Genre: Music Biopic
Premise: The turbulent road to success of the band, Fleetwood Mac, whose childhood sweetheart members, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, broke up and began writing songs about each other, songs that would make the band one of the most popular of all time.
About: Rumours finished Top 10 on last year’s Black List. This is the breakthrough screenplay for writers Tyler Austin and Patrick Eme.
Writers: Tyler Austin & Patrick Eme
Details: 121 pages
Uh oh.
Did someone say “Music Biopic?”
And Carson is still in the room?
Yes, it’s true. I have a longstanding rule here at Scriptshadow that all music biopics are awful until proven otherwise.
It’s not the most ridiculous take if you look at the evidence. Most writers who write these things don’t know how to write. They know how to research (if by “research” you mean checking out the first 10 hits on Google) the band/artist they’re writing about then give us the most linear vanilla telling of that story the medium allows.
This blasphemous approach yielded such movies as “Ray” and “Walk The Line,” films that nearly destroyed the biopic after thousands lost their lives dying of boredom while watching them.
The only – and I mean ONLY – music biopic that gave me hope for the music biopic genre was Blonde Ambition, the 2015 number 1 Black List script about Madonna. The reason that script was so good was because a) it was interested in telling a good story all on its own, and b) it wasn’t afraid to dig into the ugly parts of its subject’s life.
Audiences can tell when you’re honest. That’s the art they TRULY respond to because it mimics real life. When you start telling lies, sweet little lies, to make your movie more “commercial,” we’re not going to accept it. ESPECIALLY in non-fiction material, because that’s when you’re most required to provide the truth.
Which segues us perfectly into today’s script. Because today’s script is about the ugly. It’s about the truth. It’s about the rough realities of life, even in the face of being the most popular band in the world.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Does this mean, Carson, that you actually LIKED a music biopic screenplay? Is that even possible?
Read on to find out.
For those who don’t know, Fleetwood Mac was a gigantic awesome band who could do no wrong for a stint in the mid-70s. It all started when teenage sweethearts Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined up with an already successful band called, Fleetwood Mac.
Their first album together, released in 1975, was a success. But it was during the resulting tour that vocalist Stevie began partying more and meeting lots of people. And while it was never made clear in the script exactly what happened, this seems to have led to Lindsey and Stevie’s breakup.
Now normally when you break up with someone, you go your own ways. But Lindsey and Stevie’s plan was a litttttttllllle different. They started writing songs about each other. Mean songs. Like Lindsey’s “Go Your Own Way.” Then Stevie would come back at him with a song of her own, “Silver Springs.”
That 1977 album would go on to win ALBUM OF THE FREAKING YEAR and Fleetwood Mac seemed, to the outside world at least, unstoppable. But let’s be real. You can’t have that much conflict going on inside your house and expect it not to burn down. Just ask The Beatles.
Lindsey would become obsessed with creating experimental music while Stevie did more drugs than you can find at your local CVS. And she banged a lot of dudes, too. Or, at least, that’s the rumour. Would these two former lovebirds be permanently stuck in this music landscape alone? Or would they find a way to reconcile?
This may be the first wikipedia adaptation of a biopic that I actually liked.
That’s because the material is so juicy.
The first half of this script is notably formulaic. It feels like we’re hitting pre-ordained plot beats on cruise control (they meet, they like each other, they form a band, they struggle, they meet Fleetwood Mac). I remember angrily typing down in the rough draft of this document that this was the FREAKING PROBLEM with music biopics. So vanilla. So linear. So predictable.
But the second there’s trouble in paradise between Stevie and Lindsey, things get good. I’d always heard these two were together then broke up and they may have wrote some songs about each other. But I didn’t know that they were actively not talking and using these songs as weapons against one another. That took this script to a new level.
And I think there’s a fascinating conversation to be had here about what creates good art. That conflict and consternation and weathering the toughest moments in life – that’s what creates our biggest emotional reservoirs to draw from. And nowhere is that better proven than Fleetwood Mac and their Album of the Year, Rumours. It is the sum total of a nuclear blast of conflict.
I think about that when it applies to screenwriting. It’s hard to write something good if there isn’t some conflict involved between you and the piece. Maybe it’s you and the main character. Maybe it’s you and the setting. Maybe it’s you and the subject matter. The closer you are to the pain that inspires your art, the more likely you are to write something good.
So that was a cool “story-within-the-story” to watch.
The frustrating thing about Rumours is that it’s good, but it has the potential to be really good. I can point to three areas where it needs to tighten the screws. By the way, the phrase “tighten the screws” means you’re making a murky element clearer.
The first adjustment is that it never shows us Lindsey and Stevie super in love. We see Stevie giddy when she first meets Lindsey. But then we cut straight to them living in a ratchet apartment and not having a lot of fun together.
If we never experience them being in love – seeing that in their faces and how they act around each other – then the breakup isn’t going to be as powerful. And the breakup is EVERYTHING in this movie. That’s what the movie is about – how this breakup creates the most memorable album ever.
The second adjustment is the writers never tell us why they broke up. It’s all murky and vague. They’re hanging out. Then they’re not hanging out as much. Then Stevie gets an innocent ride home from Don Henley. Then they’re broken up somehow. Come on! This is an important moment. It needs more of a defining scene. It can’t be something that happens off-screen.
(spoiler) Finally, you need a better reconciliation. I like what the writers’ intent was. This movie doesn’t end with Lindsey and Stevie realizing they love each other. It’s more realistic than that. Lindsey goes to Stevie and says he wants to start working on music together again. But they don’t even give us a hint of any happiness between the two. They sit down and begrudgingly start working a song. I’m not asking for Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts here. Lindsey doesn’t not need to tell Stevie that he’s just a boy… standing in front of a girl. I’m asking for a little bit of love. A smile. Have them remember some old moment together and laugh about it. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
If they did these things, I would bump this up to an “impressive.” Because it’s a great story and it’s great music (I went and listened to all their songs afterwards). Well worth the read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This script taught me the power of exploring conflict in unique ways. Usually, when you think of conflict between two characters, you think of it in a straight-forward manner. This person doesn’t like that person so they let them know. And the other person lets them know what they think right back. That’s rarely interesting. What’s interesting is when people explore conflict in roundabout ways. Indirectly. Passive-aggressively. Creatively. And that’s what we get here. We get these two people exploring their conflict through song-writing. It’s a reminder that there’s a bigger conflict toolbox to play with than you think.
Today we introduce a new screenwriting term – the “reluctant active hero.”
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: Based on Pete Davidson’s life, a directionless young man, whose life changed forever when his firefighter father died, must come to grips with the reality that his mother is finally starting to date again.
About: Comedy media mogul Judd Apatow, who made Amy Schumer a star by directing the semi-autobiographical film, Trainwreck, is attempting to do the same with another polarizing Saturday Night Live comedian, Pete Davidson, best known for his public breakdowns in the media, among other things. Like many movies during these times, the film decided to ditch a theatrical release in favor of going the digital route.
Writers: Judd Apatow & Pete Davis and Dave Sirus
Details: 2 hours and 16 minutes
I love reviewing Judd Apatow movies. As narratively frustrating as he can be, there is no one in the Hollywood comedy space who comes close to him. I mean, his closest competitor is Adam Sandler. And he comes nowhere near Apatow in terms of putting out a quality comedy product.
Apatow’s secret is that he finds the realness in people. He actually does the things all the screenwriting gurus say to do. He doesn’t just create backstory for his characters. He makes sure the backstory INFORMS the characters. You see that with Pete Davidson’s character, Scott. There isn’t a single element of his persona that isn’t influenced by his father dying when he was young.
The reason Apatow’s films always fall short of being classics, though, is that he doesn’t have an inner editor. He includes everything. This not only results in his movies being long. But the pacing is always off. Scenes drift. Sequences (pro tip: a ‘sequence’ is a series of scenes) occasionally feel aimless. I mean, the first thing I noticed when I loaded up the movie was the length – 2:16. “Yup,” I said. “This is an Apatow movie.”
Scott Carlin is a 24 year old loser. He’ll be the first to tell you that. Scott lives with his mother, doesn’t have a job, doesn’t have any plans except for a vague hope to be a tattoo artist some day. Scott smokes more pot than Chaz grows, using it to cope with his total and utter worthlessness.
Scott’s life gets a whole lot worse when his mother, Margie, starts dating a man from the neighborhood, Ray. Scott’s issue with Ray is that he’s a fireman (just like his dead father) and Scott sees this as an attempt by his mom to replace dad and leave Scott behind. So Scott begins acting out, doing more drugs, and even robs a store with his friends, resulting in them going to prison (Scott is the lone friend to get away).
Scott then sets his sights on sabotaging Ray’s relationship with his mother. But it backfires when they both get into a physical altercation, resulting in Margie kicking them out (midpoint shift of the movie for screenwriting structure gurus). Without any place to go, Scott asks Ray if he can stay at the fire station, which Ray agrees to as long as Scott works.
This allows Scott to experience purpose and structure for the first time in his life, as well as understand the world his father was a part of before he died. In the end, this propels Scott into the next phase of his life, where he finally accepts the responsibilities of being an adult.
I learned something interesting about this movie while watching Bill Burr on Joe Rogan’s podcast (Burr plays Ray in the film). He said that, originally, the first scene of the film occurred in the middle of the movie. At some point, someone suggested having the scene moved to the opening.
I bring this up because one of the most important things in screenwriting is making the audience understand who a character is. It seems easy when it’s done well. But in most amateur screenplays, this is one of the most common mistakes I see. Writers don’t define who their character is. And, therefore, we never get a feel for them, resulting in us not caring what they do.
The scene in question has Scott driving his car on the highway and, for about 10 seconds, he closes his eyes completely. It just so happens that there’s a wreck up ahead, so when Scott opens his eyes, he’s seconds away from crashing into those cars. He’s barely able to steer around them and avoid the collision, but it was close.
The scene serves as a key insight into Scott’s character. This is a man who doesn’t value his existence. He doesn’t think he’s worthy of life. And it helps tell us, right away, exactly why he lives his life the way he does. So always remember that. What is that first scene you’re using to introduce your hero that’s giving us a key insight into who they are? It might be a scene later in the script you need to move.
King of Staten Island is a tale of two halves.
The first half is a screenwriting cautionary tale and the second half is a course study in the value of structure.
Let’s start with the first half first.
Despite my compliment regarding the first scene, King of Staten Island has a major hero problem. Its main character is inactive. Now, granted, his inactivity is an organic extension of his character. The whole point is to explore the life of someone with no direction. So it makes sense that he’s passive.
The problem is that his inactivity creates a first half with no momentum. Like Scott, the script is sort of stumbling around looking for a point. There is no plot other than Ray coming into the picture and dating his mom. But that can only give the plot so much structure. So we’re mostly following Scott around as he does nothing and complains about how he does nothing. Not the most riveting storyline.
Things change when he and Ray get into a fight and Scott is forced to stay at the fire station. All of a sudden, the script has structure because the station has structure. Scott now has something to do every day. And we feel like we’re progressing. He gets better at what he does, starts getting more responsibility, starts valuing the job his father did. It’s a 180 degree turn from the first half of the script.
It was a reminder that structure comes in many forms. It can come from giving your hero a goal he must achieve, which, in turn, allows you to create a set of smaller progressing goals and obstacles (which structures the narrative). Or it can come from placing your hero inside a structured environment. That is naturally going to lead to a more structured story. Ideally, you’d do both. But one can work.
Wrapping things up here, King of Staten Island is clearly Judd Apatow’s Good Will Hunting. Both movies have reluctant working-class protagonists with dead father issues who have little self-worth which they make up for in other ways (Will through fighting/anger, Scott through doing drugs). But there’s a reason Good Will Hunting is better than Staten Island. And it has to do with recognizing the limitations of the character you’re working with and designing a screenplay that makes up for those limitations.
Will Hunting does this. King of Staten Island does not. And I’ll explain the difference below in the “What I Learned” section.
Despite this, King of Staten Island is a good movie. I actually marvel at the fact that Apatow anchored his film around two non-actors (Pete Davidson and Bill Burr) and still got it to work. The fact that he was able to get convincing performances out of both of them is a minor miracle. And the fact that the movie ends better than it starts leaves you feeling good afterwards, almost to the point where you forget how wandering the first half was.
If only Apatow would hire an editor, he could take movies like Staten Island to the next level.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the watch
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The Reluctant Active Hero – If your hero is passive, which can happen when you’re writing a movie like The King of Staten Island, construct a story whereby he’s forced to be active. That’s what Good Will Hunting did. Like Scott, Will Hunting was not an active character by any stretch. When it’s up to him, he does nothing. By putting him inside this mandated activity, however, Will is forced to be active. He must show up to both these therapy and math sessions or else he goes to jail. So the next time you’re writing a character like Scott who’s lazy and does nothing, consider injecting a structure inside your story that forces them to participate in something they don’t want to participate in.
For those not up to date, I’ve moved The Last Great Screenplay Contest deadline to July 4th. That gives us FOUR Thursday articles to get your script into shape so you can win the contest and we can get your movie made and take over Hollywood. Each of these four articles will deal with a major screenwriting component and why not start with everybody’s favorite screenwriting topic: DIALOGUE.
Now we’ve gone over dialogue every which way on this site. I’m not sure I can add anything new. But what I *can* do is talk about some of these things in a more abstract sense. Because let’s be honest. The pursuit of great dialogue has an undefinable abstract quality to it. Nobody’s able to nail down definitive rules that lead to great dialogue. I’m hoping that by exploring some of the topics that influence dialogue, we can get a stronger sense of how to master this elusive part of screenwriting. Let’s get to it.
1) Keep it clean – Yesterday’s script, The Swells, didn’t have the greatest dialogue. But the dialogue was very easy to read. And the thing I noticed was that the writer put as little description between dialogue lines as possible. This ensured that the dialogue flowed effortlessly. When a writer starts interjecting what the characters are doing or how they’re reacting inside a dialogue scene, it slows things down A LOT. This is one of the easiest ways to make your dialogue stronger. Keep your excessive description to yourself.
2) Excavation of Exposition – Exposition is a dialogue killer. And, depending on how excessive your plot is, you could get stuck writing tons of it. So how do you make the dialogue fun to read when you have all this technical plot stuff you have to convey? The answer to this could be its own article. But here’s what I endorse. Do a first draft of the scene with all your exposition in there. Then, every time you rewrite the scene, take away AS MUCH EXPOSITION AS YOU CAN and replace it with natural conversation. Make it sound more and more like people talking to each other as opposed to characters giving readers information. You’d be surprised at how far you can take it. A page-long monologue about what it’s going to take to steal the money might end up being as simple is, “We get in there by sunset, we’ve got eight minutes, then we’re out.” If it feels like there’s even a little bit of talky exposition in a scene, do everything in your power to squash it.
3) Turn off your inner grammar Nazi – A telltale sign of weak dialogue is grammatically correct dialogue. Dialogue that doesn’t have any of the messy linguistic flow of a real-life conversation. The most basic example of this is if a character says, “What is up?” Instead of “What’s up?” This mistake permeates logic-based writers who don’t have an appreciation for how loose and fun language can be. Instead of saying, “Did you and Mary finally make it to your date night reservation on time?” you might want to go with something like, “Lemme guess. Another Taco Tuesday disaster?” Yes, there will be robotic characters who speak in grammatically correct sentences. But if you don’t have one of those, loosen up, dude.
4) Don’t overwrite dialogue – Dialogue is the opposite of description. Description is something you can keep perfecting with each draft and it’ll continue to get better. But when you do this with dialogue, it reaches a point where it starts to feel too perfect. The answers are too clever. The responses are more intelligent than the character who’s saying them. It’s this “crossing the rubicon” moment where the dialogue is so honed that it no longer sounds like the messy splattered world of real-life conversation. You can approach this problem in two ways. The first is to be aware of when you’re doing it. It usually picks up around the 5th or 6th draft. Check yourself. Ask, “Does this sound too perfect?” A second more radical approach is, once you’ve perfected the dialogue of a scene over 5 to 6 drafts, erase the scene altogether and write the dialogue from scratch. The reason this works is because you know the scene so well that you’re much better able to navigate the conversation. And yet, the dialogue still has that messy real-life feel to it since you’ve rewritten it from scratch.
5) Boring dialogue comes from boring characters – Think about it. When has a really interesting character ever spouted out a bunch of boring dialogue? It doesn’t happen. So if you’re struggling with bad dialogue in your script, look at your characters and ask if they’re interesting – if they’re unique and have strong personalities. One of the hardest things to do is to make a bland character an interesting conversationalist. Do a character check. Add personality to the ones who aren’t interesting and you’re going to find that your dialogue becomes a lot better.
6) Pump up the pressure – The things we say usually become more interesting when more pressure is added to the situation. So if you put two characters in a room who have nothing to do but talk, you have zero pressure in the scene. Which is a recipe for bland dialogue. Find a pressure point, push, and your dialogue is going to come alive. Pressure can come from anywhere. It could be the pressure of the walls closing in in the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. It could come from characters being chained to the wall like in the original Saw. It could come from one character needing something important from the other character, which is why interrogation scenes work so well. It could come from the deadly sun constantly being on their tail in Into The Night. Find a pressure point, or two, or three, press in on the scene, and your dialogue is going to start popping.
7) Embrace indirectness – Dialogue is worst when what the characters are saying is exactly what they’re thinking. The trick with dialogue is to look for ways AROUND saying the thing they’re saying. For example, if a wife wants to know where her husband was last night, she could say, “Where were you last night?” Or she could say, “You came home late.” The second one is going to lead to a much more interesting conversation because it’s indirect. Likewise, the husband could respond, “I know I stayed out too late. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Or he could respond, “So this is how you want to start the day?” While there are scenes in movies where characters will have straight-forward conversations, most conversations contain an element of shifting around the information that’s being exchanged. This is what makes conversation interesting, is the human element. It’s the dance. It’s the playful way in which we slither around the topic.
8) Have fun when it’s appropriate – You hear it over and over again. Erase all dialogue that doesn’t move the scene forward. I don’t believe in that. As long as your characters are moving towards something (as opposed to sitting around doing nothing) you can create little pockets of “pointless” dialogue because they’re not pointless if they’re informing us about the characters. I’m reminded of the famous Jules and Vincent scene from Pulp Fiction where they go up to kill a guy. Tarantino could’ve cut to them walking into the room. Instead, he showed us these two shooting the shit before they get to the room. And the reason it worked was because there was no plot to expose. It was just a funny scene of two dudes talking. And we didn’t mind because the characters were MOVING TOWARDS SOMETHING. The mistake all these Tarantino wannabe writers made after Pulp Fiction was they would write scenes like this with characters sitting around doing nothing. The audience is more likely to accept these “pointless” dialogue exchanges when the characters are moving towards some goal.
9) The people in your script are real – This is more of a mindset shift than anything. But if you think of your characters as characters in a story, they will speak like characters in a story. If you think of them as real people, they’re more likely to speak like real people. Let’s say your hero, Nathan, needs to ask his friend, Hank, for money. If you’re thinking of this as a story, you’re going to overthink how Nathan would say the correct lines that both inform the reader what’s going on while keeping the dialogue short and to the point in order to move the scene along as quickly as possible. But if you’re thinking of this as two real life friends, everything that they’d say changes. Hank might sit down and start babbling about the guy at his office who lost his entire paycheck on a pyramid scheme. Their conversation is going to be more free-flowing and realistic, and therefore more reflective of real life. Eventually, you’ll have to cut some of the extraneous “real-life” stuff out to keep the scene focused. But, chances are, you’ll retain enough of these real-life thoughts that the conversation is going to feel more realistic.
10) The way you say it is rarely the most interesting way to say it – That big splashy “we need to hire this writer for a dialogue polish” type of dialogue breaks down to finding creative ways to say common things. Normal is boring. Different is refreshing. In the Black List script, “Get Home Safe,” writer Christy Hall has a Skype scene between her main character, Skylar, and Skylar’s mom. In the scene, the mom asks Skylar if it’s okay to post a link to her band. Skylar says of course, you should’ve done that already. Her mom replies, “But you get mad at me when I post stuff without telling you.” Skylar then clarifies what things her mom posts that make her mad. For this, I want all of you to go in the comments section and write out Skylar’s frustrated dialogue response to her mom that explains the things she gets upset about that her mom posts to social media. Then, I want you to come back here and read what Christy Hall wrote. Because it’s going to show you the difference between weak and strong dialogue. Here’s Skylar’s reply in the script: “I only get mad when you post a photo of me deep-throating a burger on the Fourth of July, when I’m on my period, in a bikini, and looking like a friggin’ house, Mom, there’s a huuuuuuge difference.” There’s a ton to get into as to why this is such a strong line of dialogue. First, “deep-throating” is a way more interesting way to say “eating.” So already, she’s separated herself from the screenwriter pack. Next, we get the very specific DETAILED response of Skylar not liking period bikini pictures. That’s a place a lot of writers would be scared to go or not even think of. It feels specific. It feels unique. Skylar does not say “fucking.” She says “friggin.” It’s a small difference, but it’s one more slightly unique element that helps the line stand out. Finally, she doesn’t use proper sentence structure at the end. “There’s a huge difference” should be its own sentence. But by using a comma instead of period, it conveys the “all said in one breath” nature of the response, which mimics how it would sound in real life. Even the detail of using “huuuuuuuge” as opposed to “huge,” adds flavor to the line that further differentiates it from your average line of dialogue. This is an A+ level dialogue line. You achieve this by looking for different ways to say common things. You’ve got to tap into that creative spot of your brain to find this stuff and level up your dialogue.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A young woman invites people up to her remote lake house to murder them. But when a back-stabbing ex-friend apologizes for her past transgressions, our murderess changes her mind, to unexpected results.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 8 votes. Rachel James recently graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts. Her previous script, Big Bad Wolves, was a semifinalist in the Nicholl contest.
Writer: Rachel James
Details: 99 pages
Today’s script attempts to pull off that rare feat of dividing its narrative into two completely different parts. In terms of screenwriting, it’s as big of a gamble as you can take.
But if it pays off, terms like “genius” are thrown around. People respect writers who take big chances, who try different things. So did Rachel James pull it off? Let’s find out together.
30-something Lola is up at her remote New Jersey lake house with her father, Don. We’re told that both of them are inherently angry people. Although they seem to be having a nice enough time together.
That all changes when Lola starts hearing a sardonic “sawing” noise which seems to be egging her on to do something. Lola asks her dad about a friend of his who used to babysit her. The implication is that he did something bad to Lola. The next thing we know, Lola has killed her father off-screen.
Lola then invites up an old boyfriend, Art. After they have sex, she kills him too. She seems to have some sort of homicidal bucket list. Which is why, after Art, she invites up her meanie ex-friend from college, Michelle, who stole her high school boyfriend, Chase.
Lola is all set to kill Michelle but then Michelle, ignorant to Lola’s plan, profusely apologizes for stealing her man and marrying him. Lola then decides that she’s not going to kill Michelle, and the two begin a long weekend together where they play question games like, “Who would you murder if you could?”
As Michelle becomes hip to the fact that Lola isn’t being honest with her, she hurries the defense off the field so the offense can play. Not only that, but Michelle inserts herself as QB, and the call is to kill Lola. Or, at least, I think that’s the call. Because the next thing we see is Michelle back at her bougie New York apartment with Chase. This happens at, roughly, the midpoint.
From then on, we follow Michelle, who starts hearing the same “sawing” noise that Lola heard. During a house party that includes a group of people who hold up Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop as the definitive accomplishment of the Western world, Michelle loses it, goes home, and starts draping the walls in her own blood.
When Chase finally comes home, Michelle invites him into the den, turns on some hard metal, and stabs him to death. As this is happening, the name “Michelle” occasionally is replaced with “Lola,” leaving us to wonder if that was a mistake or intentional. Many Black Swan vibes here. Is Michelle Lola? Is Lola Michelle? Was there ever a Lola? I have a feeling that nobody will agree on the answer. Which is either why you’re going to love The Swells or hate it.
What about me? Did I love it or hate it?
I’m not sure what I think.
It’s definitely different.
I admire the bold choice to perform the Split In Half Screenplay. I’m a proponent of making the second half of your script different from the first so that it doesn’t repeat itself. I don’t necessarily endorse this extreme of a narrative shift. But it did ensure that the story stayed fresh.
I liked how quickly the screenplay read, especially after yesterday’s script, which felt like I was back in Chicago walking to school after 18 inches of snowfall. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge. Stop and catch your breath. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge.
This script was more “spec-y” and respectful of the reader. Small character count. Tons of dialogue. Easy to read. The script moved FAST.
Where it ran in trouble was in how little it told us.
I barely learned anything about Lola. She used to paint. I know that. Her dad’s a meanie. I know that. But everything else was vague. Lola’s past with her mother was an important part of the story but I couldn’t tell you anything about her mom or why things went bad with her. Everything is inferred but never explained.
This is a challenge every screenwriter faces. How much do you tell the audience and how much do you keep from the audience? If you err on the wrong side of either (too much or too little) it’s the difference between a confusing mess and an on-the-nose snore-fest.
I feel like The Swells didn’t give us enough information. And information is important in a script like this because people are dying. And for readers to care about those people, they have to know those people. I mean, I still don’t know what Lola’s dad did to make her want to kill him. She mentions an old friend who may have abused her but I’m filling in the abuse part myself. That was never mentioned. I’m just guessing.
If you force your reader to guess too many times, the story becomes an unfocused blob in their heads. A series of feint images connected by cobweb-thin lines. You sort of understand what’s going on, but not enough to truly be invested.
A great example of a similar script that did this well was fellow Black List screenplay, Resurrection, about a single mother in New York City who begins seeing a mysterious older man from her past and becomes convinced he’s come back to kill her daughter. That script, too, plays with mystery and its main character losing her mind. But the difference was the writer set up the main character in a very detailed way so that we felt like we knew her.
I never felt like I understood Lola. And while we get a lot more information on Michelle, since we get to see her life back in New York, even with her I don’t know what she did for work. How she spends 8 hours of her day.
That’s something I ranted about the other week because you can’t separate a person from their job. So I always get suspicious when the writer doesn’t tell me anything about that enormous part of their life. Now that I think about it, I don’t know what Lola did for a living either.
With that said, the scene writing is good enough to keep you reading. There was always an aggressive level of dramatic irony or conflict in each scene, which meant that literally every interaction had a level of subtext to it. Either Lola’s planning to kill Michelle while they’re harmlessly chatting rowing a boat on a lake, or Michelle’s prying for info on why Lola invited her here during drinks and a card game.
It was weird because, on the whole, I never knew where the script was going, leaving me frustrated. But each individual scene had an undeniable energy to it. I never wanted to give up on the script because the scenes themselves were fun.
The Swells feels to me like a promising writer who’s still trying to figure out the weird format that is screenwriting. I don’t think you can yank people around this much without giving them some concrete pedestals to grab onto. If this was a little less smoke and mirrors, I could see it working. Right now it comes off as a foggier version of Black Swan and that movie played it as close to the line of “Is this happening or isn’t it” as you’re allowed to get.
I like the writer, though. Will definitely keep an eye out for any future material she writes.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The essence of a well-developed movie character is that there’s something deep within them that is unresolved. For those who liked this script, I’m guessing that’s what they were attracted to. Both these characters have deep unresolved issues within them. And when you have that, you have a character who’s constantly fighting themselves, which is more dramatically interesting than watching someone who has it all figured out.
What’s David Fincher’s next movie? THIS is David Fincher’s next movie.
Genre: Biopic/True Story
Premise: The story of Herman Mankiewicz writing Citizen Kane for Orson Welles, and the wild Hollywood ride that led up to it.
About: We’ve got David Fincher’s next project! This one comes from his father, Jack Fincher, who was obsessed with Herman Mankiewicz, the writer of Citizen Kane, which most cinephiles believe is the greatest movie of all time. Rosebud! I’ve heard that the script is now in Eric Roth’s hands (Jack Fincher died in 2003). This is the Jack Fincher draft. Here is an article on Mankiewicz that I confess I haven’t read yet.
Writer: Jack Fincher
Details: 120 pages
One of the most frustrating things a screenwriter can do is when he has a large cast of characters but he doesn’t give you any indication, as these characters are introduced, who’s going to be important and who isn’t.
For example, let’s say you’re introducing the second biggest character in your script and you do so by saying, “BOB, 31, takes a drink of soda.” Meanwhile, three pages later, you introduce some character who’s only going to be in the script for two scenes. And with him, the description is, “DAVE, 40, thick with rage and beaten down by alcoholism, is an asshole of the highest order, the kind of person you turn away from when you see him on the street.”
To a reader, this is frustrating. Because one of the toughest things for a reader to do is keep track of who’s who in a script, how everybody knows each other, what the specifics of their relationships are, etc. And one of our only clues is how a character is introduced. If they’re getting big thoughtful introductions and we stay with them for 3-4 scenes in a row, that’s typically an indication that THIS IS A PERSON YOU NEED TO REMEMBER.
So when a character is introduced like Barely Introduced Bob is, then 30 pages later he comes back and becomes this super important character, the reader doesn’t remember who they are or how they’re connected to the story. They vaguely remember someone named Bob being introduced, but the introduction was so quick, they assumed the character wasn’t important.
This is only exacerbated when you have a script like Mank where you’re jumping around in time. It’s 1940. Then it’s 1932. Then it’s 1941. Then it’s 1934. Your script is almost designed to make people forget your characters because there are entire sections of the script where key characters aren’t around. Then when we jump back to their year, we have to reset our minds and try to remember who’s who, a tall task when half the “whos” were given blink-and-you-miss-it introductions.
This is why I’m not a huge fan of period pieces that do a lot of time jumping. All these characters are second nature to the writer, as he’s spent months/years with them. But we’re meeting them for the first time. And if you create a story where characters disappear for 30 pages at a time then, when we come back to them, they’re major lynchpins in the film, the average reader is going to be thrown.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. But you need to be an expert in the art of character introduction (great descriptions, memorable introductory scenes) and great with character development in general. Interesting people. Flaws that resonate with audiences. Personalities that distinguish one character from the next. Those are the things that make characters memorable enough that, regardless of how complex the narrative is, we always remember who’s who.
I opened up Mank expecting it to be about Herman Mankiewicz’s (Mank) relationship with Orson Welles during the writing of Citizen Kane. But that’s not really what the story explores.
We meet Mank in 1939 when he’s commissioned to write Citizen Kane for Orson Welles. Mank is in his 40s and a big fat drunk. He’s given a secretary, Rita (who types 100 words a minute – ON A TYPEWRITER, THANK YOU) and he starts to write. However, we barely spend any time with Mank in this setting. The majority of the script is flashbacks.
We flashback to the early 30s where the country is in a depression. As far as I can tell, Mank is still an alcoholic back then, too. He’s just not as bad of an alcoholic. One of the most interesting storylines is that Mank used to be friends with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who is the figure Citizen Kane is famously based on.
He’s also friends with Hearst’s mistress, Marion, and routinely goes up to Hearst’s mansion. There is an opportunity to show the disintegration of Mank’s friendship with Hearst which, we presume, is the reason he’s now recklessly skewering him in this screenplay, but this potentially intriguing plotline is barely covered.
Instead, Mank’s biggest storyline involves the political aspirations of Upton Sinclair, a former writer turned politician who was running on an “End Poverty” campaign who Hollywood hated. Sinclair was famous for getting shafted via false propaganda films that will have some seeing shades of Bernie Sanders.
To be honest, Sinclair’s life sounds interesting. But I’m not reading a script about Sinclair’s life. I’m reading a script about Herman Mankiewicz’s life. Which led to me wondering, “Why is the titular character of the movie playing second fiddle to a politician who was introduced on page 60?”
If you want to be a screenwriter, one of the most important things you must master is focus. Focusing your narrative is everything. If you try to cover eight different storylines, no matter how interesting each of those storylines is individually, you’re going to have a tough time keeping the reader invested.
There’s a quote in the script where Mank’s manager says to him regarding his early Kane pages, “Well I hate to say this, old man, but I am afraid the story as told is a bit of a jumble. A hectic hodgepodge of talky episodes. A collection of fragments that jump around in space and time like – like a bag of Mexican jumping beans.”
I was so struck by how accurately this line explained “Mank” itself that I thought, maybe, Fincher was doing it on purpose. Maybe he was trying to have the script mimic the broken alcohol-ridden mind of Mank himself. But while that sounds great in theory, you’re playing with fire when you’re making your script a metaphor. A script has to work on its own.
If I were producing this screenplay – and I’m guessing that would be David Fincher’s worst nightmare – I would get rid of the Sinclair stuff and focus on a) the current timeline and Mank’s battle with Welles to get the script done, b) his former relationship with Hearst. And c) maybe his relationship with his younger brother, which had potential. That’s all you need. You’ve got yourself a doable interesting biopic that covers a pivotal moment in Hollywood history.
And just to remind everyone – when you’re doing these biopics, YOU CAN’T INCLUDE EVERYTHING. No matter how much you want to. Or how much you can convince yourself that these peripheral stories like Sinclair’s election connect thematically with the rest of the script. This is a movie. It’s not a novel. It’s not a TV show. It’s a movie. And a movie needs to be focused. Which means getting rid of stuff you love. That’s part of the deal you sign when you join the screenwriting club.
HOWEVER!!!
I would like to add a theory I’ve come up with about this project. And if this theory is correct, it throws everything I just said out the window.
This project was given to Eric Roth. What is Eric Roth’s most famous movie? Forrest Gump. What was my least favorite part about Mank? That Mank is the least important character in the story. He weaves in and out of all the Hollywood elite players from that time, each of them getting these big juicy moments. So WHAT IF that’s what they’re going for? Mank isn’t even the key character. He’s more like a Forrest Gump who stumbles into the rooms of these major Hollywood titans. If that’s what this movie ends up being, that could be really cool. I mean, who doesn’t want to see David Fincher’s version of Forrest Gump?
Roth was recently interviewed on Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast and he sounded really excited about this project so, could it be that’s what he’s doing? We’ll see!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: They say don’t write movies about Hollywood. There’s a caveat to that. You can write movies about Hollywood THAT ARE SET BETWEEN 1930 and 1979. Directors and studios absolutely love this era of moviemaking. So they always love to go back to it when they can. We just saw it with Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. They love creating the Hollywood of old. So if you’re ever going to write about Hollywood, that’s the era to set your screenplay in.
