Today I review a script by the writer of the NUMBER 1 screenplay on my Top 25 List, E. Nicholas Mariani!
Genre: Drama/True Story
Premise: A black lawyer attempts to free 87 black men who were erroneously charged with killing a white man in 1919 Arkansas during the height of the Jim Crow era.
About: E. Nicholas Mariani needs no introduction on this site. He is the author of the number one script on my Top 25. Somehow, 41 other scripts scored higher than this one on the 2018 Black List. Injustices all over the place!
Writer: E. Nicholas Mariani
Details: 180 pages!
You know, if there’s one thing I like about Nicholas Mariani, it’s that he doesn’t swing for doubles. He swings for grand slams. He goes ALL IN with The Defender. And when you go all in, you either fall on your face in spectacular fashion, or you win an Oscar. Let’s see where The Defender’s going to end up.
It’s Little Rock Arkansas, 1919. World War 1 has just ended. It’s a celebratory day in town. Except for 55 year old black attorney Scipio (pronounced ‘Sippy-oh’) Africanus Jones, who’s just watched yet another black man he’s defended, a soldier no less, hanged.
Scipio is an interesting person. He was born a slave. He worked the cotton fields. He then clerked at a law office where he became a self-taught lawyer. He’s since become very well-respected by people of all colors in town.
But that respect is about to be tested. A young black man named Robert Hill comes to Scipio’s office and asks him to help him form a union in downstate Elaine, a town with lots of black people working the cotton fields. Scipio tells him he’s nuts. The second they find out that black people are forming a union, they’ll come after him. But Robert says he’s doing it anyway.
A few days later, Scipio gets the news that black people down in Elaine who were planning to take over the town killed a white man. In the process, all 87 of the men who were conspiring to do this are in jail. Against his better judgement, Scipio goes down to Elaine, where he finds out that nothing about the stories in the paper were true.
A group of white people attacked the church where the black people were planning the union and accidentally shot one of their own in the back of the head. This created a frenzy and all the white people in town went to hunt down black people. Somewhere between 300-1000 black people were killed.
Scipio realizes that the odds are against him for saving these 87 men, 12 of whom refuse to enter a guilty verdict, meaning that they will all be hanged. But Scipio is one of the most clever lawyers you’ll ever meet so he concocts a multi-leveled plan that will invoke laws that pre-date the American legal system, all in the hopes of winning a case that, if he succeeds, will change America forever.
I had little doubt I was going to like this one.
Mariani is the real deal. How he’s not pulling in million dollar rewrites on Oscar-hopeful projects is beyond me.
My only real criticism of the script is that it’s too long. But Mariani is one of those rare writers whose scripts are so easy to read (even when they’re dealing with serious subject matter) that the script doesn’t feel nearly as long as it is.
Let’s start at the beginning and move our way through the script.
As I’ve told you a million times, how a script begins tells the reader everything he needs to know about if the writer has the goods. If you start with something boring, the reader expects a boring script. If you start with something clumsy and unclear, the reader expects a messy script. If you start with something cliche, the reader expects a cliche script.
There’s an early scene here where a black man is being marched to his hanging in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1919. Tell me how you imagine this scene. Would there be a large group of white people screaming the n-word at the black man as he’s marched to a tree? Would there be an evil sheriff with a wide grin on his face as he eagerly anticipates the man’s death? Would the sheriff then give a speech to the crowd of people about how “this is what happens” when you “disobey the law” complete with a drawn-out southern accent?
I’m guessing 90% of you imagined that scene.
Which is the number one sign that you shouldn’t write that scene. Good writers avoid expectation and cliche. If they feel like they’ve seen it, they’re going to look for another way to write it.
In Defender, the scene takes place right there in the prison yard. The white warden is not happy that he has to lead this man to his death. There is no crowd cheering. The moment is sullen. Regardless of skin color, nobody is comfortable with what’s happening. And when the death is imperfect and the victim suffers, everyone is mortified. Nobody feels good about it.
This scene let me know I was in good hands. I knew the writer wasn’t going to execute scene after scene in the cliche most predictable fashion possible.
Next up we’ve got our main character, 55 year old Scipio Africanus Jones. This character is so damn likable, which is a big reason why this script works so well. A lot of producers and executive types toil over how to make characters likable, as if there’s a secret handbook that keeps all these tricks hidden from the world. But, in reality, you just have to think of what makes a regular person likable. Scipio sticks up for the little guy. Scipio watches, sadly, as a friend hangs, powerless to do anything about it. Scipio is friendly to everyone. Scipio is intelligent. Scipio stands up for himself. There’s no magic formula here. Just imagine what makes you like people in the real world and apply it to your character.
Mariani is also a great scene-writer. Good scene-writing DOES have its own secret playbook and the only way to access it is to write a lot and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Mariani’s scene-writing book seems to be quite large. There’s an early scene that occurs in Elaine where Scipio heads to the courthouse to make some requests from the judge.
This is a pretty standard setup for a scene – two people talking in a room. So to make it more exciting, Mariani adds a scene agitator (you can learn about scene agitators in my book) where the entire town has just gotten back from the funeral of the white man who was killed. So they storm the courthouse, screaming and yelling, seemingly on the brink of breaking in. That basic “two people talking in a room” scene all of a sudden becomes a lot more charged.
I feel like I’m going over the advanced screenwriter’s playbook here, there are so many impressive things Mariani does, but what can I say? He’s a great writer. For example, he could’ve easily had Scipio head to Elaine based off of newspaper headlines alone. Most writers would’ve done it this way. But Mariani knew that it would be better if both Scipio and the audience had a personal connection to the massacre.
So he writes a scene beforehand where Robert Hill comes to his office and tells him about the union he wants to form down in Elaine. We like Robert immediately because he’s fighting for the disenfranchised and because he’s brave. This way, when the news of Elaine hits the papers, both us and Scipio have a vested interest in going down there. It’s choices like this that turn good scripts into great scripts.
Another advanced choice Mariani made was that not every white person who stood in Scipio’s way was bad. In some cases, these men wanted Scipio to win. But they also had their own interests to protect, which led to a lot of difficult choices for both sides. This is where you can really create a powerful story – when you make things difficult for your characters.
Scipio’s most powerful ally is Governor McRae. McRae is motivated by reelection. He wants to make sure that he doesn’t seem too sympathetic to the black populace of Little Rock, which is why he’s leaning towards convicting these 87 men. Normally, you’d think, “well f*$# him.” The problem is that Governor McRae’s opposition is a full-on racist. So Scipio has to play things very delicately. He needs McRae on his side. But McRae can’t be too on his side because then McRae might lose the election, which means Scipio’s town will now be ruled by a man who supports the Ku Klux Klan.
I loved this because it made you think. There was some real strategy involved in every choice Scipio had to make. By far the biggest issue I run into with scripts that deal with race is that they’re too black and white. There’s no subtlety anywhere in the story. Those are the easiest scripts for me to put down.
I don’t know what’s up with me this week because yesterday I was tearing up during Black Widow. Then during this script I was practically bawling by the end. But man, this was a really good script. If you’ve got the time and you want to become a better screenwriter, read this script. This is what top-level screenwriting looks like.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Nothing should ever be given to your characters for free. A representative from the NAACP shows up offering money and positive press coverage to Scipio. But if they give it to him, they want to be the face of the trial. They want all the glory if they win.
Genre: Superhero
Premise: While the Avengers are on a break, Black Widow receives a message from her long lost sister that a Russian villain is planning something gnarly, requiring her to re-join her family to take care of the problem.
About: Black Widow’s 80 million dollar weekend haul proves that the only thing that Covid can’t beat… is Marvel. Eric Pearson wrote the script. And while that normally wouldn’t be a story, IMDB Pro has added a new classification – SCRIPT DOCTOR – to its credit vocabulary, and it appears that Pearson has script doctored almost every Marvel movie since 2015’s Ant-Man. What “script doctoring” means here is anyone’s guess! Black Widow was directed by Cate Shortland, who was heavily recruited by Scarlett Johansson. Johansson was big on Shortland after seeing her 2012 film, “Lore,” about five children forced on a journey during the last days of World War 2. Johansson called the film, “About as perfect of a movie as there is.” Rotten Tomatoes seems to agree with her, giving the movie a 94%. Although average moviegoers weren’t as excited, assigning the film a 76%.
Writer: Eric Pearson (story be Jac Shaeffer and Ned Benson)
Details: 133 min
I have a serious question.
Is Black Widow a superhero?
At one point, her sister says, ‘I called you because you’re the only superhero I know.’ I was like, “Sweetheart, can you do a cartwheel? Then you’re just as much of a superhero as Black Widow is.”
To this day, I still don’t know what Black Widow brings to the Avengers besides her flippy leg-chokehold bodyslam move. Can’t Tony Stark build her a suit to give her super strength or something? He basically turned the spidey-suit into a mini-Iron Man suit.
According to the latest Avengers movie, Black Widow is dead. Which means this Marvel incarnation takes place in the past, between Avengers assignments. Black Widow (aka Natasha) receives some red serum in the mail from her long lost sister, who implores her to use Tony Stark to find out what the serum is.
Instead, Natasha heads to Budapest to ask her sister, Yelena, why she sent it to her. The two haven’t seen each other since they were Russian children in a fake US family on assignment in Ohio. They don’t seem to like each other. I gathered that since, instead of hugging, Yelena tries to decapitate Natasha with a steak knife. The serum, as it turns out, allows people to be controlled by a mysterious man, who is using it to build an army of living drone soldiers.
The two realize they won’t be able to take this guy down alone so they go break their “father,” Alexei, out of prison and recover their “mother” as well. Before the family can take down the big baddie, they’ll first have to defeat Taskmaster, some metallic dude who has a Captain America shield. Will this pretend family be able to pull themselves together in time to get the job done? Or will they do what they always do – implode?
The funniest thing about Black Widow is that they’ve been campaigning to get Scarlett Johansson her own movie for almost a decade now and when they finally do it, she’s not even the star! Her sister, Yelena, is the star. She’s the one who has the problem. Natasha’s just along for the ride. As proof of how pedestrian a character Black Widow’s been, Yelena outshines her in every scene they’re in.
There’s a positive spin to this, though. A smart person who worked at Marvel said, “If we make a movie with just Black Widow, we’re f#$%d.” They knew she was too boring (and not superhero’ish enough) to carry a movie. So they built this team around her. And thank God they did because doing so turned Black Widow into a pretty darned good movie.
I actually learned something really valuable while watching this film.
When in comes to action movies, so many writers focus on the premise and the plot and set pieces and cool scenes. And all of those things are, of course, important. But let’s be real. If you’ve seen any big-budget movie in the last five years, you’ve seen this movie. You’re not going to come up with a set piece we haven’t seen before. You’re not going to come up with a car chase we haven’t seen before. You’re not going to come up with a fight scene that’s going to blow us away.
No matter how insane your imagination is, it’s unlikely you will ever come up with something that we haven’t seen before in other movies.
Which leads us to an obvious follow-up question: “Then what’s the point?”
Why even try?
If all we’re doing is copying things we’ve already seen, then why create yet another bloated CGI summer movie?
This movie reminded me why.
Because the truth about ANY movie is that if we connect with the characters, all of those moments – the car chases, the fight scenes, the set-pieces – we care about them. Even though we know they’re fake. Even though we’ve seen them before. When you connect with the characters, you enter into a quasi state of belief where the fictional world becomes reality.
Therefore, when you’re writing these movies, your core focus should be on creating a) believable characters and b) believable relationships. If you can tap into that rare thing where the character actions and interactions feel authentic – feel like they could exist in the real world – we will connect with and care about those people.
This script did a tremendous job of exploring a dysfunctional family. This was basically Little Miss Sunshine, the superhero version. This family has deep DEEP SET issues, deeper than any superhero movie I’ve ever seen. First off, the four family members? They’re not even a real family. They were a fake Russian family that was cobbled together to look like an American family for a covert operation in Ohio. So they grew up like a family, but they were all strangers to each other. That alone makes for a really interesting setup.
When you’re a pretend family, how much are you supposed to care about the others? When the mission of “Pretend Family” is over, how much responsibility do you have to talk to these people again? That conflict of not technically being a family yet still feeling the same guilt and frustrations associated with being a family made for some extremely emotional moments. I teared up more in this movie than any Marvel movie.
One of my worries going into this was, “How are they going to explain that Black Widow ghosted her family for twenty years?” But once you watch the movie, you get it. They’re not really a family. They don’t owe each other anything. And that makes Natasha and Yelena’s and Alexei’s interactions all the more fascinating since they’re all skirting the line of “I don’t have to care about you but I also want to care about you.”
I always find dialogue interesting when the motivations behind it are complex. And the motivation behind every dialogue scene in this movie is complex. Seconds after Yelena and Natasha rescue Alexei from prison, Alexei wants to talk about what his next mission is going to be while the girls are dealing with the fact that the only father figure they’ve ever had hasn’t even acknowledged that he’s happy to see them.
When he’s confronted with this, he makes an inquiry into how they’re doing, which quickly devolves into Yelena chastising him for placing her in a Russian spy training program where her uterus was ripped out to ensure that she would never have children. You got the sense that any conversation between this family could devolve quickly into that territory, which created that “walking on eggshells” undertone that makes dialogue so much more lively.
Black Widow works because the family works. Too many amateur screenwriters approach their big action movies the opposite way. They cook up a concept. They craft a plot. And then they try and cram their character storylines into that plot. I’m not saying that’s never worked before. But if you want to write an action movie where the viewer is actually engaged, Black Widow is the way to do it. Get the character right. Get the family dynamic right. And everything else in the story should follow.
Marvel continues to be the benchmark for high-budget franchise filmmaking. And, right now, the competition isn’t close.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Normally, I encourage screenwriters to avoid bringing their hero’s past into the movie. Movies work best in the present. Especially action movies, which are all about the here and the now. However, when it comes to any movie dealing with family, IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THE PAST. It would be weird if you made a family movie that DIDN’T bring up the past. Black Widow is all about the past. It’s about the fake lives they grew up leading, the terrible torture their father sent them into as children, the choices by Yelena and Natasha to avoid each other as adults. Everything in this movie is about overcoming the past. And, with movies about family, that’s how it should be.
Updated Marvel Universe Rankings
1) Thor Ragnorak
2) Captain America: Winter Soldier
3) Avengers: Infinity War
4) Captain America: Civil War
5) Spiderman: Homecoming
6) Guardians of the Galaxy
7) Ant-Man
8) Iron Man
9) Black Widow
10) Black Panther
11) Avengers: Endgame
12) Doctor Strange
13) Spiderman: Far From Home
14) Captain Marvel
15) Captan America
16) Thor
17) Guardians of the Galaxy 2
18) Iron Man 2
19) Iron Man 3
20) Loki
21) The Incredible Hulk
22) Avengers: Age of Ultron
23) Falcon and Winter Soldier
24) Wandavision
25) Thor: The Dark World
26) Ant-Man and the Wasp
Sci-Fi Showdown is just two months away! So keep working on those entries. Here’s information on how you can enter the showdown. It’s totally free!
As we continue to march towards Sci-Fi Showdown, I thought I’d do some research on which sci-fi movies have been successful over the past five years (including a 2 year pandemic buffer). Specifically, I was looking for ORIGINAL ideas since those are the ones any writer can write. Coming up with the list was a LOT HARDER than I thought it would be.
I didn’t want sci-fi movies that were heavily mixed with other genres. So I discounted sci-fi comedies (Thunder Force!) and horror masquerading as sci-fi (A Quiet Place, 10 Cloverfield Lane). The definition of “original” had to be flexible because there were many cases where an idea was based on something else even though it was basically original. For example, if a movie was based on a short story that it barely resembled and the screenplay was written on spec, I considered that an original idea for the list. Likewise, if a script was based on a graphic novel that sold 10 copies and was also written on spec? That’s an original idea to me. Original ideas by giant directors who can get any movie made didn’t count (so no Chris Nolan films). The idea with this list was to highlight the types of concepts that, because they weren’t based on any IP, could’ve theoretically been written by any old writer, including you.
As I combed through the past several years, one of the most surprising things I found was that while the top of the box office was flush with big juicy sci-fi offerings, original sci-fi films were harder to locate. For those, I’d have to descend way down in the box office rankings – we’re talking 50s, 60s, 70s. There was such a striking financial difference between IP-backed sci-fi and original sci-fi that I was convinced I must’ve missed a bunch of films. So I went back through every year a second time and confirmed, sadly, that NOPE, this was it. Now, in the spirit of fairness, more sci-fi films are being made for streamers. So this list isn’t perfect. For example, had The Tomorrow War launched in theaters, it would’ve made this list. The Mitchells vs. the Machines would’ve technically made the list, but I consider animation separate from live-action sci-fi. For the most part, this is an accurate representation of what original science-fiction looks like at the box office. Let’s take a look…
Title: Edge of Tomorrow
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, graphic novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Logline: A soldier must relive the same day over and over again in order to save mankind from an invading alien army.
Domestic take: 100 mil
Worldwide take: 370 mil
Title: Passengers
Writer: Jon Spaihts
Logline: A passenger who erroneously awakes 90 years early on a colony ship to another planet decides to open up the cryo-bay of a woman in order to keep him company, even though he knows he will ruin her life by doing so.
Domestic take: 100 mil
Worldwide take: 300 mil
Title: Tomorrowland
Writer: Damon Lindelof, Brad Bird, Jeff Jensen
Logline: A teenage girl bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor embark on a mission to unearth the secrets of a place hidden between time and space.
Domestic take: 93 mil
Worldwide take: 209 mil
Title: Arrival
Writer: Eric Heisserer (short story by Ted Chiang)
Logline: A linguist is called in by the U.S. military to figure out how to communicate with an alien species who has just landed a dozen spacecraft around the world.
Domestic take: 100 mil
Worldwide take: 203 mil
Title: Gemini Man
Writer: David Benioff, Billy Ray, Darren Lemke
Logline: An over-the-hill hitman faces off against a younger clone of himself.
Domestic take: 50 mil
Worldwide take: 173 mil
Title: Ad Astra
Writer: James Gray, Ethan Gross
Logline: An astronaut undertakes a mission across our solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father.
Domestic take: 50 mil
Worldwide take: 127 mil
Title: Life
Writer: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
Logline: A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station discover a rapidly evolving life form that threatens all life on Earth.
Domestic take: 30 mil
Worldwide take: 100 mil
Title: Underwater
Writer: Brian Duffield, Adam Cozad
Logline: A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Domestic take: 17 mil
Worldwide take: 40 mil
Title: Ex Machina
Writer: Alex Garland
Logline: A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.
Domestic take: 25 mil
Worldwide take: 36 mil
Title: Upgrade
Writer: Leigh Whannell
Logline: Set in the near-future, a technophobe who becomes crippled after an accident is forced to try a new experimental computer chip that will help him walk again.
Domestic take: 11 mil
Worldwide take: 16 mil
I’m not going to lie. Doing this research was discouraging. Who knew breaking through with an original science-fiction idea was so difficult!? I expected to find so many more films for this list. But it wasn’t just the lack of films. Several of these entries were considered failures! So even the sci-fi successes are failures.
I think the big question I came away wondering was, why is there such a huge gap in interest between intellectual property science fiction and original science fiction? Cause it’s not a small gap. It’s not even a medium gap. We’re talking IP movies that make 500 mil and then you have to travel waaaaaay down the list to find an original idea that makes 40 mil. I suppose you could go with the obvious answers. We gravitate towards movie universes we’re familiar with. You’ve also got the deep pockets argument. Franchises that have more money can add more spectacle. And people love spectacle in their sci-fi.
But if you dig a little deeper, I think the real problem is that audiences don’t find “straight science fiction” appealing. They usually want some comedy with it (Back to the Future!), some horror with it (A Quiet Place!), or some action with it (Ready Player One). A movie like Ex Machina sure gets sci-fi nerds like me excited. But it doesn’t get the average moviegoer excited. For that reason, your “straight sci-fi” concept has to be INSANELY good in order to get noticed. It’s gotta be “Gemini Man” good (bad movie but kick-ass concept) – something cool and exciting that gets people revved up when they hear it. Because when you’re going up against franchise sci-fi IP, you need ammo in your chamber. And your concept is your only ammo.
Another thing I realized was how important writing a compelling main character is. I know I tell you to do this no matter what kind of script you’re writing but here it’s even more important and let me explain why. I want you to check out the domestic takes versus the worldwide takes for Ad Astra, Gemini Man, and Life (you can include Passengers and Edge of Tomorrow if you want as well). All three of those movies underperformed at the US box office. But their worldwide box office was over three times what they made domestically.
That’s because those movies starred Brad Pitt, Will Smith, and Ryan Reynolds, all big earners on the international stage. Now look at the box office bumps for Underwater, Ex Machina and Arrival. The multiples are much smaller. That’s because they didn’t have a box office star that appealed to international audiences.
This tells me that one of the keys to getting original sci-fi movies made is to come up with a character that entices a big actor. Cause if you can get a big actor, financiers are more willing to finance your film since they know, at the very least, they’re going to get their money back internationally.
I pointed out, when I originally reviewed the Ad Astra script, that the main character was autistic. No doubt that’s why Pitt signed on to play him. Gemini Man allowed whoever came on to that role to not only play one part, but two! What actor isn’t going to want to also play a 30 year younger version of himself? Edge of Tomorrow is a huge acting challenge in that you’re playing a character who’s dealing with the insanity of having to get slaughtered every single day of his life.
Granted, you can overthink this stuff. Why did Chris Pratt sign on to Passengers, a character that didn’t have a whole lot to do other than keep a secret from another character. I don’t think we’ll ever have an answer to that. When it comes to his newest film, The Tomorrow War, Pratt’s decision had nothing to do with the character and more likely revolved around his support for the military.
So, yes, you can factor that in as well. Every actor has things that they love. If you know what those things are, write a sci-fi movie that leans into them. Regardless of that, it only improves your chances when you write a strong memorable lead character. Sci-fi writers get so wrapped up in their concepts that they often overlook their main character who, as a result, ends up being boring. The Matrix is a really cool idea. But let’s not forget Neo is an even bigger star than that concept. That’s why that movie shined so bright.
Another thing you’ll notice from this list is that “monster in a box” situations work really well with sci-fi. Underwater is monster in a box. Ex Machina is monster in a box. Life is monster in a box. It’s one of the most time-tested setups for a movie and seems to fit science-fiction like a nice snug pair of isotoners.
Finally, I don’t see a bad idea in this bunch (Tomorrowland maybe?). All of these ideas are interesting. Even Passengers, with its offbeat narrative, is thinking man’s science fiction. Arrival definitely makes you think. Edge of Tomorrow has your brain twisted in knots trying to figure out how you would handle the situation. Life and Underwater are lighter in the intellect department. But everything else reminds me of the importance of using science-fiction to provoke thought.
My final conclusion after today is, why buy one lottery ticket when you can buy two? Of course, focus on coming up with a great science-fiction concept first. Something clever. Something fresh (a new spin on an old idea). BUT where you’re really going to separate yourself from everyone else is by also creating an interesting main character. If your hero’s just some average Joe, someone Bruce Willis could play in his sleep, that’s not good enough. Preferably, your hero will be just as interesting as your concept. You kind of have to put yourself in the shoes of an actor and ask, “Would I kill to play this part?” If you can’t imagine actors getting excited to play your main character, go back to the drawing board. Why buy one lottery ticket when you can buy two and double your chances of winning?
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Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Premise: After his plane crashes, a man finds himself stuck in a giant deserted 1950s city at the bottom of the ocean.
About: Bioshock was heading towards production a decade ago when, just weeks before shooting started, it was cancelled. But according to lore, it was not cancelled because they couldn’t get the script right. It was cancelled because the studio got nervous about a 200 million dollar R-rated film, particularly when there had been so many high profile video game adaptation failures recently. For all intents and purposes, the script might have been great. You think that with content hungry streamers desperate to find the next big thing, Bioshock is going to find a home at some point, likely as a series.
Writer: John Logan (Gore Verbinski was set to direct)
Details: 111 pages
I’m trying to inspire you guys with some A-grade sci-fi world-building here.
John Logan is a fascinating screenwriter. He’s credited with over a dozen high profile studio movies (Skyfall, Alien: Covenant, Hugo, Sweeney Todd, The Aviator, The Last Samurai, Star Trek: Nemesis, The Time Machine, etc.). Yet he doesn’t have a single movie that you actually remember and want to revisit (with the exception of, maybe, Gladiator). In many ways, he’s the ultimate studio screenwriter. And what I’m going to try and do today is figure out what John Logan does to be so perfectly suited to write big budget studio movies.
Let’s take a look.
The opening to Bioshock is basically the opening to The Graduate. So much so that they might be able to save money just by buying the dailies to the Mike Nichols film. It’s 1960. A guy name Jack just graduated college. His rich father wants him to join the firm. We see his graduation party with all his dad’s friends, many of them obsessed with their golf swings. His father takes him to work the next day, shows him his pathetic little office, and Jack has a mental breakdown. There is no way this is going to be his life.
Cut to Jack on a Pan Am flight to Barcelona. Jack doesn’t have a game plan once he lands in Barcelona. He just knows that he wants to get as far away from Mrs. Robinson as possible. Luckily, he won’t have to figure it out because his plane crashes Castaway style. Jack survives and swims to a lighthouse. But, once inside, he finds himself being shot down into the ocean via an elevator and arriving in a giant underwater city from the 1950s.
The place is dilapidated with debris and puddles everywhere. After watching a monster creature slice a young mother apart, Jack runs into an Irish guy named Atlas who’s one of the last people in the city not to have turned into a crazed monster. He tells Jack there’s a sub on the other side of the city. That’s the only way out of here. And so off they go, across this monster-infested cesspool, to try and get out.
Along the way, Jack sees a lot of curious things. For example, when he stumbles into a “Leave it to Beaver” household, he sees a picture of his dog from back home on the refrigerator. What’s going on? We get the sense that there’s a mystery to be solved here and that his new “friend,” Atlas, may be hiding the answers from him. Which means Jack will have to decide whether to trust him or figure his own way out of this hellhole.
I think I found what I was looking for regarding how John Logan became the ultimate studio screenwriter. He understands a simple truth – that everybody loves easy-to-read scripts. That means scripts that are clean and sparse on the page. He only writes what is necessary. Nothing more. And he favors vertical screenwriting (the act of writing a bunch of short sentences so the eyes fly down the page “vertically”) when possible.
I’ve always thought that the only purpose for easy-to-read scripts was to placate spec screenplay readers. You’re a nobody writer. You’re trying to keep the attention of overworked readers who are reading your script at the end of their days. It makes sense to keep the writing as sparse as possible.
Conversely, you shouldn’t need to do this as a studio screenwriter. In Logan’s case, he’s working directly with producers and directors. He’s not having to work his script up the industry ladder, winning over reader after reader after reader. If he wanted to write 8 line paragraphs for 150 pages straight, he could do that.
So why doesn’t he?
Maybe the reason Logan is so successful is because he keeps the spec screenwriter mindset as a professional. If Gore Verbinski thinks, “Wow, John’s scripts are so much easier to read than that last writer I hired,” he is more likely to hire him again. Right?
Just to be clear, there is no correlation between “easy-to-read” scripts and “a good movie.” In fact, if there’s any correlation, it’s a negative one. The less words you put on the page, the less you have to go on when making the film. That’s the paradox of screenwriting. The way to write a successful screenplay is not always the way to write a successful movie.
But John seems to understand that the most important job of a Hollywood screenwriter is to keep your bosses happy. Make their jobs as easy as possible. Why write some 150 page opus with 65 characters, multiple timelines, and constantly shifting narratives that you’ll need a 10 hour Zoom call to explain when you can write these easy effortless scripts that everybody reads and thinks, “Wow, that was enjoyable.”
I admit I may be oversimplifying things but I think there’s something to this.
Because, as a movie, this story isn’t very good. It’s kind of stuck between a sci-fi script, a horror film, a supernatural film, and an all out zombie flick. I think that works in the video game world where all you want to do is be scared and shoot cool-looking creatures. But when you smash all of that stuff into a movie script, it feels a bit “everything and the kitchen sink.”
I think this would’ve worked best if they ditched the action. I know that sounds crazy but the coolest thing about this world is how spooky it is. A straight-up mystery built inside a creepy abandoned city is all you need. Injecting stupid blue liquid into our veins to become stronger and fighting off giant creatures… that’s great for video games. Dumb for movies. I suppose you could argue that Aliens balanced action with horror. But Aliens wasn’t a mystery about a singular person who got stuck inside a mysterious city. It’s entire concept was built around action (a group of military men head to a base infested with aliens).
The underwater setting of this movie is so cool that it ALMOST offsets the script’s weaknesses. But, in the end, like the creatures of Bioshock, there are too many of those weaknesses to overcome. I would probably check this movie out if it showed up on Amazon. But I’m not convinced I would make it through the entire thing.
Script link: Bioshock
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Utilize GENUINE CURIOSITY to camouflage exposition. In order to get inside Jack’s head about why he’s moving to Barcelona, Logan introduces a flight attendant who Jack starts flirting with. They get to talking and the flight attendant is genuinely curious about Jack’s life. This is the ideal time to slip in exposition because any questions the attendant asks will be genuine. She likes him. She wants to know about him. So when she asks “Why Barcelona” and Jack explains what led to the choice, it doesn’t feel at all like exposition is being doled out. It feels like two people getting to know each other. Conversely, if Jack had initiated his reasons for going to Barcelona on some random person sitting next to him in the plane, it would’ve felt like Exposition City.
Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail continues to set up his television empire with a new procedural!
Genre: TV Drama – Procedural
Premise: When a young criminal law student is murdered, a black female cop who hates her job will try and solve the crime.
About: This one comes from Sam Esmail via his deal at Universal. The show is being made for ABC. Esmail will also direct the pilot episode. Newcomer actress Candace Grace will star as Vivien.
Writer: Sam Esmail
Details: 52 pages
I debated whether to review this one or not. On the surface, it looks like a hornet’s nest of trigger warnings. Or a warning nest of triggered hornets? Or a trigger-happy hornet orgy. The script is probably going to be triggering, is my point.
On the flip side, it’s Sam Esmail, one of the most interesting writers in Hollywood. Everything he puts out there seems to have this level of prestige attached to it that’s hard not to get excited by. So I figured even if all my buttons were triggered, I would still be an entertained hornet.
Criminal Law Professor Louis Gaetz delivers a rousing speech about crime right before his students head off for winter break. We follow one of those students, 18 year old Jimmy Russo, as he heads back home and connects with an old friend, Kathy. They go smoke some dope at the old skate park and Jimmy gets in a fight with someone from his high school, a black kid named Khalid.
We then meet Vivien, a black cop who wakes up every day putting a gun to her head, wanting to pull the trigger. Vivien isn’t really into the whole cop thing. She just wants to get through the day without killing anyone or being killed herself, which she’s managed to do so far. She’s being paired up with a new partner, Todd, who’s the squarest of square white guys you’ve ever met.
They get a call to an old gas station by a forest where they find poor Jimmy’s dead body. Jimmy isn’t just dead, he’s got an “NPC” meme carved into his chest. The two cops immediately visit the last person who talked to Jimmy, his friend Kathy. At first they’re suspicious about Khalid, who it turns out is gay and was fighting with Jimmy because he once tried to kiss Jimmy and suspected that Jimmy had exposed his secret.
But Kathy eventually reveals that Jimmy was accidentally placed on Professor Gaetz’s e-mail chain, where Gaetz and his buddies were not only making racist remarks but were stealing from house vendors! Jimmy wants to expose his professor, who eventually figures out his mistake, lures Jimmy out, then gets in a skirmish and accidentally strangles him.
Vivien and Todd come to Gaetz’s house, who doesn’t even pretend to be innocent. He grabs a gun and starts shooting out his window. He jumps in his car, drives off. Vivien chases after him, gets him to crash, then shoots him dead. We then flashback to after Gaetz left Jimmy’s body to see some random guy in a raincoat emerge from the forest and carve the NPC meme into Jimmy’s chest. The end.
The TV procedural is one of the oldest genres in the business. Whenever you’re competing against a catalogue of shows this large (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of episodes) you need one of two things to get your show on the air. You either need a really unique concept or you need really captivating main characters. The less you have of these two things, the harder your job becomes.
The reason I had confidence that Acts of Crime could pull this off is because it was written by Sam Esmail. Esmail has always been a unique writer who tries different things. He was cutting edge even before he hit it big with Mr. Robot. Back then, he was known as sort of a new-age Charlie Kaufman.
So imagine my surprise when this pilot ended up so standard.
Whenever you’re watching a show for the first time, you’re trying to figure out what the “hook” is. Oh, I get it, they’re stuck on an island and have to find a way off. Oh, I get it, a judge has to protect his son from a murder he committed. Oh, I get it, the cops use the newest computer technology to solve murders. Oh, I get it, we see the procedural through the killer’s eyes as opposed to the cops’s eyes.
I kept waiting and waiting for that hook to emerge in Acts of Crime, but it never did.
I’m not even sure the pilot makes sense. The whole point of the episode seemed to be to expose Gaetz as the killer then kill him. So then why, afterwards, do we cut to a random dude who just happened upon this murder, cutting an NPC meme into Jimmy’s chest? The episode’s over. We’ve found the killer. What difference does it make if someone has an arts and crafts moment with our dead body? It’s weird. Criminal even. But cliffhanger-worthy???
Wouldn’t it be more interesting if Gaetz wasn’t caught? By pure luck, some psycho stumbled onto Jimmy’s body, decided to carve a meme into it, and in doing so, drew all the suspicion onto him? Gaetz now gets away with murder and is lurking out there with his evil racist ways, teaching the future of America. Wouldn’t we keep tuning into future episodes to see if the cops figured out the truth and caught this monster?
I kept asking myself, “What is it the producers see here? What’s different about this show than any of a thousand other procedurals?” If I really stretched my definition of a “hook” I might say that Vivien is our hook. She has that big Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon moment early on where she almost commits suicide. She also hates being a cop, making her the “anti-cop” cop. She’s also kind of opinionated. She’s black and female. But, I mean, I didn’t even know she was the main character until the end of the pilot. I just figured she was one of many cops I was going to meet along the way. So if she’s the reason they think people are going to watch this show… I’m not sure that’s going to be enough.
I’m always mesmerized by the longevity of the procedural. It’s such a dated construct. I mean how many new scenarios can you come up with for someone getting murdered? I suppose the idea with these shows is to create 4-5 characters who are compelling enough that the viewer starts to think of them as friends that they get to visit with every week. But the whole reason I read this pilot was because Sam Esmail doesn’t write material like that. He pushes boundaries. Where was the boundary-pushing here???????
Mare of Easttown and last week’s The Mayor of Kingstown have proven that you can still write great 1 hour dramas. But you can’t slip even for a second. There’s too much competition out there. It’s more important than ever to take chances these days. And, unfortunately, Acts of Crime doesn’t take any. I was really bummed out about this one.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You can argue with me until you’re blue in the face about this but audiences don’t care as much about male murder victims as they do female murder victims. Take a look at Mare of Easttown. One of the reasons that show was so successful was we needed to find out who killed that poor girl. Contrast that with who killed an 18 year old college guy? I’m sorry but I don’t care. Think long and hard about who the murder victim is in your pilot or feature. If it’s not a woman (or a child) you better have a really compelling reason for why.
