Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: Eighth grader Simon Paluska dreams of being a Taekwondo Black Belt, but he’s not allowed to take lessons. So he buys a Black Belt on Amazon for twenty-five bucks. Then, he has to use it.
About: Today’s script finished in the top 20 on last year’s Black List. Randall Green wrote 2019’s The Perfect Date and has half a dozen scripts in development.
Writer:Randall Green
Details: 100 pages

Today we deal with the screenwriting boogeyman.

The dark comedy.

The funny thing about dark comedies is that they’re the comedies writers most like to write. Yet they’re the comedies audiences least like to watch. So there’s obviously a disconnect there. Which is why I tell writers to stay away from them if possible.

But they never listen. :)

And that’s because, like I said, writers love to write them! Which makes sense. Writers are thoughtful people. They see comedy in the darkest of places. So it’s a natural fit. But you must nail that perfect blend of comedy and drama to get them right. And boy is that balance elusive.

13 year old Simon Paluska is flying to California to live with his Uncle. Simon just lost both his parents to an avalanche. The only thing getting Simon through these rough times is Taekwondo. He’s just started his Taekwondo journey and loves watching old martial arts movies. He can see himself dedicating his entire life to this discipline.

We get little hints here and there that Simon was picked on back in middle school and thinks Taekwondo will solve that problem. But after Uncle Nate breaks the news that he doesn’t have enough money for Taekwondo lessons, he tells Simon to buy a black belt online and learn Taekwondo ‘on Youtube.’ Simon hates the idea but supposes it’s better than nothing.

Simon wears his black belt to the first day of school and the class bully, James, makes fun of him for it. Simon walks over, kicks James’s desk and breaks his ruler. The class is awed by this move. So much so that hotties Liv and Autumn become obsessed with Simon. They recruit him in their plan to steal a bunch of money and move to Montana. Simon is so thrilled to have the attention of any female that he agrees, even though stealing is not part of the Taekwondo code.

As time goes on, Simon realizes that Autumn and Liv are not good for him and struggles with conflicting feelings of doing what’s right and doing whatever he can to impress them. Things get exponentially complicated when Liv kisses Simon, sparking a romance. Now Simon is in it to win it, regardless of Taekwondo. But is that the right move? Should he really go along with their plan to steal 20 thousand dollars and move to Montana at 13 years old? We’re going to find out!

Let’s talk about main characters for a second.

In general, you want your main character making choices themselves. Not having choices be made for them. Why? Because someone who’s making their own choices is ACTIVE. Someone who’s following orders or making choices based on what others say is REACTIVE. Or PASSIVE.

I’ve read enough screenplays to know how dangerous it is to write a PASSIVE or REACTIVE protagonist. There are ways to do it, of course. But it’s so much more trouble than it’s worth. Reactive and passive people are considered WEAK. Not just in stories. But in real life. So when you make that choice, you’re constantly having to explain, through other storytelling choices, why this is someone we should still be rooting for.

When I read this logline and I saw that this little kid buys a black belt, I thought, “That’s an interesting character.” He buys a black belt and then has to fake his way through it. There’s lots of comedy potential there.

But when I got to the part where his UNCLE makes the decision for him, the entire concept collapsed. Well, maybe ‘collapsed’ is an exaggeration. But I lost a lot of interest in the character after that one change.

When it comes to your main character and the main pillar holding up your concept (in this case, a kid buys a black belt even though he’s not a black belt), you need to be particular about the choices you make because they have an outsized effect on the story.

You may stress about that scene on page 64 that you’re worried “goes too far.” But that scene can’t destroy your script. Choices that occur early with both your main character and your concept – those are the things that can destroy the script.

In addition to this, the script turns the traditional “nerd arrives at a new school” formula on its head. What usually happens in these movies is the nerd gets beat up by the bully on the first day of school. In this version, the opposite occurs. Simon humiliates the bully. Just about every screenwriting book will tell you this is a good thing. Turning things on their head allows you to explore new territory.

But every writing choice has consequences. You gain some things but you also lose some things. Your job as the writer is to make sure that what you gain is better than what you lose.

I’m going to trigger a few people here but it’s such a popular example, I’m going to use it. In Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi,” he makes the bold choice of killing off Supreme Leader Snoke at the midpoint. What he gained was the element of shock. Nobody saw it coming. What he lost was the vacuum that was created when the top villain disappeared from the story. It felt like the Rebels had already won. This, of course, is what led to the desperate choice of bringing back the Emperor in Rise of Skywalker. There needed to be someone to take down.

With Simon demonstrating that he wasn’t afraid of the bully at the beginning of Black Belt, we move into uncharted territory. Simon is now looked up to. Girls are draped over both his shoulders. We gain a future that we aren’t able to predict. We haven’t been down this road before.

But we lose that deep emotional need to see our underdog defeat the bully who picked on him. That’s the reason we watch these movies. We watch them for revenge. If there’s nothing to avenge, then what’s the story? I suppose the story is that Simon must keep the Taekwondo illusion going in order to stay on top. And there is something compelling about that narrative. But is it better than a bullied underdog getting his vengeance? That’s a question the writer must ask.

Yet another problem is that the script never shows us what Simon’s normal life was like. As a result, when he walks up to the bully and breaks his ruler, we don’t know if that’s normal for Simon or the first time he’s done anything remotely like that.

Sure, we get hints here and there through conversation that he may have been a dork at his old school. But movies are SHOWING NOT TELLING. You can have your character say, “I’m a nerd” 2000 times in a row. It will not have as much impact as showing him do something nerdy. I was constantly trying to figure out who Simon was in this story. And I think that’s because I never got to see him around other kids prior to his experience at this school.

Despite all this, the script is DIFFERENT.

The voice is DIFFERENT.

It doesn’t feel like the same old thing you’ve read before. And there’s something noble about that. Most writers are rewriting their favorite movies with different character names. Black Belt feels original. As a testament to that, when I hit page 50, I literally heard myself say, “Where is this going??” I had no idea.

But just because something’s original doesn’t mean it’s going to work. And I spent the majority of this script trying to figure out what it was I was actually reading. That’s the problem with destroying the blueprint. You might end up with a house that has no bedrooms. Which is unfortunate since there were a lot of times during this script where I just wanted to go to sleep.

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

What I learned: Give your smaller characters little goals. Simon’s Uncle is saving up money to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend. It’s a small goal. But it helps make the character feel real. Fake characters simply exist, waiting for the writer to call on them. Real people are working towards things regardless of whether the writer calls on them or not. The Uncle character is the latter.

Week 0 (concept)
Week 1 (outline)
Week 2 (first act)
Week 3 (first half of second act)
Week 4 (second half second act)
Week 5 (third act)
Week 6 (evaluate your first draft)
Week 7 (rewrite plan of attack)

The hardest thing about rewriting is encountering problems that you don’t have the answers for. For example, you might have a weak main character. This is one of the most common problems you’ll find in writing. One of the main characters isn’t clicking for some reason.

And because your main character has such an outsized influence on your story, you can’t fix the other problems until you fix this one. You don’t know what to do. Do you come up with an entirely new character? Do you tweak the character you’ve got? What are that character’s new characteristics? If he has new characteristics, does that mean you have to rethink the character’s backstory so it stays in alignment with his new actions?

This famously happened with the American version of The Office.

The original six episode run had a colder Michael Scott who did what he wanted without thinking about the consequences. This is a guy who, when Oscar, the lone latino in the office, asked him if he could play in the company basketball game, Michael replied, “I will require your talents come baseball season, my friend.”

In the second season, they softened Michael up by changing a key tenet of his personality: Michael cared only about being liked. Everything he did was about getting the employees to like him. For example, when it came time to strip the employees of major health care benefits, he handed the job off to Dwight so they didn’t all hate him. The Michael of the first season would’ve had no issues enacting those changes. This change made Michael more human (and, by proxy, likable).

You can see how minor changes can have a major influence on characters. And if those characters are big, those changes will have big effects on the story.

This brings us back to the original problem. You may have a character like First Season Michael who you know isn’t working but you don’t exactly know how to fix him. You don’t yet know that having Michael desperate to be liked is the answer. What do you do?

There are a couple of options. Talk to someone about it. Explain the character. Explain what you don’t like about them. And get their opinion. Even if they’re not writers, just hearing yourself talk out loud about the character and hearing someone else react often gives you ideas. I also love lists. Specifically, “Top 5” lists. Write down your Top 5 ideas on how to solve the problem.

Then you have to pick something. Even if you’re not positive it’s the right route, you don’t want to get in the habit where “not writing” is the norm. Because every day that the solution to your problem is, “I just need to think about it more,” you reward the decision not to write. It then becomes more likely that you won’t write tomorrow. Pretty soon, you’ve gone weeks, maybe even months, without writing anything.

At a certain point you need to go with the best idea you have and understand that you might get halfway through the rewrite before you realize the actual solution, which will require you to start the rewrite over. I’d rather you do that, though, then keep going without writing. Just like your hero needs to keep pushing the story forward, you, the screenwriter, need to keep pushing the script forward.

I speak from experience. I’ve let a lot of scripts die in the rewrite process because I couldn’t figure out the solution to one of the problems. And while, in some cases, it was best that those scripts died, in other cases, I could’ve had something good if I had just pushed through.

By the way, there is usually a problem in every rewrite that seems impossible to solve. But when you do figure that problem out, it’s a game-changing moment for the script. It tends to open up a whole new world of ideas.

Let’s get back on track, though.

You have the entire month of May to finish your rewrite.

That’s 25 pages per week, which is the same number of pages we did for the first draft. That means you’ll be rewriting 3-4 pages a day. You might ask why we’re not moving faster. Since we’ve written a lot of this stuff already, shouldn’t we be able to move through the script more quickly?

No because I’m factoring in problem-solving time. There are going to be days where you don’t know what to do and you will spend two hours trying to come up with solutions. Once you have your solutions, the next day you’ll write 6-8 pages to make up for it. Which sounds like a lot but we’re assuming most of the scenes you’ve written will stay. That means you’ll be able to cover certain scenes in a few minutes, adding a new line of dialogue or two and that’s it.

But whatever you do, do not go more than one day without writing. Because that will get you into the habit of not writing. I cannot stress how easy it is for two days of not writing to turn into two weeks of not writing. If you don’t have the perfect answer for how to fix something, go with the best thing you’ve got. I promise the perfect solution will eventually come to you. You’re just not ready for it yet.

If you ever feel like you’re in the weeds and have lost track of what it is you’re doing in your rewrite, go back to the list I asked you to place at the top of your outline. The Five biggest things that need to be improved. For example, here are the five biggest things I needed to improve in my fictional comedy feature script, “First Date.”

1) Make Doug more active!
2) Claire needs to be less angry, more fun.
3) Story needs to be more active. They should be on the move 95% of the time. If they’re sitting or standing while talking, change those scenes so that they’re moving somewhere.
4) Beef up Tony the Villain. Look to add more scenes of him wherever we can. Cut to him more.
5) Look to sneak in exposition about Claire’s weird dating history wherever you can but only if it’s natural. It should never read like exposition.

Do what the list tells you to do. Remember, you prioritized these. In other words, “Make Doug more active,” is the most important note to making your script better. Therefore, if that’s the ONLY THING YOU IMPROVE, your script is going to get a lot better. So go through your scenes and look for ways to make Doug more active in every one of them.

If you’re someone who can focus on 2-3 things at once, also try and make Claire more fun while keeping them on the move when they chat. If that feels overwhelming, just focus on the “Make Doug more Active” problem. Then go back through the script a second time and focus on making Claire more fun. Then go through the script a third time and focus on keeping them moving.

There’s no perfect way to rewrite a script. A lot of problems are interdependent on each other. They naturally influence one another. So if you’re making Doug more active, Claire is going to change by the nature of being around someone who’s more active. She’s going to have more opportunities to ‘react.’ Those reactions are where you can focus on making her more fun. So solving some problems might solve other problems.

In other cases, solving a problem will create a new problem. By making Doug more active and regimented, maybe he’s not as funny. The most active character in The Hangover was Phil (Bradley Cooper). He was also the least funny character. So now you have to figure out how to still make Doug funny. And this will require you to go over the script again, and again, and again. Even though you’re creating an “official” second draft of your script at the end of this month, you may go through the script a dozen times over that month, changing things at each pass.

Let’s be honest. A rewrite is like a birthday wish list. You’re not going to get everything you want. However, if the only thing you’re able to do is solve your 3 biggest problems, your script is going to get a ton better. So don’t get obsessed over little things like that punchline to the joke on page 72. Spending two hours getting that joke just right isn’t nearly as valuable as spending that time solidifying your main character.

25 pages by the end of the week!

Good luck everybody!

I give you an update on my first producing project, Kinetic, and get into the challenges of producing in general. I review a 180 page screenplay starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. You will not want to miss this review, trust me. I get into Amazon’s insane spending spree on content. Numbers so big that they don’t make sense anymore. I introduce you to the concept of geezer teasers. I ask the question if Steven Spielberg even cares about audiences anymore. I give you my raw opinion on those Oscars. And I give two great screenwriting tips! Oh, and there’s a trivia question for half-off a Scriptshadow screenplay consultation.

If you want to read my newsletter, you have to sign up. So if you’re not on the mailing list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER!” and I’ll send it to you.

p.s. For those of you who keep signing up but don’t receive the newsletter, try sending me another e-mail address. E-mailing programs are notoriously quirky and there may be several reasons why your e-mail address/server is rejecting the newsletter. One of which is your server is bad and needs to be spanked.

Remember the days when you were a young gullible screenwriter and assumed that whoever you sent your script to sat down in front of a warm fire, a glass of expensive red wine by their side, and read your script from start to finish with the determined focus of a surgeon?

Ahhh, those were the days.

Eventually, you learned the truth. That most people who open your script don’t finish it. Sure, people who have been paid to read your script, such as readers doing coverage, will finish it. But the people who actually matter – the producers, the execs, the directors – they’re out the second they’re no longer entertained.

Most screenwriters don’t know that someone finishing your screenplay is a big deal. Even if they only thought the script was okay. The fact that they actually read your script cover to cover is an amazing feat. I still contend that entertaining people with words written on a page is the most difficult form of entertainment to hold someone’s attention.

It sucks that you never know *when* someone gave up on your script. People are generally nice. They don’t want to destroy your dreams. So even if they stopped reading on page 5, they tell you they finished it but it wasn’t for them. And how does that help you? You’re trying to become a better writer yet nobody’s identifying where it is you need to get better.

While I can’t tell you the exact moment readers give up on your script, I can give you the two most likely places. If you can master the writing in these two sections of the screenplay, you will reach your ultimate goal of writing a script that someone reads from beginning to end.

The first of these moments is THE FIRST TEN PAGES.

There is so much going on in the first ten pages from the reader’s side. For starters, they’re seeing if the first scene draws them in. They’re deciding if you can write. Is the writing professional? Is it easy to read? Or is it choppy and clumsily written? They’re deciding if they like you as a writer. Do they like your style? Do they like your voice? I just read a script by a well-known writer that I hated because I hate the writer’s style.

But what the reader is really looking for in those first ten pages is to get lost. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that what you’ve written is so compelling that they forgot about everything else that’s going on in their life and only care about one thing – what the next page holds. That should be every writer’s goal with those first ten pages.

This is why I tell writers to start their script with a mystery or a problem or an objective. All of these require a character to be active. They’re already moving through the story. And if the mystery or problem or objective is interesting, you’ve got us hooked. There’s a reason Raiders of the Lost Ark is considered to be the greatest movie opening of all time. You’ve got this big objective that’s seemingly impossible. And we get to watch this bad-ass motherf&%$#er try to obtain that objective. It immediately thrusts us into a fun entertaining situation.

But that’s not the only option. It can be a scene that plays to your biggest strength. If you’re great with dialogue, for example, drop us into a conflict-filled dialogue scene with 2-4 characters and let the dialogue fly, like the breakup scene in the opening of The Social Network. If you’re truly good with dialogue (and don’t just *think* you’re good with dialogue cause your mother told you so), readers will recognize that and not need a big flashy opening. The crispness of the dialogue will tell us, “This guy has talent. I need to keep reading.”

And don’t take your foot off the gas in those first 10 pages. I’ve read a lot of good teaser scenes that last 4-5 pages and then the writer reverts to clunky character setup and exposition. You don’t have the luxury of doing that. Your script isn’t already greenlit. As unfair as it is, once a script is greenlit, they can take their time in the first 10 pages. But you’re still trying to win people over. So you don’t get vacation time. You have to keep pressing. You have to constantly ask yourself, “Is this moment boring?” If it is, rewrite it until it isn’t.

If you manage to write a great first ten pages, readers will almost certainly give you until the end of the first act. The first act is where the big problem in the movie is set up (save the princess, get into the exclusive party, retrieve the infinity stones) and the beginning of the second act is where the characters set off on their journey. That stuff is inherently structured and usually fun to read.

This brings us to the second most common place a reader gives up on your script, which is 10-15 pages into your second act. The reason for this is that most writers know how to set up a story. But very few know how to tell the middle act of a story. They don’t have a plan. This becomes evident almost immediately. The goal isn’t clear. The characters seem unsure. The direction from the writer, if there is any, is vague. It just feels like they’re making things up as they go along (probably because they are).

And the threshold for how long a reader will put up with that is about 15 pages. Personally, I’ve seen so many scripts fall apart at this stage. You can almost read the writer’s mind. You can see the lack of confidence building with each subsequent scene.

The trick to getting this section right is, first, understanding what the second act is. It’s the obstacle act. Your hero will be pursuing something – the ultimate goal in the movie – and you will then throw a bunch of obstacles at them. Sometimes these obstacles will be overcome. Other times they will set your hero back. If, at any point, you let your foot off the gas with either of these (character no longer pursues goal, interesting obstacles stop appearing or don’t appear frequently enough), you will start to lose the reader’s interest.

In the movie Nightcrawler (one of my favorite screenplays ever), the ’15 minutes into the second act’ marker has Louis Bloom getting to a crime scene too late because his newly hired assistant, Richard, accidentally sent him the wrong way. It’s an obstacle he did not overcome. He gets right back on the horse, speeding 90 miles an hour through the streets of Los Angeles to get to the next crime scene where he’s able to get some gruesome footage that he sells to the local news.

He then parlays that into a meeting with the station’s news producer. He wants to set terms for future deals.

Louis Bloom’s determination – his goal to become the number one nightcrawler in the city – creates a narrative where, when we reach 15 minutes into the second act, he’s going to be doing something. And readers LOVE THAT. They love when the main character is ACTIVE and DETERMINED and will do anything to achieve their objective.

Conversely, in Gilroy’s and Gylenhaal’s next collaboration, Velvet Buzzsaw, if you fast forward to 15 minutes into the second act, you see Gylenhaal’s art critic character lazily waltzing through an art showing, chatting up others at the gallery. It feels random. Not to mention, the story hasn’t established which direction it plans to take. You take Gilroy’s name off of this script, I guarantee you no one makes it past page 45. Such is the importance of establishing a direction by the writer and a purpose for the main character.

If you can get this section right, I’ve found that most readers will read the rest of your script. If they make it to page 45 and they’re still into the story, they’ve decided your script is worth their time. So pay extra attention to these two sections of the script. When they’re good, it usually means the entire script is good. Good luck!

P.S. Look for a new SCRIPTSHADOW NEWSLETTER in your Inboxes Friday night!!! Update on Kinetic! Yayyyyyy!

Genre: War/True Story
Premise: Chronicles the clandestine CIA operation that risked igniting WWIII by recovering a nuclear-armed Soviet Sub, the K-129, that sunk to the bottom of the ocean in 1968.
About: Scott Free Films (Ridley Scott’s company) bought the rights to the David H. Sharp book “The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation: Inside the Daring Mission to Recover a Nuclear-Armed Soviet Sub” three years ago, presumably for Scott to direct. Scott Free hired a relatively unknown writer, Dave Collard (Annapolis), to adapt the book. That ended up being the right decision, as the script finished 3rd on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Dave Collard (based on the book by David H. Sharp)
Details: 123 pages

When you ask people what the number 1 rule in screenwriting is, they’ll probably tell you it’s “Show don’t tell.” Or “Make your protagonist likable.” Or “Don’t write a scene unless it pushes the story forward.”

They’re all wrong.

Anyone who’s been reading Scriptshadow for a significant amount of time knows the real number 1 rule in screenwriting: DON’T WRITE ABOUT THE COLD WAR. There has never been a movie about the Cold War that’s done well at the box office. It turns out that when you write about a war where there was no actual fighting, people aren’t that interested. Who would’ve thought?

Which is why I haven’t read Neither Confirm Nor Deny until now.

However, the lackluster offerings I’ve been seeing near the bottom of the Black List aren’t panning out. I figured if this script got 26 votes and finished in the Top 5, it might be good. So I’m giving it a shot! Even if that’s one more shot than was ever fired during the Cold War.

It’s 1968 and the Russians have just lost one of their nuclear submarines. This at a point in history where nuclear subs were redefining the potential to win a nuclear war. No longer would sides have to wait ten endless minutes for their missiles to sail across the sea and destroy a city. Now they could park themselves off a nearby coast and strike within seconds.

Somehow, the US Navy finds the missing Russian submarine at the bottom of the Pacific. This gives CIA Assistant Deputy Director John Parangosky an idea. What if we could capture it!? A simple question that has a complex answer. Nobody’s ever tried to pick up a dead submarine off the ocean floor before in one piece, while, at the same time, hiding it from the entire world. This won’t be easy.

So “JP” calls upon the smartest engineer he knows, Dave Sharp, to create the device that’s going to capture the sub. And then he goes to fellow brainiac, and alcoholic, John Graham, who runs an ocean mining business. He wants John to design a plan to scoop this thing up.

What the crew quickly realize is that this task is impossible. They can’t use any current Navy ships as they’re not equipped to lift that kind of weight. They will have to design a totally new ship. The budget blows up to 375 million dollars, the CIA’s ENTIRE YEARLY BUDGET. And in order to explain why a weird ship is parked out in the general vicinity from where a Russian sub disappeared a couple of years ago, they have to hire eccentric Howard Hughes to pretend he’s digging for rare ocean minerals in the area.

All of this takes a lot longer than anybody planned for. They first spot the sub in 1968. They don’t get to the point where they consider pulling it up until 1974. They want to test the equipment even longer but when the press gets wind of the mission, it’s only a matter of time before the gig is up. Therefore, they have to do it! Will they succeed and save America? Seeing as I’m here typing this, I’m guessing yes. But wouldn’t it be one hell of a twist if the whole mission, instead, started World War 3?

Neither Confirm Nor Deny is going to be a hit for people who liked The Imitation Game and Argo. It’s very much in that same vein where we follow a bunch of government folks trying to pull off an impossible task, but the writer never takes the world too seriously. There’s a big emphasis on creating “Characters” with a capital “C.” You can tell that just from the way people are introduced.

“JOHN GRAHAM (50s) walks into his office, clutching a cigarette in one hand, a coffee in the other. A one-two punch that he’s perfected so well that he can drink the coffee without removing the cigarette.”

Neither Confirm Nor Deny revels in the fact that it gets to include wackadoodles like Howard Hughes, and I have to say I’m a much bigger fan of that approach than the super-serious approach. These backroom government bureaucracy flicks can feel self-important if you don’t have a sense of humor about things. That’s the vibe I got from this. It never let things linger too long without a laugh.

Secretary: Now I got a question for you– how come you never come out and play volleyball with everyone?

Dave: Because I’m here to work.

Secretary: Even God took off one day.

Dave: Yeah, well, he wasn’t trying to raise a Russian sub that’s three miles down.

That approach alone makes this script worth the read.

But, ultimately, what prevents this script from reaching impressive territory is the sheer amount of time the team has to complete their task. Hollywood movies need urgency. We need to feel like things must happen now or else we start wondering why we’re watching. If you have all the time in the world to get the job done, then I can go home and be reasonably certain you’ll get it done. If, however, you tell me it can only be done RIGHT NOW or else the whole thing blows up, I have to stick around to see what happens.

You can trick audiences for a while when it comes to lack of urgency. It requires being vague and cutting to each scene without telling us that four weeks have just passed, or two months have passed. It feels seamless because you’re not drawing attention to the time jumps. Another Ridley Scott movie, The Martian, does this well. You don’t realize that the time is passing on Mars as much as it is.

However, if you try and extend the timeline out too long, the audience becomes hip to your misdirect. I mean, we started this adventure in 1968. It’s now 1974. How important can capturing this piece of equipment be if we’ve waited six entire years and nothing in the Cold War has changed? And haven’t they built new cooler more sophisticated subs by now? It’d be like me trying to backwards engineer an iPod but by the time I was finished, they were on the iPhone 12. Big deal.

This is part of my broader problem with the Cold War as a script backdrop. It doesn’t provide high enough stakes. I remember reading The Imitation Game and, at one point, I think they said that for every day they didn’t figure out the Enigma machine, 100,000 more people were killed. Those are what I call “stakes.” That is what I call urgency.

To be clear, this is an enjoyable script. But it never convinced me that capturing this submarine meant anything in the broader scheme of the Cold War. It was just a fun side-quest for the CIA. But, for what it’s worth, it did introduce the phrase, “We can neither confirm nor deny “ into popular culture. So there’s that.

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

What I learned: “The bad guys are getting close.” In my favorite new movie, Bad Trip, we constantly cut away from our heroes’ journey to show Bud’s psychopathic sister getting closer and closer to catching up to them. They’ve stolen her car and she’s going to make them pay. This common screenplay device is a nice way to add urgency to a narrative. If we see the enemy getting closer, we know our heroes have to hurry up. Neither Confirm Nor Deny should’ve used this device. There should’ve been a subplot where we intermittently cut to the Russians, who are getting suspicious about the Americans’ activity at sea. The more we see the Russians getting close to figuring out the Americans’ plan, the more urgency it would’ve added to the objective.