As Robert Rodriguez once said, “Every filmmaker has at least 30 bad movies in [them] and the sooner you get ’em out the better off you are.” This rule also applies to screenwriting, apparently, as demonstrated in a never-before-seen 436-page screenplay Max Landis released online in its entirety as a learning exercise/cautionary tale. Landis estimates the script, which he wrote when he was 19, is his 29th attempt at a feature (further supporting Rodriguez’s theory), and outlines a number of reasons—12, to be precise—why it’s terrible. Landis (yes, son of John) has since gone on to successfully write the screenplay for 2012’s Chronicle and has quite a few projects in development, so take heart, aspiring screenwriters. Your scripts might not always suck.
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