Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: When a lonely and socially-stunted young woman mistakenly receives a severed thumb in the mail, she makes it her life’s obsession to return it to the hand it once belonged to–putting her on a collision course that will upend her world forever.
About: This script got on last year’s Black List, with 10 votes. Screenwriter Cesar Vitale has one TV credit, a show starring Peyton List (Cobra Kai).
Writer: Cesar Vitale
Details: 104 pages

Jessica Gunning for Addie?

The other day I said you either need to give us a strong concept or a strong character. Your script cannot survive without either. Today’s script shows that you can actually include BOTH if you want. We’ve got a flashy plotline as well as a flashy character. Let’s see how it worked out.

Addie has a serious case of antisocial personality disorder. In other words, she’s a psychopath. It’s not her fault. Her parents were drug addicts who both overdosed, which means Addie got tossed around the foster care system for years.

These days, she lives alone and works as a bagger at a local grocery store. Every day is a battle with Addie because she doesn’t feel empathy. If someone spills their groceries in front of her, she will not help. She just watches them pick their own groceries up right in front of her.

One day, Addie receives a thumb in the mail. The thumb is from a rich guy named Tyler. Tyler’s been kidnapped by his drug dealers, Dakota, Shawn, and Bug. They want a million bucks from his father to return him. Which is why they sent the father the thumb. Except they’re so stupid, they messed up the address and the thumb went to Addie’s address instead.

Excited about figuring out the thumb’s origins, Addie heads to the money drop-off point where Bug is waiting. She tasers him and brings him back to her apartment and starts questioning him. Unfortunately, Bug hit his head hard when he fell and soon dies. Addie then cuts him up and puts him in her fridge.

After some more investigating, she locates the business where Tyler is being held and heads there. She kills both Dakota and Shawn to save Tyler. But there’s a caveat to releasing Tyler. She wants to be his friend. She’s tried to make friends her whole life and she figured, if you save someone’s life, they HAVE to be your friend.

Tyler realizes that this girl is batshit insane and that he still has to escape, just like he had to before. But before he does, the cops show up, confused about who’s good and who’s bad. They start shooting and not everyone survives.

A quick side story regarding this review. The logline created a different expectation from what the story ended up being. The logline made it sound like us and the main character were on this journey together, trying to solve the mystery of where this thumb came from and why.

But that’s not the script. The script starts off in the villains’ lair, so to speak. We’re there when they cut off the thumb. As the story evolves, we’re with the bad guys just as much as we’re with Addie. In that sense, we’re waiting for Addie to catch up with what we know.

It’s a slight difference but an important one. Because you want your logline to convey what the accurate experience is going to be when the reader reads the script or else you risk disappointing them. I was disappointed for a while because I liked the logline version of the story better.  Eventually, the new way won me over. But just be careful about that as screenwriters. And, by the way, I do logline consults. They’re just 25 bucks (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). So I can help you with this.

Moving on to the script itself – the other day I was talking to a producer because a writer had sent me a good dark comedy. I asked the producer if he’d want to read it and he said, “Too hard to get off the ground. They never make any money.” I bristled at the response but after reading this script today, I understand where he’s coming from.

When I finished “Thumb,” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be crying, laughing, or satisfied that the goal had been achieved. In other words, these scripts can be hard to track. They’re riding a finer line than a straight comedy or a straight drama. Sure, when you ace the test, they’re great. But when you don’t, you always leave the reader a little confused about what they were supposed to feel.

I will say this, though – dark comedies are great canvases to create memorable characters. Whether you like Addie or hate her, you will remember her. Some of the strongest characters you can write in movies are characters who react the opposite to how normal people react.

There’s this funny yet heartbreaking scene where Addie goes on a date for the first time and has no idea what she’s doing. All she knows is that she hates sushi and that’s where the guy invited her. So, in her world, if you don’t like something, you simply bring your own food, which is what she does.

Addie’s every move is counterintuitive to normal human beings, which makes her fun to watch. You may not like what she does at times, but you’re always on the edge of your seat anticipating what she’ll do next. For all the fireworks behind The Hider’s recent sale, Robert Downey Jr. probably would’ve done better securing this role and playing Addie. She’s a more interesting character than The Hider for sure. :)

But I think this script breaks down as we move into the third act. I was not convinced I was viewing the authentic actions of a psychopath. It felt like sometimes we chose laughs (Addie’s obsession with Jack in the Box) or buzzy imagery (Addie watching TV with the decapitated head of Bug on her lap) as opposed to more genuine actions.

That’s one of the tricks when you write about mental disorders. You have to do a ton of research to make sure that the character stays consistent with their mental disease. Cause once you start guessing what they’d do or have them do something for a laugh instead, we lose faith in the character. The suspension of disbelief cracks.

Once we make it into the third act, Addie becomes obsessed with finding a friend. Every third sentence  is some variation of, “I want friends.” And I don’t think psychopaths want friends, right? Or they don’t care? Maybe I’m wrong but it didn’t feel honest. Which contributed to an already shaky tone that had been bee-bopping its way around throughout the second act.

WITH THAT SAID, I still thought the script was fun. I liked not knowing what was going to happen next. The plotting was pretty tight – it evolved in a pleasant way. And Addie was such a weirdo that anytime she was in a scene, you were at least entertained. For those of you who want a story with a better version of this character, check out the book, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. But, otherwise, this is still pretty good.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When relevant to the story, we need to know whether your character is attractive or unattractive. Addie works as a bagger at a grocery store. A handsome man named Nathan asks her out. Which was confusing. Addie is clearly strange. She doesn’t seem to wear nice clothes. She doesn’t work out. Her daily diet consists of coke, ice cream, burgers from Jack in the Box, chicken nuggets, and potato chips – which means she’s probably severely overweight. Why in the world would this handsome shopper ask her out? UNLESS she’s just a genetic beauty. In which case WE NEED TO KNOW THAT. In almost every story where there’s romance or dating involved, it’s important that we know how attractive the characters are.

Or, if it isn’t, it will be soon

The first newsletter in three months is a doozy. We’ve got a great script notes deal for the first four people who grab it. We have the announcement of a major SHOWDOWN. We have a breakdown of a sexy new horror film. I dissect a ton of new trailers, including one that shocked me with how good it makes the movie look. In another trailer, I pose the question: is a young horror auteur’s career already over? Did the Emperor ever have clothes? I then take on another short story sale, this one that nabbed an A-list actor, with a nifty little concept.

It is always a great day when there’s a new Scriptshadow Newsletter. If you’d like to be included in future newsletters, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and ask nicely. :)

Genre: Drama
Premise: Four of the richest people in the world, all of whom work in the tech sector, meet up for a weekend getaway, while the tech tools they’ve created incinerate the world.
About: Succession creator Jesse Armstrong wanted to make a movie about the tech bro world, specifically the “lack of self-awareness” prevalent with most tech billionaires. Word on the street is that he wrote and directed the film all within a six months period. The movie is now available to stream on HBO Max.
Writer: Jesse Armstrong
Details: 110 minutes

This was one of the movies I was looking forward to the most this year. Jesse Armstrong, of Succession fame, getting his first big shot at a feature, staying squarely inside of his wheelhouse by tackling another bunch of richy-riches. Felt like a home run.

We’ll get into whether it lived up to the hype in a second but first, I have to mention the strange Rotten Tomatoes scores for this film. As of today, it has an 80% critic score and a 25% audience score.

This is the oddest scoring pair I’ve seen on the reviewing aggregate site. Whenever there’s this much disparity between critics and audiences, it’s ALWAYS for some political reason. Yet, while politics are mentioned in the movie, it is blatantly apolitical. Which makes the low audience score even harder to reconcile.

Maybe this will make sense once we delve into the plot.

Mountainhead follows four tech bros: Randall (Steve Carell, aka Jeff Bezos), Jeff (Ramy Youseff, aka Mark Zuckerberg), Venis (newcomer Corey Michael Smith, aka Elon Musk), and Souper (Jason Swartzman).

Although the movie doesn’t do the greatest job explaining how these four know each other, they’re apparently best friends who come together every year to celebrate how many billions of dollars they have. This year, they’re meeting at Souper’s new mansion up in the mountains.

We know exactly how much money each of them has thanks to one of the most forced scenes that’s ever been written. In it, the group goes to the top of a mountain, takes off their jackets so they’re bare-chested and, in some sort of ritual, Souper writes their net worth on each of their chests. Venis has the most money. Randall is second. Jeff is third. And poor Souper isn’t even in the billion dollar club. He only has 600 million.

The crux of the plot is that Venis has just released new AI software that allows people to make realistic videos of whatever they want. Everybody starts making videos of charged subject matter and, because these videos are indistinguishable from reality, others believe they’re real, charging up the opposition, who then start attacking these people in real life.

But the real story emerges later in the script when Randall, who has just learned his cancer has returned, starts manipulating the group so that all of their resources can be put towards digitizing the human brain as soon as possible, allowing humans to upload their consciousness to a computer. Randall has been assured by Venis that, if Venis has the help of everyone here, he could digitize the human brain within five years.

The only problem is that Jeff doesn’t want to help Venis in this area. Keep in mind, nobody knows that Randall is terminal. That’s a secret. So, when Randall learns that Jeff isn’t on board, he soft-launches the idea of killing Jeff to the other two. At first, they don’t love it but Randall is convincing and soon, they plan the murder for that night. Unfortunately, none of these guys has the capacity or know-how to murder someone, which results in all sorts of attempted-murder hijinks.

Okay, so here’s the thing.

I have complicated feelings about this movie, lol.

At first, I hated it. But then it grew on me. And while I’m not convinced that it ever made its way into “good” territory, it definitely stayed within “interesting” territory throughout. It’s not like any other movie you’ve seen and, whether you liked Mountainhead or not, there’s value to that.

The main problem with the movie is the forced camaraderie.

Matt Damon notoriously called this out after Good Will Hunting. He said that the worst thing in movies was characters pretending to be friends despite it being clear that the actors had never spent a day with each other in their entire lives.

That’s why Good Will Hunting felt so genuine. All the actors in it really were friends. At the same time this was going on, Swingers came out. That movie also had a bunch of real-life friends in it. And you could see that on screen. The chemistry was genuine throughout.

When you watch Mountainhead, you’re very aware of what Matt Damon is talking about. These guys just showed up on set and had to act like they’d known each other their whole lives. So when the lack of chemistry bumped up against the writing, that inauthenticity became apparent.

Which is why I believe the movie grew on me. This was all shot on one set, this house. That means they shot it linearly. And you can feel that. Once we get to that second half of the movie, the chemistry got better, the timing got better, the line-reading got better. That’s because the actors had been hanging out for 15-20 days.

This brings us to the murder plot and that’s when the script almost salvaged itself. I know that portion of the movie was working because when Randall, Venis, and Souper sneak into Jeff’s bedroom to smother him with a pillow, I was insanely anxious. I was so nervous that Jeff was going to wake up and say, “What the fuck are you guys doing??” If the viewer is that anxious, your script is working.

From there, Armstrong makes a bold choice (spoilers). Normally, in a movie like this, they’d kill Jeff. And then they would have to figure out how to explain it away afterwards. But Armstrong doesn’t go in that direction. He makes all three of these tech bros the Pink Panther. They’re bumbling morons who have never had to do anything physical or real in their lives. They exist only on their computers. So they don’t know how to kill someone.

Which felt genuine to me. I know that Armstrong is being satirical here. But it actually makes sense that these people would be clueless about how to murder someone. There’s this sequence where they have Jeff locked in the sauna and they’re so clueless about how to kill him that they come up with this idea to pour gasoline in the room and then light it on fire.

But once they get the gasoline, they don’t know how to get it in there. So they pour it on the floor, then get a squeegee, and start pushing the gasoline in with the squeegee. It’s so ridiculous but it’s also kind of hilarious.

I think back to American Beauty and how it was critical for Sam Mendes to get two weeks of rehearsal time with the actors. Remember, he came from a stage background so practice was a huge part of his process. Kevin Spacey repeatedly mentions the importance of that rehearsal time as it allowed them to really figure out the characters.

That’s what Mountainhead needed. I would go so far as to say that if Armstrong had two weeks with these actors ahead of time, this is a vastly better movie. Cause you can see it on the screen as the actors get more comfortable with each other. In that end scene where they’re all at the table, after having forced Jeff into a deal that gave Venis a major part of his company, the timing and chemistry with all the little side remarks between everyone, was worlds apart from where they were in that awful mountain top scene.

I started this review thinking I was going to give this a “wasn’t for me.” But it’s too interesting of a failure for me to do that. I value movies that are different, that are not like other movies out there. And although Mountainhead has its faults, I still think it’s worth checking out.

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

What I learned: Armstrong is not a believer in meeting people in real life for research. He says he’s too anxious to meet people in the real world. He likes to do his research the old-fashioned way, through reading. He read a ton of stuff about real life tech bros and used little bits and pieces of them to fill in his characters.

The writers scored 2 million dollars for the sale of their Sci-Fi Story

Last week, I reviewed the 2-million dollar short story sale, “Drift,” by Ben Queen and Jason Shuman. The story follows a hostage trade between humans and aliens. Ben e-mailed me the next day and asked if I could take the review down as he was afraid it might affect the very precarious process of getting the movie made. I said sure and Ben was nice enough to offer an interview. So, here is the interview with him and his writing partner, Jason! Maybe we can finally get some insight into how to sell one of these short stories for ourselves!

Scriptshadow: Congratulations on selling your short story! A lot of screenwriters out there are desperate for information on how to sell a short story of their own. So I’d like to go through this in detail. How and when did you find representation?

Ben Queen: Years ago I wrote a black comedy script called One Track Mind as a writing sample which got me a manager and agent. I was at ICM back then I’ve been repped by other agencies over the years but more recently I’ve been at Verve – everyone there has been terrific.

Jason Shuman: I had been at CAA for over 12 years. Both my agents left the agency during the strike. So, I decided to see what else was out there agent-wise. Ben was already at Verve when we decided to team up for Cola Wars and was advocating for them as an agency. I trusted him and I’m so glad I did. Over this first year and a half with Verve, they have been nothing short of amazing.

Editor’s note: “Cola Wars” is another project that Queen and Shuman sold before Drift, which will be directed by Judd Apatow.

Scriptshadow: Before you wrote this short story, what were you hearing as writers (from reps, from producers you may have pitched) about short stories? Were you hearing “Write them?” Were you hearing nothing? What’s the feeling out there in Hollywood about short stories right now?

JS: I think short stories are having a real moment for sure. And I get it. Writing the full screenplay on spec can feel so final, like “this is the movie.” And a pitch can sometimes not be enough. These short stories are a great way to allow producers, executives, and filmmakers a detailed insight into what the film’s potential can truly be. And with the short story in hand, the collaboration process between the director and writer can hopefully be a lot easier.

BQ: We heard from one studio executive that they’re being submitted a lot of short stories right now. I know they’ve been a good way to get original ideas set up for the last few years. A lot of these have the feeling of mini-novels, or flashy movie treatments rather than slice-of-life short stories – less literary and more propulsive, you know?

Scriptshadow: When you decided to write a short story, why did you choose this one? Was it because your agents said people want high concept sci-fi right now? Or did you just go with your gut?

BQ: This was an idea I’d wanted to do for a long time. I first came up with it a few years ago and started doing research, talking to people in the world of the story. I have literally hundreds of pages of notes on this idea. When Jason and I started working together, he gravitated to the idea and we started working it out together. Last year we sat down with our agents at Verve and ran through some features we wanted to do. They pointed at this one (Drift) and told us that was something to focus on.

Scriptshadow: Have you written short stories before?

BQ: We’ve never tried this before!

JS: First time.

Scriptshadow: Have you received any advice from industry people about how to write a short story that sells? For example, has a producer said to you, “The key to writing a saleable short story is…”

BQ: I don’t know if there’s one key but it certainly helps to have a good idea and a character you can get behind. It really helps to feel like you know the world better than anyone. And it’s not a shortcut – short stories can take just as much time to write as a screenplay. So I’d say be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort to get it right. Scott Glassgold, one of our producers, and a true expert with these short stories, had a lot of great input throughout the writing process. But among all the advice he gave the most important was to stick the landing.

Scriptshadow: In general, if someone does want to write a short story, what would you suggest they write about?

BQ: I’d say it probably just needs to be a great idea for a movie. If you’re looking to write a piece of fiction for publication, that’s different obviously. But then make sure you really execute it as best you can.

JS: As with anything having to do with writing, it should always come from the heart. This being said, it does feel like the short story format plays best in certain genres like thriller, horror, sci-fi, or a combination thereof. But I bet a comedy could work if someone wanted to try it.

Scriptshadow: Can you take me through the process of how Drift sold? Was this months of planning? Or did it happen quickly? What went on between typing “The End,” to becoming the biggest bidding war sale of the year?

JS: It actually happened pretty fast. The final draft of the story (after months of re-writing of course) was sent into our reps on a Tuesday night. On Wednesday, it was sent out to a select group of directors. By Thursday, a number of those directors wanted to be a part of it. It was then sent into various studios, each with different director attachments. By Friday evening it had sold to Skydance.

Scriptshadow: Another thing people always ask me regarding short stories is word count. How long should the short story be? Is this something you thought about or no? Any advice on short story length?

BQ: I don’t know! I didn’t even check the word count on Drift. However many it took to write it and no more. If I had to guess I’d say it was about ten thousand words – which is a lot.

Scriptshadow: What is the biggest adjustment between writing a screenplay and a short story in your opinion?

BQ: For this type of story we broke it the same way structurally, mapped it out like we would a script. At the end of the day there was less dialogue and we intentionally held back a lot of the secondary character development to help streamline the read.

Scriptshadow: Now that you’ve sold the story, what’s the next leg look like? Do you write three drafts and then try to get the studio to greenlight it? What’s the plan look like going forward?

JS: Our plan is to put our heart and soul into the screenplay as soon as possible. This type of big-scale science fiction story is a real dream for us to write. And we want to convey everything that’s in the short story and more into a script everyone can be excited about.

Scriptshadow: Any final advice to screenwriters who are trying to sell a script or a short story. What would you tell them?

BQ: If you have an idea you care deeply about, think about the best way to communicate that feeling to others. Now decide what the best delivery system is: a short story? A screenplay? A short film? So much of this business is believing in something and trying to get others to see it the way you see it. So just always be thinking about your audience and how to connect. Rinse, repeat. :)

JS: Write what you are passionate about. It will come across on the page.

Today’s script asks, “What if Marriage Story actually had a plot?”

Genre: Drama
Premise: A rising movie star and her struggling playwright husband meet with a pretentious director and a manipulative intimacy coordinator to rehearse a sex scene. Over one chaotic day, power struggles, petty jealousies, and explosive accusations threaten their marriage–and the careers of everyone involved.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. Sam Rubinek is a young writer who was staffed on the show, Riverdale. The Canadian-born Rubinek was a graduate of the Warner Bros Television Writers Workshop.
Writer: Sam Rubinek
Details: 101 pages

Eiza González for Carson?

I’m still reeling from just how bad of a screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie has let himself become. Something switched in him when he became a director. It was like he didn’t think the screenplay mattered anymore (something he’s indirectly alluded to several times on X). Final Reckoning is the inevitable conclusion of that attitude. What a disastrous screenplay.

ANYWAY!

In order to get away from the stink of that film, it’s time to read about something the exact opposite – intimacy coordinators!

There’s been some spirited chatter about how ridiculous this position is in Hollywood. But I’m on the other side of the argument. I’m shocked that, for 50+ years, filmed sex scenes were the wild west. You would briefly chat about what to do in them then, once the cameras started rolling, anything that happened happened! That’s INSANE to me. So it made total sense to create this job.

But that doesn’t preclude the position from being made fun of. Writing a script about the job is actually quite smart. There are new things that pop up in society every so often and you get a brief window where a few lucky writers are able to chronicle them before they become old hat. It’s one of the few times you get to write something fresh, something that hasn’t been done before.

Let’s see how today’s writer dealt with it.

Fresh off becoming a movie star, Carson (a female btw) is filming her latest movie, a sort of artsy project with an up-and-coming pretentious director named Marcello. For one of the flashbacks in the movie, which details a former relationship, Carson was able to get her husband, playwright and sometimes actor, Jay, to play the role of the man in the romantic flashback.

In said flashback, the characters have sex, and this has necessitated a run-through of the sex scene, which will be guided by an intimacy coordinator named Perla. Perla seems to be the only one who wants to do this, for secret reasons that will be revealed later.

Marcello would rather be shooting scenes from the film, which is already in production. And both Carson and Jay see this as kind of ridiculous. They are married and therefore don’t believe they need an intimacy coordinator. But everyone is so scared and sensitive these days that there’s no way around it.

The story takes place over just a few hours, virtually real-time, as we begin to see that everyone has something going on. Carson, uncomfortable with her quick rise to fame, relies on booze and drugs to get by. Jay, feeling like the weak link in the relationship, is desperate to finalize Carson being in a play he’s written, which she hasn’t yet told him that she’s not going to do.

Marcello gets a call from his agent at the beginning of the day discussing rumblings of an old short film he made that’s been dug up and posted on the internet. The film could be construed as anti-semitic, which is causing the trades to come digging for a story.

And then we have intimacy coordinator Perla, who we learn is a bit of a stalker, campaigning hard to get this job so she could be in the presence of the beautiful and amazing Carson, someone she very well may be in love with. Perla goes hard at Carson’s marriage, using any chance she gets to emasculate Jay as the two prep for the sex scene.

Over the course of the next few hours, all of their lives will fall apart in some significant way. The goal will be to retain enough of themselves to fight again tomorrow.

There’s this sandwich place down the street from me called “All About The Bread.” With today’s script, we might as well call it, “All About The Dialogue.” There’s a lot of dialogue here, and most of it is quite good.

It’s nice timing because I’ve been running into some dialogue issues with some of the scripts I’ve been consulting on. Today’s script reminded me of one of the keys to getting dialogue right.

You have to be good at establishing WHO YOUR CHARACTERS ARE.

If you don’t, they become this vague amalgamation of a bunch of half-formed ideas. The problem with this is that you’re then unsure how to write the character’s dialogue. Cause if a character is a million different things, then they’re actually nothing.

It’s way easier to find a character’s voice if you create a one-sentence directive for yourself.

For example, if I designate my character “the sweet naive neighbor who sees the best in everybody,” then I know his dialogue will be soft and understanding. Maybe annoyingly polite. He might use phrases like, “Shucks,” and say things like, “It’s so pleasant to see you on this fine morning.”

When you hear the screenwriting advice of, “A reader should be able to tell which character is speaking without looking at their name,” this is how you achieve that.

Perla is a great example of this. She’s introduced as someone with a “soft-spoken, crunchy-granola hippy vibe.” Therefore, when characters apologize to her about something, it’s easy to figure out how she’ll respond. She will not respond with, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Which is generic. Instead, the actual dialogue from the script is, “It’s all love.”

Note how that’s something only a hippy-type would say.

Another thing that really makes the dialogue pop in this script is power dynamics. I talk about this in my dialogue book in more detail if anyone’s interested. Power dynamics bring all sorts of fire to your characters’ interactions.

In this case, the power dynamics play a huge role. Carson is “above” Jay on the power ladder not just because she’s a movie star, but because she’s a real actor and he’s more of a part-time actor. This means that, during the intimacy sequence, she’s subtly calling the shots and Jay has to go with it.

For example, there’s a sequence where they run through the dialogue in the scene and Perla tells them that they can ask for a “repeat” if the other person’s line read isn’t convincing. Jay says his next line and Carson says, “repeat.” Jay repeats it and Carson says, “repeat.” He says it again and she says, “repeat.” Repeat, repeat repeat.

Why is this relevant? Because the secret sauce to good dialogue is conflict. Unequal power in a scene is conflict, especially when the characters take advantage of that power.

Actually, this is the type of thing you only see in more advanced writing. So, if you’re using power dynamics to charge your dialogue, you’re in a good place in your screenwriting career. Cause most writers don’t know how to do it. Or, if they *do* do it, it’s by accident.

Speaking of advanced writing, I loved how all the characters had their own thing going on. Most writers would’ve stopped figuring out their characters at Jay and Carson. They wouldn’t have put much, if any, effort into Marcello and Perla. But, by doing so, it really kicks this screenplay up a notch. Marcello’s real-time cancelling is a killer subplot if there ever was one. And Perla’s secret obsession with Carson unravels in delicious fashion.

If there’s a weakness to the script, it’s that it’s a play. And Rubinek hasn’t done enough to adapt it for the screen. It’s not visually dynamic in any way. It is not a “show don’t tell” experience. And so, on screen, it risks feeling static. But I found the script itself to be compelling. I was really into these characters and their ultimate fates.

Would recommend it without hesitation.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Here’s how to properly use guiding parentheticals in dialogue.

JAY
I promised myself I’d finish that rewrite of the second act. Oscar gave me some notes–

CARSON
(teasing)
Oh, Oscar has some notes for you. I didn’t realize Oscar the Great and Powerful had notes on your play.

JAY (unserious)
Shut up.

Note how the parenthetical words are critical to understanding the tone of the responses. If they were not used, the reader would not only have interpreted the meaning incorrectly, but interpreted the exact opposite of what was meant. That’s the only time you need parentheticals in regards to the line’s meaning – when, if you didn’t use them, the line would be read completely wrong by the reader.