Genre: Holiday/Action
Premise: In the sequel to Santaman, an evil suburban dad goes back in time before Christmas to change the holiday into his own likeness, forcing our holly-jolly ass-kicker to take him down and… you guessed it… save Christmas!
About: This one comes from one of our own, Colin O’Brien! Colin was commissioned to write the sequel to the animated film, Santaman. That second movie never made it to production but Colin has been adamant that the sequel deserves to see the light of day amongst a glut of weak holiday fare. Let’s find out if he’s right.
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Details: 98 pages

There are several templates that are considered “acceptable” when it comes to Christmas movies. There’s the Hallmark family gathering Christmas script. There is the “regular person must save Christmas” Christmas script. And there are the 15 million adaptations of A Christmas Carol.

But, in screenwriting, you don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. You want to find a new spin on the old acceptable templates. However, every time you put a new spin on something, you’re taking a risk. That spin has not yet been proven to work and, therefore, there’s a chance it will fail.

Scripts like Red One and Santaman take the “Save Christmas” trope and add secret agents and superheroes. That’s what you’re told to do in screenwriting. Don’t give us the same ole same ole. Give us a new spin! But the question becomes, “Is the reason these other spins have never been done before because they don’t work?”

Is Red One a success? Probably not.

Which leaves us Santaman. What kind of present-under-the-tree are we getting here? Is this a Lego Millennium Falcon (my dream present)? Or is it a pair of socks (the present my brother gets me every year)?

This is a very different Santa Claus from the one you and I know. He still delivers presents one day a year. But on the OTHER 364 days a year… HE FIGHTS CRIME. And it isn’t long before we see him and his trusty reindeer, Comet, take down a villain named King Coal, who flies around via a modified coal-burning stove strapped to his back.

Afterward, Santa has to head back to the North Pole since Christmas is less than 24 hours away. After coordinating with his head elf, Morton, they begin the all-night process of delivering presents. When Santa sees an uncharted house lit up like a Christmas tree, he goes down for a delivery. But it’s a trap! A suburban dad named Dan Sipowitz and his wife, Bella, knock Santa out.

They then head back hundreds of years to the beginning of Christmas and Dan steals the coveted vile of “Christmas magic,” allowing HIM to become Santa in this new timeline. Back to the present and, now, Christmas is known as Sipowitzmas. And instead of getting free gifts, you have to buy them!

Meanwhile, OG Santa’s plan is to convince his elves and reindeer up in the North Pole that he’s Santa. But they don’t know who he is! They’re now all wild versions of their previous selves, the result of this new alternate timeline.

Eventually, Santa makes his way to Sipowitz’s “Gift” Distribution Center, where he confronts Sipowitz with unsuccessful results. How can you convince people you’re Santa Claus when they don’t even know who Santa Claus is! Sipowitz orders Morton, Santa’s #1 elf who doesn’t know he was ever Santa’s #1 elf, to get Santa, forcing Santa to make a run for it.

All of this culminates in a showdown in Times Square during a parade. A SIPOWITZ PARADE. That’s right, Dan Sipowitz has created a “Christmas” parade commemorating himself. The evil Sipowitz hops on a couple of drones and tears toward Santa Claus, determined to get rid of him once and for all.

I like Christmas movies that make me feel good.

I don’t like titles like, “Merry Deathmas” or “Little Drummer Serial Killer.” When it comes to this merry time of year, I like stuff that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

That is the tone of Santaman to a T.

This script is designed to make you feel good during the holidays.

I mean, how can you not like a superhero version of Santa dueling it out in the city with a guy named King Coal who flies around powered by a modified coal stove?

Throw in heavy influence from the most delightful movie of all time, Back to the Future, and you’re plugging directly into my goosebump receptors.

Colin also has a natural inclination for writing set pieces and I thought the idea of a final set piece detailing a parade dedicated to our villain (one of the floats is Dan Sipowitz celebrating making his first million dollars), was really fun. Watching Sipowitz and Santa weave in and out of floats while doing battle was great.

And Colin’s got some good dialogue too!  There were a lot of fun little dialogue exchanges like this one, from two elves desperately trying to save Santa…

PEYTON
What if we reversed the North polarity?
MORTON
We tried that.
PEYTON
Okay, what if we RE-reversed it?
MORTON
That’s not a thing.

The whole thing was pure fun.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have notes!

In fact, I’ve given Colin notes on Santaman: Regifted. So, I’ll share a couple of them with you here.

The first one is that there’s definitely some familiarity peeking through this story. No matter how hard I tried, I could not not think of Martin Short’s Jack Frost in The Santa Claus franchise. Even though Dan Sipowitz isn’t a classic Christmas character, he still emitted that Jack Frost vibe.

Writing a screenplay is akin to walking a balance beam. No matter how hard you try, you’re going to lean into some familiar story elements. So your job is to counter-balance that by leaning in the other direction, creating your own unique elements.

The tricky part is that you’ll often create elements that are arguably unique, like Dan Sipowitz. But we’ve seen multiple elements from other movies that make Dan Sipowitz feel too familiar. Jack Frost as the villain who wants to steal Christmas in The Santa Claus 2. And then you have The Incredibles, which covered suburban dad superheroes.

You see, that’s all that matters to the reader. It’s never about it being a direct copy.  It’s about how it FEELS.  If it FEELS like something we’ve seen before, we’ll call it a cliche.

The other big note I gave Colin is the same note I give almost every writer: LEAN INTO WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR CONCEPT.

We just talked about this yesterday, where the featured subject matter was underground horse racing. Yet the writer barely explored what was unique about underground horse racing. Here, we have a script about Santa Claus being a superhero. Specifically a “Batman” like superhero. He’s got a lair. He’s got his own version of Alfred.

So when things go wrong under that scenario, I don’t want a regular Santa battling the bad guy. I want Santaman! I want a Santa superhero!

The reason this is important is because the things that are unique to your concept are the very things that are going to separate your script from every other script in that genre. So, whenever you go away from those things, you are telling a story that the viewer has already seen.

Colin and I had a discussion about this and I respected his response. He said, “Carson, I’ve rewritten this so many times. I don’t know if I want to change it anymore.” I totally get that. You get to a certain point with a script where you can’t make any more changes. Cause you run the risk of changing the script just to change it, stealing hours away from your life and for what?  To make the script 3% better?

But look. Colin brings the fun here. The script reads so fast. So effortless. It’s got great set pieces. I love the time travel aspect. A solid 10-15 lol moments.  Most of all, it put me in that holiday mood. Check it out for yourself and let Colin know what you think!

Script Link: Santaman 2: Regifted

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: “Santa’s toy workshop is just what you’d expect.”  That line comes early on in the script. Never describe something as what the reader “would expect.” There should always be variations in your version of any description.  It’s lazy to write things like, “This prom is exactly what you would expect.” Even if it’s meant to be familiar, you should still describe it in your own detailed way.

Genre: Sports/Drama
Premise: In the violent world of underground horse racing, a wannabe female jockey and her trainer brother-in-law become entangled in an illicit relationship full of blood, sweat, and sex that pushes the limits of their bodies and the law.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. It is the final script I wanted to read from last year’s Black List.
Writer: Leigh Janiak
Details: 120 pages

One thing that always perplexes me about The Black List is its pairing phenomenon. There will be a script with an entirely unique subject matter that hasn’t been seen in half-a-decade in Hollywood, only for there to be a SECOND script covering the same subject matter that year.

That’s what we see today. Million dollar spec “Stakehorse” finished number 2 on the Black List last year. The script covered the darker side of horse racing. And now we’ve got a second script from that list that covers the dark side of horse racing. This one appears to go even darker than the first.

So, microwave up some apples and hay and let’s find out if this race is worth betting on.

Ruth and her older sister Diana were brought up by a gritty horse trainer. At 10 years old, they were thrown onto thoroughbreds. When they would inevitably fall, their dad would say, “Get up,” and they’d be expected to race again. Talk about tough love.

Cut to when they’re adults and Ruth is determined to be a jockey, a path that’s dominated by men. How bad is it? Ruth is routinely sexually objectified in the locker room. In one scene, a penis is literally thrown in her face as everyone else chants “suck it.”

Ruth doesn’t care. She just wants to be a jockey and she sees her shot with an 80,000 grand prize Derby race. But she needs a coach so she goes to Hector. Once inside Hector’s place, we see that there’s a quadriplegic woman on a bed. This is Diana. Hector was her coach and is her husband.

If Ruth teams up with Hector, they bypass all the money-shaving aspects of the Derby and get to keep the entire pot. They just need to find a horse for Ruth to ride on. Oh, and I should mention that they also seem to have read 50 Shades of Gray together because, out of nowhere, they start having wild S&M sex between practice sessions. Will it get in the way of her pursuit? We’ll see!

Writing dark material is the drug of choice for many a screenwriter.

Dark material may not keep the lights on at any studios but it *does* give you street cred. It gives the writer street credit, the director street cred, the producers, all the way up to the studio.

Fight Club famously made no money. But it made 20th Century Fox cool for a while. And when you’re the cool studio, other cool filmmakers and actors want to come and make stuff with you. So, while dark material doesn’t directly show up in the bank account, it helps everyone associated with it indirectly.

But here’s the thing about dark material. The darker it is, the harder it is to wrangle. I can make you fall in love with Marty McFly in three minutes. But making you fall in love with Travis Bickle? That takes a whole lot longer.

The reason that matters is because there needs to be a connection between the reader and the script for the script to work. And that connection is most often found between the reader and the main character. Darker characters take a better writer to pull off. That’s because strong writers understand the hole they’re in when they write dark characters and they make adjustments accordingly (in order to balance the darkness out). Whereas weak writers ignorantly believe that you’ll like their dark character no matter what.

I never liked Ruth.

I never understood why I would like her.

She’s cold. She’s bitchy. She’s selfish.

That’s three-strikes-you’re-out.

But if that isn’t enough, she hates animals. If you hate animals – especially the animals that you build your life around – that’s unforgivable. Here’s a line from her…

“Machines can be fixed when they’re broken. I treat these horses like they are — dumb and fickle —”
(There’s venom in her voice)
“I hate them. I hate that I have to depend on these dumb, unreliable animals.”

Why would I even keep reading after that?

Let’s look at the best dark sports movie made in the past 15 years – The Wrestler. The main character in that movie WAS EXTREMELY LIKABLE. He was the nicest sweetest guy. He checks to make sure his opponents are okay after the match. He’s a GOOD DUDE. Ruth is not a good person. I would even go so far as to say she’s hateable.

From there, you have this quadriplegic sister. Why? What’s the point other than to create more melodrama? This script is already dark and sad. Now you’re going to add a quadriplegic sister??

This is why dark material is hard to execute. You’re asking the reader to go with you in spite of all this sad, depressing, angry stuff. It takes someone with a ton of talent to present that in a digestible way. Here it felt like the writer just kept punching us every couple of scenes to make sure we were down as much as possible.

Maybe my bias towards stories with hope is getting in the way of my analysis here. But I still think this was way too dark and sad for no reason.

There was potential for this script to be good, though.

There’s an early scene where Ruth is on her horse, preparing for this underground horse race. To her left is a 13 year old jockey. To her right is a jockey in his underwear. That’s the script I was hoping to read.

Pro Tip: You always want to lean into what’s unique about your concept.

What’s unique here is underground horse racing. Where there are no rules. But there wasn’t nearly enough of that. It was replaced by… S&M sex??????

The counterargument to my analysis is that Harness is unlike any script you’ll read this year. I will give it that. So if you like offbeat stuff, this is definitely that. But the characters never brought me in enough for me to care about that offbeat story.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned:

This script lost me on the first page of our heroine as an adult. Here was that beat…

Bare feet step on a scale.

A YOUNG WOMAN, wearing only cotton underwear. Small, compact. This is RUTH.  All grown up.

She looks down at her weight: 116.

Her face betrays no emotion.

Early on, a script is a puzzle to readers. They’re using the pieces that you, the writer, give them in order to figure out who our characters are and what they’re trying to do.

This is the first moment I’m meeting Ruth as an adult. Therefore, I’m looking for the puzzle piece that’s going to help me understand who she is. If a woman looks at her weight on a scale in a moment that’s important enough that she’s checking her weight and her face “betrays no emotion?” Then I am literally learning *nothing* about that person. If she had been angry, I would’ve learned something. If she had been happy, I would’ve learned something. If she had taken out a note card that had her last 5 weights recorded and this one was higher than the others, that would’ve told me something. But this tells me nothing. You cannot tell me nothing about your main character in the first moment that I meet them.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: A group of suburban kids stumble upon an old ship that shuttles them out into the middle of the galaxy. Now they must find their way back home.
About: Skeleton Crew comes from Spider-Man director Jon Watts. It was developed during a time when Lucasfilm had a dozen shows planned. The money-stuffed prodco wanted a Star Wars show for every demographic. As many of those shows fell by the wayside, Skeleton Crew somehow survived, probably because of Jon Watts recent pedigree. Dude is directing some of the most beloved Marvel movies around. Why not give him a chance? He teams up with Christopher Ford for this first episode. Ford is a good screenwriter. He wrote one of my favorite underrated movies of the last ten years, a little serial killer movie called The Clovehitch Killer. He also wrote several drafts of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Writers: Christopher Ford and Jon Watts (based on the universe created by George Lucas)
Details: about 45 minutes

I still believe in Star Wars.

Or maybe it’s just that I still want to believe.

But, in order for me to have this belief, I must believe that Star Wars is bigger than the people in charge of it and that those people will pass. And when people who actually understand Star Wars get a hold of it, they will finally mine the stories that Star Wars is capable of telling.

Skeleton Crew comes at a difficult time for the franchise, mere months after its most disastrous output, a show called “The Acolyte.” Well, maybe The Acolyte wasn’t as bad as The Star Wars Christmas Special. But the fact that it’s in the same conversation is damning enough.

I don’t need to re-litigate all the other mistakes the franchise has made lately, namely the 17,000 movies that it’s canceled. But let’s just say that it’s in a lot of trouble, leaving Skeleton Crew with an almost impossible task that it was never meant to take on: SAVE STAR WARS.

Does Skeleton Crew save Star Wars?

Let’s find out.

The story for Skeleton Crew is simple. Four suburban kids, Wim, Neel, Fern, and KB, are inadvertently thrust on a wild adventure. 12 year old Wim lives with his single workaholic father. Since his dad is never home, it’s up to Wim to do almost everything, including getting to school every day.

On the day of his big “placement” test, he wakes up late, forcing him to take a shortcut with his hoverbike. In the forest, he stumbles upon a Lost-like hatch in the ground. He tells his best friend Neel, which is overheard by two cool girls (Fern and KB). The four head to the hatch to find out more.

Once there, they somehow get inside, where they learn it’s an old buried spaceship. Wim accidentally turns it on and the ship lifts out of the ground and shoots into space. Once there, they realize they’re not alone. Broken robot SM-33 is there with them. When they ask him to take them home, he points to all the stars and says, “Which star does your planet belong to?” It’s then when they realize they’re f&%*ed.

SM-33 says there’s a spaceport where they may be able to find some answers so off they go. Except that the spaceport SM-33 brings them to is a PIRATE SPACEPORT! The kids dodge and dance around a number of nefarious aliens before finally running into Jod Na, a man who says he can help them get home. But do they believe him?

There are three things that hit me right off the bat with this show that separated it from other Star Wars shows.

One, it’s a simple story.

Overcomplicating your stories is one of the quickest ways to frustrate readers UNLESS you are a master at plotting. And most writers are not masters of plotting. This is such a simple story: Kids lost. Kids need to get home. That’s it. We get it right away.

Two, the character work.

Character work can be a large and overwhelming process. But when you break it down, character work is simple. You give us reasons to relate to the character, you give us reasons to like the character, and you give that character something they’re trying to achieve that matters.

Wim is lonely. He misses his mom. His dad isn’t around much. These circumstances make us care about him immediately. And we like the fact that he doesn’t want to do some mundane job for the rest of his life. He wants something bigger for himself.

Then, of course, when he gets lost, his goal arrives: Get home.

Three, the tone.

Tone is always the hardest thing to get right because it’s a feel thing. But janky tones have been plaguing Star Wars for years. The closest we’ve gotten to a proper Star Wars tone since Disney bought the franchise was The Force Awakens. But nothing’s really come close since. I mean The Acolyte was practically anti-Star Wars tone.

For Star Wars, the tone should be a combination of adventure, mythology, whimsy, and mystery. And Jon Watts got those ingredients… if not perfect, then close.

I mean, the man finally put aliens back in Star Wars! I must’ve watched 8 episodes of Andor before I saw an alien.

Here, there are more aliens than you know what to do with. My absolute favorite alien was the little monkey guy who shuttled them from their ship to the spaceport. He literally made me lol five times. That moment when he gets the payment, looks at it, giggles maniacally, then shoots off? That’s Star Wars right there. Jon Watts gets it.

The first two episodes are so good that I didn’t have many criticisms.

I suppose the girl characters were bitcher than they needed to be. But I get it. Watts is trying to create conflict. If the girls are exactly like the boys, that’s boring. But it does have a teensy bit of that “girls are superior to boys” stink that was being forced into the development of 90% of projects three years ago.

Then, of course, I have to remember that I gave The Acolyte’s first two episodes a good review. But I did so with the same caveat I will use here, which is that the screenwriters spend the bulk of their time getting those first two episodes right. Then, because they’re not spending as much time on episodes 3-7, the writing drops off. I mean it dropped off so badly in Boba Fett that they just abandoned two episodes altogether, replacing them with Mandalorian eps. So we’ll have to wait until next week to see if that’s the case here.

But something gives me more hope for Skeleton Crew over other Star Wars shows. Like Watts’ ability to direct children. The actor who plays Wim has that perfect balance of naivety, likability, and acting chops. Unlike those poor excuses for actresses who played the young twins in The Acolyte, we actually believe this actor.

This is DEFINITELY worth checking out, even if you’re not into Star Wars. It’s got this holiday feel to it that will work for most audiences. It’s sweet. It’s innocent. It’s fun. I’m in!

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Do not be afraid to take your time setting up your characters in TV shows. This is what TV was made for – long-form storytelling. It’s not like movies where you have to set your hero up in one scene. After its cold open, Skeleton Crew takes its first 17 minutes setting up its young characters and boy does it pay off. Because sometimes you need that moment of quiet – your hero all alone in their house – feeling empty, isolated, abandoned. You can’t rush through a moment like that. And that moment has its roots in Star Wars lore. Luke Skywalker walking off to the end of his home and staring up at the setting suns – that moment DID NOT NEED TO BE IN THE MOVIE. It didn’t move the plot forward. A producer with ADD probably told Lucas to cut it. But those moments help sell what’s going on internally with your character. Watts understood that and took his time setting these characters up.

When a film does unexpectedly well, I believe it’s important, as a screenwriter, to ask the question: “Why?”

I don’t care if it was a Michael Bay flick, a goofy horror movie, a love story, a slow-moving biopic, or whatever. To be dismissive of any movie that does exceptionally well at the box office is to ignore the very audience you are hoping to court later on when you start making movies.

So… Moana 2.

Best Thanksgiving opening ever at 220 million bucks (for 5 days).

That’s too many bucks, man. You can’t chalk that up to, “Kids animated movie on Thanksgiving. Of course it did well.”

No no no no no no no.

Don’t oversimplify it.

The first movie made 56 million dollars its opening weekend. This film made 135 million (over the three-day weekend). So the sequel made over two times as much. When do sequels make twice as much as the first films at this scale? It’s rare.

And it wasn’t one of Disney’s billion dollar franchises either. The first film topped off at 640 million. In fact, when the original Moana finished its run, it was seen as a soft failure by the studio. It did solid business. But not the kind of business expected out of a Disney animated movie.

So, what happened?

Why did this previously forgotten movie birth a sequel that became a smash hit?

The first reason has nothing to do with screenwriting. Disney is able to track, with terrifying exactness, what their audience watches simply by checking their Disney+ database. And Moana was getting a lot of love on streaming.

But from a storytelling perspective, its success is obvious.

The “mismatched pairing” is one of the most reliable storytelling mechanisms around. Why? Because what you’re trying to do with a screenplay is entertain the reader. You do this by creating drama. And the best way to create drama is through conflict.

The problem I see in a ton of screenplays is that the writer struggles to keep the conflict consistent. He’ll write one scene that has strong conflict. Then there will be 6-7 scenes with little to no conflict. Finally, after 25 pages, another scene with good conflict will arrive.

When you place a mismatched pair of characters on an adventure, you have conflict built into EVERY SCENE AUTOMATICALLY.

And if you want to get more advanced, you can create even more conflict by widening the difference-gap between the pair. The wider the gap, the more conflict you’ll get from them. Moana is compassionate and selfless. Maui is self-centered and insensitive. They see the world in completely different ways.

That’s what you need for an effective pairing.

And the great thing about this is that you can use it in any genre and it will work. In action, we have Hobbs and Shaw, a no-nonsense cop and a suave criminal. In Drama, Green Book. A quiet thoughtful pianist and a brash Italian driver. In Romance, When Harry Met Sally. A womanizer and a woman desperate to find love. In sci-fi, The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian is stoic and driven by duty. Baby Yoda is playful and mischievous.

Think about that for a second. How different Mandalorian and Grogu are. I mean they are so so so so so different. When you do this, you will never have to find conflict for your scene. It will naturally happen.

So the next time you want a guaranteed formula that works, create a pairing that’s not just different from one another. But VERY different.

Moving onto movie number 2. That would be Wicked. The film dropped just 30% to an 80 million second weekend. I have to give it to that little green witch. She didn’t drop much at all.

As I like to remind people, the first weekend take comes from the marketing. The second weekend take comes from the screenwriting. If you wrote a good script, people will tell others about the movie fondly, which means a lot of those referals will show up for weekend #2.

How big of a deal is this?

It’s actually made me consider seeing the film.

Now granted, it raises that possibility from -6% to +3%. But that’s still an improvement. I think I need to do some pre-movie hypnosis therapy preparing me for 2 hours of Ariana Grande creepiness. If I can somehow mentally block out her bizarre movements and 2nd grade voice, I might go.

Of note is the audience for these films. Wicked and Moana 2 have a 70% female audience. Gladiator 2, which took in just 30 million in its second weekend, is the big male movie. And they’re not showing up.

This is a strange glitch in the box office matrix because female-led movies have been declining faster than Jamba Juice stock over the last three years and it was looking like we were moving back to a male-dominated box office.

But with the ultimate male movie barely putting up a Gladiatorial fight and these other two films becoming box office bonanzas, we may have to rethink that strategy. Should we be propping up female protagonists once more? Or is the disappointment of Gladiator 2 rooted more in poor storytelling?

I’m still on my holiday weekend, watching whatever movies my parents force me to. The latest one I’m checking out is The Long Goodbye, a 1970s film about a PI looking into a disappearance. I’m 30 minutes in and, so far, it’s quite good.

If anyone has time to check it out, watch the first 15 minutes. It’s a fun little 1970s version of GSU. The hero wakes up in his apartment, hung over, and his cat is hungry. His goal is, simply, to get his cat food. Hmm, saving the cat. Where have I heard that before?

Not long after, the inciting incident arrives. It’s classic screenplay structure, playing out all the way back in 1974! We’ll see if it continues to use that classic structure tonight. :)

What’d you see this weekend? How was it?

And a really important screenwriting lesson on how to create tension in scenes

First of all, I’m giving out THREE Black Friday Half-Off Screenplay Consultations. That’s $249 for 4 pages of notes on a feature or pilot script. These will go quickly so e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you want one. Make sure the subject line reads: SCRIPTSHADOW DEAL.

Okay, I wanted to leave you with some screenwriting advice over the weekend.

I’m with family right now and my parents love World War 2 movies so I was stuck watching two of them whether I wanted to or not. The first one was Steve McQueen’s Blitz on Apple TV which is about how, during World War 2, when Germany bombed London, the British sent all the kids out of the city to safety. The story follows one kid who jumps out of the train and travels back to London to return to his mom.

The second movie is Lee, about model-turned-war-photographer Lee Miller, who captured a lot of powerful photographs during World War 2 for Vogue magazine.

Both films are what I would call “Almost Films.” They were almost good. But weak writing reared its ugly head enough times to keep them from ever rising above average. In fact, there were two scenes, one from each film, that best represented this bad writing. And I wanted to highlight those scenes.

Let’s start with Blitz.

In that film, the little kid, George, makes it back to London but is picked up by an evil group of criminals who raid bombed buildings for valuables. They need children, specifically, to fit into tight spaces. So one of the following scenes has George crawling through a bombed jewelry store to snag every watch and necklace he can find.

However, while he’s there, a couple of policemen burst in on the other side, looking for looters. The musical score becomes tense as George hides behind some debris. The score increases in intensity as the cops get closer and closer to him until, right as they’re about to spot him, George kicks some debris, causing a partial building collapse that sends the cops running back outside to safety.

To an average writer, this may seem like a good scene. You place your hero in a somewhat dangerous situation. Then, to make it worse, he might get caught. But let’s look at this scene more closely. Who is it that George is with? He’s with REALLY BAD DANGEROUS GUYS! Therefore, if the cops were to spot him, THAT WOULD BE A GOOD THING! The cops would get him away from this dangerous gang AND, after everything was cleared up, reunite him with his mom.

You must design your tension-filled scenes so that they actually create tension. There is no tension if the people who might find you and take you are better than the people you’re currently stuck with. This seems obvious to me. I don’t know why it isn’t for a WGA writer getting to write a 30 million dollar movie.

You didn’t even need to bring cops into this scene to create tension. Have George snag a bunch of jewelry. He squeezes back through the little pathways to the bad guys back at the entrance. Then, Head Bad Guy says, “No, you need to go back and get [the item that’s placed in the most dangerous place in the bombed room]. You can’t come back until you get it.” Have it be some item that requires George to maneuver up a very shaky foundation of bombed debris. A single wrong step and it’ll all come tumbling down and he’ll be buried under 20 tons of rubble. THAT’S A TENSION-FILLED SCENE.

Let’s move on to “Lee.” This movie was VERY poorly written. There was zero plot. The only thing it has going for it is a twist ending that packs an emotional gut punch. Other than that, it was your classic biopic: Wikipedia life highlights. The End.

In one particular scene, deep into the story, Lee and her assistant, Davy, have made their way into Germany immediately after the war has ended, and are at Hitler’s apartment. They pay a guard to get inside and find a couple dozen Americans lounging around.

Just like the scene in Blitz, a tension-filled score plays in the background. Lee and Davy walk through this large apartment as, literally, NOT A SINGLE PERSON LOOKS AT THEM. Yet the score keeps ratcheting up the tension. If you’re like me, you’re wondering, why is this supposed to be a tense scene? These are their allies. There is, literally, no reason to feel any tension. And yet, that’s how the scene continues to be presented.

Finally, Lee and Davy get to the bathroom. They close the door, and Lee quickly disrobes. Davy, catching on, sets up the camera. And as the tension-filled score reaches a climax, Davy takes a picture of Lee in the bathtub. End of scene.

The inaneness of this scene was so baffling to me that I went online and looked for more context. I eventually learned that this was a real picture that Lee Miller took and that was published.

In other words, the writer’s plan, in order to create tension, was to assume that everyone who watched this movie already knew about this photo. Because that is the ONLY REASON why there would be tension to this scene – that we already knew what it was Lee and Davy were going to do.

Except if I went into the middle of any city in the U.S. right now and asked 1000 random people if they had heard of Lee Miller Hitler’s bathroom photo, all 1000 of them would tell me that they had no idea what I was talking about.

I see this mistake a lot. Biopic screenwriters assuming that others know as much about their subject as they do. They never do. And, hence, you will get zero tension out of this scene.

To create tension, place her in a room FILLED WITH ACTUAL NAZIS. Have her and Davy have to squeeze past that. I guarantee you that scene will be a million times more compelling than this scene. Heck, this Key and Peele sketch has more tension than the Hitler bathroom scene. I’m not exaggerating. I have more fear for Key and Peele here than I ever did Lee and Davy.

The lesson of today is, put the pot ON THE BURNER. Don’t put it near the burner. Don’t put it half on the burner. If you want to mine the most tension out of your scene, put the pot on the burner and jack up the heat as high as it will go.