In a shocking upset, Now You See Me defeated The Running Man, which only pulled in 17 million dollars for the weekend.

See, this is why I don’t like it when Hollywood shoves someone in our faces. It isn’t organic. It doesn’t feel genuine. And when you shove someone in front of our eyes and you say, “You must now accept this person as a movie star,” we’re going to push back. Being a movie star is literally the hardest thing to achieve in existence. It must be earned. And Glen Powell hasn’t earned it.

Also, these aspiring movie stars don’t have any clue how to become a movie star anymore. The way it’s done is that you find the genre that audiences love you in and you make a bunch of movies in that genre, with slight variations here and there. THEN, about 5-7 years into your career, you branch out and try more challenging material, like weird indie films and such. And the great thing is, if you suck at that, you’ve already established a lane that people love you in, so you can go back to it.

But these new impatient Millennial and Gen-X wannabe movie stars try to be everything right away and confuse the hell out of audiences. Glen Powell breaks out in a romantic comedy. Then he does a weird TV comedy. Now he’s doing this action film. He hasn’t established himself enough for us to give him that leniency.

Does the 1-2 failed punch of Chad Powers and Running Man mean the end of Glen Powell’s career before it even started? No. He’s got one more shot. Ghostwriter, which is going to be JJ Abrams big return to directing, has him as a sci-fi novelist whose sci-fi worlds start coming to life. If that bombs, then yes, it’s over. He’s Eric Bana.

Glen Powell would also benefit from some media training. He comes off as way too rehearsed and he doesn’t seem to show any genuine parts of himself at all. I wish you luck Glenny boy.

But what I would really like to talk you about today is the third episode of Pluribus. You guys know I can’t stop talking about the importance of the third episode of a TV series and how it is the single most accurate indicator of whether a show is going to succeed or not.

Because what the third episode tells you is whether you really have a TV show. The first episode is a mini-movie that sets up the concept and asks a few questions. The second episode is a natural extension of the fallout from the first episode, usually initiated by the cliffhanger from episode 1.

But two major shifts happen in the third episode. One, you shift to a different writer. The creator writes the first two episodes. The number 1 staff writer writes episode 3. So you’re going to your bench, and the bench’s performance is the real determinant of whether your show is going to be good. Cause the bench will be writing the majority of your show.

And then the other shift is that episode 3 is the first episode that the writer hasn’t meticulously planned yet. They know exactly what episode 1 is going to look like. They’ve beat out 90% of episode 2. But no creators ever think about episode 3 ahead of time other than in abstract terms.

But more than anything else, episode 3 is the first episode where you’re settling into the long walk that is a TV show. What are your week-to-week episodes going to look like? Episode 3 gives us our first peek at that. And if you don’t have a show that can generate consistently strong plot and character beats, we’re going to start seeing it here.

Which, unfortunately, is something I noticed right away in the third episode of Pluribus. By the way, why am I so focused on Pluribus? Because it’s the first show since Severance that has the potential to be a smart entertaining science-fiction show. These are rare. So, when they come around, I grab my praying emoji hands and I blanket my screen with them.

The third episode of Pluribus starts with a literal cold open flashback of Carol and her girlfriend (who died in episode 1) taking a vacation at an ice hotel. After that, we have Carol flying back from Europe after meeting the six other English-speaking people on earth who haven’t been affected by the virus. That meeting was a disaster so now Carol is going home.

While on the plane, she decides, of the five non-English-speaking people remaining, one is worth giving a shot to. So she calls him several times but he keeps hanging up on her, presumably because he thinks she might be one of the “collective.”

So Carol goes home to New Mexico, and sits at home watching TV when she hears a car outside. She heads out, sees the car screech away, and sees that they left her a hot dinner. She calls her personal concierge (who’s been modeled to look like Carol’s dream woman in the hopes of making Carol happy) and tells her she doesn’t want them giving her food.

The next day, she goes to her fancy healthy grocery store, Sprouts, only to find that there’s no food in it anymore. The concierge informs her that the world has consolidated all of the food to make it easier to get to people. Carol bitches at her and says she wants her Sprouts by the end of the week. She hangs up and, within a couple of minutes hears trucks approaching. She then watches as a dozen semi trucks and a hundred people quickly restock the entire Sprouts. Carol has her grocery store back.

She goes back home and on one of her many frustrated phone calls with the collective, sarcastically mentions she wishes she had a grenade. A couple of minutes later, her concierge shows up with a grenade. Carol and the concierge then get in a fight, Carol accidentally pulls the pin from the grenade, the concierge freaks out, grabs it and throws it out the window, but becomes injured in the subsequent explosion.

Carol then rushes the concierge to the hospital. While she’s being tended to, another collective member checks in on Carol and their conversation segues back to the fact that they idiotically gave her a live grenade. This prompts Carol to ask them what they won’t give her.  A bazooka? Yes, they’d give it to her. A tank? Yes, they’d give it to her. A nuclear bomb? They hesitate a little on this one but… yes, they would ultimately give it to her. And that’s it. That’s the end of the episode.

I went into detail on all the major moments from the episode here for a reason. I want you to understand why the third episode doesn’t work as well as the first two, and why it’s such a bad omen for the remainder of the show.

Before we do that, however, I want to establish why the first two episodes worked. In the first episode, we have a clear storyline. The shit hits the fan and our main character has to deal with it. It’s a simple story structure and a very effective one. Remember, stories don’t have to be big and complex to be good. Quite the opposite. The best stories are often simple.

The second episode uses a goal set up from the first episode to drive its story. There are six English speaking people in the world other than Carol who have not gotten the virus. Naturally, Carol wants to meet them so they can figure out if there’s anything they can do to destroy the collective. So she flies to Europe to meet them.

What I want you to pay attention to here is how a strong goal with high stakes can give you a good episode of television. Because that’s what gives you a STORY. Someone trying to acheive an important goal and running into obstacles is a story. And it’s a very easy structure to build a 55 minute episode around.

The first thing you’ll notice about episode 3, is that unlike episodes 1 & 2, there is no overarching plotline propelling the episode forward. I knew the episode was in trouble the second the cold open started: a flashback to Carol on a vacation with her girlfriend.

What did this scene do to push the overall narrative forward? Nothing. It is dead time. The writers would argue that it’s giving us more information about our characters, which presumably, would make us care more for them. But that’s not true. It doesn’t tell us anything new about them at all. Never use a flashback if it tells us something we already know or that we could’ve already assumed.

Then we cut to the actual story part of the episode and, unlike the first two episodes, you’ll notice that no big goal emerges. Carol is on a plane bummed out that nobody else wants to try and save the world with her. Then, almost as an afterthought, she decides to get in touch with one of the non-collective individuals who wasn’t at the meeting.

Because this is something Carol decides to do on the spot, it has zero stakes attached to it. That’s a good screenwriting lesson you can take away right now. If a character is doing something they only thought of several minutes ago, the stakes of that action are going to be lower than ground level. We won’t care.

When Carol gets home, she’s got nothing to do! And this was the first moment where I really noticed that the screenwriting was in trouble. If we’re two hours into your 60 hour series and your main character doesn’t have anything to do, that’s a BAD OMEN.

It only gets worse from there. The big plot point that arrives next is… they deliver dinner to Carol? THAT’S your big plot point to jump-start the episode’s narrative?? Oof, that’s bad news. You’re trying to convince me to be entertained by Carol not wanting food? Something – by the way – that they’re already established in the previous episodes! So beyond it being a weak plot development on its own, it’s a redundant one too.

The high point of the episode is Carol going to the empty grocery store and the collective refilling the entire store for her. It’s a fun sequence, without a doubt. But it’s fool’s gold. It’s the kind of thing that, when you’re writing the episode and you’re worried that not enough is going on, you point to that sequence and say, “Yeah, but I have this great sequence here.”

A sequence in an episode that has no connection to any plot is not a good thing. If anything, it highlights that you don’t have a story running through your episode.

Then Carol goes home again. She watches TV again (more time where your hero has nothing to do!!! in only the third episode!!!). And then we introduce this grenade subplot. Carol gets in a fight with the concierge and the grenade goes off and the concierge is injured.

Let me just say that the concierge has already been injured TWICE in this show. So this is the third time. Beyond all the problems I’m listing here, you’re also repeating yourself. But even beyond that, I rolled my eyes when this happened because now Carol is taking her to the hospital. And that’s the kind of plot development you bust out when you’re running out of ideas. It literally felt like the writer was making up the story as he went along.

The most important point to take from all this is that THERE IS NO UNIFYING PLOT THREAD PUSHING THIS EPISODE ALONG. Notice how we’re just moving from random development to random development. That’s a major sign that an episode is poorly written.

You need one overarching plotline to push the episode along because, without that, you put your characters in this compromising position by which the only way to make the story dramatic is to come up with these little miniature inciting incidents that get your character reacting — like realizing she can call another of the 11 humans, like delivering her food, like giving her a grenade, like the concierge getting injured.

This was my whole worry after watching the pilot — that there wasn’t a clear path where extended plotlines could be built for the characters. With Pluribus failing the Scriptshadow Episode 3 test, it is now perilously close to imploding.

So, here’s what needs to happen for it to save itself. For one, NO MORE FLASHBACKS. If we see another flashback in episode 4, this series is done. Because it means they’re trying to fill up space. They don’t have enough plot so they need ANY SCENES THEY CAN FIND to get them to an acceptable running time.

But the main thing is they need to get back to using episodes as self-contained stories like they did the first and second episodes. This is why Gray’s Anatomy and CSI and The Good Wife can generate so many episodes so effortlessly. Because each episode generates a medical issue that needs solving, or a case that needs winning, or a murder that needs investigating.

You don’t have that luxury when you’ve written a serialized show. So it requires you to come up with that driving central force at the beginning of each episode. If you don’t, you run into the problem Pluribus ran into here. Without an overarching narrative, you’re writing a ‘grasping at straws’ narrative whether you like to or not. What little desperate plot beat can you think of now that will get you through another 8 pages?

It’s a simple solution, guys. Build a full story structure into every episode!

Did anybody see The Running Man or Pluribus Episode 3? If so, what did you think??

I’m currently consulting for a writer-director on his latest script. He’s made several movies, but this time, he’s determined to get the script right before he starts shooting early next year. He wants it as sharp as it can possibly be.

It’s led to some fascinating discussions between us. After each consultation, we hop on a Zoom call to unpack the notes. A typical exchange goes like this: I’ll say, “This scene doesn’t work because of A and B.” And he’ll reply, “Yeah, but you have to understand, with the way I’m going to shoot it, it will work.” Then he walks me through his plan, and with a few minor exceptions, he convinces me that he’s got it covered.

These conversations have reminded me of an under-discussed aspect of screenwriting: sometimes, writing what’s best for the movie isn’t what’s best for the screenplay. That distinction matters because ninety-nine percent of screenwriters are not directors. Unlike the writer I’m working with, they don’t have the luxury of fixing their “screenplay mistakes” on set.

So as a writer, you often face a troubling dilemma. Do you write what makes the best screenplay? Or do you write what will ultimately make the best movie?

Let me give you a recent example. The opening of a script I just consulted on introduces the protagonist talking to a family member over the phone. Every quarter of a page, the writer cuts to a factory where toys are being manufactured. We see the intricacies of the process, the molds, the machinery, the assembly lines, while hearing the voice-over of the phone conversation discussing something entirely unrelated. We don’t yet know how this toy factory plays into things.  At this moment in time, it’s just a series of images without context.  The script keeps cutting back and forth between the phone call and this factory multiple times until the scene ends.

On screen, this would work brilliantly. Intercutting is one of cinema’s superpowers. It can compress information, build mystery, create tension, and generate emotion, especially when paired with music. It’s one of the most expressive tools in a filmmaker’s arsenal.

But on the page? It’s nearly the opposite.

A lot of writers don’t realize how much of a mess it is because they haven’t read enough screenplays. When you’re reading a script, especially early on, you’re already juggling a lot. You’re trying to get your bearings in the story, track new characters, understand their relationships, and grasp the setup. A good reader knows that missing key information in the first act can derail the entire experience, which is why clarity is everything.

Intercutting disrupts that clarity. It prevents flow. Every cut is like being in a car with a student driver when they indiscriminately SLAM ON THE BREAKS.

The same goes for montages. Montages work wonderfully in movies, but they’re torture on the page. When I see one in a script, I instinctively roll my eyes, shift out of “enjoyment mode,” and put on my “analysis hat.” I’m no longer immersed. I’m instead parsing information. Most montages are simply lists of six to ten shots providing updates on what’s happening with the characters. Rarely are they written with dramatic weight or emotional build.

The point is simple: not everything that plays well on screen reads well on the page. And since your screenplay will be read long before it’s ever shot, your job is to write what works on the page. Which means: avoid things that make the read clunky, or boring, or a chore, even if they lead to a great movie moment.

How committed to this ideology am I?  I wouldn’t put Luke looking up at the two suns at sunset in the Star Wars script.  One of the most iconic shots in movie history!  Now, to be clear, I’d put it in the movie.  But I would not put it in the script (and if memory serves me correctly, it wasn’t in the script).  In the script it would be nothing.  It would be a moment that barely registered with the reader, if at all.  That’s how different it is on the page compared to on screen.

I’d take it a step further. When you’re choosing what screenplay to write, choose a concept that works well as a read, not as a film. What kinds of scripts read best? Simple plots. Low character counts. Clear goals. Stories with long, uninterrupted stretches of narrative flow. Think Novocaine, Send Help, Drop, Sinners, Alien, Wolfs, The Beekeeper, Ballerina.

I’m not saying I love all those movies. I’m saying that if I were an unknown screenwriter and someone told me I’d be killed in six months if I didn’t sell a script, that’s the kind of script I’d write WITHOUT HESITATION. That’s right. I’m betting MY LIFE on this advice. A clear, high-stakes, high-concept story with a small cast and a clean, propulsive narrative.

The opposite of that? Something like House of Dynamite. It doesn’t have a main character, which immediately disorients the reader. It constantly jumps between storylines and locations, making it difficult to follow. There’s heavy technical jargon. But the constant jumping is the killer. Every time you move to a new time or place, the reader has to reset. Where are we now, what’s happening, how does this connect?

Movies can handle that because the audience doesn’t have to work. They see an image, and it registers instantly. But on the page, words require effort. The reader has to visualize and process every new setting and situation on their own. Too much of that and fatigue sets in.

So what if you don’t like writing those clean, linear stories? What if you gravitate toward the sprawling ensemble pieces, scripts like My Darling California or One Battle After Another or Independence Day? Stories that cut between dozens of characters and constantly evolving events?

There’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to approach these screenplays with caution and strategy. One rule I live by is this: the more complex the script, the more you need to hold the reader’s hand. If your story has 25 characters, 10 locations, multiple time periods, and flashbacks (something like Cloud Atlas) then you need to guide the reader carefully. Slow down during complicated sequences. Orient them clearly. Make sure they never feel lost.

And when you’re tempted to intercut between two scenes happening simultaneously, consider writing them one after the other instead. It might not be as cinematic on paper, but it’ll be infinitely more readable.

I can already hear some of you grumbling. You’ll cite movies that break these rules. You’ll say this advice stifles creativity. Look, you can write however you want. But from a reader’s point of view, and from years of monitoring what sells in Hollywood, your best chance of getting noticed is with a script that’s simple, clear, and effortless to read. It may not be the most cinematic script. That doesn’t matter yet. What matters is that you get noticed. And that happens by writing what works on the page.

Of course, there’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario. That’s what I loved about Osculum Infame. It was that rare script that worked beautifully on the page but was going to work even better on screen. That’s the sweet spot you want to hit. But if you can’t, err on the side of readability. I’d rather see a story that’s a killer read, something that gets you attention, than a would-be Godfather 2 meets Citizen Kane masterpiece that never gets made because no one could get through it.

I’ll finish with a quote from one of the great bands of the ’90s. Let’s see if you can name them: “Holllllllllld myyyyyyy hand. Want you to hold my haaaand!”

Genre: Drama/Crime-Thriller
Premise: In 1980 Los Angeles, the intersecting lives of a group of eccentrics spiral toward chaos when a shocking kidnapping forces them down a dark path with only one way out.
About: Writer-director Elijah Bynum technically broke onto the scene with the A24 dud, Hot Summer Nights. But he followed that up with Magazine Dreams, a brilliant spec about a tortured bodybuilder that turned into Hollywood street dust when star Jonathan Majors’ career imploded. This latest movie of his has attracted a very impressive cast. You’ve got Mikey Madison (Anora) playing Jodie. You’ve got Jessica Chastain playing Sharon. You’ve got Chris Pine playing Jack. And you’ve got Don Cheadle and Josh Brolin in there as well.
Writer: Elijah Bynum
Details: 127 pages

Talk about a writer who got screwed.

Elijah wrote an amazing screenplay in Magazine Dreams. It went on to attach one of the fastest-rising actors in Hollywood history and was slated to be an Oscar contender.

And then the Majors situation happened. This probably isn’t the forum for this discussion.  I’m genuinely looking forward to reading this script (I’m writing this before I’ve opened it).  But if you want to understand why people are cynical about Hollywood and its awards machinery, this is the perfect example.

Magazine Dreams was tracking toward Best Actor and Best Picture nominations. Then the industry collectively memory-holed it after the Majors allegations. They did the same with The Birth of a Nation after the Nate Parker controversy in 2016.

Here’s what bothers me: If these films were truly the best.  If these performances were genuinely transcendent.  How can they simply vanish without a trace? I thought the Oscars were about recognizing excellence.

Consider the implications. Magazine Dreams was being positioned as a film people would reference a decade from now. Oscar campaigns were being built. Then… nothing. As if it never existed.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: What other films that we now consider canonical only exist in our cultural memory because a studio decided they were worth the controversy? And conversely, how many genuinely great films have disappeared because someone calculated they weren’t worth the heat?

If we’re supposedly championing “the best,” why do we need the industry’s permission to find it? Why can’t quality speak for itself?

Anyway, it looks like Elijah landed on his feet. This one has a very impressive cast.

It’s 1980. My Darling California introduces us to newswoman Sharon Normandie, who’s married to the Johnny Carson of the time, Jack Normandie. Sharon is a drug addicted mess who hates her husband and her job. Jack, who laces his late night show with lots of religious rhetoric, has driven his wife away by repeatedly cheating on her.

We also meet John Ashley Cotton, a black man who just got out of prison and who used to work on Jack’s show as a janitor. Cotton, always looking to make a buck, blackmails Jack, telling him he’s secretly recorded him having sex with two black women in his office. He wants a payout.

There’s Jodie Taylor, a fresh faced country music star who is a combination of Taylor Swift and Britney Spears. She’s all about purity and waiting for the right one and her music reflects that. But maybe she has some secrets in her past that say otherwise. She has a big performance on Jack’s show.

Then we have dimwitted criminals Roland (older one) and Kent (younger one). They’ve kidnapped a horse (named My Darling California) from Jack. (Man, Jack’s having a bad month). They want half a million dollars to give it back. We eventually learn that Sharon hired them to do this. She’s going to take half the reward so she can leave Jack. And then all of these plot threads and characters weave together for the big finale. And there will be deaths!

I’m admittedly guessing here. But if I had to bet my expensive copy of Final Draft, I would bet that this script was written before Magazine Dreams. Magazine Dreams made the Black List, it got purchased, it got the hottest actor in town attached, and it got made. Elijah then took this out of the drawer, gave it a glow-up, and sent it out.

Why do I think this?

Because it’s very much an early-screenwriter screenplay. These are the kinds of screenplays writers write to prove they’re a good writer. Cause these ensemble stories where you’re cutting back and forth between different plotlines is one of the more common ways to write an “elevated” script.

But what you learn, in retrospect, writing these ensemble pieces, is that it’s hard to keep the engine moving underneath the story. It’s hard enough to keep an engine moving on a single narrative. It becomes three times, four times, five times as hard, doing it here, because you’re constantly taking your foot off the gas when you cut away from a storyline to another one.

Now, if you do it right, that final act has a stronger engine than anything a singular narrative can pull off. Because you’ve set everything up so that, in that act, every time you’re cutting to another storyline, it’s full-throttle hurtling towards its climax.

But that still leaves the first 75% of the screenplay as something the reader has to push through. They have to make more of an effort than usual to follow along. And just hope that you’re a good enough writer to reward them with that big strong 5-storylines-hurtling-forward-at-the-speed-of-light third act.

I bring all this up because the best plan for succeeding as an unknown screenwriter is to write a really compelling single narrative screenplay about a strong character who is pushing towards a big climax. Magazine Dreams was a little slow but its main character helped it achieve that. And scripts like Osculum Inflame. Another great example.

I’M NOT SAYING THEY’RE THE ONLY SCRIPTS THAT WILL LEAD TO SUCCESS. Don’t get your jammies in a bunch. I’m just saying THEY GIVE YOU THE BEST SHOT to succeed when you’re a nobody.

Often, when a screenwriter breaks through using this strategy, they go back to their desk full of old screenplays and pull out that passion project, the one that has a little more “complexity” to it. They’ve got a little buzz so people will read whatever they send out so they send everybody their “I’m a real writer” script.

But here’s my argument. I don’t think these scripts were meant for primetime. They were meant to teach you to become a screenwriter! This type of script teaches screenwriters a valuable lesson – that an ensemble multi-plotline script is really hard to propel forward, especially early on when you’re having to introduce all these characters and their individual storylines. It’s a Setup Carnival but without the fun. Us readers have to muscle through it before the script can gain any sort of plot momentum that hooks us.

So, after writing a script like this, you become much more aware of narrative momentum in screenwriting.

None of this is to say the script isn’t good. I actually found it fairly entertaining. It’s kind of like a softer cozier version of Pulp Fiction. It just didn’t have the teeth that that script had. Pulp Fiction had a good handful of shocking moments. Which meant that any time we waited (such as through the blueberry pancakes dialogue), we were rewarded by something shocking or unexpected that happened in the next scene.

Here, the story is slow. And the rewards are mild. For example, there’s this mystery that Jack has done something horrible in his office that this blackmailer has a videotape of. It turns out he was having sex with two black women. Umm… so what? Maybe that could’ve ended his career in 1980 I guess. But it doesn’t land with the same punch as revealing a gimp, a la Pulp Fiction. I thought, with Jack’s early interactions with children on his show, that his secret sexual exploits were going to be MUCH much worse.

But look, this script is LIGHT YEARS better than yesterday’s script, Behemoth, by Tony Gilroy. This actually shows an understanding of the craft – a writer who knows what he’s doing, even if the creative choices along the way weren’t 10/10.

There’s a great moment in the script where Cotton is telling this long story about working at the late night show and how an actor left some high grade acid in his room and Cotton stole it with the intent of selling it later. But he had to stash it. And after he stashed it, it got lost.

We then cut to Jodie, who’s prepping for her big performance on Jack’s show. And she’s freaking out and the only thing she wants to calm her down – her safe space – is an orange juice. And she keeps asking everybody there for orange juice and they all say they’re going to get it for her but when they look around, they can’t find any orange juice. So they keep lying to her saying that it’s on the way.

We cut back to Cotton, who’s finishing his story. He says how frustrated he is that he lost the acid cause it was worth 5 grand. And the guy he’s talking to asks, “Well where did you stash it?” And he says, “In a bottle of OJ.” And then we cut to Jodie, about to go on stage, and a manager comes up and gives her… a bottle of OJ. And that leads to Jodie taking in 20 doses of acid before going on stage.

The way those two storylines built and then intersected demonstrated a certain poetry that, when this script was working, was great. But there weren’t enough of those moments. There were just enough to keep you invested and that’s it.

Maybe if the script had a character as compelling as Killian Maddox in Magazine Dreams, it could’ve overcome the slower parts of the story. But it didn’t. It had a lot of medium to strong characters. But nobody who truly stood out.

I’m going to say this script is worth reading because there’s plenty of good here. But the format prevents it from ever being able to break out of its screenwriting shell.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Spoiler (for both today’s and yesterday’s script). I read two scripts in two days, both of them about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. These scripts could not be more different. And both have a surprise ending where a main character learns that they fathered a child many years ago. I tell you this to remind you that YOUR IDEAS ARE NEVER AS ORIGINAL AS YOU THINK THEY ARE. You may think you’re writing gold. But if the writer down the street who’s finishing their screenplay just as you’re finishing yours, is coming to the exact same conclusion you are, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough, man. That’s why I never trust first choices in writing, especially on endings. You have to dig deeper to find that reveal that’s truly going to surprise people.

Is this Tony Gilroy’s Megalopolis?

Genre: Drama
Premise: A womanizing cellist lands a job scoring a new film, prompting reflections on the journey that brought him to this moment.
About: To some, he wrote the best Star Wars material since the original trilogy. To others, he sucked every ounce of fun out of Star Wars and bored the fans to pieces. Well, now that Gilroy is finally finished with a galaxy far far away, he can take us into his obsession with scoring movies with classical music.
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Details: 128 pages

This may be the first time I’ve ever seen a writer write a script for the age 85-100 demographic.

Ho-boy.

I know I shouldn’t say this. Cause it’s going to piss some people off. But I have to be truthful. If I’m not being truthful with you guys then what’s the point?

Tony Gilroy is a REALLY REALLY bad screenwriter.

I’ve always felt like something was off about his writing. This confirms it. There’s a lack of focus to his material that is consistently infuriating. We saw it in Andor. Five full episodes would go by before an important plot point arrived.  Every once in a while in his scripts, he does stumble into a good scene. But, in the meantime, it’s like listening to a homeless man ramble.

And that’s exactly how I would describe this script. A homeless man rambled it off in one sitting.

Oh boy. How do I summarize this plot?

So, there’s this cellist named Alex. And he’s a ladies’ man. He plays in a bunch of different orchestras and makes sure to bang the hottest girls in the orchestras wherever he goes. Honestly, I could stop there and you’d have 98% of the story, lol. I’m not lying. That’s pretty much ALL THAT HAPPENS.

And some of you might say, “Actually, that sounds pretty good to me, Carson. We get to see this guy hook up with all these hot ladies.” No.  No, it’s not. It’s sooooooo boring. We just see him talk to a series of girls over the 20 years he’s been in the orchestra: sometimes before sex, sometimes after sex. And they all fall in love with him but he moves on to the next chick and leaves them behind.

I suppose there’s one special one named Nadia. He had a bang-buddy relationship with her while she was preparing to get married to some other man. And then, 20 years later, she dies. So he goes to her wake and meets some other girl who knew her and the other girl says Nadia’s dying wish was for Alex to have sex with her too. So he does.

And I guess the main storyline is happening in the present. There’s this movie that needs to be scored and Alex is no longer a hotshot cellist. But he’s still really good. So he’s working on the movie.

There are zero stakes to this job. It doesn’t matter if it works out or not. He’ll find work somewhere else tomorrow. Like everything in this movie, we don’t care about the story at all. It actually feels like it was designed to bore readers. I’m not even lying. There’s no other way to explain this atrocity of a screenplay.

The climax has Alex obsessed with a teenager named Viviana, who’s a trip-hop artist. They’ve interacted for like two seconds in the script before this. But now we’re supposed to care that Viviana is taking over for the lead orchestra position in the movie that’s being scored. Without spoiling things, we learn something “shocking” about Viviana and how it relates to Alex. And that’s the movie! The end!

How do you know a script is bad?

There are numerous ways. But I just found a new one! You have no idea what to write for a logline until you read the entire thing. Good movies let you know what the concept is by the end of the first act. This one did not give me that information! Heck, I don’t even know if Behemoth had acts!

How else do you know if a script is bad?

When there’s a car crash in the first twenty pages AND IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY EFFECT ON THE PLOT WHATSOEVER! The Uber driver was even killed! But Alex got a couple of scrapes and bruises and just headed home the next day and the movie continued. WTF????

How else do you know if a script is bad?

The scenes have no structure. You just drift into a conversation between two people with no point. They talk about absolutely nothing that anybody would care about. “Where are you now?” “Boston.  What about you?” “I got a new house.” “You must love it.” “I do.” That’s paraphrased but VERY ACCURATE trust me. 95% of the scenes read like that. It’s either that or this endless montage that Gilroy writes in. We’re whisking from one area to the next.

I have no idea what Tony Gilroy is trying to do here.

Maybe he’s on such an advanced path of screenwriting that he’s five generations ahead of the rest of us and we can’t comprehend how baller his writing is. Maybe in the future, scenes don’t need a point. Who knows?

But come on. Let’s be real here. In the first 60 pages, there is one significant scene between Alex and his lover, Nadia. And then on page 60, we’ve flash-forwarded to Nadia’s wake. And everybody who knew her, including Alex, talks about her and plays music in remembrance of her. And it’s supposed to be this really important moment in the screenplay.

WE KNEW THIS BITCH FOR ONE SCENE!!!

WHO CARES???????

Now, if one other person makes it through this script and therefore knows what happens, they might say to me, “But Carson. That sequence is actually important because it sets up the big reveal at the end of the movie.” No. That only works when the rest of the script is compelling. You don’t get to write a setup on page 60 and write a payoff on page 128 and then fill the rest of your script with rambling conversations and montages and call it a movie.

That’s not how it works.

One of the biggest things I look for when I read a script is something I can tell that the writer slaved over. I can tell that they were OBSESSED with making every scene perfect. OBSESSED with their plotting. OBSESSED with every line of dialogue. OBSESSED with every single word that was written in the script.

You DEFINITELY do not get that feel here at all. You leave this script feeling like… hmmm… what’s the best way to put it? ……… This is the type of script I would expect someone to write who has not had a single person be honest with them for decades. They just assume everything they write is gold. And the irony is, it’s the complete opposite.

Look, I’m guessing this is a writer-director thing. And since Gilroy has 856,921 orgasms describing different classical music pieces in this, it can’t be fully judged until we’re watching it on screen with the music. But I just don’t see how this can possibly overcome such a rambling narrative. It’s sooooooooo all-over-the-place. There is no plot. And you know how I feel about scripts with no plot. They’re narcissistic experiments forced upon the masses. Or, in this case, forced upon the five people who will pay for this movie.

This was not it, guys.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Give the reader a steady diet of entertaining plot points. This script had one single entertaining plot point. Its ending reveal. That was it! A good script should have a solid plot point, where something interesting happens that moves the story forward in an entertaining way, once every 15 pages.

What I learned 2: Be careful about writing a movie completely on “feels.” No structure. No plan. Just feels. When you do that, you get this, which always feels amazing to you, the writer, cause it’s got all those feels you felt down on the page. But to everyone else, it feels like landing inside the brain of a madman.

Is this a glorified X-Files episode (the show that gave Vince Gilligan his start)? Or is this the next game-changing watercolor sci-fi TV series?

Genre: Science Fiction (TV Pilot)
Premise: (spoiler) A bizarre signal from space creates a virus on earth that spreads to every single person, connecting them into a unified mind. Except for one person. Carol.
About: In an interview with Inverse, Gilligan recounted how he came up with the idea for his show ten years ago. “I started to ponder a character, who was originally male when I conceived it, who everyone inexplicably loves. He hadn’t done anything to deserve it, but everybody’s really, really nice to him suddenly, and they’ll do anything for him. They’ll bend over backwards to make him happy, and they love him. And that was kind of intriguing. And I thought, ‘Is there a story in there?’” Pluribus just debuted its first episode on Apple TV Friday.
Writer: Vince Gilligan
Details: 60 minutes

Breaking Bad.

Iconic.

Was it Gilligan’s opus? Or does he have something even better?

Gilligan, who started his writing career on The X-Files, said he never had some big plan to return to sci-fi. It’s just that when the concept for Pluribus came together, he realized that the only genre he could tell it in was sci-fi.

Gilligan has been adamant that nobody know anything about this show going into it. “That’s how I experienced The X-Files when I first watched it. And that’s part of what made it so cool. It came out of nowhere.” He hints that that was a big part of going with Apple TV over other streamers. Cause nobody knows anything about any of their shows.

Lol.

Just kidding.

But he does hint that being in control of the marketing was part of why he signed with Apple. He wanted to make sure people went into this series knowing absolutely nothing.

So, what’s it about?

A signal from space. Always the best way to start a story in Carson’s world. :)

Cut to Carol, who’s a bestselling romance novelist who’s just released her latest book. She’s promoting it at bookstores with her agent, a woman, who she’s also in a relationship with. The two head to their hotel after a book signing and, in the parking lot, her girlfriend has some sort of seizure.

Carol runs into the hotel for help but sees that everybody else is having a similar seizure, many of them stuck standing in place while they shake uncontrollably. Carol rushes her girlfriend to the nearest ER only to find the same thing going on.

(Spoilers) Carol’s girlfriend then dies. And, not long after that, everybody stops shaking and turns to Carol and asks how she’s doing. Freaked out, Carol drives home (with her dead girlfriend’s body) and proceeds to run into more people who inexplicably know her name and tell her that they’re there to help. Carol tells them to fucking leave so they do.

Carol starts checking the TV to see if there’s news on what’s going on. There’s only one channel, though. And, on it, is the president of the United States. Who proceeds to talk… directly to Carol! He explains that the world has become a unified mind EXCEPT for Carol and ten other individuals. They want to find out what went wrong so they can fix it. In the meantime, they’re here for Carol. Whatever she needs, they’ll give it to her. The end!

Exhibit A in how vague they’re keeping this promotion

There are a couple of smart writer things I want you to take note of right away here.

The execution of the premise was great. I’ve read ten million scripts that start with some sort of outbreak but none of them quite like this. This was weirder and, unlike the typical zombie-outbreak scenario, there was this mystery as to what was going on that was very compelling. People just stopped, stood in place, and shook. And then they’re okay again, then they’re kissing. Then they’re happy. And then they’re unified in the way they communicate. It really had you wanting to see what happened next.

Gilligan also did something interesting with his hero. He made her a super successful romance novelist… yet she’s gay. I bring this up specifically because a few years ago, this would’ve been tracked as a “woke” choice. But this is how you become a good writer. If you use irony, nobody can criticize your chocies. There’s something clever and interesting about a romance novelist who writes the big brooding men that her readers fall in love with, yet she herself has zero romantic interest in men.

Finally, Gilligan did something interesting with the threat. What do we usually associate with a threat? Aggressiveness. Violence. Anger. Cruelty. Evil. Gilligan went in the opposite direction. The threat here is kindness. Helpfulness. Happiness. Understanding. This is what good writers do. They flip things on their head to create a unique experience for the reader.

And, just, overall, I thought it was a fun pilot. It’s essentially a sci-fi version of Breaking Bad. Not in subject matter. But in tone and place. Just like Breaking Bad, it’s set in Albuquerque. Which gives it this unique big-town/small-city feel, where you could be in a city one block and in the country three blocks over.

So, it’s a slam dunk right?

Well. Not quite.

I’ve been burned by way too many shows that start strong and fade fast. So let’s take a closer look.

Whenever I read a pilot these days, I’m gauging whether it has legs. That’s the main reason the golden age of TV died out. 20 different stinking rich Hollywood entities were craving so much content that they didn’t care about questions of longevity. They just needed stuff NOW. So they bought all these shows that had good pilot scripts and good concepts, but didn’t ask if they could last. Turns out, very few of them had lasting power, resulting in a ton of failed shows. These entities then decided – we’re not getting burned like that again.

I’ll be honest. I’m still trying to figure out if Plubius has legs. The central gag – that this unified blob wants to find out what’s wrong with Carol so it can unify with her, and they’re going to be ultra nice while doing so – I don’t see how much longer you can play that gag out before it gets annoying. 3 more episodes? Maybe 4?

So, what else is there to look forward to? THE most reliable tool in TV writing is to establish a strong unresolved relationship in the opening episode. Bar none. Gilligan knows this! He did it with Walter White and Jesse in Breaking Bad. Most of the time, it’s done with a romantic storyline.

But Plubius has zero unresolved relationships in its pilot. That seriously worries me. Cause that puts even more pressure on the gimmick to keep us entertained.

Pretty much the only thing hinted at in the pilot that provides a long-term view of the story is the fact that there are 10 other people in the world like Carol. So, presumably, she’s going to team up with some of these people somehow and they’ll try to fight the system. But, outside of that, Gilligan may be in serious trouble. There aren’t a whole lot of avenues to go down here.

Now, I want to talk about what Gilligan can do well in the next episode, and where he can falter. If his strategy was that the pilot episode was going to be 100% about the hook and nothing else, and episode number 2 is where he introduces the main unresolved relationship in the show, then he can get right back on track for episode 3. He solves the very issue I just laid out.

However, if he starts doing that thing where he goes backwards and tries to establish lives before all of this happened, he will lose a huge chunk of the show’s audience. You can do that. But only after you’ve earned ‘flashback credit.’ You gotta give us a sustained entertaining experience before you start doing the old TV flashback thing. Cause that shit got old fast and audiences don’t like it anymore.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Even if your pilot lacks a strong hook, if you can create a kick-ass unresolved relationship in your pilot, that can be enough to make people want to keep watching. If they fall in love with two people whose storylines they want to see resovled, they WILL come BACK. It’s the most tried and true tool in TV writing. Let’s stay on brand here for our example, which is one of the best ever: Mulder and Scully.