Tonight I will be watching The Matrix Resurrections. Tomorrow, I will have the review for you. In the interim, I’ll be praying for a Christmas miracle. As much as I want this movie to be great, I can’t help but look at the Wachowskis’ body of work and see them as screenwriting warmongers. They place emphasis on the wrong things way too often, overcomplicating their narratives, carpet bombing the very fabric of their stories. So I know that hoping Lana Wachowski will learn from every mistake she’s ever made in one single leap is asking a lot. But boy would it be awesome if she pulled it off.
The irony is that The Matrix was built on the most basic classic storytelling template there is – The Hero’s Journey – sticking to it like a tadpole to water. That original film was a model of simplicity. Why did The Wachowskis move away from that in every other movie they made?
Of course, this was not the first time we’ve seen The Hero’s Journey launch a franchise. It was most famously done with Star Wars. Adhering to that simplest of storytelling formulas resulted in a 10 billion dollar empire.
So what is The Hero’s Journey? Why is it so powerful? And how come, despite its insanely positive track record, more screenwriters don’t use it? We’re going to answer those questions right now.
The Hero’s Journey is a storytelling template that breaks down a story (or, in this case, a screenplay) into a series of beats. We meet our hero living his life. He goes on an adventure. He defeats the monster and comes home. Along the way, he battles a flaw within himself that he eventually overcomes, which results in him becoming a better person (In The Hero’s Journey, this flaw is usually a lack of belief in one’s self).
More specifically, the hero is called on an adventure, usually by another character. The hero will refuse this call because it means change and the hero, like all humans, is uncomfortable with change. However, the hero eventually acquiesces, either on their own or due to changed circumstances (Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle being killed by stormtroopers, for example), and off he goes.
The hero meets a series of characters on his journey, each with a specific purpose. You have the mentor, the ally, the trickster, the guardian, and the shadow, to name a few. Some of these characters will help our hero. Some will hurt him.
Most of these characters engage our hero in the adventure portion of the story, what we know as the second act. The primary directive of this act be a series of obstacles thrown at your hero that test him, each trying to prevent him from achieving his objective.
The last stage of The Hero’s Journey is the only stage that doesn’t mesh with the Hollywood movie formula. This third act is known as “The Return,” and follows the hero back home after he’s defeated “the monster.” While there are some examples of this in modern cinema (Mad Max: Fury Road comes to mind), most modern movies defeat the monster and follow with two or three scenes totaling ten minutes tops.
There are 17 sub-sections of The Hero’s Journey and while I’m not going to go through all of them, I’m going to show you some of the major ones and how they line up with the original Matrix film. It should be noted that even Joseph Campbell recognized that every story is unique and that not all story beats will be applicable to every film.
The Call To Adventure – This occurs when Neo goes to the dance club and meets Trinity, who tempts him with finding out what the Matrix is.
Refusal of the Call – This happens when Morpheus is guiding Neo out on the ledge of his building and Neo says, “F%$$ this,” giving himself up to the agents.
The Crossing of the First Threshold – Campbell describes this stage as, “leaving the known limits of his world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm.” This occurs when Neo takes the red pill and travels through the mirror.
The Road of Trials – “The road of trials is a series of tests that the hero must undergo to begin the transformation.” The Wachowskis attack this one pretty literally. This is when we see Neo jump across the building, try to identify agents, and, of course, fight Morpheus in the dojo.
Woman as the Temptress – “In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him to abandon or stray from his quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. A woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.” This occurs when Neo goes to the Oracle, who tempts him with being “The One,” only to find out that he is not. Of course later, we realize that she needed to tell him this for him to ultimately understand, through his own inner transformation, that he is The One.
Apotheosis – “This is the point of realization in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure.” This occurs when Trinity tells Neo she loves him, giving him the confidence in something greater than himself. He is now ready to save Morpheus.
Atonement with the Father/Abyss – “The hero must confront whatever holds the ultimate power in his life. In many myths and stories, this is the father or a father figure who has life and death power. But it doesn’t have to be the father. Just someone or something with incredible power.” Unlike Star Wars, there is no father storyline in The Matrix. You could argue that Morpheus is Neo’s father figure. But he’s not the antagonist Neo must battle, like Luke with Vader. Instead, Matrix reflects the broader view of this stage, “Someone or something with incredible power,” aka defeating Agent Smith and the other agents when he stops the oncoming bullets in mid-air.
The thing I’ve found with The Hero’s Journey, and any screenwriting template, for that matter, is that the further down into the template you go, the less effective staying true to the template becomes. That’s because every story is unique and has its own set of challenges that don’t fit perfectly into a template. To that end, you should try and hit the major beats (such as defeating the villain), then pick and choose which of the other beats best apply to your story.
However, you should follow the first half of any storytelling template as closely as possible. Those early beats tend to be universal. It’s only when your script gets into those latter stages that it becomes its own thing and, therefore, should be treated less strictly.
The main reason I wrote this was to remind people just how powerful The Hero’s Journey template is. It’s arguably the best bet for creating a universally loved story that will be celebrated for decades. Look at what the template has yielded. Star Wars. The Matrix. Lord of the Rings. The Wizard of Oz. Harry Potter. Does it get bigger than those movies??
I think the reason screenwriters don’t use it that much is for a couple of reasons. One, it’s more organic to the literary world. We can see that in Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz, and Harry Potter. When you try and do it in the movies, you tend to have to squish it together more. Which is why most of the films that use it expand out to multiple movies in order see the formula play all the way through. Also, any story that sends a character into a strange world or strange universe is going to cost a lot of money.
So you either have to be clever and come up with the world’s cheapest hero’s journey. Or be a well-known director with enough clout to demand 100 million bucks. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. The Wachowskis had only made one small film before The Matrix (Bound) and then shot The Matrix itself for 60 million bucks.
If you want to write the next billion dollar franchise, I don’t think there’s any question that the place to start is The Hero’s Journey. How can you argue with these results?
I will see everybody tomorrow for my most anticipated movie of the year! Matrix Ressurections! I can’t wait!
Note: These next 10 days are going to be weird so grab a notepad and write this down. I’m doing the weekly article tomorrow instead of Thursday because Matrix is coming out on Wednesday and I want to review it Thursday. So I’m switching those two days around. I will be sending out a newsletter by the 27th. And I probably won’t post anything next week but you never know. Us Americans are trained by our government to feel guilty when we don’t work. So we’ll see what happens!
Genre: Children/Holiday
Premise: Twas the night before Christmas and five kids have to find three items to save their foster father’s home from being repossessed.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on this year’s Black List. Writer M. Miller Davis has spent much of the last decade working on production crews. He has also written for several small TV shows. But this is his breakthrough moment as a screenwriter.
Writer: M. Miller Davis
Details: 104 pages
Tis the season!
You would think it would be easy to write a Christmas movie. You’ve got eccentric characters like Santa Claus, Rudolph, Ebenezer Scrooge, Frosty the Snowman. And Christmas is such an emotional holiday as it’s built around family and connection and healing. The ingredients are there for a good screenplay. And yet, like every genre, it ends up being a lot harder to write these things than you think.
You know what they should do? Writers should start adapting Christmas songs into movies. There are so many beloved Christmas songs. And Hollywood loves themselves an adaptation. Why not? Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. Sounds like there’s a story to that one! Am I just giving out free money at this point? Maybe. Either that or free embarrassment. I’m sure we’ll find out which at some point.
Right now, though, we’re going to find out if Operation Milk and Cookies is as good as its title. Jump in the back of Santa’s sleigh with me and take a magical journey into the world of getting to read a screenplay in just five paragraphs.
12 year old comic book nerd, Henry, 11 year old selfie-obsessed, Nadia, way too big for being 13 years old, Tomas, and 9 year old cute little oddball, Astrid, have just found out that their foster dad, Brian (described as “a Paul Rudd type”), doesn’t have enough money to pay this month’s mortgage. Which means that they’re going to be kicked out of their house on Christmas!
With only two days before the holiday, the foster siblings come up with a plan to raise money by shoveling sidewalks and selling old partially destroyed barbie dolls. After their entire day’s work results in making 5 dollars, they prepare for homelessness.
But then they happen upon a nice old man’s home, who invites them in. His house is filled with Christmas decorations and he’s warm and sweet, even making the kids cookies! He tells the kids a story about when he was a kid, he researched how to find Santa and learned that Santa couldn’t resist three things: Cocoa butterscotch cookies, a golden fir pinecone, and something that represented Christmas spirit.
The kids put a second plan together. They’ll find these three items by tomorrow night (Christmas Eve), luring Santa to their home, and ask him to give them money to pay for the mortgage so they don’t get kicked out. Their mission is soon complicated, however, by a group of bank robbers who are using an old cookie factory as a hideout.
Realizing that the kids can rat them out to the cops, they go all ‘Goonies’ on them, chasing them around town. This is happening, in addition to, Brian trying to find them. If either party finds them before they can locate the three items, Santa won’t show up, they’ll lose their house, and it will be the worst Christmas ever!!!
Sometimes you read a script that does everything technically right yet you still find yourself not invested in the story. That was the case for me with Operation Milk and Cookies.
I mean, the story has a classic GSU setup. We have a clear goal – find these three items. We have clear stakes – if they don’t, they lose their house. And we have clear urgency – they have until tomorrow, Christmas.
We have the ‘next level’ stuff as well: a legitimate set of obstacles that get in the way of the characters’ objectives throughout the second act. That comes in the form of the bank robbers, who chase them.
So what’s wrong here? Why didn’t this light my yule log? Well, there could be a couple of things. Sometimes, when you follow the formula too rigidly, the plot becomes predictable. And Milk and Cookies is definitely a standard plot. It’s very straight-forward with virtually no twists or reinvention involved.
The second possibility is the characters. Usually when plot and structure are on-point and you’re still not enjoying a screenplay, it has something to do with the characters. But this is where it gets tricky. The characters in Milk and Cookies weren’t bad. There’s this cute little storyline where Nadia gets her hands on a cell phone for the first time and goes absolutely nuts with it, becomes obsessed with selfies. There were a handful of fun little character moments like this.
However – and this is a mistake I see in 95% of amateur screenplays – there was nothing exceptional about any of the characters. The kids were all kids we’ve seen before in these types of movies. They were fine. Absolutely fine. But “fine” isn’t good enough. Nobody remembers a screenplay for characters who were “fine.”
You need at least one main character to be exceptional. You need to take risks with them. Do something different. That’s the only chance you’re going to write a character who pops off the page. I’ll give you a perfect example. Jojo in “Jojo Rabbit.” A kid who has Imaginary Hitler as his best friend. That was a huge risk. I remember when I reviewed that script and people were getting butt-hurt about it in the comments. “Why would anyone create a movie that made Hitler sympathetic. This is awful!” The script went on to win an Oscar.
But the point is that that was a risky choice. I’m not saying you have to take that extensive of a risk in a script like this. But you have to take some risk. And I felt like the writer was playing it safe with all the characters.
The reality is, this is how most screenplays are written. With writers playing it safe. Which I understand. It’s scary to take risks. Especially in this day and age where one wrong comment could get you canceled for life. But let’s be real. The best art always has some risk attached to it, whether it be through the concept (Eternal Sunshine), the characters (Joker), or the plot execution (Parasite).
With the Matrix sequel coming out tomorrow, that’s the perfect example of risk. They made a movie about people living in a simulation, and when those people fought each other, they only fought with kung-fu. How does that even make sense? I don’t know. But it captivated the world and influenced movies for the next 20 years.
Even Cauliflower, the top-ranked script on the Black List this year, a script I didn’t like, took some big risks. It made some weird choices. I didn’t like the final product but that’s the reason why so many people don’t take risks. They know there’s a bigger chance of failure. Still, I would rather read another Cauliflower than I would another Operation Milk and Cookies.
I understand that some people may argue this is just a fun Christmas movie. It’s not meant to be Jojo Rabbit. But I would push back on that. You don’t have to take Academy Award level risks to write a good script. You can take a risk with just a single character. Come up with one wild weird memorable character. Like Bill Murray’s gopher-obsessed weirdo grounds manager in Caddyshack. You do that and people will remember your screenplay.
I wanted to like this but it just didn’t leave enough of an impression on me. I felt like I’ve seen this movie many times already.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Split a goal into parts to give yourself more plot. In the “Goal” part of GSU, you can often run into a situation where a single goal isn’t big enough to give you a 100 page plot. If that’s the case, split the goal up. They just did this in Red Notice with the three jeweled eggs. And the writer does it here with the three items (Cocoa butterscotch cookies, a golden fir pinecone, and something that represented Christmas spirit). It’s an easy and effective way to ensure that your plot doesn’t end on page 45!
Spider-Man saves more than the multiverse. He saves the movie business!
Genre: Superhero
Premise: When Spider-Man accidentally opens up a rift in the multiverse, villains from other universes arrive in our world, determined to eradicate him.
About: Spider-Man No Way Home defied… well… pretty much every expectation in the book, tallying 253 million dollars over the 3 day weekend. That’s better than The Force Awakens and only behind the two-part Avengers finale. There is no other way to describe this opening than, “Wow!” A trivia tidbit for you. All three Spider-Man movies have the word “Home” in their titles. Homecoming, Far From Home, and now, No Way Home.
Writers: Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers
Details: 2 hours and 30 minutes!
You gotta give it to Amy Pascal, Kevin Feige, and Tom Holland. They have found the winningnest of winning formulas with this iteration of Spider-Man. How did they pull it off? Since Spider-Man just beat out Star Wars, let’s use that franchise as a comparison. Kathleen Kennedy once famously said the reason comic book movies have thrived while Star Wars has dived is because every comic book character has 50+ years of comic book stories to draw from. All they have to do is identify which of those stories were successful then, simply, make the movie version of that. From what I understand, the multiverse was a huge success for Marvel Comics. As was the whole “Forget Peter Parker” storyline.
The reason that’s relevant is because the only variable that’s been capable of predicting success in this business is success in a previous form. Whether it be a movie, a comic book, a novel, a podcast. The industry loves verification that something was good somewhere else at some other time. So the ability to cherry pick from 50 years of comics that have had all these popular storylines is a huge advantage.
I’m jealous. Because all Star Wars has is Boba Fett.
Back to our web-slinging friend — Spider-Man No Way Home is a better movie than I thought it was going to be. But it was far from perfect. To convey just how clunky the movie could be, its most critical scene is its worst and its least critical scene is its best. More on that in a minute. But first, if you haven’t seen the film, let’s give you a quick plot breakdown. This film is impossible to discuss without spoilers so if you haven’t seen it, you might want to come back and read this after you do.
Peter Parker has just been exposed as Spider-Man to the world. No more secret identity. Cancel culture than comes for his best friends, MJ and Ned, who are told they won’t be accepted into their dream school, MIT, because they’re affiliated with Spider-Man.
So Peter goes to the crusty old Dr. Strange and asks him to cast a spell making everyone on the planet forget he’s Spider-Man. That way, MIT will accept MJ and Ned. Dr. Strange says fine. But as he’s conjuring the spell, Peter keeps amending it. “Can you make MJ remember me?” “And Aunt May?” “And Ned?” This cripples the spell and opens up the multiverse.
Doctor Octopus takes advantage of this, arriving from a separate world to attack Spider-Man. Then the Sandman. Then Electro. Then the Green Goblin. Doctor Strange constructs a bad guy holding cell, telling Spider-Man to go out, bring the villains back here, so he can conjure another spell to send them back to their own worlds.
But when Peter learns that all of these villains meet their death back in their home worlds (courtesy of other Spider-Men), he wants to “cure” them first so that they don’t fight Spider-Man back on their home worlds and, therefore, live. Since we’ve all watched movies before, we know where this is going.
That’s right. The villains escape and turn on Peter, determined to kill him. Since Spidey knows he can’t defeat four top-level villains all on his own, he recruits two Spider-Men from separate universes and the Spidey-Trio call the villains out to the Statue of Liberty where they ready for the ultimate Spidey Showdown!
Like every comic book movie these days, Spider-Man No Way Home is a mixed bag. For those who want Cheetos, you’re going to have to endure some Ruffles. For those who want Ruffles, you’re going to have to endure some trail mix. You’re going to hate some bites. You’re going to love some bites. And it will be up to the individual to determine whether the yummy snacks outweighed the rancid ones.
Here’s my biggest takeaway from Spider-Man No Way Home. Normally I don’t like overstuffed narratives. I think they’re a writer’s biggest enemy. I think they cause more harm than good 99% of the time. Too many characters and too many storylines just don’t work well within the feature screenplay format.
However, one of the exceptions to this rule is when the “overstuffed” narrative is organic to the concept. No Way Home is all about this rift being opened up in the universe that is allowing things from other universes to come here. That concept requires multiple characters and multiple storylines because all these characters arriving here is organic to the setup.
I’m not sure you open up a multiverse and only allow one villain through. I’m not sure you open up a multiverse and don’t play with the idea of multiple Spider-Mans. With all this stuff being organic to the concept, I was into it.
But I almost wasn’t due to a single scene.
The spell-conjuring scene between Peter Parker and Doctor Strange might have been the worst scene I’ve witnessed in a comic book movie. It was bad on every level. Mainly from the writing. But the acting was awful as well. You could see poor Benedict Cumberbatch grimacing through the the lines he had to read. It played out like an improv class at the Groundlings. There was no structure, no thought as to how to play the scene, no consideration of whether the scene was working or not. You can always tell when a scene isn’t working because the actors try to distract you by adding a lot of improvised jokes.
The reason this scene bothered me so much is that it’s the scene that holds up the entire movie, right? I call these “Pillar” scenes because that’s their job. They have to hold everything else up. Why, then, they insisted on shaky logic and goofiness as the main motivators for the scene, I’ll never know.
It took me a good 20 minutes to mentally get back into the movie again, such was the terribleness of that scene. I can’t believe they didn’t reshoot it. Maybe it was due to a Covid issue.
Luckily, No Way Home had a secret weapon. MORE SPIDER-MANS! This was its saving grace. I thought that seeing the Toby Maguire Spider-Man again was what was going to move me. But it was actually the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man that made the biggest impact on me, despite not liking the Garfield Spider-Man films very much.
For those who don’t know, Garfield had a rocky relationship with Sony as Spider-Man and their relationship ended somewhat bitterly. So to see him come back with such excitement and vigor was heartwarming. It me made feel good. He even delivers a meta-speech to Tom Holland saying, “I just don’t want you to end up like I did. Hating what you’ve created.” And it worked because this was a meta movie from the get-go.
I even got the tingles when the three Spider-Men came together early on in the Statue of Liberty fight and changed their strategy from fighting separately to fighting together. Seeing them swing into action after that moment was really cool (and the crowd cheered like crazy – yay for being back in movie theaters!).
I do think it’s interesting that No Way Home’s best scene was its least relevant one. That tells me there’s something inherently wrong with this comic book formula that they haven’t figured out yet. I shouldn’t be getting the biggest feels during moments that aren’t part of the main narrative. The scene I’m referring to comes after Peter allows Dr. Strange to erase the world’s knowledge of Peter Parker for real this time, and Peter goes to pay a visit to MJ, who no longer knows who he is.
This is a basic “dramatic irony” scenario, as you screenwriting aficionados know. The writer allows the audience to know something that one of the key characters in the scene does not. In this case, they know that MJ has been in love with Peter before. But she doesn’t know this. She doesn’t even know who Peter is. So we get this chill scene where he visits her at work and he wants to tell her who he is… but he realizes he can’t. It’s the quietist scene in the movie yet it’s its best because it’s so emotionally gut-wrenching.
If they could’ve had 4-5 scenes of this emotional magnitude throughout the movie (and no, the melodramatic over-acted Aunt May death was not emotional at all), it could’ve been the greatest Spider-Man movie ever, and up there with the greatest comic book movie.
How does a movie which fails its most important scene and aces its least important still end up being worth the price of admission? BECAUSE IT’S SPIDER-MAN. x3! Watching these spider-boys become spider-besties is cuter than watching three Golden Retriever puppies play with a rabbit. You’re going to love it. Is the rest of the movie clunky? Sure. Does anybody really understand how the Spider-Men are “curing” these villains? Not really. But No Way Home is inarguably fun. So you can bet your Spidey-dollars it’s worth checking out.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This movie taught me that dramatic irony works even better when the stakes behind the dramatic irony are high. In the scene I highlighted above, when Peter talks to MJ, the secret isn’t that he’s going to break up with her. That’s still dramatic irony but it’s low stakes dramatic irony. The secret is that she once knew him and they were madly in love and a couple. The stakes of that secret are enormous, which is what makes that final moment between them so powerful.
One of the nice things about the Black List is that it tells us where the industry is trending. These are the scripts causing managers and agents to sign writers. These are the scripts managers and agents are encouraging their writers to write. And since reps have a direct pipeline into what the studios (both large and small) are looking for, this means the scripts are giving you clues about what you should be writing yourself.
To help you out, I broke the scripts down into genres. It should be noted that the Black List doesn’t include “genre” on its list which makes guessing some of these scripts tough, especially if they’re crossovers. Whenever that was the case, I went with the more dominant genre inherent in the idea. For example, for “Max And Tony’s Epic One Night Stand,” which has this as its logline: “A disastrous Grindr hookup goes from bad to worse when a meteor unleashes a horde of aliens on New York and the two ill-matched men must depend on each other to make it through the night alive,” I went with “Comedy” over “Sci-Fi” because comedy is the dominant genre within the premise.
Okay, before I share the results, can you guess which genres finished at the top? The answers might surprise you. We’ll start with the lowest and go up from there.
Western – 0
Musical – 1
Romantic Comedy – 2
Children’s – 2
True Story – 4
Biopic – 5
Horror/Supernatural – 6
Action/Thriller – 7
Sci-Fi – 8
Thriller – 10
Drama – 11
Comedy – 17
Okay! What information can we gather from this tally? Let’s start at the bottom. I’m surprised there were no Westerns on this list! The Black List usually has a few of them every year. Westerns are a weird genre in that general audiences don’t like them much but people within the industry love them because they harken back to the Hollywood of old. It seems like everyone in the movie business wants to be involved in a Western at least once in their life. So that was a surprise.
I was also shocked that there were only two romantic comedies. I thought romantic comedies were making a comeback! For a while there, there was a new one every week on Netflix. But this may simply be a case of what Netflix wants and what cool industry voters want not always lining up. I do think most industry types feel that they’re above romantic comedies. Also, it’s hard to come up with a fresh rom-com idea with the formula being so generic. So maybe that’s why their recent resurgence wasn’t reflected in this year’s list.
Only four true story entries this time around! Feels like it was double that last year. Maybe the industry is getting “true storied” out. I can only hope. Also, we’ve got five biopics. Since we can all agree that biopics are evil, I am exceedingly happy about this development. As much as I detest both these categories – true story and biopic – I readily admit they are industry mainstays and will never go away. So if you have a passion for either, go and write it. That should be your approach to whatever you write, by the way. As long as you’re passionate about it, you’ll write something good. I’ve loved plenty of biopic screenplays where the writer was obsessed with the subject matter.
Horror is next with six entries, which seems about right. Horror is the most popular screenplay genre out there but most horror scripts tend to be silly and lack depth, which is probably why the Black List doesn’t reflect the industry ratio. They think of themselves as above it. Suffice it to say, there was only one social issues horror script on the list, which was surprising. That would be Shanrah Wakefield’s, Rabbit Season: “Supernatural horror about a woman stalked through a dark city park by the most monstrous manifestation of manhood during her walk home from her high school reunion.”
Next up we have Action-Thriller, which isn’t really a surprise. The industry is still obsessed with finding the next John Wick because if you can create one cool character with a gun, you can set yourself up for five movies over the next decade. It’s almost too tempting. If I were considering writing one of these, I’d focus less on the plot and instead on the main character. Try to come up with someone who’s really unique. Who’s odd or different or unexpected in some way. Most of these “John Wick” scripts have the same main character. He’s got a military or CIA past. He hung up his cleats. He’s a secret badass. Those elements are the obvious. Now you gotta come up with things about him that are not obvious. And no, making him a woman is no longer an acceptable twist.
Well, it just warms my heart that there are a full eight sci-fi scripts on the list. Sci-fi traditionally does well on the Black List. But they usually get around five entries. I’d guess that the uptick is due to the success of The Tomorrow War on Amazon. Everyone wants that cool new sci-fi concept. Between purposefully constructed time loops, killer sounds, saving soldiers in the afterlife, and curated VR deaths, maybe we’ve found some.
Thrillers remain right behind horror as the most written genre and it’s easy to understand why. Unlike horror, which requires special effects and therefore, money, thrillers don’t require anything other than a dead body. That makes them perfect for a cheap production. Sure, they’re not as marketable as horror. But they make up for it with their microscopic budget. Netflix is making a ton of these and they absolutely love them. Which is another great thing about the genre. You can go high-brow, like Gone Girl. Or you can go low-brow, like Deadly Illusions.
Next up we have drama. Now this category is a little misleading. When you think of drama, you think of Moonlight or The House of Fog. And I’ve included scripts like that in the tally. But drama can also be a catch-all genre for concepts that aren’t easy to label. For example, Lady Chrylon’s logline is, “Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into the real world.” Is that a drama? I don’t know. I think it may be. So I put it in the drama category.
I only bring this up because I don’t want people to think that writing Nomadland is going to get you a lot of reads. Straight dramas are still a tough sell. Which is why you need to add some pizazz to them! Like this graffiti artist concept.
And finally, we have the surprise top category on the list: COMEDY! Or is it surprising? Something I learned a long time ago is that when the world is going through hell, write comedy. Yes, you all want to write deep meaningful existential narratives about how YOU SEE the pandemic, confident in the belief that your main character, Mossad, and his narration about his young sister who is on a ventilator, is going to bring Hollywood to its knees and leave the LA river overrunning with a city’s tears.
BALONEY!
All it’s going to do is bore us to death. You want to write about the pandemic? MAKE IT A COMEDY! I guarantee you you will get 100x the read requests from a pandemic comedy than from a pandemic drama. That’s why comedy did so well this year. People want to laugh. COMEDY IS BACK, BABY! Also, nothing beats a snappy comedy logline. They tend to have a significant advantage over their competition.
How bout you? Did you notice any trends in this year’s Black List? Share them in the comments section!
Also, continue to RANK YOUR BLACK LIST READS in the comments. If you liked something, tell us. If you hated something, tell us. It’ll let me know which scripts to review and which I can place on the back burner.
Today I review the Number 1 Black List script!
Genre: Drama
Premise: Under the cruel guidance of a mysterious coach, an ambitious high school wrestler struggles to become a state champion while battling a bizarre infection in his ear that both makes him dominant in his sport and threatens his sanity.
About: This is the number 1 script on the 2021 Black List! You can see my reaction to all 60 Black List loglines here. The writer, Daniel Jackson, recently won the 2021 Script Pipeline contest. He went to NYU’s Tisch for film school. And he writes for Thrillist.
Writer: Daniel Jackson
Details: 98 pages
I’m sure you’re all just as excited to get into this as I am so let’s not waste any time! A quick warning. There’s a fairly significant spoiler in the first act which I have to include in the plot summary so if you don’t want to know what happens, go read the script first!
14 year old 106 pound Adam Karr has just joined a new private school where he plans on becoming one of the only freshman wrestlers in history to win the state wrestling tournament. Adam immediately befriends fellow wrestler, and junior, Jason, who shows him the ropes.
Jason makes it clear that the team’s secret weapon is Volkov, a mysterious 70-something assistant coach who used to be in the Russian KGB where he learned all types of fighting styles. But he only coaches juniors and seniors. He’s never even looked at a freshman.
Determined to change that, Adam makes a plea to Volkov to teach him and Volkov agrees to give him a trial private lesson at his house. While the two are sparring, Volkov has a heart attack and dies. Adam runs out of the house, telling no one he was there.
In the following days, Adam starts hearing a voice in his ear (which has been infected from wrestling) and quickly figures out it’s the ghost of Volkov! Volkov’s ghost starts coaching him in his matches, telling him exactly when to move out of the way, or when to go for a tackle. With Volkov’s help, Adam starts destroying his opponents.
But soon Volkov starts coaching him in his love life (“Get rid of your girlfriend”) and social life (“Frame your best friend”) in an attempt to eliminate any distractions so that Adam will have a clear path to the state title. It seems that the more infected Adam’s ear gets, the more negative Volkov gets. Will Adam survive long enough to win state? Or will Volkov’s ear be his downfall?
The number 1 Black List script always brings with it high expectations and those expectations are probably unfair, since it’s hard enough to impress a reader with no expectations. The reality is that, these days, the majority of the writers on the Black List are amateurs. Some of you might push back on that since the writers all have representation. But representation doesn’t mean anything when you haven’t made any money with your writing.
I bring this up because it’s easy to go into these scripts thinking they’re going to redefine the medium. But the reality is that these writers are still figuring out how to be screenwriters. And that’s pretty evident in Cauliflower, an uneven screenplay that bites off more than it can chew (going with the ‘cauliflower’ theme here – roll with me).
There were two things that stood out in the script. (Spoiler) The first was the twist at the end of act one, when Volkov dies. I was so certain that Jackson was going to lean into the Mr. Miagi role with Volkov that I didn’t know what to do with myself when he suddenly died. It reinvigorated my interest in the script, making me excited to go into the second act.
The second choice I liked was inserting Volkov’s soul into Adam’s cauliflower-infected ear and turning it into a demented Obi-Wan Kenobi force ghost. One of the disadvantages writers have these days is that they’re competing against the biggest cinematic juggernaut in history – superhero IP. Every character we create seems tiny in comparison to a superhero trying to save the world.
Well, here, Jackson’s figured out a way to create an indie superhero. Adam’s superpower is his ability to know exactly what to do at exactly the right time. The ear’s voice tells him when to dodge, when to attack, when to pounce. It tells him the answers to his teacher’s history questions. It even tells him the right time to make a move on his girlfriend. It’s his own little spidey-sense.
But there were issues here I couldn’t get past.
The dialogue was a big stumbling block as much of it was on the nose. Here’s an example: “He gets me psyched up. When I listen to him, I feel like I can run through a brick wall.” I suppose you could argue that freshmen in high school don’t have the most sophisticated vocabulary. But you should always look to avoid cliche phrasing like “run through a brick wall.” As a writer, you want to come up with new stuff, not depend on the old stuff.
Another random example: “You’re lucky. You don’t even need to be coached. I watch you out there. It’s like God’s pulling the strings.” This was a line from Jason to Adam. We’ve got another cliche phrase: “It’s like God’s pulling the strings.” More importantly, this is a tell don’t show line. Writers write it when they don’t have confidence that they’ve done the job though the character’s actions. So they write a line of dialogue to drive it home. “You are the most amazing wrestler I’ve ever seen!” If you properly SHOW this, you never need a character to say it.
But things really start to get messy when you delve into Adam’s home life. To be at the top of any sport, you need your parents pushing you. It’s not like you’re voluntarily signing up for wrestling classes at age 10. It’s your parents who have to choose that and then commit you to it. Anybody here who’s been an athlete will tell you – the best kids in their sports always had parents who pushed them into that sport at a young age, made them practice an ungodly amount of hours every week, and usually got them tons of private coaching.
So for Adam’s parents to barely know he was on the wrestling team felt completely false. If he was this good, they would’ve been a part of that.
Then you had the private school angle. For reasons that weren’t made clear, Adam had always been in public school. Except for now, as his parents had just enrolled him in a private school. A private school that cost a lot of money. However, we’re also told that Adam’s father can’t find work. Why would you sign your son up for an expensive private school for the first time when one of you is unemployed? Logically, it made no sense.
We also have an awkward religious subplot. The family had either just become religious, or the parents were already religious and Adam wasn’t for some reason. But now Adam wanted to be religious and asks his parents if he could come to church with them. It wasn’t clear why he wanted to be religious or why he all of a sudden had an urge to go to church. I don’t know. The whole thing felt really loosey-goosey. It wasn’t clear who was religious, who wasn’t, how big of a role religion had played in the family up until now. None of it felt convincing. You can’t do that with religion. It needs to be clear where people stand.
Then, on top of that, you had this Youtuber Adam was obsessed with – Dirk Ironside. Sometimes Dirk Ironiside would appear in Adam’s ear and give him advice. Which was confusing because we’d already built this entire story around Volkov being in his ear. So we now have two ‘magical versions of people’ giving him advice? It felt unnecessarily complicated.
And then when we get to the ending, the main character has gone so insane that we don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I’m not going to rant about this since I’ve spent way too much time over the years on it already. But my basic issue with it is that it allows you to cheat your way out of any corners you’ve painted yourself into. Amazing writers can sometimes get away with this (they did it in Black Swan, for example). But, like I said, there was so much messiness already that I didn’t trust the writer enough to take me down that path.
The script does end on one hell of a shocking image. And, like I said, I thought the Volkov stuff was interesting. But there were too many half-formulated ideas here. The bar for these scripts is Magazine Dreams. That’s the level of sophistication you’re competing against. In the end, I felt that Cauliflower was too messy.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use descriptive exaggeration to better convey a visual. You can always depend on the nuts and bolts way of describing something, of course. For example, if you’re describing your hero running, you can say, “He sprints as fast as he can.” And that will do. But if you want to drive the visual home, you’ll have to do better than that. That’s where descriptive exaggeration comes in. You’ll say something in such an exaggerated manner that it conveys a much more powerful visual. Here’s the way Jackson describes Adam running. “Sprinting as hard as possible. Like he’s trying to escape his own body.” When I read that, I FEEL how hard he’s running. Where as, with the more generic, “He sprints as fast as he can,” I don’t feel anything.
