Due to the corona-virus craziness, the Scriptshadow segue to producing has been pushed back a few months. And guess who benefits from that? YOU GUYS. I’m extending The Last Great Screenplay Contest deadline to July 4th. That’s right. INDEPENDENCE DAY. Think of it this way. On that day, your screenplay will finally achieve independence from you. Of course, it will now depend on me. But that’s another story.
NEW CONTEST DEADLINE: SATURDAY, JULY 4TH, 11:59 PM PACIFIC TIME
If you don’t know anything about The Last Great Screenplay Contest or how to enter, go here!
As for this weekend, I’m hearing good things about this new sci-fi movie debuting on Amazon Prime called, “The Vast of the Night.” So I’m going to check that out. Also, the long-awaited Steve Carrel show, “Space Force,” debuts on Netflix at midnight. So I’ll at least check out the first episode of that this weekend. Expect me to review one of the two Monday.
Hope everyone has a great weekend. Get some writing done!
So I finished Netflix’s Into the Night and I can honestly say it’s the best TV show of the year so far.
I haven’t encountered a show with this level of urgency in a long time. The closest I can think of is Netflix’s Black Summer. But what makes Into the Night so much better is that the urgency is organically built into the premise. They have to keep flying to avoid daylight.
There are three screenwriting tips I want to bring up in particular with this show. It should go without saying that I’m including spoilers. Watch the show first if possible. I guarantee that once you start, you won’t be able to stop.
Oh, and fun little piece of trivia. This show is based on a book. And the creator adapted the entire first season from the FIRST PAGE of the book.
The first concept I want to talk about is called sandwiching.
There comes multiple times in every TV or Feature script (but TV especially) where you’ve got to write a scene with boring exposition or two characters who don’t have a lot going on. This could be the C-story in a TV episode. You’ve been told you have to write the scene and there’s nothing interesting going on between the two characters.
In these situations, you want to SANDWICH the scene with something really big before and PROMISE something big is going to happen after. If you do this well, we’ll tolerate the scene.
So there’s this moment in episode 5 of Into the Night where Sylvie, our helicopter pilot protagonist, goes back to the apartment of her dead boyfriend and mourns. Another character shows up to try and convince her to come back.
Now before this scene, we just showed a major fight between two characters in another location where one character beats the other one to near death. He then leaves that character to get back to the plane. That’s the first piece of bread on this sandwich.
The second piece is we have to leave within an hour! That’s when the sun comes up. So we have to get back to the freaking airplane NOW! This is our exciting second piece of bread which is a PROMISE that something interesting is coming. And it’s for that reason we tolerate this slow decent-but-mostly-boring scene of Sylvie trying to get over her dead boyfriend.
Where writers get into trouble is when they get lazy, when they stop sandwiching boring scenes, when they try to pile 3 or 4 boring scenes inside a sandwich, or when they don’t understand the technique at all. Because that’s when you’re at risk of writing 20-30 pages of boring story.
In an ideal world, every scene would be riveting. But it’s just not possible. You need to set certain things up for later scenarios to be exciting. And setup can be boring.
Moving on, tip 2. Dialogue doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. Into the Night is one of the most riveting TV shows I’ve ever seen. But it’s in another language. And I don’t understand that language.
Therefore, I have to use subtitles. Now, for those who don’t know about the job of subtitling, these people do not directly translate what the characters are saying. Instead, they give the bare bones generalized idea of what they’re saying in its most basic form.
If you want to have some fun, turn on the dubbed English audio and also put on English subtitles. You’ll see that their dubbed words don’t even match the subtitles. That’s because two different people are doing those jobs and they’re both just putting up their generic interpretation of what’s being said.
I bring this up because everybody talks about the importance of dialogue when shows like Into the Night and movies like Parasite are amazing yet we’re basically watching them with 3rd grade level English dialogue translation.
Does this mean you shouldn’t strive to write great dialogue? Of course not. But it’s a reminder that it’s what’s SURROUNDING the dialogue that’s most important. If you get that right, a scene will work regardless of how basic the dialogue is. Shows like Into the Night prove that.
Add conflict. Add tension. Add dramatic irony. Come up with an interesting scenario, like 7 passengers questioning an 8th passenger on if he’s really who he says he is.
From there, do the best you can with your dialogue. But it’s setting up the situation surrounding the dialogue that matters most.
Finally, one of the writing devices I like the best is when the writer makes it seem TRULY IMPOSSIBLE that the characters are going to succeed in the end.
And I stress “truly” for a reason. Because most writers set up an ending where they’re already thinking of how they’re going to get the characters around the obstacles in their way, and therefore, it doesn’t TRULY feel impossible. We can sense the writer carving that escape hatch that the characters are going to find and be okay.
Instead, you want to write your ending almost like you hate yourself. You want to make it as hard as possible for you the writer to figure out how your characters are going to get out of this.
Into the Night aces this test and then some.
(Major Spoilers)
While on their final flight – they’re not going to have fuel after this – the group has located an old Soviet bunker in Bulgaria that government officials are fleeing to. So their plan is to land the plane at the Bulgarian airport and haul ass to the bunker.
Now get this.
There’s no guarantee they’re going to get inside. It might be locked. It might be full. So right from the start, it’s bad news.
Next, they don’t know exactly where the bunker is. They’re working with some janky old map.
When they land, they have half an hour until sunrise. So they have to find a mystery bunker that they only vaguely know the location of in a country they’ve never been to before, driving on roads that are completely foreign to them, and then hope they get inside when they get there.
Only one person can carry the map but there are 9 people so they have to split up into two jeeps. So the first jeep is speeding away. The second jeep has to try and keep up with them on these winding roads. If they lose them, there’s no way to know which way to go.
Three quarters of the way there, the second jeep crashes. So they have to walk the rest of the way. Meanwhile, the first jeep crosses a gate that automatically closes behind them, locking the second group out.
The second group eventually gets to the gate but it’s electric, so they can’t even climb over it. There’s only 12 minutes left before the sun rises, by the way. They don’t even know if they’re close to the bunker or not. Also, nobody knows where the bunker entrance is. It’s not like a McDonald’s with Golden Arches signaling the location. It’s metal doors built into a hill.
I was sitting there watching this both in awe of the show, in how well it was crafted, and in awe of the writer, who so boldly made things difficult for himself.
Because it would’ve been easy to throw one mildly difficult obstacle at the characters. To throw THIS many obstacles requires a lot more work. Because now you’re stopping the characters more. You’re having to come up with solutions to these problems you’ve created. And bad writers don’t want to do that. It takes way longer to write the obstacle overcoming scenes and requires a lot more brainpower.
So I was rooting for both the characters and the writers simultaneously with this ending because I couldn’t have asked for a better end to this season.
Those are my Into the Night tips. Take them with you, into the night, and use them on your next screenplay!
This screenplay battle regarding the movie, “Yesterday,” has become an international story. Today, I review the original draft that led to the drama!
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Premise: When a struggling musician realizes that he’s the only person on the planet to remember the Beatles, he starts passing the band’s songs off as his own. Only, they don’t create the stir he expected.
About: Jack Barth was a 62 year old screenwriter who had been trying to get his scripts made for over 20 years. The dream finally happened when Richard Curtis heard his pitch for a Beatles-inspired concept about a singer who wakes up one day as the only person on the planet who remembers the Beatles. Curtis supposedly (this is where the story gets murky depending on who you talk to) refused to read the script and went off to write his own version of the idea. Long story short, Curtis took the big writing credit, Barth got stuck with the smaller “Story By” credit, despite the fact that the two screenplays are [supposedly] very similar. Now Barth is taking his argument to the streets because he wants it known who really wrote this movie. You can read more about it here in this Uproxx article. Today, I’ll be reviewing Barth’s original screenplay, the one that would eventually become “Yesterday.” His script is called “Cover Version.”
Writer: Jack Barth
Details: 103 pages, Version 10b 01 July 2016 (posted by Jack Barth on Twitter)
There’s a romanticization about the “unmade” draft of a script. That was one of the reasons I was inspired to create Scriptshadow. I wanted to read all of those famous unused drafts that were so much better than the movies that made it to the big screen.
But what I found was that, 99% of the time, it was b.s. It certainly made for a good story – these unused genius screenplays. But they were always worse than the finished product. And most of the time, a lot worse. The best of these unused scripts were simply different. Same general story. Different choices. But none of them were genius.
That’s because, as fun as it is to claim, “The studio ignored a genius script to make an AWFUL film,” the reality is, it’s in the studio’s best interest to make the best movie they can. So given the choice between a good and bad draft, they almost always pick the good one.
If you disagree with this, show me the receipts. Name the movie that was terrible and the genius script that they overlooked.
Sure, there’s stuff like Source Code. I’m notorious for how much I loved that script. But even though I didn’t love Duncan Jones’ interpretation, I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was that different from the screenplay.
And, to be honest, I’m not even sure that’s what I’m looking for today. It seems like Barth is more interested in getting the credit he deserves for “Yesterday,” instead of being treated like this second hand leper who was only good enough to come up with the idea. I’ve always loved this concept so I’m curious to see what he did with it. Let’s take a look.
The year is 2016. Dan, the lead singer of Clay Enema, is in his 30s. His band mates, girlfriend Ella, Cesar, and Sykes, still enjoy jamming and getting the occasional gig. But the future isn’t looking good. It seems that no matter what Dan does, Clay Enema can’t breakthrough.
Then one day, Dan walks into a rehearsal and, to get warmed up, strums a few chords of the Beatles’ song, “Yesterday.” Curious, Ella comes over and asks him what the song is. He plays along. “Ha ha. Just something I’ve been working on.” Cool, she says, let’s try it out. He laughs her off and gets down to business. He’s got this new song he’s positive will be a hit and he wants to practice. But the band keeps telling him, no, we want to play that other song you were working on.
Naturally, he thinks they’re messing with him so the whole thing turns into a fight and he storms off. But there was something about their conviction that they’d never heard the song before that piques Dan’s curiosity. So he looks online. And he goes to the record store. And he checks his CD collection. There is no mention of the Beatles ANYWHERE!
So Dan apologizes, gets the band back together and starts teaching them all these “new songs” he’s been inspired to write. And what do you know, they start booking more gigs.
People like the songs. But to Dan’s dismay, they don’t LOVE the songs. And so the band’s success stalls. They become big enough to go on small tours and make a living. But not globs-of-fans-darting-across-streets-crying-just-to-get-a-look-at-them big.
Dan doesn’t get it. These are the greatest recorded songs in HISTORY. Why isn’t Clay Enema as big as the Beatles? Dan’s dismay eventually leads to the group breaking up and Dan trying to build a Beatles replica band, complete with the 60s costumes and haircuts. But it doesn’t work.
Eventually, Dan comes to the realization that if there was never a Beatle, John Lennon wouldn’t have been assassinated. So he goes on a quest to find the never famous Lennon, who it turns out is a fisherman, and Dan confides to Lennon what he’s done. Lennon, who just may believe him, tells him that the reason the songs aren’t hits is because Dan didn’t write them. They’re not true to who he is and therefore they can never be hits. Dan thanks him, ditches the Beatles catalog, and starts writing his own songs again. The end.
So there are two questions being asked here.
1) Which version is better?
2) Did Curtis “steal” from Barth’s script despite the fact that he claims to have never read it?
I’ll deal with the first question first. Of the two versions, I think Yesterday was better. But not by much. Basically, Curtis asked the question, “What kind of movie does the audience want to see?” Whereas Barth asked the question, “What would *actually* happen here?”
Both avenues are interesting. There’s a dramatic irony sledgehammer with Curtis’s version whereby we know that the Beatles songs are amazing. So we revel in this opportunity to witness someone bring those songs into the world for the first time. We WANT his success. We WANT to see everybody scream and go crazy over this guy. Because we’re in on the secret. And it’s an extremely exciting secret to be a part of. Who doesn’t want to watch audiences experience “Here Comes the Sun” for the first time?
Barth’s version is more grounded and realistic. It asks the question, can you separate the music from the artist? Is the artist so intrinsically connected to the songs that become massive hits that they’re a package deal? You can’t split them up.
While I think that’s an interesting question, it leads to a much more subdued experience. And my experience with movies is that they don’t work well with middling, with average, with subdued. Movies work best with extremes, especially when you’ve got a big idea. John McClane isn’t running around some two-story insurance building in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s running around a brand new state of the art skyscraper in Los Angeles.
So while I respect that Cover Version is more realistic, it didn’t give me that big whirlwind celebrity experience that Curtis’s version did.
With that said, Barth’s version is still good. Because it is more realistic, it has a clearer theme, which is that your art has to come from you. It can’t come from someone else.
Now when it comes to the second question, things become fuzzier. And as it’s been a year since I’ve seen Yesterday, I don’t remember all the details. But the two things I’m seeing people bring up online about Cover Version that prove Curtis read Barth’s script despite claiming not to have, is the John Lennon thing and the Harry Potter thing.
I can tell you right now that neither of these moments convince me that Curtis read Barth’s script. And I consider myself somewhat of an expert in this area because I’ve heard tens of thousands of pitches. And I’ve read thousands of screenplays, many of which cover similar ideas. What I’ve found is that writers choose similar characters and ideas more than they realize. That’s because we’re all fishing from the same well. The same media cycle. The same shows. The same movies. The same pop culture. So most writers think similarly. (Screenwriter Pro Tip: When making any major decisions in your script, ask yourself, “Would another writer think of this?” If you think maybe they would, come up with something else!)
I would be willing to bet that if you gave 10 screenwriters this idea, 7 of them would’ve come up with the John Lennon scene. And I say that because it’s kind of obvious. Any good writer would naturally realize that if there was no Beatles, John Lennon never gets assassinated. Which means he’s alive. And if you have John Lennon alive, you put him in the movie.
I’d also assume most writers would make that a poignant important scene late in the film like both writers here did. Where things get fuzzy is that, if I remember correctly, John Lennon in Yesterday did some job by the sea? And here, in Cover Version, he’s a fisherman. So that’s a legitimate gripe. You could argue that that’s not a coincidence. Still, I don’t know. It’s definitely not a smoking gun situation.
And then with the Harry Potter joke at the end, that’s another thing that a lot of writers would come up with. If nobody remembers the Beatles, theoretically, maybe there are a few other famous British celebrities that never happened, which would be fun to make a joke about. And who’s more well known in the UK than Harry Potter? So that joke doesn’t convince me of anything.
Look, the reality of the situation is that these things are never black and white. I could see a situation where Curtis had someone cover Barth’s script for him and give him the broad strokes of Cover Version so he could make sure he wasn’t copying the major plot points. You’d think this would happen if only for legal reasons. Maybe a couple of those ideas from the coverage seeped into Curtis’s script. Who knows?
But the truth is, these are very different screenplays. One of them asks, what happens when you become famous off another person’s songs and the other asks, what happens when you have the greatest music catalogue in history and you still can’t achieve success? Once the script diverges from that initial hook, it’s two different stories.
And look, a lot of people get screwed over with their breakthrough script. The deal is the bigger name gets the credit and the smaller name now gets a seat at the table. This is how it’s been for many many people who’ve broken into Hollywood. The complicating factor here is that Jack Barth isn’t some 23 year old wunderkind. He was a 62 year old man who’d been grinding away at his craft for two decades and credit matters more to someone in that situation. So it sucks he didn’t get it.
This leads to a bigger discussion where I don’t understand why someone like Curtis, who’s insanely successful – even if he did write a story that was 90% different from Barth’s – why not just give Barth equal credit? He needs it so much more than you do. That’s the only part that bothers me. Do you really need any more residual checks? Is one more Porsche a year going to make you that much happier? What the hell happened to compassion and selflessness?
Anyway, Cover Version is a good script. And, more importantly, it’s a great idea. Writers can spend YEARS looking for an idea like this. And most never find one. So Barth gets credit for the most important thing of all in this case, which is that he conceived of a kick-ass movie idea.
Script link: Cover Version
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Draw out your hook for as long as possible. One thing Barth did better than Curtis was that when it got to the hook point of the movie – Dan realizing that nobody on the planet knows about the Beatles other than him – Barth really drew it out. From when Dan first strums Yesterday to his band to a few days later where he tests out their first Beatles song together. I was bothered in “Yesterday” by how quickly we whipped through that section because, remember, the hook is why the audience is there. That’s what they’re most excited to see. They want that moment where the hero is playing the Beatles song to the people who have never heard of the The Beatles before. So give them what they want. Draw that moment out for as long as you can. No audience member is going to be mad at you for it.
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Premise: (from Black List) Twenty years after a failed exorcism, a meek young woman becomes unlikely friends with the foul-mouthed demon that possessed her as a child.
About: This one’s got a couple of big pillars holding it up. Buzzy indie production house A24 and none other than JJ’s Bad Robot. Megan Amran, who broke into the business a decade ago writing material for the Academy Awards, has written on The Simpsons, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place. This is her first feature script to break through.
Writer: Megan Amram
Details: 100 pages
Just a reminder for those who don’t read Scriptshadow often.
The possession genre is the biggest bang-for-your-buck genre out there. Possession movies are obscenely cheap to make. Since you don’t traditionally need special effects, you can shoot them on the same budget you’d shoot a drama. Keep the locations limited and you can even keep it under a million. Even if the thing only has a five million dollar opening weekend, you’ve made a profitable movie.
BUT!
But you have to find a fresh angle. If you’re the 3824th writer to conceive of “The Exorcism of [Insert Female Name Here],” don’t expect your script to garner much attention.
Megan Amram takes that advice as far as someone can take it. Today we have a gross-out vulgar exorcism comedy. The 40 Year Old Virgin as an exorcism flick? Mixed with some Seth Rogen humor? Is that a thing? I guess we’re about to find out.
When she’s 10 years old, Kennedy gets possessed by a real mean demon named Lamashtu, who is one of the worst demons you can get possessed by. Think The Exorcism times ten. She’s really bad.
Kennedy’s mom, Karen, does everything in her power to exorcise Lamashtu, calling on all the best priests in the area. But they’re all terrified of Lamashtu and run away. Finally, Karen realizes that good old steady yoga breathing and positive thoughts can keep Lamashtu at bay. As long as you don’t get angry, she tells her daughter, you’ll be fine.
Cut to twenty years later. The reclusive nerdy Kennedy works as a coder at a Google wannabe company. Everyone overlooks Kennedy because she’s just so… well… NICE. And nice people get stepped on. Nice people get taken advantage of.
But after Kennedy gets passed over for a promotion, Lamashtu has had enough and reemerges! Lamashtu (as Kennedy) starts screaming at everyone at work, and all of a sudden, people don’t just respect Kennedy. They like her! This girl has spunk.
Kennedy realizes that she’s made a mistake by repressing Lamashtu all these years. It’s time to fully embrace her demon instead! Even her sexist office crush, David, asks her out, leading to Kennedy’s first ever sexual experience. The event is so overwhelming that Lamashtu takes over, giving David the best sex of his life, leading to him being obsessed with Kennedy.
But when Kennedy’s evil side starts affecting her one genuine friendship with her fellow reclusive coder, she begins to wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze. Will Kennedy say F-it and become Lamashtu forever? Or is there a way to be nice again and still enjoy her life?
Man.
This was a wild one.
I’ll give Amram props on a couple of fronts. This is a fun idea. What if you stopped holding in all those things you really wanted to say and just let go? Embrace that anger you’ve always repressed. It’s one of the more fun comedic premises I’ve come across.
And Amram doesn’t neuter Kennedy’s inner demon. This is not the safe cute version of this concept. Lamasthtu regularly unloads lines like, “You want dirty talk? I’m gonna rip your big fat cock through your stomach up through your mouth til you choke on it.” Full steam ahead on the vulgarity.
The script also does one of the most important things a script must do – IT DELIVERS ON THE PROMISE OF ITS PREMISE. You get exactly what the logline tells you you’re going to get. I can’t endorse this enough. I read a lot of scripts that promise a great premise but then the script becomes something else in its second half. Or it changes genres in the final act.
No! Whatever your unique element, whatever the “strange attractor” is in your story, that’s what you want to exploit. Milk that thing until there’s no more milk left in it.
The script did have some weaknesses though. Kennedy’s job felt totally made up. It was a tech company but it was never clear what the company did (or what she did). She was just a generic “coder” and we were supposed to go with it.
I’ve said this once, I’ll say it a million times. As human beings, half our lives are dedicated to our jobs. We spend 8-10 hours a day doing them. They are often the most influential part of our lives. So if you don’t know what a character does? If you don’t know where they work, what their position is, what their everyday tasks are? You don’t truly know that character. And, believe me, we the audience can feel it.
Even if you pick a generic job, like accounting or middle management, LEARN what that company does and why your character ended up doing that job. Cause if you don’t know that, you’re not giving us the full dimension of your character. You’re only giving us the part that you care about. And it’s making the character one-dimensional.
Speaking of one-dimensional, today’s script continues a recent trend of writers treating all their male characters as moronic sexist a-holes. I don’t know when this started or why writers do it. Isn’t the male species more varied than every single one of them being moronic and sexist and an a-hole? I would hope there are some who are nice. That are cool. That are complex and interesting. And yet in 2020, finding a cool masculine male character who’s intelligent and respectful is like looking for Bigfoot.
The crazy thing is it wasn’t that long ago when I was telling male writers who used to write one-dimensional female characters, “You know that women are going to read this script, right? Do you think it’s a good idea that all your male characters are complex and well thought out and all your female characters are one-dimensional and sex objects? Do you think that’s going to go over well?”
And now it’s the exact opposite problem. Female writers are writing all their male characters as simplistic sexist idiots. You know that men are going to read your script right? Do you think that’s going to go over well?
I’m not sure where I come out on Repossession. Sometimes I thought it was funny. But other times it got too vulgar or too off-track (it didn’t make any sense for the hero to be a virgin – that felt like a whole different movie).
I think if the script stripped away the stuff that wasn’t directly related to the concept of a young woman finally allowing her anger to come out, this could be that rare comedy movie that gets released in theaters. Because the concept itself is so marketable. But it hasn’t found its legs yet. And for that reason, it wasn’t for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here is the opening slugline for Repossession:
EXT. WEEKS FOOTBRIDGE – CRISP AUTUMN DAY
Is this okay? Traditionally, in a slugline, you only want to tell us if we’re inside or outside (INT. or EXT.), the location that we’re at (the Weeks Footbridge) and then whether it’s day or night. Amram has added “Crisp Autumn” to the slugline, which would drive purists crazy. But I think it’s perfectly fine. I like anything that gives me a clearer visual for what I’m looking at. Sure, Amram could’ve told us it was a crisp autumn day in the description underneath the slugline. But doing it here frees up the description for her to give us other information. I wouldn’t go crazy with this hack. If your additional text stretches the slugline to two lines, that’s a no-no. But if you can quickly get some relevant description in there without it feeling too imposing, there’s no harm in that.
Is Into the Night the next Lost?
Genre: Sci-Fi (TV show)
Premise: (from IMDB) When a mysterious cosmic disaster strikes Earth, survivors on an overnight flight from Brussels race to find refuge and escape the sun’s rays.
About: This show premiered on Netflix last week and I’d been hearing whispers that it was good. It’s a Belgium show and the characters speak French, which has limited its audience here in the U.S. Jason George, the creator, seems to have a prominent TV career in Belgium as he’s produced a lot of shows. His one American credit comes as a producer on the Adam McKay movie, Vice.
Writer: Jason George
Details: I watched the first 2 episodes of the 6 episode series (each ep is about 40 min long)
I love high concept TV shows and I love plane-related concepts so this was right up my alley. It had just a hint of Lost in it, and a hint of Lost is better than a shout of all these other excuses for TV shows I’ve seen lately.
I suspect that the show, which is really good, hasn’t gotten enough attention due to its subtitles. And I get it. I’m resistant to subtitles as well. The only time I’ll watch something with subtitles if I’ve been told that it’s GREAT or it has a really high concept, like today’s show.
But I was thinking to myself, why do you hate subtitles so much these days, Carson? You’ve always disliked them, but it’s never been this bad. And then it hit me. It’s because YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO A MOVIE WITH SUBTITLES.
We’ve grown so accustomed to multi-tasking, playing on our tablets and phones while watching something, that we’ve grown this second-sense ability to keep up with the movie by listening to the dialogue in the background.
But you can’t do that with a subtitle movie. You have to pay attention THE WHOLE TIME to know what’s going on. That’s why we resist these things so much. Unlike regular movies, they force us to actually pay attention. You know, the way movies were actually meant to be watched.
Into the Night starts innocently enough at a Brussels airport. It’s an early morning flight to Moscow, before the sun has come up. People are arriving. They’re just starting to board. A nervous looking man, Terenzio, notices reports on the television of people dropping dead in Asia.
He leaps up, surprises a guard, grabs his rifle, then charges onto the boarding plane. The captain isn’t even on the plane yet. Only the co-pilot, Mathieu. He tells Mathieu to fire up the engines, they need to get out of here now, before the sun rises. Mathieu has no idea what’s going on but when you’ve got a rifle in your face, you do as you’re told.
The plane takes off and Terenzio tries to explain to the passengers (about 20 of them made it on) that the second the sun rises, everybody dies. Doesn’t matter if they’re above ground or below it. Something about intense gamma rays. Of course no one believes him. And since the wifi is down, it’s impossible to confirm the claim.
The plane detours to Iceland to refuel only to find that the entire airport is on fire. So they head to Northern Scotland instead and land at a remote airport. It’s there where they find out Terenzio’s claims are true. The last article on the event, posted an hour ago, says it has something to do with a polarity change in the sun.
The group inherits three new passengers, a group of suspicious Irish military men, and off they head to the next airport. In addition to our pilot and former terrorist, we have Sylvie, a helicopter pilot who just lost her husband to cancer, Ayaz, an alpha male businessman, Rik, a jumpy older man who seems to be hiding some information of his own, a mother and her lung-challenged son, an old Russian man with dementia, a mechanic who got stuck on the plane, and Ines, a social media influencer.
As the group troubleshoots immediate problems such as fuel supply, a faulty radio, and which airports to keep jumping to, they must ultimately figure out what’s going on with the sun, and if their desperate attempts to stay alive are simply prolonging the inevitable. That, sooner or later, the sun will catch up to them.
I’m two episodes in and, so far, this show is great!
We talk a lot about urgency here at Scriptshadow. It’s one of the best ways to add tension and momentum to your story. Well what’s more urgent than constantly having a killer sun on your tail, always only a couple of hours from catching up to you? You can feel the clock ticking in every one of these scenes.
I was a little worried about how they were going to explain away these rays. How would a sunrise kill someone? Especially someone who’s downstairs in a basement with no direct contact with light? But they cover that quickly, explaining that an intense polarity event has caused the sun to emit unseemly amounts of gamma rays, which they believe is what’s killing people.
It might not work for some (I know the usual suspects in the comments section will go ape-doodoo) but I’ll just say watch it before you knock it. They do something really smart in that they don’t OVER-DESCRIBE the problem. That’s where a lot of writers get into trouble. It’s like when you oversell a lie. The more you go on and on about it, the more it looks like you’re lying. The explanation here is short and succinct and just convincing enough that we go with it.
One thing I always find interesting about these concepts is that you have to begin the catastrophe to start the characters on their journey but the catastrophe can’t be too big to the point where the characters wouldn’t realistically go on the journey.
If billions of people are dying all over the planet, there isn’t going to be a Brussels to Moscow flight. I’m sorry but there just wouldn’t be. So the writer has to walk this line of beginning the catastrophe to set up the story but have it happen JUST AS they’re getting on the plane so it’s still believable that the flight would happen.
George definitely fudged some of the timing but the plane take-off was such a frantic sequence that we overlooked it.
I only bring this up because these are the little things screenwriters have to deal with that the average viewer never thinks about. However, if you get it wrong, it could easily break the suspension of disbelief. So the writer has to spend a lot of time thinking about.
If people die the second the sun rises, that means tens of millions of people are dying all at once. And every 30 minutes, tens of millions more are dying. Why would an airport still be scheduling flights when 100 million people just died an hour ago?
But Into the Night makes up for it in the story details, which George is quite good at. For example, I love the fact that the pilot isn’t yet on the plane. Only the co-pilot is. It’s always more interesting when the less experienced guy is put in charge.
And when the co-pilot calls for a co-pilot of his own from the passengers, the only passenger who can help isn’t even an airplane pilot. She’s a helicopter pilot. Again, you want to keep adding UNCERTAINTY to the equation. The more uncertain you can make things, the more drama you’re going to get.
If this plane was piloted by an all-star pilot who spent five tours in Afghanistan and he was known as the best pilot in the world, we’d all feel safe. We’d feel he’d be able to steer us out of this. It’s putting the flawed and unsure character in charge that creates our uncertainty, that keeps us off-balance and wondering how in the world they’ll be able to pull this off.
The show is also very good at keeping its characters busy with tasks. There’s a broken radio that needs fixing. There’s a passenger who’s sick. There’s refueling that needs to be done at every airport. There’s food that needs to be restocked. Remember, characters are most interesting when they’re being ACTIVE and the way you make characters active is by giving them things to do.
Into the Night does this well and it means that, so far, the episodes are vibrant and alive.
One last thing I want to point out. The social media influencer character here, Ines. I’ve started to see this character pop up A LOT in scripts lately. And almost every time, it feels like the writer has never spent more than a couple of minutes on an influencer’s page.
As a result, the character comes across as lazy, dishonest, and cliched. Remember, the quickest way to any cliched character is writing about something you know nothing about. You will always default to the broadest strokes of that character because the broad strokes are all that you know. The key to characters that pop is the opposite. You must be specific about them. So if you’re going to include a social media influencer, go do a lot of research on social media influencers. Don’t just write what you THINK a social media influencer’s life would be like cause it’s guaranteed to come off as cliched.
Into the Night is worth checking out. Can’t wait to watch the last four episodes.
[ ] What the hell did I just stream?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A nice hack is to make the cliched character (aka the social media influencer) the opposite of the general perception. So, if you have a beautiful female social media influencer, don’t make her flashy and bitchy. Make her introverted and shy, the opposite of her big online personality.
