Miriam Paschal Reviews “The Senator’s Wife”

Ahh, Miriam Paschal… Who doesn’t know about our very good friend?

She does everything. She puts together the Movie Breakdowns for us, and her analysis of Taxi Driver, which includes the world’s first script-to-screen comparison of that movie, is still one of our most popular posts. She’s the consummate, prolific screenwriter. She’s a good friend and a reliably tough critic who pulls no punches, and we love her for that. Like everyone else, she is a recognized “Reviewer of the Month” and has a number of great screenplays under her name that have those little blue stars to indicate that they had at some point shot up in the ratings to become Top Ten favorites.

I don’t know how she finds the time to do it all, but I am so grateful she’s made time for us. Thanks so much, Mim.

-MM

--------------------------------------------------

The first thing I noticed about this screenplay is the lack of grammar. The first paragraph is nothing but sentence fragments: a screenwriting convention and one I hope to end. It's very visual and sets an emotional tone as well as gives a physical description of the setting, but any middle school English teacher would shudder to read it.

As far as the story, it's decent. It's well-structured and hits the right notes in the right places. But it's kind of low-key and doesn't shine the way, say, Little Miss Sunshine did. It will join the other movies on the comedy shelf, or perhaps the drama shelf, and a few people will rent it. Then it will end up in the previously viewed discount bin and customers will thumb past it looking for something they feel is really worth the $5.99 price tag.

Rosalind and Donny are equally decent characters. They go through a well-defined change as they discover things about themselves and about each other in their travels with Joel. There's some good dialogue here and there, but mainly it's not very memorable. The first dialogue turns out to be a campaign speech that Rosalind gives on behalf of her husband, Arthur. It's kind of funny. Ms. Fugate came up with this inspirational "it's the moments" speech and recognized that it would never pass as natural conversational dialogue, so she gave in to the obvious and made it a speech.

Donny's supposed to be some kind of mobster or a bag-man in New York. Ms. Fugate made the decision to have him speak a little more intelligently than the cliché "whaddaya" kind of dialogue we hear from mobsters on The Sopranos etc. He demonstrates that he knows how to cause both pain and injury, or not, when he punches the Judge, and that he doesn't let social niceties stand in the way of doing his job.

The description of Donny is that he's 40 and that his face and his hands are scarred, like his soul. Rosalind is in her thirties. Honestly I didn't buy the sparks that flew between these two. The genre that this story seems to have aimed at dictates that the female and male leads are co-protags and will fall in love by the end of act two. First of all, there's precious little "com" and not much more "rom" in this script. It reads more like a light drama. But romcoms seems to be gravitating more heavily towards drama lately. Second of all, and more important, is the fact that Ms. Fugate has pushed Donny and Rosalind into romance based upon the expectations of the genre, rather than allowed them to naturally find kindred souls in each other. I think producers might prefer to stick to formula because it's worked before, but it can lead to situations like this. Why couldn't Donny and Rosalind have helped each other work out some other romantic relationship in their lives?

The kid, Joel, bounces in talking like some forties film noir cop. "First cup, black. Second cup, two Sweet 'N Lows. The buzz makes you ache for the sweet stuff." And a few pages later: "A gift. A little something – something extra. Later. Donny."

This is supposed to be a ten year-old boy. Even a child who has grown up in an orphanage in New York isn't this savvy or ironic. I sincerely hope that a lot of Joel's dialogue is re-written either before production or during production.

The progression of the story is fine. I found it a little far-fetched that Joel would have managed all the FedEx transactions that they follow from New York to Florida and from there into Georgia. Then we find out near the end that he just went back into the diner and stuffed the book down into the seat. I was okay with that.

I kind of had a feeling that Joel was Rosalind's kid from the first time he revealed the scam, but I wasn't sure until Rosalind told him to stop reading the comic right before he threw up. That's when I knew. And that scene was nicely written. There was a lot of sub-text there. How does Rosalind know so quickly that Joel is car-sick? Probably because she's experienced it herself. And motion sickness is hereditary. But none of this was brought out. There was only her instant reaction, which said a lot more than any explanation could have. Also, Ms. Fugate did not want to reveal that Joel was the real son in this scene. All in all, nicely handled.

Most of the other scenes as well as the progression from one to the other were fairly predictable. Joel tricks Donny and Rosalind into a road trip. They all leave their familiar lives and form their own little unit. Arthur's suspicions grow. Donny's job is threatened. Then the journey comes to an abrupt end when the posse shows up, and just as they were getting to like each other. It was skillfully done, but there was nothing special about it.

I found the twist that Joel had cancer a little too maudlin. But what else can you do with a story like this? A truly happy ending would have felt too unreal. I think I would have tried to come up with something besides terminal cancer as the impetus for the search. Maybe there's a couple who wants to adopt Joel and he wants to find Rosalind before the final papers are signed. Then the ending would be when she returns to claim her child, only to find that his new parents have disappeared with him. Or he has been with a family, but they've been abusing him. Or he's been bounced around from foster home to foster home and just happens to cross her path instead of engineering it.

The terminal cancer diagnosis guarantees an audience of teenage girls, as well as a few of their boyfriends, plus a few twenty-somethings for good measure. It might not make back its budget at the box office, but it should clear a profit on rentals. Again, this might have been a producer's request. It's a tried and true device that is sure to cause tears.

All in all, I can see why this script was greenlit, but it doesn't stand out from among the many other movies that are going to come and go this year. This is a second draft. I don't know that I could come up with anything better on a second draft myself, so this serves as a lesson to all of us to keep re-writing. It might also serve as a lesson to offer studios something different so they will stop asking writers to stick to formula.

Back to The Senator's Wife