Genre: True Crime – Murder
Premise: Based on the New Yorker article by Nathan Heller. A true-crime thriller based on the story of two brilliant college lovers convicted of a brutal slaying. An obsessed detective investigates the true motives that led to a double homicide, and the decades of repercussions that follow.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Aaron Katz, is also directing. The project has already cast its leads, with Sabrina The Teenage Witch actress Kiernan Shipka playing Lizzy. Former Disney boy and rising star, Cole Sprouse (Five Feet Apart), will play Jens. Katz directed the 2017 film, Gemini, starring Zoe Kravitz.
Writer: Aaron Katz
Details: 122 pages
I’ve never understood giving real life murder stories the movie treatment. They’re always so much better in documentary form. I think if you’re going to do true life murder stuff, you should use the stories as inspiration then make up what you want to make up. That’s how Thomas Harris created Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter. He found real life murderers who did weird shit and molded them so they fit into his fictional narrative.
Unless you can find a truly crazy murder story. But even then you might still want to use the characters as inspiration. Isn’t that what Tarantino did with the Helter Skelter crew in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood?
Anyway, on to today’s true crime murder story, which I’d never heard of before.
It’s 1985.
College kids Lizzy Haysom and Jens Soering meet at a movie theater. Afterwards, Lizzy tells Jens that she loves to make men fall in love with her and then fuck them over. But that she’s not going to do that to Jens because he’s “different.” “You’re not included. You don’t feel like a man,” she says. “I mean that in a good way. You feel like you. You’re not a man or a woman or anything.”
Um, okay.
Lizzy introduces Jens to her parents and, a week later, after they’ve gone back to school, we learn that her parents were brutally murdered, stabbed dozens of times each. 30-something cop Reese Rezek is assigned to the case. Right away, she suspects that there’s something fishy going on with Lizzy so she brings the couple in, one at a time, to chat. When certain parts of their stories don’t match up, she knows she has the killers.
Except before she can throw them in the slammer, they run. And they run far. All the way to France. And then Italy. Back in 1985, when someone ran, you couldn’t really do much about it. To make things worse, Reese is re-assigned to work in the DEA. So she spends a year busting people for drugs. But she never stops thinking about Lizzy and Jens!
Lucky for her, she finds her way back into homicide and convinces her outfit to let her track down the murderous couple in Europe. Off she goes with her partner and actually FINDS THEM dancing at an Italian club. They see they’ve been spotted and run, resulting in a race across town, and the couple literally jump into a train car to escape. So close and yet so far, Reese must cut her losses and go BACK to the US.
Eventually, however, they get picked up for cashing bad checks and Lizzy confesses that, yes, she killed her parents. Jens decides to take his chances in court but loses and both of them get 100 year sentences. But this doesn’t satisfy Reese, who starts having doubts! She becomes convinced that this other guy, Doyle, is the one who committed the murders. Our final act is about nailing Doyle to that metaphorical cross but Doyle proves, without a reasonable doubt, that he wasn’t there that day. I guess Reese was right the first time. The End.
Whenever I read a true murder story and I’m assessing if it’s “movie worthy” or not, the first question I ask is, “What’s fresh here?” Which is a question any good reader/producer/executive/director is going to ask when they read any script. What’s fresh here? Which means that’s a question YOU need to ask about your own concepts BEFORE YOU WRITE THEM. Because BELIEVE YOU ME, someone’s going to ask that question down the line and you better have an answer for them.
And it’s a question I was asking all the way through, “Blood Ties.”
You’re already starting from a place of weakness with the murder victims in Blood Ties. There’s a reason you don’t see, “Elderly Man/Woman Stabbed To Death” on the front page of CNN ever. Murder stories don’t gain national attention unless it’s a young woman or a child. Say what you will about how f*cked up the human mind is for thinking that way but it’s a reality. And it’s something you definitely want to consider when you’re assessing whether a true murder story is worth turning into a movie.
The reason it’s a big deal is because you need as much anger and demand for justice from your reader as possible in these stories. The less anger they have about the murders and the less demand for justice they have, the less they’re going to care whether your protagonists catch the killers or not. And that’s the whole name of the game. You want us to want the heroes to catch the killers.
There are caveats to this. If you spend a good amount of time with the elderly people who eventually get murdered and really make us like them, you can create enough motivation for us to want to see their murder avenged. But Blood Ties doesn’t do this. In our one scene with the parents, we barely learn anything about them. And I feel bad for saying this but, the truth is, I didn’t feel anything when they were murdered.
So you have elderly victims who I didn’t feel anything for. Not a great way to start off a murder script.
I guess if I’m arguing the writer’s point of view, I’m banking on the reader being interested in this weird couple, specifically Lizzy. I’m hoping that you’ll find her so odd that it’ll pique your curiosity enough that you’ll want to keep reading.
But if that’s what you’re hoping is going to drive the reader’s interest, ‘sorta weird’ isn’t going to cut it. The characters have to be flat-out bizarre. They have to say really weird shit and do even weirder shit. That’s why the Mansons captivated the world. Meanwhile, Lizzy and Jens topped out at “mildly odd.” I kept waiting for them to be “movie worthy” but they repeatedly failed to deliver.
The script also has a little bit of Fincher’s “Zodiac” thrown in. The story follows Reese as she becomes obsessed with finding Lizzy and Jens. That leads to us learning a lot about her character – such as the fact that both her parents died when she was young – that her dad was supposedly a great cop. But just knowing more about the protagonist’s life doesn’t mean that the reader will care about them.
That’s a common misconception. You can tell me a million things about your hero and I still not give a shit what they do. It’s how you package their backstory with their fatal flaw and their relationships and their personality – it’s the way you mix all those ingredients into a meal that determines if we like the character or not. I felt like I knew a lot about Reese. But there was very little done to make me root for her.
Elderly victims + didn’t feel anything for the victims + mildly odd murderers + a protagonist who I don’t care enough about. It’s nearly impossible to salvage this equation.
The one time I saw it done was Spotlight. TERRIBLE SCRIPT that had similar problems to Blood Ties. But the story in Spotlight was so good and so powerful that it somehow was able to override all of its weaknesses. Unfortunately, Blood Ties doesn’t have that “Helter Skelter” story centerpiece to make up for its averageness in all the other categories. And, for that reason, it didn’t work for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When your movie has already resolved its primary conflict and you try to tack on a follow-up mystery to your story, you’re fighting a losing battle man. The audience has already checked out. It’s really hard to blow up the balloon for the entire movie, burst it, and then try to blow up a second balloon for the last 30 minutes. I think that’s successfully been done like 3 times in cinema history. That’d be like Indiana Jones surviving the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Act 2 and then he decides to go look for the Needle of Enlightenment in Act 3.
Guess what day it is?
It’s SCRIPTSHADOW WRITE A COMEDY SCRIPT IN 3 MONTHS BEGINNING OF WEEK LIST OF THINGS FOR YOU TO DO THIS WEEK day.
For those unfamiliar, Comedy Showdown is going down June 17th. That’s the submission deadline. In the meantime, I’m helping you write your script. I’ve already done Week One here and Week Two here. But even if you didn’t know about this until now, there’s still plenty of time to write a script. You’ll just need to up your pages-per-day. At the moment, I’m asking for 3 and a half pages a day. You might have to up that to 5 pages. Or, if you’re okay with not doing a final polish on your script, you can stay at 3 and a half pages.
Now, a little structure talk here so you understand what we’re going to be doing over the course of this week. For starters, we’re structuring our comedy assuming it’ll be 100 pages long. For our first draft, we are writing 1/4 of our script a week. Last week we wrote the first quarter (pages 1-25). Now we’re going to write the second quarter (pages 26-50).
This will take us to the script’s halfway point.
To make things easier for you, we’re going to be using the Sequence Approach and dividing this quarter into TWO SEQUENCES, each of them 12 and a half pages long. The first of those (pages 26 – 37.5) is commonly known as the “Fun and Games” sequence and is, arguably, the whole reason your came up with your idea. This is the section where you aggressively deliver on the promise of your premise.
Think about that first moment when the guys woke up in The Hangover. There’s a baby. There’s a tiger. Someone’s missing teeth. Those next 12 and a half pages delivered on the promise of the premise of waking up after a crazy night out and having no idea what happened the night before.
Or take Coming To America (the original). This is the moment where Prince Akeem and Semmi show up in Queens for the first time. You got the crazy New York cab driver who speaks his mind. The guys finding out that “Queens” is nothing like it sounds. Trying to get an apartment in New York for the first time. You are literally leaning into all of the funniest gags you can come up with from two guys who have never been to America… coming to America.
In other words, this should be the most fun you have the entire script. If you’re not laughing as you come up with fun new scenes for this section, you probably picked a lousy idea.
Where things get tough is in this second of the two sequences you’ll be writing this week (pages 37.5 to 50). This section isn’t as clear. In fact, I don’t know if anyone in screenwriting history has given it a name yet (feel free to suggest a name in the comments). But the good news is you know the exact number of pages it has to be – 12 and a half – which isn’t that many. And you know exactly where this sequence ends – it ends at your screenplay’s midpoint. Which means you can write towards your big midpoint moment.
The midpoint of a script tends to be the time where something big happens. That thing could be negative or positive. As long as it’s A BIG DEAL. It should also, preferably, alter the script in some way whereby the second half of the movie doesn’t feel exactly like the first half. This is a common newbie mistake. New screenwriters make the same jokes for 100 pages. You need something that alters the plot so that the jokes (and story) feel different.
I recently rewatched “Spy,” and the midpoint of that script is a positive one. It’s the moment where our spy, Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), finally befriends target Rayna Bayanov, while having to maintain her cover. The entire first half of the movie was built around Susan trying to get to Rayna. In the second half of the movie, she befriends her, but must keep her cover. That change creates a whole new set of plotlines and jokes.
In Guardians of the Galaxy, which is essentially a comedy, the midpoint is a negative one. Peter Quill and his team lose the orb to big baddie, Ronan. This, of course, sets the stage for the second half of the script, which will require our misfit team to retrieve the orb before the bad guys activate it, destroying the universe.
During both of these sections, I want you to be focusing on two things. One, keep throwing obstacles at your hero. Especially in the second sequence. The first sequence – our “Fun and Games” section – is more about having fun with the concept. But having fun is often about throwing things at your hero that they have to deal with. So you’re going to pepper some of that in there as well.
Once out of the Fun and Games section, you’re in slightly more ‘serious’ territory. So you’re going to ramp up the obstacles. For example, in “Spy,” you’re going to throw an assassin at Melissa McCarthy. You’re going to blow her cover when she’s in the middle of a difficult task. Think of yourself as the “Obstacle God.” Your job is to create obstacles that you then drop into your film.
Comedy is often about being as shitty as possible to your hero and watching them squirm. That’s where the fun is! If you aren’t challenging your hero consistently, there isn’t going to be a lot of opportunity for laughs. If you find yourself writing dialogue scenes where you’re desperately looking for the next joke between two characters, chances are you’re not throwing anything at them. You’re leaving them to blow aimlessly in the wind – and that’s where comedy dies. When you throw obstacles at your hero, you don’t have to look for laughs. The laughs organically come to your heroes as they swat away all the shit you’re throwing at them.
The second thing I want you to focus on is reminding the reader what your hero’s flaw is. You do this by continuing to give them opportunities to overcome their flaw only for them to not be up to the task yet. Obviously, if they were up to the task, your movie would be over.
Look at Steve Carrel’s character in The 40 Year Old Virgin. His flaw was arrested development. He’s still stuck in his childhood, which explains why he hasn’t had sex yet. As a writer, you want to challenge that flaw to remind the audience what it is your hero has to overcome. In this case, Steve Carrel’s girlfriend suggests he sell his valuable childhood action figures to start his dream business. Carrel resists this, at first, to let the audience know he’s not ready. He hasn’t overcome his flaw yet.
If you don’t occasionally remind the audience of this over the course of your screenplay, then, at the end, when you try and write your big heartstrings-tugging moment, there ain’t gonna be any tears. And you’re going to ask people, “Why aren’t you crying?” And they’re going to say, “Because that whole ‘he’s finally ready to grow up’ moment came out of nowhere!” “Came out of nowhere” is code for you didn’t set it up properly. Which is why you need to keep reminding your reader that your hero hasn’t overcome his flaw yet.
One last thing. Don’t worry if your page count is a little long. If it feels like you’re going to hit 120 pages instead of 100, that’s okay. I’ve found that, in comedies, there are always going to be a few characters you don’t “get” the first time around. You’re trying to find where their ‘funny’ is in that first draft. And the best way to do that is to let some scenes run long so that your ‘trouble’ character gets a chance to find his voice. That might even mean changing him in the middle of the script because he wasn’t working in the first half. In the end, the biggest thing you’re going to be graded on is, “Is this funny?” So if characters aren’t working, you need to play with them and give them opportunities to let go. Sometimes it’s a single line you write that helps you finally ‘get’ a character.
Wow, at the end of this week we’re going to be halfway through our script! Who said writing a screenplay was hard?
Onwards and upwards!
Writing great comedy scripts does not come down to plot or theme or even, as commonly assumed, dialogue. It comes down to how funny the key characters are in the script. Are they constructed in such a way that they are inherently funny without having to do anything?
When you manage to construct an inherently funny character, it is magic fairy dust for your screenplay. You don’t have to think of funny things for them to say or do. They just say and do them. Contrast this with weak comedy characters who you always seem to be moving mountains for to get just one funny line out of them. Get the character right AND HE BECOMES THE COMEDY.
What we’re doing today is listing ten great comedic roles and you’ll see pretty quickly that there’s overlap. In other words, pay attention to the kinds of characters who become iconic because their DNA on ‘how to write funny’ is right there for the taking if you want it.
Here we go!
Alan in The Hangover – Alan’s primary characteristic is that he’s the most socially unaware person in the world. Combine this with a character who likes to talk a lot and you get someone who’s always going to be saying funny things. This is a comedy staple. You saw it with Dwight in The Office. You saw it with Kramer in Seinfeld. There are variations here on how goofy you want to get with these characters. But socially unaware characters who like to blast their opinions on everything consistently become some of the funniest characters out there.
Walter from The Big Lebowski – Aggressive. Mentally unstable. Paranoid. Note the extremes of the adjectives we use to describe Walter. He’s not “kind,” or “sweet,” or “pleasant.” He’s AGGRESSIVE. He’s PARANOID! Big exaggerated negative traits are great for comedy. We also have a character, like Alan, who loves to talk! Characters who express what’s on their mind have more ‘funny potential’ than characters who keep to themselves.
Derek from Zoolander – Derek is really really really really really really really dumb. Again, note the EXTREME here. Extreme works well in comedy. If Derek is only sort of dumb, there aren’t as many laughs. Also, Derek plays into a stereotype – that all models are dumb. While everyone is freaked out about stereotyping these days, it’s one of the best ways to construct a funny character. For example, if they made Zoolander today, it would not be controversial. Find that stereotype and play it up!
Ron Burgandy in Anchorman – His name is Ron Burgandy? Ron Burgandy exhibits another staple for hilarious characters. He’s clueless. The guy has no idea what’s going on around him is usually funny. But where you get those big laughs from Ron Burgandy is that he thinks he’s amazing. That’s always a great combination to play with in comedy. You take a negative and you contrast it with a positive. This guy’s so clueless. And yet, if you asked him, he’d tell you he’s the second coming of Christ. That gap between who he is and who he thinks he is is where all the laughs are.
Megan from Bridesmaids – Melissa McCarthy stole Bridesmaids with this character and she has the writers to thank for it. Megan is your classic “no filter” character. Comedy LOOOOOOOVVVES no filter. An additional note with this character. The temptation is to look for her laughs from dialogue. Don’t limit yourself. Extend the ‘no filter’ mindset to that character’s actions as well. One of the funniest moments in Bridesmaids is when Megan steals nine puppies from the wedding party.
Stifler from American Pie – We’ve got our first villain! American Pie did something really genius with Stifler which is why he became the most memorable character of the franchise. He got it as much as he dished it out. He makes fun of everyone but gets peed on at the party. He cusses nerds out but ends up drinking a beer full of semen. He beats people up yet a nerd has sex with his mom. This supports my theory about contrast being the key to comedy. If Stifler is just a dick the entire time and never gets payback for it (until the last scene), we don’t experience any contrast in his character. It’s going from one extreme (a Stifler win) to the other (a Stifler loss) that keeps his character hilarious.
Happy Gilmore – Happy Gilmore plays with one of the simplest comedy types available: the angry dude. People who get insanely angry are funny. If Happy Gilmore is only kind of angry, his character doesn’t work. Instead, this is a guy who tries to beat up national treasure Bob Barker from The Price is Right (The Price is Wronnnng, bitch!). Comedy’s often about going one yard further than the audience expects you to go. Happy Gilmore has 30+ examples of that. And it’s a great approach to writing comedy in general. Think about where the reader expects you to go with the joke, and then take one yard further.
Vizzini from The Princess Bride – We’re adding a second villain to the list. Inconceivable! Vizzini is built around his outsized ego. This is another area where we find contrast. Vizzini is this tiny little man. Yet he has the biggest ego of anyone in the movie. It’s that contrast (or irony) that makes the character so fun. And, again, you see that comedy works well with extremes. Vizzini believes he’s the most intelligent person in the world. He believes everybody’s not just dumber than him, but WAY DUMBER than him. That’s where you want to be thinking with comedy. You want to go to those extremes.
Borat – Misguided confidence is one of the funniest traits you can play with. Why is Borat so confident? Why does he walk into every situation with such assuredness? That contrast between his extreme confidence and engaging with a country he knows nothing about is where all the fun is. Borat is not funny if he’s constantly doubting himself. He’s not funny if he’s depressed and uninterested in his surroundings. He’s funny because of his outsized confidence in a number of scenarios where there is no reason for him to be confident at all.
Stapler Guy in Office Space – I thought I’d put Stapler Guy in here because he’s so unlike any other character on this list. Most of these characters are loud and in your face. Stapler Guy is quiet and mumbles all the time. So why is he still funny? Mike Judge flipped the script on this. Most funny characters are built around what they put out into the world. Stifler and Ron Burgandy and Happy Gilmore – these are all people who throw their personalities into the world. Stapler Guy is the opposite. His entire persona is built around how the world treats him. Nobody respects him. That’s the joke. People keep kicking him and kicking him and kicking him. And I think that’s why he’s so funny, is that a lot of writers would start to feel bad about kicking someone so much. Mike Judge doesn’t. He just keeps kicking. And he adds this brilliant little twist whereby Stapler Guy tries to fight back but nobody can hear him because he’s a mumbler. Sometimes being RELENTLESSLY HORRIBLE to your character can make him hilarious.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: An action comedy wherein Benji Stone, a lovable but deeply unpopular sixteen year old, is pulled into an international assassination plot by his uncle, a retired undercover assassin charged with babysitting Benji for the weekend.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on this past Black List. The writer, Gabe Delahaye, has written a little bit for TV. Despite having a few feature scripts in development, he doesn’t have a feature credit yet.
Writer: Gabe Delahaye
Details: 115 pages
Err, remember when I said go write a John Wick comedy? I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Somebody already did that. And here it is!
Benji Stone is just a 16 year old Northern suburbs of Chicago dork who likes robotics. The guy’s sole objective is to get into MIT. Well, that’s his sole objective initially. Objectives are about to radically change for Benji in about 24 hours. But, meanwhile, he and his best friend, the super popular Lakshmi, need to decide if they’re going to a party tonight.
That decision is made for Benji, though, since his mom is going out of town and his uncle, Gideon, will be staying for the week, babysitting him. It turns out Gideon is kind of a nightmare. His questionable fashion choices (he wears a baby blue “Frozen” hat) are usurped only by his complete lack of humanity. The guy has the social graces of a Buckingham Palace guard.
Gideon makes Benji take him out to eat (Benji picks Denny’s) and that’s Benji’s first clue that something isn’t right here. Gideon drives a $300,000 McLaren. It is at Denny’s where some random guy comes up to their table, tells Gideon he looks like an old friend, and takes a picture of him. This odd moment is followed by Gideon walking into the parking lot and BEATING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE GUY UNTIL HE’S DEAD!
Gideon comes clean to Benji. He’s an international assassin. A retired one. He’s been hiding out for years to convince the world that he’s dead. This was his first step towards trying to live a normal life. And now he’s back on “the board.” And, oh yeah, now that all the assassins know of Benji’s existence, it means that he’s on “the board” as well.
There are not many 16 year olds who can handle being told there’s a million dollar payday on their head and Benji sure isn’t one of them. He begins freaking out. But Gideon assures him that with a little training, he can make him a killer too. Uhhh, Benji says. I DON’T WANT TO BE A KILLER. But it’s too late for that.
Benji tries his best to ignore this horrifying new reality and goes back to school, starting with his driver’s ed test, a test that Gideon insists on joining. It’s a good thing he does. Cause in the middle of it, a group of motorcycle assassins attack them! Gideon leaps into the front seat but is forced to only control the gas and brake while Benji steers their way to a dozen near death crashes.
Benji remains in denial, going to school the next day. But he regrets it when their new “substitute teacher” has quite the strong Eastern European accent. Yes, she’s a killer too! And she attacks Benji! Gideon shows up just in time to take her out. But he informs Benji that the situation is dire. The woman he just killed is the sister of a major crime boss. If she showed up, he won’t be far behind. And this guy is the kind of killer that makes all these other killers look like mannequins. Both Gideon and Benji will be pushed to their limit!
Question #1: Does this pass the comedy concept test?
It does. The comedy concept test is, when you hear the idea, do you automatically think of a bunch of funny scenarios. “Uncle Wick” immediately makes you think of a bunch of funny scenarios. So, right off the bat, it’s looking good.
Question #2: Does this pass the comedy trailer test?
This is kind of like question 1 but it helps you get a better sense of if this is a movie or if it’s just a funny script. Try to imagine the trailer. Does it have a bunch of funny scenarios that will look great in a trailer? This does. The ‘John Wick joins the driver’s test” set piece was genius. Killing your nephew’s substitute teacher in the middle of school is also funny.
Question #3: Is the dialogue funny?
On this one, Uncle Wick is hit or miss. The dialogue is okay. But I would’ve preferred laughing out loud a lot more. A lot of the dialogue humor is built off of the relationship between Benji and his uncle. It’s Benji going crazy and his Uncle, who’s used to doing this stuff all the time, responding with dozens of variations of “What’s the big deal?” And these moments *are* funny. But I was hoping for some more wordplay. Funnier phrasing. Some more clever back-and-forth. It kind of kept hitting that same beat the whole time.
The script’s biggest weakness is that all the focus is put on Ben and the Uncle’s storyline – which is where the focus should be. That’s the concept. But it’s clear that Delahaye didn’t put nearly as much thought into Ben’s life. For example, Ben is described as the biggest nerd in school. Then, two pages later, we introduce his best friend, a girl who is the most popular girl in school.
Uhhhh, what????
We’re just expected to go with that? Um, no. That’s the kind of friendship that needs more explanation. And this continued throughout the school stuff. It was all rather thin. The bully had the lamest bully lines ever. Ben was trying to get the hottest girl in school to go to the dance with him.
It’s not that these things shouldn’t be used. They are high school movie staples. But they only work when you twist them slightly. So they feel a little unique. That uniqueness is what sets your high school script apart from everyone else’s.
Another issue with the script is the structure. Typically, in these movies, you go out on an adventure. A good example is The Spy Who Dumped Me. That movie sends its protagonists off on an adventure. And whenever your characters are on the move, it’s easier to structure, because the objectives are always destinations, and you can double those destinations up as major plot beats.
Here, they stay in town. And that presents challenges, which we see rearing their ugly head later in the script. For example, once we’ve established that there’s a million dollar price tag on Benji’s head, why is he going to school?
Clearly, the reason he’s going to school is so the writer can get in his Substitute Teacher Fight Set Piece. Which is great for them, but lazy for the storytelling. We needed a clearer time frame and goal for our heroes. Otherwise, you get your heroes waiting around for the bad guys to show up, and EVERYONE HERE knows how much I hate ‘waiting around’ plots. They cause way more trouble than they’re worth. You want your heroes to be active and driving the plot, not the other way around.
In the end, there’s enough juice in this comedy bottle to make it worth drinking. It’s not perfect but it was a welcome upgrade from the script that I started to read for today’s review – Black Mitzvah. Oy vey. Do NOT read that if you want to laugh.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: DRESSING UP DIALOGUE – You are writing a comedy, correct? So it doesn’t make sense for your characters to say things in a straightforward manner (unless that’s the kind of character they are). Early in the script, Benji’s friend knows something about Benji’s crush that can help him get her. So she tells him that. Now before I give you the sentence she uses to convey that, I want you to write your own version of what she says. Because, what you’re trying not to do is something like this: “Hey, I heard something about Heather that can help you.” That line is fine in a drama. But this is a comedy. So how can you dress that line up? Here’s what the friend actually says to Benji: “Speaking of something weighing on your conscience, if I give you a piece of Heather intel, promise not to let the police know I helped you plan her murder?” So much more creative. It’s not laugh out loud funny. But it gets a giggle. And that’s how you want to be thinking when you write your comedy dialogue lines. Dress them up.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: An Air Marshal transporting a fugitive across the Alaskan wilderness via a small plane finds herself trapped when she suspects their pilot is not who he says he is.
About: Jared Rosenberg has a few scripts in development. But he’s still scratching and clawing his way to his first produced credit. This script finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Jared Rosenberg
Details: a slight 93 pages
The contained thriller is BAAAAAAAA-AAACKKKKK.
How come no one here has come up with a contained thriller that takes place in a small plane? The idea was just waiting for you. Then again, that’s usually the effect good ideas have. They arrive with their own personal thought bubble that dances up above your head and wonders, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
BUT!
If you’ve read my contained thriller reviews before, you know what happens to most of these scripts. They don’t have enough meat on the bone. They don’t have enough plot to keep the reader invested.
Tension is everything in these scripts. And when they begin, you get to build that tension. As they reach the second act, you get to hold that tension. But then you start having to answer questions. Then you start having to introduce complications. Things NEED TO HAPPEN to keep our interest. And those things change the dynamics in ways that defuse the tension.
Which means you need to introduce new tension. And that can be challenging for writers. The new tension is never as strong as the old. Figuring out that the guy next to you in the plane is going to kill you – that’s your starting tension. So when you ultimately have to eliminate him as a problem, where is that new tension going to come from? The good writers figure it out. The bad writers either don’t figure it out or they replace it with lame generic tension.
Let’s find out where Rosenberg’s tension landed.
The FBI has tracked Winston all the way out to the middle of Alaska. Winston has good reason to flee. His boss, Moretti, is being tried for lots of criminal acts and Winston was in charge of his books. Moretti’s hearing is tomorrow morning and the FBI has finally got the man who’s going to testify against him by way of U.S. Marshall Madolyn Harris.
Madolyn is just recently getting back on the U.S. Marshall beat after screwing up big time on her last job. Outside of how damn cold it is up here, this job shouldn’t be difficult. She’s got to take Winston on a little Cessna plane over to Anchorage, where they’ll then fly to Washington overnight so Winston can testify against Moretti the next morning.
The pilot who’s flying them is a big gnarly dude named Daryl Booth. After Madolyn handcuffs Winston to his seat, she goes up in front with Daryl. They get up in the air when it’s still daylight and, theoretically, it should only take them 90 minutes.
But we all know it’s not going to be that easy. Almost immediately, Daryl the pilot is acting suspicious. But it’s actually Winston who first notices something is up. A pilot’s ID starts to dribble out from behind Daryl’s seat and it’s Daryl’s pilot’s license… except it’s not Daryl’s face. Which puts Winston in a really sticky situation. He needs to let Madolyn know that Daryl is bad but there’s no easy way to communicate without Daryl hearing.
That’s okay, though, because Madolyn figures it out on her own, and after an intense front seat fight, she’s able to subdue him with her taser. Madolyn then needs Winston’s help to get Daryl to the back where she can handcuff him. But she can’t undo Winston’s restraints because she doesn’t trust him either. But she somehow gets passed-out Daryl to the back and ties him up.
Then Madolyn has a new problem. She has to learn how to fly a plane! She also needs to learn where the hell they are because Daryl sure as hell wasn’t taking them to Anchorage. Madolyn uses her SAT phone to call her office, which only leads to new problems, since she realizes that the only person who could’ve compromised them works in the Marshall’s office. So can she even trust her boss?
And it only gets worse from there. Since Madolyn is so focused on flying the plane, a newly awake Daryl begins his plan of slipping out of these restraints so he can finish the job he was paid for. You begin to wonder if anybody’s going to be make it out of here alive. As Madolyn puts together a last-ditch plan, we pray to the Flight Simulator gods that she’ll figure it out.
I’m happy to report that Flight Risk applies just the right amount of tension turbulence for the running time of its story.
There are a lot of things that work here.
Let me start with the first major plot development. This occurs when Winston finds out that the pilot isn’t who he says he is. When this happened, I knew the script was going to work. Why? Because the more obvious plot point would be for Madolyn to find out first. And that would’ve stolen a good ten pages worth of tension from the story.
Think about it. By having Winston figure it out first, we now have a dramatically ironic situation. Us and Winston know that Daryl is bad. But Madolyn does not. So we’re sitting here screaming at our screen, “HE’S BAD! HE’S A BAD GUY! LISTEN TO WINSTON! HE’S TRYING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION!” You lose that if you start with Madolyn learning Daryl is bad.
It also hints at a way more interesting dynamic, which is that the good guy, Madolyn, is going to have to work with the bad guy, Winston, to survive. I find that to be a more interesting setup than what I was assuming was going to happen, which was that Daryl was working with Winston.
But let’s get to the problem I talked about in the opening of the review. Madolyn subdues Daryl, locking him up in the back seat. You’ve now LOST YOUR INITIAL TENSION. Daryl is still technically a problem since bad guys are always going to try and get out of their restraints. But it’s not nearly as interesting as it was when a free Daryl was right next to Madolyn and we knew he was a killer.
So Rosenberg attacked this problem by introducing a potential inside-job situation with Madolyn’s boss. Her boss is not only the one who, presumably, set her up. But she’s waiting for them in Anchorage. So just by landing in Anchorage, her and Winston are probably going to be offed. Which begs the question, what do they do? They can’t go to Anchorage. And, also, they can’t go anywhere else because Madolyn doesn’t know how to land a plane.
Rosenberg does a good job engaging us with that storyline. I was genuinely worried while I tried to figure out who set them up and what that meant for the three people in this plane.
The only reason why I’m not giving this a higher score is that there’s not anything new here. The execution is great. But if you’ve read these types of scripts before, where you only have a handful of characters, even when you don’t exactly know who’s good and who’s bad, you know enough that nothing’s going to surprise you. And that’s why this doesn’t get some super score. It didn’t shock me.
But it’s still good. And if you’re a contained thriller lover like me, you’re gonna dig this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “A cramped, analog six-seater, powered by a single propeller. Three rows of two seats, including the pilot’s. Roughly the size and layout of your standard minivan.” A huge mistake writers make is setting their movie or major scene inside an area that they do not give any geographic clarity on. I’ve read countless scripts that have taken place inside a spaceship or some period-piece building, where the writer does not inform us how big the setting is and how the location is laid out. This results in what I call, “fuzzy approximation,” whereby the reader is forced to assume what everything looks like themselves. When readers do this, it’s always a fuzzy approximation. As a result, the entire story is fuzzy in their head. Screenplays must do the opposite to be effective. They must be clear and specific. So this simple paragraph at the beginning of Flight Risk telling us exactly what we’re looking at is much appreciated.
