Genre: Drama/Supernatural/Comedy
Premise: A family becomes internet sensations when they find a real ghost in their home and start posting videos about it on social media.
About: One of the hot projects that came together this month was the David Harbour Anthony Mackie collaboration with director Christopher Landen (Happy Death Day, Freaky, Paranormal Activity 2). Landen will be adapting the Vice short story by Geoff Manaugh, which you can read here. This one came out of nowhere, as the short story was published all the way back in 2017. Netflix bought the package.
Writer: Geoff Manaugh
Details: about 5000 words (one-quarter of a screenplay)
Today’s story institutes the dreaded 3-genre mash-up. For those new to screenwriting, the 2-genre mashup has resulted in some amazing movies (Comedy and Supernatural = Ghostbusters). But it is REALLY hard to pull off the 3-genre mash-up. Why? Because the more genres, the less focus. And focus is everything in a screenplay narrative.
Now I’m not saying it’s impossible! No no no no no. Don’t you misquote me now. Yesterday’s movie, which I loved, spanned three, maybe even four genres. But the degree of difficulty rises exponentially with multiple genres. And I’m not convinced Ernest rises to the challenge. All things considered, this is such a weird short story, that I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand. It’s worth discussing for sure.
Frank Presley, the newly headhunted president of a suburban hospital-billing firm, has just moved into an old house in the Chicago suburbs with his wife, Melanie, his 14 year old son, Fulton, and his 18 year old son, Kevin. One night, while trying to sleep, Frank hears a noise, goes downstairs, and finds a ghost hanging out.
Frank pulls out his phone camera, presses record, and, for some reason, starts laughing uproariously. He later puts this up on Youtube. People don’t take it seriously because, of course it’s not a real ghost. But Frank keeps seeing the ghost, who he names “Ernest,” and keeps recording it, putting more and more videos online until people can’t deny anymore that it’s a real ghost!
The good vibes don’t last long, though, because Frank is a big fat jerk. He yells at the ghost, tries to scare the ghost, throws things at the ghost, mocks the ghost, and, of course, laughs at the ghost. Melanie is not a fan of the way her husband is treating Ernest. She believes it’s because he hates his work and needs an outlet for his anger.
Then, one day, Ernest disappears. And Kevin does also. The millions of people who watch Frank’s videos pour through them and spot all these background conversations where Kevin and Ernest were secretly chatting with each other. The two have run off together. When the police catch up with them, Kevin tells the world that Ernest was murdered by his uncle and justice must be done!
But the FBI puts Ernest behind bars for the crime of kidnapping. A bummed out Kevin goes on Jimmy Kimmel to make a case for the government to release Ernest. But Kimmel has a surprise. It’s Ernest! Who’s just been released. They verified the murder. And although the uncle who killed Ernest died 20 years ago, Ernest finally has peace. Which means he can disappear into the next realm. Kevin asks if they’ll ever see each other again. Ernest says, without question.
I always love speculating on how a project got purchased. It’s important to study these things if you’re a writer because you want to understand what things buyers are interested in. At first, this seemed too zany to fall into any obvious sale category.
But a couple of things stuck out to me.
First of all, any idea with a ghost in it has the potential to be marketable. If this were a movie about a family that found a normal person living in their house, it’s not nearly as marketable, right? (Although, as I typed that, I realized that could be a pretty interesting movie in its own right) I bring this up because I read so many scripts that don’t have a clear element for a studio to market the movie around. You need that if you want to get people excited about your screenplay.
On top of that, the idea is fresh. I’ve never seen a movie before about a ghost going viral on Youtube. I’m not the biggest fan of the idea. But, objectively, it’s a fresh idea in so much as we haven’t seen it before. So now you’ve got two things working in your favor.
Finally, there’s actually some interesting character stuff going on in this story. The dad clearly has issues. He’s torturing a ghost, laughing about it, and putting it up on Youtube. Wherever there’s interesting character stuff, there are actors who want to play those parts. Between the dad and the ghost, there’s some juicy stuff to play around with here.
The problem is that there isn’t a clear movie structure to this story. I’m guessing that’s why nothing’s happened with it since 2017. It’s kind of hard to see where the movie is.
You can’t tell the movie through Frank’s eyes. He’s too much of an asshole. I suspect that the story will be told from Kevin’s POV, even though he’s a background character for most of the short story. He’s the one who wants to connect with Ernest. You’d probably also move them leaving to earlier in the screenplay. That’s the big “journey” that jumpstarts the narrative so it can’t show up 60% of the way into the story. I’m thinking it should happen at the beginning of Act 2.
And then you would need to clarify why they’re going on this journey, which the short story does a lousy job of explaining. You have to explain that Ernest is trying to solve his murder. In which case you CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have his killer already be dead. There’s no dramatic value in that choice whatsoever. It’s way more interesting if the guy who killed him is still alive and Ernest (with Kevin’s help) is going to confront him.
Speaking of the murder, I kept asking why it took half the story for Ernest to mention he was murdered. Why didn’t that come up earlier? Even if he didn’t want to bring it up, the tens of millions of people studying Ernest on the internet would’ve known his entire life story within ten minutes of him going viral. They would’ve figured out he was murdered, which would’ve necessitated us to explore the murder plot. Here, it feels like something that came up as an afterthought. Oh yeah, and I was murdered.
This is the kind of story that needs somebody really weird to tell it. A Charlie Kaufman type. Maybe even the director from yesterday’s wonderfully weird movie, Anders Thomas Jensen. Christopher Landen is a good director who understands the balance between horror and comedy. But I’m not sure that’s what this is about. This movie wants to make some deeper statements about humanity and Ernest has some, dare I say, Edward Scissorhands qualities to him that will require a deft touch. If Landen can nail it, though, he’s going to jump to the next level as a director.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Who you choose as your main character has a huge impact on the story. Here, you can choose between Frank, a dude who’s having a mid-life crisis and taking it out on the ghost who lives in his house, or Kevin, who’s much more grounded, much more sympathetic, and therefore makes a cleaner protagonist. They were just talking about this issue for the development process of Jungle Cruise. That movie had been in development for a couple of decades. The way they finally cracked the story, according to the producer, was to shift the protagonist role away from The Rock’s captain character and make Emily Blunt’s scientist character the hero. By doing this, it freed up The Rock’s character to be more fun and goofy, similar to what they did with Jack Sparrow in the Pirates movies. If the movie being told in your current draft feels boring, ask yourself, “What would the movie look like through the eyes of [Second Biggest Character] or [Third Biggest Character]?” Ya never know. Your boring movie could instantly come alive. Go ahead, do it right now. I dare ya.
Today’s film will end up in my Top 10 movies of the year, maybe even my top 5!
Genre: Thriller/Drama/Comedy
Premise: After a highly volatile army general loses his wife in a subway crash, a trio of mentally unstable men come to him with evidence that the crash was orchestrated by a criminal organization known as the Riders of Justice.
About: Nikolaj Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen have written a ton of screenplays together. Anders has something like 25 feature credits. I guess they write and make movies a lot faster in Denmark! Star Mads Mikkelsen has worked with Jensen a number of times. Here’s Mads’ insight into their most recent collaboration process: “As far as I remember, I think Anders Thomas pitched both the story and the idea of morphing his two dramatic universes together: his own “insanity world,” and his more [straightforward] writer side, which writes dramatic things for others … Normally, he pitches me his stuff, and if I call him and say, “What the f**k are you doing?,” then that’s a good sign. Because it’s always insane, what he’s doing, and if I’m on board it gives him the confidence to continue writing.” Riders of Justice is currently a digital rental so you can watch it right now!
Writer: Nikolaj Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen
Details: 2 hours long
I, of course, could’ve gone and seen “Old” this weekend.
The reason I didn’t was because I could’ve written that review without seeing the movie. I already know what’s going to happen. I know Old is going to be sloppy. I know it’s going to be inadvertently silly at times. I know the last 20 minutes are going to be terrible and not make sense. I know I’m going to get triggered about how someone as untalented as M. Night was able to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes for so long and make a living in this business. I’ve written that review a dozen times already. Nothing ever changes with Night.
Conversely, Riders of Justice may be the most unpredictable movie of the year. You have no idea what’s coming next. Not only that, but everything about this movie screams “This shouldn’t have worked.” The main character is aggressively unlikable. The tone of the movie shifts wildly between dead serious and sitcom-level broad. It’s weird. It’s unruly. It’s unconventional.
I love when scripts take big risks that shouldn’t have worked and somehow make them work because those are the scripts that have the decoded matrix within them. If something works that shouldn’t have, there’s some insight into the fabric of storytelling we don’t usually get.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the story. A teenage girl, Mathilde, and her mother, are riding a packed subway car. Otto, an odd man who uses extreme mathematical equations to predict car accidents, has just been fired from his job. Still, he offers the mother his seat. After she sits down, a sheet of metal from another train slices through the side of the train, killing everyone who was sitting on that side, including the mother (Otto and Mathilde survive since they were standing).
Markus, an army captain currently on duty, gets the call that his wife has died and flies home. Markus, who’s consumed with violence and anger issues, has a terrible relationship with Mathilde. This should be a time of togetherness. But he and his daughter seem as distant as ever. They are soon visited by Otto, who’s been studying the train crash. His computer model has discovered that this was not an accident, but rather a hit. A gangbanger who was also sitting on the fatal side of the train was about to name the Riders of Justice gang in court for a series murders. So the Riders of Justice had the other train deliberately crash into this one to kill him.
A furious Markus is now determined to kill every single member of the Riders of Justice, something he can’t do without help. So Otto enlists his buddies Lennart (who’s spent a large amount of time in a mental hospital) and Emmenthaler (an overweight OCD hacker with anxiety and depression) to help find each of the members and kill them. Of course, when the Riders of Justice figure out what’s happening, they take the fight to our motley unorthodox crew instead.
One of the hardest things to figure out about this movie is how a main character THIS UNLIKABLE could work. We talk all the time about how important it is to make a character likable because if the audience doesn’t like who’s leading them on the journey, they’re not going to care about the journey. And they certainly aren’t going to care whether the hero succeeds or not.
Markus shouldn’t have worked. He’s not only an asshole (one of the first lines we hear from him after he gets home from the mother’s funeral is to tell Mathilde that she needs to work out so she doesn’t get fat) but he doesn’t talk a whole lot. When someone’s an asshole and ALSO doesn’t say much, it exaggerates the assholeness. We’re not able to get inside their head to understand why they’re an asshole, so the fact that Markus just stares forward angrily all the time makes him even more unlikable.
So why do we still care? Why do we root for Markus?
Well, when you have an unlikable hero, it’s critical that you incorporate something called OFFSETTING. Offsetting is exactly what it sounds like. You come up with a bunch of things to offset the hero’s negative disposition. For starters, Markus’s wife was just killed. We’re always going to feel sorry for a character who’s just lost someone.
Markus is active. Audiences love active characters. They love characters who go after what they want. The more aggressively they go after it, the more we tend to like them. As soon as Markus realizes that his wife was murdered, he goes into Active-Mode. It’s time to kill the Riders of Justice.
Audiences also like characters who are good at what they do. There’s a scene early on where Markus goes to ask their first ‘person of interest’ what they know and the guy sticks a gun in his face and tells him to leave. Markus doesn’t say anything, lets the guy close the door on him, walks back to his car, and then, out of nowhere, he spins around, walks right back up to the door, knocks, and when the guy opens the door with the gun, Markus executes a blink-and-you-miss-it takedown of the guy, snatching his gun away then shooting him in the face. It’s not only an intense scene. It shows how skilled Markus is. After that moment, we think, “Yeah, I’m glad this guy is on our side.”
Another thing I noticed Jensen do was he offloaded more screen time than normal to the other characters. Riders of Justice is more of an ensemble piece than a “John Wick” style revenge movie. The reason why that’s important is because all of the other characters are interesting and positive and cool and fun. So we’re not stuck, 90% of the time, with this dreary angry man. That’s a big takeaway for me. If you have an intensely negative hero, consider making your script more of an ensemble piece.
The other thing about this script that shouldn’t have worked was the tone. On one side, you had Markus living in the most extreme intense dramatic movie you could imagine. While on the other side, you had Denmark’s version of Larry, Mo, and Curly.
There’s this whole subplot whereby Mathilde insists that her father see a psychiatrist for his anger issues and when she catches him talking to Otto, Lennart, and Emmenthaler in their barn, the four of them freak out and lie to Mathilde, telling her that they’re Markus’s new psychology team, here to make him better. They’re going to be sticking around for a few weeks and working with him 24/7. At one point, the ruse goes so far that Lennart, who, remember, is certifiably crazy, pretends to be a psychiatrist and does a therapy session with Mathilde. I mean that’s a scene you might see on Modern Family.
It took me a while to figure out how they made this work. Because this is the kind of thing I routinely rip screenwriters for – jumping back and forth between wildly different tones. What I realized was that these three characters weren’t just wacky to be wacky. As the movie goes on, we get into all of their backstories, which inform us why the three of them are so broken. In other words, their psychosis is anchored in reality. It’s not like Jensen said, “Eh, let’s just make him a goofball hacker and have him say funny nonsense.” This hacker has led a tortured life, as have the other two.
I still don’t think many writers could’ve pulled this off. But the ones who can are the ones who build up those backstories so that the “crazy” characters’ lives are based in some level of reality.
In the end, the thing I liked most about this script is that it morphed into this unexpected family movie. All these weird people were living together under one roof. And despite being the most unlikely family ever, they managed to make it work in a weird way. There was something sweet about that. And I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ‘sweet’ to describe a John Wick style premise. Riders of Justice shows you how to subvert expectations THE RIGHT WAY. If you liked Parasite, you’ll definitely like this.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Always try to link your hero’s journey to what you’re personally going through in life at the moment. It will instantly add depth to them. Here’s Anders on how he came up with the character of Markus: “It started with me having this completely normal 40-year crisis that all men have where you look at your kids, you look at your life, and you wonder, “How did I get here, and did I do enough?” You start rebuilding, you start looking forward, and you start looking for connections that will give your life meaning. That’s basically Markus’ character, a guy with PTSD returning home who’s lost faith in everything but needs to find a way to move forward in his life. Of course, it’s highly dramatized, but the core is very personal for me.”
What I learned 2: Anders is okay with ditching outlines if the script calls for it: “Normally, I’ll put a structure up on the wall then write a script from that. But with a script like this, it was a gut feeling. Especially in this film, it had to be a gut feeling. You had to get around so many characters and themes and layers, and if you put that up on the wall, it becomes somehow schematic. You can see the technicality of it. People in film schools hate when I say this, but it’s not something I can teach anyone.
SCI-FI SHOWDOWN REMINDER
What: Sci-fi Showdown
When: Entries due by Thursday, September 16th, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
How: Include title, genre, logline, Why We Should Read, and a PDF of your script
Where: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com
In honor of Neil Blomkamp’s newest movie trailer and Sci-Fi Showdown, we are going back to one of the best science-fiction movies of the 21st century. Here’s what I wrote back in 2009 after I saw District 9: “Today, I went to see District 9. Even after all the hype, I still walked out amazed. We’re looking at the next James Cameron here. Sci-fi like this has never been done before. Within two minutes I actually believed this was happening – that aliens had landed on our planet.”
I think I may have invented the phrase, “This didn’t age well” with that take. It’s hard to put your finger on why Blomkamp fizzled. There’s no question he’s an insanely talented guy. I think part of the problem was that he never put as much effort into the mythology of his subsequent films as he did District 9. The guy is a director, through and through. But he’s never been a great writer.
District 9 feels like a dozen people sat around a room for a year and discussed every single detail about what this world would be like. You need that with science-fiction. You try to cut corners on mythology and your movie can go from deep to thin in a millisecond. We saw that with his follow-up film, Elysium, where you got the sense that Blomkamp wrote the script in a weekend.
But we still have District 9, which is a sci-fi classic. And Blomkamp is even talking about a District 10, which I’ll be first in line for. In honor of everything Blomkamp, here are 10 screenwriting tips from District 9!
1) The hunter becomes the hunted – One of the best ironic situations to place your hero in is to start him off as the hunter and then turn him into the hunted. Audiences LOOOOOOVE that. Why? Because everybody loves irony. To emphasize how effective this is, imagine if Wikus doesn’t work for the organization moving the prawns out of their homes. Imagine if he’s just some street food vendor who turns into an alien. It’s not nearly as exciting of an idea, is it? That’s the power of irony.
2) The Goal Before The Goal – A lot of writers make this mistake. They focus on the main character’s primary goal only. In this case, it’s for Wikus to figure out how to turn back into a human. But there’s often a period of time in your story before the main character is presented with a goal. In that case, if possible, you want to insert a goal BEFORE the goal. That way, your movie gets going right away. What Blomkamp does is he creates this storyline where South Africa has decided to move all of the aliens to a new location. This act of moving them creates a purpose for the story before our real plot begins.
3) Characters should always have something to do – When characters don’t have something to do, the story comes to a standstill. But it’s important to know the difference between the good something to do and the bad something to do. That difference lies in the goal being PLOT RELEVANT. A hero who’s going to get a coffee is NOT DOING ANYTHING. A hero meeting a hitman at the coffee shop to discuss killing his boss – THAT’S DOING SOMETHING. Whenever your character is doing something that’s pushing the plot forward, they’re doing something. Otherwise, nothing’s happening in your screenplay.
4) Don’t roll out the red carpet for your hero. Put up a barbed wire fence instead!!! – A classic beginner mistake is rolling out the red carpet for your hero’s interactions. Whatever he needs to do, it goes off without a hitch. It should be the opposite. You want to put up a barbed wire fence. Make it difficult. Especially in sci-fi movies where the stakes are high. Go and watch the sequence where Wikus tries to move the prawns from their homes. Literally every prawn gives him trouble. There isn’t a single house where the process goes smoothly. Fences create conflict. Red carpets create boredom.
5) Documentary/fiction hybrids are a cheat-code for exposition – One of the hardest things to do in sci-fi is manage all the exposition and convey it to the reader. Any sort of story with an interview component, such as a documentary, lets you bypass that. District 9 may be the most exposition heavy science fiction movie ever. But I bet you never thought about that until I just mentioned it. That’s because its exposition is hidden inside documentary interviews, so we never consider it exposition.
6) A line of suspense can add an extra level of intrigue to your story – All suspense is is hinting that something bad is going to happen in the future. You can use it, then, to increase the level of interest from the audience. All throughout the opening of District 9, we get these interviews of people talking about Wikus, but they’re doing so as if something terrible has happened to him. “Wikus was always such a kind boy,” his mother tells us. We now know that something bad is going to happen to Wikus, which increases our interest in sticking around. You could, of course, not have shown any of those interviews. But, by omitting them, you also omit a line of suspense that’s driving the reader’s interest.
7) Use language differences to create more interesting dialogue – All of the dialogue between Wikus and the aliens – whether he was trying to evict them or, later, when he’s asking them for help – was charged. It had a heightened unpredictable quality to it. I finally realized it was because Wikus never entirely understood the alien language. He grasped pieces of it, enough so that he could communicate with them. But because he couldn’t speak it fluently, he was always playing catch up. It was a major reason why all the scenes with him and the aliens were so good, that struggle to understand each other and the messiness that brings. I’m thinking you can do the same with any two characters who don’t speak the same language. You can use their misunderstandings and assumptions to create a more interesting interaction than if the two are able to communicate exactly what they’re thinking. Remember, with screenwriting, you’re always looking for ways to make things harder on the characters. Not being able to understand one another is a simple way to make things harder. And, as a bonus, it makes the dialogue better.
8) Your story’s theme and your main character’s flaw are almost always tied together – District 9’s theme is: don’t treat people differently just because they don’t look like you. And Wickus’s flaw is that he doesn’t treat the aliens like real “people” because he doesn’t see the aliens as real “people.” We see this when he’s tossing cat food at them and talking to them like babies. Only when he becomes an alien and sees others treating him the same way he treated the aliens, does he realize his mistake and change.
9) What’s the worst thing you can do to your character right now? – This is a great question that can lead to some great moments in your script. It’s not something you want to use in every scene. But it’s definitely something you want to use occasionally. When Wikus gets home after his long day at work where he’s ingested some strange chemical and has been throwing up the rest of the day, feeling sicker and sicker by the minute, Blomkamp could’ve easily had his wife waiting for him, notice that he’s acting strange, ask him what’s wrong. But that would’ve been a forgettable scene. Instead, Blomkamp asks, “What’s the worst thing I can do to Wikus right now?” And the answer was… give him a surprise birthday party! All Wikus wants to do is rest. He’s sick and getting sicker by the minute. Instead, he has to be happy and peppy and act like nothing’s wrong for the next couple of hours – his worst nightmare.
10) 99% of thriller scripts fall apart when they devolve into an “on the run” story – This is because most scripts go from a STRUCTURED STORY to, all of a sudden, the main character is running around like a chicken with his head cut off, his only goal to stay a step ahead of the bad guys. This trope is boring to watch because all ‘on the run’ stuff feels the same. To combat this, give your character targeted clear goals they’re trying to accomplish. These goals will bring structure back into the story and give it purpose. You can have them run for a few scenes. But then it’s time for them to come up with a plan. Wikus goes back into the Prawn Camp because it’s the only place where he can hide from the authorities. He then agrees to help the alien get his ship operational with the understanding that, when he does, he’ll turn Wikus back into a human. This is a way more interesting storyline than had Wikus just run around Johannesburg for two hours.
Hold on. Don’t tell me you’re sending your script out there without getting professional feedback first. You only get one shot with these industry contacts, my friend. Don’t screw it up by sending them the 10,000th average screenplay they’ve read this year! I do consultations on everything from loglines ($25) to treatments ($100) to pilots ($399) to features ($499). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested. Use code phrase ‘WARM IN JULY’ and I’ll take a hundred bucks off a pilot or feature consultation. As long as you pay in July, you can send the script to me whenever it’s finished. Chat soon!
It’s the Back to Back Battle of the Airplane Scripts! Who will win? One of the most successful authors ever or a first time Black List writer?
Genre: Mystery
Premise: During a Chinese flight that experiences massive turbulence, three people die. A young investigator for the company that built the plane has less than a week to figure out what went wrong.
About: The deal Michael Crichton made for the film rights to this book were, at the time, the most expensive ever, at 10 million dollars. You’d think if someone paid that much, the movie would’ve gotten made, right? I guess Crichton kept vetoing the scripts, which he had the power to do. This version of the script was written by Frank Pierson, who wrote and directed the 1976 version of A Star Is Born. That was a very big time in Pierson’s life as, just a year earlier, he’d written Dog Day Afternoon (“ATTTTTTIIICAAAAAA!!!”). Alas, Crichton seems to have been unimpressed. Will we be?
Writer: Frank Pierson (based on the book by Michael Crichton)
Details: Sept 21, 1998, 127 pages
I asked you for plane crashes, you gave me plane crashes!
Thanks to everyone who e-mailed, sending me scripts, loglines, and articles to all the plane crashes. Still have to get through all of them. You see, I stopped when resident 90s script expert, Scott Crawford, sent me Airframe.
I’d never even heard of Airframe. And I’m someone who was once a Michael Crichton aficionado. I was even one of 14 people who read that book of his about nanobots! For those of you young’uns, there was a time when Crichton was the biggest idea-man in Hollywood. We’re talking about the brain behind Jurassic Park. Everything he wrote turned to diamonds.
Crichton and an airplane disaster sound like the perfect marriage. Let’s find out if the two lived happily ever after.
Casey Singleton gets a call that a plane heading from Hong Kong to the U.S. made an emergency landing in Los Angeles after experiencing thunderous turbulence. The turbulence was so bad, in fact, that 3 people died and dozens more were injured. Although this was a Chinese airline, TransPacific Air, it was an American built plane from Norton. Casey is the head of the investigation team at Norton.
As soon as the plane is cleared, Casey brings her team on to see the destruction inside. Seats have been flattened as if a giant stepped on them. There’s blood everywhere. The main cabin is a disaster area. There’s even a body that went halfway through the ceiling that’s still lodged up there (wear your seatbelts everybody!).
The investigation quickly centers on a design flaw that may have made the wing’s flaps deploy mid-flight, which would’ve sent the plane tumbling around in the air like a drunk uncle. The reason this flap issue is so important is because the president of Norton, a guy named Jon Edgarton, has a deal with the Chinese to send 50 more of these planes to them next week! So not only do they have to figure out what went wrong. They have to convince the Chinese it was a freak accident.
Meanwhile, a video tape from INSIDE THE PLANE somehow starts getting circulated around town and the rumor is that whatever’s on that video is gnarly. If that tape somehow makes its way to the news, the company is doomed. When Casey finally sees the tape, she’s horrified. It shows in graphic detail all the chaos that went on while the turbulence was happening. When CNN gets a hold of it as well, Casey will have to use all of her persuasion powers to convince them not to show that tape. Will they?
Sometimes you come up with an idea where the idea itself is the angle. M. Night’s new movie where people age 1 year every hour on a beach is a concept where the angle has been decided as soon as the concept was decided.
Other times, writers are interested in subject matter – say, a plane incident – but don’t yet know what angle they’re going to tackle the story from. The decision you make on that angle will determine whether you’ve got a good idea or a bad one (or something in between).
Crichton, like me, wanted to write a plane story. He just didn’t know what the angle to that plane story would be. He ultimately decided on an investigation angle that dove deeply into the minutiae of an aviation malfunction.
Instead of a big flashy plane crash, this movie is about the little flashing lights in a cockpit that the pilots don’t understand. And the purpose of slats on a wing. And the pounds of force on the human body when a plane is dropping 500 feet per second. And the subcontracting details of allowing China to manufacture the fuselage.
I love specificity in storytelling. One of the biggest mistakes I see amateurs make is telling generalized stories without enough detail. The detail – the specifics of the world you’re exploring – are what sell the story. Airframe is the most convincing fictional story about a plane incident that I’ve ever read. The specificity is exceptional.
But the angle Crichton chose severely limited the concept’s wow-factor. Not everything has to be Jurassic Park. But I’m not sure why Crichton thought 3 people dying from turbulence was a big enough story. Hell, there’s even a moment in the script where a news producer is told about what happened but chooses not to put the story on the air. “Defective parts? I don’t want a defective parts story. I want a death trap in the sky, a flying coffin story.” When your own characters seem to know more about what an audience wants than you, you may be in trouble.
Now *I* thought the story was interesting but, I like I told you yesterday, that’s because I love the minutiae of plane accidents. But I don’t think non plane enthusiasts would give two shits about this angle.
A question you want to be asking yourself with whatever you’re writing is, “Why does this matter?” Why does 3 people dying in a plane matter? Because that’s where the audience’s mind will be. Maybe not consciously. But subconsciously. And when the answer is, “It doesn’t matter all that much,” the audience loses interest. They get bored. They tune out.
It’s a pretty surprising oversight by Crichton, who knows what a big idea is better than anyone.
It’s too bad because this script has some cool stuff going for it. First of all, it’s shockingly timely. The plot is about offloading work to China and China using shady practices that don’t prioritize the safety of their planes. It also has a strong female protagonist, which wasn’t exactly a common thing back in 1998.
They also did something really clever with Casey. Typically, the person investigating the mystery in a movie like this is trying to bring the company down. They’re a journalist trying to expose the truth. What Airframe does is it makes Casey an investigator for Norton, the company that built the plane. So her job isn’t just to investigate the incident. It’s to hide her findings. To protect the company instead of expose it. So everything she finds, she’s trying to keep it from getting out, which is a slightly different, and more dynamic, investigative process than we usually get.
Airframe is even more inside-baseball than yesterday’s plane script. And yesterday’s plane script was about something that really happened! It just goes to show how important research was to Crichton. You got the feeling that this guy knew how many millimeters the bolts were that held the fuselage together. Unfortunately, the script can’t overcome its weak premise. It should be a reminder to everyone that you can write some of your best stuff. But if you’re doing so with a weak concept, it won’t matter.
Script link: Airframe
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A “What the hell are you talking about” character. Whenever you have a subject matter this technical or that requires a ton of exposition, it doesn’t make sense to have characters WHO ALREADY KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS THEY’RE ASKING to talk about this stuff. So a trick to use is to add a “What the hell are you talking about” character. His main job is to be the brain of the audience and ask, “What the hell are you talking about?” This character in Airframe comes in the form of Bob Richman, a low-level assistant to Jon Edgarton. Edgarton hands Richman over to Casey so that he always has eyes on the investigation. Richman, who’s clueless about planes, is constantly asking Casey questions like, “Why is it bad for the flaps to deploy mid-flight?” so that the audience can keep up with the technical aspects of the story.
Today, we learn the vital difference between a STORY and a STORYTELLER.
Genre: Drama/True Story
Premise: Journalists race to expose how Boeing knowingly misled regulators, pilots, and airlines to cover up a problematic flight software system on the 737 MAX, leading to two major airplane crashes and the deaths of 346 people. Based on real events.
About: Today’s script comes from an up and coming writer and producer, Terry Huang. This script made last year’s Black List with 9 votes.
Writer: Terry Huang
Details: 105 pages
I used to be terrrrrriiiiffieeed of flying. To the point where, every time I got on a plane, I accepted that it was the end of my life. No, seriously. I’d look back fondly at the things that I’d accomplished. I’d be frustrated at the things that I hadn’t. And then, off I’d go, onto this 200 foot long metal tube that was sure to crash down in a fiery blaze with me inside of it. It was fun while it lasted!
It isn’t difficult to figure out where my fear of flying originated. When I was 8 years old, waiting at the terminal for a red eye flight to a Mexican destination with my family, my mother staged an open resistance to getting on the plane because she had a “feeling” that there was something wrong with it and that it was “going to crash.” Up until that point, I didn’t even know planes could crash! And so my fear of flying began.
The good news is I’m over that fear. Now I just worry about there being enough space for my bag in the overhead.
But due to my history, I’m still fascinated by airplane disasters. I still investigate famous crashes all the time. I’ve probably spent upwards of 30 hours looking into the infamous Tenerife crash (the most deadly crash in aviation history). It’s why I’ve repeatedly mentioned on this site that I’m looking for a killer plane concept to produce (have one? Send me the logline!).
Today’s script covers one of the scariest airplane disaster concepts of all, one that involves pilots doing exactly what they’ve been trained to do, only to have the plane’s computer take over and kill them. Let’s take a look.
60-something Dominic Gates is a reporter for the Seattle Times. In October of 2018, he hears about a Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia that killed all 189 people on board. Specializing in airplane crashes, Dominic starts making calls to his contacts to find out what happened.
Meanwhile, halfway across the country, in the Bloomberg news offices in New York, reporters Peter Robison and Joel Weber also hear about the crash. The plane that went down is something called a 737Max, which is a modified 737 with bigger engines. They immediately call Boeing, who manufactured the plane, to see if they’ve made a statement yet. They haven’t.
We then hop over to Paris, where plane supply salesmen, and long time buddies, Eddy Knowles and Jeff Spalding, are attending the annual airline industry’s trade show, a place where all the big players, including Boeing and Airbus, are getting ready to promote their latest planes and technologies. Their conversation revolves around the fact that Boeing’s game-changer plane, the Dreamliner, is more like the Nightmareliner, as they can’t get the thing approved to fly. As a result, Boeing’s been forced to improvise, adjusting planes that have already been approved, which has resulted in the 737Max.
We follow the bouncing ball all over the world as we meet people on every side of the issue, from journalists, to pilots, to mechanics, to the CEOs of the major plane companies themselves, all of which heats up when a SECOND 737Max crashes in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. What Dominic, Joel, and Mike eventually find out is that when Boeing added bigger engines to the Max, it required them to also add a software system that adjusted the balance of the plane. That software erroneously took over and sent both planes plunging to their demise.
But the real scandal occurred behind the scenes where Boeing deliberately hid mention of this software system in their plane manuals. You may say, “Why would they do that?” It was because the FAA mandated that any significant change in the operation of a plane require training. Training cost money so airlines hated it. Since Boeing knew the airlines wouldn’t buy any planes if significant training was required, they hid the software from the airlines, figuring it would work in the background and therefore no pilots would ever need to know about it. The script concludes by informing us that because Boeing is so important to the economy, the company got off with a mere slap on the wrist for their gross negligence.
As a screenwriter, you are a shaper.
You know the famous scene in Ghost where Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore take a lump of wet clay and slowly mold it into a vase? That’s what you’re doing as a screenwriter. You’re taking a lump (all these ideas in your head) and you’re molding it into a vase (a thoughtful compelling story).
When you don’t do that and you just sort of vomit everything onto the page – throwing clay around willy-nilly, not looking at your creation, checking your phone for messages, flicking the specks of clay on your hands back onto the lump – sure, you’re technically still creating a vase. But there’s no shape to it. It’s just a bunch of clay.
I want you to internalize what I’m about to tell you because it’s important:
Anybody can tell a story. The writer differentiates themselves by being a storyTELLER.
I can get the homeless guy down the street to ramble on for 3 hours about how the bus driver wouldn’t drop him off at his favorite liquor store. That will technically be a “story.” But it’s not a story told well. That’s what the storyteller’s job is. To take all the variables and shape them in a way that the story has form, dramatic value, and purpose.
Otherwise you’re just giving us information. That’s how Single Point of Failure read. We just go from room to room, character to character, telling us new things about the plane crashes. There’s no form to it.
A good example of a screenplay that has form and is somewhat similar to Single Point of Failure is Margin Call. That script is about a giant investment bank that realizes it has a ticking time bomb in its investment software that has a high probability of bringing the entire bank down if they don’t do something about it immediately.
Now you could’ve written Margin Call like you wrote Single Point Of Failure, where we meet all these different players across New York City. A rival bank’s CEO, someone at the SEC, a couple of reporters who get wind of what’s going on and start digging into their story. But anybody can write that. There’s no storytelling to that version.
Instead, writer J.C. Chandor cleverly focuses on a low-level worker in the company who discovers the error. He realizes that they’ve got about 24 hours before this destroys the company. So he brings it to his middle-manager boss. The middle manager then brings it to his boss. That boss then brings it to his boss. Until the climax is them in a meeting with the head of the company. The story has a clear design to it that’s been carefully shaped.
Meanwhile, Single Point of Failure feels like its scenes were generated in a randomizer. I always get nervous when every scene introduces a new character, which this does. That tells me that the writer isn’t thinking his story through. You’ve got all of these characters you’ve already created. Why not craft a story around them as opposed to throwing new character after new character at us? It’s because coming up with a story is harder. And we’re all inherently lazy and prefer to take the path of least resistance. But if you want to be a good screenwriter, that’s what you have to do.
But guess what?
I still liked Single Point of Failure.
A lot of that is because I like getting into the nitty gritty of why airplane crashes happen. So this whole script was basically catnip to me. And I was rewarded for my curiosity. I learned some things – such as Boeing deliberately hiding the 737 Max software in their manuals – that I didn’t know before.
Also, one of the necessary ingredients of a true story like this is that it makes you mad. If you’re mad, it means you’re emotionally invested. And while I’d rather be happy at the end of a movie than mad, I’d also rather be mad than have no feelings whatsoever. And this story makes you mad. You can’t believe that a corporation this big with this much responsibility would do something that put so many people in danger. It’s infuriating.
A Single Point of Failure is a plane crash geek’s version of Spotlight. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, check it out!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m going to give you at least one scene of good dialogue in your next screenplay. It’s called doggy bag dialogue. Doggy bag dialogue is any interesting piece of information relevant to the scene or broader story that the reader can take home with them. Single Point of Failure has a good one. This doggy bag dialogue occurs when Eddy explains to Jeff why Boeing’s MCAS system actually works *too* well.
