How to Use This Site

If you’re looking for something in particular you can either use the search function in the footer below or on the script pages you’ll see a “Sort By” option on the right-hand sidebar that allows you to sort the scripts both ascending and descending by title, writer, date, number of pages, file size, source, and the date that it was added to this site. Pretty neat, eh?

Mission Statement
How do most veteran screenwriters respond when asked how someone can become a better writer? Usually by stating the obvious: write often and read a lot.

That said, we exist so that burgeoning screenwriters and filmmakers everywhere have a free resource that provides them with the highest quality screenplays available on the internet. That’s a bold statement, you say? Well, that’s because this site is about quality and not quantity. We want screenplays that look like screenplays. Why? Because we write screenplays. Because we study screenplays. Because we know what a properly formatted screenplay should look like, and John Boy’s 352 page digitally converted script in 32 pt. Arial Bold isn’t it. That’s why we only provide PDF formatted scripts, because they represent the most accurate representation of a tangible script, which we feel is crucial when studying the craft of screenwriting where so much emphasis is placed on structure and page count.

Every script available on this site has been double-checked to ensure quality, stripped of extraneous non-essential information, and file sizes have been reduced when possible.

For optimal script viewing, it’s strongly recommended that you upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Acrobat/Reader.

About Us
- Hi, I’m Sheridan. I’m an independent filmmaker with my own (very) small production company. I’ve mostly made music videos, but I’m currently working on my first feature film that I’ve written and will be producing, directing, and editing. You can check out some of my work online here: sheridancleland.com

As a student of film, I usually look for screenplays in PDF format so that I can study and break them down by page or print them, so transcripts, HTML and text files greatly annoy me. In fact, I loathe scripts in those formats, but have read and studied them when no other versions were available.

I created this site because it’s a site that I thought should exist, but didn’t, and to share with the rest of the world screenplays that I felt were of a certain standard and quality. The original idea was to have a database for my own personal use so that I could access the screenplays from anywhere, but it has quickly grown into something far greater than that initial purpose.

In fact, the site now has several contributors who help with the organization and archiving of scripts, site maintenance, writing various reviews, interviewing industry professionals, and general tomfoolery.

- Hey, I’m J.C. I think I was one of the few people who was a member of PDFSP weeks before it was shut down by the Indy deal but I wasn’t much of a member. At the time, I was running a media review web-site and ended up getting in contact with Sheridan about hosting it on our server which crashed after two days due to bandwidth. But it was in those weeks of setting up the new site that Sheridan and I became friends and I began to care more about the PDF site than I did about the review site. Then I lost contact with him for a while so I started the forum, with his blessing of course. The forum quickly took over all of my free time and I eventually gave up the review site and dedicated all my time to PDFSP. I am extremely happy with the forum and how it turned out. So now we are onto this new site that Sheridan let me help him with and I think it will revolutionize script web-sites. Seriously, look at it. No other script site matters, period.

A little about me, I am a film school grad and like GOOD movies. I rarely read screenplays and I am currently working on my _th spec that will go unsold and remain on my iMac forever. I work an easy 9-5 job that pays the bills and I spend too much time sitting on this site working on minor things that nobody notices but myself. I collect action figures, DVDs, anything argyle, and thoroughly enjoy hockey more than other sports. My blog is here.

History
December 22, 2006 – Sheridan purchases the pdfscreenplays.net domain name.

May 1, 2008 – Sheridan launches the first version of the site with less than two hundred scripts.

May 25, 2008 – After a “small” database glitch, Sheridan relaunches the site.

June 10, 2008 – Sheridan posts Frank Darabont’s draft of Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. That’s right. If you own that script, it was found here first… unfortunately.

June 11, 2008 – All hell breaks loose after Ain’t It Cool News and the entire internet hotlink to the Indiana Jones script. Contrary to popular belief, the site was not shut down because of any legal rumblings from the studios, it was actually because of bandwith/server processor consumption:

The account referenced above was found to be consuming an inordinate amount of processor time, to the point of degrading overall system performance.

While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system’s CPU in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case.

Load: 33.26, 24.67, 18.21 at 2008-06-11 21:06 (25.6% SQL)
41.89/usr 11.60/ni 13.87/sys 5.90/wa 0.00/id

Apache: 60.8 requests/sec – 264.8 kB/second – 4459 B/request
230 requests currently being processed, 30 idle servers
Apache Uptime 37 seconds

Top: 175: pdfscreenplays.net (21: /pdfscripts/screenplays/Indiana%20Jones)

It’s simple math, really. That snapshot shows that 230 requests were being processed at that moment with an average rate of 60.8 requests per second for the Indiana Jones script, which is a 5.7 MB file. Voila! Insta-gargantu-bandwith.

June 24, 2008 – J.C. purchases the pdfscreenplays.com domain name.

June 28, 2008 – The site relaunches care of weneedahobby.com.

June 30, 2008 – Traffic volume and bandwith consumption force the site to shut down once again.

August 29, 2008 – J.C. launches the forum.

August 1, 2009 – mypdfscripts officially launches.