Today’s script is like an R-rated Princess Bride set in 16th Century Rome with a little Mission Impossible built in to boot.
Genre: Action/Comedy/Period
Logline: In 16th-century Rome, astronomical badass Nicolaus Copernicus seeks papal approval for his radical new theory about the universe, but after he’s framed for the Pope’s kidnapping, he’ll risk his life and legacy to track down the real abductors.
Why You Should Read: I’ve always loved history. I just wish it could be funnier. If I had a time machine, I probably wouldn’t use it kill baby Hitler. Instead, I’d just swap him with baby Charlie Chaplin who was born a mere four days earlier. But since the latest version of Final Draft is easier to get my hands on than a functioning time machine, I decided to write Renaissance Men. A hilarious adventure that pits some of Renaissance Europe’s biggest egos including Copernicus, Machiavelli, Nostradamus and Michelangelo against each other in a high stakes game of cat and mouse.
I had many reasons why I wanted to write this. First, I knew it would be a lot of fun. Second, I was sure I could generate a ton of laughs. And last but not least, because a story about how the rich and powerful will cover up scientific truth to protect their political interests is even more relevant today than it was 500 years ago.
Writer: Eric Boyd
Details: 97 pages (this is a slightly updated draft from the Showdown)
Full disclosure, I messed up.
I went back through all the recent Amateur Showdowns to find five second-place finishers who would compete in Second Place Showdown and I forgot who wrote Renaissance Men. I only realized after I put up the scripts that this was the same writer who wrote Jingle Hell Rock.
So while some of you may be upset that Eric got another shot at the prize, don’t be mad at him. Be mad at me. I’m the one who put his script in there. As far as fairness goes – hey, if you want to get that review you gotta beat the best, right? Eric’s one of the best we’ve had so when you face him, you’re going to have to bring it.
And look, the competition at the next level is a lot tougher than here on Scriptshadow. So you’ll have to beat guys like Eric regularly.
Jingle Hell Rock rocked. Is Renaissance Men in the same league?
The year is 1524. Famous Pollack Copernicus has come up with a radical theory. Unlike how it’s depicted in the bible, the earth actually revolves around the sun, not the other way around. Copernicus’s goal is to head to Rome, pass this information on to the Pope, and become forever famous.
But just before he’s about to leave, he learns that his sister died and he’s in charge of her five children. The oldest of the children, Viv, is a firecracker who’s just as ambitious as Copernicus, and when Copernicus leaves and shows up in Rome a week later, he’s shocked to find Viv waiting for him. What are you doing here, he asks!
“Getting to Rome’s not that hard. All the roads lead here,” she responds.
Pissed off that he’s got this anchor tied to him wherever he goes, he pawns her off on his old pal Machiavelli, who’s pursuing a second career in acting. Then, just as he’s about to tell the Pope what’s up, a rival of Copernicus’s named Valentinus kidnaps the Pope, demands a ransom for his release, and frames Copernicus for it!
After getting tortured, Copernicus is able to escape and it’s then that he learns that not only are Valentinus and Machiavelli working together, but they plan to plant a thousand barrels of gunpowder under the Vatican and destroy it!
While Copernicus tries to save his niece, Queen of France Catherine de’ Medici shows up with her newest toy, her psychic Nostradamus! Nostradamus says that this is actually a lot worse than it seems. It turns out that the Pope is in on this too. They’re going to blow up Rome and begin hundreds of years of war.
Copernicus’s only shot at stopping this is teaming up with his old rival, Michelangelo (Copernicus has a lot of rivals), saving Viv from Machiavelli’s clutches, then getting to the bomb site and stopping this world-ending explosion from happening. Can he do it? Or will his giant ego and need to be remembered throughout all of history doom him?
Okay.
It’s no secret I love Eric’s writing.
I think he’s hilarious. On a site where we’re lucky to find a good comedy script once every other year, it’s nice to have someone who’s clearly talented in this genre.
And the best thing about Eric is how specific his humor is. Of all the Roman historians I know, I haven’t met a single one who can tell a joke.
Eric’s ability to both know this history and hit you with in-jokes about the era line after line is really impressive. I mean who do you know who can reel off a dozen jokes in a row about Catherine de’ Medici?
It’s also hard to believe that all these famous figures lived at the same time. By the time Nostradamus was thrown in the mix, it was pure comedy mayhem.
With that said, something wasn’t working as well as Jingle Hell Rock for me. But because I don’t know this era in nearly the level of detail that Eric does, it was hard for me to figure out why.
I think the most obvious problem I ran into was the overly dominant plot. In pretty much every scene, characters were dishing out exposition about where we were in the story and what needed to happen next.
Now the thing about comedy is that exposition is easier to write because you can do it in a fun way. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Back to the Future, which is one of the most plot heavy blockbusters you’ll ever see, and for that reason it has a ton of exposition. But it works because they make the exposition funny.
Marty’s “WTF” bafflement to Doc showing him how time travel works in that mall parking lot means we’re laughing in between every line of exposition. “Wait a minute, Doc. You’re telling me you built a time machine…… out of a Delorean???”
Eric does his best to do the same here in Renaissance Men. But the script was SOOO plot heavy that even when he’s cooking, the complexity of what needs to be conveyed wins out.
That’s one of the hardest things about comedy. Comedy scripts still need to follow the general rule of ‘every scene needs to move the story forward,’ but when people come to see comedies, they don’t come to see plots unfold. They come to laugh. So you’re performing this delicate trick where you’re always moving the story forward but not allowing the audience to realize it because they’re laughing so much.
With Renaissance Men, I wanted more funny dialogue. I wanted more funny scenarios – set pieces that were clever and used the time and place appropriately. The torture device scene was the right idea even though it never quite rose above ‘amusing.’
But, most of all, I didn’t want characters talking about what they needed to do next, which encompassed a large percentage of the screenplay. It led to a lot of moments where I thought, “Hmmm… the *idea*of this is funny. But the execution isn’t making me laugh for some reason.”
Like going and finding the original model who posed for the Mona Lisa was a funny concept. I thought, “Oooh, that could be good.” But when she showed up, we didn’t get anything that funny out of it. There were a half-dozen situations like that where the idea of something was funnier than the execution.
That’s not unique to this script by any means. It’s a common issue comedy writers battle. Lots of people can come up with funny-sounding scenarios. But it’s your job, then, to figure out the funniest way to explore that scenario. There’s got to be a funnier way to get Mona Lisa in here than having her be a tagalong with a few sorta-funny lines.
With that said, there’s more good here than bad. Easily. I enjoyed reading Renaissance. I just think it needs one of those rewrites where your sole goal is to find as much humor as possible. Judd Apatow is famous for this. He makes writers go into their scripts all the time and come up with 30 more jokes.
But it’s not just the jokes. A joke is a line. A joke is a moment. You have to come up with really funny scenarios that do most of the joke writing for you. There is some of that going on here. But it needs more.
So I give a hearty thumbs up to you, Eric. Good job.
What’d the rest of you think? Also, curious to hear who you’d cast in all the roles!!
Script link: Renaissance Men (updated draft)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “Jesus. She brought an army.” “Yeah, but it’s just a French army.” One of the easiest comedy devices to use is the “running joke.” You pick something and you just keep hitting it over and over. That’s the joke. Here, one of the running jokes is how pathetic the French are. So we keep hitting that joke over and over. Just make sure that the subject you use for your running joke is actually funny. :)
What I learned 2: In a comedy, you have to have WHAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE three stand out historically funny set pieces. They may not actually be historically funny. But you have to believe they are. One of my biggest issues with this script is it doesn’t have one. Whereas Jingle Hell Rock had 4-5.
The other day, I started reading a Black List script and I was about ten pages into it and it was just boring with a capital B. Since I planned on reviewing a script that day, I had a choice to make. I could either ditch this script and start a new one (which I hate to do) or I could keep going.
So I went and checked the Black List to see if I could glean any extra information about the writer. I noticed he was repped by a manager I’d never heard of before. The script was a lowly ranked Black List script. So I made the decision that, based on the first 10 pages being boring and the writer having weak representation, I was out.
Now you may say, Carson, dude, that’s savage. Are you saying that every writer who is repped by a low-level manager sucks? Writers have to start somewhere. True. Of course there are going to be good writers who start with low-level managers or agents. But, based on the 8000 screenplays I’ve read, the data has told me that, WAY more often than not, if you’re repped by someone I’ve never heard of before, it’s likely the script will be weak.
That led me to some deeper analysis about reading in general and why I choose to give up on a script. Because every reader, whether it be the lowest reader on the food chain or JJ Abrams who’s looking for his next project, have some similar judgment process by which they’ll give a script a certain amount of time. And that time will coincide with a number of factors attached to the script.
That’s what I want to talk about today. I call it SCREENPLAY CURRENCY. It’s something I’ve been attaching to scripts unconsciously for years. But today I decided to solidify it into something more tangible so that writers can understand what’s going on the reader’s head and they can properly game plan how they write a script under those circumstances.
Now to those of you who have always poo-pooed this practice of readers giving up on an amateur script but giving pros preferential treatment and reading their scripts differently, I point all of you to Amateur Showdown. We’ve proven again and again that this is not a practice unique to the Hollywood guard. Every single person who reads something is gauging whether it’s worth their time to keep reading. And, as we’ve shown over and over again, most of you don’t make it past the first page of an Amateur Showdown script. So why would you expect someone working at a production company whose time each day is limited to act any differently?
What I do with screenplay currency is I assess a number to a script based on factors surrounding that script. These numbers represent, roughly, how many pages I’m going to give the script to pull me in. So if something gives a script +3 currency, I’ll give it 3 pages. If there are several factors adding currency, a +4, a +1, and a +10, I’ll give that script 15 pages.
Again, none of this is exact. I’m not a robot who finishes at exactly page 15 and then says, “Beep-beep-boooop. Carson, what shall you do? Do you like script, press ‘yes’ or ‘no.” But I’ve found that, over time, it’s roughly accurate. That combined number is usually how many pages of my undivided attention I’ll give the script. If it’s lame or boring or sucks after that time, why would I keep reading? Why would you?
Here is an incomplete list of some of the things that create my screenplay currency:
Script is recommended to me by an impartial party (not the writer): +5
Script is recommended to me by two different people who don’t know each other: +15
Script is recommended to me by 3 or more people who don’t know each other: +25
Script is recommended to me by someone I really trust and whose taste I respect: +30
Script is ranked high on the Black List (top 5): +50
Script is ranked low on the Black List (bottom 20): +10
Script is repped by a high level agency (WME, CAA): +7
Script is repped by a high level management company (Kaplan/Perrone, Anonymous Content): +5
The writer has professional credits: +7
The writer has written at least one movie I like: +25
The script has won a high level contest (Nicholl): +15
The script has been a finalist in a high level contest (Nicholl): +10
Semi-finalist at Nicholl: +3
A top level writer in the industry (Sorkin) or a writer I really love: +100 (I’ll almost always read the entire thing)
A random script from an amateur writer who I don’t know from Adam: +1
The obvious question then becomes, what if you don’t have any screenplay currency? Should you give up?
Of course not.
But zero screenplay currency does mean you have to write differently than someone with a lot of currency. If you’re a writer who has 30 points of screenplay currency, you know you can take your time in the early scenes because you know the reader is going to stay with you.
But if you try to slow-burn your way through the first act with zero screenplay currency, you’re sinking your own ship. Readers have no reason to trust that trudging through that slow first act is going to pay off for them.
For that reason, you should be writing something that’s tighter, that’s faster, that has a flashier concept, something where you get the reader hooked right away. The perfect example of this is the script I reviewed Tuesday, Unhinged. The opening scene has our antagonist killing someone and then we’re, literally, off to the races.
Or if you don’t like car chase movies, another script that would’ve worked with zero screenplay currency is The Cabin at the End of the World. It starts off with this scary giant of a man approaching a small girl and we’re not sure if he’s going to kill her or not. First page, first scene, I’m in. And then we KEEP GOING. These guys break into this house, they tell our protagonists they have to sacrifice a member of their family and, heck yeah, I’m going to keep reading.
Conversely, if you have zero currency and you’re trying to write a script like BLUR, a drama about a group of depressed 20-somethings mucking around in life, I’m not saying it’s impossible to write something like that that gets you into the industry. But you’re stacking the odds against yourself.
The irony of all this is that the most successful screenwriters – the Sorkins, the Tarantinos, the Coens – they know they have all the screenplay currency in the world. An unlimited supply! Yet they still write LIKE THEY HAVE NONE. That’s why it’s a good mindset to have, that you have zero currency with anybody. Because when you know you have to hook a reader right away, you’re going to write more exciting stories. You just are.
So go forward with this knowledge and hopefully it will make you think twice about that next script you’re going to write.
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A billionaire gives up all his money before joining 200 passengers on a ship that will fly to a new planet.
About: Today’s short story was bought up out of the The New Yorker by Simon Kinberg’s production company. As you may remember, this is the second high-profile short story Kinberg has purchased in the past year. The first was Pyros, which I liked a lot. The writer, Thomas Pierce, will be adapting the story himself, and John Carter of Mars director Andrew Stanton, who has been steadily making up for that film with lots of TV directing gigs, will likely direct.
Writer: Thomas Pierce
Details: About a 15 minute read.
As I’ve said before, when you’re looking at short stories to turn into movies, you shouldn’t be looking for direct translations. You’re looking more at the potential of the story and where it can go.
Nowhere is this more true than with today’s New Yorker entry. Chairman Spaceman is an offbeat science-fiction story with little science fiction on display. One might even call it science-fiction adjacent.
It follows a guy named Dom Whipple, a 45 year old former billionaire, who has given up all his money and possessions to a church that is funding a trip to a distant planet. The church hopes to start a new society on this planet, and because Dom was so generous with all his money, he’ll be one of the 200 passengers.
We meet Dom 24 hours before the ship leaves. He’s having one last goodbye party with all his friends and ex-wife. The church assigns every passenger a sponsor. Dom’s sponsor is Jerome, who comes from the opposite end of the financial spectrum. He and his wife aren’t even able to make rent this month.
Dom, in a moment of weakness, has sex with his ex-wife and is convinced, for a couple of hours, that he doesn’t want to do this. He starts plotting a plan to get some money back and start over on earth. But a couple of hours later, he wants to go on the ship again.
That’s the thing with this story. It just sort of wanders aimlessly. It doesn’t seem to have a purpose. Dom wants this one minute. Dom wants that the next minute. At the very least, we know it’s going to end with him on that ship, so there’s reason enough to keep reading.
We learn a little more about the church and its plan. Apparently a first ship was sent two years ago with 10 pre-settlers (The Intrepid 10). It takes 16 years to get to the planet and if the first ship gets there and doesn’t like what it sees, it will alert the second ship, which will then turn around and fly back to earth.
The night before Dom is to leave, Jerome’s wife asks him for money. She’s convinced he’s got some squirreled away in the Cayman Islands or he can call one of his rich buddies and they can wire him a few hundred grand within minutes. Sorry, he says, he really has nothing left. Pissed off, she takes the last remaining money in his wallet and storms out of the room.
The next morning, Dom is shuttled to the ship. An attendant lies him down in his cryo-chamber and says that when he wakes up, he’ll be on the new planet. It’ll all happen instantaneously. He then closes the chamber and Dom begins freaking out. He changes his mind. He doesn’t want to go on the trip.
But the chemicals overpower him, he falls asleep, but a second later he wakes up and he sees all this activity outside. There are lots of people around, including a military officer and an old woman. That old woman turns out to be his ex-wife.
It’s been 30 years, they explain to him. When that other ship got to the planet, they found another intelligent species living there that attacked them, so Plan B was triggered in the second ship, which then turned around and went back to earth.
The final image is his ex-wife telling him that the world has changed a lot since he left it. The church that funded the trip isn’t even around anymore. So it’s going to be a rough transition. The End.
The only way I can categorize this short story is “frustrating.”
It’s impossible to figure out what it’s actually about. It doesn’t help that it tries to weave this religious thread into the story. In my experience, religion and science-fiction don’t mix. We just saw this a couple of weeks ago with the similarly constructed “Raised by Wolves,” which, coincidentally, has this same two-ship storyline, but focuses on the first ship arriving on the planet.
Chairman Spaceman bounced around from idea to idea so recklessly that it could never settle in to what it was trying to say. There’s this theme about rich people giving all of their money and possessions away that holds some potential. But here it’s treated as backstory. It’s so detached from the plot line that it only barely informs Dom’s character.
There’s the weird decision to give him a sponsor. Why does he need a sponsor? Usually a sponsor has a purpose. Like, if you’re a drug addict, you can call your sponsor to help talk you down from shooting up heroin. But this guy is a sponsor in name only. He’s there to follow Dom around and talk to him once in a while.
The moment where Jerome’s wife asks Dom for money is the only true “scene” in the story, something you could imagine being in the screenplay. And yet it’s so random. We barely know Jerome. We know his wife even less. Why is she getting one of the only memorable scenes in the story? And what does this moment have to do with anything else?
There could’ve been a cool thread about how this religion exploited super-rich people to fund this mission. But Dom is the only rich person on the trip. It’s one of many outlier variables in this story that contribute to its pointless feel.
There are only two interesting things in the story. The first is that Dom seems to have a sketchy past. He did some horrible things to become as rich as he did, including possibly killing a man. I wanted to learn more about this but, as was the modus operandi of the author, anything interesting was barely given focus.
The other thing – and this is where I think the movie is – is when Dom gets back from the trip. This is where I would start the movie if I were the producer. This is a man who had it all. But then he gives it away to go on this trip. The trip fails. He comes back 30 years later. He has no money. He has no business. All his contacts are dead or no longer in the game. I want to see how that man reintegrates into a future society.
Or, another way you could do it is you make the short story the first act. You set the movie up as if it’s going to be about going to this planet. You would NOT tip the audience off (like they do in the story) that the mission has a failsafe to send them back if something goes wrong. You want that twist to be a surprise. So you set the movie up to be about them arriving on the planet at the beginning of act 2 and then – BAM – the mission was a failure, 30 years has passed, and he has to reintegrate into a society that he doesn’t understand.
The only other way I could see this narrative working is if they do a 25th Hour sort of deal where the movie focuses on the 24 hours leading up to him leaving. How you say bye to everyone. You start to have second thoughts. Inject some uncertainty as to whether he’s going to go through with it. But I find the 30 Years Later idea to be way more compelling.
What do you guys think?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Start your screenplay as late into the story as possible. If you’re writing a short story, like this one, and especially if you’re writing for The New Yorker, you can experiment. Short fiction is one of the more experimental writing mediums. But when you’re writing a movie, it’s a different ballgame. You’re writing something that will hopefully make millions of dollars. So experimentation is mostly off the table. For that reason, you want to start your story as late as possible. The most friendly scenario for a movie would be starting with Dom waking up after the mission failure. That way, you’re jumping in right at the beginning of when things get interesting. That doesn’t mean you can’t do what I said above – have the first act be him prepping to leave and then leaving. But the further back you go from the moment your story gets interesting, the harder it is to hook the audience. They’re going to get bored and they might not even make it to the good part. So keep that in mind when you’re adapting something AND when you’re trying to figure out where to start your own movie idea.
Today’s script is Steven Spielberg’s classic, “Duel,” meets Falling Down.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A young woman driving her son to school gets into a road rage incident with a man who killed his ex-wife earlier that morning.
About: Unhinged, starring Russell Crowe, was originally slated to come out this fall. It is the only movie during all of this craziness that has been MOVED UP in the schedule, and will now come out July 1st. Screenwriter Carl Ellsworth is best known for Red Eye and Disturbia. He is also one of the many writers who’s taken a shot at Gremlins 3.
Writer: Carl Ellsworth
Details: 100 pages
You know the pandemic’s getting to you when you’re eagerly checking your promotions folder in your e-mail.
Today I want to talk about a common mistake I see screenwriters make, which is to explore issues in an on-the-nose manner. For example, let’s say you’re upset with how divided the country is politically and how it’s creating a lot of anger on both sides.
The wrong thing to do, then, would be to write a movie about politics and people getting angry about politics. It’s not going to land. It’s on-the-nose.
The better approach is to figure out what’s at the core of the issue you want to explore and write a movie that tackles that thematically. So with the political divide, it’s resulting in a lot of anger on both sides. Therefore, you’d want to write a movie about ANGER. You can pick from dozens of different topics where anger is involved. But the important thing is that the concept explore anger in a powerful way.
That’s what Carl Ellsworth did. This is not a political movie by any stretch. But it’s about anger. Therefore, a lot of people are going to be able to resonate with these characters.
Unhinged begins with a 50-something guy in his pickup outside of what, we presume to be, his house. The dude just looks angry. A few clues point us in the direction that his wife, who he’s in the middle of a divorce with, is in this house. We then see the man go inside. We hear a fight. The man comes back out a few minutes later, blood-smeared clothing. And the house slowly begins to burn.
Cut to Rachel Flynn, in her 30s, single mom, also in the middle of a divorce. She’s taking her son, Kyle, to school and she’s late. We get the sense that Rachel is always late. And that it’s usually her fault. Although you wouldn’t know that if you talked to Rachel. To her, it’s “the world’s” fault. Not the fact that she slept in an extra half-hour this morning.
Rachel pulls up to a red light, needing to take a right ASAP, but there’s a car in front of her. If we’re paying attention, we notice this car is familiar. Wait a minute. Is that the pickup our angry man was in earlier? With cross-traffic clear, Rachel is FURIOUS that the pick-up doesn’t take a right and lays on the horn – BEEEEEEEEEEEP.
Oh. Poor poor Rachel. That was a baaaaaad move.
She angrily whips around the truck and guns a right turn. But it’s rush hour. So it’s only a hundred feet before she’s behind more traffic. And, oh yeah, that pickup guy? He’s now next to her, motioning to Kyle to roll down the window. He’s got a smile on his face so Kyle obliges, and the man kindly tells Rachel that it looks like she’s having a rough day and, therefore, he understands why she honked at him back there.
All he wants is an apology.
But Rachel has too much pride and too much anger to offer an apology. And that just ensured this was going to be the worst day of her life.
The man, who’s never given a name, makes it his mission to follow Rachel around and terrorize her. But not just in his car. He manages to get a hold of Rachel’s phone (early on when she thinks she’s lost him and needs gas, he jacks her phone while she’s inside paying) and starts visiting her most precious contacts, taking them out one by one.
The scariest thing about this man is that he doesn’t care. He’s already accepted that this is his last day on earth. And that makes him very dangerous. He is going to teach Rachel a lesson she won’t forget for the rest of her life. To be a little more mindful of others and show some kindess, even in your worst moments.
This script started out FIRE.
Literally.
The man sets his ex-wife’s house on fire after he kills her.
And for half a script, I’d put this at an [x] impressive. There was a key moment at the midpoint which I thought was a bad choice that negatively impacted the rest of the script. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, there’s a lot to celebrate here.
I have to give props to Ellsworth for picking this subject matter. This is one of those ideas you read and you say, “OH MY GOD. WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT??” It’s so obviously a movie. Road Rage. There’s never been a movie about road rage based in the city.
There’s Duel, which was highway road rage. JJ Abram’s Joyride, another rural road rage movie. But there’s never been a city road rage movie despite the fact that it’s one of the most relatable things out there. So how nobody’s thought to write this movie before, I don’t know.
There’s also a key moment early in the script where I knew it was going to work. And I talk about this all the time. This is the thing readers look for. That early moment that hooks them, that lets them know this is going to be a little more thoughtful than the average execution of this idea.
It occurs after Rachel drives around the man and speeds off, only to have the man catch up to her and tell the son to roll down the window. Now in 99% of the theoretical scripts I’d read covering this scenario, they would have had the man act crazed or psychotic.
Ellsworth makes an unexpected choice though. The man is nice. He’s smiling. And he’s genuinely prepared to let this go. He kindly asks Rachel to apologize. It was a small moment. But the choice was just unexpected enough to draw me in. I thought, “Hmm, okay. This is not your typical bad guy. He’s got some complexity to him.”
The next moment that pulled me in was when Rachel goes to the gas station. For those of you thinking she would’ve gone straight to the police already, keep in mind, this is early on. She’s only had the one encounter with him and she thinks she’s ditched him.
While she’s inside, he steals her phone from her car. The reason I liked this choice so much is that it allowed for a second series of scenes to occur outside of car-chasing. Cause if the whole movie is him following her around in his car, that’s going to get monotonous fast.
Once he has her phone, he can start checking her e-mails, her texts, and begin infiltrating the lives of the people Rachel knows. For example, he finds out from some texts that Rachel is supposed to meet her divorce lawyer at 9. We know how this guy feels about divorce lawyers so he goes there under the pretense that he’s a friend of Rachel’s.
All of that was fun.
But there was a key moment at the midpoint where the script lost some steam. The man calls Rachel (he left a phone in her car) and they kind of unload the difficulties of their lives on each other. And the reason I didn’t like that was because a character like The Man only works if he’s mostly mysterious. The more we know about him, the less scary he becomes. And if he’s connecting with Rachel and understanding her anger, on a certain level, that takes away from the engine driving the script, which is him making her pay for what she did earlier.
From that point on, the script lost something. And you can go right back to the grandfather of this genre – Duel – to see that, yes, the best way to make that person scary is to not tell us a whole lot about them. All we needed to know about this guy was that his ex-wife left him and destroyed him in the divorce. THAT’S IT. From there just make him scary. That’s it.
Despite that hiccup, this was a good idea for a script and the execution was pretty darned snappy. For those frustrated at being kept inside all this time, Unhinged should offer a nice release.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t use camera directions on the page (i.e. “CAMERA PANS UP TO SEE THE ENTIRE ALLEYWAY”). You’re not the director. You’re the writer. However, there are ways to get around this. You simply imply where the camera is going to be. Here is a line of description from that first scene where the man kills his wife: “We STAY INSIDE THE CAR and watch through the windshield as the Man heads ominously toward the house, passing by a FOR SALE SIGN now planted in the front yard.” Without ever saying “camera” or using technical terminology, we understand where the camera is. You don’t want to do this all the time, cause it’s still directing. But you can throw these lines in there every once in a while and get away with it.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) Tim thinks he’s invited the woman of his dreams on a work retreat to Hawaii, realizing too late he mistakenly texted someone from a nightmare blind date.
About: I think it was William Goldman who once said, if a producer is setting a movie on a tropical island, that movie is not about making a movie. It’s about getting a paid three month vacation. Well, the glove fits. This is another Adam Sandler movie (his fourth Netflix movie set on an island?), except he ripped David Spade off the end of the bench and threw him in, probably because Sandler was so exhausted from having to make a real movie in Uncut Gems. Writers Pappas and Barnett are best known for writing a few episodes of The Righteous Gemstones. Oh and The Do-Over, which also starred Spade.
Writer: Chris Pappas & Kevin Barnett
Details: 90 minutes
The Wrong Missy was the number 1 movie on Netflix over the weekend. You can’t stop the Sandler. What’s interesting about Sandler PRODUCING The Wrong Missy instead of starring in it is that Spade is more of a straight man than Sandler.
This forced them to work harder on the script, since they couldn’t operate under normal Sandler Netflix Rules (show up on location, let cameras roll while Sandler does his schtick, cut, on to the next scene). This resulted in some semblance of a movie with structure and plot.
But, overall, The Wrong Missy is yet another example of how the Hollywood comedy has hit an all time low. The town doesn’t know how to make them anymore. And we’re going to see why that is and if we can change it.
The concept here isn’t a bad one. Tim Morris works a generic office job where he’s trying to get a promotion. If only he could somehow connect with his boss, who barely knows he exists.
Reeling from a divorce, Tim tries to get back out there, meeting up with Missy, a girl his mother set him up with. Missy is an out-of-control zero-filter freak show. The date is so bad Tim actually tries to sneak out of the bathroom window. He considers it a win when he makes it out of the date with all his limbs in tact.
Then, at the airport, Tim bumps into a stunning woman who’s ALSO named Missy (to show you how uninspired the writing is, the two literally bump into each other then accidentally switch bags, forcing them to reunite over a drink at the bar when they miss their flights).
Tim later texts the good Missy to join him on a business trip to Hawaii but, wouldn’t you know it, the bad Missy shows up instead. The bad Missy proceeds to get wasted. But during this legendary blackout, Missy uses an old hypnosis trick on Tim’s boss so that he now thinks Tim is his nana, who he loves more than anything.
To the frustration of all of Tim’s co-workers, who are all angling for that promotion, Tim can now do no wrong in his boss’s eyes. And to make things even better, Missy calms down so Tim actually starts to like her! But what will happen when Missy’s hypnosis wears off? Will Tim still be able to get the promotion???
Look. I’m all for a good comedy right now. People need to relieve some stress, laugh a little. And The Wrong Missy isn’t catastrophically “Like a Boss” bad.
I liked the setup. It’s clever commentary on today’s society where we hide behind our phones and our little texty fingers so that we never truly get rejected. That ends up costing our hero, who ends up inviting the wrong girl on his trip.
But once we get to the plot of The Wrong Missy, the writing falls apart.
To understand why that is, you must understand the two things you’re trying to do with comedy.
You’re trying to create funny characters.
You’re trying to create a plot that gives the specific funny traits about your character the best chance to shine.
A great example of number 1 is Alan from the Hangover. The world’s most socially unaware man who talks first and thinks later.
A great example of number 2 is Big. There’s a moment where Tom Hanks’s character brings his date back to his place. Here, the plot is specifically exploiting the comedic situation of a 12 year old boy living in a grown’s man’s body. To him, when you go back to your place, it’s a sleepover. For her, it means you’re going to have sex. The fact that the characters aren’t anywhere near the same page is what makes the scene so funny. It’s designed to exploit the specific comedy roots of the character.
We can debate whether Missy is a funny character or not. She’s basically no-filter to the nth degree and I’m sure mileage will vary depending on if you like outrageous characters or hate them.
But where “Missy” screws up is in the second department. The script doesn’t construct a plot that properly takes advantage of its key comedic foil – Missy.
The way this situation SHOULD work is that Tim needs this promotion more than anything. Preferably, there would also be the threat of him losing his job if he’s not promoted. You do this so that the stakes are sky-high. We must feel the pressure of Tim needing to get this promotion. Because if you don’t have stakes in a comedy… THEN NOTHING IN ANY OF THE SCENES MATTERS.
It doesn’t matter if Tim screws up because he’s right back to square 1, where he was at the beginning of the movie. So he’s lost nothing.
Contrast this with David Spade’s most successful comedy, Tommy Boy. In that movie, he and Tommy were in charge of keeping Tommy’s recently deceased dad’s company alive. If they fail to keep enough clients on their road trip, the company goes bankrupt.
Once you have stakes, the audience is more invested in the scenes because the scenes now MATTER. And once a scene matters, the jokes become WAAAAYYYYY funnier. It’s funny when Tommy says something stupid in the meeting that loses them the client because it actually has consequences. If there are no consequences, there is no laughter.
Bringing this back to The Wrong Missy, the way you’re supposed to construct this plot is to have the out-of-control Missy get in the way of Tim getting the promotion. She should be constantly destroying his chances at every turn, forcing Tim to clean up the mess and try again.
But the writers make the odd decision to have Missy HELP Tim. She puts his boss under hypnosis so that he’ll like Tim, which basically ensures Tim will get the promotion. So if Missy’s outrageous antics aren’t ruining anything, where’s the comedy coming from?
The writers attempt to have it come for Missy’s character. That’s where they’re hoping to get all the laughs. But actors desperately trying to make a character funny when the plot isn’t creating any laughs on its own is the surest way to kill a comedy. And that’s what happens. We’re bored by Missy’s schtick within 15 minutes. Yet we’re still being asked to laugh at it 75 minutes in.
I suppose the writers’ rebuttal would be that the movie isn’t about the promotion. It’s about Tim and Missy and if they’re going to end up together or not (they throw some doubt into this when the GOOD Missy shows up late in the trip).
I understand that argument but my response would be, why only invest in half the movie – the characters – when you can invest in both the characters AND the plot. If they had put more emphasis on the plot to give the story some actual stakes, it wouldn’t have just improved the plot side, it would’ve bolstered the character side too, since now there are some actual consequences to the characters’ actions.
This movie wasn’t bad but it sure as heck highlights our need for a good comedy again. When was the last funny comedy? Five years ago? Ten???
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you’re looking for laughs in a comedy, one of the easiest ways to find them is through an ironic character. The only funny character in The Wrong Missy is the HR Rep. This is the guy who’s supposed to be looking out for each and every employee in the company. Instead, he obsessively looks over all their private e-mails and texts (especially Tim’s) for his own entertainment. These characters are easy to create when you understand irony. Every comedy should have at least one!
