This screenplay battle regarding the movie, “Yesterday,” has become an international story. Today, I review the original draft that led to the drama!

Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Premise: When a struggling musician realizes that he’s the only person on the planet to remember the Beatles, he starts passing the band’s songs off as his own. Only, they don’t create the stir he expected.
About: Jack Barth was a 62 year old screenwriter who had been trying to get his scripts made for over 20 years. The dream finally happened when Richard Curtis heard his pitch for a Beatles-inspired concept about a singer who wakes up one day as the only person on the planet who remembers the Beatles. Curtis supposedly (this is where the story gets murky depending on who you talk to) refused to read the script and went off to write his own version of the idea. Long story short, Curtis took the big writing credit, Barth got stuck with the smaller “Story By” credit, despite the fact that the two screenplays are [supposedly] very similar. Now Barth is taking his argument to the streets because he wants it known who really wrote this movie. You can read more about it here in this Uproxx article. Today, I’ll be reviewing Barth’s original screenplay, the one that would eventually become “Yesterday.” His script is called “Cover Version.”
Writer: Jack Barth
Details: 103 pages, Version 10b 01 July 2016 (posted by Jack Barth on Twitter)

There’s a romanticization about the “unmade” draft of a script. That was one of the reasons I was inspired to create Scriptshadow. I wanted to read all of those famous unused drafts that were so much better than the movies that made it to the big screen.

But what I found was that, 99% of the time, it was b.s. It certainly made for a good story – these unused genius screenplays. But they were always worse than the finished product. And most of the time, a lot worse. The best of these unused scripts were simply different. Same general story. Different choices. But none of them were genius.

That’s because, as fun as it is to claim, “The studio ignored a genius script to make an AWFUL film,” the reality is, it’s in the studio’s best interest to make the best movie they can. So given the choice between a good and bad draft, they almost always pick the good one.

If you disagree with this, show me the receipts. Name the movie that was terrible and the genius script that they overlooked.

Sure, there’s stuff like Source Code. I’m notorious for how much I loved that script. But even though I didn’t love Duncan Jones’ interpretation, I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was that different from the screenplay.

And, to be honest, I’m not even sure that’s what I’m looking for today. It seems like Barth is more interested in getting the credit he deserves for “Yesterday,” instead of being treated like this second hand leper who was only good enough to come up with the idea. I’ve always loved this concept so I’m curious to see what he did with it. Let’s take a look.

The year is 2016. Dan, the lead singer of Clay Enema, is in his 30s. His band mates, girlfriend Ella, Cesar, and Sykes, still enjoy jamming and getting the occasional gig. But the future isn’t looking good. It seems that no matter what Dan does, Clay Enema can’t breakthrough.

Then one day, Dan walks into a rehearsal and, to get warmed up, strums a few chords of the Beatles’ song, “Yesterday.” Curious, Ella comes over and asks him what the song is. He plays along. “Ha ha. Just something I’ve been working on.” Cool, she says, let’s try it out. He laughs her off and gets down to business. He’s got this new song he’s positive will be a hit and he wants to practice. But the band keeps telling him, no, we want to play that other song you were working on.

Naturally, he thinks they’re messing with him so the whole thing turns into a fight and he storms off. But there was something about their conviction that they’d never heard the song before that piques Dan’s curiosity. So he looks online. And he goes to the record store. And he checks his CD collection. There is no mention of the Beatles ANYWHERE!

So Dan apologizes, gets the band back together and starts teaching them all these “new songs” he’s been inspired to write. And what do you know, they start booking more gigs.

People like the songs. But to Dan’s dismay, they don’t LOVE the songs. And so the band’s success stalls. They become big enough to go on small tours and make a living. But not globs-of-fans-darting-across-streets-crying-just-to-get-a-look-at-them big.

Dan doesn’t get it. These are the greatest recorded songs in HISTORY. Why isn’t Clay Enema as big as the Beatles? Dan’s dismay eventually leads to the group breaking up and Dan trying to build a Beatles replica band, complete with the 60s costumes and haircuts. But it doesn’t work.

Eventually, Dan comes to the realization that if there was never a Beatle, John Lennon wouldn’t have been assassinated. So he goes on a quest to find the never famous Lennon, who it turns out is a fisherman, and Dan confides to Lennon what he’s done. Lennon, who just may believe him, tells him that the reason the songs aren’t hits is because Dan didn’t write them. They’re not true to who he is and therefore they can never be hits. Dan thanks him, ditches the Beatles catalog, and starts writing his own songs again. The end.

So there are two questions being asked here.

1) Which version is better?

2) Did Curtis “steal” from Barth’s script despite the fact that he claims to have never read it?

I’ll deal with the first question first. Of the two versions, I think Yesterday was better. But not by much. Basically, Curtis asked the question, “What kind of movie does the audience want to see?” Whereas Barth asked the question, “What would *actually* happen here?”

Both avenues are interesting. There’s a dramatic irony sledgehammer with Curtis’s version whereby we know that the Beatles songs are amazing. So we revel in this opportunity to witness someone bring those songs into the world for the first time. We WANT his success. We WANT to see everybody scream and go crazy over this guy. Because we’re in on the secret. And it’s an extremely exciting secret to be a part of. Who doesn’t want to watch audiences experience “Here Comes the Sun” for the first time?

Barth’s version is more grounded and realistic. It asks the question, can you separate the music from the artist? Is the artist so intrinsically connected to the songs that become massive hits that they’re a package deal? You can’t split them up.

While I think that’s an interesting question, it leads to a much more subdued experience. And my experience with movies is that they don’t work well with middling, with average, with subdued. Movies work best with extremes, especially when you’ve got a big idea. John McClane isn’t running around some two-story insurance building in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s running around a brand new state of the art skyscraper in Los Angeles.

So while I respect that Cover Version is more realistic, it didn’t give me that big whirlwind celebrity experience that Curtis’s version did.

With that said, Barth’s version is still good. Because it is more realistic, it has a clearer theme, which is that your art has to come from you. It can’t come from someone else.

Now when it comes to the second question, things become fuzzier. And as it’s been a year since I’ve seen Yesterday, I don’t remember all the details. But the two things I’m seeing people bring up online about Cover Version that prove Curtis read Barth’s script despite claiming not to have, is the John Lennon thing and the Harry Potter thing.

I can tell you right now that neither of these moments convince me that Curtis read Barth’s script. And I consider myself somewhat of an expert in this area because I’ve heard tens of thousands of pitches. And I’ve read thousands of screenplays, many of which cover similar ideas. What I’ve found is that writers choose similar characters and ideas more than they realize. That’s because we’re all fishing from the same well. The same media cycle. The same shows. The same movies. The same pop culture. So most writers think similarly. (Screenwriter Pro Tip: When making any major decisions in your script, ask yourself, “Would another writer think of this?” If you think maybe they would, come up with something else!)

I would be willing to bet that if you gave 10 screenwriters this idea, 7 of them would’ve come up with the John Lennon scene. And I say that because it’s kind of obvious. Any good writer would naturally realize that if there was no Beatles, John Lennon never gets assassinated. Which means he’s alive. And if you have John Lennon alive, you put him in the movie.

I’d also assume most writers would make that a poignant important scene late in the film like both writers here did. Where things get fuzzy is that, if I remember correctly, John Lennon in Yesterday did some job by the sea? And here, in Cover Version, he’s a fisherman. So that’s a legitimate gripe. You could argue that that’s not a coincidence. Still, I don’t know. It’s definitely not a smoking gun situation.

And then with the Harry Potter joke at the end, that’s another thing that a lot of writers would come up with. If nobody remembers the Beatles, theoretically, maybe there are a few other famous British celebrities that never happened, which would be fun to make a joke about. And who’s more well known in the UK than Harry Potter? So that joke doesn’t convince me of anything.

Look, the reality of the situation is that these things are never black and white. I could see a situation where Curtis had someone cover Barth’s script for him and give him the broad strokes of Cover Version so he could make sure he wasn’t copying the major plot points. You’d think this would happen if only for legal reasons. Maybe a couple of those ideas from the coverage seeped into Curtis’s script. Who knows?

But the truth is, these are very different screenplays. One of them asks, what happens when you become famous off another person’s songs and the other asks, what happens when you have the greatest music catalogue in history and you still can’t achieve success? Once the script diverges from that initial hook, it’s two different stories.

And look, a lot of people get screwed over with their breakthrough script. The deal is the bigger name gets the credit and the smaller name now gets a seat at the table. This is how it’s been for many many people who’ve broken into Hollywood. The complicating factor here is that Jack Barth isn’t some 23 year old wunderkind. He was a 62 year old man who’d been grinding away at his craft for two decades and credit matters more to someone in that situation. So it sucks he didn’t get it.

This leads to a bigger discussion where I don’t understand why someone like Curtis, who’s insanely successful – even if he did write a story that was 90% different from Barth’s – why not just give Barth equal credit? He needs it so much more than you do. That’s the only part that bothers me. Do you really need any more residual checks? Is one more Porsche a year going to make you that much happier? What the hell happened to compassion and selflessness?

Anyway, Cover Version is a good script. And, more importantly, it’s a great idea. Writers can spend YEARS looking for an idea like this. And most never find one. So Barth gets credit for the most important thing of all in this case, which is that he conceived of a kick-ass movie idea.

Script link: Cover Version

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Draw out your hook for as long as possible. One thing Barth did better than Curtis was that when it got to the hook point of the movie – Dan realizing that nobody on the planet knows about the Beatles other than him – Barth really drew it out. From when Dan first strums Yesterday to his band to a few days later where he tests out their first Beatles song together. I was bothered in “Yesterday” by how quickly we whipped through that section because, remember, the hook is why the audience is there. That’s what they’re most excited to see. They want that moment where the hero is playing the Beatles song to the people who have never heard of the The Beatles before. So give them what they want. Draw that moment out for as long as you can. No audience member is going to be mad at you for it.

Genre: Comedy/Horror
Premise: (from Black List) Twenty years after a failed exorcism, a meek young woman becomes unlikely friends with the foul-mouthed demon that possessed her as a child.
About: This one’s got a couple of big pillars holding it up. Buzzy indie production house A24 and none other than JJ’s Bad Robot. Megan Amran, who broke into the business a decade ago writing material for the Academy Awards, has written on The Simpsons, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place. This is her first feature script to break through.
Writer: Megan Amram
Details: 100 pages

Feels like Emma Stone should be Kennedy

Just a reminder for those who don’t read Scriptshadow often.

The possession genre is the biggest bang-for-your-buck genre out there. Possession movies are obscenely cheap to make. Since you don’t traditionally need special effects, you can shoot them on the same budget you’d shoot a drama. Keep the locations limited and you can even keep it under a million. Even if the thing only has a five million dollar opening weekend, you’ve made a profitable movie.

BUT!

But you have to find a fresh angle. If you’re the 3824th writer to conceive of “The Exorcism of [Insert Female Name Here],” don’t expect your script to garner much attention.

Megan Amram takes that advice as far as someone can take it. Today we have a gross-out vulgar exorcism comedy. The 40 Year Old Virgin as an exorcism flick? Mixed with some Seth Rogen humor? Is that a thing? I guess we’re about to find out.

When she’s 10 years old, Kennedy gets possessed by a real mean demon named Lamashtu, who is one of the worst demons you can get possessed by. Think The Exorcism times ten. She’s really bad.

Kennedy’s mom, Karen, does everything in her power to exorcise Lamashtu, calling on all the best priests in the area. But they’re all terrified of Lamashtu and run away. Finally, Karen realizes that good old steady yoga breathing and positive thoughts can keep Lamashtu at bay. As long as you don’t get angry, she tells her daughter, you’ll be fine.

Cut to twenty years later. The reclusive nerdy Kennedy works as a coder at a Google wannabe company. Everyone overlooks Kennedy because she’s just so… well… NICE. And nice people get stepped on. Nice people get taken advantage of.

But after Kennedy gets passed over for a promotion, Lamashtu has had enough and reemerges! Lamashtu (as Kennedy) starts screaming at everyone at work, and all of a sudden, people don’t just respect Kennedy. They like her! This girl has spunk.

Kennedy realizes that she’s made a mistake by repressing Lamashtu all these years. It’s time to fully embrace her demon instead! Even her sexist office crush, David, asks her out, leading to Kennedy’s first ever sexual experience. The event is so overwhelming that Lamashtu takes over, giving David the best sex of his life, leading to him being obsessed with Kennedy.

But when Kennedy’s evil side starts affecting her one genuine friendship with her fellow reclusive coder, she begins to wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze. Will Kennedy say F-it and become Lamashtu forever? Or is there a way to be nice again and still enjoy her life?

Man.

This was a wild one.

I’ll give Amram props on a couple of fronts. This is a fun idea. What if you stopped holding in all those things you really wanted to say and just let go? Embrace that anger you’ve always repressed. It’s one of the more fun comedic premises I’ve come across.

And Amram doesn’t neuter Kennedy’s inner demon. This is not the safe cute version of this concept. Lamasthtu regularly unloads lines like, “You want dirty talk? I’m gonna rip your big fat cock through your stomach up through your mouth til you choke on it.” Full steam ahead on the vulgarity.

The script also does one of the most important things a script must do – IT DELIVERS ON THE PROMISE OF ITS PREMISE. You get exactly what the logline tells you you’re going to get. I can’t endorse this enough. I read a lot of scripts that promise a great premise but then the script becomes something else in its second half. Or it changes genres in the final act.

No! Whatever your unique element, whatever the “strange attractor” is in your story, that’s what you want to exploit. Milk that thing until there’s no more milk left in it.

The script did have some weaknesses though. Kennedy’s job felt totally made up. It was a tech company but it was never clear what the company did (or what she did). She was just a generic “coder” and we were supposed to go with it.

I’ve said this once, I’ll say it a million times. As human beings, half our lives are dedicated to our jobs. We spend 8-10 hours a day doing them. They are often the most influential part of our lives. So if you don’t know what a character does? If you don’t know where they work, what their position is, what their everyday tasks are? You don’t truly know that character. And, believe me, we the audience can feel it.

Even if you pick a generic job, like accounting or middle management, LEARN what that company does and why your character ended up doing that job. Cause if you don’t know that, you’re not giving us the full dimension of your character. You’re only giving us the part that you care about. And it’s making the character one-dimensional.

Speaking of one-dimensional, today’s script continues a recent trend of writers treating all their male characters as moronic sexist a-holes. I don’t know when this started or why writers do it. Isn’t the male species more varied than every single one of them being moronic and sexist and an a-hole? I would hope there are some who are nice. That are cool. That are complex and interesting. And yet in 2020, finding a cool masculine male character who’s intelligent and respectful is like looking for Bigfoot.

The crazy thing is it wasn’t that long ago when I was telling male writers who used to write one-dimensional female characters, “You know that women are going to read this script, right? Do you think it’s a good idea that all your male characters are complex and well thought out and all your female characters are one-dimensional and sex objects? Do you think that’s going to go over well?”

And now it’s the exact opposite problem. Female writers are writing all their male characters as simplistic sexist idiots. You know that men are going to read your script right? Do you think that’s going to go over well?

I’m not sure where I come out on Repossession. Sometimes I thought it was funny. But other times it got too vulgar or too off-track (it didn’t make any sense for the hero to be a virgin – that felt like a whole different movie).

I think if the script stripped away the stuff that wasn’t directly related to the concept of a young woman finally allowing her anger to come out, this could be that rare comedy movie that gets released in theaters. Because the concept itself is so marketable. But it hasn’t found its legs yet. And for that reason, it wasn’t for me.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Here is the opening slugline for Repossession:

EXT. WEEKS FOOTBRIDGE – CRISP AUTUMN DAY

Is this okay? Traditionally, in a slugline, you only want to tell us if we’re inside or outside (INT. or EXT.), the location that we’re at (the Weeks Footbridge) and then whether it’s day or night. Amram has added “Crisp Autumn” to the slugline, which would drive purists crazy. But I think it’s perfectly fine. I like anything that gives me a clearer visual for what I’m looking at. Sure, Amram could’ve told us it was a crisp autumn day in the description underneath the slugline. But doing it here frees up the description for her to give us other information. I wouldn’t go crazy with this hack. If your additional text stretches the slugline to two lines, that’s a no-no. But if you can quickly get some relevant description in there without it feeling too imposing, there’s no harm in that.

Is Into the Night the next Lost?

Genre: Sci-Fi (TV show)
Premise: (from IMDB) When a mysterious cosmic disaster strikes Earth, survivors on an overnight flight from Brussels race to find refuge and escape the sun’s rays.
About: This show premiered on Netflix last week and I’d been hearing whispers that it was good. It’s a Belgium show and the characters speak French, which has limited its audience here in the U.S. Jason George, the creator, seems to have a prominent TV career in Belgium as he’s produced a lot of shows. His one American credit comes as a producer on the Adam McKay movie, Vice.
Writer: Jason George
Details: I watched the first 2 episodes of the 6 episode series (each ep is about 40 min long)

I love high concept TV shows and I love plane-related concepts so this was right up my alley. It had just a hint of Lost in it, and a hint of Lost is better than a shout of all these other excuses for TV shows I’ve seen lately.

I suspect that the show, which is really good, hasn’t gotten enough attention due to its subtitles. And I get it. I’m resistant to subtitles as well. The only time I’ll watch something with subtitles if I’ve been told that it’s GREAT or it has a really high concept, like today’s show.

But I was thinking to myself, why do you hate subtitles so much these days, Carson? You’ve always disliked them, but it’s never been this bad. And then it hit me. It’s because YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO A MOVIE WITH SUBTITLES.

We’ve grown so accustomed to multi-tasking, playing on our tablets and phones while watching something, that we’ve grown this second-sense ability to keep up with the movie by listening to the dialogue in the background.

But you can’t do that with a subtitle movie. You have to pay attention THE WHOLE TIME to know what’s going on. That’s why we resist these things so much. Unlike regular movies, they force us to actually pay attention. You know, the way movies were actually meant to be watched.

Into the Night starts innocently enough at a Brussels airport. It’s an early morning flight to Moscow, before the sun has come up. People are arriving. They’re just starting to board. A nervous looking man, Terenzio, notices reports on the television of people dropping dead in Asia.

He leaps up, surprises a guard, grabs his rifle, then charges onto the boarding plane. The captain isn’t even on the plane yet. Only the co-pilot, Mathieu. He tells Mathieu to fire up the engines, they need to get out of here now, before the sun rises. Mathieu has no idea what’s going on but when you’ve got a rifle in your face, you do as you’re told.

The plane takes off and Terenzio tries to explain to the passengers (about 20 of them made it on) that the second the sun rises, everybody dies. Doesn’t matter if they’re above ground or below it. Something about intense gamma rays. Of course no one believes him. And since the wifi is down, it’s impossible to confirm the claim.

The plane detours to Iceland to refuel only to find that the entire airport is on fire. So they head to Northern Scotland instead and land at a remote airport. It’s there where they find out Terenzio’s claims are true. The last article on the event, posted an hour ago, says it has something to do with a polarity change in the sun.

The group inherits three new passengers, a group of suspicious Irish military men, and off they head to the next airport. In addition to our pilot and former terrorist, we have Sylvie, a helicopter pilot who just lost her husband to cancer, Ayaz, an alpha male businessman, Rik, a jumpy older man who seems to be hiding some information of his own, a mother and her lung-challenged son, an old Russian man with dementia, a mechanic who got stuck on the plane, and Ines, a social media influencer.

As the group troubleshoots immediate problems such as fuel supply, a faulty radio, and which airports to keep jumping to, they must ultimately figure out what’s going on with the sun, and if their desperate attempts to stay alive are simply prolonging the inevitable. That, sooner or later, the sun will catch up to them.

I’m two episodes in and, so far, this show is great!

We talk a lot about urgency here at Scriptshadow. It’s one of the best ways to add tension and momentum to your story. Well what’s more urgent than constantly having a killer sun on your tail, always only a couple of hours from catching up to you? You can feel the clock ticking in every one of these scenes.

I was a little worried about how they were going to explain away these rays. How would a sunrise kill someone? Especially someone who’s downstairs in a basement with no direct contact with light? But they cover that quickly, explaining that an intense polarity event has caused the sun to emit unseemly amounts of gamma rays, which they believe is what’s killing people.

It might not work for some (I know the usual suspects in the comments section will go ape-doodoo) but I’ll just say watch it before you knock it. They do something really smart in that they don’t OVER-DESCRIBE the problem. That’s where a lot of writers get into trouble. It’s like when you oversell a lie. The more you go on and on about it, the more it looks like you’re lying. The explanation here is short and succinct and just convincing enough that we go with it.

One thing I always find interesting about these concepts is that you have to begin the catastrophe to start the characters on their journey but the catastrophe can’t be too big to the point where the characters wouldn’t realistically go on the journey.

If billions of people are dying all over the planet, there isn’t going to be a Brussels to Moscow flight. I’m sorry but there just wouldn’t be. So the writer has to walk this line of beginning the catastrophe to set up the story but have it happen JUST AS they’re getting on the plane so it’s still believable that the flight would happen.

George definitely fudged some of the timing but the plane take-off was such a frantic sequence that we overlooked it.

I only bring this up because these are the little things screenwriters have to deal with that the average viewer never thinks about. However, if you get it wrong, it could easily break the suspension of disbelief. So the writer has to spend a lot of time thinking about.

If people die the second the sun rises, that means tens of millions of people are dying all at once. And every 30 minutes, tens of millions more are dying. Why would an airport still be scheduling flights when 100 million people just died an hour ago?

But Into the Night makes up for it in the story details, which George is quite good at. For example, I love the fact that the pilot isn’t yet on the plane. Only the co-pilot is. It’s always more interesting when the less experienced guy is put in charge.

And when the co-pilot calls for a co-pilot of his own from the passengers, the only passenger who can help isn’t even an airplane pilot. She’s a helicopter pilot. Again, you want to keep adding UNCERTAINTY to the equation. The more uncertain you can make things, the more drama you’re going to get.

If this plane was piloted by an all-star pilot who spent five tours in Afghanistan and he was known as the best pilot in the world, we’d all feel safe. We’d feel he’d be able to steer us out of this. It’s putting the flawed and unsure character in charge that creates our uncertainty, that keeps us off-balance and wondering how in the world they’ll be able to pull this off.

The show is also very good at keeping its characters busy with tasks. There’s a broken radio that needs fixing. There’s a passenger who’s sick. There’s refueling that needs to be done at every airport. There’s food that needs to be restocked. Remember, characters are most interesting when they’re being ACTIVE and the way you make characters active is by giving them things to do.

Into the Night does this well and it means that, so far, the episodes are vibrant and alive.

One last thing I want to point out. The social media influencer character here, Ines. I’ve started to see this character pop up A LOT in scripts lately. And almost every time, it feels like the writer has never spent more than a couple of minutes on an influencer’s page.

As a result, the character comes across as lazy, dishonest, and cliched. Remember, the quickest way to any cliched character is writing about something you know nothing about. You will always default to the broadest strokes of that character because the broad strokes are all that you know. The key to characters that pop is the opposite. You must be specific about them. So if you’re going to include a social media influencer, go do a lot of research on social media influencers. Don’t just write what you THINK a social media influencer’s life would be like cause it’s guaranteed to come off as cliched.

Into the Night is worth checking out. Can’t wait to watch the last four episodes.

[ ] What the hell did I just stream?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: A nice hack is to make the cliched character (aka the social media influencer) the opposite of the general perception. So, if you have a beautiful female social media influencer, don’t make her flashy and bitchy. Make her introverted and shy, the opposite of her big online personality.

Today’s script is like an R-rated Princess Bride set in 16th Century Rome with a little Mission Impossible built in to boot.

Genre: Action/Comedy/Period
Logline: In 16th-century Rome, astronomical badass Nicolaus Copernicus seeks papal approval for his radical new theory about the universe, but after he’s framed for the Pope’s kidnapping, he’ll risk his life and legacy to track down the real abductors.
Why You Should Read: I’ve always loved history. I just wish it could be funnier. If I had a time machine, I probably wouldn’t use it kill baby Hitler. Instead, I’d just swap him with baby Charlie Chaplin who was born a mere four days earlier. But since the latest version of Final Draft is easier to get my hands on than a functioning time machine, I decided to write Renaissance Men. A hilarious adventure that pits some of Renaissance Europe’s biggest egos including Copernicus, Machiavelli, Nostradamus and Michelangelo against each other in a high stakes game of cat and mouse.

I had many reasons why I wanted to write this. First, I knew it would be a lot of fun. Second, I was sure I could generate a ton of laughs. And last but not least, because a story about how the rich and powerful will cover up scientific truth to protect their political interests is even more relevant today than it was 500 years ago.

Writer: Eric Boyd
Details: 97 pages (this is a slightly updated draft from the Showdown)

Bill Hader for Machiavelli??

Full disclosure, I messed up.

I went back through all the recent Amateur Showdowns to find five second-place finishers who would compete in Second Place Showdown and I forgot who wrote Renaissance Men. I only realized after I put up the scripts that this was the same writer who wrote Jingle Hell Rock.

So while some of you may be upset that Eric got another shot at the prize, don’t be mad at him. Be mad at me. I’m the one who put his script in there. As far as fairness goes – hey, if you want to get that review you gotta beat the best, right? Eric’s one of the best we’ve had so when you face him, you’re going to have to bring it.

And look, the competition at the next level is a lot tougher than here on Scriptshadow. So you’ll have to beat guys like Eric regularly.

Jingle Hell Rock rocked. Is Renaissance Men in the same league?

The year is 1524. Famous Pollack Copernicus has come up with a radical theory. Unlike how it’s depicted in the bible, the earth actually revolves around the sun, not the other way around. Copernicus’s goal is to head to Rome, pass this information on to the Pope, and become forever famous.

But just before he’s about to leave, he learns that his sister died and he’s in charge of her five children. The oldest of the children, Viv, is a firecracker who’s just as ambitious as Copernicus, and when Copernicus leaves and shows up in Rome a week later, he’s shocked to find Viv waiting for him. What are you doing here, he asks!

“Getting to Rome’s not that hard. All the roads lead here,” she responds.

Pissed off that he’s got this anchor tied to him wherever he goes, he pawns her off on his old pal Machiavelli, who’s pursuing a second career in acting. Then, just as he’s about to tell the Pope what’s up, a rival of Copernicus’s named Valentinus kidnaps the Pope, demands a ransom for his release, and frames Copernicus for it!

After getting tortured, Copernicus is able to escape and it’s then that he learns that not only are Valentinus and Machiavelli working together, but they plan to plant a thousand barrels of gunpowder under the Vatican and destroy it!

While Copernicus tries to save his niece, Queen of France Catherine de’ Medici shows up with her newest toy, her psychic Nostradamus! Nostradamus says that this is actually a lot worse than it seems. It turns out that the Pope is in on this too. They’re going to blow up Rome and begin hundreds of years of war.

Copernicus’s only shot at stopping this is teaming up with his old rival, Michelangelo (Copernicus has a lot of rivals), saving Viv from Machiavelli’s clutches, then getting to the bomb site and stopping this world-ending explosion from happening. Can he do it? Or will his giant ego and need to be remembered throughout all of history doom him?

Okay.

It’s no secret I love Eric’s writing.

I think he’s hilarious. On a site where we’re lucky to find a good comedy script once every other year, it’s nice to have someone who’s clearly talented in this genre.

And the best thing about Eric is how specific his humor is. Of all the Roman historians I know, I haven’t met a single one who can tell a joke.

Eric’s ability to both know this history and hit you with in-jokes about the era line after line is really impressive. I mean who do you know who can reel off a dozen jokes in a row about Catherine de’ Medici?

It’s also hard to believe that all these famous figures lived at the same time. By the time Nostradamus was thrown in the mix, it was pure comedy mayhem.

With that said, something wasn’t working as well as Jingle Hell Rock for me. But because I don’t know this era in nearly the level of detail that Eric does, it was hard for me to figure out why.

I think the most obvious problem I ran into was the overly dominant plot. In pretty much every scene, characters were dishing out exposition about where we were in the story and what needed to happen next.

Now the thing about comedy is that exposition is easier to write because you can do it in a fun way. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Back to the Future, which is one of the most plot heavy blockbusters you’ll ever see, and for that reason it has a ton of exposition. But it works because they make the exposition funny.

Marty’s “WTF” bafflement to Doc showing him how time travel works in that mall parking lot means we’re laughing in between every line of exposition. “Wait a minute, Doc. You’re telling me you built a time machine…… out of a Delorean???”

Eric does his best to do the same here in Renaissance Men. But the script was SOOO plot heavy that even when he’s cooking, the complexity of what needs to be conveyed wins out.

That’s one of the hardest things about comedy. Comedy scripts still need to follow the general rule of ‘every scene needs to move the story forward,’ but when people come to see comedies, they don’t come to see plots unfold. They come to laugh. So you’re performing this delicate trick where you’re always moving the story forward but not allowing the audience to realize it because they’re laughing so much.

With Renaissance Men, I wanted more funny dialogue. I wanted more funny scenarios – set pieces that were clever and used the time and place appropriately. The torture device scene was the right idea even though it never quite rose above ‘amusing.’

But, most of all, I didn’t want characters talking about what they needed to do next, which encompassed a large percentage of the screenplay. It led to a lot of moments where I thought, “Hmmm… the *idea*of this is funny. But the execution isn’t making me laugh for some reason.”

Like going and finding the original model who posed for the Mona Lisa was a funny concept. I thought, “Oooh, that could be good.” But when she showed up, we didn’t get anything that funny out of it. There were a half-dozen situations like that where the idea of something was funnier than the execution.

That’s not unique to this script by any means. It’s a common issue comedy writers battle. Lots of people can come up with funny-sounding scenarios. But it’s your job, then, to figure out the funniest way to explore that scenario. There’s got to be a funnier way to get Mona Lisa in here than having her be a tagalong with a few sorta-funny lines.

With that said, there’s more good here than bad. Easily. I enjoyed reading Renaissance. I just think it needs one of those rewrites where your sole goal is to find as much humor as possible. Judd Apatow is famous for this. He makes writers go into their scripts all the time and come up with 30 more jokes.

But it’s not just the jokes. A joke is a line. A joke is a moment. You have to come up with really funny scenarios that do most of the joke writing for you. There is some of that going on here. But it needs more.

So I give a hearty thumbs up to you, Eric. Good job.

What’d the rest of you think? Also, curious to hear who you’d cast in all the roles!!

Script link: Renaissance Men (updated draft)

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: “Jesus. She brought an army.” “Yeah, but it’s just a French army.” One of the easiest comedy devices to use is the “running joke.” You pick something and you just keep hitting it over and over. That’s the joke. Here, one of the running jokes is how pathetic the French are. So we keep hitting that joke over and over. Just make sure that the subject you use for your running joke is actually funny. :)

What I learned 2: In a comedy, you have to have WHAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE three stand out historically funny set pieces. They may not actually be historically funny. But you have to believe they are. One of my biggest issues with this script is it doesn’t have one. Whereas Jingle Hell Rock had 4-5.

The other day, I started reading a Black List script and I was about ten pages into it and it was just boring with a capital B. Since I planned on reviewing a script that day, I had a choice to make. I could either ditch this script and start a new one (which I hate to do) or I could keep going.

So I went and checked the Black List to see if I could glean any extra information about the writer. I noticed he was repped by a manager I’d never heard of before. The script was a lowly ranked Black List script. So I made the decision that, based on the first 10 pages being boring and the writer having weak representation, I was out.

Now you may say, Carson, dude, that’s savage. Are you saying that every writer who is repped by a low-level manager sucks? Writers have to start somewhere. True. Of course there are going to be good writers who start with low-level managers or agents. But, based on the 8000 screenplays I’ve read, the data has told me that, WAY more often than not, if you’re repped by someone I’ve never heard of before, it’s likely the script will be weak.

That led me to some deeper analysis about reading in general and why I choose to give up on a script. Because every reader, whether it be the lowest reader on the food chain or JJ Abrams who’s looking for his next project, have some similar judgment process by which they’ll give a script a certain amount of time. And that time will coincide with a number of factors attached to the script.

That’s what I want to talk about today. I call it SCREENPLAY CURRENCY. It’s something I’ve been attaching to scripts unconsciously for years. But today I decided to solidify it into something more tangible so that writers can understand what’s going on the reader’s head and they can properly game plan how they write a script under those circumstances.

Now to those of you who have always poo-pooed this practice of readers giving up on an amateur script but giving pros preferential treatment and reading their scripts differently, I point all of you to Amateur Showdown. We’ve proven again and again that this is not a practice unique to the Hollywood guard. Every single person who reads something is gauging whether it’s worth their time to keep reading. And, as we’ve shown over and over again, most of you don’t make it past the first page of an Amateur Showdown script. So why would you expect someone working at a production company whose time each day is limited to act any differently?

What I do with screenplay currency is I assess a number to a script based on factors surrounding that script. These numbers represent, roughly, how many pages I’m going to give the script to pull me in. So if something gives a script +3 currency, I’ll give it 3 pages. If there are several factors adding currency, a +4, a +1, and a +10, I’ll give that script 15 pages.

Again, none of this is exact. I’m not a robot who finishes at exactly page 15 and then says, “Beep-beep-boooop. Carson, what shall you do? Do you like script, press ‘yes’ or ‘no.” But I’ve found that, over time, it’s roughly accurate. That combined number is usually how many pages of my undivided attention I’ll give the script. If it’s lame or boring or sucks after that time, why would I keep reading? Why would you?

Here is an incomplete list of some of the things that create my screenplay currency:

Script is recommended to me by an impartial party (not the writer): +5
Script is recommended to me by two different people who don’t know each other: +15
Script is recommended to me by 3 or more people who don’t know each other: +25
Script is recommended to me by someone I really trust and whose taste I respect: +30
Script is ranked high on the Black List (top 5): +50
Script is ranked low on the Black List (bottom 20): +10
Script is repped by a high level agency (WME, CAA): +7
Script is repped by a high level management company (Kaplan/Perrone, Anonymous Content): +5
The writer has professional credits: +7
The writer has written at least one movie I like: +25
The script has won a high level contest (Nicholl): +15
The script has been a finalist in a high level contest (Nicholl): +10
Semi-finalist at Nicholl: +3
A top level writer in the industry (Sorkin) or a writer I really love: +100 (I’ll almost always read the entire thing)
A random script from an amateur writer who I don’t know from Adam: +1

The obvious question then becomes, what if you don’t have any screenplay currency? Should you give up?

Of course not.

But zero screenplay currency does mean you have to write differently than someone with a lot of currency. If you’re a writer who has 30 points of screenplay currency, you know you can take your time in the early scenes because you know the reader is going to stay with you.

But if you try to slow-burn your way through the first act with zero screenplay currency, you’re sinking your own ship. Readers have no reason to trust that trudging through that slow first act is going to pay off for them.

For that reason, you should be writing something that’s tighter, that’s faster, that has a flashier concept, something where you get the reader hooked right away. The perfect example of this is the script I reviewed Tuesday, Unhinged. The opening scene has our antagonist killing someone and then we’re, literally, off to the races.

Or if you don’t like car chase movies, another script that would’ve worked with zero screenplay currency is The Cabin at the End of the World. It starts off with this scary giant of a man approaching a small girl and we’re not sure if he’s going to kill her or not. First page, first scene, I’m in. And then we KEEP GOING. These guys break into this house, they tell our protagonists they have to sacrifice a member of their family and, heck yeah, I’m going to keep reading.

Conversely, if you have zero currency and you’re trying to write a script like BLUR, a drama about a group of depressed 20-somethings mucking around in life, I’m not saying it’s impossible to write something like that that gets you into the industry. But you’re stacking the odds against yourself.

The irony of all this is that the most successful screenwriters – the Sorkins, the Tarantinos, the Coens – they know they have all the screenplay currency in the world. An unlimited supply! Yet they still write LIKE THEY HAVE NONE. That’s why it’s a good mindset to have, that you have zero currency with anybody. Because when you know you have to hook a reader right away, you’re going to write more exciting stories. You just are.

So go forward with this knowledge and hopefully it will make you think twice about that next script you’re going to write.

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!