A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about the word “hate.”
The conversation started because we were discussing music and I casually mentioned that I hated this band. She immediately stopped me.
“Hate is a terrible word,” she said.
Naturally, I asked why.
And she actually had a pretty interesting argument. Her point was that “hate” has become one of those words people throw around without thinking. You don’t merely dislike a movie anymore. You hate it. You don’t disagree with someone. You hate them. Everything gets pushed to the most extreme setting.
The more she talked about it, the more I started to come around. “Hate” is a conversation-ending word. It doesn’t invite discussion. It declares war on discussion. The moment you say you hate something, you’ve essentially informed everyone that you’ve moved beyond reason and entered into the realm of pure emotion.
By the end of the conversation, I found myself nodding along. Maybe she was right. Maybe we’d all be a little better off if we retired the word entirely.
I thanked her for the perspective.
Anyway.
I hate the Scary Movie franchise.
If there is a lazier, less funny comedy franchise out there, please tell me what it is. Because I don’t think it exists. The Wayans Brothers and their idea of humor have to have some of the worst attempts at joke construction that I’ve ever seen put to screen.
And by the way, the success of Scary Movie’s box office this weekend completely destroys all the good will that the box office has built up over the past couple of weeks. We thought we were seeing a revolution. That audiences had finally become smart. They refused corporate trash like Mandalorian and Grogu and embraced smart thoughtful horror in Obsession and Backrooms.
NOPE.
This weekend proves they’ll continue to pay for any piece of garbage that Hollywood lobotomizes onto the screen.
Some people will say, “No. This is good! People are coming to theaters!”
No! It is the opposite of good. People show up to this movie, are reminded of just how bad Hollywood movies can be, then don’t come back for another six months. These are the movies that destroyed the business. Not saved it.
It’s just sad that people go and see this trash. I feel like I’m watching the dodo birds, with the screenplay pages of this monstrosity of a script strapped to their backs, plunge off a cliff and I’m helpless to stop them. But what are you going to do?
The move that was supposed to have the big box office weekend was He-Man (30 mil). But it turned out the roided-out 80s icon did not “have the power.” I don’t think there was anything they could do to make this movie work because I honestly believe this was the best version of the movie they could make. Big-budget, harmless, cheesy. And people still didn’t like it. And sometimes that’s just the reality of your IP. It’s not meant to be a blockbuster no matter how hard you try and make it one. And they tried! They spent 17 years developing this. It’s just not a movie IP.
Backrooms took a pretty big tumble this weekend, losing 70% of its audience. That’s a hard to defend drop. The old excuse used to be, “Horror always has giant drops on the second weekend.” The only problem is that the film’s main competition, Obsession, GAINED audience in its second weekend. And this weekend, it’s fourth, it only dropped 7%. So they can’t use that excuse.
It confirms what I’ve been saying, which is that the backrooms don’t really make sense. The mythology is wonky. And so there isn’t nearly as much depth in the film as its missionaries want you to believe it has.
I still think it’s an okay movie. It’s just not a good movie.
But don’t worry, Backrooms. At least you’re not Mandalorian and Grogu. A lot of people have said that Backrooms and Obsession were the worst things to happen to Star Wars. Because they highlighted how tiny movies with tiny budgets can take down 300 million dollar (Mando and Grogu’s real budget) behemoths with 200 million dollar advertising campaigns.
But I would argue the opposite is true. The Backrooms/Obsession takeover is such a great story that nobody’s paying attention to the fact that Mandalorian will barely limp past 300 million dollars.
WORLDWIDE. Oh, but Disney tells us, the film is “guaranteed” to make money no matter how poorly it does. Yeah, okay Disney. I’ll expect that Mandalorian sequel announcement any day now.
I’m just pumped for Obsession. I obsessively push to you guys how important a simple premise is. It focuses the movie so much and creates this clean runway for you to just play with that premise and have fun. When you have to spend 30% of your screenplay explaining things, that’s time that you’re not entertaining your reader. That’s the power of a premise like Obsession.
Now, the premise itself has to have a good hook. You can’t be simple just to be simple. I could write a movie about a haunted lightbulb and that’s simple. But a lightbulb is not a hook people care about. A girl becoming insanely obsessed with a guy is a hook. And it’s proving to be the most powerful hook of the year.
On the TV side, I’ve been checking out this show, The Audacity, on AMC. Yes, AMC still makes shows. A couple of people had recommended it to me and the best way I can describe it is Succession in Silicon Valley.
It’s about this tech company CEO, Duncan, whose company has a really high valuation but, in actuality, it’s a worthless company. So he’s running around town trying to get people to invest money so that he and the company don’t implode once the media realizes the truth.
The show has a couple of mini-hooks. The first is that Duncan has access to a program that can access every single thing in the world. So he basically knows everything. And also, he blackmails his therapist (who’s a “therapist to the tech CEOs”) and forces her to give him information about his competition.
The show is a maddening watch. If you thought Succession was risky by making all of its characters unlikable, this writer, Jonathan Glatzer, seems to be conducting an experiment of just how unlikable an entire cast of characters can be and an audience will still watch them. I mean, Duncan alone is the most unlikable person on the planet. And the show cannot overcome that. It’s impossible. It’s one thing to be damaged and an asshole, which creates a small level of sympathy. It’s another to be a crazy asshole. And it doesn’t help that Duncan is played by Billy Magnussen, who’s probably the most unlikable character actor in his age range.
But what intrigued me about the show was that Glatzer seems to have read Scriptshadow and is using a lot of the screenwriting tools I espouse. But he’s using them like nuclear weapons as opposed to hand tools.
EVERY SINGLE SCENE has urgency behind it. We can never just sit in a scene between two characters. There’s always a ticking clock. There’s always somewhere someone has to be. If there’s a party scene, the countdown begins to when the guest of honor arrives and everyone is desperately rushing around to make sure the party is ready for their arrival.
It’s strange because whenever I see the opposite — a lazy party scene where everyone is half-asleep and there’s no clear goal and we’re limping along through several character conversations, I say, “This scene needs urgency!” But Glatzer shows me that there is definitely a limit to how much urgency a scene can handle.
I also talk about “scene agitators” as a means to spice up a scene. Don’t just have two characters in a car talking. Have there be some third agitating variable to create conflict, like a cop car trailing them that may, at any moment, light up its lights and pull them over.
In the third episode, a looming brush fire is introduced. And I’m thinking, “Of course there’s a looming brush fire.” Cause it’s something that can provide this constant series of scene agitators wherever the characters go. We have to worry about that fire getting closer and destroying everything.
In the first three episodes, I’m guessing there are about 100 scenes. 80 of them have scene agitators. There is always something agitating the characters and it’s INSANELY ANXIETY-INDUCING. It’s not fun. That’s the thing you have to realize about these screenwriting tips. You don’t just use them to check a box. You use them specifically to make a scene more entertaining. If all you’re doing is creating more anxiety in the reader and making the scene needlessly messier, than don’t use the tool. The tool is hurting more than it’s helping.
I don’t know if I can finish this show. It creates too much anxiety in me and I hate everyone in it. But what I’ll give it is that it’s never boring. And since nearly every show I watch is boring, I’m inclined to see it to the end. I will say this. Most shows that start off with low episode IMDB ratings contain episodes that get lower and lower rated as the season goes on. But this is the rare show where the rating keeps getting higher and higher. So I’m wondering if Glatzer is just using these first four episodes for setup that he will pay off in an amazing way in the second half of the season.
What did you see (and not see) this weekend?
Give me your reviews!
