Search Results for: the traveler
Wait a minute hold on. Are you telling me you’re giving 2 IMPRESSIVES in a row? On Scriptshadow? Have you gone mad, Carson???!!
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from Blood List) At the same time every morning, Scott Treder has started jumping forward in time. First a day, then two, four, eight, etc. He struggles to keep his family together and find a cure, all as his secret spreads throughout the world.
About: This script made the recent Blood List last month. The Blood List is a list of the best horror, sci-fi, and thriller scripts of the year. MGM picked up the script which is adapted from a novel that may or may not be published yet (I can’t find any info on it online).
Writer: Austin Everett (based on the novel by Joseph Eckert)
Details: 118 pages
This premise isn’t entirely new to me. I know someone else who’s working on a similar concept. I found that person’s idea full of potential as I do this one. But we both wondered what it’d look like when executed. That’s the thing with these high-concept ideas. They all sound great in theory until you start writing them, in which case you discover all sorts of challenges. Then again, that could be said for all screenplays. Either way, I’m eager to find out how this translates to the page. Let’s check it out.
47 year old biology technician Scott Treder has a simple life. He loves his wife, Amy, and his perfect 7 year old son, Lyle. There isn’t much Scott needs to worry about other than getting to work on time and helping his son with the occasional homework problem. Until one day when he’s driving his car and it disappears from underneath him, sending his body shooting down the street. Baffled, he gets to the side of the road and calls his wife, who asks where he is. She tells him he never came home last night.
After a long talk that ends in him convincing Amy he’s not having an affair, Scott goes to sleep, gets up the next morning and goes to work at Madison University. At exactly 7:52 am while working in the labs, the world speeds up and one of his co-workers asks him where he came from. That he wasn’t there a second ago. As impossible as it sounds, Scott realizes he jumped forward in time 2 days. Which means whatever’s happening has officially become a “thing.”
Scott must now convince his skeptical wife that he’s jumping forward in time so the next morning, he shows her. Scott is in the dining room, then disappears and appears 4 days later. While Amy is freaking out, Lyle is curious. He’s one of the first to recognize that the jumps are doubling each time. Scott decides to recruit some physicists at the university to help. But when he disappears and reappears 8 days later, they think he’s pulled a trick on them.
So he does it again. And this time, when he jumps 16 days, there are dozens of students and professors and scientists and media waiting. The secret has gotten out. Scott’s not sure how to handle this, but he knows he needs to start finding safe places to be when he jumps. That gets complicated when it isn’t days he’s jumping, but months, and it isn’t months he’s jumping, but years.
Amy can’t handle it. Three years after the first jump (yet only 10 days for Scott) Amy asks for a divorce. Lyle is different, though. He’s both sympathetic to his father’s plight and curious. He wants to help his father stop this. So he builds his entire life around solving the Traveller problem. Scott sees him next when he’s 13, then 19, then 27, then 51.
As Lyle changes, so does the world around us. Society has descended into a splattering of militias on the latest jump, and Scott is famous. There are believers and disbelievers alike. It takes faith to wait 24 years to see if your belief is true. But there are those who now want to kill Scott, which means he must go on the run.
There’s another more sinister truth he must face: That he may only have one more day with his son. Indeed, he makes the next jump and Lyle, a frail old man, brings Scott to his life’s work: a giant computer lab created specifically to stop the future from snatching Scott away anymore. Will it work? Or is Scott doomed to live this curse out til death?
Man , I did not expect this.
I saw the premise and I thought it was going to be one of those goofy half-baked explorations of a high-concept like that script “Furlough” that I reviewed a few years back. But boy was I wrong. Everett and Eckert go all in on this concept, opting to explore the truth of the situation.
That’s the first thing I want to bring to the attention of aspiring writers out there. If you’re going to explore a heady concept, be prepared to bring some sophistication to the script. I’m not saying there isn’t an “Independence Day” version of this idea that couldn’t do well. But by focusing instead on a father-son relationship that’s attempting to withstand 20 year long breaks, it allows the writers to cover broader universal themes.
There’s this moment where Lyle is 27 and Scott jumps and a second later, Lyle is 51 and Lyle doesn’t flinch. He’s been waiting for this moment, preparing for it, for the last 24 years. He knows he’s only got hours both to be with his father and figure out why this is happening to him. It’s a shockingly effective way of demonstrating just how little time we have with the ones we love. As a testament to this, I teared up several times during this screenplay. Cause something told you they weren’t going to be able to stop it.
That became my next question for the script. How deep are we going to go? And Everett and Eckert go deep. They expand this concept way beyond any version of the story you can imagine. Just when you think they can’t jump him forward any more, they jump him. And you’re like, whoa, when is this going to end??
There’s a more-than-obvious nod to 2001 in the story. Maybe too much. The son builds a computer suit to help Scott in future jumps and the suit is named Hal. Here’s my thing with that. We all have the movies that made us want to become screenwriters. And those movies will never stop inspiring us. But when you literally inject pieces of them into your script, you rob yourself of creating your own independent work of art. This could’ve easily been the same movie without any mention of Hal. And we wouldn’t have been reminded at so many steps of another film.
But I’m nitpicking. I really liked this a lot. It had the two most important things that a script like this needs to have. Explore the concept to its absolute limit and give me a character based relationship to care about. When you do just the first one, you get a solid movie. When you do just the second one, you get a solid character piece. When you do both, you get greatness.
I would be shocked if this didn’t snatch up one of the biggest movie stars in the world. People said Ad Astra was the last adult sci-fi movie there will ever be made on a large scale. They’re wrong. Somebody will make this movie because as soon as this gets into the hands of a Chris Pratt or a Bradley Cooper or a Robert Downey Jr, they will sign on. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the first A-lister to read this screenplay immediately attaches himself. It’s too unique of a role. And I’m also expecting this to finish top 5 on the Black List. It’s that good.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned 1: The bigger the concept, the flashier the opening needs to be. You can’t promise someone a great concept then start your script with a lame talky scene. Show us what’s awesome about your idea! Here, we get a scene where Scott is driving his car to work at approximately 27 miles per hour… and then his car just disappears. Scott momentarily continues to shoot forward in a driving position, only for his body to unravel, scrape, and then tumble forward across the concrete. What a fun way to introduce us to this concept!
What I learned 2: Avoid parentheticals if at all possible, but one time you definitely want to use them is where there’s a strong belief that a line is going to be interpreted in the opposite manner in which it’s intended. So after the 3rd time jump, Scott’s wife Amy is freaking out, marching through the living room in denial and there’s a lot of fear in the house. Lyle says, “So next time it’s eight?” Without a parenthetical, we’re going to assume that the emotion behind this line is sticking with the main emotion in the house: fear. But that’s not how Everett means the line. So it’s important he clarify it with a parenthetical. Here’s how the line reads in the script.
LYLE
(casually)
So next time it’s eight?
Is The Time Traveler’s Wife the “thinking man’s” Loki?
Genre: TV Pilot/Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: A relationship is put to the test due to one of its participants randomly jumping through time.
About: Despite its failure as a movie, The Time Traveler’s Wife apparently became a high profile project that many studios bid on. HBO won out, attaching Dr. Who writer Stephen Moffat as the showrunner. Moffat was a huge fan of the original novel. He believes that TV is the proper medium for this complex unique story. The series will star Rose Leslie from Game of Thrones.
Writer: Steven Moffat (based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger)
Details: 61 pages
Readability: Medium
I went back and forth on whether to review this one.
The 2009 movie was a disaster.
It didn’t have a narrative.
I even tried to read the original book in which I struggled to understand why anyone would think it was worthy of printing.
The reason I’ve changed my mind is because this is an HBO pilot. And HBO continues to be, by far, the most consistent channel when it comes to content. Having hundreds of projects in development. Having a model where you’re not afraid to tell people like David Fincher, “No.” Only allowing the creme de la creme of projects on air. All of that has resulted in the best programming of any channel.
I noticed several of you chirping about an HBO show I had no interest in checking out – White Lotus – which I finally watched. And even that show was good.
So I’m thinking HBO must have figured out an angle to make this story work. I mean, heck, it’s got time travel in it, right?
When we meet Clare Abshire, she’s being interviewed, I think by herself – I have no idea – in a home video about what it’s like to be with Henry Detamble, who is also being interviewed on home video – probably also by himself – about what it’s like to time travel.
We never get any explanation as to why these two are being interviewed. But that’s par for the course with The Time Traveler’s Wife, which seems to have no qualms being a random directionless mess of a pilot.
Oh, yeah, Henry is a time traveler. But not willingly. He periodically gets sucked into a time hole, or something, every once in a while, wakes up in the new time without his clothes on, must then find clothes (I do not say this lightly – 80% of the plot of this show is about how important it is that Henry find clothes whenever he time travels), and eventually keeps running into Clare, who becomes his girlfriend. Well, not all the time. Sometimes Henry will meet Clare when she’s six. In those times, he must be delicate about explaining their future together.
After a lot of jumping around, we settle into a time when Clare is 21 and Henry is 28. He works at the library – because, of course, that’s a normal occupation for a strapping 28 year old male – when Clare walks in, sees him, walks up to him, and tells him they’re going on a date. “But I don’t even know you,” he says.
During their date, Clare informs Henry that, in the future, they’ll be married to each other! Henry is shocked by the news but rolls with it, especially because it means Clare wants to have sex tonight. So they go back to Henry’s place, bang, and then Clare sees another woman’s bra in the bedroom. What’s this, she asks? Oh, I’m seeing someone, he says.
Pissed off, she storms out, seemingly unaware of the possibility that a man who had no idea who she was four hours ago might have a girlfriend. Clare would not do well on The Bachelor. While moping in her apartment, Henry comes to apologize. But not 20-something Henry. 30-something Henry! Ahh, and here’s where we see our unique premise at work. In this relationship, you can recruit your older self to take care of your problems for you.
And that’s the end of our pilot. Which, believe it or not, expects you to want to watch more of it.
Good God.
I am going to go so far as to say this is the worst thing I’ve read all year.
The number of things wrong with everything about this show/pilot/book/movie is endless.
Literally nothing works.
And it all goes back to the source material. The source material turns a weak directionless juvenile concept into a 500 page story. And then, for some reason, someone wanted to make a movie out of it. And when that didn’t work, a TV show.
Where is the narrative here?
What is going to keep people watching?
There is no goal. There is no purpose.
Are we going to be in episode 37 with Henry still hopping around in time before we realize there’s nothing here? “Oh hi, Clare! I’m 51 now and you’re 12. Let’s play hide and seek!”
Seriously, why are we continuing to watch? What is the overall purpose of the story?
On White Lotus, in the very first scene, we’re told that somebody was murdered. We then jump back in time to when everybody got to the island and watch the story play out as we wonder who it is who’s going to die. There’s a purpose.
Here it’s just a guy, at different ages, showing up and going on dates with a girl. How quickly is that going to get old? 10 minutes into the first episode? 20 maybe?
Who thought this was a good idea? It’s so bad it actually hurts my brain to think about.
Honestly, HBO is risking this becoming their worst show ever. If they want to go down that road, great. They’ve built up enough credit to have a few failures. But man. This one is going to hurt badly because it’s going to get roasted.
This goes back to an issue all writers must watch out for.
Which is that not every concept is meant to be a movie or a TV show. This is one of them. You can tell it’s one of them because there’s only one scene that the writer had in mind when she came up with the idea. The moment where a woman invites a guy out on a date and tells him that they get married in 15 years. You get to play with the shock from the guy’s side. “What?? I don’t even know you!” He says. It’s an effective trailer line moment. “I know you don’t know me. But you and I are married in the future!”
And they literally have ZERO PLANS for a story after that. That was clear in the novel. That was clear in the movie. And it’s clear here. There’s no plan.
In fact, it doesn’t even make sense!!!
Why is Henry confused by a woman telling him that they get married in the future? If there’s anybody who would be able to believe that… IT WOULD BE A PERSON WHO’S SPENT THE LAST DECADE OF HIS LIFE TIME TRAVELING!!!! Pretty much any time some random person says they know you, you’d have to give them the benefit of the doubt, right? Why would Henry act like Clare is crazy with this proclamation?
The bad ideas don’t stop there. We get a scene where Henry time jumps into some year, encounters a couple on a date, throws up, then uses the “toxicity” in his vomit as a weapon to distract the man so he can beat him up and then take his clothes. That’s right. There is a scene where our hero scrapes up some vomit with his finger, flicks it into a man’s eyes, and then beats him up. I did not know it was possible to come up with an idea that bad.
Now I do.
If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to give you ONE THING about The Time Traveler’s Wife that worked, you’d be reading my obituary now. But the argument I *might* try and make is that, at least you have a unique relationship to explore.
Because every love story has been told a million times over, it’s impossible to come up with new angles. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a rare example where they’ve come up with a unique relationship angle. Clare and Henry are constantly coming at each other at different points in their lives. So no conversation is quite the same.
But even that part of the story only works conceptually. In practice, it sucks. The conversations between these two are boring and predictable 99% of the time. You have a good feeling of what they’re going to say to each other before they say it because that’s how little thought has been put into this world beyond the initial concept.
There’s one moment in particular in this pilot that symbolizes how dumb this entire pilot is. Early on, when 30-something Henry meets 6 year old Clare and tells her he’s a time traveler, she asks him if he’s ever seen dinosaurs before. He answers, “I tickled a dinosaur’s tummy once. Actually twice. But that was in a Natural History Museum.”
Then, later in the pilot, 10 year old Henry is at the Natural History Museum and an older Henry comes to him and tells him he’s from the future and he needs to teach him about time traveling. While walking around, he lifts young Henry up so he can tickle the belly of a T-Rex model.
That’s right. We actually go through the trouble of paying off the most random line in the entire pilot. That’s not how setups and payoffs work. Setups and payoffs are for things that actually matter to the story. But not for The Time Traveler’s Wife! Nosiree. There’s so little going on plotwise in this disaster that it becomes imperative we pay off someone saying they once tickled a fake dinosaur.
The irony is that you would’ve had the ONLY INTERESTING MOMENT IN YOUR ENTIRE PILOT if Henry had actually time-traveled back to the prehistoric era and touched a dinosaur.
There is nothing worse in the world of fiction than something that thinks it’s clever when it isn’t. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a weak idea in search of a narrative that covets boredom at every turn. If I could give this less than a what the hell did I just read, I would.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware the script idea that you only have one good scene idea for. Before you write a script, you should have at LEAST five killer scenes in mind. Preferably more. If you only have one, I can pretty much guarantee your script will be as bad as The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Genre: Sci-Fi Drama?
Premise: (from Black List) An exploration of relationships as a man witnesses different types of love across the ages.
About: This one finished pretty high on last year’s Black List. This is Tom Dean’s breakthrough script.
Writer: Tom Dean
Details: 127 pages
I didn’t make it to Baby Driver this weekend. Maybe I’ll see it tomorrow and do that script-to-screen review for Wednesday. The movie’s doing quite well, which, despite my negative script review, I’m happy about. We need more filmmakers taking chances like Wright.
Speaking of a movie that didn’t take ANY chances, The House was decimated at the box office this weekend. I’m not surprised. It always felt like a lazy idea. Plus, marriage isn’t funny. If you look at the history of comedies, marriage has never been funny.
Then there’s the new Netflix show, GLOW. I don’t know what to make of that one. I’ve watched four episodes and the writing vacillates between really good and really sloppy. The majority of the scenes feel like they were filmed before anyone knew the cameras were rolling. And the main character, played by Alison Brie (the whole reason I tuned in), is inexplicably kept in the background the majority of the time. I haven’t given up on it yet. But episode 5 better be awesome.
Moving on to today’s script, I’m surprised I haven’t reviewed it yet. It’s on the Black List. It’s time-travel. Sounds right up my alley!
The year is 1960. Sort of. This is 1960 after the invention of time-travel. Which means there’s been some changes. Subtle changes. Like futuristic shit stitched in. But changes nonetheless. It’s here where our Narrator, who will take us through the many time periods in the story, introduces himself. He explains that it’s his job to keep lovers properly meeting each other in all the various time periods.
We first get to know Cecile and Sanjay, who live in Napa Valley circa 1820. But, once again, you have to remember that just because we’re in 1820, doesn’t mean that the characters were born in this era. Both Cecile and Sanjay are from different time periods in the future, or at least, some future after 1820. We watch both of them get in a huge fight, and then we cut to New York City, circa 2402.
It’s here where Sanjay is now a young assistant at a giant company. He’s told by his boss, Henri, to deliver a gift to Henri’s wife back at their condo. Once there, however, a 50 year-old Claire, Henri’s wife, discusses happiness and love with Sanjay before ultimately seducing him.
From there, we cut to Nice, France, circa 1930, where we meet Claire as a 25 year-old. She’s just moved here, and a young cop named Antoine knocks on her door to see if she knows anything about a murder that was committed outside. Antoine falls in love with Claire at first sight, but must use his fellow English-speaking cop to translate his love for Claire.
Cut to 40 years earlier, also in Nice, France, where Antoine is now older, or maybe younger, and is now an actor. Antoine is now in love with Roland, a 30 year-old transgender man. The two fight with each other about their future, specifically how Antoine cannot be with a transgender person.
That takes us to about page 70. And I could go on. But I think you get the idea.
The original paragraph that I was going to write here, I deleted. It was too personal, too negative. And I think Dean deserves credit for his ambition. Without ambition, we get Transformers 6. There’s something to be said for artists who stand up to movies like that.
However, I can’t get past how unnecessarily complicated this story is. There’s the time-travel mythology. There’s a complex narrative. There are tons of rules. There’s no true main character. Dialogue scenes go on forever. The fourth wall is broken. It’s over 120 pages. The characters we do get are all over the place.
For example, one character is a transgender man in one time period, and then a woman when we cut to earlier in his life. Except that he’s actually living in a later time period when he’s younger. It’s almost like the writing is done to specifically confuse us rather than entertain us.
At one point, in 1960, when our characters are going to a movie, they see this on the marquee: “George Clooney in ‘11th Avenue’ Directed by Howard Hawks. His first film after time travel.”
There are also a lot of lines like this: “If it happens you’re familiar with 1820’s Napa Valley, this version won’t look familiar at all. The architecture is limited to the style and technology of early 19th century, but it is very much lived in, developed, and flourishing.”
And then we get dialogue like this: “Okay. Well, when we travel through time, we regulate exactly what dimension it is we travel inside of. That’s why when you travel from 2500 to 1500, you don’t alter the past and create a paradox that would essentially change the course of events so that your parents would never meet and thus never have you and thus never afford you the opportunity to change the past in the first place.”
When you’re reading stuff like this while attempting to follow characters backwards through time, those characters sometimes getting older despite the year being before or getting younger despite the year being after, it gets to a point where you throw up your hands. You’re rooting for scripts that take chances. But if we’re not even sure what’s going on, how can you root?
To the screenplay’s credit, it starts to come together in the end. There was a moment where I thought, “Wow, this reminds me a lot of when I first read Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” But whereas it was always clear in that screenplay what was going on, this one you’re in the dark the majority of the time.
The thing is, there’s a good idea in here somewhere – this concept of following love stories backwards in time. Going in reverse from each relationship to the characters’ previous relationships, and taking that further and further back until you get to the first person who started the chain. But instead we have this time travel stuff which you need Neil Degrasse Tyson next to you to explain.
So what’s the lesson here? I’m not sure. Shouldn’t new writers be taking chances like this? Isn’t ignorance, in a way, an advantage? Christopher McQuarrie stated that his best script, the one that got him an Oscar, The Usual Suspects, was written with barely any screenwriting knowledge. He said that he wouldn’t have done a lot of the inventive stuff he did had he known then what he knows now.
So why beat Dean up for that? This comes back to one of my weaknesses as an analyst, which is my defiance of experimentation. But I think my issue here is a valid one. Had their been one experimental choice, I would’ve been okay. My problem with La Ronde is that there were half-a-dozen experimental choices stacked on top of each other. And screenplays just aren’t built for that. You can get away with it in novels. Cloud Atlas comes to mind. But screenplays are limited in the types of stories you can tell with them. That’s why this didn’t work for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re going to write long scenes, make sure there’s enough tension to sustain them. If there isn’t, we won’t have enough patience to follow the scene through. So there’s a scene in La Ronde where Sanjay brings a gift to his boss’s wife, Claire. He is supposed to slip the gift in the condo and then leave. It is imperative he not get caught. But the extremely lonely Claire catches him, then asks him to have a drink with her. And they start talking. And then there’s more talking. And then there’s more talking. The talking goes on for a really long time. And because of all that talking that’s going nowhere, the scene loses steam. If you’re going to write long dialogue scenes like this, you need to look for ways to keep the tension. For example, what we could’ve done is had Sanjay’s boss tell him he had to be back within 30 minutes, which is barely enough time to complete the task. Then, when Claire catches him, she tells him, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell on you. If you have a drink with me.” Now Sanjay’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. He has to get back to his boss ASAP. And he has to somehow get Claire to let him leave without ratting on him. Without tension, long dialogue scenes die a sad pitiful death. If you watch any of the master’s long dialogue scenes (Tarantino) you’ll see that all of the best ones are laced with tension. And the few that aren’t, are tension-less.
Genre: Serial Killer/Sci-Fi
Premise: A former music therapist is recruited to use a mysterious machine to dive into the memories of a serial killer on death row.
About: This is the writer’s SECOND time being on The Black List. The first time was with The Traveler.
Writer: Austin Everett
Details: 119 pages
Today, I am shocked.
I read this script, which I did not enjoy (for reasons I’ll get into soon).
And one of my premises was that the writer wasn’t ready to be on the Black List yet. But then I did a little googling and learned that I’d already reviewed a script from this writer. And that I gave the script an impressive!
So now I’m all turned around.
I don’t know how these two scripts came from the same writer. The only thing I can come up with is that, after the success of The Traveler, Everett dug this one out of the deep corners of his hard drive, back when he was still learning how to write.
Because the writing here is not on the same level as that script.
What was my big issue with Earworm?
It comes down to most frequent advice I give writers who send me screenplays. Which is: TOO COMPLEX. MAKE IT SIMPLER.
Today’s script is so much more complex than it needs to be.
Let me go through a list of things we have to keep track of in Earworm.
A psychic
Who’s not really a psychic, but a psychologist
Who’s a certain kind of psychologist that specializes in music therapy
She’s been trying to adopt a girl for three years
She herself was adopted
She had a twin that disappeared when she was young
We have a serial killer
He’s in a psyche ward despite his killing rampage continuing
This killer was also an orphan
This killer’s parents committed a murder suicide
This killer’s foster parents also committed a murder suicide
This killer had a twin.
Nobody knew the twin existed until today
This twin was killed when he was younger
An administrator at the ward has found a new technology that lets you see into someone’s memories
Nobody knows how the technology works
Music sometimes helps the technology work
You can see into a person’s memories when you’re hooked up together
You can also see into a person’s memories when you’re nowhere near each other.
People think you have to be a twin to do the memory invasion.
Sometimes you can switch bodies with the person whose memories you’re looking into
Do I need to go on?
There are, like, 15,000 things going on here.
The script is about a female psychic, Kimball, who’s recruited by this guy, Judd, who works at a psyche ward. That ward is housing a serial killer named Lenny, who’s pled insanity for his case. Judd seeks out Kimball and asks her to come by. He hooks her up to a device where she finds herself inside Lenny’s memory. Specifically, a memory of one of the women he’s killed.
Just out of curiosity, Lenny’s logged thousands upon thousands of hours in life. Why isn’t the random memory Kimball jumps into something more mundane such as Lenny watching TV? Why is it whenever we jump into Lenny’s memory, it’s always one of his most important memories of his life? I’m not even going to try to explain that because I’m still trying to figure out how you hook someone up to a device and they randomly are able to access some serial killer’s memory who’s nowhere near them.
We learn some key details about Kimball and Lenny. Kimball had a twin sister who was taken one night. Lenny had a twin brother who died in a horrible accident. All of this is to imply that the reason Kimball can connect with Lenny on the memory machine that nobody understands is because they’re both twins. Or, I mean, they both have dead twins in their life.
I mean… am I overstating the complexity here?
First off, twin stuff is really hard to get right. If screenwriting were divided into 12 grades, twins would be the thing that everybody in the first grade used. It’s that cheap easy low hanging fruit that seems really juicy when you’re squeezing it in your hand. But all those juices do is make your script wet and soggy.
That’s not to say you can never use it. I have this twin idea that I’ve wanted to do forever. But you have to understand that most people think of twins as a cheap trick. So what you have to do is use that expectation against them. Do something early on with the twins that’s sophisticated that the reader didn’t see coming. This sets the tone for a more sophisticated story. Which you need to live up to for the remaining 70 pages.
The way twins are used here is the worst way you can use them. The twin stuff in Earworm is messy. It’s unclear. There are multiple twins, which is just compounding an already juvenile choice. The mystery memory device only works for twins. Dueling twin mystery backstories.
Random thought. Share your favorite ‘twin’ movie in the comments section.
But the twin stuff isn’t even the main problem here. The main problem is that there’s way too much going on. Just the fact that we start off meeting our protagonist as a psychic. And, then, we learn that they’re a special type of psychic that works with music therapy. And then we learn that they’re not really a psychic but rather a psychologist that lost their license. So this person is three different things within the first ten pages.
How bout we start with being one thing?
I get that, as writers, we want to change things up. But if that means throwing everything and the kitchen sink into a character, that’s worse than being too cliche. When I see something like that early on in a script, I say to myself, “This is too complex.” And what always happens is that ends up being a precursor for what to expect in the rest of the script. And what did we get for the rest of this script? Serial killers, twins, memory infiltrating devices without rules, multiple twin backstory disappearances and accidents, body-switching.
It’s a great big Sloppy Joe.
There aren’t any rules here. When you’re dealing with something as fluid and complicated as memory, you need to establish a set of rules that the audience understands. The Matrix painstakingly laid out every single rule of the Matrix. You can make an argument that it took too long to do so. But the reason they did that was SO YOU COULD ENJOY THE MOVIE. When you don’t convey the rules of the game, you’re going to have people in the back asking, “Wait, what’s a third down exactly?” Of course they’re not going to enjoy it.
The next person who writes a movie about memory needs to put a lot more effort into it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I want to speak to the future screenwriters here who want to write this type of concept. I read a lot of scripts that have to do with going into someone’s memories. Or going into someone else’s head. Before you write one of these scripts, do three full months of research where you learn the science behind the human brain, where you learn about memory, where you learn about the current technology being used to access and study memory. Get a doctorate in those departments. Because one of the things that destroys these scripts is the writer clearly knows so little about the world they’re writing in. When you do the research, you’re able to talk about things and present things in a manner that is believable. Even if these technologies haven’t been invented yet. But if all you’re doing is a few days of googling, the reader will feel that. They’ll sense the lack of authenticity in your story. You need to be an expert on whatever the subject matter is in your script. Period. If your plan is to half-ass the research, I can save you a lot of time. Don’t write the script.
Just when we were ready to label the 2019 Black List a joke, today’s script not only earns an “impressive,” but should’ve been the number 1 script on the list.
Genre: (will reveal later)
Premise: A pair of out-of-work immigrant brothers catch a break when they are hired as day laborers to work at a house in the Hollywood Hills. But the job doesn’t go as expected.
About: Here’s writer Jared Anderson’s IMDB bio — Jared Anderson is a Los Angeles based Director from Salt Lake City, Utah. He earned a Directing Fellowship at the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles where he made his AFI Thesis Film, “Unremarkable”, which in addition to playing at festivals worldwide, was nominated for the 2016 Student BAFTA Award, the 2016 ASC Student Heritage Award, won best dramatic short at the NYC Shorts Film Festival, and was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick and currently has nearly 80,000 views. He is currently working with the creators of the new FX series, “Snowfall”.
Writer: Jared Anderson
Details: 101 pages
I’m going to warn you that you should read this script before you read my review. The best thing about this script is its many reveals. The script isn’t going to be a fun read if you already know what happens. So go download this script, come back, read my review, and we can all talk about how awesome it is.
Martin and Aracelli are a 20-something married couple who happen to be illegal immigrants in the United States. And they’re struggling badly. Their infant son has a sore on his forehead so bad it needs to be stitched up. Even then it doesn’t heal. But since they’re illegal, they can’t go to a doctor.
Aracelli tells Martin that today is going to be a special day. He’s going to get a job and bring home lots of money, which will lead to more jobs and more money, and before they know it, they’ll be living the American dream. So off Martin goes with his brother, Enzo, to Home Depot, looking for a labor job.
Enzo’s been in the U.S. a little longer than Martin and therefore speaks some English. That allows them to outmaneuver the other workers and get a job with not just anyone, but Gwyneth Paltrow-like movie star, Robin. Robin is very nice. -too nice, almost – and is thrilled to have the brothers helping her.
They get to her Hollywood Hills home and she explains there’s going to be a political fundraiser here in 48 hours and she needs the grounds spic and span. The main problem is that she invested in a marijuana business, which means she needs to move a bunch of imported dirt (yes, imported) into her basement, which is where the marijuana is going to be grown.
Neither Martin nor Enzo know what she’s talking about half the time (partly because they don’t speak English well and partly because she’s crazy) but what they do know is that something’s not adding up. There are some rather large black birds that fly around in the house, there are certain rooms that are off-limits, and, oh yeah, Robin just shot someone upstairs!
The two run upstairs to see that a migrant worker, not unlike them, is on the ground with a gunshot wound, dying. Robin screams that she opened the door and he just started attacking her. “We need to call the police!” She says. But then “realizes” something. “You two aren’t illegal, are you?” Neither of them answer. “Because the police will question you, they’ll find out you’re illegal, and send you out of the country.” Instead, she offers, you should just leave.
Martin and Enzo run out, wondering what the hell just happened. They decide not to tell their family and forget about the whole thing. But the next morning, Robin shows up at their house! Did either of them tell her where they lived? She says she needs help finishing the job, and to Martin’s dismay, Enzo, who’s been acting strange all morning, says he’s going with her. Martin goes to protect his brother. But, as it turns out, Enzo’s going to need a lot more than his brother’s protection to get out of this alive.
Just to be clear, I deliberately left out some key details to preserve the script’s primary mystery.
There’s always a scene that comes along in a good script that confirms to me, “Okay, I’m in good hands.”
That scene happens in The Laborer when the brothers were at Home Depot trying to get a job for the day. Anderson had already done a great job setting up the dire circumstances the brothers were living in. There are too many people living in their house. They have no money. Martin’s son needs medical attention. It’s not good.
The reason this is important is because when you get to scenes like this one, where your heroes are trying to achieve something, the more that’s at stake, the better the scene will play. We’ve set up that the stakes are very high for them getting this job. So you can feel the suspense as they wait for their opportunity.
But Anderson doesn’t stop there. He uses the R2-D2 trick. What’s the R2-D2 trick? It’s a time-tested guaranteed-to-work screenwriting tip!
What happens is that Robin comes over and looks at all the laborers to try and find one for the job. But she doesn’t pick Enzo and Martin. She picks some other guy. And we watch as she walks away with the guy, to her car, the job lost.
But Enzo doesn’t quit. This is his dream job, working for this woman. So he runs up and he pitches Robin him and his brother. Two-for-one. Robin thinks about it and agrees.
For anyone who forgot, in Star Wars, there’s a scene where Luke Skywalker and Uncle Owen are buying droids from the Jawas. They pick C-3PO and some red droid. We watch in horror as R2-D2 is left behind, splitting up this comedic duo we’ve fallen in love with. Can it be true? R2-D2 is going to be left with these things???
However, at the last second, the red droid pops a power converter and C-3PO pitches Luke on taking his buddy R2-D2 instead. Luke agrees and, thank goodness, our droid team is reunited.
Same idea here in The Laborer. Anderson could’ve easily had Robin walk up, look at everyone, point to Enzo and Martin, and off we go to the house. But where’s the fun in that?
Or, the bigger question all screenwriters should be asking is, where’s the fun in certainty? There isn’t any. Drama comes from un-certainty. You have to constantly create doubt as a storyteller. You must make us think, over and over again, in many different scenarios, that our heroes will fail. So when they get their wins, it feels earned, but, more importantly, it was a lot more entertaining to watch.
But here’s the kicker. That was just a normal scene in The Laborer. Things get a lot lot crazier in this movie. If you want to know what readers are looking for, this script is it. We’re looking for familiar stories that are told in ways we’ve never seen them told before.
You have no idea where this script is going. I mean, there’s one scene where Enzo goes to a reclusive gay bathhouse where I was sitting there shaking my head asking if I’d been transported into another reality. And I’ve read some crazy scenes before. They usually go off the rails. But this one culminates in an image that will haunt you for the rest of your life. I promise you that.
This script is so wild and fun that I kept waiting for it to fall apart. It’s one of the bummers of the job. I’ve watched so many great scripts crumble right before they get to the finish line that I don’t want to get my expectations up for a great ending only to be disappointed once again. But this is one of the rare scripts that nails the landing. There’s nothing I like better than a clever twist. And this has one.
It also has a lot of unexpected developments. Every time I thought I knew where it was going, it would surprise me. I’m actually jealous. Cause, usually, I can predict scripts like they’re written on the back of my hand. I watched “Underwater” last night and it was like it was spat out of some rudimentary screenwriter AI. Every single beat was hit at the exact moment it was supposed to hit. And there wasn’t a single surprising moment in the film. I don’t know how this Jared Anderson guy approaches his structuring, but I want to know. It seems like he has a system where whenever the normal path is to go right, he makes sure to go left, and vice versa. The Laborer is a very well-crafted consistently surprising puzzle.
I won’t say more than that. I’ll just say read it and prove to me there was a better script on this year’s Black List. Right now the only four good scripts on the list are The Traveler, The Menu, The Process, and now this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You always want to add layers of difficulty for the hero’s journey, even if a layer makes it JUST A LITTLE BIT HARDER than it usually is. Because the worst thing you do can do for your hero is to make things easy. Easy is boring. So by adding layers of difficulty – and you can add as many as you want – it creates more obstacles that the heroes must overcome. It was really clever making it so that Martin and Enzo only understood 40% of what Robin was saying. It added that one extra layer of difficulty in the communication, which made it that much harder to win in the end.
P.S. If anyone predicted where this script would go, I want to hear from you. But I can promise you, even with me telling you to watch for the unexpected, that you won’t be able to do it. :)