What is “movie logic?” Why should it never enter your script?
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Genre: Action-Thriller
Premise: (from writers) A college professor takes a yacht trip with her investment broker husband, but their plan for a relaxing weekend getaway turns into a deadly struggle when the skipper targets them in retaliation for the husband’s financial crimes.
About: A couple of producers inquired about this script when it was originally posted two weeks ago. I know they got in touch with the writers but I haven’t followed up with them to see what happened. Maybe the writers can share the status of the script in the comments section.
Writers: Joey Gray & Tim Wollaston
Details: 112 pages
Offshore is a strange little script, so much so that I’m still not sure what to make of it. It starts off as a serious thriller, then devolves into such craziness that it borders on comedy. The writing style and tone is so different in the two halves that when I saw it was written by two writers, I wondered if one wrote the first half and the other the second.
What the script has going for it is that it’s a movie. What I mean by that is I can SEE this as a film. I can see it being marketed. I can see the trailer. I can see the poster. And that’s important. If a script can be easily marketed, the quality of the script itself doesn’t have to be as high. With that said, I just don’t know here. The last act feels like it was written too quickly, almost as if it were a school assignment and the student had to write the last thirty pages in one night. There’s something here, but unless there’s a producer who really REALLY wants to make this kind of movie right now, the script’s going to have to be rewritten a few times before it’s ready to be purchased.
Dr. Rebecca Graham is a well-known psychology professor who has a book out about post-partum depression. She has a young son who was born deaf, Mason, and the book helped her get through that post-pregnancy part of her life to the point where she’s finally pregnant again. Unfortunately, Rebecca ends up having a miscarriage.
In the meantime, her husband, Paul, an investment broker, is dealing with all sorts of shit at work. The SEC is coming in to do a full-on investigation of the company and Paul’s boss is freaking out. For reasons that aren’t completely clear to me, the boss tells Paul he should take the company yacht and just go out into the open waters and have fun (I suppose possibly to recover from his wife’s miscarriage? Although it seems strange to me that Paul would just leave in the middle of an SEC investigation).
Anyway, Paul and Rebecca head over to this gorgeous boat where they meet Jack, the captain, a slimy sort who lingers on Rebecca’s cleavage a little too long. Rebecca feels uncomfortable about the guy but Paul assures her he’s okay and off they go. Turns out Rebecca’s intuition was right. Once they’re out on the sea, Jack kills Paul, then explains to Rebecca that Paul screwed over his parents’ retirement fund, which financially destroyed their family, which resulted in his mom shooting up the family (in a scene that opens the script).
Now here’s where things become a little unclear. The implication is that Paul’s company didn’t actually lose that money, but rather illegally stole it, and has since invested it in an offshore account in the Caymen Islands. Whether this was Paul’s boss or Paul himself who did this, I still don’t know. Regardless, there is now an account with 20 million dollars in it, and that’s where they’re headed. Jack needs Rebecca to sign off on the account so he can get the money. Of course, Rebecca wants no part in this, and spends the majority of their time on the boat trying to escape, a plan complicated by the fact that some men back on shore may or may not have her son Mason, whom Jack’s threatening to kill if she doesn’t help him.
Here was my big problem with Offshore. I never really believed anything that was happening. People were constantly saying and doing things that I’m not sure they would say or do in the real world. For example, the SEC is coming in to do a full-on investigation of the company. Paul is a key person in the company. So he just…leaves? If Paul was running away from something, I could see this, but it’s not his idea to leave. It’s his boss’s. So wouldn’t Paul say, “Uhh, Todd, shouldn’t I stay here if the SEC is doing an investigation? They’re probably going to want to talk to me. If I go on a trip, they’re going to think I’m hiding something.” That conversation never happened. So right from the start, something felt off.
Then there were little things. Like once they get on the boat and encounter Jack, the boat’s super-sketchy captain, he leers at Rebecca like a piece of meat. However, less than an hour after this extremely uncomfortable moment, she agrees to let Jack rub sunscreen on her back. Uhhh, WHAT??? Or later, when Paul and Rebecca start making out on the bed, Rebecca looks at the door to see Jack standing there, watching them. When she freaks out, Jack darts upstairs, so by the time Paul turns around, Jack’s no longer there. Rebecca proceeds to tell her husband that Jack was standing there but Paul doesn’t believe her. WHAT?? Why in the world wouldn’t you believe your wife if she said that the creepy guy who’s operating the boat was just standing there watching them make out? It makes no sense. There’s also a moment where when they first come on the boat and Mason’s with them. Mason does something wrong and Jack violently grabs him and yells at him.
Now Jack will be revealed to be bad soon. But at this moment, before the boat’s left the dock, he has to pretend to be the good guy. These two are the key to him getting 20 million dollars. Why in the world would you potentially screw that up by violently snagging the couple’s child and yelling at him?? Which was another problem I had. There was no subtlety here. Everything was on the nose. Jack makes clear he’s the villain from the second he enters the script. Why not have him be overly nice instead? Why not have him seem like the perfect helpful captain? That way, once they’re out on the water and he turns evil, it’s a great twist.
On top of this, the explanation of the plot (particularly the plot twists) was confusing. At a certain point we learn that Paul (I think) was actually bad, that he had stolen that money from Jack’s family, and was now taking this boat to the Caymen Islands to retrieve it. That might have made sense if the boat trip was Paul’s idea, but it wasn’t. It was his boss’s. So once his boss told him to take the company boat to spend time with his wife, Paul thought, “Well, why not collect that money on the Caymen Islands while I’m at it?” That just didn’t make sense to me.
Also, when we finally get to the bank, Rebecca reads a letter that basically implies Paul was going to run away from her with their son and nanny. So I guess he was secretly in love with the nanny? This is on top of the nanny secretly being Jack’s sister, who was supposed to have died in that opening shooting scene but who actually survived and infiltrated Paul’s family in order to facilitate this eventual boat trip that would get Jack and his sis their money back. Oh yeah, and the nanny/sister also caused the miscarriage (by throwing the morning-after pill into Rebecca’s coffee every morning). So the nanny is secretly a sister AND Paul’s secret lover?
This seems so outrageous that I’m inclined to think I misread it, but that was the problem with the second half (specifically the third act). It felt rushed and therefore confusing, like the writers didn’t meticulously plot through everything to make sure it all made sense. Instead, it was laid out there in a wild frenzy, giving the climax an “all-nighter” feel, one of those situations where you’re happy to have just gotten it finished, regardless of what you wrote.
If I were Joey and Tim, the first thing I’d do is go through every character choice in Offshore and say, “Would the real-life equivalent of this character do this in real life?” If the answer is no, rewrite it until the answer is yes. Too many characters operate on movie-logic here and it constantly breaks the suspension of disbelief required for a reader to enjoy the story. On top of that, re-outline and re-write all the twists and turns and make sure they all make sense. There are one too many twists here, which break the spell of the story. I’d rather read a script that has fewer twists that all make sense, then one that has a lot of twists that confuse me.
Like I said, there’s something here. But in my opinion, this script needs a few more drafts before it’s ready for primetime.
Script link: Offshore
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I don’t know why so many writers make this mistake but unless you’re writing a comedy, you don’t want your characters constantly doing or saying things that people would never do or say in real life. This is known as “movie logic” and it always reads false. If Rebecca has seen Jack look her up and down like a piece of meat AND nearly beat her child, she’s not going to allow him to do something as intimate as put sunscreen on her back. She’s just not.
