Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: When an armored car transporting a captured drug lord is ambushed on the Sepulveda Pass, an off-duty CHP officer driving her junkie son to rehab must defend the gridlocked freeway against a ruthless cartel hit-squad.
About: This script finished NUMBER 9 in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest, which had a little over 2000 entries.
Writer: George H. Stroud
Details: 113 pages
Let me get straight into why this script made the Top 10.
I want to make a Die Hard’ish movie about a dilemma on a traffic-jammed highway. Imagine the famous Armored Car Heist in Heat… spread out over 90 minutes! That’s a freaking movie right there, baby!
I was actually helping another writer put one of these together a while back that had an even juicier setup. But that script was too far away from being “movie-ready.”
So when this showed up in my contest, I was like, “Yes!” Not only did it fit the “idea criteria” I was looking for. But it was set on a stretch of highway that I, myself, spent two years driving to work on. So I knew this highway section like the back of my hand.
That’s something to keep in mind about producing. Producers are just like writers. They have certain movies they want to make. For some of them, their criteria is broad (any “home invasion” idea may be fine) and others, it’s more specific (a Die Hard like movie that takes place on a traffic-jammed highway). They’re then trying to find these scripts. Which is why you should never feel bad when your script is rejected. It may be because that producer was never interested in making that kind of movie in the first place.
That’s not to say producers can’t be won over by a great script outside of their comfort zone. As I’ll get into with the #6 script on Friday, I struggled about whether to put that in the Top 5 for this very reason. The writer was insanely talented. But I didn’t see a clear path to getting it made. Nor did I believe, if it did get made, that it would make any money. But I’ll save that discussion for Friday.
In the meantime, let’s check out Sepulveda Pass, which was one of my favorite titles of the contest!
Single mother and cop, Olivia Moreno (38), definitely loves her 17 year old junkie son, Max. But Olivia’s own addiction – work – has contributed to the growing riff in their relationship.
So when she gets home after a particularly rough day and sees Max getting high with his buddies, that’s the final straw. She tells him he’s going to rehab. The two jump in their car and head up north, which takes them through the Sepulveda Pass, a hilly section of highway that bridges Los Angeles with the Vally, and that happens to be the single most congested stretch of highway in the United States.
Unbeknownst to Olivia, up ahead, two vans release a ton of nails and barbed wire onto the road, which causes multiple accidents that bring the highway to a standstill. Back behind Olivia, five motorcycles weave their way through the stopped cars and up to an armored truck, which they then begin trying to shoot their way into.
When Olivia realizes what’s going on, she hops out of her car and goes back to help the marshals. In a lucky maneuver, Olivia is able to charge the truck just as the baddies get it open and leap in, closing it. Once inside, she sees that she’s stuck with who the truck was transporting – a man wearing a bag over his head.
The leader of the baddies, 35 year old Joaquin (who has a skull tattooed all the way around his head) organizes his team, of which there are only two left (three in total), to get inside that truck and get bag-head dude. But Olivia is a step ahead of him and escorts the prisoner, who we now know to be, “El Cazador,” head of the Sinaloa cartel and America’s sixth most wanted man, out the front of the truck and up the highway, using the cars as cover.
Joaquin, who it turns out is El Cazador’s nephew, begins immediately pulling hostages out of cars to hold off LAPD and get Olivia to do what he wants. While Olivia is, initially, able to ignore these demands, everything changes when Joaquin locates Max then realizes it’s her son. Now in the driver’s seat, he attempts to perform a trade. But everything changes again when we realize that El Cazador is secretly working with the Americans, not his cartel.
Sepulveda Pass is a movie.
I know that.
I can see the movie when I close my eyes.
That’s the difference when you’re reading as a producer as opposed to as a reader. It isn’t just about ‘does the script work?’ But, ‘is this a movie?’ Something that people would pay to make? And then something people would pay to watch?
There’s this early image of the motorcycles snaking through the five lanes of stopped cars that’s one of those perfect movie images you could put in a trailer that sells the entire movie.
And there’s just something fun about this cat and mouse high stakes game taking place on a scalding hot stretch of traffic-jammed highway. It’s like the movie writes itself!
But no matter how much I want to make something, my screenwriting analysis roots always kick in. And there were a few things keeping this from the top 5. The good news is, they can all be fixed. But some of them are harder fixes than others and would take time.
First off, there aren’t enough bad guys. After the initial shootout with the armored car, there are only 3 bad guys. The reason that’s important is because, geographically, escape seems easy when you only have 3 bad guys on one end of the highway to outrun. I was constantly wondering why Olivia didn’t simply walk north with El Cazador until she got to the front of the traffic jam.
I know her son is still in traffic but this was before El Cazador had found him. So that was confusing.
And then, inexplicably, one of the bad guys just gets up and quits. It was bizarre. You’re already struggling to present your villain as a true threat, and now it goes from three of them to two of them. At that point, I wasn’t afraid at all of Joaquin.
Luckily, this is an easy fix. Add more bad guys. Put 5 of them on the north end. 5 of them on the south end. And now you’ve trapped Olivia and the cartel boss. I can even imagine a great scene where they decide to squeeze her out. Each side begins marching inward until there’s nowhere left for Olivia to hide.
Secondly, there isn’t a single great set piece. It’s all standard shoot-and-duck or “I’m going to shoot a hostage!” type scenes. This script needs 4-5 great set pieces that are direct extensions of the unique scenario that they’re in. I’m talking like an overpass needs to get completely blown up. I’ve already given you one, with the squeeze move. Now you need to create four more.
Third, the plotting could be more creative. Holding characters hostage and threatening to shoot them is EVERY ONE OF THESE MOVIES EVER. It’s not specific to this unique circumstance. Don’t rest on cliches. Come up with cool new stuff. It’s a challenge but this is the difference between a run-of-the-mill action script and a kick-ass action script.
Finally, the main two characters – Olivia and Max – are good but not great. The reason this matters is because we’re mildly interested in “good” characters escaping. But we’re on the edge of our seats watching “great” characters try to escape.
Max, in particular, needs an upgrade. He’s an addict without the authenticity of addiction. I know from watching that show Intervention that when you threaten to take a drug addict to rehab, they will become VIOLENT if they need to in order to escape. Rehab is worse than death to an addict. Yet Max shrugs his shoulders and asks what time he should be ready.
But look. This is standard stuff that you see on any professional script that’s moving towards production. They need better set pieces. There are alway characters who need to be improved. So it’s up to you, the writer, to show that you can take these challenges on.
The setup for this script is so solid that I have no doubt George can address these issues and get this up to my requirement to consider something production-worthy which is, at least, a [xx] worth the read. Or maybe I should now say, [xx] worth turning into a movie.
George was not comfortable posting his script online so if you want to read the script, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I will connect you with George.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If a character doesn’t feel authentic, we won’t care as much when they’re in danger. That’s because we don’t care as much when we realize that a character is fictional. The idea is to make the character so authentic that they are indistinguishable from a real person. If we believe they’re real, their life being on the line feels to us like a real person’s life is on the line.
This week, I’ll be reviewing the five screenplays that just missed The Last Great Screenwriting Contest finals. Script Number 10 is today, 9 tomorrow, 8 Wednesday, 7 Thursday, and 6 Friday. The Top 5 from the contest have already been announced. You can see them here.
Genre: Horror
Premise: When an estranged daughter returns to her childhood home to help with her mother’s extreme hoarding, she must find a cursed object in the clutter before a malevolent spirit can possess her mother forever.
About: Today’s script, Possessions, is special in that it was voted into the Top 10 by you, the readers of the site. I had a large pile of “Almost” scripts in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest which I then had a secondary competition for on Scriptshadow. Possessions beat out all the other scripts. Katherine Botts has been a frequent contributor to the site over the years and has gotten a [xx] worth the read for one of her previous Amateur Showdown efforts.
Writer: Katherine Botts
Details: 101 pages
I was reading Possessions for the second time last night (more on that in a sec) and there’s this moment that arrives where we realize the mother is possessed by a dead man. I stopped reading, looked up, and said to no one, “It’s a hoarder movie about possessions… and she’s ALSO possessed! Genius!” It was one of those cool little moments that make script reading so fun.
Ah, but what did I mean when I said I read the script twice? “You don’t have time to be reading scripts twice before you review them, Carson. You’re a producer now!” Well, it just so happens that I read an early draft of Possessions a couple of years ago. So let’s just say I “possessed” more information about the Possessions script than your average reader. Heh heh heh.
What I remember about that draft was that it was rough. There was a lot going on and it hadn’t all coalesced together yet. So I was curious to see what kind of progress Katherine had made. Let’s find out together, shall we?
Real Estate broker Norah Dodds is annoyed when her brother, Dylan, calls and tells her that their mom, Felicity, is acting up again. More so than usual. We get the impression that their mom has special needs. And now those needs are getting in the way of Norah’s career momentum! But since it’s her mom, she heads home to tackle the problem anyway.
Once at her childhood home, Norah is horrified to see that her mother, a practiced hoarder, has taken her hoarding to Def Con fire hazard levels. The house has become so decrepit that the city is threatening to condemn it unless they clean it out! Which is why Dylan called. Furious, Norah schedules out the week to get all the crap out of the house.
Meanwhile, the small town Norah grew up in is dealing with a problem of its own. While clearing out his deceased father’s home, Mark Echt finds a bunch of dead bodies in the basement!!! It turns out his dad was a serial killer! And the reason that’s relevant is because Felicity bought some items from Mark’s estate sale. And those items, which are possessed, are scattered around this house, hidden inside the hoarding!
Norah doesn’t know this yet, though. She’s too busy cleaning out the bazillion pieces of her mom’s crap so the city doesn’t condemn the property, as that would mean she’d have to spend even more time with her mother trying to find her a new place to live. We can’t have that happen. But Norah’s priorities change when an extensive yarn set in the basement ties her down and attempts to strangle her within the endless pile of trash scattered everywhere. We can see the house itself almost swallow her up.
After barely escaping, Norah realizes that there’s more going on here than mere hoarding. She does some research on the serial killer and suspects he’s cheated death, hid himself in his possessions, which will allow himself to transfer into a new body and keep living. Which is exactly what happens. Echt takes over Felicity’s body and kills her next door neighbor! When Norah identifies that her mother is now Echt, she takes him on in a final battle to save her mother, and maybe in the process, save their relationship!
There’s SOMETHING here.
I can see a horror movie built around the act of hoarding. There’s some sort of link there that makes sense.
Katherine’s also improved this script a lot since I first read it. My main note was that there was too much going on. Norah’s dad was still alive, which complicated things (he’s dead now and a big reason why Felicity’s become such an uncontrollable hoarder – much better), and Felicity also had Alzheimer’s, which added this whole other complex component to everything. It felt very “everything and the kitchen sink.”
Everything-and-the-kitchen-sink writing is when writers don’t have an editor. Whatever they think of, they put in their script. The problem with that is ideas start competing against each other. Imagine if in A Quiet Place, instead of just having alien monsters with super-hearing, there were also zombies. That’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink writing. It doesn’t allow the most important subject in your movie to shine.
And that’s where I’m still having problems with Possessions.
It’s cleaner. It’s more focused. The story is sharper. But something about this serial killer storyline isn’t working for me and I’m trying to figure out what it is. It feels a little “everything-and-the-kitchen-sink” to me in that: What are the chances that at the exact same time that your mother’s home is being condemned for hoarding that, a few blocks away, they learned that one of the townspeople was a psychotic serial killer who cut up body parts and kept them in suitcases?
When there’s a serial killer like that – a “national news” type of serial killer? That happens maybe once every few years in our country. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t buy into that aspect of the story. The counterpoint to my complaint is that it’s part of the setup. It’s established early on in the first act. The unwritten rule is that you get one big coincidence in your first act. So why am I not giving Possessions that coincidence?
I gave it some deep thought and I think I may have figured out the problem. A serial killer is going to be the bigger idea in a movie 9 out of 10 times. So if you’re an audience member and you’re over here watching this slow family drama about hoarding and across town you’ve got this really interesting serial killer story…. you’re going to wonder why we don’t get to watch that.
I mean think about it for a second. Who’s the more interesting character? The woman who just came home because her mom’s been hoarding more than usual? Or the guy who just came home to find out his dead father was a rabid serial killer his whole life? Isn’t that guy the one we should be following?
I understand that the serial killer storyline makes its way into the hoarder storyline eventually. But it takes a while. And maybe that’s the real issue here. The hoarding story isn’t as potent as it could be and doesn’t move as fast as it could. There’s “slow” burn and there’s “too slow” burn. This is more of the latter than the former. If we could ramp up the pace and inject some plot developments with more punch, I might not have all this time to wonder why we’re not following serial killer dude’s son.
It’s frustrating because the script is DEFINITELY better than the first draft I read. In particular, the relationship between the mother and daughter is much more complex and dramatically interesting. But there’s a clunkiness to this serial killer component that needs to be ironed out before I can get on board with Possessions. And more needs to happen in this script for sure. It feels like the screenplay has three big horror moments. It needs seven or eight. The horror needs to be more potent.
Possessions got a ton of votes so make sure to counter my thoughts in the comments section!
Script link: Possessions (latest draft)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Preferably, you should be following the most interesting character in your story’s orbit. So, early on, when you’re doing those initial drafts, keep an eye on your other characters. Do their lives sound more interesting? Are their situations more compelling? If the answer’s yes, consider making them your main character. If you still want to follow the character you originally envisioned, that’s fine. But you’re going to have to reimagine them to the point where you can honestly say they’re the most interesting character (or are in the most compelling situation) in the story.
The five finalists, other contest entries that will get a review next week, and that mysterious script that Carson calls “The best screenplay I’ve ever read in my life.”
Who would’ve thought it would only take me a year to get through 2000 scripts? Well, lookie-loo, we’ve made it to the finish line. YAAAAYYY! Now, as I told you guys, this contest has always been about finding movies to produce. So whenever I came across a difficult decision – this script or that script – that’s the criteria I used: “Do I want to produce this?”
I bring this up so you don’t feel bad if you didn’t make the cut. There were some strong entries that either were too hard to market, too expensive, or not something I personally felt I could add anything to. The good news is, some of those scripts will still get exposure.
Starting on Monday, I’ll review the five scripts that just missed the finals. The first of those will be the winner of the “ALMOST” group that you, the readers, voted for. That’s Katherine Botts’ script, Possessions. Then I’ll review the 9th best script on Tuesday, 8th best Wednesday, then 7th, then 6th. Then, on Monday, January 25th, I’ll announce the winner of the contest.
Now, onto that big buzzy mysterious script everyone is talking about. Yesterday, in the comments, I dropped the bomb that I had just read the best script I’d ever read in my life (yes, out of 8000 screenplays). Why, then, is it not a finalist? Because it’s un-produceable. It’s so dark and depraved and hard to stomach that it just can’t exist in today’s marketplace. Imagine Seven meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now imagine being 100 times more depraved than the combination of those two movies. What I just said is not hyperbole. It’s that dark. However, the storytelling is SO AMAZING. The way the writer crafts the story is so INCREDIBLE. It is the most unforgettable screenplay I’ve ever read, hands down. It’s just impossible to make is all.
But I don’t think the script should disappear. So what I’m going to do is chat with the writer next week and decide how to get this out there. What I may do is review the script on that final week of January so, at the very least, the writer gets some exposure. Because the world is his if he wants to be a working screenwriter. He’s one of these one in a million guys.
Okay, now onto our five finalists! I’m listing them in no particular order. Make sure to give them a big congratulations in the comment section!
Title: Kinetic
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: Following a harrowing phone call while out on the road, a long haul trucker with a tormented past must deliver a tank of liquid crystal meth before sundown in order to save his pregnant wife.
Writer: Chris Dennis
Why It Made The Finals: This is Die Hard with a truck. The moment I knew it was a movie was when the main character, a former drug-addict, is forced by his captor to snort a line of cocaine while driving, instantly transforming him into his old crazed soldier self. He immediately destroys the captor and steels this “hulk” version of himself to rescue his wife no matter what. It’s an old-fashioned action movie that’s executed perfectly. That’s the key with these scripts. If the concept is familiar, the execution has to be incredible. And Chris nails it in that department.
Title: Tighter
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: When a Japanese rope bondage workshop is taken hostage by masked intruders, a couple must find a way to escape their captors while tied together at the wrists.
Writer: Arun Croll
Why It Made The Finals: I love this idea. There are a million hostage scripts. I read them all the time. Even though they’re so ubiquitous, I don’t fault anyone for writing one because ‘hostages’ is a built-in high-stakes scenario. It’s the all-important “S” in GSU. But the problem is, nobody ever gets creative with it. Hostages in a bank. Hostages in a building. Hostages on a ship. Arun’s setup was clever. Imagine someone taking you hostage when you were at your most vulnerable – already tied up. That, along with the BDSM component, lends this weird energy to the hostage situation that immediately makes the movie feel fresh. Tighter was really fun.
Title: Crescent City
Genre: Action-Horror
Logline: A woman with the ability to control ghosts is forced to protect a witness being hunted by supernatural assassins.
Writers: Andy Marx & William McArdle
Why It Made The Finals: I knew this one had a shot from the first ten pages. A getaway driver takes a crew that just robbed a bank to a safe house. She explains to them, when they get there, “Nobody will come looking for us here.” “Why not?” They ask. “Cause this house is haunted.” A haunted safe house is something I’d never heard of before. Another fresh idea. What really got me excited about this one was the franchise potential. The main character is able to control ghosts. So there’s this deep mythology about a voodoo cop-crime underworld that’s going on right next to the regular world. It had shades of John Wick in that sense. These two writers also wrote a script that nearly made the finals called “Maniacal,” about masks that take over their human host bodies and turn them into crazed killers. Really fun! And proved to me that these writers have the goods.
Title: Mother Redeemer
Genre: Psychological Horror/Thriller
Logline: When Allie – a devout member of the Children of Ra – receives a sign from their God that she will soon be the mother of Earth’s messiah, she must find a way to protect herself and her divine child from the cult’s corrupt leader, who intends to use the newborn for his own malicious purposes.
Writer: Brian Accardo
Why It Made The Finals: I’ve wanted to make a movie about cults for as long as I can remember. Which is why not one, not two, but three cult-themed scripts made the semi-finals. It ended up being an embarrassment of riches as all three of the scripts were strong. But there’s something about the heroine in Mother Redeemer that was a cut above. She had a couple of AMAZING moments in the third act. We’re talking kick-ass movie lines people will be quoting in 20 years. It also allows me to make another movie that I’ve been dying to make, which is my version of Rosemary’s Baby. Which is essentially what this is but with a cult twist. Fun fact – the writer, Brian, SPECIALIZES in writing cult scripts. So he’s been perfecting this genre for a while.
Title: That Wind Come Down
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After taking the fall for a horrific crime and spending twenty five years in prison, a neurologically disabled ex-con must confront his troubled past as he desperately tries to find a kidnapped young woman who’s disappearance may be connected to his past transgressions.
Writer: Chris Rodgers
Why It Made The Finals: It’s pretty straight forward, really. I know, for a fact, that a big time actor will want to play the lead in this movie. Being neurologically disabled, this is a different type of hero than we’re used to. It’s the kind of acting challenge actors dream of. Get the right director on this thing and it might even lead to an Academy Award nomination. The writer, Chris, is the real deal. He had another script that could’ve made the finals, but it just happened to be one of the other cult scripts that lost out to Mother Redeemer. Chris has been writing for a while. In fact, he was an Amateur Showdown winner all the way back in 2013!
I want to finish this off by thanking everyone who entered. Just because you didn’t make the finals or the semis, don’t let that discourage you. There are a lot of reasons a script might not have been picked, the least of which is that it’s not the kind of movie I like. Someone else who does like those types of movies may have loved your script. Had they been running this contest, you may have been the winner. There’s lots of subjectivity in the industry. As long as you keep studying and keep learning and keep writing and keep sending your scripts out there, you will eventually find fans of your work. Good luck and keep us all posted on your success! :)
P.S. Tomorrow, the SCRIPTSHADOW LAST GREAT SCREENPLAY CONTEST finalists are announced!
We’re almost there!
We’re exactly one day away from the announcement of the finalists in the Scriptshadow Last Great Screenplay Contest.
But before we get there, I wanted to share some final thoughts about the competition. When you’re reading 3-4 screenplays a day, a clarity comes over you about why some screenplays work and others don’t. It has something to do with seeing good writing and bad writing side by side.
The biggest difference between an okay script and a good script is that okay writers put the onus on the reader while good writers put the onus on themselves. What I mean by that is, okay writers feel that the very act of writing a screenplay should get them points from the reader. “I spent all this time on this. I created all these characters. I wrote seven drafts. You owe me your appreciation.”
Good writers don’t care about that. They know that’s the last thing that is going to affect a reader’s interest in their screenplay. Instead, they know only one thing matters: Does the reader want to keep reading?
Do they want to keep reading after the first scene?
Do they want to keep reading on page 10?
Do they want to keep reading at the end of the first act?
Do they want to keep reading at the midpoint?
Having a vague belief that the reader wants to keep reading at those checkpoints is not what I’m talking about. I’m saying you’ve specifically designed your story in a way that you’re using story devices in those moments that keep a reader interested.
You’re using suspense. You’re using mystery. You’re creating intrigue. You’re creating worry. You’re creating tension. You’re offering questions that need to be answered. You’re using conflict. You’re throwing difficult challenges or complications at your characters. You’re building a sequence towards a clear climax. You’re setting up interesting unresolved problems between characters (that readers have to stick around for to see them resolved).
Let’s look at yesterday’s script, which did a great job keeping the reader invested all the way up to its climax. The first part of the script is a “building” sequence. That means you’re clearly building towards a mini-climax (a climax that’s going to come within the next 8-15 pages). Tom meets Sandra and they start dating. Everything is going well. But, uh oh, Sandra’s troubled brother enters the picture. He owes a lot of money to someone and if he doesn’t pay it, they’ll kill him.
This is a complication in the relationship. Readers naturally want to then see if your characters can overcome this complication. We also get the sense that Sandra might not be who she says she is. So we’re worried that Tom may be getting played (another complication). More importantly, we’re still building the storyline. The two get closer. The brother’s problems get worse. Until, finally, they have to deal with it. Tom gives Sandra the money to pay off her brother’s debt. And the next day, she disappears.
We then cut backwards in time to Sandra months ago. She’s a coked-out hooker. Huh? A mystery (or you could call it a question): Why is Sandra a coked-out hooker? Gotta keep reading to find out! We then build our second sequence. Sandra meets a mysterious guy (mystery!) who offers to help her out. This new guy, Max, then takes her under his wing and builds (a key word here – when the reader can feel you building towards something, they’re more likely to stick around) her into a con artist. But then we start worrying that Max may be doing the same thing to Sandra that Sandra was doing to Tom. And we have to keep reading to find out!
That’s such an important thing I just said so let me repeat it. You want to create a series of situations where the only way for the reader to find out what he wants to know is to keep reading. If you don’t pose any questions, the reader doesn’t need any answers. You need to dangle a series of carrots in front of the reader at all times. If you give the donkey (your reader) any of those carrots to eat, you must replace it with a new carrot. The less carrots you dangle in front of the reader, the harder it is to keep them invested. Most good stories have 3-5 carrots dangling at all times.
Conversely, I was reading a script from the contest and after a strong first scene (which is why the script advanced) it went 25 pages of straightforward setup. Setup of characters. Setup of their situations in life. Setup of where they lived. There was no thought at all put into keeping the reader invested during this time. I was bored out of my mind. Which is what I’m talking about. A good writer never lets that happen. Even when the task is difficult. I would guess that this writer’s argument would be, “Well, I had a lot of characters to set up. I didn’t have a choice.”
No. No no no no no no no no no no.
You never have an excuse to NOT ENTERTAIN the reader. Don’t ever sell yourself that lie. That lie is why you haven’t broken in yet.
Earlier this year, I read an Agatha Christie type script – a bunch of characters come to an island to visit a mysterious rich guy – and the writer had a dozen characters to set up. Did he spend the first 20 pages giving us a boring rundown of each character? No, he set up a few characters on the boat ride in. Then when they get to the house, the caretaker is waiting at the front door but he’s difficult. He has a set of rules about who gets in and who doesn’t. This leads to a few heated arguments. In other words, the writer built a scene around CONFLICT to keep the reader entertained while he was introducing his characters.
Now you may say, “Big deal, Carson. That’s not hard.” Tell that to the thousand-plus scripts I’ve read that introduced their characters in the most boring way possible. This writer could’ve easily had the caretaker be nice. Offer no resistance at all. Open up the door. Everybody walks in. Continue the character introductions for another five pages. And we’re already bored. You have the option, at every point in your screenplay, of asking, “Is the reader entertained right now?” If there is even a small chance that they are not, you need to start troubleshooting and figure out how to keep them invested. Add some conflict. Add some mystery. Build towards an approaching mini-climax (something that’s going to come to a head within the next 8-15 pages).
I realize it’s hard to quantify this stuff into a clear set of rules. But basically you want to change your mindset from being a “writer” to being a “designer.” You’re designing a series of sequences in your screenplay that are constructed to keep a reader’s interest.
You’re not writing “whatever comes to mind” and hoping for the best. If you write like that, your reader will lose interest at some point. Unless you’re one of those 1 in a million writing geniuses. But I wouldn’t bank on that. Instead, design each segment of your story to be impossible not to keep reading.
There’s one caveat to this. You have to know how to create strong interesting characters. Nothing I’ve said above works unless we either like or are intrigued by your main characters. I recently read a script by a beginner writer that technically checked a lot of these boxes I talked about. But the characters were way too thin. They didn’t act like real people at all. So even though the writer created conflict between his characters, even though he came up with plenty of complications for them to endure, I was still bored because I didn’t care about anyone.
I’m not going to get into what makes a good character because that would take another 40,000 words. But I’ll leave you with a tip. Think of each character as their own individual story. Because they are. They’ve lived this whole life up until this movie started. Draw from that life to create the things that make us interested in them. There are a lot of qualities that make characters likable or interesting. The Queen’s Gambit used a popular one – a girl who loses her mother in a car crash and is forced to live in an orphanage. Who’s not going to have sympathy for someone in that situation?
Make no mistake. The writer didn’t just stumble onto that. He DESIGNED it. He designed the character’s life in a way so that you would feel sympathy for her. It was calculated. Which is exactly how you need to be. You need to design characters we like or are interested in. And then you need to design a series of sequences in your screenplay that are impossible not to keep reading.
That takes humility. You are admitting that just throwing your stream-of-conscious thoughts onto the page isn’t enough. You need to design it. Then, and only then, will writers lose themselves in your work.
Seeya tomorrow with the CONTEST FINALISTS!
Genre: Con
Premise: (from Black List) A chain of scam artists goes after one wealthy family with the perfect plan to drain them of their funds. But when love, heartbreak, and jealousy slither their way into the grand scheme, it becomes unclear whether the criminals are conning or the ones being conned.
About: Oddly, this comes from the team whose only other feature credit is the wacky Jonah Hill comedy, The Sitter. It finished top 10 on the 2020 Black List. Apple and A24 snatched the spec script up when it went up for auction. Julianne Moore will play Madeline.
Writers: Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka
Details: 117 pages
This genre has disappeared as of late and I’m trying to figure out why.
It could be as simple as nobody’s written a good con-man script in a couple of decades. I’m trying to remember the last one they released. Was it that Will Smith Amber Heard abomination? The box office results of that one probably didn’t help any subsequent con man movies get made.
I think the issue is that when you write one of these, they can’t just be “movie smart.” It’s one of the few genres where the writer has to be a lot more intelligent than the audience. Because if they aren’t, the cons aren’t clever. And if the cons aren’t clever in a con-man script, then what are we even doing?
Most of the cons in these scripts are “movie-clever.” You know how you’ll watch a movie and there’s a party scene and one of the characters will make a joke and everyone in the scene will laugh but nobody in the audience will laugh? That’s a “movie-joke.” It doesn’t make real people laugh. Same problem with bad con-man scripts. The cons work on the movie characters but the audience wasn’t fooled at all.
I’m hoping this is one of those rare con-man scripts where I’m genuinely outsmarted. Let’s see.
20-something Tom is living a pretty lonely life in Philadelphia when we meet him. It doesn’t help that he owns a bookstore that has no customers. Luckily, that changes when 20-something cutie pie Sandra shows up. Sandra is looking for a book for school and just as Tom is about to ring her up, he does something he never does – he asks her out to dinner.
The two have a great first date, then a great second date, and after a couple of weeks, they’re spending every second together. Tom is on cloud nine! That is until one morning at Sandra’s place when some guy shows up yelling at Sandra. She tells him to leave and explains to Tom that that was her brother. He owes a lot of money to some bad people. How much, Tom asks. 350,000 dollars.
Despite us screaming through the screen at Tom to NOT DO IT, Tom gives her the money (it turns out Tom was secretly rich). And then, magically, the next day, Sandra no longer lives in her apartment. She’s gone.
We then cut back in time to meet… Sandra. But this Sandra is much different than the previous Sandra. She’s a hooker-junkie. Pissed at the lack of money Sandra is making, her pimp makes her approach some lonely guy at the bar. This is Max. Max is in his 30s and can best be described as neutral. After some small talk, Max informs Sandra that he’s going to take her away from this life and help her find a better one.
Cut to our “Neo training sequence” where Max teaches Sandra how to be a lady. He teaches her to sound like she knows about things she doesn’t. And, most importantly, he teaches her to find and play a mark. Pretty soon, Sandra is ready to be a real live con woman.
Then we cut back even further in time to meet… Max. It turns out Max is a screw-up who constantly crawls back home for money. Even his own single mom, Madeline, is embarrassed for him. And this is the worst time for Max to be asking for money since his mom has finally found someone she likes – Richard. Richard is handsome and successful and a genuinely good person. Please, his mother tells Max, don’t screw this up for me.
But what if I told you Max couldn’t screw it up for his mom. That’s because, this isn’t really his mom! It’s his mentor! The person who taught him how to con! And they’re lovers now. Or, at least, Max believers they’re lovers. His fake mom may very well be taking Max for a ride. But that’s okay. Because Max has just found out something very important about Richard. That his son owns a bookstore in Philadelphia. That’s right… Richard’s son is Tom! Duh-duh-duhhhhhhhh!
The dead horse I beat over and over again on this site is: FIND. AN. ANGLE. Find an angle. There are lots of ways to tell a story. You can, of course, use the tried-and-true “straightforward” approach. No gimmicks. No games. A simple linear narrative approach. And that’ll work if the idea is really strong. But sometimes you need a snazzier approach.
That’s what we got today. Telling this story in reverse order while switching the central character each time was genius. Like I said at the beginning of this review, the con-man genre is inherently predictable. So if you tell it in a linear fashion, it’s too easy to guess what’ll happen. The very nature of us changing perspectives and times every 20 pages eliminated our power of prediction. Cause I didn’t even know where the story was headed, much less who was conning who.
But the writers didn’t stop there. They knew that for any screenplay to work, it has to connect with the reader on an emotional level. There are a handful of emotions to choose from. Here, they use anger. The manner in which Sandra took advantage of Tom was so cruel that we wanted to see her go down. So the writer wisely made that the final storyline.
It turns out that Madeline screwed Max over because what she was really interested in was getting Richard’s money when he died (he was in poor health). So the story picks up at the wake, with Tom meeting Madeline as the lawyer informs them that Tom’s father left all of the money to Madeline (in part because Tom proved he wasn’t financially responsible after being conned out of 350 grand). Madeline is elated, of course. But what she doesn’t know is that Tom has spent the last couple of years looking for the woman who conned him. And he’s finally found her. Of course, wherever Sandra is, her connection to Max won’t be far behind. And guess who’s connected to Max? Madeline.
So it isn’t just about the cons here. It’s about the emotional payoff. Do we get to see what we really want to see – which is for these three people who took advantage of Tom to go down. And that, my friends, is how you write a good screenplay.
A side note here is that the dialogue was only slightly better than average. However, I think that’s why it worked. A lot of times in this genre, the writers try to show off their dialogue. Everybody’s got a clever comeback. People are using double-entendres. A lot of the dialogue is dripping with sexual innuendo. That’s fine if that’s the kind of story you’re writing. But these writers wanted this to feel realistic. If you want a story to feel realistic, you can’t over-stylize the dialogue. It’s got to feel authentic.
Which is a good reminder. Everybody talks about how important dialogue is. But if you’re not great at it, there are stories you can tell that don’t require you to be great. So just pick those stories.
My only problem with this script is the ending. I’m not going to go into specifics because it’s super-spoiler territory. But I think the writers bit off more than they could chew. The beauty of the first 90% of this screenplay was how simple it was. Yes, we kept changing times and characters, but once we got into a time-period, it was straightforward. The ending betrays that simplicity, which is unfortunate, because before that, this was a ‘mega-impressive.’ It was, honestly, almost perfect. Hopefully they clean the ending up before they shoot. Either way, this was still a really good script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Make sure we know what’s at stake!! I find out AFTERWARDS that the Richard con was a half billion dollar con?? No no no no no no. That information needs to be clear BEFOREHAND. We, the reader, will be way more invested if we know that kind of money is at stake. Before that, I thought Richard maybe had 5 million dollars or something. I was like, good for you. You can get a three bedroom apartment in midtown. I didn’t realize how big this con actually was.
