Clarice Starling is back! And can someone tell me what the heck Conflict Coffee is??
Genre: 1 Hour Drama
Premise: The continuing exploits of FBI behavioral specialist Clarice Starling one year after the famous case that made her a celebrity.
About: The first attempt at creating a Clarice TV series happened back in 2012, around the same time when that Hannibal series went to air. But the show never made it. This time, the project is being spearheaded by hardest-working-writer in the business Alex Kurtzman and “Rachel Getting Married” screenwriter Jenny Lumet. CBS is said to be big on the show and are expecting it to be a breakout hit.
Writers: Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet
Details: 63 pages
Writing a script like this isn’t that different from writing a spec as an unknown. As an unknown, people go into your script assuming it’s going to be bad. So it’s up to you to prove them wrong. And the sooner you start proving them wrong, the better. Because readers are looking to confirm their bias. As soon as they can CONFIRM it’s bad, they can start skimming.
Writing a Clarice Starling pilot is similar. Viewers are going into it rolling their eyes. It feels like a cash-grab, an exploitation of a perfect movie following a character nobody is interested in seeing outside of those films. So you have to prove them wrong. And the sooner, the better. Because viewers have lots of other options. And they’re not waiting around to see if a bad idea gets better.
With that said, it’s not impossible to write a good Clarice pilot. Everyone thought the same thing about the Fargo TV show. You’re exploiting a perfect movie that isn’t asking to be fit into the TV format. But, what do you know, it turned out great and launched Noah Hawley’s career. Will this have similar success? I’ma let you know in a minute.
It’s been a year since Clarice came out of Buffalo Bill’s house of horrors with Catherine Martin and things are a lot different. Clarice is struggling to deal with the fame and the FBI’s head therapist isn’t convinced she should still be working. Clarice still hasn’t talked to Catherine since that day and the therapist thinks it’s because she still hasn’t processed what happened.
Then Clarice gets a surprise call from Attorney General Ruth Martin. Ruth Martin as in, yes, Catherine Martin’s mother. She flies Clarice to D.C. and tells her they’ve got two young dead women with bite marks on them who have turned up in the river. Ruth thinks it’s a serial killer and she wants Clarice on the case. But Clarice is still barely an agent (it’s 1993 and she’s just 26 years old). So she’ll have to answer to Task Force head Paul Krendler, who doesn’t like Clarice and her lucky serial killer capture one bit.
Immediately, Clarice and Paul disagree on what’s happened. The bite marks indicate a single killer. But Clarice’s training tells her there’s something odd about the bite marks. They aren’t… sexual, which was the operating thesis before Clarice showed up. There’s something weird going on here. But Paul doesn’t want to hear it, and forces Clarice to tell the media it’s a single killer.
Clarice, ever the friend to the freak shows and the misfits, befriends loner detective Tomas Esquivel, a Cuban American who’s still mad at the task force for hazing him by putting beans in his locker. The two go off and talk to family members of the victims, eventually learning that all of them have ties to autistic children.
Clarice begins putting together a working thesis that the women in the river were whistle blowers for a biolab company dabbling in autism medicine. What this means is that this isn’t a killer doing this. It’s a company. Which means this is much much bigger than anything she’s investigated before.
I’ll start by saying this. Sequels are always better than prequels and here’s why. The objective in writing any fictional story, particularly movies, is that you want this event you’re writing about to be the biggest moment in this person’s life so far. If it isn’t, then you’re telling the wrong story.
Luke Skywalker didn’t do anything interesting growing up. Which is why we don’t tell any of that story, as much as Disney would like to. Luke’s life only got interesting when that message from the princess showed up.
Same thing with Clarice. I was worried that they were going to do a Silence of the Lambs prequel with this show. Which would imply that Clarice had a bigger moment in her life than taking down Buffalo Bill. So I’m at least happy that they decided to set the events of “Clarice” after Silence of the Lambs.
But this is an auspicious start to the show. I get what they’re doing injecting some big bad government conspiracy into the mix as to generate enough of an overarching storyline to fill up an entire season. But I’m not sure that an autism conspiracy ignites my reading motor. I mean this is the franchise that gave us Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter. It feels like a step down.
And I’ll give you the exact moment in the pilot where I said to myself, “Uh-oh.” It occurs when Clarice and Esquivel go to the victim’s husband’s house to ask him questions. They go there, ask if they can come in and ask him questions, he says yes, and they come in and ask questions.
Why is this a problem scene for me? Because procedurals have been around for 100+ years. That means you have to always be on your game to keep them fresh. One of the laziest ways you can write an agent-suspect questioning scene is to have them come to the suspect’s house and, in a perfect setting, ask them questions. It’s such a lazy setup that the scene dies before it’s written. You’ve already chosen the least interesting way to tell this scene so, chances are, it’s going to be weak.
I’m not saying you can never write a procedural scene in a character’s home. But it has to be under the pretense that you understand this is a boring way to explore the scene. Therefore, you’re going to do something with it that uses that expectation against the reader. For example, if the suspect is the husband of the dead wife, as is the case here, they show up and he’s extremely chipper. He’s upbeat, happy, asking how they’re doing. Not acting like someone who just lost their wife at all. At that point, we forget where we are because we’re so focused on this character’s odd behavior.
But my preference is that you don’t send your hero to a garden-variety house questioning scene at all, ESPECIALLY when it’s the very first suspect visit of the series. A great hack for avoiding this mistake is to ask, “What’s the worst situation under which my detective would want to question this person?” And then write the scene under those conditions.
It could be as simple as them catching him leaving work during a huge storm. They corner him right as he’s about to get in his car, rain pounding, he says he’s late and has to go before finally saying he’ll give them two minutes. Right there with the rain assaulting their umbrellas, they must hurry up and ask him what they need to know. I guarantee you that’s going to be a better scene than if you sit down with the suspect in his quiet home with all the time in the world.
The best thing this pilot does is the conflict between Clarice and Paul. He really dislikes her. Not just that, but he feels like she didn’t earn this promotion. That she doesn’t belong in his presence, on this case. That created a desire in me to see Clarice prove him wrong. And, actually, that was the only drive for me to finish the story. I wanted her to make this guy look like the loser he was. Unfortunately, everything else was too generic. I felt like I’d seen this show before. The fact that this is Clarice instead of some no-name did help a little. But once the excitement of that died down, the show had to work on its own. And it didn’t work for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Brew your conflict coffee under every scene. What’s conflict coffee? It’s the coffee you brew under a scene before the scene starts that allows for conflict to play out. Most writers don’t brew conflict coffee under their scene. They just plant characters in a generic room with nothing else going on and let them talk to each other, then are confused when everyone says their scenes are boring. Your scenes are boring because you didn’t brew any conflict coffee underneath them!!! Take the suggested scene I created above in the rain. I brewed three heavy cups of conflict coffee under that scene. The first was the storm. That makes things difficult for our heroes. The second is a suspect who doesn’t want to talk to them. And the third is he’s in a hurry, he’s got to get home, so he only has time for a few questions. Imagine the scene WITHOUT those three cups of conflict coffee and then WITH those three cups of conflict coffee. Now tell me which is more likely to be the better scene.
It’s the WWEEEEEEKKKK-EEEENNNND.
Which means we’ve got THREE new movies being offered up at the cinemas. And it just so happens these three films give us the perfect snapshot of what the industry is looking for. We’ve got Gretel & Hansel – our horror movie. We’ve got The Rhythm Section – our Jane Wick flick. And we’ve got The Assistant – our socially conscious entry of the week. All three films, it should be noted, have female leads.
While none of these movies will do huge box office, this is the kind of stuff that Hollywood is looking for from spec screenwriters. The Jane Wick flick might be on the way out, especially if Rhythm Section doesn’t do well. But with the well-written “Ballerina” coming soon under the John Wick banner and therefore with a ton of those Wick marketing dollars, the Girl with a Gun genre might not be dead yet.
What are your thoughts on this weekend’s crop of films?
Let’s move on to Amateur Showdown. Is it ever coming back? Or is it DEAD? Let’s find out together, shall we? On March 13th, we will have SCI-FI SHOWDOWN. My favorite genre. Or wait, wasn’t contained thriller my favorite genre? Who cares. Sci-fi is my favorite genre now.
This gives you 43 days to get your s%#@ together and polish that sci-fi gem you’ve been tirelessly working on for the last six years. Oh wait, that’s me. We’re talking about you guys. Yes, starting today, you can send in your script for Sci-Fi Showdown. Just e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com and put “SCI-FI SHOWDOWN” in the subject line. Include the title, genre, logline, why you think the script deserves a shot, and, of course, a PDF of the script. You’d be surprised at how many people send me entries with no script. You have until Thursday March 12th, 8:00 PM pacific time to get your entries in.
And, if you’re still getting that Last Great Screenplay Contest script ready, a reminder that the deadline is Sunday, June 14th. I need the title, genre, logline, and PDF sent to the same e-mail (carsonreeves3@gmail.com). Except the subject line should be: “LAST GREAT CONTEST.”
Meanwhile, for those who’ve got time to waste, let’s talk about The Outsider. If you haven’t been on the site for a while, I gave a glowing review to the first couple of episodes of this show. I liked it so much, I thought I was watching one of the great TV shows of all time.
Two weeks later I find myself struggling to finish Episode 4. Welcome to the challenge of TV writing, where great television can nosedive in as few as two episodes. So what happened to The Outsider? I’m not sure. But I can tell you exactly when I sensed it was in trouble.
It came in episode 3 with the introduction of a new character named Holly Gibney, a private investigator. Since this character is so all over the place, I’ll leave it to the Stephen King wiki webpage to describe her: “Holly suffers from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), synesthesia, sensory processing disorder, and she’s somewhere on the autism spectrum.” In other words, she’s a “LOOK AT ME AND HOW WILD AND WACKY AND DIFFERENT I AM” character, one of the worst characters a writer can write.
Up until this point, the reason The Outsider was so good, outside of the fact that it had a great hook, was that it had embedded itself in authenticity. These felt like real people. This felt like a real town. These felt like real consequences. This felt like real mourning.
By writing in a totally unrealistic desperate attempt at a scene-stealing character, all that authenticity went out the window. We now had a WRITER (notice the capitalization) who wanted us to know he was WRITING. It doesn’t help that the actress is awful, but the important thing to note here is that, before, characters were authentic. I mean who’s more believable as a person than Detective Ralph Anderson? Holly Gibney might as well be in the next Bad Moms sequel (Bad Moms “Easter Shenanigans!”) she’s so outlandish and unrealistic.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing or how good it is. The second you start writing to impress the reader – whether it’s with your purple prose or outlandish plot twists or crazy characters – you lose. Because that’s the moment when the reader or viewer becomes aware that someone is writing this. And that’s when you’ve lost your audience, when they’re no longer suspended in disbelief. I wouldn’t say that Holly Gibney single-handedly ruined this show. But it’s hard to stay invested in a show when you’re rolling your eyes half the time.
I’m going to keep trying though. Ben Mendelsohn is such a good actor that it’s worth continuing to watch just for his scenes. I mean what other actor could’ve made Captain Marvel watchable? But I’m worried. I’m going to pray this Holly abomination gets knocked off at some point. And that they can ramp up the mystery again. There were full loaves of mystery early on. Now they’re trickling little breadcrumbs at us and expecting us to clap like dolphins.
What do you guys think? Am I being too hard on it? What’s your take on the last few episodes?
Lonestarr357 had a great question in yesterday’s comments. After Scott S. eviscerated the uncomfortably detailed opening scene of I Heart Murder, Lonestarr asked this:
I’m unmistakably reminded of a script from a couple months ago and the indelible scene where the investigating hero was caught, paralyzed and fellated by the villains, who told him to back off or they would not only kill his daughter, but deposit the sperm they just extracted inside of her, so it’d look like he raped her before killing her.
I feel like this ought to be an article in the making. We’re told to create memorable scenes to get the attention of readers, but how far is too far? Does the reaction you hope to elicit fall more toward ‘This is a memorable scene! Let’s give the writer lots of money!’ or ‘This is a memorable scene. I need a fucking shower?’
This is a great question.
I know it’s a great question because as soon as I began typing up my response, I realized I didn’t know the answer. I thought I knew. But this is a far more complex question than it first appears to be.
I remember the exact scene Lonestarr is referring to. And I thought the same thing he did when I read it. This is way too far. It’s uncomfortable. It’s a weird choice. And yet, I DO REMEMBER it. I’ve read thousands of scenes since then and have forgotten almost all of them in the process. But I do remember that scene. So does that mean the scene is a success? You must be doing something right if your scene is more memorable than two thousand others, right?
This leads us to a broader question of, “What makes a memorable scene?”
Strangely, when I tried to compile a list of standout scenes over the last few years, not a lot came to mind. I even googled, “Most memorable scenes of 2019,” and a lot of the scenes they listed were okay. But I wouldn’t call them TRULY MEMORABLE STANDOUT SCENES.
A few that people seem to agree on were The Spahn Ranch scene in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. The Baby Delivery scene in A Quiet Place. The Birthday Party at the end of Parasite. And The Beheading scene in Hereditary. Some of my personal favorites over the last few years would be the Pennywise sewer scene at the beginning of It. The failed Deadpool Team attack in Deadpool 2. And the highway border shootout in Sicario.
What do almost all of these scenes have in common? They’re SPECIFIC TO THEIR SUBJECT MATTER. The Spahn Ranch was Charles’ Manson’s spot in a movie where Charles’ Manson’s shadow is leaning over the whole movie. It made sense to set a major scene there.
What’s the worst thing you can put your characters through in a world where you can’t make a noise or you die? Force a woman to have a baby under those circumstances. A Quiet Place.
Parasite had been setting up the son’s infatuation with Native Americans the whole movie. So it was only natural to have a Native American themed birthday party that all of a sudden becomes violent and murderous.
What’s more “super heroey” than trying to put a new superhero team together. Hence a superhero interview process that ends with six heroes going after the bad guys, only for all of them to die horrible embarrassing deaths, was very specific to that genre.
When you have a movie about a clown who lives in the sewers who likes to eat children, you probably want to write a featured scene where a clown in a sewer lures a young boy in so he can eat him.
The best way to understand the power of writing a scene specific to your subject matter is to see what happens when a movie TRIES to write a memorable scene and fails. Look no further than the motorcycle chase scene in Gemini Man. Now this isn’t a bad scene. But it’s far from a memorable one. Chances are you’ll forget the details of it within 48 hours.
While I’m not saying a lack of specific subject matter is the only reason the scene is memorable, it is a major one. WE’VE SEEN MOTORCYCLE CHASES BEFORE. We just saw one in John Wick 3. And that one had freaking samurai swords. Yet you’re here trying to make a nuts and bolts motorcycle chase scene your big memorable scene of the movie? Of course it’s going to be forgotten. And the big reason for that is that motorcycle chases are a dime a dozen in action movies. You needed to come up with a scene that was SPECIFIC TO YOUR SUBJECT MATTER.
So let’s go back to Lonestarr’s original question. What is it about that fellatio sister rape-framing scene that, even though it *is* memorable, doesn’t place it in the same category as the scenes I highlighted above?
The main problem is you’re introducing SHOCK for shock’s sake. A truly shocking moment *will* be memorable. For example, I could have a character butcher a live elephant over the course of five minutes. It would be shocking. It would be memorable. But would it be the good kind of memorable? No, of course not.
These scenes also become a problem when the writer makes it more about them than the story. Again, if you look at all of the examples I used above, those scenes organically fit into the story. But when you’re having characters say and do things that are utterly disgusting and way further than they need to go, that gives off the impression that the writer is trying hard to make his scene shocking. And in those cases, it’s more about them than the story.
But that brings us to the curious case of Hereditary. As some of you remember, I hated Hereditary’s script. I thought it was the epitome of desperate shock-value writing. There’s no movie here. It’s just a collection of “look at me” shocking moments. And no moment was more “look at me” and shocking than the sister decapitation scene.
However, in director Ari Aster’s defense, it’s legitimately in the top 5 most memorable scenes of 2018. Many Hereditary fans will use it as proof positive of Aster’s genius. But this is a scene that does not pass the SPECIFIC TO ITS SUBJECT MATTER test. You could’ve written this scene into any horror film of 2018 without much story rearranging.
So that’s what’s tripping me up on creating a clear set of rules regarding MEMORABLE GOOD scenes and MEMORABLE BAD scenes. Clearly it’s in the eye of the beholder. However, I do think that focusing on creating a big clever well-set-up scene that’s specific to your subject matter is always going to yield better results than writing a shocking or vile or uncomfortable scene. Those will be memorable. But for all the wrong reasons.
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.
