Today’s script asks, “What if Marriage Story actually had a plot?”

Genre: Drama
Premise: A rising movie star and her struggling playwright husband meet with a pretentious director and a manipulative intimacy coordinator to rehearse a sex scene. Over one chaotic day, power struggles, petty jealousies, and explosive accusations threaten their marriage–and the careers of everyone involved.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. Sam Rubinek is a young writer who was staffed on the show, Riverdale. The Canadian-born Rubinek was a graduate of the Warner Bros Television Writers Workshop.
Writer: Sam Rubinek
Details: 101 pages

Eiza González for Carson?

I’m still reeling from just how bad of a screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie has let himself become. Something switched in him when he became a director. It was like he didn’t think the screenplay mattered anymore (something he’s indirectly alluded to several times on X). Final Reckoning is the inevitable conclusion of that attitude. What a disastrous screenplay.

ANYWAY!

In order to get away from the stink of that film, it’s time to read about something the exact opposite – intimacy coordinators!

There’s been some spirited chatter about how ridiculous this position is in Hollywood. But I’m on the other side of the argument. I’m shocked that, for 50+ years, filmed sex scenes were the wild west. You would briefly chat about what to do in them then, once the cameras started rolling, anything that happened happened! That’s INSANE to me. So it made total sense to create this job.

But that doesn’t preclude the position from being made fun of. Writing a script about the job is actually quite smart. There are new things that pop up in society every so often and you get a brief window where a few lucky writers are able to chronicle them before they become old hat. It’s one of the few times you get to write something fresh, something that hasn’t been done before.

Let’s see how today’s writer dealt with it.

Fresh off becoming a movie star, Carson (a female btw) is filming her latest movie, a sort of artsy project with an up-and-coming pretentious director named Marcello. For one of the flashbacks in the movie, which details a former relationship, Carson was able to get her husband, playwright and sometimes actor, Jay, to play the role of the man in the romantic flashback.

In said flashback, the characters have sex, and this has necessitated a run-through of the sex scene, which will be guided by an intimacy coordinator named Perla. Perla seems to be the only one who wants to do this, for secret reasons that will be revealed later.

Marcello would rather be shooting scenes from the film, which is already in production. And both Carson and Jay see this as kind of ridiculous. They are married and therefore don’t believe they need an intimacy coordinator. But everyone is so scared and sensitive these days that there’s no way around it.

The story takes place over just a few hours, virtually real-time, as we begin to see that everyone has something going on. Carson, uncomfortable with her quick rise to fame, relies on booze and drugs to get by. Jay, feeling like the weak link in the relationship, is desperate to finalize Carson being in a play he’s written, which she hasn’t yet told him that she’s not going to do.

Marcello gets a call from his agent at the beginning of the day discussing rumblings of an old short film he made that’s been dug up and posted on the internet. The film could be construed as anti-semitic, which is causing the trades to come digging for a story.

And then we have intimacy coordinator Perla, who we learn is a bit of a stalker, campaigning hard to get this job so she could be in the presence of the beautiful and amazing Carson, someone she very well may be in love with. Perla goes hard at Carson’s marriage, using any chance she gets to emasculate Jay as the two prep for the sex scene.

Over the course of the next few hours, all of their lives will fall apart in some significant way. The goal will be to retain enough of themselves to fight again tomorrow.

There’s this sandwich place down the street from me called “All About The Bread.” With today’s script, we might as well call it, “All About The Dialogue.” There’s a lot of dialogue here, and most of it is quite good.

It’s nice timing because I’ve been running into some dialogue issues with some of the scripts I’ve been consulting on. Today’s script reminded me of one of the keys to getting dialogue right.

You have to be good at establishing WHO YOUR CHARACTERS ARE.

If you don’t, they become this vague amalgamation of a bunch of half-formed ideas. The problem with this is that you’re then unsure how to write the character’s dialogue. Cause if a character is a million different things, then they’re actually nothing.

It’s way easier to find a character’s voice if you create a one-sentence directive for yourself.

For example, if I designate my character “the sweet naive neighbor who sees the best in everybody,” then I know his dialogue will be soft and understanding. Maybe annoyingly polite. He might use phrases like, “Shucks,” and say things like, “It’s so pleasant to see you on this fine morning.”

When you hear the screenwriting advice of, “A reader should be able to tell which character is speaking without looking at their name,” this is how you achieve that.

Perla is a great example of this. She’s introduced as someone with a “soft-spoken, crunchy-granola hippy vibe.” Therefore, when characters apologize to her about something, it’s easy to figure out how she’ll respond. She will not respond with, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Which is generic. Instead, the actual dialogue from the script is, “It’s all love.”

Note how that’s something only a hippy-type would say.

Another thing that really makes the dialogue pop in this script is power dynamics. I talk about this in my dialogue book in more detail if anyone’s interested. Power dynamics bring all sorts of fire to your characters’ interactions.

In this case, the power dynamics play a huge role. Carson is “above” Jay on the power ladder not just because she’s a movie star, but because she’s a real actor and he’s more of a part-time actor. This means that, during the intimacy sequence, she’s subtly calling the shots and Jay has to go with it.

For example, there’s a sequence where they run through the dialogue in the scene and Perla tells them that they can ask for a “repeat” if the other person’s line read isn’t convincing. Jay says his next line and Carson says, “repeat.” Jay repeats it and Carson says, “repeat.” He says it again and she says, “repeat.” Repeat, repeat repeat.

Why is this relevant? Because the secret sauce to good dialogue is conflict. Unequal power in a scene is conflict, especially when the characters take advantage of that power.

Actually, this is the type of thing you only see in more advanced writing. So, if you’re using power dynamics to charge your dialogue, you’re in a good place in your screenwriting career. Cause most writers don’t know how to do it. Or, if they *do* do it, it’s by accident.

Speaking of advanced writing, I loved how all the characters had their own thing going on. Most writers would’ve stopped figuring out their characters at Jay and Carson. They wouldn’t have put much, if any, effort into Marcello and Perla. But, by doing so, it really kicks this screenplay up a notch. Marcello’s real-time cancelling is a killer subplot if there ever was one. And Perla’s secret obsession with Carson unravels in delicious fashion.

If there’s a weakness to the script, it’s that it’s a play. And Rubinek hasn’t done enough to adapt it for the screen. It’s not visually dynamic in any way. It is not a “show don’t tell” experience. And so, on screen, it risks feeling static. But I found the script itself to be compelling. I was really into these characters and their ultimate fates.

Would recommend it without hesitation.

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

What I learned: Here’s how to properly use guiding parentheticals in dialogue.

JAY
I promised myself I’d finish that rewrite of the second act. Oscar gave me some notes–

CARSON
(teasing)
Oh, Oscar has some notes for you. I didn’t realize Oscar the Great and Powerful had notes on your play.

JAY (unserious)
Shut up.

Note how the parenthetical words are critical to understanding the tone of the responses. If they were not used, the reader would not only have interpreted the meaning incorrectly, but interpreted the exact opposite of what was meant. That’s the only time you need parentheticals in regards to the line’s meaning – when, if you didn’t use them, the line would be read completely wrong by the reader.

Genre: Action
Premise: Ethan Hunt’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to destroy an evil AI that wants to blow up the world. He’ll do anything, including going to the bottom of the ocean, and soaring to the highest point in the sky, to achieve his goal.
About: The last Mission Impossible movie was supposed to be Part One in a Two-Part Mission Impossible franchise finale. But the movie did so poorly that Paramount regrouped and repurposed today’s film as more of a standalone finale. The movie took in 77 million dollars over four days, losing out to the live action Lilo & Stitch film, which broke records with a 180 million dollar take. But at 68 million dollars for the regular 3-day weekend, Mission Impossible 14 secured its highest ever opening weekend take! Who says theatrical movies are dead!!??
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie
Details: 3 hours long!

I want to start off by acknowledging how amazing Tom Cruise is. The dude is literally risking his life for our entertainment. That is not an exaggeration. He does these insane stunts that all bear the risk of death just so that we can sit in an air-conditioned theater and enjoy ourselves for 8 hours. I mean 3 hours.

I’ve seen a couple of interviews with him recently where he talks about making movies and it’s incredible that, at his age, with how many movies he’s made, that he still has the same drive that he had at 23 years old.

It’s almost in-explainable. Scientists should study him. Cause that doesn’t happen with anybody in any career. There’s always a natural downtick in their drive. Praise the Thetan gods, I suppose.

Tom Cruise is the last movie star not by accident. It is because he outworks everybody that he’s had this continued success. And let that be the big lesson from this movie. If you want to succeed as a screenwriter, outwork everybody. You do that and you will find success, I promise you.

I am going to give you a highly simplified summary of Mission Impossible 18 simply because I don’t have the mental capacity to track all the nuances of the plot, of which there are thousands.

A singular AI is taking over the world, getting access to the nuclear arsenals of all the nuclear countries one at a time. The only way to stop this is to get the AI’s original source code, which will be used to turn off the entire internet. This source code is at the bottom of the sea in a crashed submarine.

Ethan Hunt convinces the president of the United States to give him an aircraft carrier so he can go get this source code. He preps his newest team to be there when he arrives back up topside. Except he doesn’t know where that’s going to be yet so they’ll have to stand by.

He goes down, gets the source code, comes up in Antarctica where his team miraculously finds him. But then we head to some cave space where both the government and Lame Villain are waiting for him to take his code. Lame Villain triple crosses everyone in order to get the code and make an escape. Ethan then chases him on a biplane. He defeats Lame Villain, turns off the world, purging it of the AI, then reboots everything back up again. The End.

Before I go medieval on the atrocious screenwriting in this movie, let me say what I liked about it. I liked that they brought back the CIA desk operative from the original Mission Impossible. That’s still the best Mission Impossible movie. That moment of Cruise breaking into the white room is iconic. This was the guy who designed that room. For his failure, he got sent to Antarctica for 30 years.

It ended up being shockingly heartwarming. He met his wife out there. And he gives Ethan Hunt the knife (that Hunt dropped at the last second) back, which brought out the Carson goosebumps. Then this guy gets to join the team! How cool is that! And don’t you love the irony? That Ethan Hunt “ruined” this guy’s career and now they’re teaming up together. That’s actually smart screenwriting.

But that’s the end of any love I had for this movie. The rest of it is an utter mess. It’s sloppy. It’s poorly written. It’s overwritten. Pretty much everything I warned writers about in the Friday article came true in this screenplay.

Dude, you could’ve cut out the entire first hour and lost nothing. Lost absolutely nothing. There is ZERO reason for a 3 hour Mission Impossible movie. Zero. This is Screenwriting 101. Don’t start your story earlier than you have to. McQuarrie starts his movie literally an hour before he needs to. We don’t get the crux of the goal until an hour into the film. That’s inexcusable.

And the plotting?

Well, in each of the last four Mission Impossible movies, I lost track of the plot. So, when I went into this one, I said to myself, “I am going to focus so hard and listen so intently to every plot point that I never lose track of what’s happening in this movie.”

That lasted about 30 minutes.

I don’t want this review to turn into an attack on Christopher McQuarrie but the dude has settled into some really poor writing habits, the most problematic of which is his obsession with turning McMuffins into black holes of confusion.

You see, McQuarrie doesn’t just give you a McMuffin. He’ll give you half a McMuffin. They must go find the other half of the McMuffin somewhere else. Then, we hear about a new McMuffin, which the two-halves of the first McMuffin will open. But before we can get this McMuffin, we must first go off and get a code. Where is this code? This code is at the bottom of the sea, in a submarine. Oh, but before we can go to his submarine, we must first figure out where it is. Which means we have to go find its coordinates. Where are the people who know the coordinates? In Antarctica.

It goes on and on and on and on and on.

And I don’t know why McQuarrie would think any of this was even slightly entertaining. I suppose he thinks it’s “smarter” than going with one clear McMuffin. But dude, we’re not here to play your game of McMuffin Roulette. We want to watch some cool set pieces! By making us suffer through 40 minutes of gobbledygook exposition between every set piece is disastrous screenwriting.

It’s so bad that I’m actually reevaluating McQuarrie’s entire screenwriting career. Has he ever been a good screenwriter? I’m starting to wonder if his only value to the movie industry is keeping Tom Cruise alive long enough to finish each movie.

Then, we finally get to the big impossible mission, the submarine dive, AND IT SUCKED! That set piece sucked. I’m sorry. It was Tom Cruise swimming in silence for 20 minutes. I love Tom Cruise but there is a limit to what I’m able to bear with him. Quietly swimming through a wrecked submarine to find the source code for the evil AI (why in the world would the AI source code be in a submarine??????) was peak levels of “who the hell cares.”

Even the most dramatic part of the set piece is something THEY TOLD US WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AHEAD OF TIME! They say that Ethan Hunt is going to die while he’s in the freezing water before he can get to the surface but that’s okay because the frozen water is going to preserve his body and they’re going to bring him back to life.

And that’s exactly what happened! So there was no suspense at all. “Here he is, dying. Here they are, grabbing him. Here they are, reviving him. Oh, and, yup, they revived him, just like they said!” Where’s the suspense when you’ve already told us exactly what’s going to happen?

I’m even going to push back on the featured set piece of the movie, the bi-plane sequence. For starters, why are we flying perfectly brightly painted World War 1 airplanes? What’s the logic behind that?

Are we even trying to connect the dots anymore? Clearly, they wanted to use the bright unique planes in the climax but didn’t spend a single moment coming up with a reason for why these planes would be available to the characters.

You have to try!

Steven Spielberg loves making movies this way – stitching together plot beats to get to set pieces. But what’s so great about movies like Indiana Jones is that all of the set pieces MAKE SENSE.

When Indy is dragging himself underneath the moving jeep at the end, it’s because that line of cars is transporting the Ark of the Covenant. So he’s trying to catch up to the ark. These planes have absolutely nothing to do with the movie. It’s almost like Ethan Hunt ran over to an airport and the movie production said, “Here, use this one.” There was no attempt to integrate the planes into the story in any logical way.

And the scene wasn’t even that good! There’s no dialogue, which you would think would be a good thing as this was an action set piece, but there were several key moments where it was unclear what Ethan Hunt was trying to do and why. There were two seats in the plane and I think he accidentally got into the wrong seat, the one that doesn’t control the plane. But that one still has basic controls for the plane? So he was using secondary, harder, controls for the plane?

What am I supposed to be thinking in that moment? Am I supposed to be in suspense because Ethan is trying to decide whether to risk his life attempting to get to the “real control” seat or stay safe using the “less reliable control seat?” Who knows! Cause nobody tells us.

And if you’re internally arguing with me about how exciting this scene was, let me ask you this. If you didn’t know that Tom Cruise was doing all these stunts for real, would you think it was a good scene? I get that Cruise and his stunts are part of the package here. You can’t take away one without taking away the other. But I’m judging this ending on the dramatic impact to the story. And the story in this plane chase was ho-hum. Chase, get close, grab on, punch guy.  That was it.

I did like when the bad guy gleefully screamed that he was the only one with a parachute before getting his head split open on the tail. That was great. But then Tom Cruise ends up having a parachute later!!!! That perfectly encapsulates the last 5 Mission Impossible movies. Logic does not matter. We’re told Ethan is screwed cause he doesn’t have a parachute. But then he just does have a parachute for some reason.

I’m glad these movies are over. They’re not as cool as James Bond films. They’re not as gritty as Jason Bourne films. They’re not as pretty as John Wick films. And they’re not as fun as Fast and Furious films. They were always second rate to me and it’s nice to finally put them to bed.

I would not recommend ANYBODY see this movie. You will be disappointed. There isn’t a single memorable moment in the film, in my opinion. It’s a total waste of time.  But thank goodness it’s the last waste of time.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If there was ever an example of why you should keep your plotting simple, it’s this movie. It’s ridiculous how over plotted this is. It’s ridiculous how many boring exposition scenes we’re dragged through as a result of that over plotting. Please, I beg of you – keep your plots simple. Or else they’ll end up like Mission Impossible 26.

MEMORIAL DAY SCRIPT NOTES DEAL! I’m giving out unlimited HALF-OFF sets of notes for the Memorial Day Weekend. If you want one, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: MEMORIAL DAY. You don’t need to send the script right away but you do need to pay now to secure the discount!

As we approach this weekend’s big movie release, Mission Impossible 19, I pondered what it was that made big action movies tick. My first thought was set pieces. Mission Impossible thrives when it has those 15 minute show-stopping set pieces.

But set pieces need something to connect them together. Those connecting pieces are your plot. And, actually, the more I assess today’s action movies, the more I realize how much plotting they contain.

This is because a) Studio movies are plot-driven. b) There are more characters than ever in movies these days (Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Marvel), each with their own plotline. And c) big action movies need a lot of plot to push the story forward.

Managing this can be overwhelming, which is why I always encourage writers to keep their plots simple.

A good simple plot begins with a protagonist’s goal. You see, a story needs to always be moving forward. So you design your script to accomplish that. Always ask, what can I do to keep pushing the story forward?

By introducing a goal for the main character, you’ve begun the forward-pushing process. Whether it’s to find the Ark of the Covenant, kill Thanos, save your kidnapped daughter, find the serial killer, or win the National Spelling Bee, you need that push to get things started.

The bigger the goal, the bigger the initial push. What that means is, if you introduce a giant goal, like ‘we need to kill Thanos or the universe dies,’ the reader will endure more pages before they require another major plot point.

Now we just need to write a bunch of shit before we get to the end and our job is done, right? Oh, if it were that easy.

Think of your plot as going on a New York to LA road trip. The big introductory goal is the first tank of gas you put in your car. But you will need to refill your car with gas many more times throughout the story before you get to your final destination.

The question then becomes, “When do you refill?” Well, like I said, it depends on how big your initial goal is. If it’s really really big, you may not need to introduce a second plot point for 30 pages. But, generally speaking, in plot-driven movies, you need to refill the tank every 12-15 pages.

But Carson, what does “refilling the tank” mean? “Does it mean I need to add another goal?” Maybe. But not necessarily. Things get tricky here because there are many ways to affect a plot. Technically, you have infinite options.

But the way I like to look at it is, you have your main plot goal (kill Thanos). Then you introduce the smaller goals that need to be accomplished to get there. For example, your hero may need to confront some supervillain who knows where Thanos is first. That could take 12-15 pages.

Once that goal is over, you then introduce a new goal (put more gas in the tank) and you’re good to go for another 12-15 pages.

However, what I’ve learned is that if you only have your characters complete a series of goals until they get to the final goal, the script gets predictable and stale. It feels like we’re on a very stiff roller coaster in the backwoods of Appalachia.

Therefore, there are other plot developments (or “plot points”) that can put gas in the tank.

The recent Final Destination movie is a good example of using different ways to fill up the tank. At one point, a character who’s slated to die next doesn’t die for some reason. This creates doubt and uncertainty within the group, which lowers their guard. Which results in one of the other characters getting killed.

This is a different kind of plot development. It doesn’t give us a goal we must achieve. It’s more of a disruption. Note how when you add a disruption, it sends the script down another path. Which is a big part of plotting. Plotting is a series of events that occur, one after another, often through cause and effect.

Now that you know what plot is, let’s discuss how to get the most out of it. Because I read a lot of scripts where the plot falls apart. What do you think the most common reason is for a plot falling apart? I’ll let you mull that over for a second. Ready for the answer? Overplotting.

This is when you have too much stuff going on in the movie. Your primary plot is too busy. You have too many characters engaged in too many subplots. Too many new plotlines are introduced before old ones have been completed.

Why is this bad? Because plot has this evil twin brother who, if you’re not careful, can take your screenplay down faster than Connor McGregor can pin a 7th grader. That evil brother? His name is EXPOSITION.

The more Brother Plot plays a part in your screenplay, the more Brother Exposition plays a part in it as well. That’s because all plot needs to be explained. If Spider-Man needs to take down Mysterio with a gangbusters plan, you need to explain that plan to the audience. That exposition takes time and is often boring to read. If your plot is simple, the occasional exposition scene isn’t a problem. But if your plot is complex, you will be spending nearly all of your scenes keeping the reader updated on what’s going on.

This is why my screenwriting philosophy is to keep your plots SIMPLE but ACTIVE. Make them easy to understand, but constantly moving (and evolving!). They still need to zig. They still need to zag.

Anora is a great example of this. Nobody is ever confused when watching Anora. We always know what’s going on. Guy and girl fall in love in first act. Girl must find guy in second act. Girl must go back to her old life in third act.

Very simple.

And yet never is the movie predictable. And never does it get bogged down. That’s great plotting. Which is one of several reasons it won the screenwriting Oscar.

Compare this to Killers of the Flower Moon. That script was the epitome of overplotting. We followed 6-7 key characters in town, each with their own heavily detailed plotlines.

On top of this, the individual plotlines were dense and hard to follow. This is what happens when you try to do too much with your plot. You bring your story to a standstill as you bounce back and forth between subplot updates and heavy exposition.

EVERY TIME YOU ARE USING EXPOSITION IN YOUR STORY, YOUR STORY IS AT A STANDSTILL. It cannot move while exposition is being offered. The more plot you add, the more exposition you must include, which means the more areas of your script that are standing still.

Some of you may point to several dense intricately plotted movies that worked. It’s true. Any level of plotting can work. But the more plot you add, the more time you will need to spend rewriting and rewriting and rewriting to make all that additional plot feel seamless and elegant.  One might have to rewrite an exposition-heavy scene 50 times before it’s cleaned out every ounce of excess exposition.

Mad Max: Furiosa is a densely plotted film. There is a TON going on in that story. From Furiosa getting kidnapped as a child, to growing up with this evil family, to escaping, to becoming a road warrior. Meanwhile, a parallel storyline is showing us Dementus grow up and try to take over the region, fail, then succeed. Then we have this third faction of people who control the bullets in the region. There’s a lot going on.

I can’t imagine the amount of time it would’ve taken to rewrite that script to get it to that final draft. And even then, you have plenty of people who still think the film is overplotted. They’ll say there’s too much going on.

Compare that to the previous film, which had the simplest plot ever: Furiosa needs to drive from Point A to Point B. Is it a coincidence that people liked that sparsely plotted movie a lot more? I don’t think so.

This is why I say, err on the side of writing Fury Road rather than Furiosa. Audiences prefer simple easy-to-follow plots as long as those plots are active, and as long as those characters are going after things and overcoming obstacles along way.

How does this relate back to Mission Impossible?

Well, Mission Impossible isn’t as relevant to the average screenwriter as one might think. When Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise want to make a Mission Impossible movie, they just make it. There is no one who gets in their way. This means that Christopher McQuarrie can do whatever he wants with the script.

If he wants to write a quadruple cross somewhere that only 3% of the audience will follow, he can do that. There is no producer telling him he needs to get rid of that plot development because it doesn’t make sense. Ditto coming up with some set piece that isn’t relevant to the larger story.

This is why the Mission Impossible scripts are slightly difficult to keep up with.  And why you don’t want to use them as learning tools. They will lead you astray for sure.

A great spy script has effortless setups and payoffs, elegant double-crosses, twists that are surprising yet still make sense. That’s what you’ll have to do to get your action script noticed. Nobody’s giving you that if you go Full McQuarrie.

In the meantime, keep your plotting simple. What that’s going to do is allow you to focus on the fun. Focus on the chase. Focus on the conflict. Focus on the drama. You will not have to deluge your script with endless scene after endless scene of exposition. Your template, if you’re writing action specs, should be movies like Novocaine, Civil War, Fury Road, Nobody, and The Beekeeper.

We just want a fun story that moves along briskly and surprises us every now and then. If every screenwriter had that kind of philosophy when they wrote an action movie, we’d have a lot more great action movies.

Genre: Horror
Premise: When a deadly virus infects mothers and turns them against their offspring, a father must do whatever it takes to protect his daughter from her mom.
About: This script finished with 12 votes on last year’s Black List. It was picked up by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes in the hopes of becoming the next breakout horror hit, a la A Quiet Place. Screenwriter Marc Bloom, who hails from Cape Town, South Africa, was also on last year’s Black List, with Ferocious. He also has a script, Cauldron, set up at 21 Laps. Most importantly, he’s an OG reader of the greatest screenwriting site on the internet, Scriptshadow. 10 out of 10 highly recommend.
Writer: Marc Bloom
Details: 94 pages

Maggie G. for the mom?

One of the hardest balances to strike in spec screenwriting is writing a script that reads like lightning but still contains depth, particularly on the character front.

It’s hard to write one and two sentence paragraphs and still get into the heart of your characters. It can be done. I’ve seen Brian Duffield do it in Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately.

But, usually, nailing one of these means sacrificing the other. And, with Mom? I think the wonderfully speedy read prevented the script from diving into that section of the story ocean that needed it most – the relationship between the members of this family.

Let’s take a look.

40-something John Slater is a doctor at an Urgent Care Clinic in a small town in Ohio. He’s used to seeing people throwing up, being in pain, and being generally uncomfortable. On this particular day, nothing that exciting happens at work.

But then he gets home where his wife Tess, and 12 year old daughter, Izzy, are waiting. The family seems to be normal and loving – no clear problems from what we can tell. When John heads off on an errand, his next door neighbor, an annoying man in his 60s, pleads for John to help him. His mother has disappeared.

John reluctantly goes inside the dark creepy house only to eventually find the mother walking around for the first time in years. The woman then picks up a rake and viciously attacks her son with it until he’s dead, then uses the instrument to bludgeon herself to death.

John hurries back to his own home where he finds Tess acting bizarre towards Izzy. There’s something sinister about the way she’s speaking. John senses that there’s more going on here and grabs Izzy to leave. That’s when Tess comes after them and things get real. Once outside, John and Izzy see that all across the neighborhood, mothers are killing their offspring. It’s time to get the hell out of here.

The two steal a car (Tess sabotaged theirs so they couldn’t leave) and hear some details on the news about what’s going on. It seems to be some sort of virus connected to trace tissues that every child leaves within their mother. These tissues have gone bad, for lack of a better word. And now mommies wanna slaughter their children.

The National Guard comes in to quarantine the town, which basically makes every person with a living mother a sitting duck, including our duo. So John and Izzy bounce around town, watching as various insane things happen (mothers swan-diving off their roofs once they’ve killed their offspring, mothers coming out of the woods in droves to attack the people stuck on the highway). Eventually, Tess catches up to them and she’s not leaving until her daughter’s ticker is no longer ticking.

I kind of liked this script but the thinness of the story definitely got in the way. It seems only natural that a script about mothers trying to kill their children is trying to say something. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out what that message was. Which means this is just a movie about mothers trying to kill their kids.

Does a script like this have to say something?

I loved Final Destination: Bloodlines, and that wasn’t trying to sell any message. But that was a horror-comedy. “Mom?” feels more serious. The concept wants you to look deeper. But every time I dipped my head below the water, I just saw black.

The answer is somewhere in this family. All screenplays come down to broken relationships that need to be resolved. Whatever the issue is that broke the relationship is typically the message of the movie.

For example, if you watched that Netflix show, Four Seasons, Kate (Tina Fey) and Jack (Will Forte) have this relationship where they’ve become roommates rather than a couple. He wants to change that but she doesn’t want to put in any effort. That’s what they have to figure out. And it’s part of a broader message in the show about how relationships are hard and if you don’t nurture them, they will fall apart.

That’s very clear when you watch the show.

It’s telling when you write a script where the message ISN’T CLEAR. Because the reader is looking for a message. If they don’t find it, they start getting frustrated.

What a lot of writers do is they freak out when they realize their story doesn’t have a message so they kind of pepper it with several messages, unofficially telling the reader to, “Go ahead and choose whichever one you like best.” But that never works. Multiple messages just confused the overall point of the story.

I know this: If you want to write a more thoughtful powerful story, you need more words. You need more sentences and paragraphs. Which is scary for a screenwriter because they’ve been told from day one to keep it lean and tight.

But, remember, there are tools available that allow you to lengthen your descriptions and scenes and character moments without it FEELING like it’s longer. Which basically comes down to dangling carrots. If you’re dangling juicy carrots in front of the reader, that manipulates time.  A continuous series of rewards (carrots) helps us forget about time.

This is why every Final Destination set piece moved so fast. Cause the big fat juicy carrot of death was dangling at the end of each scene.

I think Mom? needed more character development so that we understood what this family was going through and, therefore, what needed to be fixed. I don’t have the answer by the way. I don’t know, off the top of my head, how to construct a satisfying family drama in this scenario. It’s tricky. Cause there isn’t anything very relatable in life to your mother trying to kill you.

You can use metaphor (maybe mom has never understood you – so her killing you is a metaphor for your inability to connect) but even as I wrote that out, it didn’t sound quite right. In Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately, Duffield uses possession as a metaphor for the difficulties of marriage. And he pulls it off perfectly.

Like I said at the outset, I kinda liked this script. And I think, depending on who directs it, it’s going to be full of some very freaky compelling imagery. Which I assume will get butts in seats. But I was looking for more here. I don’t think the script is where it needs to be to deliver on the promise of its premise. Yet!

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

What I learned: Your heroes should never feel safe in a horror movie.  The safer they feel, they safer we feel.  And if we feel safe for too long, we check out.  Here, the moms are violent killers, but only towards their offspring. In other words, if you run into somebody else’s mom, she’ll walk right past you. Therefore, there were a lot of times in this script where I felt safe. Cause only Tess could hurt them and Tess was nowhere to be found. It’s kind of like a zombie movie where only one zombie is coming after you. I needed to be in fear a lot more here.

An absolutely SUPERB moviegoing experience!

Genre: Horror
Premise: (from IMDB) Plagued by a recurring violent nightmare, a college student returns home to find the one person who can break the cycle and save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them.
About: The Final Destination franchise is back! Where did it ever go???? This franchise has always been awesome. Maybe we’ll get some answers in the review. The movie MASSIVELY over-performed this weekend, taking in 51 million dollars, bigger than any Final Destination opening by far. And both critics and moviegoers love it, as it has both a 93% RT score and 89% Audience score.
Writers: Guy Busick & Lori Evans Taylor (story by these two and Jon Watts) – characters by Jeffrey Reddick
Details: 110 minutes

Girl, it don’t get better than the latest Final Destination movie.

You know how, sometimes, you’re jonezing for a cheeseburger and you get one from that new smashburger place down the street and it hits your gullet like a magical marshmallow and you’re having that once-a-year foodgasm that allows you to see God?

That’s what Final Destination did this weekend. It was the perfect movie arriving at the perfect time.

DAMN was it good.

It’s funny how this movie even got made when you consider Hollywood all but forgot about the Final Destination franchise. Now that’s it’s pulled in a whopping 50 million bucks, everyone’s thinking, “Why didn’t we do this sooner??”

I’ll tell you exactly why.

Jason Blum.

This is one of those things that annoys the heck out of me about Hollywood. Jason Blum comes around and says, “Never make a horror movie for more than 7 million bucks. Do that and you’ll print money.”

And that formula worked for a while. But that doesn’t mean you can’t ALSO make bigger budget horror movies. Especially when you consider that people get bored of watching the same thing over and over again. I can only watch so many 7 million dollar horror movies before I slam my fists down on the table and demand me some production value.

Which is what is so glorious about Final Destination. You get more horror production value in the first 15 minutes of this movie than you’ve gotten in the last 5 years of horror movies combined.

The opening Skyview Restaurant set piece is BANANAS on top of BANANA SPLITS. “Splits” is a fitting word, actually. The movie starts with a young couple back in the 50s who go to this brand new “Seattle Needle” type restaurant. But then a jerky little kid throws a penny off the top of the tower that gets sucked into the air conditioning unit, creating a chain reaction that takes the entire restaurant down. OR SO WE THINK.

Cut to present day, where college student Stefani starts having these nightmares about that very catastrophe. It bothers her so much that she leaves school to go home, where she reunites with her brother, Charlie, and her dad. Long story short, her grandmother, Iris, was the woman on the date that day. Iris had that Skyview implosion vision in real time and was able to stop the jerky kid from ever throwing the penny.

But that’s baaaaad news for Stefani and her cousins, who are also under the same bloodline of Iris. You see, all those people were supposed to die that day. And because they didn’t, death owes them. The only thing that’s protected Stefani, her bro, and her cousins, is that Iris has become a hermit psychopath, designing a house to keep her safe from death’s attempts to kill her. But once death finally succeeds, it can now come after her bloodline. And only Stefani believes this will happen, meaning everyone else is cluelessly walking into death’s grip.

Can I just thank the screenwriting lords, for a second, for designing a screenplay THAT ACTUALLY HAS SCENES!!!!

For goodness sake! Instead of 50 mini-scenes, we get seven bona fide set piece sequences (aka, long scenes). These scenes are designed around death attempting to kill one of the characters. We have the Skyview scene, a backyard barbecue scene, a fun tattoo parlor scene, an MRI that goes berserk scene, a dump truck scene, and a couple of final scenes for the climax.

A huge reason why this movie is blowing away expectations and everyone loves it is because it SITS IN ITS SCENES. It allows you to marinate in that early anxiety, when we know death is planning its kill. Then things get worse, and worse, and the characters try to save each other. But no matter what they do, death is too strong and wins out.

Every one of these set pieces is designed that way and it’s a perfect design because it keeps you captivated the whole way through the sequence. And then as soon as the sequence is over, another one starts. It’s so refreshing to experience a movie that’s not afraid to sit in its moments.

Let me be clear about that. A big reason nobody does this anymore is because THEY’RE TERRIFIED that the reader is going to get bored. God forbid you don’t machine-gun a new scene at them every 60 seconds.

The irony is, the reader is going to be MORE INVESTED when you slow down. Because it’s exciting to see what’s going to happen next in the scene. Granted, you have to do it well. You can’t just write a bunch of boring nonsense for 8 pages and expect readers to be captivated.

The reason Final Destination kills at this is because each of these set pieces is heavily designed around suspense. Death is trying to kill one of our characters. We turn the page because a) we want to see HOW it will try to kill them, and b) to see if it succeeds.

You can replicate this in your own writing. Just come up with another line of suspense. Some other looming issue that will hurt your character in some way if it succeeds. It could be as simple as a teenager getting ready to go to school knowing that the school’s biggest bully is waiting for him and plans to beat the hell out of him (Dazed and Confused).

One of my favorite things to share with you guys is the ways in which writers show that they’re better than the average writer. I always compare a writer’s creative choices to what the average schmo screenwriter would’ve done. If the professional writer did what the schmo writer would’ve done, that means they’re not a good writer and are extremely lucky to be working in Hollywood. Although they all eventually get figured out. So, like the characters in Final Destination, their luck won’t last forever.

(Spoilers) Here, there’s this moment near the midpoint where Erik, one of the cousins, is up next for death. He’s working late night at his tattoo parlor and has to close up. As he’s closing, a chain from the ceiling flips down and connects to his nose ring. The chain starts getting wrapped up in the slow-moving ceiling fan and Erik is getting pulled closer and closer to the ceiling. Meanwhile, he trips on some alcohol cleaner, which spreads over the floor and catches fire on a flame. Needless to say, Erik is going to die.

The next morning, Stefani realizes that Erik never texted her back so she grabs her brother and they hurry off to the tattoo parlor to make sure he’s okay. On the way, her brother gets a text notifying him of the fire at the tattoo parlor last night. That’s when both of them realize Erik is dead.

SLAM ON THE BREAKS AS THEY ALMOST HIT SOMEONE

Stefani looks in front of her car to see… Erik???!!! Yup, turns out Erik is still alive! He DIDN’T succumb to death last night. All of this is confusing until they get the family together that night and Erik’s mom comes clean. Erik is not her husband’s (Iris’s son) child. His mom slept with some other guy. This means that Erik is not part of the bloodline and, therefore, isn’t on death’s hit list. The stuff at the tattoo parlor the previous night truly was a freak accident, lol.

Why is this good writing? Because I read all the scripts where the writers settle into a predictable pattern. They would never ever write a surprise like this. They would’ve had death’s hit list and gone down it one by one. They think, “This is what the audience wants! So give it to them!”

Yes, the audience wants the kills, of course. But they also want to be surprised. They want unexpected things to happen. Because when unexpected things happen, it’s exciting AND it programs into the reader/viewer that more unexpected things can happen. So the reader/viewer always feels unsteady. Which is exactly where you want them.

There were only two issues I had with this movie. I can’t stand CGI deaths. I wish they would’ve spent a little more money on making some of these look real. And the acting here was barely passable. This may be the first studio movie I’ve ever seen where I didn’t recognize a single actor. I’d never seen ANY of these actors before in my life. And I’ve seen every movie ever made! So they saved A LOT of money on acting here.

But it didn’t matter because the writing was so good and every single freaking set piece worked. It’s rare to write one good set piece in a script. It’s super hard to write two. It’s nearly impossible to write 3. I heard that Mission Impossible, coming this weekend, only has 2. And that movie cost like half a billion dollars. To have 6-7 truly awesome set pieces is so hard. But it’s the reason this movie has taken over the town and will be one of the biggest hits of the year.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Big-budget horror is back, baby!!! You don’t have to write 5 million dollar horror movies for the next year or two. If you have a higher-budgeted horror, write it. It will still need to be better than its low-budget equivalent because if people are paying more money, they want bigger and better ideas. So you need that big juicy strong concept.