Genre: Political/Drama/Thriller
Premise: While looking into a client’s murder, a Los Angeles social worker stumbles on a political conspiracy in the wake of the 1987 Whittier Earthquake.
About: This script finished in the top 15 of last year’s Black List. Both writers have done a lot of short films but this is definitely their biggest success to date. Although there have been a lot of criticisms lobbed at the Black List lately, one thing they’re definitely doing is celebrating brand new writers. I don’t think there is any writer on this list that has had a long career.
Writer: Ben Mehlman & Filipe F. Coutinho.
Details: 131 pages

I picked this script to read for a very specific reason. As we all know by now, management companies have figured out a way to game the Black List. This is why you see the same managers on there year in and year out. I don’t begrudge them for it. They’re just working the system to get their writers noticed. And, in some cases, the managers have the goods.

But I always take those Black List entries with a grain of salt because I know the managers have reached out to the voters and made sure they voted for their writers. There are a couple of entries in the top 10 that benefited immensely from this. I’m not going to name names but there’s one writer in particular who’s made the top 10 twice now who, in my opinion, shouldn’t have even made the bottom 10.

I’m saying all of this because today’s entry is from a management company, Mazo Partners, that I’ve never heard of before. Which means these guys don’t have their own personal, “Black List Vote Marketing” team. Theoretically, that means this script actually earned its stripes. And it does sort of carry that vibe with it. There’s a Chinatown feel to its setup. It even has a cool picture on the title page. Should Robert Towne be shaking in his boots? Is his “best screenplay of all time” title about to be revoked? Let’s find out!

It’s 1987. While flying into Los Angeles, 47 year old Whittier social worker, Jackie, spots a 16 year old kid, JD, freaking out about the turbulence. She goes over to him, settles him down, but just as they’re about to land, everyone in the plane starts mumbling. Jackie and JD look out the window to see that Los Angeles is currently shaking from an earthquake.

When Jackie gets back to Whittier, she learns that her community has been hit the hardest. The state of California pledges to help out the folks of Whittier, bestowing them with 60 million dollars so they can rebuild.

Meanwhile Jackie and her new assistant, Tracy, get called in by the police as they have a 16 year old who was caught dealing coke (remember, it’s the 80s!), and what do you know – it’s JD. Because the earthquake has plugged up all the shelters, Jackie and Tracy are forced to send JD into some outdoor tent city, something neither of them are proud of.

Well their guilt is about to skyrocket as JD turns up dead several days later. For reasons I’m still unclear about, Jackie has zero interest in looking into her new plane friend’s murder and only does so because Tracy is so distraught about it.

Around this time, the infamous 1987 Black Monday stock market collapse occurs and a guy Jackie is sleeping with (named Guy), informs her that the money she invested with him is all gone. Furious, she screams at Guy. But Guy says don’t worry, he has a new “sure thing” investment where she can make all her money back and more. Just give him 30 grand. She says she doesn’t have 30 grand. And this is where the character actions in this script go bonkers – she borrows 30 grand through a loan shark to give to the guy who just lost all her money.

Jackie keeps digging into JD’s murder and eventually stumbles across the suspicious actions of Whittier’s Director of Treasury, Patrick Sy, who lost all 60 million dollars the state sent him for earthquake recovery in the Black Monday market crash. Long story short, Patrick never lost the money. He just said he did so he could use it for another project of his: gentrifying Whittier. A few more things happen but that’s the general gist of the plot.

We often talk about likability when it comes to our protagonists. But likability (or lack there of) are not the only things that influence whether we want to root for the hero or not. Another thing that influences us is stupidity. If our hero does something really stupid, we won’t root for them. When Jackie lost her entire net worth to this shyster con man and then willingly borrowed 30 grand from a loan shark at, probably, 50% interest, to invest in another money scam of his, I lost all respect for her.

You have to be so careful with the character creation aspect of your protagonist because your protagonist, unlike secondary characters or plot beats, is in EVERY SINGLE SCENE OF THE SCREENPLAY. So if we don’t like them for whatever reason, nothing else you write matters. You could have the greatest plot in the world. We won’t care.

I was also baffled that Jackie shares a very emotional and intense moment with this scared kid on a plane, and then when he’s murdered a few days later, she can’t be bothered to look into his case. It made an already frustrating character even more frustrating.

“Whittier” is clearly inspired by Chinatown, which is dangerous in so many ways, the most obvious of which being: How can you possibly compete with one of the best movies ever? Once you’ve made it clear to the reader that this is the movie that’s influenced you, everyone reading will compare your characters to the characters in that movie, your plot beats to the plot beats in that movie. And you will lose every time. Not because you’re a bad writer. But because a great movie is magic. It’s lightning in a bottle. It happens once every 2-3 years. You just can’t compete with that. Which is why I tell writers to go write something new, so people can’t compare it to anything.

But even if you strip away that argument, the stakes aren’t big enough for this story. When I found out that the twist was gentrification… I mean… I don’t know any movie plot where that’s going to move the needle. It’s not big enough. With that said, I’m not sure Chinatown’s stakes were that high (relatively speaking) either. But these days, the game is different. The stakes need to be high and feel like they matter.

Finally, when you’re tackling stories that have complex city government storylines, the writing has to be so sophisticated. We have to believe that you’ve actually lived in this world. Because if you haven’t, or you haven’t done years of research, it starts to feel a little keystone cop-y. Robert Towne knew that world soooo well. And his treatment of it was incredibly sophisticated.  Today’s script didn’t feel that way.

I’m being harsh here, I know. It’s not a bad script. But those cornerstone pieces of a screenplay – the main character, the stakes – they need to be A+. They can’t be B- or C+. You can have some C+ secondary characters or subplots. But not for the stuff that matters. Those have to be a perfect or near perfect grade.

Unfortunately, this didn’t make the cut for me.

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

What I learned: For these more “upscale” murder-mysteries that have a big hook, the ending reveal needs to be bigger than the hook itself. So if your hook is an earthquake, your ending reveal has to be bigger than an earthquake. Gentrification does not feel bigger than an earthquake. Which means your plot ends with a whimper. If I may quote the famous marketing director of Porker Pipes, when it comes to your ending, “Go Big or Go Home.”

Genre: Action
Premise: A guy who builds boat engines for a living is recruited by a boat-racing crew who use the racing as cover for their real jobs – yacht pirates.
About: This is the big script that sold a couple of weeks ago. It came together as a project once Jake Gyllenhaal signed on. As I told you guys in the newsletter, you’re always one cool script idea away from getting a big flashy movie made. Glenn has been out of the game for a while. Look at him now.
Writer: John Glenn
Details: 124 pages

I’m always nervous when I review spec scripts. We don’t have many of these to celebrate. So I know, when they come around, it’s important that they’re good. If they’re good, it increases the chances the movie will be good. And if the movie is good, that means Hollywood will be buying more original material on spec. So I always feel pressure when I’m reviewing these, especially one as high-profile as this. This isn’t a rinky-dink million dollar horror spec. This is going to be a big production. So put your hands together and pray with me!

29 year-old Jessie lives in the middle of nowhere next to some lake. He builds boat engines and then races them. He barely makes any money off of this, though, which has put him in massive debt. Therefore, he isn’t surprised when an older guy named Marty shows up and tells him that he’s bought out his operation.

Marty informs Jessie that if we wants his business back, he has to come build boat engines for him down in Miami, where the real racing happens. Jessie reluctantly heads down to the Gateway to the Americas and meets the crew, which includes the hot-but-damaged Fiona, the slick Cuban, Nestor, the Nav systems expert, Bao, and a few other folks.

Jessie is surprised when Marty allows him to participate in a preliminary race, but Jessie shows that the big time is still above his pay grade, as he finishes last. That’s okay, Marty tells him. Because this racing thing? It’s all for show. What they really do is head out to international waters in these speedboats and rob gigantic billionaire yachts. And they’ve got the biggest one yet on their radar.

Jessie and the team prep extensively for the yacht known as the “Anastasia.” But boy are they surprised when they board this thing. There is over 100 million dollars of art on it, which they steal all of. By the way, the whole idea behind speed-boat heists is that the boats can race off in any direction and be 100 miles away within minutes, therefore confusing the boat’s occupants on where these pirates came from.

Except when you have a resourceful enough person, they can find out anything. And the person they just stole from was a Russian oligarch. He kills Marty and informs the rest of the crew he’s going to kill all of them AND their families UNLESS they can pull of the impossible. Steal him a 200 million dollar yacht known as the Cortez. That sounds like a dandy plan except for the fact that nobody knows who even owns the Cortez. It’s so steeped in dark crime, it might as well be invisible. But this is the bed our boaties have made for themselves. Now they have to lie in it.

Cut and Run is basically the boat version of The Fast and the Furious. But not The Fast and the Furious as it is now. The Fast and the Furious as it was in the first few movies, when it was grounded in reality. That’s ironic considering that Cut and Run is not set on the ground, but at sea.

The point is, it’s a self-contained story. Fast and Furious has basically become a giant TV series with these new episodes where nothing is really resolved other than a new physics fact, like that a car can now fly in space. To that end – that it was reality-based – I liked Cut and Run.

But Cut and Run has a flaw that it needs to figure out before it gets in front of cameras. Which is that the structure is wonky. Based on the summary of the plot I laid out, what’s the most exciting thing to you about this idea? It’s the Russian oligarch, right? Once he comes in, the story gets a hundred times more interesting. Well, what if I told you that the Russian oligarch doesn’t make his demand on the crew until page 85?

Come on.

That’s a midpoint twist if I’ve ever seen one. It needs to have happened 25 pages earlier.

I think I understand the issue they ran into. They had to set up Jessie. Then they had to set up the whole crew. Then they had to set up the fake racing operation. They had to figure out if they could trust Jessie. And then they had to introduce Jessie to their actual operation (they’re pirates). Then they have to do a long prep for pirating the Anastasia. Then they have to sell all the art they stole from the Anastasia. Then, and only then, could they introduce the oligarch.

These are the challenges you face as screenwriters. You’re constantly looking to fit everything in, and then, at a certain point, you realize there’s too much, and you have to make some sacrifices. Not everything is going to make it. This is healthy though. A screenplay is a battle of the best. If it’s not good enough or if it’s bogging the script down or slowing down the plot, you get rid of it.

My question, looking back on the script, is, “Do we need the racing stuff?” It doesn’t play into the story at all. And it takes up a lot of time. Why not just get straight to the crime so we can move our oligarch’s entrance up to the midpoint?

I suspect that the reason is those boat races are going to feature heavily in the marketing campaign, just like the street races in those early Fast and Furious movies did. Illegal boat racing in Miami? That’s a money shot right there. So I get it. But your big bad guy arriving with 40 pages left in the story? That’s not going to cut or run it.

Another thing that kinda bothered me was that Jessie wasn’t special enough. You always want to give your main character a ‘super power.’ I don’t mean in a superhero sense. But they should be great at something, which is why they’re needed. You can then play with that super power throughout the story. But all Jessie knows how to do is put an engine together. There needed to be more there.

With that said, the script is strong. I definitely felt like I was inside of this world. There is a lot of speedboat and yacht porn here. The level of detail is insane. And it doesn’t feel like the amateur versions of these scripts I read where the level of knowledge of your basic crew member is how many off-color jokes they know. Everybody here has a job. They all seem to know their job well. And that ensured that the suspension of disbelief never broke.

Now if they can just fix that structural problem, this could be a really cool movie.

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

What I learned: Complicate the relationship. There’s a love story between Jessie and Fiona here. You never want these relationships to be too clean. Clean is boring. You have to constantly look for ways to complicate the relationship. One of the ways you can do this is by having one character find out a secret about the other, and then not reveal it. So after Jessie really starts to like Fiona, he gets a call from an old cop friend who he’s asked to look into the crew. The friend tells Jessie that Fiona is talking to the FBI. Keep in mind, Jessie is learning this just days before they go after the Anastasia. This form of dramatic irony allows for much more interesting interactions between Jessie and Fiona now. When Fiona wants to have sex, for example, Jessie has to do so so she doesn’t get suspicious. I don’t know what pretending to have good sex is like with someone who’s planning to send me to prison for the rest of my life, but I’d imagine it’s not an easy feat. But boy is it great drama for everyone else. Complicate the relationship!

I saw that Moonfall debuted in second place at the box office this weekend, with 10 million dollars. Moonfall, if you don’t know, was directed by Roland Emmerich, who directed movies such as Independence Day, 2012, and The Day After Tomorrow. Emmerich was quoted as saying, in a recent interview, that Marvel, DC, and Star Wars, have destroyed the movie industry, as they’ve made it impossible to create original content anymore.

Some people have pointed out that Moonfall is just another one of Emmerich’s “end of the world” movies and, therefore, isn’t that original either. However, they’re forgetting that Emmerich has a bunch of original movies he wants to make. But the studios are only going to give him money for the movies they know he makes successfully. And big end-of-the-world destruction movies are his bread-and-butter, so they’re the ones they greenlight.

This argument reinforces the question that has been dogging Hollywood for the last two decades: Where is the originality? It’s a question I think about a lot, specifically in regards to whose fault it is that we don’t have many original films. One could make the argument that it’s the fault of the moviegoers. If they don’t go see original movies, then Hollywood isn’t going to make them.

But I would place the onus on the creators. It’s our job to create something so irresistible that people can’t *not* go see it. This is something writers continue to get wrong. They’re so wrapped up in what *they* want to do that they forget they’re trying to create something *for others.*

Our flaw, as artists, is that we are all narcissists. It’s all about “me.” I need to prove “myself.” I want to make art people will love so I can feel better about “me.” Any artist who tells you they’re making art for others is a liar. They’re doing it so they can feel good about themselves. And it’s that approach that prohibits them from seeing movies through the eyes of the consumer.

IP is the exact opposite of this. Nobody involved in an IP property is worried about themselves. They’re only worried about making money. And because that’s all they care about, they’re able to see the world explicitly through the consumer’s eyes. What does the consumer want, they ask? They want that thing they’re familiar with. And it’s this very lesson that helps us understand how we can compete with IP.

The way you compete with IP is by understanding its appeal: familiarity. IP is playing on the fact that people have seen this thing before, are familiar with it, and therefore will likely want to see it again. Spider-Man understood this three-fold. It knew, not only, that you were familiar with Spider-Man, but that you were familiar with the three actors who had played Spider-Man. You went to see that movie due to the familiarity you had with the character and those three actors.

So, when you’re coming up with a movie idea, you want to find something that people are familiar with. A guy with a gun taking revenge on bad guys – that’s a setup audiences are familiar with. A haunted house – that’s a setup audiences are familiar with. The end of the world (yes, Moonfall) – that’s a setup audiences are familiar with.

Once you have the familiar, you add the unfamiliar. Or, it’s more relevant moniker: the x-factor. The x-factor is why concept generation is so difficult. It cannot be measured. It is one of the aspects of screenwriting you come up with on a gut feeling and then you hope, desperately, audiences connect with it.

The reason Moonfall did not do gangbusters at the box office was because potential moviegoers didn’t find the x-factor, the moon crashing into the earth, that interesting.

A key element of a successful x-factor is that it gives you scenes you haven’t seen before.  The trailer I saw for Moonfall didn’t give me anything I hadn’t seen in any of Emmerich’s other movies. The reason this is important is because YOU MUST GIVE THE AUDIENCE A REASON TO COME SEE YOUR MOVIE. Three Spider-Mans is a reason to go see the movie. Familiar destruction set-pieces with some vaguely new elements aren’t a reason to go see a movie.

A recent example of “familiar with an x-factor” is the home invasion movie, See For Me. It has the familiar setup of a home invasion. However, it adds a twist. The girl in the house is blind and must rely on an app that connects her to a “seeing” operator, who can see the house through her phone, and tell her what’s happening so she can navigate danger.

Is this a gangbusters idea? Not really. I think it’s okay. But the writer *did* apply the concept-generation formula correctly. Familiar element (so you can compete with IP) and an x-factor (so you can differentiate yourself from others who’ve participated in this same setup).

Another famous movie that applied this formula was Paranormal Activity. The familiar element was a haunted house. The x-factor was that the whole thing was told through snippets of home video. Then there was Alien. The familiar element was the “monster-in-a-box” scenario. You’re stuck inside a location and a monster is hunting you down. The x-factor is that they moved the location onto a spaceship, set it in deep space, and changed the monster to an alien. Still another was Bridesmaids. It took the familiar: raunchy R-rated group comedy. Then added the x-factor: The group was made of all women instead of all men.  Maybe the most famous example of this is Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Familiar element: A heist film. X-factor: Takes place inside someone’s mind rather than at a bank.

There is a more daring way to come up with a great concept but we’re walking into advanced territory here, people. You are about to leave the safety net that “familiar” provides for you. Do so at your own peril. In this riskier version of concept generation, you *only* use an x-factor. A famous example of this would be The Matrix. I don’t know what the “familiar” is here other than a guy who’s lost in life. But the x-factor is that he’s living in a simulation and can use that reality to bend the rules of space and time to kill as many people as possible. It’s a straight up x-factor idea.

Just remember that ideas without the familiar element have a bigger chance of seeming “out there” and “weird” to others. That’s because the familiar element GROUNDS the idea. If there’s nothing to ground the idea, we’re not even sure what we’re looking at. A recent example of this would be Tenet. It’s got the x-factor in spades: The ability to physically move backwards through time. But where’s the familiar? Is this a spy movie? Is it a globe-trotting playboy movie? Is it a crime movie? Without any ‘familiar’ to ground the concept, we’re never sure what we’re watching.

It should be noted I see all these ‘x-factor only’ ideas that never make it past a query letter. They’re often the worst ideas as they have nothing holding them together. So while the payoff is high (The Matrix was so awesome it still resonates today), the downside is below sea level. We’re talking Howard The Duck, Joe Versus The Volcano, The Happening, and Southland Tales. So if you choose to go down this route, do so carefully.

As you can see, I’m trying to prep everyone for the month of March, where I’ll be guiding you through writing the first act of a brand new screenplay. You have roughly three weeks to come up with a great concept. As I’ve stated many times before, a weak concept is at the top of the list for what’s holding your script back. So you want to put a ton of effort into finding the right one. Hopefully today’s post gets you a little closer. If you want professional feedback on your logline, I offer analysis for $25. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. Just know that I’m going to be truthful!

Oh, and tomorrow, I’ll be reviewing a big recent spec sale that attempts to do the very thing I talked about today. We’ll see if it succeeds…

REMINDER: A quick reminder that you have one month left! The month of March on Scriptshadow will be me guiding you through your first act. Which means you still have a month to figure out a great concept. If you’re on the fence and need feedback, I do logline evaluations for $25. You get a 150-300 word analysis, a logline rewrite, and a 1-10 rating. My threshold for whether a concept is “write-worthy” is a 7 out of 10. So you’ll instantly know if you have a keeper on your hands. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you need help.

Flashbacks.

Around here we call them “flashbads.” Cause it’s never a good time to use flashbacks.

Remind me again why that is, Carson. It’s because movies work best when every scene pushes the story forward. When you’re flashing back, you are obviously violating that rule. I mean, the word “back” is literally inside the word “flashback.” That should tell you everything you need to know.

This topic is all up in my face this year because The Book of Boba Fett is obsessed with flashbacks. The majority of the first four episodes were set in the past.

Now I don’t want to get too sidetracked but since I think it’s part of the larger picture, I’ll bring it up: The Book of Boba Fett is a total mess. The last two episodes have contained three seconds of Boba Fett…… IN A SHOW CALLED ‘THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT!’

There’s clearly something weird going on behind the scenes. I don’t know what it is. But this cannot have been the original plan. My theory is that they didn’t complete the overall set of scripts for The Book of Boba Fett, necessitating that they pull in the first few episodes of Mandalorian Season 3, which had already been shot, and shoehorn them into this show.

The reason I bring this up in relation to today’s article is because the flashback issue in Boba Fett is clearly a symptom of a bigger problem. They didn’t know what to do with this series. They didn’t have a story. And when you don’t have a story, you run in place. Think about it. How can you move your characters forward if you don’t know where they’re going?

That’s when, as writers, we get these ideas that we think are good at the time – “Let’s go back to Boba’s past and see how he got here” – when in reality, we’re procrastinating the story. We’re writing about sh*t that doesn’t matter since it’s set in the past. No matter how much depth it adds to the character, you still haven’t moved the present-day story forward, and that’s caused the audience to get bored.

Which brings me to Station 11.

Station 11 is this weird show on HBO Max. It covers a pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population. And we cut to 20 years later where a traveling Shakespeare Theater Company goes from apocalyptic small town to apocalyptic small town, putting on plays. The central character is a woman named Kirstin, who tends to play the lead character in all their plays.

The structure of Station 11 is a bit schizophrenic. While we do spend a fair amount of time with the Shakespeare Company, we’re constantly flashing back to before the pandemic, to the early days of the pandemic, and to a year after the pandemic.

And we’re doing it with multiple characters. Sometimes we follow Young Kirstin and the man who saved her, Jeevan. Sometimes we’re covering movie star Arthur, a man who died of the virus on day 1 but who’s left a strong influence on many of the other characters, including Kirstin, who was in his play. Sometimes we’re covering headstrong Miranda, who was once married to Arthur, and who has written a graphic novel called “Station 11” that plays into the story in a myriad of ways.

Anyway, something funny happened as I took in the first few episodes of the show. I found that I enjoyed the flashbacks. And not just enjoyed. I looked forward to them! Being a person who loves to deal in absolutes, this blew up my newfound theory that The Book of Boba Fett had enshrined upon my screenwriting coda – that all flashbacks were bad. Obviously, flashbacks could be good. So what was it that Station 11 did that Book of Boba Fett did not?

Before I answer that, let me first acknowledge that when it comes to flashbacks, more so than many other aspects of screenwriting, there is gray area. It’s not always clear why flashbacks don’t work sometimes and do work other times. What I do know, however, is that they usually don’t work. Which is why I advise against using them. But since there are examples of them working, it’s worth figuring out why.

The biggest reason that The Book of Boba Fett flashbacks failed is because they filled in a storyline that was unnecessary to know. There was nothing about Boba Fett being helped by sand people that affected the present day story. It affected a few things about his character, such as the way he fought. It also made him more forgiving and nicer.

But one of the best ways to identify whether a flashback is needed is to ask yourself, “Does the present day story suffer if I get rid of this flashback?” I would argue, 100 times out of 100, that nothing in the present day story changes if you eliminate Boba’s flashbacks. That’s how you know they’re not needed. “Let’s get to know him a little better” is never a good motivation to write flashbacks. Flashbacks need to do more than that to justify their existence.

One of my favorite storylines in Station 11 is the relationship between Young Kirstin and Jeevan. What happens is that Jeevan is at a play right before the pandemic. Spoilers, obviously. In the play, Arthur dies onstage. In the chaos that ensues, Young Kirstin, who has a part in the play, has no one to take her home. So Jeevan reluctantly offers to take her. But when they get to her house, nobody is home. So Jeevan has to take her back to his place. That’s when he gets the phone call about the virus and Jeevan and Young Kirstin get stuck together as the virus cascades over the city.

When we cut to the 20-years-later storyline, we have Kirstin. But we have no Jeevan. And here’s where Station 11 establishes why its flashbacks actually matter. We now want to know what the hell happened to Jeevan. Why is he gone? It’s a mystery. And every time we cut back to Young Kirstin and Jeevan, we get a little more information on what happened to them.

In addition to this, the writers of Station 11 established conflict between Jeevan and Young Kirstin. He’s resentful towards Kirstin. He was supposed to be able to leave her at her home and go. Instead, he’s been made responsible for this girl, which is something he never wished for. So there’s a burden there that creates an ongoing unresolved conflict between the two. And the reason that’s relevant is because conflict is what generates entertainment in scenes. If the two were hunky-dory, their scenes would not be interesting. It’s the fact that he doesn’t want to be responsible for this girl, combined with the fact that he isn’t around in the future, which has us asking, “What happened?” And makes us actually look forward to the flashbacks.

Another big flashback sequence occurs in episode 5. In this flashback, Clark, an actor who used to do stage work with Arthur before Arthur became a movie star, gets stuck at a small airport at the early stages of the pandemic. At first, everyone at the airport thinks it’s your average delay. But, the next thing you know, it’s been five days, and then ten, and then 30. So we watch it play out as the people realize they’re stranded here. This is their new home.

Theoretically, this episode should not work. Up to this point, Clark has been an ancillary character. All of a sudden, he’s getting his own episode. Shouldn’t this fall under the same blanket as the Boba Fett episodes? Will the present day story still work if this flashback is eliminated? It probably would. And yet, this was one of the best episodes of the series. Why?

This is where we enter the gray area of screenwriting theory. The reason this flashback episode works is because it’s a really good story. You’ve got all the ingredients for a good story in place. These people get stuck at the airport. A worldwide pandemic hits in real time. They realize nobody’s coming for them. They have to live there. They have to make rules. There are some people who don’t like the rules so they push back, causing conflict. At a certain point, one of them may be infected. The actions the group takes towards the infected character up the intensity considerably. We’re curious if the airport group is going to make it or if they’ll implode. It’s an interesting story.

In the spirit of debate, I would bet that the writers of Boba Fett would argue that Boba being captured by the sand people was, likewise, a good story. That the viewers would be caught up with what the sand people did to him and how he escaped them. And they’d love the fact that Boba eventually befriended the sand people and they worked together to take on the bad guys who were raiding their land.

This is where storytelling becomes subjective. I thought that storyline was C+ at best. It wasn’t very compelling. We never got to know any of the sand people well enough to care that their land was being stolen. The drama was mild. The plot development was standard stuff we’ve seen a million times before. You never felt like you NEEDED to know what happened next. Whereas, with that airport episode in Station 11, there were several developments (one of which included a plane full of dead infected people) that definitely pushed the plot forward in interesting ways.

That may be what flashbacks come down to. If you can justify a flashback’s existence (it must affect the present-day story in some purposeful way) then it comes down to the exact same challenge you deal with in writing your present-day stuff: Are you telling a good story? The airport story was way more intricate, way better thought-out, and had way better reveals, than the sand people storyline in Boba Fett. So we were more eager to see it through.

But just remember this. While a film or a show can withstand slow scenes here and there, it cannot withstand slow scenes IN ADDITION TO a slog of a flashback story. Which is why it’s so important to scrutinize the addition of flashbacks. A lot of writers just add flashbacks to fill up the time. They don’t add them because they’re essential or because they want to use them to tell a story they can’t tell in the present. And that’s what you need to do to justify your use of flashbacks.

Now some of you might be saying, “But Carson. You’re talking about TV shows here. They have a different set of rules than movies.” That’s true but it’s also false. Let’s be real. TV shows have become long movies in disguise. So they should still operate under that same mantra of: KEEP THE STORY MOVING FORWARD. That’s not to say you can never use flashbacks. But if you do, they better be justified. And they better be damn entertaining.

Anybody else see Station 11? What did you think about the flashbacks?

Genre: Drama
Premise: Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into the real world.
About: This script was optioned last year by Stampede Ventures. The writer, Brandon Constantine, recently sold a script to Lionsgate, called Cutlery. Here’s the logline for that one, which made the 2019 Hit List: “In the near future, a young woman who grew up in her father’s cutlery shop embarks on a blade-wielding rampage across LA to save her dad from a ruthless psychopath.”
Writer: Brandon Constantine
Details: 107 pages

One of the downsides of writing in the genres that I tell you to write in – thriller, horror, action, sci-fi – is that they are all well-tread genres. You’re usually writing something that somebody else has already written – just your version of it. We saw that yesterday with Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel. Half-a-dozen of you pointed out movies that had the exact same setup as Hotelx4.

So while I wouldn’t recommend anyone go out and write a graffiti love story due to the fact that there’s no proven market for them and, therefore, it’s unlikely anyone will want to buy the script, I admit that it’s refreshing to read something new. Due to the fact that I’ve read so many screenplays, I *have* come across a few graffiti scripts. But they come around like once every four years. Let’s see what today’s writer, Brandon Constantine, did with his idea…

Jalen, who I’m guessing is 21 years old, is a poor up-and-coming graffiti artist in New York City. When we meet him, he’s “tagging” a subway car *WHILE IT’S MOVING.* So, yeah, you better believe this guy is good at what he does.

A couple days later, Jalen is participating in a graffiti battle with his current rival, Sean, a really angry Asian-American guy. The battle takes place in front of New York’s elite art class, and this is where the insanely rich Sarah first notices Jalen. After Jalen wins, she says, “Let’s get out of here.” You don’t have to ask Jalen twice.

Over the next several weeks, the two become inseparable, and Jalen even teaches Sarah how to spray-paint. Sarah utilizes her newfound skills at school, impressing those in her art class with her paintings. Meanwhile, Jalen, who’s black, must combat stereotypes from his rich admirers. Success, it turns out, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In an unrelated incident, the comic book store Jalen works at is fire-bombed leaving his boss and father-figure, Sam, burned to a crisp. While picking through the wreckage, Jalen finds a super secret box that contains two ancient Japanese cans of spray paint. Jalen tries them that night and it turns out, whatever you paint with these things comes to life! Jalen’s old rival Sean calls him up, challenging Jalen to a rematch, and off they go for their final battle, which is sure to be filled with craziness.

If I were to pitch this, I would call it a “real life Spiderman tale with a Romeo and Juliet twist.” I say ‘Spiderman’ because Jalen is, essentially, a superhero. Except he doesn’t fight crime. He creates cool art.

The Romeo and Juliet connection is interesting because it reminds us that certain themes are timeless. Two people who shouldn’t be together fall in love. It’s the setup for the two highest grossing movies of all time – Titanic and Avatar. That combined with the non-traditional subject matter (graffiti), was the primary strength of the script.

Unfortunately, Lady Krylon is too messy to celebrate. There doesn’t seem to be a cohesive structure here. It starts off strong, with the graffiti battle. But then Jalen wins. Since he wins, what’s left to prove? What’s left to gain? Imagine if Rocky Balboa had beaten Apollo Creed at the end of the first act. Where is there left to go with the movie?

The script then switches over to the love story but while the love story wasn’t bad, it also wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before. It’s a standard story of two people hanging out and falling in love with very little conflict along the way. Conflict, whether it be inside the relationship or outside, is the primary ingredient for making a love story entertaining.

Both Titanic and Avatar have it in droves. In Titanic, Jack is the poorest guy on the ship and he’s trying to get the richest woman on the ship. He’s also got 500 other rich people determined to stop him. Talk about conflict. In Avatar, you’ve got both people falling in love amidst the human side preparing to wage war on the aliens in order to get the energy source they came for.

I never once got the sense that anybody was trying to stop Jalen and Sarah from being together. Which isn’t a necessity for a script. But if you’re going to dedicate 50+ pages to a love story, you probably need some conflict to get in the way. I mean even Sarah’s dad is a fan of Jalen.

Then, on page 70, as if out of nowhere, Jalen discovers these super graffiti cans, which is kind of cool. But it’s unclear why the story needs them. He just plays with them for 15 pages, which leads us to our ending, where Sean challenges Jalen to a rematch, which is a confusing ending considering the fact that Jalen has already beaten Sean. Had he lost to Sean in that opening battle, this rematch would’ve had some meaning to it.

That’s the issue. The story never felt planned. I know some writers believe in this idea of stream-of-consciousness writing, where you allow the story to evolve as you write. That does lead to some unique ideas, yes. But the downside is you get to your ending and you’re not sure what to do. So you come up with a big finale, but there’s nothing in the finale that pays off anything that preceded it. It’s just big for big’s sake.

One of the steps of becoming a strong screenwriter is understanding that every scene has a purpose. That every scene must be an immovable force due to the fact that it’s critical to the story working. I don’t think enough screenwriters realize this. They sort of write what they feel and, as a result, the scenes are hit or miss.

There are only 50 scenes in a movie. You should be putting each one through the gauntlet. Is this an entertaining scene? Is this a necessary scene? Is this the best scene I could write in this circumstance? Does my script feel like it can’t live without this scene?

That’s one of the major differences between movie and TV writing. TV stories are fluid and evolving, which allows for some of these softer scenes. Movie stories are finite. They have a beginning and an ending. So every scene needs to be in service to that. And I feel like writers don’t respect that mantra. They get loosey-goosey and lower the bar for what constitutes a worthy scene.

I say Lady Krylon would’ve worked better if Jalen started off as a weak artist. Then, at the end of the first act, he finds these special spray-paint cans, and becomes a phenomenon with them. Then, as he rises to fame, he must face the prospect that he’s a fraud, cause what he’s doing is a gimmick. The end of the movie would then be the opposite of what it is now. He decides to put the cans down and use normal cans for the final battle. That’s what structure looks like. This script was just too messy for me.

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

What I learned: Know your blind spots, as either a younger or older writer, and do the necessary work to fix them. Here, in Lady Krylon, where I’m assuming the writer is young, we get student live-streaming of the graffiti battles. We get people putting out Tiktok invites whenever there are meetups. When I read older writers trying to write young people, they still have their teenagers calling each other on the phone, just like they, the writer, did 30 years ago. It’s a huge tell that you don’t understand the world you’re writing about. On the flip side, older writers have a much better grasp on “real life” things like 9 to 5 jobs, mortgages, money, marriage, kids. When young writers write about these things, it’s kind of embarrassing as it’s clear they have no idea what they’re talking about. Steven Spielberg admitted as much when he looked back at his screenplay for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  He had his main character just walk away from his family!  “If I were to write that script today, I never ever would’ve done that.  It doesn’t make sense,” Spielberg said.  So just know where your “age blind spots” are and do the necessary research so you don’t sound ignorant.