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No foolin', we wrote a 'Star Wars' script

Posted Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at 1:14 AM Central
Last updated Thursday, April 2, 2015 at 11:45 AM Central

by John Couture

Poe Dameron suffers a devastating loss!

It's not often that we get into the April Fools spirit around here, but it's not for a lack of trying. Most years, we simply forget until March 31 when it's too late to come up with anything good, or we can't think of anything that would resonate with enough people.

This year was different. With The Force Awakens opening in theaters on December 18 and people going crazy about the smallest of details, we thought it was the right time to do something around that. One day as Tim and I were messing around between segments on the podcast, we thought it would be funny to do a podcast of silence for April Fools Day and somehow that spiraled into doing a table read of the new Star Wars script.

The only problem is that we didn't have said script, but as an aspiring screenwriter, I was up to the challenge. What? Write the entire script for the next installment of Star Wars over one weekend? Sure, why not?

So, during my annual March Madness sabbatical, I watched a lot of basketball and wrote the script to what I thought The Force Awakens might look like. I didn't go into it blindly though. I watched the trailer a dozen times and sought out the most reliable of leaks out there to try and flesh out the story.

The best way to sell a hoax is to get it as close to true as possible, right? Well, we won't know until December 18 rolls around, but considering that J.J. Abrams didn't fire off a cease and desist letter, I think it's a safe bet that I missed the mark a bit. That's OK, the process was fun and it kicked off my long dormant desire to write again, so that's always a plus.

Besides, Tim, Scott, Melissa and I had a great time bringing it to life in our table read. You can listen to the whole script being read by us in the embed below.

For the sake of posterity, I've included the original post below in case anyone enjoys that sort of thing. I don't think we fooled many of you, but that wasn't entirely the plan. The plan was to create something fun and I think we accomplished that.

Enjoy!

Original News Story Follows:

Officially, The Force Awakens doesn't open until December 18, but I got the surprise of a lifetime back in January. Through some sort of freak cosmic alignment of stars, I got my hands on what I'm fairly confident is the screenplay for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens.

I should probably explain, huh?

J.J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot has a pretty nifty twitter account that among other things has a pretty regular Friday contest where if you retweet one of their tweets, you're entered to win some cool Bad Robot swag. Usually, it's a hat or a t-shirt, but often it's cool one-of-a-kind Bad Robot items that any true geek would kill to own.

Anyhow, back in December, they had one of these contests for a Bad Robot Christmas ornament.

Like I do most Fridays, I retweeted it and quickly forgot about it. I mean seriously, with thousands of people doing the same thing, what are your chances of winning? Imagine my shock when right before Christmas, I got a notification from them that I had won. I gave them my shipping address and quickly forgot about it again, because well, it was Christmas. About a month later, I was pleasantly surprised to get a package from Bad Robot.

Now, the ornament didn't appear to be that big, but the box was about the size of one of those USPS "if it fits, it ships" boxes and the cool thing is that it was all decked out with Bad Robot images. In itself, the box alone was beyond amazing, but when I picked it up, I realized that it felt heavier than it should. I didn't think anything of it at first, because I figured they are probably like Kevin Smith, who is known to randomly toss in things to fill up boxes to winners.

When I opened it up and saw the ornament, I was impressed with the articulate craftsmanship and took joy in the fact that it will hang from our family's Christmas tree for many years to come. But it was the other thing in the box that nearly made me lose my shit.

I pulled it out and thumbed through it quickly and my hands were shaking. I was holding what appeared to be the script to Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens. My first thought was that this had to be a cruel joke. But after I regained my composure, I dug into the script a bit and noticed that all of the character names that were revealed after the trailer were in there. And despite only paging quickly through the first dozen pages or so, I saw parts that were obviously pulled directly into the trailer. If it was a hoax, it was quite the elaborate ploy and I just didn't feel that anyone at Bad Robot would have that sort of time on their hands.

So, I made a tough King Solomon type decision and read the script from cover to cover. After finishing the script, I was convinced more than ever that it was indeed genuine. At 71 pages, I knew that it wasn't the final shooting script, but it may have been an early draft or a treatment. A quick web query found that many of the leaks from reputable sources also seemed to jive with this script.

So, what do I do with it?

This decision proved harder than the one to just read it. On one hand, I felt that I owed it to the Star Wars fan community to get the script out there. On the other, I'm not usually one to willfully spread spoilers or rumors. I agonized over the decision for weeks and then I consulted Tim and asked him for his advice on the matter.

Naturally, being a huge Star Wars fan himself, he wanted to read it for himself before making a decision. After reading it, he gave me some wise Yoda-esque insight. He basically said that there's no way to prove or disprove if the script is real or a hoax, so why not put it out there and let people decide for themselves.

That actually made logical sense to me, but I didn't just want to post the script and let it get swallowed up by the aether. Then it came to me, I could round up some friends who happen to be diehard Star Wars fans themselves and we could perform a table read of the script. So, that's what we did.

None of us are professional actors and only Melissa has a legit IMDb profile, so you have to bear with our mistakes and terrible acting. The best part is that you can get the script for yourself right here and follow along.

After you read/listen to the script, come back and let us know what you think below. For an added bonus, I took the opening crawl that is featured in the script and created this visual representation of it. Enjoy!