Genre: Comedy/Satire
Premise: (from Black List) When Tabitha, a struggling foster kid, wins a contest to become part of the BIRDIES, a popular daily YouTube channel featuring the radiant and enigmatic Mama Bird and her diverse brood of adopted children, she soon learns that things get dark when the cameras turn off.
About: This one finished with 16 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Colin Bannon, has been working in the industry since 2008, when he was a Location Production Assistant for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! He also wrote another Black List script, “First Ascent,” about a mountain climber who does a climb on a haunted mountain.
Writer: Colin Bannon
Details: 108 pages

One of the many Youtube families.

Have you ever watched these family Youtube channels?

When I was at my brother’s place recently, my niece was obsessed with them. And while, on the one hand, they were fun, I couldn’t help but wonder what psychological effects the channel would have on the children. No matter how you spin it, it wasn’t healthy.

So I was expecting someone to write a script about this sooner or later. It’s too juicy of a topic not to and it’s a fresh take on the child star phenomenon, which is something that hasn’t had a fresh take in a while. Youtube (and social media in general) has created this new fertile plot of land for movie ideas, and today’s script might be the best commentary on that world I’ve seen yet.

Tabitha is a 13 year old orphan who lives in a miserable “Annie” type orphanage. Her only happiness comes form her favorite Youtube reality show, “The Birdies,” about a married couple who adopted a bunch of kids and now has one of the largest audiences on the service.

That’s changing, though. The family’s all-star daughter, Nightingale, has finally turned 18, which means she can legally leave the home and go off-grid, as far away from cameras as she can get. The good news for Tabitha is, this means they need to adopt someone new into the family! And that’s, like, Tabitha’s dream!

So Tabitha sneaks out to Best Buy to record an audition tape on one of the sample iPads. When the blue-shirted Best Buy employee spots what she’s doing, he charges forward to stop her. She rips the iPad off the security chain and goes running through the store while the video waits to upload. Just as she’s at 97%, the employees grab her and kill the upload. NOOOOOOOOOO.

After hours of crying, the other orphans tell Tabitha that her video went viral! Someone else in the store taped her. Which means – you guessed it – SHE GETS PICKED! The next day, Mama Bird (always dressed to the nines), Papa Bird (always holding a camera) and the other five children, all of them a perfect rainbow of diverse ethnicities, run to greet their new sister.

The next thing Tabitha knows, she’s IN THE BIRDIE MANSION, the home she’s been watching religiously every day for the past 8 years! And she has her own room. And she gets a brand new digital camera, iPad, iPhone, iwatch – everything an influencer needs. Yes, that’s right. Tabitha is now a content creator. And she’ll be expected, just like the rest of the family, to generate content for the daily show.

Tabitha then learns the truth about Mama Bird. When the cameras turn off at 8pm every day, so does big happy charismatic Mama Bird. She’s replaced by a cyclone of depression, of Youtube burnout. Of worry and fear and obsession. All Mama Bird has cared about for the last decade are subscribers and views. And both are plunging every day due to Nightingale leaving. What Tabitha doesn’t know is that Mama Bird is counting on her to save the channel. And for that, she will expect Tabitha to do many things she doesn’t want to do.

The first thing I want to point out about this is the clever setup, which is easy to miss since it’s subtle. Bannon is satirizing the “Youtube Family” genre by doing what any good writer would do. You take someone who doesn’t know that world and throw them into it. They then act as an avatar for us, as we ourselves don’t understand that world either. So when Tabitha is thrust into this family, we feel a connection with her and want her to succeed.

But Bannon faced an interesting problem in this setup. You can’t create a new 13 year old family member out of thin air. So how do get your heroine (Tabitha) into this family? The solution Bannon came up with was to make the entire family orphans. Now it makes sense why they would want to bring someone new into the family.

In addition to this, it adds more edge to the concept, since “adopting” isn’t that different from “casting.” You have to be a certain type of person (bubbly, charming, energetic) to make it into the family. From there, the level of love you receive is dependent on how many views you get.

Which is why this is such a clever idea. In the past, they explored similar concepts (child stars being worked like dogs) on TV shows. But in those shows, you *expected* the producers and executives to be assh*les. It came with the territory. But here, the producers are also the parents. So work and love are intertwined. Which is way more f*cked up for a child than simply needing to get ratings for your boss.

And Bannon understands this concept so well. I read a lot of scripts where the writer has come up with a good idea, but they don’t totally understand that idea, which results in a lot of non-specific scenes and characters that don’t leave an impression. It’s the difference between me making a cheeseburger and In and Out making a cheeseburger. In and Out eats, sleeps, and breathes cheeseburgers. They know that world so specifically that there’s nothing I could do to make a cheeseburger as delicious as theirs.

But let me give you a more specific example from the script itself.

There’s this great moment not long after the first act. Tabitha has just moved into the Birdie mansion, and after they finish taping for the day, Tabitha goes upstairs to see her bedroom for the first time. This is the first time in her life that she’s had her own room. So she breaks down. One of the other kids sees this and gives her a puzzled look. “The cameras are off,” the kid says. Tabitha looks back at him, quizzically. “You don’t have to cry. The cameras are off.”

It’s a perfect encapsulation of what these kids’ lives are. Every seemingly important moment requires a camera-worthy response. They’ve been trained to give that response when needed. If someone’s emoting without a camera taping it, that doesn’t make any sense to them at all.

Also, this script is another point for the power of simplicity – in this case, the power of a simple theme. A writer recently sent me the theme of their movie and it was like 8 sentences long and I chuckled and said, “This isn’t a theme. This is a thesis statement.” Big chunky long themes are not only unhelpful, they can actually hurt your script. The more you’re trying to manipulate the story so that it connects with every component of your giant unwieldy theme, the more confused the reader’s going to be.

The theme here is: The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

The theme is powerful not only because of how simple it is, but because every person on the planet understands it. Simple almost always means ‘powerful.’ That power comes from the theme sticking with us. Someone who watches this movie is definitely going to remember it whenever they’re thinking of quitting their work or leaving a relationship. Is the grass really going to be greener? Or does the other side of the hill have a Mama Bird waiting for us?

There’s only one part of the script I didn’t get. The midpoint shift has Mama Bird turning Tabitha into Nightingale (signified by giving Tabitha Nightingale’s old wig) to stop the views from plunging. I’m not sure why she would think this was a good idea. The viewers aren’t going to mistake Tabitha for Nightingale. Actually, they’re probably going to get mad. (“why is this girl pretending to be someone she isn’t?”). So I wasn’t gung-ho about that choice. But everything else here is spot on. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Good stuff!

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

What I learned: The “Eventually Is Gonna Snap” Character. I recently spotted this character on the show about the finance industry, “Industry.” This one worker was so determined to make it at the firm that he never left work, never went home, never did anything social. You just KNEW he was going to crack. And he did, in a horrible way. Here, we get that character with Bustard, one of the “birdie kids” in the family. Bustard isn’t as quick-witted or charismatic as the other kids and is, therefore, constantly being reminded by Mama Bird to up his game. You can see him desperately trying to do better – going so far as to repeat the word “subscribers” out loud thousands of times so he can say it without his foreign accent. Eventually, Bustard cracks and becomes suicidal. Why do these characters work? It’s the car-crash principle. If there’s a car crash up ahead, you spend all that time inching forward in your car anticipating how bad it could be, and, of course, when you get there, you have to look. A “Eventually Is Gonna Snap” character ensures that the reader will keep reading because they have to stick around to see that character wreck.

Genre: Dramedy/Musical
Premise: A terminally ill, improvident father spends the last day of his life touring NYC with his estranged daughter, and has only a few hours to right a lifetime of wrongs…and make 1.2 million dollars.
About: This is the 6TH BEST SCRIPT from my contest, which had over 2000 entries. The Misery Index also finished Top 50 in last year’s Nichol contest.
Writer: David Burton
Details: 97 pages

Should we bring Robert Downey Jr. back to his roots?

If my contest were awarding scripts for how interesting they were, Osculum Inflame would be number one on the list. The Misery Index would be number two. It’s sort of like Big Fish meets Little Miss Sunshine. It’s one of those scripts that you’re not sure what to do with. And I mean that in a good way. You feel the power of something special being presented. Yet you’re not sure what to do with that power. Maybe you guys can help.

40-something New Yorker, Harvey Winters, has been informed by his doctor that he’s got inoperable cancer and he’s going to die. So on the one day of the week he gets to see his daughter, 11 year-old Chloe, he decides to apply for a 20 thousand dollar loan in the hopes that he and Chloe can turn it into 1.2 million dollars. Why 1.2 million dollars? We’re not told yet.

Harvey is a talker. He’s got a lot of things to say. Whereas your average dad will check his phone and point when you ask him where you’re headed, this is a typical Harvey response: “This way. Definitely this way. Two blocks until we get to the cafe where Crazy Joey Gallo was gunned down by Albert Anastacio in front of his children. Then we turn right and carry on until we see the apartment building where Kitty Genovese was repeatedly stabbed while 38 onlookers did nothing. From there, it’s a breeze.”

Harvey appears to have two goals here – have fun with his daughter and look for opportunities to make money. The first stop is a boxing match in Little Italy. Harvey plans to bet on himself to win. But when his opponent turns out to be a really good female kangaroo, he gets knocked out in the first round. This sends Harvey back to the hospital, where they inform him that the head-hit has given him a unique condition where he imagines everyone breaking into song. Which means the rest of our script is part-musical.

The next stop is an old genius stock broker friend of Harvey’s, a guy who was so smart, he invented “The Misery Index,” which can basically predict catastrophe with 75% accuracy. But it turns out his buddy’s gone a little cuckoo, a fact that is confirmed when he randomly hops out of their moving cab to avoid the government.

Harvey and Chloe attempt to get back some of those losses by participating in the 110th Annual Saddest Song In New York Contest. Harvey recruits a lookalike for the once famous artist, Christopher Cross, to help him win. But Fake Cross is on a different career path these days, and instead of singing one of his classic saddies, he sings a new song about killing his new girlfriend for cheating on him. They don’t win.

To add insult to injury, Fake Christopher Cross steals Harvey’s suitcase of money when he’s not looking, and disappears. This leaves Harvey, who’s terminally ill, penniless and prone to breaking into song, with nothing. Well, except for Chloe. And he figures that’s how it should be. Who cares about money and things and forced song singing when you have the most beautiful perfect daughter in the world with you for a day? Yeah, Harvey’s just fine with how this day ended up.

Take a look at these first ten pages if you get a chance. They’re REALLY good. Harvey, through voice over, tells us this complex backstory about how he ended up with cancer. It’s so unique and specific and fun that if this were a First 10 Pages Contest, this script would’ve won.

David is also really good with dialogue. Here’s Harvey describing to Chloe the day he proposed to her mother:

That fun back and forth banter between the two lasts the entire script and it’s one of many things that helped the script stand out. Another thing David did well was take us through a city we’ve seen tens of thousands of times before and made it feel different. This is important so pay attention. Especially if you’re a new writer. Most writers give us the version of something we already expect.

So if the movie is set in New York, the newbie writer is going to give us Time’s Square. We’re going to get the Empire State Building. We’ll of course have a major scene in Central Park. This script is not that. We do go to some well-known places, such as Little Italy, but the next thing you know we’re in an underground boxing match. I never knew where they were going next. It felt like an adventure in a far off land. Not New York City.

Another thing I liked was the choice to make the movie one day. Whenever you’re experimenting – writing something unique – consider condensing the time frame. It artificially gives a story structure it normally wouldn’t have. Without the one-day thing, you’ve got a dying man wandering around New York for weeks or months on end. It’s much harder to structure a story around that. This kept things tight.

However, even with that constraint, we still run into one of Misery Index’s biggest problems. It’s not clear what we’re doing here. We’ve got a suitcase full of money which we’re trying to turn into a lot more money but we’re not sure why. The reason this is problematic is that audiences struggle to root for characters when the consequences of their journey are unclear. Let’s say Harvey fails to turn the money into 1.2 million, what’s changed? Nothing. He didn’t succeed. But we didn’t know what he was trying to do anyway. So we don’t even know what he’s failed at.

I suppose the argument would be that the desire to make 1.2 million is a mystery and audiences will want to see that mystery solved. And we do eventually find out what the money is for. But I know, for me, I was more frustrated than curious about the plan. I wanted to know what the reason was we were doing all this.

I think if this script is going to reach its full potential, it needs a clearer destination. Sure, Little Miss Sunshine’s beauty pageant had zero stakes attached to it. But it still gave the movie a laser-like focus. Wherever we were in that movie, we always knew that they needed to get to that beauty pageant.

The question is, does David’s insane level of talent overshadow this weak story goal? And I think the answer to that question will change depending on who’s reading this. Because my mind kept changing throughout the script. One scene I’m like, “Yes!” Next scene I’m like, “No!” Next say I’m back to “Yes!” again. I mean what other writer on the planet casually drops a Mexican Independent Baseball Association backstory subplot into a screenplay? As far as I know, David is the only one.

I’m curious if that talent is enough to win you guys over. The good news is, we can all find out together. Download the script here!

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

What I learned: HARVEY: “No. Christopher Cross has bushy hair and a big beard. He looks cool.” CHRIS: “Ah. Well, see, that’s Christopher Cross from 1980. I’m a Christopher Cross 2019 lookalike.” —- Don’t date your script by adding dates! Present dates and years are bad for your script. Why? Because let’s say you’re reading a script that references the year 2017. What are you going to think? Obviously, that the script was written in 2017. Which means the script is now FOUR YEARS OLD. Seasoned readers will immediately wonder why hasn’t it been able to attract any serious attention in those four years? It’s evil but this is how the reader’s mind works. So stay away from years if possible. But if you must use a year, stay on top of it. Always change it when the new year comes!

Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Black List) After being haunted by a terrifying entity, a twelve-year-old boy teams up with his eccentric uncle and three other misfits to form their own ghost club, investigating all the paranormal sites in town so that he can find and confront the ghost that’s tormenting him.
About: Today’s script finished Top 10 on the 2020 Black List. It is adapted from the novel by Craig Davidson, who’s been compared to Chuck Palahniuk. Davidson isn’t afraid to get dirty when promoting his work. After releasing a novel in 2007 called The Fighter, Davidson participated in a fully sanctioned Canadian boxing match against Toronto poet Michael Knox (he lost) and then did the same for the novel’s US release, boxing against Jonathan Ames. He lost again. Talk about doing everything you can to get your work out there!
Writers: Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman (based on the 2019 novel by Craig Davidson)
Details: 110 pages

Back to the Future is about as perfect a movie as I’ve ever seen. But when I look back at it, not with the fondness of nostalgia, but with the critical eye of a screenwriting enthusiast, it has its fair share of odd choices. For starters, a 17 year old boy is best friends with a weird 65 year old outcast scientist. That may not seem strange at first glance. But picture yourself reading that script for the first time before the movie was made. Wouldn’t we be asking, in what reality would a cool high school rocker kid be friends with a weird old scientist? If I was giving notes on that script, I would tell the writer, “This relationship isn’t believable.” And yet we all accepted it without question.

On top of that, the core of the story involves a woman trying to sex up her son. Granted, she doesn’t know it’s her son. But we do. Why do we accept this? Why do we laugh instead of cringe? It speaks to the randomness of creativity. Sometimes, as artists, we must go with our gut even if we know what we’re writing isn’t supposed to work. I bring this up because, today, we have a script that reminds me a lot of Back to the Future. It’s about kids befriending much older adults and going on haunted excursions together. Will it work? Only one way to find out.

Jake is 12 years old when something big, dark and scary appears above his bed. It is this experience that sends Jake to get help from his Uncle Calvin, an expert in the occult. In fact, Calvin even owns an occult store (called the Occultorium). When Jake tells Calvin about what he witnessed, Calvin becomes convinced that Jake is being visited by a wandering ghost.

Meanwhile, a Native American family moves into town and Jake befriends the boy in the family, 12 year old Billy, and Billy’s skater girl sister, 14 year old Dove. The two join up with Calvin’s co-worker, Lexington, and start investigating haunted places around town where Jake’s evil bedside ghost may be hiding.

First is an old train tunnel. Calvin, who’s way too into these ghost spots for a 40-something man, tells the story of a kid who went into the tunnel at the urging of some mean kids only to get clocked and killed by a train. It is said that the spirt of the kid still lingers here. And when Jake goes into the tunnel to check, he momentarily sees the boy, and runs for his life. Afterwards, however, Jake isn’t sure if he really saw something or it was just his imagination.

Next, they go to a sunken car in a lake. In one of the more blatant examples of child endangerment, Calvin sends Jake underwater to see if the ghost is in the car. This after Calvin explains that a young couple’s car crashed into the lake and the girl died. It is said that the driver still haunts the lake, looking for her. But alas, they don’t find Jake’s bedside ghost here either.

Finally, they head to an old house that’s halfway burned down. Calvin explains that a couple lived here and let a man in who wanted to use their phone, only to have him take the wife at knife-point and slice her neck. She would later die and the husband ended up going insane, which ended in him burning the house down with him in it.

But this time, Jake doesn’t get a chance to go inside. That’s because something happens to Calvin after he tells the story. He goes into a deep haze and starts knocking on the front door. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK. Freaked out, the kids all run away. And it is only when Jake tells his mother what happened, that she explains the true story behind her brother, a story that will make everyone reevaluate the three haunted sights they visited.

Saturday Night Ghost Club is one of those scripts that’s hard to get a handle on initially, like a UFC fighter who you’re still trying to gauge. Is he a boxer? A martial-artist? A grappler? For the first 60 pages of Saturday Night Ghost Club, I thought I was reading a cheesy kids movie about ghost-hunting.

But as the script hits its second half, something changes. It starts with Dove, who we realize is way more complex than initially presented. It turns out she’s highly bi-polar, capable of going on manic rants, and making a routine of taking the bus out of town as far as it will take her before her mom retrieves her for the 20th time.

One of the primary differences between amateur and pro work is character depth. Character depth can be explored in many different ways. It can be as simple as a character flaw. It can be someone fighting their past. It can be an internal battle where someone is fighting depression or addiction. But character depth is really anything that goes below the surface. That was my issue with the first half of this script. The kids were all surface-level. Calvin was surface-level. The mom was surface-level.

Which is why it was so strange that, all of a sudden, Saturday Night Ghost Club became an intense character piece, to the point where I was getting really emotional at the end. (Spoilers) As it turns out, these haunted places they’ve been visiting were not the locations of random acts of haunting, but rather connected to Calvin himself, who, it turns out, lost his wife in the home that was burned. Who crashed their car into the lake as he rushed her to the hospital. Who had his first kiss with her in the train tunnel.

Which makes Calvin one of the most tragic figures on this year’s Black List. The poor guy is so traumatized by his loss that he’s simply blocked it out. Replaced it with this goofy endeavor of “hunting” for “ghosts.” As long as he’s coming up with potions to defeat slime-gobblers, he doesn’t have to face the truth. And that was damn heartbreaking!

Ahh, but all is not perfect. I’m not fond of the late twist that requires your hero to forget everything about his life. I’ve encountered that more times than you’d think. And while they do a pretty good job of it here, it’s still a tough sell. Even if you say Calvin was in a coma and the doctors decided not to tell him the truth cause they were afraid it would be too much to handle, it still comes off as convenient for the movie that this major character happens to forget everything that resulted in the script’s cool last second twist.

Not to mention, if this guy is as mentally unstable as they’re saying, why are you allowing your 12 year old kid to hang out with them 18 hours a day? There’s no one who knows how mentally deranged Calvin is more than Jake’s mom. Yet she’s got no problem letting the two hang together.

Then again, one of the greatest horror-thrillers of all time, Psycho, uses this conceit, as Norman Bates has such an extreme mental break that he occasionally thinks he’s his dead mother. I’m just not sure you can pull that off in 2021 the way you could back then. People know so much more about mental health these days that you have to treat the subject matter with an additional amount of care. But who knows? Even as I was questioning the logic of it, I was experiencing an emotional reaction. So that means it worked on some level.

It took me a while to get into this one. I thought for sure I was going to give it a “wasn’t for me.” But it rounded that last corner like a bat out of hell and sped its way to a solid “worth the read.”

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

What I learned: One of my fears going into this turned out to be a valid. It didn’t feel right that the club consisted of kids AND adults. Why? Because when you have adults around, YOU FEEL SAFE. That was a big reason the first half of the script wasn’t working for me. We’d go to these haunted places, put our kids into scary situations, but always with adults a few feet away. Now that I’ve read the whole thing and know that the story is about Calvin, I realize he has to be there. But if you’re making a scary movie, you need your big scares to actually be scary. And if you’re using an element that reassures rather than frightens, you might want to think about if that’s a good idea. The scariest movie of the last five years, “It,” is terrifying for that very reason – the kids are all alone when they encounter the scares.

The saddest thing about Scriptshadow Showdowns? Only one gunslinger survives.

Tomorrow is the SUPER SHOWDOWN we’ve all been waiting for where the winners of the last four Amateur Showdowns face off. Considering that a previous Amateur Showdown winner took the top spot on the 2020 Black List, I can only imagine what will happen with the winner of Super Showdown!!! Is an 8-figure sale on the table? I don’t see why not.

But that’s not what today’s article is about. Today is about the eight scripts that finished at the bottom of the last four showdowns. Amateur Showdown mirrors Hollywood in that if a potential reader doesn’t think the script sounds interesting, they won’t open it. You almost have to imagine Amateur Showdown times 100. Or Amateur Showdown times 1000. That’s how many entries you’re up against. It’s only once you internalize that, that you realize how enticing your script idea needs to be to stand out from those other 5000.

So I’m going to break down the eight loglines that finished in last place and see if we can identify weaknesses that might help the writers – and, in turn, you guys – understand why the scripts didn’t score well. It may have nothing to do with the concept. Sometimes it’s the execution that’s the problem. But usually, if a script isn’t getting a lot of love, there’s something faulty in the concept. Today, we’re going to identify those faults.

Before we get to that, for reference’s sake, here are the winners of the last four Amateur Showdowns…

FIRST WEEK WINNER
Title: Our Hero
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: When 3 nerdy middle school kids discover the secret lair of a burned-out superhero; the world’s most powerful man agrees to be their friend in exchange for keeping his secret.

SECOND WEEK WINNER
Title: Bad Influence
Genre: Horror Comedy
Logline: After a popular child influencer gets possessed by the devil, her family, who rely on her income, struggle to keep her brand alive.

THIRD WEEK WINNER
Title: Archer
Genre: War
Logline: 1415 — As the English army marches towards doom in the greatest battle of the medieval age, a young archer seeks redemption for his past under the cruel tutelage of his ruthless and invincible sergeant. A medieval FURY meets PLATOON.

FOURTH WEEK WINNER
Title: POSSESSIONS
Genre: Horror
Logline: An estranged daughter returns to her childhood home to help with her mother’s extreme hoarding only to discover her mother’s cursed by one of her many, many possessions.

They will be facing off tomorrow so get ready to vote! Okay, now let’s try to fix the scripts that got the lowest number of votes.

Title: Violet Sun
Genre: Horror
Logline: Born with a severe allergy to sunlight, a maladjusted teenager struggles to cure his disease by consuming the healthy blood of unsuspecting victims so he can win back the girl of his dreams before she leaves his life forever.

Analysis: I thought this was going to do a lot better. One of the most common pieces of screenwriting advice you hear is to identify a successful concept then find a fresh angle on it. This is a vampire movie without actual vampires. I felt that was a good pitch. Not to mention, it’s been a while since we’ve had a big vampire movie. And since vampires ALWAYS come back, I thought this was showing up at just the right time. But that’s the weird thing about timing. It’s always too soon until one day it isn’t. And it usually “isn’t” when someone comes up with a killer screenplay in the genre. Alas, maybe Violet Sun just didn’t stick the landing.

Title: IN A FIX
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Amid growing tensions with a rival gang, a fixer must quit her job before her controlling crime boss discovers she is pregnant.

Analysis: I’m not as surprised that this one struggled. For starters, I don’t think everyone knows what a “fixer” is. It’s a general enough term that a lot of people won’t know what’s going on. And like I always remind everyone, generalities get you nowhere in loglines. It’s the specifics that win over the reader. In other words, it isn’t the “family lives on a farm and must avoid a world of monsters” that gets you to read A Quiet Place. It’s that the monsters have super-hearing which means even the slightest sound can get you killed. I’ve also found that words like “gang” without context can be logline killers. What gang? There are thousands of gangs. What’s unique about this one? Again, BE MORE SPECIFIC. Finally, it isn’t clear why the complication in the logline – being pregnant – is so bad. Is there a known pregnancy bias in this line of work? So this one had a lot of issues and my guess is that it’s low vote count had a lot to do with readers simply not opening the script. This is my weekly reminder to get a logline evaluation, guys (e-mail “logline consult” to carsonreeves!@gmail.com). I can help you avoid these problems.

Title: Get Woke
Genre: Buddy-comedy
Logline: An old-school police officer joins forces with his tech-savvy teenage daughter to crack the case of a social media influencer’s cyber stalker.

Analysis: I was so bummed when this one didn’t do well. It was one of my favorite titles. I think this is another case of choosing the wrong things to focus on in the logline. I don’t know what the actual story is (it’s been forever since I read the first ten pages) but I would hope that the specifics of the setup are more interesting than what I’m seeing here. We start off with too common-sounding of a team-up. It’s the “old school” police officer. How many times have we seen that in a logline? A million? That’s okay, though, if you get us excited about the team-up partner. But all we hear about her is that she’s “tech-savvy.” That’s the wrong thing to focus on in a concept like this. When you hear “Get Woke,” you’re immediately thinking of political correctness and social issues. But there’s no mention of either anywhere in the logline. In fact, if this wasn’t titled “Get Woke,” I would think it was silly comedy about the internet. So there’s a disconnect there. Lesson? Make sure your logline and title are simpatico.

Title: Unchained
Genre: Action
Logline: Two fallen out sister-soldiers must reunite and reconcile as they fight their way through a train of mercenaries to reclaim a mysterious WMD-classified object that drove them apart — before the ride reaches its destination.

Analysis: One of the reasons I put this one into the showdown is because I wanted some variety and there weren’t a lot of straight action scripts to choose from. But even as I was putting it up, I sensed that it would struggle. As someone pointed out in the comments, I don’t know what a “sister-soldier” is. Is it two sisters who were also soldiers and the writer just wanted to pare that down into a combo-word for faster reading? Is it that whenever two women fought in the army together, they are known as “sister-soldiers?” It’s frustrating because I don’t know. One of the fastest ways to kill a logline is to confuse the reader early. And there’s a specific reason for that. The reader says to himself, “If this writer can’t make one sentence clear, how is he going to make 110 pages of sentences clear?” I would’ve also told the reader what the WMD is. Once again, you do not pull in readers with generalities. You pull them in with specifics. “WMD” makes this sound like every other action movie ever.

Title: The Article
Genre: Contained Drama/Thriller
Logline: When the CEO of a large media news company invites a troubled Male escort to her apartment……things are not as they seem.

Analysis: I thought this one was going to do better. I liked the twist of a female hiring a male escort instead of what we usually see, which is the other way around. I liked the contained component of the story. I liked how the large media company implied that there were some stakes on the line. It’s not like this escort is showing up at some middle manager’s one-bedroom apartment. But now that I’m looking at the logline again, I can see why it didn’t do well. It contains the logline-killing “ending to nowhere” tag. “They get stuck in a haunted house where they realize… they are not alone.” “An antiquities dealer is presented with a choice… that will change her life forever.” “A politician must win the election while keeping… a horrifying secret from his past.” TELL US THE THING!!! TELL IT TO US! The “thing” is what gets us excited. It’s what gets us to read. Why would you ever not include it in the logline? Do you really think someone’s going to get excited to read something where someone… “experiences a terror they’ve never experienced before?” What’s the terror???? I think if the writer had included what ‘wasn’t as it seemed,’ he would’ve gotten a lot more reads and, therefore, a lot more votes.

Title: Big Stick
Genre: 1 Hr. TV Drama
Logline: After a crushing fall from grace, a Boston cop/mom with an anxiety disorder retreats to her California surf community where her rogue investigation into a young girl’s murder teases a career do-over requiring the takedown of a powerful judge and her surf-hero son.

Analysis: To be fair, this is a feature-driven contest. Having a TV idea is a handicap. With that said, there are a LOOOOOOOOTTTTT of TV ideas being pitched all over town. And while they don’t need to be as high concept as movie concepts, they do need some aspect of them that stands out. The most specific component of this logline is surfing. Everything else is general to the TV landscape(fall from grace, a girl has been murdered, returning home). So I would at least hope that there was something interesting going on with the surf aspect in the logline. But it feels like window dressing. ‘Oh yeah, and people surf here too!’ Maybe if the girl murdered was a surfer and the protagonists’s son is also a surfer, and the logline hints at the idea that he may be involved, now you’re getting closer to an appealing concept. But as it stands, nothing in this logline screams, “Oh my God, I have to read this now.” I’m not saying every logline has to do that. But I started out this article reminding you of just how many concepts your script is in competition with. So if you’re not going to write something that has an “Oh my God, I have to read this now” concept, you have to accept that your job just got a lot harder. Cause you’re going to be trying to get people to read something that, when they hear the pitch, they’re not going to be excited to read. That’s always a tougher road.

Title: Kelsey’s Crossing
Genre: Drama
Logline: When the helicopter she’s riding in over the Sonoran desert crashes in Mexico, the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel has to rely on a group of migrants to survive the dangers and brutality of the desert and help her travel 40 miles to get back to American soil.

Analysis: I was surprised this didn’t do better. This logline was one of, maybe, twenty-five in the entire contest, that truly understood how to develop a concept with irony. I don’t know if the execution was lackluster or what. But as I’m re-reading the logline now, I’m noticing one thing that may have hurt it. This part: “the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel.” While that does convey the concept to the reader, it doesn’t put an image in their head. It doesn’t even tell us if it’s a man or a woman (even though pronouns tell us later and the title implies it). Nailing the identity of this person is key to making this logline work. For example, if I told you the main character looked like Natalie Portman and wore a hoodie, that’s going to put a different movie in your head than if I told you she looked like Blake Lively and was quickly becoming Fox News’ next big anchor. Imagery is so important in envisioning movies so when you have an idea like this one where look is so important, make sure to tell us what the person looks like.

Title: Ambrosia
Genre: Time Travel/Heist
Logline: Three anxiety-ridden young adults discover an experimental drug that allows them to time travel back 36 hours after each overdose. As the side effects intensify and their tolerance builds, each time travel back becomes reduced (16 hours, 8 hours, etc), but they keep going back anyways to perfect a bank robbery. Meanwhile, the town’s leading detective chases them down.

Analysis: I think this is a pretty good idea but anyone who’s read a lot of scripts before knows that when time-travel rules get even a little bit complicated, the story falls apart quickly. Props to Alex because he makes the concept sound as simple as it can. But I heard right away in the comments that people were getting confused reading the script, and that wasn’t surprising at all. I do think this idea of continuing to go back in time to execute a heist could work. But I’d encourage Alex to simplify the rules. It’s like beating a dead horse at this point. I always warn writers away from complicated time travel. But they keep ignoring me!

Genre: Teen Comedy
Premise: A young Asian-American teen basketball fanatic who just wants to dunk and get the girl ends up learning much more about himself, his best friends, and his mother.
About: This script finished all the way up at NUMBER 2 on the 2020 Black List, which was just released this week. While there hasn’t been an official announcement yet, it looks to be set up over at Disney +. The writer, Jingyi Shoa, was a staff writer on the show, Boomerang.
Writer: Jingyi Shao
Details: 109 pages

One of the reasons I started this site was because I wanted to learn more about these successful screenwriters who sold screenplays for a million dollars. Their success seemed magical to me, almost intimidatingly so. Were they always to remain enigmatic mysteries? Unobtainable gods whose keys to success would forever be locked up in some secret screenwriting vault behind the Hollywood sign?

There were times where I thought the answer was yes. Monday, the readers of this site learned that it doesn’t take magic. What it takes is writing a lot of screenplays and trying to get better with each one. That’s what Angela and Mayhem showed you. Success is obtainable. But you do have to work for it. It’s not going to be handed to you.

Now that I’m thinking about it, both Mayhem and Angela were very active on the internet – posting and getting their scripts read repeatedly. Taking feedback. Using that feedback to improve. Neither of them buried their heads in the sand and dogmatically declared, “My way or the highway.” They embody the 2020 screenwriting path to success. You got to get your work out there. If the only people who see your script are you and your cat, you’re never going to get anywhere. Unless your cat becomes the president of Paramount.

And with that PSA out of the way, join me and Chang. Cause we’re going to show you how to dunk!

Chang is 16 years old and plays bass in the marching band. And he loves basketball. He doesn’t love it enough to play on any teams. Or, I should say, the teams don’t love him enough to let him play on the team. But that doesn’t stop Chang’s enthusiasm for the fastest growing sport in the world.

Chang’s world of basketball love is interrupted one day by real love! A fellow sophomore named Kristy, she of the emo variety, moves into town and joins the band. She takes an immediate liking to Chang but then the worst thing imaginable happens. MATT. Yup, that darn Matt. Greek God. Beautiful blue eyes. Star basketball player. Worst of all, he can dunk like nobody’s bidness.

Once Kristy starts hanging around Matt, Chang realizes that to get her back in his orbit he’ll need a hail kristy. So after a basketball game, in front of the whole school, Chang bets Matt that he can dunk a basketball by the end of the season. That would be 12 weeks from now. Matt laughs. This 5’8” kid who’s not even on the team? Yeah right. But you’re on.

In a stroke of luck, Chang meets an AT&T rep, Devin, who used to be the star of the Romanian league. Chang asks Devin to teach him how to dunk and Devin’s in. But only if he can put it on his Youtube channel. The next 12 weeks entail a lot of Rocky style montage training until Chang is literally within one inch of dunking. But time has run out. His first dunk will have to happen on the big day! By the way, this is the midpoint of the screenplay. And, wouldn’t you know it, Chang does it! He dunks! In front of the whole school!

When the dunk heard round the school uploads to Devin’s channel, it goes viral. Which leads to local news wanting to interview Chang. Then ESPN. Then, while he’s at ESPN, he meets NBA basketball player Gilbert Arenas, who takes him out to a strip joint! Where Chang makes it rain. As the Chang legend grows, so too does a rumor. A rumor that, if it gains traction, could end all of this. That rumor is… Chang cheated. That Chang… cannot dunk!

First off, I love when writers play with the expected format. On the first page, instead of “Based on a true story,” we get, “Based on countless true stories.” As if to imply that thousands of Asian teenagers everywhere are trying to get the girl by learning how to dunk. That single line tells you exactly what you’re in for with Chang Can Dunk. This is turn-your-mind off 1200 degrees of surface-level entertainment.

But if we’re being real, this script is not a #2 worthy Black List script. It doesn’t have enough meat on it. And I’ll tell you exactly where it’s lacking – character development. A script at this level with this kind of story needs heavier character development to earn its place. Scripts like Edge of Seventeen come to mind. You get the impression that the writer of Edge of Seventeen was interested in creating real people. Where this script is more about creating archetypes.

Which is fine. I’m only judging it by that high bar because it’s so high on the list.

One of the characters who had a ton of potential in this script was the mom, Chen. She’s a single mother who’s a little overprotective of her son. But the problem with her is that she was never clearly defined. We don’t know what her “issue” was. If you don’t establish a clear character “issue,” then we don’t know what needs to change in that character for them to arc.

A few weeks back I reviewed a short story about an Asian family called The Paper Menagerie. In that story, the mother’s issue was clear. She wouldn’t learn English, which created a chasm of communication issues between her and her son. The whole story was about how that lack of communication destroyed their relationship, all the way up until her death. The reason that story is one of the most emotional you’ll ever read is specifically because the writer so clearly identified the mother’s issue in the story.

The character issues didn’t stop there. All of the characters outside of Chang felt off. Kristy is the romantic interest for the first 20 pages after her entrance. And then she just straight up disappears, occasionally making cameos when she gets bored. Or there’s Devin, the coach. He had potential as a character but he didn’t have a single flaw. There was nothing in his life that he was having trouble with or trying to overcome. When you don’t explore the weaknesses in your characters, your characters remain one-dimensional.

But the biggest problem with Chang Can Dunk is that it makes a pivotal error right at the midpoint. Chang isn’t sure he can dunk yet when going into the day of the dunk. So what he does is he sneaks into the gym the night before and lowers the rim a couple of inches. So what’s the story issue? It isn’t clear that this happens. The writer doesn’t show it. We see Chang sneak through the gym window. But we don’t see him with tools or anything. So we don’t know what’s going on. I only found out 50 pages later that he cheated when Chang admits he lowered the rim.

This is the kind of thing that would’ve worked better if you clearly showed Chang lowering the rim. This would create a powerful state of dramatic irony that runs through the second half of the story. We know Chang is a fraud but nobody else does. That type of setup ENSURES the reader will keep reading because they want to see what happens when the secret gets out. They want to be there for the fall.

I was trying to think of a similar movie to compare this to and then it came to me. Chang Can Dunk is Spiderman: Homecoming but without Spiderman or any superheroes or super powers. It has that same tone and sense of humor. So if you liked the last two Spiderman movies, you’d probably like this. Me? I needed a lot more from the characters to connect to this story and care about its conclusion.

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

What I learned: I like when writers take a chance and complete the story goal at the midpoint (as opposed to waiting until the end of the movie). It makes for a more unpredictable script because now we’re wondering where the story goes from here. Chang Can Dunk actually has Chang dunk at the midpoint! It’s unexpected and genuinely had me wondering what would happen next.