Genre: Black Comedy/Drama
Premise: When a 13-year-old social misfit hacks into the financial life of his reclusive 70 year old neighbor and finds she’s being short-changed at her home office job, the two embark on an epic journey to seek justice from the shady for-profit “university” that’s been cheating her for decades.
Why You Should Read: The short version? Lili & Will is dark and funny and has loads of heart, with two very cool parts for an “actress of a certain age,” and pretty much any kid from “Stranger things.” The enhanced version? I’ve been working on this thing for years, and even though lots of people said they loved it, no one ever loved it enough to open a checkbook. At first I shrugged this off to “Nobody wants to make a POKER movie.” Yes, for years this script was about two characters on their way to a poker tournament, and nothing at all like the logline above. But then I got a NOTE I never expected — that my characters were GREAT, but they were drowning in technical b.s. about card playing that bogged everything down. I was DEVASTATED by this, knowing I would have to change pretty much EVERYTHING. But for the first time in my life, I buckled down, took the note, and actually did the work. NEW third act. NEW plot. NEW character arcs. NEW pretty much everything. Anyway, this is the result. I hope you enjoy it.
Writer: Jeff Stein
Details: 110 pages
I’ve read a few of Jeff’s scripts now and whenever I do, I think, “Man this guy has talent. Not only that, but he understands the craft.” Some writers have one, some have the other, but rarely do writers have both. And that’s my conundrum with Jeff. I know he has what it takes. Getting so many votes on this script proves what I’ve always believed. But there’s something in his writing that’s holding him back. And it’s not easy to figure out what.
After reading Lili & Will, I think I have an idea. At some point in his scripts, Jeff makes one major choice that sends his script into Troublesville. And it’s hard to come back from a bad choice. If he can eliminate that mistake, he can thrive. Let’s take a look at his latest!
Lili & Will follows 13 year-old Will, a middle-school nerd who has the unfortunate honor of living with a single mother who strips for a living. Will hopes that one day his mom can quit so they can have a normal life. But things seem to be getting worse, not better. His mom books a “Strip Tour” where she’ll be impersonating a once-famous Playboy Bunny. This should give them some breathing room financially, but it leaves Will alone for the summer.
Concerned, his mom asks the old reclusive weirdo next door, Lili, if she’ll keep an eye on her son. Lili says no thanks. Meanwhile, Will looks into online poker in the hopes of winning big so his mom never has to strip again. He needs a fake ID to sign up, which leads him to Lili. But after sneaking through her computer, he finds out she’s being ripped off by her employer, one of those spammy pyramid schemes that has its “employees” mail thousands of letters to people, paying them fractions of a cent for each one.
When Will tells Lili about the scam, she agrees to drive with him to the company headquarters and shake the CEO down. That’s the plan anyway. Neither Will or Lili know how to drive. They manage though, and do so in style, as it turns out Lily still has her dead brother’s never-driven Roadster.
This oil & water team come from two completely different sides of reality, but develop an operating friendship along the way. Unfortunately, Lili falls ill with a mysterious ailment and must go in for emergency surgery. It’s only when Lili’s life is in danger that Will realizes just how good of a friend she is. But it may be too late for that. Then again, it may not.
The thing I love so much about this script is the pairing. One of the tips I give out when it comes to two-handers is to make sure there’s conflict between the characters. We’re going to be with these two the whole movie so they better not be boring and agreeable the whole time. But a tip I should promote more is to make sure the pairing is INTERESTING. Give us two unique characters. Two people we’ve never seen together before. Or two people so different we have no idea what to expect when they’re thrown together. That’s Lili & Will for you, and it’s the script’s biggest strength.
The script’s got a pretty sweet plot, too. I like that Will initially tries to take advantage of Lili, only to find out that she’s being scammed, and then decides to help her instead. I love that it’s based around one of these pyramid schemes. Everybody hates pyramid schemes so you’ve got the audience 100% on your side from the get-go. It reminded me a bit of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, but with a better concept, since our heroes’ goal was one of justice.
However, once we get on the road, the script hits some rocky patches. The scenes feel rushed, many of them in a “blink and you miss them” manner, as opposed to Jeff stopping, figuring out what the scene is about, and milking everything he can out of the scene. For example, two threatening thugs come up to buy Lili’s car. This scene could’ve easily been 5 pages as we built up the tension behind these guys and whether they were going to do something bad to get the car. Instead it’s 6 lines of dialogue and we’re on to the next scene. This happened a lot.
Compare that to another “car buying” scene, the one in Psycho, where Marion goes to buy a car. But instead of 6 lines, we get a drawn out suspenseful purchase with a cop from across the street watching her every move. I needed the scenes to breathe in Lili and Will, especially because the characters were so good to begin with. Both were perfectly capable of sitting in scenes and talking for a long time.
In regards to the “choices” comment I made, we encounter that problem late in the script. We finally get to the company. They’re getting all jazzed up to go in there and take these scammers down. And ten seconds into a conversation with the manager, Will EXCUSES HIMSELF TO GO THE BATHROOM???? It made absolutely zero sense, both for the story and for the character. This is Will. He’s the “Get it Done” guy. And he leaves during the climactic showdown with the corporate bully? Come on!! That simply cannot happen.
Unfortunately, the script never recovers after this scene. We ditch the more interesting plot that’s been set up for another “We’ll get our money another way” sequence at a local casino. If I were Jeff, I would stick with the taking down the pyramid company plot. That’s where the audience is going to find its satisfaction. But there’s a bigger issue here. Why did Jeff make this choice? Because it’s choices like these that can send a solid script off onto a snowy unmarked road. It feels a bit like an ADD choice – this need to come up with something different, to constantly switch things up, keep giving the audience something new.
You’ve come up with a good plot. TRUST IT. Believe in what you’ve created and stick with it to the end. Nebraska, about a man who begrudgingly drives his elderly father to a lottery office to pick up his “winnings,” doesn’t end with some Rodeo heist that had nothing to do with the original story. It sticks with what we’ve set up.
I really really really want Jeff to succeed, man. He cares so much about this craft. He cares so much about getting better. I mean, “Vlad the Inhaler?” the Russian thug with asthma? Does it get any more genius than that? Or this exchange after Lili and Will first meet – LILI: “Er, would you care to come in for a cup of coffee?” WILL “Well, it’s three in the morning and I’m a kid, but sure.” I read that line five times and laughed harder each time. There are a lot of these genius nuggets scattered throughout Lili & Will. So do me a favor; if you’ve read the script, give Jeff your thoughts on anything you believe could make it, and Jeff, better. Thanks. And thanks to Jeff for letting us read his script!
Script link: Lili & Will
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Treat each scene like a script. Give it your all. You have to make each scene its own little great thing. If you’re writing a bunch of scene-fragments? – stuff that bridges the gap between writing the previous scene and that next scene you REALLY want to write, you’re leaving a lot of dead space in your screenplay.
What I learned 2: If you ever rush though anything in a script, we’ll know. That’s not something you can hide.
