What I Loved
I adore a historical drama that accurately portrays an era to the point that I am witnessing history in reality – becoming engrossed as if I am a time traveler viewing the people and events in real time. The best historical writing and films are of this caliber. The rest are limited or suffer in entertainment value due to resorting to myth, formula, revisionist history and political correctness. Impasse represents an accomplished screenwriter AND historian.
What I'd Love To See
There’s nothing I can contribute in relation to your writing. You are a writer in every respect. And I seldom review scripts, but writers of your caliber are extremely rare, and you’ve created a powerful script that warrants all that may enhance it toward marketing and development. Toward that end, I have a few suggestions.
Your script is of the classic tradition of the horse soldier movies. They don’t make’m like that anymore – and they never will. Nowadays the POV of both the Native American and White American cultures needs to be evenly represented. This isn’t bad if the Native Americans are portrayed as realistically as the whites; their strengths, flaws, divisions among themselves, etc. It makes the entire story much more interesting with all the personalities involved, alternating between both groups to the final conflict. A great example of this in novel form is Buffalo Trail by Jeff Guinn that portrays the individuals and events leading up to the great battle between the buffalo hunters and Indians at Adobe Walls in 1874.
The greatest flaw I’ve seen in scripts is too much dialogue. Except for a few genres, screenwriters should treat dialogue as a necessary evil. The very first consideration given a script is a fast scan to determine the amount of dialogue, and based on the assumption narrative is action, if the dialogue appears excessive the script is stillborn. In a recent interview with William Goldman he stated that the first thing done to an acquired script is the omission of the dialogue. Try to get it down to a few meaningful words, a gesture or look, that which is truly germane toward moving to the next action sequence.
Hollywood acquires and makes the worst westerns. However, some wonderfully realistic productions are appearing through independents on the cable and satellite networks – mostly in the form of mini-series. Hell On Wheels and Deadwood are two prime examples. Your story would lend itself well to a mini-series.
Please don’t abandon this script or let it languish. Consider it a gemstone that, when time or inclination permits, warrants an
additional facet here and there.
You’re welcome to contact me via my personal e-mail. Especially do so if you do a rewrite of this script.
Good luck.
Gene Gwynne