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Scriptnotes Summer Superhero Spectacular Three Page Challenge

THE CLOCK STRIKES THREE!!! by Bucky Knaebel

EXT. CAFE – NIGHT

We are outside looking in at what one might say is an exact replica of Hopper’s Nighthawks. Instead of Bogart-esque type characters, we see three superheroes at the counter.

INT. CAFE – NIGHT

Commander Alpha (34), a Superman look-a-like, is regaling his tale to two obviously bored superheroes: Pecos Pete (24) a fella in cowboy garb with a mask and Mauve Moth (21) a woman dressed like, well... a Mauve Moth. An incredibly OLD WAITER is refilling their coffee.

COMMANDER ALPHA

And of course everyone had lost hope and was ready to surrender. But not I. I alone defeated the Tyranny Twins. Single-handedly, I saved the entire East Coast.

PECOS PETE

You don’t say.

COMMANDER ALPHA

I do, and maybe, just maybe, you can either see me in action or aid me, not that I will need it, on one of my adventures.

MAUVE MOTH

Wouldn’t that be something.

COMMANDER ALPHA

It would be something you would never forget.

Just then, THE CLOCK (22) skinny white guy dressed like Flava Flav circa 1990 with a large CLOCK around his neck, springs from around the corner.

THE CLOCK

Sup’ bitches? It’s time for your beatdown!

PECOS PETE

Oh no, are you here to slow down time? You realize all that does is stretch out the span of us whooping on you.

THE CLOCK

Nah, yo. I got upgrades n’ shit. Brace yo’self fools!

With his hands, The Clock thrusts his clock from his chest as waves emanate from it. The Clock slowly dissipates into nothingness. A beat. Our trio of heroes burst out in laughter.

PECOS PETE

That. Is. Amazing. That just might be a first. I have never seen a villain defeat himself.

The heroes leave some money on the counter and walk out. As they are leaving an incredibly YOUNG WAITER takes the money from the countertop.

EXT. CAFE – NIGHT

Our heroes stumble out, still chuckling at what just went down.

MAUVE MOTH

Ummm guys. Look at each other.

They oblige. Both men now have full-on 1970’s porn star moustaches. Almost identically they tug at their new follicles.

COMMANDER ALPHA

Well, I’ll be... I bet I look handsome. I look handsome, don’t I?

PECOS PETE

The Clock gave us moustaches? That’s weird, right?

Mauve Moth looks around while the two guys continue twirling their new facial hair. She notices the cars, the trash on the ground, and then slowly walks over to a newspaper stand. She points to the newspaper in the newspaper stand. The two male heroes walk over and see that the year is 1978.

MAUVE MOTH

It’s 1978... and we are in trouble.

Title Card (in old Horror Movie Script): THE CLOCK STRIKES THREE!! Dun, Dun, Dunnnnnnnnnn!

MAUVE MOTH (CONT’D)

It’s 1978... and we are in trouble.

PECOS PETE

You just said that. Wow, that little turd wasn’t lying. I don’t suppose any of you have any time travel devices on you do you?

Commander Alpha actually checks his pockets while Pecos Pete shakes his head in annoyance. Mauve Moth walks in the cafe and then walks back out again.

MAUVE MOTH

He is long gone. No sign of him in there.

COMMANDER ALPHA

I got it. I can fly around the earth as fast as possible and make the rotation speed up, thus hurtling me forward in time.

MAUVE MOTH

One, that does nothing for the two of us left here. Two, you really have no basic understanding of physics or science do you?

COMMANDER ALPHA

Well Sergeant Smarty-pants, what are your bright ideas?

MAUVE MOTH

Give me a second. I’m thinking.

PECOS PETE

Anyone know how to make a time travel device?

Now its the Mauve Moth’s turn to be irritated.

MAUVE MOTH

You guys remember any heroes or villains from the 70’s? Anyone that can help us?

COMMANDER ALPHA

There were heroes in the 70’s?

PECOS PETE

The Awesome Afro and the Furious Fists, Space Junkie, Captain Funkadelic, Rhino-Man, Bugboy, The Goofballs, Captain Cloud, The Finger, The Foot, The Fist, Roundhouse, Town Jester,

Kimchi Rhinestone by Michelle Burleson

SUPER: “It wasn’t God who made honky tonk angels – Kitty Wells.”

INCHON, SOUTH KOREA. 1996

EXT. BUPYEONG STREET – 2:00 A.M.

A YOUNG KOREAN WOMAN (early 20’s) kneels at a weathered guitar case. Chokes down sobs. Shoulders quake.

Steady now.

She’s popping each latch slowly, patiently, shhh. Lifts out a beat up ACOUSTIC GUITAR. Lays it gently on the sidewalk, but even still:

TWANG! Out-of-tune strings snap the silence. UMPH. She muffles them instantly, eyes darting. Coast still clear.

She unties a traditional Korean papoose strapped to her back. In it:

A sleeping INFANT.

She tenderly nestles her newborn into the guitar case. Quivering lips press to the tiny forehead. Please forgive me.

Tucked into the swaddling: a JADE TURTLE NECKLACE.

FIVE FEET UP

A rusty sign on a rustier gate. In Korean and English it reads: “ST. ALOUICIOUS’ HOME FOR AMERASIAN ORPHANS. INCHON, KOREA.”

BLAAAAAAAG! A grating, shrill gate buzzer. The baby wakes, wails. Kid’s got some pipes.

The Young Korean Woman’s rapid footstrikes fade as she sprints away. The infant won’t be alone for long as...

...windows -- some broken and covered with The Korea Herald -- light up inside the orphanage. First one, then many.

EXT. NAMDAEMUN MARKET – SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – (PRESENT) DAY

Manic urban chaos. Hectic haggling over food cart fare, designer knockoffs, pirated movies and music. Cases of blackmarket booze.

In the midst, the AMERASIAN ORPHAN GIRL (now a scrappy 18) shreds a twelve bar blues intro.

EXT. NAMDAEMUN MARKET – STREET CORNER – CONTINUOUS

Her filthy fingers work the fretboard of a tinderbox guitar. She belts righteous, oh-my-soul delta boogie.

Her voice? Grade A brass-n-sass.

THE ORPHAN

(crooning)

“How my mama met my daddy I don’t know/ She was a Korean girl, he was a G.I. Joe...”

The Orphan’s exquisite jade turtle necklace clashes against her ratty t-shirt. Too much tomboy to be a beauty. Too hungry to care. She plays to an audience of none, until:

An off-duty U.S. ARMY SERGEANT (30’s) struts by. Whoa. What the...?

THE ORPHAN (CONT’D)

“...Nine months later and full of disgrace/ I was dumped at the orphanage in his guitar case...”

His head bobs along. Groovin. Whips out an iPhone:

YOUTUBE APP. Click.

RECORD:

THE ORPHAN (CONT’D)

“...half-breed blues, nobody wants you around/ even though you’re taller, people always look down/ Half-breed blues, every door is shut/ to a symbol of shame, yankee- gook mutt.”

UPLOAD VIDEO. Click.

In the “Title” field he types:

“Kimchi Rhinestone – A Seoul Miner’s Daughter”

SHARE.

The Sergeant drops a five into her guitar case -- the same one she was abandoned in years ago.

SERGEANT

(in clunky Korean)

Kam-sa-hab-ni-da.

THE ORPHAN

(bowing)

Thanks, man. You, too.

He winks with a playful two-finger salute.

SERGEANT

“Half Breed Blues,” huh? That’s a honky tonk hit if I ever heard one.

EMCEE (O.S. PRELAP)

By a vote of nearly One! Hundred! Million! America’s new Honky Tonk Angel is...

INT. AMERICA’S HONKY TONK ANGEL STAGE – NASHVILLE, TN – NIGHT

A center stage spotlight shines on two barely legal BLONDE SOUTHERN BELLES. They cross fingers. Hold hands. Fidget. Left foot. Right foot. Please God, please.

EMCEE

..going...

Every mini rip into the envelope an eternity.

EMCEE (CONT’D)

...to...

Sweet torture.

EMCEE (CONT’D)

...be...

The Emcee flashes a salesman smile.

EMCEE (CONT’D)

...announced after this message from Honky Tonk Angel creator, J. Randall Hays!

Zombie With a Gun by Paul Yoshida

EXT. ROYAL HAWAIIAN MOTEL – HOLLYWOOD, CA – NIGHT

A pair of NEON PALM TREES flickers in the sky. Below, a red- neck PICKUP is parked in front of one of the rooms.

INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT

The owner of the truck, a scum-bag with “WHITE POWER” tattooed on his neck, INHALES a line of coke off a hand-mirror. This is LOU (30s).

An ASIAN HOOKER emerges from the bathroom.

ASIAN HOOKER

You save me some?

LOU

This is comin’ out of your pay, you know...

He hands her the mirror, walks over to the mini-fridge, and grabs a beer.

ASIAN HOOKER

(to herself)

...Prick.

She snorts a line. Lou shotguns his beer and throws the can across the room.

LOU

Alright, let’s fuck.

He takes a seat on the edge of the bed and kicks off his cowboy boots. The hooker climbs onto his lap and opens her blouse.

EXT. PARKING LOT – NIGHT

A BLACK 1978 PONTIAC TRANS-AM pulls into the lot and parks next to the pickup. The driver, a HOODED MAN, steps out and stuffs a GLOCK PISTOL into the back of his jeans.

INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT

Lou and the hooker are now grinding away on the bed, the hooker on top. Suddenly, there’s a LOUD POUNDING at the door.

ASIAN HOOKER

(freaked)

Who’s that?

LOU

Fuckin’ christ...

Lou tosses the hooker aside, grabs his REVOLVER from the dresser, and goes to the door.

He looks through the PEEPHOLE and sees the Hooded Man standing in front of the door, his face hidden in shadow.

ASIAN HOOKER

Is it the cops?

LOU

(through the door)

Wrong room, asshole!

Lou watches through the peephole as the Hooded Man turns and walks away. Satisfied, he tosses his gun onto the dresser and climbs back into bed.

LOU

Now, where were we?

EXT. PARKING LOT – NIGHT

Outside, the Trans-Am reverses into the middle of the parking lot. It’s pointed directly at the motel room.

The Hooded Man puts it into neutral and REVS the engine. The car RUMBLES with power.

INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT

Lou and the hooker are at it again, this time doggy-style.

ASIAN HOOKER

Yeah! Yeah! Right there!

EXT. PARKING LOT – NIGHT

The Hooded Man put the car into gear and STOMPS ON THE GAS. The Trans-Am PEELS OUT, laying rubber. It flies straight towards the motel room.

INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT

Inside, Lou and the hooker are totally oblivious to what’s coming.

ASIAN HOOKER

Don’t stop! Don’t--!

BOOM! The Trans-Am comes CRASHING through the wall. Broken glass and debris fly everywhere.

Lou and the hooker dive behind the bed for cover as the car comes to rest halfway inside the room.

As the dust settles, Lou and the hooker poke their heads up from behind the bed.

The car door opens. The Hooded Man steps out. He walks towards them, gun in hand, his face still hidden in shadow.

ASIAN HOOKER

P-please, don’t hurt me!

The Hooded Man raises his gun and points it at Lou.

HOODED MAN

(to the hooker)

Leave.

She scrambles to her feet, collects her clothes, and tiptoes past the car and exits through the giant hole in the wall.

Meanwhile, Lou looks down and spots his revolver lying close by underneath the bed.

Still pointing his gun, the Hooded Man takes a PHOTOGRAPH out of his pocket and tosses it at Lou.

It’s of a YOUNG COUPLE with a BABY GIRL in their arms.

LOU

What the fuck is this?

HOODED MAN

You pigs murdered them. Shot ‘em dead in their home.

LOU

Bullshit. I didn’t murder nobody.

HOODED MAN

Yeah, you did, Lou...

He pulls back his hood, revealing the GREY AND ROTTING FACE OF SEAN WALKER (30s), the young man in the photo.

Lou can’t believe his eyes.

How to Write a Photoplay

Film Industry, Formatting, Words on the page

Today’s one awesome thing comes from the Internet Archive: Herbert Case Hoagland’s 1912 book [How to Write a Photoplay](https://archive.org/details/howtowritephotop00hoag):

> To write a photoplay requires no skill as a writer, but it does require a “constructionist.” It requires the ability to grasp an idea and graft (please use in the botanical sense) a series of causes on the front end of it and a series of consequences on the other end. An idea so grafted will surely bear fruit; and to learn the art of this sort of mental horticulture it is necessary first to understand, in a general way, how motion pictures are made and what is done in the studio, in the field and in the factory. Let us learn something of these things and begin at the beginning—in the office of the Scenario Editor.

The photoplay was the precursor to the screenplay. It’s essentially a list of scenes, designed for silent films. Without dialogue, it can be challenging to establish the relationships between characters:

> The scenario writer must bear in mind that the first thing to do is to introduce his characters on the screen in a way that almost immediately determines their position in, and relationship to, the story. Many photoplays are failures because a proper beginning has not been arranged.

> If, for example, the scene opens in a young woman’s home and her lover is coming to see her, the fact that he is her lover and not her brother or husband should be clearly shown in the action, and the action of the play is the thing to write.

Scene geography and narrative sequence are extremely important. So are hats.

> If a man is to go from a room in one house to a room in another, there should be a scene showing him entering the second house, but it is unnecessary to have him leaving the first because in the first room he can be made to catch up his coat and hat and exit. Obviously he is going out, and when one sees him on the street and entering the second house the entire thought is conveyed to the spectator.

> The question may arise, if his action of putting on his hat and coat suggests leaving the house, why his entering another room and removing them doesn’t mean the reverse. The answer is simple—because he may have simply gone into another room in his own house and the man in the theatre seat wonders, “Why, in thunder, did he put his hat and coat on to go along the hall or just from room to room.” Seems farfetched, but it isn’t. The spectator asks just such questions.

Hoagland’s scenario writers are now called screenwriters, but many of the issues remain the same.

> Revising is the hardest part of a writer’s work. The first copy flows from the inspired pen like the proverbial water from a duck’s back and under the influence of watching the story grow the writer finds incentive to continue, but oh! the drudgery of rewriting and revising. Inclination may writhe and squirm and plead to go away and leave the work undone, but Determination must grab Inclination and club it into submission if the writer ever expects to flirt with the elusive Goddess of Success. Revision is imperative. All the big fellows in the literary world do it. Only by careful rewording and rewriting can any production of this nature be flawless. A good way to do this is to read your scenario aloud to members of the family or to friends; better still is it to have some one read it to you that you may hear the words with another’s intonation and vocal shades.

Hoagland’s book has a list of all the major motion picture studios, few of which exist today. But his warning sounds familiar:

> Don’t send Biblical stories to a manufacturer who makes a specialty of western stuff. Study the needs of the firms producing pictures and direct your scenarios accordingly. On another page the class of story most sought for by the different studios is touched upon, and ambitious writers cannot do better than to subscribe to The Moving Picture World or some other trade paper and carefully study the comments on the films as they appear week by week.”

You can read the whole thing [here](https://archive.org/details/howtowritephotop00hoag).

Writing in another writer’s style

Television, Words on the page

Dara Resnick Creasey has some advice for TV [staff writers on a new gig](http://hollywoodjournal.com/industry-impressions/the-write-way/20140409/):

> [Your] first script should as closely mimic the showrunner’s writing style as possible. Of course every script you write will have some of you in it. That’s why you were hired, after all. For your thoughts. Your voice. But your job in these first precious 55 pages is to show the people reading it that you understand the show – that you can write in the voices of its characters, and grasp its unique vernacular.

> This is not the time to take a risk, to deviate from the story you collectively broke in the writers’ room because you suddenly think you have a better act-out.

I’ve never written on someone else’s TV show, but I have done feature work where I was only rewriting a small part of the script and needed to match the previous writer’s style and voice. To me, that’s a blast. Just like calculus is higher-level math, this is higher-level writing. How would *this* writer write *this* character in *this* kind of scene?

It can be strangely satisfying to surrender your ego and imagine yourself as a wholly different writer.

Each writer has her own way of arranging words on the page. If you need to match someone else’s style, I’d start by looking at:

* Unfinished end-of-line punctuation. Two dashes? Ellipsis?
* How much uppercase she uses within scene description.
* Parentheticals. Are they for timing (beat), clarity (joking), or how-to-play (“please die in a fire”)?
* Sensible commas, or the Oxford variety?
* Profanity. Is it A SPACESHIP or a GIANT FUCKING SPACESHIP?
* How characters see events within a scene. Do they clock them, spot them, notice them, spy them?
* Transitions. Is it CUT TO every new scene, or do they mostly go away.
* Paragraph length. What’s the upper limit in terms of number of lines?
* Does an interrupted character get a CONT’D?
* Simultaneous dialogue: Side-by-side or (overlapping)?

In each of these cases, there’s no right or wrong answer. Except that in TV, the showrunner reading the script knows what she likes, and it’s how she writes. So as a staff writer, it’s absolutely in your best interest to write exactly like she would.

For a feature rewrite, it ultimately comes down to how much work you’re going to be doing on the script. If it’s nearly a page one rewrite, you’re doing no one any favors by aping the previous writer’s style. Yes, it’s more work to go through otherwise intact scenes and change the punctuation, but you’re trying to create the best experience for the reader. Consistency matters.

Consistency is also why you adapt to the previous writer’s choices when doing surgical work on a script. You’re a craftsman making a repair. Done properly, no one should see the work.

Try to open this PDF, cont’d

Follow Up, Geek Alert

Yesterday, I [asked](http://johnaugust.com/2014/try-to-open-this-pdf) readers whether PDF encryption was actually effective, and offered up two sample PDFs as a test.

Two readers quickly cracked the easier of the files:

> The first file only took about 30 seconds. Right now the second one is running and it’s hit 5 digits so far running at an average rate of 1,005,000 words/second. I’m on an i7 CPU, similar to what you could buy in a nice Macbook Pro laptop.

The vulnerability is the password. The password for the first PDF was a four-digit number. The password for the second PDF was a random 32-character string, which made brute force much less effective.

> I ran multiple instances of the same app starting at different password lengths (6, 8, 10, 11, 12) so was getting upwards of 5M words/second. I let it run for 12+ hours or so but the possible combinations are staggering.

How staggering? Well, if you use a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers, you get total of 62 possible characters:

0123456789AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

Then, depending on your password length, math makes it awesome.

Length Combinations Laptop Dedicated Distributed
2 3,844 Instant Instant Instant
3 238,328 Instant Instant Instant
4 15 Million < 2 Secs Instant Instant
5 916 Million 1½ Mins 9 Secs Instant
6 57 Billion 1½ Hours 9½ Mins 56 Secs
7 3.5 Trillion 4 Days 10 Hours 58 Mins
8 218 Trillion 253 Days 25¼ Days 60½ Hours

I’ve adapted this chart from [these numbers](http://www.lockdown.co.uk/?pg=combi) courtesy Ivan Lucas, which date back to 2009. I’ve arbitrarily labeled the three columns as “laptop,” “dedicated” and “distributed” to illustrate what kind of system might be used in 2014 to achieve these results. The point is that each additional character in the password really does make it much more difficult to solve.

In fact, even at the fastest rate on this chart, solving the 32-character combination on the second PDF would take longer than the age of the universe. ((I’m almost sure I’ve done my math wrong, but I love a provocative statement.))

One of the people who cracked the first PDF actually works in IT security. He warns against getting smug:

> There are far more advance methods that utilize GPU hardware and elegantly-crafted combinations of known hash values, dictionary attacks, and brute force to get results much faster.

> Hackers have refined their tools using a pool of hundreds of millions of real-world passwords stolen from servers. They don’t have to use brute force if they know that 80% of people follow certain patterns.

For PDF encryption, the consensus seems to be that the latest version of Adobe is pretty effective if you’re using the 128 or 256 bit option and have 8+ random characters. Random, as in not a word in a dictionary.

No standalone file is safe from someone with enough time and the right tools. But for something like a screenplay, encryption is quite a bit better than I expected.

Far from being useless, PDF encryption is potentially worth it. I may start using it more often.