Genre: Drama
Premise: A young circus hand befriends the newest addition to the show, a seductive mermaid with a murderous past.
About: This is the runner up script from The A-List, which is not an actual list but a screenwriting contest set up specifically for entertainment assistants. The scripts are judged by the assistants and, in order to prevent any favoritism, have anonymous title pages. If you’re wondering why I picked the number 2 script to review as opposed to number 1, it’s because the number 1 script’s concept sounded like an active attempt to dethrone Unisom as the best prescription sleep-aid on the market.
Writer: Noelle Liljedahl
Details: 110 pages
This contest seems so specific, doesn’t it? Only the personal assistants of the development execs of the writers who have no representation and have only been in Hollywood for more than 13 months but less than 25 months are eligible.
Okay, I kid. It’s not that bad. But still. It’s hard enough to find good scripts when the scope is… EVERYONE ON THE PLANET. So what are the chances we get a good script out of this niche collective of writers?
The one thing these writers have going for them, however, is they read a lot of scripts – which, for some reason, not enough aspiring screenwriters do. The people who visit this site are the most likely to read scripts but even a lot of the Scriptshadow readers I’ve met over the years confess to having read less than five scripts in their life.
I mean, come on people! This is your chosen profession. You want to be an expert at it. One of the easiest ways to improve your writing is to read other scripts. And not scripts of movies you’ve seen. Unproduced scripts that have gotten noticed by the industry.
And here’s a pro-tip. After every five industry scripts you read, read a straight up amateur script – something that got the lowest vote total on Amateur Showdown. You’ll start to see noticeable differences between good and bad writing.
Enough scolding. Let’s dive into this fishy story already.
It’s 1920 and 18 year old Cillian is a — well, there’s no nice way to put it – he’s a sh$% shoveler in a circus. But good times are ahead for our dear protagonist as he’s heading off to college in a few days. Cillian ain’t gonna be shoveling sh$% for long.
Then *she* shows up. *She* is the unicorn of the circus world – a real live mermaid. You have to understand that in the circus community, it’s common to fake mermaids. All you have to do is throw a fake fin around their waist. But this one is REAL.
Cillian, who’s a virgin (although I’m not sure why that’s brought to our attention since it never plays a role in the story), is drawn to this mysterious creature, who’s so cryptic she doesn’t even have a name! She’s just “The Mermaid” in the script. Cillian starts visiting her in her tank on a daily basis and quickly falls in love with her.
There’s only problem. The Mermaid is bad. Without warning, her eyes will go inky black and if there’s anything alive near the top of the tank she’ll snatch it and gut it and eat it for breakfast. A few circus workers find this out the hard way. So even though Cillian and The Mermaid like each other, getting intimate isn’t an option. Intercourse isn’t as fun when you’re dead.
When the owner and ringmaster of the circus, Rolf, finds out that The Mermaid has a crush on Cillian, he demands that Cillian stick around. The Mermaid has proven hard to tame. But if there’s someone around to placate her, things will be easier. Cillian says ‘fine.’ He likes hanging out with the Mermaid anyway. But what he, nor we, have figured out, is whether The Mermaid really likes him… or is just pretending to in order to orchestrate an escape.
The tricky thing with circuses is conceptually they’re great for a movie. It’s the perfect cinematic backdrop. The characters are all weird. You’ve got wild animals in the mix. When you’re thinking in broad terms of a circus movie, it FEELS like a film.
But it’s for that very reason why so many of these scripts (and I’ve read a lot of them) end up being duds. The writer assumed that the circus would do all the work for them. But a circus movie is no different from a small-town coming-of-age movie. You have to find a compelling story within that backdrop that will keep viewers invested.
Does The Mermaid keep us invested?
Somewhat.
Everything rests on how interested you are in this love story between Cillian and The Mermaid. If that’s your jam and you’re at the edge of your seat trying to figure out how their relationship is going to end, you will enjoy this.
But beyond that, there isn’t much of a story. The entire circus backdrop seems to exist solely as a time-filler between Cillian and The Mermaid’s interactions. There are a couple of other decent character storylines, such as the older femme fatale in the circus becoming jealous when Cillian falls for The Mermaid.
But even our villain, the ringmaster, isn’t that villainous. And, if I’m being honest, the script felt too similar to both The Shape of Water and Water for Elephants. It’s almost as if these two films were watched right before writing the movie.
This is a common issue for a lot of screenwriters. I’ve been through the stage myself. We love the movies we love and therefore borrow from them liberally. We can’t help it. But as you gain more experience, you become better at realizing it and actively switching out the characters and plot points from those inspirational movies.
I don’t know about this one. It’s not a bad script. It just didn’t have that extra level that elevates a decent script into a good script. Whether it’s a stand-out character or a big plot twist or a unique new writer’s voice or some next-level imagination — I kept wanting this script to take it up notch but it always seemed content with decent but predictable plot developments. For example, if nothing had happened for a while, I knew it was time for The Mermaid to kill another person. And that’s what happened. It made for a reading experience where I was 30-40 pages ahead of the writer. And that’s something all writers should be actively avoiding. If you think the reader is expecting something, DO NOT give them that something. Give them something else.
I do think there’s a movie in here somewhere. A killer mermaid is a cool idea. But this script needs to be developed into something edgier. It’s too vanilla and predictable in its current incarnation. And not enough happens.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the worst things we can do as writers is become too comfortable within the story universes we create. We’re so proud of ourselves for coming up with the idea that we don’t push ourselves to elevate that idea. When you write that way, you write okay scripts. But you never write good scripts. Or great scripts. After you’ve come up with your idea and started writing the script, you should constantly be asking yourself, “How can I elevate this beyond the expected execution of this concept?” You get the feeling that guys like Tarantino and Fincher and Aronofsky and Cameron are constantly asking themselves that question. Which is why they make unforgettable movies.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a struggling fashion model in New York City gets chosen by a mysterious Parisian designer to be the face of his first campaign since his disappearance five years prior, she begins to realize she was chosen for a reason and must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for beauty and recognition.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 10 votes. The writer, Michael Paisely, is just getting started. He was a Writer PA on The Witcher. And no, I don’t know what that is. STX picked up the script last year.
Writer: Michael Paisley
Details: 111 pages
There’s a theme to this year’s Black List. And that theme is: “I’m still learning.” Which is great. I’m not going to harp on writers learning their craft. We’re all in different stages of the journey so no need to be mean to anyone just because they haven’t figured it all out yet. Well, except for yesterday, of course.
Mia is a young New York model who’s been passed up by every job in the business, all while her model friends are booking Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry. It’s not fair! So when she hears about fashion legend Marceau de Saint-Pierre’s newest fashion show, called “Dollhouse,” she doesn’t bother getting her hopes up.
But then her photographer frenemy, Drew, tells her he’s working on Dollhouse and that he thinks Mia would be perfect for it. Indeed, just two days later, Drew gives her the news that Saint-Pierre wants to see her! So Mia visits him at his lavish mansion where he’s finishing up five years of obsessive work. “Dollhouse,” he tells Mia, is about death.
Now’s the time when I should probably tell you Saint-Pierre went crazy and disappeared five years ago. So, um, yeah. Something tells me this show’s going to be extra in all the wrong ways. Soon, Mia’s informed that three of her model frenemies will be doing the show as well. But it’s clear that Saint-Pierre sees Mia as the star.
Feeling the pressure, Mia wants to look skinny and perfect, and therefore starts doing all those self-destructive things models do. As a result, she starts having bad dreams, many of which involve a bloody model in a dress who equal parts wants to kill her and warn her. Just when she’s about to hurt Mia, though, Mia always wakes up in her bed, wondering if it was a dream… or not.
Things escalate when frenemy photographer Drew gets fired from the job and is later murdered. This is followed by Model Frenemy 1 getting hit by a car, Model Frenemy 2 being stabbed, and Model Frenemy 3 being massacred. Soon, Mia is all there is left. And she looks a fright. She’s done so much damage to her body that clumps of her hair are coming out. Oh, and let’s not forget that Mia always seemed to be the last person to see her murdered friends before they died. Could Mia possibly be the murderer? The “Dollhouse” show may reveal the answer.
If this sounds a lot like a certain movie called Black Swan, that’s because it’s heavily influenced by that film.
I remember reading that script long before the movie came out and it having this rare control of conveying insanity in a sophisticated way. That’s really hard to do and it’s the main weakness I see in all of these “main character going crazy” narratives.
The “going crazy” sub-genre makes it too easy to fall into sloppiness. That’s because you don’t have to explain anything as the writer. If something bizarre happens, you can just have your hero wake up afterwards, posing the question, “Was it real or not?”
For example, early on in this script, one of the mannequins turns out to be a robot that comes off its stand and attacks Mia. Seconds later, she wakes up in her bed and it’s never explained whether she imagined it or not. Nor is there ever another “robot” moment in the script. To me, that’s sloppy. If you’re going to have outrageous things happen, at some point it’s advantageous to give the reader an explanation. Cause when the answer is always “maybe it was a dream,” we feel manipulated.
I’m not saying it can’t be done. Black Swan walked the line perfectly. And I think they pulled it off by not relying too much on the dream thing. They did a few times. But the cool thing about Black Swan was that there were just as many moments that had logical answers to them. It struck that perfect balance. Dollhouse was one continuous series of crazy happenings with zero explanation.
Also, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to gather from Mia killing all of her friends (supposedly). If Mia was on the bottom of the totem pole in the show and she killed them one by one in order to get to the top, that would make sense. But Mia was the star from the get-go. So I didn’t understand how killing several girls below her helped her case. If anything, keep them around so they can see how it felt to be her all those years.
Despite these issues, the script works.
And to explain why, I want to go back to yesterday’s script. Someone in the comments asked me why it was that the Hunters writer was able to get a show on Amazon if he was as bad as I claimed he was. And the answer was, despite not being a good writer, he’s a good concept guy. The script that got him noticed was a big concept idea (the first murder on the moon and the subsequent investigation) and Hunters is a big sexy idea as well.
But it goes one step further. It’s not just coming up with the big concept, it’s coming up with the big concept that writes itself. If you can do that, you don’t have to be the best writer in the world. The CONCEPT IS GOING TO DO A LOT OF THE WORK FOR YOU. So in the case of Hunters, even though most of the scenes are terrible, every once in a while you get a big flashy scene because that’s what the concept dictates – hunting down Nazis.
This is in contrast to, say, “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” which doesn’t have a concept. This forces Tarantino to come up with cool ideas for scenes all on his own – a much more difficult proposition. But since Tarantino is one of the top 5 screenwriters in the world, he’s good enough to pull it off.
Getting back to Dollhouse, it’s the same thing. This is a big fun concept that writes itself. All you have to do with these “going crazy” movies is give the hero a giant goal they’re after – in Black Swan it was the main role, here it’s the star of the Dollhouse show. And then you show the character slowly losing it along the way in their quest to achieve their objective.
Another thing Dollhouse has going for it is that its two main characters – Mia and Saint-Pierre – are crazy. ACTORS LOVE PLAYING CRAZY. They love it. Love it more than anything. So when you have not one but TWO lead roles leaning into insanity, you know, as a production company, that you’re going to get a lot of great actors interested in this. And once you have the actors, it’s easy to find the money. That’s all this business is. You have to put together the elements that justify the cost of the movie.
But, yeah. This is definitely a writer who’s still learning. We have a Screenwriting 101 mistake in the opening scene, which is putting specific music cues in your script. Not only that, but you assume people know the song and therefore are in the exact same headspace as you when you wrote the scene. Let me take this moment to remind you that there’s three truths to this life – death, taxes, and everybody has different taste in music. Music cues are one of the fastest ways to alienate a reader. And it doesn’t even matter if they aren’t alienated because there’s a 99.9% chance that the production is not going to be able to afford the song anyway!!!
Luckily, this FEELS LIKE A MOVIE to me. That’s important. A lot of scripts read like scripts – they don’t have anything big enough in them to justify being turned into a movie. This is definitely a movie. And that’s why STX picked it up. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to get it over the finish line.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Crazy characters sell. Narratively, crazy characters are trickier to make work than you think they’ll be. But they are one of the gold stamps when it comes to attracting actors to your material. So if you’ve got a great idea that organically integrates a crazy main character or two, it’s not the worst idea in the world to write that script. See “Joker” for reference.
Genre: TV Drama/Thriller (first episode)
Premise: When his grandmother is killed in her home, a young man is visited by a mysterious older fellow who explains that Nazis have infiltrated America and they need to be hunted down and killed.
About: This is one of Amazon’s big-swing TV shows they’re hoping becomes the next water cooler franchise – as much as water cooler shows can exist in the age of “Everybody Watches Shows On Their Own Timeframe Now.” The show comes from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions (more on that in a second) and is created by David Weil. If that name sounds familiar to Scriptshadowers, that’s because you’ve heard it before. In fact, there’s a little bit of screenwriting infamy associated with the script he broke in with. More on that in a bit as well.
Writer: David Weil
Details: 90 minutes
This show’s backstory is almost as mysterious as its plot. “Hunters” was one of the first big shows announced from Monkeypaw Productions – Jordan Peele’s production company – after Get Out. Yet in the lead up this week to the show’s Amazon debut, Peele was never mentioned. His connection is so muted, in fact, I had to check to see if this was the same Nazi show he was a part of.
Even in the standard press releases on the trade sites, Peele’s name is never mentioned. I can’t convey to you how bizarre this is. It would be like someone producing a Tarantino script never mentioning the movie was written by Quentin Tarantino.
This has inspired me to throw on my tin foil anti-vax 9-11-was-an-inside-job hat and make a bold statement that, even though it’s pure conjecture, I’m 95% sure is true. I believe Jordan Peele saw the first cut of this show and said, “I don’t want my name associated with this in any way.” Because seriously, why else would Amazon not mention that this is a Jordan Peele show? It’s got to be because it’s terrible.
And it is. It’s very terrible.
The show opens on a small pool party in an undisclosed time period, although the clothing and hair imply it’s probably the 70s or 80s. All of a sudden, a Jewish woman starts screaming and pointing. Everybody stares at her like she’s nuts, even the host of the party, who appears to be the person she’s pointing at. Finally we get some semblance of what she’s yelling. Butcher. Killer. That man was a Nazi who killed tons of people in the concentration camps.
The host, who seems perplexed by this accusation, calmly walks over to his grill, takes out a hidden silencer gun, and shoots all eight people at the party, saving the last bullet for the screaming woman. Before he shoots her, his American accent shifts to German. She was right, he tells her. Bang.
Cut to our hero, a young college-aged kid named Jonah, who’s coming out of a screening of Star Wars with his buddies. Still have no idea what year it is. The kids speak like people today but are dressed like kids from the 80s. So confusing. Afterwards, Jonah meets up with an older kid, which is when we learn the nerdy Jonah is a hardcore drug dealer (he’s got like 2 pounds of weed on him). None of this makes any sense but whatever. The older kid only pays half price and then beats Jonah up for wanting the rest of his money.
Jonah then goes home to his New York townhouse. He lives with an older woman who I’ll later learn from summaries of the show is his grandmother. But when you’re watching the show, no relation is ever explained. He keeps calling her “Sultey,” to confuse matters even more. Later that night, someone breaks in and shoots Sultey.
Cut to Florida where an old Jewish woman is watching game shows. An evil looking Asian plumber man comes out of her bathroom and informs her that “it’s” fixed. The large old woman then goes to take a shower, which begins with gratuitous elderly nudity. Once inside the shower, she notices the door latch is locked, and instead of water coming down, it’s gas. The woman dies soon after.
Back to Jonah, who, at his grandmother-in-summaries-only funeral, is approached by an old man (Al Pacino) who implies that there’s something more going on here with his grandmother’s death. Jonah then takes the rest of his drug stash with the plan to hire a street gang to find out if they know anything about the guy who killed his grandma. The plan backfires, but Jonah eventually discovers a series of clues that lead him to the killer, who it turns out is a Nazi. Jonah will need to make a choice on whether he’s ready to kill a man and join… the hunt.
This show is awful.
But before I eviscerate it, I have to give props to the opening scene. I read a lot of not-so-good TV pilot teasers. But this one was great. First of all, if you’re going to have a scene with a Nazi killing a bunch of people, the obvious place to set it is somewhere dark and scary. Which is exactly why you don’t want to set it in someplace dark and scary. By setting this opening massacre at a bright happy pool party, you invite a sense of irony into the scene. Once Weil did that, he didn’t have to do much else. The acting between the screaming woman and the secret Nazi host was soooooo good that the scene killed.
It goes to show that setup is most of your job as a writer. If you set up a great scenario, the scene will write itself. And this scene did.
That’s where my praise ends, though.
Let’s move to the introduction of our main character Jonah. Actually, no, let’s go further back. Nobody tells us what year it is. Which would MAYBE be okay if your execution of the time was so perfect that we knew exactly what year it was. Like “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” You didn’t need to tell us anything for us to know it was 1969. But here, the dress code and the way people speak is vague enough that we could be in any year between 1970 and 1983.
Why is this relevant? Well, the introduction to our hero happens after he and his friends come out of Star Wars. As they’re coming out, the three are going into deep detail about what Star Wars is and what the characters represent in a manner no different than 1000 people debating Star Wars on Reddit today.
The thing is, people didn’t debate Star Wars when it came out. They just went and celebrated the movie because there was no complain culture back then and the franchise hadn’t been over-sold yet. And if they did debate it, it was only after watching it dozens of times. Not for the very first time. Which brings us back to the time period issue. Was this 1977 when Star Wars first came out? Or was it a re-release year? If this was a re-release, their debate would make a little more sense. But the fact that I’m so confused about something so simple within seven minutes of starting your show is a REALLY BAD SIGN.
But even if you look past that, you can’t look past the dialogue here, which is some of the most clumsy try-hard “written” dialogue I’ve seen in a professional production in a long time. In one scene, Jonah is hanging out with his two lame friends at the beach who are mindlessly looking at girls and calling out, “Jane” or “Tarzan.” Jonah finally asks them what Jane and Tarzan mean (which makes zero sense, by the way, since these three are all best friends and therefore would’ve already discussed this together a long time ago). Here’s their response:
“Oh, we call ‘Jane’ if the chick’s squish-mittens are trimmed. And then Tarzan if it looks like her Harry Manilow’s an all-out pube jungle.”
I can say with 100% certainty that in the history of the world, no person has ever talked like this. This is “written” dialogue, the kind of stuff you pat yourself on the back for coming up with despite the fact that no one would actually say it. And people will argue that movie dialogue isn’t supposed to be 100% realistic. I agree with that. But there’s a difference between upping the quality of conversation in written material and straight up try-hard gibberish.
Since Star Wars was a part of this pilot, let me reveal a quote from the great Harrison Ford to one George Lucas: “George, you can write this stuff. But you sure as s#@% can’t say it.”
Same deal with Hunters. Because people aren’t talking like real people, we don’t believe what we’re watching. The suspension of disbelief is broken. And that happens over and over again in this abomination of a show.
There’s so much WTF going on, I can’t chronicle it all. Like when Jonah’s maybe-grandmother is shot in her home and the shooter flees. Jonah races downstairs 3 seconds after it happens and starts screaming “HELP! HELP!!!!” Wouldn’t you be a little bit worried that maybe the person who just shot your grandma is nearby? And if they hear that someone else is in the house, they might come back to kill you too?
There’s no sense of people acting realistic in this or any situation.
Like the fact that Jonah is this lame little nerd who also happens to be a hardcore drug dealer. Or that when things go badly, he goes to this street gang that, I swear to god, was plucked right out of the movie Warriors, as if that’s the writer’s only exposure to the 70s. I was half expecting them to put on roller skates and start dancing around at some point. It was a parody of a gang to everyone but the writer.
In order to get the gang to help him, he offers them all his weed. Right at the moment, the cops show up, see Jonah holding all the weed, and arrest him (there was no setup to how they knew to show up here right at this moment of course). I’m thinking to myself, “Is that the only reason the writer made him a drug-dealer? Is so he could put this plot point in there where Jonah gets arrested and has to get bailed out by the Nazi hunter?” Look, I get it. Sometimes you place things in your plot to get your characters from point A (where you have them) to point B (where you need them). But you should never ever do so in a way that betrays the character.
Which takes me back to this Jordan Peele thing. Why isn’t he promoting this? Well, after I watched the show, I checked to see who wrote it. I saw the name “David Weil.” “I know that name from somewhere,” I thought. And I did a quick Scriptshadow search. When the results came back, EVERYTHING MADE SENSE. Weil is the writer who broke in with that abomination of a screenplay, “Moonfall!”
clip from my review of the script…
I’ll tell you the moment where I officially gave up on Moonfall. It’s when Hart and Cassie visit Dawn’s therapist to ask her if Dawn was acting strangely in the days leading up to her death. The therapist says Dawn was fine, but the two later go in and steal the therapist’s files on her.
In the files, there are a few dates mentioned in Dawn’s sessions. That’s when Cassie realizes – wait! These aren’t dates. This is code! Dawn’s trying to tell us something! So Cassie turns the dates into numbers (i.e. June 6, 2037 becomes 6062037) and realizes that these dates are – stay with me now – COORDINATES! So they now have to find those coordinates on the moon and dig up the clue Dawn left!
Okay, so let me get this straight here. Dawn, our murder victim, sensed that something bad was going to happen to her. So, in order to help her future investigators solve her murder, she decided to secretly work in a series of benign dates during her therapy sessions, which she assumed her therapist would then write down in her notes, that the police would later steal those notes, would look through them, notice the dates, think to convert them into numbers, figure out that those dates were actually moon coordinates, that they were to then dig up.
[end of clip]
To this day, I still have no idea how that screenplay became a thing. It was set on the moon and one of the featured scenes was a storm. THE MOON DOESN’T HAVE WEATHER. Cooler heads prevailed cause the movie never got made. But somehow he snuck this Nazi thing through the system. I know Peele is a big World War 2 Nazi buff. He made several sketches about Nazis in his comedy sketch show, Key and Peele. So maybe he was blinded by the possibilities and signed on. But when he finally saw the product, he realized, “If I don’t take my name off this, I’m not going to have a career in TV for long.”
If you both have Amazon Prime and a really low bar for entertainment? If things like logic, character motivation, and common sense don’t matter to you? Then by all means, check this out. It’s like a TV version of Southland Tales. I can’t believe they paid tens of millions of dollars for this. Wow.
[x] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In a screenplay, what you want to happen doesn’t always line up with what would actually happen. And how you negotiate this ongoing issue has a huge effect on how genuine your story reads. A famous example of this occurred in the movie Terminator Salvation. We were inside a human warehouse hideout in the middle of the desert. Out of nowhere, this 5 story tall robot’s hand crashes through the ceiling and everyone starts running. As many viewers pointed out afterward – how did a 5 story tall robot sneak up on a hideout in the middle of the desert without anyone hearing it? The reason is because the writer WANTED that scene. But it didn’t line up with the REALITY of the situation, which is that there was no way for a robot to get there without being heard. So the writer just…. ignored the issue. And while every once in a while you can get away with this, it more often than not erodes the viewer’s trust in the storyteller. — Jonah running downstairs and screaming “help” seconds after someone shot his grandmother creates this dramatic response from the character that the writer WANTED. But the reality of the situation dictated the character first act with caution, making sure the killer was gone. That didn’t fit with the scene the writer wanted so he ignored it.
I believe it’s time for another installment of, “Wait, that’s a pro script and mine’s not??”
One of the most frustrating things that an aspiring screenwriter faces is identifying the line where amateur ends and pro begins. I’m not talking about official titles here. Everyone knows a pro script is one where a writer gets paid. So maybe the better way to classify it is, where is the line for “Hollywood Ready,” – a script that gets sold or optioned by a reputable production company, a script that wins one of the big contests, or a script that makes the coveted Black List.
How do you know when you’ve written a script deserving of one of these accolades?
This post idea came to me after reading that hauntingly poor haunted house real estate script that made the Black List last week.
I hate when this happens because it’s confusing to writers. They read this terrible script and wonder, “Wait, this made the Black List yet I’m the one still struggling on the outside??” I feel your pain because scripts like this make this whole process feel random. And I promise you it isn’t. Everyone out there is looking for good material. I know because I talk to these people and they want nothing more than the next great script.
It’s important to remember that there is often information you’re not privy to with these bad script success stories. For example, I noticed with the haunted house writer that he was also a director. Therefore, he may have gotten repped by CAA as a director. Not a writer. This gave him an obvious leg up over unrepped writers when he wanted to send a new script out there. It doesn’t explain why 10 people voted for it, but still, it provides more context into how he might have gamed the system.
I remember reading an awful sci-fi script years ago that sold for a lot of money. I didn’t understand the business as well back then so I was miffed as to how anyone thought buying this script was a good idea. Then I learned that the writer was best friends with Channing Tatum at a time when every single studio was desperate to make a Channing Tatum movie. This studio thought that by buying Channing’s buddy’s script, who knows? Maybe he’ll star in the movie. Or, if not, we’ve built up some good will with him so he’ll want to make other projects with us.
But here’s an important thing to remember about these bad scripts. You don’t get to carry them around and when somebody rejects your script, pop them out and make the argument that “This script is worse than mine and it sold. Henceforth, you should buy mine so Hollywood remains a fair place.” Being better than the weasels who backdoor their way into success isn’t a convincing argument. Nobody cares if you write something better than that piece of garbage that sold.
At the same time, this is not a random system. Yes, there are outliers on both sides. But by and large, the scripts that are optioned and developed and purchased and made, these scripts and these writers are better than the slush pile of amateur scripts available. A lot better. And there’s nobody more ordained to make this claim than me. I’ve read more scripts on both sides of the line than anyone save for that Robservations guy. So I have a good feel for where that line is.
But how do YOU know where the line is?
The first thing we need to establish is that there is no line. There are too many variables that affect a screenplay to be able to say, “If you do a, b, c, you’ve written a Hollywood Ready script.” Someone can be weak with plot but if they write a game-changing character, their script can be pro-worthy. Look no further than Joker. Someone can have a weak voice but if they plot something together as strong as Parasite, their script can be pro-worthy. Marriage Story is a plotless wandering journey. But the characters, dialogue, and voice are strong, which makes it, you guessed it, pro-worthy.
If you’re GREAT at one of these four things – plot, character, voice, dialogue – you can write a pro-level script. But most writers will never be great at any of those things. So you have to become really good at two or three of them. I even know some working writers who aren’t ‘really good’ at any of them. But they’re ‘good’ at all of them. These are the “Gemini Man” working professional writers in Hollywood. They can do everything well but nothing exceptional. That should be inspiring. It lets us know that you don’t have to be brilliant to succeed in this business.
Another huge one is writing with strong concepts. I know SO MANY writers who have the chops to break in but they write weak concepts. Weak concepts often come in two flavors. Unexceptional Dramas and Tired Movie Ideas that no longer get people excited. In the Unexceptional Drama category you have stuff like Marriage Story and Call Me By Your Name. In the Tired Movie Ideas category you have stuff like Taken. Or even Die Hard. In both cases, the execution has to be exceptional for these scripts to stand out. And there are maybe 5-10 movies a year where you can legitimately say that the execution was “exceptional.” In other words, you can’t count on exceptional.
There’s a new show coming out called “Beforiegners.” It’s about a group of Vikings who get sent to the present day and have to integrate into modern society. Do I know if this show is going to be any good? No idea. But I know this. It’s a flashy concept. And flashy concepts GET MORE READS, which increases the odds you’ll get your ‘yes.”
They also increase the “yeah but” factor. The “yeah but” factor is when you’re reading average or below-average material, but you keep saying to yourself… “Yeah but, the concept is so fun.” The reader is willing to stay with the script longer. And that’s all this game is, folks. You’re trying to buy more time. Cause the longer somebody invests in your script, the more likely it is they’re going to want it.
Now let’s talk about something uncomfortable.
One of the biggest reasons it’s hard for writers to know where that Hollywood Ready line is is because most writers overestimate their ability. They’re great at pointing out what everybody else’s weaknesses are but are legally blind when it comes to identifying their own. In order to make this next statement, I’ll preface it by saying this was a FORMER COMMENTER. Nobody here right now. But this guy would tear screenplays apart left and right on this site. And I’d read a number of this person’s screenplays. All I kept thinking every time I read one of their critiques was, “Yeah but… you can’t even write a story that makes sense.” I mean they LITERALLY couldn’t put a coherent storyline together.
All of us have some level of that blindness in us. Which is why I tell writers to assume they’re not as good as they think they are. And therefore to work hard to make up for the weaknesses they’re ignorant to. Also, try to un-ignorant yourself. Give your script to people. Beg them for HONEST FEEDBACK (not ‘be kind to me’ feedback). When you get more than one person complaining about some aspect of your writing, you’ve been given a GIFT. You now have something you can work on!
You can attack this in two ways. One, stop writing scripts that highlight your weaknesses. If people keep telling you your character work isn’t good, maybe don’t write Marriage Story. Write Snowpiercer. Or Jane Wick in space. Or two, go out and study everything you can about that subject matter so you can get better at it. Not enough screenwriters work to improve their weaknesses.
Finally, be aggressive and get your script out there. This is a business of no’s. Even people who like your script are going to say no. I once read a friend’s husband’s script that was pretty good. The friend was thrilled because she’d given it to a bunch of people and none of them liked it and finally she had someone to work with on the project and get it made. But the subject matter wasn’t my jam. It was good for what it was. But it’s not a movie I was interested in making. So I had to clarify that to her.
If you’ve been at this screenwriting thing for a while? If you’ve written more than six screenplays? If you’re consistently getting positive feedback from multiple people? You breaking in might just be a matter of getting your scripts to more friends, more contacts, more contests, more screenwriting sites, more Amateur Showdowns. Put your script in front of more pairs of eyes. Funny enough, I find that the people who aren’t ready (who’ve written less than 3 scripts) are good at this. Whereas the people who are ready, don’t do enough of it.
Outside of that, it’s a matter of knowing that every script you write is going to be better than the last. And as long as you’re writing strong concepts that make getting reads easy, your odds are going to go up with each new script you write.
But please… PLEASE. Don’t buy into this idea that it’s all a game of luck and randomness. Trust me, this town is desperate for good material. Keep giving them your best and when you’re ready, your time will come.
Genre: Contained Thriller/Apocalypse
Premise: In the near future when air-supply is scarce, a mother and daughter fight for survival when two strangers arrive desperate for an oxygenized safe haven.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List, just below the top 20. Doug Simon co-created the 2010 TV show “Brotherhood” and co-wrote the 2015 horror movie, “Demonic,” starring Frank Grillo.
Writer: Doug Simon
Details: 97 pages
I’m expecting contained thrillers/horrors/sci-fiers to be well represented in The Last Great Screenplay Contest. Writers know that everyone is looking for the next great contained flick cause they’re cheap to produce and easy to market. They’re also some of the easiest reads (low character count, easy to understand situations) meaning lots of people will give them a shot. And, of course, there are tons of production houses who can afford them (compared to if you write a 250 million dollar superhero script, where there are only two places you can go with that). So I’m always happy to read the latest contained script. Even if it’s no good, there’s always something to learn from them.
40 year old Joel lives in a bunker with his father, Mike, his wife, Amy, and his 18 year old daughter, Megan. These four are surviving in a world that’s gone airless. Or, at least, oxygen-less. Luckily, Joel was one of those weirdo survivalist people who prepared for the apocalypse. So while everyone else died, he had his family high-fiving over bunker dinners within a week.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of our story, while Joel and Mike are looking for things in their abandoned farmhouse, Mike falls through the weakened floor and loses his oxygen backpack. These backpacks, which offer 2-5 hours of air, are the only way you can survive up top. Joel fails to save his father before his oxygen tank runs out, and after informing the fam of the accident, insists on burying his father next to his mother in a cemetery.
That cemetery is over two hours walking distance though. And in this world, two hours is a long time. If something goes wrong, you won’t have enough oxygen to get back home. And that’s what happens. Joel leaves and never comes back. Cut to five months later where Amy and Megan are holding up the fort by themselves. That’s going well until two mysterious people show up – Tess and stupid Lucas, claiming to have known Joel.
Tess knows Joel was an engineer. She and Lucas are part of a small group of people living in a similar larger system miles away. Tess wants to come in and inspect dad’s oxygen system in the hopes of understanding it better so they can go back and fix their own dying oxygen system. Amy is having none of it but Megan believes them, or at least wants to. It’s a lonely existence they live. If there are other people out there, that changes things.
After a drawn out Q&A and several precautionary measures, Amy opens the bunker door, only to have a new guy, Micah, fly out of nowhere into the bunker. Amy manages to slam the door shut, keeping Tessa and Lucas out. But now they have to fight off this crazed Micah dude. Megan, whose father trained her for situations just like this, pulls out a gun and shoots him in the shoulder, putting him on the ground. They’ve contained this situation. But Tess and Lucas are still outside, determined to get in at all costs. And to give them some incentive, they each have only 45 minutes left on their oxygen packs. Things are about to get messy.
Number 1 rule of Contained Thriller Club. Give us scenarios unique to your concept! If you have a world where you can’t make a sound or monsters kill you, think up scenarios where your characters have to make noise and deal with the consequences.
I will give “Breathe” this. It embraces Rule Number 1 of Contained Thriller Club with a vengeance. There are a good fifteen sequences in this script where people get themselves in situations where their oxygen is cut off or limited and they have to fix the problem or die. This created a ton of “ticking time bombs” that kept the script MOVING.
But there’s an issue with the setup. Running out of oxygen is not a new idea. We see it all the time in movies. Especially space movies and underwater flicks. So even though the writer, Doug Simon, is doing the right thing – engaging in scenarios that take advantage of his concept – it all feels a bit familiar.
That means we get a mixed bag of oxygen-starved scenarios. For example, the bad guys clog one of the vents up top, creating a 15 minute countdown inside the bunker to find a solution or run out of air – a situation that feels way too familiar. But it also gives us a scene where Megan, who wants to know what’s really going on with these people, puts the injured Micah in an airless room and promises to pump in one minute of oxygen for every question he answers truthfully. That was certainly a more entertaining scene than what we usually get, which is to tie the bad guy to a chair and ask him questions.
Despite its weaknesses, the script stays strong throughout most of its 97 page running time (a good page length for a contained thriller). Killing off the father after we’d gotten to know him made us way more sympathetic to Megan and Amy than had Dad only been someone referred to in dialogue. So I was engaged in most of the “oxygen running out scenarios” if only to make sure these two made it out alive.
But the writer makes a choice in the third act that we need to talk about because it’s something all contained thriller writers will face. Third acts are supposed to be BIGGER. Not just in contained thrillers. In all scripts. This is the ending. You want it to feel big and exciting. So the question you run up against is: Do you stay true to your contained thriller setup or do you move out of it in order to give the viewer that big fancy finale? Simon decided to go big and I think it hurts the script.
We get this whole third act where Amy has to take an electric car to the place where her husband died to get a key card to get back into the bunker, which at this point she was locked out of. Yeah, this adds a bigger, arguably, more exciting ending. But it also no longer feels like a contained thriller.
I’ve heard the saying that when you give someone your concept, you’re signing a contract with them to deliver on that concept. Once you move out of that concept, you’ve broken the contract.
To be fair, sometimes the contract is gray enough that it’s up to the writer to decide where the line is. But the moment I was the most invested in this screenplay was when we had one injured bad guy inside, with Amy and Megan, and two determined bad guys outside who needed to get in within the next 45 minutes or they would run out of oxygen. This occurred at about the midpoint and set up a perfect real-time story for the last half of the screenplay. And it was a good setup! All the motivations made sense. They were organic to the story. And you had this sweet x-factor inside the bunker in the third guy. So there were potential pitfalls everywhere. I would’ve been happy had we stayed with that setup.
But I get it. The thing all of us writers are terrified of is boring the reader. It’s our worst fear. This can lead us to inject sequences and storylines that, on the surface, solve this problem. But they’re often fool’s gold. Sometimes you have to trust that the situation you set up is capable of delivering.
Despite that, this script had more good than bad and I’d say it’s worth reading, especially for contained thriller writers who want to get better.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you write contained stories, make sure there are things for your characters to do before the main conflict (in this case, the bad guys) arrives. For example, here they have to check the oxygen levels every 12 hours. They have to go outside and clean the solar panels. Everybody has jobs. The reason for this is: IT KEEPS YOUR CHARACTERS ACTIVE. And this is important when there’s nothing interesting going on yet. Because at least your characters aren’t sitting around, playing cards, having boring conversations. Seven pages of stillness could be the difference between the reader closing your script or continuing to read it.
