screenplay coverage

find it at Coverage Special For New Screenplay Customers Only at hollywood lit sales.

Contributed by Joe Pearshouse found at netribution.co.uk

Whether you’re a screenwriter, producer, director, executive or movie fan, two-time #1 bestselling author Blake Snyder (Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies) will show you — from concept to structure to execution of specific scenes — how the magic of story comes alive through tried and true techniques storytellers have known for centuries. Blake has mastered the art of writing and selling scripts to Hollywood, and now teaches others.

Learn the tricks of the trade that will turn your idea into a screenplay, including mastering the 15 beats of every good story, the concept of “primal” and why primal stories work best, creating the “Perfect Beast”, and proven rules for script repair. T

His and much more, as the essentials of Save the Cat! come to life with indispensable stories and examples in a fun, fast-paced, involving 2-day seminar whose past attendees have made four spec screenplay sales in 2007. PLUS: Your chance to pitch YOUR story to Blake – and find out if your story will work!
Save The Cat! with Blake Snyder 24/25 November 2007 Central London
£250 + VAT (Raindance members get 15% discount) Call 020 7287 3833 to book or email will@raindance.co.uk

Script Review: The Rivals

A script review about a movie that has nothing to do with big explosions, superheroes, murder or sex? That’s right, the IESB does have a softer side.

Hi Guys, Snake here. I won’t bore you with too long a yarn before I get on with this one.

But, let me just preface this by letting all you folks know that my girl goes to some artsy-fartsy, art and fart type academy for artists. Yup, I know. Feel my pain! Somebody has to feel me out there in the cheap-seats!

So, for reasons pertaining to my love of things that in no way pertain to art, but in every way pertain to my love of ‘gettin’ some’’, I play ball and journey to these strange places called ‘museums’ at her bidding, where I stare blankly into space and think about things like ‘what color is that little laser in my DVD player?’

If your not familiar with these really quiet, very clean places where you’re not allowed to touch anything (one learns these things the hard way), they like to hang things on the really-white-walls you’d normally find at your senile grandma’s yard sale. Y’know, pictures of old mills, and even stranger things (just like my senile old grandma’s house!) like door knobs mounted onto a wall with no door to speak of for it to open.

My dame calls things like that ‘modern and ironic’. I call it bad carpentry. But I digress...

Wandering past all those paintings of fields and trees and what not at this glorified yard-mart, guess what I find hanging on one of those really white walls they must paint all the time? Why none other than a painting of some lady named Sarah Bernhardt.

‘Who gives an air biscuits chance in a hurricane’ about some corpse named Bernhardt you ask (the painting was old)?

Well, according to my sources (IMDB) some guy name Steven Spielberg and John Madden do . . .Which brings me to my point.

I’ve really got to stop saying I won’t bore you guys with my stories here, because I know I will.

A while back someone snuck a script by me about this Bernhardt broad, by slapping a GI-Joe script cover on the thing. And wouldn’t you know my dumb ass took the bait like a fat man drawn to pie. I liken the experience to biting into a slice of pie. However it also like finding a big black, curly pube baked into the crust of said pie.

I quickly called up my source, calling ‘Shenanigans’ on the numb-nutz, a rake and shovel in hand ready to do some yard work all up and down his mug. But then he holds me at bay by telling me that the Bearded One him self had considered, was considering, or had generally breathed in the direction of this project at some point.

Dejected, I put away my cammies and re-buried all five pieces of my drawn and quartered ‘Duke’ action figure (I hated it when the rubber bands in those torso’s finally gave) and did my time like a man. Just like the museum thing with my gal . . .

Sarah Bernhardt fresh screenplay secret

Sarah Bernhardt Sarah Bernhardt! You better be one tough-broad if I’m going to be played for the patsy. One tough broad, indeed . . .

Which brings me to “The Rivals’. The script that was not GI-Joe.

What did I think of it?

Well despite all better judgment (you punks saw this coming!) I really dug it. This is some first class words on paper here folks'. First class . . .

And that Sarah Bernhardt broad? Is she ‘Joe’ tough? Well maybe not that tough, but she’s definitely cut from a cloth way darker than honey-suckle yellow, and twice the thread count to boot.

I did have a few problems with it by scripts end, but before I get to bitching let me give you guys my usual rundown of the goods as they come at us.

We begin with a card telling us the time is 1895. The place - Turin, Italy. We get one last card giving us a “Domino’ like disclaimer that what we’re about to get a load of is ‘sort of’ true. And then we begin . . .

ELENORA is the biggest actress in Turin . . . and only Turin. She’s got a cute little daughter who she sends to private school to play with the Nuns, and some poser playwright boyfriend named GABRIEL who she’s more a mother to than a lover. By all accounts she is generally satisfied with her life. That life being that she exists as a rather big fish in a small pond.

But when her play is cancelled because the starlit MS. SARAH BERNHARDT needs a place to crash on account that Venice isn’t feeling well this season, she takes it as an insult. Adding injury to that insult, it seems the world famous Bernhardt will be playing most of the same leading roles she will be playing, after the intruding troupe pulls stakes and moves onto their next world-class venue.

When Bernhardt drops onto the scene, everybody in Turin is awestruck by her arrival, seeing as how she presents herself practically like a royalty. Her son MAURICE and manager SCHURMAN are two most important parts of her expansive entourage.

Admirers abound. This includes Gabriel, who can only try and scheme of a way to get the Star to play the lead in one of his plays.

Sarah of course hates it in scrappy lil’ Turin. And, as far as her personality goes, is everything we’d expect from a diva of her magnitude. In one word (and at first glance) she’s quite simply a total bitch. But the show must go on. And it does . . .

And as Elenora puzzles over Sarah’s larger than life performances and stage personae, she notices that the Diva’s overwrought acting is far from ‘real’. This lack of realism matters little however, because Mrs. Bernhardt is truly a star in the finest sense of the word. People from the orchestra dug out to the cheap-seats (my people!) feel, and love this lady. And that’s what she knows she’s lacks as an actress.

Of course she hardly lacks talent, as evidenced when she does a quick performance for Shurman, who recognizes her for what she is immediately. A natural. In fact he sees in her a totally new, vastly more realistic acting style that will become the future of their craft.

After trying to launch a play of her own with Shuman’s help, it isn’t long before Bernhardt finds out and literally steals the play away from Elenora, making herself the star.

What then begins next is a series of one-ups and double-crosses as the two compete in the matching roles, their rivalry making headlines across the whole of Europe. This all culminates at a Gala hosted by Bernhardt Royal suitor, where after having soup dropped on her plane-Jane gown during dinner, Elenora puts on a sexy lil’ number that takes all the interest off Bernhardt and puts it onto her.

Finally, Elenora is star. And Bernhardt knows it. After just about the bitchiest scene in all of filmdom, the two divas realize how petty they’ve been.

Bernhardt went onto to be one of the first silent era actresses, successfully making that tricky leap from stage to screen.

Screenplay coverage Elenora Duse.

Elenora went onto . . . well . . . read the history books to get the rest folks, because I can’t tolerate another ounce of estrogen permeating this review.

But estrogen levels what they are, I did enjoy the script even if it was a rampaging vag’ fest. My girl hasn’t been this proud since I told her I dug that movie ‘The Queen’. Hey it was funny!

Not at all what I expected from those dry as bones Oscar promo’s they had everywhere, that made the click look like the cinematic equivalent of viewing the ‘Golden Girls’ watch the paint dry in Buckingham palace through a brutal English winter.

Those problems I mentioned earlier . . . Well, I just felt it took awhile to get to their tit-for-tat rivalry. I mean we know it’s coming. It’s called ‘The Rivals’ after all. At times I thought the one-ups-man ship was going to get really down and dirty, and it never did. That was a bit of a let down because after a similar flick like ‘The Prestige’ getting all raw and weird on me, I thought this one might get a little homicidal also. It doesn’t.

But than I remembered that this is historical. And maybe murder was too much of a departure. I dunno' . . .

I also though there could have been a better tie in to what was to come, rather than only a card at the end telling us that Bernhardt would go on to act movies. I thought maybe there would be a scene where she gets a look at an early movie projector and sees in it the possibilities.

Once again I don’t think this jibes well with the timeline of the script, but relevancy is always a good way to end a story, and I thought that’s where they we’re going with it. Basically, that even though Sarah would no longer be the most cutting edge performer, she would find her calling in something that was far more advanced, showing the Diva has not only talent but also foresight.

Other than that, I can’t really complain about this one too much. It was hard to completely disappointment me because I knew so little about the material. That being said however, it had to win me over considering this thing is really not my cup of Joe and I normally avoid these types of flicks like the plague.

Whiny chick flicks are like my kryptonite. But there is neither here. Instead we get strong, demanding women who know what they want and how to go about getting it. Can’t fault anybody for that I suppose.

That being said once is enough for me. I dug ‘The Queen’ but I never said it would grace my DVD shelf. Hell, the other DVDs I got up there would kick its ass for fun. So thanks for making the initial two hours enjoyable, but no thanks to seconds. I had enough the first time, thank you Miss. Miren.

Now if I only could get out of going to those damn museums. .

‘The Rivals’ was written by Robin Swicord with revisions by Jullian Fellowes. Dated 4/20/2007, 120 Pages. Two people that make learning fun and easy!

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