Genre: Action-Comedy
Premise: After a Hollywood assistant is publicly fired for admitting while on a conference call that he’d love to kill his boss, he finds his boss dead in the office the next morning and goes on the lam to figure out the real culprit, all while being hunted by his boss’s assassin.
About: Lillian Yu graduated from Harvard, wrote for the prestigious Harvard Crimson, and sold her first spec, Singles Day, back in 2018, to New Line. She’s since worked as a staff writer on TV shows, Powerless and Warrior. This latest script of hers finished in the top 5 on last year’s Black List. This script may or may not be written due to Lillian’s direct experiences with Scott Rudin. I have no info on whether that’s the case. All I know is that the second page of the script says, simply, “F*uck you, Scott.”
Writer: Lillian Yu
Details: 100 pages
Parasite actress Park So-Dam for Chelsea?
By this point, you’ve all heard the famous Hollywood saying: “Nobody knows anything.”
More specifically, nobody knows what movie ideas are going to work and what movie ideas are going to fail.
That’s because, although the formula – give them something the same but different – is agreed-upon by everyone, nobody can identify what the percentages of “same” and “different” in that equation are.
This is why you hear so many people say, “That idea is too much like so and so movie.” And for the next idea you’ll hear, “That idea is way too weird.” Nobody can agree on how much of “the same” and how much of “different” is required for a magical winning concept.
Today’s concept puts that quandary to the test. This definitely feels like familiar territory. A couple of mis-matched people are running from someone who’s trying to kill them, carrying, in their possession, a macguffin USB drive, that potentially has the answers they need to achieve their goal.
The “different” part is that, instead of this taking place in Budapest, like a Mission Impossible movie, or even New York City, here in the states, it’s taking place in Hollywood. So that becomes the big question. Is throwing in the Hollywood part enough to make this idea fresh and exciting? Or is it still one of thousands of the exact same types of scripts written in this space?
I suspect the answer will depend on the individual.
Our script follows producing assistant, and 28 year old Ugandan, Teddy Adebayo. Teddy works for a really terrible producer named Frank who throws things at him, makes him kill poor little squirrels because he doesn’t like the sound they make when running on the roof, and routinely laughs at him for being so stupid.
One day, when Teddy is fed up with Frank and not really paying attention to what he’s doing as he patches a bunch of people into a teleconference in the conference room, he confesses to his best friend and fellow assistant, Chelsea Hamamura, that he would kill Frank if he could. Little did he know he was broadcasting on the teleconference when he said this. So Teddy is immediately fired.
That weekend, when Teddy goes in to return his company keys and collect his final paycheck, he finds Frank stabbed to death in his office…. WITH TEDDY’S LETTER OPENER! No sooner does this happen than Chelsea appears, who congratulates Teddy on finally doing the deed. Teddy insists he’s innocent. Only seconds later, a masked man shows up to make sure Frank is dead, forcing Teddy and Chelsea to hide.
While observing the man, Chelsea notices that his gun is cop-issued, which means they can’t go to the cops with this! Teddy will have to prove his innocence some other way. He remembers a “secret” project Frank was working on that may have answers and locates a thumb drive that may have that project’s script on it. They drive off in a James Bond stunt car, with the masked man in pursuit.
Chelsea heads to the SoHo House to confront Paul Rudd, who’s had a two year feud with Frank. While she gives Rudd the business, the masked man appears and starts shooting up the SoHo House. Luckily, KEANU REEVES is there taking a meeting and tackles the guy, allowing Chelsea and Teddy to slip away.
The two eventually end up at Elon Musks’ house (or an Elon stand-in) and then Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s house. It’s a celebrity cameo party. Each celebrity gets them a little closer to their answer. But will it be enough to clear Teddy’s name? Or is he getting screwed one last time by the boss from hell, whose parting gift is sending him to prison for life?
This is the kind of script I was just talking about yesterday as one of the ways spec screenwriters can still get a theatrical release. Write an action-comedy. And to the writer’s credit, this is an action-comedy concept I haven’t quite seen before – an action comedy built around Hollywood. To that end, I guess you can say it checks the “same but different” box.
With that said, something wasn’t working for me. I tried to figure out what it was. The script had plenty of the fun outrageous moments you want from a movie like this. For example, at one point, they go to The Rock’s house for help, which reminded me of the guys in The Hangover going to Mike Tyson’s house.
But then it hit me. The central pairing in this movie isn’t interesting. And it’s not interesting because it’s not easily definable. Last Wednesday I reviewed a buddy comedy called “Drive Away Dykes,” and in that one, the relationship was easily definable. One woman was the most overtly sexual lesbian on the planet. The other was the most conservative lesbian on the planet. They fit together because they were so clearly on two different ends of the spectrum.
There isn’t enough of a difference between these two. For starters, they’re both assistants. So right away, they kind of feel the same. Sure, Chelsea is brave and Teddy isn’t. But these aren’t their defining traits, like the fact that the woman in Drive Away Dyke was a slut and the other was a prude. Here, the fact that one character is brave and one isn’t just seems to be a convenience thrown in there to get some laughs.
The dynamic is off as well.
The script introduces Chelsea first.
Then it introduces Teddy. Yet Teddy, in our first 10 pages, is the hero. He’s the one we’re focusing on. Chelsea is barely mentioned.
But then, as soon as they go on the run, Chelsea takes charge. She’s the one making all the decisions. So it’s apparently her movie, which I guess is why she was introduced first (usually, the character you introduce first is the hero).
But it’s super confusing because all the stakes are attached to Teddy. Not Chelsea. Chelsea’s the comic relief. Except she’s also the hero??
I didn’t know what was going on there.
Also, I want to take a second to vent about something. Because I’m seeing this in more and more scripts.
So, this is how Chelsea is introduced: “We WEAVE THROUGH a threadbare office: an assistant, CHELSEA HAMAMURA (mid-20s, half-Japanese, ASD that manifests as droll), orders office supplies on an Amazon-like e-commerce site named Everest while an INTERN runs from the kitchen with mugs of coffee in hand.”
You may notice that there is very little description of what Chelsea actually looks like. Why does this matter? Well, later, we’re told, rather vaguely, that Teddy is infatuated with Chelsea. And through very minor clues here and there, we learn that she’s really freaking hot. Which is a big reason why Teddy likes her so much.
But for some reason, all writers are terrified to label female characters as attractive now because people on Twitter occasionally highlight these descriptions and say, “Typical male writing. Only focuses on how the girl looks.” And female writers don’t want to perpetuate these dated practices so they don’t tell you either. So now we get these very vague descriptions and the reader is just supposed to figure out on their own if someone is good-looking or not.
While there are situations where a characters’ looks don’t matter, it does matter if you have a love story. A movie about a person who is attracted to a really ugly individual, for example, is a completely different movie than one where they’re attracted to a beautiful individual. I guess this is a long way of saying, don’t listen to all these Twitter losers. Tell us what your character looks like. Don’t be afraid. There are ways to convey a person’s attractiveness tastefully. And you should do so so you don’t leave all your readers confused as hell.
If you decide to keep things vague to win Twitter points, you run the risk of what happened to me in this script. Which was, halfway through, I realized that Chelsea was gorgeous and Teddy was in love with her. That means I missed 40-some pages of potential subtext and sexual chemistry because I didn’t know who was attractive and who was attracted. None of that was explained clearly.
I wish I could say I liked this but it just had too many problems.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In a Harvard interview back in 2018, Lillian Yu gave two pieces of advice. “First, work as an assistant. Get the lay of the land, and learn the players. See how this weird system works. I can’t tell you the number of seasoned writer-friends who have asked me, a lowly baby writer, for advice on this kind of thing. My only leg up is knowing the industry—who the good agents are, which producers won’t steal your idea, which executive is looking to buy a project about a deaf Tibetan Mastiff, etc. Second piece of advice: work in development. Working as a development exec was basically my grad school in screenwriting. You get to peek behind the curtain and see how everything works from the buyer’s side—what executives look for in a pitch, the note behind the note, meeting etiquette, standard story structure, etc. This was the best investment of my time I could have made, and I actually got paid to do it.”
Don’t worry. I give you five genres that you, as a spec screenwriter, can still write that get released in movie theaters!
A question I get asked a lot is, “How does a good script become a bad movie?” The prevailing thought is that if it’s on the page, all you have to do is point the camera and get out of the way. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t work like that. From actor rewrites to budgetary rewrites to a director shifting the script’s tone to miscasting… a lot can happen between great script and cameras rolling.
I bring this up because I loved the Ambulance script by Chris Fedak. It was such a fun ride with all these cool twists. Most action films are pretty bland, plot-wise. This one was constructed in such a clever way. So I was rooting for the movie. However, it did not do well this weekend, not even breaking 10 million at the box office.
That is not to say Ambulance is a bad movie. I don’t know if it is or isn’t. It seems to be getting good reviews for a Michael Bay film. But its failure at the box office is concerning considering that “theatrical” has become such an unknown in 2022. It feels like every movie’s success or failure is redefining the box office on the fly.
The first thing we have to take into account is streaming’s rise and theatrical’s fall during the pandemic, and how that reset audience’s expectations in regards to what they would and wouldn’t pay for. I lump both those in together because if they hadn’t happened at the same time, I believe theatrical would’ve weathered the storm. But because the streaming wars forced streamers to come up with bigger and better product to jack up those subscription numbers, along with people getting used to not going to the movies, it created a perfect storm scenario for a box office apocalypse.
I think people looked at “Ambulance” and they said, “Hey wait a minute. Didn’t I just see that action movie on Netflix for free that had a bigger budget and a bigger star in “Extraction?” Once you give people something bigger for “free,” they no longer value paying for it. I mean, hell, we even got a bigger budget Michael Bay movie on Netflix not too long ago, “6 Underground.” So why would you go to the movies and pay for a Michael Bay movie?
Another problem is the budget. The movie only cost 40 million dollars. Considering that the average Bay movie cost north of 200 million, the movie couldn’t help but look “Bay-light.” Why am I going to the movies to check out a small film by a filmmaker who makes big movies? Or, if that question seems too industry-coded, look at it from the average moviegoer’s POV. They see a trailer for a movie called “Ambulance” and all it contains is a bunch of shots of an ambulance car chase and it’s kind of like, “So what would normally be one scene in a Michael bay movie is now…… the entire movie?”
A third factor I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about is the fact that Bay’s style is starting to feel dated. The sweeping dolly shot at sunset where the actress or car is bathed in golden sunlight… it feels very 1999. You’ve got these newer action filmmakers, guys like Sam Hargrave, the Russo Brothers, Chad Stahelski, and David Leitch, who have a darker grittier more inventive style with much fresher action choreography. These guys are more interested in making you feel the visceral physicality of two men beating each other to pieces than they are making sure that every strand of those actors’ hair is in place.
This is a long way of saying, you see the Ambulance trailer and think, “What’s new here?” That’s what sucks about good scripts that don’t have their goodness baked into the concept. The goodness is in the way the story is executed. And you don’t know that unless you see the film.
What Ambulance’s failure says is that the mid-to-high range action movie may no longer be worthy of a theatrical release. Seeing as this is a screenwriting site, I’d like to discuss what this means for screenwriters and how you can adapt. Because what everyone fears is that theatrical has become, exclusively, a superhero industry. And that it’s only a matter of time before all the other genres slip down the slope into that large gargling mouth belonging to the streamers.
Let me alleviate those fears by first giving you some non superhero genres that still get theatrical releases and then giving you scripts written on spec that can still become theatrical releases. Because, as of this moment, there are still options. Let’s look at them.
NON-SUPERHERO MOVIES THAT STILL GET THEATRICAL RELEASES
Giant IP Action Movies – Fast and Furious, James Bond, Mission Impossible – With these movies, you have to give the audience a combination of 3 things – a big movie star, wall-to-wall giant set-pieces, and at least one major thing in the movie that people haven’t seen before that you can build a marketing campaign around. Mission Impossible is famous for this. They put Tom Cruise on the side of a plane while it’s taking off. To get into this space is tough because the first time you try to do it, you don’t have as much money as the established IP does. So you’re already at a disadvantage. We saw this with Uncharted. It was a boy amongst men and even though Sony put a lot of money behind the marketing, it only barely snuck into the “BIG IP ACTION MOVIE” conversation, with a 51 million dollar opening. Giant IP Action is probably the most competitive space in theatrical movies at the moment.
IP Horror – The reason horror is always going to be in the conversation is because 12-18 year olds love to be scared. And that demo, despite what some may say, is still showing up to theaters if the brand is big and exciting enough. IP horror has been a rather recent development as the Blumhouse formula made it seem like you only made a ton of horror movies for 5 million bucks each and hoped one of them broke out. But ever since The Conjuring and It, they’re sinking a lot more money into these films so that they feel more like events.
Animation Movies – Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks. These are always going to do well because they spend a ton of money and time on them. Because animation is something that can be manipulated up until the last second, they can test the sh#t out of these movies internally, figure out what’s wrong, then go back and fix them. With a regular movie, you’re sort of locked in once you finish production. Yes you can reshoot, but reshoots cost tons of money and don’t allow nearly as much flexibility as animated productions. Long story short, they don’t release these things until they know they’ll print money. That and parents want to get out of the house with their kids every once in a while and movies are one of the cheapest forms of entertainment out there.
Action-Comedy – Action Comedies are right on the brink of becoming streaming movies. I think Red Notice made the industry believe that was the direction we were headed. But as of now, if a studio loves an action-comedy idea, they’ll still release it theatrically. The more I dig into this, the more I think it might become one of the rare genres that live in both universes. Netflix may just act as a de facto studio in this case, releasing action-comedies to compete with theatrical action-comedies. Free Guy, Jungle Cruise, The Lost City, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Spy.
Biopics/True Stories/Book Adaptations – Hollywood loves to celebrate itself, and these are the three genres it does it with. Movies like House of Gucci, Spotlight, Little Women, Wolf of Wall Street. There’s a chance these could slide into the streaming universe soon but I’m not convinced it will happen. I don’t think the Academy wants all the movies it nominates to be on streaming. It should be noted that true stories can be written as spec scripts, so you could place them in that category as well. The only reason I’m hesitant to do that is because studios tend to like when you base your true story on a published work and most non-working screenwriters can’t afford to option those works. But it’s possible to find a great true period story that hasn’t been told before and just write it without any source material. If you can place on the Black List, like Spotlight did, some big people will take notice and, possibly, you get your script produced.
NON-SUPERHERO MOVIES THAT STILL GET THEATRICAL RELEASES THAT ANY SPEC SCREENWRITER CAN WRITE
Clever/Fresh Horror (A Quiet Place, Get Out) – The best bang for your buck option. Basically what you want to do here is focus on smartly written character pieces that center around family and then, for the majority of the screenplay, keep your monsters unseen. Let the horror come out of our imagination. That’s what both A Quiet Place and Get Out did, which is why they became phenomenons. Another thing about keeping these movies character-driven is that they’re cheap to make, which means more buyers. And if the idea is cool enough and you’re lucky enough to get a director who hits it out of the park, you get that big studio release. This is the genre where the most writers and directors come out of.
Guy with a Gun movies (John Wick, Nobody, Sicario, The Accountant) – This one may be confusing as I just said that mid-to-high range action movies are moving to streaming. But here’s the thing. “John Wick” is a formula studios are going to keep trying to replicate because a) the guy with a gun formula has been around forever so studios know that it works, and b) everyone outside of Disney is desperate to find new franchises and this is one of the best ways to do so because you don’t have to spend a ton of money on the first film so it’s a relatively cheap risk. Going back to Ambulance, if there’s one problem with that project, it’s that it’s not a clear “guy-with-a-gun” scenario. It’s not something you can build a franchise on. Another twist to note here is that studios have been trying to create the girl-with-a-gun genre for a while now and it just hasn’t worked. Kate, Gunpowder Milkshake, The Protege, Ava, Atomic Blonde, Proud Mary, Peppermint. I don’t know why these aren’t catching on. It could simply be that they’re bad movies. It could be that they haven’t found an “Angelina Jolie circa 2003” or “Scarlett Johansen circa 2012” actress that elevates these films. But the industry has cooled on girl-with-a-gun movies as a result. That’s not to say you shouldn’t write them. But I think the pendulum in this genre has swung back to the male side. And if you’re looking for someone to write for, Nicholas Cage is about to have a comeback moment where studios start putting him in big movies again. So start there.
Action Comedy (Free Guy, Jungle Cruise, The Lost City, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Spy) – Yes! We have a crossover here! Action-Comedy is one of the best genres that spec screenwriters can write because it’s one of the few genres that if you nail it, you get the full Hollywood treatment. You get the big stars, the big budget, the big marketing push. You could end up as one of the top 15 movies of the year with a smart concept. I just wrote in my last newsletter how the 80s and early 90s are filled with high concept movies that you can draw inspiration from. People under 35 don’t know that much about this era. So you have advantage if you’re older and know this time well. Cause these types of flicks were huge back then.
World War 2 Movies (Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, The Imitation Game, Flags of Our Fathers) – Sometimes I think the best advice I could give a new writer is to write a World War 2 script. There are just so many stories from that war and Hollywood never tires of them. They absolutely love that war. Not “love” it. But you know what I mean. And if I were you, I would look to create a contained time scenario in order to make it a really tasty spec. Someone just wrote one of these that I reviewed. I can’t remember what it was called (can any of you find it?). It was about a soldier who had to make it through a forest swarming with Nazis in a couple of hours to deliver a message or something. Something like that hits all the beats because you not only have the draw of World War 2 that Hollywood loves, but you have that tight clean exciting read by making it real-time.
Zombies/Vampires (World War Z, Zombieland, I Am Legend, upcoming Nosferatu, Let The Right One In) – I might get some pushback for this one because there hasn’t been a big zombie or vampire movie in a while. But you know what that tells me? THE NEXT WAVE OF ZOMBIE AND VAMPIRE MOVIES ARE COMING. These two genres never die, no pun intended. As is the case with every new iteration of these sub-genres, don’t bother writing them unless you a) love these movies, and b) have a fresh take on them. Cause in order to reboot a genre, you need to be the person with a new take on it. A quick concept trick on how to create “fresh takes.” If a genre has been really serious for a while, create a light/comedic take. If a genre has been really light/comedic for a while, create a serious take. That’s what Zombieland did on the heels of those Dawn of the Dead type movies and it became a phenomenon.
Bonus: Any Really Clever Premise – If you have a truly great idea or a truly ironic idea (Jurassic Park, Yesterday, Good Will Hunting, Source Code, The Hangover, Back to the Future, The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Memento), these can get into theaters. The reason is that, when a truly great idea hits Hollywood, everyone in town gets excited about it, and they all start competing to work on it. So you end up getting an amazing director and an amazing actor and, if you do that, there’s no way they’re not releasing the movie theatrically. Since everybody thinks their idea is amazing, here’s a quick test. Send your logline to three people. If all three of them don’t say, “Oh my god, that’s an amazing idea,” it’s not an amazing idea. Or you can just come to me for a logline evaluation and I’ll tell you ($25 – carsonreeves1@gmail.com). That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. It’s just not a great idea and, therefore, it’s probably not theatrical-release worthy.
Let me be clear that there are always going to be exceptions. If you can write a script that wins over a revolutionary director like Darren Aronofsky, the Safdie Brothers, or the Daniels, yeah, you can be one of the rare lottery winners. Hell, that’s arguably what happened today. Ambulance won over Michael Bay, which means a script that normally wouldn’t get a theatrical release did. The only problem with this strategy is that you’re basically betting on the fact that one of ten directors in the world has the exact same interest as you do with your rare weird screenplay concept. If you have information on a director and know they’re looking for a specific subject matter and it just happens to be subject matter you love as well, writing that script makes more sense. But if you’re just hoping, you’re playing the lottery.
Just to be clear about today’s post, this is what you should write if you want to get a THEATRICAL RELEASE. It’s not necessarily the best way to break in. The best way to break in is, unfortunately, less glamorous and takes more time. You write a really powerful script that you’re extremely passionate about, hope to get on the Black List so that people learn your name, those people check out your script, you gain some fans, you get meetings with those fans, and you pitch them on adapting one of their projects. It’s a longer route but it’s the more common route.
I hope this helps!
REMINDER – THE FIRST ACT CONTEST DEADLINE IS MAY 1!!!
I need your title, genre, logline, anything you want me to know about the script, and, of course, a PDF of your first act. You want to send these to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line “FIRST ACT CONTEST.” The contest is 100% free.
What: The first act of your screenplay
Deadline: May 1st, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Include: title, genre, logline, extra info, a pdf of the act.
Cost: Free!
Something has been happening frequently enough in the amateur consultation scripts I’ve been reading lately that I need to bring it up. Because if it’s happening in five of the last seven scripts I read, it’s happening everywhere.
I’m talking about OFF-SCREEN STORY. Off-screen story is any story that occurs outside the pages of your screenplay. A traumatic moment that your adult main character experienced when he was seven – that’s off-screen story. Unless you flash back and show it to us, of course.
But off-screen story can also be something simple. If you show us your hero eating dinner with his family and then the next scene is him at work the following day, well, there’s a good 12 hours of off-screen story that occurred between those two scenes.
Your character STILL EXISTS in those moments. Stuff happened in his life. Maybe his youngest son got picked on at school and he had to give him a little speech to make him feel better. Maybe he needed to help his teenaged daughter with algebra homework. Maybe he got in a small fight with his wife about a friend’s wedding she wanted him to come to but he doesn’t want to go.
And by the way, there are additional off-screen stories going on with your secondary characters. Just because the hero’s wife only appears in four scenes, that doesn’t mean she didn’t have things to do and places to go while we were following your main character.
What I’ve found is that the more a writer knows about their off-screen story, the better the script is. This skill really does belong to a small percentage of writers – and they tend to be the advanced ones.
It makes sense when you think about it. Beginner and intermediate screenwriters are still learning the basics, like character arcs, and conflict, and how to create suspense, and how to pace their story out. Having to worry about things that don’t even happen on the page is the last of their concerns.
And yet, it is the thing that will take your screenwriting to the next level.
Here’s why.
The more you know about the world you’re writing in, the more confident your writing will be. It’s no different from real life. The more you know about a topic, the more confident you’ll be talking about it. Whenever you know more about your characters and the world they exist in, the more confidently you will write. And I’m going to prove it to you.
Write a 3-scene story about a guy who works at a telephone company. Doesn’t matter what the story is. Just write it. When you’re finished, write a 3-scene story with you as the main character that takes place at your own place of work.
I bet you the second scene is going to be a lot more specific, a lot more authentic, and populated with a lot more detail. Why? Well first of all, you know everything about yourself because you’re you. So you know what kind of mood you were in last night, all the obstacles you’ve experienced the past week. You know everyone at work to an annoying degree. You have such a specific understanding of what you do, that you’ll be able to come up with something that feels real.
With your telephone dude story, you won’t know anything about his life except for maybe his age and whether he’s married or not. You have no idea how a telephone company operates so good luck making that feel real.You won’t know anyone at his work so you’ll depend on cliches to build the characters (the “holier than thou” boss, for example).
It’s night and day when you write from a place of knowledge, and that’s all off-screen story is. It’s having all those details to draw from IF YOU WANT THEM. And that’s why most writers don’t bother with off-screen story. Because the truth is, you don’t use most of it.
Your hero might’ve gone through a goth phase when he was in high school. But your script never gives you an opportunity to mention that or even use it to inform how your character reacts to things. So the prevailing belief is that it’s a whole lot of work for not a lot of payoff. It’s easier to just focus on the stuff that’s on the page. Cause that stuff actually “matters.”
The key word in that last paragraph should stand out in big bright lights to you. It’s “easier.” If it’s easier, that usually means it’s not good.
So, in one of these amateur scripts I read, which was a sci-fi script, there was a really generic bad guy. I could tell that the writer didn’t have any idea what this villain’s childhood years were like. Or even the years where they became a bad guy. They didn’t know how it happened. They didn’t know what motivated him to become this person. Which amounted to a villain with no clear power-set (since they didn’t know how he gained his powers in the first place) who was just bad because he was bad.
It’s impossible to create memorable characters this way. You have to do the hard work. You gotta take a few weeks (if they’re a major character) and figure out everything that’s happened in that character’s life to lead them to this point.
I know it’s impossible to compare to the greatest characters in movie history. But there’s a reason Hannibal Lecter was so memorable. This movie wasn’t even his first appearance. Author Thomas Harris had written Hannibal into previous books before. Which means he had all sorts of off-screen story to utilize when writing Hannibal’s scenes or coming up with his dialogue.
When Dr. Frederik Chilton references to Clarice the fact that Hannibal once bit a chunk out of a nurse’s face and shows her the picture, that didn’t come out of thin air. Thomas Harris already knew that that happened, either because he’d written it into a previous novel or written it into backstory for his own knowledge. That’s the power of off-screen story, is you can draw from all of these things that you already know.
When you don’t know those things, you always go to the top of your brain for choices, and the top of your brain only contains cliches and stuff from previous movies you’ve watched. So the script is always generic and always boring. It’s why you write dialogue exchanges like, “Is that clear?” “Crystal.”
Now there’s two ways to do this. The first is to do a bunch of research and character bios and world bios and backstory before you even write the script. I know a lot of writers who do this. They’ll come up with a concept, then collect ideas for that concept over the course of a few years. Then, when they have enough notes, they flesh out all of those ideas in a document – we’re talking 15-20 pages here – and then write the script.
Another way to do it for the impatient crowd is to jump right into the script and start writing. However, these writers have to know that they’re going to write between 10-15 drafts of the script. The plan will be to find all the off-screen story in those subsequent drafts. That’s a perfectly viable plan as well. But you gotta do one or the other. You can wing it, of course. But a script is always going to be better if you’re starting from a place of knowledge.
I can spend years giving you examples of this. Quentin Tarantino writing an entire season of his fictional character’s (Rick Dalton) cowboy show for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. J.R.R. Tolkien coming up with entire languages before he wrote Lord of the Rings.
I understand that there is a tipping point here, where the amount of time you spend creating the off-screen world becomes detrimental to writing the script. Cause, theoretically, there’s always another character in the script you could know more about. And knowing more about them would help the script, yes. But if it’s preventing from ever writing the script, that’s not good.
Still, my experience is that 99% writers are on the other end of the spectrum. Especially amateur writers. They don’t do enough off-screen story work and, as a result, their scripts have zero detail, zero specificity. So everything feels generic. And characters have no depth because you can tell the writer knows absolutely nothing about them when the camera’s not on them.
You’d be shocked at how many consults I’ve had where I’ve asked the writer, “What is this secondary character’s job?” “I don’t know.” How could you not know?? A job informs half of a person’s life. It possibly has the biggest influence on who they are. And you don’t know what your hero’s wife does for a living? If you don’t know that, you don’t know your main character. Because he’s living a completely different life if his wife is a high-level corporate lawyer compared to a secretary for a used car dealership.
I’m sure some of you are still pushing back but think about that for a second. Let’s say you now know the wife is a lawyer. Well, if you get to page 72 and there’s a legal snafu that occurs to your character, guess what? You know exactly who he’s going to go to for help because you knew, ahead of time, that his wife was a lawyer. If you don’t know that, you’re bringing in Rando Joe The Lawyer who you’re introducing on page 72.
This is the stuff that elevates your script to the next level because it’s the stuff that takes your script from a fun fictional experience to actual real life. It’s what makes us believe that the movie is happening. It’s where our disbelief is suspended.
I know it’s annoying. I know it takes a long time. But do you want to write average screenplays? Or do you want to write good screenplays?
I hope it’s the latter.
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Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: Two lesbians, one slutty, the other conservative, head down to Florida on a road trip, unknowingly carrying a high profile suitcase that belongs to some very bad people.
About: The Coen Brothers split up! So Ethan is now writing with his wife, Tricia. This is their first project together. It was originally pitched in the early 2000s, with actresses such as Holly Hunter, Selma Blaire, Christina Applegate, and Chloe Sevigny attached.
Writers: Ethan & Tricia Coen
Details: 97 pages – This is an older draft. I’m sure they’ve updated a few things to make it more modern since then.
Emma for Jamie?
I’m not sure what I’m in for today.
All I know is that the Coens have split up. Something tells me that they took a long look at their last decade of movies and said, “Maybe we’re getting a little stale. Maybe it’s time we did our own thing.” This gave them the opportunity to do the movies they’ve been pitching each other for years that the other didn’t want to make.
The first film on that slate was Joel’s MacBeth. Although I’m sure a small group of people will pound the ground the second you say that movie was a failure, I have yet to meet someone who’s actually seen it (feel free to strike back in the comments if you have). So as far as I’m concerned, they’re 0-1. Today’s Coen movie sounds a little more commercial, but only a little.
Look, I am a Coen fan. These guys have written some of the best screenplays ever. But I also call it like I see it. So if this is good, I’ll be leading the charge to watch it. If it’s bad, I’m going to be honest and say it’s bad.
Let’s take a look!
Our movie begins with a very “Coen”-like scene. A Chinese man named Jimmy Yun clutches a briefcase as he walks hurriedly down a street at night, looking around frantically. Soon he is chased down by someone who corners him in an alley and shoves a corkscrew into his neck, causing Jimmy to scream at the top of his lungs.
Cut to a second scream, this one coming from a woman being sexually exploited in untold ways by another woman named Marian. Marian is a lesbian. A very slutty Philadelphian lesbian. And this foray into casual sex with some random chick is about to lose her her girlfriend, who, truth be told, Marian didn’t like much anyway.
Meanwhile, we meet Jamie, a very uptight conservative lesbian who only engages in sex when it’s inside a deep meaningful relationship. For that reason, she hasn’t gotten laid in six years. Luckily, she’s got Marian, her best friend, who is determined to help Jamie end this drought.
When Jamie quits her job to experience more of life, she decides her first order of business will be to go on a road trip. She signs up for a “drive away” service, one of those things where you drive someone else’s car to them in another city. That way, you get the car for free. And Marian invites herself along for the fun.
The job will take them to Florida. And it has a big stipulation. The car MUST be there by tomorrow. Jamie says that’s fine. But Marian is having none of it. She plans to stop at every lesbian bar between Philadelphia and Florida to get laid. And she’s going to force Jamie to do the same.
Little do the two know, there’s a special suitcase under the spare tire in the trunk, a suitcase we may remember from the opening scene. As soon as the owners of that suitcase and that car realize that Marian and Jamie did not deliver the car on time, they send two heavies to take the car back. And let’s just say these men have no problem adding two more bodies to their trail of violence.
Drive Away Dykes is the Coen version of Due Date. It’s a broad comedy with some of that Coen special sauce drizzled all over it. It’s got gore. It’s got inappropriateness. It’s got the kind of humor that makes you laugh and cringe at the same time.
Most importantly, though, it has something that all scripts need. Which is that, whatever genre you’re playing in, you have to bring something new to the table. Drive Away Dykes is the first road trip I’ve encountered that’s centered around two lesbians. And that’s why it feels so fresh.
And it’s not just for show. Not just to be different. You know that because this movie doesn’t work UNLESS the main characters are lesbians. There’s so much focus on Marian’s desire to get laid and Jamie’s resistance to get laid, that every situation they encounter with other lesbians becomes this sort of game where we’re wondering if Marian is finally going to win out and get Jamie a woman.
On top of that, there’s this undercurrent of sexual tension between these two, and therefore we’re wondering if anything is going to happen between them. I suppose this has been done before with road trips that follow a guy and a girl. But there’s definitely a different flavor to it when both characters are lesbians.
As anyone who’s written a road trip movie knows, the two characters at the center of the story have to have an intense amount of conflict between them, which Marian and Jamie do. And the “bigger” character has to be really really funny. They can’t be kind of funny. I can confirm that Marian is really funny. Her sexual obsession combined with how easily she’s able to discard the sexual scalps she racks up makes her worse than the biggest male womanizer you’ve ever met. She’s so cavalier about it, you can’t help but laugh.
And she’s a quote machine. Every word out of her mouth is nuts. “Well, hello, they’re all repressed in New England. That’s why we’re going the other way. Although there was this one chick I screwed once from New Hampshire? She was, she got her tongue so far in me I thought it was gonna wriggle out my asshole.” “Marian!” “No, really, they say there are advanced yoga people who can do that. In India, supposedly. Like, black belts in cunnilingus. They can even do it to themselves — they have pictured of it, like, in medical texts.”
On top of that, the Coens cannot help themselves and always throw some bad guys in there who are unafraid of killing people. This is what sets the Coens apart. Most comedy writers will throw villains into the story. But they’re villains in name only. They’re not actually scary or dangerous.
Coen villains are dangerous. This creates the unique voice that permeates the Coen-verse, as you feel something in a Coen comedy that you never feel in a studio comedy, which is genuine fear for the protagonists. The Coens somewhat brilliantly set this up in the opening scene. By showing us not just a kill, but a kill in gruesome detail, they show us what’s capable of happening to our heroes.
Finally, there is no shortage of weirdness to this story. You’re going to do a double-take when you find out what’s in the suitcase. And from there, it only gets weirder. The most shocking thing about this script is that you wouldn’t know that both Coen brothers didn’t write it. It feels just like every other Coen script. So maybe Ethan’s wife, Tricia, is just on the same wavelength as the brothers.
I have a feeling this is going to cause a stir when it comes out. In a good way.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The Coens are at their best when they keep things simple. They have characters with a goal (drive to Florida). They have a macguffin (the suitcase). They have bad guys chasing good guys. Then they just try and come up with fun original set pieces. If you follow that formula – as long as you push yourself and come up with genuinely original set pieces – you can write a really good screenplay.
By the way, it helps if you start with an already original setup. It would’ve been harder to come up with original set pieces here if we were following a guy and a girl. The fact that they’re lesbians looking for lesbian hook-ups, places them in set pieces that are already gonna be different. Which is why this script stands out.
Genre: Drama
Premise: Two former best friends, at opposite ends of their sport’s success spectrum, take each other on in a match for the ages in front of the woman they both love.
About: Big one here! Zendaya in a tennis movie! With “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino directing! That may be the most unorthodox trio of elements (Zendaya, tennis, Luca Guadagnino) I’ve ever seen in a project. And I love tennis so I’m here for it! The writer is brand new.
Writer: Justin Kuritzkes
Details: 128 pages (lots of dialogue, though, so it doesn’t read that long)
Normally, I go into scripts naked. I have no idea who wrote them or where they came from. All the stuff you read in the “About” section is usually research I do after I’ve read the script. I do this so I can judge every script equally. This time, however, I know a little about the script.
That’s because it’s a tennis script. And anybody who knows me, knows I’m a tennis guy. To give you a peek behind the curtain, I had the Miami Open on Tennis Channel playing, literally, on a loop, all last week. So when a tennis script comes around, I’m more curious than usual.
In this case, I’m insanely curious because it’s a tennis script……… directed by Luca Guadagnino. Well respected critically acclaimed directors don’t typically direct tennis movies. And even when they do – Woody Allen – the movie isn’t any good. In fact, tennis movies still have an 0-19 track record in cinema.
And yes, I’m including King Richard, which I don’t consider to be a tennis movie. It’s a movie about a crazy dad who turns his daughters into tennis players. A legit good tennis movie that focuses on tennis has not happened yet.
Adding some spice to the dish is that Zendaya is starring. Four months ago I wouldn’t have cared about that. But since then, I’ve fallen in love with Euphoria, and now consider myself a Zendaya fan. I am soooooooo so so so very interested in if this script is actually good. The pieces indicate literally ANYTHING is possible. Let us find out together, if this is finally the first good tennis screenplay.
Our story opens on the beginning of a tennis match between 6-time Grand Slam champion, 33 year old, Art Donaldson, and 32 year old tennis journeyman, Patrick Zweig, playing the finals of a Challenger (low-level) tournament in the middle of nowhere.
The best player in the world is playing a tiny Challenger because he’s coming off an injury, needs his confidence back, and therefore wants some cupcake wins leading up to the U.S. Open.
Watching the match is 33 year old Tashi Donaldson, Art’s hard-nosed wife and coach, who seems very into this tiny nothing match where the winner only gets $7000. That’s because, as we’re about to find out, there’s a LOT of history between these three.
Flash back nearly 20 years ago when the three were juniors. Art and Patrick were the toasts of the junior boys’ world, winning the junior U.S. Open doubles championships together and facing off in the singles final. And that’s where they meet Tashi, who’s better than both of them. There’s an instant connection between the three.
The script then jumps back to the present day, where we’re a little further along in the match. This is the structure we’ll be following. We’ll play a little of the match, then jump into the past for a while, before coming back again.
Each time, we learn something new about the relationship and the players. We learn that Patrick, who decides against college and joins the tour, starts dating Tashi. We watch as both Tashi and Art go to Stanford and become good friends. We watch as Art starts to undermine Patrick in an attempt to date Tashi himself. We see Tashi experience a devastating injury in college that kills her career in an instant. And we see this strange entanglement of the three until Art and Patrick begin to detest each other.
This makes their present-day match all the more compelling, as talent and skill go out the window. This is not the number 7 player in the world playing number 207. It’s two former best friends committed to destroying each other out of pure hate. Who will win?
Let’s cover the biggest question on everyone’s mind: Was the tennis stuff accurate?
Okay, maybe nobody cares about that except me. But actually, it is important. Even if you, the reader, don’t have a clue about the subject matter, you can always tell when the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a sense you get. And as soon as you get it, you don’t trust the screenplay as much. It’s no different from walking up to your tennis lesson and catching the last few points of your pro playing against a good player, and seeing him get his butt kicked. All of a sudden, you’re not so sure about learning tennis from this guy anymore.
The tennis stuff was, for the most part, accurate. I never read anything and thought, “That would never happen.” Sure, it’s unlikely that one of the best players in the world would play a Challenger tournament. But they made a pretty good case for it. Art needed a few easy wins under his belt to gain confidence going into the U.S. Open and this was the only tournament available with a week left.
Where the script runs into trouble is in the love triangle. At times I was into it but there were these super-long dialogue scenes that didn’t always feel genuine. It felt like a writer trying to put the words HE wanted into the character’s mouths, as opposed to the words that would actually come out of peoples’ mouths.
We all are guilty of this. In fact, this is one of the hardest things about screenwriting, is letting go enough to let your characters speak. The challenge is that scenes need to push the story forward so you do need to GUIDE the conversation. But finding that balance of guiding the conversation and also letting the characters speak is a line finer than any of the lines you’ll encounter on a tennis court.
For example, early on, when the characters are just 17 years old, they’re hanging out at a big tournament for the first time. There’s some flirting going on as the guys try to gauge if Tashi likes them. Tashi mentions that she’s seen them play before and Patrick has some fun with it, replying, “I didn’t know you’d been watching.” Tashi responds: “I haven’t been. I just watched you play once at the Junior Australian Open, and it was obvious to me that no one’s ever taught you anything. They’re all afraid of messing with the magic. That’s why you still have that atrocious serve.”
I have been in hundreds of conversations with tennis players at tournaments and no player has ever said to another player, who they’ve just met, that one of their strokes is horrible. When you get to know someone, sure, you have fun with that sort of thing. But first time you meet? Come on. Imagine coming off any field or rink or court, meeting someone, and them saying, “God, you can’t dribble worth shit!”
Yeah, the writer is trying to establish that Tashi says what’s on her mind. Which I sort of get. But you still have to play by the rules of reality. Especially if you’re writing a drama, which this is. A comedy, you might be able to get away with that if you’re going for a laugh. I could see Will Ferrell delivering that line. But this is supposed to be real life. It’s not realistic to insult someone about their passion within a minute of meeting them.
With that said, the writer gets more right about this 3-way relationship than wrong. I know that because I found myself caring more and more about the match the more I learned about the characters’ history. Each new piece of information deepened the grudge in this grudge match, which tells me I was buying into it.
But I do think Tashi is the weak link here and I think I know what’s going on. Art and Patrick are the ones who get to play. They get all the action. Tashi is relegated to watching on the sidelines. So the writer knew that he needed to make a really strong character. Somebody who left an impression. That, Tashi is. She’s incredibly strong, opinionated, brash, intense. The problem is, she’s so much of these things, that you kind of hate her. She’s always angry. She’s always yelling at someone, always telling them off. I was kind of thinking of Jada-Pinkett Smith whenever she spoke. I’m not sure that “pissed off” is the best defining trait for a character.
A cool thing about Challengers, though, is that it shows you you can create big stakes without needing a big plot. All the tennis scripts I read have the players playing in the final of Wimbledon or something. It’s cliche. And, as a result, we don’t take it seriously.
The way to create big stakes in a smaller movie is through the characters. You raise the stakes through the relationships you build between them. And Challengers is really good at that. From learning these two used to play doubles as kids, when they were best friends, to falling in love with the same girl, to both dating that girl at different times in their life, to one of them becoming great and the other flaming out — all of that makes their puny little Challenger match a big deal. Ironically, the tournament doesn’t even matter. All that matters is beating this person they detest.
The script also has some… we’ll say… surprising developments towards the end. Not on the court. Well, sort of on the court. But more so off the court. Ehh, if I say anything more, I’ll spoil it. But I want to say one more thing because it’s an important screenwriting point. The dialogue gets noticeably better towards the end. And I was wondering why. I finally realized that the earlier dialogue, which was occasionally on-the-nose, no longer felt on-the-nose since the characters were in these climactic heated “everything’s coming to a head” conversations. Those are the moments where characters really say what they mean. So what was on-the-nose before, now felt authentic. I think the writer just needed to dial that “I’m a character who says exactly what he thinks all the time” stuff down in the earlier portion of the screenplay. But at the end, it was great. It led to some truly powerful moments.
It’s for these reasons that I recommend Challengers. Will it be the first truly good tennis movie ever? I don’t know. Tennis movies, like Patrick’s career, tend to flame out onscreen. But they’ve got a great director and an ace up their sleeve with one of the hottest actresses in town so maybe they crack the code. I’ll know right away once they drop the trailer and report back to you then!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Think long and hard about what a character’s defining trait is. Because that’s the trait that we’re going to see over and over again in the majority of the scenes they’re in. So if you want us to like someone and their defining trait is, “pissed off,” you’ve probably failed. There’s all sorts of defining traits to choose from. So pick the ones that both capture the character but also make the audience see that character the way you want them to be seen. Ripley’s defining trait in Aliens was, “determined,” or “brave.” Ruby’s defining trait in Coda was that she lacked confidence in herself. Guy’s defining trait in Free Guy was, “optimistic.” Julie’s defining trait in The Worst Person in the World was, “noncommittal.” She never knew what she wanted. I’ve noticed that when a writer picks the wrong defining trait for a character, the character doesn’t work. And that’s what I think happened with Tashi. Don’t get me wrong. She’s not a terrible character. But she was grating, like sandpaper, and I’m not sure that’s what the writer was aiming for.
