We’ve got the Sundance grand prize winner here! Is it, like Rolling Stone claims, “every single Sundance movie rolled into one?”
Genre: Drama
Premise: A high school girl with dreams of becoming a singer is held back by her deaf family, who desperately need her help in order to succeed in their new fishing business.
About: Writer-director Sian Heder was approached by Lionsgate to remake Coda, which was originally a French film. They developed it through Lionsgate but, ultimately, the studio (which isn’t known for films like Coda so I don’t know why anyone thought it’d get greenlit in the first place) decided to pass. The producers then put the financing together independently, got the film made on their own, and, after it debuted at Sundance, Tim Cook bought the film for 25 million dollars for his Apple streaming service.
Writer: Sian Heder (based on the French film, The Belier Family written by Victoria Bedos, Stanislas Carré de Malberg, Éric Lartigau, and Thomas Bidegain.
Details: 110 minutes
Every writer needs to establish a modus operandi.
They need to have a writing rule-set to operate by. Mine is: simple story complex characters. 99 times out of 100, when a story gets too complicated or tries to do too much, it falls apart. Which was my big issue when I saw that Coda won Sundance. You have commercial fishing. You have a deaf family. You have a girl who wants to be the next American Idol. At first glance, there’s too much going on here.
That’s where my skepticism was born. But, believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. When something proves me wrong, that means there’s something to learn. What did they do to navigate this pitfall? What can I learn that’ll help me expand my knowledge of storytelling?
Let’s see if I even need to worry about that with Coda…
Coda (which stands for “Child of Deaf Adults”) takes place in Good Will Hunting land, aka Boston. Frank and Jackie Rossie are deaf parents who own a fishing boat. Their two children are 20-something Leo, who’s also deaf, and our main character, 17 year old Ruby, who’s the lone member of the family who can hear.
Because Ruby can hear, she’s tasked with keeping the family business together. You’re not allowed to commercially fish with an all deaf crew. You need at least one person who can hear. Because the family is barely scraping by financially, they have no choice but to employ Ruby.
But Ruby has big dreams. It being her last year of high school, she signs up for choir class, as she’s always wanted to sing. When it turns out she’s good, her teacher, Bernardo, encourages her to try out for a music scholarship. Ruby never even thought about college as she figured she’d be working with her family forever. But she decides to give it a shot.
The family, meanwhile, gets tired of being taken advantage of in the fish market and decides to start their own company where they keep all the profits. Of course, in order for this to work, they’re going to need Ruby to handle all of the ‘hearing’ related stuff, which is a lot. For example, in order to get some exposure, they do an interview for the local news. Guess who has to be there to translate?
Ultimately, we know where this is going. Ruby is going to stick around for her family. Not because she wants to. But because she has to. That is, unless, her parents realize how important it is to let their daughter live her own life. Will they come around?
Okay, let’s make one thing clear. The rumors you heard about the echoes of a man sobbing relentlessly in Hollywood are NOT TRUE. I know there were Youtube videos posted. I know the local news nicknamed this handsome gentleman – not that anybody saw him, I’m just assuming he’s handsome – “The Sacred Sobber” – but whatever you heard about this rumor, it is not true, okay? So stop accusing me of wasting an entire box of tissues while I watched Coda. It’s fake news.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Here’s the thing with Coda. It *is* messy. And it *is* trying to do too much. And not everything fits together perfectly. But it still somehow works. I think I’ll chalk it up to, the best movies are imperfect. It’s their strange concoction of ingredients that make them so memorable. Coda falls squarely into that category.
I also think there are certain movies that weren’t meant to be distilled into a logline or even a trailer. You don’t understand them until you’re living inside the context of the movie itself. When I saw the trailer, the fishing and singing stuff didn’t go together at all.
But in the movie, they do a good job of establishing the fishing stuff as the family’s livelihood. It’s very realistic. We see their job in intimate detail. So we buy into that world. It *is* a little jarring when Ruby, out of nowhere, says, “I want to be a singer now.” But just like the fishing stuff, we get into the details of her teacher coaching her and her practicing her duet with another boy in class – and that world gets established as well.
You sort of realize that that’s the point. This singing world is an escape for her. So it has to be different from the fishing world. Cause that’s why she’s doing it. It’s almost like her “Matrix.”
But where the movie really excels is when we realize that Ruby is going to have to choose between family or herself. This is one of the most universal themes you’ll see. It’s a story as old as time. And, for that reason, it’s a powerful story. Every good story should, at some point, give your hero an impossible choice to make. And by “impossible” I mean a choice that seems so difficult that even the audience is unsure what the character will do.
Coda does a great job of upping the stakes for the family so they don’t just kind of need Ruby. They REALLY need Ruby. For starters, they begin their own business which is impossible to run without a hearing person involved. And then they get caught fishing one day without a hearing person on the boat. They’re told that if you don’t have a hearing person on the boat moving forward, you’ll never be able to fish again.
Talk about STAKES! The consequences are dire for the family if Ruby decides to leave. All of that creates a ton of suspense as we wonder what Ruby is going to do. It’s great.
There’s one other thing I want to point out with Coda and it regards “showing not telling.” Coda has a series of three scenes that exemplify the power of “show don’t tell.” When you’re a new screenwriter who’s trying to understand why this is important, remember that when you cover major character moments through dialogue only, you risk them feeling on-the-nose or melodramatic. So you want to look for “show” options instead.
**SPOILERS FOR LAST ACT**
One of the primary unresolved conflicts in Coda is between Ruby and her father, Frank. Frank doesn’t understand all this singing nonsense. And, even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because he can’t hear Ruby sing. So he doesn’t even know if she’s good or not. Therefore, one of Ruby’s major roadblocks in chasing her dream is winning over her father. There are three scenes that show his transformation from “non-believer” to “believer” and all of them are show-don’t-tell.
The first occurs when the choir class puts on a show at the school auditorium. Ruby’s family comes but, of course, they can’t hear anything. So they’re sort of bored and signing to each other during the show. “What should we have for dinner later?” That sort of thing.
Then, at the end of the show, Ruby has a solo. During the solo, for the first time in the movie, the camera takes the POV of the deaf family, specifically Frank. So we’re hearing what they’re hearing, which is nothing. While this is happening, Frank starts to look around, and he notices how everyone is reacting to his daughter singing. Some are smiling. Others are crying. Others are moving to the music. It’s the first moment where he sees what his daughter’s singing is doing to people.
Frank is now conflicted. Is he holding his daughter back by keeping her in the family business? When they get back home that night, Frank calls his daughter over and asks her to sing the song again. But this time, since he’s next to her, he can place his hands on her vocal cords and “listen.” It’s through this experience that he becomes even more convinced of her talent.
This leads to the third and final scene, when Ruby does her audition for music school. It’s a closed auditorium so her family is forced to sneak into the upper deck. While singing the song, Ruby notices her parents, and begins to sign the song as he she sings it so they’ll understand it. It’s in that moment that Frank finally realizes that he can’t hold his daughter back. And so, even though she’s chosen to stay with the family at that point, he insists that she go to music school.
Three MAJOR story beats. All conveyed through SHOWING not TELLING. That’s how to screenwrite, people!
I don’t think Coda will be for everyone. I admit that it tries to hit those heartstrings a little too aggressively at times. But it’s so well done that it works (in my opinion). You love these characters. And that’s another feather in the movie’s cap. No character is left behind on the development front. Every single character gets their own storyline, their own arc.
Finally, it’s just nice to get a drama that’s going to be pushed at the Oscars without a single political agenda on its docket. All this movie cares about is entertaining and emotionally resonating with people. On that end, it does a tremendous job. Coda will definitely be a Top 10 movie of the year for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You want to feature scenes unique to your premise. Every concept should be original enough that you can write scenes that nobody else can write – because they’re specific to your setup. You have a movie about a deaf family. You BETTER THEN GIVE US SCENES ABOUT A DEAF FAMILY THAT WE CAN’T GET IN ANY OTHER MOVIE. Or else what’s the point of even writing the movie? One of the early scenes has both Frank and Jackie go to the doctor because they both have, um, itching in a sensitive area. The doctor doesn’t sign. So guess who has to come and translate? You got it, their 17 year old daughter! The scene that follows is both uncomfortable and funny.
Reposting this screenplay review with Free Guy debuting this weekend!
Genre: Action (sci-fi?)
Premise: (from Black List) A bank teller stuck in his routine discovers he’s a background character in a realistic, open world action-adventure video game and he is the only one capable of saving the city.
About: Matt Lieberman sold this script just a month ago. That helped it finish number 17 on the just-released 2016 Black List, with 15 votes. Lieberman is starting to make a name for himself, with several high-profile projects in play at the major studios. He is currently writing a feature version of The Jetsons.
Writer: Matt Lieberman
Details: 109 pages
Usually I’ll review the number 1 Black List script right away. But the number 1 Black List script in 2016 is a biopic about Madonna. And to put it bluntly, I’d rather bake myself inside of a pizza oven than read a script about the origin of pointy bras.
It’s not that Madonna doesn’t deserve a biopic. In fact, I’m guessing the script is damn good. But I’m sad that this is what the Black List has become – a list of people re-telling stories about other people. The Black List used to be populated with all these weird original gems. Now it’s “The true story of this” and “The true story of that.”
And you know who we have to blame for this? Us. As long as we keep buying tickets to movies like Sully – wonderful real life stories that have no reason to become movies – then writers will peddle more real-life stories to the studios, since they know that’s what they want. And the studios want them cause you’re paying for them.
It’s like people who complain about Transformers. If you don’t want shit like Transformers, don’t buy tickets to it. Don’t rent it. I guarantee you they’ll stop making Transformers movies.
Luckily, if you go deeper into the Black List, you start to find some originality, and Free Guy was the first script I hit where I went, “Hmmm, that sounds interesting.” Ironically, it’s a story about going against the grain. Something I hope screenwriters will do more of in 2017.
Guy works as a bank teller and goes through the same routine every day. He gets up, goes to work, survives a bank robbery, plays softball (where his team always loses), gets drinks with the guys afterwards, then goes to bed. Then does the same thing all over again tomorrow.
Then one day Guy stumbles across some glasses that, when he puts them on, show a map of the city he lives in, as well as a meter for his health, and how much money he’s got. And thus begins Guy’s awakening. He realizes that he’s a background character in some sort of giant simulation.
Guy approaches a hot girl he routinely sees around, MolotovGirl, and after some initial resistance, learns that she’s a player in this game – as in there’s a real person in “another dimension” playing her. The game is called, “Free City.”
As if having his reality rocked wasn’t enough, he learns from MolotovGirl that Free City is about to be closed down in a week to make way for Free City 2. Guy and everything he knows is about to be shut down forever… UNLESS he can find a way to keep Free City operational.
So Guy begins a revolution, telling anyone who will listen that they’re all background players in a game and if they don’t rise up and rebel, Free City is toast. When the game’s programmers learn that the game is rebelling against their code, they pull out all the stops to take down Guy… FOR GOOD.
I love premises like Free Guy. You’ve got some Matrix in here, some Truman Show, some They Live, some Groundhog Day, some Ready Player One. You read Free Guy and you say to yourself, “How come someone hasn’t made this movie already?” That’s when you know you’ve got a good idea.
But it isn’t just the concept that works. Free Guy makes you think! Whenever you can zoom in on those universal conflicts, you can elevate a silly movie idea into something special. When Guy’s going through his daily routine and asks, “What if I took a single step out of my comfort zone? What would happen?” but then doesn’t do it, it hits you hard.
Because aren’t we all Guy? We all THINK about doing something different. But we never do it. It’s so much easier to stay in our lane. To the point where it feels like we’re being controlled. I mean when was the last time you truly took a chance in life? That you truly put yourself on the line? I’m guessing not recently.
That’s the great thing about channeling these universal human truths through your hero. Is that the reader is going to sympathize with your hero. And once you have that, you have them for the rest of the story. Cause we’re going to want to see if Guy finds a way out. If he finds a way out, it means maybe one day we’ll find a way out.
Structurally, Free Guy breaks down into four sections, each with a different story-engine. Remember that in screenwriting, as long as some type of engine is driving the current section of your screenplay, you’re good. The second there’s no engine is the second your script is dead.
The first section is driven by mystery. Guy knows something isn’t right about his life, about the way the world operates around him, and he wants to find out what it is. That takes us through the first act.
The second section is about leveling up. Molotov Girl – the one person who can answer Guy’s questions – is level a million and lets Guy know that she does’t talk to newbies. Hit level 50 and they can chat. So the engine for this section is the goal: “Get to level 50.” We watch Guy rob banks and steal cars until he gets to level 50.
The third section is “RUN.” The programmers designate Guy and MolotovGirl as threats to the game and chase them around the city (as cop characters) to try and eliminate them. Having your characters chased is one of the oldest story engines in the book.
The final section is “REVOLUTION.” It’s another goal – to start a revolution in the city so they can rise up to the programmers and keep the city in tact.
And, of course, Lieberman adds another element of dramatic conflict by installing a literal ticking time bomb – the arrival of Free City 2.
It seems straight forward when you break it down, but as is the case with everything, it’s hard as hell to make something look simple. As I read Free Guy, I noticed numerous components that I could tell drove the writer crazy during the writing process.
For example, you have the old zombie question: Are there video games in Guy’s world (do people in zombie movies know what zombies are)? Because if there is, then Guy would understand what was happening immediately.
However, that’s not as dramatically interesting as Guy having to piece together that he’s part of a false reality. So Lieberman had to eliminate complex games from Guy’s world, even though that doesn’t make any sense. How is this world the exact same as the world we live in, yet they don’t have one of the most popular forms of entertainment on the planet?
These are the annoying rules you have to figure out when writing a script (particularly sci-fi) because if you don’t, if you decide “Eh, maybe they have video games, maybe they don’t,” that unsuredness oozes into the read and we feel it. We know you’re either bullshitting us or not doing the hard work and the final product feels foggy instead of clear.
So I give Lieberman props. This script is pure fun for the very reason that he did all the hard work. And more importantly, Lieberman proves that something good can come out of playing video games 8 hours a day.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You must know the rules of your sci-fi script, even the rules that you don’t have to explain to the reader. The more you know, the more solid the foundation of your screenplay will be. I read so many scripts where the writer doesn’t know the answers to half the questions about his world or rules, and those scripts are always foggy frustrating reads.
You’re probably looking at the title of this article and thinking, “What the f#@% is a keystone cop?” When it comes to questions like these, there’s only one person I trust. Google. And here’s what he had to say: “A group of characters in humorous US silent films. They are police officers who are very stupid and are always making silly mistakes. A group of people, especially police officers, are sometimes compared to the Keystone Cops if they fail to do something properly because they have made stupid mistakes.”
Why am I bringing this odd term up?
A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a screenplay consultation and one of my critiques of the script was that the cops felt like “keystone cops.” The writer basically countered with, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to explain that.” He was right. I wasn’t clear on what a “keystone cop” was or why it was a problem.
Upon further reflection, I realized I’d given this criticism numerous times yet never formulated an actual definition – in screenwriting parlance – of what it meant. So today I’ve decided to break down what a “keystone cop” is and why, if you don’t take it seriously, it has the potential to sink your screenplay.
For starters, almost every movie has a cop, a government agent, a military figure, or a criminal in it. In some cases they’re in the movie for a scene. But usually they’re around for much longer. That’s because movies tend to cover ‘larger than life’ scenarios and, in those scenarios, your heroes are either going to inhabit these occupations or encounter them.
Here’s where the problems begin. Writers never do any research on these jobs beyond watching other movies. As a result, the cop characters don’t act like real cops. And because they don’t act like real cops, we don’t see them as real cops. For example, let’s say that you’re writing a scene where a cop pulls a car over. Do you know what that cop is supposed to do in that situation outside of say, “License and registration please?”
You know how a cop takes the driver’s license back to his car? Do you know what they do when they get back to their car? Do you have any idea what the procedure is? I’m guessing you don’t. Which means you’ve written a keystone cop.
Now, to be clear, that might not hurt you in certain situations. If you’re writing a goofy comedy and there’s only one scene with a cop in it, it won’t be a big deal. But the more integral a cop, an agent, a soldier, or a criminal is to your story, the more it’s going to matter. In those cases, you can’t just have a cursory understanding of the job. You have to know it better than 99% of the people out there.
Because this is what happens. When you, the writer, don’t know the procedure for, say, what an FBI agent does over the course of a day, that seeps onto the page in ways you’re not aware of. Things start to feel FAKE to the reader, even if they’re not sure why. Once a reader loses trust in the writer’s knowledge of the subject matter, they check out. It’s happened to me hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
So this writer asked me to clarify for him EXACTLY what it was about his script that screamed “keystone cops.” And I realized a couple of things. One, his cop partners never went back to the precinct. They never engaged with any other cops. We only ever saw them with each other. It was there that I realized that a big contributor to keystone cops is *what you don’t show us*.
Cops have a job. That job starts at their precinct and requires them to go back to their precinct at least once a day. It’s there where we meet their superiors, the ones who are giving them their orders. It’s a place where you establish that you truly understand how being a cop works. Conversely, if a cop is never around any other cops the entire movie, they just seem like any other person. There’s nothing unique about their day.
The keystone cop criticism doesn’t just apply to cops. It applies to criminals as well. If your criminals don’t don’t act realistic or do realistic things, they will be labeled keystone criminals. I remember this one amateur writer wrote a script where two criminals discreetly exchanged a bag of money at a diner.
Do you know how much money they exchanged? 20 million dollars. I had to explain three things to the writer. One, 20 million dollars in 100 dollars bills weighs 400 pounds. Two, you would need a really big bag to hold all that money, so it’d be impossible to be discreet about it. Three – and this was the most important point – it was too much money to begin with. These were medium-level criminals. It didn’t make sense that they were doing anything that involved 20 million dollars.
That’s very common in keystone cop scripts by the way, where the money numbers the writers come up with make zero sense within the context of the story. For example, if you have a first time criminal who wants to rob a bank, does it make sense for him to try for 20,000 or 2 million dollars? The answer to this will determine whether your character is a keystone criminal or not so I hope you pick right (the answer is 20k).
Probably the biggest influence on the keystone cop label is a character’s introductory scene. Every character’s introductory scene is the scene that sells them to the audience. So if you look at it that way when you’re creating your cop or your agent or your criminal, you want to come up with as specific a scenario as you can that’s going to sell that character in that position.
One of the most famous examples of this is The Godfather. Who doesn’t feel that Vito Corleone is a real Godfather after that opening wedding scene where guest after guest come in to his office to ask him for unique things that only someone in his position can offer? That was it! That was all we needed and we believed this character was a real Godfather.
Another example: Scorsese. One of the reasons Scorsese is the master when it comes to crime films is how specific he is about the characters, what they do, how they operate, how they got where they got. Do yourself a favor and watch Casino, and just watch the sequence where they go through the details of how a casino operates. I never see that level of specificity in amateur scripts, which contributes to their keystone cop nature.
Another common issue in keystone cop scripts is when they cover a specialized version of a job – an internal affairs cop, a fixer, a surveillance investigator, a bookkeeper for the mob – and I don’t know anything more about that job at the end of the script than I did at the beginning. That’s unacceptable. One of your goals with any character should be to teach the reader about their job, what they are, what they do. That’s how we believe in someone, when we learn all of the unique aspects about their profession.
The reason I’m highlighting all this is because it’s one of the easiest ways to differentiate a pro script from an amateur script. The pro scripts I read that cover this subject matter are FAR AND AWAY better researched than the amateur scripts. If you want to write about crime, about cops, about the FBI, the CIA, big international incidents that involve multiple governments, you need to become an expert in this world.
Wikipedia and watching Heat for the 80th time isn’t going to cut it. I’m talking about reading NUMEROUS books on the subject matter. I’m talking about interviewing FBI agents for hours. If you’re laughing at that, then you don’t have what it takes to excel in these genres because the people who are writing produced movies in these genres, they’ve done the research. And if they haven’t, the studios pay for them to go out on ride-alongs until they do understand the profession. When David Ayer broke in, he did so with his script, U-571 that was based on his experiences as a submariner in the Navy. How are you going to compete with that level of realism unless you become obsessive with learning everything about the profession?
There is a silver lining to this. There are several things in screenwriting that are almost entirely based on talent. Dialogue is the obvious one. As frustrating as it may be to hear, someone who’s not naturally gifted with dialogue is never going to be as good as Tarantino no matter how much they study it. However, when it comes to research, you can out-research anyone. You can become an expert on the CIA if you’re willing to put in the time. You can then go write a bunch of CIA scripts – which Hollywood loves by the way – that feel more realistic than anybody else’s script in town.
But if you think you’re going to write a great script about a criminal organization and your only knowledge of criminal organizations is that you like the genre, you’re fooling yourself. You gotta do the hard work to make this stuff believable. But I promise you, when you do that research, it’s going to pay off. And you won’t have to hear me shaking my head mumbling, “keystone cops” anymore. So get to it!
Are you actually sending your screenplay out into the world without getting professional feedback? That is dangerous, my friend. I can tell you exactly what they’re going to criticize and help you fix those problems BEFORE you send it to them. I do consultations on everything from loglines ($25) to treatments ($100) to pilots ($399) to features ($499). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested. Chat soon!
Is Gucci the best ‘dysfunctional family’ script ever written?
Genre: Biopic
Premise: Follows the notorious Gucci family, specifically the relationship between Maurizio Gucci and his blue-collar wife, Patrizia.
About: For a director in his 80s, Ridley Scott sure does get around. Gucci is a huge awards contender this year. We may have finally found a non-Star Wars movie where Adam Driver doesn’t just get recognized for his amazing acting, but also makes some money! Lady Gaga also stars. The script was written by screenwriting newcomer, Roberto Bentivegna.
Writer: Roberto Bentivegna (based on the book by Sara Gay Forden)
Details: 133 pages
Readability: Medium
I was kind of interested in this one because I know ZERO about Gucci. I didn’t even know what Gucci’s first name was. I thought he was like Madonna. One name only. I figured I was going to get some early version of the Kardashians with “Gucci” – something vapid and empty. But it turns out the Gucci story is a lot more interesting than you might have thought.
It’s 1975 in Milan, Italy. 25 year old Patrizia Reggiani (who will be narrating our story) is trying to get a man. Or, I should say, her mother is trying to get her a man. And since they’re poor, her mother’s got her sights set on the richest people in Italy. She spends all day looking up parties and calling up rich families to try and get her daughter near super rich men.
They finally strike gold when Patrizia charms a young Maurizio Gucci at a party. Patrizia is relentless in her courting of Maurizio and, soon, they’re married. But nobody on the Gucci side of the family shows up to the wedding because they believe all Patrizia is interested in is the money. Which we’re meant to believe she’s not (more on that later).
We then meet the Gucci family. And boy are they unique. Gucci, if you don’t know, is an upscale clothing brand. You have Aldo, 70, who’s the skirt-chasing current CEO of the company. You have his son, Paolo, who thinks he’s a designer but is the least-talented designer in all of history. You have Rodolfo, who’s Aldo’s brother and Maurizio’s dad. He just loves the lavish lifestyle Gucci has allowed him to live. And then you have Maurizio, who doesn’t really want anything to do with Gucci.
But that’s about to change. Patrizia realizes Gucci could be so much more than it is. So she starts putting a plan together to give her and Maurizio total control of the company. First, she gets Aldo put in American prison for tax evasion. She then gives Paolo enough money to start his clothing line, which, of course, fails, and when he’s left with nothing, she forces him to sell his quarter of the company to them. This leaves Rodolfo, who conveniently dies. Which means Maurizio and Patrizia now own the company.
But just when it looks like all of her dreams have come true, an old female friend comes back into Maurizio’s life, wins him over, leading to Maurizio and Patrizia’s separation. Patrizia is so devastated that she tries everything in her power to get him back. But he tells her that she destroyed his family and doesn’t want her in his life anymore.
I’m going to get into major SPOILER territory for the rest of the review but you probably already know this. Patrizia hires a couple of hitmen to kill her husband. Which they do. And she actually thinks she’s going to get away with it and obtain the entire Gucci fortune. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take the cops long to connect the dots and send her to prison for 30 years. Which means she should be getting out soon! All you elderly rich bachelors, be on the lookout!
Man, what a script!
I always forget how powerful tragedy narratives can be when the characters are actually interesting. Last week we had Plush. And that guy was *kind of* interesting. But this family is the craziest weirdest family ever. None of the Guccis knew what they were doing and they were running one of the most famous fashion brands in the world.
To remind screenwriters everywhere, when you don’t have a goal-driven screenplay like, say, the recent “Love and Monsters” (travel across the forest to find a girl), you can use this formula whereby the main character is trying to BUILD SOMETHING. In this case, Patrizia is trying to build an empire. She’s trying to consolidate Gucci so that her and her husband can run it. That’s why we keep turning the pages. We want to see if she succeeds.
Speaking of Patrizia, I do not envy the challenge Bentivegna had with her.
He’s working with an extremely unlikable person in Patrizia. I mean, anyone who kills their husband is obviously not the best. But he can’t show that or else we’re not going to root for her. So the script engages in this endless dance of figuring out clever ways to make Patrizia not look as bad as she is and still have her do bad things.
For example, Bentivegna knew that if he had Patrizia hunting around Italy for rich men only, we’d hate her. So he shifts that responsibility over to the mom. It’s the mom who’s dead set on Patrizia finding a rich husband. Patrizia is innocent in all of this – wink wink.
Likewise, whenever she talks to Maurizio (or anyone else for that matter), she’s perfectly nice to them. And not in a conniving way. She’s genuinely nice. But then, out of nowhere, she’ll savagely manipulate Paolo to take his quarter of the company. For a while, I kept wondering why someone so nice was doing these things. And then I realized, oh, she was a terrible person in real life but they know if they show that, we’ll hate her and tune out.
Despite cheating on that front, the script still works. I think it’s because there’s so much conflict baked into this family. Nobody likes each other. They’ve all got different ideas on how to run the company. They’re all protecting their percentage of the fortune. And then you have this wildcard in Patrizia who’s trying to shuffle the deck and when you mix all that conflict together, it’s only natural that it will be entertaining.
I don’t think there’s a bad scene in the entire script.
I also give credit to Bentivegna for not making a common mistake made in these screenplays – which is that when writers take on a real-life murder story, they don’t actually write a story. They write the ending, where the person is murdered. Then they go back and write 100 pages of filler to get us there.
With Gucci, I wouldn’t have even cared if there wasn’t a murder. That’s how good the story was. I loved watching the dimwitted Paolo try to launch his own clothing line and come up with the most disastrous fashion show in history. I liked that the two brothers didn’t see eye-to-eye on business whatsoever so they just ran their halves separately. I loved the infighting as well as the fighting with the other major Italian fashion brands.
And I just loved learning little details about the company. That one of the reasons their products are so amazing is because they raise the Rolls Royces of cows. Or that they – as in Gucci – deliberately sold knock-off versions of Gucci on the street just to make a little more money.
Like I said at the top of this review, this is probably the best dysfunctional family script I’ve ever read. Every single character is memorable. That alone should inspire you to read it. Because, remember – the hardest thing to do in screenwriting is write memorable characters. And this script excels at that. So check it out. It’s well worth your time!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Offload some of your “unlikable” protagonist’s dirty work to a secondary character. This will make them less unlikable. That’s what Bentivegna does here. He takes Patrizia’s worst traits, such as being a gold digger, and moves that motivation over to her mother. It’s a small detail but it has major ramifications in how we view the hero.
Genre: Horror/Comedy/Action
Premise: In modern day Detroit, Dracula’s eponymous servant, Renfield, is fed up with his abusive boss. So he puts in motion an exit strategy.
About: This is a project that came together two years ago with horror superstar Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) coming up with the idea. It’s part of the new Universal mandate to explore their ‘monster’ IP as a set of unique films as opposed to an interconnected universe (a la Avengers). The project is written by Ryan Ridley (Rick & Morty), will be helmed by Chris McKay (Tomorrow War), and will star Nicholas Hoult. It’s important to note that this is the 2019 draft so the script has likely evolved since then.
Writer: Ryan Ridley
Details: 98 pages
Readability: Very Slow
This is a pretty neat idea.
Take one of the most famous characters of all time – Dracula – and introduce a part of him that most people don’t know about – his servant, Renfield. Because the nature of servitude is humorous in a modern context, you make it a comedy.
For those of you trying to come up with a concept that lands with people, it’s always good to use characters who are known to audiences. I don’t see “Renfield” being nearly as compelling if Renfield is serving some vampire named Jake. The fact that we’ve got THE BIGGEST MOST RECOGNIZABLE vampire of all time is what gives the concept pop.
Now let’s see if the script is any good.
We’re in Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst cities in the United States. It’s here where we meet Renfield, a 40-something aging-hipster type, in his weekly support group for co-dependents – people who are stuck in abusive relationships that they don’t have enough self-esteem to leave.
After listening to one of the women in the group talk about how her partner sucks, we follow Renfield to an apartment, see him eat a cockroach, gain superhuman powers, then kill the man who we realize is the significant other of the girl in the group. While this is happening, ANOTHER person comes into the apartment – a hitman who also wanted to kill the significant other, and Renfield kills him too.
Renfield then takes the significant other’s suitcase, which it turns out is filled with drugs, as well as the significant other’s body, and brings it back to the sewers, where his master, Dracula, sucks him dry. Renfield then goes home to his apartment. What he doesn’t know is that because of that suitcase, the city’s biggest drug lord, Ella Lobo, is now after him.
Cut to a cop with a serious anger problem named Rebecca. Rebecca is tasked with figuring out what happened in this apartment. She eventually realizes that this Renfield guy is involved. Which means the cops are after Renfield too. When she catches up to Renfield, he falls in love with her, but she hates him because she thinks he’s a serial killer. Their relationship gets even more complicated when he informs her that he’s been Dracula’s servant for the past 100 years and he gains superpowers when he eats bugs.
After the cops catch and throw Renfield in jail, Rebecca really wants to take down the Lobo family and, therefore, breaks Renfield back out of jail and teams up with him. But, wouldn’t you know it, as this is happening, Ella Lobo makes a deal with Dracula, which means that Renfield and Rebecca aren’t just going to have to take down the Lobos. They’re going to have to take down the master himself!
I’ve only seen a few episodes of Rick and Morty but the fact that this is what today’s screenwriter is known for is telling. From the couple of times I’ve watched the show, I’ve found the jokes to be fast and furious and come from everywhere. That crazy disjointed nature is part of why so many people love the show.
But while that may work in half-hour animation, it does not work in a 100 minute feature. As you’ve heard a million times on this site, features need focus (FNF) and “Renfield” doesn’t have any. It doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. The engine driving the story changes every ten pages.
You can chalk some of that up to an early draft. But I’ve read a lot of first drafts that eventually became movies and what I’ve learned is that if the foundation isn’t solid in that first draft, the story never gets good no matter how many drafts you do.
I mean we start off with Renfield killing people for his master. So far, so good. Then we learn Renfield eats bugs to generate superpowers. That is not a very good idea. Then we have a bag of drugs dictating the plot. Okay, so we’ve just gone from an original concept to a generic one. Then we switch main characters for a while and Rebecca becomes our lead. At this point, the script is off the rails. Now Renfield is considered a serial killer by the FBI so everybody tries to capture him. I’m happy that the writer really liked Silence of the Lambs but that is the wrong plot development for this script. Oh wait, now it’s a team-up movie! Renfield and Rebecca become a buddy-cop team to take down the bad guys.
Again, you can get away with this type of concept-jumping in half-hour animation because the time is short and the level of emotional investment is low. But with a 100-minute movie, you have to build up investment in the characters, as well as the plot, and that requires patience and focus. If you start jumping around to any plot point that you fancy in that moment, the audience will tune you out. Which is what happens here.
Another person who read the script told me they couldn’t even get out of the first act due to how scattered the plot was.
At least one part of the script works: Renfield’s co-dependency support group. If you remember, I told you the other week that you want to be doing MORE THAN ONE THING in your scenes. That’s what the co-dependency group does. First, it cleverly establishes that Renfield is in a bad relationship (with Dracula) that he is trying to get out of. Second, this is also where he finds his victims for Dracula. He gets the names of these support group members’ evil significant others, seeks them out, and takes them to his master.
When I read that, I said, “Okay, this could be good.”
But literally everything that follows doesn’t work.
Just this idea that he eats a cockroach or a centipede and, all of a sudden, becomes a superhero… I’m sorry but that’s not a good idea. How do you even rationalize that connection? That bugs can provide powers? At least with Ratcatcher 2 (from The Suicide Squad) she had an entire backstory about how she learned to control rats. It was baked into her character. This just felt like one of those exhausted 3am throwaway ides – “What if he like…. GAAINED SUPERPOWERS WHEN HE ATE BUGS???”
Another problem with the script is one I hadn’t considered, which is that you have this looming shadow over the whole story that is Dracula. He is the reason we’re here. As I stated earlier, the movie doesn’t work if Renfield is a servant to Random Vampire Jeff. It works because he’s a servant to the biggest vampire of all time.
And therein lies the problem. We want Dracula. But the more Dracula you show, the more you overshadow Renfield. So what do you do? Neither Kirkman nor Ridley seems to have the answer. Oddly, Renfield doesn’t even live with Dracula. Dracula lives in the sewer system while Renfield lives off in some apartment somewhere. So they’re not even around each other for 90% of the screenplay. That seems like a miscalculation in a movie about a master and servant.
I’m not the comedy expert but I’m thinking your comedy is going to come from your actual concept – which is that Renfield is the servant to Dracula. The comedy isn’t going to come from some 30 year old drugs-in-a-suitcase plotline.
Some of the choices here are kind of baffling to be honest.
You may have noticed that I’ve added a new category to my reviews – READABILITY. Why did I do this? I realized that one of the most important qualities for a script is HOW EASY IT READS. I’ve read 150 page scripts that were breezy reads and 90 page scripts that felt like my eyes were sinking in quicksand. As spec screenwriters, your script’s ‘readability’ should be a top priority.
Readability refers to having a clear and concise writing style. For example, some writers love to be clever. But cleverness only complicates the read, especially if you’re not very good at it. So be clear and concise. You also want to say as much as possible in as few word as possible. Most of the things you say in six lines you can say in three. And finally, some writers have a natural ability to blend words together in a way that’s pleasing to read. All those things make for an easier reading experience.
“Renfield” was clunky. It was unclear. There were giant paragraphs for days. And this is a comedy script. Comedy is the one genre where the readability has to be light-speed. If it’s even medium, its’ not going to work. So “Renfield” was really disappointing on that end.
I wish I had more good things to say about Renfield but unless they’ve come up with a completely different take on the subject matter since this draft, I’m going to say that this project has an uphill battle. The one argument you can make is that it’s comedy and, as we all know, comedy is subjective. I know tons of people who LOVE Rick and Morty so it may be that I just don’t get the comedy here. Which wouldn’t be the first time (I had a lot of these same criticisms for the “Ted” script, for example, and that movie went on to be a mega-hit). So we’ll see. I just wish there was a clearer vision on the page.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “MARK, 50s, a gentle giant a la John Carrol Lynch, the leader of this support group.” Don’t use obscure real person references in your screenplays. Nobody knows bit actors’ names. Even if they did, when you make references like this, it looks amateur. This is a Screenwriting 101 mistake.
