How to choose ideas that producers want to buy, next amateur showdown announcement, important end-of-contest dates, and the single worst screenwriting trope ever.
I remember being a young inexperienced screenwriter desperate to understand what it was Hollywood wanted. My thinking was, if I know what they want, I can give it to them. Which should be obvious. If your dream is to make food for McDonald’s and you’re determined to get poached salmon on the menu, chances are you’re not going to succeed. You gotta be the guy who comes up with the McGriddle.
Yet coming up with a script they’d be interested in still seemed difficult. Sure, you could write the next Tenet, but then everybody tells you it’s too expensive to make. You could write the next The Conjuring, but then everybody tells you they read ten Conjurings a month. We need something original. So then you write something original, like First Cow, and everybody tells you that nobody is going to make a movie about something that obscure.
So, what do you do???
I wish, back then, I could’ve engaged in the practice of what I’m doing with this contest – reading scripts with the explicit purpose of making movies from them. Because I’ll be honest with you. There are a LOT of good scripts in the finals. It’s an embarrassment of riches, really. Script after script, I’m impressed with what I’m reading. However, it’s so easy for me to decipher which scripts advance and which don’t. I simply ask the question: “Is this something I want to produce?” The second I ask that question, the answer of whether that script advances or not becomes clear.
So, as a writer, that’s where your head should be at when picking scripts to write. You want to ask the question, “Is this something someone would want to produce?” I understand that the answer to that question varies depending on who’s producing. But you can still get a sense of how difficult the path to victory is. If you’re writing a movie like David Lowery’s, “A Ghost Story,” for example, and getting butt-hurt that nobody wants anything to do with it, then you have to get real with yourself. Nobody ever makes that kind of movie unless the director wrote it.
I’ll give you an example. One of the best writers in the finals is David Burton. Here’s the logline for his script, “The Misery Index:” A terminally ill, improvident father spends the last day of his life touring NYC with his estranged daughter, and has only a few hours to right a lifetime of wrongs…and make 1.2 million dollars.
David is an extremely talented writer (his script made the Top 50 of the Nicholl competition). But as I’m reading the script, I’m imagining trying to sell this movie every step of the way – to production houses, to financiers, to distributors, and, ultimately, to you, the people who pay for it, and I’m thinking, “That’s going to be one long difficult journey. Even if I do everything perfect, it’s still going to be a hard sell.”
Let me make something clear: I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. I told David himself that it’s a juicy part for an actor. If you can get someone big to play the main role, the film could get financed. But when I compare it to, say, one of the scripts I read which I think could be the next Die Hard, the decision is easy. Every step of the way, it’s going to be people jumping over each other trying to get involved in that movie.
Look, I have my passion projects as well. Every director or producer has that idea they know isn’t designed to make money unless it’s perfect. But that’s kind of the point. People would rather play their own passion project lottery ticket than someone else’s. Which is why very few passion projects get through the system unless they’re directed by the directors who wrote them.
So while I know it isn’t the perfect way to decide what to write, it should be one of the tools you use to decide. Ask yourself, “Is this a concept that a producer – someone looking for something that has a good chance of moving through the system and getting made – would be interested in?” Because a common mistake screenwriters make is only looking at their screenplays as a writer. You should at least attempt to see what your project looks like through the eyes of those responsible for selling it.
Which segues perfectly into our next Amateur Showdown. Yes, that is right, we’ve got another Amateur Showdown on the horizon. Amateur Showdown has led to script sales, agents, managers, even movies getting made! So you bet your bottom dollar you’ll want to enter your latest script. What’s the genre going to be? Drumroll please……………………
Amateur Showdown Genre: HIGH CONCEPT
Where: Entries should be sent to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: Include title, genre, logline, why you think your script deserves a shot, and a PDF of your script!
Entries Due: Thursday, March 4, 6:00pm Pacific Time
I already know what you’re thinking. What does high concept mean, Carson??? High concept is an admittedly vague term so I’ll keep that in mind when I go through the entries. The basic idea is that it’s a movie concept, as Michael Bolton once famously stated, “with a big sexy hook.” A family that can’t make any noise or else they’ll be killed by monsters (A Quiet Place). A future where murderers are convicted before they’ve committed the act (Minority Report). A dinosaur island (Jurassic World). A man whose memory only goes back 8 minutes tries to solve his wife’s murder (Memento). A failed singer wakes up one day to learn the Beatles never existed and he’s the only person who remembers their songs (Yesterday). A high school girl and a serial killer switch bodies (Freaky). A woman is hunted down by her supposedly dead husband, who has figured out how to become invisible (The Invisible Man).
Not on any ‘high concept’ list would be movies like Ladybird, The Way Back, The Assistant, Moonlight, A Star is Born. I wouldn’t even consider Extraction high concept. A guy saving a kidnapped kid is far from a sexy hook. Ditto, John Wick. A hitman who comes out of retirement to kill a bunch of Russian mobsters is a very basic premise.
Character-driven ideas tend not to be high-concept. It’s sort of built into the term. A high-concept idea is going to be “concept” driven. Yes, there are a few examples of high-concept character-driven ideas. “Her” is one. A guy falls in love with his AI computer. That’s a character-driven hook. But this is kinda the business. Understanding big ideas that audiences would pay for is what separates the wheat from the chaff. So “getting it” is kinda the point.
Finally, an update on the contest. Here’s the plan. I’m going to announce the finalists on Friday. And because there were so many good scripts that didn’t make the finals for a variety of reasons, I’m going to review four ‘almost-made-it’ scripts next Monday-Thursday. And then, on that Friday, I will announce the winner of the contest.
If you’re someone in the industry looking for good material and good writers, you’re definitely going to want to mark these dates down. The level of writing in this contest is better than any contest I’ve ever done and it’s not even close. There was so much strong material. And I’m excited to introduce some of those writers to the world. So tune in Friday and all next week.
I can’t wait!!!
What I learned: I couldn’t leave this post without mentioning one more thing because it had such a huge effect on me this weekend. I single-handedly quit watching Your Honor due to the ASTHMA INHALER TROPE. The asthma inhaler trope is one of the single worst inventions in the history of storytelling. It has made its way all the way up to the “TOP 5 ANNOYING MOVIE CLICHES.” For those who haven’t seen the show, Brian Cranston’s character’s son has asthma. And an asthma inhaler. The actor who plays the son so overacts the asthma attacks that I turned the show off. I couldn’t do it anymore. They were that insanely annoying. I’m going to finish this off by making a plea to the screenwriting community to retire this trope. It is cliche. It is overdone. It is evil. And, worst of all, it’s unoriginal. Let 2021 be the death of asthma inhalers in screenwriting. Thank you.
