Genre: Comedy
Premise: When an ultra-religious yet porn addicted teen discovers that keeping her virginity is the only way to stop Satan from taking over of the world, she has to team up with a celibate warrior monk to ward off the irresistible Incubus sent from Hell to seduce her.
Why You Should Read: If you don’t follow the worldwide box office, you may be oblivious to the fact that the two highest grossing movies of 2021 are both comedies, that in the middle of a global pandemic, have out-earned both Deadpool movies to become the highest grossing live-action comedies of all time. Now, I haven’t seen either of the Chinese made Hi, Mom or Detective Chinatown 3, but since they were both approved and oversaw by a communist dictatorship, I’m sure they’re fucking hilarious. Meanwhile,  the last full year theaters over here were open, the highest grossing comedy the free world’s been able to produce was the Upside. Do any of you remember that hilarious comedy about a suicidal paraplegic? A movie so concerned with checking all the inclusion boxes, but was still able to piss everybody off because it cast Brian Cranston instead of an actual paraplegic. What kind of a world do we live in where the Chinese Communist Party seems to have a better sense of humor than Hollywood?  I would try to get to the bottom of this, but the answer to that question would probably make me want to slit my fucking wrists. So instead, I will forgo the autopsy on American big screen comedy and proceed straight to the resurrection.  That’s right, just think of Two in the Pink as your own personal screenplay Jesus, here to absolve you of all your comedy sins. The first ever faith-based-teen-sex-comedy for the “me too” era. A story so raunchy that it makes Porky’s look like Paw Patrol.  Did anybody ask for this? No, but trust me, it’s just what the world needs right now. If Communist China wants to lead the world in everything else, so be it. But they can have comedy when they pry it from my cold, dead, medium-sized pecker. — I thank you for your consideration. God bless Script Shadow. God bless America. And Hail, Satan!
Writer: Erik “Bang” La Desh
Details: 99 pages (update: This is an updated draft)

Sadie Sink for Stacy?

In the official Comedy Showdown post where all first pages of the entries were posted, I spotted a comment regarding Two in the Pink that said, “Your first page was the only one that made me laugh.” I agreed. Two in the Pink was the only first page IN THE ENTIRE SHOWDOWN that made me laugh. Some other entries made me smile. Some made me do that thing where you nod your head silently and mutter, internally to yourself, “Not bad.” But Two in the Pink was the only one that invoked a laughing noise from my body. Satan walking down a staircase made of live kittens?? How does someone even think of that, lol?

So I was a little bummed when Two in the Pink didn’t win. I wanted to see if there were more laughs where that came from. That’s not to say I was disappointed in Senior Prank. I still think it’s the most marketable concept of all the entries. But I felt that the funnies were going to be much more frequent in Two in the Pink. As fate would have it, the script Gods have implored me to review the script. Let’s find out if I was right.

Satan is so ready to take over the final earth (final earth? More on that in a sec). But to do so, he needs to take high school senior Stacy Wentworth’s virginity. If he can do that, the final earth will descend into a gigantic bang-fest where all anybody cares about is sex. And if that happens, Satan will have no problemo owning it.

So he creates Chad (Mid-twenties, long blonde hair, Australian accent, perfect abs, perfect face, perfect everything) the perfect fuck-boi. All Chad has to do is have sex with Stacy. Which should be easy. Stacy is a horn-dog. She’s spent her entire life determined to have sex. The only thing preventing her is her pure dorkiness. I mean, like really bad dorkiness. As in, whenever she’s nervous, she sings the 1990 MC Hammer hit “Can’t Touch This.” Yeah, that kind of dorky.

Now you may be asking, in what reality does any girl have trouble having sex? Aha, let me explain to you the world Two In the Pink exists in – the Pink World. The Pink World is like our world but reversed. Women are the aggressors. They’re the horn-dogs. They’re the ones who stay up all night masturbating to porn. It’s the men who wear dresses, who are reserved, who shake their butts for dollar bills at the strip clubs.

Stacy is just so darn dorky, she can’t get laid! So this should be a lay-up for Satan’s chosen bang-boy, Chad. All he should have to do is say “Let’s have sex” and the deal is sealed. Which is what happens. That is until a glowing wiffle ball bat hits Chad in the face! From out of nowhere, a 40-something dude named Reggie arrives, grabs the wiffle ball bat with one hand and Stacy with the other. Come with me if you don’t want to engage in sexual intercourse!

But Stacy DOES want to engage in sexual intercourse. So Reggie has to kidnap her. As they drive away, he explains the situation. She is the Last Smasher. He is the Suppressor. If she caves and has sex, this earth, like all the other earths, will fall, and Satan will be able to invade and rule all the earth planets. “Well what should I do?” She asks. “We train.”

Reggie introduces Stacy to Mama Ilsa. Things have changed, Mama says. Satan knows we’re onto him. In order to stop him, we will have to descend into Hell and defeat him. Reggie bequeaths the Wiffle Ball Bat of Chastity to Stacy and teaches her to fend off penis with it. Because there will be a lot of penis in Hell. And no matter how much she wants all of it, she must resist. Not just for herself. For all womankind.

Wait a minute, what??? There’s no more live kitten stairway!? I e-mailed Erik to ask him what was up. He said there were a lot of complaints about it so he took it out. I hate you guys!

Anyway, moving on.

Two in the Pink might be too smart for its own good.

What I mean by that is that I had to do a lot of mental gymnastics during every boy-girl interaction in order to properly understand the jokes. For example, early on Stacy is hitting on a boy at the comic book store. And the boy is ignoring her. And I had to remind myself, “oh yeah, this is a play on when a guy hits on a girl and she’s too cool for school and ignores him.” The reason it was tricky was because, these days, I see scenes just like this in regular movies – where a dorky girl hits on a guy and he’s not interested. So I had to, again, remind myself that if I just imagined Stacy as a guy and the dude as a girl, it was funny.

Since humor is so timing-sensitive, the time-delay of understanding these moments often ruined the joke. Any time you have to explain a joke to yourself, you’re probably not going to laugh. Which is too bad because I think Erik is really funny and has some strong comedic dialogue skills. If I wasn’t always having to decode interactions, I’m sure I would’ve laughed a lot more.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of funny here.

I loved all the 80s movies references. I love that Reggie is Kyle Reese from The Terminator. I thought the wiffle-ball bat of chastity was hilarious. Erik’s imagination knows no bounds. This mans creates one of the all-time dream teams in comedy history – Succubus Squad 69, which consists of Andromeda Tittie-Bang, Lady G-Spot, and Princess Butt-Fuck. There’s a battle on a highway where Reggie takes all three on with his wiffle-ball bat of chastity that was hilarious.

I did feel like Erik missed an obvious opportunity here, though.

This movie is all about not letting Stacy have sex. If she has sex, it’s literally the end of the world. So wouldn’t it be better if there was romantic interest between Stacy and Reggie? You would need to lower his age to around 23 so he’s not the beaten down older vet. But now you’ve got this guy who’s here to stop this girl from having sex, who starts falling for her. And she’s falling for him too. They themselves could screw this whole thing up if they give in to their urges. That makes every scene between them a lot more interesting.

Part of me wonders if there are one two many stories here. Satan sending someone to earth to take a virgin’s virginity is one story. An alternative earth where men and women have opposite characteristics is another story. Should we be trying to combine the two? Is it too heady? Why can’t Satan be trying to do this on a normal earth? I don’t think that gets in the way of the idea. And, as I pointed out earlier, it potentially makes it better, since we’re not doing gender math before each joke. Curious to hear what you guys think.

Two in the Pink gets points for being unique, for being daring, and for having some laugh out loud moments, even if it was playing to its audience…

But I’m not sure I ever truly wrapped my head around the premise. For that reason, it wasn’t quite pour moi.

Script Link: Two in the Pink

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

What I learned: Character descriptions in comedies should be funny! I love this one of Satan. “SATAN; the dragon-winged and goat-horned Prince of Darkness, as sinister as he is sexy.” Erik could’ve easily stopped at “Prince of Darkness.” He could’ve even slipped “sinister” into the description and called it a day. “As sinister as he is sexy” is a much funnier (and better) description though.

Genre: Action
Premise: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they’re surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
About: Writer Brooks McLaren wrote the 2018 Netflix movie, How it Ends. Co-Writer DJ Controna is an actor who was most recently in Shazam as one of the grown up super-kids. The script was picked up by Thunder Road. It doesn’t have a director or any actors attached yet. It finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writers: Brooks McLaren & DJ Controna
Details: 107 pages

Cavill for Lucas?

A couple of promising things going on with today’s script. First, the script is co-written by Brooks McLaren, who wrote one of my favorite early scripts on Scriptshadow, How it Ends. It was a super fast read with a determined hero shooting across a United States which was quickly becoming overwhelmed by a mysterious apocalyptic event. The movie would go on to be subpar, unfortunately. But I loved that script.

Also, I love plane movies! You guys know this. And this one’s got Thunder Road attached to it, the production company I want making Kinetic! (You hear that Scriptshadow readers working at Thunder Road? Let’s make it happen). I don’t see how I’m not going to like this. But the Black List has been on an extended Scriptshadow losing streak so who knows what’s going to happen. Let’s find out together.

CIA agent Aaron Hunter gets a call from headquarters to get the hell to work! They’ve got a problem. That problem is “Ghost,” an infamous assassin who’s been off-grid for a year, but who has just taken out an entire team of CIA agents in Malaysia! Since Ghost is so hard to find, this is one of the few times they’re close enough to track him. And they track him to Singapore where he’s getting on a plane.

Lucas Reyes, a contract killer in the area, is called by the CIA and told to get to Singapore Airport immediately. They believe Ghost (who nobody’s ever actually seen) will be on a plane to San Francisco soon and they want him on that plane STAT! He has to kill this guy! Lucas isn’t in the mood but he’s so low on cash, he doesn’t have a choice.

Once the double-decker A380 is in the air, Lucas gets a text that they made a mistake. Ghost duped them and got on a flight to London instead. So you can relax, they say. Uh-huh. Riiiiight. We know something is up because this is a movie! Immediately, Lucas’s seat-mate tries to poison him. So he kills that guy and stuffs him in the first class bathroom.

Then Lucas starts looking around for Ghost. When he gets attacked by another passenger, he suspects this job is more complicated than what he was told. Lucas finally tabs the charming stewardess, Isha, as Ghost, and just as he does, they’re BOTH ATTACKED. After a little recon, Lucas finds that these assassins on the plane have both his AND Ghost’s pictures on them. They’re trying to kill them both!

Still with no idea what’s going on, Lucas and Isha make a temporary alliance to fight off all these assassins together. What they ultimately learn is the CIA may have tricked all these assassins to be on this plane at once so they can all kill each other off. Will Lucas survive that plan? Will he spare Ghost if he does? You’ll have to jump on this flight to find out. And make sure to wear a mask!

Friends, lovers, fellow script readers. Quick SPSA here (Screenwriting Public Service Announcement)

If it all possible, don’t put a peanut allergy character in your screenplay. I encounter a dozen of them a year in the scripts I read. It’s far too frequent a choice.

And you don’t want to get in the habit of including gimmicks in your screenplays anyway. Gimmicks are things you know will work but have a very low ceiling of effectiveness. These include peanut allergies, asthma inhalers, the lovable little deaf girl, insulin injections, stuttering. Strive for better. Strive for originality.

Fight or Flight is basically Bullet Train in the air.

I love comparing scripts like this because you get a direct comparison of how different choices affect a screenplay. Both of these scripts are about assassins on a moving public vehicle. But Bullet Train took a more artistic approach, backing up a few hours at a time to introduce characters before they got on the train. It felt like there was a clear plan in place. And that structure worked well.

Fight of Flight engages in a messier approach where chaos reigns supreme, both in how the villains operate and how the plot unfolds. We’re sort of stumbling from one section of the plane to the next where battles ensue. For example, when Lucas gets into the first class section, he’s attacked by a team of Chinese Triads. After that, he must take on a service dog who’s had half his skull replaced with metal, which means he has steel teeth.

There’s also this sort of wild mystery of who Ghost is, and then, once we find out who Ghost is, why all these people are trying to kill Ghost AND Lucas. This question keeps pinging back and forth between our plane and CIA headquarters as we learn bits and pieces about who’s really in charge and who’s screwing who over.

The script moves fast and has an undeniable energy to it. But it’s that messiness that kept getting in the way. I was constantly stopping to ask, “Wait, what’s going on right now?” I still don’t entirely know why they’re targeting Lucas and I’m not sure you can have that. It leaves too much up to interpretation. I wanted clearer answers sooner so I could engage with what was happening.

All of this is a reminder that while I love plane concepts in theory, they’re incredibly difficult to pull off. I would even say they’re harder than simplistic contained locations such as basements. Cause you have to explain what’s going on in the cockpit and why they don’t get involved. You have to account for the 200+ clueless passengers. If people start killing each other, surely the passengers would find out. And they would freak out. And now you’re dealing with rogue passengers running around.

Just to give you an example of this in practice, once Lucas and Isha couldn’t keep their killing a secret anymore, they had to go up and tell the pilots what was going on. Of course, by doing this, you run into the issue of how this event would be treated in real life. The pilots would call for a military escort and be forced to land at the nearest airport. But you can’t have that happen or you don’t have a movie. So, instead, we get a conversation with the pilots where they think this might be good for their careers. They could get a book deal, “like Sully.”

Once you make a decision like that, it has seismic repercussions. Since the pilots wouldn’t really make that choice, you have to slide your script from “action” over into some version of “action comedy.” With the tone now shifted, not everything feels as scary as before because we’re all just having a good time with a goofy plane comedy-action flick.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Arnold Schwarzennegar and Sylvester Stallone made an entire decade of those movies, some of which I still love to this day. All I’m saying is that you don’t want your script to control you. You want to control the script. If the script is taking you in a direction you don’t want to go in because you have to explain away some difficult things, take a step back and figure out how to keep the tone the way you envisioned it. This used to happen to me all the time. The script would keep pulling me away from my original vision. And even though it felt wrong, I’d let it.

Even as I type this review, I’m still not clear what the tone is. Sometimes it seems goofy and sometimes it feels serious. Comparatively, I understood the tone of Bullet Train within five pages.

If Bullet Train does well, expect this to be rushed into production. It’s one of the operating procedures in Hollywood – luck. You must depend on things outside of your control to get your project through the system.

This was a tad too messy. Feels 4-5 drafts away from its best life.

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

What I learned: It’s not uncommon to finish a first draft with an unclear tone. The script feels serious sometimes, goofy others, an action movie sometimes, a drama others. One of your jobs in rewriting is too establish which of those tones you’re going for and taking the stuff out that doesn’t fit. This can be very hard for writers who fall in love with their stuff. For example, a writer who LOVES a joke he wrote may refuse to get rid of it, even if he’s going for a full-on dark drama. He’s like an addict when you bring it to his attention, coming up with a million reasons why the joke “still works.” Don’t be that guy. Understand what tone you’re going for and get rid of anything that doesn’t support it.

What I learned 2: Just to be clear, when I said to avoid writing gimmicks (peanut allergies, asthma inhalers, the lovable little deaf girl, insulin injections, stuttering), I’m not saying they NEVER WORK. They can work under two conditions. One, it’s organically infused into the concept/story. If you have a movie about a family that struggles with diabetes, an insulin injection character is a natural extension of that. Two, if you can find some spin on the gimmick that people haven’t used before, by all means include it. If you’re bringing us a stutter in some new fresh way we’ve never experienced and it works for your story? Hell yeah put it in there.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Two high school friends that had a falling out reunite and become superheroes as adults to take on the growing supervillain problem in the city.
About: Thunder Force is the latest collaboration between Melissa McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone. The two have made several movies together, including Superintelligence, Life of the Party, The Boss, and Tammy. Falcone does not contain any writing or directing credits that don’t include McCarthy except for The Looney Toons Show, which he wrote 12 episodes of. Possibly the biggest leap in the business without proving one’s self since Barbara Streisand’s infamous hairdresser, Jon Peters, made the leap to producing.
Writer: Ben Falcone
Details: 105 minutes

One of you made a good point the other day.

You said, “You should review Thunder Force because all of us have had some version of this idea at some point.”

Great observation. We’ve all had the ‘regular people become superheroes’ comedy concept before. We finally get to see what comes of that idea when you turn it into a movie.

Now you’re probably saying, “Really Carson? You’re going to review Thunder Force? What’s the point? All you’re going to do is bash it and marvel at how the untalented Ben Falcone gets to make stinker after stinker while much more talented writers are forced to wait on the sidelines.”

That’s true.

But, believe it or not, Thunder Force is a great movie to learn from. Not because it’s bad. That would be easy. No, Thunder Force is a great movie to learn from because it’s the most average average movie ever.

There’s an old saying in life. Play to win. Don’t play not to lose. Ben Falcone plays not to lose. And it’s going to teach all of us a lesson on how to be better comedy writers.

If you haven’t seen the film, it follows two girls who meet in high school and become fast friends. There’s Lydia Berman, a hard-partying scatterbrain who doesn’t take school seriously enough. And Emily Stanton, a geeky girl whose parents were killed by a supervillain. Because of this, Emily plans to dedicate her life to becoming a genius who can turn regular people into superheroes so they can beat the supervillains.

Oh yeah, regarding superheroes. Currently, the only kinds of superheroes there are in the world are villains, who the media have tabbed, ‘miscreants.’ This is why Emily must succeed at her job. If she doesn’t create superheroes, the miscreants will take over the planet.

Lydia and Emily had a falling out at the end of high school and, now that they’re adults, Lydia is finally ready to repair their relationship. She heads over to Emily’s gigantic tech-lab and, after reminiscing about old times, accidentally injects herself with Emily’s life’s work – a super-serum. Once the super-serum is in you, you can’t go back. Which means Lydia is permanently a superhero now. And Emily is forced to train her.

While Lydia trains (a process that basically involves getting stronger), Emily injects herself with her own superpower – invisibility. Once that takes hold, it’s off to fight the miscreants. The plot then boils down to a secret miscreant who’s running for mayor and Thunder Force (their new team name!) trying to take him and his miscreant team down before it happens. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, hi-jinx ensue!

Like I said at the beginning of this review, Ben Falcone is not bad at his job.

He’s average.

He gets away with it because he’s got a movie star wife. But there’s no getting around the fact that he’s mind-numbingly average.

What does that mean, average?

How can you make sure that you, the aspiring comedy writer who does not have a movie star spouse, are not average?

Simple. DON’T MAKE AVERAGE CHOICES.

Every decision you make in a screenplay is a choice. That line of dialogue you’re writing is a choice. The character you choose to play opposite your hero is a choice. The situations you put your characters in, they’re a choice. Bad writers make bad choices in these moments. Good writers make good choices. And average writers make average choices.

There is a formula for making sure you don’t make bad choices. It goes something like this.

Your talent level + Offsetting effort = good choice.

If your talent level is high, most of your initial choices will be good. If your talent level is low, you will have to work much much harder to create good choices. That means never going with your first or second choices, always digging deeper. And it means a lot more drafts than the talented writer. This is because more drafts means more opportunity to spot your subpar choices and change them.

But what does an average choice actually look like?

The most common average choice in comedy is a *dated joke.* In Thunder Force, because Emily doesn’t have a real superpower, Falcone gives her… a taser. Yes, that’s right. The taser joke, a joke that has literally been around for 12 years (remember it in The Hangover), is used prominently in Thunder Force as it is Emily’s main weapon. Ironically, the first character it’s used on in the movie is played by, you guessed it, Ben Falcone.

But the failure of this choice actually goes much deeper. You are writing a comedy about superheroes. WHY THE F&%$ ARE YOU GIVING ONE OF THEM A TASER?????? The operating principle of every script is mine your choices FROM YOUR CONCEPT. A taser could be in any movie. ANY MOVIE. Why are you using it in a superhero movie? This choice is unforgivable.

It also leads us to the movie’s main problem.

Emily.

Falcone came up with a solid dynamic between Lydia and Emily EMOTIONALLY. One of them was the big wild crazy one. The other was the reserved quite introverted one. That dynamic worked great when they were kids.

But it doesn’t work at all for the comedic purposes of the film.

Instead, the comedic dynamic is one-sided. It’s Melissa McCarthy doing her Melissa McCarthy thing and Octavia Spencer off to the side occasionally mumbling “Okay, so where do we go next?”

Whenever you write a comedy two-hander, you need to get three things right. You need to make the first character funny. You need to make the second character funny. And you need to make them FUNNY TOGETHER (see Rush Hour, The Other Guys, 21 Jump Street, The Heat). Falcone appeared to be so focused on getting the emotional dynamic right that he forgot to make Emily funny, which, in turn destroyed any chance of a funny dynamic between his leads.

There’s an early scene in a convenience store where Thunder Force is taking on some bad guys. Emily literally disappears and Lydia takes down all the bad guys herself. It’s such a one-woman-show that when Emily reappears, I’d forgotten she was still here. If you have an entire set piece in your comedy where your co-star doesn’t have a single joke, you’re doing it wrong.

I know exactly how Falcone stumbled upon this mistake.

He fell in love with this idea that Emily has always been “invisible” in life. Therefore, it would be the PERFECT SUPERPOWER TO GIVE HER! Right? Cause theme? Invisibility for the invisible girl! YES!!!! – I got news for you, sweetie. If you’re making choices in critical parts of your comedy that favor theme over laughs, you lose. I know some people are going to push back on that. They’re wrong. If we’re not laughing, YOUR COMEDY IS A FAILURE. Appeasing USC film professors doesn’t make up for a theater full of people not laughing.

Emily is a disaster of a choice. And since she’s in 85% of the movie, that means your movie isn’t funny. You can recover from an unfunny side character. You can’t recover from an unfunny co-star. And these are the choices average writers make.

The best way for average writers to play above their pay grade is to get tough feedback. You need people telling you, “These are average choices. You need to do better.” Melissa McCarthy doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’s going to tell her husband that Emily is the most boring character ever. I’m guessing he gets a lot of encouragement from her. Encouragement is THE WORST THING YOU CAN GIVE AN AVERAGE WRITER. They start living in dream land. They believe their stuff is better than it is. That they don’t have to try as hard when the opposite is true.

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of feedback on the tennis script I’m producing and the feedback is HARSH. Stuff like, “THIS ENTIRE SUBPLOT WAS LAME.” I LOVE that. When you’re not one of the geniuses, you need people calling you out. It’s the only way you’re going to push beyond your skill level.

This is probably more analysis than Thunder Force deserves. Most people will watch this movie and forget it a day later. But I read a Thunder Force-like screenplay every couple of weeks – an average spec where the writer isn’t talented enough to write a half-baked execution of his idea. The bar is much higher than you think it is. On all scripts, but especially comedy. Unless, of course, your wife is the biggest comedy actress in the world.

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

What I learned: Make structure work for you, not against you. If you’re using a screenplay structure that divides your script into sections (for example, eight 12-page sequences), don’t stubbornly keep to that if it’s not working. One of the early sequences in Thunder Force is a training sequence. That training sequence starts at minute 30 and ends at minute 42. It’s exactly 12 pages. The problem? Falcone only needed half of those pages. Within six minutes, we were already repeating beats. It was at this moment that I first started losing interest. So, look, don’t dogmatically stick to a section page count just because the structure says you have to. If it’s not working for you, rework it until you need all those pages or MOVE ON TO THE NEXT SEQUENCE.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: An action comedy wherein Benji Stone, a lovable but deeply unpopular sixteen year old, is pulled into an international assassination plot by his uncle, a retired undercover assassin charged with babysitting Benji for the weekend.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on this past Black List. The writer, Gabe Delahaye, has written a little bit for TV. Despite having a few feature scripts in development, he doesn’t have a feature credit yet.
Writer: Gabe Delahaye
Details: 115 pages

Ewan McGregor for Uncle Wick?

Err, remember when I said go write a John Wick comedy? I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Somebody already did that. And here it is!

Benji Stone is just a 16 year old Northern suburbs of Chicago dork who likes robotics. The guy’s sole objective is to get into MIT. Well, that’s his sole objective initially. Objectives are about to radically change for Benji in about 24 hours. But, meanwhile, he and his best friend, the super popular Lakshmi, need to decide if they’re going to a party tonight.

That decision is made for Benji, though, since his mom is going out of town and his uncle, Gideon, will be staying for the week, babysitting him. It turns out Gideon is kind of a nightmare. His questionable fashion choices (he wears a baby blue “Frozen” hat) are usurped only by his complete lack of humanity. The guy has the social graces of a Buckingham Palace guard.

Gideon makes Benji take him out to eat (Benji picks Denny’s) and that’s Benji’s first clue that something isn’t right here. Gideon drives a $300,000 McLaren. It is at Denny’s where some random guy comes up to their table, tells Gideon he looks like an old friend, and takes a picture of him. This odd moment is followed by Gideon walking into the parking lot and BEATING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE GUY UNTIL HE’S DEAD!

Gideon comes clean to Benji. He’s an international assassin. A retired one. He’s been hiding out for years to convince the world that he’s dead. This was his first step towards trying to live a normal life. And now he’s back on “the board.” And, oh yeah, now that all the assassins know of Benji’s existence, it means that he’s on “the board” as well.

There are not many 16 year olds who can handle being told there’s a million dollar payday on their head and Benji sure isn’t one of them. He begins freaking out. But Gideon assures him that with a little training, he can make him a killer too. Uhhh, Benji says. I DON’T WANT TO BE A KILLER. But it’s too late for that.

Benji tries his best to ignore this horrifying new reality and goes back to school, starting with his driver’s ed test, a test that Gideon insists on joining. It’s a good thing he does. Cause in the middle of it, a group of motorcycle assassins attack them! Gideon leaps into the front seat but is forced to only control the gas and brake while Benji steers their way to a dozen near death crashes.

Benji remains in denial, going to school the next day. But he regrets it when their new “substitute teacher” has quite the strong Eastern European accent. Yes, she’s a killer too! And she attacks Benji! Gideon shows up just in time to take her out. But he informs Benji that the situation is dire. The woman he just killed is the sister of a major crime boss. If she showed up, he won’t be far behind. And this guy is the kind of killer that makes all these other killers look like mannequins. Both Gideon and Benji will be pushed to their limit!

Question #1: Does this pass the comedy concept test?

It does. The comedy concept test is, when you hear the idea, do you automatically think of a bunch of funny scenarios. “Uncle Wick” immediately makes you think of a bunch of funny scenarios. So, right off the bat, it’s looking good.

Question #2: Does this pass the comedy trailer test?

This is kind of like question 1 but it helps you get a better sense of if this is a movie or if it’s just a funny script. Try to imagine the trailer. Does it have a bunch of funny scenarios that will look great in a trailer? This does. The ‘John Wick joins the driver’s test” set piece was genius. Killing your nephew’s substitute teacher in the middle of school is also funny.

Question #3: Is the dialogue funny?

On this one, Uncle Wick is hit or miss. The dialogue is okay. But I would’ve preferred laughing out loud a lot more. A lot of the dialogue humor is built off of the relationship between Benji and his uncle. It’s Benji going crazy and his Uncle, who’s used to doing this stuff all the time, responding with dozens of variations of “What’s the big deal?” And these moments *are* funny. But I was hoping for some more wordplay. Funnier phrasing. Some more clever back-and-forth. It kind of kept hitting that same beat the whole time.

The script’s biggest weakness is that all the focus is put on Ben and the Uncle’s storyline – which is where the focus should be. That’s the concept. But it’s clear that Delahaye didn’t put nearly as much thought into Ben’s life. For example, Ben is described as the biggest nerd in school. Then, two pages later, we introduce his best friend, a girl who is the most popular girl in school.

Uhhhh, what????

We’re just expected to go with that? Um, no. That’s the kind of friendship that needs more explanation. And this continued throughout the school stuff. It was all rather thin. The bully had the lamest bully lines ever. Ben was trying to get the hottest girl in school to go to the dance with him.

It’s not that these things shouldn’t be used. They are high school movie staples. But they only work when you twist them slightly. So they feel a little unique. That uniqueness is what sets your high school script apart from everyone else’s.

Another issue with the script is the structure. Typically, in these movies, you go out on an adventure. A good example is The Spy Who Dumped Me. That movie sends its protagonists off on an adventure. And whenever your characters are on the move, it’s easier to structure, because the objectives are always destinations, and you can double those destinations up as major plot beats.

Here, they stay in town. And that presents challenges, which we see rearing their ugly head later in the script. For example, once we’ve established that there’s a million dollar price tag on Benji’s head, why is he going to school?

Clearly, the reason he’s going to school is so the writer can get in his Substitute Teacher Fight Set Piece. Which is great for them, but lazy for the storytelling. We needed a clearer time frame and goal for our heroes. Otherwise, you get your heroes waiting around for the bad guys to show up, and EVERYONE HERE knows how much I hate ‘waiting around’ plots. They cause way more trouble than they’re worth. You want your heroes to be active and driving the plot, not the other way around.

In the end, there’s enough juice in this comedy bottle to make it worth drinking. It’s not perfect but it was a welcome upgrade from the script that I started to read for today’s review – Black Mitzvah. Oy vey. Do NOT read that if you want to laugh.

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

What I learned: DRESSING UP DIALOGUE – You are writing a comedy, correct? So it doesn’t make sense for your characters to say things in a straightforward manner (unless that’s the kind of character they are). Early in the script, Benji’s friend knows something about Benji’s crush that can help him get her. So she tells him that. Now before I give you the sentence she uses to convey that, I want you to write your own version of what she says. Because, what you’re trying not to do is something like this: “Hey, I heard something about Heather that can help you.” That line is fine in a drama. But this is a comedy. So how can you dress that line up? Here’s what the friend actually says to Benji: “Speaking of something weighing on your conscience, if I give you a piece of Heather intel, promise not to let the police know I helped you plan her murder?” So much more creative. It’s not laugh out loud funny. But it gets a giggle. And that’s how you want to be thinking when you write your comedy dialogue lines. Dress them up.

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
About: This script finished with 16 votes on last year’s Black List. Screenwriter Isaac Adamson is no stranger to scripts about animals and humans, or the Black List for that matter. His script, Bubbles, a biopic about Michael Jackson told through the point of view of MJ’s chimpanzee, topped a former Black List. That project, which was moving full steam ahead, was halted suddenly due to one of the unflattering Michael Jackson documentaries that came out. So Adamson went back to one of the surest formulas for getting back on the Black List – mix humans and animals together in some weird way. Adamson also has a Chippendale’s biopic project set up with the director of I Tonya, Craig Gillespie.
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Details: 96 pages

Oscar Isaac for Eddie?

Is there better catnip to the Black List than weird human-animal movies? Actually, human-to-animal transformation movies have been around long before The Black List. I remember when my dad took me to the old black and white version of The Fly. The words, ‘Help me, help me,’ still ring in my ears today.

There’s something about someone transforming into something else (in this case, an animal) you’re going to want to stick around to see. This is what good stories do, people. They come up with reasons for us to stick around. So when Eddie Vesco starts turning into a possum, I couldn’t help but wonder just how drastic the final transformation was going to be.

32 year old Eddie Vesco has it all. He’s a platinum selling country rock star with a model wife. Sure, she’s decided to become a “painter” in her post-modeling day, but you take the good with the bad, right?

Speaking of, Eddie’s in need of some good. It’s been forever since his last album and he’s already spent all the money he was advanced to record his next album. Which means it’s time for Eddie to get back to work. Eddie has a system for recording hit records. He’s got a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, complete with a recording studio. So he goes there, gets inspired, and comes back with 13 new songs.

But when Eddie shows up at the cabin, we immediately learn there’s more to the story. A beaten down 42 year old heroin addict named Otis is sitting in the corner of the living room, half-hidden in the shadows. You see, Eddie doesn’t know how to write songs. So this guy does it for him. Secretly of course. The whole reason it’s been so long since the last album is that Otis was in prison. He’s finally got out.

Eddie tosses him 5 grand and tells him to get to work. There’s only one problem. That night, Otis OD’s. Which means… you got it… Eddie, for the first time, has to write his own songs.

After Eddie throws Otis’s body in the woods, he notices that he has a possum problem. Possums are always coming in and out of the many holes in the walls. Eddie doesn’t realize just how bad his possum problem is, however, until one of the possums starts talking to him. In English.

Possum Jack explains that HE was the reason Otis could write those songs. And that he can do the same thing for Eddie. All Eddie has to do is bring food for him and his pregnant possum wife, Possum Jill. But when Eddie grabs some junk food from the local gas station, Possum Jack makes it clear that they need more nourishing food. Preferably, roadkill.

Eddie’s about had it with these pesky possums but after Possum Jack helps him record his first of thirteen songs and the song is amazing, Eddie’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the other 12. So he gets roadkill for the possums but they say the roadkill is too old. They need fresher meat. So Eddie gets a live cat from the animal shelter. But these picky possums want something better. Like, say, HUMAN meat.

During this time, poor Eddie starts growing big thick whiskers on his face. Possum Jack informs him that this is part of the deal and it will keep happening until their deal is over. Eddie asks if there’s any way to stop it. The only thing they’ve seen stave off the transformation is what Otis was doing. As in, heroin. Which means now Eddie will have to become a full-on heroin addict.

All of this comes to a head when Eddie’s manager and wife show up. But, by this point, Eddie is so far in it, so determined to get those 13 songs, that he can even rationalize sacrificing them. It’s at this point that we realize… maybe nobody survives these possums.

Let’s start with the structure here.

One of my rules is that if you’re going to write something wacky, you want the rest of your screenplay to be structured. This grounds your story. And Adamson did a good job here. He set up the parameters well. Goal – go record 13 songs. Stakes – if he fails he’ll owe the recording company the full advance they gave him, which he’s already spent. Urgency – he’s got two weeks.

In addition to this, the setting itself is contained (to this farm house). Which further structures the story. Every time you add a border or a time limit or anything that acts as a container around the story, the story is easier to tell. And it’s easier to follow as well. This just as easily could’ve been about some singer who spends a year doing a bunch of concerts and at night he has possums talking to him and they’re really funny and they won’t leave him alone and he records a great final record and… whatever else you wanted to throw in there.

I know that sounds ridiculous. Who would write that? you say. If you’re writing one of your first three screenplays, you’re probably writing stories just like that. They’re all over the place. Messy. Directionless. I know because I read them. So, yes, you do need to worry about structure when you write, especially with subject matter like this.

Where Possum Song loses its melody is in it world-building. And this is where a lot of writers get lost in the weeds if they’re not careful. Once you start developing your world and its rules (in this case, the possums and how they operate) you can become seduced by that world and expand it too far.

We have a guy who relies on another guy to write his songs. Who it turns out is relying on a magic possum to write those songs. And this possum only performs this magic act if you bring him food (possums can’t find their own food?). But processed food isn’t good enough. They need real meat. But then older meat isn’t good enough either. They need recent dead meat. And then recent dead meat isn’t good enough either. Now they need human meat? And part of the curse means you start turning into a possum. But you can stop your possum-turning by doing heroin?????

Sometimes, in the unlit shadows of a 3am writing session, you can talk yourself into these things. “Yeah, that all makes sense.” But when the harsh morning sun shines down, that’s when you have to be honest with yourself. Because writers can talk themselves into anything. So you need to have that ‘come to Jesus’ moment with yourself when dealing with rules, rules, and more rules.

Because the power of a script like this is in its simplicity. It’s a dude using possums to record songs. The more convoluted you make that, the quicker you’re going to run into trouble.

This wasn’t as good as Bubbles which had that “lightning in a bottle” effect going for it. And I would’ve liked to have seen more of a physical transformation in Eddie. I think people are coming to this movie for the Jeff Goldblum level “Fly” transformation. So that would’ve been more fun. But it’s still a good script. It’s an especially good script to read to understand what kind of zaniness the Black List responds to.

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

What I learned: The time constraint before the time constraint. The time constraint of this screenplay is two weeks (that’s how long he has to record the songs). But that two weeks isn’t up until the end of the movie. So what you can do is you can create a more immediate time constraint somewhere in the middle of your script, which acts as a way to keep tension up in the second act. Here, Eddie’s wife, who’s pregnant, is having the sonogram on Wednesday, where they’re going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. She really wants Eddie to be there, which he promises to be. This is the time constraint before the time constraint. It’s something we know we’re leading up to, and therefore one more way to add a little tension and direction to the script.