticing bits. Did you place in a reputable contest? Put that in there. And like I’ve said in previous entries: keep your query blasts small. Only do about 20 a day (if that). This way, you can see what works and what doesn’t. If you’re not getting a hit, maybe you need to change your subject. Or maybe your logline needs work. Don’t blow it by doing 500 in one day.

It’s tough, it’s rarely rewarding, and sometimes it feels downright stalkery. (Not a word.) But for a lot of us, it’s all we have. And most importantly: it works. I promise.

About the writer: A talented writer and 10 year veteran of the industry, “P.J. McNeill” has seen it all (and he’s ready to kiss and tell.) Got a question, a comment or just general bile /praise you want to spew?  Email PJ at pjscriptblog@gmail.com. New to P.J. readership?  Click here for more articles!

Congrats to Breanne. Her script A Day with Death has been filmed. Check out the official trailer.

A Day with Death – Official Trailer # 1 (HD) from asurftv on Vimeo.

A cantankerous sixty-five-year-old woman has a few things to do before she goes and Death will just have to hold off. Along the way the two become unlikely companions.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that this particular Reaper is a tall young lady whom Margaret quickly nicknames “Kulapo.” Being the charming lady that she is, Margaret convinces Kulapo to accompany her through the town for one day – tying up “loose ends.” Along the way, they develop a bond…

Written By Breanne Mattson
Produced, Directed & Edited By Asurf Oluseyi
Production Manager – Larry Homs Ahmed

Talk about it on the Discussion Board.

– Don

The Haunting – July 30, 1998 early draft script by David Self – hosted by: Horrorlair – in pdf format

When Eleanor, Theo, and Luke decide to take part in a sleep study at a huge mansion they get more than they bargained for when Dr. Marrow tells them of the house’s ghostly past.

Information courtesy of imdb.com

More on the Movie Scripts page.

Writers were challenged to write a script in 7 weeks. The genre: Thriller. The theme: Male lead about 50 years old. Race against the clock. The gist: Assume a male actor in his 50’s, in good physical shape, is looking for a mid to high budget “Race-Against-The-Clock Thriller”.

Each day, one script from the 7 week challenge will be featured. And finally…

A Time to Forget by Eric Wall (EWall433)

An assassin’s memory is erased in preparation for a hit on the President of Palestine, but when he begins to question his employer’s motives, his mission turns into a race against time to discover his true identity. 112 pages (pdf format)

Discuss this script on the Discussion Board

Over on the Unproduced Scripts page are fifteen original scripts for your reading pleasure.

– Don

Writers were challenged to write a script in 7 weeks. The genre: Thriller. The theme: Male lead about 50 years old. Race against the clock. The gist: Assume a male actor in his 50’s, in good physical shape, is looking for a mid to high budget “Race-Against-The-Clock Thriller”.

Each day, one script from the 7 week challenge will be featured. Next up…

A Journalist’s Riposte by Arty Whale (ArtyDoubleYou)

A journalist must fight his way through a team of deadly mercenaries, all while trying to figure out not only why they want him dead, but their more sinister of intentions. 100 pages (pdf format)

Discuss this script on the Discussion Board