One of the interesting things about reading all those scripts in a row for my contest was seeing so many scripts fall apart in real time. Which was frustrating. You want every script to be good. And with all these scripts passing the “First 10 Pages Test,” your expectations are already high.

So why is it, then, that so many scripts start off strong, then fall apart?

I remember reading semi-finalist script, Wish List. In case you forgot, here’s the logline: “An Amazon delivery man is ambushed in Mexico by a group of gangsters who mistake him for a drug mule, and must survive using only the packages inside his van.” The opening teaser followed an Amazon delivery guy (not the main character) who’s attacked by a crooked Mexican cop. He doesn’t get out alive, establishing the stakes for when we meet *our* Amazon delivery driver.

It didn’t take long for me to lose some of that early confidence in the script. The main character was a bit too goofy for my taste. He reminded me of someone Kevin James might play. Which is fine if you’re writing a comedy. But this wasn’t a comedy. The driver is soon trapped by a Mexican cartel and his situation is anything comedic.

A great concept is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it gets you more reads. It’s a curse because you now have to live up to that great concept. That means you have to be as clever as your logline implies. And this is where the edges of Wish List started to fray.

Let me be clear about something first, though. Wish List doesn’t make any big mistakes. The mistakes it makes are actually quite average. Unfortunately, that’s all it takes for a reader to lose interest. You guys know this. You read scripts from the site all the time. The second an even mildly questionable writing choice is made, you raise an eyebrow, and by the time a second one arrives, you’re out.

Wish List already had one strike against it because I didn’t feel the tone of the hero matched the tone of his predicament. Then, once the driver started using his packages, that’s where my interest dropped for good. When you have an idea like this, you’re looking for interesting packages the driver uses in clever ways.

The first package we open is an iPad, which the driver uses to translate what the bad guys are saying outside, which was okay. But the only reason he had to do that was because he didn’t have his phone. A phone could’ve done that as well. So we’re not using things in a clever way yet.

Now the driver has to find a phone to call for help. So he starts opening packages until he finds one. However, the only phone he finds turns out to be a kid’s phone, which doesn’t have all the adult features. Which is sort of clever. You always want to make things hard for you hero. Not giving him a fully-featured phone does make things harder than if he had an iPhone. But that’s two packages so far where I’m not seeing much ingenuity. I’m not seeing anything clever. And that’s the whole reason I picked this script.

So even though I would continue to read, my heart wasn’t in it anymore. And that’s how quickly a script can fall apart.

In the case of Wish List, I don’t think the writer made any giant mistakes. I just think he underestimated what the bar is for a good script. Scripts like this are all about the choices you make. It’s how imaginative you can be with those items. If I were the writer, one of the first things I would’ve done was google, “Top 100 things ordered on Amazon” and obsessively combed through the list. You’d probably come up with 50 fun ideas to play with.

But the bigger lesson here is: Don’t assume the movies you see made are the bar you must hurdle. The bar is actually a lot higher than that for any spec screenwriter. You have to write something great to get people interested. It’s only later that over-development and bad notes from studios execs and maybe a director who doesn’t know how to write will ruin your script. But to get to that place, it first has to be great.

Another script whose first ten pages I loved was Honey Mustard. We meet this woman, Stella, who’s married to this utterly awful excuse for a human being. A guy who’s pure evil. The first ten pages is all about her reaching her breaking point and killing him. It’s a really intense first ten pages so I had high hopes for this one.

We then meet this other character, Buford, who’s having a really tough time of it. He’s out of a job. He’s got a family to support. We see him get coldly rejected after an interview. So he’s having a lousy day too.

What happens next is we follow Stella to her workplace. She’s a waitress at a diner. And her first customer is, guess who? Buford. Clearly, neither of these two are in a good place and we can feel that undercurrent of tension in their interaction. Which is credit to the writer who did a wonderful job of setting up the immediate backstory of these two characters to create this charged moment.

Buford gets annoyed when Stella keeps forgetting to bring him honey-mustard sauce for his order. He keeps reminding her and reminding her and reminding her. But she’s dealing with her sexually harassing boss and a handful of other impatient customers and she just killed her husband, so yeah, she’s a little distracted.

So Buford does something really mean. In order to get her back, he doesn’t tip her (he puts “Honey Mustard” on the tip line, lol). And off he goes.

We then follow Buford home where he gets some good financial news. And maybe, just maybe, his family is going to be okay. Meanwhile, we cut back to the diner…. AND EVERYONE IN IT IS DEAD. They’ve all been shot and killed. The cops are trying to figure this out. Stella is not there so she’s their first suspect.

We then cut back to nighttime at Buford’s house. Buford starts seeing a car drive past his place repeatedly. He gets worried. Then he sees the words “HONEY MUSTARD” finger-written through fog on the window. And he realizes that the waitress is here to kill him and his family.

So where did everything go so wrong so fast? Simple. There should not have been a mass-killing at the diner. Literally, the second that happened, I said to myself, “This script is done.” And every subsequent page further supported that. The reason this script was so strong early on was because everything was character-based. It was all about setting up the characters’ lives and then watching what happens when those lives collide.

The second you turn it into a mass-killing, it becomes a whole other movie. And not the movie that you set up, by they way. This isn’t “Unhinged.” However, a part of me understands why the writer, Michael, made these choices. He’s been told time and time again, by people like myself, that THINGS NEED TO KEEP HAPPENING in a screenplay or else the reader will get bored.

Fearing that his script was TOO character-driven, he went all in on taking things to Mach 10. But here’s the thing. When you write good characters, you don’t need a bunch of fireworks. This script could’ve survived as a slow-building character piece. You could even add 3-4 other characters, whose lives we follow, and then have all of them collide in the ending. But turning Stella into this (potentially) mass-killing house-invader was the least interesting choice you could’ve made after that setup, in my opinion. You started with believable and switched to unbelievable in a heartbeat.

So what can we learn from these two scripts? First, deliver on the promise of your premise. And start to do so early. You have to prove to your reader that you’re going to give him what he paid for. Jurassic Park does a great job of this with the whole mosquito-blood scene. I remember watching that and thinking, “Wow, that totally makes sense for how they’d be able to create dinosaurs in modern day.” It was clever and it hooked me.

Next, don’t feel like you’re serving a stadium full of ADD-riddled idiots when you write a script. The problem with that mindset is you think you have to have a car-chase (or a “car chase equivalent”) every scene. So you end up writing these great big plot developments when the script doesn’t need them. It’s hard to be patient as a writer. But just remember that, if you write great characters who are involved in interesting situations, readers are going to want to keep turning the pages.

Finally, have a plan for your second act. This is where most scripts fall apart because it’s the moment where the writer has to actually write the story. The first act is just setting up the concept you came up with. But the second act is where we need to feel like there’s a plan in place. We need to feel like the characters have goals or a clear direction. If it helps, break your second act into four sequences of, between, 12-15 pages. Doing so is automatically going to give your act more structure.

If you go into the second act with only a vague sense of what you’re going to do? It’s going to show on the page. You can’t hide it. A reader senses when the person telling the story isn’t quite sure where he’s going. If you hate outlines, that’s fine. But it means you’re going to have to do a lot more rewriting on your second act to get it to a place where it feels purposeful. If you do these three things, you should be good to go!

By the way, I’m curious what your thoughts are on Honey Mustard and Wish List. I still think both these scripts have potential. So, what are your fixes?

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
About: This script finished with 16 votes on last year’s Black List. Screenwriter Isaac Adamson is no stranger to scripts about animals and humans, or the Black List for that matter. His script, Bubbles, a biopic about Michael Jackson told through the point of view of MJ’s chimpanzee, topped a former Black List. That project, which was moving full steam ahead, was halted suddenly due to one of the unflattering Michael Jackson documentaries that came out. So Adamson went back to one of the surest formulas for getting back on the Black List – mix humans and animals together in some weird way. Adamson also has a Chippendale’s biopic project set up with the director of I Tonya, Craig Gillespie.
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Details: 96 pages

Oscar Isaac for Eddie?

Is there better catnip to the Black List than weird human-animal movies? Actually, human-to-animal transformation movies have been around long before The Black List. I remember when my dad took me to the old black and white version of The Fly. The words, ‘Help me, help me,’ still ring in my ears today.

There’s something about someone transforming into something else (in this case, an animal) you’re going to want to stick around to see. This is what good stories do, people. They come up with reasons for us to stick around. So when Eddie Vesco starts turning into a possum, I couldn’t help but wonder just how drastic the final transformation was going to be.

32 year old Eddie Vesco has it all. He’s a platinum selling country rock star with a model wife. Sure, she’s decided to become a “painter” in her post-modeling day, but you take the good with the bad, right?

Speaking of, Eddie’s in need of some good. It’s been forever since his last album and he’s already spent all the money he was advanced to record his next album. Which means it’s time for Eddie to get back to work. Eddie has a system for recording hit records. He’s got a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, complete with a recording studio. So he goes there, gets inspired, and comes back with 13 new songs.

But when Eddie shows up at the cabin, we immediately learn there’s more to the story. A beaten down 42 year old heroin addict named Otis is sitting in the corner of the living room, half-hidden in the shadows. You see, Eddie doesn’t know how to write songs. So this guy does it for him. Secretly of course. The whole reason it’s been so long since the last album is that Otis was in prison. He’s finally got out.

Eddie tosses him 5 grand and tells him to get to work. There’s only one problem. That night, Otis OD’s. Which means… you got it… Eddie, for the first time, has to write his own songs.

After Eddie throws Otis’s body in the woods, he notices that he has a possum problem. Possums are always coming in and out of the many holes in the walls. Eddie doesn’t realize just how bad his possum problem is, however, until one of the possums starts talking to him. In English.

Possum Jack explains that HE was the reason Otis could write those songs. And that he can do the same thing for Eddie. All Eddie has to do is bring food for him and his pregnant possum wife, Possum Jill. But when Eddie grabs some junk food from the local gas station, Possum Jack makes it clear that they need more nourishing food. Preferably, roadkill.

Eddie’s about had it with these pesky possums but after Possum Jack helps him record his first of thirteen songs and the song is amazing, Eddie’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the other 12. So he gets roadkill for the possums but they say the roadkill is too old. They need fresher meat. So Eddie gets a live cat from the animal shelter. But these picky possums want something better. Like, say, HUMAN meat.

During this time, poor Eddie starts growing big thick whiskers on his face. Possum Jack informs him that this is part of the deal and it will keep happening until their deal is over. Eddie asks if there’s any way to stop it. The only thing they’ve seen stave off the transformation is what Otis was doing. As in, heroin. Which means now Eddie will have to become a full-on heroin addict.

All of this comes to a head when Eddie’s manager and wife show up. But, by this point, Eddie is so far in it, so determined to get those 13 songs, that he can even rationalize sacrificing them. It’s at this point that we realize… maybe nobody survives these possums.

Let’s start with the structure here.

One of my rules is that if you’re going to write something wacky, you want the rest of your screenplay to be structured. This grounds your story. And Adamson did a good job here. He set up the parameters well. Goal – go record 13 songs. Stakes – if he fails he’ll owe the recording company the full advance they gave him, which he’s already spent. Urgency – he’s got two weeks.

In addition to this, the setting itself is contained (to this farm house). Which further structures the story. Every time you add a border or a time limit or anything that acts as a container around the story, the story is easier to tell. And it’s easier to follow as well. This just as easily could’ve been about some singer who spends a year doing a bunch of concerts and at night he has possums talking to him and they’re really funny and they won’t leave him alone and he records a great final record and… whatever else you wanted to throw in there.

I know that sounds ridiculous. Who would write that? you say. If you’re writing one of your first three screenplays, you’re probably writing stories just like that. They’re all over the place. Messy. Directionless. I know because I read them. So, yes, you do need to worry about structure when you write, especially with subject matter like this.

Where Possum Song loses its melody is in it world-building. And this is where a lot of writers get lost in the weeds if they’re not careful. Once you start developing your world and its rules (in this case, the possums and how they operate) you can become seduced by that world and expand it too far.

We have a guy who relies on another guy to write his songs. Who it turns out is relying on a magic possum to write those songs. And this possum only performs this magic act if you bring him food (possums can’t find their own food?). But processed food isn’t good enough. They need real meat. But then older meat isn’t good enough either. They need recent dead meat. And then recent dead meat isn’t good enough either. Now they need human meat? And part of the curse means you start turning into a possum. But you can stop your possum-turning by doing heroin?????

Sometimes, in the unlit shadows of a 3am writing session, you can talk yourself into these things. “Yeah, that all makes sense.” But when the harsh morning sun shines down, that’s when you have to be honest with yourself. Because writers can talk themselves into anything. So you need to have that ‘come to Jesus’ moment with yourself when dealing with rules, rules, and more rules.

Because the power of a script like this is in its simplicity. It’s a dude using possums to record songs. The more convoluted you make that, the quicker you’re going to run into trouble.

This wasn’t as good as Bubbles which had that “lightning in a bottle” effect going for it. And I would’ve liked to have seen more of a physical transformation in Eddie. I think people are coming to this movie for the Jeff Goldblum level “Fly” transformation. So that would’ve been more fun. But it’s still a good script. It’s an especially good script to read to understand what kind of zaniness the Black List responds to.

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

What I learned: The time constraint before the time constraint. The time constraint of this screenplay is two weeks (that’s how long he has to record the songs). But that two weeks isn’t up until the end of the movie. So what you can do is you can create a more immediate time constraint somewhere in the middle of your script, which acts as a way to keep tension up in the second act. Here, Eddie’s wife, who’s pregnant, is having the sonogram on Wednesday, where they’re going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. She really wants Eddie to be there, which he promises to be. This is the time constraint before the time constraint. It’s something we know we’re leading up to, and therefore one more way to add a little tension and direction to the script.

Genre: Action
Premise: An assortment of assassins and criminals are all stuck on the same Japanese bullet train searching for a briefcase with 10 million dollars in it.
About: It’s the hottest project in Hollywood. John Wick’s David Leitch is directing this monster movie for Sony which will star Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga, Sandra Bullock, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Joey King, Michael Shannon, and most importantly of all, the return of Masi Oka, who played “Hiro” on the show “Heroes.” Bullet Train is based on a novel by Kotaro Isaka and was adapted, somewhat surprisingly, by Zak Olkewicz, who doesn’t yet have a produced writing credit (although he has a lot of scripts in development and has been featured on the Black List).
Writer: Zak Olkewicz
Details: 121 pages (2/21/20 draft)

This project has been all over the news for months – a non-stop feed of high-profile casting announcements. Which made me curious as that usually means the script has a lot of great characters in it. Also, I like thrillers on trains. There’s something about being cooped up on a train with nowhere to go that intensifies a situation. It’s the same reason I like plane thrillers (by the way, I’m going to review that monster plane thriller that 12 studios bid on in the next two weeks).

So does the script live up to the hype? Get your metro passes ready, baby, and we’ll find out together.

Kimura is a Japanese man with a major drinking problem. In fact, he was passed out when his young son climbed up on a roof and fell off, sending him to the hospital, clinging to life. That’s the reality Kimura has to deal with now as he gets onto this morning’s Tokyo bullet train.

Meanwhile, we meet Tangerine and Lemon, two hitmen who may or may not be brothers (they claim they’re not). Tangerine is the brains of the operation, while Lemon can’t stop talking about Thomas the Tank Engine, that kid’s show about a train with a face. It is through the prism of Thomas that Tangerine understands the complex workings of the world around him.

Tangerine and Lemon, who love bantering by the way, are in possession of The Son, who is the son of a Russian crime boss and all around terror best known as The Black Death. Some men kidnapped The Son and Tangerine and Lemon showed up with their ten million dollar ransom, but instead of giving it to the kidnappers, they killed them, all 17 of them in fact (we get a quick flash-cut of all 17 kills). Now all they have to do is deliver the suitcase of 10 million dollars and the Son to the Black Death at the end of the line.

There’s a small problem, though. Lemon thought it would be a good idea to leave the suitcase in the storage area, which has allowed a private investigator named Ladybug (a man, in case you were wondering) to take the suitcase and scuttle off to some other part of the train. When Tangerine and Lemon realize what’s happened, they make it their primary focus to find the person who stole their suitcase. The reason this is their primary focus is because if this person gets off at any stop and disappears, the two of them will be dead.

Back to Kimura, who is moseying about the train when a teenage girl named Prince (yes, I know Prince implies she’s a boy) snags him and ties him up in one of the compartments. She explains to Kimura that he is going to help her kill The Black Death. And if he doesn’t, she has a nurse on call in the hospital where his son is at and that nurse is going to kill him.

If all of this isn’t crazy enough, a giant poisonous snake is slithering its way around the insides of the train because… well, because why not? I suppose you could say it’s a precursor to just how crazy things are about to get. Because once Tangerine and Lemon get back to their seat after their first run-though on the train, they find that The Son is DEAD. Uh oh. Now what are they going to do?

Before long, we realize that the person we really have to be worried about is Prince. Prince is a legitimate psycho. She not only kills Kimura, but as he lays dying, she explains, in detail, how she’s going to slowly kill his son. Sounds like she’d be great at parties. All of this is happening amidst the broader question of, who is The Black Death? And what is he going to do when he learns that neither his alive son or his 10 million dollars is waiting for him at the last stop?

Let me start off by saying this is the kind of movie I would like to produce. All it cares about is that its audience has a good time. Every character, every dialogue scene, every plot choice, is designed to entertain. However, that doesn’t guarantee it *will* entertain. Intentions are not results. You still have to deliver. So let’s look at this piece by piece to see if it delivered.

For starters, they use a good old fashioned McGuffin. Which is the briefcase. This is the *thing* that all the characters are after. I don’t think a lot of writers understand why a McGuffin is so useful. The main reason is that it makes every character in your story active. If everyone’s got the same goal – get the suitcase – then they will all be actively pursuing something.

The best thing about a well-constructed McGuffin is that it creates collisions. Characters will keep bumping into each other. And since the characters want the same thing and only one of them can have it, there is natural conflict in every interaction. That’s an underrated story device, in my opinion – the value of constant collision between characters. The more of that you have going on, the more drama you’re going to have in your screenplay.

But even if you do these things, it does not guarantee a successful result. That’s because the individual pieces themselves – the characters – must all be interesting. And I think that’s where you’re going to have differing opinions on Bullet Train. They’re going for this late 90s, almost Tarantino-like approach, to the characters – especially Tangerine and Lemon – and it’s hard, when reading their dialogue, not to think about how much better Tarantino is at this stuff. That’s not to say the dialogue is bad. But it has a little bit of a try-hard quality to it. The Thomas the Train stuff, in particular, was overcooked. It’s one thing to bring it up a couple of times. But it’s literally all Tangerine talks about.

Luckily, those two are balanced out by Prince, who’s an excellent character. In fact, I think Joey King is going to steal this movie. She’s a legit psychopath, essentially playing the worst version of a Generation Z teenager. If you’ve ever thought you’ve run into the most entitled person you’ve ever met, wait until you meet Prince.

Another thing I liked about Bullet Train is that it made some splashy unexpected choices, which I think you have to in a movie like this. If you play a movie called Bullet Train, where a bunch of assassins are stuck in a train together, too straight? You’re missing out on some fun. So I liked the fact that there’s this random snake on the loose. I liked that The Son dies on page 30. I like anything that makes the audience think, “Uhhhhh, now what?”

I do have some advice for those writing scripts like this. You have to rewrite these scripts incessantly. Because they are highly dependent on how clever they are. And the best way to be clever is through setups and payoffs. But, as seasoned writers know, setups and payoffs are always clunky in the first few drafts. You have to keep smoothing them out over time to the point where you don’t even notice the setup.

And I don’t think Bullet Train quite got there. Then again, this is a 2/21/20 draft. I don’t think they started shooting until this year? So they’ve had some time to clean those up. What they’ve got here is good. But when you’re jumping around this much and there’s so much to keep track of, you have to rewrite tirelessly to get all the setups and payoffs exactly right.

Final thoughts. This was good. It’s going to be a fun movie. In fact, I’d say it’s the exact type of movie we need right now. Good old fashioned movie magic fun.

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

What I learned: Design a script with a bunch of fun characters who get to do a lot of fun things. You do that and you get actors wanting to play parts. This isn’t as important in studio movies where money gets you any actors you want. But when you’re an aspiring writer trying to make a name for yourself, a script with a bunch of actor-friendly parts is a great way to get noticed, and, more importantly, get your movie made.

As the movie landscape continues to nosedive, my desperate search for something, anything, to watch continues. This weekend, I hit an all-time low. I found my finger painstakingly scrolling down the Netflix queue where it landed on “To All The Boys Always and Forever Part 3.” As the highlight box surrounded the film, I almost – ALMOST – pressed “okay.” Don’t worry, though. Cooler heads prevailed and I clicked away – far far away from any Boys Always Being Loved.

Luckily for me, I got one of those recommendations that happened to be something that had been recommended to me before. A movie on Hulu called “In and Of Itself.” Which is usually a sign that something is good – if two unrelated parties are suggesting it to you. Not gonna lie. It looked pretty weird. But desperate times call for desperate measures. So I restarted my Hulu subscription and off I went.

In and Of Itself mirrors what they did with Hamilton. A guy was doing a one-man show in New York that played for over 500 nights. The play then became so popular, that he taped one of the performances and sold it to Hulu.

The show/play/movie/performance/documentary immediately shows its hand, establishing that it’s not like anything you’ve seen before. The unassuming mild-mannered orator, whose name I don’t know, proceeds to tell us a story about a guy named the “Rouleteesta.”

The Rouleteesta was a gentleman so lost after having returned from war that he would do anything to feel alive again. So he entered a highly illegal underground game of Russian roulette. Yes, this was real Russian roulette. With an audience. And it was so popular that everyone would come in to bet big on the winners and losers.

Now, every contestant who played this game only played once. Because if you lost, you’re dead. And if you won, you got paid a handsome fortune. This game brought in a lot of desperate people who needed money. Once they got that money, they weren’t dancing with the devil a second time. Not so for the Rouleteesta. After winning that first night, he came back the very next night to play again. People thought he was crazy. And maybe he was. But that didn’t matter. After he won a second time, he came back a third.

And when people started to doubt him – assuming he figured out a way to cheat the system – he insisted that they put TWO bullets in the chamber instead of one. Let’s up the stakes, baby. And even with two bullets, when the Rouleteesta pulled the trigger, he was still alive to tell the tale.

I should inform you at this moment that our stage the orator is on has, behind it, on the wall, six windows, each of which holds a lit display. In the top left display is an artistic rendition of a rouleteesta puppet. And whenever we hear about another night of Russian roulette, the puppet mimics the motion of putting the gun to his head and, ‘click,’ surviving.

Back to the Rouleteesta. After the the two-bullet gimmick wore off, the fearless Rouleteesta says, fine, I’ll put three bullets in the chamber! At this point, he’s up to a 50/50 shot of blowing his brains out. But he’s the Rouleteesta! And despite several nights of holding a half-loaded gun to his head and pulling the trigger, the Rouleteesta continued to survive!

So he adds a fourth bullet. And then a fifth bullet! And after surviving night after night, he finally demands that they put a SIXTH BULLET in the gun. That would mean the gun was loaded! And so on that night, with everyone betting against the Rouleteesta, figuring even he couldn’t outsmart a loaded gun, you know what happened?

I’m not going to tell you.

You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to anger you. Quite the opposite, actually. I’m trying to help you. You see, me stopping the story before I give you the ending was done to make my first point about storytelling today.

Which is what all of you screenwriters do, by the way. You tell a story. Every time you write a screenplay. Every time you write an act. Every time you write a scene. You’re telling a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And if, at any point, you were to stop telling that story, your reader should be furious with you. Just like you’re upset that I didn’t finish this story.

Think about it. If you’re writing a screenplay and, at any time, you could take the screenplay away from the reader, and they aren’t upset with you, you’ve failed. If they’re like, “Yeah, I’m fine whether I know what happened or not,” you’ve failed. You must design every story you tell in a manner that makes the reader furious should that story be taken away from them.

And I don’t think 95% of writers write that way. I think they write on their time, on their schedule, and never once consider how invested the reader is at any given moment.

In and Of Itself is fascinating in the respect that we are all this orator. We are all one person on a stage trying to keep an audience invested. We desperately need them to care. To want us to keep going. As such, it’s our job to use every trick in the book – everything we know about writing – to keep their interest. It doesn’t matter if it’s sophisticated or the cheapest trick in the book. If it works, it should be in the toolbox.

And our orator has many tricks up his sleeve. For example, he establishes these window displays behind him. Each of them has a different object in it that, until called upon, is a mystery to us. But starting with the Rouleteesta story and connecting that to the Rouleteesta puppet display, he now has us wondering, “Hmm, I wonder what those other displays mean.” And what’s the only way for us to find out? It’s to keep listening to the story.

You can do the same thing in screenwriting. In Star Wars, when we see the Death Star blow up Alderaan, Princess Leia’s home planet, and Mof Tarkin demands that Leia tell him where the Rebel Base is, that is a ‘window display’ screenwriting trick. You are saying to the reader, “This planet-destroying death star is going to try and blow up the Rebel Base.” You’re giving us a peek into the future, just like those displays give us a peek into the future. And, also, just like those displays, there’s still mystery attached. We don’t know if they’re going to succeed or fail.

Just for a second, imagine Star Wars without the Death Star demonstration scene. If we never see it blow up a planet, we never see the window display that tells us what’s coming. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t think it was dangerous. But the window display trick gets us a lot more invested. And that’s the name of the game. The more invested the reader is, the more excited they are to turn the pages.

It turns out the orator is really good at giving you reasons to stick around, which is the secret sauce of any good story. You have to set up a situation by which people want to stick around. And so after the Rouleteesta story, the orator explains that one person from the audience, every show, must agree to come to the next night’s show. They will be in charge of the show’s “book,” which is sort of like a diary of every night’s performance. Unfortunately, that audience member is not allowed to see the end of the show. They will be required to leave, with the book, come back the next night, and only then will they get to see the ending.

The orator leans into this fact and explains to the book-taker that he’s going to LOVE the ending. There’s going to be an elephant. Like a real live elephant. Out here on this tiny stage. It’s what makes the show everything it is, he emphasizes, reiterating several times the craziness that’s going to happen at the end of the show. It’s life-changing.

Most people, when they hear this, don’t know what’s going on. They’re wrapped in the comedic back-and-forth between the orator and the audience member, who’s learning the rules of the book and what will be required of him going forward. But seasoned storytellers know exactly what’s happening. The orator is feeding our need to stick around – to be there when this big crazy thing happens. Everyone in that audience is now looking forward to the ending. Imagine having a reader that excited about the end of your story. You could probably write a 50 page dialogue scene in a diner before that ending and still have the reader excited to get to that final act.

In and Of Itself is one of those rare experiences for screenwriting fanatics like myself where we get to see the storytelling form from a different perspective and therefore notice things that we usually overlook. It’s a reminder that all we’re trying to do in a screenplay is tell a series of stories – through scenes, through sequences – that readers want to keep reading. And that there are numerous tricks you can use to get there. This movie was a great reminder of that.

One of the projects I’m developing as a producer is a tennis movie. For those who read the site regularly, you know I’m a big tennis fan, so it’s only natural that I’d have a tennis movie on my slate. We can go into the specifics of how marketable a tennis movie is at a later date. But for now, we’ll stay on topic.

In researching other tennis movies, most of which have been failures, I came across this 1995 tennis movie called, “The Break.” The Break is a really bad movie. It’s about a former tennis player turned teaching pro who mentors a young prodigy during his first year on the tour. You can experience some of the movie yourself here, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

The Break has a lot of script problems. The main character – the coach – is too on-the-nose. The plot, which involves gambling for some reason, is overwritten. And the tone is all over the place. One second it wants you to take it dead serious. The next it wants you to treat it like a Farrely Brothers comedy. Watching the film is a frustrating reminder of how easy it is to make a terrible movie.

As I continued my research, I looked to other successful sports movies to see how they did it right. Eventually, I was reacquainted with Bull Durham. Bull Durham is an interesting film. It’s quintessential late 80s/early 90s and already feels pretty dated when you go back and watch it. But one thing is clear. The movie works. That’s all you’re asking for as a writer, director, or producer. Does the movie work? And Bull Durham works really well.

But that’s not what I was focused on. What I was focused on was the fact that, as I watched Bull Durham, I realized that The Break was a total ripoff of the film. Everything from the sports angle, to the mentor stuff, to the [attempted] tonal balance between drama and comedy. Heck, the main character in The Break even copied Kevin Costner’s 5 o’clock shadow and Bon Jovi haircut.

The difference between the two films was that Bull Durham was just better. Everything about it worked better. Most importantly, the writing itself. It was more sophisticated, less cliche, took more chances, had better jokes, understood character dynamics better, conveyed the eccentricities of its sport better. It was better in every way.

That experience reminded me of one of the biggest mistakes screenwriters make: They are slaves to the moment. In fact, I would say that every screenwriter IN HISTORY has made this mistake at least once. And most of them continue to make it. We allow the generation of our ideas to be influenced by whatever the latest fads are. As such, we come up with stuff that can be categorized as “just like everything else out right now.” There’s actually a term for this. And I’m going to give you that term in a moment. But before we get to it, let’s discuss the two types of idea generation philosophies you want to be using.

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

This is one of the best ways to create fresh ideas. You take something that hasn’t been around for a while – a situation, a character, a setting, a concept – and then you bring it into the present, preferably with a spin. This is what Star Wars famously did. Westerns were becoming old hat. So Lucas created a space-western. We saw it with one of 2019’s biggest pictures, Joker. That was basically a reimagining of the 1982 movie, The King of Comedy. Todd Phillips found his spin by putting a famous DC comics character in it. Same for 2017’s Get Out. That was “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” with a modern horror twist. “What’s Old is New Again” is a great way to generate ideas.

WHAT’S NEW IS NEW AGAIN

“What’s New is New Again” is another good way to generate ideas. This is when come up with a truly new and fresh idea. Something that hasn’t been done before. Because you’re competing against a century of movies, going this route can be challenging. “New is New Again” ideas often involve new technology. Newer ideologies. New stories in the media. New cultural shifts. I would argue that The Matrix was a “What’s New is New Again” idea. Some people may say we’ve done versions of The Matrix before but I’d push back on that and say the large majority of it was something fresh. Ditto Jurassic Park. We’d never seen a dinosaur island idea before. A lot of Black Mirror episodes feel “new is new” to me.

WHAT’S NEW IS OLD AGAIN

This is what I was referring to with “The Break” versus “Bull Durham.” And it’s the mistake most writers make when coming up with an idea. They see the latest hit movie in the theater or they track which movies are doing well at the box office and they come up with an idea that’s similar to them. For example, if someone saw Tenet, they might come up with an idea about heading backwards in time against the grain of everyone else moving forwards in time. It certainly FEELS like a new idea due to the fresh “new” feeling you got while watching Tenet. But six months later when you begin sending the script out, everyone’s going to say “This is just like Tenet.”

Yes, you want to understand what’s trending in the industry. But you must be careful about being too influenced by the current slate of popular movies. Unless you get in at the very beginning of the trend, by the time you send out the script, it’ll be old hat. A lot of people called Bird Box a ripoff of A Quiet Place. Instead of not being able to make a noise, you’re not able to look at things. But the reason Bird Box still did well on Netflix was because it was well into development by the time A Quiet Place came out. So they were able to get it out there immediately, when a “sensory” horror movie still felt fresh. If you, the unknown screenwriter, started writing a “Quiet Place” clone immediately after the movie came out, you’re already racing against time. Every single day, your idea gets more stale. It’s not a pleasant place to be.

There’s a final category that’s not worth getting into since it’s obvious. But I’ll mention it anyway. “What’s Old is Old Again.” This is when you take an old movie and basically write the exact same movie. You’re not bringing anything new to it. Writers sometimes make the mistake of believing an “old is old again” is actually a “old is new again” situation. They believe they’ve created a fresh twist but the twist is too subtle, or not enough to make the idea feel new. So you want to watch out for that. Ask yourself if you’re TRULY bringing something new to the old idea. But I think this category speaks for itself. Don’t do it.

You should be focusing on the two best ways of coming up with an idea – “old is new again” and “new is new again.” They’re more likely to garner a response (assuming that your idea is actually good, lol).

With that said, I don’t want to scare you. Coming up with ideas is hard enough and here I’m saying, “Do this and don’t do that or you’re screwed!!” I concede that there’s a fifth option. And that’s when you come up with an idea that just “feels right.” It may violate some of the things I’ve warned you about here. But the idea excites you for some reason. On Tuesday I reviewed a script called “Towers” about a family man who wants to build a club on the top of his company’s building and later gets into drag-racing. I’m not sure what category that idea falls into but something about it excited the writer and that ended up getting him a lot of attention. So there is an element of following your gut here. Use these categories I’ve discussed above as a guide, not as gospel.

Good luck! :)