I couldn’t ignore all the buzz that Sinners was getting. It’s not easy to achieve both 90+ percent in critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. So, over to the local movie theater I went and strapped in for two hours of… well, I didn’t know what. I’d seen the fist trailer, which was vague, and nothing else. This is how I prefer to see movies if possible. I want to know as little as I can.

The story takes place in a 1932 Mississippi town – and yes, I was, as always, excited to be able to type out “Mississippi.” Identical twins Smoke and Stack, who used to work for Al Capone in Chicago, have returned home to start a new business venture. They’re going to open a dance hall.

For whatever reason, they’re adamant about starting their dance hall TONIGHT. You’d think maybe they’d spend a month putting the place together. But no, it must be tonight. By the way, it’s never explained why the urgency but maybe Ryan Coogler reads Scriptshadow and knows that the tighter the timeframe, the better.

Smoke and Stack put together their team throughout the day – getting their guitar man, their harmonica man, their door man, their food people, their liquor guys. And, as the sun sets, people start showing up.

Little do they know, just down the road, a vampire has crashed a couple’s home and immediately turns them into vampires as well. The three of them, who now are, also, an Irish folk band, show up at Smoke-Stack’s party and want to join. A little issue, though. They’re white and everyone here is black. So Smoke and Stack tell them to get lost.

Eventually, Smoke’s (or Stack’s) side piece girlfriend ventures out to ask the folk band why they’re still hanging around and she gets bitten. Therefore, when she comes back inside, she lures Stack into a back room and, during hanky-panky time, she bites him. Smoke catches wind of what’s going on and orders everyone but the staff to leave. And now, the games begin.

The folk band vampires immediately turn all of the leaving partygoers into vampires, which means there are a good 200 vampires outside eager to devour the staff. So they wait, and they taunt, and they tempt, and they trick, all in an attempt to lure the rest of the crew out and turn them into vampires. Eventually, it becomes an all-out war and nearly everyone dies.

So, how was it??

Was it as good as everyone’s saying?

Well, you know how I see things at this point. The first thing I’m looking at is not the acting, not the directing, not the visuals or the music. I’m looking at the script. And the script has problems.

I’ve seen these types of scripts before and they have a very significant issue that’s hard to overcome. That issue is that the main event – in this case, the party – is too small to get to right away but too big to get to too late. In other words, you can’t start the party at the beginning of the second act (pages 26-31). You’ll run out of steam before the climax.

However, the later the party starts, the more script you have to cover in the meantime. And what do you do with that time? The first act (pages 1-30) sets everything up. In this case, it sets up the brothers’ return. It sets up the purchase of the party building. It sets up all the characters who are going to be involved.

But, traditionally, when the second act begins, that’s when your characters need to go out on their journey. For example, that’s when Deadpool and Wolverine begin their journey to escape the world they’ve been banished to. In Sinners, the “journey” is the party.

But like I said, you can’t start the party too early. So this leaves this “No Man’s Land” between the end of the first act and the beginning of the party, where Sinners is clearly lost. Coogler’s solution is to extend his setup from 30 pages, to a full 45 pages, and so we get lost in this ENDLESS setup where, quite frankly, we’re bored out of our minds.

Now, in fairness, the reason I don’t think it bothered critics as much, is because they know what’s coming. They know Insane Vampire Party is coming. And when you know something big and flashy and sexy is coming, you’re more willing to suffer through an elongated setup. But there’s no question that this setup section is a disaster. It’s way too long.

Still in need to cover time before the real movie begins, Coogler then gets us to the party, but gives us this sort of “half party” where people are lingering about and chilling and not really into it yet. Again, we’re stuck in Screenplay No Man’s Land here. And it’s giving this movie all sorts of pacing issues.

In fact, the inciting incident, when the vampire folk band shows up at the party, doesn’t happen until 60-70 pages into the script! Which is insane. But, at least now the movie has begun.

So, once the movie truly begins, was it worth the wait? I would say…. Almost. Things get so crazy that there’s definitely entertainment value to be had here. And the music stuff is really good. There’s sort of like this music battle going on between the people inside the building and outside the building. It’s funky, a little bit different. And that was cool to watch.

Also, Coogler was a genius to cast Michael B. Jordan in the brother roles. Because, traditionally, if you had cast a movie star and a character actor in those roles, you wouldn’t make your movie star a brain dead vampire halfway through the film. The movie star wouldn’t go for it. They’d want to be the star, the guy who leads the charge til the very end. But because Jordan is playing two roles, it allowed Coogler to do that, which was cool.

And I was into the final battle. I was curious what was going to happen. Unlike traditional Hollywood movies, you got the sense that nobody was safe and that’s when endings are most exciting. I’m not sure I understood why we continued the movie after the night was over. But, otherwise, I thought the climax was good.

So, it’s a mixed bag, this film. It’s messy. In addition to the early script issues, I don’t really understand what the movie was about. I’m guessing some sort of social commentary was being made here but I didn’t pick up on what that was. I’m sure people will get on their high horses and confidently claim it was about “this” or “that,” but I’m betting every one of them got those theories from a quick post-movie internet search.

In the end, I have to ask the question, “Would I be confident in telling someone it was worth 30 bucks (ticket plus parking) to go out and see this movie?” And the answer is, “No.” I think whoever I told to go see this movie would be upset with me afterwards. But is it worth checking out when it hits streaming? Sure. There’s enough good here to, at the very least, have a nice passive viewing experience.

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

What I learned: Beware story setups that have a “Screenplay No Man’s Land.” This is where there’s a gulf in between the end of the first act and the beginning of the official “adventure.” You’ll be pulling your hair out trying to figure out how to make pages 30-60 entertaining.

An excellent resource for how to write a pilot script

For any of you writing pilots, I want you to watch the pilot episode of Your Friends and Neighbors. I’m not saying it’s the greatest pilot script ever. There were aspects of it I didn’t like. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t know how the overall concept is going to last (how many houses can you steal Rolexes from before the viewer gets bored?). But the writer, Jonathan Trooper, nails the basics of what you need to do to write a good pilot.

You see, whenever I read pilots, I’m looking for two primary things for the writer to get right. One is the characters. TV *is* character so we’ve got to have at least 5 compelling characters to care about. And two is plot. You have to create a plot that actually keeps the story interesting.

Sadly, when I do TV pilot consultations, 90% of the pilot scripts achieve neither. I’m lucky if I come across a pilot that does one. But if you want to be a professional TV writer, you have to be able to do both. And that’s where Your Friends And Neighbors comes in.

The show follows a guy named Andrew Cooper, a financial worker who makes gobs of money for his firm, enough to afford a giant house in the suburbs of New York, where he lives with his beautiful wife and two children. Well, where he *lived* with his beautiful wife and two children. One day, he came home and found her having sex with his best friend. She then left Andrew for the friend and now Andrew is alone.

To make matters worse, Andrew comes into work one day and is fired by his boss, who says he’s being let go because he had sex with a subordinate, a strict no-no at the company. Since Andrew will not gain access to his clients, per a work agreement, for another 2 years, that means Andrew has no income. Not good when your bills amount to 100 grand a month. So Andrew, who now rents a smaller house in the neighborhood, resorts to sneaking into his neighbors’ houses and stealing stuff, like watches, wads of bills, probably paintings in future episodes. That kind of stuff.

The most common mistake I see in pilot-writing is that the writers place all their focus on setting up their characters, to the point where no plot can emerge. It’s basically an extensive 60 page character list. Writers often feel confident about these pilots because it takes a lot of work to conceive of 7-10 characters and naturally set them up in the story. So it feels good when you do it. But what they don’t realize is that it’s not enjoyable to read a bunch of, “And here’s this character, and here’s this character, and here’s this character, and here’s this character.” Those characters need to be brought into a story that’s entertaining us.

That brings us to plot. Every once in a while, I do read consult pilots that have the opposite problem. They’re all plot and very little character. These usually come from feature writers who are writing their first pilots. Features are way more plot-driven so, naturally, the writers are bringing that spirit to their pilots. Like I’ve been alluding to, however, you want to do both.

Enter Your Friends and Neighbors. This show sets up a solid 10 characters and always stays entertaining. That’s a very key point I want you to ingest. Character introductions often slow stories down. So you have to carefully balance introductions with plot movement. Best case scenario is that you introduce a character AS THE PLOT IS MOVING ALONG. But it’s not always possible. Sometimes, you need to stop the story so you can say, “Here’s a new character.”

An example of this would be the character of Samantha in Your Friends and Neighbors. Samantha is a neighbor who’s separated from her husband who Andrew has a sexual relationship with. The scene they introduce her in has no plot movement whatsoever. She comes over, they have sex, they bicker afterwards, and she leaves. Tropper needed to introduce that character at some point, so he stopped the story to give her a scene.

So yes, it’s okay to do that. Just make sure that the next scene moves the plot along. What you want to avoid is a bunch of character introduction scenes mashed together without any plot movement. Unless they’re all the most amazing characters ever, I promise you that the reader’s going to get bored.

What is the plot in the Your Friends and Neighbors pilot? It’s a classic 3-Act structure. We establish Andrew’s life in the first act. He’s fired at the beginning of the second act. This forces him to try and figure out what to do. That’s his second act purpose. And the third act is him committing to stealing from his friends and neighbors.

But just smacking down a 3-Act structure does “take care” of your pilot’s plot. All you’ve done is lay the framework. You now want to get into that frame and PLAY. You want to bob and weave and introduce positives and negatives, and twists and turns. You want to keep the viewer on their toes.

The opening scene has a young woman hitting on Andrew at a bar. Andrew, out of boredom and maybe loneliness, sleeps with her. That becomes the reason his boss, later, fires him. Because this woman worked in an adjacent department at the firm and was technically his subordinate.

A character acts. There are repercussions for that action. That’s plot.

The “play” part comes in later. A desperate Andrew shows up at his old work in the morning, cutting off the girl he slept with as she’s walking into the office. He begs her to recant her complaint. She looks at him sideways. “What are you talking about?” She says. “I never made a complaint.” And now we realize that this goes deeper. Andrew storms in, confronts his boss, who’s elusive about the whole thing. But the point is, there’s more to this story. And that’s a great way to think about plotting. You want to introduce developments that announce, “There’s more to this story.”

In between the scenes that make up that plotline, we’re meeting the ex-wife. We’re meeting the kids. We’re meeting his mentally troubled sister. We’re meeting the friends and neighbors he’s going to steal from later. Tropper does a really great job with that balance. If we meet a new character, the next scene will be plot. If a scene is all plot, the next scene we’ll meet a new character. And then, occasionally, he’s able to include both (plot advancement, character introduction) in the same scene.

It all adds up to a seamless story and, therefore, a professionally polished pilot, the kind of production companies happily pay writers to write because there aren’t many writers who are good at it.

Your Friends and Neighbors is on Apple TV+. Have a watch and let me know what you think.

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

What I learned: Try to add conflict to your character introduction scenes. Like I said above, a lot of character introductions are kinda boring. The main character usually gets a sexy character intro (Andrew has a 3-page monologue with the girl who hits on him in the bar about the struggles of becoming successful while raising a family). But once you get past the 2-3 biggest characters, you often just have to introduce characters to get them in the story and it’s not always the most entertaining scene. But, you have a secret tool at your disposal to make the scenes at least A LITTLE MORE entertaining. And that tool is called “conflict.” Take the scene with Samantha, the separated woman Andrew is sleeping with. Tropper introduces CONFLICT into the post-sex scene where she gets pissed at him because he wants to sleep alone. It’s not the greatest scene. But it’s better than no conflict. It’s better than everyone being peachy and boring and perfect. So use conflict to spice up your character intros. That’ll keep us satiated until we get to the next plot beat.

As my strained eyes continue to keep me from reading my weekly allotment of scripts, I have been watching a lot of movies and it’s been a really cool experience. I’ve developed this terrible habit over the years of watching movies and shows with my laptop on. When the movie or show inevitably hits a slow scene, I’ll quickly check my e-mail or pop over to the Hollywood Reporter or ESPN to see if there’s a new story up.

I didn’t realize just how detrimental to the movie-watching experience that was until these past couple of weeks, with my eye strain, and me closing my laptop up. Movies are definitely different when you give them your undivided attention. I’m sure it improved Brave New World by a good 25%. I’m not sure I would’ve liked that movie had I also been trotting around the internet at the time.

It definitely made a difference when I watched A24’s latest film, Opus. Then again, I’m a huge fan of this type of movie set-up. I love a group of people heading off to some remote mysterious location, stranded from the rest of the world. I just think it’s such a juicy setup that has so many routes for you to potentially go down.

Opus follows an online journalist, Ariel, who is called to the remote ranch of mega pop star, Alfred Moretti. Part Michael Jackson, part Elton John, part Prince, part Lady Gaga, Moretti hasn’t released an album in 30 years and he’s only bringing in a select group of music journalists to hear his new songs.

But when Ariel shows up to Moretti’s remote Wyoming ranch, she’s surprised to see just how many people are walking around in blue jumpsuits. It almost seems like she’s just walked into… a cult. Moretti, played by John Malkovich, greets the group, showing off just how weird and eccentric he is (if you’ve ever wanted to see John Malkovich twerk while performing a pop song, this movie is for you).

The rest of the group is so starstruck by Moretti that not a one of them notices how weird the situation is. For example, nobody is allowed to walk anywhere without a concierge (Ariel’s bitchy concierge is played by “Prey’s” Amber Midthunder). And what’s with that hut on the outskirts of the foundation where people go and shuck oysters for hours on end?

Of course, they all figure it out too late. And by that time, the killing has begun.

If I was trying to figure out what kind of spec script I should write that would sell, this setup – a group of people ignorantly going to a dangerous remote location – would be in my top 5 choices. It’s such a delicious setup and has so many fun plot options to play with.

I read a lot of scripts about cults. But what I learned the hard way is that cults aren’t enough. There’s something cliche about them. So, just like any good screenplay concept, you have to find a unique way in. Which is exactly what Opus did. It uses this mysterious pop star as its entry point, which makes the script unique.

Was the execution perfect? Definitely not. There was a haphazardness to the chaos as opposed to uniformity. For example, the representative influencer in the group ends up waking up inside one of the bean bag chairs during a puppet show (yes, a puppet show), ripping herself out, only for us to realize that her entire body is bloated. Moretti then casually explains that he’s given her a drug that makes everything in her body – flesh and organs – expand. So her tongue has swelled up to ten times its original size.

It’s a freaky wild scene. But there’s no rationale to it. Why did Moretti choose to infect one of the group with that specific poison? I’m guessing that the writer just thought it would look disgusting and awesome. That’s not how you write scripts. You want the mythology behind all the actions to be consistent. For example, in “Saw,” the kills are always sadistically crafted torture devices. There’s a consistency there.

But I still give credit to Opus because it took chances. John Malkovich performs a raunchy version of his latest song. It’s a weird scene. I don’t even know if I’d say it worked. But it had me on the edge of my seat. It was different. And that’s what you want to do as a writer. We should always be trying to give the viewer something they haven’t seen before. Always. It’s hard to do cause you’re competing against millions of hours of movies. But you should still try.

I actually think this movie would’ve been a lot bigger had they cast someone different in the lead. I respect that Hollywood is trying its hardest to make Ayo Edebiri a thing. But she’s not a lead in a movie. She just isn’t. She’s got a character actor’s face if I’ve ever seen one.

If they would’ve cast Sydney Sweeney or Anna Taylor-Joy or Mikey Madison. Even Daisy-Edgar Jones. This would’ve been a much much more successful movie. Cause it’s a really fun premise and I think people saw Ayo’s face on the poster and said, “Ehh… not interested.”

But she’s good! She’s definitely good enough to keep the story compelling. If you’re someone who likes these types of movies – modern-day Agatha Christie scenarios – this is a strong entry into the genre. I think this movie is going to age well.

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

What I learned: Horror is all about looming dread. You set up that something bad is coming and then milk the suspense. This movie setup is one of the best at achieving that. When we show up to this remote location, we know, from minute 1, that something bad is coming. So the looming dread begins. And you’d be surprised at just how powerful an engine that is in screenwriting. It makes people want to turn the pages!

I checked out Captain America Brave New World this weekend, as it finally became available on digital. All in all, I had an okay time with it. As much crap as Marvel movies have received over the last four years, they bring something no there type of movie brings – which is high-budget feel-good entertainment – movie escapism at its best.

I also watched the A24 movie, Opus, about a journalist who visits a former pop star at his retreat only to learn that he’s running a cult, and while I also like that movie, it didn’t give me the feeing that a Marvel move does – that pure energetic infusion that makes you feel like a kid again.

Opus makes you feel confused, a little bit down, sad for the state of humanity. There’s nothing wrong with those movies but if all we had to watch were adult-themed films, we’d want to hang ourselves. Marvel is one of the few outfits that gives you a fun time at the movies.

With that said, Marvel has created a unique a screenwriting-related problem for itself that it doesn’t seem to have a solution for. I’m talking about STAKES. Stakes are the measured importance of what your characters are doing. Things have to matter for audiences to care about what your characters are doing. With Oppenheimer, for example, the fate of the world was at stake with the creation of the bomb.

This problem of stakes actually existed before Marvel popped up. It’s been an issue ever since George Lucas and Steven Spielberg invented the blockbuster back in the late 70s, and then eventually the trilogy. Lucas may have screwed all of Hollywood, in fact, when he came up with the Death Star. How do stakes get any bigger than a planet-destroying base?

Because, if you’re creating a sequel, you are tasked with upping the stakes. Otherwise, why would anybody show up to your film? Nobody’s really been able to figure out a definitive answer to that question.

In a way, the higher the stakes you create, the more you hamper your franchise moving forward. Cause you can’t top stakes that are already sky-high.

Marvel has had to deal with this on a whole other level, though. Because, unlike a trilogy, Marvel has a universe. So it doesn’t just have to figure out how to make the stakes higher in movies 2 and 3. It has to figure out how to up the stakes in movies 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. And what it’s learned is that that’s almost impossible.

I say “almost” because they found a momentary loophole – the gimmick of one-off all-star team-ups. Three Spider-Mans in one film for example. Or Deadpool and Wolverine. As far as consequences are concerned, neither of those films have high stakes. But the juicy team-ups distract us from that.

However, “juicy team-ups” is not part of any known writing formula. So you can squeeze 2-3 movies out of it. But, sooner or later, you have to go back to telling real stories without gimmicks. And that’s when you’re going to need stakes again. But you can’t create stakes if you’ve already given us movies with the highest stakes ever. I mean, the bad guy in the Avengers movies erased half the people in the universe.

Which brings us back to Brave New World. How do you make this movie work? What kind of stakes can you possibly introduce that will feel big enough to make us show up? Sure enough, they couldn’t. At “stake” is a brand new metal, called adamtanium, which is even more powerful than Wakanda’s vibranium. Not exactly snapping half of the universe away.

This is why nobody showed up for this movie. Avengers, Iron Man vs. Captain America, three Spider-Mans, Deadpool and Wolverine. Those movies destroyed any opportunity for Marvel to release a film like Brave New World. You’re asking the audience to show up for Taco Bell after serving them prime rib. Why would you think you could do that? It’s either arrogance or ignorance. I don’t know which. But you’d think there’d be somebody smart enough to know that audiences don’t show up for the understudy.

So, I pose a question to you. If you don’t have these giant stakes, what do you do as a writer? If you – as in you reading this article – were tasked with writing Brave New World, what would you do? Because there is, actually, a solution. And that solution is, you move the stakes over to the characters as opposed to the world.

We actually see a successful example of this in one of the greatest franchises ever, Star Wars. In the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, there isn’t anything close to the magnitude of the Death Star. And yet many people consider Empire Strikes Back to be even better than Star Wars.

What can we learn from this? How did George Lucas pull a “lower stakes” movie off?

Well, he shifted the stakes onto the characters. It went from the importance of taking over the galaxy with this planet-killing base to defeating the character – Darth Vader – whose very existence allowed the Empire to control the galaxy. And, of course, the stakes were higher within Luke himself. He’s learning the Force, which threatens Darth Vader’s ability to rule the galaxy. So it is critical that Darth Vader defeat him.

This is what mid-tier (non team-up) Marvel movies ARE TRYING TO DO. This is what Brave New World is TRYING TO DO. It’s accepting that it’s not Avengers: Infinity War. But it’s trying to create characters that we care about and, therefore, become invested in, in the same way that high stakes make us invested.

The problem with that is, it’s hard to make characters do the heavy lifting in spectacle movies. Cause people come to spectacle movies wanting spectacle. And when you tell them, “We don’t have as much spectacle, but we’re gonna give you some neat characters instead,” it feels like a bait and switch to the average audience member. Cause Marvel has made them used to giant high-stakes spectacles.

And you can see just how hard it is when you consider that, in order for The Empire Strikes Back to pull it off, it needed 2 of the 5 greatest movie characters of all time in Darth Vader and Han Solo. How realistic is it that you’re going to write 2 of the 5 greatest movie characters into your movie?

I would go so far as to say Sam Wilson is, realistically, not even in the top 5000 best characters of all time. If your main character isn’t even in the top 500 best movie characters and you’re building your movie around character…. um, Good luck.

With that said, you still have to try. As a producer, you can’t walk into the Captain America writer’s room and say, “We know Sam Wilson’s Captain America isn’t a great character so we’re not even going to write him an emotionally compelling storyline.” No, you try. Because if you do pull a great character off, it will distract the audience from the fact that you don’t have gigantic stakes in your spectacle movie.

Where I think the Brave New World writers dropped the ball was in Sam Wilson’s internal struggle. What made Chris Evans’ Captain America intriguing was that he believed in doing the right thing no matter what. But sometimes he was presented with situations where doing the right thing no matter what could result in more damage than doing the “wrong” thing. So it was fun to observe that inner battle.

Sam Wilson didn’t have anything like that. Instead, they tried to lean into this idea that he’s taking the place of a beloved hero and trying to live up to that expectation, but that’s less relatable than the universal human struggle to choose good when constantly faced with temptations to do otherwise. In fact, after President Harrison Ford tells Sam Wilson that he’s not Steve Rogers, that was pretty much it when it came to that internal battle. They barely addressed it again. So, it obviously wasn’t enough.

To me, this is yet another reminder that old school screenwriting principles give you the biggest head starts in your script. Two of the big ones are: 1) create likable heroes and 2) give them interesting internal struggles that need to be resolved by the end of the movie. If you do those two things, you’re ahead of 90% of the screenwriters out there.  And if you can add giant external stakes on top of that?  Then there’s a good chance you’ve got a juggernaut of a script on your hands.

Okay guys, you’re going to hate me. But I’ve put off so many things that I have no choice but to take care of them this week. So I’m not sure I’m going to be posting much, if at all. I don’t have the time.

With that said, I wanted to leave you with my thoughts on the last two episodes in Black Mirror, Hotel Reverie and Eulogy. In classic Black Mirror fashion, one was the worst episode of the season and the other was the best.

What’s interesting about this is they both use the same type of concept, which reminds us how even a small change in the way a concept is approached can have an outsized effect on the quality of the story.

In Hotel Reverie, we follow a modern day movie star who is placed inside an old movie where she’s replacing the star. In Eulogy, we follow a man who’s placed inside old photos that bring back heartbreaking memories of his ex-girlfriend. In the former, nothing really makes sense. A movie star shows up to a new digital production and has no idea what she’s doing and they say to her, “You know all 500 of your lines by heart right?” And she’s like, “Uh, yeah,” and they then drop her into the old movie where she’s expected to say all those lines in one uninterrupted take. As if that makes sense. Not to mention she’s a black actress replacing a white male actor in a 1940s love story that I guess was going to be rereleased with her playing the new part. Like audiences would just accept that? Nothing in this episode made sense.

But Eulogy was really thoughtful and interesting. It follows this older man who has to go through old photos of him and his ex-girlfriend to find memories that they’re going to use at the now dead ex-girlfriend’s funeral.

The whole thing is this cool mystery as we go back from photo to photo, each one giving us a little more information on their relationship and what happened to make him so bitter with her. There are little twists along the way. And the ending is really good. It’s a wallop of an emotional punch. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see how to write a simple story out of a strong hook.

I will try to post again this week but I can’t promise anything!