The Best Scripts I Ever Read - Maybe.

Someone asked me in an e-mail today to write about the best screenplays I ever read, and I have to admit that that is a tough one, for a few reasons. The biggest one is that, to read as many things a year as I do, I generally try to forget everything I read after I write it up. Then, scripts I read after seeing the movie don't really count (because I am reading differently than if I hadn't), and while I'm sure I read some great unproduced scripts over the years, I'm really straining to think of any real examples.

Which might be the real story here -- that there just aren't a lot of amazing unproduced scripts floating around Hollywood. In fact, I can remember in the 1980s, when a screenwriting magazine would regularly put out their list of the ten best unproduced scripts, the list would inevitably include scripts that when they were finally made were very underwhelming, like "Miracle Mile" or "Man Trouble". Digging into my brain (for something, anything), I remember reading a cute/funny script by Garrison Keillor (of all people) about a teenage boy spending a night out on a line waiting to buy concert tickets. Was it a great script? I don't really remember. But it stuck with me, and that has to be worth something.

I read a draft of "Dolan's Cadillac", based on a Stephen King short story, that was supposed to be made with Sylvester Stallone at one point (who would have been totally wrong for the part). Someday, someone is going to make a very solid movie out of it.

Most of the very good scripts I remember reading were scripts thateventually were made into movies. "Saving Private Ryan" is probably one of the best, though the draft I read was better than the eventual movie. One great scene I remember, that didn't make the film, was one in which Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore's characters are talking about the incident in which Hanks' character became a hero, after saving 10 men. The problem is that 9 of the 10 had since died anyway, making Hanks wonder what the point of his heroism was; Sizemore was the 10th man, and he soon died, as of course does Hanks (hey, if this is a spoiler, you don't go to enough movies). The whole exchange was thoughtful and sort of spoke to the sad, pointless side of war and heroism, probably so much so that Spielberg decided not to put it in the movie. Too bad.

Paul Haggis' "Crash" was a great script, one of the ones that stayed with me, that I was happy to hear was being made into a film. "Short Cuts" was a good read. "In America". "Life as a House". "Stay" I remember generally liking, though the huge amount of money that it sold for was too much for a small film that isn't going to be helped by the studio now needing it to be a big film. "Ocean's Eleven" is a great read, that somehow played better than the movie did, though the movie isn't bad.

For fun, I just opened up my logbook, to see how many scripts I read in September 2000 actually got made into movies; figure 5 years is a good benchmark (and also remember that I read for production companies and small studios, so most of these scripts came from agents or producers). Turns out I read 20 books and 50 scripts that month (and probably ignored my wife too much). 4 of the scripts were made into movies (though by companies other than who I read them for) -- "Ocean's Eleven", "Death To Smoochy", and low-budget movies "The Safety of Objects" (another good script) and "Morvern Callar" (which I don't remember much about). I know I hated "Death to Smoochy", was shocked at the cast that signed up for it, and felt validated when it tanked (though I'm not perfect -- for instance, I was underwhelmed by a collection of boxing short stories that was ultimately turned into "Million Dollar Baby". But Haggis' script worked, they cast the hell out of it, and Eastwood did a good job directing it. In other hands... who knows?)

Otherwise, the September 2000 roster is made up of a lot of scripts and books that don't ring many bells. I read a few of the Chronicles of Amber books for someone that month, but it's going to take a miniseries (or a TV series) and a solid budget to really bring the stories in those books across. I also read a script based on Robertson Davies "Deptford Trilogy" that didn't really work well, and a draft of "The Incredible Hulk" that had nothing at all to do with the eventual film. Aside from these is just a bunch of titles that don't mean much; quite possibly some of these were solid tales that no one wanted to take a flyer on, but more likely they were just entries in the grand mass of mediocre scripts that drift by and never really go anywhere.

And that's the bottom line. Every month I read 50-80 new things. Some are good, and are going to go on to make decent movies; some will get made even though they aren't all that good. Most just lack the really great idea, the fresh writing, the crisp storytelling or the collection of interesting characters that are going to spark anyone's interest -- and unless you are writing a high-concept comedy or a horror film, you really need all those things to sell your script.

Everyone is looking for a great script. And there are a lot fewer out there than you might imagine.