Week 7 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

Every Thursday, for the first six months of 2024, Scriptshadow will be guiding you through the process of writing a screenplay. In June, you’ll be able to enter this screenplay in the Mega Screenplay Showdown. The best 10 loglines, then the first ten pages of the top five of those loglines, will be in play as they compete for the top prize.

The first month and a half of these posts have gotten you to page 20 of your screenplay. But don’t worry if you’re just stumbling upon the challenge now. You can easily catch up. We’re writing an average of 1.5 pages a day. Which is nothing. So check out the previous posts, which I’ve included below, and spend 2 hours a day writing instead of 1. You should be caught up within two weeks. Here are those links…

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident

The major thing we’re going to focus on today is the “Turn Into Act 2.” But before we get there, we have to talk about page counts because your major plot beats are going to take place on different pages depending on how long your screenplay is.

The desired length of a spec screenplay in 2024 is between 100 and 110 pages. The more simplistic your concept is, and the less characters you have, the lower the page count will be. So if you’re writing a movie like Gerald’s Game, about one woman in a bedroom the whole movie, that’s a simple story with a tiny number of characters. So it probably won’t be more than 90 pages. If, however, you’re writing Napoleon, which may take place over 20 years and have a cast of 30 characters, your script could be as long as 130 pages.

Once you have your page count, you’re going to divide it into four sections. So, if you have a 100 page script, it’ll look like this…

Act 1 – Pages 1-25
Act 2 (First Half) – Pages 26-50
Act 2 (Second Half) – Pages 51-75
Act 3 – Pages 76-100

If it’s 110 pages, it’ll look like this…

Act 1 – Pages 1 – 27.5
Act 2 (First Half) – Pages 27.5-55
Act 2 (Second Half) – Pages 55 – 82.5
Act 3 – Pages 82.5-110

Don’t get your tighty-whiteys in a bunch and complain that this is too restrictive. These numbers are GUIDELINES. You don’t have to abide by them exactly. But the majority of scripts operate best with an Act 1 (Setup), an Act 2 (where all the conflict and struggle happens) and an Act 3 (Climax). So it’s nice to have an idea where those major plot beats occur.

The reason we divide Act 2 into halves is because Act 2 is large and we’re trying to make it more manageable. By dividing it in two, you create 4 equally long chunks of screenplay. And, also, something big usually happens at the midpoint of a story. So I like to use that as a divider between the first half of Act 2 and the second half of Act 2.

Bringing this back to today, we will be writing pages 21-30 this week. Which means that, for those of us writing 100 or 110 page screenplays, we’re going to be writing our “Turn into Act 2,” which is just a fancy way of saying: it’s the end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2.

Now, last week we left off at the inciting incident. Things got a little contentious in the comments section as people debated where the inciting incident was, particularly as it related to Star Wars. Don’t worry about that. Star Wars has a deceptively tricky inciting incident due to the fact that the main character doesn’t even show up until page 15.

It’s usually easy to identify the inciting incident, which is the incident that destroys the main character’s day-to-day life and forces them to address a problem. A simpler example would be Free Guy, when Ryan Reynolds puts on the glasses that show him that the real life he thought he was living in is actually one big video game.

We’re going to assume that you’re writing a 100 page screenplay. That means your Turn into Act 2 is going to occur at page 25 (exactly 25% of the way into your script). Since we’re starting this week on page 21, we first must know what to write BEFORE we get to the Second Act.

Well, remember what I said last week. Around page 15, you get the inciting incident. This creates a scenario by which a problem must be solved. Solving that problem is your hero’s goal for the movie. Barbie is having thoughts of death. She must go to the Real World to figure out why she’s having these thoughts.

But your hero is NOT YET READY to leave their normal life. As human beings, we are rarely told YOU MUST CHANGE NOW and then immediately we start changing. No. We resist it. We run away from it. We pretend it isn’t a problem. We ignore it. Whatever we have to do to NOT change, we do it. Which is how this section between pages 15-25 works. The character isn’t ready to go on their journey yet so they resist.

But a few of you are already thinking, “Wait a minute, Carson. So we’re supposed to write 10 full pages of resisting?” Good question. The answer is no. That would be a waste of space.

What I’ve found about pages 15-25 is that a number of things can be going on. Yes, resistance is one of them. Ryan Reynolds trying to ignore the fact that he’s just learned he’s living in a video game in Free Guy is an example of that.

But, also, there can be education going on in this section. In Barbie, Barbie must go visit Weird Barbie, who educates her on what she must do. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones talks to Brody about what he must do before he officially sets off in search of the Ark. So education (aka “exposition) is one part of this section.

You may also wrap up certain storylines from the first act. If you have a young character going on a big journey, he might have a scene with his parents where he says goodbye.

You may also use this section to cut to the subplots of your secondary characters.  You see this in Barbie.  Before she heads off, we cut to Ken and figure out what’s going on with him.  If you have a major villain, like Kylo Ren, you might cut to him as well – see what he’s up to and push his story along a little further.

In other words, you’re not just gearing YOUR HERO up for this journey, you’re gearing YOUR ENTIRE STORY up for this journey. You’re putting everything in place so that the screenplay is prepared to move forward.

This brings us to page 25, which is our Turn Into Act 2 and this is going to be the simplest plot beat you write in your entire script. Your Turn Into Act 2 is just your hero leaving on the journey. They’ve officially accepted the fact that they must go off and do this. And so here they go.

Now, what if you don’t have a traditional “Hero’s Journey” screenplay where your hero leaves their “home world” and goes off on a larger adventure? What if you have a movie like Killers of the Flower Moon or Coda or Parasite or Silver Linings Playbook?

So, this is where things get tricky. But, generally speaking, the moment your main character begins pursuing the goal that will drive your entire screenplay is the moment the second act begins. I say “tricky” because take “Parasite.” In Parasite, the family acts as one character. So the second they decide that their goal is to take over this rich family’s home is when Act 2 begins. In Coda, the moment the main girl decides that she’s going to enter this singing competition is the moment Act 2 begins. With Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper wants to be in the dance competition because his ex-wife is going to be there and he hopes to use the opportunity to win her back. It’s not as strong of a goal as, say, Promising Young Woman (take everyone down involved in my friend’s sexual assault). But it does the job of giving the narrative a clear spine.

After that, you hit the most fun part of the entire screenplay which is the “Fun and Games” Section. This is where you get to show off your concept. For example, when Barbie goes to the Real World, you get to show her clashing with people who are the complete opposite of her. Or in Star Wars, you get to see Luke and Obi-Wan go into an alien bar.

As always, this is just a guideline. There’s no such thing as the perfect blueprint for a script. So, if you don’t know what to do, follow your gut. Or take some risks. One of the reasons I’m slowly pacing us is to allow you to make mistakes and still have time to go back and try something else.

Okay, here’s this week’s assignment…

Friday = write 1 scene (Your main character resists going after his goal)
Saturday = write 1 scene (Prepare the script for the Journey)
Sunday = write 1 scene (Turn Into Second Act)
Monday = write 1 scene (Fun and Games)
Tuesday = write 1 scene (Fun and Games)
Wednesday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes
Thursday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes

Week 6 of the “2 scripts in 2024” Challenge

If you haven’t been present on the site lately, here’s the deal.  I’m guiding you through the process of writing an entire feature screenplay. Then, in June, we’re going to have a Mega Screenplay Showdown. The best 10 loglines, then the first ten pages of the top 5 of those loglines, will be in play as they compete for the top prize. So far, I’ve helped you choose a concept, sculpt your outline, and build your characters. Last week, we wrote our first ten pages. Here are the links if you’re late to the party…

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages

One of the things I baked into this challenge was making this ACHIEVABLE. I mean, all you need is one hour a day. Who doesn’t have that? So, if everything is going according to plan, you should have ten pages written by now. Two pages (aka one scene) for five days a week, with two extra days in the week to catch up, make adjustments, or rewrite.

Now that we’re headed into our second ten pages of the script, that means we’re hitting one of the most important beats of the entire script. I’m talking about the inciting incident.

The inciting incident is built out of this idea that, before the crazy stuff starts happening in your story, we have to get to know your character. We have to see them in their “normal” habitat. The reason we want to see them in their normal habitat is so we have something to contrast them against when they’re thrown on this big journey.

In that sense, the inciting incident (which typically occurs between pages 12-15) is a divider. It divides the past life (pages 1-14) from the future life (pages 16-110). My favorite way to think of this “divider” is the event that causes the “problem.” The problem is the thing that your hero must now deal with for the rest of the movie. The problem also creates the goal because the act of solving any problem is a goal. If I wrote a story about a guy whose car broke down on the way to a date with the girl of his dreams, the car breaking down is the event, which creates the problem (I no longer have a car to get to the date anymore), which creates the goal: do whatever needs to be done to get to the date.

One of my favorite examples of an inciting incident is War of the Worlds. In that movie, we see Tom Cruise’s everyday life as a construction worker and a family man and then BOOM, the event is sprung on us. And boy is it a good one. Alien tripods come out of the ground and start killing everyone! This creates a problem: Tom’s family (half of it) is in danger.  Which creates the goal: Reunite with family.

Like all classic story beats, inciting incidents work best when you’re using the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is when a character is content (but unknowingly unhappy) living a mundane life. And then: BAM! Something happens to shake them out of that existence, sending them off on a life-changing journey.

But inciting incidents can be tricky when they don’t fall under the classic Hero’s Journey template. That’s when I hear writers complain and say, “These forced plot beats are restrictive and ruin the art of creation! They are evil, Carson! Eviilllll!” Watch, you’ll see some commenters make that argument down below.

Look, no one’s saying you have to use an inciting incident. But it’s such an organic part of every story, it makes your story better 99% of the time. Think about it. If you told a friend about your day, you’ll include an inciting incident without even thinking about it. “I was at work, minding my own business. Then Sara comes up to me and says I’m responsible for our biggest client canceling their order.” Sara coming up and saying you screwed up the order IS THE INCITING INCIDENT of your story.

But yes, it’s true that some scripts don’t allow for organic inciting incidents. Take yesterday’s script for example: Neobiota. In that story, Melanie’s “normal life” occurred before the script even began. The inciting incident, technically, is the plane crash that placed her in this position. That created the problem that our hero had to solve.

But Mikael actually did something clever here. He made the “life in her normal habitat” section of the script her life on the beach after the crash. We spend 10 pages of her getting acclimated to her new surroundings before we introduce a new problem, aka the inciting incident: one of the dead passengers stands up and starts moving.

Another movie that has a non-traditional use of the inciting incident is Star Wars. In that script, we don’t even MEET the main character until 15 pages in. That’s when we start Luke Skywalker’s “normal life.” The inciting incident doesn’t come for another 15 minutes when Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed. This motivates Luke to head off on this journey to save the galaxy.

What’s interesting about Star Wars is that it has an earlier inciting incident as well. But, in order to understand it, you must understand that the first fifteen minutes of the movie has a different protagonist: Darth Vader. Yes, Darth Vader is the “protagonist” of the first segment of the movie. The reason he’s the “protagonist” is because he’s the one with the goal: Recapture the stolen Death Star plans.

That’s why he barges into the ship. He needs those plans! The inciting incident for Darth Vader’s story, then, is R2-D2 escaping in a pod and heading down to nearby planet, Tattooine. This is the “problem” that gives Darth Vader his goal: Retrieve that droid. Some people might even call this the “actual” inciting incident of the movie as it happens near the traditional “inciting incident” point (12-15 pages in). But the real inciting incident is what motivates your *real* protagonist, which is why Luke’s aunt and uncle being murdered is the more accurate representation.

A lot of people get the inciting incident mixed up with the break into the second act (pages 25-30) and it’s understandable why. Once your inciting incident happens, your hero should technically be thrust on their journey, which is where the second act begins.  But what’s supposed to happen in the traditional Hero’s Journey is that your hero feels safe in his world. He likes his world. Then this inciting incident comes around, creating a problem he must solve. But guess what? He doesn’t want to solve it. Solving it requires going off into this new strange scary world that he doesn’t want to go into. So what does he do? HE RESISTS. That’s what the space between the inciting incident and the beginning of the second act is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the section where the character resists.

The reason this resistance matters is because it conveys something important to the audience: that your hero has a weakness. Their refusal to change conveys that they have growing to do. If the problem occurred and the hero was just like, “Yeah, let’s go! Woohoo!” Then your hero is already internally strong, which isn’t as interesting. The resistance shows that growth is required.  And growth is the whole point of a journey.

Another reason why the resistance after the inciting incident is important is because it’s similar to real life. In real life, nobody wants to change. We’re all resistant to it. So when we see our hero resist, we relate to that. This is a key reason why stories work so well. When our hero finally does take on the journey and ultimately change, it’s a reminder that we can change too! So it invigorates us, gives us hope, sends us back out into life with a pep in our step.

Now, as some of you might’ve caught onto, certain scenarios don’t lend themselves to this. Take War of the Worlds. The attack of the Tripods is so intense and in your face that you don’t have the opportunity to sit around and resist. “Hmmm, I don’t know if I want to go on this journey. It’s too difficult.” No, the journey has come to you! You have to go on it!

But you can still create resistance in how your hero reacts. A hero only truly goes on a journey when they take action. So you can create that resistance by having Tom Cruise run away a lot, hide, resist. Then, when he realizes he has to save his freaking family, he takes action and you’re thrust into your second act.

Star Wars had its own issue with the resistance period. It had used its first fifteen minutes on a bunch of characters other than its hero. So when Luke experiences his inciting incident of his aunt and uncle dying, we’re already 30 minutes into the movie. We don’t have time to dilly-dally so Luke takes a beat then says, “I’m ready. I want to go on this journey.” And off they go.

Now, Lucas and his writing crew did a sly job here because they incorporated an earlier scene after Luke and Obi-Wan escape the sand people where Obi-Wan tells him, “You need to help me out.” And Luke resists then. He says, “Nope.” So that resistance was retroactively built into him in a way where he could say “I’m ready” the second his aunt and uncle are murdered. That’s important to note. Each inciting incident has its own potential issues. It’s up to you to figure out how to solve them.

Some of you may want to say that the real inciting incident in Star Wars is Leia’s message to Obi-Wan Kenobi but it isn’t. That message is not meant for our hero. It’s meant for Obi-Wan. Let me make this clear. The official inciting incident is the thing that sends YOUR HERO (not any of the supporting characters) out on their journey.

By the way, this is why important plot beats such as the inciting incident get complicated in big ensemble pieces (Star Wars movies, Avengers, Fast and Furious). In those movies, each character has their own journey, which forces you to motivate all of them. In some cases, this requires you to create a bunch of mini-inciting incidents, like Star Wars does. A lot of writers will solve this problem by treating the group as one character (Avengers). Give us a Thanos trying to destroy the world and everyone’s problem and subsequent goal is the same.

Also, with Avengers, or serial killer movies with detectives, or Indiana Jones, you often don’t have that resistance period because the problem is their job. Indiana Jones doesn’t resist because his freaking job is to find ancient antiquities. The Avengers don’t resist because they’re superheroes and saving the world is their job. Same with detectives and cops. When they get a new case, they don’t usually resist (although in some situations they will and I actually find those stories to be better because of that) because it’s their job.

The main thing to remember here for these next ten pages is that you want to introduce a big problem in your hero’s life and then, if it fits your story, show them resisting it afterward. A character journey is almost always more powerful if they, at first, don’t want to go on it. This shows the audience that they’re not yet ready and that change is needed. That way, later on, in your third act, when they finally are ready to change, it will be more powerful. This is why they say that if you have a problem in your third act, it’s usually because there’s a problem in your first act. Not properly showing that resistance could very well be that problem.

Friday = write 1 scene
Saturday = write 1 scene
Sunday = write 1 scene (you should be near your inciting incident here)
Monday = write 1 scene (should be an inciting incident day)
Tuesday = write 1 scene (the beginning of your hero’s resistance)
Wednesday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes
Thursday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes

Don’t worry. Scriptshadow has the best outlining method in the business. Even the Outline Haterz are going to love it.

We are in WEEK 4 of our Writing 2 Scripts in 2024 Challenge. It is probably the most controversial week because this week we’re outlining. And, as we all know, there is a contingent of screenwriters who believe that outlining is Satan reincarnated. I’m not here to argue with those people. All I’m here to say is that the more prepared you are, the better your script tends to end up.

Here are the links to the first three Writing A Script posts if you need to catch up:

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters

As far as how much time I need from you this week, at the bare minimum, you need to give me an hour a day. But if you want your outline to have real impact, two hours is preferable. And for those of you youngsters who don’t have jobs yet and have all day to write, put in as much time as you’ve got because when it comes to writing a screenplay, your progress will be proportional to your preparation.

The idea here is we want to create CHECKPOINTS. These are key moments in the script where the scenes are of elevated importance. If you can construct a series of script checkpoints, you’ll always have something to write towards.

The more checkpoints you create, the shorter the distance until the next checkpoint, which makes writing easier. For example, if you have a checkpoint on page 10 and then your next checkpoint isn’t until page 50, that’s where you’re going to run into trouble. The amount of space feels too vast, you don’t know how to fill it up, which leads to the dreaded “writer’s block.”

Remember, writer’s block is rarely about your inability to come up with something to write. It’s more about a lack of planning. The more you plan, the more pieces of your screenplay will be in place, and the easier it will be to connect those dots together.

So here’s the first thing I want you to do. I want you to think of three big set-piece scenes. These are the scenes that are going to sell your screenplay. When you came up with your concept, these are often the first scenes you thought of. For example, if we were writing Barbie, a set piece scene would be the big “I’m Just Ken” musical number. In Heat, it’s that iconic bank robbery scene. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, it’s Dr. Octopus attacking Peter Parker on the highway. In Bridesmaids, it’s the dress try-on scene.

And don’t limit yourself to 3 if you want more. What was so cool about Fincher’s The Killer was every single scene was a set-piece. So he had like eight of them in there. Whatever’s right for your movie, come up with that number of set pieces. And if you really want to do this justice, come up with 20 set-piece ideas and whittle it down to the top 3.

Pro Tip: One of the easiest ways to separate yourself from the competition is to NOT SETTLE. If you settle for the first three ideas that come to you, your script is not going to be as good as if you came up with 20 ideas and picked the best three.

From there, open your outline document and place the scenes at the rough page number where you think they’ll work. Just post “Page 45 – I’m Just Ken musical number.” It doesn’t have to be perfect. Again, you just want to create these checkpoints that you’ll be able to move towards. Even if you only create these three checkpoints, you’ll be in better shape than if you went into your script naked.

The next thing I want you to figure out is your first scene. Your first scene is SO IMPORTANT. I could write 5000 words on the importance of the first scene and it wouldn’t be enough to convey just how important that scene is. So just trust me on that.

If I were you, I would not go with a “setup scene” as your opening scene. This is a scene where you’re setting up a character or setting up your plot. You know the opening scene of Die Hard? Where we meet John McClane on a plane? That’s a setup scene. You CAN do that if you really want. But it’s better to start with a dramatic scene that pulls the reader in.

My favorite example of this is Source Code – the spec script not the movie – A dude lands inside someone’s body on a train and is told he has eight minutes to find a bomb or the train blows up. But a more recent, less intense, example is Tuesday’s script I reviewed – The Getaway. A married couple attempts to have sex in an airplane bathroom and get busted for it. Just make something happen in that opening scene. Don’t bore us.

Okay, now we’re going to get into the technical stuff. Most writers don’t like to do these story beats because it’s, well, technical. Screenwriting is supposed to be free-flowing, fun, artistic. It’s art! Art should never be dictated by technicalities! Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Screenwriting is inherently mathematical. It’s 110 pages. Those pages are divided into four sections – Act 1, Act 2.1, Act 2.2, Act 3. Essentially, each of those sections are going to be 27 pages long, although that will change depending on the length of your script. But the key to remember is that the end of each section will ALSO work as a checkpoint, since a major moment will happen at the end of each section.

Don’t worry. You’re not going to stick to this like a bible. The nature of writing is that you’re constantly generating new details in your story and those details will generate new story ideas. So, much of this is going to change. But we have to start somewhere.

Which leads us to the inciting incident. This is the thing that happens that INTERRUPTS your hero’s world, usually between pages 10-15. You know that moment in body-switch movies where they first switch bodies? That’s an inciting incident – it’s the disruption of your hero’s everyday existence that now forces them to act. In The Killer, it’s when our main character killer tries to assassinate his target but misses.

After this happens, your hero will be in denial. That’s because just like you and me, movie characters don’t like it when they’re forced to change. So they resist, resist, and resist. But then, at the end of Act 1, which will be your next checkpoint, they accept that they need to solve this problem and head off on their journey (usually around page 25).

The next checkpoint I want you to figure out is your midpoint (around pages 50-60). Now, midpoints are one of the trickier parts of a screenplay because every screenplay is so different that by the time you get to the midpoint, there is no “one-size-fits-all” scene you can write, like the inciting incident. Oppenheimer’s midpoint doesn’t have anything in common with Star Wars’s midpoint. The two movies are trying to do something completely different with their stories.

But something you can keep in mind is that you don’t want the second half of your movie to feel exactly like the first half of your movie. So, for example, if you’re writing a contained thriller where our heroine is being held captive in a basement that she’s trying to escape from – if you just have her try to escape for 90 straight minutes, we’re going to get bored. You need something to happen at the midpoint that changes the story up considerably.

Maybe the most obvious example of this is the movie, Room. The first half of that movie is a woman and her kid being held captive in a room. The midpoint is their big escape. And they succeed. The second half of the movie covers the aftermath as our heroine tries to deal with the trauma of what happened. You can’t do this with most movies. But it’s a great example of how the midpoint should affect the second half of your story.

A more subdued version would be The Equalizer 3. The first half is Robert McCall recuperating in this small Italian town, watching as a local gang makes the locals’ lives a living hell. He doesn’t do anything because, if he does, it will bring attention to himself. But at the midpoint, the gang goes too far, and Robert has had enough. So he starts taking them out one by one.

That’s a good example of a midpoint by the way. The midpoint should always make the second half BETTER, if possible. That’s why Room was not the perfect movie. Its first half was more entertaining than its second half. You always want it to be the opposite.

Once you have your midpoint, your next checkpoint will be the end of your second act (between pages 75 and 90). This is when your hero will “die,” – figuratively of course, but sometimes literally (The Princess Bride). They’ll be at their lowest point. They’ll have tried to solve the problem but failed. There are no other options. The audience should truly feel, in this moment, like there is NO WAY our hero can win. That’s when you know you’ve written a great finale to your second act. In Barbie, this is when Barbie comes back to Barbie Land only to realize that the Kens have taken over.

And the final major checkpoint is your climax. This should be easy because, if you set up a clear goal for your hero at the beginning of your story (John McClane – take down the terrorists and save my wife), then this is the scene where they’ll attempt to do that.

Also, the reason we did that character work last week is so that you can match up your character’s transformation with your climax. For example, if your character’s flaw is that they are selfish, your climax should test that selfishness. It should give them an opportunity to become selfless. If you can pull this transformation moment off, it’s the kind of thing that makes your script feel really intelligent and satisfying.

Okay, those are your major checkpoints. If you get all of those down, you should be in a really good place by the time you write “FADE IN.” However, if you want to go deeper, I prefer that you never go more than 12-15 pages without a checkpoint in your outline (12 if your script is 100 pages, 15 if it’s 120 pages). Even if you just have a cool idea for a scene – that’s all you need for a checkpoint. What we want to do here is close the gap between those big empty holes of space in your script so that you’re never writing in a void. That big void of empty space between checkpoints is when you start freaking out and get writer’s block.

Easy, right?

As you can see, I’m not big on these super-detailed outlines that include things like, “The Circular Resistance Modifier To The Protagonist’s Conflict Moment.” Screenplays are too varied for those specific moments to work in every script. My outlining method keeps things loose enough that you don’t feel controlled by your outline, but it’s tight enough that you have confidence when you start writing your script.

If you have any outlining questions, I’ll be dipping in and out of the comments all weekend. If I have time, I’ll answer what I can. Now start outlining! Cause next week, WE BEGIN WRITING!

Frankenstein meets Forest Gump meets Flowers for Algernon meets The Island of Doctor Moreau meets Wes Anderson meets 50 Shades of Gray

Genre: Drama/Fantastical
Premise: A crazy old doctor performs an unthinkable experiment on a young woman and charts her progress as she opens up to a new world of sexuality that she embraces with aplomb.
About: To tackle playing different mental ages throughout the movie, Emma Stone came up with five “templates” for how she would act at the ages required for each stage of the film. This allowed her to know which ‘version’ of Emma to perform in a production that was shot out of order. The screenplay was written over four and a half years time.
Writer: Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray
Details: 2 hours and 20 minutes

Some of you were probably hoping I would review the new Netflix flick, “Leave the World Behind,” so I’ll leave a mini-review in the comments. You can also check out my review of the book here.

Okay, onto my big weekend movie…

You guys know me well enough to know I’m not the biggest indie movie fan. I think a lot of indie movies are smoke and mirrors. They’re weak scripts bolstered by artistic direction from talented directors. But when you undress them, the stories are a hodgepodge of half-realized ideas drowning in melodrama, philosophy, quirkiness, or some unappealing combination of the three.

With that said, I understand that a film is not just a screenplay. The acting, the cinematography, the sound, the music, the set design, the locations, the direction — all of these things can make you feel something separate from the writing. So, every once in a while, when I watch an indie film, it works. Which is exactly what happened with Poor Things.

It helps that this is unlike any movie I’ve ever seen before. Let me give you an idea of how weird this movie is: I almost walked out in the first ten minutes. The cinematography, music, and acting were so jarring that I felt like I was going to vomit. I’m not kidding.  I got super queasy.

I’m glad I gutted it out, though.

Our story is set in an indeterminant time – my guess is somewhere in the 1800s – and follows a mad genius named Godwin who finds the body of a rich pregnant woman who killed herself by diving off a bridge into the river. This, Godwin decides, is “Bella.”

For reasons only Godwin understands, he takes the brain out of the still living fetus and inserts it into Bella’s skull. So Bella is now her child.  And you thought the ending of Chinatown was a trip!

Godwin hires a young assistant named Max to chart Bella’s every move. Because Bella is beautiful, Max falls in love with her, and Godwin tells Max they should marry, which both Max and Bella are thrilled about.

But then Bella discovers self-pleasure which completely changes her view of reality. A lawyer and cad, named Duncan, who comes in to notarize the marriage, finds himself drawn to Bella and asks her to come away with him on an adventure where they will have copious amounts of sex. That’s all Bella needs to hear. She’s in.

Off they go to Lisbon where Duncan fulfills his promise. But then one afternoon, when Duncan is asleep, a restless Bella heads out into the city where she engages in some sexual exercises with random men. Being a child, she sees nothing wrong with this and excitedly shares her experiences with Duncan, who is beyond mortified.

After a series of fights, the two end up in Paris without any money and, without consulting Duncan, Bella rectifies the situation by heading to a local brothel and offering her services. She loves the experience so much that she decides to become a full-time prostitute. Eventually, she learns that Godwin is dying and heads home, where Max is thrilled to see her again. Once there, she is confronted by her former husband (before she killed herself). Bella will have to make a choice of whether to stay with Max or return to her original husband.

Man, where do you start with this film?

There’s so much going on!

I guess let’s talk about the most relevant element for screenwriters, which is that if you want to nab a great actor, write a movie with a kid in an adult body. It’s the clearest path to an Oscar. We saw it with Sam Rockwell playing a 14 year old in Three Billboards. We saw it with Olivia Colman playing a child in The Favourite. And now Emma Stone is going to win the Oscar for playing a 5 year old.

Cause she will win the Oscar for this. The race is over. Not only is she playing this very unique part but the things that Emma Stone does in this performance are borderline unsettling. I don’t like to use the word “brave” in acting because, well, “playing pretend” doesn’t have that high of a ceiling.   But it’s appropriate. She is brave for the insane things that she does.

And then there’s the icky part of this movie. I’m just going to say it. Bella is a 3 year old prostitute. It’s insane when you really think about what’s going on and how someone got this idea and everyone signed up for it. The more you think about it, the more icky it gets.

But let’s look beyond that. In a movie like this that has such a unique character, it is almost impossible for any other actor in the movie to stand out. But Mark Ruffalo somehow manages to. Probably because he plays something he’s never played before: a sexual deviant a-hole. And he does so hilariously.

The real power in his performance is his unraveling. He starts off as this super-confident charming ladies’ man who’s bedded hundreds of women. But through each excursion with Bella, he loses more and more of that confidence because she drives him crazy. She’ll go out for a croissant and come back having slept with a stranger, lol. Duncan cannot handle it. He freaks out, throwing a number of temper-tantrums, each of which is worthy of its own Oscar.

Then you have the sets. I’ve never seen sets like this. There’s a fairy-tale aspect to them and, yet, they somehow feel real. The Lisbon set, in particular, where they were up on this cliff in this little town. It was romantic and beautiful – kind of like how a famous city might look in a dream. Yorgos captured that. The boat set was a favorite as well.

The big thing I worry about with these movies is that they’re more concerned with being weird than good. That’s definitely how things played out early. But by the midpoint, it became quite an emotional film that was trying to say something about growing up and lost innocence and embracing who you are. And there were some heavy emotional moments late between Bella and Godwin, her quasi-father who did the unthinkable to her. It wasn’t just dumb shock value.

Will I recommend this to friends? Not unless you’ve spent at least one day of your life watching a Jean-Luc Goddard marathon. You need some cinephile street cred to be able to make it through this movie, I feel confident in saying. Its strangeness is more overwhelming than any casual moviegoer will be able to handle.

But, at the end of the day, the movie DOES work. And it’s worth seeing just for Emma Stone’s performance. I promise you, you’ll leave saying to yourself, “Wow,” after you watch what she does.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Poor Things, as wacky a movie as it is, uses one of the oldest screenplay templates in the business: The Hero’s Journey. Go ahead and watch this movie next to Star Wars. You’ll see that it follows an extremely similar narrative. It goes to show that The Hero’s Journey can be used for the highest-grossing films in the business as well as the artsiest of artsy fare.

It’s only 4:30pm and it’s already dark in my place??? What the F&%$ is going on????

Sorry, had to get that out.

I’m getting oh-so-close to my end-of-the-year movie rankings so I’ve been trying to catch up on everything I’ve missed. I don’t know what I was expecting when I watched Dumb Money because nobody was talking it up. Yet it was still getting decent reviews.

So I was as surprised as anyone when I was so pulled into it. If you don’t know anything about the film, it covers the “Gamestop” stock-buying fiasco from a couple of years ago, when a ton of personal investors got together to try and bankrupt a giant hedge fund that had put all of its money into “shorting” the dying company of Gamestop. In doing so, it left itself vulnerable on the .000001% chance that Gamestop didn’t go bankrupt.

This plucky little personal investor named Keith Gill, who not only foolishly buys 50,000 dollars worth of stock in Gamestop, but runs a Youtube channel where he explains his elaborate thought process for doing so, inspires a movement over on a Reddit site when a few of the bigger personal investors on the site latch onto his advice once they realize they can bankrupt one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.

This creates a revolution where people just keep buying more and more Gamestop stock, putting Citadel into bigger and bigger trouble. There’s this great little scene late in the screenplay where Keith Gill’s wife asks him, “How much did we make today?” “5 million,” Keith responds. “How much did we make yesterday?” “4 million,” Keith responds.

We then cut to Citadel employee Gabe Plotkin, whose wife asks him, “How much did we lose today?” “1 billion,” Gabe replies. “How much did we lose yesterday?” “1 billion,” Gabe replies. It perfectly wrapped up how insane this was.

But the main reason I liked this movie so much is because it creates this impossible internal dilemma for the main character, Keith. Remember, in the newsletter, when I talked about making things as hard as possible for the main character? But, in that example, I was referring to externally. For example, if your hero gets in a gunfight, have his gun lock up. How do you win a gunfight without a gun? That’s the sort of stuff you want to do to your main character.

But if you want to take that to a nuclear level, make things impossible on your hero INTERNALLY AS WELL. That’s what this movie does. Keith becomes the face of this movement. He bought 50,000 dollars worth of stock when the stock was 3 dollars. The stock gets up to 450 dollars. Which means Keith has holdings of over 50 million.

Now, if you were smart, you’d cash that out. At least some of it.  But because Keith is the face of the movement and because he’s live-streaming every night, every move he makes is symbolic. If he sells even a tiny bit of his stock, he is admitting to everyone that he no longer believes in the movement. Which would cause everyone else to sell their stock and the whole house would crumble. So he’s under this enormous amount of pressure to not sell. And you could see it on him. This guy was scraping by his whole life and then, over the course of a month, he has 50 million dollars. BUT ONLY IF HE SELLS.

It was an impossible situation. And then, of course, the banks and hedge funds start conspiring to destroy the personal investors (really rich people call personal investors “dumb money,” cause it’s so easy to take their money), creating an impossible external challenge as well.

In addition to this, Dumb Money handles exposition like a champ. When you write this type of movie – one that requires so much education for the audience to understand what’s going on – it’s easy for the script to drown in that exposition. But Dumb Money spreads its key educational scenes out, so they’re never overbearing, and has fun with them, so that there’s a playful enjoyable aspect to hearing how all this works.

Oh, and as we always say here on Scriptshadow: Underdog movies always work. And this is a pretty big underdog story.

Now, is it the best movie or screenplay of the year? I don’t know. I’ve been letting the film marinate in my head for the last couple of days. It’s certainly more entertaining than those high-profile Oscar-thirsty yawners that the studios are releasing. I’m curious to hear why people haven’t been talking this up more. Am I alone on Dumb Money Mountain?

I also have something very sad to report. This weekend, the Marvels officially bowed out of the box office race, tapping out at 80 million dollars. To give you a little perspective on where this places the film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, the biggest box office disappointment in Star Wars history, made 84 million dollars on its opening weekend.

The Marvels represents, to me, the pinnacle of message-over-matter. And when I say “matter,” I mean, “that it matters” to the audience. It was written to drive a message. It was cast to drive a message. The director was hired to drive a message. At no point was a creative decision made with the goal of making the best movie they could possibly make.

At first I was like, “How could a company this big with this many smart people make such a mistake?” But it’s much more complicated than that. Disney made a series of decisions over four years that opened up the opportunity for the patients to run the asylum. Honestly, I don’t know if they can go backwards. That’s why they brought Bob Iger in – to fix all this. But Iger is learning that even in the quick four years since he left, the game has completely changed. If you go backwards, you get attacked. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you get attacked. It’s one of the more unenviable jobs in the world, I’d say. Well, I guess the 50 million dollar compensatory package at the end of each year helps.

The big positive story coming out of this weekend’s box office is the performance of the oddly titled, “Godzilla Minus One.” I didn’t know that titles could also be math problems. Can’t wait for “Aquaman Divided by 12” and “The Cosign Purple.” Anybody up for “Dune Part Two Multiplied by Nine?”

Godzilla Minus One is getting crazy good reviews. Which we’re not used to with Godzilla movies these days. I checked out the trailer to find out why and I can see why critics are going gaga. They set it right after World War 2, which is origin time for when Godzilla was born. So we’re going back to the beginning. It looks kinda cool but I don’t know if I understand the message. These people just endured this terrible war where 3 million of them were killed and now you’re going to have a monster show up and kill even more of them? How bout give them a chance to breathe, sheesh.

I will say that it looks a LOT BETTER than the latest U.S. Godzilla movie. That trailer was so poor that I actually thought it was fan-made. I’m still not convinced it isn’t. Maybe the Godzilla nerds can come in here and straighten me out. What’s going on with these two films? And why so much math?

Finally, please pay your respects in the comments section to The Marvels. I know we’re all hurting. But maybe, if we lean on each other, we can get through this.