Spec Script Sale: “Lamb of God”
Mandate Pictures acquires comedy script “Lamb of God” from writer Diablo Cody. Per Deadline:
The comedy follows a young conservative religious woman who loses her faith after a plane crash. She decides to go to Vegas and live the life of a sinner, and somehow finds her faith along the way.
Cody is set to make her directing debut on this project.
She is repped by MXN.
By my count, this is the 44th spec script to sell in 2011.
The 44th spec script didn’t sell in 2010 until October 12th which means sales are up significantly this year.
UPDATE: Cody has discovered Tumblr and posted this about “Lamb of God”:
I spent my winter/spring writing a script called “Lamb of God.” It’s about a woman who survives a plane crash and loses her faith in everything. (Comedy gold!) Seriously though, it’s not the cynicism-fest implied by the log line. It’s a nice Christmas story.
Yesterday, I ran into Jason “Dave Grohl” Reitman, who has turned two of my scripts into movies that I love. (“Juno,” which you’ve probably seen if you have HBO, and “Young Adult,” which comes out later this year and is the cynicism-fest implied by the log line.) I told Jason about “Lamb” and how I planned to direct this time. Jason seemed very confident in my abilities, but he also predicted that the night shoots in Vegas will induce neon-sick delirium.
“The next time you write something for yourself to direct,” Jason laughed, “every scene will take place indoors, during the day, in a neutral location. It’ll be like: Interior. Kitchen. Noon.”
It’s weird to have a brand new job after three films and three seasons of television. I wrote “Juno” in 2005. I’ve been a writer ever since; sometimes a writer-producer, but a writer all the same. And now I’m…something else. If I hear a certain type of music for a scene, I don’t have to shyly suggest it. I can use it. If I picture an actor in a role, I can offer them said role. Craaaazy. (Ben Fong-Torres voice.) I’m accustomed to riding shotgun. Look, I’ve worked with incredibly generous directors (love you Jason and Karyn, and Craig and Craig and pretty much everyone), but for the first time, I get to be the Captain and Tennille. Holy shit.
I know the new thing online is for everyone to be really mumbly and self-deprecating. If you don’t pretend like you hate yourself and your life, everyone thinks you’re a terrible asshole. But I’m going to take a risk right now and put this out there:
1. I am pleased with this new opportunity.
2. It feels good.
I thought Juno was terrific, Young Adult with Jason Reitman directing sounds great, but Lamb of God may top them all. I love the premise of this movie. Of course given my academic background in theology and lifelong interest in all things spiritual, that shouldn’t be surprising.
Some of the greatest movies of all time are ‘salvation’ stories including The Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca, It’s a Wonderful Life, hell, even Pulp Fiction can be seen through that lens: Jules was ‘saved,’ Vincent was not.
Stripped of its religious overtones, salvation stories are about characters who discover and claim some fundamental truth that transforms their lives. While that truth can be found in the External World of events in the Plotline, there is always some type of resonance, even resurrection of that truth within the character. As in Shawshank where Andy ‘preaches’ hope to Red… and at the end of the story, Red reaches deep into himself to claim that (and reject Brooks’ path of suicide). Indeed, the last words of the movie are Red’s confession: “I hope.”
With “Lamb of God,” my guess is Cody takes her Protagonist from a religious perception of salvation to a more, for lack of a better word, humanist view. Not in any formal sense of the term, but rather the P’s deeply personal, individual experience. And how nice for “Lamb of God,” you’ve got those three innate movements Aristotle noted about Story thousands of years ago:
Beginning: Loses ‘faith’
Middle: Becomes a sinner
End: Find faith
My guess is that first stage of ‘faith’ is an inauthentic one, the Protagonist living in a state of Disunity. As Jung says, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.” Hence the airplane accident, a massive jolt to the Protagonist’s system causing her to reject the belief system by which she had heretofore lived.
Now the P must engage her Shadow self (parts of her personality she had repressed when she was a believer) and this she does by becoming a ‘sinner’ in Las Vegas (if you’re going to dive into sinning, is there a better place than Vegas?) And through the events she experiences and characters she meets along the way, P gets in touch with some authentic aspects of her Self, lays claim to them, and eventually finds a version of faith that is genuine to who she is. Hence some approximation of Unity.
I haven’t read the script, so this is all pure speculation. But as you can see, “Lamb of God” has already got my mind racing. I will be tracking the movie’s progress with great interest.