Remember, the Logline Showdown deadline is this Thursday! Details below!

Genre: Drama
Premise: A doctor coming off a divorce must learn to understand his anxiety-ridden teenage daughter while exploring a romance with an old flame.
About: This is the last script from the 2023 Black List that I was interested in reading.  Screenwriter and director, Rachel Lambert, is best known for a film she made recently with Daisy Ridley titled, “Sometimes I Think About Dying.”
Writer: Rachel Lambert
Details: 116 pages

The character of Rebecca feels like an adult Jennifer Lawrence role.

A quick reminder of how to enter Logline Showdown this week.

What: 5 Loglines Showdown
When: Friday, January 31st
Deadline: Thursday, January 30th, 11pm Pacific Time
Submit: 5 loglines, each with a title and a genre
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

This may be the most ironic review I’ve ever posted considering I’m promoting a logline competition in the same post. This is, obviously, one of the weakest loglines you could enter in a logline competition.

To that end, Carousel is a great example of a script that a Hollywood agent would read and say, “This writer has talent,” while simultaneously knowing the script would never go anywhere.

UNLESS the writer was also the director. Which today’s screenwriter is. So she’s figured out a way to circumvent the obstacle. But let this be a lesson to non-writer-directors that trying to get traction with a script like this is like trying to get traction as a tennis pro while playing with a hockey stick.

The script takes place in Cleveland, Ohio, where Noah, the head doctor at a local medical clinic, is dealing with the fallout from his divorce and his deteriorating relationship with his 14 year old daughter, Maya, who’s battling crippling anxiety.

If the recent divorce isn’t bad enough, Noah’s also dealing with the death of his father, who used to run the medical clinic. Noah’s brother, Sam, stepped in to help during the transition but is now eager to move on, leaving Noah unsure of how to move forward.

The one bright light in Noah’s life occurs when Maya falls in love with Debate Team at school. However, Noah will later learn that his former lover, Rebecca, who’s moved back from a high-level political job in D.C., is coaching the debate team.

Noah attempts to weave his way back into Rebecca’s life even if she’s reluctant to reciprocate. Then the two run into each other so much that she figures, ‘why not give it a go,’ and the relationship reignites.

I wish I could give you some splashy exciting plot that develops after this but the above synopsis is pretty much it. That’s all that happens in the script. Which should give you an indication of where this analysis is going.

This is the problem a lot of writer-directors have.

They hide their writing behind their directing. They can make something look like a movie. But there’s nothing underneath it. That’s because writer-directors, except for the superstars we all know, rarely put as much effort into learning writing as they do directing.

Literally nothing happens in this script.

It’s so devoid of any plot points that you might as well have had us follow 5 real people around for a week. Just have us experience life. Cause that’s what this script is. It is trying to mimic real life.

Well, I’ve got news for you.

REAL LIFE IS BORING.

Movies are meant to highlight the most important and exciting moments from life. That’s what makes us want to see them. Cause they feel larger than life. Even writers who like to explore grounded real-life stories know this. Your biggest plot point in a movie cannot be drunk texts on page 103, which is what actually happens in Carousel.

You can probably feel my frustration here because this is one of my pet peeves – writers who place the burden on the reader to be entertained rather than on themselves to entertain. It’s your job, as the writer, to inject DRAMA into your story consistently enough that we stay invested.

That’s not taking anything away from the character development or the dialogue here, both of which I found strong. The attention to detail, particularly in relation to Cleveland, was also strong: “This storied institution of Cleveland is a menagerie of ethnic cuisine and legacy food stalls the size of multiple city blocks. There’s pierogi, kimchee, paczki, salted and cured fish, kraut, sausages served on hard homemade rolls with krauts. Noah, Rebecca, and Maya browse and sample.”

But that’s not storytelling.

Storytelling requires a plot. It requires you to periodically advance the story in dramatically compelling ways.

I don’t think I encountered a single plot point here. I’m not asking for 16,000 plot points, like Deadpool & Wolverine. But can you give me one? Even though I liked the Maya character, as we trudged towards the midpoint, I was hoping she was going to die so, at least the story could have some plot to deal with.

It just makes things so much harder on you, as the writer, if you’re only writing a character study. When characters are only going through internal emotions, that exploration needs to be perfect for the script to work. You have no wiggle room for error like you do when you’re hitting us with a new plot point every 10 pages.

Take Rebecca and Noah. A pretty good exploration of a relationship. But was it good enough to carry the movie all by itself? Not even close. I just finished the script and I still don’t understand why these two have such a complicated relationship with one another. This line from the script explains it best: “She looks up. And there, standing right there in her backyard, is Noah. He is the last person she wants in that moment. And he is the only person she’d ever want.”

Uhhhhh… what?

I don’t care as much about that confusion if I’m enjoying the plot. But if that character stuff is the only source of entertainment in the screenplay, I’m going to demand perfection.

It’s too bad because there is talent on display here.

In particular, there is a sophistication on the character side that you don’t usually see in a lot of screenplays. “When you’ve convinced someone it’s safe for them to love you, you have immense power.” “They talk about whatever topics allow them to feel connected to another man without doing any emotional labor.” “This is Ian all over again. He builds the maze, you run through it, hoping there’s an “I love you” at the end.”

If you love drama and character studies, I would not write feature scripts. I would write for TV. I would write a novel. Both of those give you more space to explore character and neither requires the stakes and urgency movies do.

I’ll leave you with a page from the script which demonstrates just how slow the read was designed.

Script link: Carousel

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

What I learned: To all the writers who prefer grounded drama, I beg of you to keep this in mind – You’re not trying to win over your college English professor. You’re trying to win over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of moviegoers. Never forget that when you’re coming up with a story.

People be doggin Flight Risk but I swear on the Delta wings that Sally the flight attendant gave me on a flight from Chicago to Cleveland when I was 10 years old that it was a good script!

Plus we gotta give Lionsgate credit. The studio only gets two number 1 films a year so we just celebrate it when it happens!

I’m not here to talk Flight Risk though.

I’m here to talk American Primeval.

The show has exploded on Netflix, becoming the most watched new show on the streamer.

Let me make something clear to every screenwriter: When you have a show that does well in a genre that the public typically ignores? YOU MUST STUDY WHY.

There are secrets in every breakout success so, if you’re smart, you’ll dissect why something that wasn’t supposed to happen happened.

I sat down and watched the pilot episode of American Primeval and have discovered all the answers.

Come in with a focused sympathetic situation

A lot of times with these TV shows that have a lot of characters, the pilot will jump around, covering a lot of territory, so as to set up the plot. The problem with this is that whenever you dilute the narrative, you lose narrative thrust.

So, I like when a pilot introduces us to a main character, or group of characters, and stays with them. It’s much easier to hook a reader that way. Especially if you create a sympathetic situation with those characters.

When we meet Sara Rowell and her son, Devin, they’re in a bind. They’ve arrived in a dangerous town on the frontier. They don’t have any allies. They’re two weeks late. Sara’s trying to meet up with her husband, yet nobody knows where he is.

We sympathize with that. Because we know that if they don’t find her husband, they’re probably dead. So, emotionally, we’re hooked. And that does sooooooooo so so so much work for the story. If you can get the reader emotionally hooked on your main characters and their situation, you’re golden. American Primeval does that right away.

Drop us into the thick of things

A mistake I see a lot in TV writing is, what I call, “SETUP ADDICTION.” All the writer cares about, in that pilot, is setting up the 15 characters in their show. I get it. TV has a lot of characters. It covers many hours of story. For that to work, you have to tell us who everyone is.

The problem is, when you only focus on that, you don’t actually hook us. You’re telling us, “bear with me while I describe all my characters to you. Then, once I’m finished, we can get to the good stuff.”

No. That’s not how successful storytelling works. You must entertain us ALONG THE WAY. That starts on the very first page. So, here, we’re not just setting things up. We’re immediately meeting two people, a mother and her son, who have arrived at a remote train station, both of whom are looking for the mom’s husband.

Every character we meet isn’t met to say to the audience, “Here I am. I will be one of the characters in the story.” Instead, they come in as dramatic accomplices or foils to our heroine’s goal. That’s how you hook a reader in a pilot. You start the entertainment on page one.

And here’s a pro-tip for you: Come into the story as late as possible. We could’ve easily come into this story with Sara on the train, on her way to town. And it probably would’ve allowed us an easier way to introduce her and her son. But, had we done so, we would’ve started off with a slower, more boring, scene.

By starting the story as late as possible – with her and her son already having arrived in town – we jumped right into things.

Introduce danger above and beyond what we’re used to

The average potential viewer dismisses Westerns because they find them boring. Westerns move slower. Plot beats take longer to get to. The setting is vast but often empty. This genre doesn’t feel exciting enough for most people.

Therefore, if you write a Western that leans into that template, we’ll dismiss it. But, it’s clear right away that American Primeval has no interest in typical Western conventions. It leaned into intensity as much as possible. Even in the slow moments, there were always scary-looking dudes lurking nearby – guys who could snap our heroine’s neck in a second if need be. There is no safety in American Primeval and that’s what’s drawing in people who don’t typically watch Westerns.

That’s a valuable lesson, by the way. When you give readers what they’re used to, they will react accordingly. Give them a bigger, scarier, more intense, Western, and they will clear their Thursday nights out to binge your show.

One of the things that really stuck out to me about American Primeval is when the local sheriff laid out to Sara why she needed to turn around and go back to Philadelphia. You’ve got a brutal winter, fearless outlaws, three of the most violent Indian tribes in the country, bears, wolves, and let’s not forget the crazed Mormons.

Unlike any Western I’ve ever watched before, it felt like there was no way to succeed. If you can create that belief, you will retain 99% of your readers. People are inherently curious about impossible odds. In contrast, if you say, “The goal is difficult but doable,” there’s no reason for the reader to keep reading. Cause you told them straight up that the hero will probably succeed. NO. You want them to believe that YOUR HERO WILL DEFINITELY DIE. That’s how to keep a reader invested.

Urgency In Non-Urgent Scenarios

This next tip is reading crack. Whenever you write period stuff, create an URGENT SCENARIO. Readers are so accustomed to stories set in the distant past unfolding at a slower pace. So if you can create a scenario that feels urgent, the juxtaposition will evoke an unfamiliar and exciting feeling in the reader.

Right from the start here, we learn that Sara’s husband left two weeks ago because she and her son were late. So time is of the essence. He’s two weeks ahead of them. They have to move now!

Give us truth

Finally, American Primeval is yet another example that writing rewards truth.

When you try and lie by creating scenarios that the reader knows are either factually or subconsciously inaccurate, they will turn on you.

One of the things that confused me when I looked into this show is that audiences loved it but critics did not (they gave it a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes). The deeper I looked, the more I realized that critics, who mostly favor progressive storytelling, dislike when Native Americans are portrayed poorly. So they never give stuff like this a positive score.

This opens up an opportunity for anyone who wants to portray controversial aspects of history truthfully. There were some savage natives back in the Wild West and by simply showing that truth, you give the reader a show that feels different from every other show they’ve seen.

If you look at Killers of the Flower Moon, there are no bad Native Americans in that film. Only bad white people. That’s mostly how things are portrayed these days. As a writer, your job is not to mimic what other people think is right.  It’s to seek out the truth and show it. Cause if you can show that truth, you are giving people an authentic experience, which is something audiences rarely experience these days.

All of this is what’s led American Primeval to be the most popular show on Netflix. I was only surprised by this BEFORE I found out who wrote it. Mark L. Smith is a great writer. What better endorsement can you get as a writer than Quentin Tarantino hiring you to write something (he hired Mark to write his Star Trek film).

I also chat with Mark every once in a while. I beg him for that Star Trek script but he always says the same thing. He’d be kicked out of Hollywood if he gave it to me. But I’ll keep trying!

Unless you can’t handle extreme violence, I recommend ALL OF YOU watch this show. It’s a spectacular example of how to write a great pilot script that hooks the reader.

Will Taxi Driver 2 be written by AI?

What: 5 Loglines Showdown
When: Friday, January 31st
Deadline: Thursday, January 30th, 11pm Pacific Time
Submit: 5 loglines, each with a title and a genre
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

So, the other day, I heard that Paul Schraeder was in the news for saying outlandish things. For those of you who don’t know, Paul Schrader is a famous Hollywood screenwriter best known for scripting Taxi Driver. He also wrote Raging Bull.

Just to provide some context, Schrader’s last five movies were Master Gardener, There Are No Saints, The Card Counter, Dark, And First Reformed.

The reason, it turns out, Schraeder was in the news is because he said he’s been spending a lot of time on Chat GPT and that the AI program is better at coming up with movie ideas than he is.

Now, the last time I checked this, which was about six months ago, that statement would be demonstrably false. AI could come up with these ideas that SOUNDED like movies. But they were always missing an ingredient or two that made them sound like an actual movie.

Maybe that’s changed. But that was my experience six months ago.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that Paul Schraeder isn’t exactly an ideas guy. Taxi Driver is literally a movie about a guy driving around in a taxi. Its strength is in its execution, not in its concept.

And here’s the logline for Master Gardener: “A meticulous horticulturist is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager.” Not going to win any Pitch Fests, that’s for sure.

So, from the jump, my initial thought was, “Well, Paul, lots of people could come up with better movie ideas than you.” He’s not very good at it.

But, in the leadup to next week’s Logline Showdown, I’m curious where we stand on AI movie ideas. Is it getting to a point where AI could actually come up with an idea that’s worthy of spending 30 million dollars on?

So, what I thought I’d do is challenge AI to come up with five movie ideas in the five most marketable genres. Horror, Thriller, Action, Adventure, and Sci-Fi. I’m going to tell it exactly what I’m telling you here. In fact, I’m going to paste this paragraph into the prompt and tell it I want it to come up with its five best loglines for those genres. And then I want to dissect those ideas and see if they’re any good.

Are you ready?

Okay. Here goes nothing!

Horror:
Echoes in the Hollow – When a grieving mother moves into an isolated mountain village, she discovers the town’s eerie folklore about soul-stealing shadows might be true, as she begins to hear whispers from her dead child calling her into the woods.

Thriller:
The Algorithm – A brilliant tech investigator uncovers a government-run AI capable of predicting crimes before they happen, but as the AI starts framing innocent people, she must outsmart the machine before she becomes its next target.

Action:
Code Red: Omega – When a rogue paramilitary group hijacks a U.S. missile submarine, an ex-Navy SEAL turned disgraced shipwright must infiltrate the vessel to prevent a global catastrophe, relying on his engineering wits and old combat skills.

Adventure:
The Titan’s Map – After discovering a hidden map etched into an ancient statue, a group of rival treasure hunters embarks on a perilous journey across the globe, chasing a mythical lost city rumored to contain an artifact that can rewrite history.

Sci-Fi:
Quantum Divide – In a future where teleportation has revolutionized travel, a physicist discovers a dark secret: each teleportation creates a copy while killing the original. When the technology is weaponized, she must expose the truth before humanity destroys itself.

First impressions?

Before I share those, let me emphasize that the ultimate goal of a logline is to make the reader go, “Holy shit, I want to see that movie now.” It’s rare to achieve that, whether you’re human or artificial intelligence, but that’s the goal.

So, that’s the initial criteria I’m judging these loglines by. And none of them pass the test. Nothing here makes me go, “I have to see this!”

With that said, none of them are bad. I didn’t read any of these loglines and roll my eyes, which, to be fair, is something I do often when I go through logline submissions. Just the fact that there are no spelling or grammar errors puts them above 60% of the entries in my competitions.

But, ironically, AI’s loglines have the same issue that a lot of human loglines have, which is that they sort of feel like a movie you’ve already seen, yet they don’t offer a fresh enough perspective to make this new version movie-worthy.

Let’s take a look at them one by one.

Title: Echoes in the Hollow
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a grieving mother moves into an isolated mountain village, she discovers the town’s eerie folklore about soul-stealing shadows might be true, as she begins to hear whispers from her dead child calling her into the woods.

The “special attractor” here (otherwise known as the variable in your story that’s supposed to make your idea sound exciting) is “soul-stealing shadows.” I’m just not interested in shadows. I don’t find them very compelling. In fact, they seem kind of boring. Shadows? So, your special attractor is weak from the get-go.

Then, you have the dead kid calling from the woods trope. I mean, come on. I must’ve read a thousand scripts where you can hear kids or babies, laughing or crying from the woods or deep in the house. It’s lazy and it’s far from a hook.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with this idea. But nothing about it stands out. Which means it’s going to get passed over.

Title: The Algorithm
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A brilliant tech investigator uncovers a government-run AI capable of predicting crimes before they happen, but as the AI starts framing innocent people, she must outsmart the machine before she becomes its next target.

I’ve noticed that AI does this thing where it takes movies that already exist and makes a minor change to them. This is just Minority Report with AI instead of those milk-laden prognosticator people.

But, to be fair, this is what humans do, too. They keep trying to spin their favorite movies in new directions. The success of a movie idea often lies in finding the perfect balance—pushing the concept in a fresh, new direction while still preserving the core elements that made the original idea compelling.

The Algorithm is too close to the original Minority Report to feel fresh.

Title: Code Red: Omega
Genre: Action
Logline: When a rogue paramilitary group hijacks a U.S. missile submarine, an ex-Navy SEAL turned disgraced shipwright must infiltrate the vessel to prevent a global catastrophe, relying on his engineering wits and old combat skills.

This is an interesting one because straight action concepts aren’t usually flashy. With that said, Hollywood still places value on originality and a flashy concept in a genre they love to make could be the difference between your movie getting picked over another one.

I know that Hollywood has been looking for a great sub script for a while now. Therefore, if you can come up with a good submarine concept, you have a chance at filling that requirement.

Ironically, the problem with this logline is a logistical one. Which I didn’t expect to encounter with AI, since AI is built on 1s and 0s. But how do you infiltrate a submarine that someone has already hijacked? Do you swim down there and, when they’re not looking, climb in through the missile hole?

I suppose he could’ve already been on the sub. And, if that’s the case, it’s not a bad idea. I would’ve liked a little more irony in his job (having him be a ship builder feels barely adjacent to the task at hand).

And then the ‘save the world’ thing feels generic. But I guess a lot of big action movies subscribe to those stakes. — On the plus side, I like the title.

Title: The Titan’s Map
Genre: Adventure
Logline: After discovering a hidden map etched into an ancient statue, a group of rival treasure hunters embarks on a perilous journey across the globe, chasing a mythical lost city rumored to contain an artifact that can rewrite history.

More than any other example, this idea feels stitched together from other movies. And this is the big complaint against AI, that it doesn’t know how to create on its own. Its creation is always built on top its database of previous creations.

And while the argument is that humans do the same, I would argue they go about the process differently. AI literally cherry picks variables from these past successful movies and stitches them together in a mechanical way.

Humans tend to think more emotionally when they build on top of previous ideas, utilizing what they feel, specifically in relation to how humans would be involved in these stories.

Most of the time, protagonists are stand-ins for the writers writing them. Writers use the characters they’re writing to work through their own problems they’re dealing with in life. And that’s what makes the story feel relatable and human.

AI has not figured out how to do that. Nor do I think it’ll ever figure that out. Because how do you work through a human experience if you’ve never been a human?

On top of that, The Titan’s Map feels like an old discarded Indiana Jones sequel pitch. It’s just not very original.

Title: Quantum Divide
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: In a future where teleportation has revolutionized travel, a physicist discovers a dark secret: each teleportation creates a copy while killing the original. When the technology is weaponized, she must expose the truth before humanity destroys itself.

Same problems. AI is aware of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. It’s using the basic premise behind that as its foundation. And the rest of the idea doesn’t even make sense. It’s going to be weaponized??? What do you mean? Are you going to trick people into teleporting so you can secretly kill them?

I’m just working this out in my head here. Teleportation R&D, building of the devices, powering these devices – probably equates to a couple of million dollars per teleport? How much does a bullet cost again? About 10 cents?

Can someone do the math for me? Which one of those options is more cost-efficient if you want to kill someone?

Look, maybe the implementation of the weaponization makes more sense in the actual script. But it’s your job as the writer to convey that in the logline. Or else you’re going to get snarky responses like this one.

For fun, I copied and pasted my critiques of all five loglines back into ChatGPT and asked it to rewrite the loglines incorporating the criticism. I’m not going to include all of those rewrites since I don’t want this post to be 5000 words. But I’ll include one to give you an idea of if it’s able to improve.

Title: The Titan’s Map
Genre: Adventure
New Logline: When an estranged father and daughter uncover a map etched into an ancient artifact, they must navigate deadly rivals and their fractured relationship as they search for a mythical city rumored to grant its finder unlimited power.

As you can see, AI tries to create an approximation of a “human issue,” by adding a father daughter team with problems. But it’s conveniently just that – the symbol of a human problem. There is no sense at all that these two are real people. That’s what AI continues to miss the mark on.

So, what’s my conclusion in all of this?

AI has gotten A LITTLE BETTER at creating movie ideas. But because it doesn’t have any power to create brand new ideas out of nothing and because it lacks any understanding of human behavior, its output continues to result in half-baked ideas without any emotional depth. The more you scrutinize them, the less they hold up.

Motherboy goes for the shockiest ending of the 2024 Black List. Does it succeed?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A pregnant wife dreads spending the Thanksgiving holiday with her husband’s parents due to his odd mother, who continues to baby her son well into adulthood.
About: I got sold on this script due to its one line pitch. “BARBARIAN by way of an erotic, Hallmark holiday movie.” How brilliant is that!? Screenwriter Tess Brewer is originally from Australia. She is yet to secure her first writing credit.
Writer: Tess Brewer
Details: 94 pages

Mommy?

I love setups like this.

It’s simple setups like this that have led to classic movies such as Get Out.

Send two characters to a remote location where they encounter other characters that they are in conflict with in some way and then allow the drama that gestates from that clash to guide your story.

The reason I like this setup so much is because you can write a really cheap movie this way, which massively increases the chances of your script getting made. We just saw it with the great Speak No Evil.

The pitfall with these setups is that there aren’t as many places to take the story. Which means you gotta be a really good writer to make them work. I have a very structured way in which I judge these scripts. I’ll share that process with you after the plot breakdown.

33 year old Tatum Woodrow is pregnant. But that equates to 1/100th the anxiety she feels compared to her impending holiday hang-out session with her husband’s, Owen’s, mother. The two are headed to Owen’s parents’ remote cabin for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Owen’s obsessive mother, Amelia, has never quite accepted her son as anything other than a 10 year old child. She loves him, she babies him, she bathes with him, she sleeps in the same bed as him whenever they’re in the same house. Tatum has brought this up numerous times during their marriage counseling but it never seems to get through Owen’s thick skull.

They head to the house where we meet Amelia, along with her sick and fast-deteriorating husband, Neil. Right away, Amelia is babying Owen (she wants to get him into that warm bath ASAP!). On the first night, Tatum wakes up to find herself alone in her bed. She goes downstairs and see Amelia watching over Owen, who’s asleep on the couch. Creepy!

The next day, when Neil and Tatum are alone, he tells her he wants to do something that makes him feel independent again and heads off. Tatum feels weird about letting him go due to his dwindling physical state but what can she do? An hour later, Amelia finds Neil in his car in the garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Suicide.

Amelia is furious with Tatum for not watching over him more closely. She quickly has Owen turning on his wife as well. It’s not looking good for Tatum! But then, later, Tatum stumbles upon a secret so shocking, it will pit her against Amelia in a fight to the death.

One of the primary ways I grade screenplays is I look at the concept and I note what the average screenwriter would do with that concept. In other words, if you gave 100 screenwriters that concept, 75 of them are going to write a very similar version of that story.

That’s the version of the story you DON’T WANT TO WRITE. Because that version is the version that anyone could write. You want to write the version that only a few screenwriters could write. That’s the reason Hollywood pays screenwriters – to give them the version of the story they could not write themselves.

That’s a fancy way of saying: NEVER WRITE THE OBVIOUS VERSION OF YOUR CONCEPT.

Give us a version that’s unique in some way. That can be through the unique voice you use to tell the story. It can be in how you play with the structure. It can be through adding a couple of bold creative choices that send the story down non-traditional paths. It can be through the creation of unique characters we don’t typically see in this setup.

But whatever you do, don’t go into auto-pilot and give us exactly what we expect the movie to be. Cause, if you do that, why do we need to watch it? We’ve already seen that movie in our heads.

So, where did Motherboy land on that game board? The obvious version or the unique version?

A bit of both. The first half of the script was very by-the-numbers. Anybody could’ve written it. For example, there’s a scene where Tatum wakes up in the middle of the night, her husband gone. She hears giggling down the hallway. She creeps down it, she peeks inside the bathroom doorway where Tatum and Owen are naked kissing in the bathtub.

AND THEN OF COURSE it’s a nightmare.

I must read scenes like that a thousand times a year. They’re so cliche. They’re so obvious. That’s what I mean when I say, 75 out of 100 writers are going to write the same version of the story. That kind of writer will write that scene. Why? Cause it’s obvious. And it takes no work to come up with.

You should be writing scenes that DON’T COME TO YOU EASILY. Cause those are the ones that nobody’s thinking of.

But the second half of the script was less predictable. Lots of spoilers so you’ve been warned. First, Neil kills himself. I wasn’t expecting that. Then, not too long after, Amelia kills Tatum! That’s a bold creative choice right there, getting rid of one of the co-leads. Finally, you get this shocking twist. I’m not going to spoil it here but I’ll just say, the script wanted to give the Chinatown ending a run for its money.

Now, did it all work?

Ehhhhh… that’s not easy to answer. I suppose I was mildly entertained throughout that second half of the script. But I’m not sure pure shock earns you a ‘worth the read.’ I needed a more. So, it’s by no means a hard ‘wasn’t for me.’ But it didn’t quite climb enough rungs to get to recommendable.

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

What I learned: This is a great way to conceive of a concept. Take a known issue in society then extrapolate it to its extreme. So, if you have a mommy’s boy, make it the most inappropriate mother-son relationship ever. If you have a helicopter parent, make that parent so psycho that they’d kill to keep control over their kid. For an empty-nester, maybe they’ll do anything to lure their kids back to their home, lie, cheat, steal, kill. Something to consider for the Logline Showdown!

What I learned 2: Little details. Little details can be the difference between cliche and original. For example, I read more screenplays than you can possibly imagine with a miscarriage backstory. So that story choice has become cliche to me. But if you can add just one small differentiating detail, I won’t see it as cliche. That’s what Brewer did here. Tatum had a miscarriage but they were twins, not a single baby. It’s a small thing but it makes a difference. You know why? Because it shows that the writer is THINKING. They’re not going with the obvious. If a writer is constantly putting thought into their choices, their script usually ends up being good.

Million dollar sale for first-time screenwriter!

Genre: Thriller/Drama/Supernatural
Premise: A couple struggling to save their failing marriage take a risky step in their sex lives, igniting a chain of events that threatens to destroy everything they’ve built together.
About: Script sold for a million bucks once Robert Pattinson attached himself. It’s a great sign for screenwriters who believe that selling a script is impossible. Newbie Ross Evans doesn’t have a single credit to his name yet still pulled a 7 figure sale. It’s also a reminder that the people you have to win over to get a script sold these days are the high profile creatives. The name director or the name actor.
Writer: Ross Evans
Details: 101 pages

I still don’t know what to think of Robert Pattinson. He’s not very memorable in any of his performances. But he’s not bad either. The one thing I will give Robert Pattinson is that he seeks out incredibly talented people. Therefore, when he gets involved in a project, it’s usually, at least, interesting.

Let’s see if this continues that trend.

Jake and Emma have been married for 8 years and are incredibly unhappy. Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging that they’re unhappy, they either ignore it (Jake) or act out (Emma).

After Jake runs into his ex, Kate, he comes to realize that it’s finally time to cut his losses. That is until Emma suggests something radical to inject some spark back into their marriage – she’ll have sex with another man and he’ll watch.

Jake is reluctant at first but what does he have to lose at this point? So they hire some guy off the internet and he’s at their house the next night. Unbeknownst to Emma, the guy slips Jake a vile of mystery liquid. He then has sex with Emma.

But, during the sex, he starts chanting some weird language and the next thing you know, Jake is in Emma’s body and Emma is in Jake’s. WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED!!?? Before they can ask Sex Guy, he disappears!

Uh oh. This is bad. The two are forced to continue their lives in each other’s bodies while they try and locate Sex Guy so he can give them the cure. But when Jake goes into Emma’s work the next day, her boss does some dirty sexual things to Emma (aka Jake), confirming that the two are having an affair.

Furious, Jake (as Emma) invites the boss up to their remote cabin under the premise of sex only to chop his penis off and kill him. Emma shows up not too long after, having caught on to Jake’s plan, and the two must work together to bury the body.

What we eventually learn is that the vile Sex Guy gave Jake is the cure and will change them back. But when Jake (as Emma) gets pregnant, they decide not to change back, since Emma (as Emma) could never get pregnant.  Something about Jake being in her body has changed that.

Oddly enough, all this energy has reinvigorated their marriage. The two are…happy? That is until Emma admits she liked the thrill of Jake’s murder and wants to kill someone else. This happens right as Kate (Jake’s ex) becomes suspicious that the two are up to no good. So she tries to bust them. What happens next changes all three of their lives forever.

Well that was……….. not what I was expecting.

I think after you watch a movie like The Brutalist, it’s hard to come back down to earth and read something this detached from reality.

My eyes might as well have been dice when Emma and Jake switched bodies cause they were rolling all over the place.

However, I quickly began to see what Pattinson saw in this. When Jake goes to Emma’s work (as Emma) and her boss does something sexual that Jake isn’t remotely prepared for, I realized that this was a good setup to explore gender roles.

Not only is the moment a shock for Jake in so far as, within seconds, he experiences the world through a woman’s eyes. But it opened the door to explore this genre in a bold, new, uncharted way. We always see this genre as a broad comedy, but making it Hard-R allowed us to push boundaries and reveal uncomfortable body-switch antics that have never been seen before.

In the ultra-competitive world of storytelling, where every story has been told a thousand times over, that’s the name of the game – finding new avenues that allow you to explore things in ways they haven’t been explored before.

In other words, this ain’t Freaky Friday.  This ain’t Tootsie.

The setup is also, clearly, why it sold for a million dollars. Robert Pattinson gets to play two parts for the price of one. He gets to play Jake and he gets to play Emma. Actors LOVE playing multiple roles in a movie. And oddballs like Pattinson love scripts like this especially because they get to play a woman. What better acting challenge is there than playing a member of the opposite sex?

The movie’s biggest challenge is going to be de-messifying the script. There’s a lot going on here. Our two leads are in each others’ bodies. There’s a serial killer subplot that comes into play. The “potion” is used as a way to switch other bodies throughout the story. So the two need to save enough liquid to switch themselves back. Then you have the pregnancy. Then you have Kate coming into the picture. It’s a lot.

But I give it to Evans because, unlike yesterday’s film, he landed the plane. There’s a wild scramble during the climax (spoilers) where characters are bouncing into other bodies and when the dust settles, we’re not sure who’s where. It’s really clever because, in those last scenes, two out of the three people die, and we don’t know which ones!

In the end, How to Save a Marriage is a great example of what happens when you take a big creative risk. That body-switching scene was a bridge too far for me. It was tonally inconsistent with the rest of the movie and felt beyond sloppy. But once we got past that, the darker body-switch dynamic – specifically placing our heroes into opposite-gendered bodies – allowed this script to feel much deeper than your average screenplay.

It’s still too messy. But I’m hearing they’re continuing to develop it so I hope they’re smoothing all these bumps out.

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

What I learned: Back in 2011, there was a Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman body-switch movie called “The Change-Up.” When Reynolds and Bateman were debating on whether to make the movie, they asked the same question I alluded to above. What’s different here than other body-switch movies? Reynolds argued that they were making the first R-rated body-switch movie. That was enough for Bateman and he signed on.

Years later, however, Bateman was asked about the failure of the film and Bateman noted that, yes, they were doing the first R-rated body-switch movie but they didn’t really do anything with it other than swear more. It wasn’t enough to truly explore the different path.

The reason How to Save a Marriage works is because they fully exploited the different path of their premise. They didn’t merely swear more. They explored uncomfortable territory that occurs when men and women switch bodies, stuff we’ve never seen before. That’s what every writer should be doing. When you come up with a premise, after you decide what your unique angle is, make sure to lean 100% into that unique angle. It’s the only way your script is going to be different. If you pull punches, like they did in The Change-Up, it’s going to be a forgettable screenplay.