Genre: Biopic/Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) Based on the confusing, sometimes offensive, borderline-insane memories of David Prowse, the irascible Englishman behind Darth Vader’s mask.
About: We just covered The Black List yesterday and this is the first NEW script I’m reviewing from the list. It’s written by two newcomers. Nicholas is a composer who worked in the music department for John Carter of Mars and Dalton is an actor. By the way, if you only came to the main Scriptshadow page yesterday, you did not see the full Black List post. For whatever reason, when I updated, it didn’t catch. So if you only saw the 5-line “Black List Holding Post” message, click here to get the full article.
Writers: Nicholas Jacobson-Larson & Dalton Leeb
Details: 117 pages

What’d you think I was going to choose for my first 2017 Black List review? It’s freaking Star Wars week, man. And by the time you read this, the review embargo for The Last Jedi will have been lifted. Which means we get reviews from people other than those looking to keep Disney happy so they continue to get pre-release access to their big films. Oh, Carson, you’re so cynical! I know. I hate it. However, I am hearing, from the few people brave enough to speak negatively about the film, that the big criticism is that it’s tooooo sloooooow. Hmm, I wonder who predicted that? Could it be the person who said 2 hours and 30 minutes is way too long for a Star Wars film? I wonder. :)

Not to worry. We’re going back in time to when Star Wars was pure. When studios could actually hide all of the negative stuff that was happening on their films. And one of the most infamous of those stories is that of David Prowse, the man who would play Darth Vader.

David Prowse’s career was looking up. He had a role in A Clockwork Orange, and was one of the only actors with the balls to stand up to Stanley Kubrick. At least that’s what Old David Prowse, now 80, is telling the journalist who’s come to interview him about why George Lucas banned him from representing Star Wars.

Prowse dives back into his life as a bullied kid who took up bodybuilding, grew to 6 foot 7, and became enamored with acting. He was in his 40s, with a wife and kids, when a young director named George Lucas wanted him to play the big baddie in his low-budget science-fiction film, Star Wars. Prowse leapt at the chance, especially because this finally seemed like his opportunity to show he could act.

Almost immediately, Prowse put people off on the Star Wars set. He was clumsy, always knocking down and breaking expensive props, and annoying, constantly assaulting George Lucas with pointless questions about his character. But even as the rest of the cast – especially Harrison Ford – turned on him, Prowse was driven by the promise to finally show off his acting skills.

So you can imagine his reaction when he went to the premiere only to find out his voice had been dubbed over by James Earl Jones. Prowse was furious, but encouraged when he learns in Empire that his mask will be coming off. At least now they’ll be able to SEE him. Except that doesn’t turn out the way he hopes either (they used another actor).

In a final grand act of defiance, Prowse informs the Daily Mail that Darth Vader dies in Return of the Jedi, spoiling the film well before its release. That’s the rumor anyway. Prowse claims he had nothing to do with the leak as our journalist wraps up the interview, not quite sure why he wasted the last 4 hours with this man. Did he really learn anything new? Was Prowse being truthful about anything? The only one who will ever know is Prowse himself.

Let me start by saying this. This script has a great final scene. It’s so damn powerful and moving that I was in tears. Unfortunately, the rest of the script doesn’t stack up to the ending, as it’s unsure of what tone it wants to strike and who it wants to portray David Prowse as. And it’s frustrating. Because there’s obviously a lot to work with here.

The script uses the interview framing device to tell its story. This is where an interviewer attempts to find some truth about the protagonist, and before the protagonist can give you that truth, he must tell you how he got there. And hence we have a reason to tell his life story. This device is most successful when the truth the interview is trying to get at carries with it high stakes. The golden example of this is Titanic. They interview Old Rose to find out where the 100 million dollar diamond they’re searching for might be. That’s stakes!

We don’t get stakes anywhere approaching that in Strongman, and this is one of the script’s primary weaknesses. The question that sends us into Prowse’s life is “Why do you think you were banned?” The stakes are so low with this question that within 20 pages, I’d forgotten what the question was. It wasn’t until the final ten pages, when we’re back in the interview room and the question is repeated that I remembered it.

This is a good double-tip for screenwriters using any plotting device. Make sure the goal has some stakes attached to it. And don’t be afraid to REMIND the audience what those stakes are. Even the most attentive audience member is going to have trouble remembering what the point of the movie is if you go 100 pages without mentioning said point.

However, this wasn’t a script killer. This script lives or dies on the depiction of Prowse. And that was a mixed bag. It’s strange. The script is told almost entirely as a comedy. We get lots of scenes like Prowse dressing up a mannequin like Obi-Wan with a mop and doing pretend lightsaber battles with him. There are a good 30 prat falls throughout the script. The goofy characters he played in previous films – like Frankenstein – start following him around in ghost form telling him what to do. And yet it wants you to take Prowse’s journey seriously. When he’s sad about being overlooked, it wants you to be sad too. And it’s hard to do that when Prowse is erroneously remembering Carrie Fisher saying stuff like, “I’m wetter than a Dogobah swamp right now.” (an admittedly funny line)

In fact, I could never tell whether the writers wanted us to laugh with Prowse or at him. But most of it plays like we’re laughing at him, and I don’t think you can do that with a biopic. We have to sympathize with the character, to believe he’s got a leg to stand on. And Prowse is mostly depicted as a clueless unpleasant asshole.

The script shines most in its final third when it begins to ditch its comedy aspirations and focuses more on a man’s struggle to be seen, to be taken seriously, to not have to hide behind masks for the rest of its life. It also covers the complicated fact that Prowse was taken advantage of and used every step of the way of the Star Wars trilogy, even if some of it was his fault. There’s a poignant moment late when Carrie Fisher comes to him and says, “David, maybe people would like you more if you were a little nicer.” And he doesn’t understand what she means. He sees himself as a good guy.

So I don’t know what to make of this. It’s a mixed bag. I will say this – on the comedy side, Harrison Ford is fucking hilarious. He has NO respect for Prowse whatsoever and constantly screws with him throughout the productions, his go-to move being to point his pretend laser at Prowse’s penis and say, “Pew pew pew!” which infuriates Prowse to no end.

And then that ending. You know what? Now that I think about it. That ending doesn’t work unless some of what came before it worked. So maybe I’m underselling this. But it’s a weird script. It’s good sometimes. Bad sometimes. And ultimately leaves you confused about what the point of it all was. Funny. That’s what I’m hearing about The Last Jedi as well. :)

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

What I learned: If you’re a writer writing about an era before you were born, don’t insert phrases and language from the current era. I’m pretty sure nobody was saying, “What’s up, bitches?” in 1977, as Harrison Ford says in this script.

P.S. Please continue to share your thoughts about any Black List scripts you read in the comments. I love seeing what you guys think about these scripts. It also helps me determine what I should review.

Lean times at the box office!

Don’t worry. The good movies are coming.

But they sure are making us suffer in the meantime! A Planet of the Apes sequel? This is like making us eat at the school cafeteria when there’s an In and Out right across the street.

The latest entry in the Lame-O Summer 2024 Movie Olympics is Planet of the Apes Human Girl Says Hi or whatever it’s called. Even if I went to check the actual title of this film, I would forget it by the time I came back to this document. That’s how unoriginal these Apes sequels have become.  Literally 98.123% of the movie is shots of apes in a forest.  I don’t even know who this director is. When I heard “Wes Ball,” I said, “Wes Ball, the actor from American Beauty, is directing now?”

Because the studios are releasing these second banana movies, there’s nothing much to talk about. At least you used to be able to marvel at the motion-cap technology that brought these apes to life. Now the biggest talking point is that the Apes movies do sorta better overseas. Oooooh. Can’t wait to spend  three hours at poker night debating that nugget.

All joking aside, there’s a reason I liked the initial movie in this franchise and why none of the others have made sense to me. The initial movie was simple and I could buy into it. Every other sequel has tried to convince us that a planet which has less than half a million apes, has been able to take over 8 billion humans. It doesn’t make sense on any level.

My whole thing is: If the core concept doesn’t make sense, your script won’t work. It will work enough that if you pour 150 million into it and another 100 million into advertising, it will trick enough people to see it that you can claim a 50 million dollar opening. But nobody cares about this franchise and I honestly believe it’s because the core of the concept doesn’t make sense.

Speaking of animals, my current obsession is Baby Reindeer. Not just the show but the circus surrounding the show. Fiona Harvey, the woman who the stalker character of Martha is based on, was on Piers Morgan over the weekend! She claims she left creator Richard Gadd a total of four voicemails, three e-mails, and a couple of texts. There’s a bit of discrepancy there as Gadd says it was closer to hundreds of voicemails, tens of thousands of e-mails, and an uncountable number of texts.

I have to admit Harvey seemed quite reserved in the interview. So either Gadd did exaggerate this whole thing or she was on a whole lot of meds.

Either way, it does bring up the question of, “How personal can you get in your writing?” I’ve always advocated for truth from screenwriters.  It’s the #1 path to creating a strong original voice.

But there’s clearly a tax to being so truthful. Gadd, who was a nobody for a decade, experienced these events and built a story universe around them (first in his stand-up act, then in his play, now on a TV show). The latter has turned him into a mega-star overnight.

But you can tell when you watch interviews of Gadd how uncomfortable he is getting into the details of the real-life inspirations. He can feel Fiona breathing down his neck. She’s going to sue and who knows what’s going to come of that. But I can’t imagine it’s going to be enjoyable, even if everything he’s said is 100% accurate.

Moving onto lighter fare, Star Wars is about to sign Sigourney Weaver into its far far away galaxy. She’s going to play a substantial role in The Mandalorian and Grogu. Much like The Acolyte brought in Carrie-Anne Moss, it appears that Lucasfilm is all about stunt casting in an attempt to build as much goodwill back into its fractured fanbase as possible.

I know talking about Star Wars these days is the equivalent of kicking the nerd after he’s already been beaten up by the bully. The franchise doesn’t have any future shows or movies that the fanbase is excited about.

We can dog Marvel all we want. But Marvel still has Spider-Man. It still has Deadpool and Wolverine. It still has the new iteration of the X-Men to bring into the fold. There are things to get excited about with Marvel.

Trying to get excited about Star Wars these days is like trying to get excited about getting Amazon gift cards for Christmas.  Sure, there’s value to them.  But they’re not exactly… exciting.  The Acolyte, by all behind-the-scenes accounts, is supposed to be lousy. We have an upcoming Rey movie, which is a tough sell considering the character became less interesting with each sequel. There’s James Mangold’s “First Jedi,” movie, which has a teensy bit of promise but so little is known about it that it’s hard to form an opinion either way. And then, of course, there’s Mandalorian and Grogu.

The problem with our buddy Mandor and his adorable little green partner-in-crime is that they’re building a movie around the franchise on a downslope. You never want to build a movie on a franchise that’s slipping. You want to build it on a franchise that’s rising.

The perfect time to release this film would’ve been after the first season, when everybody loved The Mandalorian. But most Star Wars fans I talk to barely remember what happened in Season 3. So you’re building a movie in an attempt to SAVE the franchise which is an inherently negative motivation.

There’s got to be a good Star Wars movie idea out there, right?  There’s got to be something that would get people excited.  Any ideas? 

A couple other things that popped up over the weekend are, one, that JJ ABRAMS IS BACK! Nobody has seen the man since the premiere of Rise of Skywalker. As I mentioned before, I once had a contact inside Bad Robot (she no longer works there) and she told me that when Abrams went to the premiere, the movie had been changed since his final edit and nobody told him. So he was furious. I get the feeling that was the worst professional experience of Abrams’ life, which is probably why we haven’t heard from him. Still, 5 years is a long time to disappear for someone of Abrams’ stature.

He’s teaming up with my buddy Glen Powell. I say “buddy” because, of course, Powell was in the film, “Anything but You.” “Anything but You” also starred Sydney Sweeney. Sweeney and I are tight in that I was a fan of hers before everyone else. So, by association, Glen is my friend.

I have to say I like this team-up. Powell is making a movie, Twisters, that I thought couldn’t possibly work. But it looks cool. So maybe he is the next Tom Cruise like everybody is saying he’s going to be. We don’t know yet what the Abrams movie is about. But I’m just happy he’s back. He needs to work again!

Finally, they’ve announced more Lord of the Rings films, the new ones built around the character of Gollum. Good idea? Look, these studios are scared. And when they’re the most scared, they turn to the IP that made them the most money. They don’t care if it makes sense to add more films to the franchise. They just know it’s a better bet than going with something original. Cause original is the unknown. And the unknown is terrifying. That’s why IP is a blessing and a curse. With that said, I suspect these films will be better than the Amazon Rings series.

Oh, one more thing. Check out the interview Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen did over on The Hollywood Reporter. Both these two have been huge supporters of Scriptshadow throughout the years. Anna was actually instrumental in getting Alex Felix’s Where Angels Die made (as “The Gateway”). They have a new horror movie out called, Tarot. :)

Have you been struggling with your dialogue? I have over (that’s right, OVER) 250 dialogue tips in my new book, “The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written.” You can head over to Amazon and buy the book, right now!

Civil War has to have one of the strangest reactions to movies I’ve seen in a long time. Every day that goes by, its RT review score drops another percentage point. And yet, with this weekend’s box office win, it has become A24 and Alex Garland’s best first-2-weekends release ever.

The film (11 mil this weekend) is fighting a war on two fronts. One, it’s promoting itself as something bigger than it is. So everyone who sees it can’t help but be let down. And two, the elite progressive crowd, which is independent film’s primary audience, is mad that it doesn’t take more shots at conservatives. The Hollywood Reporter was so angry about this, they needed to get it off their chest.

Either way, I think it’s cool that an indie film is causing such a stir. I was just lamenting the fact that we don’t have enough conversational pieces in cinema these days. You had Barbie last year. But that was an outlier. Before that, it had been a while.

Abigail’s lower-than-expected box office (10 mil) continues to prove how elusive the target is in the horror movie space. Horror seems easy from the outside (and to be fair, I believe it’s the genre most forgiving of bad writing) but finding that concept that excites people enough to drive them to the theater is, as always, elusive. Audiences will keep you humble. There are no slam dunks except for sequels, as Steven Spielberg famously said.

The trailers for Abigail were less scary and more campy. I always get nervous when writers mix comedy with horror. Being scared is something everybody agrees on. If something is scary, we’re all on board. But comedy? Whatever half of the audience finds funny, the other half is guaranteed to find stupid. So you’re lowering the chances that your script/movie will connect.

This is why movies like Renfeld and Lisa Frankenstein land with a thud. I think when people go to a horror film, they want horror. It’s not like comic book movies, which organically have a lane for comedy. This genre mash-up had its heyday back in the 80s, with franchises like Leprechaun and Child’s Play, and I think that’s because it was a campier time. Audiences are less forgiving of campiness these days, probably due to the 50x cynicism power-up that the internet has injected into our souls.

But that cynicism has been delightful for the movies that deserve it. And there is no movie released in the last decade that deserves a bigger cynical take than Rebel Moon Part 2. I mean, this movie, guys… I put this movie on and just stared, frozen in place, with my jaw on the floor. I would’ve turned it off if I hadn’t been so confused about how a movie this bad could’ve been made.

There is not a better image to represent this movie.  Everybody is perfectly framed.  They all have cool expressions on their faces.  They’re shooting in slow motion.  Hair, makeup, and wardrobe have all been adjusted to the millimeter.  And yet we don’t care one bit what’s happening because the story that led up to this moment failed to create even an iota of compelling drama. 

First of all, can we all just take a deep breath and THANK THE LORD that Snyder wasn’t able to convince Kathleen Kennedy to make this a Star Wars movie? Holy Jesus, thank you thank you thank you. Star Wars may be in a rough spot now. But this would’ve been like sticking 50 wooden stakes into the franchise’s vampiric chest.

While the film has its baffling share of bad directing choices (namely that 89% of the movie is presented in slow motion for reasons the most brilliant scientists in the world would never be able to figure out), it’s the screenwriting that does the film in. If you don’t have a story to build your directing around, it won’t matter what you do. And this script makes mistake after mistake after mistake.

Right off the bat, there is zero originality within any of the science fiction choices. I see this all the time in weak sci-fi scripts. The choices appear out of thin air. There is no thought behind them. No history. No mythology. No specificity. They amount to the writer thinking, “This would look cool on screen” and that’s it. That’s the only basis behind the choice.

There is this robot in the movie with animal horns on its head. Why? No clear reason! Just… “animal horns on a robot would look cool,” which may be the singular sentence that defines Zack Snyder. What makes science fiction awesome IS the world-building. We need to sense that there’s a deep rich history in this made-up universe for it to resonate, for it to feel real. And if you’re just basing all your choices on, “Oh, that would look cool,” it will come across as paper-thin to audiences.

If you look at characters like C-3PO and R2-D2, not only do these robots serve functional needs in this universe (one is a protocol droid capable of communicating with the vast number of alien languages throughout the galaxy and the other is an astromech pilot droid) but they have rich detailed history, having been through numerous wars before we meet them (namely the Clone Wars), all of which George Lucas knew in the very first draft of the script.

A classic screenwriting error is to believe that your character only exists the second they’re introduced in your movie. While I’m sure that Zack Snyder would argue that he knows all sorts of backstory about his hero (somebody named “Kora”), I can assure him that however much backstory work he’s done, it is a fraction of what needed to be done. This main girl who lives on some farm and hoes wheat or whatever she does… 98% of what Snyder knows about the girl is in how he envisioned her looking. She had a cool angular face that would look killer in all of the slow-motion action scenes he planned on filming.

Or there are moments like when Snyder has his version of Han Solo encased in some webbing version of carbonite with multiple tubes running red and blue fluid into his body.  I would be willing to bet my life that Snyder has no idea what those tubes are or what the liquid within them does. I know this because there is zero logical or visual consistency between what the character is encased in (webbing) and what those tubes are doing. Again, it comes down to Snyder thinking, “Red and blue tubes!  That would look cool!!” That’s it! That is the only criteria for a creative choice in Rebel Moon. The irony is that if you argue that “knowing what looks cool” is Snyder’s lone talent, he fails at it more than he succeeds!

So how did this happen? How did two movies that are this terrible – movies that cost an enormous amount of money – get made in the first place? The answer is simple: Netflix doesn’t develop. Or, if they do, the notes they give aren’t mandatory. They are suggestions. And when they hire these big names (They brought Snyder into their fold when he was at his professional peak, after the Snyderverse), they give them total power. Anything they want to do, they let them do.

Ideas are like people. If you don’t challenge them, they can’t grow. They can’t become bigger and better versions of themselves. It is beyond clear to me that not a single creative decision in this entire screenplay was challenged. I’d even go further. I would bet that nobody at Netflix even read the script. How could they? Nobody who can call themselves a creative read this script and thought it was anything other than abysmal and needed mountains of rewrites.

It is the curse of being successful. People start trusting you too much. And you believe they’re right. Recently, Ridley Scott expressed frustration about the fact that, even at this stage of his career, with all of the success he’s had, people still constantly challenge him during the filmmaking process. At first, I thought that sucked. “He’s earned the right to do what he wants!” I screamed at my computer.

But after watching Rebel Moon Part 2, I’m reminded how important it is that every creative choice be challenged. Being forced to defend why you made the choices you did allows you to see just how strong they are.  Because it’s usually during a defense when you realize that a choice has no legs.  “No, cause see, the reason for that is that he has that power… well, he doesn’t have it yet but… oh, I forgot, cause when he was young?  He once had a vision — I had that in an earlier draft, I need to put it back in — so then, see, when you know that, you realize that he has this special power… which I know is actually two powers, flying and super-strength, but I explain the flying later on, and that’s why it makes sense that he can do these things.” You can feel yourself stumbling over your defense as you explain it and that’s when you go, “You’re right.  I need to fix this.”  Again, if there’s no struggle, how can the best choices rise to the top?

I do understand Snyder on some level. For directors, they want to get behind the camera. Cause that’s where the movie’s made. It’s annoying sitting in a room and trouble-shooting script problems then waiting weeks or months for the writer to fix everything. But when you don’t do that, this is the movie you get. This is a first draft movie. It is a piece of garbage with no dramatic thrust, with no true reason to keep watching. And now you’re the butt of a joke. You’re Battlefield Earth. When you could’ve avoided that by doing the hard work and actually getting the script taken care of.  It drives me nuts!  But this is a problem I’ve learned that many in Hollywood will always make.

Week 15 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Week 14 – The Climax

At the start of the year, we said we were going to write a script. This week, that dream becomes a reality. Because if you’ve been following the schedule I’ve laid out every Thursday, you are just 10 pages away from typing “FADE OUT.”

Technically speaking, these should be the easiest pages you’ve written all script. Chances are, you finished the climax last week. Or, if your climax bleeds into the final 10 pages, you’ve already got momentum going from last week so finishing up should be a cake walk.

But one thing I didn’t talk about last week, and something that’s likely to come up at the end of your climax, is THE CHOICE.

Last week was all about structuring your ending like a miniature movie – giving it that first act, second act, and third act.

However, there is something going on concurrently with that, which is the conclusion to your main character’s (or main supporting character’s) arc. Remember, at the beginning of your script, you will have created a character with a gigantic weakness. This weakness is known in some circles as “the fatal flaw.” It is the flaw that’s holding your character back in life – that’s keeping them from finding happiness.

Most flaws exist inside a person’s blind spot. That’s because a flaw is as much of who you are as any other attribute. So you don’t think of it as a weakness. It’s just “who you are.” You may be selfish, stubborn, a procrastinator, a coward, impulsive, a cynic, or indecisive, and have no idea.

I remember the first time somebody assigned a character flaw to me, telling me I was a perfectionist. I said, “What are you talking about? I’m not a perfectionist.” They then proceeded to give me five active examples of my perfectionism. I honestly had zero idea that was a flaw of mine until that moment.

So, most of the time, your hero won’t know their flaw. We, the writer will know it. Almost everyone who knows your hero will know it. But your hero won’t truly recognize this as a flaw until the climax. Until they’re faced with a CHOICE within the climax that gives them the option of either…

a) Continue to live their flawed life.
b) Overcome their flaw and change.

Interestingly enough, the answer isn’t always “b.” Sometimes your character will choose “a.” When they do, though, a price must be paid. You can’t have your hero remain flawed and not pay a price. So, in tragedies, the hero is given the big choice at the end, they choose to remain the same, and they usually die as a result.

But let’s get back to how this affects our ending.

You want to create a choice in the final “battle,” where the hero can either keep doing what they’ve always been doing or they can change. Keep in mind, that if you do this well, it will be the most powerful moment in your entire screenplay. This is the moment that is going to give your audience the feels. This is the moment where you can make people cry.

Three of the most common flaws that pop up around this time are: cowardice, selfishness, and a lack of belief in one’s self. So, you’d write a choice into the ending where the hero could either continue to be a coward or finally show bravery. We see this with George McFly in Back to the Future when he finally stands up to Biff and punches him in the face to save Lorraine.

In The Matrix, Neo has spent the entire movie not believing in himself. He doesn’t believe he’s “The One.” He’ll get into little spats with the agents but, at the end, he does what the group tells him to do – RUN. So in that final climactic moment where he gets cornered by the agents in a hallway, he has his CHOICE built around his flaw: He can continue not to believe in himself and run away. Or he can believe in himself and face the agents head on. Guess what he does?

Who’s the most selfish character in the original Star Wars? It’s Han Solo. He has a choice at the end of that movie. He can take the money and leave his allies high and dry or he can stay and fight and help them destroy the Death Star. In the end, his choice is to come back, shoot down Darth Vader, which allows Luke a clear shot at the Death Star.

That moment – that moment where the Millennium Falcon appears at the very last second to shoot down Darth Vader’s ship before Vader can take out Luke – is one of the single most exciting moments in movie history.

And the REASON that is is because it’s coming on the heels of a major character transformation. That’s the power that an expertly executed climactic character transformation can accomplish. That’s why this formula is so important.

I talk to so many writers who treat the act of finding a character flaw for their protagonist to be some kind of burden. They know that it’s something screenwriting books tell them they have to do and that’s the only reason they do it. But this is WHY you want to integrate a character flaw. It’s FOR CREATING MOMENTS LIKE THE ABOVE with Han Solo.

Cause you can’t create emotional beats in your climax if you haven’t set up any character transformations to happen. You can still come up with decent endings, especially if you’re good at plotting and paying off setups, which all good endings do. But if you want to come up with that ending that hits the reader in the gut, figure out a character flaw at the beginning of your writing process, explore that flaw throughout the movie, then pay it off here in the climactic scene.

It’s easy to forget that a movie should be an emotional experience. Viewers want to connect with the people leading them through the story. And just like we, as real-life people, like to see our friends and family overcome their weaknesses and become successful in life, so do we want to see these new “friends” of ours – these movie characters – overcome their flaws and become successful.

Movies really are a metaphor for life. That 2-hour experience feels like we’re living a life with these characters. So if you do your job, we will connect with and care about those characters, and want to see them win in the end. But not just win. CHANGE. When they change for the better, that’s what gets the feels flying into fifth gear.

After you finish your climax, it’s up to you how many more scenes you want to write. But the general rule is that you don’t want to stick around much longer. The viewer will start to get restless. They came here to see the main character win. The main character won. So they’re ready to leave. Some movies (Rocky) will end right there! But it’s okay to wrap up a few character relationships if you need to. I would say try to get out of your script after the climax within three scenes.

Time to bring the torch home!

We will celebrate next week after you’ve completed your script.

Then we can talk about rewriting.

It’s going to be a BLAST. :)

I believe in fighting for the little guy.

I believe in giving non-traditional movies platforms to do well at the box office.

So I admire Jordan Peele using his muscle over at Universal to get them to give Monkey Man a 3000 theater release.

But the one thing I believe in more than anything when it comes to screenwriting is writing a story that people understand.

Cause it doesn’t matter if you’re a 300 million dollar Marvel movie or a 5 million dollar indie movie – if we watch your trailer and we’re not sure what your movie is about?

YOU’RE EFFED.

You are capital “E,” EFFED.

You can’t tell me after watching the Monkey Man trailer that you knew what it was about. It was all over the place. Which is why the movie barely cleared 10 million dollars on this, its opening weekend, despite getting the holy grail of movie release scenarios: 3000+ theaters.

Peele was trying to give Patel the same career-making break that he got: Make that passion project you’ve been slaving over forever, put it up on the big screen, and watch everyone come.

Except the only people who came were the people who visit sites like this or live in Los Angeles or run errands for busy agents at WME. No actual regular people saw this movie because they watched that trailer and they said, “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

Don’t believe me? What was the last big movie that released an “I don’t know what I’m looking at” trailer thinking everyone was going to show up and no one did? Beau is Afraid.

How did that movie do again? I’ll give you a hint. Nobody saw it. Why didn’t they see it? Because you watched that trailer and you had no idea what you were looking at.

All this ties back to screenwriting, guys. Come up with a strong, but also CLEAR concept. Make the story simple to understand. If you do those two things, people will read your script. People will like your script. People will want to make a movie out of your script. When that movie is finished and a trailer debuts, people will want to watch that movie. So, lots of people will show up for that movie.

It’s a very simple formula.

I’m surprised Peele, who’s been championing this movie, doesn’t know this. It’s the very reason everyone in the world knows his name. GET OUT was so easy to understand when you saw the trailer: White girl brings home black boyfriend to meet her rich white parents. We immediately understood that simple premise.

I’m sure a few people will chime in and give a couple of examples of complex weird movies that have done really well at the box office. Yeah, it does happen. But it happens an infinitesimally smaller amount of time because the only time those movies do well is when they’re AAMMMMMMAAAAZZZZING and, as a result, the word of mouth spreads. But they have to be perfect in their execution of what they’re trying to do.

So, yeah, if you think you’re capable of making one of the top 30 nontraditional movies of all time, then sure, write something super complex that can’t be conveyed in a trailer. But I mean most of those top 30 movies are top 30 out of luck. George Lucas had a million things go wrong in the making of Star Wars, obliterating his original vision of the film, yet that weird concoction of mistakes somehow resulted in a masterpiece. You just can’t plan this stuff.

But I’m getting off track!

The point is: Come up with a good idea, make it clear, and we’ll show up.

Funny enough, this is the exact reason why two other recent films did poorly at the box office.

We have The First Omen, which barely made 8 million bucks this weekend and then Immaculate, the Sydney Sweeney horror movie that did poorly a couple of weeks ago.

Both films have clearer premises than Monkey Man. But not by much. Note how there’s no way to tell what either movie is about if you just look at the posters. I’m not saying that your movie has to be picture-perfect-poster-clear. But it’s usually a bad omen (sorry, had to do it) if it isn’t. Cause it probably means there’s something not clear enough about your story.

Even the title of “The Omen” is weak-sauce. I see it and I’m not sure what it means or what the movie is about. That’s usually a bad sign. Then the trailer starts and, okay, someone gets pregnant with maybe a demon. And then the rest of the trailer is just scary images. Where’s the story?  What’s the endgame???

Remember that old Wendy’s commercial? “Where’s the beef?”

“Where’s the story?”

And then with Immaculate, you’re talking to the inaugural card-carrying member of the Sweeney Fan Club here. If there was anybody who was an easy sell to go see a Sweeney movie, it was me.

So why didn’t I go?

Cause I watched the trailer and I wasn’t clear what the movie was about after the nun gets pregnant. It seemed like she walked around a lot and, occasionally something weird would happen around her, and then she’d walk some more. That’s not a narrative. There is no story in that. If a trailer is having a hard time conveying the basic story, that’s a huuuuuuuge indication that the script is weak.

As much as it pains me to admit, the reason Godzilla x Kong is killing at the box office is because it’s so easy to understand in all three phases of what I discussed above.

The Title
The Poster
The Trailer

But let’s just say that you like to write more challenging offbeat stories. Are you screwed? No. Those stories are actually the ones that get screenwriters noticed. Cause all the readers in Hollywood are reading the same predictable stuff. So some offbeat subject matter with a challenging story is going to stand out, as long as it’s written well.

But that’s probably going to be the extent of how far the script goes. It will get you meetings, which may get you jobs, which hopefully gets your career up and running. But stuff like that rarely gets made into movies because, when it does, it loses people money, like Monkey Man is going to do.

Right now, at this very instant, Jordan Peele is having to make some very difficult apology calls. He’s the one who made Universal release this wide when they wanted to release it on streaming.

We’re going to be having this discussion all over again in a couple of weeks when Challengers comes out, the Zendaya tennis movie. You guys know I liked the script. It was unique. It was challenging. And, unlike most of these scripts, someone took a chance on it and it got made. Which is awesome for the writer.

But no one’s going to see it. Because nobody who watches that trailer is going to understand what it’s about. A sex triangle tennis story? Like, come on, man. I’m Mr. Tennis and I’m not paying to see that movie. I’ll see it on streaming. Which is my point. These scripts get you noticed. If you’re lucky, they get made and go on streaming, which gives you that IMDB credit, which helps start your career.

But if you want that 3000 theater release, you have to write John Wick. You have to write Bullet Train or Smile. Things that people understand in under five seconds.

It’s not a bad thing. Almost every story you’ve ever fallen in love with has been simple. You’re just adding to that legacy.