John August

Projects

Price of Persia, original screenplay

Prince of Persia, Projects

Jordan Mechner has posted the [original screenplay for Prince of Persia](http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2010/10/pop-orig-screenplay/), which better reflects the movie he and I hoped to make back when we set up the project in 2004.

I didn’t do any real writing on PoP — my hands never touched the keyboard — but I worked with Jordan extensively on the pitch, outline and first few drafts of the project. My involvement essentially ceased after this 2005 draft, when I turned my attention to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Nines. Jordan and I also cowrote Ops, a pilot for Fox which you can read in the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library).

You’ll notice many story and structural changes between this draft and the finished film. One of the biggest is in the opening: the movie adds backstory setting up Dastan as a fair-minded orphan adopted by the king. I prefer the original, which let him be the reckless gambler with no real responsibility, since he was third in line to the throne.

It’s the difference between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, and sets a very different tone for the story.

You can check out the script and discussion on [Jordan’s blog](http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2010/10/pop-orig-screenplay/).

Oblivio Accebit from The Nines

Projects, The Nines

questionmarkHaving an “Oblivio Accebit” spiral poster would mean countless things to me. How can I obtain one, boss? I’ll do anything.

poster ryan reynolds— @josephsaid

We only printed one. It’s either discarded or in a storage locker somewhere.

But if you’d like to print your own, here’s a link to [the original Photoshop file](http://ja-vincent.s3.amazonaws.com/accebit.psd). Warning: It’s big (6.9MB).

In Go, would Todd have shot Ronna?

Go, Projects

questionmarkThank you for writing one of my favorite movies. I saw Go at the theater when it was released and it has since been one of my favorite movies. One my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies is Todd Gaines.

There is one part that has always left me wondering. Was Todd really going to kill Ronna?

On one hand, Todd simply didn’t seem like a murderer. A sleazy drug dealer? Yes. Murderer? No.

On the other, in a deleted scene, he did pull a gun on Claire and left Ronna for dead after Adam and Zach hit her with the car.

Todd also didn’t come across as stupid, reckless or naive. It seems if he wanted to kill someone, he would have chosen a better place than a very public party where he likely would have been recognized by his clientele.

This has always been a dilemma to me. I was hoping you could shed some light on it for me.

— Thomas Lehman

todd gainesTodd Gaines never shot anyone, and had no intention of killing Ronna. He wanted to scare her.

Look at events from his perspective: He’d been played for a fool by a cocky teenage girl. Beyond the sting to his ego, she’d cost him money. If word got around out how she’d outsmarted him, other customers might lose their healthy fear of him. He knew where Ronna would be, so he decided to go find her.

When their conversation was interrupted by a poorly-driven Miata, Gaines bolted. I’d consider that fight-or-flight, a self-preservation instinct. When they find a girl’s body, you don’t want to be the guy with a gun.

In conversations with Tim Olyphant before we shot the movie, we discussed that Gaines probably wasn’t a full-time drug dealer. Maybe he went to art school, or worked as a club promoter. For set decoration, we gave him an art table and a bunch of illustrations.

If you met Gaines on a rainy morning — like Claire later does — you might think he’s a pretty nice guy.

WTF is a beat sheet?

Charlie's Angels, Ops, Projects, QandA, Treatments

questionmarkFirst, thanks for telling me to [buy a new car](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/fix-or-ditch-the-car). (I did.) Second, what the frak is a beat sheet?

I’ve taken screenwriting, short-story writing, and novel writing classes. I’ve taken filmmaking classes. I’ve read several writing manuals. Writers and professors all love to talk about the importance of beat sheets. While they are apparently the single most important thing a writer can ever do, they never show examples. And I’ve heard multiple definitions, from a one-sentence description of each scene to a detailed breakdown of every action in the script.

I’m beginning to suspect conspiracy. I don’t think anybody really uses beat sheets. They claim to in order to sound responsible, much like the myth of flossing. Can you post an example of a beat sheet and blow this mystery out of the water?

— Nick T.

Beat sheets are a form of outline. Each major plot point gets its own bullet point (or occasionally, a number). That’s it.

They can be a helpful way of discussing the storyline of a movie.

PRODUCER

What if Shoe and Dog’s dance number at Marvin Gardens came before Race Car discovered the Community Chest? We could get rid of these three beats, including Top Hat and Thimble’s knife fight.

SCREENWRITER

Did you know Inception wasn’t based on anything?

In the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library), you can see a minimal [beat sheet](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/ops_venezuela_who_writes_what.pdf) that Jordan Mechner and I did for our never-shot pilot Ops. It includes a column showing which characters are in any given scene, and which one of us was going to write it.

For the first Charlie’s Angels, I did a series of beat sheets as we debated and formulated. [This one](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/charlies_beat_sheet.pdf) shows a pretty close approximation of what I ended up writing for the first draft. Numbering the beats ended up being a huge help for conference calls.

(Trivia: You’ll notice there’s a villain character named “Lucy Liu,” which far predates the actual Lucy Liu being involved with the movie. That villain character was ultimately played by Kelly Lynch, while Lucy was later cast as the third angel.)

Note that beat sheets are also commonly written after there is a draft of a screenplay. I’ve asked my assistants to do a beat sheet of a script I’m about to begin rewriting so that I’ll have a roadmap of how things are arranged.