I (Don't) Want to Suck your Blood... by general1

I suspect that at least a couple reviews of this have begun with the old “I don’t care much for vampire scripts”, but as far as I’m concerned any script can be successful if done well (okay, maybe I hate the majority of musicals, but that’s another story). Particularly enticing to me going in was the backdrop: if there’s one genre that I’m willing to try no matter what, it’s period horror. I don’t necessarily know what it is, but something to do with the lack of technology (no cell phones, assault rifles, etc.) makes the predicaments of the prey particularly frightening (it can also work in modern stories like “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, where again the protagonists just seem utterly defenseless). Now, obviously this script is told from the point of view of the vampires, which for me detracts from the horror quite a bit. Still, there’s an opportunity to add to this dimension with Katherine, a mortal—though I’m not sure it’s played out that way.

But let me start with the beginning of this script, which I have to say is among the best (if not THE best) that I’ve read on Trigger Street. I mentioned it below, but the dialogue in the first 7 pages (and especially pages 5-7) is about as witty and clever as it gets. The only advice I’d offer to improve the first 7 pages (at least when they’re taken out of context—I’ll get to this later) would be to conceal Jonathan and Lucian’s identities until Lucian attacks the Gypsy. First of all, saying a character is a “vampire” in his or her description is an unfilmable—and furthermore, it spoils the surprise of what’s to come. Of course we know from the logline that this is about a vampire, but there’s something about that initial jolt when the vampire first shows his fangs that can really start a horror movie with a bang. Thus, I’d make a few changes to this carnival scene: rather than a vampire, have them throw stakes at coffins (a little more subtle), and get rid of dialogue like “can a vampire die of boredom”, “it’s too early for that”, and “never too early for appetizers”. In short, I’d try to make this the kind of scene where, looking back it’s OBVIOUS they’re vampires, yet as we’re watching it we wouldn’t be entirely sure (a really good tactic to throw us off might be to open with a shot of the Gypsy watching them sinisterly, so as to mislead us into thinking she’s a vampire).

Normally I tend to proceed pretty much in a chronological manner through the script (as that’s how someone watching this on screen would be analyzing it), but here I feel like there are a couple broader issues that are really bogging down the story. This is probably going to sound somewhat harsh, but it is just my attempt to try and improve this script—which is well written, but seems to be lacking in a few key areas.

First of all, pacing was for me a huge issue—this script was like a roller coaster. I’ve mentioned how great the first seven pages were, but I’ll add that up until the middle of page 16 (the end of the dress shop scene) I was utterly HOOKED. This reminded me a lot of the opening of “A Clockwork Orange”, with a sordid sequence of events featuring brutality that is so shocking you can’t help but keep watching. The wonderful dialogue and wry humor really add a lot to this…almost enough to make me overlook the fact that nothing of significance had really happened (but I’ll get to that later). However, the engine completely falls out after this, and we have 20 pages until ANYTHING that rivals the first 16 pages happens (and even then, it’s just the brief scene with the dead twins). Following this, the next real “action” scene is the one with Katherine discovering Jonathan and Alex with the two dead guys—a scene that with its combination of blood and humor hearkened back to the first 16 pages. But again, then we go back to serious conversations with Jonathan and Freud for another 20 pages or so until a gratuitous attack scene (page 67) that leads to Freud’s death about five pages after that. The pace picks up not too long after that, leading into a climax that despite some historical issues (which I’ll get to later) delivered overall. Basically, what I think I’m trying to get at here is that the TONE is unclear. It’s certainly alright to blend genres, but here it’s like part of the time we’re watching a very dark yet almost comedic horror film, and others it’s a serious drama about a man (okay, vampire) struggling with a personal problem.

This brings me to what might be the central flaw with this script to me, which is the lack of a visible EXTERNAL conflict. Obviously it’s a lot easier when the humans are the heroes—their goal is to protect themselves and kill the vampires—but even when a vampire’s the hero, it’s hard to devote 100 pages to a problem that’s merely internal. I realize that it would be difficult to make this vampire be struggling for something tangible, because the fact that he’s immortal and nearly invulnerable would require quite the antagonistic force to counter him—but right now the overall conflict is just weak. In the first place, I feel like we need to see more rationale behind WHY Jonathan is so depressed—or maybe more VISUAL representation. Right now he says he’s depressed, but it’s not really enough to understand why he’s like this. Perhaps it’s because we’re humans and we can’t understand what it’s like to live for centuries by sucking the blood of innocents, but I feel like it’s almost a “cheat” to simply tell us Jonathan’s depressed and make us go off that. At the very least, maybe we could have a scene early on where Jonathan’s about to attack but stops and reconsiders. Maybe he picks a random victim and finds that it’s a young child, and he thinks back to the days before he was immortal, and it’s THIS that makes him question just what the heck he’s doing—and subsequently makes him seek out Freud for treatment. Lucian (I think) says at one point that Jonathan has had numerous crises of consciousness, which makes me wonder why he never tried to seek help before (or if he did, obviously it didn’t work). So I definitely think he should begin the story as a typical blood-thirsty vampire and then have this crisis of consciousness around the inciting incident (because right now there really isn’t one unless you count Jonathan telling Lucian he’s depressed numerous times early on). The external conflict’s a bit more difficult of an issue, though perhaps it could involve his love for Katherine—he wants to be with her, but knows that if he doesn’t get rid of his blood lust he’ll end of killing her…and so he goes to Freud to mend his internal conflict (wanting to stop killing people, or perhaps he even hopes Freud can cure him completely) with the hope that it will lead to fixing his external one (allowing him to be with Katherine). It could still be improved (and what I’ve suggested might take out some of the humor from the story—though like I said, it’s largely absent after page 16 as is), but right now the romance angle isn’t played up near enough, whereas it seems like it could represent an external manifestation of Jonathan’s internal dilemma.

There’s also a key issue I want to point out which for me really stretched the limits of plausibility, and that’s the fact that it seems like these vampires are unknown to the public. In fact, I know they’re unknown—it’s the fact that Freud’s report would exposes them that really causes them to kill him (not so much that he’s “cured” Jonathan, or at least that’s how I read it). Now let’s think about this for a moment: a Gypsy gets killed at the carnival, a pile of corpses ends up at the brothel, a bunch of nuns die at the mausoleum, a couple people get killed at the dress shop…and this is just the first 16 pages, or one night of mischief for the vampires. First off, considering the panic that swept London when Jack the Ripper killed a half dozen prostitutes over several years, I can only imagine what it’d be like when presumably dozens of bodies are discovered on a nightly basis. Clearly this isn’t the work of a serial killer, and with all the vampire references in culture of the day (the novel and film of Dracula, Nosferatu, etc.), I have to think that at least SOMEBODY might say “hey, maybe there’s a vampire running around London”. Even if that’s not the case, to just disregard the public reaction seems almost ignorant. Maybe if the vampires were waiting for bombs to strike, then sneaking into collapsed building and killing the survivors, the public might assume they were bomb victims (though with that kind of mutilation I don’t know), but as is it gets kind of ridiculous when all these people are being killed and no one seems to take notice.

Lastly, I’ll just comment briefly on the historical accuracy of this script. Yes the dialogue is going to be an issue with some people, but personally I won’t quibble too much with it. I just want to point out that the events in the script take place in September 1939, while the first German raid on London wasn’t until nearly a year later. Again, I know this isn’t meant to be entirely accurate from a historical perspective, but I do think it’s worth noting (especially since I honestly don’t think Freud HAS to be in here—a well-crafted “generic shrink” could work).

CONCEPT: I do like the idea of a vampire who’s disillusioned with his way of life and his attempt to get help from a psychiatrist, but what’s there right now just doesn’t feel like enough to carry a script for 100 pages—more like a short script about Freud interviewing a disturbed man who in a twist ending turns out to be a vampire (something like “Interview with the Vampire”, with just the beginning and end framing scenes). What I think would be more effective is to craft a concrete and tangible goal for Jonathan, and to have this be the impetus for his seeing Freud. I mentioned that perhaps he could fall in love with Katherine from afar, yet know that as long as he has this blood lust, he’ll kill her. His seeking out Freud then would not only have greater stakes (because as is, all that happens if he “fails” is that he stays depressed—not that enticing), but the conversations could also have a more specific aim. Right now it’s kind of like Freud’s a “gimmick”, and a lot of the scenes with him and Jonathan just seem to beat around the bush. Rather than making it about “ooh, we’re watching Sigmund Freud in a movie”, it could be about Jonathan and his trying to decrease his blood lust. Like I said before, I honestly don’t even think Freud’s necessary here—what would happen (and this is just a thought) if Jonathan hears about a psychiatrist who himself is a vampire who’s learned how to control his thirst for blood? That to me would be much more enticing (especially to find out how he’s learned to do this), and it would also make Jonathan’s motivation for going much clearer than him simply hearing an actor talk about a renowned psychiatrist.

RATING: GOOD (I like the premise, it’s the execution—i.e. “story”—that fell short for me)

STORY: I don’t really have much to add here, though one note I made below that I feel is worth mentioning is the ending—a payoff with no setup. Jonathan throws the dagger to kill Lucian, which would’ve worked perfectly if we’d seen him throw it at the carnival at the beginning. Personally, I think it would’ve worked well if we begin with Jonathan as a standard bloodthirsty vampire—he gets perverted satisfaction as he throws a dagger at a human dummy at the carnival. That proves his skill in this regard, so at the end we’re willing to accept his striking Lucian with perfect accuracy.

RATING: AVERAGE

CHARACTER: I think I’ve discussed Jonathan enough, and as mentioned Katharine and Freud don’t work for me right now—her relationship with Jonathan isn’t really developed and his role seems little more than being there and letting us hear his voice. The other vampires I did think were better characters, though. Magdalene especially reminded me of Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter, and from pretty early on in the script I was picturing Helena Bonham Carter in that role (hey, I think she still looks good enough to pass for 19!). Alex and Nico were a bit indistinguishable (obviously it’d be easy on screen due to their ethnicities, but on the page they often acted and spoke alike), and I wonder whether one or even both of them couldn’t be eliminated altogether. Lucian is a solid villain on the whole, though I can’t help but feel (and this is true with the others as well) that his role was significantly diminished in the second act—again, largely to make room for Jonathan’s conversations with Freud, which just didn’t do much for me.

RATING: AVERAGE

STRUCTURE: Right now I can see a three act structure, with Jonathan deciding to go to Freud as the end of act I and Freud’s death the end of act III. However, I do feel like there isn’t a clear inciting incident—just some ramblings of Jonathan’s that he’s depressed—and in a future draft I think this could be remedied by making Jonathan have a clearer external goal. In that case, an inciting incident could be his falling in love with Katherine (or another human woman), which spurs him to go to a shrink later on because he knows he can never be with her as long as he’s a bloodthirsty vampire. There also isn’t a discernible midpoint, which I feel is attributable to the lengthy and rather languid second act that consists largely of tedious conversations between Jonathan and Freud with a few gratuitous scenes of violence (the one exception being the one where Katherine comes across Jonathan and Alex after they’ve killed the two men, which I really liked).

RATING: AVERAGE

DIALOGUE: People are probably going to complain about the historical accuracy of the dialogue, but obviously it’s not meant to be perfect. There is very little exposition and on the nose dialogue, and in fact the only real problem I have is that a few expressions (“dude”, “shit himself”, etc.) feel way too modern for this time period. But I do think the dialogue here is really good on the whole (especially pages 5-7), and I’m chalking up the insipid story to my later aversion to the characters’ speeches (mainly in the interactions between Freud and Jonathan).

RATING: GOOD

OVERALL: This script was well-written on the whole (a few issues with sluglines and some typos, but nothing too serious), and like I said I really enjoyed parts of it—the first 16 pages were superb and the climax exhilarating (despite the apparent historical inaccuracies with London not being bombed in 1939). I just feel like the second act really slowed the script down, largely because the conversations with Freud didn’t really have a discernible direction to them—and more importantly, nothing tangible was at stake. At the very least, Jonathan should want something more than this abstract…well, honestly I don’t even know how to word it, and I worry a reader or audience member wouldn’t be enticed either. For that reason, it feels like an external conflict would vastly improve the story: I’ve mentioned making Jonathan want to learn to control his blood lust so he can be with a mortal woman, and as a result have him visit a mysterious “vampire shrink” who can teach him to control it (something his friends obviously don’t want him to do). Something like that would really invest me more in the script than simply throwing Freud out there and having him talk elusively for 40 pages or so. Again, these are all just my suggestions as to how I think this could be improved—nothing more—but hopefully a thing or two I’ve said can be helpful.

RATING: AVERAGE (though it DEFINITELY has the potential to be a GOOD with some tinkering)

NOTES AS I READ IT (BY PAGE NUMBER):
• I tend to mark formatting/mechanical mistakes only the first time they appear (unless they’re quite egregious, in which case I might list them multiple times)
• These are thoughts AS I READ, and hence an issue may be resolved as the story progresses (I try to note these, but don’t always)

--don’t put a date on any scripts you send out (though it’s fine for just putting it on TS)

1:
-- Jonathan, a British vampire with dark hair (26), and Lucian,
a vampire of African decent (28), stand at a game booth.

Okay, there are three issues here. First, capitalize characters the first time they appear. Second, unless you have kid characters you should put an age range and not an exact age (i.e. “late 20s” instead of “28”). Lastly, how would we know they’re vampires from looking at them? Unless they’re baring their fangs we wouldn’t—and I’ll just add that I think it’s a mistake to reveal this so soon anyway. Great horror movies always open with that “gotcha” moment when we realize who the monster is, not with us seeing them as a monster from the get go

2:
-- LUCIAN
It may be my last. Can a vampire
die of boredom?

Again, I think you could have a much more effective opening by not revealing them as vampires so soon—in short, I’d get rid of the second line here.

--should be “fixates on”

3:
--LATER is only used for the same location as the previous scenethis should be NIGHT

4:
-- JONATHAN
Coal shortage. There is a war on.

The war started on September 1st, yet the opening just says it’s 1939. Just to “appease” the naysayers (horrible attempt at humor I know), I might make the opening heading something like “December, 1939”

--nice opening that could’ve been better if you only hinted at them being vampires

5:
--again, slugline here should be NIGHT not LATER

7:
--SUPERB dialogue in that last scene (I mean up there with high-quality produced scripts)

-- The street is deserted. No one notices the ruckus.

Kind of redundantobviously no one notices if no one’s there

--wait, I thought you said the street was deserted before

9:
--not sure an Asian vampire in the 30s would say “dude”

15:
--nice transition there

22:
--seems like this should be the inciting incidentI loved the earlier scenes but I’ll admit the pace has slowed down some

23:
-- LUCIAN (CONT’D)
(hisses)
Unless you plan on outing us or
killing them all.

Lucian certainly doesn’t mind killing them all, and (as I’m sure I’ll mention in my overall comments) the fact that they’ve killed so many people has to have “outed them” (maybe not them specifically, but people must realize that there are vampires—or even mass murderers—about). Also, you don’t need the CONT’D for characters speaking. If you’re using Final Draft, go to DOCUMENT then MORES AND CONTINUEDS and turn off AUTOMATIC CHARACTER CONTINUEDS (not sure how to do it if you have a different program)

--need a time of day for the slugline

-- LUCIAN
Like you’re seriously considering
telling your problems to some MAN.

Minor change, but I’d make it “human” instead of “man”

--the exchange at the bottom of 23 feels a bit too on the nose for me. It isn’t awful, but with the kind of dialogue you’ve written thus far (especially in some of the earlier scenes), I think you can make lines like “the thirst reminds me and I’m sick of it” a bit less obvious.

25:
--“own” not “on”
--not sure I buy Jonathan knowing Freud’s in LondonI’d rather him actually find out somehow

26:
--ok, so he found Freud in the newspaperall the more reason to take out his “revelation” that Freud MUST be in London

27:
--Martha’s dialogue should be O.S. if she’s inside the house

33:
--don’t start a scene with dialogue (it could just be “He catches up to her”)
--“is” not “it”

36:
-- NICO
A little guilt nothing more. --
They die so we can live.

I’d like to see more of this. Right now, I have virtually NO sympathy for any of these characters (maybe a little for Jonathan, but there are other issues with him—sure I’ll mention these in general comments). We see them slaughtering (or having slaughtered) mass amounts of people—far more than the vampires we’re used to seeing ever did—and taking great pleasure in it. Justification like this greatly helps toward understanding these characters, because otherwise this whole script will become almost nihilistic—blood and gore for their own sake

40:
--“best friend” is an unfilmableSHOW us he’s Freud’s best friend

53:
--not sure “that old dude about shit himself” is something that would be said in the 30s

63:
--okay, you really need to set up this scene before just throwing out dialogue. I have no idea who’s there or what’s happening

75:
--again, I can’t believe NO ONE suspects that the thousands of bodies might suggest there are vampires about

76:
--end of act II

78:
--why’d they wait so long to kill Freud? They could have done it before Jonathan ever even saw him

83:
--darkest moment: somebody's been reading their Blake Snyder :)

102:
--that could have been an effective payoff IF we’d seen Jonathan throw the dagger at the carnival at the very beginning. However, he didn’t, and thus it’s hard to believe he could have such accuracy as that

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