Genre: Crime/Thriller
Premise: A single mother who’s about to be kicked out of her recently deceased father’s home becomes a hostage during a bank robbery that ends in shocking fashion.
About: HBO Max is not playing around anymore. They want their own IP. Which is why they bought up Black Choke. I’m thrilled about this development. The more buyers there are in this town, the more opportunity there is for screenwriters like you to sell scripts. And not just any scripts – ORIGINAL MATERIAL. Which, as we know, is sorely lacking in Hollywood. Black Choke sold last week and comes from Doug Simon, who’s previously appeared on the Black List with his contained thriller, “Breathe,” about a family who’s quarantined in a special underground tank after the world’s air becomes unbreathable.
Writer: Doug Simon
Details: 119 pages
Today’s script is an update on the 1998 movie, A Simple Plan. And dare I say, its execution is even better. Let’s take a look!
30-something Nina Trainer is barley making ends meet. She works two jobs, one of those as a maid. All so she can barely put food on the table for her young son. Nina needs a big break soon since the bank is about to re-claim her home.
40-something Sara, a security officer at that very bank, has seen better days. She was once the best cop on the force, until she tried to save some people from a burning car and has never been the same since.
One rainy day, two men in masks break into the bank and steal half a million dollars from the vault. While this is happening, a dumb teller tries to intervene, resulting in the robbers killing both him and the bank manager. Sara was shot as well and is barely hanging on.
As the robbers exit, they’re forced to take a random person in a rain parka so they don’t get shot by the police. They then speed away. Once inside the van, we pull away the parka hood to reveal… Nina! She was coming to the bank for one last ditch effort to stop them from taking her home.
Later, when they’re driving up the hills, trying to figure out what to do with Nina, she pounces, and the truck goes plunging down the hill killing everyone inside except for… Nina! As Nina is about to call the police, she notices that there’s a car with two dead people and HALF A MILLION DOLLARS inside. Free money! Money that will solve all her problems.
She takes the money, finds and steals a car, and drives home. Nobody saw Nina inside her parka so she’s Scott free. That is until her awful ex-husband, Ray shows up. Ray spots the money and wants in. Because she knows he’ll call the cops otherwise, she’s forced to bring him into the fold.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Keene heads over to the hospital to find that his old partner, Sara, is hanging in there. He wants to know what she saw during the robbery so they can find out who these dudes were. Not to mention the person in the parka they kidnapped. But Keene doesn’t know the half of it. You see, Sara was in on the robbery. And she quickly figures out that whoever her accomplices kidnapped now has the money. She just needs to find that person… and get the money back.
Not long ago, a writer sent me a bank robbery script for a consultation, and my big note to him was that the script didn’t have a hook. It was just characters committing a crime. He came back with a good point. He said, “Did The Town have a hook? Did Hell or High Water have a hook? How bout Heat?” I had to concede that he was right.
However, while a story hook isn’t necessary to sell a screenplay or get a film made, they’re the screenwriting equivalent of having your own publicist. Every time you send your query out, there’s this cool hook dangling there, making it impossible not to request the screenplay.
By not having a hook, you basically cut down the number of people who request your script ten-fold. Let’s run the numbers. If you send a query out for a screenplay that has a great hook, you might get 8 out of 10 requests for the script. If you send a query out for a script that doesn’t have anything resembling a hook, you’ll be lucky to get one request.
In other words, you’re playing 8 lottery tickets instead of 1.
Does that mean you should only write scripts that have a big hook? The short answer is yes. Especially if you’re an unknown. But there’s a bigger point to be made here, which is that, the less of a hook you have, the better the script needs to be. Since less people are going to read it, those people will have to be louder in their endorsement of the script. And they’re not going to be loud unless you blow them away. Let me now ask each and every one of you here at Scriptshadow, how many times are you BLOWN AWAY by a script?
Conservatively…. Once a year? Once every two years maybe?
But this gets into an even DEEPER question, which is, should you assume that you’re the exception? Should you assume that you’re the one writer a year who writes the script that BLOWS PEOPLE AWAY? And therefore, because you are that exception, you don’t need a hook? Theoretically, we should all feel this way, right? If we don’t believe in our writing, who will?
But my whole thing is, why make things harder for yourself? They’re already hard. The odds are already stacked against you. Why not do something that makes things easier for you? You can still believe in your writing. You’re just making sure that more people get a chance to read it!
I bring all of this up because today’s script has a fairly basic premise (it’s got a *bit* of a hook but nothing I haven’t seen before) and despite its pedestrian setup, it’s one of the rare instances where the writing is so good, it makes up for the lack of a hook.
For starters, Doug Simon does an incredible job making you fall in love with Nina Trainer. I’ve talked about using bully scenes to make your hero sympathetic before. If you show a bully picking on your hero early on in the screenplay, we’re going to have sympathy for them.
But you don’t have to approach the bully setup literally. In Black Choke, when we meet Nina, she’s a maid riding up the elevator to clean an office floor. When the elevator doors open, we see a group of drunk laughing office workers who’ve just finished up the day with a party. They stumble into Nina – to them a faceless maid – who then comes out onto a trashed office floor, cake and ice cream scattered about, no thought whatsoever for who has to clean up their mess. This is going to take all night. These jerks have effectively bullied Nina, just in a non-traditional way.
Now, normally, you’d look at this and say, “Who cares? Everyone knows you have to make your hero likable or sympathetic. That’s screenwriting 101. This should hardly be considered ‘good writing,’ Carson.”
But here’s where the skill is. Later in the movie, Nina is going to be doing some bad things. She’s going to be stealing half a million dollars, for example. She’s going to be killing someone. When your hero is going to be doing some truly despicable things, your average “save the cat” or “kick the dog” trick isn’t going to be enough. You have to come up with something that’s going to make us love this character no matter what they do. Which is why this opening is so good. We see this woman being dehumanized by these jerks to such a degree that we’re going to love her no matter what.
Simon also does a kick-ass job of keeping us guessing in a plot where we already know he’s trying to trick us. Pretty much every major story beat had a surprise development in it. Hill achieved this by setting up each plot beat so that you’d only ever assume one outcome. That way, when the other outcome occurred, you were shocked.
When Nina’s ex-husband, Ray, finds out about the money, he becomes the most important variable in the story. Nina can’t do anything without figuring out how to keep Ray happy, since he knows the secret and has to be involved. Now, as a screenwriter, I would tell you that this is dramatic gold. Keep Ray front and center because he complicates Nina’s journey so much. Therefore, when Ray’s accidentally killed later (in a really fun scene), it’s a total shock because the twist HELPS rather than HURTS Nina.
But then Simon hits us with another twist. It turns out Ray told his current girlfriend, Eliza, about the money. She calls Nina, wanting her cut. Which means Simon was able to both give us a shocking twist AND keep the exact same amount of pressure on Nina, by supplanting Ray with Eliza.
There’s a lot more good here I could write about. This script is really clever and really fun. My only complaint is that there are too many characters. I’m not convinced the script needed so many people. But, boy, it’s so well-done. If you want to write a crime script without a hook, check this one out. It shows you where the bar is.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I used to dislike small town crime movies. They didn’t have that sheen a big city crime movie has, like “Heat” with Los Angeles. But now I know why they work. They work because the small town setting means everybody knows each other. And when everyone knows each other, you can have a lot more fun with the characters. For example, bank security guard Sara is trying to help Sheriff Keene find the money. Normally, this is a standard pairing. But their scenes are charged because they used to be partners, and when they were partners, they were sleeping together. That’s harder to do in a big city crime movie where the individuals are more separated. So if you’re trying to decide between the two, know that the big city crime movie will feel bigger. But the small-town crime movie has more character possibilities.
I don’t know what I was expecting from Jungle Cruise but I will say that when your lead actress’s main talking point in her press appearances is that she did everything within her power to not be in the movie, that doesn’t exactly give you confidence in the flick.
Then again, the history of this project dictates that whoever ended up in it will have probably done so kicking and screaming. Jungle Cruise has been one of those cursed projects in Hollywood, the very definition of “development hell.” The project was first conceived after Disney converted Pirates of the Caribbean into a successful film and was to star Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. Since then, it’s been one problem after another.
But after a Rock attachment and more rewrites than the Bible, the movie found a green light when Disney convinced Emily Blunt to come onboard. Producer Hiram Garcia claimed that the script was cracked when they realized that Emily’s scientist character should be the lead, not The Rock. Without the burden of having to ground the protag, The Rock could develop his own version of Jack Sparrow, and just… to put it simply… screw around.
Jungle Cruise draws most heavily on two films – Raiders of the Lost Ark and the aforementioned Pirates. It takes place in 1916. Lily, a privileged scientist who wears pants instead of dresses, has heard of a sacred flower deep in the Amazon Jungle that can cure any disease. So she and her brother, MacGregor, head to the heart of Brazil with a mechanical arrowhead thingey which holds the key to finding the flower.
Once in the Amazon, they run into Frank, a bargain basement cruise skipper who hasn’t uttered a single truth in 40 years. When Frank can’t make the rent on his boat, he’s forced to accept the Lily job, and off they go. Almost immediately, they encounter a Nazi (you may ask how there are Nazis in 1916 but just trust me, he’s a Nazi) with his own sub (I told you about those Raiders references) who will stop at nothing to get that arrowhead. Gotta have your McGuffins if you’re writing a big Disney movie!
After Frank tries several times to con Lily (at one point orchestrating an operation of fake cannibal tribes to pretend to kidnap them), they run into an actual threat in Aguirre and his band of Spanish jungle spirits. Aguirre, who’s made out of snakes (I told you about those Pirates references), is also looking for the super flower, presumably to turn him back into a non-snake person. Even though they don’t trust each other, Frank and Lily will have to work together to defeat both the Nazis and the snake people so they can find the sacred flower and erase all disease and suffering on planet earth.
So, in the newsletter – which I know you all read – I talked about a famous screenwriter (Terry Rossio) who claimed that the reason he was filthy rich while so many other screenwriters couldn’t afford to refill their Lime Scooter credit, was because he focused on making fun happy entertaining movies while all the other screenwriters were trying to make edgy “dark” R-rated material. “Jungle Cruise,” this screenwriter would argue, is the sort of script you SHOULD be writing if you want to become successful beyond your wildest dreams in Hollywood.
Do I agree with him?
Can I say, ‘sort of?’
Family films for young kids (Pixar and Disney Animation), Family films for medium-aged kids (Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean), and Family films for teenaged kids (Star Wars and Marvel movies) make the most money in Hollywood. Period. And these films are all uplifting positive experiences that make you feel good after seeing them. So, yes, if you’re writing any of these movies, it means you are getting a huge paycheck.
But I think the conversation surrounding why writers do or do not want to write these movies is more complicated that Terry Rossio laid out. If you write Jungle Cruise, nobody will ever EVER know your name as a screenwriter. Ditto The Jungle Book. Ditto Malificent. Ditto The Lion King. Ditto Black Widow. Ditto Captain Marvel. So, yes, you do get paid the big bucks. But you feel unappreciated. You feel like anyone could’ve done the job.
Remember, the only reason people know Terry Rossio’s name is because he started a popular website in the 90s where he and his writing partner were the only professional screenwriters out there giving advice. Had he not started that site, nobody would know his name.
So I think that’s the real dilemma here. When you write one of these movies, it’s purely for the paycheck. You will never get recognition for them EVEN WITHIN the industry itself. Because when these movies do well, it’s the director who gets the accolades, the actors, the visual effects team, and even the studio itself is going to get credit before the screenwriter does.
But some people don’t care about that. Some people want to make money. Hell, I want to make money producing movies. So I’m not standing up here on my high horse saying I’m better than this. But it is a question screenwriters have to ask themselves. Do they want to become a working screenwriter who nobody will ever know?
If you do, then by all means, write high concept PG spec screenplays and think of them as calling cards for getting one of those Disney jobs. Then, once you’re called into the room, you MUST be good at coming up with an angle.
The angle that got Jungle Cruise made was changing the main character from the captain to the passenger. Switching the protagonist is one of the best ways to find a fresh angle in any script. A lot of writers get lost in the bells and whistles of a property (“What if we set the cruise… IN SPACE?”). Yes, you can find fresh angles that way. But it takes so much less energy to switch the POV of the film, which often yields more interesting results.
By switching the main character from Frank to Lily in Jungle Cruise, it allowed them to make Frank more mysterious and more fun. I don’t want to spoil anything but there’s a major reveal with Frank later in the movie and I don’t see how they could’ve done that if he were the protagonist.
We were just talking about this in my Ernest review, which is a short story being adapted into a movie. The short story had the father as the protagonist. But the father was angry and inactive. The son, who was a secondary character in the narrative, was the most active character. So I’m willing to bet that the screenwriter will make him the lead.
I actually think every writer owes it to himself, before they start writing, to imagine the movie through every other characters’ eyes to see if they’re missing out on a better movie. Let’s take Raiders as an example. What does that movie look like with Marion as the lead? Pretty good actually. She’s a fun character who seems to get in a lot of mischief. But she’s not as good of a character as Indiana Jones.
Or, if we’re looking at recent box office, what about Stillwater? Does that movie get better if the daughter is the protagonist rather then her father? I think it does. She’s the one in trouble. Not him. Her story seems more interesting. Also, focusing on her would probably necessitate you back up and see the immediate aftermath of the murder, which would’ve been way more dramatic than anything else that occurs in that sloppy screenplay.
Getting back to Jungle Cruise, writing a movie like this isn’t dissimilar to watching a movie like this. You kind of feel good about it while it’s happening. But then, when you’re finished, the experience quickly slips from your mind, leaving you wondering if the whole thing ever happened in the first place.
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One of the reasons I have a unique perspective on screenwriting is that I’ve read more bad scripts, from cover to cover, than anyone else on earth.
I can’t prove this, of course. But if I’m not number 1, I’m definitely in the top 5. And that’s because I do something really unique, which is I review screenplays. And when you review screenplays, you can’t stop reading them when they suck.
Almost everybody else in this industry (and this industry is the only place where anybody actually reads screenplays remember) will stop reading a script the minute they get bored. They only finish a script when they’re enjoying it.
I would stop whenever I was bored if I could. But I can’t. I have to keep going so I can accurately review (or consult on) the script.
Maybe there are some readers – especially back in the 90s when agencies and production houses had to keep up with a massive screenplay-driven industry – who have read as many bad scripts, cover-to-cover, as I have, since they had to write up coverage. But I doubt it.
So why am I bringing this up?
Because you don’t truly understand what you *shouldn’t do* in a screenplay until you’ve been forced to read 80 pages past the first moment you knew the script sucked. Let me give you an example.
I read a script a long time ago. It might have even been reviewed on this site. It was about a group of people who were stuck inside a castle during a zombie attack. Absolutely nothing happened during this script. I think the zombies attacked once or twice. By and large, the script was about people waiting inside a castle. I figured out pretty early what the main script mistake was – that the protagonists weren’t active. That they sat around and did nothing until the zombies attacked, in which case they’d ward them off, then go back to doing nothing for 40 pages.
It’s one thing to learn what’s wrong with a script and give up on it immediately. It’s another to know what’s wrong with a script then have to endure two more hours of it. When you’re forced to sit with a mistake for that long, it gets tattooed into your brain. You will never again make the mistake of writing non-active characters after reading Zombie Castle.
But it goes further than that. Because then I had to ask the question, “Well, wait a minute. There are good movies with characters trapped inside of one location. Why do those movies work?” You research those movies then you say, “Oh yeah, a big difference is that there’s way more conflict between the characters in this one than in Zombie Castle. That conflict kept the scenes entertaining even though the protagonists weren’t actively trying to achieve something.”
In Cloverfield Lane, a group of characters are locked in a bunker the whole movie, the difference being our main character WAS TYRING TO ESCAPE. In other words, she wasn’t just waiting around chatting like the characters in Zombie Castle. She was scheming. She was plotting. That kept the plot moving despite the fact that it was contained.
I wouldn’t have learned this stuff if I hadn’t endured two hours of the worst version of it and then asked myself “Why?” That’s my favorite question to ask when I’m watching something bad, by the way. “Why is this bad?” Not “why” in a general. “Why” as in SPECIFICALLY WRITE OUT WHY. It’s a powerful way to learn.
I think you know where I’m going with this. That’s right. I’m telling you you have to read bad screenplays. And I don’t mean two or three total. I mean at least one a week. Because until you become a high intermediate screenwriter, you will learn more from a bad screenplay than you will a good one. Hands down, guaranteed. You need to sit in these mistakes for hours at a time for them to resonate. And once they resonate, YOU WILL NEVER MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES IN YOUR OWN WRITING.
I can already hear the whining. “I don’t want to.” “That sounds like my own personal hell.” “What a waste of time.” Guys. You want to make this your profession, right? Then that means, sometimes, you’re going to have do things that you don’t like. And this is one of them. Cause I’m telling you, it’s going to make you a better screenwriter.
The irony of only reading good scripts is that you get so lost in the glow of the script, you don’t actually understand why the script is working. You just have a good “feeling” after you’ve read the script. This feeling then “inspires” you to work on your own stuff.
But all you’re doing is riding the high of inspiration adrenaline. There isn’t some Law of Writing Transference whereby if Aaron Sorkin writes a great scene, you too, will write a great scene just because you enjoyed his. Let me quantify that for you: Feeling good while you’re writing doesn’t mean you’re writing well.
Don’t get me wrong. Inspiration is a good thing. But unless you identify what it is about a screenplay that works, you’re probably not going to be able to transfer that into your script. For example, if you don’t know that the main reason The Rock’s and Kevin Hart’s characters in Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle work because of irony (a weak insecure teenager is placed into the strongest body in the world, a star high school linebacker is placed into the weakest body in the world) and instead try to generically mimic the banter between the characters, it isn’t going to work because you haven’t actually learned anything.
When you’re bored out of your mind reading a bad script, that’s all you have time to do is identify why you hate the script so much. It’s actually the perfect situation for learning because you’re stuck.
Let me give you another example.
I once reviewed a script with a really fun premise called, Liar, Coward, Judge. Here’s the logline: “Deep winter in Civil War Era Missouri – A Union Deserter, a Priest and an Assassin must fight for survival when they are stranded in the wilderness and hunted by a terrible Sasquatch.” Cool right? How can something like this be bad? But it was bad in the worst kind of a way: It was boring.
Because I was forced to sit with my boredom for so long, I got punched in the face over and over again with the script’s biggest mistake. That the characters were too simplistic. Here’s what I wrote in the review…
“But strangely enough, I didn’t sense depth to any of the characters. They were all surface-level people. A priest who’s a dedicated priest. An assassin who’s a mean assassin. A deserter who’s a coward.
The best characters tend to be dynamic. Bad people who have good qualities and good people who have bad qualities. That unexpectedness adds a rich extra layer to the character that makes them far more interesting to watch. Think of one of the most popular characters in the history of cinema – Batman. He’s a good person, but he’s not above doing bad things to get the job done.”
Sitting with weak characters for so long taught me the value of adding dimension to characters. I guarantee you I don’t figure that out if I stop reading the script the second I get bored.
So many of the mistakes I see writers make wouldn’t be made if they had read just ten bad screenplays cover to cover. For example, let’s say a writer sends me a 150 page script, which happens more often than I’d like. I guarantee they never would’ve done that, if they themselves, were forced to read ten 150 page scripts cover to cover. “Oh yeah,” they’d realize. “Reading one of these kind of sucks. Okay, I’m never making that mistake again.”
Where do you find bad screenplays? Head over to SimplyScripts.com. They’ve got a lot of beginner screenwriters over there posting stuff. You can also do a search here for “Amateur Showdown” and there are many amateur scripts you can download from the posts.
I’m going to say it one last time. You will be more likely to not make a mistake if you yourself were tortured by that mistake.
Happy weekend writing (and reading)! :)
Is this the script Christopher Nolan should’ve directed instead of Interstellar?
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: After NASA sends a crew of astronauts into deep space to find another habitable planet, the crew is unexpectedly woken up from hyper-sleep and must survive a mysterious new threat that comes from the one place they never expected – Earth.
About: This script appeared on last year’s Black List. The writers, John and Thomas Sonntag, are repped by Gersh. About five years ago, they sold a show called “Blackmail” with Aaron Paul attached to NBC but it never went to pilot. They’re still looking for that big produced credit break we all are!
Writers: The Sonntag Brothers
Details: 100 pages even
You still have a month and a half to finish your script. You should be writing every single day.
After finishing Generation Leap, I thought to myself, “Would this script win Sci-Fi Showdown?” I came to the conclusion that the answer is yes. It’s not a great script. But it’s got an interesting premise. It’s got a plot that moves fast. And I haven’t seen this movie before.
Some of it is sloppy but that’s the case with almost every script. So, if you’re entering Sci-Fi Showdown, read this screenplay (someone from the Comments section should be able to send it to you). Cause this script is the bar you’re trying to beat. Let’s take a look at it…
At the beginning of our story, our heroine, Morgan, explains the Wait Calculation to us. “Imagine a nest of birds and they’re out of worms. Dire stuff. So one brave bird volunteers to fly out across the land and save the nest. But while she’s out on her perilous journey, the R&D department back in the nest creates a jetpack. They strap that sucker on a second bird, and suddenly the second bird passes the first bird, gets the worm, and returns to the nest a hero.”
She continues with the foreshadowing monologue: “How long should someone wait to leave so they won’t get lapped by something better? It’s the hardest question for an explorer to get right because there is no answer.”
Cut to 120 years later where Morgan, along with former surgeon Isaiah Wilkins and elder statesman Leland Wong, are the three astronauts tasked with traveling to the planet of Meliora to see if it can sustain life. NASA wants another planet to go to when the ozone completely collapses. We’re currently in the middle of the 300 year journey.
But the three are woken up from hyper-sleep by a giant ship that engulfs them. Inside that new ship, they meet Hunter, Yuri, and Alyx, also from NASA. Hunter, the captain, explains that they left earth just *twenty* years ago, also to fly to Meliora, and part of their mission was to pick these three up. Had they not, by the time Morgan, Isaiah, and Leland made it to Meliora, it would’ve already been settled.
Hunter is a bit hoity-toity about the whole thing. And when Morgan and Isaiah attempt to give their opinions on matters, the “future” group rolls their eyes. Morgan and her crew are from a lost generation. It’d be like someone from 1930 telling you how to handle stress.
While the two teams butt heads, they’re alerted by the ship’s A.I. to an object up ahead. It turns out there’s a *third* clunky-looking ship ahead of them. As they come up on it, they learn it was a ship sent to Meliora from the Reagan era! Our ship has just overcome THIS ship via the Wait Calculation. Unfortunately, the technology of that ship is so dated that when they try to de-thaw the pilots, the entire ship malfunctions and the astronauts die!
Back on the big ship, the two 3-person generations get to talking and realize that, if the Wait Calculation has already been met twice, it will surely be met again. Which means a fourth ship is coming! Lo and behold, that’s what happens. The group go back into hyper-sleep but a few years later, get woken up and boarded by the fatest of the Wait Calculation ships yet.
The big difference is that these new astronauts are angry and militaristic. It turns out that after the third group left earth, there was a world war. Which has shaped this latest mission by NASA, which is more territorial in nature. The two original teams will have to unite to take on the military team. But it may be for nothing. Because even if they defeat them, who says another ship isn’t coming?
What a weird script that’s also kind of a good script.
First off, I’ve never heard of this principle before. But as soon as it was explained to me, I thought, “Huh, that’s cool.” I like sci-fi ideas that make you think. And this one kept me thinking.
Let’s go through it together. You can get in a shuttle now in order to reach another planet in 300 years. However, if you wait 50 years, the technology could theoretically advance to a point whereby you make it to the planet in 200 years. Even with a 50 year head start, you would still beat the first ship to the planet by 50 years. But it gets better. If you wait 100 years, the technology might advance to the point where it only takes you 50 years to make it to the planet, in which case you beat the first ship by 150 years and the second by 100 years.
If that’s the case, why leave now? Why not wait until technology advances and you can get there faster? But if technology is always advancing, you should technically never leave (since waiting is always going to get you there faster).
Ugh, my head hurts.
The Wait Principle isn’t the only neat idea in Generation Leap. The script also poses the question of how generations 100 years apart would work together. The ideologies that defined each generation would be night and day. Imagine the mindset of someone who risked their lives to defeat Germany in World War 2 working with someone whose entire existence has been defined by social media posts. Could those two vastly different mindsets work together effectively? I find that an interesting question.
Unfortunately, the script doesn’t have enough time to get into those deeper questions. The first generation is basically about being the first humans to visit another planet. They want all the glory. The second generation doesn’t care about prestige. They just want to get the job done. And the third generation is hardcore militaristic.
As a result, with a few fleeting exceptions, the debates are surface level.
Despite this, the script’s relentless plotting keeps it entertaining. We’re woken up from hyper-sleep by something mysterious. It’s the next generation ship, swallowing them up. After they come to terms with this new team, they discover another ship. It’s the ship that left before them. As soon as that’s over and they go back to sleep, we cut to the military ship showing up. These guys are so combustible that they create enough problems to keep the plot firing on all cylinders until the end.
This is the kind of script I could see becoming a movie. That’s why I’m making it the bar for Sci-Fi Showdown. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it doesn’t explore its premise as intelligently as I would’ve hoped. But there’s more good here than bad. And when you have more good than bad, you have the foundation for a movie. Generation Leap was a fun, if imperfect, script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: I’m putting an end to one of the most overused science-fiction tropes out there right now. You cannot use it anymore. I’m talking about when the ship (or base) doesn’t have enough oxygen to keep everyone alive for the remainder of the mission, so now they have to decide who to get rid of. I’ve read this in maybe 50 science-fiction scripts. I’ve written it before in my own science-fiction script. Science-fiction is one of those genres where you don’t want to pick the low-hanging fruit. The way to stand out with science-fiction is to dream up things that we haven’t seen before. So no more ‘oxygen is running out’ subplots. Every time you think of that as an option, remember that the reader has probably encountered it a dozen times.
Genre: Drama/Supernatural/Comedy
Premise: A family becomes internet sensations when they find a real ghost in their home and start posting videos about it on social media.
About: One of the hot projects that came together this month was the David Harbour Anthony Mackie collaboration with director Christopher Landen (Happy Death Day, Freaky, Paranormal Activity 2). Landen will be adapting the Vice short story by Geoff Manaugh, which you can read here. This one came out of nowhere, as the short story was published all the way back in 2017. Netflix bought the package.
Writer: Geoff Manaugh
Details: about 5000 words (one-quarter of a screenplay)
Today’s story institutes the dreaded 3-genre mash-up. For those new to screenwriting, the 2-genre mashup has resulted in some amazing movies (Comedy and Supernatural = Ghostbusters). But it is REALLY hard to pull off the 3-genre mash-up. Why? Because the more genres, the less focus. And focus is everything in a screenplay narrative.
Now I’m not saying it’s impossible! No no no no no. Don’t you misquote me now. Yesterday’s movie, which I loved, spanned three, maybe even four genres. But the degree of difficulty rises exponentially with multiple genres. And I’m not convinced Ernest rises to the challenge. All things considered, this is such a weird short story, that I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand. It’s worth discussing for sure.
Frank Presley, the newly headhunted president of a suburban hospital-billing firm, has just moved into an old house in the Chicago suburbs with his wife, Melanie, his 14 year old son, Fulton, and his 18 year old son, Kevin. One night, while trying to sleep, Frank hears a noise, goes downstairs, and finds a ghost hanging out.
Frank pulls out his phone camera, presses record, and, for some reason, starts laughing uproariously. He later puts this up on Youtube. People don’t take it seriously because, of course it’s not a real ghost. But Frank keeps seeing the ghost, who he names “Ernest,” and keeps recording it, putting more and more videos online until people can’t deny anymore that it’s a real ghost!
The good vibes don’t last long, though, because Frank is a big fat jerk. He yells at the ghost, tries to scare the ghost, throws things at the ghost, mocks the ghost, and, of course, laughs at the ghost. Melanie is not a fan of the way her husband is treating Ernest. She believes it’s because he hates his work and needs an outlet for his anger.
Then, one day, Ernest disappears. And Kevin does also. The millions of people who watch Frank’s videos pour through them and spot all these background conversations where Kevin and Ernest were secretly chatting with each other. The two have run off together. When the police catch up with them, Kevin tells the world that Ernest was murdered by his uncle and justice must be done!
But the FBI puts Ernest behind bars for the crime of kidnapping. A bummed out Kevin goes on Jimmy Kimmel to make a case for the government to release Ernest. But Kimmel has a surprise. It’s Ernest! Who’s just been released. They verified the murder. And although the uncle who killed Ernest died 20 years ago, Ernest finally has peace. Which means he can disappear into the next realm. Kevin asks if they’ll ever see each other again. Ernest says, without question.
I always love speculating on how a project got purchased. It’s important to study these things if you’re a writer because you want to understand what things buyers are interested in. At first, this seemed too zany to fall into any obvious sale category.
But a couple of things stuck out to me.
First of all, any idea with a ghost in it has the potential to be marketable. If this were a movie about a family that found a normal person living in their house, it’s not nearly as marketable, right? (Although, as I typed that, I realized that could be a pretty interesting movie in its own right) I bring this up because I read so many scripts that don’t have a clear element for a studio to market the movie around. You need that if you want to get people excited about your screenplay.
On top of that, the idea is fresh. I’ve never seen a movie before about a ghost going viral on Youtube. I’m not the biggest fan of the idea. But, objectively, it’s a fresh idea in so much as we haven’t seen it before. So now you’ve got two things working in your favor.
Finally, there’s actually some interesting character stuff going on in this story. The dad clearly has issues. He’s torturing a ghost, laughing about it, and putting it up on Youtube. Wherever there’s interesting character stuff, there are actors who want to play those parts. Between the dad and the ghost, there’s some juicy stuff to play around with here.
The problem is that there isn’t a clear movie structure to this story. I’m guessing that’s why nothing’s happened with it since 2017. It’s kind of hard to see where the movie is.
You can’t tell the movie through Frank’s eyes. He’s too much of an asshole. I suspect that the story will be told from Kevin’s POV, even though he’s a background character for most of the short story. He’s the one who wants to connect with Ernest. You’d probably also move them leaving to earlier in the screenplay. That’s the big “journey” that jumpstarts the narrative so it can’t show up 60% of the way into the story. I’m thinking it should happen at the beginning of Act 2.
And then you would need to clarify why they’re going on this journey, which the short story does a lousy job of explaining. You have to explain that Ernest is trying to solve his murder. In which case you CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have his killer already be dead. There’s no dramatic value in that choice whatsoever. It’s way more interesting if the guy who killed him is still alive and Ernest (with Kevin’s help) is going to confront him.
Speaking of the murder, I kept asking why it took half the story for Ernest to mention he was murdered. Why didn’t that come up earlier? Even if he didn’t want to bring it up, the tens of millions of people studying Ernest on the internet would’ve known his entire life story within ten minutes of him going viral. They would’ve figured out he was murdered, which would’ve necessitated us to explore the murder plot. Here, it feels like something that came up as an afterthought. Oh yeah, and I was murdered.
This is the kind of story that needs somebody really weird to tell it. A Charlie Kaufman type. Maybe even the director from yesterday’s wonderfully weird movie, Anders Thomas Jensen. Christopher Landen is a good director who understands the balance between horror and comedy. But I’m not sure that’s what this is about. This movie wants to make some deeper statements about humanity and Ernest has some, dare I say, Edward Scissorhands qualities to him that will require a deft touch. If Landen can nail it, though, he’s going to jump to the next level as a director.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Who you choose as your main character has a huge impact on the story. Here, you can choose between Frank, a dude who’s having a mid-life crisis and taking it out on the ghost who lives in his house, or Kevin, who’s much more grounded, much more sympathetic, and therefore makes a cleaner protagonist. They were just talking about this issue for the development process of Jungle Cruise. That movie had been in development for a couple of decades. The way they finally cracked the story, according to the producer, was to shift the protagonist role away from The Rock’s captain character and make Emily Blunt’s scientist character the hero. By doing this, it freed up The Rock’s character to be more fun and goofy, similar to what they did with Jack Sparrow in the Pirates movies. If the movie being told in your current draft feels boring, ask yourself, “What would the movie look like through the eyes of [Second Biggest Character] or [Third Biggest Character]?” Ya never know. Your boring movie could instantly come alive. Go ahead, do it right now. I dare ya.
