Let’s start out this Mish-Monday with a big fat CONGRATULATIONS to our boy, Nick Morris, whose movie, Becky, debuted this weekend on digital AND in Drive-In theaters.

I gladly contributed to that $$$ total by renting the movie myself and you better believe I had a grand old time with it. There’s something special about watching a movie written by someone you not only know but are rooting for. It was exciting and fun (the cutting Kevin James’ eyeball out with scissors scene was a highlight for me) and I recommend all Scriptshadow viewers check it out.

Speaking of Becky, someone in the comments section brought up that it’s the first Scriptshadow Amateur Showdown winner to become a movie and I thought that was interesting because we’ve had some great Amateur Showdown winners on the site. What was it about Becky that made it the first one?

That answer can be broken into two parts. First off, it’s a movie concept. Like the producers said to Nick when they reached out to him. “It’s Die Hard with a 9 year old girl.” Once you can get producers thinking in terms of visualizing the movie and seeing the marketing angle for it, you are massively increasing your chances of selling the script.

And two, IT’S DOABLE. The more expensive a movie is to make, the less people there are who have the ability to make it. I love Jingle Hell Rock to death. But I’m the first to admit it’s a 75 million dollar movie. And, at that price point for a comedy, you’re talking about a limited number of outfits in town who can pull it off.

Becky, meanwhile, is in the 3-5 million dollar range. There are a lot of people in the movie business who can scrounge up 3 million dollars to make a movie if they like the concept enough.

The longer I do this, the more I think PASSION is the most important factor in creating a script that people respond to. But it doesn’t hurt to keep marketing and budget in mind.

Looking at all this in hindsight, it makes perfect sense why Nick is breaking into the business. He writes doable horror films, all of which he’s passionate about. So one more thumbs up to Nick and can’t wait to see the next one, buddy!

Switching gears, I wanted to share with you my latest TV obsession, the FX/Hulu show, “Dave,” which is their highest-rated comedy ever. Yes, as in higher than It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

“Dave” is a semi-autobiographical take on rapper Lil Dicky’s life. For those of you who are skeptical about a show involving a rapper, I encourage you to check out a couple of Lil Dicky’s videos (Earth and Freaky Friday).

There’s a reason this guy has become so big. He’s talented and unique and always looks to elevate the genre of music and television with something new. If that’s not good enough for you, maybe this pitch is: Dave is “Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Entourage.”

I was skeptical myself but within five minutes, I was hooked. Whenever I’m hooked quickly, I always stop and ask why. Cause hooking a viewer is the single most important thing a writer can do. If you can figure out how to hook someone, you can own the storytelling universe.

In the case of Lil Dicky, it didn’t take me long to figure out what he did. When I say to you, “rapper,” close your eyes and tell me what comes to mind. I’m guessing some tough guy talking about how many “bitches” he has, throwing money around, a grill in his mouth, cars, planes, attitude, living the crazy life.

Okay, now open your eyes and look at Dave. He’s a scrawny insecure neurotic Jewish guy. Immediately you have irony. And when you have irony, that’s a storytelling superpower. It makes characters a lot more interesting.

But “Dave” takes it up a notch. Again, your typical rapper talks about how many girls he’s f#$%@ and how many girls he’s got hanging around him at all times. Dave, meanwhile, has a traumatizing rare condition with his penis. I’m not going to get into specifics because it actually makes me squeamish to think about. But the short of it is, his penis is the opposite of whatever you’d imagine an alpha tough guy rapper’s penis to be. And he’s super insecure about it.

What this does is it creates sympathy. It’s no different than Nemo’s tiny fin. Once you feel bad for the circumstances someone’s in, you are much more likely to root for them. So this ailment Dave has been cursed with makes us root for him more so than we’d root for the typical guy.

On a broader scale, a weakness or disability can punch up a character’s depth. Because it’s not just the fact that the character has a weakness, it’s all of the mental baggage that comes with it. It’s the insecurity. It’s the worry. It’s feeling “less than.” A character who’s having to battle that on an every day basis is going to be more interesting than the guy who has everything figured out.

As viewers, we’re not just hoping the character gets the giant pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (For Dave, that big rap contract). We’re hoping he can mentally overcome this ailment that’s defined his whole life and not worry any more. The achievement of the inner character goal is usually more satisfying to an audience than the achievement of the outer goal. And that’s a big part of what Season 1 of Dave is about.

Another thing I love about Dave is that it consistently exploits its premise.

You’ve heard me talk about this before. A premise is a promise. It’s you saying to the reader/viewer, here’s what my movie/show is about. Whether that’s about dinosaurs or time travel or getting shipwrecked on an experimental island or falling in love with a robot. Your premise is a promise to the viewer that you’re going to entertain them with this specific subject matter.

The mistake so many writers make is they set up their premise then give you a bunch of generic scenes that could be in any movie. If you’re going to give me Minority Report, about people who get convicted for murders they haven’t committed yet, you better not give me detectives showing up at houses asking questions to a suspects’s mother, stuff you could see every week in every TV procedural ever.

There are two scenes in Dave that stuck out to me in this respect. The first occurs in episode 9. Dave is doing some last second recording work on his computer. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is packing cause they’re going to a wedding. She’s trying to get him to hurry but he’s dragging his feet.

So what does Dave do? He invites her over to make her case while he’s recording his song. This results in a cute little autotune conversation that becomes its own song. What’s important to note here is that we are LEANING INTO THE FACT THAT DAVE IS A RAPPER. That is his life. By taking a conversation and repurposing it into a “song”, we are delivering on the promise of the premise.

But probably my favorite moment from Dave comes in the final episode which begins with an eight minute musical sequence of Dave doing something illegal during a concert and going to prison for it. The sequence jumps back and forth between rapping and telling the story in his normal voice, taking us through months and months of his life. Here is the **graphic** (trigger warning!) first part of the sequence…

Here’s when you know you’ve written a scene that’s delivering on the promise of your premise. It’s a scene THAT COULD ONLY EXIST IN YOUR SHOW. This scene couldn’t exist in any other show on TV. It could only exist in Dave. That’s why this show is so good.

That’s all for me, today. Don’t forget you only have twenty-seven more days left to get your Last Great Screenwriting Contest scripts in. Oh, and tomorrow should be interesting. I’ll be reviewing Fincher’s dad’s screenplay that Fincher is directing, Mank, about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s battles with director Orson Welles over screenplay credit for Citizen Kane.

That’s right! You know him from the comments section. You know him for winning Amateur Showdown. You know him as one of the nicest writers on the block. It’s Nick Morris! Three years ago, Nick won Amateur Showdown with his script, “There Was a Little Girl.” Nick soon received a phone call from a producer who wanted to make it. Three years later, the film, now titled, “Becky,” is being released! How cool is that? Today we pick the mind of our resident genius and find out how we, too, can get our scripts made. Nick is a frequent commenter and I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to answer any additional questions you have in the comments.

CR: Let’s start with how this idea came to you. What inspired you to write it?

NM: I’m so obsessed with movies, especially horror from the 70’s and 80’s – the ones I grew up with. I try to write scripts for movies I’d personally want to watch that don’t exist yet. My first script, “Harvester” came from this epic, supernatural-slasher franchise that I had been building in my head for a lot of years before I ever actually sat down and attempted to write it. The script got me enough attention to inspire me to keep on writing. But it quickly became clear that “Harvester” was just too ambitious (read: expensive) for any producer in their right mind to take a chance on with a first-time writer. Okay. Think smaller. More intimate. Low budget. The Harvester’s day will come… :)

The idea for “Becky” came to me while driving, where many ideas seem to find me. I’m a big fan of “Home Alone” and as you know, pretty much all things horror. What if “Home Alone” were a hyper-violent revenge thriller? Hard R rating. Shot on location in the woods. Played seriously but in a fun, over-the-top, satisfying way. This was something I’d pay to watch. I had the basic framework in place by the time I got home and started writing immediately.

Incidentally, the first cut of “Becky” wound up getting an NC-17 from the MPAA.

CR: I sense a Nick Morris Cut on Disney Plus in the near future. Okay, so, I reviewed your script three years ago, then titled, “There Was a Little Girl.” What happened after that review?

NM: So, the day that the Amateur Friday review for “There Was a Little Girl” was posted, I was at work, shipping equipment and driving a forklift. Every time I got to sit down at my desk, I was reading Scriptshadow. Every chance I got to check my phone, Scriptshadow. I was getting so much great feedback, both from you and the community, that I couldn’t tear myself away from Scriptshadow any longer than was absolutely necessary to still function and do my job. Late in the day, I got an email from a producer. He said that he was reading the script and that his colleagues down the hall could hear him going nuts over it! He asked if he could share it with his partners and get back to me about possibly “picking it up”. Hell. Yeah.

I gave him my phone number, wrapped up my work day and headed home to kick off my vacation with cold beer and an AF review to pour over. I had gotten some interest in my script from a producer, accomplished nothing at work, and I was now on vacation. Solid Friday, all around.

A couple days later, my wife and I set out on a little road trip to attend a Metallica concert in Montreal. It’s almost a 12-hour drive from here in Nova Scotia. Somewhere just inside the border of Quebec, my phone rang. Unknown number. I pulled the car over to answer. It was the producer. He talked a mile-a-minute and I did my best to process everything he was saying on the side of the highway with trucks roaring by. He said that he, and everyone in his office, loved the script and they wanted it! We could discuss it further when I got back home in a few days. I can’t even describe everything I was feeling in that moment. I was waaay over the moon.

CR: That’s awesome! What specifically about the script did they respond to?

NM: I remember him calling it “Die Hard with a little girl.” It was probably the gleefully violent tone that drew him in but I think the lawnmower scene was what sealed the deal.

CR: One thing writers learn quickly in this business is that no matter how much someone likes your script, they’re ready with a round of notes. Was that what happened with you? And if so, what were the major notes you were given for the rewrites?

NM: The producers didn’t really have a lot of notes for me out of the gate. Their biggest thing was the characterization of the bad guys. They wanted them to have more “flavor”, which was something that you also pointed out in your review. They suggested making them Nazis. So that’s what I did and it was a great note because this approach definitely gives the personalities of the villains, particularly the leader, Dominick, more color and depth.

CR: What about rewrites? How many were there and how long did the process take?

NM: I was under contract for one rewrite and one “polish”, which is just a lighter, final round of minor revisions. So from the time the contract was signed to the time I turned in my last draft was probably between two and three months. It was sometime during those rewrites that the producers opted to change the name of the project to the shorter and punchier title of “Becky.”

CR: As a writer going through this for the first time, was there anything about the process that surprised you?

NM: For me, almost everything is surprising on some level. Everything is a first. And I’m still learning new things every day about the process and about this business. Probably the biggest surprise to me early on was how cool everyone was to work with. I think I was nervous that the whole experience was gonna be really stressful or something. But that wasn’t the case at all. The producers and everyone I’ve dealt with have been absolute pros and a total pleasure to collaborate with and learn from.

CR: Another lesson working writers learn is that what works on the page to hook readers doesn’t always work in movie form. Were there any changes you needed to make to make this more “cinematic” and less of a spec script?

NM: Certain elements needed to be dialed back or cut in the interest of production, logistics and the budget. Some things are far easier to write than they are to shoot. A lot of that stuff was handled by Lane and Ruckus Skye, the other writers for “Becky.” They came onboard the project along with the directors, Cary Murnion and Jon Millott. They were responsible for taking my wild and untamed story and whipping it into a tighter and leaner narrative and they did a fantastic job with it. I couldn’t be happier with how the finished product turned out.

CR: My primary criticism in the script was, as you remember, whether it was believable that this little girl could physically compete against a group of grown men. Was that ever an issue during development? If so, how did you tackle it?

NM: Nobody ever voiced any real concerns to me about Becky’s age. I tried to make everything she did in the script reasonably plausible, using her anger, her resourcefulness (and her dog) to outsmart and outmaneuver the bad guys. Divide and conquer. In fact, one of the very first things the producer told me was that he wanted to get “the little girl from Annabelle 2” for the role of Becky. Lulu Wilson was eleven years old at the time and she was already a familiar face to horror fans so I was thrilled by this revelation. Within a few weeks, Lulu was onboard and she was super excited about the project. That was sometime during the fall of 2017. But principle photography didn’t begin until August of 2019. By then, Lulu was thirteen. She’s so talented and she was always the producer’s first choice for Becky so her character had to be aged-up along with her. It was absolutely the right call because Lulu’s a total beast and what she brings to the role is really phenomenal to watch.

CR: Take me through the mind of a writer who is writing for himself as opposed to writing for an employer. What can screenwriters expect from that transition? Does writing get harder?

NM: In many ways, I find writing for an employer to be easier than the process of grinding through the first draft of a spec script. But I’ve been fortunate in that everyone I’ve worked with so far has been really enthusiastic about my writing but they’ve also been perfectly clear about the changes they want to see. Having that direction helps a lot and knowing that someone is eagerly waiting to check out your next draft is a great motivator to get it done as efficiently as possible. It definitely requires a bit of a mindset shift in terms of your approach to the work but it also clarifies your path going forward.

CR: What was the biggest lesson you learned as a screenwriter from this whole process?

NM: There are so many. The biggest thing I’ve learned on this wild ride is that it’s possible. It can be done. And you don’t need to be in LA, either. Thanks to social media and platforms like ScriptShadow, where “Becky” was discovered, you can put your work out there from anywhere in the world.

CR: One of the things I’ve always liked about you, Nick, is how positive you are. I mean, you’re the only person I’ve ever had an online disagreement with about The Last Jedi and we both left the argument courteous and respectful. :) This is an extremely important quality for writers to have since this business can be so harsh. Where does that positivity come from and can you give us any tips on how to remain positive in the face of a rejection-based business?

NM: Hey, thanks! I still dig “The Last Jedi”. :) Of course, you need to be cognisant of what people say about your work and differentiate between what’s valid and what isn’t. Understand that screenwriting is an artform and all art is subjective. One person will dig what you’ve come up with and the next won’t. Take it all under consideration. But in terms of a generally positive outlook on life? You know that scene in “Airplane” with the pilot walking through the airport fighting off everyone that comes near him? That’s sort of what I try to do with negative influences. Learn to identify potential threats to your happiness, your confidence and self worth and dropkick that shit the hell out of your way without looking back. Keep moving forward. Find whatever it is that makes you happy, inspires you and makes you feel safe and direct all of your energy there. For me, it’s my loving and supportive family, music, movies and writing. The rest is noise.

CR: And finally, do you have any advice for aspiring screenwriters out there on how to get their script turned into a movie!

NM: Put your scripts out into the world however you can. Submit to Scriptshadow, hosting sites, contests, wherever. Use social media to build legit relationships with folks in the industry, but tread carefully without EVER coming off as pushy or annoying. Ideally, you wanna let them come to you about your work. And if your writing connects with the right person at the right time, you’re off! Maintain that positive attitude, be cool to people, be adaptable and open to criticism and you might just get to watch your script become a movie.

CR: Oh, and when and where can we see Becky???

NM: Tomorrow! June 5th. “Becky” will be available Digitally and OnDemand through all of the major platforms. You can pre-order it now on iTunes and, if you’re lucky enough to have one nearby, “Becky” is playing at over 50 Drive-in theaters across the U.S. with more to come as they continue to reopen.

Today I finally FINALLY settle the debate of whether the famous Protosevich draft of I Am Legend is an abandoned classic

Genre: Horror/Action
Premise: In post-apocalyptic San Francisco, a man tries to survive with his dog while avoiding a new race of blood-drinking people.
About: I am Legend is a classic book. It was one of the longest running properties in Development Hell until Will Smith came along and finally turned the project into a go movie. It is widely believed that they went with a lame draft and ditched one of the best drafts of a script EVER. Which is why I wanted to read the draft they passed up. I wanted to find out if that was true.
Writer: Mark Protosevich (based on the classic novel by Richard Matheson
Details: No page numbers

Last week I reviewed a script called Cover Version, which is the script that would eventually become Yesterday. A discussion had begun brewing online about whether Richard Curtis ruined Yesterday and that the original script was much better. I read Cover Version and disagreed.

I said that, in my experience, the script that makes it to screen is the best version of the script 99% of the time. The idea that that all these movies (The Snyder Cut! The Ayer Cut!) have some masterful unamade better version somewhere back at the studio lot may sound romantic. But it’s never true. Often, the movies are just different iterations of the same material.

But this is the script they say is the exception to that rule. The Protosevich draft. It was way better than what they went with. Today I offer you another episode of, “WAS THAT OLD DRAFT REALLY BETTER THAN THE MOVIE?!”

Robert Nelville lives in the aftermath of a pandemic that nearly wiped out the entire human population. He lives amongst these things called hemocytes. These are half-vampire half-zombie things that are intelligent and want nothing more than to kill Nelville, especially their leader, Cortman, a guy who likes to wax poetic every night outside of Nelville’s heavily fortified home.

Robert spends his days foraging for food with his dog. Luckily, the hemocytes can’t survive in sunlight. So, during the day, he’s fine. But if there ever comes a time when he gets stuck out here at night, he’s screwed.

Robert’s goal is mostly to survive. But one day when he *does* get stuck in the darkness, that goal is looking unlikely. Nelville and his dog wipe out a band of hemocytes but both of our heroes end up injured. Nelville tries to save his dog but fails. Bye bye doggy.

About to give up on life, Robert finds a note in the city center from another uninfected human. He shows up to meet Anna. Soon, she moves in and the two are having sexy time. But Anna is a trojan horse working for the hemocytes! She’s able to get Nelville out and bring him back to Cortman, who drags Nelville back to his underground subway city. He’s been waiting a long time for the opportunity to kill Nelville. And now he’s going to enjoy it!

It’s been a while since I saw the movie but here’s what I remember. I remember a cool opening image of Will Smith hunting in a post-apocalyptic New York. I remember a somewhat logical storyline where he was a doctor trying to find a cure to this disease. I remember the zombies being too CG and taking me out of the movie. The moment I remember checking out was when the woman showed up. I don’t even remember why she was there or what she wanted. Probably because it was dumb.

So is the script better than that?

I mean, the bar sounds pretty low.

Hmm… I dunno.

A couple of differences I noticed right away.

The hemoctye Nelville first encounters in this draft is both clever and can speak. That made for a completely different experience than the mindless zombie bomb we got. And the second was the level of detail in the zombie hierarchy. There are a lot more layers to this foe than in the film. It feels more unique. We’ve seen plenty of mindless zombie movies already. This smart half-zombie hierarchy is what would’ve made this zombie movie different.

But after that, the drafts read surprisingly similar.

This is exactly what I was saying. They’re slightly different movies but it’d be a stretch to say this early draft is hands down better.

I liked Nelville better in the movie to be honest – how they made him a doctor (he’s a history professor in the script). That allowed him to be more active. And he also had more influence on the story. If he figures out the cure, he can save an entire race. This would’ve fixed the problem in this draft, which is that all Nelville is trying to do is survive until the next day.

Another difference was the zombie-vampires themselves. In this draft, they’re smart. They can hold a perfect conversation with you. I went back and forth on if this was a better idea or not. On the one hand, a killer species that’s just bottled up rage with no brains is terrifying. There’s no talking one of these guys out of killing you.

But in the script, you get the sense that these guys are rational. Blood thirsty and crazy. But Cortman could be reasoned with. Which is scarier? The movie version, for sure. However, by giving them personalities, the script made them more complex and interesting. That theoretically created a richer set of characters. But I’m not sure it achieved that in practice.

Like the movie, the script loses something when Anna shows up. Look, bringing a new character into a story at the midpoint is a smart idea. It creates a whole new set of scenarios that were unavailable in the first half of the script, which allows the second half of the script to feel different.

But in both situations, I never warmed to Anna. There was always something “plot-pointy” about her character. She was never a real person. She was a way to give the second half of the movie purpose and build to some sort of clear focused ending. If you ever catch yourself using your characters as plot pawns instead of really getting to know them and exploring them, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

I hate to break it to everyone but, once again, it is NOT true that some great script went unshot for some bastardized Hollywood version. This draft is merely different. And it’s not even that different. A lot of the key beats from the movie are in here as well. If you want to know what killed I Am Legend, look at the casting of Will Smith and whoever decided the hemocytes should look overly computer generated.

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

What I learned: The city you pick for your story matters. Each city has a unique personality that, if you do it right, should ooze into the story. Los Angeles is laid back. San Francisco super liberal. Chicago is a working class town. The ONLY thing that New York brings to the table is familiarity. That’s the only reason to set your movie in New York. Otherwise, you’re just the 500,000th movie that has set itself in New York City, ensuring your movie will feel derivative. They should’ve kept San Francisco, like we see here in this draft.

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: Two weed growers who have been dating for over a decade have their relationship upended when one of them wins a reality TV show contest to fly to Mars.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with six votes. It’s an adaptation of a short story from Deborah Willis in her book, “The Dark and Other Love Stories.”
Writer: Kaitlin Fontana (from a story by Deborah Willis)
Details: 115 pages

Someone told me not long ago that Mars movies were dead.

To them I say, WRONG-O!

And CHECK URSELF B4 U WRK URSELF!

One of the first lessons I learned about Hollywood is that something is only dead until it isn’t. A year after I was told that Hollywood would never make a pirate movie again, Pirates of the Caribbean came out. So I learned to distrust Hollywood rhetoric early on.

As long as you have a good idea, you can make any “dead” genre work. But that’s the key. It has to be a good idea.

Today’s idea is… funky. Different. I like the title! That’s what made me open the script. But does the script live up to that title? Let’s find out.

Kevin and Amber have been dating for twelve years. Both of them lack purpose. They start growing weed in their basement so that they never have to do anything with their life. But then Amber goes off and applies for a reality show that ends with two people going to Mars.

Kevin watches helplessly as the newly purposeful Amber flies to the reality show location to start her training. While this is happening, we jump back to earlier points in Kevin and Amber’s relationship to show how they met. I would say “how they met and fell in love” but this relationship is more a relationship of convenience.

The script also turns Kevin into a somber version of Ferris Bueller who will talk straight to us, the viewer, about why this situation sucks so badly. Well, Kevin, it’s about to get worse. Every Thursday Kevin watches his girlfriend on the reality show as she becomes closer and closer to another contestant, the handsome and cool, Adam.

Eventually, Amber and Adam are sent up on a space capsule for six months to simulate the trip to Mars. See if they can handle each other for that long. The answer comes to us in a stunning visual. When the two exit the capsule, Amber’s pregnant!

But don’t worry. Kevin starts screwing around with some druggie chick named Tanya who not only comes around to smoke weed all the time, but happily watches the reality show with Kevin’s girlfriend in it. Alas, Kevin gets bored of Tanya and dumps her. Will Kevin ever find happiness? And will Amber and Adam be heading to the real Mars? Check out Girlfriend on Mars to find out!

I’m going to isolate this script’s problems down to a single issue.

A depressed inactive aimless main character is too much for a script to overcome. It’s hard enough to get an audience to root for a depressing character. But then when you add in that he doesn’t do anything but sit on the couch all day and watch his ex-girlfriend’s reality TV show, that’s something no screenplay can make work.

On top of that, you have two storylines. One where a girl is training to go to Mars and the other where a guy sits on the couch all day. Which one of those storylines sounds more interesting? I’m hoping you said the first one. But we don’t spend any time with Amber. We instead stay back at the house, on the couch, with Kevin.

You have to look at this logically.

You’re trying to make a movie.

So you have to imagine what your movie is going to look like onscreen. If 80% of your movie is a guy on a couch, how is that going to look onscreen? I’d imagine it would look pretty un-cinematic.

So either focus on the part of your movie that IS cinematic or repurpose the story you want to tell (in this case, Kevin’s) so that it’s MORE cinematic. And that goes right back to our main character. The simple adjustment of making Kevin more active means he’s going to be out there in more situations encountering obstacles and trying to overcome them, which is cinematic.

Now you may say, well Carson, the whole point of his character is that he’s the opposite of his girlfriend. He’s depressed. He has no motivation. That’s his character’s flaw! And what I would say to you then is, okay, so is it a good idea to write a movie about that character?

This is why I always say, one of the best things you can do when you’re putting your story together is to figure out how your character is going to be active.

The only time I’ve found that lazy inactive characters work is when they’re FORCED to be active and when it’s a comedy. Two classic stoner comedies, The Big Lebowski, and Pineapple Express, take stoner passive characters then thrust them into their worst nightmare. THEY MUST BE ACTIVE. That’s why those movies are so fun. Lebowski would not be a classic character and Pineapple Express would not be a beloved comedy if those characters were able to chill out doing nothing but smoking pot the whole movie.

This leads to a bigger question, which is, is there a movie here?

I think there is if you go the full comedy route. And you’d need to figure out a way to keep Kevin and Amber around each other. He would need to go to wherever she was training so they’d still be spending time together.

Because by making her so far away, you dilute the importance of their relationship. You want characters who are having problems with each other to be around each other. That’s when they’re the most interesting to watch. Cause we want to see if they’re going to resolve those issues or not.

It’s hard to feel any emotion with the two on the phone or Kevin watching her on TV. It all feels so far away and unimportant.

But, yeah, this needs to be a full-blown comedy. I mean, the title is, “Girlfriend on Mars.” That’s a title that elicits a laugh. You need a funny script to accompany it.

In the writer’s defense, this is a first draft of a book adaptation and those first drafts tend to follow the book narrative too closely. Books and movies are soooooo different. The storyline of a movie needs to be tighter, it needs a focused hook, and it needs to be simpler. This isn’t the kind of movie you want to burden with a bunch of jumping around in time. It just isn’t that kind of story.

I hope they figure it out.

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

What I learned: Novels tend to be more introspective. Movies are more in your face. That’s why adapting a novel or a short story can be tough. But that’s the skill you need to bring to the table as a writer. You must figure out a way to take something that’s largely in a character’s head and make it active and cinematic. Sometimes that means drastically changing the story. But you gotta do what you gotta do! Don’t be a slave to the original material if it’s going to make a lousy movie.

What I learned: If there’s a problem facing your hero, you should write the movie so that they have the opportunity to tackle that problem. One of the reasons Girlfriend on Mars is so frustrating is because Kevin has this huge problem – his girlfriend is training to go to Mars and she’s falling in love with her co-pilot – and all he can do is watch. If there isn’t even an option for your hero to solve the problem, there’s going to be very little drama in your movie. This is why I said it would’ve been a good idea to get Kevin and Amber around each other. Now he has a shot at disrupting this.

Today’s movie is a prime example of the power of a small group of people working together to create art.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Set in the 1950s, a DJ and a switchboard operator living in a small town hear a strange noise coming over the airwaves and spend the night trying to decipher what the noise is and where it’s coming from.
About: The Vast of Night was a tiny film created by a small group of passionate people which would eventually get accepted into Slamdance and become one of the breakout films at the festival. Amazon would purchase it and when the movie debuted this weekend, it held a surprising 93% Rotten Tomato score, a virtually unheard of achievement for a film made by and starring people who have zero footprint in the movie business. This is director Andrew Patterson’s first film. It is writers James Montague and Craig Sanger’s first film. You’ve never seen the two leads before. So what was it about the movie that got people so revved up? Let’s find out!
Writers: James Montague and Craig W. Sanger
Details: 90 minutes

I’m all about the UFOs. Aliens visiting this planet is my jam. But it’s well-traveled Hollywood real estate and therefore you have to come with a fresh angle to stand out. The Vast of Night is one of the few movies in this genre to actually achieve this.

The story takes place in Small Town, USA during the evening of a big high school basketball game. We meet Everett Sloan, our DJ helping people at the gym set up for the game. Everett’s trying out his new audio tape recorder and having a blast interviewing people about the game.

Everett runs into Fay Crocker, a geeky female switchboard operator with a penchant for science who begins rattling off some of the crazy predictions she’s read about the future in her Popular Mechanics magazine collection. We follow the two around the school and into the quiet small town until they eventually split up to do their jobs, him to DJ and her to work the switchboard.

The Vast of Night then places us in a single profile shot watching Fay do her job for FIFTEEN FULL MINUTES. During the tail end of this session, she hears a strange noise and calls Everett to patch him in to see if he knows what it is. Everett doesn’t but wants to play it on the air to see if anybody else knows.

This leads to an older army veteran, Billy, calling in, who says he has a story to share and goes on about how he, too, heard that noise when he was deployed. After Billy’s call, an older woman, Mabel, calls in and says she needs Everett to come to her house so she can tell him something important about the noise. Everett grabs his tape recorder and Fay and they head over there. Mabel says that her own daughter was taken by aliens responsible for that noise.

Figuring that the aliens must be nearby and will probably leave once the basketball game is over, Everett and Fay grab a car and drive into the vast of night to try and locate the alien ship. They eventually do. But when the alien ship spots them, will it allow them to go back to town? Or will it make sure the story ends here?

I give the writers credit for keeping the narrative tight. That’s a little screenwriting trick you can use with plots that don’t have a lot of sex appeal. The nature of limiting the timeline to 2 hours or 3 hours or 4 hours, gives the story a false sense of urgency that tricks the viewer into feeling like the plot is moving along faster than it is.

But the real star here is the directing.

These guys had no money yet they found a way to make this feel like a movie. By the way, that’s one of the primary things producers and studios look for in directors. They’re looking for people who can make a 1 million dollar movie look like a 5 million dollar movie. Heck, Robert Rodriquez built an entire brand on that.

But back to Vast. The first thing they did was set the story in 1953 which added some production value you don’t get from your run-of-the-mill UFOs-in-the-sky movie. And they set it at night because the director couldn’t hide the telltale signs of this not being a 1950s town in the day. So that was a smart move.

He then told the story in a series of long single shots. Which is really hard to do. Especially when you have inexperienced actors. These actors are being asked to remember 10 pages of dialogue while doing complex walking one-take shots. Which is exactly why you don’t usually see that. Other directors (I’m talking indie directors, not Sam Mendes with 100 million dollars to play with) are too scared to try it. If you ruin one of those shots, you’re setting up for another 3 hours to get the next one. And there’s only so many of those takes that you get on a tiny budget like this. Yet that was the risk the director took in order to make sure his movie felt different from everyone else’s.

The director, Patterson, would also mix in these insane dolly shots. There’s one shot in the middle of the movie that pulls out of Everett’s DJ station and zooms along the ground, like a skateboarding possum on meth, through the entire town, going into the school, all in a single shot, mind you, then INTO THE BASKETBALL GAME ITSELF as its going on, goes onto the court while the game is playing, then swishes back out of the school and over to Fay in her switchboard room.

You just don’t see that in your average indie. It’s ambitious.

But the directing can’t outrun the writing issues in Vast. The primary issue is a lack of stakes. What Vast of Night attempts to do is use IMPLIED STAKES. Implied stakes are when you vaguely imply that good things might happen if the hero succeeds or bad things might happen if the hero fails.

Implied stakes don’t work well. You need CLEAR STAKES. Clear stakes are, “You better get the money by 6pm or we’re going to kill you.” Implied stakes are, “You better get the money or else.” Vast of Night is an implied stakes screenplay. We’re not sure why figuring out this sound matters other than it’s going to quench Everett and Fay’s curiosity. Is quenching curiosity “stakes?” Not where I come from.

And then you have an inevitable ending, which is unfortunate. There are so many risks in the direction and the ending is something we figure out two minutes after the strange noise appears. I mean, what else can you do really? You’re building up to this UFO. Obviously you’re going to show it. (spoilers) And since you need to add some extra pop, you’re probably going to have your leads beamed up to the ship. And that’s exactly what happens.

On the plus side, the dialogue is occasionally fun. I enjoyed Fay’s fascination with the future in the opening walk. And Billy’s call-in to the station was a highlight. The best performance of the movie comes from a character who never appears on screen. And while it’s easy to focus on his performance, Montague and Sanger gave him some juicy dialogue to work with.

In the end, this is a case of young fresh talent making a movie. There were always going to be missteps. But the pros overwhelm the cons when it’s all said and done. The Vast of Night is worth checking out.

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

What I learned: Today’s what I learned is on you guys. I watched Space Force this weekend, which was awful. But I couldn’t figure out why it was awful. It’s not a bad idea. When I think Steve Carrel and Space Force, I imagine funny stuff. And I love 75% of the cast. Yet nothing in the show works. And it’s hard to figure out why other than to say it’s just not funny. So for those of you who saw it, educate me. What can I learn from Space Force on how not to write a comedy TV show?