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!

Genre: Horror/Adventure
Premise: A former Hawaiian warrior turned werewolf is recruited to join a mysterious pack of werewolves.
About: It appears that Aaron Guzikowski really likes wolves. He created the show, Raised by Wolves. And it turns out, during the planned Monsterverse slate of horror movies, he wrote a draft of The Wolfman. Afterwards, Ryan Gosling would come to Universal and pitch his own version of The Wolfman, which had a Christopher Nolan approach to the property whereby he would treat it very realistically. “Nightcrawler” was given as a tonal comp. Yesterday’s writers, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, would go on to write that draft for Gosling. To be clear, today’s draft was written by Aaron Guizikowski (Prisoners, Raised by Wolves, Papillon).
Writer: Aaron Guizikowski
Details: 120 pages

Wolf Week continues here on Scriptshadow.

Monday, we looked at the classic horror film, An American Werewolf In London. Tuesday, we had that Big Mean Orange-Haired Wolf. And today, we have a reimagining of the classic film, The Wolfman.

So, as those who read my newsletter know (e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to sign up), our first Monsterverse script, for Van Helsing, turned out to be pretty awesome! And so, can a full moon strike twice in the same month? I thought that was impossible.

Or, wait. A full moon actually stays full for two nights, right? So maybe it can strike twice! Unless the second night of the full moon is only like a 95% full moon. In that case, it’s not a real full moon. And since I don’t know much about werewolf mythology, I don’t know how much of an effect that has on werewolf changism.  Is a 95% werewolf still a werewolf.  Or is just a werewol?

The year is 1826. We’re on Molokai Island, Hawaii (I’m guessing they were targeting The Rock or Jason Mamoa for the role). The prince of this land, Deo Kekoa, is hanging with his homies when a fiery ship sails right up to the beach.

Deo and others try to break through the hull where they hear people screaming. But when they finally succeed, they’re attacked… by a werewolf. Deo is able to kill it but, unfortunately, he’s been bitten. And since his father has seen werewolves before, he knows Deo will turn into one. So he banishes Deo.

We then wake up in 2017 in Iceland, where Deo is now a bodyguard for high-profile clients. Over the years, Deo has learned how to turn into a werewolf on command. Unfortuantely, he still has no control over his true turning, which happens every full moon.

Deo is responsible for guarding a businessman named Edmund Razmus, who works for something called the “Frankenstein” Corporation. He takes Edmund out into the middle of nowhere in order to truly isolate them from threats but it isn’t long before a group of werewolves attack and kill Edmund. Deo does some research on these werewolves and learns that they live in Hamburg, Germany. So off he goes.

Once there, he meets with the alpha of the group, a steely wise businessman named Jacques Delancre, a billionaire shipper. Also, Deo realizes, Delancre is the man who owned the fiery ship that crashed on his shores that day.

At first, Deo wants to kill him. But there’s something magnetic about Delancre that Deo has never experienced before and he soon finds himself curious about this wolf pack. For so long, he’s been alone. It feels good to finally have a family. Delacre teaches Deo to stop resisting his animalistic urges and, instead, embrace them. He wants Deo to be more wolf than man.

The next thing you know Deo is helping Delancre with a heist. The Frankenstein Corp has a lab in the Swiss Alps and they’re doing tests on a former member of the pack. Because Deo has the special ability to turn into a werewolf whenever he wants, Delancre needs him for this rescue mission. Deo agrees, but in the process, worries about if he’s being seduced for, ultimately, nefarious purposes.

Um.

This script is awesome.

I mean, I don’t know what’s going on over at Universal. But they’ve gotten two of the best big-budget scripts I’ve read in a long time and they’re not going to do anything with them. It baffles me.

Cause this was a really cool script.

There were four things that stood out. One, the mythology. It’s really well-researched and constructed. Every werewolf here has a deep backstory as they come from a different time period and different part of the world.  And the stuff about the Wolfpack and who it operated was really cool. Two, the specificity. We start off on a gold-caped Hawaiin prince in the year 1826. I’ve never seen that before in film. When someone can give me that level of detail and uniqueness right away, the script that follows is almost always good.

The originality is strong as well. Going from 19th century Hawaii to 21st century Iceland. It feels like we’re in a totally different world than we’d usually be in with movies like this. 9 out of 10 writers would’ve started this movie in New York.

Finally, the way the story is constructed is really smart. It starts off with this 20 minute teaser. Then we move to a bodyguard story, where our hero has to protect someone. Then we move to a Matrix situation, where our hero joins this cult of werewolves and learns about their pack and powers. And then we’re performing a heist in Switzerland.

It was just really freaking cool!

You know what it felt like in a weird way? Like a werewolf version of James Bond, if that makes sense. And I would’ve never in a million years thought of combining those two worlds for a werewolf film. Yet here we are and Guzikowski hits it out of the park.

You guys know how much I love when I can’t predict what’s going to happen in a script. The problem I always run into when I finally encounter one of these scripts, is that the only reason I can’t predict anything is because the script is so sloppily written and the writer is making things up on the fly. Rarely do I encounter a screenplay where I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen ANNNNND what happens is still smart and calculated. Which is exactly how I would describe this script.

So you’re probably thinking to yourself, if this is so good, why didn’t they make it, Carson? This is where we get into how complicated Hollywood is today. Cause I think almost every genuinely good script has been made in Hollywood. Cream eventually rises to the top.

But we’re in a whole different era these days with all these extra factors in play. Nobody had done the interconnected “Universe” approach on a large scale before Marvel. So this was brand new territory. And the combination of The Mummy doing badly combined with The Invisible Man being a breakout hit changed the course of how Universal approached its monsterverse.

Big-budget was out. Low-budget was in. It’s why we’re going to get a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman. And I’ll be honest, I think a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman could be awesome. It just sucks that this movie is going to be left behind.

With that said, everything is cyclical. There will be a time in Universal’s future where big-budget monster movies make sense again. When that happens, they’re going to want to bring this script, and Van Helsing, back out, and make them. Cause these are really good screenplays. And it’d be a shame if nothing ever came of them.

Screenplay Link: The Wolfman

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

What I learned: A preview of one of my dialogue tips from the book. If you’re going to have people speak in a foreign language, yet present the dialogue in English, it’s imperative that you italicize the dialogue. If not, you’ll create a situation like the opening of today’s script where Deo seems to be speaking in English. And I’m thinking, “How does he know English?” The writer then tells us, in the description, that he’s speaking his local language and a translator is translating it. Problem solved right? No. Because as I continue to read Deo’s dialogue, I’m still seeing it as English and have to adjust, remembering he’s speaking in a different language. It’s an annoying hesitation-correction that occurs every time you read the dialogue. That visual cue of the italics immediately alerts the reader that it’s another language. Problem solved.

Today, instead of writing about scripts from Black List’s pasts, I write about a Black List script… from the fuuuuuuutttttuuurrrrrrrre.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of how independent right-wing media helped Donald Trump win the presidency.
About: Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum have been on a tear lately, landing every writing job in town. The “Orange is the New Black” writers got the Chippendales gig, the Wolfman project, and, most impressively, “Dumb Money,” about the Gamestop stock story.
Writer: Rebecca Angelo & Lauren Schuker Blum
Details: 113 pages

Jake Gyllenhaal for Cernovich?

There is a special kind of excitement that goes into opening a script that you have no information on, not even a logline. The storytelling possibilities are endless.  Who knows where you’re going to end up?  That’s where my head was today.

And then I opened the script.

After a page I mumbled, “Please no.” After two pages I said, a little louder, “Oh God please don’t do this.” After five pages, my head fell into my lap before I raised it to the sky and screamed…

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

But I committed to reading this script so I’m going to review it for you guys.

Our story starts back around 2015 when something called “Gamergate” was going on. I guess a popular online gamer was dumped by his gamer girlfriend and he complained about it online and this got a lot of male gamers angry at the ex and they wrote really mean online comments to her and I guess this was a metaphor, in the media’s eyes, for toxic masculinity.

A lawyer named Mike Cernovich, who lost his license because of a he-said/she-said date rape accusation in college began a legal blog and started writing about Gamergate, which was becoming a rallying cry for men who were looked down upon or something. Cernovich was quickly joined by a conservative gay man named Milo Yiannopoulos who started writing about Gamergate for Breitbart, an independent conservative news outlet.

During Gamergate, Mike and Milo (sounds like it could be a children’s game show) realized the power of conflict in regards to internet attention. Not sure why that would be surprising to anyone but apparently it had never been weaponized before like these two had done it. And they realized they could use that same conflict-based writing to help Donald Trump, whose ideals seemed aligned with Gamergate, to win the presidency.

And so the script is a trip through a bunch of internet conservative personalities – guys like Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec – who join this crusade and use a lot of toxic combative strategies to rile the troops. For example, Milo Yiannopoulos becomes obsessed with making fun of Leslie Jones from the Ghostbusters movie, painting her as the poster child for what’s wrong with political correctness. Blah blah blah. Because of their help, Trump wins the presidency.

Man, I have to say. Dropping this script into the middle of Hollywood must have been like dropping a 50 ton peanut into a cage of rabid elephants.

The reason I was so excited to read this was because I wanted to talk about something we rarely get to talk about on this site. Which is writing samples. The writing sample has become more important than ever due to scripts not selling like they used to.

These days you write a sample, blast it around town, get a lot of fans, get called in for meetings, then pitch for projects at each production house. Nobody represents this power strategy better than Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum. These two have been tearing it up, getting nearly every writing job they interview for.

So I wanted to see what was special about their writing sample that maybe you could learn from so that you could take it and apply it to your own writing samples.

Then I read this script and it turns out its success is only based on them writing about the Trump election. I just don’t think we can learn anything from that.  Except, maybe, that you should title your next script, “I hate Trump.” But it’s more than that.  I was hoping that, in spite of the subject matter, there would still be something to celebrate here.

I look at a script like Promising Young Woman, which covers a lot of the same ground as American Right. It’s about toxic masculinity, sexism, feminism. But it’s actually clever. And it doesn’t paint a black and white picture. The main character is just as flawed as the people she’s going after. So it’s easier for the audience to relate to her. I just re-watched that movie for my dialogue book and holy moly is it good.

Today’s script is just laying out a list of conservative personalities and doing the same tragedy bit with them you see with all these Black List scripts since The Social Network. The Drudge script. The Twitter one. There are several more I can’t remember the titles of.

I don’t know whether to criticize this strategy or celebrate it. Because it obviously worked. To me this genre may be old hat. But Hollywood still seems to lap it up.

I will say this. It does have one major attribute of a typical “writing sample” which is that it’s a hard sell as a movie. Writing samples usually are. As much as everyone likes to talk about politics online, politics don’t make good movies. People go to movies to forget about the politics buzzing in their ears all day. They don’t go to experience more of it.

Which tells me it was a strategic move by the writers from the start. They weren’t trying to make a movie here. They sat down and asked, what kind of script gets passed around Hollywood? Biopics, one. Anything that attacks conservative ideals, two. Combine those ingredients together and you have a nuclear script bomb. So maybe that is something you can learn from.

There are times when writing sample scripts get made but only when the writer goes on to have a couple of big movies in the marketplace. At that point, someone takes a gamble on their writing sample.

Ironically, it rarely ends well. It’s almost better for a writing sample to remain a writing sample because when you make the movie, you often find out there was a reason it was a writing sample. “Passengers” is a great example of this. That script was celebrated as the greatest script never made for eight years. That’s a sweet title to have on your resume. But then the movie gets made, ends up being bad, and now you’re just the writer of that bad movie.

If I can take my aggravated pants off for a just a minute and look at this script objectively, I guess it does a good job of conveying its theme. Which is this idea of weaponizing conflict and divisiveness for personal or political gain. A good writing sample tends to have a strong theme because writing samples are deeper than your typical Hollywood movie.

If they were surface level, like Taken, they’d get made right away. It’s the fact that they require you to think more that prevents producers from making them. Again, most people go to movies to be taken out of their brains. I know some of you hate to hear that but it’s true for mainstream moviegoing. When I watch Black Panther 2 a month from now, I don’t want to be thinking. I want to have fun.

I also give credit to the writers for coming up with this visual highway in their script that stood for the “information superhighway,” aka, the internet. I liked how when our characters would utilize social media and blogs to create divisiveness, that we’d cut to this actual highway and visually see the results – thousands of car pile-ups, for example. And the victims of these online attacks would be climbing out of cars, bloodied, barely alive. That was the one big creative idea they nailed.

Definitely not going to recommend this script, though. I understand why Hollywood likes it, of course. But this was not my jam. I have a crushing fear that it will be the number 1 script on the Black List in two months, and when that happens, it’s basically going to negate the last bit of confidence I have in the list. If you can write something that, this predictably, would be number one on the list, then you’re not celebrating creativity anymore.

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

What I learned: Brown-nose scripts. Brown-nose scripts are when you write about a particular subject or idea because you know the teacher specifically loves that subject or idea. Brown-nose scripts have infiltrated the Black List and, like weeds, are slowly destroying it from within.

Every Monday in October I’ll be reviewing a classic horror film!

Genre: Horror
Premise: After recovering from his friend being killed by a wolf, an American traveling in England heads back to his nurse’s London home, where he begins to suspect that he’s a werewolf.
About: The famous wolf transformation scene in this movie was so impactful that it forced the Academy to come up with a makeup Oscar. Director John Landis came up with the idea for the movie at 18. But no one wanted to make the script for a full 10 years.
Writer: John Landis
Details: 97 minutes

Do you feel that?

It’s the hair standing up on the back of your neck.

That’s because it’s October, the month of ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and zombies. “Smile’s” 22 million dollar box office proved just how much people love to be scared in October.

With horror opening weekends, I’ve learned, it’s not about how good the movie is. It’s about how good the marketing is. That means what does the poster look like? And what does the trailer look like? Smile has that in spades. And it’s something all of you horror writers should be thinking about BEFORE you write your horror scripts. Not after. This movie was marketed very simply on a sinister looking smile and boy did it work. Cause nobody expected this film to take in 22 million dollars.

The lesson Universal learned was a little more complex with “Bros” bombing. I think a lot of people are going to point to moviegoers not being ready to accept a mainstream LGBTQ movie. But I think if you put a real movie star in that role over Billy Eichner, the movie at least has a chance. Eichner is annoying. He built his comedy brand on negativity. He’s not a leading man and is, arguably, unlikable. He just wasn’t going to be the guy to break a gay romcom into the mainstream.

Not sure how we segue out of that into London circa 1981 so I’m not even going to try. I’ll just say that like a lot of you, I saw this movie as a kid, and that werewolf transformation scene blew me away. It was a part of my nightmares for years to come.

But the funny thing about that scene is that it was so good it overshadowed my memory of the rest of the film. I don’t remember anything about this movie other than that scene. So I was really looking forward to watching it again as it was basically like watching a brand new movie.

The film follows two Americans, David and Jack, just out of college, who are traveling around England. After visiting a weird Yorkshire pub, they’re attacked by a wolf and Jack is brutally killed. The Yorkshiremen from the bar shoot and kill the wolf before it can also kill David.

David then wakes up in a London hospital two weeks later where he learns that his best friend is dead. As David recovers, Nurse Alex gets a crush on him. And his doctor, Dr. Hirsch, believes David is suffering from a delusion that they were attacked by a wolf, as the Yorkshiremen claimed the two were attacked by a madman.

While at the hospital, David starts getting visits from his dead friend, Jack, who informs him that David’s a werewolf now and must kill himself because, if he doesn’t, he’s going to turn into a wolf at the next full moon and start killing people. David dismisses these visions as trauma. But in the back of his mind, he wonders if his dead friend is right.

Eventually David is released and he goes to stay with Nurse Alex. Meanwhile, Doctor Hirsch heads to that Yorkshire pub and believes that David might start to hurt people due to believing that he’s a werewolf. It’s too late, though. The full moon comes and – kazow – he finally turns into a werewolf. From that point forward, his killing spree begins.

First off, great movie.

I was starting to worry that I wasn’t capable of truly enjoying movies anymore because I’ve seen so many. But this proves that it’s not me. It’s the movies. The people making the movies have to do better. Cause this film was basically brand new to me and I thought it was great.

I noticed a lot of good choices here.

For starters, David and Jack were a lot goofier than I remember them being. And when Jack gets killed, I learned a valuable lesson. Which is that, these days, characters are goofy just to be goofy. But here, the goofiness and the jokiness serves a purpose. Which is that Jack’s shocking death hits you harder because of the fact that these two were such good friends. And that friendship was built in just 10 minutes by having these two be very comfortable and jokey around each other. In other words, the choice to make them jokey, was 100% story motivated.

Same thing for Jack’s transformation into a wolf. Of course I remember the actual transformation as a kid. But what I didn’t remember was how much pain Jack was in while it was happening. That’s what stayed with me this time. He was in immense pain as it was happening. And they really draw the transformation out so the pain we feel is extended. Again, it’s a STORY and CHARACTER related reason why the scene hits us so hard. Not just amazing special effects.

I also thought they did a great job with the exposition. I’m working on the exposition section of my dialogue book at the moment so this hit me especially hard. But every single exposition scene takes place when dead Jack comes back to explain to David how the werewolf thing works. The thing is, we’re so focused on the amazing special effects of Dead David (he becomes more disgusting with each visit) that we have no clue that massive exposition is being thrown at us.

And kudos to Landis because he created the biggest distraction of all for the biggest exposition scene of all – that being the porn movie where David and Jack talk in the back of the theater and Jack introduces David to all of his dead victims from last night. I can’t remember anything as creative as that to hide exposition.

Granted, this is more of a writer-director trick since it wouldn’t have worked as well on the page (we can’t see special effects on the page). But it was still genius.

The only thing that perplexed me was the structure. David stays in the hospital all the way until page 35. He doesn’t turn into the wolf until 60 pages in! They just wouldn’t do that today.

And I was really thrown by it because I didn’t think it was necessary. Every movie can benefit from urgency. Urgency keeps the plot zipping along. So why did Landis turn his back on urgency??

Finally, I realized what was going on. They didn’t have any choice but to wait an entire month. Obviously, on the day David and Jack were attacked, it had to be a full moon. So we were going to have to wait another month until the next full moon turned David into a werewolf.

That’s why the movie doesn’t seem interested in pushing anything forward. David has these bizarre extended, ultimately silly, nightmares while he’s in the hospital. When he gets back to the nurse’s place, there’s an entire day where he has nothing to do so he just hangs out. Typically, you want to avoid this in screenwriting. Your hero should never be in a position where they have nothing to do.

Ironically, the movie works in spite of this. And I think it’s because they had such a large carrot dangling in front of the audience (the coming full moon) that we didn’t care that we had to wait. We were so locked in by the suspense, that time didn’t really exist (that’s what good suspense does, by the way – eliminate time).

It seems as if Landis wasn’t ignorant to David’s lack of purpose. When one has a protagonist without a goal, it’s important that someone else in the story does have a goal. At least that way, we can cut back to them occasionally, to give the story some forward momentum. That character came in the package of Dr. Hirsch. He’s the one who starts getting concerned about David. Therefore, he goes out to the Yorkshire pub to see if he can get more answers. He’s the one who grabs Nurse Alex to head back to the city in an attempt to find David before he can hurt people.

That’s a little tip for you if you ever find yourself with an unmotivated main character. Make sure at least one other key character in the story is motivated with a strong goal.

I just thought this was a really good film. It still holds up today. Yes, there are some goofy parts (I could do without the killer Nazi ghosts and ghouls nightmares). But the core of the story works. We care about the main character. We like all the supporting characters. We want to see what happens to our hero. That’s really the only rule that matters in writing: The audience needs to want to see what happens to your hero. If you have that, you have a movie. If you don’t, you have Bros.

Movie is free to watch on Amazon Prime!

Screenplay Link: An American Werewolf In London

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

What I learned: Intense suspense. If you can’t have the urgency, replace it with VERY STRONG SUSPENSE. It can’t be rinky-dinky suspense. It’s got to be intense suspense, like the impending full moon in An American Werewolf in London.