You’ve got 48 hours to get your loglines in for June Logline Showdown! Details below.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A schlubby, long-suffering late night comedy writer’s simmering anger and jealousy begin to boil over into madness as he suspects that his telegenic A-list boss is trying to replace him.
About: To get you guys excited about this Friday’s Logline Showdown, I’m reviewing May’s runner-up logline, the script I actually thought had the best chance at being really good. But I sensed it wouldn’t win just because it’s such a quiet concept. Yet another reminder to keep the reader in mind when choosing what concept to write. The more read requests you get, the more shots you get get at the winning combo.
Writer: Danny Albie
Details: 104 pages

Once again, this is a reminder that June Logline Showdown is this Friday. Deadline is THURSDAY! So get those loglines in!

When: June 23rd
Deadline: Thursday, June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: e-mail all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: include title, genre, and logline

Hader for Andy?

Onto our review!

Andy Letts is a gangly 46 year old divorcee who’s the head writer on an aging late night talk show headed by the beloved Jack Rafferty. Andy’s life amounts to trying to write edgy jokes for Jack, getting turned down, replacing them with safe jokes that Jack wants, and watching as Jack gets all the credit.

Andy doesn’t do much otherwise. He doesn’t date. He masturbates to humiliation porn. He goes to therapy. He’s basically on autopilot. The only other activity he has is following this one girl on Twitter named Becca who occasionally writes funny tweets.

One day, Andy decides it would be a good idea to hire Becca. Especially because his entire writing staff is made up of straight white men. Jack, along with the show’s showrunner, are not happy about this new addition, especially because Becca wants to write more edgy left-leaning political humor. She’s more into “clapter” than “laughter.”

Becca eventually bullies her way into a segment on the show that does really well and that begins her meteoric rise. Within a month she’s the co-head writer on the show. More and more of Andy’s jokes are now being overlooked. It’s only a matter of time before she takes over his job completely.

Then, one night, Andy and Becca decide to get drinks. (Spoilers follow) The drinks go well enough that Andy invites her back to his place. They then get into a heated conversation about diversity that takes an unexpected turn into Becca threatening to falsely accuse Andy of sexual assault. The two get into a brief scuffle that ends with Becca dead.

Andy gets rid of the body, goes back to work, and hopes that everyone will just forget about Becca. And, for the most part, they do. But it turns out Andy’s not finished yet. The Becca escapade gave him a taste for blood, and a taste for finally getting that recognition he so rightly deserves after all these years.

The Head Writer has one of the most charged scenes I’ve read all year. It’s a scene that I’ll never forget.

But, on the whole, the script is a frustrating read for several reasons. So let’s talk about it.

The biggest problem here is that the story doesn’t have an engine underneath it. It’s one of those scripts where life is just happening. I understand that this is a character piece. But even character pieces need that engine pushing the story forward. We have to feel like we’re going somewhere.

After finishing the first act, I still didn’t know what this story was. Andy hires Becca but I didn’t know why. Andy’s problems at work are so vaguely conveyed that I wasn’t sure what the problem was that needed to be fixed.

About 70 pages into the script, Andy explains to someone, “My boss likes my writing but doesn’t like me.” And I thought, “Why didn’t I know that on page 20? Why am I only learning that now?” That’s how vague the first act was. It didn’t do a good job establishing the relationships, what was specifically wrong with those relationships, what was wrong with work, and why Andy needed to solve it by hiring Becca.

When Andy hires Becca, his reasoning seems to be a sprinkling of several things. The other writers don’t work hard enough. They need more representation on staff. Andy wants a younger voice to make Jack look hipper. Andy needs someone to help him with his duties. If you have a bunch of reasons, you don’t have any reasons.

For movies, you need one big reason so the audience is clear on why “the big thing” (in this case, Becca’s hiring) needs to happen.

In “Blackberry,” they need to hire Jim because they don’t have a shark. They have a bunch of geeks who are great at building phones but who don’t have any idea how to run a business.

Once Becca comes in, the script makes another curious choice. Becca insists on making more liberal jokes. Everybody on staff is afraid of this because of the repercussions. Hold on here. Unless this movie is set in an alternate universe, I’m pretty sure that the jokes you can’t tell these days on late-night television are conservative-leaning jokes. So that didn’t ring true at all.

We then go back to our engine-free narrative. Outside of Becca’s popularity rising, it’s not clear where the plot is headed or why we should still be watching. I still don’t entirely understand why Becca was hired. I don’t have a good grip on Andy’s situation with Jack. Jack kind of likes him but kind of doesn’t? It’s confusing. And now we’ve completely taken a left turn by turning the movie into a “late night talk show needs to be more woke” narrative, which comes out of nowhere. It was never established before Andy hired Becca that the show only told conservative jokes.

So all these things led to a very mushy narrative, and a narrative that didn’t have much push behind it. We don’t know where we’re going.

But then we get the Andy and Becca “date” scene.

One of the strategies to really get your reader invested is to write stories and scenes that rile them up. The things that Becca says and does in this scene – I got so angry! To the point where I was not unhappy when she met her demise.

More importantly, after forcing myself through the 60 pages that preceded this scene, only to be on the edge of my seat for six straight pages, I realized: This scene IS THE MOVIE.

But, unfortunately, everything around this scene, starting with page 1 and ending with page 105, needs to mostly be rewritten.

For starters, we need a stronger impetus for hiring Becca. It can’t just be because Andy thinks it maybe sorta might help. Somebody needs to come in and force them to do it. Or they were exposed on CNN for being the last writer’s room of all men. Something like that.

And then everything with Becca’s storyline needs to move faster. We can’t laze around. Create time goals. Maybe we establish that the Emmy nominations are announced a month from now and Becca is determined to get the show nominated. Something where we have a goal and we feel like time is of the essence.

Then, I think the Becca death needs to happen on page 45. Not page 60. You can’t be lazy with plot points in character pieces. It’s too risky cause the slower story is more at risk of getting boring. From there, maybe Andy finds her joke notebook. And so Andy starts using her jokes and he finally starts getting all the credit and acclaim he’s wanted. Meanwhile, the police are closing in on finding who killed Becca. And you can still do this thing where he starts offing other people on the writing team.

You do that, you’ve got a movie. Right now, you’ve got a meditation on what it’s like to be a head writer who nobody respects. That’s fine to explore that. But you need a plot surrounding it.

Script Link: The Head Writer

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

What I learned: If you’re trying too hard to impress the reader, the line is going to feel off. Like this line, “Andy watches Shepherd cut a GIANT PIECE OF ICE CREAM CAKE. It’s so big, feet amputate themselves looking at it.” It took me several reads to realize this was a diabetes joke. It’s just too clever by half. The reader resents writers who are desperate to impress them. Just tell the story. That’s what we like.

“I want the truth!”

Every time I put the month’s logline winners up for Logline Showdown, I always get a dozen comments that amount to, “THIS IS THE BEST YOU HAVE????” I get it. It’s the internet. We want perfection. We want the posts on our terms. I do it as well on other sites.

But, just so you have more context, I want you to see the loglines that aren’t making it so you can better appreciate the ones that do. Because it’s hard to come up with a good concept and it’s hard to write a good logline. I think Scott said this – just being able to come up with a sentence that sounds normal is difficult. Much less one that effortlessly conveys a compelling movie idea.

For those interested, we do a Logline Showdown every month. Send in your title, genre, and logline. I pick the five best. You guys vote for your favorite. The logline that gets the most votes gets a script review the following week. We’ve found several good scripts already. Let’s find some more! Here are the details for the next showdown…

JUNE LOGLINE SHOWDOWN!

When: June 23rd
Deadline: June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: e-mail all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: include title, genre, and logline

If you’re struggling with your loglines, you can always get a logline consultation from me. They’re 25 bucks. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll have feedback to you within 24 hours.

Okay, let’s take a look at some of the loglines that didn’t make it into the showdown and why. Actually, none of these loglines are bad. But they were all missing something. Let’s find out what those somethings were.

Title: Unwind
Genre: Dark Comedy/Mystery
Logline: Desperate for new material after her editor rejects her article, a high school journalist teams up with her ex-boyfriend to uncover a school conspiracy when she discovers a photo of a paraplegic kid standing on two legs.

Analysis: The first thought that went through my head when I finished reading this logline was, “So what?” The stakes don’t feel very high. Why do I care about a random kid who may have been faking his paraplegic-ness? In the writer’s defense, it’s a comedy. And the stakes for comedy scripts don’t have to be as high. But there’s something underwhelming about this mystery that’s preventing me from feeling that excitement I need in order to open a script. That’s not to say the script would be bad. If the writer’s got a really witty and sardonic voice, the script could work. But I’m just going off the logline and the logline isn’t giving me a big enough reason to care.  This is one of those scripts that I’d read if someone else told me it was great.  But it’s not a script that wins me over on the logline alone.  Which is a good lesson for every screenwriter trying to write a spec screenplay.  Try to win us over with your concept alone.  It shouldn’t need any extra convincing.

Title: Kill and Make-up
Genre: Satire
Logline: Down on her luck and bearing the weight of her world, flight attendant Amanda meets Bailey, a solipsistic psychopathic serial killer, who might just be her key to happiness.

Breakdown: Fun title. Nice play on words. And the story is kind of intriguing. A love story with a serial killer. There’s some nice irony there. But it feels like it’s missing that element to put it over the top. Like the logline from a couple of months ago where the serial killer was done killing but then went to the engagement party of her rich fiancé and had to do everything within her power not to kill his insufferable family. There was more of a story there, more of a plot. This logline is an idea. “I fell in love with a serial killer.” But where’s the plot? What’s the end goal? Finally, I’ve included a lot of serial killer loglines on the Logline Showdown this year. And I just didn’t want to include another one so soon. That’s a tough reality about the industry. Sometimes you have a good idea but the producers you send the idea to just made a movie like that or they just started developing a movie like that. Your logline could just be bad timing. Which is one of many reasons not to take rejection personally.

Title: Influence
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A group of influencers stranded at the shoddy island resort they’ve been promoting is terrorized by a manipulative entity that wants to harness their immense reach.

Breakdown: There’s not enough meat on the bone here. We’ve got a group of influencers. They’re stuck together in some scary situation. This is a VERY COMMON setup right now. Lots of writers are starting with a similar premise to this. Which means you have to differentiate your idea somehow. An entity that “wants to harness their immense reach” is not enough of a differentiation. To be honest, I don’t know want that means. It’s not specific enough. A logline needs to place an image in the reader’s head. When you are vague, you are doing the opposite of that. We can’t imagine anything. And if we’re not imagining the movie, we’re not going to request your script. I would rewrite the second half of this logline and BE SPECIFIC.

Title: Wicked Morning Star
Genre: Horror
Logline: In 1986, two ambitious girls obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, heavy metal, and Lucifer ritually sacrifice a wealthy classmate and attempt to conceal the crime as their friends gather for his birthday party in the basement where they’ve hidden his body.

Breakdown: When I read this logline, I have a couple of concerns. One, you’re asking us to root for two people who killed someone. There is a chance, of course, that you’ve made them sympathetic and the victim unsympathetic, so that we’re okay with the killing. But that’s the thing about loglines. There is no context. We don’t know for sure. Going off just the logline, I don’t want to give these killers my time. The other issue is that the idea feels small. I’m imagining this small basement, since all basements are small. I guess they’ve put him in a trunk or something. And the appeal of the story is, “Will someone find out?” But I only see that trick working for a few scenes, 30 pages at most. We’re not going to be on the edge of our seats on page 75, still wondering if Lucy is going to look inside that trunk and find the body. The gimmick will be up by then. So those two issues are the reason I didn’t feature this logline.

Title: The Men in White
Genre: Supernatural Thriller/Action
Logline: When Mikey McKay, a kind but dimwitted drug dealer, dies searching for his missing brother, the two mysterious Men in White appear to protect Mikey from the dangers of purgatory and guide him to the portal to Heaven before his soul disappears forever.

Breakdown: You don’t usually want to include character names in loglines. It tends to be a rookie move. Which means the reader’s going to assume you’re a beginner writer, which means they’ll be less likely to request your script. The exception is when your hero’s name is in the title (Forrest Gump, Jerry Maguire). But you should stay away from this if possible. From there, it’s too standard of a premise. I get pitched a lot of concepts where somebody dies and they have to do something before they can get to heaven. The more original the plot is between the death and getting to heaven, the more likely I am to request the script. This seems like a vanilla version of that journey. He has to avoid bad ghosty people and get to heaven. Feels like we’re missing that sexy “strange attractor” that amps an idea like this up.

Title: No Body Recovered
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: After escaping a brutal police raid on his unhoused community, a wounded man flees downriver in search of his missing dog; desperate for survival, he accepts help from a local bowfisherman who unveils a sinister plan — remove the unhoused from his river one by one.

Breakdown: There may be something to this idea but the fact that I had to read the logline four times before I mostly understood it is a problem. First of all, “unhoused” is a weird word. I was annoyed that I had to look it up. I suppose it’s the latest politically correct way to refer to homeless people. But even if you get past that, this missing dog enters the equation out of nowhere. So I guess this is a “look for your dog” movie now? Then, also out of nowhere, a bow fisherman appears. That seems like a random character type to be introduced into this story. And then the bow fisherman wants to kill all the homeless people, I think? Or just scare them off? It’s a little unclear. But then he’s also going to help our hero find his dog? Even though he hates that our hero is homeless? Or does he not know he’s homeless and that’s why he agrees to help him? Or are you saying that, that’s the inciting incident of the story, in which case, they’re now mortal enemies? Our hero will look for his dog while the bow fisherman tries to hunt him? As you can see, the fact that there’s so much going on here makes it difficult to identify what’s happening. And the second a reader is unclear what the story is, THEY’RE OUT. They don’t give you a second chance. Cause the way they see it is: If you can’t be clear in one sentence, why would I expect you to write a clear 20,000 word story?

Title: 21 Shots
Genre: Slasher Comedy
Logline: On the eve of her sister’s wedding, a woman takes 21 shots to ring in her 21st birthday. When she wakes to a room full of dead friends, she must retrace her 21 shots to figure out the killer before the wedding begins… or the killer finds her.

Breakdown: Another confusing logline. I understood the story up to the point where she takes 21 shots to ring in her 21st birthday. So far so good. She then wakes up to a room full of dead friends. Okay, a mystery. It seems a little excessive but I’m still giving the logline a chance. Things fall apart with this segment: “she must retrace her 21 shots to figure out the killer.” How does one retrace 21 separate shots? “Hmm, I took my first shot over at the bed here. Then I took my second by the piano. Then my third in the bathroom.” Wouldn’t you be done with that investigation after five minutes?  Also, how is that going to help her solve the mystery? If you get past that, you run into the logline’s biggest problem: who cares about making it to the wedding WHEN ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD!!!!???? I’m pretty sure getting to the wedding is the least of your worries at that point. Not to mention, instead of figuring out where your 17th shot was, why not just call the cops? There are just too many questions that pop up with this logline.

Title: The Girl Who Lived
Genre: horror
Logline: A young woman must survive a night of horrific attacks both by the living and the dead when she sets out to discover why she was the lone survivor of a mysterious plane crash as a child.

Breakdown: Tal complains a lot that his loglines don’t get picked so I thought I’d extend him the courtesy of explaining why I didn’t pick his latest submission. To start, why isn’t “horror” capitalized?  You want to put your best foot forward.  It’s not a dealbreaker but it implies you’re not taking the submission seriously – that you’re rushing through it.   — Like a lot of Tal’s loglines, this sort of feels like a movie but, at least for me, I’m having trouble connecting the first part with the second part. She’s going to finally solve the mystery of being the only survivor of a plane crash. So as soon as she looks into that, random living and dead people start attacking her? I don’t get it. The fact that it’s not one or the other (dead or alive) scatters the focus of the idea, weakening its impact. If it was just ghosts that went after her – preferably dead passengers she remembers from the flight – at least then there’s a logical connection between the first part of the logline and the second. But trying to solve a plane crash mystery and having dead and alive people all try to kill you – it’s just not a very eloquent idea. It feels messy. Blunt. Quickly cobbled together without any self-scrutiny. I commend Tal for putting these elements in his idea that are high concept and sexy (plane crash, ghosts). But neither of those elements connect to one another in a harmonious way, at least from how they’re presented in the logline.

Title: Parousia
Genre: Psychological Horror
Logline: An apprehensive pregnant couple, still haunted by a past miscarriage at the hands of a doctor, go to a remote midwifery for the perfect birth but strange occurrences and sinister undertones soon signal the experience may not be so idyllic after all.

Breakdown: This is a good example of an intriguing logline that falls apart in the home stretch. I see this ALL THE TIME. You get to the part of the logline that may actually seal the deal. Then you shroud it in a fog of mystery. I get why this happens. You’re thinking: “I must create mystery!”  But that’s one of the more common misconceptions about loglines – that you want to be mysterious. You actually want to tell the reader exactly what they’re going to get. You do this because reading a script is a business proposition. People will take the time to read your script because they think it might make them money. It’s not an enjoyment proposition, like paying for a ticket to go see a movie. That’s a different type of pitch and, therefore, one where mystery can be strategically infused.  Know the difference!

Title: Her Deafening Silence
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a violent attack leaves her with a debilitating hearing disorder, a reclusive assault survivor fights to maintain her sanity as visions of her assailant and a distant, mysterious scream threaten her isolated existence.

Breakdown: You’re not giving us a movie here. You’re giving us a short film. I’m not saying that your script doesn’t have a full movie in it. But this logline? This logline implies a story that is, at most, 15 minutes long. A deaf person starts hearing a scream in the distance. Where’s the plot? Is it that the scream keeps getting louder? Closer? Okay. But screams happen all the time in horror movies. That’s not big enough to build an entire story around. I get the sense that there’s more that happens in this script. But then that needs to be in the logline. We need to be able to see the plot of the movie in order to gauge whether it’s something we’d be interested in.

Get a Script Consultation With Carson for $100 OFF! – In addition to logline consultations, I do full screenplay consultations, pilot script consultations, outline consultations, first act consultations. Anything you need help with, I can help! If you mention this article, I will give 100 dollars off a feature or pilot consultation to the first four people who e-mail me. :). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: Back in 1518, there was an infamous real-life “dancing plague” that took over a town and proceeded to kill dozens of people. To this day, there is no consensus on what happened.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. So far, the writer, Julian Wayser, has made a couple of short films.
Writer: Julian Wayser (story by Julian Wayser & Rebecca Dayan)
Details: 93 pages

If you’re anything like me, you have gone down that internet rabbit hole late into the night and found yourself exploring the many inexplicable mysteries of our planet. Most of the time, for myself, that involves aliens. Cause we all know that they walk amongst us.

But one of the weird mysteries I’ve always been curious about is the dancing plague. Every time I stumble upon it, I’m not sure what to think because it’s so odd! I’ve always wanted to know more. I’m not sure I ever thought of the subject matter as a movie. But now that someone’s written a script about it, I’m curious what the angle is. Let’s see what today’s writer came up with.

Our story starts with a farmer named Joss Frizt who’s out planting seeds one night when a meteor kablams into his field. The next day, a priest shows up and wants the meteor. So, he orders Joss and Joss’s men (who are all lepers, including his brother) to load the meteor up so he can take it into town.

Take it into town they do – the town of Strasbourg, of the Holy Roman Empire, July, 1518. Strasbourg is off on its own island. And it is also very close to collapse. There is little-to-no food in the area, so everybody is starving to death.

After Joss heads back home, we stay with a young woman, Frau Troffea, named after the rare French delicacy of the time, fromage toffee, aka toffee flavored cheese. Frau helps out at a local orphanage and has a mental breakdown when she realizes how malnourished the kids are. So she walks into the town square and starts wildly dancing.

Nobody knows what to make of it. Eventually, her husband shows up and drags her back home. But the virus has been set into motion. A few days later, several other peasants are performing the wild endless dance in town square. That quickly rises to several dozen. And now, the authorities are getting worried. They don’t have any idea why this is happening.

We then meet Ida, a basket weaver who cares only about her daughter, Agnes, who’s been married off to a wealthy businessman. Ida thinks her daughter is miserable in this man’s care and dreams of rescuing her. But Agnes turns out to be so taken by the crazy dancers that she, too, heads down to dance.

We eventually catch up with Joss again, who implores the rich church (who is hoarding grain) to save the dancers. It is his belief that this is the dance of the poor. It is the dance of the hungry. They do not have anything left in their life and this is their last resort – moving randomly and endlessly. It is a reality that the church is ill-equipped to solve.

Well that turned out to be sad!

Wow.

Here I was all excited to learn about this weird spontaneous event that happened 500 years ago only to get sadness, death, and starvation. We even get a guy who drowns his baby to death cause he can’t feed him. I don’t read nearly enough stuff that depresses me so I’ll keep this one nearby in case I ever catch myself feeling happy about something.

I mean… look. I guess you have to tell the story that was given to you.

But do you?

After doing a quick wikipedia search, it appears that everything surrounding this dancing plague was sad. So that’s where the writer drew his inspiration from.

But this is still a movie. You still have to give people an experience that fulfills them in some way. And when people are going into a subject like this in a fun curious mood, you shoot yourself in the foot when you provide them with a version that makes you want to wither up in your bedroom for 5 days and suck your thumb.

I didn’t like how the writers teased you from the outset with the fun version that included a meteor crash. We’re thinking – okay, this meteor had something to do with this. But it didn’t. It didn’t have anything to do with it. If anybody reads this and tells you they understand what the meteor has to do with this story, they’re lying. Including the writers. It’s unconnected nonsense.

Yes, I’m frustrated because I wanted a cool story! Instead I got the Manchester By the Sea prequel.

Always always always consider what your reader is expecting. Because if you give them an experience that’s too far removed from their expectations, they will eviscerate you. This may be the most depressing script I’ll read all year. And it’s ruined my curiosity about this subject matter.

As for the narrative choice to follow multiple characters throughout the story – I like that kind of stuff. I was a big fan of Richard Linklater’s first film, Slacker, which used that approach. It’s a fun way to tell a story.

But you do sacrifice structural cohesiveness when you go this route. Without a main character to latch onto, it’s easy for the reader to feel lost and unsure where the movie is heading. Whose story is this, really? Who does it affect the most? I don’t think that question was answered here. I definitely struggled to find someone to latch onto.

I suppose Joss Fritz is the obvious choice. He has a strong opening scene where the priest shuns him for relying on lepers for labor. Joss reminds the priest that the church takes all their money so the lepers are all he can afford. The priest disregards the criticism. So we immediately sympathize with Joss’s crappy situation. But then Joss disappears for most of the movie. Which renders his introduction moot.

Straight up, I wanted something more fun, something that didn’t take itself so seriously. It would be like writing a movie about Stonehenge and the whole film is about how they used to beat and torture people then used Stonehenge to sacrifice them to the gods. Might that be accurate? Sure. Does that mean I want to watch that movie. No. There are a million other way more fun ways to take a story about Stonehenge.

As writers, WE CONTROL THE NARRATIVE. We are god. So we get to choose what to write. It’s why Quentin Tarantino can change how Hitler died. It’s why Bridgerton can change the racial makeup of the aristocracy. It’s why Mel Gibson can make up “prima nocta” to ensure we hate the bad guys.

Coming at this story from such a sad depressing place makes one wonder, “Who would want to watch this?”

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

What I learned: If you are going to write a story that moves between characters instead of stays with a main character, you have to be GREAT at creating memorable characters in a short period of time. Because that’s what these scripts are about. We’re constantly ditching characters to meet new ones so you have to be great at setting those people up, making them interesting, making them impactful. Look at, literally, any of Tarantino’s movies. Almost every character he introduces makes an impact right away. They’re extremely memorable. You need that in these kinds of stories to make up for what we lose by not being able to connect with a main character. If readers aren’t constantly complimenting you on your characters, DON’T WRITE THIS KIND OF MOVIE.

If I had to guess why Fast and Furious didn’t do boffo numbers this weekend (it came in at 67 million – Fast 7, six years ago, made 150 million its first weekend), I’d venture it’s for the same reason I chose not to see the film myself – It doesn’t look different enough from previous incarnations of the franchise.

In Fast’s defense, it becomes difficult to differentiate yourself when you’ve had nine sequels. But it is doable. When I look back at the Fast franchise, there are three things that have gotten me to watch their films. One: doing something different. I liked the Tokyo Drift angle cause they were trying to do something different from the first two films.

Two, they promoted an action scene that was so amazing, you couldn’t not go. That fuel robbery action scene on moving fuel trucks was one of the coolest action sequences I’ve ever seen in my life. It was also the best edited action scene I’ve ever seen.

And the last thing they do well is stunt casting. They bring in some name that bathes the entire franchise in a new exciting light. That was the case with The Rock. The Rock vs. Vin Diesel? Sign me up!

They went with choice number 3 again this time around but they crapped the bed with their casting. Jason Mamoa. I’ve taken naps more interesting than Jason Mamoa’s performances. Bless Jason. He seems like a genuine guy. But the man does not move any of the needles on the dashboard.

If they want to bring us back for Fast 11, they need to do all three. New fresh concept. Come up with the best action set-piece in the entire franchise. And give us the coolest stunt-casting ever. Maybe a de-aged Jean Claude Van Damme AND a de-aged Steven Seagall? I’m kidding. Or am I? (I’m not)

I’ve been keeping tabs on the Cannes Film Festival. And by keeping tabs, I mean keeping track of how long each standing ovation is. It’s tough to keep up. At one point, a random journalist came back from the bathroom, crossing in front of the audience, and ended up getting an impromptu 3 minute standing ovation.

Indiana Jones got a respectable 5 minute standing ovation but word on the street is that the movie is kind of a mess. Indiana is running up against the same issue Fast and Furious is, which is that you’re attempting to squeeze a new experience out of an old ratty towel.

But you know what? I DON’T CARE. Because it’s Indiana Jones and even though I got burned worse than twice-cooked toast with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there’s nothing quite like the Indiana Jones experience. I’m doing my best to avoid spoilers and I’m hoping that the de-aged Indiana Jones stuff figures out a way to get us some vintage Indiana.

On Saturday night, Killers of the Flower Moon got a NINE MINUTE standing ovation, a full six minutes more than Bathroom Guy. I’m bit a torn about this movie. As you remember, I loved the book. LOVED IT. It was so freaking good. And the trailer they just released? A-PLUS. Stunning. Best trailer all year. Maybe even the best in the last five years.

But listening to the press conferences of the movie, it seems like they’ve made a major change to the book. The story of the Osage is, no doubt, sad. But what balanced out that sadness was the investigation into who was doing the killing of these Osage members. The author had built this procedural element into the mix, which had us curiously turning the pages. And that made it exciting.

But, apparently, Scorsese took that out. Which has turned the movie into one giant sad-fest. Maybe even a moralizing sad-fest. If their plan here is to make people feel bad for things other people did 150 years ago? I don’t want to be rude but go walk barefoot in a room full of loose legos.

Sure, if you go that route, it gets you standing ovations and pats on the back from people within the industry, not to mention those back pats you’re giving yourself. But it leaves audiences feeling cold. No actual moviegoers want to see a movie designed to make them feel bad about themselves.

What I’m hoping is that this is just the media doing its media thing. They have to play up these narratives cause it makes them feel good about themselves. But the reality is, we moviegoers just want a good movie. That’s it! We don’t want to be preached to. So, hopefully, that’s what this movie is. Because I’m rooting for this film. I want it to be great. It’s such an interesting story. And I’m a sucker for a great ironic premise, which is exactly what this is.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a neck-and-neck Oscar battle between this and Oppenheimer. I can’t wait to see who wins.

Okay! I’m going to finish up with a quick script-to-screen breakdown of “Air.”

I LOVED the “Air” script. It made my top 25. What made the script so good was that it FLEW BY. It had a great underdog main character whose relentless determination gave the story incomparable momentum. You both loved Sonny Vaccaro and were swept up by his pursuit of Michael Jeffrey Jordan (whose face is never seen in the script or film – love it!).

For these reasons, I was more than excited to see what it looked like in movie form. I knew that, if it hit on all cylinders, it had the potential to be the next Jerry Maguire.

I probably shouldn’t have placed those expectations on it. No, the movie isn’t bad. But it’s not nearly as good as the script. And there is one big reason for that: It doesn’t look like a movie.

It looks like a student film.

I’m sorry but it does. This is Ben Affleck’s worst directing effort to date. And while Matt Damon may not have phoned it in, he occasionally barks it in from the other room.

The entire movie feels like it was done via a series of second takes. Not a single scene feels thought-through or lived in. You could practically hear the A.D. saying, “We’re running out of time. We gotta keep moving. You only get two takes for this setup!”

Matt Damon is giving us these perfunctory performances where you can sense that he hasn’t fully memorized his lines. Compare his acting in this movie to Good Will Hunting where you could tell he’d tried EVERY SINGLE ANGLE in every one of those scenes so he knew what worked best by the time the camera was rolling. Not even remotely the case here.

And where is the money? Show it to me!

Where’s the money on the screen?? That’s one of the ways you can tell a good director. They can make a movie look amazing for way less money than they wanted. This film is the opposite! It cost 90 million dollars! Yet it looks like a 15 million dollar film!!! They shot it in a bunch of rooms! I could’ve done that.

The one set they built – Nike headquarters – is dark, boring, and empty. Where are the people??? Could you not afford extras?  Compare that to the agency set in Jerry Maguire. You could feel the life in that set. Here, it looks like they turned half the lights off to save money.

You may say, Carson, the money is in Matt Damon and Ben Affleck! They’re movie stars. You gotta pay for that. Sorry: BUT NO! This is Matt and Ben’s first movie for their new production company. They shouldn’t be getting paid anything. They should be putting every single dollar on screen.

I cannot emphasize how lifelessly this was directed. It was as if they went to each actor’s home and did close-ups and had them read lines and then stitched the performances together via clever editing. Go watch this film. It’s 90% talking heads in dark rooms. What is this? A 1970s TV show??? Where did the money go???? 90 million dollars!?? Robert Rodriquez made a better looking film for 7000 dollars!!!

I’m baffled.

But you know what? This shows the power of a great script. The movie survived this dreadful display of directing solely because of how good the script was. Even with Matt Damon getting his lines phoned in through an earpiece, the dialogue was still good. His character’s desire to sign Michael Jordan kept us engaged.

But it never ceases to amaze me how a director’s interpretation of a script can screw up what the original author had in mind. The directing here needed a shot of adrenaline. Ben Affleck is a good director. He won an Oscar! Which is why I will never understand what he was thinking with this one.

Every second-to-last Friday of the month, I will post the best five loglines submitted to me. You, the readers of the site, will vote for your favorite in the comments section. I then review the script of the logline that received the most votes the following Friday.

If you didn’t enter this month’s showdown, don’t worry! We do this every month. Just get me your logline submission by the second-to-last Thursday (June 22 is the next one) and you’re in the running! All I need is your title, genre, and logline. Send all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com.

If you’re one of the many writers who feel helpless when it comes to loglines, I offer logline consultations. They’re cheap – just $25.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.

Are we ready?  Voting ends Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time!

Good luck to all!

Title: Personal Statement
Genre: Drama
Logline: When her family hires an independent admissions consultant to help craft Ivy League-worthy college application essays, a Chinese-American high school student must fight to control her life story and protect her identity.

Title: Petal to the Metal
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: Maggie finds herself the target of her sister’s wedding-thirsty bridesmaids after unintentionally catching the bouquet, messing up the bride-to-be queue.

Title: Broken Vessels
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A book collector replies to an ad for one of the rarest books in existence, only to be held captive by the seller, who makes the jaw-dropping claim that the two of them have been locked in a centuries-long battle over the murder of his wife.

Title: The Dinosaur War
Genre: Drama/True Story
Logline: In their quest to unearth long-hidden fossils, America’s first two paleontologists (and bitter adversaries) wage an epic feud that includes bribery, theft, vandalism and violence. As the rivalry intensifies, they risk their reputations – and their lives – in an all-consuming race to discover new species of dinosaurs.

Title: The Head Writer
Genre: Dark comedy
Logline: A schlubby, long-suffering late night comedy writer’s simmering anger and jealousy begin to boil over into madness as he suspects that his telegenic A-list boss is trying to replace him.