Genre: Superhero/Noir/Crime
Premise: When the Riddler starts leaving riddles at all of his murders taunting the Batman, the batster will have to team up with Catwoman to find him before he enacts his final sinister plan on the city.
About: Predictions were all over the map on how The Batman would open. Most were saying it would come in at 100 million. Well director Matt Reeves and his posse laugh at such predictions because The Batman made 128 million dollars this weekend! Stick that in your bat bowl. Reeves’ co-Writer, Peter Craig, burst onto the scene with 2010’s, “The Town.” He’s currently writing Gladiator 2 for Ridley Scott.
Writers: Matt Reeves & Peter Craig (‘Batman’ created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane).
Details: 3 hour running time!

I’ve heard that this Batman is the best Batman film EVER. Yes, even better than The Dark Knight. Could it be? These people are aware, I presume, that Robert Pattinson is playing Batman, right? I kid, I kid. Who doesn’t love themselves a little R. Patty, warts and all.

This is what makes Hollywood so amazing. They spend upwards of 3 million dollars to create a bat suit that makes a scrawny Pattinson look beefy. They get a good DP and gaffer in there to make sure the light is always hitting the suit in just the right way to make Pattison look menacing. Add a moody high quality score and choose an editor who knows how to edit around lousy takes and weird mannerisms. You do all that and now you have yourselves a convincing Batman.

But is it a good Batman? And has this Batman given us a good movie?

Okay, here’s today’s overly simplified summary of the movie. The Riddler kills the Mayor of Gotham. He also leaves a message for “Batman” that states the Mayor was dirty and so were a bunch of other Gotham politicians. We get the impression The Riddler isn’t done yet.

Police Lieutenant James Gordon has no choice but to bring the Batman in to comb over the crime scene. Afterwards, Batman looks over the riddle the Riddler left, which asks what do lying men do after they die. Batman answers “Lie Still,” in under a second, which gives him and Gordon a good chance of being on the next episode of Jeopardy.

After pestering the Penguin, who’s a club owner here, to tell him what he knows, Batman meets Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, and the two decide to team up. As the crime scenes and riddles stack up, Batman desperately tries to catch up to the Riddler. And just when he’s getting close, the Riddler comes to him, surrendering. Except it’s a ploy. Because what the Riddler is about to do next will determine whether he takes over the entire city.

The thing that comic book movies figured out is that they can keep these films alive by hijacking sub-genres and using them to build a mould around the superhero-y stuff. One of the reasons comic book movies started to get so bad in the 2000s was that they kept going the origin story route. Audiences had gotten so familiar with that structure, unfortunately, that every movie now felt familiar.

So superhero films started experimenting, even though they didn’t really know what they were doing. This gave us movies like Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns from 2006. It wasn’t an origin story but it kind of was. The film just never found its footing. Enter the sub-genre, a strategy that Marvel began implementing. You’ve got the Buddy Cop movie (Captain Marvel). You’ve got the Spy movie (Winter Soldier). You’ve got the John Hughes High School Comedy (Spider-Man: Homecoming ). This gave comic book movies a new life because now, you weren’t really going to see a comic book movie. You were going to see a high school comedy… with superheroes.

The Batman continues this strategy, as it embraces “Film Noir” as its sub-genre. You’ve got a deep baritone Bruce Wayne, narrating the state of the city in the film’s opening scene. Every scene is painted in thick endless shadows. Characters don’t speak so much as pose and try to make the dialogue sound cool. And, most importantly, it all works. The Batman as a noir film is great.

But the screenplay… the screenplay is another story.

Sticking with this month’s theme, I was hyper-focused on the first act. And it pretty much followed the same blueprint I’ve laid out for all of you. We get our teaser, which is that the mayor is killed by The Riddler. Then we introduce our hero, The Batman, along with a couple of other characters. We establish the world (Gotham) they’re in, specifically the fact that crime is a big problem in the city, which is why Batman has gotten involved.

Batman’s intro, where he arrives to take down a group of bullies about to beat a subway rider into submission, quickly establishes that he’s a badass and takes his job of protecting the city seriously. We need to have a good feel for your hero after their first scene. The Batman succeeds in that regard.

The inciting incident is technically the mayor’s murder, which already happened in the teaser. But it doesn’t officially become the inciting incident until Batman is called to the murder with Gordon, and they inspect the crime scene. It is here where The Riddler’s game is introduced, adding a secondary element. Batman will have to solve the murder. But also solve Riddler’s larger puzzle.

Reeves’ decision to go this route was a wise one. When you have a universe as wide and varied as Gotham, which is home to a lot of characters, you risk the reader getting lost in all the noise. So you want a narrative that’s immediately understandable, something to counterbalance the huge complex world you’ll be tasked with bringing to life.

Utilizing one of the oldest story setups in the book – the murder investigation – is a great way to keep the story focused and, as a result, keep the reader clued in. While there were a few places in the movie where I had to think hard to remember what was going on, I was never confused, like I am with some of these movies that have 800 characters. This is because I always understood the core of Batman’s goal: Find the Riddler.

The problem with The Batman is that it thinks too highly itself and, therefore, doesn’t realize that its investigation is kinda bland. The rhythm of the story is too predictable. Go chase one clue, find a dead person with a riddle card attached to them, someone reads the riddle, Batman always answers the riddle within two seconds, this sends them to their next destination, where they find another dead person and another riddle. Which sends them to their next destination. And so on and so forth.

This would all be well and good if the characters were great. But the two most interesting characters, the Penguin and the Riddler, are given limited screen time, while their heroic counterparts, Batman and Catwoman, are given the majority of the time. And while our heroes are pretty cool, they’re not captivating enough for us to truly care about what’s going on.

This partly has to do with the noir genre itself as it often feels like characters aren’t talking to each other, so much as directly to the audience, delivering their lines as stylistically as possible. There’s a detached quality to the dialogue and the line-readings that speaks to the bigger problem with noir – which is that it always looks cool, but, emotionally, feels cold.

Which is a strange thing to say because everything else about the movie – the way it’s filmed, the way it’s lit, the way it’s designed – implies that it’s a much deeper comic book movie than you usually see. But it isn’t. It’s a cinematography class. It’s got costume design up the wazoo. But everything else in the film is skin deep.

Nobody’s going through any internal battles outside of some vague references to Bruce’s difficult childhood. Contrast this with Arthur Fleck in Joker, who’s so very desperate to connect with others. Who’s tasked with taking care of his aging mother. Who must battle a strange disorder daily (his spontaneous laughing). Who must fight off an inner rage. We really feel like Arthur is a person struggling through life. Batman, meanwhile, is just a guy who seems upset that there are a lot of criminals around.

This makes the three hour running time seem ridiculous. You can have that extra hour if you’re going to use it. But if all you’re going to do with that hour is turn 2 minute scenes into 4 minute scenes, and 5 minute scenes into 10 minute scenes, you’re killing your narrative’s momentum. There was this scene about two hours in where Bruce is talking to Alfred in the hospital and I swear it was 15 uninterrupted minutes of them droning on to each other.

I know we say for every Marvel movie, “That could’ve been shorter,” but in this case, it’s true. This movie could’ve lost an hour and it wouldn’t have affected the film AT ALL.

I do think it’s cool that Matt Reeves made this badass looking superhero flick peppering in a 90s edge that included “Seven” references and a Nirvana-inspired Bruce Wayne. But halfway through this movie, when I realized the investigation narrative was going to keep hitting the same beats over and over, I mentally checked out, watching the rest of the film with only a passing interest.

There’s good here. Just not enough of it.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The Reluctant Team-Up always works. This is when your hero reluctantly teams up with another character, as is the case here with Batman and Catwoman.

Note: For those confused, I originally posted this on Sunday, a full 12 hours before the Black List came out, as a holding spot. While we waited, I shared my top 10 movies of the year. That’s why you have this weird combination of “Best Movies of 2021” and “Black List 2021” in a single post. If you don’t care about my favorite movies of the year, just scroll down. :)

The Black List SHOULD be coming out tomorrow (Monday). Once it’s released, I will update this post with gobs of commentary. If anyone is looking for stuff to do in the interim, you can check out my RE-RANKING of the 2020 Black List, where I give you the TRUE rankings of all of last year’s scripts.

While we’re waiting for that, let’s talk movies!

Releasing West Side Story during a pandemic was an idea akin to opening up a gelato stand in Antarctica. Probably not the best idea. West Side Story was always going to be a hard sell but trying to get people to watch a dated musical in this environment? I could think of a few concepts that might’ve brought Spielberg more cheer. Hey, Steven, what ever happened to Robopocalypse? Pretty sure that would’ve made more than 10 mil.

The thing about Spielberg that made him into the mogul he is today is that he had a keen sense for knowing exactly what the masses wanted, a rare ability to always have his finger on the zeitgeist pulse. So you have to ask, with the disappointing box office of West Side Story, has that magical power finally passed Spielberg by? His last five movies before this were War Horse, Bridge of Spies, The BFG, The Post, and Ready Player One. Not exactly a glowing resume.

The funny thing is that this interception probably won’t go down on Spielberg’s stat card. West Side Story made 10 million dollars yet I’ve already read articles about how it’s beginning its awards run so it’s going to be around for awhile and remember The Greatest Showman? That made only 8 million its opening weekend before going on to gross 175 million so that’s exactly what’s going to happen to our movie, West Side Story! The pandemic is the best thing to ever happen to box office bombs. There’s so much spin available to studios these days, you could open your own dreidel company with it.

Considering the Black List is the ‘best of’ list for screenplays, I thought I’d give you my best of movies of the year. Normally, I would give this its own post. But let’s be real. 2021 has been a weird year for movies and when I looked at my list, I didn’t think it deserved its own post. With that said, there was one cool aspect about these films and that’s that a lot of them snuck up on me. That’s the best way to find a movie, in my opinion – when it comes out of nowhere. That was the case for most of these movies, in fact. Let’s take a look.

11) Bo Burnham’s “Inside” and The Lost Leonardo – I have a longstanding frustration with movie reviewers who include documentaries on their end-of-the-year lists. Documentaries aren’t real movies! So I’m going to compromise and squish my two favorite documentaries into one slot and put them at the bottom of the list. “Inside” is amazing for two reasons. Burnham is fearless when it comes to letting you inside of his brain. That makes for both an uncomfortable and exhilarating journey. Also, as a bonus, you’ll be humming half of his songs after watching. — I’m such a sucker for these art docus and “The Lost Leonardo” is probably the best art docu ever. This deep dive into how the art world prices things and how much they hide and manipulate the image of a particular painting is both educational and entertaining. Biggest lesson I learned from the movie? Never cross a billionaire Russian warlord.

10) Nobody – What I liked about Nobody was that it was a John Wick movie but if someone put the movie’s forehead on a bat, made them spin around 50 times, then forced them to run a 100 yard dash. There was an ‘off-kilter’ quality to Bob Odenkirk’s pursuit that made for a kooky hero’s journey. Even the fighting scenes (like the famous bus fight) were unique. And you need that uniqueness in a sea of clones.

9) Free Guy – Possibly the most Ryan Reynolds Ryan Reynolds movie of Ryan Reynold’s career. Fun little premise. Love that this was a naked spec. We haven’t had one of those in the Top 10 of the box office in at least a decade. And unlike West Side Story, Free Guy is the perfect movie to release during a pandemic as it’s an ideal escape. Two hours of feeling good. Sign me up.

8) The Beta Test – Not many people have heard of this one. It’s about a married Hollywood agent who gets an invitation in the mail saying someone wants to have an anonymous sexual encounter with him. Against his better judgement, he decides to do it, and then must suffer through the consequences of doing so. Shades of American Psycho. A very cool directing debut. The acting is a bit uneven but this one shocked me with how good it was.

7) Ghostbusters: Afterlife – Another movie I watched that was only interested in one thing (making you feel good). While I get the nostalgia criticism, I felt that the screenplay was tight and built well towards its climax. I thought it was funny. Podcast was my favorite movie character of 2021 (only half-joking). I didn’t know Reitman had it in him but this was good!

6) Malignant – That twist. THAT TWIST! I don’t know if I could ever watch this movie again because the first 90 minutes are so bad but THAT TWIST. I don’t think a movie has ever made my Top 10 on a twist alone but Malignant just did it.

5) Voyeurs – This may be a case of me being a fan of the voyeur subject matter. It could also be a case of me falling in love with Sydney Sweeney after White Lotus. Either way, this was a simple premise done well. And what do I always tell you guys? Keep it simple! One of the many benefits of doing so is that you keep your production budget low, which increases potential buyers. This entire movie was basically shot in two apartments.

4) Boiling Point – Was just talking about this the other day. A one-shot tension filled restaurant thriller. If your screenplay lacks tension, watch this movie right now then spend the next few ways deconstructing how every scene is packed with conflict. You’ll never write the same way again.

3) Bad Trip – The hardest I’ve laughed during a comedy in I don’t know how long. Taking the hidden-camera gimmick and integrating it into a cohesive narrative was genius. I still don’t know how they pulled some of this off. This movie was unforgettable.

2.5) Coda – Why 2.5? Cause I forgot to include it and, therefore, had to squeeze it in. A tear-jerker that actually turns you into a biological waterfall. Wholly unique. Impossible not to fall in love with the family. Go watch this if you haven’t already!

2) I Care A Lot – You knew it was coming! I did a dialogue scene breakdown for I Care A Lot in one of the best written scenes of the year. This movie isn’t perfect. And those who criticize it for not having anyone to root for have a fair point. But I just loved the way this offbeat plot emerged. So cool to see J Blakeson back in the ‘hot director’ chair. I fully expect him to blow up from here.

1) Riders of Justice – If there’s a theme that connects these top three entries, “unexpected” would probably be it. No movie had me more flummoxed (in a good way) than this one. The movie was so good that super producer, Shawn Levy, optioned it for a remake. I don’t know how they’re going to adapt this quirky character piece slash action revenge tale for American audiences and not confuse the moviegoing universe but I’m there to find out!

And that’s my list! Are there any amaaaaaa-zing 2021 movies that I missed?

THOUGHTS ON THE 2021 BLACK LIST!

My initial thoughts on the list are, “You know, this isn’t half bad.” This year’s list, unlike recent years, seems to be celebrating the best ideas as opposed to following agendas. Of course we still have mainstays such as ‘the true story of this celebrity nobody actually cares about’ and a few concepts that would, shall we say, be applauded by the Twitter crowd. But, by and far, the list seems to be about the best ideas. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted from the Black List.

Another thing I noticed is that Franklin Leonard, as reclusive and curmudgeonly as he is, seems to *sort of* be listening to feedback. We’ve gone from 80 screenplays to only 60 this year. I still think topping out at 25 would make the list so much more exclusive and prestigious. But this is a good first step. When you have 80 scripts on the list, all you’re doing is providing the public with a receipt of every script that agents sent out that year.

To build a little suspense, I’m going to tackle these in REVERSE ORDER. Lowest votes first all the way up to the top voted script. I’m also going to be **HIGHLIGHTING** my favorite concepts, so you’ll know exactly what’s gotten me all hot and bothered. Let’s get started, shall we?

7 votes
Title: Ways to Hide In Winter
Writer: Jenny Halper
Logline: A woman in rural Pennsylvania falls in love with a stranger from Uzbekistan, then finds out he may be responsible for war crimes. Based on Sarah St. Vincent’s acclaimed debut novel.
Thoughts: Obviously, this one is based on a novel and therefore there’s probably a lot more going on here than what’s in the logline. It’s given me flashbacks to that Jason Reitman movie with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, Labor Day. Without saying much more, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

7 votes
Title: The Way You Remember Me
Writer: Geoffrey Roth
Logline: Following the death of her vivacious, entrepreneurial, thirtysomething son Ben, Laurie learns that he had frozen some of his sperm before his passing. As she embarks on an unconventional journey in search of someone who may bear Ben’s child, Laurie forges an unexpected friendship with a woman, who, in turn, starts to fall for the memory of him.
Thoughts: This sounds a little bit like if John Greene and Nicholas Sparks had a screenplay baby then had the Hallmark channel breastfeed him. Then again, this is a logline. There are ways to explore these stories in a sophisticated compelling manner and ways to explore them in a schmaltzy melodramatic manner. I hope this is the former!

7 votes
Title: The Unbound
Writer: Sam West
Logline: Disillusioned with life in the wake of a personal tragedy, Rachel goes on a mountain retreat with her friends in search of an escape, only to find themselves stumbling into the depths of horror and madness.
Thoughts: This is a classic logline mistake so I’m guessing some freshly hired assistant wrote it. You have kept the only thing that would make anybody want to read this script a secret (“only to find themselves stumbling into the depths of horror and madness”). We need details. What horror? What kind of madness? What are the specific details of these events? Without knowing, nobody will want to read this. Cause I read a dozen scripts a year about people mountain climbing. Tell me why yours is different. Another reason to use my logline service! (E-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com for a logline consult. They’re just $25!)

7 votes
Title: Thicker Than Ice
Writer: Tara Tomicevic
Logline: Inspired by the true story of Hannah and Marissa Brandt, adoptive sisters and hockey players who put their relationship to the test as they vie for Olympic glory… on different teams: top-ranked Team USA and Korea’s first ever unified team.
Thoughts: First of all, kudos to the writer for finding a different kind of true story. This sounds different from everything else out there. But there’s a fatal flaw in the premise, which is that it contains two different movies. On the one hand, you have two sisters forced to play sports for two different teams on the Olympics. That’s a movie right there. But then you also have the first ever unified Korean female hockey team, which is clearly a movie unto itself. Too many ideas has killed more screenplays than I can count.

7 votes
Title: Sleep Solution
Writers: Ted Caplan, Jenni Hendricks
Logline: Two former thieves are having a hard enough time with their fussy newborn baby when a mishap draws them back into their old lives, forcing them to recover a priceless jade bangle, escape their boss’s murderous son and, toughest of all, get their baby to sleep through the night.
Thoughts: At this point we might as well add the “three crazy things” approach to the logline vernacular since it’s used so often. I’ve always had problems with this approach as it indicates that you don’t really have a good idea so you’re forced to throw three crazy things at us in the hopes that it will make up for that fact. The only time it works is when the three things are genuinely awesome. But, first of all, I don’t even know what a jade bangle is. And I doubt most people do. So, already, right there, you’ve kind of screwed yourself. Because the second people are confused in your logline, you’re done. Straight up, you’re done. If you can’t be clear in one sentence, why would someone think you could be clear with 100 pages. This logline is too messy to give me hope.

7 votes
Title: Max and Tony’s One Night Stand
Writer: Thomas Kivney
Logline: A disastrous Grindr hookup goes from bad to worse when a meteor unleashes a horde of aliens on New York and the two ill-matched men must depend on each other to make it through the night alive.
Thoughts: This is one of those ideas that could either be really stupid… or really awesome. I only say it could be stupid because I read a lot of scripts like this and the chaos has a tendency to get so ridiculous, you cease to be emotionally invested. It’s just a bunch of silly gags that run out of gas by the midpoint. If this script has three hilarious set pieces, though, that’s enough for a fun movie.

7 votes.
Title: Lift
Writer: Daniel Kunka
Logline: A female master thief and her ex-boyfriend who works for the FBI team up to steal $100M worth of gold bullion being transported on a 777 passenger flight from London to Zurich.
Thoughts: You know I love myself a plane concept! Throw a heist premise into the mix and you have yourself a movie. I’m a little concerned about whether there’s enough plot here to last an entire movie. I guess it depends on how big you want to go (do they send military planes up after them or is everything going to be relegated to the plane). It’s a fun premise but it feels like it’s missing one more piece.

7 votes
Title: Killers and Diplomats
Writers: John Tyler McClain, Michael Nourse
Logline: The true story of the murder of four American churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980 and the low-level American diplomat who teamed with his most dangerous informant to smoke out their killers. Based on Raymond Bonner’s work for The Atlantic.
Thoughts: While I would love to be positive here, when I heard, “The true story of the murder of four American…” my brain went into a mini-seizure. I’ve seen so many loglines start this way I can’t even count them. I’m looking for the unique element here that sets this apart from every other true story rescue mission but I’m not seeing it.

7 votes
Title: An Ideal Woman
Writer: Laura Kosann
Logline: Set in American suburbia during the Cuban Missile Crisis: A 1960s ex-actress and housewife finds her house-of-cards world begin to tumble as she continues to be pitted against two identities.
Thoughts: I’ll rule this one as ID2ILL, which stands for “Incomplete Due To Insufficient Logline Info.” The thing you don’t want to do with your logline is cause confusion or a lack of understanding. “Pitted against two identities.” What does that even mean? I guess it has something to do with her being an actress and she becomes one of her parts? Who knows? This logline needs to be way more specific to entice people into reading it.

7 votes
Title: The Family Plan
Writer: David Coggeshall
Logline: A former top assassin living incognito as a suburban dad must take his unsuspecting family on the run when his past catches up to him.
Thoughts: Okay, we’ve just located the single most generic logline of the year. I know I say this all the time but, still, people obviously don’t listen so I’ll say it again. What is the unique component about your story? Whatever that is, make sure it’s highlighted in the logline! I may have just dogged An Ideal Woman but at least that logline had “1960s,” “Cuban Missile Crisis,” “Ex-actress.” These are unique things that paint a picture of a specific story in the reader’s head. We don’t get even a hint of that here.

7 votes
Title: False Truth
Writers: Thomas Berry, Isaac Gabaeff, Nathan Gabaeff
Logline: The life of a cynical San Francisco criminal lawyer at the top of his career unravels when he agrees to represent a father accused of killing his infant son in an extraordinary case that challenges widely accepted medical beliefs, a biased justice system, and his own personal worldview. Based on true events.
Thoughts: This isn’t my thing but I understand why these scripts are written. Actors LOVE PLAYING these parts. They love playing lawyers who are going up against impossible odds with heavy emotional stakes involved. Grab a great actor for this part and you’re in the awards conversation. Done.

7 votes
Title: Dennis Rodman’s 48 Hours In Vegas (link)
Writer: Jordan VanDina
Logline: Before Game 7 of the NBA finals, Dennis Rodman tells Phil Jackson he needs 48 hours in Vegas. What follows is a surreal adventure with his skittish assistant GM that involves a bull rodeo, parachuting out of a Ferrari and building a friendship that neither one of them ever thought was possible but will end up solving both of their problems.
Thoughts: Oh boy. I’ve already reviewed this one and it’s not a bad script but when you’ve got that kind of title, your expectations are as high as a parachuting Ferrari. So when that parachute doesn’t open and you crash into the ground like Wil E. Coyote, you don’t exactly remember the experience fondly.

7 votes
Title: The Dark
Writer: Chad Handley
Logline: When stranded on the far end of Manhattan by a mysterious city-wide blackout, a group of inner-city middle schoolers must fight through seemingly supernatural forces to make their way back to their parents in the Bronx.
Thoughts: I’m a little frustrated by the term “seemingly supernatural forces.” I would rather the writer tell us what the forces are so we understand what kind of movie we’re reading. But this is the first script so far that feels like a movie. Clear shades of Attack The Block.

7 votes
Title: Carriage Hill
Writers: Emi Mochizuki, Carrie Wilson
Logline: A pregnant couple hoping to start their family in the suburbs find themselves embroiled in a decades long mystery which threatens to shatter their American dream.
Thoughts: ID2ILL – What’s the decades long mystery? TELL US! That’s what’s going to make us want to read the script! This sounds like it could be good but because I don’t have enough information, the script goes deeper into the pile.

7 votes
Title: Blackpill
Writer: Alexandra Serio
Logline: Awkward and lonely, Jared is only able to find a community online — until the day he realizes that his favorite Youtuber lives nearby. Desperate for a connection, he becomes determined to find a way into her life… whether she wants it or not.
Thoughts: Seems like we’re getting more and more of these “influencer stalker” concepts. And since I like stalker concepts, I’ll keep reading them! As you know, one of my favorite recent reads was Lurker, which covered similar subject matter.

7 votes
Title: Bella
Writer: Chris Grillot
Logline: A young college student is forced to confront her family’s dark past when a mysterious stalker appears, derailing her life and sending her spiraling into a web of anxiety and paranoia.
Thoughts: Stalker deja vu! Unfortunately, there aren’t enough unique details to get me excited about this script. There are plenty of examples of basic premises that turn out to be great scripts because the writer has an amazing voice or they just execute the sh#t out of the story. But if you’re one of these writers who has a great script with only a basic premise, you have to gussy up the logline just a little bit more so your script doesn’t sound generic.

7 votes
Title: APEX
Writer: Jeremy Robbins
Logline: When an adrenaline junkie sets out to conquer a menacing river, she discovers that nature isn’t the only thing out for blood.
Thougths: Time for another acronym! GELS. Generic Ending Logline Syndrome. What *is* out for blood!? Tell us! Or nobody’s going to want to read the script.

8 votes
Title: St. Mary’s Catholic School Presents The Vagina Monologues
Writers: Hannah Hafey, Kaitlin Smith
Logline: Frustrated by the conservative curriculum at her high school, a rebellious teen girl decides to stage the school’s first ever production of The Vagina Monologues. Which is going to be a challenge, as no one else at St. Mary’s can even bear to say the word ‘vagina’ out loud . . . Based on Flynn Meaney’s Bad Habits.
Thoughts: While this might not be aimed at my demo, I appreciate any well-constructed ironic premise as irony is the quickest way to create a “I have to read this” logline. And kudos to the writer for putting the entire premise right there in the title, making it easy for lazy potential readers to get hooked without even having to read a logline. Okay, things are starting to pick up here!

8 votes
Title: A Nice Indian Boy
Writers: Eric Randall
Logline: When Naveen brings his fiance Jay home to meet his family, his traditional Indian parents must contend with accepting his white partner and helping them plan the most fabulous same sex Indian wedding the Bay Area has ever seen.
Thoughts: As one of my best friends is Indian and I saw all the insanity he had to go through with his family when he married a white woman (his parents were disowned by some of their cousins), I can only imagine the endless supply of conflict a premise like this offers. You have to get the execution right. But the writer has a great entry point into a movie.

8 votes
Title: A Hufflepuff Love Story
Writer: Sophia Lopez
Logline: Unpopular Hogwarts student Finn blames everything bad in his life on being sorted into Hufflepuff rather than Gryffindor with Harry Potter and the cool kids. So when he discovers a chance to go back in time and fix that, he takes it — only to discover things aren’t quite as simple as he’d imagined.
Thoughts: The weird Harry Potter ideas continue to make the Black List!. This is basically fan fiction which means it’s a script that can never be made. However, you can get noticed with fan fiction and, obviously, by making the Black List, this writer has achieved that. And since it’s all about getting noticed, I applaud the writer! Whatever it takes.

8 votes
Title: Hello Universe
Writer: Michael Golamco
Logline: When a bully’s antics land a timid boy in the bottom of a well, his self-proclaimed psychic friend and unknowing crush team up to find him. Based on the 2017 book by Erin Entrada Kelly.
Thoughts: There are two kinds of children’s movie ideas. The kind that appeal to kids and the kind that appeal to both kids and adults. This seems more like the former which is why I’m not over the moon about it. But it does feel like one of those sweet harmless movies that, if you caught on a plane, you might break into tears during the climax (everybody cries when watching movies on the plane. Anyone who tells you differently is a liar!).

************CARSON PICK************
************CARSON PICK************
8 votes
Title: Go Dark
Writers: Josh Marentette, Spencer Marentette
Logline: A team of black-ops soldiers use an experimental technology to travel into the afterlife and rescue their dead teammate.
Thoughts: We’ve got our first super high-concept entry into the 2021 Black List. WOOOOO-HOOOOO! Bring back the 90s spec boom! Bring back the 90s spec boom! Come on, I can’t hear you. Bring back the 90s spec boom! This feels like a script that wouldn’t have made the list without the success of The Tomorrow War so thank you Chris Pratt.
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8 votes
Title: From Little Acorns Grow
Writer: Laura Kosann
Logline: After a woman becomes one of the first female presidents of a 1950s publishing house in New York, she draws a former college classmate into her orbit, who soon finds her literary empire is not what it appears to be.
Thoughts: Everything was great up until, “is not what it appears to be.” Literally the entire logline falls apart in that moment. What isn’t what it appears to be? Tell us and we’ll probably want to read your script. For those of you who counter this logic with, “Well we want to retain the secrets of our story.” It doesn’t matter if nobody wants to read the script in the first place.

8 votes
Title: Four Assassins (And A Funeral)
Writer: Ryan Hooper
Logline: The adoptive daughter of a legendary assassin returns home for his funeral… and finds herself in the crosshairs of her four highly trained, highly dangerous siblings.
Thoughts: Okay, first of all? Best title so far. This one has potential. It’s very high concept yet doesn’t require a big budget. I’m always a little squirrely about comedy concepts that have family members trying to kill each other because you know that – since it’s a comedy – nobody’s actually going to kill their sibling. But the script’s got a good starting point.

8 votes
Title: The First Outside
Writer: Yumiko Fujiwara
Logline: Peter, a seventeen-year-old painter, lives with his controlling mother in a lonely house in the wilderness. When he meets a mysterious stranger, he begins to question the reality he was raised to believe, gathers the courage to leave his mother, and unveils the sinister truth behind his upbringing.
Thoughts: I’ve read so many versions of this story before. And, unfortunately, the logline doesn’t tell me anything that would indicate this is going to be different from those scripts. One thing the writer could’ve keyed in on was the mysterious stranger. Tell us more about them. What makes them unique. That might’ve piqued my interest. But the current logline feels too general to get me excited.

8 votes
Title: The Devil Herself
Writer: Colin Bannon
Logline: When an elite assassin is sent to the haunted Harz Mountains in Germany on an extraction job she intends to be her last, she quickly learns that the local legends about witchcraft are true and must face a sinister supernatural threat.
Thoughts: Okay now this is a cool idea. We’re mixing genres (assassins, the supernatural) which is always a great way to find some high concepts hiding in the shadows. And the idea of an assassin battling witchcraft gives me the tingles. This one could be fun.

8 votes
Title: Barron’s Cove
Writer: Evan Ari Kelman
Logline: When his young son is viciously murdered by a classmate, a grieving father with a history of violence kidnaps the child responsible, igniting a frenzied manhunt fueled by a powerful politician — the father of the kidnapped boy.
Thoughts: This is how you perform a final logline PUNCH, which is a great way to end your logline in style. You build up to it, insert the hyphen, then finish with the hammer punchline. That I liked. What I’m not sure about is young children viciously murdering other children. Does that even happen? And now you’ve got a dad kidnapping a young child who he’s possibly going to harm? I don’t know. Sounds like a dental floss thin rope you’re going to have to walk.

8 votes
Title: Ballast
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Logline: A naval engineer and her crew find themselves trapped in a deadly game on a shipping vessel in the middle of the Atlantic when they learn a series of car bombs are hidden amongst the thousands of vehicles on board.
Thoughts: MAJOR points for coming up with an original high-concept premise. I’ve never encountered anything like this setup before. My worry would be script repetition. After they find and defuse several bombs, what then? Do we just keep looking for more? If the script has a plan to push the narrative beyond that, this could be really fun.

9 votes
Title: It Was You
Writer: William Yu
Logline: With the future of Manhattan’s Chinatown at stake, a stubborn store clerk battles against an innovative CEO’s expansion plan, while both are unaware they’ve been falling in love with each other on a new, anonymous dating app.
Thoughts: I saw some people praising this one as a modern take on You’ve Got Mail (and The Shop Around The Corner). My only concern is that it sort of feels like one of those situations you might find in an episode of a teen TV show. So I’m wondering if it’s big enough. I guess the counter argument to that is the CEO angle. That’s what makes the concept big enough for a movie. I don’t know. I’m lukewarm on this one. I’ll put it in the “has the potential to surprise me” pile.

9 votes
Title: IDOL
Writer: Tricia Lee
Logline: The true story of American Idol viral sensation, William Hung.
Thoughts: When I originally wrote up this list, I missed this entry. That may have been the universe speaking to both me and anyone who wants to make this film. Oh COME ON. I kid. I kid. Who doesn’t love William Hung. SHE BANGS, SHE BANGS! I wonder if this will be a satirical take or a serious take. Oh, who am I kidding. I don’t wonder at all.

9 votes
Title: Hard to Get
Writer: Dan Schoffer
Logline: After Amanda is seemingly ghosted by the man of her dreams, she’s delighted to discover he’s actually been kidnapped — and takes it upon herself to be his rescuer, going on an adventure of epic proportions along the way.
Thoughts: I’m digging this one. I smile every time I read “she’s delighted to discover he’s actually been kidnapped.” Again, my friends – IRONY! Irony is so powerful in loglines. You’re not supposed to be happy that your boyfriend was kidnapped which is why this works. I also like the genre-switch of the female knight going to save her prince-cess.

9 votes
Title: Fiendish
Writer: Edgar Castillo
Logline: While meeting her boyfriend’s dysfunctional family at their ancestral manor, a young woman finds herself entangled in a bizarre and terrifying mystery when the family’s patriarch claims to have been cursed by a demon.
Thoughts: Hmm, this reads like an ‘almost’ idea. There’s clearly *something* here – the starting point for a movie. And the demon is clearly a callback to the ancestral manor, so there is connection between the first and second halves of the logline (something a lot of writers don’t do). But the logline seems to be missing that “and then what” story beat that really gets us excited to read the script.

9 votes
Title: Chicago For One
Writer: Madeleine Paul
Logline: Based on Robbie Chernow’s hilarious viral solo adventure, a newly heart-broken groomsman takes Chicago by storm celebrating a solo Bachelor Party Weekend after the rest of the party — including the groom — get stuck over 700 miles away.
Thoughts: A fun idea. Again, we’ve got a little bit of irony there. Parties are supposed to contain multiple people by definition. So a single person party is ironic. Plus it’s a party with stakes attached to it since it’s a once-in-lifetime ordeal. I think I would’ve liked this better, though, if it was about a guy who was about to get married, his fiancé broke up with him, but he still had this giant bachelor party paid for and decided to do it anyway, even though all the other guys dropped out.

9 votes
Title: Challengers
Writer: Justin Kuritzkes
Logline: Framed around a single tennis match at a low-level pro tournament, three players who knew each other when they were teenagers — a world-famous grand slam winner, his ambitious wife/coach, and their old friend who’s now a burnout ranked 201 in the world — reignite old rivalries on and off the court.
Thoughts: Now you would THINK that this would be my number one most anticipated screenplay, seeing as I’m a big tennis nut. But here’s the thing. I don’t think it’s possible to write a good tennis movie. I’ve tried it several times myself. I’ve worked with several other writers writing them. There’s something about tennis that doesn’t translate well to film. So I’ll read this. But it kind of sounds like your basic talking heads drama. I’m not seeing that “ace” angle here. Also, why is a grand slam winner at a challenger tournament? I mean, duh, that’s the first thing all of you were thinking, right?

10 votes
Title: Skeleton Tree
Writer: Paul Barry
Logline: When an accident sinks their boat, two teenaged boys must learn how to survive the wilds of the remote Alaskan coastline, endure one another, and to come to terms with a long-held life-altering secret.
Thoughts: Lord of the Flies, but with two flies. Can it work? Hey, survival can work as the sole motivator for a narrative because the stakes are literally life and death. And the less apt the characters are at surviving, the more interesting the story tends to be. Since our characters here are young, I’m assuming they’re not well-equipped for survival. This could be good!

10 votes
Title: Shania!
Writer: Jessica Welsh
Logline: Eilleen Edwards rises from an impoverished upbringing in rural Canada to transform into 90’s global country-pop superstar Shania Twain, only to face her greatest challenge yet: putting her life and career back together after losing her voice.
Thoughts: I mean, this logline seems tailor designed to make me dislike it. Not only do you have a music biopic. You’ve got an artist whose music I don’t care for. I don’t know. It seems like we can do better. How about concentrating on a single concert so we at least have some urgency to the story. Otherwise, loglines like this give me PTSD.

10 votes
Title: Sandpiper
Writer: Lindsay Michel
Logline: Still reeling in the wake of her husband’s death, master thief Viola Crier signs on to a risky, last-minute job set to take place inside a man-made time loop, but as the number of loops increases, the job begins to spiral out of control.
Thoughts: I’m pretty sure I highlighted this spec in a newsletter. I’m digging the new angle on the loop movie. And it seems the story gets even more weird as the loop rules start to change once inside the loop. I’ll definitely read this one.

10 votes
Title: Operation Milk & Cookies
Writer: M. Miller Davis
Logline: After their house is threatened with repossession, a mismatched group of foster kids set out on an adventure to summon Santa Claus to save their home and end up on the run from a crew of angry bank robbers.
Thoughts: Oh my god. What a great holiday film title. The concept itself feels a little light under the gortex jacket. But this one will definitely make the pre-Christmas read list here at Scriptshadow.

10 votes
Title: Mimi
Writer: Scarlett Bermingham
Logline: A successful illustrator finds herself friendless after her best friend gets engaged, forcing her to embark on an epic quest to “date” for new girlfriends — as an adult.
Thoughts: This, like It Was You, is a fun idea. But it’s also one of those ideas that feels like a TV episode. I think this was actually a Friends episode, wasn’t it? Still, if the writer is funny, we could have a funny script on our hands.

10 votes
Title: Follow
Writer: Michael Kujak
Logline: When a social media influencer meets a fan at a meet-and-greet, she’s so taken with her cleverness and vulnerability that she invites the fan to intern with her for the summer. At first, they’re an unstoppable team, but soon, the influencer is forced to wonder who she has let into her life.
Thoughts: Okay, that’s it. The social media stalker movie is now officially a new genre. This is why I hate that the Black List doesn’t include genres because I don’t know if this a light comedy, a dark comedy, or the second coming of The Cable Guy. Where it falls on that list has a major influence over how much I want to read it.

10 votes
Title: Cruel Summer
Writers: Leigh Cesiro, Erica Matlin
Logline: During the summer of 1998, five camp counselors accidentally kill a stranger in the woods.
Thoughts: Very common setup. Not seeing anything original here. It almost seems like the manager wants to hide the concept from the prying eyes of Black List readers. Which is fine by me. But it makes me not very excited to read your script.

10 votes
Title: Abbi and the Eighth Wonder
Writer: Matt Roller
Logline: When a misogynist explorer meets his sudden (and violent) end, his long-overlooked understudy seizes the moment and embarks on an adventure that will earn her a place in the annals of history.
Thoughts: This sounds fun. Sort of like a comedic version of Raiders. I always say that the easiest way to find an idea is to take a popular movie and come up with the comedy version of it. The understudy angle implies all sorts of struggle and shenanigans, which are both great for comedy. Sounds pretty good!

11 votes
Title: Yasuke
Writer: Stuart C. Paul
Logline: The true story of the first and only African Samurai in feudal Japan who rose from being a slave for the Jesuits to fighting as a Samurai in the unification of Japan.
Thoughts: You know me. I’m not a true story guy. But I like this idea a lot. Not only do you have the fish out of water element, which is one of the most bankable setups in screenwriting, but I like that we’re telling a unique story about a black slave. So many of these concepts I’m seeing with slavery are on the nose. This is whatever the opposite of on the nose is. And that’s what makes it sound so cool.

11 votes
Title: Wheels Come Off
Writer: Kryzz Gautier
Logline: In the year 2065, a fiery teenager with a wild imagination, her paraplegic mom, and their clueless robot struggle to navigate the post-apocalypse; but when the mother’s wheelchair breaks, the trio must venture out into the dangerous “outside” for a chance to survive.
Thoughts: Let me say this. If you would’ve sent me the logline for Street Rat Allie Punches Her Ticket without context, I would not want to read it. But that screenplay turned out to be great. This seems to exist in that same universe, so I’m curious about it. But, if I’m being honest, the logline reads a little messy.

11 votes
Title: Jellyfish Days
Writers: Matthew Kic, Mike Sorce
Logline: A young woman and her devoted boyfriend’s lives are dramatically altered by a medical procedure that could potentially quadruple their lifespans.
Thoughts: This is a classic “And” logline. Annnnndddd?????? It could quadruple their lives AND then what? Where’s the conflict. Without conflict, it’s an idea. It’s not yet a movie. Maybe the movie is hidden in a longer logline but then I would’ve liked to see that logline. It’s not a bad idea. It’s just incomplete.

11 votes
Title: Indigo
Writer: Ola Shokunbi
Logline: An art thief who takes priceless objects from museums and private collections and redistributes them to their original countries of ownership is tracked by a dogged FBI Agent across the globe.
Thoughts: This seems a little too “do-gooder” to me. It’s like, ohhhh, you’re such a good person for returning these items to their rightful countries! How good of you! That’s so good! You must feel really good about yourself. Give me a break. Someone else read this and let me know if the FBI agent wins. Cause if they do, I’ll give it a read.

11 votes
Title: Candlewood
Writers: Jason Benjamin, Jessica Granger
Logline: In 1992 a seaplane crash in a lakefront community sparks a relationship between three young sisters and the mysterious, injured female pilot.
Thoughts: All right. A plane crash slant on Little Women. I’m with Larry David on this one. No more Little Women stories for me. But seriously, there’s a certain lack of dramatic excitement involved in stories where the plot seems to be about people becoming friends. It’s lightweight. There’s not enough conflict. I’m not saying it never works. There are, of course, many great movies about friendship. But it’s hard to get excited about reading screenplays with that setup is all I’m saying.

11 votes
Title: Believe Me
Writers: Hannah Mescon, Dreux Moreland
Logline: An absurdist biopic chronicling the many rises and falls of Donald Trump, culminating with that fateful night at the 2011 Correspondent’s Dinner.
Thoughts: What’s that old adage? Know your audience? Mescon and Moreland certainly know their audience by throwing a Donald Trump script into the Hollywood butter churner. And, to their credit, they’re giving us an unexpected angle. I’m not aware of what happened at the 2011 Correspondent’s Dinner. But I’m, like a lot of people, burnt out on political stuff so I probably won’t check this out.

12 votes
Title: Symphony of Survival
Writer: Daniel Persitz
Logline: The incredible true story of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich writing an epic symphony during the deadly World War II siege of Leningrad — a work of art so powerful it would save him and his family, all while helping to unite his people with the Allies.
Thoughts: Hmmmm… Part of me commends the writer for coming up with a new angle on World War 2 subject matter. The other part wonders if we’re stretching at this point. What’s next? The story of the German chef who created the strudel that ignited Germany’s appetite for world dominance? Where do we draw the line for World War 2 ideas???

12 votes
Title: MICHAEL BAY: THE EXPLOSIVE BIOPIC
Writer: Sean Tidwell
Logline: Packed with enough C4 to split an asteroid in two, this tell-all Michael Bay origin story reveals the explosions that defined him, the fire that ignited his little heart, and the fate that sealed his Hollywood destiny.
Thoughts: Very fun idea. Maybe a few years late but a satirical take on the master of the mindless blockbuster framed within one of these ubiquitous cradle-to-grave biopic formats? Lots of possibility for hilarity here. There’s only one thing wrong with this concept. And that’s that it’s one slot below the funniest concept on the list. Which is………

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12 votes
Title: The Masked Singer
Writers: Mike Jones, Nicholas Sherman
Logline: Mickey Rourke loses his mind after he’s forced to take a gig on television’s highest rated show: The Masked Singer.
Thoughts: Literally couldn’t stop laughing when I read this. First of all, Mickey Rourke thought he was above being on the Iron Man 2 set. He couldn’t stop complaining in one of the most professional and high-level productions in the business – a giant Marvel film. Can you imagine how angry he would be if he had to do a Masked Singer episode, the current bottom of the barrel for celebrities to get screen time. I honestly couldn’t imagine a single minute going by in this movie that wasn’t funny. It’s a genius concept.
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12 votes
Title: Lady Krylon
Writer: Brandon Constantine
Logline: Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into the real world.
Thoughts: “…after the art starts bleeding into the real world.” What. Does. That. Mean??????? Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel where the characters they’ve painted come alive to fight by their side. I don’t know if that’s what happens but that’s how you want to write it. You want to actually TELL. US. WHAT. HAPPENS.

13 votes
Title: Rabbit Season
Writer: Shanrah Wakefield
Logline: Supernatural horror about a woman stalked through a dark city park by the most monstrous manifestation of manhood during her walk home from her high school reunion.
Thoughts: Seems like a supernatural version of Get Home Safe, which isn’t a bad idea. It’s going to be hard to top that script though with the voice being so strong. Also, not sure how you extend a chase through a park for 90 pages. I can walk through most parks in five minutes.

13 votes
Title: Loud
Writer: Whit Brayton
Logline: A famed experimental musician finds himself embroiled in the race to solve Earth’s primary existential threat: A deafening sound that never stops, forcing all of humanity to survive in silence.
Thoughts: This is one of the most interesting entries on the list but not for the usual reasons. If you have this annoying sound as the main source of conflict, then won’t you annoy audiences by playing it? Or will it just be implied and we’ll sit in silence the whole movie? I do like the unique antagonist though. I’ve never seen that before. Curious about this one.

13 votes
Title: Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel
Writer: Michael Shanks
Logline: A man wakes up trapped in a mysterious hotel room. All alone in a mind-bending prison, his only chance for escape is teamwork: with himself.
Thoughts: First of all, I love this title. I don’t know why but something about it tickles my curiosity. As for the concept, these super-cheap contained trippy ideas that focus on multipel versions of the same character – I see them a lot. And they’re REALLLLY HARD to extend out to a full 90 minutes. So I’m skeptical but, hey, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

13 votes
Title: Hot Girl Summer
Writer: Michelle Askew
Logline: After witnessing a drug deal gone wrong, thirteen-year-old (and exceptionally awkward) Beatrice accidentally finds herself in the middle of an underground drug ring…and on the perfect route to having a proper hot girl summer.
Thoughts: I don’t think you should ever include parenthesis in loglines. They always gum up the logline and loglines are meant to be clean and easy to read. The one exception, though, is comedy loglines. You can have more fun with those. And the parentheses, ironically, are actually what save this logline. Cause without knowing that a girl who was trying to be hot was “exceptionally awkward,” I wouldn’t have understood the point.

13 votes
Title: The College Dropout
Thomas Aguilar, Michael Ballin
Logline: A young Kanye West’s intimate journey to create his seminal first album that reinvented hip hop music.
Thoughts: You knew it was coming, right? We all knew it was coming. In an industry dead set on excavating every musical biopic opportunity it can find, Kanye was going to be in the mix at some point. To be fair, Kanye is one of the more interesting individuals out there. He doesn’t follow the flock. He’s bi-polar. He’s had tragedy that’s defined him. There’s a lot to dig into there. But, in the end, it’s still a music biopic. You can’t escape that prison.

13 votes
Title: Air Jordan
Writer: Alex Convery
Logline: The wild true story of how an upstart shoe company named Nike landed the most influential endorsement in sports history: Michael Jordan.
Thoughts: Just when I thought the list couldn’t get more unoriginal… they did it. Does this story really need to be told?? You’re talking to someone who loves Michael Jordan! I used to go watch him play in the old Chicago Stadium. I should be the prime audience here and I even think this is the most boring angle into this man. We get it. Nike was lucky to get Jordan and the two sides flourished for 30 years together. There, I just told you the entire story.

14 votes
Title: *Weird
Writer: Augustus Schiff
Logline: An autistic kid tries to do normal college things — making friends, figuring out if girls like him, getting over his mom’s death — while seeing life in his own “musical” way.
Thoughts: You never know if these tug-at-the-heartstrings scripts are going to be cheesy and maudlin or complex interesting character studies. So I’ll reserve judgement here. But based on the logline alone, I’m getting a slight “try hard” vibe.

15 votes
Title: Whittier
Writers: Filipe Coutinho, Ben Mehlman
Logline: While looking into a client’s murder, a Los Angeles social worker stumbles on a political conspiracy in the wake of the 1987 Whittier earthquake.
Thoughts: I like murder mysteries that collide with unexpected scenarios. So I like that there’s an earthquake angle to this investigation. Seems like Coutinho and Mehlman are Chinatown fans. If you’re going to be inspired, why not be inspired by the best?

15 votes
Title: Homecoming
Writers: Murder Ink (Brandon Broussard, Hudson Obayuwana, Jana Savage)
Logline: Ten years after graduation, one of New York’s most eligible bachelors and his eccentric wanderlust wingman try to pull their recently divorced friend out of his rut by taking him back to Howard University’s legendary Homecoming for the best weekend of their lives.
Thoughts: I don’t have much reaction to this logline since I don’t know what’s legendary about Howard’s homecoming. Seems very specific. But I love that these three writers have marketed themselves with this very memorable name. It can be hard to remember writers so anything that set you apart is helpful. If there are any 2-team or 3-team writers out there, I’d consider stealing this approach. Just make sure your name is as cool as “Murder Ink!”

15 votes
Title: Grizz
Writer: Connor Barry
Logline: A car accident strands a young paramedic in the rugged Pacific Northwest where she is hunted by a ravenous grizzly bear.
Thoughts: We’ve had a couple of bear-hunts-person scripts reviewed here on the site. One of them was pretty good. As far as this one that’s made the Black List, it seems too standard. You got to gussy it up a little, maybe tell us more about the main character. Anything to add more specificity. The less specificity you add, the more generic your premise will sound. Never forget that!

16 votes
Title: Mr. Benihana
Writer: Chris Wu
Logline: When a short Japanese kid from post-war Tokyo decides to make it big in the US of A, he discovers a winning recipe of exploiting his heritage with good old-fashioned American entertainment, to the great shame of his traditionalist father. This is the larger-than-life immigrant story of the OG daredevil playboy tycoon: the one-and-only Rocky Aoki.
Thoughts: I don’t know who this guy is and I’m biopic’d out. So I can’t muster a shred of excitement for this one.

17 votes
Title: In The End
Writer: Brian T. Arnold
Logline: In the near future, terminal patients are given the opportunity to go out with a bang with personalized VR “perfect endings.” But when the best Transition Specialist gets far too close to a patient, he finds himself questioning everything in his life.
Thoughts: Noooooooooo! You had such a good logline until the last eight words. “He finds himself questioning everything in his life” is literally the equivalent of writing, “I give up on this logline.” I’m going to promote my logline service a SECOND TIME in this article because, clearly, half of Hollywood needs it. $25. E-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “Logline.” I will help you!!!!

18 votes
Title: Mercury
Writer: Stefan Jaworski
Logline: When a first date takes a dangerous turn, down-on-his-luck Michael risks everything to save his newfound love from her past. Little does he know, the night — and his date — are not what they seem. Michael soon finds himself on a high-octane cat-and-mouse race across the city to save himself and uncover the truth, armed with nothing but his wit, his driving skills, and a 1969 Ford Mercury.
Thoughts: Can you market an entire concept around a car? Let’s see. “Christine” did it. “Gran Torino” did it. So yeah, I guess you can. But this logline is a mess. Neither people NOR nights are what they seem? So this is supernatural?? But it’s also a first date movie. And then also a cat-and-mouse movie? If the writer puts all these pieces together in a cohesive way, I’ll be happy. But usually when I see loglines this messy, I see scripts this messy.

19 votes
Title: Wait List
Writer: Carly J. Hallman
Logline: A troubled millennial from small-town Texas will do anything to get into her top-choice law school, including murder.
Thoughts: The logline is a little thin but the premise is strong enough that I can see a movie here. Remember what I always say – if you’ve got a dead body, you’ve got a movie.

19 votes
Title: Ultra
Writer: Colin Bannon
Logline: When an ultramarathoner learns he is one of ten contestants chosen to take part in a secret race known as “the hardest race on earth,” he is forced to confront his past when he realizes there are deadly consequences for breaking the rules.
Thoughts: Is this the script sale I covered recently in the newsletter? Or is it a competing idea? Either way, Colin Bannon seems to be one of the only people on this list who understands strong high concept ideas. And he gets extra points for not writing a script about the Michael Jordan flu game.

21 votes
Title: The Villain
Writer: Andrew Ferguson
Logline: The completely outrageous and completely true story of “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli — from his meteoric rise as wunderkind hedge fund manager and pharmaceutical executive to his devastating fall involving crime, corruption and the Wu-Tang Clan — which exposed the rotten core of the American healthcare system.
Thoughts: As we’ve established too many times to count, I’m not a fan of the biopic. However, if you’re going to do one, pick an interesting person. Martin Shkreli is like a real-life movie villain. His evilness is almost too good to be true. If you were to force me to read a biopic from this list, The Villain would be my first choice, hands down.

23 votes
Title: Killer Instinct
Writer: Lillian Yu
Logline: After a Hollywood assistant is publicly fired for admitting while on a conference call that he’d love to kill his boss, he finds his boss dead in the office the next morning and goes on the lam to figure out the real culprit, all while being hunted by his boss’s assassin.
Thoughts: This sounds fun! I didn’t love Yu’s previous Black List entry but this one feels more grounded, like something she could wrangle in. With Cicada, I felt like she didn’t know that world as well as the writers who dominated that space.

25 votes
Title: Divorce Party
Writer: Rebecca Webb
Logline: Patricia Ford feels pretty good about trading her South Boston roots for a “perfect” life on New York’s Upper East Side, until everything falls to shit and her raucous girlfriends throw her a Divorce Party at the home she’s about to lose. As the night goes from wild to totally insane, Patricia takes back control of her life.
Thoughts: Sounds very ‘girl power.’ But I’m more interested in ‘concept power,’ which this doesn’t seem to have a lot of. I do like the irony inherent in the title. A divorce is a sad/bad/depressing thing. Therefore, we’re used to seeing it next to sad/bad/depressing words. Not fun words like “party.” Which is why irony is so powerful. The reader thinks, “Wait? Party? Why are they partying for a divorce?? Let me check this out.”

30 votes
Title: See How They Run
Writer: Lily Hollander
Logline: A blind mother moves into a remote farmhouse with her young daughter, but the mystery of the home’s previous inhabitants intrudes upon her attempts to repair their relationship.
Thoughts: This logline is pretty bereft of details. Which is why the writer’s lucky it finished so high on the list. Because even though the logline itself doesn’t get me excited, I’m guessing the execution has to be pretty good to get 30 votes.

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32 votes
Title: Cauliflower
Writer: Daniel Jackson
Logline: Under the cruel guidance of a mysterious coach, an ambitious high school wrestler struggles to become a state champion while battling a bizarre infection in his ear that both makes him dominant in his sport and threatens his sanity.
Thoughts: I’m happy with this finishing number one on the list because it’s got a bunch of weird things going on that make me curious. The mysterious coach. The ear infection. The implication that the ear infection gives him some sort of advantage. Him losing his sanity. That’s how I like my Black List concepts to be baked up. In weird sauce. Now I just hope that the execution answers all these questions!
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One final thought. The other day we talked about hustle being one of the primary ingredients for success. Well, here’s your chance to practice it. Every entry on the Black List comes with the corresponding manager and agent representing that writer. If any of these ideas sound like the kind of scripts you write, query that agent or manager with your logline. See if they’ll read it. Some, like the top guys at Verve, will be too busy. But you might be surprised at how many people respond to you. To get their contact info, just sign up for IMDB Pro and shoot them an e-mail. Good luck!

This weekend I watched two movies, Shang-Chi and Red Notice. Although I don’t live and die by Rotten Tomatoes scores, I did check the two RT scores for these movies and saw that, for Red Notice, it got a 40%, and Shang-Chi a 92%. I’m going to use today’s post to make an argument why those scores should be reversed. The problem with Red Notice, in my opinion, is that people (critics, in particular) didn’t realize what it was trying to do.

First, it’s giving you an alternative to big fun superhero movies. The superheroes in Red Notice are the outsized personalities of its three leads. Everybody is funny, everybody is charming, and everybody, of course, has a ten gigawatt smile. Second, everybody involved in this movie wanted only one thing: to make audiences feel good. We’re living in a tough day-to-day environment with a lot of polarization and a lot of anger. These guys said, “Let’s make everyone forget about that for two hours.” And, for the most part, they succeeded.

The film, which I’d pitch as Rush Hour meets The Da Vinci Code meets Raiders of the Lost Ark, follows FBI agent John Hartley (The Rock) as he tries to capture the most notorious art thief in the world, Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds), who is attempting to steal three bejeweled eggs that belonged to Cleopatra, the entire set being worth 300 million dollars. As the story unfolds, Hartley and Booth must work together to stop a third thief, The Bishop (Gal Gadot) from obtaining those three eggs.

Red Notice got me thinking about a Hollywood movie mainstay: The “Turn Your Brain Off and Just Enjoy Yourself” movie. A lot of cinephiles haaaaaaaaaayte this type of movie. They want their Moonlights. They want their Spotlights. Anything that doesn’t challenge the mind is a waste of their time. But you have to remember that the large majority of moviegoers don’t watch those movies. They just want to be entertained. Which Red Notice does.

Now all “Turn Your Brain Off and Just Enjoy Yourself” movies are not created equal. There are good versions and there are bad versions.

Good Version: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Bad Version: Geostorm

Good Version: John Wick
Bad Version: 6 Underground

Good Version: Shazam!
Bad Version: The Do-Over

The question is, what is the difference between the two? If you’re setting out to write one of these movies, how do you make sure you write John Wick and not 6 Underground? And I think I know the answer. Laziness. The bad versions of these movies always seem to have more cliches in them. Always seem to have less thoughtful plot beats in them. They seem to be less creative in all the key areas. For example, the whole Continental Hotel thing in John Wick really helped set that movie apart because it built a bigger mythology into the assassin world than your garden variety spy flick.

To put it more succinctly, the bad versions of these films feel like they never got past a second draft. For those of you new to screenwriting, the second draft of a screenplay is where you’re still figuring out how your story comes together. You’re using the second draft, mostly, to fix all the sloppy stuff in the first draft. Then, once you’ve painted a lot of that dry wall, you can start to decorate the interior. But you’re probably not going to finish those decorations until the sixth draft. There’s a whole lot left to figure out in the story.

(Random Star Wars reference ahead) This is why The Phantom Menace was such an oblong clunky experience with little good and a whole lot more bad. It’s because George Lucas famously only wrote one draft. Screenwriting doesn’t favor the lazy. It is a craft that rewards writers who challenge every scene and plot beat and character they’ve written and ask themselves, “Can I make this better in the next draft? And then the draft after that. And then the draft after that.”

Red Notice isn’t a perfect movie but it’s perfect at what it’s trying to do – which is give you 2 hours of pure entertainment. Get to the stuff at the end when World War 2 comes into play and tell me you don’t become giddy. It was like a comedic version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had a blast watching this and unless your heart is made of rock, I expect you to like it as well. It kind of has that old-school “line up around the block early 2000s Hollywood” vibe that’s been missing from the industry for a while.

Meanwhile, I checked out Shang-Chi because it was free on Disney +, and I can’t say I felt the same way about it. It started off strong. I loved that out-of-control bus scene inspired by Spider-Man 2. I was digging the main character, Shaun. He played the underdog role well and he was funnier than I thought he would be.

But the whole movie went to Garbage Town as soon as they traveled to the sacred forest. All of a sudden there were dragons and random big dog monsters and about 60 scenes in a row of people sitting around, talking in rooms about their daddy issues. It went from this really cool movie to the world’s most boring superhero flick (not including The Eternals, of course). They even brought back one of the most disliked characters in the Marvel Universe, that dumb Mandarin guy from Iron Man 3.

But the biggest problem with the film was that Marvel, once again, displayed its achilles heel, giving us a 200 million dollar CGI ending it paid 20 million dollars for. You had dumb dragons flying around, as well weird mini-dragons. And people trying to break into some giant cave door. It was so dumb and pointless. This same CGI overload was a problem in Black Widow and Black Panther. The difference is that those movies were good enough to withstand those endings, whereas Shang-Chi was not. They should’ve kept this movie back in San Francisco. That’s where it was working. A huge Marvel letdown.

On the TV side of things, I checked out two shows. The first was the Will Ferrell Paul Rudd Apple show, The Shrink Next Door. You know how when you start watching something and you can tell immediately that it’s not going to work? There’s either a shot or a scene or a character that lands with a big thud? Something about what you’re watching feels disjointed, uncalibrated, off.

That was this show.

We start off with this pointless behind-Will-Ferrell walking scene where he’s in a beekeeper suit and I immediately knew. “Here we go! Quirky for quirk’s sake opening!” And then we cut to Paul Rudd at a party playing this over-the-top persona he clearly isn’t right for. I knew right then that whatever they were attempting to do with this show wasn’t going to work. I kept watching but every subsequent scene only confirmed what those first couple of scenes told us – that this was going to be Lame City. It’s too bad because I really like both actors. But this show is not worth your time.

Which leads me to a show that IS worth your time if you love interesting screenwriting stuff – the show “You” on Netflix. “You” is about a more charming version of Christian Bale’s American Psycho character, a New York bookstore owner named Joe Goldberg. Joe falls in love with a girl who comes into his store, Beck, and starts stalking her, learning everything about her, and then strategically placing himself in situations where they’ll meet so as to, ultimately, become her boyfriend.

The reason this show makes me all slobbery for screenwriting is because it tackles two huge screenwriting pillars. The first is dramatic irony. If you don’t remember what dramatic irony is, it’s one of the most powerful storytelling tools a writer has in his toolbox and basically gives the reader more information than one of the main characters.

“You” is the most aggressive use of dramatic irony I’ve ever seen. I’m going to spoil a few things here, but nothing past the third episode. Joe clones Beck’s phone so that he has access to all her texts, all her social media, all her e-mail, all her calls. He knows everything about Beck as soon as she knows it. Joe is also a killer. He kills Beck’s hookup buddy so as to clear a path to become her boyfriend. And when her best friend starts getting in the way as well, he looks for ways to eliminate her too.

This creates one of the more interesting relationship shows you’ve ever watched because when Joe and Beck are together, we know that there’s this entire other world going on beneath the surface that’s paved the way for this relationship to happen. It makes every single one of their conversations exciting because there’s always an element of subtext involved (that’s a dramatic irony bonus – it automatically creates conversation subtext).

If you’ve ever underestimated what dramatic irony can do for you, check this show out. Because it’s dramatic irony on nitroglycerin. There is never a moment where there isn’t more going on in a scene than just a conversation. There are always several layers UNDERNEATH.

The other crazy thing about this show is it demonstrates just how far you can push a character and still make him sympathetic. Despite everything I just wrote, you will root for Joe and Beck to be together. How is it that a writer can make you root for a character who does such despicable things? Well, watch the show. Because it shows that, with several clever writing tricks, you can make almost anybody sympathetic.

In this case, the guy that Beck was hooking up with was the world’s biggest jerk. He was mean to her. Didn’t care about her. Said a lot of nasty things to her. Only called at 2 am when he was drunk. So when Joe kills him, we’re actually happy. We like Beck a lot and we didn’t want her to be with this guy. And then, with her friends, they’re bad as well. One of them, in particular is super-controlling and manipulative and uses Beck and also keeps her from chasing her dream. So we want Joe to get rid of her.

Another thing that really helps when you have a bad person is voice over. “You” has more Joe voice over than it does regular dialogue. Joe is always taking us through his thought process. Sometimes it’s creepy. But mostly, it’s motivated by good intentions. The more we hear someone talk about why they’re doing things, the more likely we are to understand them. Whereas, if there was no Joe voice over and we saw him kill people, we’d probably hate him.

And they do cheap ‘save the cat’ things as well. There’s a kid who lives in the apartment next to Joe whose step-dad is abusive and Joe helps the kid cope, always giving him books from his store and giving him a shoulder to cry on. It’s audience manipulation at its finest but, hey, it works. Who isn’t going to like a character who helps a kid living with an abusive family?

So from a screenwriting perspective, this show is worth checking out because it does things you’re not supposed to do and has figured out a way to make them work – mainly that the protagonist is a stalker-slash-serial killer and we still want him to end up with the girl. I haven’t run into too many movies or shows that have been able to pull something like that off. Which is why I’m so impressed. Check it out if you can!

Deadline for Sci-Fi Showdown is tonight (Thursday) at 11:59 pm pacific time. Details for entry ARE HERE

I was going to save this for the newsletter but what the hell. It’s Sci-Fi Week and what’s more Sci-Fi than The Matrix?

So let’s go back in time for a second. I remember seeing the Matrix trailer during the Superbowl and reacting exactly how Keanu Reeves reacted. “Whoa.” There was so much going on at that time in Hollywood. George Lucas was about to release the first Star Wars movie in 15 years. That’s all anybody could talk about, was the lead up to that movie.

And then you had this random flick from a couple of directors nobody had ever heard of starring an actor who most people felt was on the downslide, and yet when it was all said and done, the polls were unanimous. The Phantom Menace was a bust. The Matrix was the future.

The lead up to the sequels was the most heavily discussed lead up to any movies ever. There’d be daily articles about how the Wachowskis were building entire freeways for action scenes. Or how the famous (infamous?) burly brawl set piece had taken more days to shoot than most studio movies.

And so it was heartbreaking when the movies came out and they were such a mess. To give you some insight into how big of a dud those movies were, it’s important to remember that Quentin Tarantino was at his peak popularity at the time. The only modern filmmakers he was intimidated by were the Wachowskis. And the Matrix sequels had the potential of putting the zeitgeist king in their shadow. He was legit afraid of them.

What do you think his reaction was after watching an early matinee of the film on its opening day? “This is what I was worried about??” he said. He left Matrix Reloaded with zero fear of the Wachowskis ever again. Which might seem pompous but anyone who watched that movie knew that the Wachowskis had some deep set issues in their writing.

Their approach to narratives was laborious. Their favorite scenes tended to feature characters espousing endless exposition. They overcomplicated their mythology until it became nonsensical. And, on top of it all, they didn’t have a good plan for their story. The overall plot goal was strong – defeat the machines and destroy the Matrix – but literally every other aspect of the script felt fuzzy, like they’d only given cursory thought to it.

Despite all of this, I still love The Matrix. I believe it was one of those pivotal game-changing moments in Hollywood history that redirected the industry. And for that reason, when I heard that they were making a new Matrix movie, I was ecstatic. Now some of you might say, Carson, you just listed all these reasons why the Wachowskis suck. What makes you think anything’s going to change now?

Fair question.

I don’t know that it is going to change. But there are a few things that I find encouraging. Number one, there has never been a time in history where the dilemma of being too “plugged in” is more relevant than right now. I can’t even tell you how much more dependent I am on machines now than I was in 1999. We didn’t even have Instagram in 1999. Hell, we didn’t even have Twitter! *If* the script really leans into this theme of what being plugged in means in 2021, I think it has the potential to be powerful.

Two, the Matrix sequels were rushed. It’s hard to write any script in a short amount of time. It’s even harder to write a sequel in that time. And it’s harder still to write two sequels in that time. I would go so far as to say they never stood a chance. They rushed it, which is exactly why the movies feel the way they do – big and sloppy. That wasn’t the case with Resurrections. They’ve had 15 years to come up with an idea.

And finally, we have the x-factor, which is that there’s one Wachowski instead of two. When you have two writers, each writer tends to favor certain things. I’m hoping that the Wachwoski that *didn’t* do the movie is the one obsessed with ten minute exposition monologues and stuffing as much mythology into the story as possible. I’m hoping that the Wachowski that *did* do the movie is the one who favors a lean storytelling style, like we got in the first Matrix.

As some of you have pointed out, plot details of Ressurections have already leaked. I am avoiding those. So, if those leaks are accurate and if they point out that everything I’m about to say is wrong? Well, I guess I’ll find that out when the movie premieres. Now let’s get into the trailer…

What’s interesting about watching this trailer is that I didn’t have any expectations. I didn’t go into it convinced the movie was going to be great. I didn’t go into it convinced it was going to be terrible. Truly, I went into it as open-minded as I have in a long time for a franchise. And I felt I was rewarded for that mindset.

The first thing I noticed was how different the cinematography was. The Matrix is known for that green tint. Every movie between 1999 and 2004 had a green tint as a result. Even indie films about pregnant teenagers had a green tint. I like that Wachowski recognized that repeating that green tint would date the movie. By moving into this more vibrant color palette, it gives the Matrix a completely fresh look. You need that to let people know, “This isn’t your daddy’s matrix.”

Once the trailer gets going, you start to get a feel for the story they’re going to tell. It seems that Neo was placed back in The Matrix and is going to, once again, get pulled out by Morpheus and his team. This brings up questions such as, are they going to do a soft-reboot of the film a la The Force Awakens? In which case I believe a lot of people are going to feel cheated.

Or are they – and this is the route I’m hoping they’ll take – use the unique mythology of the Matrix to play into the repeating nature of the system? Deja-vu, glitches, memories, dreams. Some people have complained that a lot of shots from the trailer are taken from the first films. Well, maybe that’s the point. Maybe the Matrix is repeating the same events and Neo has to find a way to stop it.

With that said, I do wish there was a little more “new” going on. I like the Doogie Howser opening. Without question, he’s a bad guy, there to specifically get inside Neo’s head so they know what he’s thinking and can continue to control him. Carrie-Anne Moss looks way better than I thought she’d look. Keanu looks great although he sort of looks like he does whenever he’s walking around LA. I like the blue-haired chick. She feels like she’s going to steal the movie.

As far as the action goes… I mean, let’s be honest, this is where the movie is going to live or die. The awesome thing about The Matrix is that it can provide a type of action scene that no other franchise can match, even comic book movies – this mix between the real and the fantastical that’s, strangely, grounded in reality.

For example, if you look at a Spider-Man set piece, he’s fighting in the real world, yes, but he’s also fighting 1000 drones that can create illusions. Whereas, with the Matrix, you can only bend reality so much. So we get these heightened “real-world” action scenes that are bigger and better than your straight-up action set-pieces. James Bond on steroids with a side of DMT.

The action in the trailer looks good. But there isn’t yet a money shot. There are scenes that get right up to the “money shot” line but they don’t cross it. Like the girl flipping over the car. The guy walking through a door where reality is tilted. Or that mid-city cross-walk set piece where there are a million things going on at once. All of those look good. But not great.

The problem with changing the industry so radically is that you influence so many people who have, since, tried to elevate what you invented. Walking through a door where reality is 180 degrees upside-down doesn’t have the same punch after Christopher Nolan built an entire set-piece around the very same idea in Inception.

So I’m hoping they’re keeping their money shots under wraps until the movie, or, at the very least, until the final trailer.

I, for one, am more hopeful for this Matrix sequel than I was before I saw the trailer. And I’m going to say one last thing that’s probably going to tick some people off but I don’t care. I think a huge reason this looks good is because Lawrence Fishburne isn’t back. When I saw how much weight Fishburne gained for the sequels, that told me everything I needed to know about how little he respected the franchise.

I’ve heard numerous times that he’s a diva. That he wanted way more money than he deserved. I feel like he would’ve been an emotional drain on the entire set if he would’ve come back. Putting this new guy, the Candyman dude, in the role – think about how excited he is to be playing such an iconic character. I’m sure that that positive energy affected everyone. Because, whether you liked this trailer or not, you can’t deny that everyone looks engaged. They want to be there. They want to make a great movie. Now, did they make a great movie? We’ll have to wait and see. But you know my ass is going to be there opening night to find out.

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Hey, have a great sci-fi script with a killer concept? Want to get your own “Matrix” made? Enter Scriptshadow’s Sci-Fi Showdown screenwriting competition. I pick the best five concepts. You, the readers, vote on the best script, then I give that script a review. If I like it, we’re going to do everything in our power to get it made. The deadline is today (Thursday) at 9:59pm Pacific time. Details to enter are here! Good luck!

Today, I want to bring you back to one of the defining characters in cinema history. He was introduced to the world on May 19, 1999.

His name?

Jar-Jar Binks.

Jar-Jar Binks was the brainchild of George Lucas. And while you wouldn’t know it today, he was supposed to be the most important character in the prequel trilogy. He would start out as the comedic relief in Phantom Menace before becoming a wise master in Revenge of the Sith.

That never happened because the world revolted against him. But I’m not concerned about Jar-Jar’s fate in today’s post. I’m focused on how Lucas made a critical comedy mistake when constructing this character. A mistake that ensured he would not be the comedic relief he was meant to be. Want to know what this mistake was?

GEORGE LUCAS ACTIVELY TRIED TO MAKE JAR-JAR FUNNY.

Now we’re going to get into a trippy thought-provoking topic today so stay with me because it’s admittedly confusing but here’s the premise of the post: The act of trying to make something funny is what makes it unfunny.

You’ve probably met that person at the party who’s desperately trying to make everybody laugh. And, yet, the more he tries, the less funny he becomes. Why is that?

Well, when somebody is actively seeking validation from you through laughter, it creates a “try-hard” vibe that dilutes the humor. It becomes more about them getting you to laugh than you actually laughing.

That’s the vibe Jar-Jar Binks gives out whenever he’s in a scene. He is not interested in talking to Ani. He’s not interested in figuring out how to outwit Watto. He’s not concerned about how they’re going to get off this desert planet. Jar-Jar Binks is only there to stand in front of all of the other characters, look directly into the camera, and make you, the audience laugh.

He is the ultimate embodiment of a try-hard comedic character.

For comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at an earlier comedic character of Lucas’s, Yoda. Yoda is hilarious. He gets in a fight with R2-D2, whacking his cane against him. He makes a bunch of jokes that only he thinks are funny and he doesn’t care if you agree or not. He has this weird way of talking backwards. He orders this giant human around. He steals food.

Yoda doesn’t care if the audience laughs or not. He is existing inside the reality of the movie, which is why what he does is so funny.

This leads me to the three cornerstones of writing a good comedy script. They are the concept, the characters, and the scenes. However, it is how you approach these three cornerstones that decides whether your movie will be funny or not.

You are not trying to come up with a funny movie idea. You are trying to come up with a movie idea that will provide the opportunity for comedy. You are not trying to come up with funny characters. You are trying to come up with characters whose personas lead to organically funny actions. You should never try to write a “funny scene.” You should construct scenes that best open up the opportunities for funny moments.

Let’s go through these one at a time.

When coming up with a concept, you’re looking for a giant situation that creates the most opportunity for comedy. Wedding Crashers. That’s a concept that, in the title alone, you can start to see the opportunity for a bunch of funny scenes. And they come to you organically. You don’t have to force anything to find them.

Same thing with Night at the Museum. You get stuck in a museum overnight where everything inside the idea comes to life. So many funny scenes are going to come from that premise without you even having to try.

Conversely, look at the Adam Sandler comedy, Hubie Halloween. That movie is about a weirdo who stumbles around his town on Halloween night. It is the definition of “try-hard.” There’s no clear concept where you can imagine funny scenarios. It is solely about a character TRYING TO BE FUNNY on an unusual night of the year. Even before the movie has started, we get the sense that characters will be desperately attempting to make us laugh, just like the unfunny guy at the party.

This extends into character-creation as well.

You don’t want to be in the headspace of, “I need to make this character really funny.” That thought-process is what creates the problem. You’re going to bypass the movie and directly focus on making the audience laugh. Which is when they never laugh. It’s the Jar-Jar Binks effect.

Instead, create characters who provide the potential for being funny within the situations they’re in. Annie (Kristin Wiig) in Bridesmaids is this really jealous person. That’s the core of her character. It’s not, “Wacky Girl.” It’s “Jealous Girl.” Then, all the movie has to do is put Annie in a bunch of situations that expose her jealously.

Like a pretty teenager coming to buy a necklace at the jewelry store Annie works at. She’s excited about hanging out with her best friend later. Annie, meanwhile, has lost her best friend to this other chick who’s fast replacing her. So Annie starts making nasty quips to the teenager about how friendships never last, which devolves into insult-hurling, until Annie finally calls the customer the c-word.

It’s a really funny scene. But I never got the sense that the character was trying to make me laugh. All of her humor came via the insecurity she harbored due to her jealousy.

Finally, you want to extend this to your scene-writing. You should never try to write a “funny scene.” You should, instead, come up with a scene that provides you with the most potential for funny moments.

If you’re writing a golf comedy, for example, you want to look for unique scenarios that mine the best opportunities for laughs. So you put the angriest golfer in the world in a mini-golf course. Or you put him in a celebrity pair-up tournament. Without me even having to explain these scenes, you’re already thinking up funny moments.

All of this seems obvious after-the-fact. But I’m the one who has to read all the amateur comedies where the writers don’t think of this stuff. They don’t think of forcing Happy Gilmore to learn how to putt on a mini-golf course. They focus on the golf tournaments and love story only and their comedy ends up being bland.

When you do all this right, it comes together in a beautiful way and leads to lots of funny scenarios. For example, the movie, “Spy.” That movie is about an introverted CIA desk agent who must become a field agent for the first time. That idea creates a bunch of funny scenarios. The main character is going to be funny just through the sheer act of trying to learn the practice of spying on the job. And there are going to be plenty of scenarios that offer potentially funny outcomes. Just having to sit down with an international kingpin during lunch and convince her that you’re a regular person — that offers plenty of opportunities for jokes.

Finally, I’m the first to admit that the rules of comedy are complicated. We often laugh at things we’re not supposed to laugh at. Or didn’t think we’d laugh at. There are times, such as in “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective,” where the main character is clearly interested in making the audience laugh, and it still works. So I’m not saying that this is only way to write comedy.

What I am saying is this formula gives you the best chance of writing a good comedy script. Even if you can only get two out of the three in there, you still have a good chance of writing a good comedy. In the meantime, if you catch yourself writing lines, characters, or scenes in a desperate attempt to make people laugh, I can guarantee you that’s when your comedy isn’t going to work. And if you ever need a reminder of why, pop in every scene of Jar-Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. He’ll remind you. :)