I had an insane amount of stuff to do this week so I’m going to include the newsletter here on the site, as well as send it out to everyone. Hope you enjoy!

HALF-OFF SCRIPT NOTES DEAL (ONLY 3 AVAILABLE!!!)
I’m currently working with several produced writer-directors on their screenplays at the moment. Every time I give them notes, they tell me that they’ve never gotten better feedback in their life. “Carson, I went to USC for film school and I learned more about screenwriting from these notes than I did the entire time while I was there.” It’s time to stop fooling around. It’s time to get professional feedback that’s going to change your script’s life. Don’t you want to change your script’s life? Don’t you care about your script? If so, you can get some life-changing notes for half-off. That’s $249 for 4 pages of notes on either a feature or pilot script. I’m going to give the first two deals out to the first two writers who e-mail me. Then I’ll give the last one to the 15th person, just to make sure that if you’re in a different time zone and asleep when I send this newsletter, you still have a shot at it. To get a deal, e-mail me the subject line “249” to carsonreeves1@gmail.com!

As most of you know, I’m a big tennis guy.  I used to compete when I was younger. I played in college. And I even played some smaller professional tournaments out of college, before realizing that I wasn’t ever going to be able to reach the level required to make it on the pro tour. So I said, “I’m going to do something easier. Become a professional screenwriter!” lol.

But I’ve never abandoned tennis. Usually when I work, I have The Tennis Channel playing in the background. I closely follow my favorite players on Instagram. I still play and try to improve parts of my game. I love it! It never gets old.

Part of this love has led me to discover the rapid emergence of tennis-related social media accounts. It became common, if you were a coach for example, to start a Youtube channel and use it to give tips or commentate on the pro tour. This “tennis influencer” industry has opened up a whole new way for tennis aficionados to engage with the sport.

There’s one influencer, in particular, though, who I want to talk about today. His name is Winston Du and he’s one of the more popular dudes on the tennis social media landscape. His channel is based on a very simple premise. He records himself playing against other players and posts the matches on his channel.

Winston’s channel started blowing up several years ago and it’s not hard to figure out why. He’s an affable sweet guy who really enjoys the sport and, when he started, I don’t think many players were recording their matches and posting them. So he benefited from being the first.

For context regarding Winston’s level of play, the USTA uses a 1.0 – 7.0 rating scale. A 1.0 is someone who just picked up a racket yesterday. A 7.0 is Raphael Nadal. By the time Winston started his channel, he was a 3.5. A 3.5 is a level that you can achieve fairly easily if you play 2-3 times a week for a year.

Now, you have to understand that the way tennis works is that you get better by playing better players. Better players hit the ball harder, forcing you to be faster. They put soft shots away, forcing you to hit harder and deeper. They hit their serves bigger, forcing you to improve your reflexes. They’re more consistent, forcing you to improve your own consistency. And they run you around more, forcing you to improve your cardio. The fastest way to become a better player is to play better players.

But the tennis community has this quirky little bug embedded in its system whereby players only want to play against players who are better than them. It’s kind of like dating. Everybody wants to date someone hotter than them. But if no one is dating down, then nobody ever gets together. This makes it difficult to get better in tennis. Cause the better players don’t want to play with you.

How do you circumvent this? You must get lessons, you must practice, you must play matches. In other words, you must BUILD A STRONG FOUNDATION FOR YOUR GAME. The more practice hours you put in, the better you get. The better you get, the better level of coaching you get invited to. The more tournaments you play, the more experience you get. The more you win, the more times you encounter those better players, the ones who push your game to the next level. All of this takes time. Years in fact!

But Winston Du didn’t have to do any of this. He’s found a loophole in the system that allows you to skip to the front of the line. He gets to play against the 200th ranked tennis player in the world simply by having a YouTube channel. He’s been granted instant access to an advanced level of tennis without having to earn his way there.

Now, why am I going on about tennis influencers in a screenwriting newsletter? Because Winston Du’s Youtube channel is the perfect metaphor for what AI does to aspiring screenwriters. Both are shortcuts that grant you instant access to advanced-level output without requiring you to build the foundational skillset that makes that output possible. Just like Winston’s channel became a loophole that let him bypass years of practice and coaching to play elite players, AI is a loophole that lets new screenwriters bypass years of learning to produce professional-looking scripts.

All a new screenwriter has to do to write a scene now is tell AI what the scene is about and it will write it for him.

It sounds like screenwriting utopia. You don’t actually need to learn the craft anymore!

Right?

Well, not so fast. Let’s talk a little more about Winston Du.

Despite Winston having instant access to top level tennis, he hasn’t gotten much better. He started at a 3.5. And now he’s a 4.0 (he says he’s a 4.5 but he’s not). His backhand has gotten a tiny bit better. His forehand’s improved a little. But his serve hasn’t improved at all. His footwork hasn’t improved either. He continues to make basic mistakes, such as running backwards from hard hitters instead of standing his ground. Overall, his game looks very similar to what it was when he started.

Why is that?

I’ll tell you why. Because he never built a foundation. He never had coaching. He never had someone explain to him how a body-to-ball positioning difference of 3 inches can completely change your swing, losing you 20 mph on your shot. He’s never been told the importance of a deep knee bend on a serve. Or how to pronate your wrist to add more power. He’s never done any footwork drills. He only gets as ready as early he needs to instead of getting ready as fast as possible. Nobody’s ever gone over with him the importance of hitting cross-court as opposed to down-the-line.

In other words, Winston Du never had an education. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. He just sees the other players he invites on his channel and tries to mimic them. He’s playing at a level he hasn’t earned the right to inhabit.

This is exactly what’s happening with AI and new screenwriters. Like I said above, AI can write a scene for you. You can give it all the variables along with some direction and it will give you an approximation of the scene you want. You can then go in there and make some changes, turning it more into the scene you want. And, voila, with very little work, you have a scene.

However, if that’s how you learn to write scenes, you haven’t learned anything. Just like Winston, you’re writing at a level you haven’t earned the right to inhabit. Nobody taught you to come into the scene as late as possible and leave as early as possible. Nobody taught you how conflict is the lifeblood of every scene and how you need to identify where that conflict is coming from for the scene to shine. Nobody taught you how to hide exposition in dialogue. Nobody taught you how each character must have a “want” in the scene. You’re just hoping AI figures out all that stuff for you.

And if AI doesn’t include these things, you’ll never know. Cause you never learned it in the first place. So, if the scene isn’t working, you don’t know how to tell AI how to fix it. This is the same scenario Winston is in. If he’s always hitting the ball late, how does he fix it if he never learned all of the reasons why you hit late in the first place? Winston’s channel, ironically, has done more damage to his game than good. It’s put him in a position of power without requiring him to understand how he got there.

This is what the next generation of screenwriters will look like. They’ll be wielding a sword that’s too heavy for them. Their screenplays will look like screenplays. But they won’t feel like them. Most of the stuff they do, they won’t understand why they’re doing it. They’ll just trust AI with the process.

But guess what? Hollywood is a business of rewriting. The guys who get paid the big bucks get paid to problem-solve and know how to fix things. If you were hired to write Star Wars Episode 11 and your second act is boring as hell, AI is not going to be able to fix it on its own.

Implementing changes in a screenplay is all about understanding the intricacies of how a screenplay works. If Disney wants a protagonist to be more likable, that might mean changing your hero’s flaw. And well-taught screenwriters know that the hero’s flaw is tied to everything else in the movie. So changing the flaw will mean changing numerous other things in the script. AI doesn’t know that!

And even if, theoretically, it gets to a place where it did, it still needs you to guide it. But since you never built your foundation, since you skipped to the front of the line like Winston Du, you won’t know to tell it that. You’ll be just as clueless as the dumb executive who hired you. And if you’re just as clueless as them, why do they need you?  They can prompt AI to write a scene just as easily as you can.

So, here’s the cool part about all this. If you’ve been reading my site for more than two years, you are part of the last generation of real screenwriters. Everybody coming up now will know less about screenwriting than you do. They will depend on AI for an increasing amount of the workload and, in doing so, destroy any chance of developing the screenwriting skills they actually need. This means that the studios will want YOU going forward. Not these fake AI screenwriters. And I think that’s pretty fucking cool. That we were the last ones who actually learned the craft. I can’t emphasize how valuable a commodity that is.

Now, if you are a young screenwriter making your way up, my advice to you is to STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM AI. It’s a shortcut that is going to prevent you from learning. You need to make your own mistakes. You need to read all the screenwriting books. You need to write bad scripts. All AI is, is your dad doing your homework for you. Yeah, it got done. And it saves you time so you can go play with your friends. But you didn’t learn jack shit. And if you’re not continually learning in this craft, you will never get good enough to write a good screenplay. Are you a Winston Du?  Or are you a Winston Don’t?

BLOOD & INK SCREENPLAY CONTEST UPDATE

In one of the most popular months on Scriptshadow, thousands of writers pitched their horror movie ideas to try and get into the Blood & Ink Horror Screenplay Contest. 97 pitches were accepted. Those writers are now (hopefully) hard at work writing their screenplays for a finishing date of late February.

I’m trying to do a Blood & Ink related showdown every month in order to keep the participants motivated. I know how easy it is to get derailed while writing a script. What was once so obvious now seems like hieroglyphics in your head. My advice is to STAY THE COURSE. All screenplays have periods of frustration baked into them. You have plots that have lost momentum. You have weak story beats that feel unsolvable. You have characters who are way too boring. It’s all part of the process! Just remember that every single movie you’ve seen has been through the same thing and the writers of those movies always talk about how solving these problems was the breakthrough that opened the rest of the script up. I would go so far as to say, if your script is easy to write the whole way through, it’s probably not very good.

This past weekend, I had a Scene Showdown for the contest. A little less than 40 of the contestants decided to enter. You can take a look at all five of the chosen entries here and see if you agree with the winner of the competition. Keep visiting the site for announcements on when the next showdown will be!

AROUND TOWN

Osculum Infame Begins – Osculum Infame is a script by German screenwriter Bernd Bachmann. It is a script that came to me several years ago for a contest. It’s a real-time contained horror thriller set in the 1600s about a woman assumed to be a witch who’s hanged on a tree and left to die. To this day, it is the single most intense reading experience I have ever had. But it also has a woman getting brutalized for 90 minutes and I didn’t think Hollywood at the time was ready for that. But deep down I knew that its time would come. Recently, I decided I was finally going to expose it to Hollywood. I was nervous but my gut told me that the writing and story were so incredible that someone was going to buy it. Now, you have to understand that, normally, it takes sending a script out endlessly to get a sale. Yet, in the case of Osculum Infame, the very first producer I sent it to e-mailed me 48 hours later and said, “We want to make this movie and we want to make it now.” And so in the past week, both the writer and I have signed deals (myself as a producer) and now we’re in the process of putting the package together and getting financing. It’s a very exciting experience for both me and the writer. But it should also act as a reminder to all screenwriters. Bernd wrote a screenplay that you literally couldn’t put down if you tried. It never lets up. Not for a second. And he does an amazing job of putting his hero into situations where you’re certain she will die and she somehow finds a way to survive. I honestly think that if it’s filmed as written, it will be the most intense movie ever made in history. That’s not hyperbole. And I’d bet that those of you who have read the script would agree. That’s really cool – to be able to do something that’s never been done before. The lesson?  Make your script unputdownable.  This is a SPEC SCRIPT.  Those need to be fast.  They need to grab readers and never let go.  The slower your spec script is, the harder you’re making things on yourself.  — Now I don’t think the production company is okay with me sharing too much information about the movie. I know that part of the plan is to keep this quiet then unleash it upon an unsuspecting world. But I will try and share with you what I can in these newsletters. Assuming you guys are interested. But, very cool success story for both a Scriptshadow writer and Scriptshadow. :)

5 million views in 2 weeks
Pluribus Trailer – Something that’s always fascinated me about Hollywood is how quickly you can fall from its heights. You would think that if someone created an amazing show, they’d be a superstar forever. But tis not the case. What happened to Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote True Detective? What happened to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who ran Game of Thrones? What happened to David Chase, who created The Sopranos?? Vince Gilligan is very close to being a member of the ‘What Ever Happened To’ club. Ever since the end of Breaking Bad, he’s been invisible. Better Call Saul was decent (if slow and clunky) but he wasn’t nearly as involved in that as he was Breaking Bad. The man has been MIA, particularly when it comes to new ideas. Well, he finally has a new idea and it’s one that he’s so precious about that he wouldn’t even reveal it to his own family. That idea is finally here in trailer form and… it does not look good. I know that Gilligan is trying to purposefully keep the concept vague but it’s usually a bad idea when your trailer is confusing as hell. And it’s rare that one of those becomes a riveting series. Don’t get me wrong. I like that he’s trying something different. And I will watch because it’s Vince Gilligan and anything from the creator of Breaking Bad makes me curious. But expectations after THIS trailer?? They’re low.

4 million views in 2 weeks
Send Help Trailer – It’s hard for me not to get excited about a spec idea. By the way, a “spec” idea is a script with a big concept and a high-octane engine. Everything feels big or fast or intense or terrifying. Or a combination of all four. These are the scripts that sell. Stuff that’s hard to put down. Like Osculum Infame! And the smart writers look to add irony to them. Cause they know irony is the best bang-for-your-buck way to supercharge a concept. Here, we have an asshole boss who makes his assistant miserable. The two then crash land on an island where he gets injured. This means his life is in her hands. The assistant is now the boss. The boss the assistant. These spec ideas do have a trap door, though. Which is that they tend to feel dated. Specifically because spec ideas aren’t as popular anymore. So it feels like we’re going back to a time past. Honestly, Send Help is giving me those vibes. It feels like a movie that could’ve come out in 2003. But look. I was one of the few people who liked Flight Risk, another spec idea. So, who’s to say I won’t like this too?

Something is Killing The Children – Blumhouse is panicking. The little horror house that could made its name on producing 3 million dollar horror movies with no stars, with one out of every 3 of them breaking out and becoming a money-printing machine. Then M3gan 2 happened, scaring the bejeezus out of everyone there. Since that fateful opening, rumor is that people at the Blumhouse offices are “spooked” (ironic, cause they make horror films) and meetings were called. This deal seems to be the first peek into what new company philosophy came out of those meetings. They have officially snatched up the biggest-selling horror comic since The Walking Dead, about a world where children can see monsters but adults can’t. Blumhouse outbid the likes of Lionsgate and Netflix, outfits with much deeper pockets. It’s a total 180 to what Blumhouse was built on, signaling that they’re looking for a big franchise, and maybe to move into TV as well. As for the concept, it goes to show that simple, but big, ideas always hold cachet. However, if it’s excessively simple, like this, it helps to have some visuals as well as some prior success. An interesting side bit about this is that Netflix dumped a lot of money into developing “Children” for a while, with Mike Flanagan guiding the project, but ultimately, the option ran out. Only when it got hot around town again did they decide they wanted it back.

Shiver Spec Sold – If you put Deadpool creator Tim Miller in a project with Keanu Reeves, I’m going to pay attention. And this project comes from one of the more prolific screenwriters out there, Ian Shorr. Shorr has written tons of scripts that got on the Black List, back when the Black List was cool. Many of them were very high concept. But, if I’m being honest, of average execution. He wrote that Mark Wahlberg movie, Infinite. It’s yet another reminder of how important concept is. It can make up for so many other issues in your script. I don’t have a logline for this but it’s said to be about a smuggler who gets double-crossed in the middle of the Caribbean, a sinking occurs, and the smuggler is surrounded by hungry sharks and evil mercenaries. Oh yeah, and this keeps happening over and over again because………… TIME LOOP. That’s right. The loop sub-genre is NOT DEAD YET. A concept like this is interesting because it’s got a lot of flash to it. But there’s not enough connective tissue. You need that connective tissue to create an idea that sounds clever. But, look, it got this package together, which is pretty impressive. And it’s another script success story, which we now have three of in this Around Town section. I’d call that a win. :)

SCRIPTSHADOW TIP OF THE MONTH 
Up your concept’s stakes (especially important for TV show ideas)
We talk about stakes all the time on my site but here’s a story that emphasizes just how important they are. Nobody Wants This, starring Kristin Belle, is a breakout show on Netflix about an atheist girl who falls for a Rabbi. They try to make a relationship work despite the fact that “none of their friends or family want this.” What I recently learned was that the creator, Erin Foster, had been pitching this show around town for half-a-decade and nobody wanted it. However, there was a huge difference in her show’s concept back then. It was still about a girl dating a Jewish guy. But the guy wasn’t a rabbi. He was just… Jewish. When she pitched that show, everybody kept coming back with the same note: “It feels too small.” At her wit’s end, Foster brought on one of the co-creators of Modern Family and he demanded an immediate change. Instead of just making the boy Jewish, make him a rabbi. Now, it wasn’t just his family life that could be disrupted, it was his job. The project was purchased quickly afterwards. The lesson here? Look for ways to increase the stakes of your concept. Here, a seemingly minor character profession change created much higher stakes, which then led to a sale. You should always be looking to do the same, ESPECIALLY if you’re writing something on a smaller canvas, like Nobody Wants This.

SCREENPLAY REVIEW – KITTEN

Genre: Horror/Action
Premise: When a brilliant but reckless inventor accidentally shrinks himself and his sister to six inches tall, they must outwit her suddenly monstrous house cat and survive long enough to reverse the experiment before it’s too late.
About: There’s a guy in Hollywood who’s the only person I’ve been able to find who reads as many screenplays as I do. And I asked him the other day if he’d read anything lately that he liked. He immediately sent over this screenplay. Let’s see if our tastes mesh!
Writer: David Christopher Bell
Details: 116 pages

Here kitty-cat!

Here kitty kitty kitty!

Come on kitty!

To me, the most fun scripts to write in the world are the ones like this. You come up with a wild premise then you think up as many ways as possible to exploit that premise. That’s the main way I judge these scripts. I’m looking for AMAZING SET PIECES. Cause that’s what the concept promises so that’s what you gotta deliver. Remember, Steven Spielberg went to David Koepp and said, “I need these five set pieces in Jurassic Park. You figure out how to connect them together.” That’s how important he knows set pieces are FOR THESE TYPES OF MOVIES.

Ironically, Jurassic Park is a great comp for today’s script. Cause the danger is similar. Let’s take a look.

30-something inventor Garth Chapman (think a young Doc Brown) lives in his loft with his slacker, 20-something sister, Nahla. Nahla has absolutely zero going on in her life besides streaming shows she likes and hanging out with her cat, Kitten. Meanwhile, Garth has turned the sauna on the ground floor of his loft into a shrinking machine.

Garth is shocked when billionaire Noel Monk, who invented a rideshare app, and who Garth has been informally talking to, says he’s coming over right now to check out the machine to potentially invest in it. This is how Noel likes to work – on the fly. Noel brings his wife (who’s also his business partner), Alice, his security guard, Leonard, and decides to also bring along the rideshare driver who’s driving them, Adnan.

When they get there, a nervous Garth shows them how the machine works. You have to turn the safety switch off upstairs then go downstairs to the sauna room to operate it. Everybody THINKS the safety switch is on. But Kitten goes exploring on top of the control panel and accidentally turns it off.

I think you know where this is going. The group heads into the sauna, there’s a crazy ass explosive noise, and the next thing they know they’re all six inches tall. While everyone else is freaking out, Noel is celebrating. It works! This is going to make him billions! Until he sees what’s just outside the sauna door. It’s Kitten! And now, compared to all of them, Kitten is the size of a bus!

When they realize that the only way to fix this problem is to head back up to the control panel to reverse the process, and that if they stay in this sauna for too long at this size, they’ll overheat and die, a plan needs to be made quickly! But while nobody’s looking, an unafraid Noel just walks out of the sauna, decides to try and calm the kitty down, then proceeds to get sliced and diced by the cat, who treats him like a cat toy. A cat toy that must be destroyed until there’s nothing left of it.

Uh oh.

The rest of the group freaks out and realizes they need a REAL PLAN now. They decide to split up, one group to try and distract the cat, the other to get to the control panel. This results in Garth and Alice attempting to pull a cat wand up the back of the refrigerator and dangle it so the cat obsessively watches it. That half of the plan doesn’t go well for Alice. Nahla and Leonard then head for the control panel. That doesn’t go well either when Leonard sees an open window and figures he has a better chance outside than in here with this monster (he doesn’t). Meanwhile, Adnan goes rogue – full Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator.

Our story concludes with Nahla having a face off with her cat. Unlike the others, the cat only decides to play with Nahla. But a cat isn’t the best judge of what “playing” means when dealing with a fragile 6 inch piece of flesh. In one intense moment, Nahla is thrust inside Kitty’s wet cat food that she wouldn’t eat earlier, pushed deep down into it, and almost drowns in cat food goo. (Spoiler) What a way to go that would be! But not to worry. Nahla survives and becomes big again. As for the others? I can’t promise the same.

Ever since this stuff started happening with Osculum Infame, I noticed, subconsciously, that I was reading scripts less from a script reviewer point of view and more from a producer point of view.

When I read scripts as a script reviewer, all I care about is, “Did the script entertain me?” But when I read scripts as a producer, I care only about, “Could this be a movie?”

And with Kitten, I’m on the fence in that department.

I know this. I WOULD MAKE IT!

I think the premise is hilarious and ripe for all sorts of set pieces that nobody’s ever seen before, which is one of the big things you’re looking for as a producer. You want to give people something new.

But the tonal execution must be so precise here that, if it’s even a little bit off, the whole thing is stupid. Because unlike Honey I Shrunk the Kids, which doesn’t really take itself seriously because it’s only got to win over family audiences, Kitten is darker and more serious. If you play that too lightly, it’s silly. If you lean too hard into it, it becomes ridiculous. Cause you have characters acting like they’re in Predator here. Yet they’re in an apartment facing a cat. That’s not an easy note to hit.

But I love this idea so much. I’m always looking for those great ironic premises. And this one hit the bullseye. The least threatening thing in the world all of a sudden becomes a T-Rex.

And I love that Bell didn’t hold back. When the cat jackrabbit scratches the entire front side of Noel off, with all of his flesh and skin splattering up against the sauna door, I was giddy with excitement. We’ve already seen the safe version of this premise. It’s time to get uncomfortable!

And I loved the final “showdown” between Nahla and Kitten.

But goodness gracious me does this writer get in his own way. Every single paragraph is at least double the length it needs to be. A script like this needs to MOVE. But there’s too much description. And it’s not like you shouldn’t describe what’s going on here because we are talking about a scenario that needs the world explained.

But that was ANOTHER thing that was so frustrating. With all the extra description, Bell wasn’t actually describing the things that mattered! I couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, how they kept opening and closing the sauna door. The sauna door would be impossible to open if you’re 6 inches tall. But people kept opening it and closing it no problem.

You’re skipping over the fun part of these screenplays – that the things we take for granted all of a sudden become impossible. Getting stuck in the sauna because you’re six inches tall could’ve been one of the best set pieces in the movie. Cause if they don’t get out, they basically sweat to death. But the writer ignores these possibilities.

And then the set pieces that he does write, he takes for granted what the reader is seeing. It’s strange because he’s overwriting and underwriting at the same time. He’s overwriting all of these unimportant details yet not meticulously describing how the back of the fridge is set up so that we understand what we’re looking at when Garth and Alice are trying to climb it.

I was getting super frustrated because this premise has so much potential. It’s the dark version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

And the writer didn’t do his homework trying to figure out what fun situations might come up when you’re this small. For example, there comes a point where they have to enter a code on an iPad to restart the machine. That’s something we take for granted. But if that iPad is really big compared to them, just entering the code alone would become a challenge. I wanted to see more stuff like that.

But I always say that great concepts are the deodorant to poor writing. There’s nothing that covers up the smell of weak writing like a strong concept. Cause all I kept thinking was, “This would be a really fun movie.” And there was the occasional strong moment – like Noel getting killed. Like Nahla’s battle with her cat in the end. It just needed more of that.

And it needs to both slim down all of its unnecessary text while doing a better job at describing what we’re looking at. If it can do all these things, I would hope that some risky production company would make this. Cause I think it could be awesome.

Script Link: Kitten

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

What I learned: Spec scripts – especially high concept contained ideas like this – need to be SHORT and LEAN. This script should not be a single page over 105. Yet it’s 115 pages long. And what was my main complaint? Overwritten. And that’s what overwritten gets you. It gets you to 115 pages. This is not a criticism I came upon in retrospect. I noted it the second I saw the page-count before reading. I saw 115 and thought, “That’s not good.” For simple premises guys: 105 pages. No longer. If you’re writing Oppenheimer, go ahead and shoot for 140. But not ideas like this.

Read the five scenes. Vote on your favorite one. Winner gets a review!

Okay, guys. Sorry for the delay on getting this up. But I promise you it’s for a good reason. I’m not going to get into the details but myself and the writer of a certain earth-shattering insane script that may or may not be over there in my Top 25 are in the process of putting the movie together. Contracts are being signed. Directors are being Zoomed with. I’ll have more to report in the newsletter. Stay tuned.

Onto the Showdown!

The Blood & Ink Contest has caused some confusion so I want to make all of this as clear as possible. I created a Horror Screenplay Contest (The Blood & Ink Screenplay Contest) where you had to pitch your concept to get in. You only got in if I approved of your concept.

97 concepts got in. Those writers are now writing their scripts, which will need to be finished by February.

In the meantime, to keep all 97 participants writing, I’ve been doing showdowns. Blood & Ink Participants can either participate in these showdowns or skip them. It’s up to the individual.

This month, we’re doing a “That Scene” Showdown, where the writers submit one of the best scenes from their script. 38 of you participated. These are the top 5 scenes (subjectively speaking, of course) from those 38. Your job is to read as much of each scene as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments section.

You have until Sunday, at 11:59PM PACIFIC TIME to vote.

Happy Halloween and GOOD LUCK TO THIS SHOWDOWN’S SCREENWRITERS!

P.S. I’m going to try and have a newsletter out by Sunday night. So if you don’t receive it by Monday, make sure to e-mail me.

Title: Slumlord
Genre: Horror
Logline: A transient carpenter, tracked down and compelled to take over the decaying complex his ordained father managed before his mysterious death, learns all the tenants are failed exorcisms secretly contained by the Catholic Church. With the unsecured residents set for relocation, he must fortify the building and monitor the conspiring demons during their final week.
Context: This is day one of the protagonist’s task of securing the building and preventing the tenants from escaping before the Church evacuates them to a new location. JAKE (33), with the help of his father’s longtime assistant, SISTER WINSLOW (48), is conducting a general inspection of the building, the units, and the tenants, to see what he’s up against. We’ve seen that Lillian Thorne is likely responsible for the death of Jake’s father. Jake is unaware. The scene takes place early in Act Two.
Full Scene Link: Slumlord Scene

Title: The Devil in 5D
Genre: Horror
Logline: (Temp til someone sends me the real one) A young woman begins to suspect that the devil is living in her apartment complex.
Context: None
Full Scene Link: Devil in 5D Scene

Title: Karoshi: The Drive
Genre: Horror
Logline: A reporter investigates the stories of people who are literally working themselves to death, then realizes she can’t eat or sleep or rest either, so she must keep working on the story, hoping to undo the curse before it kills her too…
Context: Maria, a reporter, has been asked to check on a colleague Derek, who is working on the story of the taxi driver who crashed – because Derek just submitted a draft of the article that’s over 400,000 words long! And seems to still be working on it…
Full Scene Link: Karoshi Scene

Title: Transcranial
Genre: Horror
Logline: To disprove the existence of the Devil (and perhaps by implication, of God), a ruthlessly ambitious neuroscientist creates an artificial demonic possession. But his breakthrough unleashes something new, an undeniably supernatural force that could destroy humankind…and only his own ultimate sacrifice may be able to stop it.
Context: The scene takes place in the aftermath of neuroscientist Richard’s successful simulated demonic possession of Daniel, the young experimental test subject. Daniel has now been dialled down, and is ostensibly back to normal.
Sarah, a devout Catholic, resigned to having her religious beliefs regularly denigrated by her scientific peers, is about to conduct the exit interview with Daniel, to ensure that he is okay.
Richard and James remain in the observation room. Richard is able to communicate with Sarah via an earpiece.
The scene begins with Sarah entering the main experimental chamber where Daniel is sitting, waiting….
Full Scene Link: Transcranial Scene

Title:  It’s The Worst Time of the Year
Genre: Psychological Horror
Logline: Two successful, single business women from the big city get trapped in a Hallmark movie nightmare where it’s always fall — but weirdly somehow also always Christmas. They’re forced to open a bakery, enter the pie contest, solve the weekly town murder, and date the impossibly hot plaid-wearing widower — all while trying to find a way to escape before increasingly aggressive townspeople trap them in this hellscape, force them to give up their lives and drink pumpkin spiced lattes….forever.
Context: In this scene, Sarai, a bull headed New Yorker who doesn’t take shit from anyone, has been trapped in this Hallmark town that demands compliance and cheerful participation in your assigned roles. After multiple failed attempts at escape, she tries to exert control by resisting the system and refusing to play into the Hallmark narrative. As Sarai refuses to comply, the townspeople are essentially brought in as oblivious enforcers of the rules.
Full Scene Link: Worst Time of Year Scene

Taylor Sheridan has been in the news cycle lately because he left his home base, Paramount, where he built an empire, and set up a new deal with NBC and Universal (said to be worth 1 billion dollars).

There are several articles out there about it. If you like your tea laced with soy sauce, check’em out. Cause they’ve got some kick. The rumor is that David Ellison didn’t like Sheridan, who’s notoriously stand-offish and likes to do his own thing. Ellison brought in two women to run the division and their first idea was to give Sheridan a bunch of notes on his gestating projects. I mean do some homework girls. Everyone knows Sheridan doesn’t do notes.

There were also many insights into how Hollywood is stupid. And why certain good movies don’t get made. Sheridan has this great script (F.A.S.T.) that he sold to Warner Bros before his Paramount deal. Once Sheridan got big, Warner Bros wanted to make it of course. So they went to Paramount and said, can we have Sheridan for this movie? And Paramount said, “Sure. Just give us half the profits of the film.” Needless to say, that movie never happened. But, it’s that sort of stuff that pissed Sheridan off.

Also, Paramount wanted to be more hands on whereas Sheridan wants to be left alone. I have no idea what Paramount was thinking on that front. I get wanting control of a rookie, or some middle-of the-road guy. But you don’t micro-manage the dude who’s propping your entire studio up.

I remember back when I entered into the screenwriting fray. All of my heroes were forged in the past. I had seen their movies, fallen in love with them, thought of them as Gods. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino. They were iconic. And, therefore, when I looked at their stuff, I saw it as unachievable. How can you compete with Gods?

But everything feels a lot different when you watched someone become a God in real time. You were there when that person was nothing. You saw the climb they made, even those first baby steps. And when you see it that way, the goal feels a lot more achievable.

I watched Sheridan from a very unique point of view. I read all of his scripts before any of them were made. So I didn’t have anything influencing my judgment. He was just another writer trying to make a name for himself at a time, around 2010, when screenwriting was extremely competitive. Much more so than today.

That’s why I look at Taylor Sheridan and I say, “If he can do it, so can you.” Because look. When he had that one-two screenplay punch of Sicario and Hell or High Water (Comancheria), those were good solid scripts. But they weren’t genius scripts. I didn’t read them and say, “This guy is shooting straight to the top.” I just saw very solid writing principles at play. A storytelling foundation was there. Character writing was better than the average professional. His scripts moved fast. They all had these moments in them that were a little surprising, something to latch onto and tell others about. But that was it. That was his beginning. And, if you ask me, that’s achievable.

But there’s something in there I glossed over which is the first lesson in becoming the next Taylor Sheridan. He had TWO SCRIPTS floating around. Not one. TWO. The reason I bring that up is because when a writer TRULY BREAKS OUT from the pack, it’s because they have a quick 1-2 punch.

You can forge a very solid career slowly. Write a script, sell it, it gets made. People like it. They ask you what you have next. You work on finishing the next one, get a package together, shoot it. And 2 or 3 years later, your second movie debuts, and you start to establish yourself as a dependable writer.

But when you have two scripts – and specifically two scripts in the same general tone – and those movies both hit (either at the box office, critically, or both), you become EXTREMELY HOT in this town. The red carpet is pulled right up to your crappy Los Feliz apartment and they say to you, “Here’s all the money in the world, do whatever you want.” And if you can then deliver a hit on a THIRD movie or TV show, you’re a bona fide superstar all within the span of 4 years. And that’s what happened to Taylor Sheridan.

So get that 1-2 script punch ready.

But the thing that really sets Taylor Sheridan apart is that he writes fast. This is something I’ve learned is of supreme value in every trade in the world. There are a lot of people who can give you a good product if you give them 5-10 years. But there are only a few who can give you a good product in one year.

That’s what Taylor Sheridan is good at. He writes fast (the dude literally has a screenplay titled “FAST”!) but he still manages to write with quality. Now, I want to point something out here because nobody is a machine. I have noticed that Taylor Sheridan’s pilot scripts are all good. But they’re never great. And that’s because he does write so fast. He doesn’t have the time to make them perfect.

But they’re ALWAYS GOOD.

And all “writing fast” is, is practice. You gotta keep writing and practicing so that you get the fundamentals down. You want to be able to write first drafts that have a solid foundation because that’s what takes up all the time in writing – is when you have to rewrite the foundation of your screenplay. But if that’s there (you have that clear vision and you know exactly the story you’re writing and how it’s going to play out) then you’re only rewriting scenes and dialogue and moving small pieces around the board. It takes much less time.

Finally, you can’t talk about Taylor Sheridan without discussing the subject matter he writes about. It’s part and parcel with his rise to fame. Nobody was writing modern westerns. The western was thought of as a dead genre. But he walked towards that instead of walking away from it.

That is usually where the biggest success stories are going to come from. The big shocking rags-to-riches success stories don’t come from people who try and copy whatever is popular at the moment. The success stories always come from writers who write something that nobody else is writing at the moment.

And notice I said “modern western” not Western. These are the nuances that must be noted when you put together the success story. If he would’ve written straight Westerns, I don’t think we know Taylor Sheridan’s name today. He smartly combined modern America (or almost-modern America) with the Western. Hell or High Water has cowboy hats and the desert and horses. But it also has cars and phones. That tweak made the stories more accessible to modern audiences. And the exact same thing can be said about Yellowstone.

There’s a final caveat to this. Taylor Sheridan didn’t say, “Ooh, nobody’s writing modern Westerns. That’s a way to make money!” He clearly loves that subject matter. So that has to be a part of the equation. You have to look for something that nobody’s doing that you’re also personally passionate about.

Guys, I know it seems absurd thinking this big. But it seemed absurd for Taylor as well. And look where he is. It’s possible. I watched it happen in real time. Now I want to watch it happen in real time to one of you. So, get to work!

Genre: Sci-fi/Wackalicious
Premise: A man who says he’s from the future shows up at a diner claiming he needs to recruit a team to help him save humanity from implosion.
About: I will always check out what Gore Verbinski is doing. He has very eclectic taste. And while nothing of his non-Hollywood lineup is great, it’s always interesting. This movie from Verbinski stars Sam Rockwell (White Lotus) and Juno Temple (Ted Lasso). It is written by Matthew Robinson, who co-wrote the Brian Duffield movie, Love and Monsters. It’s a little unclear when it’s coming out but it’s already been shot and went through post so it should be soon.
Writer: Matthew Robinson
Details: 124 pages

I like cookies.

You give me any cookie, I will eat that cookie. I will even eat cookies that I don’t like. I don’t like those really dry Christmas pinwheel cookies. I think they are disgusting. But if you put those in front of me, I will eat them. That’s how much I like cookies.

But you know what kind of cookie I won’t eat? I won’t eat a cookie with cookie dough on top of it. Just as I won’t give a good rating to a high concept screenplay with more high concepts stacked on top of it. Which is what we get today.

Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die begins with a man from the future, or so he claims, bursting into a Norm’s Diner at night. Norm’s is a diner chain relic of the 1970s here in Los Angeles. The man immediately starts yelling at all of the 40+ customers and workers in the establishment.

He tells them that he’s from the future. And, in the future, mankind is destroyed. It all started with morning social media time. It’s what humanity did to start their day. But that time on their phone before they got out of bed started extending… and extending… and extending until nobody did anything anymore.

This allowed AI to rise up and eliminate a lazy, unsuspecting populace. Future Man claims he has traced the saving of mankind back to this Norm’s diner. He’s actually been here 100 times before to collect the bravest combination of people to execute a task that will save the world.

Each time, he picks a different group of people and they attempt to accomplish the mission. Except every single time they’ve all been killed. As he’s explaining this, a bunch of cops show up outside. Future Man warns everyone that if they try to flee, he has a bomb on him that he’ll detonate.

After a lot of back and forth, six people agree to help Future Man accomplish his mission. As they try to escape the diner to start their mission, we begin a series of flashbacks where we meet each of our group members before this day. And… let’s just say this is where things get weird.

A school teacher named Mark becomes convinced that all of his students are being manipulated by their phones and want to kill him. He eventually has to flee the school or be slaughtered. Then you have Susan, whose son is killed during a school shooting and she’s approached by people who say they can clone him. Twenty minutes later, she has her son back. Except her cloned son has an add-on that makes him deliver verbal ads to his mother every hour for stuff that his mom might like.

You then have Ingrid, who’s allergic to cell phones. We learn about her falling in love with another guy who’s allergic to cell phones and they end up living this perfect life out in the middle of nowhere with no internet. But then one day, her husband buys a VR set and becomes addicted to it and leaves Ingrid so he can live inside his VR world full time.

After each flashback, we cut forward to Future Man and his team getting closer to their destination: the home of a nine-year-old boy who creates an AI that takes over the world. Future Man explains that he has a thumb drive that will insert a fail-safe mechanism onto the AI before it spreads to the rest of the internet. It will ensure that AI never wants to harm human beings, therefore saving the future.

As everything and the kitchen sink is thrown at our gnarly group of characters, we are never completely sure whether Future Man is crazy or if all of what he’s saying is really true.

I call these scripts “Walking off the Reservation” scripts. It’s when you leave the land of the tried and true and venture off into the unknown.

Out here, in the unknown, amazing things can happen. You can come up with material that nobody’s ever seen before.

But what you have to realize is that the paths extending off the reservation are not as untraveled as you think. Just because you’ve never seen someone walk down this path doesn’t mean someone hasn’t walked down it. The very existence of a path means it’s been forged by the legs of another ambitious traveler.

Unlike successful movies, where screenwriters can trace each triumph and understand why it worked, the failures are far more difficult to document. Failed movies are forgotten mere weeks after their release. The problem with this is that many of these movies attempted to travel down these same paths, only to discover they lead nowhere. Which means writers aren’t learning that those choices don’t work.

This doesn’t even account for the hundreds of thousands (yes, I said “hundreds of thousands”) of screenplays that never went anywhere because they ventured down these paths as well, only to become lost in the vast wilderness of misguided story choices.  You haven’t learned from their failures either.

My point is this: walking off the reservation is a dangerous high-wire act. The fact that a unique, mysterious path remains open is far less likely to mean you’ve discovered something magical and far more likely to mean it’s already been proven to lead nowhere. So tread with ambition. But also care.

Unfortunately, Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die treads recklessly. It wants to be the most unique script you’ve ever read. But nearly all of its choices end up feeling try-hard and unsatisfying. They’re wild, but they’re wild in that “something’s off here” way. I don’t know what to call it.

“Manufactured originality” maybe? You can feel the desperation to create the originality and it’s taking precedence over simply writing the best story.

But here’s where the script officially lost me. It’s actually a huge oversight. I don’t know why Verbinski didn’t flag it.

The premise is predicated on this idea of: Is Future Man telling the truth or not? Is he really from the future or is he just some crazy homeless guy? Are we living in a normal, boring, everyday world or are we living in a reality that allows for time travel and science fiction?

Well, the second we flash back to one of the group members, we get that answer. The moment you tell us the high school kids are robots being controlled by secret messages on their phones, you’ve admitted that we are living in a science fiction reality. So I no longer care about the question of, “Is Future Man real or just a crazy homeless dude?”

It’d be like making Safety Not Guaranteed and, in the middle of the movie, cutting to a ten-minute sequence of our main character (the one who claims he’s a time traveler) in the future. You’ve stepped on the mystery driving your whole story. I have no idea why they did that here.

It pains me to give this script a “wasn’t for me.” I genuinely admire ambitious scripts. I appreciate when writers take big risks. But with big risks comes big responsibility. When you’re writing something that doesn’t fall into a clearly polished template, the burden falls on you to meticulously refine all the unconventional material you’re introducing. If it feels even slightly sloppy, that sloppiness will be magnified precisely because it exists under the unforgiving spotlight of innovation.

There’s simply too much going on here. The writer tried to do everything and then some. If we would’ve had the Future Man storyline combined with more grounded backstories for each of the group members, that would’ve worked much better.

Script Link: Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die

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

What I learned: Be careful about using your zany tone as a shield against having to abide by real-world logic in your storytelling. A major conceit we’re asked to accept here is that the police outside of Norm’s will kill everyone inside if they attempt to escape. The writer is trying to create a scenario where they’re all trapped, where everyone dies if they don’t help Future Man complete his mission. But that’s not how police operate in the real world. Even if everyone bolted outside at once, the police aren’t simply going to open fire and massacre them all. The writer would likely defend this by saying, “It’s not the kind of movie where cops behave normally. It operates in a different register, a more heightened, comedic reality.” Here’s the problem: when you construct storylines where people act in direct opposition to how they would behave in reality, especially when lethal force is involved, most audiences won’t follow you down that path. Be a stronger writer and devise a more plausible explanation for why the cops would attack. Movies like The Matrix had to solve this exact problem. They had to construct believable justifications for why it was acceptable for Neo to gun down 300 people. I’m not claiming they arrived at the perfect solution, but they invested the effort and ensured it made enough sense that we wouldn’t question it.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Told in real-time from three different perspectives, the United States Defense Department tries to stop a mysterious nuclear missile launch heading towards Chicago (why you gotta take out my home town, Hollywood!?)
About: Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim started out by writing YA movies such as The Maze Runner and Divergent. He then segued into serious fare with Jackie. This seemed to get his appetite whet for some politics, so he developed the interesting failure that was Zero Day, with Robert DeNiro. He then wrote this script which, no pun intended, blew Katheryn Bigelow away.
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Details: 112 minutes

My original plan was to watch and review the most art housey art house movie ever, Bugonia. But then I realized that less than three of you will ever see the movie. So, I instead decided to review the much more accessible Netflix Oscar contender, A House of Dynamite.

To start off, Katheryn Bigelow is an underrated director. James Cameron’s former girlfriend has directed some really cool movies. So much so that you wonder why she continues to be overlooked and underappreciated.

Part of it may be the subject matter she chooses. Both Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit just didn’t have any appeal beyond curious Hollywood folk. That’s the curse when you become an “Oscar” director, like Bigelow became after The Hurt Locker. Is you start making choices that you think the Oscar people will like rather than making movies you want to make.

Generally speaking, when you’re chasing audiences, whether that be the casual everyday moviegoer or the uptight Academy member, you write bad stories. You’re always going to be more passionate about the things that you personally want to explore. And the more passionate you are about those things, the more you’re going to pour into your screenplay.

Where House of Dynamite lies on that spectrum for Bigelow, I don’t know. What I do know is that I like the concept. What I always tell you guys is to pick a concept that feels new or fresh. And fresh can be something old *IF* there have been no movies covering that subject matter for a long time.

It’s been forever since we’ve gotten a nuclear war movie. So the concept itself feels fresh.

Now, you can stop there if you want. Just come up with something that’s new or that we haven’t seen in forever. BUT if you want to supercharge your movie idea, look for an unexpected point of view. That takes your story and elevates it even higher because you’re further creating something unique.

That’s what House of Dynamite did. It’s a nuclear war story told from the specific point of view of war rooms – the places where these giant world-altering decisions are being made. And what’s cool about Dynamite is it added TWO MORE variables that helped it stand out. One, it told the story in real-time. And two, it divided the story into three separate segments, which restarted the timer for each one.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, the plot here is pretty straight-forward. A nuclear missile is launched from somewhere on the other side of the world. Nobody can pinpoint where. All they know is that, in 19 minutes, it’s probably going to hit somewhere in the United States.

The structure is then divided into three real-time segments. The first segment deals with the low-level techy workers whose job it is to figure out what’s going on and defend against it, probably with their own set of missiles.

The second segment, which pushes us back to the beginning of the launch, bumps us up to the actual United States Defense Department. This includes the big dogs, like the Secretary of Defense. These guys are not just ordering the underlings about what to do. They’re communicating with other nations and trying to determine who launched the missile.

Finally, we get to the third segment, which also pushes us back to the beginning of the launch. This final segment is all about the president of the United States, who is pulled from a public appearance and must decide, in the 19 minutes between getting pulled and getting to a safe location, how to respond to this threat.

All right, so, what did I think?

Before I get into that, I have to say that I am not afraid of nuclear war at all. Anybody who follows UFO chatter knows that aliens have shut down dozens of nuclear facilities in the past. The aliens are here to make sure we don’t blow ourselves up. If anyone launches a missile, they’ll take care of it – I PROMISE YOU.

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of the way. This movie, which doesn’t seem to care about aliens for some reason, WAS AWESSOOOMMMMME…

…

…

For exactly two-thirds of its running time.

I was pulled into the movie immediately. It’s got a great hook. A missile has been launched. They don’t know where from, potentially because one of their satellites covering the area was hacked.

And then we just go through the real-life system of how America deals with this threat. And that system is terrifying. That’s where all the tension lies. Running a country with this sophisticated of a defense network means there are all these little checkpoints that need to be hit, and the whole time you’re thinking, “Well, wait. We should put the president himself on the fucking phone and have him call everyone to de-escalate this!” The fact that that’s not part of the protocol is infuriating. Instead, you’re putting the lives of 8 billion people in the hands of 25 year olds. It’s nuts.

But it’s nuts in the most captivating of ways.

That’s something I’m always looking for in screenplays: authenticity. I look for events that I know are based in reality. Because I know, then, that what I’m watching is genuine. And when you feel like you’re watching something genuine, your very being gets pulled into the movie.

Remember suspension of disbelief? One of the worst things you can do as a screenwriter is have your characters or your plot do something that’s unrealistic. In doing so, you alert the reader that what they’re reading is bullshit. The suspension of disbelief is broken. The audience has tapped out.

With movies like this, it’s the opposite. The attention to detail is so on point that we feel even closer to the story than we normally would. I don’t know if there’s a term for the opposite of the breaking of suspension of disbelief. But if someone wants to invent it for this movie, feel free to do so.

So why isn’t the movie gaining more interest from the Academy? Why does it only have a 6.7 on IMDB? For the first hour and twenty minutes, I was ready to scream at all the dum-dums who had rated this film so poorly.

But then the third and final sequence of the movie came.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh very much no.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a great movie fall apart so spectacularly.

Wow. Talk about a miscalculation.

We discuss this all the time on the site. A screenplay is a series of creative choices. And the ending is probably the most important creative choice of all. House of Dynamite quite possibly made the worst creative choice they could’ve made for the film’s ending.

But before we get to that, we have to acknowledge the other big issue with the third sequence which was that Idris Elba did a jarringly terrible job as the president of the United States. His big acting choice, as far as I could tell, was to be really tired for some reason. Even before the missile enters his day, he’s tired. And everyone he talks to, he’s tired.

If I’ve learned one thing from this movie, it’s that I do not want Idris Elba to be my president. This guy would drive any country into the ground. Because Oppenheim wrote him terribly too! Elba’s president is the most clueless person in the entire story. He seems to be learning everything on the fly. He can’t make any decisions. He asks every question sixteen times.

I get what Oppenheim was doing I think. He wanted the final sequence to be different – more personal. These other two sequences were all about pace. This was more about one person. Slowing it down and dealing with the problem from a single perspective. Which could’ve worked…

If Elba hadn’t shit the bed in the role. He was so awful. Which meant that, essentially, the entire final act didn’t work. And that was BEFORE we got to the unacceptable, ambiguous ending.

Ugh.

For movie lovers, there is nothing worse than a great movie that implodes right in front of your face. And just like this nuclear missile, you’re helpless to stop it.

I read some interviews with Bigelow and Oppenheim and they said that they chose to go with this ending believing it would “start a conversation.” Oh, it started a conversation all right. A conversation about how bad you destroyed your movie.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream (as long as you know going in that the ending is the worst ending ever – in fact, just stop after the first two sequences and imagine whatever you want to imagine for the final act. I promise you it will be better than what they came up with)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This movie should be taught in screenwriting schools across the country for the danger of ending your script ambiguously. I’m not saying it never works. BUT IT DOESN’T WORK WAY MORE THAN IT DOES. And this movie should scare the shit out of ambiguity-obsessed screenwriters. Cause the choice of ending here – for us to never find out what the president decided or what happened to Chicago, in a movie that mined two hours of tension and anticipation from those very facilitators, was… I hate to say it… but an all-time moronic creative choice. You literally turned an Oscar-worthy movie into trash.