An excerpt from Reals’ script review for The Blind Rage of Peacoat Miller which will be available 03/01/18:
Hey guys,
The Write to Reals series will now be taking on the wonderful world of unproduced feature scripts and analyzing what we can learn from these stories and these writers to help our own writing and get our work optioned/produced.
What better way to start off this series than by looking at a story that is described as “The Ring meets American Pie” about a porn tape circulating and killing horny college kids?
Doesn’t it kill you that this never got made? Wouldn’t that be everyone’s favorite film of all time ever?! Maybe not, and there is a reason this didn’t get produced… stay tuned for my thoughts.
And here is my review of The Blind Rage of Peacoat Miller (2008) by Adam Penn…
Initial Thoughts
I was sold on the logline (as you can probably tell from the above description) but I wanted to talk about how this script, by its very genre classification, falls into a strange position that is difficult for writers to pull off.
I am talking about the horror/comedy which is a hard sell (unless you are producing it yourself). This comes down, in essence, to two very specific things:
1. Comedy is subjective. For example, I love Talladega Nights, but totally understand that it is over-the-top and not everyone might be a fan. I, however, find it hilarious, but comedy, in general, is tough because if your reader doesn’t share the same sense of humor as you, you are likely looking at a pass.
2. Horror is subjective. For example, a film that disturbs me, another viewer may find silly or not disturbing in any way.
So, combining the two of these puts you (from the start) in a very precarious position in trying to find the right balance of two very subjective genres and the unquantifiable phenomena that makes each work.
Lastly, the 111 pages tells me that the story is probably overlong, the jokes will probably get stale after a while and the writer didn’t know how to condense. This is just a guess, but an ideal page length for this type of story would likely be between 90 – 98 pages.
Anyway, let’s see how this story reads!
Want EARLY access to our videos, uploads, and movie/script reviews? Members get them FIRST! Follow this link to our Discussion Forum.
And be sure to check out our Notes Service, where I give my detailed thoughts and suggestions on your script.
