It was the sixteenth of July, one of those days in Los Angeles
where the sun melted every house and human on the streets. A hot
humid day where nothing was seen outside of a highly air-
conditioned interior. Many found chores to do, things they had
forgotten about for months, others took a long nap hoping the sun
would cool down behind the horizon soon. Me, I grabbed a
screenplay that was gathering dust on my shelf and I started to
read. This was a script that I had to take home and review while
I was working at Streetson Styles Entertainment, a motion picture
development company – and I had never gotten to read it. Ah, I
thought, it was probably one of those conventional Hollywood
stories… that involved some man… and some woman… in some remotely
dangerous situation… lies and betrayals… I had had it to tell you
the truth and I couldn’t stand for another cheese piece; Had I
had any other choice, Machiavelli Hangman would still have been
on my shelf.
The first page flowed so well that I let out a chuckle, knowing
full well the author couldn’t keep it up by the end of the first
10 pages. I was surprised. I thought the fast pace couldn’t
continue past the 30th page, but then I looked down and realized
that I was already on page 75 of a 100 page script, and I had
read it in less than 30minutes. At this point, I had already
developed a bond with the characters and I was personally rooting
for the story to come together nicely. The worst thing on this
heat-drenched day would have been a bad ending to a great story.
The pages flipped, the words flew, the characters came and went
so fluidly that I couldn’t find any flaws in the structure. I was
slowly realizing what I had missed. This was a great piece of
screenwriting… the best I had read in all those years I had
worked at SSE. Ironically, I had to read it when I left the
establishment.
The ending came, oh how it came. It was as brilliant as Fight
Club or Sixth Sense, but it didn’t have an twist ending. I’ll be
honest, I was expecting something a la "Confidence" – which for
the record, was an absolute disaster I thought.
Machiavelli Hangman in a lot of ways had a structure that
resembled Crash and characters so vibrant that they could have
been in any Baz Luhrman film and dialogue… oh, the dialogue… so
crisp it could have been written by Quentin Tarantino himself.
As I turned the last page, I wasn’t quite sure of what I was
feeling. All I knew was that I had been holding my breath for
quite a long time because I then let out what may have been the
longest sigh I have ever sighed.
If the filmmakers don’t screw up this amazing script, I promise
that it will be a classic.
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