Genre: Thriller
Premise: When old college friends on a trip to Mexico get trapped in an underwater cave system with a bull shark, old tensions and power struggles resurface as they fight to survive.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List!
Writers: Aja Gabel & Myung Joh Wesner
Details: 100 pages
After yesterday, I was ready to have some fun.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved Unorthodox. But had you told me that the most celebrated piece of writing I reviewed all month would’ve been a character piece about an Orthodox Jew searching for the meaning of life with Yiddish to English subtitles, I probably would’ve told you to move a few inches to the left while attaching the noose to my neck to ensure that it killed me instantly after I kicked the chair over.
Shark.
Caves.
Entitled 20-somethings.
Carnage.
That’s the kind of entertainment I need during Day #107 of Quarantine. Let’s get to it.
27-year-old Kate is a worrywart who over-plans everything to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Whatever your definition of spontaneous, she’s not that. Meanwhile, her frenemy, Charlie, is the opposite. She shoots first and asks questions later. She’s also been with the object of Kate’s desire, James, for five years.
Kate, James, and Charlie team up with oversexed Adrienne and her dumb but pretty new boyfriend, Greg, to go to Aguas Serenas Eco-Resort where there’s a cave system called “Ojos Rojos” that’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world. The group goes over the game plan with their guide, Miguel, and into the caves they go.
The “system” has six caves and the most impressive cave is, of course, the last one. So when things start to go wrong (something scratches Adrienne’s leg, Greg reveals he has asthma), they push forward cause they really really want to see that last cave. Even when Kate swears she sees something big lurking below the water, they continue on.
Once they make it the final cave, it’s as advertised. Truly magnificent. There’s only one problem. A shark has followed them in here. Some of you may already be crying foul. “Sharks can’t survive in fresh water, Carson!” But according to this script, and why would I doubt them, bull sharks can survive in both salt and fresh water! And that happens to be the shark that’s after them.
The bull shark takes out poor Greg first before setting its sights on Adrienne. She puts up a fight (punching the shark in the nose) but it ultimately takes her down to Death Town. Despite his experience, Miguel also gets chomped into pieces, which leaves our love triangle – Kate, Charlie, and James – all by themselves. Will they get out alive? Or will their contentious history and subsequent spatting do them in?
All right.
Real talk.
I could go into a detailed breakdown of all of the issues in this script but the reality is, I’ve already talked about these things. I mean, when you name a character “Charlie” and automatically assume we’ll know it’s a girl, that tells me you haven’t read enough screenplays to understand why that might be confusing to a reader.
When I saw that inside the first five pages, I knew I was in for a rough ride.
But there’s a bigger problem here. Which is that something is missing in screenwriting lately. I’ve reviewed lots of the so called “most celebrated” screenplays of the past year and time after time, they’ve disappointed.
What’s going on?
Cause a script like this should be fun. It has the makings of a good movie. We’ve seen a lot of shark movies before. But we’ve never seen one where they’re blocking the only path out of a submerged cave system. There’s a lot of potential in that idea.
Why did it, then, fail to meet its potential? And why is that happening time and time again lately?
While there’s no catch-all answer to this question, I’ve noticed one thing that’s doing writers in. And that’s that they’re using their premise as a crutch.
They believe the premise is going to do the work for them so they don’t have to try that hard. When it comes to writing a screenplay, you have to do something special in one of two areas – the plot or the characters.
The reason for this is we need something beyond what we’ve seen before to excite us. If your execution is the same as every other similar movie we’ve seen, we’re going to get bored. For example, if you would’ve told me that I had to bet my family’s life on who was going to die first in this script, I would’ve said, “Greg,” and then taken the most peaceful nap of my life because that’s how sure I was that my family would be safe.
It cannot be the case where your execution is so predictable that I can take a nap when my family is in danger.
Now let’s say that you’re not good with plot. You’re lousy at coming up with creative story ideas. Are you screwed?
No.
You can still excel if you can create compelling characters. If I like a character and relate to the issues they’re going through and you present that character to me in a way that is both honest and unpredictable, I don’t need a great plot. I’m fine watching the story of that person.
Look no further than yesterday’s review of Unorthodox.
There is more entertaining character exploration in the first 3 minutes of a movie about an Orthodox Jewish Woman that there is about all of the characters in Apex FOR THE FIRST 40 PAGES.
All that happens in the first 40 pages here is characters talking to each other. There isn’t a single dramatic event that occurs like there is in Orthodox, where the first scene is a woman escaping her community.
So here’s how to combat this.
When you come up with an idea – and hopefully it’s a strong idea like Apex – imagine in your head what that movie looks like. Think about all the scenes that might happen. Chances are, you’ll come up some good ones. Write those down because those are the scenes that the audience is looking forward to.
But when it comes to everything else, you should be questioning it. Cause a lot of those ideas you’re having come from other films. They seem inspired when you’re thinking about them. But, in reality, you’re just recalling characters and plot beats from movies you’re familiar with.
From there, you want to ask, “How am I going to make the execution of this story different from what people have seen before?” And I’m not going to lie to you. This will be one of the hardest questions you’ll have to answer. You’ve got a hundred years of cinema and TV to compete with so pretty much everything has been done before.
However, just the act of ASKING THE QUESTION improves the chances that you’re going to give us something fresh. And it may just be one revelation. It might be the act of Annie Wilkes bludgeoning Paul’s feet so he can never leave the house in “Misery.” That creative decision was so controversial, the screenwriter begged the director not to include it. That’s how sure he was that they’d gone too far. And it ended up being the most talked about scene of the year. You have to be willing to go down that road as a writer.
I always try to remind writers to get inside their readers’ heads and ask, “What are they expecting me to do?” And then make sure you give them anything but that. Not always. But enough to keep them off balance.
That’s today’s lesson. Coming up with the concept is half the battle. You then have to push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of if you truly want to impress us.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The personal stakes have to line up with the situation. A movie about the impending demise of the planet is going to have higher personal stakes than the trials and tribulations of fitting in at high school. The personal stakes in Apex are that James cheated on Charlie once with Kate. While cheating may feel like the end of the world in a high school movie, it doesn’t have the same cache in a movie where everyone is being killed one by one. The personal stakes here needed an upgrade. There was one moment where it seemed like the time James cheated with Kate resulted in her getting pregnant and having an abortion. But that turned out not to be the case. However, the stakes of that choice lined up a lot better with this concept than just someone who cheated on his girlfriend once. (note: This is, of course, assuming you’re treating the deaths in your movie seriously. If this was The Meg, which obviously has a tongue-in-cheek approach to death, it’s okay to lighten the personal stakes)
Genre: TV Drama (but sort of a movie, since it’s only 4 episodes)
Premise: A young woman in an orthodox Jewish community in New York escapes to Berlin to pursue a new life.
About: This series is based on the real-life story of Deborah Feldman, who chronicled her exploits in the 2012 autobiography Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Interestingly, the writers used Feldman’s book verbatim for the “past” storyline but made up a lot of the stuff that happens in Berlin (the present) for dramatic purposes.
Writers: Deborah Feldman, Daniel Handler, Alexa Karolinski, Eli Rosen, Anna Winger
Details: 4 hour-long episodes (I’ve watched the first 2)
So I’m sitting there watching Unorthodox, the sleeper show on Netflix that has no business being in a Netflix Top 10 that favors such frivalous entertainment as murderous lion tamers and something called “Coffee and Kareem.” Yet as of Friday, five separate people had recommended the show to me so I thought, “Okay, I have to check this out.”
While watching the first two episodes, an age-old screenwriting tale began to rear its head: Most screenwriters have no idea how to write engaging character pieces. There are plenty of screenwriters who know how to write boring character pieces. Believe me, I’ve read them all. But there are very few writers who, without gun fights and super powers and end-of-the-world stakes, know how to keep audiences engaged.
Unorthodox reminds us that it can be done.
Esty is a young woman who’s grown up in an orthodox Jewish community inside of New York. But when we meet her, she’s fleeing this world. You’d think she’d been continuously beaten and tortured the way she runs for her life and jets off to Berlin.
Esty seems to be searching for something in Berlin but we’re not told what. In the meantime, she befriends a group of musicians she meets at a coffee shop. Before Esty left New York, she’d been secretly taking piano lessons (in this particular orthodox Jewish community, you are not allowed to play music). Might Esty be able to parlay those talents into a position at their elite school?
Unorthodox institutes a 3-pronged interweaving plot. In addition to following Esty in the present, we also go back in time to observe the events that led to her departure. We start right before the courting process with her soon-to-be fiancé, Yakov. Yakov is so shy and so constricted by this culture that he can’t even look Esty in the eyes.
The third plotline is also set in the present and follows Yakov and his community’s head “fixer,” the ironically unorthodox Moische, as they’re tasked with flying to Berlin and bringing Esty back. The deeply flawed Moische was chosen because he knows the outside world best. Heck, he even has a smart phone. With internet!
We eventually learn that the reason Esty came to Berlin is because her mother ALSO fled the community years back and took up residence here. Esty is hoping to reconnect with her but gets distracted when the music opportunity arises. Will her new music career work out for her? Will she and her mom reunite? Or will everything go back to normal when Esty is captured and pulled back to New York by her husband and Moische? We shall see!
There’s this sort of weird belief among writers that character pieces mean that a certain level of boredom is acceptable. There’s almost an arrogance to it, the attitude being, “Well if you want to enjoy deep thoughtful stories that those big Hollywood movies aren’t giving you, you have to suffer through some slow meticulous setup that isn’t always going to be entertaining.”
To this I say: Hogwash.
It’s possible to make a character piece just as entertaining as a “Hollywood” movie. It’s just more difficult. The trick is a) be a little inventive, b) use time-tested storytelling devices, and c) be unafraid to recruit some “Hollywood” tricks of the trade.
Let’s start off with the inventiveness. Unorthodox jumps back and forth between the present and the past to create a 2-for-the-price-of-1 experience. This results in a constantly changing storyline that keeps you on your toes. Had Unorthodox told its story as a straightforward sequential narrative, it wouldn’t have been as interesting.
But it’s important to keep in mind that just adding a second narrative isn’t enough. You have to do something with it. Its existence must be justified. What Unorthodox does is it creates questions in its present that can only be answered by watching the past.
For example, one of the first things Esty does when she gets to Berlin is find a woman. We see her waiting for the woman. We see the woman arrive from afar. We see Esty about to approach her. But then the woman is met by another woman, who kisses her, Esty is shocked and confused and runs off.
At the time, we have no idea what just happened. But later, during the “past” narrative, we learn that that woman is her mother.
This is something Unorthodox is good at. It doesn’t give anything away upfront. This forces you to keep watching to find things out. This is one of the most basic tenets of writing. If you don’t provide us with any unanswered questions, why do we need to stick around?
Moving forward, let’s talk about time-tested storytelling techniques. And I’m going to give you one that you have to master if you’re going to write a good character piece. It’s a little something called STAKES. But I’m not talking about the stakes of the entire story. I’m talking about takes INSIDE INDIVIDUAL SCENES.
You see, when you don’t have two people pointing guns at each other, you need to find other ways to raise the stakes. And you do this through a) setting up the importance of something, b) taking your time to build it up, and c) paying it off in as big of a way as possible.
In Unorthodox, we’re given multiple references to the fact that Esty is a pianist. We don’t see her play. But her love for it is carefully woven into the story (for example, the person who helps her escape New York is her piano teacher).
When she gets in with the musicians, a new storyline builds where she wants to audition to get into the school. After multiple scenes of watching them play and conversing about music, they’re all together at a dinner party and someone finally says, “Hey Esty, there’s a piano. Why don’t you play for us?”
The mood all of a sudden becomes serious. We’re going to find out after all this time if Etsy is actually good or not. And not only is this her first time playing onscreen. But she has to do it in front of a dozen musicians who have all been playing music since they were in diapers. These are the best of the best.
This is how you create stakes in a scene. It’s a careful process of setting things up and then coming up with a scenario where the moment has major consequences. A lesser writer might’ve had Esty play in front of her best friend in the group. That would’ve lowered the stakes considerably. It needed to happen in front of this group to truly feel big.
Finally, when you’re writing character pieces, don’t be afraid to borrow from Hollywood storytelling. Unorthodox does that in two ways. The first is it creates a PURSUIT STORYLINE. You usually see pursuit storylines in big crime movies. Our murderers have escaped but we keep cutting back to the cop who’s close on their tail. This creates a sense of urgency in the story since we know that the antagonist is always closing in (you can also use Darth Vader closing in on Luke in Empire Strikes Back as an example).
Unorthodox does this with the husband and Moische. This was the best storytelling choice the writers made because one of the biggest reasons character pieces are so boring is because they’re so slow. Creating a storyline that adds urgency to the proceedings fixes that problem.
Another way Unorthodox borrows from Hollywood is the “buddy cop” trope. The buddy cop trope is when you pair up two opposing characters to ensure that whenever we cut to them, there’s always conflict. Yakov and Moische could not be more different. One is naive and meek and close-minded. The other is aggressive and intense and world-traveled.
This would’ve been a less interesting story if Yakov and Moische were equally timid and close-minded.
If you’re writing a low-concept character piece or a low-concept TV show, you’re going to want to check out Unorthodox. It understands where the pitfalls of this genre are and makes sure it has solutions to them. It knows that unless it entertains you, you won’t give a damn. So it always keeps entertainment at the forefront.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Treat your key story threads like sex. DON’T GIVE IT UP RIGHT AWAY! The reason that piano scene plays so well is because they built it up over a long period of time. There was a moment early in the story where Esty sits down at a piano in an empty room. She places her fingers on the keys. Weak writers would’ve had her play something amazing right then and there. “Oh,” they would’ve said to themselves while writing the scene, “she’s playing this beautiful piece to an empty room! It’s so powerful!!” No. No no, no no, and no again. What Unorthodox does is it cuts out before she plays anything, further building up the suspense of the piano storyline. This ensures that when she finally does play in front of all those people, the tension and suspense are at an all time high.
What I learned 2: Combine characters when possible! It always makes your script smoother. This script needed someone to teach Esty piano. The script also needed someone to help Esty escape. Of course you could’ve had two separate characters for each need. But why not combine them into a single character like Unorthodox did? — Incidentally, one of the easiest ways for me to spot a newbie writer is someone who adds a new character for every single task in the script. They never look to combine characters.
What I learned 3: Never limit yourself when adapting material. You have to think outside the box, even when the story you’re adapting is true. I find it fascinating that the writers here decided the stuff about the escape wasn’t enough and created this whole fictional present-day storyline as a way to add an extra, more accessible, layer to the story.
Genre: Sci-Fi (TV 1-Hour Drama)
Logline: Within hours of learning from an otherworldly source that his upcoming flight is destined for disaster, a would-be Good Samaritan highjacks Northwest Orient flight 305 in order to prevent it from crashing – so begins the saga of history’s most elusive fugitive, D.B. Cooper.
Why You Should Read: To be entertained. You could simply read to page 2, at which point you’ll hopefully buckle up and enjoy the ride. For those familiar with D.B. Cooper, great. For those who aren’t, a quick review of his wiki page may interest you.
Writer: Scott A. Kovall
Details: 71 pages
Man, this was one of the closest Amateur Showdowns ever.
The three top scripts all had virtually the same vote count. That makes it tough for me because how do I choose?!
In the end, I decided to go with the TV pilot because TV is so important right now with everything that’s going on in the world. We’re all staying home looking for that perfect show to help us through the quarantine. It feels like the right time to review a pilot.
For those wondering which script I’d read and liked from the Sci-Fi Showdown offerings, it was “Nowhere Girl.” One of the most unique premises I’d ever come across and something that should’ve imploded within 20 pages. But Chris Cobb somehow pulls the bizarre execution off. The original draft I read probably would’ve garnered a double-worth-the-read.
So “On This Day In History” has a lot to live up to. I don’t want to feel like I made the wrong choice here so let’s hope Mr. Kovall pulls this off!
[A quick note. I’m going to summarize the plot but I might get some things wrong. I struggled to understand even basic plot points.]
A guy named Sinth who has a tattoo of the name “D.B. Cooper” on his exposed shoulder is sitting on the top floor of a skyscraper in New York in 1974 looking for people to shoot with his scope-rifle. It’s hard to understand if he’s got a specific target in mind or he’s just looking for bad folks.
Cut to three years earlier where Sinth is a high school history teacher. After his class, a strange 25 year old woman with a guitar named Leighton tells him that his on-again-off-again best friend, Tweet, needs his help tonight. Sinth responds to her by writing all his responses on the blackboard.
That evening Sinth takes a ride on his motorcycle only to run into a giant tornado. Luckily, his on-again-off-again buddy Tweet’s house is on his escape route. He runs inside and, by virtue of being there at just the right time, stops the tornado from killing Tweet.
It turns out Leighton is both from the future and invisible to everyone but Sinth. Her job is to tell Sinth to be at certain places at certain times to stop tragic things from happening. For example, she takes Sinth to a hockey game where he stops a puck that goes into the stands. Had he not been there, the puck would’ve hit a young girl in the head and killed her.
What Leighton really needs Sinth for, however, is to go on a certain flight and follow a set of instructions where he will appear to be demanding money. But, in reality, he’s taking the plane off its planned flight path where it would’ve collided with another plane and killed everyone on both flights.
After Sinth, aka D.B. Cooper, does this, he heads back to his high school teaching job where we spend the last ten pages of the pilot, Sinth talking to his class who only want to discuss the now famous story of a guy named D.B. Cooper who jumped off a plane with a bunch of money. The end.
I’m going to share with you some behind-the-curtain details on why I picked this pilot for Sci-Fi Showdown. D.B. Cooper is an infamous mythological figure. Placing him in a science fiction environment sounded fun.
However, if I’m being honest, I was concerned about the logline. It sounded unfocused. And in almost every case where I’ve read an unfocused logline, the script itself has been unfocused. When you think about it, it makes sense. If a writer can’t make one sentence clear, how can they make 70 pages clear?
Unfortunately, that fear was confirmed.
I was lost pretty much from the get-go.
We meet our hero, Sinth Freeman, four pages in, where we’re told he’s America’s Most Elusive Fugitive Ever. We then focus on a tattoo on his arm that says, “D.B. Cooper.”
So many questions.
Is his name Sinth Freeman or D.B. Cooper?
If he’s D.B. Cooper, why would he announce to the world he’s D.B. Cooper by tattooing “D.B. Cooper’s” name on his shoulder?
Or is this after his infamous escape from the plane, in which case maybe he’s using the name “Sinth” to hide his true identify? But wouldn’t showing your real name via tattoo defeat the purpose of that?
Or has he not become a fugitive yet? If so, why have two names?
I’m so confused already and we’re barely four pages in.
But it gets worse.
Why is this guy propping himself down in the middle of New York randomly searching for people to shoot with a rifle? Is he a good samaritan who just happens to be an expert rifleman on the lookout for criminals? Or is he a trained killer who’s been hired for a job?
Aggressively unclear.
But it get worse.
The Blackboard scene.
We cut to three years earlier where Sinth, a.k.a. not yet D.B. Cooper, is a teacher. A guitar playing woman named Leighton shows up in his class. Leighton starts asking Sinth questions and for reasons I have no answers for, Sinth only responds to her through writing answers down on the blackboard.
Is Sinth a mute back in 1971? Has he not learned to talk yet?
All unclear.
At this point I thought I was at least halfway through the pilot. I looked up and nearly had a heart attack. I was only on page 15!!! I still had 57 pages left!
I don’t want to be mean to Scott here. I will say this. He takes a lot of chances with this pilot. He goes for it. And I appreciate that. But if I’m 15 pages in and I’m struggling in every single scene to have even the barest idea of what’s going on, that doesn’t bode well for me wanting to continue reading.
There’s something to be said about the old adage, just tell a good story. Don’t overtell it. Don’t insert yourself into it. Don’t over-stylize it. The ultimate goal is for the reader to forget they’re reading a story. That’s hard to do when you’re trying to show off. When you’re having characters only answer questions on their blackboard when they’re perfectly capable of answering normally.
The biggest problem is that there’s no continuity here. We’re being shaken like a polaroid picture. We’re watching a guy walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers, we’re shooting people from a rooftop, we’re in a history class, we’re in a tornado, we’re at a hockey game, we’re on a plane.
I’m guessing this is what Scott was going for. He didn’t want a smooth ride. And I’m not going to tell you that herky-jerky storytelling doesn’t work. There are cases where it does work. 500 Days of Summer, for example, tells its story in a herky-jerky style.
But the thing with herky-jerky storytelling is that every single other component of the writing has to be perfect. Cause if we’re also confused about OTHER PARTS of the story, now you’re just asking too much of the reader. Readers don’t go into scripts wanting to read every scene three times so that they can understand what’s happening. And that happened constantly here.
For example, halfway into the script you throw out that Leighton is invisible to everyone but Sinth. And sometimes Sinth talks through writing instead of speaking. It’s too much. I always remind writers that one of the quickest ways to lose a reader is lack of clarity. There is nothing that will make a reader check out faster than confusion. Especially if it’s regarding basic story points that shouldn’t require extra thought.
It should be noted that my known preference is simple easy-to-understand concepts and narratives. So, in Scott’s defense, this was going to have to tough time with me even if the execution was great. I applaud him for going after it and trying something different but it just wasn’t my thing.
I’m going to review Nowhere Girl next Friday. I know that script and it deserves a review. So if you want to join in that conversation, read the script here.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Avoid try-hard writing, both in description and dialogue. Seeing a writer try hard to impress is no different than the 12-year-old boy desperately doing skateboarding tricks to get the pretty girl’s attention. The fact that you want to impress her so badly is exactly what pushes her away. Here are a couple of examples from On This Day In History that felt too try-hard…
You’ve had 72 hours to gain some distance from the screenplay you wrote in two weeks.
Wait. TWO WEEKS!? How in the world were you able to write a screenplay in TWO WEEKS??
Oh yeah. Because of me. :)
Prep 1, Prep 2, Prep 3, Prep 4, Prep 5, Prep 6, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14
But as we all know, a first draft is merely an accumulation of ideas. The rewrites are where you begin connecting those ideas. The rewrites are where you turn your script into an actual screenplay.
So what’s the first thing you should do in a rewrite?
Here’s what I suggest.
Read through your script but don’t focus on anything technical. Forget about first act turns and infusing the right kind of conflict into a scene. You want to put yourself in the mind OF A READER. Not enough writers do this. They only focus on what they’re putting out and not what people are taking in.
In order to do this, you have to remove judgment of your work and you have to turn off the logical side of your brain. These things are only going to get in the way.
All you should be focusing on is HOW YOU FEEL. You want to chart your mood. This is important at this stage because you still don’t know your story that well. That means you’re still able to emotionally react to things. That ability won’t be there in Draft 6. By that point, you’ll have been through the script so many times, you’ll only be able to see structure and mechanics.
You want to keep track of two things in particular. When are you engaged? And when are you bored?
As long as you want to keep turning pages, that’s “GOOD.” But when turning those pages becomes a chore, that’s “BAD.” Try and track, as accurately as you can, where these feelings start and stop. So for example, it might look like this:
Page 1 – 7 GOOD
Page 8-10 BAD
Page 11-14 GOOD
You can be more specific if you want. I’ve been known to add “GREAT,” “AWFUL,” “VERY GOOD,” “BORED OUT OF MY MIND.” I’ll leave that up to you. But it’s going to become a helpful resource when you’re all finished because you’ll have a visual map for where your script is working and where it isn’t.
Once you identify spots where it isn’t working, you can go back to where that boredom started and figure out what changed in the script to cause that boredom.
You might find, for example, that seven of your ‘BAD’ sections had a certain character in them, which would confirm that that character isn’t working. The same with subplots. A certain subplot you thought was imperative when you wrote the script ended up being boring in the execution.
After you’ve done your emotional tracking, go back to each weak section and ask a simple question: “Why doesn’t this work?” You don’t have to be an expert screenplay analyzer to answer this question like yours truly. You can answer it in plain English. “This location they’re in is boring.” “This conversation is dumb.” “I don’t care if John wants to break up with Linda or not.” “This character is the most annoying person on the planet.”
From there, ask yourself another simple question. “How can I make it better?”
“The location they’re in is boring.” Okay, maybe you’re placing them in too safe of an environment. Instead of allowing your characters to speak in private, put them at a dinner party where they’re forced to converse quietly because they don’t want everyone else to hear their business.
“This conversation is dumb.” Maybe the conversation is only revealing exposition or backstory – a quick way to Boredom Town. Add some conflict. Add some drama to the scenario. Maybe Sara is still mad at Ron about staying out late night with his drinking buddies and that subtext has made its way into today’s conversation about taking the kids to school.
“I don’t care if John wants to break up with Linda or not.” Maybe you never established Linda as a person we like. Maybe you never established how much John needs her in his life. Had you done both those things, we’d care more about a potential break up.
“This character is the most annoying person on the planet.” Maybe the character simply isn’t working, no matter how much you liked them conceptually. Sometimes the best answer is to get rid of something, whether it be a character, a subplot, or a scene. A good screenwriter is like a good general manager for a sports team. They’re able to let something go, no matter how emotionally attached they are, if it’s the right thing for the team.
Once you’ve identified all your weak spots and written down all of your solutions, you can put together a new outline. Your new outline will look a lot like your old outline but this one will focus on what you need to fix rather than what you need to create. You’ll write stuff like, “Matrix Training Scenes: These are the scenes where we really need to sell how little Neo believes in himself. Extra emphasis on the fall during the building jump. Extra emphasis on his struggle to keep up with Morpheus in the dojo fight.”
I encourage you to be as detailed as you can be. Rewrites are when you start to see your movie past the surface level. You start to understand your characters’ motivations better. You start to see how previously separate plotlines can connect. You start to see common themes pop up. So don’t be afraid to be a little “mad scientist” when you’re putting together this outline. Write down every little thought you have. The more help you can give yourself when it’s time to write, the better.
Finally, every draft of your script should feel bigger, faster, and stronger. So many of the scripts I read don’t feel like movies. They feel like pleasant constructed stories that are mildly entertaining. Movies need to be larger than life! Even character pieces. The experiences the characters go through need to be bigger than the average experience we go through in life. Why? Because if all you’re giving us is real life, why would we pay to see that? We already have it for free.
So make the key moments in your script BIGGER. Keep adding urgency to any slow areas so that your script feels FASTER. And make sure the stakes in all of the key areas of your script are high. If there aren’t major consequences to your characters failing, we’re not going to care. That was my issue with yesterday’s script. If the wedding didn’t happen, they could just get married at a courthouse. It didn’t matter. Doing that will make your script STRONGER.
So get back in there and kill it on the rewrite so you’re ready when The Last Great Screenplay Contest deadline rolls around.
Good luck!
Genre: Comedy
Premise: When a young man can’t come up with enough money for his wedding, he’s forced to enlist the help of his estranged crazy grandmother, who will only provide the dough if he helps her kill herself.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 12 votes. This is writer Patrick Cadigan’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Patrick Cadigan
Details: 111 pages
Everybody in town thinks that when the pandemic is over, Hollywood’s going to want to buy a bunch of dramatic pandemic material.
I’m sure a couple of those projects will sell.
But if you’re looking for to play the smart money, it’s going to be in comedy. In times of stress, people want to laugh. So expect every studio to stock up on comedy projects. Netflix especially. They have the fastest concept-to-distribution model by far. So they can get a lot of these comedies in front of our eyes quickly.
Speaking of comedies, I’m happy that today’s script doesn’t involve a group of female characters going on a raunchy trip together, since that’s all Hollywood was buying for a good five years there. We might actually get back to seeing a variety of comedy projects. Let’s see if “Grandma” starts us off on the right foot.
30-something Ben works the phones at a dying insurance company. So while his career isn’t exactly on the upswing, he does have Mary, his partner-in-crime fiance who he’ll be marrying in a few months.
Mary is perfect in every way except for one. HER FAMILY. They suck. In fact, her father, George, corners Ben at a family gathering and informs him he can’t pay for their wedding. Which means Ben is going to have to come up with 30 grand.
This forces Ben to call his grandmother, Minnie. Minnie is one feisty old broad who tells it how it is. When Ben’s parents died unexpectedly when he was a child, Minnie raised him. The two never got along and Ben escaped the second he was of age to do so. He hasn’t talked to Minnie since.
Ben explains his predicament to Minnie and she comes up with an idea. She’s been planning to euthanize herself for years but she’s needed a family member to sign off on it. If Ben signs the suicide papers, she’ll give him the money.
Ben is thrilled with the arrangement… until he learns that they have to wait 30 days for the suicide. Which means Minnie will be helping Ben and Mary plan the wedding. When she suspects that Mary’s family is a bunch of cheating lying sleazeballs, there’s a good chance that she’s going to blow this wedding up before Ben and Mary can walk down the aisle.
Let’s start off with the good.
A comedy about a wedding where the love story isn’t about the bride and the groom, but rather the groom and his grandmother, was clever. I loved how, at the end, when the priest is reading the vows, Ben stops because he wants to go get his grandmother. It’s the the exact opposite of these “last minute sprint to the wedding” climaxes.
Also, this movie will get made.
It’s basically Bad Grandma and just like Bad Grandpa was able to get Robert DeNiro so it could make its movie, this will get an older famous female actress that ensures this moves into production as well.
But I don’t have any praise beyond that.
One of the hardest things about comedies is getting the balance between plot and comedy right. I’ve read hundreds of failed comedy scripts where my critique was, “You focused so much on the humor that the plot fell apart.” I’ve read almost as many failed comedies where my critique was, “You were so obsessed with structuring this thing that you squeezed out all the comedy.”
The best comedy scripts balance these two things.
Unfortunately, “Grandma” falls into the latter category. It’s so plot-centric that there aren’t any stand-out scenes. In fact, the only stand-out lol scene in the script is the opening flashback funeral (for Ben’s parents).
It shouldn’t be surprising that that’s the only scene that isn’t structurally attached to the story. It’s a flashback separate from everything. Without the constraints of plot, Cadigan only had to worry about being funny. Which is probably why it was the only scene that made us laugh.
Another problem is that Cadigan can’t decide whether Grandma is a comedic character or a straight up caricature. A caricature is a one-dimensional cartoonish character built solely for laughs. Mr. Chow in The Hangover is a caricature.
A comedic character is someone who’s funny, even goofy, but who we actually care about. Jack Byrnes in Meet the Parents is a comedic character.
Cadigan seems to shift Grandma between these two classifications when it’s convenient. She’s a loud-talking swear-a-minute pistol through many of the early scenes. But in the second half, we’re asked to see her as this fully fleshed-out human being with flaws. In the wise words of LaVar Ball – “Pick a lane.”
Finally, I never cared enough about the wedding.
Those are the stakes, right? If Grandma doesn’t help Ben, they can’t have the wedding. But does that mean he’ll lose Mary? Can’t they just get married in Vegas or at the courthouse instead? I never felt like the wedding falling through was the end of the relationship. So the stakes were never high enough.
Contrast this with Meet the Parents where you felt that if Greg didn’t win Jack over, he was going to lose his fiance. They did a great job establishing how much stock she put into her father’s approval.
But let’s be real. LOLs trump all. If you make this funny, we’ll overlook any issues. I’ve consulted on scripts like this before and what I tell the writer is to go through every single big scene and make it as funny as you can without worrying about the plot. Just come up with the funniest possible scenario you can think of.
Then, after you’ve done that, go back and gently edit those scenes so that they retain their new hilariousness but also fit back into the plot, even if that fit isn’t as perfect as before. Again, if we’re laughing, we’re not thinking about whether the script performed a proper “break into Act 2.”
Not a bad script but it’s going to need a few rewrites to get where it wants to be.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The stakes have to be present in the logline. If the stakes feel weak in the logline, you need to rethink your concept. Guys needing to find their kidnapped friend and get him back to his wedding within 24 hours (The Hangover) – high stakes. Guys trying to tag the one friend in their group who’s never been tagged yet before his wedding (Tag) – low stakes. The stakes for this wedding never felt that high to me.
