Genre: Biopic
Premise: Harvard. 1959. A young Ted Kaczynski is experimented on by Dr. Henry Murray during a secret CIA psychological study that may have led to the creation of the Unabomber.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 10 votes. Both of these writers have done a little TV work as well as written some indie features.
Writers: Adam Gaines & Ryan Parrott
Details: 91 pages
One of the most common things you’ll be tasked with as a working screenwriter is finding angles on topics that have no business becoming movies. Hollywood is so focused on snatching up life rights, biographies, and IP that they don’t actually ask if the ideas are something worth turning into a movie.
The Empty Man, which I spoke about yesterday, is a perfect example of this. It was some dumb comic book that nobody read. Yet someone decided to buy it. And then they pitched it to director David Prior, who went off to read it, came back, and said, there is no way I will make this movie because this comic is stupid as hell (paraphrasing). But I will keep the title and make my own movie. They wisely said, ‘fine.’
The problem with making a movie about Ted Kaczynski is that he’s an unpleasant wacko who possesses zero qualities that would make him a good movie character. He’s a disturbed weasel who sends bombs to people with crazy-person messages attached. That character can never ever be a protagonist.
And yet, here is the sickness that permeates the industry. Everyone is so desperate to get movies through the system, they’re willing to pluck these unpleasant, but popular, topics, off the idea tree, thinking that a sad bleak boring name is better than no name at all. And so we get a screenplay about Ted Kaczynski.
One of the weirdest things about this screenplay is that we’re never told, until the very last line of the script, what Ted Kaczynski did to deserve the treatment of a movie. If I’m 25 years old reading this, all I’m thinking is, “Who is this guy and why are we following him?”
I suppose this could’ve been an artistic choice. But something tells me the writers assumed that everyone would know who Ted Kaczynski was. Which is something you should never do as a writer. I didn’t know even know who Ted Kaczynski was. I thought he was the Oklahoma City bombing guy. While you may spend 200 hours researching someone and therefore know them intimately, a majority of readers will have no idea who they are when they first lay eyes on your script.
“Rewired” focuses on Ted’s life when he was 17 years old attending Harvard in 1959. He was a math prodigy who got recruited by a pretty teacher’s assistant named Barbara Martin into a psychological experiment at the university being run by a psychology professor named Dr. Henry Murray.
Murray asks Ted, along with the 50 other students in the program, to give him a thesis on how to live life and Ted comes back with a paper that basically states too many people in Harvard don’t need Harvard because they’re already set for life. Meanwhile, poor people like him have to scratch and claw just to keep up with their scholarship requirements and then, when they graduate, they’ll have to start all over again, since they don’t have a network of rich people to help them.
Murray then recruits a lawyer from the legal department and tells him to debate everyone in the group, breaking down their life theses, and making them feel as bad as possible about their ideas. His plan seems to be to destroy their beliefs to see if he can then build an entirely new belief system within them.
Halfway through the experiment, Barbara visits Murray’s home, only to discover that he’s babbling incoherently and randomly painting his walls with a long black stripe. Needless to say, this man should not have been conducting any experiments. But it was the 50s so there weren’t a lot of checks and balances.
Barbara tries to warn Ted that Murray’s experiment is evil so Ted goes to Murray’s office to quit. But Murray takes advantage of Ted’s youth and naiveté to convince him to keep going, which basically amounts to a lot more psychological abuse. Ted heads home for the holiday and is violent for the first time to his brother. His parents are concerned that something sinister is going on at the university and encourage Ted to drop out.
I’m not clear on if he did drop out or not because the last few pages of the script are vague. But I think he may have? And then we get a closing title screen that tells us Ted killed three people with mail bombs and injured 23 others. The End.
I mean… (my head drops to the desk)…
I don’t understand why people write these scripts.
This script is so f$%#%ing depressing and sad and rote and boring and nothing happens! It’s two people sitting across from each other for 90% of the movie.
Even the script’s intention doesn’t work – to build sympathy for Ted Kaczynski – because Ted is such a bummer himself. He lugs himself around campus, staring at the ground, talking to no one, when he does talk to someone he’s scolding them or getting upset. Why would we care about this person? They’re extremely unlikable. I don’t mean that in a screenwriting sense. I mean in a person sense. Like, I hate these kinds of people. So why would I care about a movie that follows one of them?
And this goes back to the point I made at the beginning: Not every well-known person in history is meant to have a movie made about them. Just because somebody did something spectacularly good or spectacularly bad does not mean that a film must be made about them. And yet Hollywood can’t help themselves. No soul left behind. No matter how boring or rote or unlikable or annoying or eye-rolling a famous individual is, we must make a movie about their life!
What I’d be curious about here is if any of what I read is documented – if these interactions between Ted and Murray came from a transcription – or if the writers just made them up. Because the conversations certainly felt made up, with the bad guys sounding like mustache-twirling villains from the 70s.
At one point the lawyer says to Ted, “Your father. Average sausage maker. Master bowler.” Ted replies, “How did — how did you know that?” The lawyer says, “Grinding it together as it grounds him down. You must know those casings are made from intestines. Tell me… do you help your father clean the intestines? So he feels like less of a failure?”
I apologize if these words are on record but I sincerely doubt it. They feel made up. If you’re going to tell a story this serious, you can’t just have a bunch of made up gibberish as it undercuts everything you’re trying to accomplish – which is to write a convincing portrayal of how this kid was manipulated. That’s the only thing the movie has going for it, is that authenticity.
Another issue I had with this script is that they’re squaring a Harvard professor off with a kid to challenge his ideas. However, Ted is psychologically weak from the get-go. He’s lonely. He doesn’t have confidence in himself. He doesn’t even really belief in his thesis. For that reason, the conversations are all one-sided.
Psychological battles are entertaining when the two parties are an equal match. Without that, it’s basically like watching a bully come into a room and beat up someone smaller than him again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. It’s masochistic. It’s unpleasant. I just… I’m so baffled about why anyone would think this would be entertaining.
Which brings us back to… yes, you guessed it: the fault of basing your movie on a weak idea. There’s honestly a more entertaining movie in two people trying to figure out how to spell Ted’s last name. We have to stop blindly putting scripts like this on the Black List because it means we will only get more of them.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is one more example that you cannot fix a bad idea. Whether it’s a bad fictional idea or a bad subject you’ve chosen. Writers lose years of their lives trying to make scripts work that will never work because the subject matter doesn’t work. This is one of those scripts. Nobody should ever make a movie about Ted Kaczynski. You can’t make him sympathetic. You can’t make the story entertaining. Anything you come up with will be bleak and sad. Nothing about this script works.
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Rogue Squadron, the Patty Jenkins Star Wars film that nobody other than Kathleen Kennedy asked for, has now been “delayed.” However, if you read further into the article, you learn that the delay is that so Patty Jenkins can “fulfill other obligations” on her other films (Cleopatra and Wonder Woman 3).
Hmmm… this sounds very suspicious to me. Star Wars was her priority project. Yet that’s the one she chose to put on the back burner? This is sounding like yet another forever delay (Lucasfilm’s new code phrase for “fired”). We saw this exact same thing happen with Rian Johnson’s new Star Wars movies. They’re still “delayed” (wink wink). I don’t know why this annoys me so much but Disney, dude. Be a man and just fire her. It’s okay to let someone go because their previous movie gave you pause on whether they could deliver a good Star Wars film.
I for one am thrilled by this development. As soon as the project was announced I rolled my eyes. Patty Jenkins is a bland filmmaker at best. Choosing her to reboot the Star Wars universe after what happened with 7, 8, and 9 very well might’ve destroyed the Star Wars brand for good. At least now it looks like they’ll start off with the Taika film, which has a much better chance of re-capturing the Star Wars magic.
You know I always have to report on the latest Star Wars news. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming!
Did Eternals Just Flatline the MCU? Also, a Secret Awesome Movie That Everybody Needs To See!
I want to start off by saying, good for Kevin Feige for taking chances. A lot of people give Marvel shit because they “play it safe.” I don’t think that’s true. I thought Thor Ragnarok was weird and different. Feige took a gigantic risk when he made a superhero movie with a 90% black cast. Even choices I didn’t like – a smart Hulk and a beer-gutted Thor – I must admit were huge bets.
And now comes Eternals, a movie with characters that have nothing to do with anything we’ve seen before in the MCU. Ten of them, to be exact. Instead of the fun swashbuckling nature that all the Marvel films exhibited before this, Eternals chooses to be slow, thoughtful, dare be it, meaningful. It is the biggest chance the MCU has taken yet.
And it is a complete failure.
The movie limped over the 70 million dollar mark this weekend but it’s now below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the worst reviewed Marvel movie of all time, a percentage that ensures a huge second weekend box office drop.
I have not seen the film. I woke up on Saturday thinking I was going to go. But as the day went on, a thought kept creeping into my head. Do I *have* to see this? Will I feel like I’m missing anything if I *don’t* go see this? The answer was no.
That reality metastasized into a larger discussion about what we’re trying to do as screenwriters. Isn’t creating a movie that people *HAVE TO SEE* the whole point of screenwriting? Should that not be the bar we set for ourselves when we come up with an idea? Shouldn’t we be asking, “If this became a movie, would people *have* to see this?” If the answer is no, why write it?
Here are some movies that, as they came out, I knew that I *had* to see them: Inception, The Dark Knight, Spiderman: Homecoming, 1917, Rogue One, Force Awakens, Get Out, Joker, Us, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Deadpool, A Quiet Place, Halloween, The Hangover, Parasite, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Social Network.
Why would I have to see Eternals? What special unique thing that I can’t get anywhere else is Eternals bringing to the table?
The reality is, Kevin Feige finally left the blackjack table and played roulette. He took, quite possibly, the most indie filmmaker of the last decade and gave her the reins to a 200 million dollar Marvel movie. What he got in return was Supheroland, the most boring looking superhero movie ever made.
You have a director who likes to create wide artificially blocked frames that stress stillness instead of activity and combined that with a near impossible screenwriting task – introducing ten different protagonists with ten different storylines. A lot of people have asked me how to write ensemble pieces since they’ve become en vogue during the superhero era (Avengers, Fast and Furious, Etc.). You do it by introducing the characters in their own movies so you don’t have to spend 70% of your movie setting people up.
It takes a certain amount of hubris to believe something like this could’ve worked. It has literally everything going against it. I guess when you experience as much success as Kevin Feige, you start to believe you can do anything. Now that that’s been proven wrong, what are the consequences?
Because here’s the upcoming slate for Disney (not Sony) Marvel movies:
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (May 6, 2022)
Thor: Love and Thunder (July 8, 2022)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (November 11, 2022)
The Marvels (February 17, 2023)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (May 5, 2023)
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (July 28, 2023)
Where is the sure thing? The first Doctor Strange didn’t light the box office on fire so there’s no guarantee this one will do better. Black Panther no longer has the actor who played the title character. How can that not hurt the film? I have no idea what The Marvels are and I don’t think anyone else does either. And Ant-Man is the lowest performing franchise Marvel has. The two movies that should do well are Thor and Guardians. But I’d say even Guardians is in trouble since the second movie was weak and James Gunn’s Suicide Squad turned out to be a dud. Throw in a post-pandemic box office lull and Marvel could be in serious trouble moving forward.
Should this be the beginning of the end of Marvel’s incredible run, people will look back at Eternals as the movie that started the slide.
Bummed out that I no longer had a movie to watch, I cycled through a few backup options. I started watching Finch on Apple TV and it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t good either. The best way to describe it is that it was a 1990s Tom Hanks movie… without good directing or good writing. It had all the ingredients for one of those monster box office Hanks hits – Hanks doing a one-man show, his charm front and center, an impossible task with the highest of stakes. But the execution was so vanilla, you needed an industrial sized waffle cone just to make it through the first act.
So I went down my list and landed on a title several people have quietly been telling me to check out: The Empty Man. From what I understood, The Empty Man was a horror film that got lost in the mix once the pandemic showed up. It was dumped on HBO Max with barely a whisper. I looked it up on IMDB. Never heard of the director before. Never heard of the writer before. How good could it be?
Try the best horror film since A Quiet Place.
Wow was this movie good!
The film takes a very cliche horror premise – you call out to someone known as the Empty Man – and three days later, you kill yourself.
I challenge anyone to watch the opening of this movie and not get sucked in. It’s one of the creepiest – not to mention, heart pounding – 20 minutes you’ll watch all year.
But I’ll tell you when I knew this movie was special. You know how I always tell you: GIVE US SCENES WE HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE. Especially in horror. Give us scary scenes that are fresh. That are new. If all you’re doing is recycling old scares, why would we give two shits about your script?
Well, The Empty Man has one of the scariest scenes I’ve ever seen. And a big reason for that is because it’s so original. Our main character, an ex-detective looking into the death of a friend’s daughter, follows a series of clues that leads him out to a remote farm where a cult is practicing all sorts of weird cult stuff. It’s night time. He’s safely tucked away in a forest, a stream between him and the cult, who are a good half-mile away, performing a ritual where 100 shaved-head members are jogging around a bonfire.
It’s a weird moment but there’s nothing overtly scary about it. Then the bonfire goes out. Total darkness. We can’t see anything for an extended moment. Our hero stands there, behind a tree, in silence, waiting. Then, just across the stream, the moonlight illuminating the tops of their shaved heads, he sees all 100 cult members, facing him.
Instead of being half a mile away, they’re now about 200 feet away. They don’t move. They don’t make a noise. For all he knows, they don’t see him.
He then takes a step back. As soon as he does this, they take a step forward. Silence again. He takes a second step back. They all take another step forward, their feet uniformly clomping down in a loud “thump.” The brilliance of the scene occurs in between the action. The director isn’t afraid to sit there in silence for what seems like days. Everybody still. Everybody silent. Everybody waiting for the next move.
Finally our hero turns around and runs. And all 100 cult members sprint after him.
I’ve never seen a scene like this in a horror movie in my life. Do you know how difficult that is to do? To create a truly original horror moment? It’s nearly impossible. You’re competing against millions of horror scenes. So when someone puts the work in to find that original scene, I know I’m watching something special.
And this director is definitely special. He’s Ari Aster but he actually understands screenwriting. One of the great things about this script is the mythology. The backstory for the empty man is so extensive, so weird, so layered, that you almost feel like you’re in a philosophy class. You’ve constantly learning things you’ve never even fathomed before. It’s so unique. I can’t stop thinking about it.
I understand why this movie got dumped. It’s got nobody you’ve ever heard of in it. It’s got a first time director. The studio needed to cut costs somewhere during the pandemic and spending a bunch of money to promote a movie that didn’t have anybody in it or making it that they could market was an easy decision. But dude, Warner Brothers. You had an all-timer on your hands here. This is an amazing movie. I hope enough people are able to find it. It’s one of the best horror movies of the last decade.
Quick final announcement. I came across an excellent drama script during a consultation that I’m going to review on Wednesday. Nobody in town knows anything about this script so it’s making its debut here. The writer is one of the best dialogue writers I’ve encountered in years. And, best of all, they’re allowing me to post the script. So you’ll get to read it yourself. We haven’t highlighted dialogue for a while on Scriptshadow. But this review is going to be all about dialogue. So make sure to tune in!
These horror submissions were shut out of Horror Showdown. Why?? Also, stay til the end because I announce the next SHOWDOWN!
I always say that running a contest is one of the worst things a person can do. You make one friend and 999 enemies.
And I get it. You see the entries that made Horror Showdown last month and you think, “My concept is better than those.” First off, you’re probably wrong. However, a few of you might, indeed, be right.
Therein lies the immeasurable conundrum of subjectivity. You might have a cool idea that I’m just not into. I’m not a fan of movies about magic, for example, like Harry Potter. I find them abracadumb. But, obviously, there are people who love Harry Potter and whom might anoint your magic concept the best idea they’ve ever seen.
Also, whoever’s running the contest is looking for a specific type of script. Nicholl celebrates high-minded fare where theme takes precedence over everything. The Black List is turning into a site that celebrates social commentary. For me, right now, I’m looking at concepts and asking, “Is this a movie I’d want to make?” If the answer is no, I don’t need to deliberate any further.
Both of those things – subjectivity and could this be a movie – are driving 95% of my choices. Just because your script didn’t win those two battles doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. So don’t get down on yourself if you didn’t get picked.
With that said, there are concepts that are just straight up weak. And the purpose of today’s exercise is to help writers identify why a concept or logline doesn’t work and what you can do to improve your concepts moving forward. Let’s get to it!
Title: One Night in the White Mountains Under a Black Sun
Genre: Drama/Horror
Logline: In 1936 the lives of seven strangers violently collide when they become snowbound in an Italian hotel while one of them must stop a Nazi plot that would destroy the world.
Analysis: I wanted to get Felip’s entry in here because I could sense his audible frustration at not making the showdown (I love you, Felip!). This script actually finished in the top 15 because I thought the logline was intriguing. But the reason I passed on it had more to do with the Why You Should Read – “I just wanted to spin a decent yarn with Nazis and underground cults and black magic and werewolves and aliens.” Once I saw all that, I knew it was too much for me. There have been a few times in Scriptshadow history where I’ve liked “everything and the kitchen sink” scripts. But usually, I’m not into them. And once you have werewolves, Nazis, aliens, cults, and black magic? I just knew that wasn’t going to be for me. I tend to like simpler more direct concepts.
Title: THE PROJECTIONIST
Genre: Horror
Logline: A group of teens discover an old movie theater projector abandoned in a barn and inadvertently unleash a wave of horror after they switch it on.
Analysis: At first glance, this sounds like it could be a movie. But there’s one issue holding the logline back. We go from A to C instead of from A to B to C. We start with an old movie theater projector. Okay. There’s something a bit mysterious about that. However, how does switching it on unleash “a wave of horror?” Was the projector owned by someone dangerous? Maybe if there was a bit more information about WHY the projector unleashed this horror, I might’ve given this one a shot.
Title: Blood
Genre: Horror / action
Logline: A former combat medic, now providing rapid-response medical assistance for LA’s criminal underworld, takes on a trafficking gang harvesting teenagers’ organs for sale on the black market.
Analysis: I get the feeling that Ben tried to sneak an action script into the horror showdown here. So that’s the main reason I didn’t pick it. But I’m highlighting this concept to warn people off “organ trafficking” storylines. This is a 20 year old idea at this point. I know specifically how the town feels about organ trafficking because a couple of years ago I found a really good script about organ trafficking and I tried to pitch it to a bunch of people. Nobody would read the script the second they heard “organ trafficking.” it’s just a dead subject matter. If you’re going to do it, do it like they did it in Squid Game, where it’s a Z-story.
Title: Slaughterhouse
Genre: Horror
Logline: A documentary crew goes undercover to expose the horrors of factory farming, but things turn grisly when their project is discovered by a group of brutal farmers.
Analysis: This is a perfect example of how subjectivity plays into choosing scripts. I can’t stomach anything where animals get hurt. It just gets me thinking about all the animal harm going on in the world and I get really depressed. So this was a ‘no’ for me immediately. But from the writer’s e-mail, he pointed out that this script has gotten him a lot of meetings. So, obviously, other, less-sensitive people, have no issue with the subject matter. I just want you guys to see this so you don’t get too down about a rejection. There could be something in your idea that someone is simply sensitive to. I know people who won’t read anything about rape. Or abortion. There’s nothing you can do about that so there’s no reason to get down about it.
Title: The Malignant Shift
Genre: Psychological Thriller / Horror
Logline: One year ago, a fringe religious sect vanished into the wilderness of an undisclosed location. Today, a group of idealistic documentarians set out in search of them for the story of their lives. Tomorrow, they discover that some things are better left undisturbed.
Analysis: I wanted to highlight this entry for a specific reason. It contains a classic logline mistake that I see writers make over and over again. The logline starts off strong then dissolves into nothing. It amounts to, “Some documentarians set out to find a fringe religious sect who vanished into the wilderness a year ago… and then scary stuff probably happens.” The end of of a logline shouldn’t be a teaser. You want to tell us what happens. If the sect turned into cannibals, tell us that. If they were eaten by giant wolves that are now hunting our documentarians, tell us that. If the woods trap them until they starve to death, tell us that. The “exciting first half logline” that then becomes the “vague ending logline” is one of the biggest logline mistakes you can make. You gotta be specific about what happens.
Title: The Doppelgänger Suite
Genre: Horror
Logline: A paranormal team — headed by a grieving estranged married couple who’ve suffered a family tragedy — shoots their season finale at an accursed New Mexico hotel plagued by a century-long string of physically impossible suicides. Unless the married couple can reconcile and solve the mystery, they and their team will become the hotel’s next victims as their blackest secrets, desires and agonies take human form in a murderous game that must conclude by dawn.
Analysis: I passed on this one for one simple reason. Too long of a logline. I know everyone hates writing loglines. I used to hate them too. But being able to write a cohesive logline that quickly conveys the concept indicates to readers that this writer has been at the craft for a while, understands that writing loglines is a necessary evil, and knows what they’re doing. When I see a logline this long, 99.9999% of the time, the script is messy. Here’s the thing. Once you learn how to write a strong concise logline, you also learn how to be a concise storyteller. You’re more focused, both with your overall screenplay, as well as the scenes within your screenplay. Someone recently asked me how long a logline should be. There’s no universal number, but somewhere around 30 words is ideal.
Title: THE FUMIGATOR
Genre: Horror
Logline: A highly ritualized serial killer uses his fumigation services to isolate and torment a troubled family in their own home.
Analysis: Shout out to Brett for this entry. Always love to see Brett enter. Here’s my issue with this one. The concept borders on comedic. If you explain to me that someone would use those big house coverings to hide their killings, that does make sense. But those tents all look like something you’d see at a carnival. The title “The Fumigator” comes close to sounding like a horror parody. And, also, I couldn’t figure out how the killer’s plan worked. The families all have to leave the house while it’s being fumigated. So how could the killer trap them if they’re already gone? It was just one of those ideas that didn’t quite work for me.
Title: Monster Bait!
Genre: Horror Comedy
Logline: While on a family ski trip, a teen’s efforts to win over his girlfriend’s dad go horribly wrong when a curse makes it so that every time he masturbates – a monster kills the object of his lust.
Analysis: Okay, “Monster Bait” is a funny title. But when it comes to horror comedy, my bar is higher than the elevation your last flight flew at. A horror comedy idea has to be absolutely amazing for me to bite. And this one didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I thought a curse just makes things happen. I wasn’t clear why a monster needed to appear (for example, when I think of a curse, I think of Tom Hanks in “Big.” He becomes an adult. That’s the curse. There aren’t also demons flying around trying to kill Tom Hanks). There’s a logic-chain to these concepts that needs to be clean and this one was too messy for me.
Title: The Slaying at Rustic River
Genre: Slasher Flick
Logline: Five college friends vacation at a remote cabin in the woods, however, they soon find themselves hunted by a killer whose motives are fueled by an unspeakable event linked to the group’s past.
Analysis: Another classic example of a logline not giving us enough information. It’s being vague. Loglines must be SPECIFIC. It is the SPECIFIC that intrigues the reader, not the GENERIC. Here’s the key problem phrase of the logline – “are fueled by an unspeakable event linked to the group’s past.” TELL US THE EVENT. Don’t talk around it. The event from the past is the hook. Without it, what’s unique about this concept?
I wish I could’ve gone through all of the entires but I only have so many hours in the day! So what do you think?! Should any of these have made the Horror Showdown? Who should’ve gotten in? Who should’ve been pushed out?
***ANNOUNCEMENT***
Finally, the official announcement of the next showdown will be in the newsletter. But here’s the unofficial announcement. The next Showdown is titled ANYTHING GOES SHOWDOWN. That means any script, any genre, any concept – it’ll be open to every script. We’re going to fold “WEIRD SCRIPT SHOWDOWN” into ANYTHING GOES SHOWDOWN. And I am going to be paying special attention to those weirder ideas. One or two of those will definitely make the showdown. So you did not write those scripts in vain. The deadline is FEBRUARY 3RD. So you have exactly three months to get your scripts in shape. GOOD LUCK!
Holy Guacamole. I’ve actually found a good Black List script!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: An obsessed fan maneuvers his way into the inner circle of his hip hop idol and will stop at nothing to stay in.
About: This script finished pretty high on last year’s Black List, with 11 votes. The writer is young and relatively unknown but he did work as a story editor on “Dave,” which is a really funny show on Hulu. I’m not sure what a ‘story editor’ on a show does so maybe one of you TV guys can fill me in. Either way, this is a brand new writer so let’s see what he’s got!
Writer: Alex Russell
Details: 109 pages
Whatever happened to the stalker genre?
I love a good stalker movie.
Remember “The Fan?” With Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes? Funny story about that film. In one of the pivotal scenes, DeNiro and Snipes had a charged conversation while throwing a baseball back and forth to each other (Snipes plays a star baseball player in the film). Everybody in the production had been looking forward to shooting the scene since the beginning of the shoot. It was one of those Mano a Mano scenes between your two big stars where they really go at it.
So they start shooting this scene in a wide shot and they realize very quickly that DeNiro can’t throw a baseball. He literally looks like a little kid trying to throw a ball for the first time in his life. Here DeNiro is playing this ultra-tough guy stalker in the movie. The scene is about him covertly threatening Wesley Snipes’ character. And he’s spraying the ball around like a spastic monkey.
Everyone in the production had to huddle together – away from DeNiro of course – to figure out how to deal with this unforeseen obstacle. After talking it through, they realized the only way to do this without letting DeNiro know how embarrassing his throwing was, was to shoot the two players in ultra close-up, which hid DeNiro’s inability to throw. So if you go watch the movie, you’ll notice this scene plays out a little weird, with these ultra close-up shots that don’t really allow you to enjoy the scene.
Just goes to show how hard making a movie is. You never know what kind of problems you’re going to run into on a day of shooting.
Matthew is 22 years old and works at American Rag on La Brea (great place to find jeans by the way). Like a lot of people in LA, he’s lonely and confused. He can’t seem to make friends no matter how hard he tries. Hell, he lives with his grandma. He’s not exactly ‘killing it.’
Then, one day, across the street from work, Matthew notices his idol, a fast rising music artist named Oliver. Oliver hurries over to American Rag to escape a gaggle of fans. Since Matthew knows everything about Oliver, including the music he likes, he quickly changes the music in the store to what he knows is one of Oliver’s favorite tunes.
As soon as Oliver hears this, he asks who’s in charge of the music, and Matthew introduces himself. They talk about old music for a while and Oliver is so impressed with Matthew’s knowledge of music that he invites him to his concert that night. Keep in mind, Matthew has pretended this entire time to have no idea who Oliver is, which is one of the main reasons Oliver likes him. Matthew is not a “fan.” He’s a “real person.”
At the concert, Matthew meets Oliver’s entire crew. They’re a little skeptical of him at first, especially Shai, Oliver’s longtime friend and manager. But because he’s harmless, they let him in. This leads to Matthew visiting Olivier’s house. And, after a while, being given the reins to shoot an informal documentary about Oliver and his entourage. It allows Matthew to get very close to Oliver. He’s officially living his dream.
That dream leads to Matthew becoming his own celebrity of sorts since he’s all over Oliver’s Instagram. Everything is going great until Matthew revisits his old job where he runs into his co-worker Jamie. He stupidly invites Jamie to Oliver’s next event and the crew unexpectedly loves Jamie. They love him so much, in fact, they invite him on a big trip to London! All of a sudden, Matthew is losing status within the group.
Matthew needs to find a way to get Jamie out of the group without it looking like he tried to get Jamie out of the group. So he covertly injures him on the next video shoot. The move backfires as Oliver finally realizes that Matthew is just another crazed fan. After he kicks Matthew out of the group, Matthew must come up with a last ditch plan to get into Oliver’s good graces… forever.
Goal. Stakes. Urgency.
None of these are present in Lurker.
And yet the script still works.
Why?
Well, remember. All goal, stakes, and urgency do is provide your screenplay with an engine that propels the plot forward. Give characters a tesseract to go after (goal). Establish that if they don’t get it, the world blows up (stakes). And give them a short time frame to do it in (urgency). The reason I push GSU is because it’s the most powerful engine you can use to generate a story. But it’s not the *only* engine.
Another engine is the “levee breaks” engine. You either tell or imply to the audience that, at some point in the movie, the levee is going to break, and then you slowly build up to that moment. Since the reader knows the levee is going to break, they don’t necessarily need immediate goals. They still need characters doing things. But they don’t some giant involved plot.
The most famous example of a “levee breaks” engine is Titanic. Titanic doesn’t have a goal other than for Jack to try and seduce Rose. The engine that’s really driving our interest is the impending doom of hitting that iceberg and a good chunk of these people on the boat dying.
The “levee break” in Lurker is slightly different. It’s Matthew’s obsession with Oliver. We know that Matthew can’t help himself. That he’ll keep pushing and pushing until Oliver has no choice but to push back. And that eventual clash – the levee breaking – is why we keep reading. We know it’s coming and we can’t help ourselves. We want to see what happens.
By the way, just because you employ a “levee breaks” engine, that doesn’t mean your script is going to write itself. In fact, the reason this isn’t as common of an engine is because it’s harder to execute. Think about it. When you have GSU, you always know what your character’s going to do next since the character’s job is to achieve his goal. If the goal is to take down an island dictator (The Suicide Squad), then you just keep writing scenes that bring your heroes closer to that goal.
But what do you do if your character doesn’t have a narrative-defining goal? The options aren’t as clear. However, Lurker gives you a good template for tackling the problem. Have your hero push for more as the script goes on (Matthew wants to be more involved in the group – every 15 pages he wants more access, more responsibility) and then you introduce obstacles that create setbacks for your hero (Oliver starts to like Matthew’s buddy Jamie more than him, Oliver says he only wants Matthew to document the team, nothing more).
This struggle creates conflict and, remember, conflict is the lifeblood of drama. And drama is what generates entertainment. So we’re entertained by Matthew desperately trying to get closer and closer to the center of the group – he won’t stop until he’s practically INSIDE Oliver.
The script also has a beat on the Gen Y crowd. It feels modern. It feels up-to-date. Just the fact that Matthew becomes a quasi-celebrity because he’s on a famous person’s Instagram is a real thing. These celebrities have people around them all the time and they’re taking pictures of them, posting them, and people who want to know everything about those celebrities of course want to know who the people surrounding them are as well.
Finally, the script has something to say. It’s shining a light on the shallowness of today’s celebrity. There’s a scene in the script where Matthew is approached on the street by someone who recognizes him and he starts asking Matthew what he can do to be like him. What skills can he build? What classes can he take? And Matthew just kind of stands there realizing he has no skills. He’s just some guy who got lucky and is now stalking a dude. Which begs the question – is that the definition of celebrity in 2021?
If you like stalker scripts like I do, you’re going to love this. Check it out!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Plot beats that shake up the story must make sense logically and dramatically. One of the only mistakes in the script was when Matthew willingly invited Jamie to one of Oliver’s events, which led to Oliver and the crew liking Jamie more than they liked Matthew. If you think about this plot beat, it doesn’t make sense. Why would Matthew bring someone else into the fold who could potentially expose him (remember, Matthew pretends that he’s never heard of Oliver until Oliver walks in the store – but Jamie knows otherwise). The more logical beat would have been for Jamie to have gotten into the event on his own somehow, and surprisingly bumped into Matthew and Oliver.
