Genre: Thriller
Premise: A true-crime podcaster tries to solve a gruesome cold case, putting her in the killer’s crosshairs.
About: Sony Pictures picked this one up for six-figures. It went on to place on last year’s Black List. The writer, Tom O’Donnell, has written on a couple of Comedy Central animated shows.
Writer: Tom O’Donnell
Details: 120 pages
Reader bias.
What is it?
Reader bias is the factor you cannot control as a writer, nor should you try. It is when the reader simply does not like the genre or subject matter you are writing about. But here’s the good news about reader bias. Just as it can hurt you, it can help you. The reader can love your genre and subject matter. And that’s when you’re in the best position to succeed – when you’ve gotten your script in front of someone who likes that kind of script.
Theoretically, there are four reader situations you will run into.
(Hate – Hate) Reader hates your subject matter and hates your execution.
(Hate – Like) Reader hates your subject matter but likes your execution.
(Like – Hate)Reader likes your subject matter but hates your execution.
(Like – Like) Reader likes your subject matter and likes your execution.
So, assuming you have an objectively good script, you need to give it to at least four people for the odds to sway in your favor that one of them is going to be a Like – Like. And the odds increase if you can double that and get it to eight people (triple with 12, quadruple with 16!). However, this Netflix’esque algorithm only works if the script is actually good. If it’s an objectively bad script (you’re still at the beginning stages of learning screenwriting), you don’t even get the courtesy of being graded.
Today’s script was a Like – Like for me. I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that there’s a great podcast-driven script to be written. And I think today’s writer might have just pulled it off.
29 year old Ana Cohen has a “Serial” like hit podcast on her hands (called “I Heart Murder”). Five years ago, a young woman named Dora Bishop, who lived in a small town in West Virginia, was brutally murdered – burned alive even. After a flurry of interest, the cops in Dora’s town just… gave up. And since then, the murder has gone unsolved.
Ana and her trusty hipster producer, Seth, have raised the case from the grave. In the last few months, it’s become THE must-listen-to true crime podcast. They’ve determined that the murderer is one of three suspects. The cop with a temper, Joe Ivy. The Goth misfit high schooler, Cody Varga. Or the white nationalist, Ronnie Burnett.
The last few weeks, however, have been uneventful. The show is getting stale. So Ana decides to take it on the road to the very town where Dora was killed, a town she has made infamous, and which has a lot of people who don’t like her. While this is happening, Ana starts getting threatening DMs from a person who wants her to stop digging. But one of the reasons the show has become so popular is that Ana is relentless. She will do anything and everything for the show. She’s not stopping til she finds her killer.
Once in the small town, Ana seeks out the three suspects she’s made famous to interview them. Her number one suspect is Ronnie. I mean, heck, the guy has already served time for murder (his wife). It has to be him, right? But Ronnie seems genuinely confused by Ana’s pre-formulated ‘gotcha’ questions, making her question everything she thought she knew about the case.
She starts looking into the other two, but when the police lock up her producer and the threatening DMs start coming more frequently, Ana wonders if she’s finally gotten herself into a situation she can’t dig herself out of. Ana does end up finding the killer. But it’s the last person she suspected. And now they want to do away with her before she reveals the truth to the world.
The first thing that stuck out to me about this script was the main character’s edge.
Everyone in Hollywood is terrified of unlikable main characters. This is why you only see them in fringe independent movies, with maybe a single high profile edgy character making it into the spotlight a year (last year’s Joker).
The problem with that is, characters without an edge tend to be boring (with a few exceptions). Our “edge” as individuals is a big part of what makes us unique. So if you can give your hero an edge, they’ll pop off the page more. And characters who pop off the page tend to get better actors and actresses interested.
Ana is not a good person. She’s selfish and she puts the podcast above everything else, even the safety of her own co-workers. However, that same edginess makes us cheer for when she won’t back down when the locals tell her to leave, or when she sends a clever ‘F-U’ retort to the person who keeps trying to threaten her. You get just as much good as you do bad from her attitude.
But it’s not enough. You need at least one thing in your script that makes your ‘unlikable’ main character likable enough to root for them. For Ana, it’s that she’s doing the right thing. She’s trying to get justice for this victim. I’ve read other scripts that have had Ana-like characters who I hated because they were living vapid directionless lives and complaining about it.
You have to understand, when you’re creating the edgy or ‘unlikable’ protagonist, that everything affects the equation. What might work in one script doesn’t work in another because of the circumstances surrounding the plot or concept. But what I learned from this script is that Ana’s edge is a big part of what makes the script so readable. Had she been a goodie-two-shoes who just wants to do the right thing, I’m not sure I would’ve dug the script as much.
The writer also makes an interesting choice in that there’s no unresolved relationship between Ana and her producer, Seth. In other whodunnits, the central relationship is often the one that’s most explored. But Ana and Seth are co-workers here and that’s it. There’s no previous love story, current love story, issues between them, fundamental differences in how they view the world. Seth is a little more careful than Anna. But that’s it.
When it comes to the central relationship in your script, the reality is that the less there is going on with it, the more realistic it plays. Cause in everyday life, not everyone has drama with everyone else. Unless you’re a contestant on The Bachelor. So you do gain some realism by making that choice. However, you lose an opportunity to explore your characters on a deeper level and provide the movie with another subplot (how is their conflict going to be resolved)?
Silence of the Lambs could’ve been a movie where Clarice and Hannibal just exchanged information. But it was the way that the two explored each other and created that unresolved conflict that elevated the movie to the next level. In the end, it’s up to you what you think is right for your movie. But in this case, the reason I think it worked was because the ‘whodunnit’ aspect of the story was so strong. Had it not been, maybe we complain more about the ‘boring’ relationship between the leads.
Finally, it was a really cool move to send our hero into the belly of the beast. It seems obvious in retrospect but that’s only because we’ve read it. Those decisions aren’t as easy when you’re facing the blank page. But, yeah, once we went down to West Virginia, the constant tension that came from Ana and Seth being in danger made this a quick read, even at its aggressive 120 pages.
Definitely check this one out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t throw something bad at your hero when it’s convenient for them. Throw something bad at your hero when it’s INCONVENIENT for them. When Ana gets her first DM threat from the killer, it isn’t when she’s stuck in traffic on the 405. It’s right before she’s been asked a question in front of an audience of hundreds at a podcasting convention. The fact that she has to pretend like everything is okay in front of all these people is a lot more compelling than if she can have an honest fearful reaction alone in the car.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A fixer who brokers off-the-books exchanges for powerful corporate clients finds himself being hunted after he’s hired to protect a whistleblower and the evidence she’s uncovered.
About: This script finished in the top ten of last year’s Black List. This is the writer’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Details: 108 pages
Just yesterday I was talking about how Sundance movies don’t make money anymore. Well today shows just how much stock Hollywood puts in my opinion. In a most unlikely alliance, Neon and Hulu (??) teamed up to pay the most money for a Sundance film EVER – 18 million bucks – that being for the Andy Samberg time-loop black comedy, Palm Springs. Wondering what the movie is about? Scriptshadow’s got you covered. I reviewed the script last year. Immediate thoughts – the time loop conceit is alive and well. But, also, SOME CATCHY HOOK is better than NO CATCHY HOOK, even if that hook’s a little tired.
On to today’s script, which has a much more subdued hook. Actually, I don’t know if this constitutes a hook. It should lead to some good debate in the comment section (what is a hook?). I would say a hook is any strong unique quality in your concept that begets intrigue. I’d never heard of this unique job before, and I *was* intrigued by it, so I guess that makes it a hook, no?
Karen Grant has found herself in a quandary. She decided to blow the whistle on her company, which develops a synthetic tobacco strain which she knows causes the same types of cancer as regular tobacco. Her 400 million dollar company is about to be purchased by a billion dollar company and let’s just say that if this info gets out, it’s not going to be good for either company.
But Karen gets cold feet when both companies learn of her plan and send people after her. Scary people. Karen is in no man’s land. The bad guys are so powerful they’ll probably find a way to bury the story before it spreads, and afterwards, they’re going to make the rest of her life miserable. But she can’t just give the documents back either. She knows too much. And when gigantic companies encounter problems like this, they tend to dispose of said problem.
So Karen is referred to a guy named Tom, or as he’s known in the business, a “broker.” This is a man whose specific job it is to broker high profile behind-the-scenes deals, such as this one, so that nobody gets in an accidental car crash and that the company in question can be assured that this compromising info never reaches the public. A broker has no allegiance. He’s not here for Karen. He’s here to broker a deal for both sides.
But as you’d expect, the billion dollar company would prefer to do things their way. So their M.O. is to track down these brokers and introduce them to the old concrete feet in the local river routine. Except they’ve never run into a guy like Tom. Tom uses old school technology to communicate – old phones, p.o. boxes. If he needs to have a conversation with his clients, he calls an operator and does what deaf people do, use an old machine to type out his responses and the operator reads them out loud for the other person.
This frustrates the heck out of Karen’s company, who can’t seem to get a beat on this guy. So they eventually decide to do the deal, a deal that will net our broker a cool 40 million bucks. But then something unexpected happens. Tom starts to fall for his client. And that compromises everything.
This one did not start out strong. The problem was voice over.
Here’s the thing with voice over. It’s a great tool. It can be used effectively in a handful of situations. For example – Fight Club. Voice over there is a part of the story’s DNA. It would be weird if that story didn’t have voice over. That’s how well-woven it is into that movie.
The Broker does something you don’t want to do early on in a screenplay, which is to give us voice over that doesn’t clearly connect to the people or the images we’re seeing. We’re watching two people have a conversation at a diner. We meet a couple of other folks also. During this, we hear some random voice from some random guy talking about something vague.
I understand why writers like to do this. There’s something artsy and creative about using voice over with a series of unrelated images. In the rare cases where it’s done well, it creates a sense of mystery that drives the reader to turn the page. But when it’s done badly, which it almost always is, it creates a sense of confusion. I don’t know who ANYBODY IN YOUR STORY IS YET. So when you’re showing me one face and you have some other person talking about something different, it’s frustrating.
And while I did eventually figure it out, there’s no guarantee that the reader will give you that much time. I only did because it was a Black List script, a script that lots of other readers had vouched for, and therefore something I had some assurance would get better. But if you’re a random writer with a random script, I wouldn’t give you the same length of rope. Not because I hate you. But because I’ve read thousands of scripts that started badly and never got better.
So you can get fancy all you want in your opening. But do so knowing that there’s high risk involved.
The good news is, once this story hit its stride, it got good. I liked this broker character. It made sense to me that there are high profile unique situations that occasionally pop up where there isn’t some yellow pages number you can call for help. The only help you could get would be from a specific person who does this specific job, and because of that job, lives in the shadows.
And the writer took that one step further by giving the broker old school technology. It provided the story with an opportunity to create set pieces you don’t traditionally see in movies these days because everyone is using cell phone tracking software and back door sniffers to steal passwords. You can’t do that when the target’s primary communication method is postcards.
I was really digging that aspect of the story. However, the writer takes a calculated risk by adding a love story to the plot. And while I didn’t have a problem with that in theory, it’s not executed very well. First of all, these two can’t communicate face to face. Most of the time when they’re talking to each other, one half of the conversation is coming from the telephone operator, not Tom.
So for Karen to all of a sudden become interested in this guy – she begins asking him personal questions, wanting to get to know him – it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It does open up a fun plot development, though, in that Tom starts getting sloppy because he’s starting to have feelings for her too. But the physical separation aspect of the story becomes too much of a hurdle for that plot development to work.
The script makes some other good choices, though. I’ve read a lot of scripts like this where we only see the story through Karen’s eyes. But The Broker puts us in the room with the bad guys almost as much as the good guys. This allows the writer to create fun dramatically ironic scenes, such as Karen going to the airport and us knowing that the bad guys have already tracked her here. So she doesn’t know she’s being watched but we do. They’re hoping she’ll lead them to Tom. But the climax of the scene is that Tom was playing them the whole time to get them out in the open so he could get a visual on who was following her. You can’t write that scene if you’re only telling the story through Karen’s eyes.
So I’d say The Broker is worth the read. It’s by no means perfect but it’s got enough going on to keep you interested, that’s for sure.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware complicated family dynamics. And if you do have complicated family dynamics, spell them out for us. The reader understands “mother,” “father,” “son,” “daughter.” But things can get confusing when you run into cousin and step-father and step-son and father-in-law and daughter-in-law territory. To the writer, the connection is obvious. But if you don’t spell it out for us, we can easily be confused. I spent half this script trying to figure out who Ray was. At first I thought it was Tom’s brother. But then later we learn they have different moms. So I made an educated guess that their moms were sisters, which would make them cousins. And then Ray has a daughter who Tom has a strong family bond with. What’s the relation when your cousin has a daughter? A cousin-niece? At a certain point, you have to ask if complicated family dynamics are worth it, especially when most of the people reading your script are reading it faster than you’d prefer.
What I learned 2: Why is this a big deal? Have you ever had a reader ask you a question about something in your story that you thought was obvious? Like, “So did John kill Sarah or not?” And you want to point to page 54 where John is being interrogated and he clearly says, in the scene, “I killed Sarah.” Why did your reader miss that? It may be because they were trying to figure out something as stupid as how two characters are related.
I have a question for you.
Does Sundance matter anymore?
It used to be the number one hotspot to find the next breakout hit. Little Miss Sunshine, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, The Usual Suspects.
But what’s come out of Sundance recently?
Late Night. Blinded by the Light. The Report. And let’s not forget that 2017 Sundance darling that lit the box office on fire – Beach Rats.
Okay, to be fair, there are still some success stories. Eighth Grade. The Big Sick. Call Me By Your Name. But Sundance movies used to make money! Little Miss Sunshine made 100 million bucks at the box office. Where are the money-makers these days? It feels like Sundance has become more of a place to feed streamer content.
Back in the day, film festivals were the only way to get non-traditional movies a) seen and b) distributed. But the internet’s been steadily eating away at that model for years and I think we’ve finally reached a point where festivals no longer make sense. The one argument they still had over the internet was, “Do you want your movie to be seen on a big screen or on someone’s phone?” But outside of Christopher Nolan, people aren’t picky about how they watch their media anymore.
I suppose it’s still a place to build buzz for projects. You have a movie that does well at Sundance and that translates into a studio getting behind you and putting together a legit release with an actual marketing budget behind it. But how did that go for a movie like “The Farewell?” Yes, it was a critical darling. But nobody saw it. Why? Because there were a bunch of people looking really sad on a poster for one (nothing screams “I HAVE TO SEE THAT!” better than a bunch of depressed faces). But also, Sundance no longer carries the same level of cache. There aren’t enough successful movies coming out of there to generate interest when they say they’ve found a new one. And The Farewell continues that streak.
The point is, I’m not sure film festivals work as a model anymore. They were perfect for 1997 when it was the only way to break out from obscurity. But nowadays, it seems like the better option is to make a great short film, put it on the internet, get a lot of views, and find someone to bankroll the feature (a la Lights Out). I also believe it’s a matter of 3-4 years before a Netflix or Amazon creates a direct distribution model for films the same way they have for self-publishing novels. “But how will anyone know about them, Carson??” The best movies will rise to the top via rankings and word of mouth. If I had the resources, I would put that system together in a second.
While I was ruminating on all this, what should appear on my iTunes main page but the latest “Jay and Silent Bob” movie. Before I knew what was happening, Carson circa 20 years ago rented the flick. Great, now I had to watch it.
I decided to enter this viewing experience with a simple directive: LAUGH ONE TIME. That’s it. That’s all I was asking of this 90 minute movie – to make me laugh one single time. Did it succeed? I’ll share that answer with you in a second but first let’s talk about Smith.
Kevin Smith is the single luckiest person who’s ever made it in Hollywood. And I say that sans hyperbole. I truly believe he’s at the top of the list.
This is a man who maxed out his credit cards to make a movie, in black and white mind you, that he then used the last of his money for to submit to the Independent Feature Film Marketplace, got the world’s worst screening time (11 am) and nobody showed up except for one guy named Bob Hawk who had a little pull in the indie business. Hawk literally told Smith that the only reason he showed up was because he saw the publicity card for the movie and it looked like the saddest thing he’d ever seen. He showed up because he felt bad for the film. It just so happened that his sense of humor lined up with Smith’s. He began telling everyone it was great, and this was back when you could tell people through backchannels that something was great, build a buzz, and the movie would succeed regardless of whether it was good or not. It was the buzz that propelled it, not the quality of the film.
It is safe to say that had Hawk not gone to that Clerks screening, nobody would’ve ever heard of Smith.
Mind you, I’m not saying Clerks wasn’t good. There are obviously people who love it. But is it as good as it was made out to be? If you look at the rest of Smith’s contribution to film, does it support the belief back then that he was a talented filmmaker?
I throw in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and, like I said, I only want to laugh once. The plot isn’t as bad as I expected. Jay and Silent Bob get arrested for growing weed and during their court case, accidentally sign a document giving up the rights to their names, which allows Kevin Smith, as in the actual director, to use their likeness to make a Jay and Silent Bob reboot movie so they need to get to California to stop him. Actually, what am I talking about? That sounds awful. Am I deranged?
Which would explain why I was not able to achieve my goal. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot does not have a single solitary laugh in it. Not one.
I’m sitting there thinking to myself, how can this be? Just the sheer number of jokes implies that one of them has to hit. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. But nope. There isn’t even a funny dialogue line. And that’s arguably Smith’s only strength, is his dialogue.
I could’ve disposed of the film’s memory right then and there but my screenwriting analysis side wouldn’t let me. I had to understand why the movie was so unfunny. Comedy is the most subjective genre there is. But this was objectively unfunny. Why was that?
The first thing that popped out at me were the letters “S” and “U.” Longtime Scriptshadow readers know what I’m talking about. G = goal. S = stakes. U = urgency. Jay and Silent Bob had the “G.” The goal is to get to Hollywood to stop the movie from happening.
But what are the stakes? What happens if they don’t stop it? The movie gets made and… then what? They don’t have the rights to their own names? Does it really matter? If it does, they don’t do a good job conveying that to us. The value of high stakes is that they make your characters’ actions feel important. This trickles down to every single scene because if our characters encounter an obstacle, we’re a lot more invested in them overcoming that obstacle if the ultimate goal feels important.
Stakes work hand in hand with URGENCY. If you can create an important situation and you can then give your heroes less time than they need to accomplish it, your script is going to feel tense, and that’s something Jay and Silent Bob Reboot lacked.
Jay and Silent Bob has what I call “FALSE URGENCY.” It’s urgency that’s on the page (“We only have 3 days to get to Hollywood!”) but it never truly feels like they’re in a hurry. This is something I try to remind screenwriters. You can’t pay lip service to the formula. It has to be authentic. In The Hangover, you really felt the characters’ need to find the groom by the end of the day so they could get him to his wedding on time.
Or look at one of the biggest comedies from last year – Good Boys – to see how to get the formula right. In that film, the boys lose their dad’s really expensive ‘they’ll be grounded for life’ drone to some older neighborhood girls and they have to get it back by the end of the day. Goal = get the drone back, Stakes = grounded for life (high stakes for 6th graders), and Urgency = Dad gets home at the end of the day.
When you don’t have GSU in a comedy, you’re hanging your characters out to dry in every single scene. What I mean by that is, “being funny” is the only thing driving the scene, which is the fastest way to write an unfunny scene.
For example, there’s a scene where the characters stop for food at a fast food joint. There are no stakes attached to this scene. No urgency. The only goal is to order food. Smith does everything in his power to write funny dialogue. But funny dialogue without any purpose behind it is the equivalent of pointing at someone and saying, “Be funny right now.” Who’s ever been able to be funny in that situation?
And that’s almost every single scene in this movie. But here’s the curious part of all this. That was the same approach Smith took with Clerks. So why did that movie work and this one didn’t? How come rule-breaking dooms this film but doesn’t doom that one?
Well, it IS actually possible to write funny stuff without a plot or GSU. It’s just a million times harder. It’s like anything in writing. Sure, you can write a good movie with a passive hero. It’s just a million times harder than if you write a movie with an active hero. So why would you stack the odds against yourself?
I have a theory on why Clerks worked while this didn’t. Energy. The energy a screenwriter has before he’s made it is his superpower. You’re hungrier. You’re angrier. You’re more willing to rewrite it until it’s perfect. All of that comes through in that movie. Regardless of how you feel about Clerks, there’s no denying that it’s packed with a manic energy that picks up the slack in places where the plot and characters dip.
Conversely, Jay and Silent Bob feels like a tired film. Everyone looks tired. And when you have weaknesses in your writing as big as Smith does, you can’t afford for other parts of your production to be lacking.
Share your thoughts about Sundance, Kevin Smith, and this weekend’s box office in the comments section. 1917 with another strong hold. Seems like a shoe-in for Best Picture at this point. And I still haven’t seen it! Maybe this week. :)
I’m sorry guys.
But I can’t.
I said I was going on a Star Wars hiatus, that I wouldn’t talk about Star Wars for a while.
But here we are, once again, with more Star Wars drama! The Obi-Wan show has effectively been shut down. This show has literally been in development for the last five years. First as a movie, then a TV show. Either way, they finally announced that it was going forward, they finally set a date for shooting. But it wouldn’t be a Kathleen Kennedy Star Wars production unless somebody was getting fired.
In this case, she didn’t fire the director, which is her usual M.O. She fired everybody else.
Now I don’t have enough of an inside scoop to know what’s going on here. But I can make a solid educated guess. Disney was hoping Rise of Skywalker was going to make 1.6 billion dollars. Instead, it’s going to make 1.1 billion dollars. Whenever expectations aren’t met at a major studio EVERYBODY FREAKS THE F#@% OUT. Everyone starts doubting. Everyone starts covering their a$$. And any project that has a connection to the tainted product gets major budget cuts.
This would be in line with reports that they’re trying to cut six episodes down to four.
But the weirdest thing about all of this is that Obi-Wan was supposed to be a movie. That was the original idea. It was going to be the next standalone Star Wars film after Solo. But then Solo bombed so they made it a TV show. Now there’s no rule out there that movie concepts can’t be re-imagined into TV shows or vice versa. But something about the way this project has been ripped apart, reconfigured, ripped apart again, rearranged, gives off the impression that it’s a big giant mess. And they don’t know how to fix it.
It’s funny. One of the things I’ve picked up on these producer meetings is how terrified people are to say yes. If you don’t say yes, you can’t f&%# up. You can only f&$% up if you say yes and it turns out bad. So there’s a strong incentive from everyone to say no. And that fear only grows greater the closer you are to production. That’s why so many projects get right up to the starting line only to fall apart a day before they begin. Or, in Obi-Wan’s case, AFTER they begin.
If you cancel Obi-Wan (which it’s looking like is going to happen) the PR hit isn’t as bad as if you made it and it sucked.
But I mean, where is Star Wars going at this point? They are so far in the woods, so far from the nearest trail, that they’ve given up trying. They’re literally STOPPING EVERYTHING, standing in the middle of the forest, and hoping someone shows up and rescues them. But I got news, Star Wars. JJ isn’t coming to the rescue anymore. Nor is Baby Yoda. Taika’s good for a few cute headlines and that’s it. What is your freaking PLAN. You’ve never had one and it’s finally caught up to you.
Just sit down and come up with a plan, then follow it. That’s why Marvel is the biggest franchise in history right now. They literally told you their 10 year plan 10 years ago. Everybody laughed at them but they followed it and here we are.
The irony is that I never wanted an Obi-Wan series in the first place. It doesn’t make sense. He came to Tatooine to watch over Luke. Why would he leave him here and go off on adventures? Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the job he was given. Yoda didn’t say, “Watch over the boy… unless you get bored and feel like killing a few gundarks in the Outer Rim.”
But, at this point, he’s the last of the original franchise stars you can use. I don’t know. Maybe Rian Johnson got back in Kathleen’s head. Kill the past, he said. Especially everything that has to do with that Obi-Wan show.
Is it just me or is this our big prelude to Kathleen Kennedy finally getting fired? It sure feels like it.
I’m looking for a great script.
The Last Great Screenwriting Contest is where I plan to find it.
But there’s a problem.
I’ve been saying, “Give me that next fresh contained horror idea or that next big social thriller,” only to realize that this advice is constricting your ability to come up with either.
For everyone I’ve been meeting in town, I’ve been asking the question, “What kind of script are you looking for?” The endgame being that I can marry what you submit to what the industry wants to produce.
It’s early times with these meetings but one of the things I’ve noticed is that almost everyone’s looking for the same thing. They want reasonably budgeted horror, thriller or sci-fi and you get vanilla stars if it’s contained and double chocolate chip brownie points if there’s some kind of social commentary behind it.
Since everyone knows this is what Hollywood is looking for, every writer is writing one of these movies. Which means the competition is fierce.
But there’s a bigger problem stemming from this need, which is that it gets writers thinking too narrowly. By zooming in on the most recent examples of these successful films, they’re coming up with variations that are too similar.
Take “Get Out” for example. When somebody says to you, “We’re looking for the next Get Out,” your mind zooms in on a very specific type of movie: a couple in a scary contained situation with some sort of social commentary attached to it. It’s hard to build an original idea from a base so narrow.
You know that old Hollywood adage, “Give me something the same but different?” The sweet spot for that advice is being a little closer to ‘different’ than ‘same.’ But most writers approach it the opposite way. They generate ideas that are closer to ‘same’ than ‘different.’
All of this is to say I don’t want you writing Get Out clones. Or A Quiet Place clones. Or John Wick clones. The secret to strong ideas is that they’re not like anything else out there. That’s why they stand out. One of the best ways to explain this is to look at all the movies that surprised Hollywood. These are the concepts that the industry didn’t think much of. They didn’t give 100 million dollar marketing campaigns to to ensure triple digit box office. These were ideas that were outside of Hollywood’s purview yet still found a way to thrive. In that sense, they represent what a good outside-the-box idea should look like. Here are the top “surprise hit movies” every year dating back to the beginning of Scriptshadow…
Biggest Surprise Hit 2019 – Joker
Biggest Surprise Hit 2018 – A Quiet Place
Biggest Surprise Hit 2017 – Get Out
Biggest Surprise Hit 2016 – Deadpool
Biggest Surprise Hit 2015 – American Sniper
Biggest Surprise Hit 2014 – Fault In Our Stars
Biggest Surprise Hit 2013 – Gravity
Biggest Surprise Hit 2012 – Ted
Biggest Surprise Hit 2011 – Bridesmaids
Biggest Surprise Hit 2010 – Inception
Biggest Surprise Hit 2009 – Avatar
Biggest Surprise Hit 2008 – Juno
Okay, let’s see if we can learn anything from these. Joker is an easy one. The last five years has been big fun goofy comic book movies. Audiences were ready for the opposite of that – a stripped-down zero-CGI comic book character study. However, this doesn’t quite apply to the current landscape since we’re at the end of a trend (big fun goofy superhero movies). With the social horror stuff, we’re still at the beginning of it. However, this is a powerful example of taking the temperature of moviegoers, recognizing what they’re bored of, and giving them the opposite.
A Quiet Place, as much as some of you hate it, is the perfect example of the meter being closer to ‘different’ than ‘same.’ This was a SILENT MOVIE. A mainstream silent horror movie. We hadn’t seen that. That and the clever setup (you can’t make a sound in this world) made this feel different from your Conjurings, your Insidiouses, and your Saws, which is why audiences delighted in seeing it.
Get Out was as fresh a concept as they come. When was the last time someone mixed horror and race in an appealing way before this film? Deadpool stood out by making fun of its genre. You can always get away with that when a trend has been around for a while and Deadpool came out at just the right moment. American Sniper was an interesting one because most war movies are made for liberal audiences (theme: war is bad). American Sniper found a concept that appealed to both sides. War is bad (liberals approve) but also here’s a real life American superhero (conservatives approve). I’m not sure we can use this film for today’s lesson, though, as its success is too specific.
On the flip side, Fault In Our Stars is the perfect example of today’s lesson. At the time, YA novels with sci-fi (Hunger Games) or supernatural (Twilight) elements were all the rage. So everyone in town is sitting around saying, “We need to find the next big YA supernatural or sci-fi concept!” If you think about it, we’re in a similar place today. We’re all saying, “We need to find the next big social contained thriller or social contained horror.” So what happened back in 2014? Divergent was made. And what happened with Divergent? It wasn’t fresh. We’d been here already. So of course the franchise imploded. But then we had this YA novel that had nothing to do with sci-fi or the supernatural. It was still YA. BUT IT APPROACHED THE GENRE FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE – 2 sick teenagers who fall in love. It was NOT the 10,000th YA werewolf franchise Hollywood had been pitched that year. That’s how you generate a truly fresh concept that audiences respond to. You take the seed of the trend and you grow your own plant with it.
I’m going to go off-book here for a second but hang with me. The Hunt is a great example of a social thriller that was different. Everyone else is writing these on-the-nose race-driven social thrillers. Meanwhile, Lindelof is writing something completely different – an elite liberal enterprise that catches and hunts conservatives. I read everything and I hadn’t encountered anything close to this concept. If the media hadn’t gone loco over this movie, The Hunt was primed to be a big hit.
Gravity’s a weird one because, like 1917, it’s so director-dominant that I’m not sure screenwriters can learn much from it. But I will say this. It was unlike anything else at the time, right? I mean who was writing real-time movies in space? NOBODY. Just like who’s writing real-time movies set during World War 1? NOBODY. Actually, there is a lesson to learn here. Real time concepts can take average scenarios and elevate them. Maybe there’s a real-time social thriller to be made. I don’t know.
Ted is another good example of smart concept generation, believe it or not. The buddy movie is the oldest comedy setup there is. You would think, then, that it’d be impossible to infuse a fresh idea into the setup. And yet that’s exactly what they did. They made one of the buddies a real-life talking teddy bear. Who else was writing a script like that at the time? I’ll give ya a hint. NOBODY. This is how you think outside the box.
While most people will tell you Bridesmaids was just The Hangover with women, that’s not true. That was just the way they marketed it so that people would show up. The truth is, we didn’t have big female comedy ensembles at the time. It was such a foreign concept that it truly stood out from anything else out there. And that’s the name of the game for today. What are you giving us that we can’t get somewhere else?
On the surface, Inception had little influence on Hollywood. Outside of Gravity, no one started giving people 120 million dollars for original science-fiction ideas. But what you can learn from these bigger budgeted surprise hits is that they spawn a market for LOWER BUDGETED ideas in this space. Source Code and Transcendence come to mind. Avatar doesn’t help us much. It’s a true anomaly. Nobody else can do what Cameron does. And the only lesson I can take from Juno is that a unique writing voice, particularly a unique DIALOGUE voice, cuts through bland subject matter. Your voice becomes the hook. And that’s what happened with Diablo Cody.
Think about it. Everybody gave her s#@% about Juno’s dialogue, so she stopped writing dialogue like that. And since then, her career hasn’t gone anywhere. Coincidence? If you have a unique voice, the last thing you want to do is tame it, regardless of what the internet thinks.
So what’s the conclusion to all this? It’s to remind you that your minor tweaks of trendy concepts aren’t going to be enough to make your script stand out. You have to push further away from the center to get that original idea that’s going to catch my attention as well as everyone else’s. Get on it. You’ve only got five months left til The Last Great Screenwriting Contest’s deadline!
