What is the gangbusters screenwriting lesson within Project Hail Mary that nobody’s talking about?
Project Hail Mary dropped just 23% in its third weekend. Is this amazing hold because of Ryan Gosling? Yes. Is it because of a stellar marketing campaign? Yes. But when a movie holds this well, there’s one reason that rises above all others – THE SCRIPT.
Only awesome stories have 23% drops. Because awesome stories hit audiences more powerfully. Which means audiences come back from this film and tell other people about it, who then go see it themselves. It is the oldest and most effective form of marketing there is.
Now, there are many reasons why this screenplay is great. I’ve gone over some of them on the site. But I want to tell you a secret screenwriting reason this movie is killing at the box office that nobody’s talking about. It’s a reason that Hollywood keeps forgetting. But it’s been around forever and a day.
Here are some of the movies that should cue you in on the tip…
Step-Brothers
Bridesmaids
Swingers
Back to the Future
Good Will Hunting
Midnight Cowboy
Know what it is?
Okay, let’s put up the final movie that represents this tip, what some say is the greatest movie of all time.
The Shawshank Redemption.
Now do you know what the tip is?
It’s FRIENDSHIP.
Actually, it’s more specific than that. It’s a love story told through the lens of friendship. A platonic love story. Audiences absolutely love this simple formula. Two people fighting against the world to achieve what they need to achieve.
And Project Hail Mary falls into that category perfectly. It’s a love story told through the lens of friendship between Grace and Rocky.
Here’s how to make this formula work. You imply that the friendship has to end at some point. Just like a love story. You have to tell us that the lovers may not get together at the end.
I was just watching Back to the Future the other day again. Doc and Marty’s future is threatened by the fact that Doc is dead in the future. So, the very act of succeeding results in a friendship dying. That’s what makes these narratives so special.
And it’s the same thing here in Project Hail Mary. Grace and Rocky are trying to save the galaxy together but by doing so, they will never see each other again. That creates this looming feeling of worry and sadness in the audience, that makes things all the more amazing when the two end up together at the end.
So, why aren’t there more movies about friendship? We’ve established it’s a powerful blueprint to create an exceptional film. Well, until recently, Hollywood always thought you needed the female love interest to make a movie work. So, that was the relationship that always took precedence.
That’s why, when you saw The Shawshank Redemption back when it came out, it felt so different. There was no love interest.
But anyway, building a story around friendship can be dramatically powerful. And if you can couple it with a high concept like Project Hail Mary did, well then watch out, because you can take that movie to the box office stars.
Not all the entertainment news out there is as peachy as Ryan Gosling’s hair, unfortunately. There’s a really bad show that just debuted this week. It’s called The Miniature Wife. Now, you may say, “Uhhhh, Carson? Why would you think that show would be anything other than terrible?”
I assumed it was probably bad, yes. But I love Matthew McFaddyen! And I like Elizabeth Banks. Also, I really want someone to make the movie, “Kitten,” (scroll down in link for review) from a script I reviewed a few months ago. And I was wondering if this show would, in any way, negate that project.
That answer came pretty quickly: DEFINITELY NOT.
Cause this show is terrible.
I mean ACHINGLY terrible.
But here’s the good news. Failures like this can teach writers something and this show actually has a powerful lesson you can learn from the poor writing on display.
It’s something I call “SETUP BLOAT.”
I’m highly aware of Setup Bloat at the moment because I’ve consulted on several scripts recently, all of which had setup bloat in them. And setup bloat is a uniquely evil issue in that it kills your script immediately. Because it’s happening during the setup. And the setup is where readers decide, quickly, whether they’re in or out. If you have Setup Bloat, the reader will not make it through your first act.
So, what is Setup Bloat?
It consists of two things.
One: THERE’S WAY TOO MUCH GOING IN YOUR STORY
Two: THE EXPOSITION REQUIRED TO INTRODUCE ALL OF THOSE PLOT ELEMENTS
Exposition will always be required in your first act. You need to set up your story. Which means you need to write exposition. But here’s the thing about exposition in your setup: The reader only allows for you to provide so much exposition before they tap out. (if you want to learn how to effortlessly add exposition, my dialogue book has an entire chapter dedicated to it)
I think you know where this is going. If you don’t have a ton of plot to set up, then you won’t have to write that much exposition.
However, if you have a super complex plot with a ton of moving parts, then the majority of your first act is going to be exposition. Every moment is going to be you introducing information that the reader needs in order to understand the story. That’s Setup Bloat: When your first act is so over-stuffed with exposition that very little entertainment is allowed to breathe through.
Which is exactly what happens in The Miniature Wife. First we set up the unnecessarily complex situation that two people who are already married are deciding to stay married. Then we set up the husband’s miniaturization invention. Then we set up the complex funding requirements for this invention. Then we set up the wife breaking up with her secret boyfriend. But not a boyfriend she physically cheated on her husband with. This was just an emotional affair. We also set up that she used to be a famous author but hasn’t had a best seller in 15 years. Then we set up that her emotional affair boyfriend secretly pretended to be her agent and submitted a short story she wrote without her knowledge to the New Yorker. But what he didn’t know was that she stole that short story from one of her university students. Stole it to secretly keep on her hard drive in order to pretend to herself that it was hers. So now she has to go to that student and convince her to leave the country for six months, isolate, all so that she’ll have no idea that she, the wife, stole her short story when it gets published in the New Yorker.
And that’s just some of the setup!!!!!!
Do you see, now, how Setup Bloat can destroy a script before it even gets going? I don’t think William Goldman in his prime would’ve been able to manage that level of setup in a first act.
To be clear, part of what makes a good screenwriter a good screenwriter is making exposition invisible. It’s finding ways to make scenes entertaining on their own, before covertly slipping the necessary exposition into them. But if you don’t know how to do that, you end up with setups like The Miniature Wife, where it’s not only all exposition, but it’s clunky obvious exposition. It’s clunky setup scene after clunky setup scene.
How do we avoid this? Don’t write a billion threads into your plot. Or, if you do have a lot of plot, space it out. Especially if you’re writing a TV show. You have so much more time to delve into your plotlines in TV writing. You don’t have to stuff all of them into the world’s biggest trash bag and dump it on your reader in the first act of the first episode.
I’m kinda disappointed. I wanted a cool Matthew McFaddyen TV show to watch. But if there’s a silver lining to this, it’s that he’ll be able to look for another job right away after this one gets canceled next week.
