Genre: Sci-Fi (short story)
Premise: In the near future, “Tardy Men” – a new breed of firefighter with high-tech fire suits fused into their spines – go into dangerous fires to retrieve valuable items for the rich.
About: This package is still coming together and, along with hot spec sale, Don’t Worry Darling, last week, is drawing major bids from multiple studios. It looks like Simon Kinberg, who will direct, discovered the short story, which appeared in The New Yorker, and changed the main character from a male to a female so that Reese Witherspoon could play the lead. A cool footnote is that the author of the short story, Thomas Pierce, will be writing the screenplay. The film will be retitled, “Pyros.”
Writer: Thomas Pierce
Details: short story – 1200 words
I never cared about Simon Kinberg being a big successful Hollywood writer/producer despite a body of work that suggested below-average talent UNTIL he joined the Star Wars team. Cause I love Star Wars. I wanted great Star Wars movies. And then, out of nowhere, I’ve got the guy who’s making some of the worst superhero movies in history involved in Star Wars in a major capacity. That’s when I began the anti-Simon Kinberg movement.
When this project hit the airwaves, my interest was piqued because it’s such an odd move for everyone involved. You’re going to have a studio committing major dough to a 1200 word short story. You’ve got Reese Witherspoon taking on her first ever hard sci-fi role. And you’ve got Kinberg trying his hand at original material, as opposed to the safety net of well-known IP. On top of that, it’s an admittedly intriguing premise in that it’s a sci-fi idea I’ve never seen before. That’s hard to do in any genre, but especially sci-fi.
Also, these are always good reminders for writers about what kind of stuff Hollywood is searching for. We spend so much time in our delusion bubbles convincing ourselves that any idea we come up with is genius, we forget to look at real-world “this is what sells” data.
Let’s take a look.
Tardy Man begins with a man talking to us using abbreviated language. “Can’t talk thru suit. That’s why note cards,” he tells us. He then proceeds to explain that he’s a “Tardy Man,” as in “fire retardant.” His “Tardy Suit,” he explains, is connected to his spine and he can’t remove it without help “or else death.” That’s why he has to “use note cards.”
He explains that his job is to run into big fires, the kind that take up entire neighborhoods, and recover things for rich people. The company he works for, Wick, has one rule. The item they paid you to get is the only thing that matters. Doesn’t matter if you see a dying dog. Doesn’t matter if a person is stuck under a dresser on the second floor. You get the item and that’s it.
In today’s case, he needed to obtain a bin that kept important items for a rich family. While he was walking to the house, he saw a little kid in the pool. Only place for him to stay safe. He walked by the kid but later goes back to get him, even though Wick has been known to kill Tardy Men who disobey the rule.
He then places the boy in the bin and goes on a long trek through the fire-fueled forest, to the safety of a random home just outside the fire. That’s when we realize this is the woman he’s been telling the story to the whole time, the woman he’s asking to take the boy. Now he has to get back to Wick and hope they don’t find out what he did. The End.
Well, I may not be the biggest Simon Kinberg fan, but in this case, he nailed it. This was really good.
For starters, it’s cleverly written. I love the mood the abbreviated style creates and I love that the abbreviation is motivated. Not only that, but it’s used as a semi-mystery to drive the story. Why is this person talking like this, we’re wondering.
But here’s the real reason I liked this story.
One of the most pivotal moments in this business is when you pitch someone an idea. In that moment you’re either going to get a yes or a no. And the significance of this is that it will be added to the total tally of yeses and nos, which provide you with a pretty clear picture of whether your idea is good or not.
However, what a lot of writers forget is that there’s a secondary pivotal moment within the pitch itself. It’s the moment when you give the person the definitive image that proves your idea is worthy of being a movie. In Blake Snyder’s book, Save the Cat, he talks about this moment with his big spec sale, Don’t Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot. During the pitch, there was a moment where he described a car chase where his protagonist was forced to be a passenger in his mom’s car during the chase, leading to the slowest car chase ever. It was that moment that the producer said, “This is a movie.”
That’s the goal of the definitive image. It’s your highlight image that sells the movie. Another example would be the birth scene in A Quiet Place. Establish that monsters kill you if you make any noise and then force one of your characters to give birth within that construct. People hear that and they go, yup, that’s a movie. No question about it. A more specific way to look at this is, “What’s going to be the moment in the trailer that makes people want to see this movie?”
That moment occurred while I was reading this short. Early on, the Tardy Man was walking through the backyard of this house he had to go into, and he sees this desperate child in the pool. And he just… keeps walking. That’s it right there. That’s the movie. You show a man in a giant deadly fire who sees a boy who needs saving and he just walks right past him? That shocking image is going to sell the movie. And, actually, it’s going to sell it even better when Reese Witherspoon is doing it. Because women are supposed to be motherly. And for her to coldly walk past a boy who needs help… that’s going to get literally “ohhhhs” from the audience.
There was another line I really liked here as well: “Very, very sad situation. Tardy Man a good person. Too good. Wick doesn’t like good ppl.” This implies that “Tardy Men” need to be cold and unfeeling. They must learn to eliminate their emotions. They’re here to do a job and the job is all that matters. That’s a really interesting character for actors to explore, and I’m going to assume it’s the reason Reese signed on.
It’ll be interesting to see if Kinberg uses the entire story here as the basis for his screenplay or if he only uses the core concept. Because while transporting a boy in this box that supposedly only has an hour of air in it gives the movie a nice ticking time bomb, something tells me there’s so much more you can do with this idea. You could create an entire mythology behind the house and the people who own it and what they want the Tardy Man to retrieve and maybe it’s something illegal. I like the idea of him having to save someone, but I don’t think it should be a real time 90 minute “walk through a fire” story. I’m afraid that might get boring.
This is easily one of the best short stories I’ve read. It’s so hard to come up with a good story in a thousand words, but somehow this Thomas Pierce guy pulled it off. I’m really looking forward to this now.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This was a wake-up call to me that not every low-to-mid budget sci-fi idea has to be some dumb time-travel thing or “people stuck in a ship” or “wake up in a strange room” idea. Not that you can’t write good versions of those movies. But of the hundreds of low-budget sci-fi scripts that I’ve read, 90% of them are those three setups. Expand your imagination and look for sci-fi ideas in unexpected places.
