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  • #76
    Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

    Originally posted by ATB View Post
    Eddie, did I read something wrong or did you say somewhere in these 8 pages of responses that the real life thieves actually did NOT wear masks and just posed as Boston PD?

    If so, then I think the convo about masks should be over. Lose 'em. Having thieves ballsy enough to bare their own mugs is much more appealing than burglars in store-bought halloween masks.

    If I did read that wrong and the real thieves did not pose as BPD, then perhaps you should consider adopting that detail and still losing the masks.

    Either way, Carson does have a point. I don't agree that it's lazy, but it's worth a try to attempt to make this robbery (which is the foundation of your story) as unique and fresh and memorable as possible.

    Now, it is worth mentioning that the thieves in The Town actually posed as BPD when they attempt to rob Fenway Park. So, this too could cause a reader to think "seen it!" and chalk it up as lazy. But I don't think it's nearly as overdone as halloween masks and I, personally, found the Fenway Park scene much more rattling than the other robberies in the film. And I think it's because the thieves have nothing to hide behind. They're in the open. Unprotected, in a way. And it seemed to ratchet up the stakes.

    Anyway... Consider allowing your thieves to toss the masks.

    Of course, this all depends on what really happened. But it sounds like you've got some room to manipulate the story.
    I know the real thieves posed as BPD, but no description of them was ever put out (at least that I can recall), so I don't know if they wore masks too. My guess is they did not, and they were two generic white guys. One poster wrote a book about it, so maybe he can chime in.

    Based on all the feedback, I probably could lose the masks or maybe try to put a new spin on it--especially in light of The Town (which had many, many problems in my opinion; finishing the book soon and will chime in shortly on The Town thread).

    Clearly, the vote is for something different, and I think people are right. There is just too much other mask type stuff out there. Maybe hiding in plain sight is the way to go. Who knows? If I do that, 100 hundred people will tell me they've got to have masks.

    @Infinite Jest. I did mention that museums like the Gardner, for a long time did have poor security, because it's sort of assumed no one would rip off a painting that you could never sell anywhere. It's not like jewels that may look like thousands of others. These are very unique paintings and you don't walk into a pawn shop and say 'what can you give me for this?' So it makes sense Harvard museums wouldn't have much security either. And do you know the old joke about the Harvard and Yale men standing at urinals? If not, I will divulge.
    Quato Lives!

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    • #77
      Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

      Late to the party, but Earbrass said something important:

      If this is a true story, and presented as a true story, the story can be less exciting and unusual because it really happened. When you change it from "true story" to "fiction" you are now in a different genre and the audience will expect things to be clever and usual and more interesting.

      In the "true story" version it's okay if the audience thinks: "I could have done this", but in the fiction version you want the audience to think they are not clever enough to figure out how to do this. You want the heist to be like a magic trick. You know how Penn & Teller will show how a trick works, and you are amazed at how clever and skilled they are? That's what you want the audience to feel.

      And I think that might even be the "note behind the note" with the whole mask thing - yes, robbers in real life put on masks... but once you take this out of real life and make it fiction, we want to be amazed. Having not read the script, if the rest of the heist isn't something that would take Banacek to figure out, that might lead to the nit-pick note about masks.

      I understand there may be all kinds of legal roadblocks with using the museum's real name... but I think you should consider it anyway and makes this a "true story".

      - Bill
      Free Script Tips:
      http://www.scriptsecrets.net

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      • #78
        Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

        Okay, so, a movie was made this year. The movie was considered good, some even thought it was better than good, the town, and they used masks. Did anyone say anything?

        I think I had more of a problem with the score being virtually the same as Heats and the movie being a hodgepodge of 'seen it before', but no one seemed to care all that much.

        I like to think that 'aging' plays into movie making because every ten years you have the same demographic that will go see these movies and to them they will think it's fresh because they've never seen it.
        "A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
        AYN RAND

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        • #79
          Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

          Originally posted by wcmartell View Post
          Late to the party, but Earbrass said something important:

          If this is a true story, and presented as a true story, the story can be less exciting and unusual because it really happened. When you change it from "true story" to "fiction" you are now in a different genre and the audience will expect things to be clever and usual and more interesting.

          In the "true story" version it's okay if the audience thinks: "I could have done this", but in the fiction version you want the audience to think they are not clever enough to figure out how to do this. You want the heist to be like a magic trick. You know how Penn & Teller will show how a trick works, and you are amazed at how clever and skilled they are? That's what you want the audience to feel.

          And I think that might even be the "note behind the note" with the whole mask thing - yes, robbers in real life put on masks... but once you take this out of real life and make it fiction, we want to be amazed. Having not read the script, if the rest of the heist isn't something that would take Banacek to figure out, that might lead to the nit-pick note about masks.

          I understand there may be all kinds of legal roadblocks with using the museum's real name... but I think you should consider it anyway and makes this a "true story".

          - Bill
          Yes, this is a much more elegant version of what I was trying to say. I also would agree not to get fixated on the masks... my guess is Carson was using that specific example to illustrate that numerous things in the script need to be more surprising and original. Especially if it's fiction.

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          • #80
            Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

            Originally posted by EddieCoyle View Post
            I know the real thieves posed as BPD, but no description of them was ever put out (at least that I can recall), so I don't know if they wore masks too. My guess is they did not, and they were two generic white guys. One poster wrote a book about it, so maybe he can chime in.

            Based on all the feedback, I probably could lose the masks or maybe try to put a new spin on it--especially in light of The Town (which had many, many problems in my opinion; finishing the book soon and will chime in shortly on The Town thread).

            Clearly, the vote is for something different, and I think people are right. There is just too much other mask type stuff out there. Maybe hiding in plain sight is the way to go. Who knows? If I do that, 100 hundred people will tell me they've got to have masks.

            @Infinite Jest. I did mention that museums like the Gardner, for a long time did have poor security, because it's sort of assumed no one would rip off a painting that you could never sell anywhere. It's not like jewels that may look like thousands of others. These are very unique paintings and you don't walk into a pawn shop and say 'what can you give me for this?' So it makes sense Harvard museums wouldn't have much security either. And do you know the old joke about the Harvard and Yale men standing at urinals? If not, I will divulge.
            Honestly, I think you should just try to learn more about the true story behind how these thieves pulled this off without anyone being able to provide an accurate description of them.

            Like Bill said above: if you go the True Story route, your audience will give wayyyy more leeway than if they're lead to believe this is all fictionalized. AND you can make up a lot of your "true story." So just try to stay close to the stuff you already know about this heist, and then take liberties where the story becomes muddy.

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            • #81
              Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

              You have to admit, it does make sense to give pro scripts a slighter higher rate on his scale a lot of the time. His "worth the read" rating is a weird hybrid of two ratings: the actually quality of the script and whether you should bother reading it. Even if the Snow White script was "not for me," I can see it getting a bump to "worth the read" because of its significance. Because it is now a small piece of actual screenwriting history, worth 1.5 million, and that means there might be something to check out despite his noted problems.

              I'm not saying it's a good rating system, I'm just saying I understand it. With amateur scripts, there is no reason for him to recommend to writers to read it unless it really is very well done and could compete in the marketplace. It's not interesting to read an amateur script that's not ready. It IS interesting to check out a 1.5 million script even if it has a lot of problems. Especially when you can see the potential in it, which is just as big a part of getting a sale as nailing the execution. If a script has problems but you can still say, "This could be huge," I get why he bumps it up a little bit.

              The real funny thing is how much we debate his opinions. Any one of us could go the route he does and make a review blog, to I'm sure much varying success. Just remember he's a normal dude like the rest of us. I personally like getting info on the scripts he reviews just so I can gauge in advance whether it applies to me. I don't put much weight on his actual assessment of the material.

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              • #82
                Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                Haven't heard the Urinal one....

                One thing that interests me, is who commissioned the theft? I think Whitey and the Boys are a catch all boogie man for a lot that happened in those days, what they got away with was more a product of the protections they enjoyed, rather than their sophistication.

                I'm sure those paintings were out of the country within days...
                He who laughs last is mentally slow

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                • #83
                  Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                  I'll try to respond to the last several posts...

                  Bill, thanks for the thoughts. This thread has been very interesting and instructive. I mean the larger issues and not the picayune (sic) matter of the masks, which was somewhat my fault for raising. The script always used the real name of the museum up until the final polish (the change was made based on the advice of someone more knowledgable than I), but we could easily change back. It would take five seconds.

                  To the larger point of fiction v true story, it's a tough one. This is the largest art heist in history and also considered one of the largest (if not the largest) property thefts in history. In some ways, the idea of the script is to draw attention to the plight of the art. So to go fiction on it and make it an entirely different story strikes me as wrong because then it would just be another heist movie and not THIS story.

                  BUT...besides the actual night of the theft, almost nothing is known about the whereabouts of the art and there have been few good leads in the 20 years since the robbery. So to stick to the "true story" leaves you only with the actual robbery. What's the rest of the movie?

                  For us, the tantalizing aspect was to theorize what could have happened after the robbery. The robbery is 5-10 pages of the script. The rest is about the quest to find the paintings and the transformation of the Merner character and his ultimate decision to come out of retirement to avenge the death of his partner. Perhaps that needs to be done better, as has been noted, but it's a script that is really caught in this true/fiction conundrum. Maybe a rewrite some time down the road will be able to work it out better.

                  To end on a lighter note: a Harvard and a Yale man stand at urinals. They both finish their business. The Yale man goes to wash but the Harvard man exits the bathroom without washing. Outside the bathroom this exchange occurs.

                  Yale Man: "At Yale, we always wash our hands after pissing."

                  Harvard Man: "At Harvard, we don't piss on our hands."
                  Quato Lives!

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                  • #84
                    Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                    Lofl!
                    He who laughs last is mentally slow

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                    • #85
                      Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                      The first time I heard that joke was when I was a freshman at Harvard and my HS best friend went to Brown. And that was the popular joke at Brown.

                      "At Hahvahd, we always wash ah hands after we urinate."

                      "At Brown, we don't piss on our hands."


                      But the best urinal joke I ever heard ends with "Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day."

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                      • #86
                        Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                        Originally posted by EddieCoyle View Post
                        BUT...besides the actual night of the theft, almost nothing is known about the whereabouts of the art and there have been few good leads in the 20 years since the robbery.

                        Everybody knows Mr. Burns has the stolen Vermeer.

                        I agree with the others that having the robbers pose as BPD is way more interesting than going with masks. The masks aren't a big deal, or a reason somebody would pass on your script, but they're simply not as cool as robbing a museum without them. Plus you get to say that's how it really happened.
                        Last edited by Jenny; 02-11-2011, 08:29 AM.

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                        • #87
                          Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                          Wait a minute. How is having them wear masks too much like The Town, but having them pose as Boston cops not? They posed as Boston cops in The Town. I'm just saying...
                          Excedrin Migraine. Red Bull. Fade in.

                          Sinister Scrawlings

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                          • #88
                            Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                            Originally posted by RyanJackson View Post
                            Wait a minute. How is having them wear masks too much like The Town, but having them pose as Boston cops not? They posed as Boston cops in The Town. I'm just saying...
                            The character masks weren't just used in The Town, but The Town and a bunch of other movies.

                            It takes a lot more guts to pose as BPD, and show your face, than to hide behind masks. And isn't the scene more interesting if you think they're police and then they aren't? If they show up in Mona Lisa masks, you immediately know they're robbers. (I'm assuming the scene is told from the guards' POV, and so the audience thinks they're honestly cops at first.)

                            Anyway, the masks thing is minor, and I'm sorry I started it. I was just agreeing with Carson (rare!) that it's an easy thing to make an example of, if the larger note is that the screenplay doesn't always use the most interesting way to tell the story.

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                            • #89
                              Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                              Neither is more original (dressing up as a cop or wearing a mask). There are a bunch of heist films where the robbers dress up as cops or security officers. Just like there are tons of heist films where they wear masks. Their chosen disguises aren't that important. The STORY and the CHARACTERS involved in said story are. As far it taking more guts to show your face, It takes guts to pull of a heist period. Masked or unmasked.
                              Excedrin Migraine. Red Bull. Fade in.

                              Sinister Scrawlings

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                              • #90
                                Re: Reviewed on ScriptShadow

                                Originally posted by RyanJackson View Post
                                Neither is more original (dressing up as a cop or wearing a mask). There are a bunch of heist films where the robbers dress up as cops or security officers. Just like there are tons of heist films where they wear masks. Their chosen disguises aren't that important. The STORY and the CHARACTERS involved in said story are. As far it taking more guts to show your face, It takes guts to pull of a heist period. Masked or unmasked.
                                I think we can all agree on that. But I think the point we were (or at least I was) trying to make was that IF the real life thieves did NOT wear masks and actually DID pose as BPD, then don't change that. If that is what REALLY happened, then go with it.

                                Masks or no masks, the story is more interesting if we believe it is the true story of what happened that day... or at least as close to true as possible.

                                @EddieCoyle: have you found anything in your research as to how these thieves got in and out of the museum without anyone being able to describe them? Did the guards say there really were masked men, or that there really were fake cops??

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