A dissection of a doomed movie concept

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Speaking of loglines, we here at Scriptshadow love ourselves a good concept discussion. “That idea is amazing!” “No, that idea sucks!” Concept development is really the heart of screenwriting. Because it solves so many problems when you’ve got a good one. Conversely, if you have a weak or bland movie idea, your entire script is an uphill battle as you attempt to make up for your problematic idea.

This process is complicated by the fact that there’s no universally accepted standard for what constitutes a good idea. The only real way to know is to field test it. The bigger the field, the more accurate the assessment is. But, even then, you’ll have people who think a good idea is a bad one. Every single project that’s been made into a movie in Hollywood had its detractors.

But that’s what makes talking about this stuff so fun! And, today, I want to talk about two movie ideas that fall on opposite ends of the good-bad spectrum.

So, over the weekend, I stumbled upon an article about that Jennifer Lawrence comedy, No Hard Feelings, which is one of the rare comedies that’s being released into theaters. In the article, they talk about how the movie came to be.

Jennifer Lawrence’s close friend is writer/director Gene Stupnitsky (Good Boys, Bad Teacher). Stupnitsky showed Lawrence the original Craig’s List ad that inspired the movie several years ago. Lawrence fell on the floor laughing when she heard it and thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. What kind of crazy family would actually hire a woman to de-virginize their son??

Stupnitsky, smart screenwriter that he is, secretly began writing the script as soon as he got that reaction. Then, two years later, he came to Lawrence and said, “Hey, remember that hilarious ad about the family that hires a woman to have sex with their son? I wrote a script about it!” Quite possibly the easiest way in existence to get a movie made: Not only know a movie star, but know EXACTLY the kind of movie they want to make. I do not begrudge Stupnitsky for doing this. It’s so hard to get any movie made and he was given a golden ticket.

Now, did Stupnitsky know this was a bad movie idea and write it anyway cause he knew he could get Lawrence and, therefore, get the movie made? Maybe he thought, like a lot of writers, that the idea had problems, but he could overcome them when writing the script. Because, the truth is, this is an awful movie idea, as it has a poison pill embedded in the bowels of its story. But before I explain what that pill is, let’s talk about another movie idea.

A year ago, I heard about this “Flamin Hot Cheetos” project which was ALSO being adapted from a real-life story. I was neutral on the announcement but they released the trailer last week and it looks pretty good. It’s got an underdog story of this janitor working at the Frito Lay plant and he comes up with this idea to make Cheetos taste even better by adding hot sauce.

The story is about him being thrust into the buttoned-up corporate world of which he’s highly unfamiliar, as he pushes his snack idea to the top ranks of Frito Lay. The movie seems to be marketing mostly to the Latino family crowd. But it certainly looks like a crowd pleaser.

So why do I bring these two projects up?

Because, as screenwriters, you have to understand why one concept works and another doesn’t. I get hired by writers all the time (e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com – logline consults for just $25!) who send me a couple of ideas and want to know which one they should write. When I do these consults, the answer is always easy. One logline is always a lot better than the other. But screenwriters have a tough time seeing this.

So why is Flaming Hot Cheetos a markedly better idea than No Hard Feelings? One of the most dependable templates in all of storytelling is the underdog template. If you can find a really great underdog story, especially one based on real events, write it. Cause Hollywood loves to make them and people love to watch them. This is why Flamin Hot Cheetos is a great bet.

Now let’s move over to No Hard Feelings. Even the title of this film is bad. What does that even mean? If you have a title, especially for a comedy, that doesn’t give the audience any indication whatsoever what the movie is about, you are in MAJOR trouble. To be fair, I understand why Lawrence and Stupnitsky thought this ad was funny. If someone had read this ad out loud to me, I probably would’ve laughed as well. It really is bizarre that a family actually put an ad out for this.

HOWEVER.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good movie idea!

The more you dig into No Hard Feelings, the more you realize how bad of an idea it actually is. What’s sympathetic about Jennifer Lawrence’s character? Why do we like her? Why would we want to root for her? Who’s rooting for a 30 year old woman to successfully take the virginity of a high school kid under the pretense of scoring some money so she can continue her loser narcissistic lifestyle? Anyone?

Stupnitsky and Lawrence not only raised their hands, they doubled down! In the trailer, we see Lawrence’s character deceive a freshly-axed boyfriend so she could bang some hot dude via a one night stand!! Sure.  Let’s instantly come up with a way for the audience to hate the main character, and then we’ll send her off on this totally sketchy adventure.   (I think I liked that scene in the script – I was clearly high on drugs at the time)

But hold up here, Carson. Just hold the heck up. What about The Graduate? Doesn’t that have the exact same situation in it? Mrs. Robinson seduces Benjamin Braddock. Yes, it does. Except for one critical difference. MRS. ROBINSON ISN’T THE MAIN CHARACTER. And The Graduate wouldn’t have been a good movie if she was.

Which is the clue that gives us the fix to this entire premise. Maybe, just maybe, the movie works if the KID in No Hard Feelings is the main character. If you built the movie around him and his inability to connect with people and his helicopter parents are terrified their son is never going to find anyone so they hire a woman to seduce him, there might be a movie there.

I could even see that being a midpoint twist. Nerdy guy meets older woman. They get together. Halfway through, the reveal comes – his parents hired her to have sex with him. Second half of the movie is, what happens between these two after the fallout?

So why didn’t they do that? I’m about to tell you a dirty little secret about Hollywood so get ready to take a shower afterwards: Cause then Lawrence doesn’t sign on. If Lawrence is just some secondary character, she doesn’t sign onto the movie. This is what I hate most about Hollywood. The system is designed, at least in situations like this, to make the worst version of the movie.

Now there’s actually a little more nuance to this story because keep in mind who’s writing No Hard Feelings. Gene Stupnitsky. What is Stupnitsky known for? He’s known for writing a female teacher who’s a total b—h. He’s known for writing about a group of middle schoolers who run around swearing at everyone. It looks like Stupnitsky believed that, because he’s been able to get away with writing “unlikable” characters before, he could do it again.

But he’s miscalculated this time. Unlike those scripts, which have a singular problematic element, this script has TWO of them.  The main character is unlikable AND the adventure itself is unlikable.  We don’t like that Lawrence’s character is in this situation.  We don’t want her to succeed.  What’s left to like?  What’s left to root for?

Maybe if you made her the world’s sweetest person and she’s forced into this instead of chooses it, there’s a fraction of a chance we would root for her. But even then I’d be unconvinced.  Years after the movie, Flashdance, was released, producer Lynda Obst was asked about the 30+ different drafts that were written of the script before it got made.  She said, in retrospect, that it was one of those movies, with its cleverly ironic main character, that was always going to work no matter what.  Every draft would’ve worked.  No Hard Feelings is the opposite.  I don’t think there’s any way the premise could’ve been saved.

Before I check out today, I want EVERYONE from this site to read the TJ Newman article over at Deadline. Newman is the writer of the two airplane novels that netted her a total of 3 million dollars from Hollywood. She wrote a guest article explaining how it took her 20 years (TWENTY YEARS!) to sell both of those novels. She was rejected 40 times. It’s an inspiring and insightful look into the persistence and perseverance required to be a successful writer. Never let that flame extinguish!

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is, probably, the best movie Marvel could’ve released right now, the reason being that IT’S ITS OWN THING. The problem Marvel’s been facing lately is that all of its movies have been intertwined with one another, and while that was great when the MCU was cooking, it’s become the world’s draggiest anchor ever since it entered its Marvels/She-Hulk/Dr.Strange era.

Still, I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to get myself to go watch the end of Starlord’s trilogy. There were two main reasons why. One, the film looks sad! It looks like it’s going to lean heavily into its feels and that’s not why I go to see big Hollywood films. It’s why I watch smaller films and some TV shows. But when I go to see a big movie, I want to have fun. I want my spirits to be lifted, not dragged down to Sadsville.

And to be honest, I don’t think Guardians has earned the right to have a big emotional ending. This isn’t Iron Man after 20 films. This isn’t Luke Skywalker at the end of the greatest trilogy ever. It’s Chris Pratt, people in weird makeup, and CGI creatures acting goofy in space. Let’s be real here. People aren’t asking for Manchester by the Sea when they’re watching gun-wielding raccoons.

Then, of course, there was that second movie. That second movie was awwwwwful. It was weird. It was bumpy. It ditched its main character in favor of focusing on its two villains. Had that movie been good, I probably would’ve seen Volume 3 regardless. But the stink from that misfire still lingers in the back of my nostrils.

I’m so hot and cold when it comes to James Gunn. Never connected with his pre-Guardians content. Love Guardians Volume 1. Hated Suicide Squad. Loved the Peacemaker show. Hated Guardians Volume 2. I’m actually excited to see what he does with DC because he has an opportunity to dethrone the flailing Marvel. But this one? This Guardians 3 movie? I’m sitting this one out.

So, after my No Guardians For Me temper tantrum I just made you endure, did I give up on the weekend?  Absolutely not. I did watch something. And that something ended up totally surprising me. It surprised me so much that I did research on the creator, Graham Yost, only to find out he was the writer of SPEED, one of the best action movies ever!

The show I watched was called Silo, which is a post-apocalyptic story about people who live in a giant underground silo city. Every once in a while, someone demands to go outside, convinced that the air isn’t poison and that humans can, once again, live on the surface. But all of these people make it a total of about 20 steps before they fall to the ground and die.

The pilot episode is about the silo Sheriff’s wife, who suspects that the governing body of the silo is lying to them, and that the outside is, indeed, livable. (**spoiler**) So she goes outside. And dies just like everyone else. The sheriff is left heartbroken. But as time goes on, he considers giving the outside a shot as well.

I actually read the book the show was based on (called “Wool,” which refers to the wool everyone has over their eyes) which started as a short story that the author, Hugh Howey, shared with an online group. The enthusiasm inspired Howey to turn the story into a novel (the first chapter in Wool, which was the original short story, is utterly riveting so I’m not surprised people fell hard for it). It’s very much like the “Lost” narrative where there are a lot of secrets and reveals, which makes it ideal for a TV show.

So then why isn’t anyone talking about it? They probably will as word gets out. But I think it has more to do with the fact that Apple has zero concept for how to promote a TV show. None of these streamers do, really, beginning with Netflix. But the thing about Netflix was it was a destination site. You went there looking to watch something then you saw the latest greatest Netflix show being promoted so you checked it out.

Apple TV not only doesn’t have enough material to be a destination site, it’s buried under too many layers of menus and buttons. Every time I fire it up, I feel like I’m turning on a nuclear reactor. Is this where the original shows page is? Or is it over here? I suppose Apple gets some credit for making me feel like a genius every time I find the show I came for. But the poor ease-of-use severely hurts its chances of anyone watching a show on its service.

Then, of course, it doesn’t spend on advertising. Which is bizarre for a company with a 1 trillion dollar market cap. Great shows are going to find an audience no matter whether they advertise or not. But everything else needs to build awareness. Apple literally has a media strategy whereby they don’t tell you about a new show and make it hard to find any show you do hear about. With that strategy, the ONLY way anybody’s going to be able to find your show is if it’s Game of Thrones level awesome. It baffles me that there are smart executives getting paid millions who don’t do anything about this.

Is Silo a great show? I don’t know yet. But the pilot is darn good.

I’m always surprised when something pulls me in. Since I know all the buttons and levers writers are pushing to get me to buy into their story, I’m hyper-aware that whatever I’m watching is being written. For that reason, it’s hard for me to get lost in a show/movie. But I got lost in Silo’s pilot.

What wizardry did the writer use to achieve this?

Well, they start by giving us an intense opening scene then flashing back.  Yes, this is a cliche.  But they do it well. They start us in the present, briefly setting up the world of the silo before the Sheriff tells the government he wants to go outside. The story makes it clear that this is a death wish, which is a nice way to intrigue the viewer.

That wasn’t what hooked me, though.

What hooked me was the story of the Sheriff and his wife once we flashed back. The entire episode takes place in the past and shows the Sheriff and his wife trying to conceive a baby.

I can’t emphasize this enough – when someone becomes hooked on your story, when they buy in – it’s almost always because of the characters. And it’s almost always because you’re being truthful with those characters. You’re showing us characters who are going through the same trials and tribulations that real people go through. It’s that authenticity that makes us care about them.

All the Sheriff and his wife care about is having a baby. That’s it. That’s all that matters to them. And each day that goes by, each day that they become a little less hopeful, pulls us closer to them, makes us feel more sympathy for them, makes us root a little harder that tomorrow will be the day they get pregnant. By the end of this pursuit, I was in love with these two. I was ready to run through a wall for them.

So when the wife says she wants to go outside, the equivalent of committing suicide, I was heartbroken. Cause I knew what that meant. I knew she wasn’t coming back and I knew that he would be wrecked.

It’s something I try to remind myself of all the time, whether I’m helping another writer or working on something myself. Don’t get distracted by the bells and whistles – the twists, the mysteries, the mythology, the double-crosses. If you make us care about your characters, we’ll follow you through any door. Hell, we’ll follow you right out the silo! Into that poisoned air.

Assuming we can find your show, of course.

If AI was a whisper two weeks ago, it’s become a Wilhelm scream over the last two days. That’s because with screenwriters striking, everyone wants to know if the studios are going to turn to AI to write their scripts.  Let’s be honest. This is the dream of every studio in town. To be able to generate scripts without dealing with pesky neurotic inconsistent writers who never entirely deliver on what the studios wanted in the first place.

Can you imagine if you didn’t need to hire and fire Damon Lindelof for the next Star Wars movie? You could merely go to an AI chat bot, feed it an idea, and have the script written in 98 seconds? And pay nothing in the process. That sounds like a sweet deal to me. In fact, we can get a preview of what that script looks like right here. I’m going to prompt Chat GPT to write the opening scene of the recently announced Rey movie.

Riveting stuff there, Chat GPT.

I’m here to tell you that AI has no chance of replacing screenwriters. And I’ve got five ironclad reasons why.

It Doesn’t Know How To Be Funny

AI has no concept of humor. Which makes sense. AI is a logic-driven process. It crunches data and approximates how to use said data to give the user his desired result.  It’s very nuts & bolts.  It doesn’t do funny. And if you can’t do funny, you eliminate a gigantic component of screenwriting.

Even if you’re not writing a comedy, you need to inject humor in places. You’ll always have at least one character who’s comedic. The screenwriters who get the most attention are the ones who have strong voices, and “voice” is synonymous with how a writer uses humor.

I prompted Chat GPT to write a new Seinfeld scene. Jerry and the gang have found his apartment transported to the future, in 2023, and they’re trying to get back to 1992.  For clarity’s sake, I prompted GPT to have them already in the future.  Yet is still started like so…

And this is a sitcom that Chat GPT already has tons of data for. So it knows the characters and the kinds of episodes that are written and where the laughs usually come from. Even with all that data, that’s the best it could do. Now let’s see what happens when I tell it to write the same scene with a totally original sitcom, where it has to make up everything. Here’s what it gave me.

I don’t think there’s even an attempt at a punchline in this scene. It’s safe to say that comedy is the first area where screenwriters are safe.

How Can Something That Isn’t Human Document The Human Experience?

Every story that has ever been written is a reflection of the universal human experience. When someone writes about love, it reflects their own experiences with love. When someone writes about the devastation of losing a loved one, it’s because, either directly or indirectly, they have experienced that feeling of loss. Heck, when someone writes about losing their virginity, they are drawing upon their own experience of losing their virginity.

How can a computer ever cover these things in an authentic way? This is the secret sauce in screenwriting that you don’t really think about. You need to bare your soul in your writing if you want your stories to resonate with others. Neil Gaiman talks about this. That nobody paid his writing any attention until he started writing “the truth.” The truth being our true life experiences, the ugly stuff we’re ashamed about, the things we’re embarrassed of, the messy stuff that occupies the shadows and crevices of our existence. That’s what makes a story connect with other people.

I’ve been watching the Hulu show, Dave, lately.  It follows a rapper trying to make it big.  Dave spends a lot of time in his show focusing on his insecurities about his body, particularly in relation to sex.  There’s a lot of fear and shame and confusion that occurs whenever he has sex.  That’s an exclusively human thing that a computer could ever replicate.  Why?  Because a computer has never had to go through that before.

It’s a Litigation Nightmare

The dirty little secret about AI’s journey into art is that it steals. It says it doesn’t. It says everything it generates – pictures, paintings – all comes from its “imagination.” But a funny thing happened not long ago. Someone prompted the AI to generate a photo of a slide tackle in soccer. It came up with this.

Look a little closer. You see something there in the middle right side? It almost looks like a watermark. Here’s another REAL photo that happened to already be on the internet.

Looks similar huh? And what’s that there? Is that a Getty watermark? Ahhhh-haaaaa. Looks like we just caught AI in a big fat case of plagiarism. Obviously, AI is taking real photos and real paintings to create art. It’s stealing. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the second AI “writes” some scene into a movie that’s eerily similar to a scene from an unsold screenplay on the internet, or even a scene from another produced movie, that that studio is going to get sued up the wazoo.

This is going to happen with characters, scenes, concepts, dialogue. They could potentially get sued from two-dozen different directions if you believe that AI is crowd-sourcing data from every corner of the web to come up with their screenplays.

If you’re a studio, why put yourself in that position? Just buy a single writer’s script and you don’t have to worry about any of that.

Its Costs Are Going to Skyrocket

Recently, it was discovered that AI used Reddit as a huge language source for the way it thinks and acts. So Reddit said, we’re not just going to give you that data. We’re going to charge you for it. This is going to be a business that explodes over the next few years.

Every single company, Reddit, CNN, the New York Times, Twitter, Instagram, blogs — anything that has lots of data – is going to start charging AI to use it. Which means AI is going to have to pass those costs on to others. YOU.  You’re going to have to start paying for AI. And for every corner of the internet that AI will have to pay money to use, those costs to the consumers are only going to rise.

What that means is that a producer is not just going to be able to get a Chat GPT screenplay for free. They’re going to have pay for it. And the costs are going to keep getting higher as people figure out how AI is getting its information and making sure that they have to pay to get that information.

It Cannot Offend

This is the whole ball of wax, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the smoking gun as far as why screenwriters will never have to worry about AI replacing them.

AI cannot offend. It’s not allowed to. It’s being reprogrammed EVERY SINGLE DAY to be less offensive than the day before. This is happening because the AI companies are terrified of AI saying something offensive. Because that means THEY’RE offensive. And they can’t let that happen.

The thing about writing is, if you want to write anything that has any sort of power to it, it’s hard to do so without offending someone.

AI could not have written Inglorious Basterds. German people could say it’s offensive and stereotypes them. AI could not write The Whale. It’s offensive towards overweight people. It would refuse to write Veep, as there’s way too much swearing and mean-spiritedness. It wouldn’t write Academy Award winning Promising Young Woman, as the subject matter of rape and revenge are tricky to navigate and may trigger someone. It couldn’t write 13 Reasons Why.  The series might cause someone to commit suicide.  It would refuse to adapt Anna Karenina, as there are no people of color in that story. It couldn’t write Beef because the show routinely makes Asian-Americans look dangerous and incompetent. It couldn’t write Super Mario because Italians don’t want to be stereotyped as cartoon plumbers.

American Beauty, Doubt, The Hunger Games, Jojo Rabbit, Get Out, Mad Men, Joker, Three Billboards, Spotlight, The Passion of the Christ, Room, Silver Linings Playbook, American Sniper, South Park, Deadpool, The Sopranos, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Juno, Crash, White Lotus, Suicide Squad, both the British and American Office.

AI would not have touched a single one of those stories as they each have something in them that could potentially be perceived as offensive.

I’m not even convinced it could write Top Gun Maverick, as the bad guys are vaguely implied to be Russian, and the AI would refuse to stereotype an entire nation.

What this means is that AI would only be able to write the most vanilla of vanilla screenplays. The safest of the safe. You wouldn’t feel a single emotion because AI would go out of its way to avoid anything that might cause emotion!

People have said, “Yeah, but AI is only going to get better.” That’s true. But we’re also only going to get more sensitive. So it doesn’t matter how good it gets if it still has to avoid ten million offensive pitfalls every time it writes a screenplay.

The only entities who can write stories are people because people are still allowed to shine a light on the dark crevices of life. People are allowed to shine a light on the corruption inside the Catholic Church. People are allowed to write a pro-life movie like Juno and tackle the contentious underbelly of that subject matter. People are allowed to highlight the kinds of inadvertently offensive people who we find ourselves around every day, like Michael in The Office. AI is not allowed to do that. Which is why writers will always be safe.

Wrapping this up, do I think that AI could come up with a really clever plot like the movie, “Missing,” which I just watched? Do I think it could come up with a whopper of a twist, like “The Sixth Sense?” I honestly don’t know. I think it has a better chance of figuring out how to plot a movie since plotting is technical.

But plot is so closely interwoven with character. And “character” is the thing that I don’t think AI will ever figure out. Because it’s elusive. You can’t come up with a mathematical equation to write a great character. And, like I said earlier, AI doesn’t understand the human condition. It can’t. It’s never lived a human life. For that reason, every screenwriter in Hollywood can sleep soundly. You’re not going to be replaced.

“First of all, this script is way too long. 180 pages is 80 pages more than anyone in Hollywood is willing to read. Next, you’ve got this overwhelming theme of saving the planet that’s obviously a political message. Nobody wants political messages in their movies. They just want to be entertained. Your main character, Jake, is boring. He’s a lughead without any personality. A movie that’s going to cost this much money needs a way more interesting main character. And let’s not even get into how ridiculous this mythology is. I was confused half the time. So, they’re on a planet with aliens and then they become the aliens by growing the aliens and putting themselves inside their heads digitally. Basic questions like, what happens when their avatars need to sleep, are never adequately answered. A movie like this is a bridge too far, too weird, and too expensive to ever get made.”

-Avatar
Worldwide box office: 2.7 billion

“There are so many things wrong with this script, I don’t know where to start. Maybe start with the fact that in a movie about people living in a simulation, that whenever people fight each other, they can only use kung-fu. Why don’t they fight like normal people? Why only kung-fu? The script is packed with pseudo-philosophy that is consistently eye-rolling. I kid you not, one of the lines is, “Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth… there is no spoon. Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” Good lord. This doesn’t even get to all the logical faults in the movie. Why do they have to go through this entire song and dance to get Neo out of the Matrix? Why not just take him out right away? This whole script is ridiculous.

-The Matrix
Worldwide box office: 467 million
Also, the most successful DVD of all time

“This is one of the most disjointed scripts I’ve ever read. It has a great opening sequence that pulls you in but then, inexplicably, you leave that storyline and follow another one with a douchey Hollywood sex offender who we hate. Why would you build a story around this guy? Eventually, we get back to the house where all the good stuff was happening and that’s when you introduce the most ridiculous character I’ve ever seen, a giant naked orc-woman with superhuman strength who thinks everyone is her baby. This went so far away from your cool opening that it made me completely lose faith in both you and the script. This would never get made because everybody who watched it would leave the theater fuming.”

-Barbarian
Budget: 4.5 million
Worldwide box office: 45 million
Turned its director into one of the hottest names in Hollywood

“I’ve never seen a dumber idea in my life. You’re making a superhero film with a main character that doesn’t have any superpowers. And, oh yeah, you’re not focusing on the superhero. You’re focusing on the supervillain. Why in the world would we root for the bad guy???? He’s one of the most diabolical awful human beings in existence. We see that here in spades. His primary storyline is stalking the single mom who lives in his building.  Who’s our target demo here?  4chan?  The script doesn’t have a narrative either. The character just drifts through life, occasionally trying to be a stand-up comedian. This is too heady and slow for superhero fans and cinephiles have no interest in watching superheroes. I don’t see any audience for this movie.”

-Joker
Budget: 55 million
Worldwide box office: 1 billion

“I don’t understand why we’re considering this script. This is a horror film, which is a genre that plays to 13-21 year olds, and the whole thing is a silent film. Nobody speaks! What Gen-Z moviegoer that you know is going to pay to watch a silent film? The script is so desperate to be seen as clever.  It makes the daughter character deaf.  Get it!?  The monsters hunt on noise and she can’t hear any noise!  Oh, the irony!  Give me a break.  The rules dictating this world don’t make sense.  As humans, we always make noises. We sneeze, we cough, we fart. All of this is ignored in the movie. Audiences would tear the logic of this film apart. And teens – our primary audience – are going to massacre us online for a horror film where nobody talks.”

-A Quiet Place
Budget: 17 million
Worldwide box office: 340 million

“So let me get this straight. We’re going to go all in on making a period piece about a boat sinking and the whole thing is going to rest on a love story? I get it if this is Dirty Dancing and we’re shooting in a small town for 10 million bucks. But we’re recreating 1912!  We’re recreating an entire boat down to the last detail and we’re shooting on multiple sets with hundreds of extras and endless costuming. This is going to cost us a fortune. There’s no scenario whatsoever where enough people will pay to see this movie to make up for that cost. We’re literally throwing money away.”

-Titanic
Worldwide box office – 2.3 billion

“I have never read a script with a more passive main character in my life. Nothing that happens in this story happens because the main character made it happen. It only happened because he fell into it. For that reason alone, we have zero shot at getting an actor big enough to convince a studio to finance the movie. But even if we somehow trick someone to be in the film, it’s three hours of a wandering narrative that doesn’t have a clear destination. We’re in Vietnam, then we’re playing ping-pong at the Olympics, then he decides to walk across the US for no reason. It’s like the writer couldn’t make up his mind what kind of story he wanted to tell. I feel certain in my assessment that if we make this, it will be one of the biggest flops the studio has ever made.”

-Forrest Gump
Worldwide box office: 678 million

“This was a good script but these movies don’t make money! Small town crime dramas have a ceiling of 10 million at the box office if they’re lucky. Their audience, older men, is too small. Also, with everything moving online, people are getting more and more used to watching these kinds of movies at home.  Not to mention, the golden age of TV is allowing audiences to get their fix of this genre in TV shows, which is probably what this movie should be since it’s so character-driven. No way this justifies the cost.”

-Hell or High Water
Budget: 12 million
Worldwide box office: 37 million
The movie is the first step in the writer creating a billion dollar franchise (Taylor Sheridan)

“This is the most generic laughable action movie I’ve ever read. It starts off with some Russian guys killing our protagonist’s dog. That becomes the primary motivation in the film – to get them back. No, actually, they kill his dead wife’s dog. It wasn’t even his dog! That would actually make more sense. So he decides to unretire and kill an entire Russian crime organization because of the dog. I kid you not. And then we get five standard gun shootouts and that’s the movie. We’ll be lucky to get 20 rentals on digital video if we make this.”

-John Wick
Budget: 14 million
Worldwide box office: 86 million
Begins a billion dollar franchise

A story that’s always stuck with me is Zach Braff’s pursuit of making Garden State. Everyone told him that script was terrible. And, to be fair, it wasn’t very good. But he pushed through all that resistance, made the movie, and it was the big surprise hit at that year’s Sundance. It then went on to have a long successful theatrical run.

That story made me realize that every single script that ever gets written is going to be criticized. In fact, more people are going to criticize your script than not criticize it. No matter how good it is. Without going into the weeds, art is weird. It is the most criticized of any pursuit in life. Everybody has opinions on why a piece of art doesn’t work. And if every artist and writer gave up because of those critiques, nothing would ever get made.

Everything you read in this post is something I’d heard was said or was likely said. Yet, in every case, the writer pushed through regardless of the criticsm. Which is exactly what you should do if you believe in your screenplay. It doesn’t matter what anyone on this board says, what I say, what some random agent says. You will get negative criticism no matter what. Once you understand that, you have a superpower. Cause now you know you can ignore those people and find the people who do get your script. That’s the only way movies happen, is people pushing through the criticism and finding a way to get their art produced.

Do the same and your movie will be on my sequel to this post!

Would you like to know the winner of last week’s grudge match?

Before I give the final tally, I have to say that this was CLOSE. I’m not sure what I was expecting. But I didn’t think the competition would come down to the wire. There were too many voters. You figured someone was going to run away with it.

I wanted to read both scripts this weekend but I didn’t have time so I read the first scene of each. And I have to say, I liked the opening of both scripts. Grendl’s opening is more of a sequence but I found it clever the way the separate plotlines collided in an interesting and shocking way.

And I thought Kagey’s scene was good as well. When the friend decides to go steal some extra fishing gear and the drug guys pull up, my stomach dropped. So, for all the pomp and circumstance – of which there was plenty in the comments section, believe you me – this ended up being a good old fashioned writing contest. Two very capable writers bringing it.

And with that, the winner of our first ever Grudge Match was…..

KAGEY!!!!!!

His script, For Good Men To Do Nothing, received 25 votes. Grendl’s script, Haddegon Tails, received 22 votes (23 if you count Brenkilco’s late vote).

Congratulations, Kagey. And good job Grendl for keeping it exciting. I was checking the vote count multiple times a day all week. So I was into it, man.

I want to thank everyone who voted, everyone who tried to read the scripts, and especially those of you who read both scripts all the way through. And also those of you who left notes. It sounds like Kagey got some really good ideas for his script. And while we all know Grendl is a little tougher to puncture on the suggestions front, I wouldn’t be surprised if he incorporated a few notes himself.

That’s what I like about our showdowns – it’s the only place in the world where you get a ton of people reading your script and giving you feedback. They don’t even get this in the pro ranks. A few people read each draft, and that’s it. So if you’re smart, you can really take the feedback and make your script awesome.

I have a final thought before we wrap this up.

One of the themes of this battle was LUCK. Kagey’s argument was that the best writers will rise to the top and get noticed no matter what. Grendl’s argument was that it all comes down to luck, being in the right place at the right time. That’s what the grudge in this Grudge Match centered on.

Kagey said, if your old script is good enough, Grendl, someone would’ve bought it. Grendl stands strong on his belief that the only reason the script hasn’t been purchased is because Hollywood is a sham and there’s no difference between pro and amateur other than nepotism and luck.

I disagree with both writers to an extent. I don’t believe that you either have it or you don’t and if you do, you’ll get noticed. Nor do I believe that there’s an endless number of terrible writers making a living strictly due to luck and connections. Sure, they’re out there. But I don’t think they make up a huge percentage of working writers.

May I present a third option: WORK YOUR BUTT OFF. Work your butt off learning as much about screenwriting as possible — writing as much as possible. And then work your butt off as a salesman. Hustle, market yourself, cold query everyone in town, get your scripts into all the major contests and on all the major screenwriting websites.

Most writers are only good at one of those two things. So if you can be good at both, there’s a good chance you will find success as long as you keep at it. But if you’re average at both, it’s not going to happen. And that’s what most writers are. They’re average when it comes to learning and improving and they’re average at hustling.

So Grendl is right. If you’re only good at the writing part and crappy at the marketing part, you will need luck. And Kagey is right. If you’re really good at the marketing part but crappy at the writing part, you will need to put effort into learning so that your ability improves to a point where you’re writing good screenplays.

If you’re struggling in either of these departments, come up with a plan. TONIGHT. Write down how you’re going to get better at writing or marketing, set realistic goals for yourself, and get to work. Cause I guarantee you, you know where you’re weak.  And knowing is half the battle. Now do something about it. Yes, I just quoted G.I. Joe.

What’d you guys think? Pro vs. Amateur. Is the line as clear as they say it is?

Oh, and let’s not forget the obvious question.

Who’s next?

:)