Search Results for: F word
note: Whiplash review coming tomorrow.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A Los Angeles drifter with big dreams finds himself drawn into the world of “nightcrawling,” a practice where independent videographers search out violent crimes and sell them to news shows.
About: Recently Jake Gyllenhaal left the giant Disney musical, Into The Woods, because funding for this film finally became available and he loved the script so much, he didn’t want to pass it up. I figure if someone’s passing up big studio money to do a small indie film, the script must be pretty great. Dan Gilroy is best known for writing The Bourne Legacy, The Fall, and Two For The Money.
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Details: 108 pages – 11/27/12 draft
Jake Gyllenhaal has been trying to break through into that A-list category for awhile now. But no matter what he does, he’s still stuck in that B – B+ category. Actors who can bring you 10-15 million on opening weekend, but not much more unless they’re paired up with a big actor. So how do you get onto that A-list? It’s simple. Find a great character. If you can find a great character and you nail the performance, the film stays in the theater longer, which leads to more accolades, which leads to more publicity, which leads to possible Oscar nominations. And all of a sudden, when that big new production needs a star, the first name on producers’ lips is… Jake Gyllenhaal!
Which is exactly why you want to write interesting unique characters. Every actor out there is dying to find that character that’s going to light up their career. Today’s script is a perfect example. Gyllenhaal actually left a film where they drape you in money just because of the Nightcrawler lead. That’s how rare these opportunities are and why actors jump when they get their chance because writers just don’t write enough juicy characters. And make no mistake, the role in Nightcrawler is about as juicy as they get.
20-something Louis “Lou” Bloom is like a lot of people in Los Angeles. He’s trying to become relevant. He’s trying to get a job. He’s trying to make money. He’s trying to find a place that doesn’t look like a janitor’s closet. The man is desperate to find a life of importance.
Lou is also… strange. You aren’t going to find an easy way to describe him but if pressed I’d say he’s an ambitious sleazy sociopathic hustler with a tinge of autism. He will steal your bike the second you turn away, then sell it to the bike store on the next corner with a load of bullshit so tall it’d dwarf the tallest hill in Hollywood.
Here’s a little taste of that action, where he’s trying to run up the price on the bike store owner who sees right through him: “This is a custom racing bicycle, ma’am, designed for competitive road cycling. This bike has a lightweight, space-age carbon frame and handlebars positioned to put the rider in a more aerodynamic posture. It also has micro-shifters and 37 gears and weighs under six pounds. I won the Tour de Mexico on this bike.” Bike Store Owner: “No bike has 37 gears.”
So one day, Lou happens upon a nasty car wreck where a young woman is stuck inside a burning vehicle. He notices a couple of independent videographers taping the ordeal. Armed with every cop radio frequency in town, it’s clear these guys race around to wherever bad shit is happening, tape it, then sell the footage to the news stations.
Fascinated, Lou buys himself his own video camera and starts doing the same. The big difference between Lou and his much more experienced competition is that Lou is, well, FUCKING CRAZY. He will drive 95 on side streets to make sure he gets to wherever the hell the action is first. This means he always gets the best footage, and he starts selling it to the news shows for big money, or one station in particular – K.S.M.L.
K.S.M.L. is in the gutter and therefore desperate. That means they’re willing to show crazier violence and pay more. Lou takes a particular interest in the director of K.S.M.L.’s news, Nina Romina. She’s twice his age but that’s just fine. Lou has a thing for older women. When she doesn’t show interest in him, Lou just uses his leverage: “You don’t want me [sexually], I don’t wanna give you the footage I found.” Nina knows Lou is her meal ticket and therefore, obliges Lou’s advances.
Eventually, however, the oven starts burning too hot. Sweeps is coming up and while Lou is still the best in the business, Romina needs something huge. It’s at this point that Lou realizes, if he’s going to find a story truly mind-blowing story, he can’t wait for the news to happen. He’s going to have to create it himself.
Man oh man oh man is Gilroy a good writer. This script just flew by. He’s one of the few writers who can be descriptive with barely any description at all.
LOS ANGELES
Shimmering in night heat… THRUM of civilization… a FREEWAY feeds into the city as a SEMI blasts by and CUT TO
A COYOTE
Loping across a RESIDENTIAL STREET in the hills… it stops under a street lamp… darting away and CUT TO
THE L.A. RIVER
For those of you who’ve read my book, you know one of the movies I broke down was Taxi Driver. But I almost didn’t include it. I thought to myself, people don’t write like this anymore. You can’t write Taxi Driver in this day and age, so what’s the point of using it as an example? I now realize I was wrong. You can write a movie like this. You just have to update it to a new time, to a new collective sensibility. You can still have a dark fucked up character running around a city doing dark questionable things, but it needs to be faster. It needs to have more pop. More energy! Enter “Nightcrawler.”
And, of course, if you’re going to write the next Taxi Driver, you gotta have your modern day Travis Bickle. Dan Gilroy found that character in Lou. This guy is just… I can’t even summarize him really. He’s that complex. There’s this moment that encapsulates him best where he basically blackmails Nina into giving him more of the action. However, there’s a detachedness to the way that he speaks, as if he both wants and doesn’t want what he’s asking for:
“Now I like you, Nina, I look forward to our time together, but you have to understand that 25,000 isn’t all that I want. From here on, starting now, I want my work to be credited by the anchors and on a burn. The name of my company is Video News Productions, a professional news gathering service. That’s how it should read and that’s how it should be said. I also want to go to the next rung and meet your team and the anchors and the director and the station manager, to begin developing my own personal relationships. I’d like to start meeting them this morning. You’ll take me around and you’ll introduce me as the owner and president of Video News and remind them of some of my many other stories. I’m not done. I also want to stop our discussions over prices. This will save time. So when I say a particular number is my lowest price, that is my lowest price and you can be sure I’ve arrived at whatever that number is very carefully. Now when I say I want these things I mean that I want them and I don’t want to have to ask again. And the last thing that I want, Nina, is for you to do the things I ask you to do when we’re alone together at your apartment, not like the last time.”
I mean, how are you NOT going to want to play that character if you’re an actor?
On top of the character stuff, this script is a great discussion companion for a previous article, The Six Types of Scripts Least Likely To Get You Noticed. One of those scripts I was trying to warn you away from was the coming-of-age story. However, I said if you refuse to listen and still want to write one, try to add a fresh angle to it. Don’t write the traditional coming-of-age story. Write something different.
Nightcrawler is exactly that. This is about a confused man who ends up finding his calling (coming-of-age). But he does it amongst a rocket-fast storyline and a unique subject matter we haven’t seen on screen before. Gilroy took a coming-of-age story and turned it into a thriller. If you are going to take chances and write stuff producers typically hate, the least you can do is that.
Gilroy did it and wrote a classic script in the process.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (TOP 25!)
[ ] genius
What I learned: Characters whose demeanor opposes their desire can be quite fascinating. Lou is desperate to move up, yet seems completely disinterested whenever discussing so. He’ll blackmail you, but do so without the slightest hint of emotion. In other words, if you have have a character ordering a hit, have him laughing while he does it. If you have a character who’s steaming mad, have him deliver his side of the argument with a smile. That contrast never quite fits when we’re watching it happen and is therefore always engaging to watch.
My new best friend Sean and I are hanging out later. So I just wanted to post a picture of him.
One of the most frustrating things about going through all these scenes was reading scenes that just didn’t go anywhere. Nothing was happening. And here’s where you see a major difference between experienced screenwriters and new screenwriters. It’s the difference in their interpretation of the phrase “something happens.” In a script, in every single scene, in order to keep a reader riveted, something NEEDS TO HAPPEN. Beginner writers say, “Hey, that conversation between me and my co-worker about our douchey boss was kind of funny. I’ll put that in a script.” And they do. And they don’t understand why no one responds to it. It was cute. There were a few funny lines. And it was life, man! Real-world shit! The reason nobody cared is because nothing happened.
Experienced writers know that “something happens” means ratcheting up the stakes and bringing something big to the table, a scene where what people say actually matters, where there are consequences to people’s actions! If they’re going to write a scene about two co-workers, one of them is going to have a gun hidden in her jacket. She and her co-worker had an affair. He’s broken it off. She’s been e-mailing and texting and calling him to no avail. He barely responds to her. Echoes of Fatal Attraction. She’s finally convinced him to have lunch with her. She’s brought a gun to their little chit-chat and is considering using it if the conversation doesn’t go well. Now, something is happening.
There’s an old saying with writing screenplays. It goes something like this: Your story should be about the most important thing that’s ever happened to your character in his life. In other words, if what you’re writing about isn’t even the biggest thing that’s happened to your hero, why do you think we would be entertained by it? I think you can apply this approach, at least partially, to scene-writing. The scenes you write should be the biggest 1, 2, or 3 things that happened to your character that day. There will be exceptions to this for sure. But if you’re picking your best scene in the whole script? One that really shows off your chops? And it doesn’t even seem (or barely seems) like it was the most important thing that happened to your character that day? How do you expect a reader to be impressed?
But here’s the real killer. The writers who WERE able to write a scene where something was “happening?” The ones who avoided that pothole? They often made the mistake of writing the scene in the most predictable way possible. Those are some of the hardest scenes to read. Because here we are. This huge scene is laid out before us (i.e. Hero finally confronts his mother who left him as a child), and it… goes… exactly… according… to plan. He asks mom why she did it. She takes a deep breath. Says she doesn’t know. She thinks about it. Talks about how it was all too much for her. I mean, WE’VE SEEN THAT SCENE BEFORE! We’ve seen it a billion times.
I just don’t understand why screenwriters don’t realize this. Why they don’t realize that we’ve been down that road before. As a writer, it’s your job to know the reader’s expectations, and then go in a different direction. That way you surprise them as opposed to bore them. This to me, is what all the best writers do. And it’s one of the easiest skills to learn. You don’t have to be a master storyteller to do it. All you have to do is recognize the way a scene typically plays out, and go another direction. Even if that direction turns out to be a bad choice, at least we’ll applaud you for not taking the obvious route.
Another thing that shocked me is I don’t think I read a single “Hitchcock bomb under the table” scene out of all the submissions. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong (Miss SS read a few submissions so maybe she did) but I didn’t see one. This is one of the EASIEST ways to write a good scene. You should have 2-3 versions of this scene in every script you write. Maybe more depending on the genre. Essentially the idea is, if you have two people talking at a table, it’s boring. But if you tell the audience there’s a bomb underneath the table, a ticking bomb, then all of a sudden the scene becomes interesting.
This is where Sean and I met. Memories.
You can apply this to a scene in a million different ways. I just did above. The two co-workers talking, one of them secretly has a gun they’re planning on using. That’s a Hitchcock scenario. The scene with John McClane and Hans on the roof in Die Hard. We know he’s the bad guy. John doesn’t. That’s a Hitchcock scenario. A 17 year old girl is going out with a 35 year old biker that nobody in her family likes. There’s a big family dinner. The girl and the guy are planning on dropping the bomb that they’re getting married. That’s a Hitchcock scenario. If you want to win a scene contest, write a good “Hitchcock scenario” scene and, at the very least, you’ll be in the running.
Not every scene has to be a world-beater. Comedy is different. As long as you’re funny, you can get away with not much “happening.” But you have to be a freaking dialogue master to pull that off. You have to write dialogue that SINGS. When you give your script out to people, you better always be receiving the compliments “Your dialogue was great” and “I couldn’t stop laughing.” If not, do not try to rest on your dialogue alone. But to be honest? Why not do both? Why not create those intense pressure cooker situations that make scenes pop ALONG with the comedy? That’s why Meet The Parents was so good. They did such a great job setting up the stakes of that dinner scene. With how much Ben Stiller’s character wanted to impress Robert DeNiro’s character (his girlfriend’s father). They made it clear that everything was riding on his performance at that dinner table. So each word spoken was a potential death trap. Then, when they’re bantering back and forth about whether cats have nipples, it’s not just the writer trying to show you how funny he is. It’s Ben Stiller’s character digging a hole the size of the Grand Canyon trying to find a way out of his continued screw-ups. When we’re emotionally invested in a scenario, we’ll always laugh more.
Despite my passionate plea for better material, this week was really cool for me because I usually read everything within the context of the script. This placed my focus SOLELY on the scene. The scene had to live or die on its own. And it made me realize that each scene, in its own way, is like a script. It’s got its setup, its conflict, and its resolution. It needs goals, stakes, and urgency. It needs conflict. But most of all, it needs to matter. We need something important to be happening or else we’re going to tune out. And you guys need to treat it like that. Treat every scene with pride, like it’s its own story, and try to write the best story you possibly can. If you do that, the next time I hold one of these contests, you won’t have to choose a scene from your script. Because every one of them will be great.
Genre: Rom-Com
Premise: (from me – based on limited information) A young man finds his relationship threatened when the former love of his life, now a famous singer, makes an unexpected visit.
About: A couple of interesting points to make. One, this is Illi’s first screenplay. And two, it was a finalist in two New York screenwriting contests (the New York Screenplay Contest and the Screenplay Festival).
The setup: John has been dating a girl, Lucia, who has no idea that he used to date the famous singer, Verena, who’s currently in town. John actually bought the ring to propose to Verena a long time ago but never did. Lucia finds the ring and believes John is proposing to her. John tells her the truth in an inadvertently asshole-ish way, and she dumps him. So John goes to the supermarket where she works to apologize and get her back with a big surprise.
Writer: Illi Ferreira
Details: 7 pages
Aaron Paul for John? Why not!
As I went through scene submissions, one of the most interesting things I found was which scenes people picked to send. I quickly realized that WHAT a person sent was a quick indication of where they were as a screenwriter. Some scenes were literally two pages long, bridge scenes, that had our characters moving from one place to another, discussing immediate plot points, probably the most un-dramatic moments in the entire script.
Others thought huge action scenes were the way to go. I know that’s what I reviewed yesterday, but that’s because the scene was constructed soundly and well-written. Typically, big action scenes aren’t what a script is about. A script is about the characters and what’s going on between them, whether those problems be familial, relationship-based, or work based. A good scene to pick, I think, would be something revolving around one of those relationships, that showed a clever set up, intriguing conflict, a surprise or two, wrapped in a slightly unexpected package. That’s what I was looking for. Scenes that made you think a little.
Instead I got a lot of obvious straight-forward scenes where characters were saying exactly what was on their minds (no subtext). A lot of shooting. A lot of yelling. A lot of plot-reciting. At least with today’s scene, the writer put some thought into his characters and came about their interaction in a slightly different way.
For those too tired to download the scene, it has John, our main character, show up at Lucia’s work (she’s a cashier at a grocery store) to apologize for being mean the other day. Of course, because she’s working, he has to buy something – each item a sort of “time credit” for him to continue his apology. She’s not hearing any of it though, and is trying to speed him through the line. Customers appear behind him, putting pressure on him to hurry up. Can he get her to accept his apology in time? Or will he fail and lose Lucia forever?
You remember the term “scene agitator” from my book, right? This is when you add an element to the scene that agitates your characters, that makes it more difficult for them to do… whatever it is they’re doing. Here, we see that agitator in the form of a checkout line. John cannot speak freely with Lucia because she’s at work. In order to talk to her, he must buy something like everyone else. Then, when he gets in line, he only has until the end of the sale before he has to leave.
I thought this scene would be fun to discuss because it presents the writer with a choice. That’s the thing with writing. It’s never one simple route. Often, you’re going to have tough choices, with each choice having its own pros and its cons.
So here, John gets in line and starts pleading his case to Lucia. The idea is to make things tough on John, right? We want time to be running out for his apology. So traditionally, you’d put someone behind John – preferably someone very impatient. And that’s what Illi does here. He puts an old woman behind him.
But Illi decides to go another route and pull some laughs out of the situation. In order for John to continue to talk to Lucia, he needs to keep buying things. So he keeps grabbing a new bag of chips off the rack every five seconds or so. After awhile, seeing what he’s trying to do, the woman behind him starts grabbing chips for him. She starts helping him, which is kind of funny.
In other words, there was a choice. We could go with the option that provided the most drama for the scene. Or we could add some humor. Illi opted for humor. Which is fine. But the scene did lose a little bit of that urgency as a result. If we would’ve seen an impatient businessman behind John, and every 30 seconds another impatient shopper got into line, now we’re REALLY going to feel some dramatic tension.
When you’re writing any sort of character interaction, I think you’re trying to put your characters in less-than-ideal situations to have that conversation.
Have you ever set up a plan to tell someone you liked them? And you have it all worked out perfectly how you’re going to do it? You’re going to go to their work, wait for them outside, greet them with a surprised ‘hello,’ offer up a few carefully practiced jokes, then casually ask them out to a movie? But it never goes like that does it? You wait for them outside their work. They end up being late. So it gets dark. Now you look like a stalker. A night time guard approaches you, suspicious. He asks you what you’re doing out here. You nervously tell him you’re just waiting for a friend. He doesn’t believe you, so he stands nearby and watches you. The girl finally comes out. You’re freaked out about the guard so you look nervous and jittery. She picks up on that and now she’s creeped out. Right before you get to your first joke, some guy comes out, puts his arm around the girl. “Hey, you ready?” he asks. She looks at you. “Yeah, just a second. (to you) What were you about to ask me, Joe? Something about a movie?”
Whenever you want to talk to anyone about something important, it NEVER goes how you plan for it too. And that’s really how good dialogue scenes work. Whatever was planned goes out the window because all these unexpected things should be popping up. Sure, the perfect “nothing goes wrong” scenario is wonderful for real life. But it’s boring as hell for the movies.
I liked how Illi created that imperfect scenario, which is why I liked his scene. That doesn’t mean there weren’t problems. I couldn’t put my finger on it but the scene itself felt a little clunky. There were too many action lines between the dialogue, making it difficult to just read and enjoy the scene. I thought the dialogue was okay, but not exceptional. And in rom-com spec sales, the dialogue is always really strong. So Illi still has a ways to go. But this was a solid effort for sure.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Dialogue scenes benefit immensely from a time limit. Create some reason why your characters have to get their conversation over quickly, and you’ll find that your scene instantly feels snappier, more energetic.
Okay folks. Doing something different this week. Many months back, I had people on my mailing list send me their best scenes from their current scripts. The plan was to read them all, then review the full scripts of the best scenes. Due to a couple of factors (the primary one being that I didn’t find anything that blew my socks off), I’ve changed my mind. Instead of reviewing the entire script, I’m only going to review the scenes. I realized that in all the reviewing I’ve done on this site, I rarely analyze and break down individual scenes. And obviously, with scenes being the primary building blocks of a screenplay, that’s kind of absurd! So this week, I’m going to review five scenes, and then, whichever one gets the best feedback, I’ll review the entire script. Let the fun begin!
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Premise: (from writer) ALIENS meets THE MATRIX as a troubled soldier leads a group of mercenaries into a hostile, alien dimension to retrieve an ancient artifact. Against his wishes, his estranged father is along for the ride and is the only one that can lead them out.
Scene setup: The writer’s setup is too elaborate to include, but basically we’re in a gigantic alien hive lit by a river of flowing lava.
Writer: Logan Haire
Details: 7 pages
Download and read the scene here.
As I started reading the scenes for Scene Week, I learned the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in a long time. Let me set the scene (heh heh). I was at a café for reasons beyond my control, and so had to read some scene submissions in a busy place with people constantly walking in and out of the door just a few feet away from me. It was Distraction Nation. Which meant I had a hard time concentrating.
So I’m trying to read page after page but something’s always happening. A click. A bang. A loud laugh. Something always caused me to jerk up, to see what was going on.
That’s when it hit me.
When you write, you have to write in such a way that the reader CAN NEVER LOOK AWAY. You have to make it IMPOSSIBLE for them to look away, no matter what kind of distraction pops up.
I remember reading a book a couple of years ago – “Before I Go To Sleep.” It was told from the perspective of a woman waking up with amnesia who was in bed with a man she didn’t recognize. She was scared, confused. She needed answers. She realized this wasn’t the “long night out, wake up the next morning” type of forgetfulness. This was a deep forgetfulness. Something bigger and more terrifying. Then, when she walked to the bathroom, when she looked in the mirror, she almost fainted. She saw someone 15 years older than herself staring back at her. Why the hell did she look like this?? The scene continued like this and even though I HAD to go to sleep because I had a big day the next day, I couldn’t stop reading! I NEEDED to figure out what had happened to this woman.
I felt the same way when I read The Disciple Program and Django Unchained. Tyler and Quentin wrote these scenes that you just COULDN’T look away from, even if you wanted to. They pulled you in and never let you go. Sadly, I can’t say a single scene I read here (out of hundreds of submissions) compelled me to keep reading. Don’t get me wrong. There were a lot of SOLID scenes. There was a lot of professional-level writing. But again, there was nothing that made me want to read the entire script.
For that reason, I think it’s best to look at this week more as a learning experience than a “These are the best!” set of posts. The truth is, I haven’t spent a lot of time breaking down scene-writing on the site. So I’ll probably learn a few things myself.
As such, even though I know it will make the comments section messy, feel free to pitch your scene (and provide a link to it) if you felt like your scene was INDEED “Must Read” worthy. If a bunch of commenters verify that, yes, your scene kicked ass, I’ll be more than happy to review it. So again, I found about 20 decent scenes that were all of similar quality, and I’m basically picking at random between them for the 5 reviews.
For those who didn’t read the Harbinger scene, it’s basically about a group of military dudes who find themselves in some sort of alien hive. As they’re walking through this thing, they see the aliens (or demons, as they’re known) skittering through the hive walls, watching them. What starts as just watching, slowly evolves into an attack, and our guys start running and shooting in a desperate bid to save themselves. They even enact a “nano second skin” that can’t be penetrated as part of their defense. But with the demons are growing in number and with our team running out of solid ground, even that may not be enough.
I chose this scene because, while it didn’t do anything mind-blowing, it was a solid action scene that kept me entertained, that I could visualize, and that I could imagine on the big screen.
The first thing that stuck out to me is something that barely ANYONE did with their scene submission, and that’s create suspense. We see the shadows of these demons running through the hive walls as our military group is walking. We know it’s only a matter of time before they come out. So we’re on edge. That anticipation is getting us all antsy, scared of WHEN they’re going to attack. That’s how you want your audience to be. All antsed up! You never want them to be relaxed.
You know when you have one of those impossible days? You have to write, work, read a friend’s script, pick up your dry cleaning, get your girlfriend a card, pay a few bills, be home for the cable installation, etc., etc.? Add to this that you woke up late. So you’re already behind on the day. Just the thought of doing all these things in such a small amount of time stresses the hell out of you. I want you to imagine that feeling. That’s the kind of feeling you want your reader to have when they’re reading your script! They have to feel like there’s so much that needs to get done and there’s no way your characters can do it.
I also like how this scene builds. It progresses. It isn’t just stagnant and one note like a lot of the scenes I read. Aliens start slinking out of the hive, bit by bit. So the threat is getting more intense. In other words, the situation is DIFFERENT from how it was one page ago. And the threat will be even worse one page later, growing again.
I also like how when the action begins, it’s told inside 1-2 line paragraphs (with an occasional 3-liner). I see a lot of bad action scripts that pile in 3-4 line paragraphs one after another during huge action scenes. If stuff is supposed to be happening fast on the screen, shouldn’t it be happening fast in the reader’s head? To do that, you have to keep the lines short and sparse.
Likewise, Logan’s prose was very clear. And you may be saying, “Shouldn’t that be a given?” The answer is yes, but it’s something I saw a LOT of writers in Scene Submissions struggle with. And here, it’s INCREDIBLY important, because we’re talking about an alien world, an alien setting, multiple characters, and a lot of action. It’s easy for a reader to get confused if a writer isn’t doing his job.
My worry here is that the scene (and concept) is too familiar. It’s a lot like a video game (Gears of War for me, and of course, Aliens on the film side), and the lava stuff reminded me of the dreadful CGI ending to Revenge of the Sith. This kind of stuff seems like it shouldn’t matter. But it does. Anyone who reads your script is going to get a little weary if it’s too similar to something else. We want to see originality, something new and different, and that’s not what I got here. When I said earlier, “None of the scenes I read propelled me to want to read the scripts,” for Harbinger, is was that “too familiar” feeling that did it in. I’ve been in this world numerous times already. So why would I want to revisit it?
With that said, I might give it 10 pages. Logan has proven he can write a scene. And for that, I have to give him props.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (barely made the cut)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I didn’t see this in Logan’s script, but his sparse writing reminded me of it. — Isolate character names during big action sequences to create more of a “vertical” read. A “vertical” read just means that a lot of the text is near the left side of the margin and all the action lines are sparse, allowing a reader’s eyes to fly down the page “vertically”). I don’t like to see this used just anywhere in a script. But it’s a GREAT approach to adapt for action writing. For example, instead of:
Jetson lands hard on the concrete, shaking the room. He spins his gun out of his holster and shoves it into Frank’s face. Frank stares down the barrel of the gun, half an inch from his nose.
You’d write:
JETSON
Lands hard on the concrete, shaking the room.
He spins his gun out of its holster, SHOVES it into Frank’s face.
FRANK
Stares down the barrel of the gun, half an inch from his nose.
So I’m peering out at the specscape this diddly-do and it’s not looking so volcanic . “Diddly-do” is code for “day” by the way. “Specscape” is code for “spec landscape.” And I have no idea what volcanic means. Actually, before I continue, you should know that I quit sugar cold-turkey recently. And you have to realize, I was a sugar addict. It’s now Day 7 and my intelligence has gone waaaaaay down as a result. Like miles below sea level. I know it was already underwater to begin with, but that’s still low. I’m still going to write this blog post though because I’m feeling passionate about something. Quentin Tarantino when he talks about NO HARD EIGHT FOR YOU-type passionate!
Where was I? Right, so there have really only been 2 “true” spec sales this year (one about Greek Gods in modern day. Another about an astronaut trying to survive a hobbled spacecraft) and I’m thinking that’s not enough, man. True, lazy-ass Hollywood really didn’t get started until January 6th (you can’t put January 1st on a Wednesday and expect people to go balls to the wall for two days, go back to a relaxed weekend, then start up again – of course they’re going to wait until the 6th), but 17 days and only two spec sales isn’t enough. Especially with everyone geeked up to find the first great script of 2014. We should have had 5 or 6 big spec sales already.
Now some might say that Hollywood isn’t a spec-sale town anymore. And that’s true to a certain degree. It ain’t the 90s. These days it’s more about finding writers with potential, sending them to meetings everywhere in town, and hoping they book some assignments. But I think Hollywood is always ready to buy something if it’s good. And therein lies the problem. Nobody’s been writing anything good!
Remember back in the day when Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott used to write all those awesome screenwriting articles on their website? And we’d visit that site every week because they were guaranteed to give us something new to think about? There’s one article I remember quite well, though the title of it escapes me. It was basically about the fact that when you’re writing a screenplay, each page you’re writing needs to be worth a million dollars. Because that’s how much they’re going to spend on the budget of the film (110 pages, 1 million per page, 110 million dollar budget). So the question they posed was, “What makes your writing worth a million dollars a page?”
I never forgot that. And sure, there’s an argument to be made that that’s the most unhealthy approach to creating art ever. But I don’t agree. Thinking in those terms can actually help you become a better writer. Because all it’s doing is it’s making you justify your choices and your effort.
And they need to be justified, because the stakes have gone WAY up since that article. These days, the budgets for major studio films START at a hundred million, and can go up to THREE-HUNDRED MILLION. Add marketing and distribution costs for not just America, but dozens of countries around the world, and we could be talking a 600 million dollar investment before a single person buys a ticket.
With the average screenplay being 110 pages, that equals out to almost SIX MILLION DOLLARS PER PAGE.
Welcome to the new state of movies. So do you believe your script is worth 6 million dollars per page? That’s a pretty intimidating question right? You can see why these studios lean so heavily towards intellectual property. That’s their answer to the question, “Why are our in-house scripts worth 6 million dollars a page?” Because Batman has proven to be a beloved bankable hero for 70 years. Because millions of people have read and loved The Hunger Games and they’ll come out to see a movie-version of the book.
But yeah, that six million dollar a page figure is a little scary. So let’s dial it back and be more realistic. Most big-time studio movies have around a 200 million dollar budget, which means each one of your pages needs to justify 2 million dollars spent. Do you believe each one of your pages justify that kind of investment?
That’s a really complicated question but here’s an interesting way to look at it. Can someone open your script to any page, read it, and say, “That page is worth 2 million dollars?” I don’t know. I mean not all pages are created equal. Some you need to have context to understand. Some are naturally more exciting than others.
Ah, but I’ll tell you this. Anyone can definitely open a script to a random page and say, with certainty, “That’s not worth 2 million dollars.” And I believe that’s the secret to writing a “2 million dollar a page” screenplay. Your job is simply to make sure that people can’t open your script to any page and be able to tell right away that it isn’t worth 2 million bucks. All that page needs to be is good enough so that that person can’t definitively say it isn’t. To know for sure, they have to read on. And if you’ve done your job, after reading the next page, they’ll want to read the next one, and then the next one after that and the next one after that until they get to the end. You’ve written a 2-million dollar a page screenplay if someone who picks it up CAN’T PUT IT DOWN until they finish. That is the ONLY surefire way to know if you’ve written something that a studio will invest 200 million dollars in.
Here’s the root of the problem for why we’re not seeing enough of these types of screenplays. Writers aren’t trying hard enough. I mean assuming you know the basics – how to come up with a marketable fresh premise, how to create a complex interesting main character, how to keep your narrative moving, how to structure your script – it’s up to you to give us 100%.
Want to know how to write 110 2-million dollar pages? Start with the scene. There are 50-60 scenes in every script. I want you to answer this next question honestly. Don’t bullshit yourself or me. That latest script you’ve been pushing to everyone, trying to get everyone to read? How many of those 60 scenes can you say you gave 100% on? That each and every scene in that script is as good as you can possibly make it?
If you can HONESTLY tell me that all 60 of your scenes are as good as you can do? That’s great. I am virtually making sweet love to you right now. But if that’s not the case, all I can ask is, “Why?” What in the world makes you believe you can put a script out there where you haven’t made each scene as good as it can be?
Let me let you in on a secret. From the amateur spec scripts I read (and I read about 10-15 a week), do you know how many scenes in those scripts I’d say, on average, are the best the writer could’ve done? Maybe around 5. 5 scenes in each script! For more seasoned writers, I’d say maybe 20-25. Which seems better, but it’s still less than HALF of what you need to write something great!
If you want to SELL something – if you REALLY want to play with the big boys – why are you holding yourself to that shit-ass standard? Why not, when you put your script in someone’s hand, be able to say “I did as well as I possibly could’ve done here?”
The one huge advantage amateur writers have over pros is THEY HAVE NO DEADLINE. A studio isn’t all up in their e-mail box asking where the new draft is. You’re free to spend AS MUCH TIME as you want on your script, to perfect it beyond perfection, so you have no excuse not to make it great.
And if you follow that model, each page WILL be worth 2 million dollars because every page in every scene is going to have a purpose. It’s going to be there for a reason. And you’ll have added the necessary conflict or suspense or dramatic irony or plot twist or side-splitting dialogue that was necessary to make that scene great.
Look, I can’t promise you if you do this, you’re going to sell a screenplay. Because the truth is, a lot of writers don’t yet know how to write a script, how to pick a concept, how to arc a character, etc. But if you hold yourself to this standard NOW, when you’re still learning? Then by the time you DO understand all this stuff, and your skill level matches your craft, you’ll have the kind of discipline that’s going to give you a HUGE advantage over everyone else.
So get to it. Open your latest script up and make it 2-million-bucks-a-page worthy!