Today we take a look at a script from the man responsible for the darker, edgier Daredevil reboot. Not surprisingly, the script is a bit of a daredevil itself.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A story that follows a dozen different seedy characters in New York City during one of its sleaziest decades, the 1980s.
About: This script made the 2006 Black List. I don’t know much about it but the writer, Caleb Kane, had been a Broadway actor for a long time and has appeared in a lot of popular TV shows. He segued into writing and wrote a few episodes of Fringe. He wrote a draft for the reboot of Daredevil, but hasn’t had that big breakout writing moment yet. These City Walls appears to be his writing sample.
Writer: Caleb Kane
Details: 165 pages!!! (1/06 Draft)

Denzel for Mr. Man?

I love me some 165 page screenplays. As in, “I hate me some 165 page screenplays!” I mean seriously? 165 pages? Do you really think you’re THAT good that you can completely ignore what every reader and producer in town finds acceptable? I guess so. And I guess it worked since enough people liked it to get it on the Black List (to a degree – I don’t think it finished very high). But seriously, I have never seen a 160 page script that couldn’t be sliced to pieces.

I’m actually glad this came along on the heels of the Fight Club post, as it, too, is a non-traditional screenplay. We’re jumping around between multiple characters. We’re taking our time getting in the plot. We’re not entirely sure who the main character is. There is an experimental vibe to the script, and I’m sure something can be learned from that.

Maybe the first is: Beware the ULTRA AMBITIOUS SCREENPLAY. Jaw-dropping page counts, murky plots, lots of characters. I know I just wrote an article telling you how to approach these types of scripts, but that doesn’t mean I think you should write them. Besides the fact that it’s just really hard to wrangle together a story of this enormity, readers aren’t really trained to understand scripts like this. They’re looking for clear narratives, clean goals – a story that moves forward quickly and with purpose. These anti-structure screenplays are hard to define so even when a reader likes something about them, they’re reluctant to say so, since they can’t really pinpoint (in industry terms) why they feel that way. It’s safer, then, for a reader not to support a script like this. Something to keep in mind.

It’s winter in New York City. 1983. 20 year-old Ruben has worked his way up the ranks for Mr. Man, a local pimp who’s keen on expanding his business. But before he can do that, he needs the perfect girl. Someone new. A fresh face. If Ruben can find him that face, he can get in on the ground floor of Mr. Man’s new business venture.

Ruben does just that, finding a homeless 17 year old girl named Noel trolling the streets with her boyfriend. Mr. Man slyly gets the boyfriend hooked on heroin so he can remove him from the picture, and turns Noel into one of his top girls. Everything’s going according to plan until Ruben starts falling for Noel, and wants to get her out of New York City. Mr. Man notices something growing between the two and doesn’t like it. He tells Ruben that he better mind his own business. The girl is his.

In the meantime, Mr. Man blackmails one of his richer clients with pictures of him doing some really nasty stuff with one of his girls. Mr. Man classes up his women and uses the client’s access to a high rolling clientele, and soon he’s not slumming it on the streets anymore. Unbeknownst to him, however, Ruben has saved a bunch of dough and is planning for Noel’s escape. Mr. Man can’t have that, which means we’re going to get a stand-off between the two. And it’s very likely only one of them is coming out alive.

That is a REALLY simplified synopsis of the screenplay. I should probably get an award for that actually, as I make it sound like a pretty focused little story. The reality is, there are a lot more characters and way too many subplots here. I see this problem a lot in these screenplays – where writers are trying to be super-ambitious. They write a bunch of storylines, thinking it will add complexity and grandiosity to their story, making it more “respectable,” but many of those storylines either a) don’t push the narrative forward or b) aren’t very good.

I mean, we have this subplot where a drug-addict named “Boo” is trying to kidnap his son back from his ex so he can place him in a child porn magazine and make some easy dough. Boo had next to nothing to do with any of the other characters. Plus his storyline just wasn’t very interesting. Since that accounted for 15-20 pages, Kane could’ve easily cut the subplot and got this down to 145 pages. Do the same for another unnecessary subplot or two, and you’re down to 120 in a jiffy, a page number where readers don’t actively hate you within 2 seconds of opening your screenplay.

These City Walls DOES have some stuff going for it though. I WAS curious enough to keep reading and I think that’s because a lot of the characters popped. I don’t know if I’d say they were great because there wasn’t any traditional character development here. We weren’t getting into their pasts or arching them. But they all had personalities, and I think that’s something a lot of writers forget to add. You can include all the depth in the world when it comes to character, but if there isn’t a personality there, we’re probably going to be bored by them.

There’s plenty of personality to go around here. Mr. Man was a part any actor would want to play. Despite Boo being unnecessary, his drug-addicted rantings and mumblings made him stick out. Noel was delightfully naïve. Ma Love stuck out as the aging prostitute. Blackmailed client Milton Klein wore the nervous screwed businessman part well. I don’t remember a lot of characters when I read scripts. I remembered almost all of them here. And that’s saying something.

I thought the dialogue was pretty good at first. It felt authentic. Lines like, “Motherfuckin’ outlaw, man. Bet. Just gotta keep movin’ on that one big sting, though, you know? Get my game straight.” – they put me in that time and place. Impressed me. However, as the script went on, pretty much EVERYONE started talking like this so the effect lost its luster. Literally 8 different characters could’ve said that line, they all spoke so similarly. When you’re writing dialogue, you HAVE to distinguish your characters so that they all talk uniquely. If they’re all talking alike, the dialogue (no matter how good) becomes stale and tiresome, like it did here.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I think the fixes here are pretty obvious. Get rid of the unneeded time-sucking subplots, and build the story around Mr. Man’s ascension into high class escorting. In other words, give him a CLEAR GOAL. Make this like a prostitute version of Scarface. With that goal driving the story, everything will be more focused, and you still get to explore most of the seedy characters from this draft, just in a more plot-heavy setting. Right now we don’t get to Mr. Man’s first high-class prostitute party until, like, page 110. GIVE ME A BREAK! That should’ve been on page 45 at the latest.

Anyway, this had some nice flashes, but it was too messy to recommend. Too bad. I was hoping to find a lost gem. ☹

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

What I learned: “Writing samples” are scripts that highlight a writer’s biggest strength. They typically aren’t marketable enough to be made. So if you’re great with dialogue, write a script that centers around dialogue. You then get a lot of meetings from people who need dialogue punch-ups and hopefully start making some dough. If a writer gets big enough or a big enough actor falls in love with one of the roles in the script, a “writing sample” will occasionally get made.

What I learned 2: OTMSS (one too many subplots syndrome). A lot of time, when a writer is told to cut out pages from their script, they do so via little pieces here and there. A line of dialogue, a description, the tail end of a scene. If you REALLY want to cut pages, cut out unnecessary subplots. These are subplots that you convince yourself are necessary because you like what they add to the characters, but that don’t move the story forward in any interesting way. Get rid of one of these and you can make 10 pages disappear like THAT. It’s one of the easiest ways to cut a bunch of pages.

They attached, they waffled, they attached again, they waffled, and now, finally, Leo and Martin are back together again with The Wolf Of Wall Street.

A day off for me but this review is pretty darn good, so I don’t feel so bad. I actually read the book “The Wolf Of Wall Street” a long time ago and thought to myself, “They’ll never make a movie out of this. The main character is the most despicable human being ever.” Though I guess since Scorsese makes tragedies, that doesn’t matter as much. Still, I’m curious as to how he’ll keep us invested in what has to be the single most evil most disgusting flesh-container ever recorded in written form. I also want to know when Scorsese and Dicaprio are getting married. I mean, put on a ring on it already! Here’s guest reviewer Daniel Holmes to report on the script and potential nuptials.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young financial whiz tries to take down one of the world’s biggest hedge funds from the inside.
About: This is of course the follow-up to the 1987 Oliver Stone film, “Wall Street.” Michael Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko. Shia LaBamBam will continue his streak of starring in every hot movie that’s being made. Vietnam vet Oliver Stone is back at the reigns, helming his most noteworthy picture since the invention of the personal computer.
Writer: Allan Loeb

“If this works out, maybe I can do a reimagining of The In-Laws.”

This script has been burning a hole in my hard drive for months and to be honest, I was never going to review it. I was never a fan of the first film. It always felt to me like a movie that wanted to be better than it actually was. Of course, I was pretty young when I saw it. All I knew about the stock market was people yelling and throwing pieces of paper at each other. But I figured with the way the economy is wreaking havoc on our lives, Wall Street 2 might have something timely to say.

So I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that Oliver Stone is directing the film. I have nothing against Mr. Stone. When he re-edited Alexander 18 times, I said ‘the more the merrier.’ Is Jared Leto gay? Is he not gay? There’s an app for that in the Alexander films. It’s just that the man hasn’t inspired confidence in awhile. The *good* news is that Alan Loeb is the writer. You may remember Alan from my review of The Only Living Boy In New York, a “Graduate”-like tale of a confused 20-something desperately trying to keep his life in order. I liked that script quite a bit, so I was intrigued to see what he would do with the Wall Street franchise (is it really a franchise now?)

BamBam striking the Luke Perry pose circa 1991.

Jacob Moore is pissed. Why is he pissed? Because someone just killed his boss. Well, that’s not entirely true. Someone started a rumor about his boss’ investment firm that eventually sank the company’s stock price, which led to the company going under, which led to the boss playing chicken with a subway train…and losing. Luckily, Jacob was given a 1.5 million dollar bonus just days earlier, enough to secure the most extravagant engagement ring money can buy for the woman he plans to spend the rest of his life with. “Take me to the Fuck You room,” he tells the jeweler.

You see Jacob’s stuck on the bubble. His boss was a bit of a father figure and after a few days away from Wall Street he’s beginning to think maybe it isn’t worth it. Why not dance off to a quaint little town in the middle of Americana and build a family? We’ll never know how close Jacob came to making that choice because Jacob’s fiance just happens to be the daughter of Gordon Gekko – yes, Michael Douglas’s character from the first film. Gekko got out of jail a few years back and spends his days broadcasting economic doom-and-gloom to anyone who will listen. He’s even got a new book explaining how the American economy is a time bomb waiting to explode. A little side note is that Gekko can ony talk about the economy. He can’t trade in it anymore. The SEC won’t let him within a hunred miles of a broker.

So when a still sore Jacob comes to Gekko for his blessing, Gekko calls him out. You don’t want my blessing, he tells Shia. You want advice on how to take down the man that “killed” your boss. Gekko makes a serious if contrived deal that only happens in Screenplay Land: He’ll help him take down the bad guys if Jacob helps him reestablish a relationship with his daughter. Jacob realizes this is a chance to learn from the best, get some revenge, and lose the audience.

The man who destroyed his boss’ fund is an eccentric billionaire hedge fund manager named Bretton Woods (gotta give it to Loeb – cool name). He’s the kind of guy that flies in the world’s biggest piano prodigy for some afternoon entertainment. He lives by the mantra: “The only thing worse than death is becoming irrelevant.” Gekko’s plan is for Jacob to get a job with Bretton, gain his trust, then make a whole bunch of bad trades that bankrupt his ass (my words, not his). Gekko will be advising him from the sidelines, telling him when and what to move.

Unfortunately this all plays out about as well as it sounds. The more contrived your story, the harder it is for the audience to buy into. Money Never Sleeps plays out like a dramatized version of today’s news headlines, giving us no new or behind-the-scenes information, and does so with a story that doesn’t have any bite. The face of the franchise, Michael Douglas, plays a neutered down role for 90% of the story, feeling more like an assistant coach than the power hungry face of the team.

It wasn’t lost on me that a movie all about money feels like a desperate attempt to make money. Just because you don’t have ninjas with a kung-fu grip on your poster doesn’t mean you’re cinematizing a story for a noble cause. I pose this question to you: Is this story worth telling? I don’t think I need to answer that question to answer it. Stone and Douglas clearly see this as a way to get back in the game. And that’s fine. Vin just did it with The Fast And The Furious franchise. But we all know what kind of movie results from a project without any passion behind it.

Luckily “Money Never Sleeps” has a saving grace. And that saving grace is its ending. Without giving too much away, a role that looked pretty thankless for Douglas comes roaring back up the charts like a hot stock. Loeb’s previous 105 pages were all a carefully constructed set-up to give us a shocker of a finale. And I have to admit, it worked. But the end result feels like a government bailout. Sure we feel okay now. But does it solve the underlying structural issues in the system? I’m afraid not. The best final 30 pages in history couldn’t have saved this sequel.

[ ] Bear Sterns
[x] Sell
[ ] Hold
[ ] Buy
[ ] Gold

What I learned: You have to make the connections in your story as direct and personal as possible. Jacob’s doomed boss is not his *actual* father. He’s merely a father *figure*. Bretton didn’t kill Jacob’s boss. He started a rumor that led to the downfall of J’s boss’ company which led to his boss’ choice to commit suicide. The connections here are too loose. Imagine if the boss*was* Jacob’s father and that Bretton *actually* murdered him, but Jacob couldn’t prove it in court. So the only way to take him down was to work for Bretton and destroy him from the inside. Sure you’d have to figure out a reason why Bretton would hire him under those conditions, but it’s still doable. And because things were direct (murder) and personal (his father), we’d be so much more in to the Jacob revenge storyline.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A young couple who perform rituals to raise people from the dead get more than they bargained for when they attempt to re-animate a young girl who doesn’t remember how she died.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer is brand new!
Writer: Mike George
Details: 98 pages

Rising star Dominic Sessa for Ryan?

As I’ve pointed out before, you can really up your chances of breaking into the business if you come up with either a HIGH or MARKETABLE concept that can be shot in a single location.

Here’s the difference between the two. A high concept is something that has that all-important ‘strange attractor.’ The upcoming The Watchers is an example of this. A group of people get stuck in a looped forest that’s impossible to get out of, forcing them to live together in an isolated cabin in the woods.

Absent a high concept, you can still break through with a MARKETABLE concept. That just means you’re writing an idea in a genre that’s marketable and the idea itself lives in the same marketable space as other movies studios have released.

And yes, you can achieve both of these with the same idea. I’m just saying that if you don’t achieve the high concept, you can still write a script that people want to buy as long as it’s marketable.

Today’s script lands in that high concept space, albeit right at entry level: A couple attempts to raise the dead at an isolated AirBnB to disastrous consequences.

27 year old Shay and 25 year old Ryan are trucking it out to a remote house. We’re not sure why yet. We just know that Ryan is a little more smitten with Shay than Shay is with him. In fact, early on, Ryan attempts to propose to Shay, who steadfastly refuses. She’s not where he is yet.

The two get to a remote AirBnB farmhouse and start unloading their stuff. And that’s when we see a body bag. With a body in it! The couple lugs the dead body into the home. From there, we start to get hints about what’s going to happen. They’re going to perform a seance to bring this dead girl back to life.

The reason we’re bringing her back to life is explained soon after. They’re working for a client. This is his daughter. What they do is bring people back to life for clients so that they can have one last conversation with their loved ones before they move on.

However, the process for bringing people back to life is complicated. It requires writing out detailed pentagrams on the ground, writing in ancient languages on the walls in blood. Oh, and there’s a lot of sacrificing. One of them always has to sit within the pentagram and give a lot of blood in order to bring the dead person back to life.

Once they prep everything, the client, 40-something Mark, shows up. But the second he walks through the door (spoiler) Shay looks at him in shock. Shay knows this man. And he knows her. If this is the client, she knows, then chances are their dead girl is not his daughter. And that begs the question: Who the hell is she?

The first half of this script was awesome.

I was on the edge of my seat.

Two things I absolutely love in a screenplay are 1) Show me something I haven’t seen before. And 2) Give me a deep compelling mythology that I know you know intimately.

This script nailed both.

I’ve read ideas sort of like this before. But nothing quite like this. A couple who work as spiritual necromancers rent a home to perform a resurrection.

And then you have the mythology… this writer went all in on this mythology! I got the sense that he must’ve dabbled in witchcraft at some point in his life. He knows way too many details about the practice not to have been a part of it somehow.

Those two things powered the first act of the screenplay.

I’ll tell you something else that powered it. The word “No.” In my dialogue book, one of my big dialogue tips is utilizing the power of “no” in conversation. “Yes” rarely leads you anywhere interesting in a conversation. But the word “no” almost always leads you there.

Early in the script, Ryan, who clearly likes Shay more than she likes him, proposes to her. And what does she say? She says, “No.” The reason that answer is so important is because it lays a thick claptrap of conflict over the rest of the story. Every conversation they now have is affected by this new jilted dynamic.

Think about what their conversations would be like if she had said yes. I’ll give you a hint. They rhyme with ‘boring.’ With Ryan now wondering what he’s done wrong, why she doesn’t like him as much as he likes her, there’s subtext in every conversation that’s had.

So we’ve got an [x] impressive here, right?

Well, let me say this. I admire whenever a writer takes a big creative swing. Whenever they make a daring choice, there’s value in that. Unfortunately, I think George made the wrong choice and it kind of destroyed the rest of the screenplay. Spoilers ahead.

This Mark guy comes in and he’s supposed to be the dead girl’s father. He wants to reunite with her one last time. But then we see him and Shay giving each other eyes. We’re wondering what’s going on. What we find out is that he and Shay used to work together as “con men” bilking people out of money, pretending to raise the dead.

Mark then heard that Shay was doing her business with someone new. And she still owed him money or something. So he pretended to be a client in order to find her and get that money back.

The reason the choice doesn’t work is because it took a small intimate story with a really fun idea and made it both too silly and too complex. Once you introduce con men into other genres, it never feels right. It’s the kind of thing that only works when you establish it at the outset: This is going to be a con man movie.

But the bigger issue is that if George would’ve stuck with what got him here, he was on the verge of writing a great script. Because you’ve got this really cool mystery. When they’re slowly bringing this girl back to life, they’re realizing that she’s different. There’s some sort of mystery to her. That had me turning the pages.

But, also, you destroy your most emotionally impactful storyline before it ever had a chance to breathe, no pun intended. A father getting an opportunity to say goodbye to his daughter one last time… I wanted to see that. Especially after all the effort Ryan and Shay put into bringing her back alive. I felt that George really robbed the story of a great moment there.

Also, we should’ve left Mark in the ‘former or current lover’ category. We’ve already established that Shay doesn’t want to marry Ryan. You’ve built a compelling conflict between them via that storyline. Her sleeping with Mark would’ve been a natural extension of that storyline and now you’ve got this other layer of b.s. the three of them have to deal with as they bring this daughter back to life.

This happens sometimes. We get overzealous as writers. We get bored with our stories. We feel like we have to do more than we actually do. So we come up with big wild plotlines when a smarter smaller more emotional plotline would’ve been better.

I’m going to give this script a [x] worth the read because its first half is so good. But it’s one of those ‘hanging on for dear life’ worth the reads. Cause the second half was way too messy.

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

What I learned: Build your relationship backstories from elements organic to your concept. In other words, sure, you could’ve had Ryan and Shay begin their relationship at a coffee shop. But a coffee shop is generic. Instead, use the organic elements of your story to explain how they met. Which is what George does. Ryan and Shay met because Shay was originally working alone, Ryan hired her after his mom died, and they started dating after that. Not only does it make more sense but it feels genuine because it’s original. It stems from the core of your idea as opposed to some generic place that anybody in any movie could’ve met.

Is the worst logline on the 2023 Black List its best script??

Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) A married man takes his girlfriend on a romantic getaway to a villa. There is a swimming pool.
About: This script was on the Black List with 8 votes. The writer, Evan Twohy, had a script on the Black List a couple of years ago called Bubble & Squeak. The only thing I remember about it is that it was weird.
Writer: Evan Twohy
Details: 101 pages

Jason Bateman for Martin?

Since we’ve been having so much fun with loglines all weekend, I thought, “Why not keep it going?” Just like America’s football fans can’t get enough Taylor Swift drama, I can’t get enough logline drama!

Today’s script had the single worst logline on the Black List. And yet, several of you read the script and told me it was great! Hence, I wanted to provide the “loglines don’t matter” crowd with some ammunition going forward. It’s finally time to review “Roses,” aka “Swimming Pool Script.”

51 year old Martin says goodbye to his wife, Justine, as he heads off on a work trip for the weekend. At least that’s what he tells Justine. We see him drive up to Northern California and pick up the 28 year old naive Rose, who’s quickly falling in love with Martin. Martin then drives her to a big Air BnB cabin in the forest.

After the two make love, Rose decides to go swim in the poorly cared-for pool, which has a greenish grime layer over the top of it. The two later head to sleep when Martin is woken up at 3 in the morning to a sound outside. He grabs a working old gun from the wall of the mansion and heads out, only to find Rose inexplicably swimming laps in the pool.

He asks her if she’s crazy, only to hear Rose reply from behind him. He turns and sees a second Rose, aka Original Rose. The Rose coming out of the pool is Rose #2. Savvy moviegoers will figure out what the script tells us later – this pool duplicates anybody who swims in it.

Martin is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He’s freaking the heck out but he can’t exactly call the cops, since his weekend soiree with a younger woman will get back to his wife. Eventually, Rose #1 talks him into sleeping on it. And the next morning, they try to figure out what they’re going to do.

Soon, it’s apparent that Rose #2 is different from Rose #1. Rose #1 is head over heels in love with Martin and would trust her life to him. Rose #2 is only in it for the fun and finds Martin annoying and dumb. If it was up to her, she’d end this affair tomorrow. Because of this, Martin covertly takes Rose #2 on a walk deep into the woods and shoots her dead. Problem solved.

Well, not really. When he gets back, there are five new Roses with the original Rose. And worse, they’re starting to look different. For example, one of them has a nose growing off of their neck. It turns out the Roses love swimming in the pool. And, despite his attempts to stop them, they keep swimming, and keep duplicating, with each new iteration less human. Once the Roses finally have a big talk about Martin, they realize he’s one of the worst people ever. Which only means one thing: They have to eat him. Will Martin be able to escape? Or will the rapidly expanding Roses consume him?

One of the common issues I find in amateur screenplays is that the writers come up with a unique idea but they don’t do enough with it. For example, they might come up with an idea about time travel, yet their entire third act has nothing to do with time travel. When you come up with a unique idea, your job, as the screenwriter, is to exploit the heck out of that idea. You want to milk every last drop out of it. That idea is the selling point of your entire movie. Why would you avoid it?

If you want to know how to exploit an idea to its fullest, read this script.

This script is the blueprint for concept exploitation. At the end of the first act, we have two Roses. By the midpoint, we have five Roses. Within ten more pages, we have 30. Ten more, we have 50. By the third act, we have 100. By the climax, Martin himself is multiplying.

In other words, whenever the script needed to evolve, it went back to its hook – the swimming pool that clones whoever goes in it. Whenever you’re facing an issue in your own screenplay that you can’t find a solution for, exploiting your concept is usually the answer. So, if your movie is about a guy trying to start his chocolate business (Wonka), and you’re not sure what to do with your climax, you should probably lean into… drum roll please… CHOCOLATE. Which is exactly what they did. Wonka is tossed, by his rivals, into a vat of steadily rising liquid chocolate to die.

The genius of this script is that it never stops leaning into its unique premise. It keeps going back to that swimming pool well. And the writer has a lot of fun with it. It isn’t just that Rose keeps getting cloned. It’s that her clones get cloned and each one comes back a little less human. So these new Roses we’re getting become gnarlier and gnarlier. In other words, the writer isn’t mindlessly milking his premise. He’s CREATIVELY milking it.

So, what does a non-exploited version of this premise look like? We’ve seen it before. It’s if Twohy would’ve stopped at two Rose clones. You can write that version. And I’m not even saying that version of the script would have been bad. But it wouldn’t have been as fun as this one.

The only issue I have with this script is that I’m not sure what it’s trying to say.

There was this interesting moment about 40 pages into the script where Rose 2 reveals that she doesn’t have that naivety that Rose 1 has. She’s more skeptical of men and their motives. Twohy seemed to be exploring the multiple voices in our heads that are always fighting each other during the life decisions we make. I thought he was going to continue down that road with each new iteration of Rose that came out of the pool. But that never happened. They became more like a hive mind determined to eliminate Martin.

It’s a common issue writers encounter when writing a screenplay – they can either lean into the aspects of the script that create more of a theme, or lean into the aspects of the script that create more of a fun story. Rarely are you able to do both. But this script ends up being so wild and fun by the time we reach the third act, I think Twohy made the right choice.

So does this answer the age-old question once and for all? Loglines don’t matter? I’m afraid to say it does not. Because I never would’ve read this script based on the logline and I don’t think anybody else would’ve either. The script was read because the writer had a previous high-ranking script on the Black List that got a lot of reads and developed a lot of fans for the writer. So they were eager to read anything he wrote, regardless of the logline. You, as the unknown screenwriter, don’t have that luxury. You need to earn it first. So pick a great concept and write a great logline. :)

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

What I learned: If I didn’t make it clear enough in the review, EXPLOIT YOUR CONCEPT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Every creative decision you make in your script that isn’t derived from your unique premise, means you are creating characters and scenes THAT COULD BE IN ANY MOVIE. The goal is to create an experience that can only be enjoyed IN YOUR MOVIE. So lean into your premise as much as possible!