Genre: Horror
Premise: An aging rocker with a hankering for death-themed items purchases an old suit online that is said to be haunted, as it comes with the ghost of the man it belonged to.
About: This is an early adaptation of one of Joe Hill’s books. With the recent success of Black Phone, there’s a good chance the book will be thrust back onto the Hollywood deal table. Joe Hill’s title was pulled from Nirvana’s song, “Heart-shaped Box.” Neil Jordan, who adapts today’s script, has won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (The Crying Game).
Writer: Neil Jordan (based on the book by Joe Hill)
Details: 129 pages – 2007 draft

Keanu for Judas?

This might be the weirdest adaptation choice ever.

Neil “Crying Game” Jordan adapting Joe “Black Phone” Hill?

This feels like something Shay Hatten should be adapting.  Isn’t he the Stephen King nut?  (Joe Hill is King’s son, for those who don’t know)

I don’t know if I’d say that Neil Jordan feels “too good” for this, cause he hasn’t exactly been lighting up the movie marquee lately.  But he definitely feels like an out-of-left-field choice.  I’m not sure what to expect.  But maybe that’s a good thing!  Let’s find out.

Judas Coyne used to be a big time rocker in a “Megadeth” type band. These days, however, in his 50s, he’s spending a lot more time at home than on the road. It’s at his large mansion that he hangs out with his former-stripper girlfriend, Georgia. He calls her Georgia cause that’s where they met.

Judas loves to collect things like torture devices and skulls – anything that has to do with death. So when his assistant, Danny, spots a “haunted suit” online, Judas tells him to buy it. Several days later, the suit shows up (in a heart-shaped box), and Judas doesn’t even get to sleep that night before seeing James Craddock, the ghost of the man who owned the suit.

Judas soon learns that Craddock is here to kill him. More specifically, he’s going to make Judas commit a murder-suicide with Georgia. Freaked out, Judas and Georgia try and burn the suit. But that doesn’t do baloney. Craddock keeps showing up and taunting them.

Judas eventually learns that Craddock is the father of a groupie he once dated. When Judas ended the relationship, the groupie killed herself. Craddock is here for revenge. The only solution Judas can come up with is jumping in the car with Georgia, driving to Florida, and confronting the dead groupie’s sister, who tricked Judas into buying the suit.

Along the way, they stop at Georgia’s aunt’s place. Her aunt is a medium and, during a Ouija session, the dead groupie possesses Georgia. What we learn is that the cause of the suicide is a lot more complicated than originally thought. The sister may have been involved in it. So off Judas and Georgia go, this time with more purpose, to confront the sister, and get Craddock off their back for good.

I’m going to be honest – when I first saw Jordan’s name on this project, a little voice in the back of my head said, “Looks like someone needed to pay off the mortgage.”  This had all the makings of a paycheck job.

And for a good 20-30 pages there, I felt like those fears were confirmed. You see, one of the biggest traps in horror is the “wait around for scares to happen” approach. This is where you put your hero in a house or a building or a barn or wherever, and they just wait for scary things to happen for 90 minutes.  There is no activity.  Only re-activity.

That approach doesn’t work unless your hero happens to be stuck in the location. The Shining, for example. The main character has to work here at this hotel for the off-season. He doesn’t have a choice. And they’re in the middle of nowhere, as well, so he couldn’t go anywhere even if he wanted to.

This setup wasn’t like that. The main character, Judas, lives at this house. But he can leave whenever he wants. Now, the writers try to stave off that arrangement with the old “latch-on curse” rule.  Even if Judas leaves, the ghost can follow him. But I’ve found that that doesn’t work. It still feels to the reader like we’re sitting around a house waiting for scary stuff to happen.

Luckily, Judas finally says, enough is enough, grabs Georgia, and says we’re going to Florida to tell this beeyatch (sorry, that’s just how we talk in the clink) to take her curse off him so Mr. Stanky Suit can be decommissioned.

It’s amazing what purpose and goals do for a story. Cause, within a matter of seconds, we went from a “waiting around” horror story to one with actual momentum and activity. The engine driving the story revved to life, as if it had been begging to do so the entire time. And now we’ve got ourselves a movie.

From there, it’s a surprisingly thoughtful character piece. Jordan and Hill cleverly weave this concept of Georgia being a stand-in for Florida (the suicide girl). Judas has had so many women throughout his life that they’re all sort of the same. So Jordan and Hill are making this interesting statement that all the women are basically Florida. They’re interchangeable. So Judas isn’t just making peace with this girl who killed herself because of him. He’s making peace with all the girls he heartlessly disposed of.

At first, I thought Jordan was a bad choice for this. Through those first 30 pages, we get major “serious writer guy” vibes. Horror requires an undertone of fun.  We don’t go to horror movies to be miserable.  We go to feel fear and then anxiety and thrills and scares.  But ultimately, we have to feel like we had a good time.  I wasn’t getting that movie early on.

However, the further along we got, the clearer it became that Jordan was trying to do something real. And that realness eventually won me over. That’s not say there weren’t scares. Craddock was a scary dude all on his own.  But I was definitely more invested in Judas’s personal journey than I thought I’d be.

After I finished this, I couldn’t help but be reminded how tough a place Hollywood is. I know this was written in 2007 when Joe Hill wasn’t as big. But it was also written a lot closer to when Neil Jordan was big. So you still had an author selling hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, and an Oscar-winning screenwriter – and even WITH THAT PACKAGE, this movie still didn’t get made.

That’s why when you hear me say, “Your script has to be great,” I’m not kidding around. Because you’re not Joe Hill. You’re not an Oscar-winning screenwriter. So if they’re getting passed up, imagine how easy it is to pass you up, an unknown writer without any credits.

The only way to overcome that enormous wall is to write something so un-put-downable that people will climb that wall for you to get it to the other side. Make sure your bar is high with you concepts and make sure it’s even higher with your execution. Cause those are the two things you can control. Everything else is up to the screenplay gods.

In the end, whether this was a paycheck job or a passion project for Neil Jordan, he’s such a good writer, that he made it work. It’s definitely worth checking out. And I’ve included the script so you can do just that!

Screenplay link: Heart-Shaped Box

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

What I learned: When it comes to character development in a horror script, you want to make decisions on a script-by-script basis. If you’re writing something with a more dramatic slant, like today’s script, you probably want to have some character development. If you’re writing something with more of a comedic slant, like An American Werewolf in London, you don’t need as much character development. Ultimately, it’s up to you. Deadstream was comedic yet still had character development. Just make sure you avoid FORCED CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. If it feels like you’re adding character development to keep people like me happy, it’ll show in the finished product. If it doesn’t feel natural and organic to the character, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

Today we get a pilot script from Hollywood’s newest golden child screenwriter

Genre: TV Pilot – 1 hour – Horror/Slasher/Sci-Fi
Premise: Set 15-20 years in the future, a group of high school kids ensconced in future technology are shocked when one of their friends is murdered, seeing as murder rarely happens anymore.
About: Today’s pilot comes from Hollywood’s screenwriting wunderkind, Shay Hatten, he who has basically taken over writing all the John Wick movies. He wrote this pilot in 2018 for the SyFy channel. They cast the show and shot a pilot but it was apparently so bad they didn’t go to series with it. Hatten was on my list of Top 10 future great screenwriters in Hollywood.
Writer: Shay Hatten
Details: 54 pages

We’ve got ourselves a Shay Hatten script today.

Hatten is known for his big energetic writing voice, which he definitely brings to today’s pilot. Hatten, who is not shy about his desire to emulate his hero, Shane Black, gives us all sorts of 4th-wall breaking action to digest in (Future) Cult Classic.

“If this scene doesn’t make every single person watching it vomit, I quit. Andy’s Dad’s guts have been, like, forking splorked all over the Goddamn place.”

Since I know some of you hate that writing style, tread carefully going forward.

The year is 2025 or 2030 — somewhere in that range – and 17 year old cool rebellious girl, Bree, is heading to her best friend, Andy’s, place so they can go to the first day of school together. The two are besties times a thousand, although you kind of get the impression Andy loves Bree.

Needless to say, he’s not happy that Super Cool Guy, Henry, has lowered himself from his cool guy pedestal to date Bree. We know this wasn’t easy because the social credit app the teens use has lowered Henry’s popularity out of the top 1%. Meanwhile, Bree and Andy are the two lowest-ranked students on the app, on purpose. They do bad things to stay at the bottom.

After a few oddly injected “Trump is evil” remarks that didn’t have anything to do with the story, all the students put on their virtual reality goggles, where they’re then transferred into a virtual environment, where their principal makes several announcements about the coming school year.

After this VR excursion ends, the principal tells everyone to meet him in the auditorium as he just received some devastating news (I can’t emphasize how clumsy this is – after the principal greets them in the VR world, he then says he wants to greet them in the real world, creating two scenes in what easily could’ve been one!). The principal then announces that one of the students (who we met earlier at a party) has been killed.

What we eventually learn is that some masked killer is running around killing people. It’ll be up to Bree and her friends to figure out who it is. Of course, they’ll also be hoping it isn’t one of them.

I’ve seen some bad ideas before. But this is up there.

A horror slasher story set in the future with the unofficial tone inspiration being Back to The Future 2.  Who needs a regular horror show when you can integrate virtual reality, social credit apps, and hoverboards?

I’m sorry but horror and the future don’t mix.

Let’s not forget the last horror movie that tried to be futuristic.  Demonic?  Remember that masterpiece?  There were a confirmed 13 deaths from the 100 people who went to see that movie in theaters.  Cause of death?  Boredom.

Horror is the one genre that gets better the further back in time you go. If you go back just 30 years, we couldn’t call anybody when we were in trouble. We just had to deal with it. That alone makes for horror situations that are a thousand times scarier.

I just watched Silence of the Lambs again (yes, for my dialogue book, in case you were wondering) and I was thinking that great scene where Clarice accidentally visits Buffalo Bill’s house couldn’t have been written today. Her boss would’ve called her to warn her. And, if she didn’t answer, he would’ve texted, which she would’ve checked.

But things get really scary if you go back 50 years, 100 years, 150 years. In those days, not only was everything spookier, but you were really on your own if you were stuck in a bad situation.

The badness of this pilot didn’t stop there, though.

It’s set 15 years in the future and we would occasionally flash back eight years to when Bree was a kid. So now we’re flashing back despite the fact that this show’s flashback is still our present’s flash-forward. It’s just weird. It twists your mind in all the wrong ways. You’re thinking about things that have nothing to do with the story itself, which means the suspension of disbelief is constantly being broken.

Shay was probably frustrated because he was trying something different here. And isn’t that what we’re told to do as writers? Be unique. Show a new voice. Find a different angle. Be subversive.

Then we do all those things and everyone’s like, ‘well that was dumb’ so we shrivel up into a ball and spend three weeks eating 5 dollar donuts from Slider’s even though they make your tummy hurt cause all the yeast is natural and therefore expands way further than all that fake yeast and you promise yourself you will never ever try something original or eat donuts again. You’re going to play by the rules from now on.

Look, I’m not telling you to play it safe.

But “different” is a dicier path. It has a much higher failure rate. That’s because if something hasn’t been tried already, it’s not because you’re the one genius who came up with the idea. It’s more likely because it’s been tried before and failed badly, so everyone forgot about it.

This begs the question, how does a writer recognize that they have a bad idea?

Well, the best way to find out is to poll the idea with people who have no connection to you. Put your idea here in the comments and see what commenters say. Don’t listen to the commenters who are your friends as they will likely be nice to you.  Look at the people who you have no connection to. They’re going to be the most honest.

If the ratio of dislike to like is around 5 to 1, you’ve got a bad idea on your hands. Anything worse, you’ve got a really bad idea on your hands.  You want to be closer to the 4 likes for every 1 dislike ratio.

But let’s say you’re private about your ideas and don’t want to post them on the internet. What then? If you truly want to figure it out privately, you need to be extremely honest with yourself. Start by asking, is writing this script like pulling teeth? Does every scene and moment feel forced? Do you dread writing the script because it’s always difficult to come up with pages?

Deep down, do you have this constant feeling that the story doesn’t work?

If so, you probably have a bad idea. I’m not going to go so far as to say this is true all the time. Some genius works are hard to write. But I think we all know, deep down inside, if something is working or not. And if you’re unsure, you always have me. You can get a consultation and I’ll tell you straight up, if you genuinely want to know, whether the idea works or not. You can even get a logline consult done BEFORE you write the script to potentially save yourself a lot of time.

Also keep in mind that you can pivot. You don’t have to completely abandon a script if you love the idea. Sometimes it’s a matter of changing the main character POV. Sometimes it’s about changing genres (from a slasher to a mystery, or a drama to a horror). Sometimes you haven’t unlocked the best angle to tell the story from yet.

When it comes to today’s story, it does start to come together a teensy bit towards the back end of the pilot. Once we start looking into Emily’s murder, there is a slightly fresh perspective we’re exploring this genre from – this idea that a murder has been committed in a world where murder has basically been eradicated.

But, again, the tone is so off here. The comedy and the horror don’t mix organically. You throw in the “Back to the Future 2” future speculation stuff (“Zoinks! There’s one of them hoverboarders!”) and it gets even jankier. The story just doesn’t know what it is.

And I could totally see this playing out when they tried to shoot the thing.  I could see five actors playing five different tones. That’s how poorly constructed this mushy mythology is.

I struggled through this one from the get-go. I’m surprised I was able to make it through the whole thing, to be honest. It was that bad.

Script link: (Future) Cult Classic

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

What I learned: When it comes to comedy-horror, the comedy has to be organically built into the story. That’s why yesterday’s comedy-horror film, Deadstream, was so good. The main character was an annoying Youtuber. So that’s where all the comedy came from – him being one of those annoying Youtube personalities. When you’re just trying to add comedy to add it, cause you want to, you get today’s pilot. Everything feels forced.

OFFICER KIPPER
Peyton, the boyfriend. It’s his SnapStream feed.

MOSCOVITZ
Is that like SnapChat?

Kipper stifles a laugh. Moscovitz glares at him.

OFFICER KIPPER
Sorry, just– SnapChat was over ten years ago. This is totally different.

Ooph. This is what passes for humor in this script. Forced humor is the worst humor.

What I learned 2: Unless you have an amazing horror idea that needs to be set in the present, I highly suggest you set you horror script at some point in the past.

Genre: Horror/Comedy
Premise: A Youtuber who’s recently come back from being cancelled livestreams an all-night excursion in a haunted house.
About: Pitched as “a found-footage horror movie for people who hate found-footage horror movies,” Deadstream made its debut at SXSW to lots of audience love. The movie was written and directed by husband-wife team Vanessa and Joseph Winter. Joseph also stars. The movie was purchased by the Shudder horror streaming service and came out this weekend.
Writers: Vanessa and Joseph WinterDetails: about 90 minutes long

I heard, “This generation’s Blair Witch” and saw a 90-plus percent Rotten Tomatoes score and I thought, “Hmm, this sounds like it could be good!”

I also thought the found footage genre died off too soon. In an attempt to pillage the genre, a lot of idiots who didn’t respect found footage made films that didn’t even attempt to be good. You need to love and respect the rules of a genre to make it work.

Their biggest screw-up was having zero reason for the character to keep recording. Which constantly broke the suspension of disbelief. Hearing all the high praise, I have high expectations that this will not be the case with Deadstream.

Our main character, Shawn, is one of those really annoying Youtubers. Think a nerdier version of Jake Paul. He does stunts like sneaking across the country’s border in a car trunk. Dumb nonsense that gets him millions of views. Which has emboldened him to become even more annoying.

Shawn recently got canceled for something we’re not fully privy to. All we know is that Shawn has just been reinstated by his streaming service, which allows him to come back with a bang. He’s going to livestream a trip into a remote haunted house in the woods.

Shawn has made some rules for himself. For starters, to ensure that things stay entertaining, he must check out any noise he hears or he will concede all monetization of the video. Next, he’s bringing a “Wheel of Stupid Things To Do,” (it has stuff on it like, “Seance,” and, “Play Ouija”) that he’ll occasionally spin.

He also rips out his car’s spark plugs and hurls them into the forest to prevent himself from chickening out. And once he’s inside the house, he uses a master lock to lock himself inside, then throws away the key. This man is committed to staying here!

After he sets all his cameras up, Shawn starts hearing things. When he goes to check out what’s going on, he runs into “Chrissy,” a super-fan who came here to hang with her favorite streamer. When his followers vote to let Chrissy stay, Shawn reluctantly does. But the more he gets to know Chrissy, the sketchier she seems to be. And, at a certain point, it becomes clear that he not only needs to get out of this house, but get as far away from Chrissy as possible.

The first thing that came up as I was watching this was… this is not original. I will bet that there have been several dozen low-budget horror movies made just like this over the past five years. Livestream in a haunted house. It’s the ultimate low-budget horror setup.

So why is it that Deadstream is getting celebrated while nobody’s ever heard of those other films?

The writing.

These two understand screenwriting. And I’m going to guess that everyone else who made one of these films just showed up at the haunted house and figured out the story on the fly.

It was clear while watching this that the writers extensively rewrote this until it was great.

Let me explain how I know this.

A movie like this is deceptively hard to write because while it can easily be a 20 minute movie, it’s nearly impossible to make it a 90 minute movie. There’s just not enough stuff you can do in one location with 1-2 characters for 90 minutes. You really have to structure the script out to fill up the length.

After meeting Shawn with a brilliant introduction that shows us a lot of his previous videos, Shawn arrives at the haunted house. Now I want you to think for a second, if you were writing this movie, you’re in, about, minute 8 of the movie. You still need at least 15 more minutes to get to the end of Act 1. So what do you do? How do you structure that out?

Think about it right now. Cause I want you to compare what you would’ve done to what these guys did.

Okay, so here’s what they did. Sean has to set up all his cameras in the house. There are six main rooms. He’s got his backpack full off gear. And he has to go into each room to set up the camera, which will be connected to his iPad, so he has video monitoring of every room.

As he takes us into each room, he gives us a little history lesson. For example, he’ll say, “This bedroom is the room where the most deaths happened in this house due to a, b, and c.” In other words, it’s all very structured. We have a goal (set up all the cameras) and they’re slyly slipping in exposition (which is the good kind of exposition, by the way, since it’s interesting) that takes us all the way up to the end of the first act.

Not long after, we meet Chrissy. Chrissy then becomes Shawn’s partner in crime (spoilers follow) for a while. The second character adds a different feel from the first act, which is important in movies like this, which get boring quickly due to monotony.

Then the midpoint twist happens. Chrissy attacks Shawn and Shawn kills her in self-defense. Now Shawn has physically killed a person. You may be asking, “And the livestream people are just okay with this?” That’s part of the fun here. The livestreamers are commenting things like, “Fake!” And “Your Special FX are awesome!” There’s this plausible deniability hanging over the livestream the whole time.

From there, Shawn gets out of the house, but, as we remember, he destroyed his car engine. So how is he going to get away? After that, he hides in his car from a few ghosts. And, in the end, he realizes (getting a little help from his followers) that if he’s going to get out of here, he has to go back in and destroy the soul of this house. And that becomes our final act.

The structure is impeccable. It really is. And it demonstrates just how important screenwriting is and why so many indie films – especially indie horror films – are so bad. The directors put barely any effort into the script and you just get a bunch of random nonsense.

Also, they did a nice job with the character development. Shawn isn’t just some guy doing a livestream. He’s a guy who did something terrible that got him canceled and he’s trying to revive his channel. The writers slow-play the reveal of what he did, which creates some mystery. And then when we finally learn what he did, we get some genuine character development, as this becomes about more than just surviving. It’s about growing and learning from your past mistakes.

They even do a great job tying Shawn’s profession to Mildred’s (Mildred is the house ghost who posed as Chrissy). Mildred was a poet desperate to get published. So Shawn realizes, at a certain point, that she was trying to gain an audience (followers) just like him. And this insight into her ultimate goal is what helps him finally destroy her.

And yes! They set up rules that made it make sense why Sean kept filming the whole time. At no point did you say, “Okay, he wouldn’t be filming here.” They even built in reasons for him to do stupid stuff, like go check out scary noises, because he knew it would make the livestream more entertaining so he made a financial promise to his followers to do so. That was clever.

I don’t really have many criticisms, except for the main character’s acting when Chrissy was around. When Shawn is talking to the camera, he’s great. He’s perfect at being “Annoying Youtube Personality.” But when the actor has to do genuine acting with Chrissy’s character, it just felt like acting. The naturalism was gone.

The thing I love about horror is that you can make really good movies for very little money. These two proved that. Definitely check this out if you have Shudder!

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

What I learned: “’I think the whole time we were just terrified that we were making a movie with a camera on one guy’s face.” This quote from the writer-directors struck me because I think with every script you write, you become obsessed with that one component about your script that makes you think it’s not going to work. Jordan Peele famously talked about this issue with Get Out. He couldn’t reconcile the fact that he was trying to make something genuinely frightening and poignant but also make it kind of funny. He was convinced that that tonal balance couldn’t work. It’s important that we, as writers, understand that this is a natural part of the process. You need to be okay with that thing about your story you’re convinced doesn’t work because if you let it get the best of you, you’re going to give up.

It’s always fun to see Scriptshadow veterans have success.  Kevin Bachar is a former Amateur Showdown winner.  He credits the win and the subsequent review as a big learning experience for him.  Since then, he’s gone on to write a script, The Inhabitant, a modern take on serial killer Lizzie Borden, that he got optioned and eventually made.  The movie is out right now (!!!), both in theaters and on VOD.  Kevin is a documentary filmmaker who grew up in Queens and attended Brooklyn College.

SS: How many scripts did you write before something happened with this one?

KB: The first script I wrote was a horror film entitled – The Peak of Fear – which I submitted to Amateur Showdown, way back in 2014. Although it won, it didn’t get the coveted “worth the read” Script Shadow seal of approval. But it was a great exercise in getting notes and applying the ones I thought worked and discarding those that didn’t. The Inhabitant, which was originally titled – Blood Relative – was my third script. It was also a conscious decision on my part to write something easy to produce and relatively low budget. I know we’re told all the time not to chase after genres and we should write what you “love”, but the truth is no studio or producer is really reading scripts from unknown writers for big budget pics. The best way into the industry is through horror/thriller with a hook or twist. Mine was the attachment of the Lizzie Borden myth set in modern times.

SS: I know you are a big reader of the site.  Can you point to anything you learned on the site in particular that helped you with this particular script?

KB: I’m an avid reader, and have been since I started screenwriting. I remember one bit of advice you gave in regard to plot, where you used the metaphor of blowing up a balloon. The script should be continually blowing up that balloon until it keeps getting bigger and bigger until you know it’s going to explode, but you keep blowing, getting it to the absolute stretching point, and then you’re wondering how many more puffs can it take until you bellow out one more breath and then – BOOM.

SS: When did you finish the script? 

KB: I finished the script in 2015 and placed it up on the BlackList website. It ended up getting a number of the coveted 8s and was eventually highlighted as a featured script on the site. Just to be clear, this is the BlackList website, not the annual list that comes out and you review scripts from.

SS: How did you get your manager (or agent, or both)?  And did that happen with this script or a previous one?  If a previous one, how many scripts ago and what was the script about?  

KB: The manager that first helped get The Inhabitant (Blood Relative) rolling, found me via the BlackList website. They read a number of my loglines for scripts I had on the site and they thought they were very producible. I think it hits something you mention all the time about the importantance of loglines and is your idea a movie. Not to be a downer but too many times I’m reading loglines or ideas mentioned on Script Shadow and they are too naval-gazing inward dramas or high-flying space operas that aren’t going to get serious attention from any manager/agent.

SS: Why do you think it was this particular script that got made (as opposed to your previous scripts)?

KB: My previous script, the aforementioned – Peak of Fear, was horror, but was not what you’d consider low budget. It wasn’t in any means a high-budget but it wasn’t going to be less than 2 million. The Inhabitant was not special efx heavy and could be done at a lower price point. It also had a teenage lead which is one of the key selling points for horror – since that’s the biggest audience for the genre.

SS: When was the script purchased/optioned?

KB: The script was eventually optioned in 2019. So, I wrote it in 2015 but it didn’t get optioned until 4 years later. I can’t stress enough that you have to be willing to play the long game in screenwriting.

SS: When and how did the money come through?

KB: The option money came through when the option was signed and then the payment for the full script came in when we began principal photography. I know everyone wants to know numbers but that’s not going to happen, sorry but as they say – That’s personal. And to be honest it has no bearing on breaking in and what you might get paid for your work. It all depends on the budget, studio, producers and where you shoot it.

SS: A lot of scripts get written.  Rarely does a script get made.  What would you say was the most important factor in this script getting made?  Who, involved in the process, was the most important person in getting the movie made?

KB: I think there are a few key players who helped get The Inhabitant made. The manager I mentioned earlier also managed a director who loved the script. I worked with the director and created mood boards and a proof-of-concept trailer or a rip-o-matic (see the one Rian Johnson did for Looper.) The director eventually dropped out, but it helped make the project real. The producer of The Inhabitant, Leone Marucci, was the next huge driving force, as any producer is to get a film made. It’s kind of obvious, but the film doesn’t get made without Leone pushing it forward because he believed in it. He actually contacted me about another script which was under option and I told him about The Inhabitant, and that it was available. He read it and loved it. Which brings me to the final most important factor/person to get the film made – the screenwriter. I was always pushing it forward and committed to spending time and money to get it made. On my own dime I flew out to Los Angeles to take meetings with the director and Leone (pre-covid 2019) which showed that I was serious about the film. I also spent time and money creating and cutting the proof-of-concept and mood boards which were really helpful in getting people to understand what the film could be.

SS: I believe this started as an independent project right?  Can you explain to me how it ended up at Lionsgate? 

KB: It was an independent production, but when the film was finished it was then taken to various studios – big to mid – and both Lionsgate and Gravitas Ventures partnered in the release.

SS: I noticed you’ve had a long and successful career as a documentary filmmaker.  I suspect some writers might think you had an advantage being in the industry already.  Possibly gaining industry contacts from that world.  Did your career in the documentary world help you succeed in screenwriting at all?

KB: The truth is my doc career meant nothing to the fiction/movie world. It gave me an interesting story at meetings but not one of my documentary connections at Discovery, Nat Geo, etc intersected with the feature world.  I let people know this all the time because they want to put up these invisible fake walls and in the end it comes down to their writing. My doc work didn’t help me win the Page Awards, twice semi at Austin, win Final Draft Big Break for romcom and win Screencraft’s Action/Thriller contest which had Steve de Souza, the writer of Die Hard, as one of the judges. If you write a great script and get it out there through Script Shadow or contests or queries then it will get read and that’s the truth.  Sorry if I’m ranting, it’s just I’m so tired of hearing the same old “woe is me” lines. Just write, and write great scripts.

SS: With everything you’ve learned, what would be the biggest advice you’d give to writers on how to write a script and get it made into a movie?

KB: I think you need to read what is getting made and ask yourself a simple question – “Is my writing this great?”. Go read Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River – does your script sound like that? Move like that? Draw you through the page and onto the next? Read any movie that got made over the last 20 or so years and compare your writing to theirs. I know when I started my writing was nowhere near what was being produced. But I’m a perfect example that you can get better, much better.

SS: I tell writers to do this as well but I’ve found that, often times, writers just aren’t able to see how professional writing is better than theirs.  Most writers I encounter, actually, think their writing is better than the movies getting made.  So is there a more specific way to judge your writing against professional writing?

KB: To be a writer, a writer who will sell that novel, short story or screenplay, you have to be able to be 100% subjective on your own writing. I think this might be one thing that can’t be taught. You see it a lot of times on Script Shadow when people start endlessly defending their script when people start to give criticisms. They’re never going to improve.  I also think, having a real objective sounding board is key. Having your friends or family read it means nothing and really offers you no real feedback.  Even a friend who’s a reader or producer, because in the end they’ll never give you their real reaction if the script isn’t good. Also, I know it’s controversial but screenwriting competitions/fellowships can offer you a real benchmark for your script. The Inhabitant – as mentioned, received numerous 8s on the BlackList, it was semi-finalist at Austin, a top %15 at Nicholls amongst other placements. Also, winning Amateur Showdown on Script Shadow years previous told me that I had some talent as a writer. Too many writers never get their work out there to see if it in fact is professional level.

Now go and watch The Inhabitant!

$$$ – SUPER DEAL ON SCRIPT NOTES! – $$$ – I’m letting TWO MORE people in on that newsletter deal. 4 pages of notes on your script for just $299. That’s 200 dollars off my regular rate. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “DEAL,” and you’ll be first in line to reserve a slot. If you’ve got a TV pilot, I can take another 50 bucks off the price. Take advantage of this! You never how long it will be before the next deal!

This genre, once a secret handshake between in-the-know writers and audiences, has been all but forgotten.  Is a sleeper screenwriter ready to revive it?

One of the movies I watched recently for my dialogue book was the romantic comedy, Jerry Maguire. That movie has some of the most iconic lines ever written in it. SHOW ME THE MONNNEYYYYYY! Cameron Crowe had been steadily working up to that moment in time and captured the American zeitgeist with that movie. You think Stranger Things has a cultural impact? Imagine that times 20 with Jerry Maguire.

Romantic comedies have been on my mind lately after reading all these articles about “Bros” tanking at the box office. One of the arguments for why the film failed was that women are the key demo for romantic comedies. So if you give them a romantic comedy without a woman in it, they have no one to relate to. Now you’re dependent on men for your box office. But, oh yeah, men don’t show up for romantic comedies.

Which brings me back to Crowe. Crowe was the guy who figured out the formula for getting men to show up to romantic comedies. He centered his movies around a male main character. He made that character slightly alpha, so as to create an, almost, wish-fulfillment version of a hero for men to root for. And then he didn’t shy away from the love story, which ensured that women got everything they wanted out of the movie as well.

Crowe first birthed this formula in Say Anything. That’s the movie where John Cusack plays Lloyd Dobler, a fast-talking kickboxing instructor who falls in love with a girl who’s way too close to her father. To this day, that film has one of the 25 most iconic images in all of film in it, which is Lloyd holding up the boombox outside Diane’s window playing Peter Gabriel’s, “In Your Eyes.”

But he really turned the formula loose in Jerry Maguire, where we had the overtly alpha sports agent, Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, try to start his own agency. The movie was the pinnacle of romantic comedies made for men. It had one of the most powerful bromances ever in a movie (with wide receiver and client, Rod Tidwell). It had this wish-fulfillment scenario that all guys love of starting your own business and putting everything on the line to make it work. And, just like Say Anything, it didn’t shy away from the romance.

This was the secret ingredient that no other writer in town seemed to recognize. Some Hollywood writers knew how to write a guy’s movie. Others knew how how to write a girl’s movie. But nobody knew how to mix the two. The key was giving us that “Male” centric storyline but treating the romance with respect, as opposed to making it an afterthought.

There’s one other writer-director who understood the power of this. He just did it in a different genre. That was James Cameron. James Cameron brought the boys on board with his alpha male main characters, some rad special effects and/or cool sci-fi elements, and then he wholly embraced the romance, which ensured that women showed up too. He rode that formula to, at one point, the two most successful movies in history, in Titanic and Avatar.

Getting back to Crowe again, something happened after Jerry Maguire. Elizabethtown had the exact same formula as his previous films. The main character had the cool alpha male job of being a sneaker CEO. Crowe committed to the romance. But something didn’t work. And he tried to do it again with Aloha. Giving us that “cool” military satellite storyline for men, along with the key romance between Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone. But the movie didn’t connect with anybody, men or women. I could write a book about all the mistakes that probably contributed to its failure but the point was, Crowe was now out of the picture with this genre and, except for a couple of exceptions (“Hitch” comes to mind), Hollywood forgot about it.

Until…..…

A young comic/director named Judd Apatow realized that he could tweak the formula. His main change would be to use beta male main characters as opposed to alpha ones. These characters would be dorks, nerds, with not much going on in their life. This would bring in a different kind of male viewer – guys who identified with those groups. But the part of the formula he kept in tact was embracing the romantic components of the story, which was essential to bringing in the female audience.

He also made one other adjustment. He called his movies comedies instead of romantic comedies. It was a branding choice that made men feel more comfortable going to see these films.

Whether by design or not, Apatow had stumbled into the same equation that had made Cameron Crowe a household name. His new tweaking of the formula gave us two instant classics: The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. So it was more than a little bizarre when Apatow abandoned the formula after Knocked Up. Not surprisingly, his movies stopped doing as well. I guess, creatively, he was more interested in drama at the time, which is all well and good. But it left Hollywood’s best kept genre secret without a champion. And that leads us all the way to today. Nobody’s used this formula since.

How could that be?

Hollywood doesn’t just leave money on the table.

There has to be a reason.

Actually, several things happened that contributed to Hollywood forgetting all about this money-printing genre.

First, since 2000, traditional romantic comedies started to do less than stellar numbers at the box office. She’s Out of My League, Friends with Benefits, Leap Year, Just Friends. It was one miss after another. This created the pervasive thought that romantic comedies just didn’t work in the market anymore. A misnomer because it wasn’t that they didn’t work. It was that the movies weren’t as good.

Then Bridesmaids came along and everything changed. It created a movement in Hollywood where leading women were the new leading men. And what better genre to have a leading lady in than the genre that did so well with women in the first place, romantic comedies. It didn’t help that the actress leading all of the big romantic comedies as this time was the devil herself in Katherine Heigel.

Combined with the rise of the Bechedel Test, any remaining male writers who were interested in writing romantic comedies, realized that they weren’t needed here anymore, and moved on to other genres. Throw the birth of streaming into the mix, which seemed to better fit the comedy and romance genres, and this all but pulled romantic comedies off the big screen, which killed the perception of the genre. Now they were seen as “lower tier” movies.

Meanwhile, female writers were mostly writing wish-fulfillment rom-coms that didn’t even attempt to cater to men. This made it so a genre that was already struggling to bring in men had closed the door on them completely.

Another factor is that this industry continues to tell writers, subconsciously or otherwise, don’t write these movies. If you pitched a male-leaning rom-com to the average studio exec right now, they’d look at you cross-eyed. “You want to put a male lead in a romantic comedy?” “You want the female character to be in a supportive role?” “You want her to fall for the man? As opposed to live her best life and not be dependent on a man?” “Are you crazy?”

This is where Hollywood gets it wrong. When it comes down to it, people are going to see what they want to see. Not what Hollywood wants them to want to see. There’s no better example of this than Bros. Hollywood so wanted people to want to see that movie. But there’s the disconnect. You can’t make people want to see something, no matter how good your intentions are. The real world is not a Benchedel Test.

I’m telling you, the male-centric romantic comedy is a goldmine. It’s been proven repeatedly. And it’s there for the taking because very few people know how to write them. Why can’t you be that person? Now, I’m not saying to write one of these movies if you’re not a comedy or romance guy. I’m a big believer that you have to love the genre you’re writing in to write something great. But if this is your genre, don’t be scared off from writing it. Your script is going to feel like a breath of fresh air when people read it since everyone’s been trained to only write these female-led rom-coms right now. It is the perfect time to stand out.

I’m sharing this with you because Hollywood can be really dumb these days and it’s made them forget about what movies people actually want to see. Top Gun proved that in spades. I think the person who writes the next Jerry Maguire is going to prove it as well.

$$$ – SUPER DEAL ON SCRIPT NOTES! – $$$ – I’m letting TWO MORE people in on that newsletter deal. 4 pages of notes on your script for just $299. That’s 200 dollars off my regular rate. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “DEAL,” and you’ll be first in line to reserve a slot. If you’ve got a TV pilot, I can take another 50 bucks off the price. Take advantage of this! You never how long it will be before the next deal!