Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: In the near future, terminal patients are given the opportunity to go out with a bang with personalized VR “perfect endings.” But when the best Transition Specialist gets far too close to a patient, he finds himself questioning everything in his life.
About: Brian T. Arnold wrote on a web series called “Open House.” This script of his landed on last year’s Black List, with the ninth-most votes. He also won the Tracking Board Launch Pad competition and finished Top 50 in the Nicholl (I believe in both instances with a different script, though I need someone to confirm that).
Writer: Brian T. Arnold
Details: 109 pages

Is today the day it all changes?

Is it finally time for me to recognize that the Sci-Fi & Drama categories mix can produce a good screenplay?

I don’t know, guys. Movies like Swan Song have left such a stain on the sci-fi/drama legacy that it looked like the genre combo would never recover.

Maybe writer Brian T. Arnold has recruited his screenplay acumen from some sort of parallel universe where things that shouldn’t go together suddenly do. A peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich? Gin and milk? Sci-fi and drama?

It’s the near future and 30-something Peter Grimsby, an intensely focused man, is helping an old guy live his dream – take down Hitler during World War 2. The process requires that the man sacrifice himself to do so, and afterwards we learn that we were in a simulation, and that this man is now dead in real life.

Peter, you see, is a “transition specialist.” If you’re dying, the company he works for, Ascension, gives you an opportunity to go out your way. Ascension creates your perfect ending and then, concurrently with the climax, they, poof, inject your real body with poison so you die on the spot.

Lately, Peter’s been struggling. Part of creating these “final endings” is getting to know the people he’s going to murder. So when they die, a little piece of him dies as well. To make matters worse, Peter’s about to meet his biggest challenge yet, Gale, a fast-talking 70-something who hates what Ascension does but realizes it’s the best of a bunch of bad options.

At first, Peter is annoyed by Gale. But once he starts to uncover her rockstar life – she was once a famous photographer who traveled all over the world – he warms up to her. Meanwhile, Peter starts dating the daughter of the man he most recently terminated and, as you can imagine, their relationship is complicated.

As Gale’s perfect ending grows near, Peter begins having an emotional breakdown, which is when we learn that Peter is working on his own perfect ending, tied to a traumatic experience from his childhood. Is this an ending he’s planning on doing soon? Or is it for the far-off future? We’re not sure, leaving us wondering if our hero is going to make it out of his story alive.

Whenever I read a good script, there’s an indication early on that that’s where it’s going. I’ll share with you what that moment was in “In The End.”

The script is tasked with explaining how its rules work. What is the ‘perfect ending’ and what are the logistics to how it works? To answer this question results in exposition which you, the writer, must include. Every writer deals with exposition differently. There are cheap and lazy ways to dole out exposition. And there are thoughtful ways. I can spot a good writer by which option he chooses.

Here, after our World War 2 teaser, Arnold takes us inside a hospice where our hero, Peter, is explaining to a group of dying people how Ascension works. He shows them a little company video, fills in the holes himself, then asks the group if they have any questions. A few of them ask questions and he answers them.

This scene is pure exposition. And yet, any person watching this movie would have no idea that it’s pure exposition because the scenario is organic to the story. Of course to get clients, they have to go places where people are dying and pitch them their business. So we don’t question it.

The lazy way would’ve been for Peter to have a meeting with his boss, and his boss all of a sudden went into an unmotivated exposition monologue: “Do I have to remind you what we do, Peter? We go to old people and we ask them to die with us. You are the creator of their death. You get to choose what it is. I consider that a privilege. And sure, it’s a little barbaric that we shoot poison into them the moment they die in their simulation but…”. I read exposition like this all the time.

Another thing I liked about this scene is that a plot thread emerges from it. Peter receives his next client. That might seem obvious to you. But when you’re staring at a blank page, it’s never obvious. You compartmentalize scenes to do what you want them to do – “Okay, this is going to be the exposition scene where we explain to the audience how the perfect ending works.”

You forget that you can combine things. The fact that one of the patients wants to sign up and he’ll be a part of the plot moving forward means that the scene is not an island. The veins of the following scenes are now laced within it.

I admit that about 40% of the way through the script, I didn’t know where we were going or if I liked wherever that was. Gale took some getting used to. All the other characters felt real whereas Gale felt like something out of an early 2000s indie movie. Here’s a typical line from her: “I almost got a tattoo once that said “No Regrets.” But, I didn’t. Because I knew I’d regret it. And, I have no regrets.”

But the more we got to know her, we realized that that was partly an act to protect herself. Once we started un-peeling her layers, she became more grounded. And that’s when I realized what the script was doing. It was going to make you love this woman so that when Peter had to kill her, it was going to be waterworks. That’s another thing I liked about the script. It sets up an ending we’re sure we’re headed towards before throwing a couple of curve balls at us. It not only doesn’t end up the way we expect it to. It ends better.

I did have a couple of issues with the script. Arnold needed to spend more time on the believability of the “perfect ending” productions. A Hollywood movie takes 1000 people to create. Yet Peter and two assistants are able to put together incredibly complex realistic three-dimensional real-time movies for the clients. It wasn’t as lazy as that Neil Blomkamp movie that just came out (you lay down on a bed and somehow because there’s a wire nearby you’re magically in a simulation). But since that’s the heart of the concept, it needed to be more believable.

I also thought Arnold overcomplicated Peter’s character journey. I never quite understood what was going on with him. Sometimes it was that he got too close to his clients. But then, also, he hadn’t gotten over his traumatic childhood event. And maybe he was considering suicide but maybe not. Also, he was a workaholic and needed to quit and do something he loved to do even though he supposedly loved this job. It was confusing.

Despite that, the bones of the script are so solid and you get so attached to these dying characters, that, emotionally, this is a home run. It really hits you hard at the end so I definitely recommend it.

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

What I learned: I think what I learned here is that sci-fi dramas don’t work. But drama sci-fis do. What I mean by that is if we expect sci-fi and you give us a bunch of crying and melodramatic scenes, we’re going to be disappointed. But if your story is essentially a drama with sci-fi aspects used minimally to support the drama, that can work. But the marketing needs to be on point. You have to be clear that it’s a drama first. Cause I’m telling you – there’s nothing worse than when you’re excitedly expecting one thing in a script and you get something different. It’s the worst.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Mickey Rourke loses his mind after he’s forced to take a gig on television’s highest rated show: The Masked Singer.
About: This script finished Top 25 on the most recent Black List. Believe it or not, it’s kind of based on a true story. Mickey Rourke really did appear on The Masked Singer (something I did not know when I originally saw the logline) and randomly took his mask off while being interviewed after his first performance, unintentionally (or intentionally?) disqualifying himself. Maybe Mickey didn’t know the rules?
Writer: Mike Jones & Nicholas Sherman
Details: 94 pages

We’ve had a long and winding journey with comedy scripts on this site. The short of it is that 99.99999% of them don’t do well. Even the ones that are funny don’t have enough laughs in them to justify their existence. I’ve long struggled with whether this is more about me having read too many comedies and therefore being numb to overused jokes or if it’s more the fault of the writers, who aren’t delivering.

Well, this weekend’s mini-binge of Peacemaker reminded me that when you have a group of funny characters and a writer who’s good with dialogue, you’re funny, even to people who have read a million comedy scripts before and know what to expect. In other words, no excuses.

Since this was the funniest premise on this year’s Black List, I felt if any script had a shot at making me laugh, it was this one. Let’s find out if I was right.

Mickey Rourke had one hell of a career in the 80s and early 90s. The script lets us know just how good he had it, giving us all the movies he turned down (Bad Boys, The Big Chill, Caddyshack, Dead Poets Society, Platoon, Tombstone, The Untouchables, Pulp Fiction, Top Gun, 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, and Silence of the Lambs).

While Rourke had a brief career resurgence with The Wrestler, that was almost a decade ago. With those mortgage payments on that Malibu five bedroom getting harder to pay, Rourke does the unthinkable – he accepts a job on Fox’s weirdo reality game show, The Masked Singer, which has celebrities dress up in bizarre costumes, sing a song, and then a panel of judges tries to figure out who they are.

When Rourke gets to set on his first day, he falls in love with a big purple gremlin costume, insisting on wearing it. Then, during his first performance singing the upbeat Barenaked Ladies song, “One Week,” Rourke has a breakdown and begins crying in his suit. He continues to sing the song though, now as a slow ballad, and America instantly falls in love with him.

Of course, nobody knows that Purple Gremlin is Mickey. So Mickey can’t capitalize on his newfound fame. When he attempts to extort Fox-Disney for some money, they remind him what they did to Armie Hammer when he was difficult. When Mickey keeps pressing the issue, they recast Purple Gremlin with Wanda Sykes!

Furious, Mickey kidnaps the president of Fox TV and, as Purple Gremlin, livestreams a list of requests that, if Fox doesn’t meet, he will blow her up. After Mickey calms down, he decides against blowing her up, but is able to negotiate his way back onto the show for the big finale. He then gives one of the longest monologues in movie history decrying the death of art. (Spoiler alert) He then refuses to take off his mask. The End.

Screenwriting Trigger Warning: This script is heavy on the asides and fourth-wall breaking. If you are not into that sort of stuff, do not read this script. It may put you in a permanent anger coma.

“The Masked Singer” screenplay is almost as absurd as “The Masked Singer” concept. It’s one-part fourth-wall breaking, one part emotional character study, one part absurdist comedy, and one part thoughtful commentary on the state of the industry. I don’t know what to make of it if I’m being honest. On one page, Rourke is threatening to blow someone up in a purple gremlin costume and, on the next page, Rourke is giving a “Leaving Las Vegas” level exploration of debilitating drug addiction.

One of the things you’re always battling as a reader is how the script you expected compares to the script you actually got. This was a funny concept so I was thinking the script was going to lean into Mickey being a diva. Instead, it leans into Mickey being a sad depressed old man. And my question to the writers would be, “Which one is funnier?” I contend that Mickey being a diva is funnier. So I was miffed that that was scrapped in favor of Sad Mickey.

Ultimately, comedy scripts are judged by whether you laugh or not. And I did not. I suppose I giggled a few times, like at the ongoing joke of Mickey being pathetically sad about the fact that he never had kids. But mostly I read this script with a giant confused look on my face. I couldn’t understand exactly what I was reading.

Some people have called this a “parody” script. It’s supposed to get the writers noticed. It was never meant to be a movie. I call b.s. on that. If Mickey’s agents called these guys and said he wanted to do the film, would they say ‘no?’ Of course not. Therefore, it’s a legit script. I bring that up because some writers try to hide behind the parody label so they can have it both ways. If it’s made fun of, it was never supposed to be a real script anyway. And if it gets made, it’s a great story about how a script that wasn’t even real got made.

But ever since Being John Malkovich got produced, these celebrity-focused screenplays are legit scripts and need to be judged as so. While I didn’t dislike this script. I found it too messy. It’s trying to do too many things. Trying to cover too many bases.

And we can’t forget that these scripts have a ceiling. They do well with lower-tier readers, people who haven’t read many scripts, because this is probably the first time they’re encountering this style. But when the scripts move up the ladder to the seasoned readers, there’s a lot of eye-rolling that goes on because they’ve seen this act before. Probably dozens of times.

What’s so frustrating is that this is a really funny idea. An actor who takes himself more seriously than most world leaders is forced to accept the most humiliating job in show business – The Masked Singer. There’s so much comedy to mine from that.

But the focus is more on the fourth-wall breaking description (talking directly to the reader) than the script itself. When you have a good concept, you don’t need that. That’s what good concepts give you. They make it so that you don’t have to depend on gimmicks. You should only bring in gimmicks when the concept is weak.

Take one of my favorite comedy concepts of the last decade, Neighbors – A young couple who have just started a family find out that they’ve moved next to a fraternity house. Imagine writing that script in a big wacky voice where you’re constantly talking to the reader. It would’ve distracted from the story, right? Yet that’s what’s happening here.

The final issue is the script tries too hard. The writing really wants you to love it. I’ve always struggled to figure out where the “try-hard” line is. How does one be big and boisterous with their writing and it not sound try-hard? Well, Peacemaker just did it. So I know it’s possible. But there definitely seems to be a line and, unfortunately, The Masked Singer crossed it.

Based on the overcooked writing and uneven tone, this one wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: In a comedy script, you should never try and make the asides funnier than the jokes in the movie itself. Your funniest stuff should be coming through great dialogue or a clever payoff or a hilarious set piece. It shouldn’t come from you sharing an off-screen opinion about whether Nick Cannon should be in your movie after his anti-Jewish comments or if Donald Trump is soulless. Save your best jokes for the actual movie, the stuff that audiences are going to see.

High-profile television IP is a fairly new space so I suspect we’re going to be scratching and clawing our way into a workable structure for these shows for the foreseeable future. What I do know is this. Marvel shows have been average. And the Star Wars shows have been below average. Boba Fett’s latest episode confirmed to me that they don’t know what to do with that character or the story, for that matter. The show has little bursts of fun moments. But, for the most part, it’s a show in search of a coherent story.

The Marvel shows have fared a little better. Hawkeye and Falcon & Winter Soldier were no-frills empty calorie entertainment. And Wandavision and Loki, while better, never quite lived up to their ambitious objectives.

One of the things I’ve realized is that superhero characters are built for big flashy moments. The caravan chase in The Dark Knight. The train sequence in Spider-Man 2. The airport sequence in Captain America: Civil War. TV doesn’t allow for this to happen. The budget just isn’t anywhere near what it is for those films. That’s where superhero shows have struggled. With their identity stolen away, they’ve tried to reinvent the genre. And what we’re learning is that there isn’t anything low-budget that can replace those big crazy set-pieces.

Which brings me to Peacemaker, easily the best high profile television IP that’s hit streaming so far. I went into the series skeptical only because I didn’t think Gunn’s Suicide Squad was very good. I did that thing where you put a show on in the background while mindlessly looking up new coffee tables online. Despite only casually following along, I found myself consistently giggling at the dialogue.

The next thing I knew my laptop was on my current ugly coffee table, completely closed (a rarity) and with each passing minute, I was more pulled into Peacemaker’s charming irreverent slice of superhero fiction. You know what it reminds me of? If Community was an R-rated superhero show. It’s got that balls-to-the-wall “who cares” attitude to it.

Hell, I was singing along to the opening dance number by the second episode!

There are a lot of things to like here but I’ll point out a couple that stood out. The first was the bridge between episodes 1 and 2. At the end of episode 1, Peacemaker is being chased by a scary powerful alien woman. That’s the end of the episode. The second episode 2 begins, we cut to the continuation of Peacemaker being chased by the alien woman!

You might be asking, “Why is that a big deal, Carson?”

Well, whenever I watch an episode of Boba Fett, they draw EVERRRRYYYYTHING OUUUUUUT FOR AS LOOOONNNNNNNNG AS POSSSSSSSIBLE. If we’re in the middle of a chase at the end of an episode, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next episode is going to start with a 20 minute flashback. And maybe – MAYBE – they’ll show us the continuation of the chase after that.

Don’t get me wrong, I know this is a narrative technique. You give us the beginning of a big moment then you cut to other characters or other storylines so we have to suspensefully wait to see what happens. However, it’s clear with episodes of Boba Fett, and most of these Marvel episodes, that that’s not the reason they’re making us wait.

They’re making us wait because they don’t have enough story. And when you don’t have enough story, you lean on trickery. You lean on false story engines. You’re basically finding things that fill up time so you can make the episode’s minimum time requirement.

This has become so predominant in high profile IP shows that I was legitimately shocked – in a good way – when we continued right where we left off in episode 2 of Peacemaker. Gunn understands that the lure of flashbacks – they help flesh out characters – can also act as story roadblocks, sending you off on some long not-well-thought-out detour that always takes too long to get you back to your original route.

Good writers develop characters in real-time. They don’t need that flashback crutch.

The other thing I like about Peacemaker is that Gunn didn’t say, “What’s the best Peacemaker show?” He said, “What’s the Peacemaker show that would best highlight my strengths as a writer?” Gunn’s biggest strength is putting characters in a room talking about nothing. As many of you know, I’ve railed against doing this. But IF YOU’RE GREAT AT SOMETHING then it doesn’t matter if you’re not supposed to do it. Your strength should always take precedence over what you’re “supposed” to do. And Gunn is a master at funny observational dialogue.

I’m beginning to realize why I didn’t like his last two movies (Suicide Squad and Guardians 2). It’s because, in features, you can’t sit characters in rooms and have them babble on for three minutes. Every scene in a feature has to push a ten-ton movie forward. Without that constraint, Gunn can now let loose. And he’s really good at letting loose. The way his mind works is so funny and he’s finally found a medium that allows him to go to town in this area.

By the way, one of the reasons he’s able to do this is because he’s created eight full-on dialogue-friendly characters. If you’re new to my site, there are dialogue-friendly characters and dialogue-unfriendly characters. If you’re trying to write great dialogue with two dialogue-unfriendly characters, it’s never going to sound right. I mean, can you imagine Boba Fett and Fennec having even a single entertaining conversation together? Of course not. Because neither of them is dialogue-friendly.

Gunn made sure that every single character here had their own entertaining personality type. Peacemaker is a blabbermouth who says a lot of ignorant things. His hilarious best-friend, Vigilante, is like Deadpool-lite. Co-team leader Emilia is always angry and always ready to take that anger out on you. Tech Specialist John, probably the most introverted of the bunch, is still willing to engage in awkward opinionated debates about what they should be doing. New Girl Leota isn’t afraid to throw quippy insults Peacemaker’s way.

I know it seems obvious. But if everyone is designed to be entertaining when they speak, you’re going to have a lot of good dialogue.

But I’ll tell you my favorite moment in Peacemaker – the moment that confirmed to me the show was special. And, believe it or not, it’s a moment that doesn’t have any dialogue. It occurs when Peacemaker is hiding outside the house of a man they need to assassinate with Emilia, his hot-headed boss who hates him but who Peacemaker has a major crush on.

They’re far off, in the bushes, waiting for the target to arrive so they can take him out with a sniper rifle. As they sit in silence, waiting, Emilia is eating a bag of trail mix. Peacemaker keeps looking over at it, hungrily. Finally, reluctantly, she holds the bag out so he can have some. He eagerly reaches in and takes a handful. Then, just as we think he’s going to start eating it, he begins to pick out the little pretzels and, one by one, place them back in the bag that she’s holding while she stares at him like he’s a crazy person.

I like this moment for two reasons. I love scenes that tell us who characters are by showing and not telling. This twenty-second moment tells us so much about these characters without saying a word. She hates this guy so much that the act of giving him her food must be coupled with an animated production of how much she hates doing so. Through that simple action, we know how much she detests Peacemaker. Meanwhile, the fact that Peacemaker starts placing trail mix pieces he doesn’t want back in her bag tells us that he is so ignorant to others’ perceptions of him that he doesn’t even know when someone hates him. That is Peacemaker in a nutshell: oblivious.

And two, most writers wouldn’t think to come up with this moment. It’s too subtle. To know your characters well enough to create a subtle moment as specific as this one is rare. Or, at least, in the scripts I read, it’s rare. It’s a great reminder to think about what your characters could do while they’re not speaking to each other. Moments do not always have to start with words.

This show came at just the right time for me. I’ve been looking for a good show. And this one is so fun. I would go so far as to say it’s the best thing James Gunn has ever done. And I dare anyone to challenge me on that because I’m obviously right. What about you? Have you seen Peacemaker? What did you think?

In my continued efforts to help you write a script that gets you noticed by the industry, I keep going back to this idea of “voice.” Second only to coming up with a killer concept, writing a script with a unique voice is a great way to a) get an agent, and b) make the Black List.

The problem with giving writers this advice (“Improve your voice!”) is that they don’t know what “voice” is. How can you practice getting better at something if no one’s able to define it? That’s one of my ongoing pursuits here at Scriptshadow – quantifying what “voice” is so writers can get better at it.

For starters, don’t get writing voice mixed up with directing voice. Directing voice is [mostly] the way a director manages the images and sounds of his movie. Terrence Malick having all those wide-angle “follow” shots of his characters, over flowery voice over and an intense music track. That’s not writing. That’s directing.

Writing voice has to do with the way you describe things, your dialogue, your humor, what aspects of the story you choose to focus on, how sparse or thick your writing is, how flowery your prose is, how much of your personality makes it into the writing, and what the overall thematic focus of your story is. A strong voice results in people being able to know that you wrote a script without your name having to be on it.

Hence, I’ve gone through a bunch of movies and screenplays to determine every type of voice out there. And I came up with ten. We’re going to go through all ten of these and, afterwards, I want you to ask yourself which one sounds the closest to the way you write. Then I want you to consider writing a script in that voice.

Although I still contend that a great movie idea beats everything, the goal here is to get yourself into the game. And if your ideas haven’t generated a lot of interest on the screenwriting market, then “voice” may be the better way in. Okay. Are you ready? Let’s get into it.

Voice 1 (Snappy Dialogue): This is probably the most popular version of “voice.” It’s the snappy clever dialogue script. It’s Juno. It’s The Breakfast Club. It’s The Social Network. This class of voice is reserved for people who are gifted in the art of dialogue. The characters are all smart and have great comebacks to whatever the other character says. There’s an effortless lyrical quality to the exchanges. You never quite know what anybody’s going to say next. Big balmy monologues come effortlessly to these writers. Just remember that in order to write snappy dialogue, you need genres and situations that support snappy dialogue. Don’t write thrillers or horror or sci-fi if you want to write in this voice. Write in genres where there’s naturally a lot of talking.

Voice 2 (An Elevated Dark Sense of Humor): For whatever reason, “regular” humor doesn’t get you the “great voice” label. As good as The Hangover was, nobody categorized the writers as having a great voice. When it comes to humor and voice, you have to go dark to make an impression. Some of you were pointing out that Tuesday’s script, Wait List, would qualify as dark humor. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is a recent high-profile script that we’d place in this category. I’d put Get Out in there as well. Possibly Nightcrawler. The reason I say “elevated” is because just having a dark sense of humor isn’t enough. There has to be a level of intelligence behind it. It has to be clever, cunning, biting.

Voice 3 (Saying What You’re Not Supposed To Say): One of the key tenets of “voice” is that you give the reader something they haven’t seen before. That’s why your script stands out. It’s providing the reader with a new experience. When you say things that you’re not supposed to say, you’re giving the reader something that they don’t hear. This is what separated Louis C.K. from so many other comics. He started talking about how idiotic his kids were – a huge ‘off-limits’ topic for comics. But because there was truth to what he was saying (a lot of parents secretly felt their kids were idiotic), they loved it. It was choices like this that make him such a unique voice. On the movie side, we can tweak it a little to explore things that you’re not supposed to explore. American Beauty became a gigantic hit in part because a 40 year old father was pining after his high school daughter’s best friend. You’re not supposed to write about that. But it’s because nobody else is writing about that that doing so makes you unique.

Voice 4 (Going Super Dark): There’s a floor to how low general audiences are willing to go. The super-dark voice is when you plunge a hammer through that floor and jump down into whatever’s beneath it. The most famous example of this voice is Seven. That script got a ton of attention specifically because it was so dark. A more recent example would be True Detective. I might even put Promising Young Woman in there. You want to figure out where the average person’s threshold is and push past that. I would actually put the now secretly famous Osculum Infame in this category. The risk with these scripts is that they will offend some people. So you might receive some uncomfortable rejection e-mails. I know I did with Osculum Infame. But when someone likes it, they tend to really like it.

Voice 5 (Mixing Genres That Shouldn’t Go Together): This one is how Tarantino got famous. He came up with his own genre – the “Tarantino” genre. He did this by mixing Westerns with Blaxploitation with Black Comedy with Noir with Crime Drama. Clearly, when you do this, you’re going to come up with something that feels different. Remember back in 2010 when writers started mixing history with horror? We got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. We got Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. You can play this game any way you want and come up with some wild concepts. You could mix Westerns and Musicals, Sci-Fi and Black Comedy, Romantic Comedy and Fantasy. You use any of those combinations and you instantly get tabbed as having a unique voice.

Voice 6 (Full Weirdo): This is when you throw out any pretense of writing a Hollywood movie and just write something WEIRD. The Lobster comes to mind. Sorry to Bother You. The Lighthouse. Swiss Army Man. For both the concept and execution of these scripts, turn off the logical side of your brain and let the right side do all the work for you. The weirder you get, the more voice points you earn.

Voice 7 (Put Your Stake In A World People Aren’t Writing In): When I read Taylor Sheridan’s stuff, I’m not sure any specific voice jumps off the page. However, I always know when I’m reading a script of his, which is one of the components of a “voice” script. What I realized is that Sheridan found this universe that everyone else was ignoring and staked a claim in it. Americana. Struggling Middle Class America. Conservative values. He then treated that world with sophistication, whereas everyone else was writing really cheesy movies in that space. There are writing landscapes out there that people are ignoring. Go out there and find them and you can become the voice of that world.

Voice 8 (Quirk It): Twenty years ago, a movie called Little Miss Sunshine burst onto the scene and became the little movie that could. It was, maybe, the quirkiest movie ever produced. And it started a movement. Quirk was in. “Quirk” is any idea that’s weird, goofy, and leans into awkwardness instead of avoiding it. The voice here comes from the characters who will all be playing outsized versions of their real-life counterparts. The character will never just be depressed. He’ll be the depressed guy who’s made a vow of silence and only speaks with his hands. Garden State, Ghost World, Safety Not Guaranteed. All quirk-fests. And yes, I know Juno could be placed in this category. There is going to be some overlap between voices. Don’t get too caught up in that.

Voice 9 (The Gimmick Script): The Gimmick Script is less about the movie and more about the reading experience. The Gimmick Script might be written in first person. There might be a lot of breaking the fourth wall (with the writer speaking directly to the reader). The prose may have a lot of needless swearing in it, or asides that have nothing to do with describing what’s going on. It may take a well-known property and flip it on its head (Exploring the Charlie Brown characters all grown up). One of the first scripts that made my Top 25 was called “Passengers,” (there’s a link to it over on the right panel), a weird alien invasion story told in the first person. Gimmicky voice is probably the cheapest type of voice available to writers. But it can work.

Voice 10 (Create Your Own Style by Mixing and Matching): It’s important to understand that voice is always evolving. You can create a new voice at any time. Shane Black wrote big fun masculine movies with sparse playful prose that he sometimes broke the fourth wall on. That was his style. Just remember that your voice is, ultimately, your personality. So pick the “voice modules” that best reflect your personality. That way, you’re writing organically as opposed to forcing it. And that’s it, folks. I hope this helped!

Let’s see if you learned anything. Here are ten movies. Do these movies have a writer’s voice or no? Leave your answers in the comments. In a little bit, I’ll provide the actual answers.

Die Hard
The Hurt Locker
Birdman
Inception
Dune
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Free Guy
Old
Napoleon Dynamite
Alien

Is Worst Dinner Ever the Comedy Version of Die Hard We’ve All Been Waiting For?

Genre: Comedy/Action
Premise: An estranged father and son have to survive terrorists, explosions, and, worst of all, dinner with each other, at the top of one of Boston’s tallest buildings.   
About: Jack Waz has been staffed on several television shows since the mid 2010s.  He charges onto the Black List in the number 11 slot with Worst Dinner Ever.  
Writer: Jack Waz
Details: 96 pages

Yesterday’s review got a little intense.  I’ve noticed that certain subject matters get the trigger-happy crowd a little too triggered.  Which is why we’re going in the opposite direction today.  We’ve going to have fun.  We’re going frantic.  We’re going comedic Die Hard!  I can hear Scott’s head turning in the UK all the way from LA.  “Die Hard, did you say?”  Yeah baby.  We got a Die Hard inspired script.  Let’s discuss! 

20-something Danny has a pretty sweet life except for one thing.  He hates his dad, Charles.  While it appears the hatred is deep deep DEEP-SET, it was really his mother’s funeral that put that hatred over the top. That’s when Danny learned that his dad went out on a date right before her funeral.  

While Danny would be fine never seeing his father again, his fiancé, Kate, insists that she meet him if they’re going to get married.  Danny reluctantly makes the phone call and the two set up a dinner at Boston’s Prudential Center, which has a bougie restaurant at the top of its main building.  

Around this time, we learn that Charles is stupid rich.  He runs some high class financial fund.  And, if we’re paying attention, we also learn that he has some unhappy clients in Ireland who may believe he’s stealing from them.  

Both wife and fiancé join Charles and Danny for dinner and, surprisingly, things go smoothly at first.  But then a flash-grenade lands in their salad and all hell breaks loose.  Charles and Danny sprint downstairs while Kate and Charles’ wife are stuck in the bathroom.  

Callum, our “Hans” in the story, sends all of his IRA team after Charles and Danny who, mostly through stupid luck, are able to avoid, and occasionally, kill, the baddies.  Finally, Callum’s number 1 man is able to capture them, infuse them with a truth drug, and get Charles to admit that he’s running a Ponzi scheme in an account under his son’s name.  Yikes!  From that moment on, we have to worry about Danny killing Charles more than the IRA killing them. 

Worst Dinner Ever passes the GSU test.  

We’ve got our goal – save fiancé and wife and get out of the building.

We’re got our stakes – death along with the implosion of Charles’ business.  

We’ve got our urgency – the whole thing is taking place tonight.

And the script gets points for its energy.  There isn’t a page in this screenplay that reads slow.  

You’ve also got a fun variation of the Die Hard formula.  For you newbie screenwriters, finding a fresh spin on the Die Hard formula is a rite of passage in this business.  Everyone has either tried to do it or is still trying to do it.  And here, we’ve switched two variables.  Instead of the genre being an Action-Thriller, it’s an Action-Comedy.  And then, instead of having a single hero running around the building, we get a two-hander.

Is it enough?  

That’s a good question.  

One of the things I constantly run into reading screenplays is that a lot of them, on the surface, should work.  I’d put Worst Dinner Ever in that category.  You’ve got a high concept comedic spin on Die Hard.  Your central characters are in intense conflict with each other throughout the movie, providing plenty of drama and potential for character growth.  You’ve got the wife and girlfriend here to add more variety to the situation.  The concept is contained and easy to understand.  The stakes are high.

But I didn’t quite go gaga for it for two reasons.   

Whenever I see a concept, I envision what the script is going to be.  If the writer gives me that exact version of the story, I rarely enjoy it.  As I like to remind writers everywhere, you need to be special in your execution of the story.  If you’re only able to give us what 99 out of 100 other writers would’ve given us, then you’re not exhibiting any special qualities.  A good screenwriter is supposed to anticipate what the reader wants and give it to them, but do so in ways that they didn’t expect. 

I’m not saying you have to reinvent storytelling here.  But you at least have to include a few carefully placed scenes that keep us on our toes.  I checked out Copshop over the weekend, which is a fun little movie.  It’s about a guy who purposefully gets arrested so he can get into the same jail as the dude he wants to kill.  Once the film has the two in their adjacent jail cells, we think we know how it’s going to go down.  But then we learn that one of the cops upstairs is on the take with a cartel.  The Gerard Butler character tricks another cop and gets out of his cell by minute 30. There’s a close-range shootout as he tries to kill his target hiding behind the bench.  And I’m thinking to myself, “I have no idea where this is going next.”  

Comedies are a little different in that the audience doesn’t come to them for plot twists.  But that’s not what I’m asking for.  I just want the writer to be ahead of me as opposed to me behind ahead of the writer.  

Another issue with Worst Dinner Ever is the comedy.  Comedy is subjective.  So much so that two people can watch the same comedy with one thinking it’s an instant classic and the other thinking it was the most unfunny movie they ever watched.  So I’m not going to pass judgement on the sense of humor here.  I was more concerned about the repetition of that humor.  It was the same joke over and over again.  Danny yells at Charles for being a bad dad.  Charles yells at Danny for being a bad son.  We probably get that joke in the neighborhood of 100 times.  

There were occasional funny moments that broke up that routine – such as when they use a snowmobile in the building to escape the bad guys.  But we kept going back to that squabbling joke over and over again. 

I remember in another ‘meet the parents’ movie, “Meet the Parents,” that Greg had a different comedic relationship to the dad (antagonistic) compared to his fiancé (desperate to seem more manly in her eyes) to the ex-boyfriend (tries to live up to the impossible standard he set) to the sister (she’s constantly annoyed by all the mistakes Greg makes) to the brother (forced to keep the brother’s drug use secret).  The comedy felt varied because each relationship was so different.

Which is frustrating because Worst Dinner Ever is an easy read.  I like the idea of a comedic Die Hard.  But when you can anticipate almost every line and almost every plot beat, you’re going to get bored as a reader.  Readers need to be surprised every once in a while to stay invested in a story.  Which is why this wasn’t for me.  

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

What I learned: With comedies especially, you have to look for scenes that specifically exploit the premise.  If you don’t do this, your comedy will be generic because it’s going to stem from the same pool as every other comedy.  Worst Dinner Ever’s unique premise is that father and son hate each other more than anything.  So let’s build a scene around that.  Have two terrorists interrogate Charles and Danny in separate rooms.  They tell each of them that if they don’t give them the information they want, they’re going to kill their son/dad.  “Fine,” both the dad and son say.  The terrorists get tripped up.  “I don’t think you heard me.  We’re going to kill your father if you don’t tell me where he’s hidden the money.”  “Good!  Make sure you elongate the torture process if possible.  And if you could allow me to watch or record it and show me later, I can’t express how helpful that would be.”  The terrorist stares at Danny, realizing that this plan has no chance of working.  You could get a really funny scene out of that and it’s unique because you can’t do it any other movie.  That’s what you should be aiming for: comedic scenes that can’t be in any other movie.