sent to a remote island

to

bury the dead

a wisecracking young inmate soon finds

his life in danger

when the island is overrun

by hordes of the undead

who had been killed by prison guards

are there different screenwriting rules

for established screenwriters versus

those that are new writers

i think so i think

i think that there are unwritten rules

um and it just again

i think a lot of it basically boils down

to

like formatting how your script looks

um how you present your script i mean

newbies can't do

what established writers can do

um

you know i mentioned like the robert

town thing or yeah i feel a lot of

screenwriters don't use slug lines at

all for me that's a big thing i i think

that that's that's insane but i know

that william goldman for instance

doesn't use slug lines and of course he

you know butch cassidy and the sundance

kid right
but i feel like

a william goldman can get away with that

j fingers cannot

[Laughter]

so i i'm you know very careful in how i

format and present my work so that one

day if i do decide that i want to break

a rule here there i can

do you have an opinion about log lines

yes

i do not like log lines i

i think log lines suck

what's wrong with them they're they're

just so they're they're difficult

they're difficult you know everyone's

just like oh if you can you know if

you're unable to distill you know your

story into one sentence you can't tell

me in one

maybe two sentences what your script is

about then

then already i know that your script is

terrible and i'm like no that's not true

um

i mean i i do understand the importance

of log lines

uh it's just crafting them is is just a

pain i just don't don't like doing it

um
my log line for potter's field

i worked on

for weeks before i

finally got one that i thought was

was decent

i i can't even say that i was like

like truly pleased with the final

log line but

at you know a certain point i was just

like okay i've got to stop this is this

is where we're at and i'm going to see

if this works and

it's got me some requests so obviously i

did something right with that

so the log line for this film which is

potter's potter's field feel okay it

took you how long

uh several weeks several weeks several

weeks it took me several weeks to craft

this one

but then that's also based on you know

just working on it previously you know

just coming up with log lines that just

absolutely didn't work and just me

giving up or you know like whatever so

what i when i finally came back uh to it

because i i knew that i wanted to start

submitting start getting the script out

there i sat down with with this version

of the log line and yeah it took it took

several weeks for me to craft it and

and

get it into the shape where uh where i'm

finally

getting some some hits from it

oh may we hear it yeah sure

uh sent to a remote island

to

bury the dead

a wisecracking young inmate soon finds

his life in danger

when the island is overrun

by hordes of the undead

who had been killed by prison guards

okay

okay so and that what parts did you

struggle with like where did you

find you well first like

mentioning the protagonist

um

i didn't know how i wanted to

describe him uh there were some drafts

where i used the character's name uh his

name is amir addison but then i realized

no one cares

you know that's not what they're looking

for in a log line you know the

characters they'll get to the

character's name when they read the

script

so in in trying to describe you know who

he was succinctly uh that was that was

difficult for me

uh but then i just thought about

the most striking parts of his

personality you know i mean we already

know that he's you know in prison he's

an inmate

and he has this kind of

uh uh

caustic sense of humor like you know

he's he's always you know just saying

something smart and

you know not really insulting people but

you kind of go in there and so

i thought wisecracking would be a good

way to describe him

and i also wanted to kind of bring the

mind like a young eddie murphy uh you

know we all kind of remember what eddie

murphy was like in his early career you

know with like 48 hours and beverly

hills cop and trading places and i

wanted my character to be reminiscent of

that so i thought that wisecracking was

a great way to kind of describe him

just also just the structure you know

just what should i mention first

you know should i lead off with a

wisecracking young inmate and i did that

for a while but that didn't seem to work

so then i led off with uh you know uh

assigned to

uh bury the dead on this island just it

sets up the the place you know you know

where the script is taking place and

what's supposed to happen and then after

i set it up we mentioned the protagonist

you know

wisecracking young inmate

but i think the thing that really

uh

made the log line work

was at the end i added

a little tidbit about the undead who had

been murdered by prison guards that was

missing

and

everyone you know when i asked for

feedback on the log line they're just

like ah this is cool i guess but you

know how about but when i added that one

part toward the end

response was

it was just like oh wow this is

now i get it you know now i i want to

read this now this is

it hooks me
so that's the log line that i decided to

go out with and yeah once i started

querying

i started getting hits you know i

started getting requests for the for the

split for for the script

so you were sending it out before you

had this particular log line no no i

wasn't sending it out no no uh just

working on the log line so that i could

send it out

uh i see okay so you weren't able to

weigh whether this was was an improved

version but you knew from the reaction

that this tidbit at the end

where we know like why

why these people had died and right okay

exactly interesting wow

and did anyone say it was too long it

was too short of a long time no no um i

don't know how many words it is exactly

but i know i tried to keep it kind of

within the recommended limit you know

like 35 words 35 to 40 words i think is

what they say

your log line you know should be

so i tried to keep it within that

now for your books

the description i know on amazon when i

looked at it it's much longer you know

oh yeah it's like a paragraph or so um

is there something with books where

there's the same type of rules for the

log line

no it's different okay yeah yeah you

know i mean they expect a much uh much

longer

in-depth kind of blurb you know so that

they can put on on the back of books on

amazon and barnes noble

uh press releases what have you yeah

there's log lines are not really

not really a thing at least you know in

my experience yeah in the publishing

kind of like world right so with scripts

short log line and then a lot of white

on the page kind of like get to the

point

and don't race waste the reader's

attention sounds like okay