www.mypdfscripts.com/sheridan-reviews-motor-city/As of late, I’ve been in a bit of a revenge/kick-a-lot-of-ass mood (must be something to do with the former day job), and J.C. suggested I add this script to my “read pile.”
So, around a couple months ago, I took a couple hours out of a slow afternoon and kicked back with this screenplay and a cup of coffee, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t get around to even a sip of that coffee.
Uh-huh, this roller coaster had me hooked from page one. Why? Because this f*****g thing lunges at your jugular and it just doesn’t let go until the words: FADE TO BLACK. What’s more, it doesn’t play ball like the other guys. No, this script’s got an agenda all its own. And I love it.
Logline: A small time hood is framed and sent to prison, only to exact revenge years later.
Genre: Action
Details: May 15, 2009 – First Draft – 74 Pages
Writer: Chad St. John, an emerging screenwriting wunderkind, that had not one, but two scripts (yes, two) on the 2009 Black List: this script and The Days Before.
He also made a splash back in December for selling his original spec The Further Adventures of Doc Holliday to Paramount.
A Google search and quick gander at his profile on IMDb Pro shows that he’s also attached to the following in development properties: Spy Hunter, Outland, Ronin, Sgt. Rock, and just sold and attached himself as director of Four Kings of Ruin. Not bad for a guy that used to bartend, huh?
You may have noticed that he seems to have a penchant for the action genre, but we are talking about a guy that practically holed up in the basement of that yippee-ki-yay-ing motherfucker John McClane (no, Bruce Willis, silly) for six months1, give or take, so it’s not too hard to surmise that there maybe/possibly/could have been just a tad bit of influence.
Regarding Motor City, St. John had this to say to ScriptShadow2:
Honestly, it wasn’t my idea. Greg Silverman over at Warner Bros., one all around bad ass dude, tossed that one my way. After they bought [The Days Before] and I had rewritten it based on their notes, Greg offered me a two script blind deal. I was definitely salivating for the chance, but I really wasn’t keen on the blind aspect of it. I wanted to have at least one of the scripts spelled out before I said yes. I thought it was crucial to follow DAYS with something just as unique. So, Greg throws this idea at me. Then, he says the magic words…“and there’s no dialogue.” A “silent” revenge movie.
I said yes before he finished the sentence. The artist in me leapt at the chance. Besides, when the hell is another Exec this far up the food chain in a studio going to ask me to write a “silent” movie? I was all over it. It was audacious and ballsy. Of course, then I spent a week banging my head into a desk in front of my computer thinking, “What the hell have I done?”
Why was it received so well? I was just humbled that it was. Truly. I still am. I think part of it is definitely that it was just so ballsy and different. Maybe it was a reminder that a script doesn’t need to have an explosion a minute. Or, even dialogue. You’ll have to ask all those cats who like it. I just aim for “Don’t Suck”.
I rewrote it for Dark Castle. And, yes, added dialogue. I’m really happy with how it’s coming along. We still go back and forth as to which version is the right one to get made. I suspect it might be a version that combines the no dialogue and dialogue versions. We’ll see.
What’s it About? We start in Detroit in the 1970s, moving toward an upscale residential area where a fire glows several blocks away: lights, sirens, a panic. When suddenly a MANIAC runs by us carrying a one-legged dead man over his shoulder. We track with him:
His clothes are torn, blackened by fire, filth, and blood. Cuts and scrapes bleed openly.
His head is shaved boot camp style. His face is covered in a dozen scars--the kind you get from deep gashes that heal without the benefit of stitches.
There’s a pistol-grip sawed off double-barrel shotgun in his hand and murder in his eyes.
Meet JOHN MILLER.
Running for all he’s worth across the top of an apartment building, he LEAPS into the night air off the edge...
That’s the end of the first page. Effective, because how – in the f**k – can I not turn the page now?! In the clichéd words of Muhammad Ali, this things moves like a butterfly and stings like a bee. At this point my mind was racing with the possibilities of what was going to happen next. You aspiring lot, the sooner you learn this lesson the better: make me absolutely want to turn to your second page. I don’t care if it’s a comedy or a melodrama; if you make me want to turn the page instead of just having to, then I’ll respect your writing all the more.
I digress. Moving on…
We flash forward 30 years to the present day and meet a dude who receives a scrapbook of newspaper clippings that nearly gives him a heart attack.
Then we flash back to the seventies, and Miller leaving work where he receives a “package” from a friend, which he tosses into the glove box.
Unbeknownst to Miller, he’s being followed.
When he stops for a coffee some punks jack his car. He chases them down, but doesn’t catch them and finds that nothing is wrong with his car. Strange.
He goes home and from the “package” he pulls a tiny engagement ring, which he hopes to brandish during the proposal to his girlfriend… which he just can’t seem to do: the ghosts of his past weighing on his conscience.
Oh, he has an Army Ranger tattoo, too.
Then, as if by accident, he sorta, kinda proposes to her and, finally, on page eleven, she shrieks the script’s first coherent word:
SOPHIA
Yes!
But the happy moment is short-lived as just outside is a gaggle o’ coppers about to bust up the party. And they do. Why? Because from the trunk of Miller’s car, a cop pulls out kilo after kilo of cocaine. Yep, there was nothing wrong with his car earlier because he’s been set up.
At an interrogation room we meet our douche bag antagonist:
The door opens--a man that narrows Miller’s eyes to slits enters. He subconsciously takes a step back.
Impeccably dressed. 40′s. This is no cop. This dude is a Viper in a trendy suit.
His name is RAMIREZ.
Then we flashback to how Miller met Sophia. In a bar. In a mess. With Ramirez. It becomes a bigger mess, and Sophia leaves with Miller.
Flash forward to the interrogation room where Ramirez leaves Miller with his tiny engagement ring. The bastard.
Then St. John does another clever thing here, he flashes forward to present day, and that scrapbook from earlier, and gives us a major plot element in a single shot:
The ocean breese kicks up, catching pages of the scrap book--flips a few. It stops on a yellowed headline...
“LOCAL MAN GETS 25 YEARS AFTER 6 MONTH TRIAL”
An ink smeared black and white of Miller dead center. Cuffed. Pulled through a crowd of COPS and REPORTERS.
To make this short story even shorter, I’ll recap the rest fairly quickly: While in prison, Miller manages to gather up his ole Ranger buddies on the outside and they formulate one mother of a no holds barred ass-kicking revenge plot, which also involves busting Miller out of the pen.
Once out, hell hath no fury… and if you like things that go BOOM, then you’re gonna love just how revenge is exacted here. Oh, God, yes. It’s brilliant. Unlike anything I’ve read or seen before. Even down to the third act plot twist where something goes terribly wrong, but it has to because that’s how we get to the present day and finally… the end of the script.
I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s f*****g tragic. Beautifully f*****g tragic.
Overall Thoughts: There’s been a lot talk in closed circles of how many words of dialogue this script doesn’t have, so let’s run the numbers: in the first 71 pages only three audible, coherent words are spoken, with seven lines of dialogue being uttered in the remaining two and a half pages.
And I would venture far enough to say that those final seven lines could be pared to a mere three with ease without any drastic impact to the story. I mean, after 71 pages, then suddenly there’s all this dialogue? Why ruin a good thing? Pare it down. Keep it simple. Sparse. Lean. Taut.
Anyway, how does St. John achieve this minimalism in dialogue? Well, before we even start, he gives us the following note:
NOTE TO READER: AS THERE IS LITTLE AUDIBLE DIALOGUE IN THIS STORY, DIALOGUE THAT APPEARS IN ITALICS IS DESCRIPTIVE OF CHARACTER REACTION AND/OR EMOTION CONVEYED.
Clever, because he’s able to express a lot using this method. It’s way of showing what a character is thinking without them ever uttering a word, which any actor worth their weight should love because it’s forcing them to do what they hopefully do best: act.
“A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.” ~ David Mamet
And you know what? This script is a good script. Not only is it good, but it’s pretty damn impressive, too. Anyone wanting to know/study how insignificant dialogue can sometimes actually be should really read this script.
No, seriously, if you can find it read it.
I’d almost venture far enough to say that this script should be mandatory Screenwriting 101 reading, because this is a lesson that needs to be learned in the yakety-yak dialogue-heavy wake of the Tarantino’s and the Kevin Smith’s of the world. Why? Because writers often think they can simply use dialogue to fix a script’s greater structural problems. That’s one of many reasons why voice-overs are often shunned because they’re considered a cheap, easy fix. Never be fooled into thinking that a lot of blah-blah-blah can ever replace the stark effectiveness of a mere look or simple action.
I’m telling you, what Chad St. John has done here… it takes balls to tell a story this way, and it’s f*****g refreshing because he had to get routinely creative with the action in order to compensate for the lack of dialogue. And that’s where this script most definitely succeeds. It’s really interesting to see how a screenwriter can use action to convey so much.
Film being a visual medium, you’d think this should/would be a given, but among a rash of current screenwriters, more often than not, dialogue is used far more than it should be. Visual, people. Visual. I’m willing to bet that St. John even surprised himself more than once while writing this script. It’s easy to have a character blab, “F**k you,” but you know… the real trick is to, instead, find an engaging, non-verbal way of expressing that f**k you.
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ~ Anton Chekhov
How often do your characters speak when they don’t have to?
When something does need to be said, often times St. John places a barrier between us and the characters (i.e. a window), so that we can’t hear what they’re saying, exactly, but we can see it all in their body language. And it works. Extremely well.
Through the dingy front door window, past the security bars, and down the hall, we watch Sophia and Miller embrace.
She smiles. He smiles. They talk. We can’t hear what they’re saying from out here, but you can read the lips.
I love you’s galore.
Final Thoughts: I hope that they opt to make this version of the script. I really do. It’s a crime that anyone even asked for a version with dialogue. I mean, an agent — of all people — had the balls to think the idea, then a screenwriter had the balls to actually write it, so, in my honest opinion, Dark Castle needs to grow a pair and make it.
As-is.
No dialogue.
It’s audacious and a risk, sure, but man, if it succeeded (and it would), I could see this project creating a ripple through the current screenwriting world. Hell, the film industry, period. A much, much, much-needed ripple.
My only real complaint with this script, which is borderline trivial, is that there are some minor grammatical errors and he leaves out a word here and there, but overall it is absolutely, most definitely worth the read.
Script Magazine: The Days Before – July/August 2009 –
www.scriptmag.com/magazine/view-1214.html ↩
ScriptShadow: Interview with Chad St. John:
scriptshadow.blogspot.com/2010/04/interview-with-chad-st-john.html ↩
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This sounds so exciting to me ... would love to read the script.