A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about the word “hate.”

The conversation started because we were discussing music and I casually mentioned that I hated this band. She immediately stopped me.

“Hate is a terrible word,” she said.

Naturally, I asked why.

And she actually had a pretty interesting argument. Her point was that “hate” has become one of those words people throw around without thinking. You don’t merely dislike a movie anymore. You hate it. You don’t disagree with someone. You hate them. Everything gets pushed to the most extreme setting.

The more she talked about it, the more I started to come around. “Hate” is a conversation-ending word. It doesn’t invite discussion. It declares war on discussion. The moment you say you hate something, you’ve essentially informed everyone that you’ve moved beyond reason and entered into the realm of pure emotion.

By the end of the conversation, I found myself nodding along. Maybe she was right. Maybe we’d all be a little better off if we retired the word entirely.

I thanked her for the perspective.

Anyway.

I hate the Scary Movie franchise.

If there is a lazier, less funny comedy franchise out there, please tell me what it is. Because I don’t think it exists. The Wayans Brothers and their idea of humor have to have some of the worst attempts at joke construction that I’ve ever seen put to screen.

And by the way, the success of Scary Movie’s box office this weekend completely destroys all the good will that the box office has built up over the past couple of weeks. We thought we were seeing a revolution. That audiences had finally become smart. They refused corporate trash like Mandalorian and Grogu and embraced smart thoughtful horror in Obsession and Backrooms.

NOPE.

This weekend proves they’ll continue to pay for any piece of garbage that Hollywood lobotomizes onto the screen.

Some people will say, “No. This is good! People are coming to theaters!”

No! It is the opposite of good. People show up to this movie, are reminded of just how bad Hollywood movies can be, then don’t come back for another six months. These are the movies that destroyed the business. Not saved it.

It’s just sad that people go and see this trash. I feel like I’m watching the dodo birds, with the screenplay pages of this monstrosity of a script strapped to their backs, plunge off a cliff and I’m helpless to stop them. But what are you going to do?

The move that was supposed to have the big box office weekend was He-Man (30 mil). But it turned out the roided-out 80s icon did not “have the power.” I don’t think there was anything they could do to make this movie work because I honestly believe this was the best version of the movie they could make. Big-budget, harmless, cheesy. And people still didn’t like it. And sometimes that’s just the reality of your IP. It’s not meant to be a blockbuster no matter how hard you try and make it one. And they tried! They spent 17 years developing this. It’s just not a movie IP.

Backrooms took a pretty big tumble this weekend, losing 70% of its audience. That’s a hard to defend drop. The old excuse used to be, “Horror always has giant drops on the second weekend.” The only problem is that the film’s main competition, Obsession, GAINED audience in its second weekend. And this weekend, it’s fourth, it only dropped 7%. So they can’t use that excuse.

It confirms what I’ve been saying, which is that the backrooms don’t really make sense. The mythology is wonky. And so there isn’t nearly as much depth in the film as its missionaries want you to believe it has.

I still think it’s an okay movie. It’s just not a good movie.

But don’t worry, Backrooms. At least you’re not Mandalorian and Grogu. A lot of people have said that Backrooms and Obsession were the worst things to happen to Star Wars. Because they highlighted how tiny movies with tiny budgets can take down 300 million dollar (Mando and Grogu’s real budget) behemoths with 200 million dollar advertising campaigns.

But I would argue the opposite is true. The Backrooms/Obsession takeover is such a great story that nobody’s paying attention to the fact that Mandalorian will barely limp past 300 million dollars.

WORLDWIDE. Oh, but Disney tells us, the film is “guaranteed” to make money no matter how poorly it does. Yeah, okay Disney. I’ll expect that Mandalorian sequel announcement any day now.

I’m just pumped for Obsession. I obsessively push to you guys how important a simple premise is. It focuses the movie so much and creates this clean runway for you to just play with that premise and have fun. When you have to spend 30% of your screenplay explaining things, that’s time that you’re not entertaining your reader. That’s the power of a premise like Obsession.

Now, the premise itself has to have a good hook. You can’t be simple just to be simple. I could write a movie about a haunted lightbulb and that’s simple. But a lightbulb is not a hook people care about. A girl becoming insanely obsessed with a guy is a hook. And it’s proving to be the most powerful hook of the year.

On the TV side, I’ve been checking out this show, The Audacity, on AMC. Yes, AMC still makes shows. A couple of people had recommended it to me and the best way I can describe it is Succession in Silicon Valley.

It’s about this tech company CEO, Duncan, whose company has a really high valuation but, in actuality, it’s a worthless company. So he’s running around town trying to get people to invest money so that he and the company don’t implode once the media realizes the truth.

The show has a couple of mini-hooks. The first is that Duncan has access to a program that can access every single thing in the world. So he basically knows everything. And also, he blackmails his therapist (who’s a “therapist to the tech CEOs”) and forces her to give him information about his competition.

The show is a maddening watch. If you thought Succession was risky by making all of its characters unlikable, this writer, Jonathan Glatzer, seems to be conducting an experiment of just how unlikable an entire cast of characters can be and an audience will still watch them. I mean, Duncan alone is the most unlikable person on the planet. And the show cannot overcome that. It’s impossible. It’s one thing to be damaged and an asshole, which creates a small level of sympathy. It’s another to be a crazy asshole. And it doesn’t help that Duncan is played by Billy Magnussen, who’s probably the most unlikable character actor in his age range.

But what intrigued me about the show was that Glatzer seems to have read Scriptshadow and is using a lot of the screenwriting tools I espouse. But he’s using them like nuclear weapons as opposed to hand tools.

EVERY SINGLE SCENE has urgency behind it. We can never just sit in a scene between two characters. There’s always a ticking clock. There’s always somewhere someone has to be. If there’s a party scene, the countdown begins to when the guest of honor arrives and everyone is desperately rushing around to make sure the party is ready for their arrival.

It’s strange because whenever I see the opposite — a lazy party scene where everyone is half-asleep and there’s no clear goal and we’re limping along through several character conversations, I say, “This scene needs urgency!” But Glatzer shows me that there is definitely a limit to how much urgency a scene can handle.

I also talk about “scene agitators” as a means to spice up a scene. Don’t just have two characters in a car talking. Have there be some third agitating variable to create conflict, like a cop car trailing them that may, at any moment, light up its lights and pull them over.

In the third episode, a looming brush fire is introduced. And I’m thinking, “Of course there’s a looming brush fire.” Cause it’s something that can provide this constant series of scene agitators wherever the characters go. We have to worry about that fire getting closer and destroying everything.

In the first three episodes, I’m guessing there are about 100 scenes. 80 of them have scene agitators. There is always something agitating the characters and it’s INSANELY ANXIETY-INDUCING. It’s not fun. That’s the thing you have to realize about these screenwriting tips. You don’t just use them to check a box. You use them specifically to make a scene more entertaining. If all you’re doing is creating more anxiety in the reader and making the scene needlessly messier, than don’t use the tool. The tool is hurting more than it’s helping.

I don’t know if I can finish this show. It creates too much anxiety in me and I hate everyone in it. But what I’ll give it is that it’s never boring. And since nearly every show I watch is boring, I’m inclined to see it to the end. I will say this. Most shows that start off with low episode IMDB ratings contain episodes that get lower and lower rated as the season goes on. But this is the rare show where the rating keeps getting higher and higher. So I’m wondering if Glatzer is just using these first four episodes for setup that he will pay off in an amazing way in the second half of the season.

What did you see (and not see) this weekend?

Give me your reviews!

Or is it?

It has been a loooonnnnnnnnnnnnnng time since the directing industry had a revolution.

There used to be new filmmakers popping up everywhere. Every couple of years there was some exciting new voice (Tarantino, Rodriquez, PT Anderson, Richard Linklater, the Coen Brothers, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, David O. Russell) that everyone had to know. Somebody whose movie had the industry buzzing. Somebody who made older filmmakers sweat. It happened so often we assumed it would always happen.

And then one day, somebody turned off the water.

When was the last time people got genuinely excited about a new director? Jordan Peele? That was ten freaking years ago, dude!

Sure, there are talented filmmakers working today. The Safdies are badass. The Daniels rock. But outside of the Hollywood ecosystem, people could care less about these guys.

Which is why a revolution was desperately needed. For years, Hollywood treated YouTube as the kiddie table. It was where people made reaction videos, gaming streams, low-budget green screen video podcasts.

Then, one day, a group of these YouTubers said, “We’re ready to make real films now.” Chris Stuckmann. Markiplier. Curry Barker. Kane Parsons.

And people started paying attention. Not because these movies were masterpieces.  But because for the first time in forever it felt like the beginning of something was upon us.

So the question becomes: Is this the filmmaking revolution we’ve all been waiting for?

I watched all four of these filmmakers’ films to find out.

But before we get into that, I want to talk about something Michael De Luca said recently. De Luca, who currently runs the film division at Warner Bros., was asked about these YouTube folks and he gave a surprisingly aggressive answer.

He said that these creators have spent years building a relationship with their audience. They’ve uploaded enormous amounts of work online. They’ve received praise. They’ve received criticism. They’ve been forced to see, in real time, what people respond to and what they don’t, and they use that information to hone their craft.

De Luca then contrasted them with the old established directors he works with. According to him, an old guard director would rather get dropped into the middle of Rodeo Drive naked than sit with a test audience at a 10am Burbank screening of his latest movie.

The more I thought about that, the more fascinating his comment became. Because I think De Luca may have identified the biggest difference between the old generation and the new.

The old generation was built on the idea that the director was king. The director was the overarching authority on everything. The director received inspiration from the heavens and anybody who questioned what he said was challenging the nature of art itself.

The YouTube generation grew up the opposite. They posted their work. People told them it sucked. Then they posted more work. People told them it was better. Then they posted more and more and more. And they repeated that process hundreds of times until they got really freaking good.

The old model was built on authority.

The new model was built on connection.

Which is why I think these four filmmakers are so interesting. Because whether this particular group succeeds or fails, they may represent the first wave of a completely new talent pipeline. So let’s look at their movies and see what we’re dealing with.

Let’s start with Chris Stuckmann and his film, Shelby Oaks, about a woman investigating the disappearance of her sister, who vanished while filming a YouTube ghost-hunting show.

Of the four filmmakers on this list, Stuckmann may have had the hardest road of all. For years, Stuckmann built a career on reviewing movies. Analyzing them. Breaking down what worked and what didn’t. Identifying flaws. Explaining why certain choices succeeded and others failed.

Then one day he had to make one himself. That’s a terrifying position to be in. Because no filmmaker is going to be judged more harshly than the guy who’s spent years judging everybody else.

Every criticism you’ve ever made becomes a loaded gun sitting on the table. You can’t use the clichés you’ve complained about. You can’t make the mistakes you’ve pointed out in other films. You can’t hide behind excuses because you’ve spent years telling those filmmakers why those excuses aren’t valid.

The lane becomes incredibly narrow.

I think Stuckmann understood the challenge. You can see him trying his ass off to avoid making a conventional movie. Shelby Oaks mixes traditional narrative storytelling with found footage and docudrama style interviews.

The problem is that effort isn’t the same thing as life. Somewhere along the way, this movie became completely inert. I kept trying to figure out why because the setup should work. A missing person mystery is one of the most reliable story engines out there.

But the movie sputters more than the rusty 20 year old Toyota Corolla I had in high school. The found footage elements feel oddly dated. The directing avoids urgency. The documentary interviews keep stopping the story right when it should be building. Within twenty minutes, you’ve checked out.

I think the problem is that Stuckmann spent years analyzing storytelling. But analysis and creation are not the same skill. When you’re creating from a place of instinct, you’re chasing ideas. When you’re creating from a place of avoidance, you’re chasing mistakes. Those are different energies.

I know this personally because whenever I try to write creatively, my mind is bombarded with all the “dont’s” and “no’s” and “avoids” that I warn you guys about week after week. How can you create when you’re scared of every choice that pops into your head?

Creativity flourishes through creation. And Review Brain destroys that. I noticed that in Shelby Oaks. I’ll use a tennis analogy. The best players in tennis try to win. The weakest players try not to lose. This is the definition of a “try not to lose” movie.

Then we’ve got Markiplier and his film, Iron Lung, about a convict placed inside a tiny submarine and sent to explore an ocean of blood in a distant future where much of humanity has disappeared.

If Chris Stuckmann’s problem is excessive caution, Markiplier’s problem is the opposite. This guy doesn’t care if you’re confused. He doesn’t care if you understand what’s happening. He doesn’t care if you’ve been properly briefed on the rules of the world. He barely seems interested in explaining anything.

Iron Lung throws you into a tiny metal submarine, locks the hatch, and says, “Good luck.”

The movie opens by informing us that many of the stars are gone. Okay. Why? No clue. The ocean is blood. Okay. How did that happen? No clue. We’re supposedly carrying out a mission. Cool. What’s the mission? Also unclear.

The entire movie operates like that. You’re constantly searching for footing.

Now, normally, I hate this approach. As you know, I’m a story guy. I want goals. I want motivations. I want setups and payoffs.

And yet… I sort of understand why people are responding to Iron Lung. Because unlike Shelby Oaks, which often feels trapped inside its own fear, Iron Lung feels alive.

Messy. Confusing. Half-baked.

But alive.

The closest comparison I could come up with was imagining a young David Fincher being forced to make a movie in twelve days with no money and only partial access to the script. It’s rougher than a back-alley joy ride in a car with no shocks.

But if I had to choose between a filmmaker who’s making interesting mistakes and a filmmaker who’s terrified of mistakes, I’ll take the interesting mistakes every time.

Next we have Kane Parsons, whose path was very different from these other two. He helped create an internet phenomenon. Backrooms started as a picture, then a series of atmospheric short stories, and then it got into Parsons’ hands, where it became a series of short videos. Weird. Atmospheric. Unsettling. The kind of thing made to spread online.

Unlike the others, Parsons wasn’t working with a tiny budget. He was handed 15 million dollars. That’s a completely different challenge. Suddenly you’re dealing with producers, executives, actors, departments, schedules, notes. All the machinery that comes with professional filmmaking.

Through that all, Parsons had to deliver what he knew the audience wanted, which was that strange unsettling feeling they got from the short films, but in a real environment. Backrooms has the distant influence of a young David Lynch. Like a confusing nightmare that wants to destroy every corner of logical thinking in your brain.

And it works more than it doesn’t. Because unlike Iron Lung, where the lack of structure feels accidental, the lack of structure in Backrooms feels intentional.  At least most of the time.

While I think Backrooms is easily one of the strongest films in this group, I also think Parsons remains the biggest question mark. Is he just a filmmaker who got really good at doing this one specific thing and that’s all he’s got? What does a non-Backrooms Kane Parsons movie look like? Cause when I’m trying to imagine it, I imagine a juvenile concept and an inconsistent execution.

You gotta remember something: Kane Parsons has nothing to do with the creation of Backrooms. Somebody else came up with the idea. He was just the best guy at making videos of it. And as anyone in this business will tell you, concept is king. We’re all searching for that rare gem of a great concept. If you aren’t handed the shiniest diamond of them all like you were with Backrooms, what do you have? The answer to that question will define his career. Full-stop.

Finally we get to Curry Barker and his film, Obsession, about a young man who makes a wish that his female crush will fall in love with him, which she does, but the wish works so well that she becomes crazily obsessed with him.

Of the four filmmakers, Barker is probably the most traditional in that he cares just as much about the script as he does the directing.  As I pointed out in my review of the film in the June newsletter, that makes sense, since his father has a screenwriting podcast.

Obsession is a strange entry into this foursome because it feels the most like a movie you’ve seen before. And so you would think that would work against it. But it never does.

I think what Barker did a great job of is he understood that good horror premises have a simple hook but you need to balance that simplicity with some sort of extreme. Because if you have a simple premise and you also have an uninspired execution, your movie will be forgettable.

Barker knew that he was going to let this actress go crazy and that that would be the balancing point to even out the simplicity. And he was right. Now, every single actor in Hollywood wants to work with him.

So what does all of this mean? Is the YouTube revolution real?

Sadly?

No.

I only think one of these guys is going to have a career in Hollywood. And that’s Curry Barker. This guy did the time. He made tons of shorts. He learned the craft. He had good people in his life emphasizing the importance of writing. He’s the full package.

But the other three? I have a lot of doubts that they’ll make it past their next movie. Markiplier needs to find a screenwriter he likes. If he does that, he might have a shot. Cause his directing skills are pretty good.

Kane Parsons seems heavily chained to the Backrooms universe. I’m not convinced he knows anything about storytelling outside of that. He’s young so he has a lot of time to mess up and learn. But these super young dudes can flame out hard when they hit their first bout of adversity. Need I remind you of the name, Josh Trank?

And then you have Chris Stuckmann, whose creative ceiling appears to be barely high enough to stand up under. I didn’t see a single thing — directing, casting, lighting, acting — that he did well. All of that stuff was subpar. Your first movie has to show SOME SORT OF “I’m awesome at at least this ONE thing” quality. But he didn’t even have that one thing he was good at.

Which means this revolution is more hype than reality.

But we might be missing the bigger story. That the revolution isn’t this new group of filmmakers. It’s this new pipeline to find talent.

For years, Hollywood searched for new talent in all the same places. Film schools. Assistant jobs. Mailrooms. Nepotism. Film festivals. The indie film circuit.  Where has that gotten us in the past decade?  I’ll tell you where.  To, arguably, the worst decade of film ever.

Hollywood spent decades assuming YouTube was beneath them. Then this month happened and suddenly they had to confront reality. Not that these kids could direct. But that they could direct movies THAT MADE LOTS OF MONEY. And that’s the one language Hollywood cannot ignore. Cause believe me, they don’t want this new revolution. They don’t! They would prefer it go away because it means rewriting the rule book and they hate how much uncertainty comes with that.

The revolution is that those graphene gates the studios have put in front of all of their lots have finally been removed.

Hollywood’s about to get a lot more interesting.

This writer took over the town for a week. What can we learn from her?

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Two parents will do anything they can to help their son get into Yale, his dream college since he was a young child.
About: Sophie Fleur de Bruijn recently sold a romantic comedy spec that is said to be the best rom-com script in forever. I’m trying to get my hands on it (if you have it, please send it to me here: carsonreeves1@gmail.com). In the meantime, this is the script she wrote right before it, which appeared on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Sophie Fleur de Bruijn
Details: 111 pages

Reese for Heather?

The less glamorous but far more common path to success for screenwriters is this: they write a script that’s good enough to get noticed but not quite good enough to sell. That first script puts them on the industry’s radar. Then, when the next script arrives, people are already paying attention. And if that one delivers, everyone wants it.

That’s what’s happened with today’s screenwriter. She wrote today’s script, Early Action, that got her on the Black List. And then last week she went out with a romantic comedy spec that many are saying is the best romantic comedy script in five years. And 40 different companies wanted it. I didn’t even know there were 40 companies who could buy a script but much like a legitimate critique of Backrooms, let’s look past that detail.

Today, I want to take a look at the script that put Sophie on the map and got the industry paying attention. Attention that ultimately helped her sell her next script. By studying what worked, you can apply some of the same principles to your own writing. Let’s jump in, shall we?

Heather and Richard are young parents to Oliver, a kid who only wants one thing in life. To go to Yale for college. The barely middle class couple have secured a house in a really amazing neighborhood because the house had a gruesome murder in it. This has allowed them to get Oliver into the best schools in the country, which will bolster his chances of getting into Yale.

Cut to several years later and Oliver is in his senior year in high school. In an extremely confusing plot point that I still don’t understand, an angry teacher at the school released the GPAs and colleges that all of the kids in the school applied to, which has caused all of the parents to be really really angry.

As best as I can understand, this leads to Heather and Richard learning that five other seniors in the school are also applying to Yale. And apparently Yale only chooses one kid from this school, which means that Oliver’s application has to be better than those five kids. And since that teacher exposed all the students’ applications (I think), Heather and Richard are able to read the other five students’ applications and realize that their son’s application doesn’t measure up to them at all.

So they find Lance Latham, a guy whose only job is to get rich kids into prestige colleges. Lance tells them that there’s very little Oliver can do to beat these other kids. His only shot is writing an essay for the ages. He needs a story that will bowl the Yale admissions team over. So, Lance says to the parents, make sure he has a great story.

Heather and Richard take this to mean they need to create a series of crazy events (deliver a baby from an actor pretending to be in labor in a stuck elevator, have Richard pretend to be choking in a restaurant) that will give Oliver something to write about. But all of the staged events go wrong for one reason or another.

They finally go for the whopper — pay some people to kidnap their own son. This traumatic event will surely lead to the best essay of the six applicants and win Oliver his coveted dream spot at Yale University. Unless something goes wrong, of course.

Okay…

Where should I start?

Let’s start with the setup. If you have to move mountains to set up your story, then your idea is too complex. The amount of events that need to happen here (there’s a strange meltdown at the school as students’ info is leaked, the parents realize Oliver has a tougher road to get into Yale than they thought, they go to the fixer guy who explains to them how applications work and what they’re up against and what the best course of action is which eventually leads to him saying make sure he has a great essay, then they study all of his competitors essays, and then they sneak in and learn that Oliver only has two sentences so far in his essay, and then they start planning a series of faked events so their son has more material to write this essay) — The amount of shit we needed to trudge through just to start the movie was WAY WAY WAY TOO MUCH!

It reminded me of that dreadful screenplay for Will Ferrell’s and Amy Pohler’s movie, The House. I remember that script well because fifteen different things needed to be explained and connected in order to come up with a believable scenario by which the characters would open up a casino in their house. It was awful. And of course the movie was awful too.

Let me give you the setup for the hottest movie in town right now. A guy wishes the girl he’s in love with falls in love with him too and then she becomes obsessed with him. THAT’S IT. THAT’S THE SETUP.

Audiences don’t like to connect 82 dots just to get your movie started. If that’s what it takes to get to the meat of your story, you’ve got way too much going on and you need to seriously simplify it.

Then, after all that work just to set up the story, the faked events the parents come up with DON’T EVEN MAKE SENSE. They give an actress a balloon to put under her shirt and put her in an elevator with their son and have the elevator stopped and the girl pretend to be in labor so that Oliver will deliver a baby. BUT THERE’S NO BABY!!!! What happens when he actually tries to deliver it???? Of course the scene ends with him passing out before that truth can be revealed.

Then our writer creates this scene of the dad choking at a restaurant in the hopes that their son will give him the Heimlich and “save his life.” That’s your plan for writing a great essay on a Yale application??? I once gave my dad the Heimlich at a restaurant??? This movie doesn’t even make sense!!!

The problems with the script don’t stop there. We don’t even spend any time with Oliver! We spend all our time with the parents. Oliver is the one trying to get into school. He’s the reason we’re supposed to be rooting for everything here yet we barely know him. Literally the only thing we know about him is that he wants to get into Yale.

And on top of all this, this is a very weak premise. This movie idea doesn’t fit into any known lane that Hollywood makes movies in. I suppose it’s a comedy but it’s not a comedy lane that has ever been done before. So, why would people go watch this?

So, what’s going on? How is this writer getting so much heat? Well, despite all of this, the writing itself is amusing. It’s even occasionally funny. There’s a scene, for example, where they’re not-so-lightly encouraging their son to change his pronouns to they/them, pretending to have no ulterior motives at all, and a couldn’t-be-bothered Oliver insists he’s fine with his regular pronouns, irking his parents to no end, who continue to push their pronoun agenda all the while pretending they’re okay with whatever he decides. There’s a lot of stuff like that that definitely made me chuckle.

And I think that in spite of being really bad at the mechanics of writing a screenplay, the writing itself is very fluid and effortless and… it’s hard to quantify the last part but the best way to describe it is that I felt good while reading this script. There’s something very positive about the way Sophie writes that I liked.

There was a time on this site when I experimented with two ratings at the end of every script review, one for the script and one for the writer. The problem was that so many of the ratings were the same that I gave that up. But, for this script, I would give a worth the read to the writer and a wasn’t for me for the script.

And maybe what happened with this rom-com she later sold is Sophie just came up with a much simpler idea. The thing about writing screenplays is, each concept leads you down a new path that you haven’t experienced before. And you don’t know what kinds of concepts work best when writing screenplays until you’ve written a bunch of them. And one of the lessons you eventually learn is that simpler concepts work best. So maybe Sophie’s rom-com idea is just really simple. Maybe she learned that lesson after this. Or maybe she just got lucky and stumbled into it. It can happen.

I suppose if you average these two ratings (one for writer, one for script) together, they end up right between a ‘wasn’t for me’ and a ‘worth the read’. So I have to decide which rating to give and I think this writer is good enough that I can bump this up to a ‘worth the read.’ But it’s a very weak ‘worth the read.’

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

What I learned: Good comedy writers use parentheticals strategically. I always tell writers to avoid parentheticals unless they genuinely add something to the line. This is a great example of one that earns its keep:

LUANN (CONT’D)
Thank you. Diane is gonna kick my ass. She teaches kickboxing on weekends.
(with profound importance)
The 9:00AM slot.

Notice that the joke isn’t actually in the words, “The 9:00AM slot.” On the page, that’s just a piece of information. The comedy comes from Luann treating that detail as if it’s the most important revelation imaginable, which comes from the parenthetical.

A reckoning is upon us.

Genre: Horror
Premise: An architect who’s been burdened with running a small town furniture store discovers an endless series of rooms running underneath his store.
About: The backrooms started as a picture of a real room of yellowed walls that looked both depressing and terrifying.  Reddit started writing nosleep articles about it and the lore became more and more expansive until people started making videos of this picture on Youtube — turning it into a never-ending maze of this awful piss-yellow sad endless series of walls and rooms. 17 year old Kane Parsons was the Youtube creator who got the most views from his Backrooms videos. His version was the creepiest and most imaginative. Now, here’s the interesting thing. Nobody owned the rights to the Backrooms IP. It was created publicly. But A24 was still terrified of putting millions of dollars into this property only to later find out that someone owned it and wanted compensation. So, if you read between the lines, A24 would not have preferred to hire a 20 year old director. It’s just not done for a major film. Too risky. However, Kane could use all of the lore that he created in his videos, which provided a legal safety net for A24. So, that’s why a 20 year old is directing such a giant film. The writer of the script, Will Soodik, has written for several high-profile TV shows, including Westworld.
Writer: Will Soodik and Kane Parsons
Details: 110 minutes

People have asked what I think of this new wave of young YouTubers taking over the movie industry.

You want to know what I think of it?

I LOVE IT.

I love it love it love it.

You know why? Because this is the first time in I can’t even remember how long that something fresh and exciting is happening in Hollywood. I’m actually going to go into this more in my Friday article, where I discuss how and why this is happening. But I think it’s great. People are talking about movies again and that’s a great thing. Cause they weren’t talking about them for a long time.

Now, when it comes to Backrooms, I’ve been a fan of these videos since they first popped up on Youtube. My first thought when I saw them was, “When is this going to be a movie?” Cause it was so obvious that it could be one. Well, that time has come.

Clark is a newly divorced failed architect who is slumming it up running a large crappy furniture store in this 1990s set story. When he can’t figure out where his way-too-large electric bill is coming from, he looks into the circuit breaker in his basement, which leads him to an invisible doorway that takes him into the backrooms, a never-ending connection of yellow-walled generic rooms.

Clark starts exploring the rooms and is baffled by just how expansive and random they are. He then gets a couple of his younger employees to come with him and document the experience. The trio then sets out to go deeper into the backrooms than Clark has ever gone before, and that’s when things get strange.

Some sort of unseen creature grabs the cameraman. Clark then gets split up from his second employee. And eventually he falls deeper and deeper into the backrooms until he’s lost.

We then cut to Mary, who we met earlier in the film. She’s Clark’s therapist. She goes looking for Clark. Cause that’s what therapists do when their patients don’t show up for a session. She goes to his furniture store, finds the basement, finds the secret entrance to the backrooms, and goes in herself. She eventually finds Clark. But poor Clark has kind of gone insane. And now Mary has to escape him and find her way out of… the backrooms.

There are so many weird things about this movie. Something that nobody is talking about is that this is a movie for 20 year olds yet they cast a 50 year old man and a 40 year old woman in the leads. Maybe they knew the youngsters would show up but still needed the old guard and that’s why they cast these two? Still a strange choice.

Getting to the story here, I thought the first 40 minutes was pretty good. It’s a little clunky at times, which I’ll discuss in a second. But the weirdness of these backrooms and the introduction into that world is exciting. You both want to know and don’t want to know what’s around the next corner.

However, the longer you stay in this world, the clearer it is that the director has only a slightly better idea of what this place is than you do.

This is actually important. Because when you do any sort of world-building in screenwriting, you need to understand your mythology 100%. The reason The Matrix is a classic is because the Wachowskis spent 10 years refining that mythology. Not by choice. But because their project kept getting rejected. But that ended up being a good thing cause it forced them to continue thinking about and building the world they were setting their story in.

Kane Parsons maybe understands 40% of the Backrooms mythology. And, keep in mind, he did not create this world. He built on what others had created. So, it makes sense he’s not sure what it is.

The reason all this matters is because a story like this needs its mythology to be 100% solid for it to fire on all cylinders. Because the whole deal is the backrooms. If there isn’t an understanding of what’s going on there, then the entire experience is going to be running on fumes and guesswork. Which is exactly what happens.

The interesting thing here, though, is that the backrooms are so trippy and so weird that they can kind of withstand some of this weak scaffolding. Mythology schmamolgy as long as there’s some trippy looking robot creature peeking its head out from one of the crevices in the walls.

But that then puts the pressure on the characters and the storytelling itself. And, ultimately, that’s where The Backrooms falls apart.

There’s a scene in the first act where, after a long day, Clark is in his bed, watching TV, about to go to sleep. And then we pull away and we show that Clark is actually still at the store. He’s using one of the for-sale beds to sleep in that night and has pulled up one of the televisions, I guess, to watch before going to bed.

It’s a cute little gag.

But there’s a deep tissue problem with this moment. We’re not exactly sure what it means. Does this mean that Clark lives here at the furniture store? There’s a moment earlier, during his therapy session with Mary, where he mentions that his ex-wife lives in their house now. But the indication is that that happened a while ago. So, surely, he’s rented an apartment since then, right?

Or hasn’t he?

Okay, let’s say he hasn’t. Let’s say he’s living here. Well, he has employees. Do his employees know this? Or does he hide it from them? Does he get up every morning an hour before they show up and hide the evidence that he sleeps there?   That information — the information that would actually tell us something about this character — is never shared with us.

Think about what the cost is for not clarifying this.  Those are two completely different characters — one who is okay with his employees knowing that he lives here after work and one who hides that from his employees. The first one doesn’t give a fuck. The second one feels ashamed. Two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. If you want to construct a strong clear character, those details matter A LOT. But we’re never given that information.  Or any information like it.

But you wanna know what?

I don’t think Kane Parsons knows the answer to that question. I don’t think he cares. He liked the bed gag. That’s all he cares about.

Now, you may say, “Carson, you’re looking into this way too deeply. People aren’t going to this movie for character development. They’re going to be creeped out by the backrooms.”

I agree with that. That’s what today’s “what l learned” section is about.  The problem is, the third act is about how the backrooms are part of Clark’s psyche! Mary is walking into Clark’s head. We are literally in the character’s head. Which means the entire script is dependent on the character development being A+. And the director hasn’t even established who this character is.

So, you’re watching this final act and you’re going… what’s going on here? Absolutely nothing about Clark’s descent into madness is earned cause we barely know anything about him.

And, again, the movie sort of covers it up with the effective creepiness of the tall pirate monster chasing Mary. That’s the power of the Backrooms. Is that every time a glaring screenwriting issue pops up, the backrooms says ‘look over here!’ and you stop focusing on it.

With that said, I still think they left a ton on the table with the backrooms. There are much better backrooms moments online (on YouTube) than what they gave us. That was what I was looking forward to the most — seeing stuff that I hadn’t seen on Youtube. This is the big screen baby. Give us something bigger.

But a lot of this was rehashed stuff you could already see online. There wasn’t a single new backrooms moment where I said, “Oh wow. That’s cool.”  Nor did it seem like they were looking to create that moment.

So, all in all, this movie wasn’t for me.

But what I say next might surprise you. I don’t think anything I just said matters. Yeah, the character development here wasn’t even half-baked. It was quarter-baked. But maybe that’s what makes the movie feel fresh. I remember watching Phantasm as a kid and a lot of it didn’t make sense. But it stayed with me my whole life. Cause it was weird and unpredictable and unsettling. And I think the teens and 20-somethings who see this film will leave having had a similar experience.

And I think that may be part of this larger movement going on with these Youtube filmmakers that is getting people back to the theater. The very fact that they AREN’T doing it the Hollywood way, or the Scriptshadow way, is what’s helping them stand out. I’m going to talk about that a lot more on Friday.

For Wednesday, I’m going to take a break from horror and review a script from that new female writer who had 40 companies chasing down her rom-com script last week. I’m not reviewing her rom-com. But I’m reviewing the script she wrote before that. That should be fun.

Seeya then!

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

What I learned: Like I always say — whatever it is that people are coming to your movie for, make sure that that thing works. If it’s comedy, the majority of your focus should be on making sure the script is funny. If it’s a thriller, the majority of your focus should be on making your script fast and exciting. If it’s a horror movie, your focus needs to be on scares and creepiness.  If you succeed in providing the key thing that the audience came to experience, the script can withstand a surprising amount of weaknesses. And I think that’s why Backrooms is doing so well. Its character development sucks. But it’s consistently creepy throughout. And since that’s what people are coming there for, they’re mostly leaving satisfied.

Should be there in less than an hour.

This was one of my favorite newsletters to work on. I document finding the Ember Knight script, the writers signing with Kaplane/Perrone and how you can be the next screenwriter to make that leap. I interview the writers and push them on why they decided to write such a long script. I also take a look at one of the hottest movies to come along in a long time. The way this film is performing at the box office is insane. And what I found out about the director’s father is going to surprise a lot of screenwriters, as I think it’s a big reason the movie is doing so well. So, if you’re not on the Scriptshadow Newsletter List, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “NEWSLETTER” and I’ll send it to you.