Search Results for: It
GET THOSE LOGLINE SHOWDOWN ENTRIES IN! DETAILS BELOW!
The August Logline Showdown deadline is TONIGHT at 10pm. For Logline Showdowns, you send me a logline for a script. I then pick the best five loglines and they compete on the site with you guys voting. Whoever wins gets a script review the following week!
What: August Logline Showdown
Enter: Feature Screenplay Loglines Only
Deadline: Thursday, August 24th, 10:00 PM Pacific Time
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Okay, on to today’s topic!
Lately, I’ve been reading too many screenplays where I haven’t been able to connect with the characters. Whenever this happens, I go to this place where I think I can’t enjoy screenplays or movies anymore because I’m too deep inside the screenwriting matrix. I only see writers making choices rather than getting lost in a well-told story.
But then I’ll watch or read something good and realize that, no, it’s not that I’m emotionally dead inside. It’s that the writing isn’t good enough. The specific place where most writing goes bad is in the characters. The vast majority of the characters I read in screenplays are some combination of uninspired, boring, simplistic, and weak.
But the worst characters I see? Are the ones who are just *there*. That’s it. They’re on the page. They’re in the script. But they lack any sort of quality that pulls you in and makes you care about them. There are only 2 scripts on last year’s Black List where the writers wrote characters that I actually cared about. They were…
There were other scripts on the list that made me interested in the characters. But here’s why I’m writing today’s article. Making readers interested in your characters isn’t the same as making people *care* about your characters. It’s the difference between characters charged with TNT and characters charged with plutonium.
When you make the reader care about a character, they are EMOTIONALLY ENGAGED in your screenplay, which makes the story a thousand times more potent.
And writers just don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t fault them for this. The biggest thing I’ve learned about screenwriting since I created Scriptshadow is that the hardest part to get right is the characters. That’s because you’re trying to represent a 659-dimensional human being in two dimensions. Our lives are hundreds of thousands of hours long. You think it’s easy to emulate that within two hours? It takes all sorts of writing knowledge to figure out how to condense the vast complexity of someone’s life into an artificial person who only exists for two hours.
But here’s the good news. I’m going to tell you how to do it. Right here. Right now. There are seven key things you gotta focus on. You will not be able to include all seven every time you construct a character. That’s because each script is different. But you should try and include as many as you can. Are you ready? Here we go.
A PAST
Give your character a past. Make that past as specific as possible. Because the more you know about that character’s past, the more you can include it in who that character is right now. If your character used to sell drugs on the street before becoming a big successful businessman, maybe he still has some of that “street” in him. Maybe he uses more slang. Maybe he’s not so prim and proper. If you know 19 other things about that character’s past and all 19 of those things have some echoes and remnants that have made it into who your character is today? I guarantee they’re going to be a more fleshed-out character than 90% of the characters the average script reader reads.
A SPECIFIC JOB
I just read this script where it wasn’t clear what the main character’s job was. I don’t think the writer knew. You can’t make this mistake. A character’s job is one of the easiest ways to add some specificity to them – to make them stand out from other characters. We spend half our lives at our jobs. So our jobs have a big influence on who we are, what we talk about, what we’re interested in, how much time we have for others. There’s a reality show I watch where this person used to be a bartender 12 years ago. And when he was a bartender, all he cared about was getting drunk and scoring chicks. In the latest season of the show, he’s become a bar owner. Now, all he cares about is where to score more investment money and ways to get more people to show up at his bars. Same person, but his job has created two completely different versions of him. For a writer to not be absolutely clear on what his main character’s job is and what that job entails and how it shapes his character is criminal. You’ve got to know!
DETAIL
I’m not exaggerating when I say that 99% of the scripts I read don’t include enough detail about the characters (specifically the main characters). Give me the details! Don’t tell me he’s wearing a “nice outfit.” Tell me what the outfit looks like. Is he wearing a blazer? If so, what color is it? That’s going to tell me something about him (if it’s lime green, I’m going to know that he’s eccentric). Is it a cheap blazer or an expensive one? Cause that’s going to tell me if he has money. Is it tailored or is it ill-fitting? That’s going to tell me if he cares about his appearance. And I’m just talking about his outfit here. Detail extends far beyond that. I want to know the details of his place. I want to know if he walks slow or fast. I want to know if he speaks with a lisp. Every detail you give is an opportunity for us to understand your character better.
ACTIVE
Make your character active. This is the one that most writers get right because it’s often a function of the screenplay. Most screenplays have a goal that needs to be achieved (Take down Thanos!). So your characters have no choice but to be active when they pursue this goal. Active characters are way more interesting than passive characters. Of course, there are rare stories that require a passive protagonist. That’s fine. But I promise you that for the 99.9999% of stories out there, you want your character to be active. It’s one of the easiest ways to make the reader connect with your hero. People like people who go after things.
A PERSONALITY
Ever go on a date with someone with zero personality? It’s misery, right? Same thing goes for movie characters. If they don’t have personality, we’re not going to like them. When I said above that I read too many boring characters, “boring” referred to “no personality.” Personality does not mean a super charming funny person, like Ryan Reynolds, by the way. I just mean they have to have some identifiable characteristics that make up a cohesive persona. They can be quirky, like Juno. They can be confident and assertive, like Ethan Hunt. They can be creative and ambitious like Tony Stark. They can be free-spirited, like Jack Dawson in Titanic. They can even be internal but tough, like James Bond. The point is, YOU NEED TO KNOW what those characteristics are. If you don’t know, there’s a good chance they’re going to be blank as a piece of paper.
A FLAW OR AN INTERNAL CONFLICT
Characters tend to be more interesting if they’re battling something internally. That battle might be a flaw (they’re stubborn). Or it might be an internal conflict (they haven’t properly mourned the death of a loved one). The great thing about flaws and internal conflict is that even when the story strops, your character’s struggle is still moving. You may be able to escape the bad guys for a while. But you can’t escape your thoughts. Or your weakness. It’s always there. So it’s downright silly not to include one of these for your character. I guarantee they’ll become more interesting once you do.
UNRESOLVED RELATIONSHIPS
One of the most relatable things on this planet are these universal struggles we have with other human beings. Old friends whose relationships we haven’t repaired cause we’re too stubborn. Mothers who won’t let their daughters stop thinking about getting married or having children. Divorced couples who wonder if they did the right thing. Being betrayed by someone you loved. Letting jealousy seep its tentacles into your marriage. Religious differences. Long distance relationships. Sibling rivalries. If you want the secret to pulling readers into a character, give that character a compelling unresolved relationship with another character. Take the most successful movie of the year – Barbie. Ken is in love with Barbie. He just wants to be Barbie. And she doesn’t want him. That unresolved struggle informs his entire storyline. It created an iconic character.
These are the ingredients. It’s up to you to decide how many to use and how to mix them. I encourage you to try and include all seven. Because the biggest mistake I see writers make when it comes to character is that THEY JUST DON’T TRY HARD ENOUGH. They don’t put in the effort. I read some scripts where I can tell the writer didn’t take a single minute before writing the screenplay to think about who their protagonist was. Trust me when I tell you, if you do that, that’s exactly how that character will come off to the reader – as someone who a writer did not put any thought into.
As I’ve said before, a movie can survive an average plot. It cannot survive an average protagonist.
Good luck and see you tomorrow for Logline Showdown!
Genre: Action/Comedy
Premise: After Hollywood’s leading action star hits his head on set and wakes up thinking he’s a real-life action hero, he embarks on an international mission to track down a real stolen nuke before it’s too late.
About: This script made it onto last year’s Black List. Sean Tidwell, the writer, wrote another script, Super Dad, that was on another Black List that I thought was funny but I remember getting a lot of blowback for liking the script. I can’t win here!
Writer: Sean Tidwell
Details: 104 pages
If there’s one thing that’s clear about why people are going to see Barbie, it’s that it’s fun. It’s summer. It’s hot. People are in a good mood. Barbie is like the last piece of the happiness equation. Maybe that’s why nobody wanted to see The Last Voyage of the Demeter. It didn’t scream: “Fun summer movie!”
Then again, neither did Oppenheimer. And I’m pretty sure a lot of people saw that. I’d actually call Oppenheimer “anti-fun.” Man, this box office stuff is hard to figure out. Anyway! The point I was going to make was that Mega Action Hit is the perfect script to read right now. It screams “Fun!”
Dack Benson is the world’s coolest movie star. He’s also a gigantic workaholic. He never stops making films for his Mission Impossible-like franchise, where he plays a member of a super-secret government organization called I.B.S. It’s gotten bad enough that his wife is done with him. She wants a divorce.
Dack has done so many of these freaking movies that he gets careless on one of the wire stunts, falls, and hits his head. When he wakes up, he thinks he’s Dack Benson. Because… HE IS Dack Benson. Character Dack Benson’s name in real life is also Dack Benson. That’s how into making movies this guy is.
But now he thinks he’s his *character,* Dack Benson. And when he sees a news story about a guy named Ivan Shanko (warlord and nudist) procuring a nuke, he recruits his production’s two newest assistants, Julia and Max, to help him save the world. The two think he’s method acting and are so scared to upset the franchise star, they go along with it.
Because Dack does all his own stunts, he’s pretty proficient at a lot of the spy stuff and figures out that something is going down in Turkey. Dack asks the military to fly him to Turkey and because he’s a movie star, they oblige.
Once in Turkey, they learn of the elaborate plan to both secure the nuke, get the uranium, combine the two, and blow up a city! That city, it turns out, is going to be Liverpool. So off Dack, Julia, and Max go. But when they finally catch up to Ivan, Dack gets hit in the head AGAIN, and is now back to being actor, Dack. The problem is he’s so deep in it now, that actor Dack will have to figure out a way to save the world (or Liverpool).
First thing I need to remind you of is that this is one of the last genres you can still legit sell a spec script in. The reason for that is that audiences don’t care about IP when it comes to action comedies. And studios know that if they add action to comedy, it will sell all over the world.
Mega Action Hit asks the question, “What if Mission Impossible made fun of itself?” That’s the concept in a nutshell. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tidwell was hoping Tom Cruise played the part.
Indeed, that would be funny. Actually, I would love to see an in-his-prime Ben Stiller play this role, as he kind of already did back when he pretended to be Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible stuntman.
But these scripts are trickier than they look. They always sound fun in logline form. But when you have to sit down and flesh them out, you quickly wonder how you’re going to take 20 pages of flesh and stretch it out to 100 pages.
I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as it’s funny.
So is Mega Acton Hit funny?
I did laugh a few times. There’s this scene where Dack, Julia, and Max, are discussing their intricate plan of dismantling a nuclear syndicate while sitting around a computer, then we cut to a wide shot and they’re all sitting in the middle of a Fed Ex store, using one of their rented computers.
There were a lot of fun jabs at how silly the dialogue is in these movies. When the crew is thrust into a dangerous situation, you’d get exchanges like… Dack: “I have a plan!” Julia: “What is it?!” Dack: “I’ll let you know when I think of it!”
Probably my favorite joke was when Dack sees an IBS Treatment Center in the middle of Liverpool and believes it’s an extension of his agency. They, of course, mistake his passion for believing he has *actual* irritable bowel syndrome, and perform emergency surgery on him.
On the flip side, there was comedy I didn’t like. I don’t think that Ivan and his team of nudists were funny at all. Not because it isn’t my type of humor. But because it’s lazy. Just having naked people onscreen for no other reason than “naked is funny” is lazy comedy writing.
Whatever joke you want to include, do it in a clever way. Which is why I liked the IBS joke. It makes fun of the fact that all these industries have the most pointless acronyms. It found a way to work that joke into the story later on (with the IBS Treatment Center). That I can get on board with.
People being nude for no other reason than that naked penises are funny? That’s, quite frankly, lame. Take a lesson from the best comedy scene ever, Ted getting his testicles stuck in his zipper on prom night in There’s Something About Mary. You’ve created an actual scenario around the nakedness as opposed to saying, “These guys are naked. Funny, right???”
Plus, nude doesn’t work on the page because we can’t see them. So even if someone is going to find that funny, they won’t laugh because they can’t see it! And will often forget the characters are nude until you remind them (that’s what kept happening to me while reading this).
A lot more could’ve been done on the character front as well. In comedies, you want your characters rocking those fatal flaws in big bright flashing lights.
Tidwell *does* explore that with Dack wanting to quit to spend more time with his wife. But for some reason I didn’t care. There were no scenes that made me a fanatic Jessica cheerleader. So after the thirtieth time that Dack tells Julia and Max that he wants to quit acting and be with his wife, all I could do was roll my eyes.
It’s hard, I get it. One of the most frustrating things in screenwriting is wondering if something’s working. Is this character working? Is this plotline working? Is this scene working? Is this third act working? Is this CONCEPT working?
But you want to know what I’ve found? I’ve found that, deep down, we know when something’s not working. I know this because I’ve probably given a thousand consultations where, after I sent the notes back to the writer, they said, “Carson, I knew that [that thing] wasn’t working. I just needed you to say it.”
So we know. And the wife thing didn’t work at all here. Which sucks because Tidwell built the entire emotional arc of the movie around it.
Mega Action Hit is fun. But like a lot of these scripts, the fun is too empty. It’s not genuine fun. It’s the kind of fun you have passively watching TV while messing around on your computer. In other words, there’s not enough here for me to endorse it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A “bridge” scene is not an excuse to be boring. In scripts where your characters are on the move, there’s a temptation that, when they’re on a car ride, or a train ride, or a plane ride, to “offload” some exposition. If you EVER think you can use a scene as a “breather?” As an opportunity to place some important but boring exposition in there, that’s terrible writing. Screenwriting is not about YOU. It’s about the READER. It’s THEIR experience you want to be good. Not yours. Sure, being able to offload that exposition onto a plane scene where we’re waiting for the characters to get to the next destination – that may be helpful to you, the writer. But I can promise you it isn’t going to be fun for the reader. We have that here in a plane scene where Max and Julia share their backstories with each other. BAD! NO! Always always always look to make the scene entertaining. You don’t get any “off” scenes as a screenwriter.
It’s no secret that the industry is going through a transition.
The move away from original concepts at the box office as well as the rise of streaming has confused the marketplace in ways that probably won’t be settled for another five years.
The best way to explain it is that streaming has tried to pick up the slack on the original concept front and the results have been a mixed bag. We’ve gotten red-headed step-children like Ghosted, Red Notice and The Gray Man, which are more “shy concept” than “high concept.”
But there’s also been some golden children. Army of the Dead comes to mind. The Tomorrow War. Palm Springs. With these movies, we’re talking legitimate big ideas, the kind of “spec-y” material that gets industry folks jazzed up.
But I must be honest in saying that I’ve been questioning the value of “high concept” (or “flashy concept”) lately. It used to be the highest form of currency an unrepped writer possessed. Nowadays, the kind of script that gets a writer noticed is muddier than ever.
Take a movie like Extraction, on Netflix. Good movie. But how reliable is it that such a nuts-and-bolts action spec is going to get you noticed? That film was dependent on its direction to work. It was the furthest thing from a script-friendly concept.
You also have these screenwriting success stories that revolve around voice. Christy Hall, who wrote “Get Home Safe.” Shay Hatten, who writes all the John Wick stuff. He broke out because of his sixth gear writing style. Simon Rich, who’s positioning himself to be the next Charlie Kaufman. Emerald Fennel, with her eerie revenge story, Promising Young Woman.
So then, should writers forgo concept and write something that best showcases their voice?
The answer to that is a big fat “no” and I’ll tell you why. Because the one thing that has been true of Hollywood ever since its inception is that NO ONE WANTS TO READ YOUR SCRIPT.
They don’t. I love reading and I can’t even read your script. Not because I don’t want to. But because I’ve got a million other scripts to read so I don’t have time.
Now imagine someone who doesn’t like reading at all! How do you get them to read your script?
There are only four ways.
- Already have a relationship with them.
- Someone they respect must recommend the script to them.
- There’s a monetary benefit to reading the script (an agent reading a project that already has funding to see if it’s right for their actor).
- It’s a really good idea.
We know we can’t do anything about number three. And both one and two are dependent on you getting the script to someone in the first place. Which leaves us with number four. You have to come up with an idea that entices readers to want to read your script. And it has to be the best idea possible because, as we’ve established, nobody wants to read your script. So you have to make your idea irresistible.
I don’t think writers internalize this truth. A good way to cross that barrier is to imagine yourself pitching the script to a friend. That’s where you really know if your idea is a winner or a dud. A friend catches you off guard and asks you what your script is about. No matter how well you explain it, it always ends up sounding boring (or weak, or bad).
Most writers live in Delusion Land when it comes to their movie ideas because they’re biased and have an emotional attachment to their ideas. Telling them their idea is bad just makes them want to prove you wrong. So let’s use this as an opportunity to remind you what makes for a good concept.
STRANGE ATTRACTOR
There are a lot of movie ideas out there that sound decent at first. Yet there’s clearly something missing. That thing is usually the strange attractor. The “strange attractor” is the element in your idea that’s unique enough to set your concept apart from others. A kid who gets kidnapped by a local serial killer and imprisoned in his basement is a dime-a-dozen concept. A kid who gets kidnapped by a local serial killer, imprisoned in his basement, and has access to a phone that can connect with all the killer’s previous victims is a concept with a strange attractor.
MARKETABLE
Would it require mountains to be moved to market your idea? Is your idea about a 19 year old selling bed mattresses in 1997? Is it about two nuns questioning their faith? Is it an impressionistic account of an American family’s rise and fall over two decades? I’m not saying these movies don’t occasionally break out. Aftersun is about a woman’s memories with her dad when she was 11. It would definitely fall into the “unmarketable” category. But remember that you’re not pitching people an already-finished movie. You’re pitching them a script and trying to get them to read it. How many of you have even seen Aftersun? If you haven’t seen a beloved movie that’s already finished and available for only 5 bucks, why would you think anyone would want to read your unmarketable premise, which *IS NOT* a movie that won a dozen awards? If you’re going indie, at least try and get *ONE* marketable element in there. Even Bones and All had cannibals. Even the indy-est film ever, “The Whale,” had a 600-pound man. Even “Pig,” had a truffle pig. Think about how your movie would be marketed to know if your average reader would be interested in reading it.
THE ‘ALMOST’ CONCEPT
The ‘almost’ concept is the fake Rolex of the screenwriting world. It looks good at first. But the closer you inspect it, the less it holds up. It basically amounts to using a lot of high concept buzz words that don’t add up to anything real. Here’s an example: “An advanced AI algorithm figures out a way to create the first real vampires, werewolves, and zombies, which are inadvertently released into the population.” Look at all the high concept buzzwords here. “Advanced AI algorithm.” “Vampires.” “Werewolves.” “Zombies.” It must be a good idea, right? No. Because it’s an inelegant collection of surface-level elements that lack a compelling narrative.
IRONY
Irony is the biggest concept cheat code you’re ever going to find. It’s actually quite difficult to come up with a good ironic concept, which means that, when you do, your idea is going to stand out. One of the reasons that The Lost City was a hit was because it had a fun ironic premise. The dopey clueless model on the book cover of all her romance-adventure novels is determined to save the author when she gets stuck in a real-life adventure. The great thing about ironic movie ideas is that they’ve proven they can stand the test of time. 1983’s Trading Places is about a poor guy who trades places with a rich guy. We all love watching a rich person who’s all of a sudden penniless. Or a poor person who becomes a millionaire. We all love irony.
PUSH THE ENVELOPE
Not everyone likes to write big flashy movies. But, if you’re going to write something smaller, you have to find ways to turbo-boost the idea or I’m afraid people just aren’t going to be interested. Promising Young Woman walked a dangerous line with some of the scenes in the script as well as its main character’s actions. Black List script, Magazine Dreams, about a disturbed man obsessed with bodybuilding, gets uncomfortably gnarly. If you’re thinking of writing an idea that’s both small and lightweight, you’re making things sooooooo hard on yourself. If you’ve got one of the things listed above (irony, strange attractor, marketability) it can work. But if not, you need some edge. Look to push the envelope, usually with your main character. The Joker is the ‘best case scenario’ outcome of this strategy.
In the end, idea construction comes down to creativity. It starts with inspiration – you saw something and it gave you an idea for a movie. You then have to be honest with yourself. Do I have a legitimate movie idea here? When I was in high school, I saw my friend’s brand new litter of puppies and I thought, “That would be a great idea if the puppies were all real smart and could communicate with humans.” So I came up with a drama idea (not comedy idea) about smart puppies. Again, just cause you’re inspired doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Once you have the idea, come up with the best way to present it. I’ve told this story before – screenwriter Ben Ripley’s first six drafts of Source Code centered around a detective trying to figure out why a train crashed. Once Ripley moved the script inside the train, in the mind of a character who keeps waking up on it every eight minutes, the idea came alive.
And from there, you have to field-test it. Ask people who have told you before that you have bad ideas what they think. If several of them are really pumped up about the idea, you probably have something on your hands. If everyone’s lukewarm or gives you that pleasant, “Yeah, it’s not bad” response? Or starts asking a lot of confused questions? Throw the idea away. There isn’t time for you to waste on an idea that you’ll find out six months down the road wasn’t any good in the first place.
Feel free to field test ideas here in the comments. I’m going to ask for an amendment to the field-testing, though. If you are replying to someone’s idea, you must rank it on a 1-10 scale. BE HONEST. We’re trying to help people here. Not send them off on a wild bad-movie-idea goose chase. And writers? I’ve found that most people rating you on a 1-10 scale will rate you one number higher than what they really think. Just because most people don’t want to be mean. So if someone gives you a 6 out of 10, they’re probably giving you a 5 out of 10.
You can come to me as well. I will give it to you straight. My logline consults are $25. You can e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you want one!
For reference, I’ve done a few hundred logline consults this year and I’ve given about ten 8’s. A couple of 8.5’s. No 9’s or 10’s. And I use “7” as my floor for whether you should write the script or not.
I’m way too busy at the moment to do a proper post. However, I’ve been wanting to post about the “Give it 3 Pages” test for a while now and this seems like the perfect time.
The “Give it 3 Pages” test is this idea that it’s impossible to get people to read your script. But anyone will read 3 pages. So you should be asking people not to read your script. But to read the first 3 pages of your script.
And guess what? If you’ve done your job, they’ll keep reading. In other words, it’s a cheat code. You get people to read your script who would never otherwise read your script.
There’s a caveat, of course. Those first 3 pages need to be good enough that people want to keep reading. But guess what gift you receive if they don’t keep reading? You get the gift of knowing you need to improve your first 3 pages.
So here’s what I want everyone to do. In the comments section, ask as many people as possible to read your first 3 pages. As the reader, you simply tell the writer if you stopped after page 3 or kept reading. If you kept reading, that’s a win for the writer.
Since I know [almost] everyone here is nice, a lot of you are going to say you stopped on page 3 but “plan to keep reading.” No no no no. Sorry writers. That doesn’t count if the reader says that. They have to actually have kept reading. Not say that they plan to keep reading.
If you’ve done your job, they will keep reading because they will not have been able to stop.
All right.
Have at it, everyone.
The “Give it 3 Pages” Test.
Genre: TV Pilot – Half-Hour Comedy “Documentary”
Winning Logline: A parody of ‘makeover’ reality shows, Beyond Help with Handy Andy follows overconfident yet completely incompetent “Handy Andy” Cornwall as he travels the country documenting his attempts to fix everything from failing restaurants to broken marriages, in the hopes of selling his half-assed reality show to a network. Look out, America. He’s helping!
About: Today’s pilot script won the TV Pilot Script Showdown, a rare opportunity for TV writers to battle it out on the, otherwise, feature-focused Scriptshadow. It comes from Scriptshadow vet, Colin O’Brien (CJob).
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Details: 36 pages
Adam Devine for Andy?
The half-hour comedy, once the cornerstone of the TV industry, has fallen on tough times.
They say that feature film comedies have become non-existent and that’s because everyone can get their comedy fix on TV. But where is that comedy show that’s giving us earth-shattering knee-slappers these days?
A lot of today’s comedies seem to want just as much drama in them as humor. Succession. Barry. Shrinking. The last bona fide “everyone watched it” TV comedy was The Office. Ted Lasso was pretty big but I don’t know if it got anywhere near “Office” level.
The most interesting half-hour comedy show I’ve seen lately was Jury Duty. It follows a fake jury during a fake Los Angeles court case where one of the jury members is a real person who has no idea that he’s participating in a facade.
It was fascinating, kind of messed up, and doing something different with the struggling comedy genre.
Let’s see if Handy Andy can carve out its own slice of the comedy pie!
Andy is a 40-year-old dude who just decides, out of nowhere, that he’s going to start one of those “fix it” reality shows. He only has one employee, the non-English speaking Miguel, who holds the camera for him. It’s not clear how Andy gets production sound for his shoots.
Andy’s first fix-it job is the Carters, a family living in a slightly dilapidated house that the city may tear down if it doesn’t start looking nicer soon. Simon, the father, Vanna, the wife, Sandra, the teenage daughter, and Kevin, the young son, are reasonably happy to have someone who’s going to take care of this issue for them.
The problem is, Andy has no idea what he’s doing. Nor does he listen. So despite the outside of the house being the part that needs to be fixed, Andy focuses on the inside. For example, he buys a slightly better couch for the living room.
Also, Andy doesn’t really have a production plan, so he just sleeps at the houses of his clients, which is the first sign to the Carter family that they may have signed up for something they shouldn’t have.
After Andy does several pointless things around the house, he finally decides to work on the outside, and when the Carters are gone, he re-does their driveway. The only problem is, he places their car on that driveway before the wet concrete has set. Which means the car is now stuck in the driveway.
That’s it for the Carters, who not only fire Andy immediately, but warn everyone in the community about this scam reality show host. Problem is, Andy is so clueless that he doesn’t care. A few days later, he’s on to his next assignment: a restaurant. What ever trouble is Andy going to get into there?
Beyond Help is an amusing pilot.
But, if I’m being honest, I was hoping for more laughs.
Every 15 pages or so, Andy would say something that made me chuckle. For example, Andy has this wife who’s left him. And he still thinks they’re going to be together. So he shows a picture of her to the camera. But, of course, because she hates him, he has to blur her face out.
This is my beautiful wife, Jan. You can’t actually tell she’s beautiful because we had to blur her face for legal reasons. You know how that is. (shrugs) Anyway, her loss. I’m sure once the show’s a hit she’ll come crawling back. (sad smile) Because I’ll tell you one thing, they can’t blur her out of my heart.
Little jokes like that always make me smile.
But I’m not watching a show like this to chuckle or smile. I’m watching a show like this to laugh. And I don’t think there was a single LOL moment for me in the cleverly titled, Beyond Help.
The problem, in my opinion, was that the execution of the comedy was too safe and predictable. You don’t want to hear either of those critiques in comedy feedback. But I’d ask Colin, where are you pushing the envelope with the comedy? Where are you giving us that unexpected joke or doing comedy we haven’t seen before or pushing the limits of the “documentary format” half-hour comedy? Or just giving us a genuinely fresh joke?
Again, Jury Duty gave you a character who didn’t realize he was in a comedy. Which created some highly interesting moments.
Even the 15 year old Office was pushing the envelope. One of their most famous episodes was titled “Gay Witch Hunt” and you watched Michael try to find out if anyone else in the office was gay after finding out the shocking truth that Oscar was gay.
Leslie Knope’s defining characteristic in Parks and Rec was her undying optimism for improving the community despite the fact that her department was created specifically to do nothing.
I don’t know what Andy’s primary comedic characteristic is. He just seems to be clueless. I’m not sure that’s enough. Note how with The Office and Parks and Rec, the main character’s defining comedic characteristic was in direct opposition to what needed to be done. Michael wants to be every employee’s friend. But if you do that, employees aren’t going to be incentivized to work hard. Leslie Knope wants so badly to help the community. But the government doesn’t want her to work at all.
I suppose, once people meet Andy and realize he’s an idiot, they don’t want his help anymore. And I guess that’s the primary obstacle creating comedic conflict? But just as I wrote that, I’m not convinced we’re getting enough out of this character.
Also, some of the comedy feels dated. Miguel is a clueless non-English speaking Mexican who never understands what Andy says to him. This feels like Napoleon Dynamite humor circa 2004.
On top of that, the world-building here has a lot of holes in it. Andy is broke yet he still has enough money to buy a new couch for the family. Andy is broke yet he can afford to re-do someone’s driveway. The rules were confusing. And while you may think that it doesn’t matter in a comedy as long as it’s funny, that logic only works when the rest of the script is firing on all cylinders.
When it’s all said and done, Beyond Help reads like a lot comedies that come across my desk. Which is that the overall concept makes you laugh. But when get into the nitty-gritty – the execution – nothing is elevating above the page.
It’s a reminder of how hard comedy is. Once you come up with a funny idea, a lot of writers think the work is over. But the real work has only begun. You gotta go through every scene and honestly ask yourself how funny it is on a 1-10 scale. And then keep rewriting until every one of those scenes is at least at a 7 out of 10 on the funny scale, but preferably at an 8 out of 10 or higher.
The majority of the current scenes here were at a 4 or 5 out of 10 on the funny scale. That’s not good enough. Especially for a pilot. Producers and audiences will give you leeway on season 3 episode 4. But the pilot has to sing. It’s got to be next level. And when I read this pilot, I didn’t feel like Colin was giving me everything he was capable of.
Moving forward, it would help if we got to know Andy’s real life a bit. The thing with comedy is that the audience needs to know who the character is in their real life so they understand the dynamic of what they’ve been thrust into.
I couldn’t place who Andy was in his real life. Was he just some dimwitted idiot who decided to do this job one day? Or was there a progression that led him to this point? For us to understand the comedy, I think we need some insight into that, either through 5-10 pages of main character setup or, if you wanted to be more artsy, you could intercut flashbacks of how Andy came upon this idea throughout the pilot.
I’ll now call upon the comedy experts of this site to give Colin some funnier prompts to work with. What scenarios can we explore in the Handy Andy universe that are going to give us more laughs? Cause I still think there’s something to this idea. But it definitely needs a jolt to the comedic heart. It’s way too casually executed.
Pilot Link: Beyond Help
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I need to first see that Jim Carrey obsessively lies in Liar Liar for the comedy in that movie to work. It’s only once I see his dependence on telling lies that I’m able to laugh when he can no longer tell them. This pilot needed that. I need to know who Andy is in the real world before I can appreciate who he is in the fix-it world. Cause he can’t just be a generic moron. That’s not funny enough.
SUPER SCRIPT CONSULTATION DEAL!!! – If you e-mail me and mention today’s pilot script, “Beyond Help,” I will give you 200 DOLLARS off a feature screenplay consult (4 pages of notes) and 100 DOLLARS off a pilot script consult. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com by the end of the weekend!