Genre: Drama/Comic Book
Premise: The origin tale of Arthur Fleck, the man who would become the most famous villain of all time, the Joker.
About: Todd Phillips, the director of the Hangover movies, said he was sick of woke culture destroying comedy and wanted to try something different. Since there is no official origin story for the Joker, he thought it might be interesting to explore that. Warner Brothers was reluctant at first, but once they agreed, they went all in on it, despite the fact that they already had an actor, Jared Leto, playing the Joker. Joaquin Phoenix is said to have lost 50+ pounds for the role, but unlike previous actors’ traumatic experiences trying to embody the infamous character, Phoenix said playing him was “enjoyable.” The movie opened this weekend and made 94 million dollars domestically, making it the biggest opening in the history of October. If that doesn’t make you SMILE, what does?
Writers: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver
Details: 2 hours and 2 minutes
The media is having a hard time with this one.
They want to pigeonhole it or use it to push a hot-take political narrative. And yet, to their unending chagrin, nothing’s sticking. I think that’s because this movie is hard to categorize. It’s such a unicorn in that it doesn’t fit into any boxes. It’s a comic book movie. But it’s really a drama about mental illness. It’s a movie about laughter. But without any laughs. It tackles gun violence, and yet despite our best attempts to villainize Fleck’s actions, we think most of the people he killed deserved it.
That’s the big one for me because it represents just how powerful writing can be. We writers can make a mentally disturbed man murder people and make it feel like he was in the right. How messed up is that?
In case you didn’t read my review of this script, I loved it. It was a tick away from genius. And I was curious if they were going to stick with that draft for the shooting script. The answer is yes with the exception of a few changes.
First, Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) doesn’t show up in the script until late. We see him on TV a few times. But we don’t meet him. And while this didn’t bother me, it was a little weird that this giant character involved in the film’s big climax isn’t formally introduced until late in the script. Phillips must’ve sensed this as well, so they added an Arthur dream sequence early on where he’s in Murray Franklin’s studio audience, and Murray invites him on stage and tells him how great he is. The scene was by no means necessary but they needed Murray in there earlier somehow, and that’s how they did it.
Another thing they did was improve the background storyline of the Joker-inspired city riots. Background storylines are always tricky. By their very nature, they happen in the background. A lot of times writers will depict these storylines through TV news segments – the old “Hey bartender, turn that up, will you!” and the bar quiets down as we see the latest news story about the serial killer on the loose.
But hearing a news guy say, “And the riots are getting worse!” doesn’t advance the storyline in an impactful way. So what you’re always trying to do as a screenwriter with these background stories is look for ways to intersect them with your main storyline. And that’s the change Phillips made in the shooting script.
In the original script, Joker just went to Murray’s show. But in the final film, he runs from some cops and stumbles onto a subway that’s filled with clown impersonators on their way to the big demonstration downtown. Now we’d heard on television that the demonstration was happening. But by intersecting Arthur’s personal story with the actual members of the demonstration, it made it more real. We now feel the riots, the demonstrations, because Arthur is in the middle of them.
But the biggest change they made was to the “love” story. In the script, the Sophie relationship was straight-forward. She was just being nice to someone who clearly had mental issues and he mistook that for her liking him. Late in the script, he goes to see her, finds her having sex with her boyfriend, is confused, and she tells him to get out of his apartment and never come near her again.
The movie takes that up a tic. Now, him and Sophie get in an actual relationship. She goes to his stand-up. She’s there with him for support when his mother is in the hospital. You’re kinda confused what she sees in him, but then the big “Sixth Sense” twist hits where we realize he was imagining being with her all those times. They’ve never been in a relationship at all.
This change made for a better movie but it looks like a change they made last-minute because they weren’t able to smooth it out enough. It never made sense, from the audience’s perspective, why she would be with him. He’s way too creepy and weird. Of course, she ISN’T with him. But that’s a cop out. You still have to sell the fake relationship to the audience. I think a lot of people came out of the movie saying they were glad that twist happened because, otherwise, it made zero sense why she was with him.
So let’s get down to it. What did I think of the movie compared to the script?
I didn’t like it as much.
And I’ll tell you why.
Joaquin Phoenix.
There’s something disturbing about Joaquin Phoenix. He’s a bizarre dude who delights in making people uncomfortable (watch any of his interviews to see this in action) and there were several times during his performance that I felt like he was way too self-indulgent. The random weird dancing sequences (not the cool stairs dance, but the alone in his underwear dance) got tiring. And in these moments, I saw Phoenix. I did not see Arthur Fleck.
It was the same reason I didn’t like that Jim Carrey movie, Man on the Moon. You were so aware that Carrey was being an insufferable nutball on set that you saw the insufferable nutball, not the character he was portraying. There were several times watching Joker where I thought, “These other people working with him must hate him.” I’ve even heard as much. Bryan Callen, who has a cool podcast called “The Fighter and the Kid” talked about his one scene with Phoenix and how the guy is the world’s most annoying human.
And yes, I’m aware I’m not supposed to judge this film on who Phoenix is in real life. But he’s kind of intertwined with this character to the point where you have to. I guess the best way to put is that I never saw Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. But in “Joker,” I definitely saw Joaquin Phoenix. And that prevented me, at times, from enjoying the movie.
As for the story, it hit me harder than it did in the script. Something about the script made me feel safer. There was a tad more fun in it. But the movie, especially with the intense mental illness being displayed, made for a dark sad experience. I was emotionally DRAINED after this film. And this is the reason why I struggle to connect with these movies (tragedies) in general. They’re hard to watch. And afterward, I don’t want to put myself into that emotional blender again. It’s so sad how this person transforms into what he does. I thought that maybe because it was a comic book character, there would be a taste of entertainment to the story. But no. This was about a mentally deranged man becoming unhinged.
With that said, there’s so much greatness in this movie. I loved the killing of the coworker scene and the midget not being able to get out because of the chain lock. I loved the opening scene with the sign. Without that scene getting us to sympathize with Arthur, nothing else in this movie works. I loved the interaction between him and Bruce Wayne at the gate. I loved the seemingly innocuous scene where he asks the mental hospital clerk to look up his mom’s records. It was just a conversation and yet there was so much subtext to it – how at first the clerk thinks he’s normal, but the more he talks to him, the less sure he is, does he help him, does he not help him? I loved the dancing down the stairs scene. I loved the score, the cinematography, and the Joker’s final costume was amazing.
I remember when this film was announced and everybody said, “That’s the dumbest idea ever. You already have a Joker. Now you’re going to have a second one?” In a time of “everything Marvel does is right” and WB doing something that Marvel would never do, that brought them a lot of negativity. And yet they charged forward anyway.
They hitched their wagon to an unproven director in this genre. They made the darkest comic book movie ever. They made it R. Not fun Deadpool R. Sad/Angry R. I read a review where someone said that this is biggest risk a studio has taken since Fight Club and I agree. It’s so different from everything out there. And it would’ve been much easier for Warner Brothers to say no. But they gambled and it paid off. This movie is going to be remembered for a long time. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since Friday. And that rarely occurs these days. These studio movies are so formulaic you’ve forgotten them by the time you’ve validated your parking ticket.
Probably the best thing about this film is it’s going to remind studios to take more chances. It’s been a long time coming.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Find ways to integrate your foreground story with your background story. Having nameless TV anchors talk about a plague sweeping across the globe isn’t enough. You must personally intersect your characters with the plague at some point. That may seem obvious. But a lesser writer would’ve kept all of the “riot-demonstration” storyline in Joker on TV inserts. Phillips knew we had to get Arthur into the middle of that at some point to really sell it.
Last week’s Amateur Showdown was basically a 3-way tie (14 and 1/2 votes for Money to Burn, 13 votes to Odyssey, and 13 votes to The Black Petrel) with some hints of suspect voting, which means I get to decide which of the three I want to review. I went back and forth between Money to Burn and Odyssey. I know that Jay (Money to Burn author) can write. And I get a sense through some e-mails with Alex (Odyssey) that he knows what he’s doing as well. When it comes down to calls this close, there’s only one solution –
FIRST. PAGE. SHOWDOWN.
[echo] showdown…showdown…showdown
That’s right. Here at Scriptshadow when scripts need to be picked and the picking ain’t easy, the written word is the only solution. So here we go. This is the first page of Money to Burn…
And here’s the first page of Odyssey…
Let’s start with Odyssey. Its opening is fine for a movie or cinematic TV show. I can envision the gentle dolly back of the camera from the painting and into the room. But as a script opening, it’s not very good. Scripts aren’t about camera moves. They’re about grabbing the reader. With that said, the writing is strong and detailed and I feel like the writer has a good grasp of the craft.
Moving over to Money to Burn, we’re in a helicopter, a sniper’s looking for his target. Something’s happening! This is a much better opening – dropping us into the thick of things. But like any good Amateur Showdown, there’s a twist. I look to the top of Money to Burn and see… 123 pages??? For a heist flick? That’s a loonnnng script. And Jay’s been at this for awhile. He should know how much high page counts affect readers.
I’m torn about which one to go with but when reading one script gives me an entire extra hour to my evening (Odyssey is 63 pages), that’s the script I’m going to choose. So I’m going with Odyssey.
Genre: TV Pilot/Western
Premise: A fierce pregnant widow makes a deal with a degenerate grave-robber to help her escort a herd of cattle across the Old West while the psychotic creditor that drove her husband to suicide and murdered her father stalks her across state-to-state, determined to make her pay up, or worse.
Why You Should Read: My bread-and-butter trademark is to take a tried and tested genre and write a new interpretation of old tropes. I think we all love westerns for the grizzled stares, the melodramatic music, and the collective fantasy of a lawless land. I do too. But I’m more interested in what the genre can do in the modern-day, not confined by what your Dad might like to watch on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. Odyssey is a pilot for a mini-series that honors what has already been done in the genre, but also takes it forward into new, exciting directions.
Writer: Alex D. Reid
Details: 62 pages
it’s 1891 and 20-something Cassandra Lane is pregnant. Being pregnant back in the 19th century was no picnic but you know what’s less of a picnic? Joseph Dalton, the mean-mugging creditor who Cassandra’s husband owes 5000 dollars to. Joseph’s shown up to the couple’s home in New York to get his money. There’s only one problem. They don’t have it.
After yelling at Cassandra for awhile, Joseph goes upstair to confront the man in question, Hosea, who, when confronted with the reality that he’s never going to find a way out of this, blows his own brains out. That cowardly move suddenly transfers the 5000 dollar debt on Hosea’s head, and puts it squarely on Cassandra’s. Isn’t that special.
Cassandra manages to flea New York and go back to her home state of Kansas. It’s here where she reunites with her widowed father, Nathaniel, who’s having money problems of his own. He can barely pay rent. Yeah, living back in the 19th century pretty much blew. Between your house burning down every month and contacting polio several times a year, you were constantly getting swept away in the Johnstown Flood.
That big fat meanie, Joseph, along with his gang, follows Cassandra all the way to Kansas and kills her dang dad! It looks like Cassandra’s going to be next. But when the gang members carry Cassandra out to shoot and kill her, she’s saved by a grave-robber named Dante, who, ironically, was planning on grave-robbing her father. But this is far from friendship at first sight. The very next day, Dante steals Cassandra’s father’s cattle, which he plans to take to California and sell.
Back at home, Cassandra is visited by yet another nasty presence, a bounty hunter looking for Dante. When he realizes Dante is long gone, he tortures Cassandra, who uses every last bit of grit and spittle to escape and kill the dude. Afterwards she steps outside to see, guess who? Dante. Who’s had a crisis of conscious. Seems he’d rather herd these cattle to California with their rightful owner. So off they go. But little do they know, the evil Joseph is on their trail.
I had mixed feelings about Odyssey.
I was not a fan of the first scene. It was written like Cassandra and Joseph were alone. Joseph’s creeping up on her. We’re thinking she might be in danger. But then, the guy they’ve been talking about this whole time, her husband, was upstairs. Just kicking it by himself. If he’s here to see that guy, why is he talking to Cassandra? So then we go upstairs and have a secondary scene in the house where Hosea is flinging a gun around, threatening to kill himself, and finally does it. The dialogue here felt very soap-opera-ish. On the nose. Overly dramatic (“I can’t even look after my own goddamn wife and child from–from fucking PARASITES like him! What the hell am I if I can’t do that, huh?” “The man I love.”). It didn’t set the pilot off on the right foot, that’s for sure.
And a funny thing happens when the first scene doesn’t work. It triggers a psychological shift in the reader where they lose a little faith in the writer. They don’t move forward with as much confidence. But hey. I was on the fence with Cop Cam for a while and that script turned around quick. So this was far from a script killer.
What annoyed me, though, was the jumping around in time. I don’t mind storyline jumping that much, but it has to have a clear purpose behind it. And this felt more like we were scrambling up the timelines in an attempt to add some extra flash to fairly plain story. I still don’t understand why we were cutting back to Cassandra, her dad, and some Indian kid. I never cracked the importance of that storyline.
The pilot works best when it’s sitting in its scenes and letting the characters push towards potentially ugly situations. Like when the bounty hunter has Cassandra all alone in her house. It’s one long scene but it properly builds a sense of dread and a fear that Cassandra isn’t going to make it out of here alive.
I also liked Alex’s fearlessness. This isn’t your grandfather’s Western TV show. People die in horrible ways and Alex isn’t afraid to show it. Heck, even Cassandra’s poor dog is offed. And while normally, I’m not a fan of animal deaths, it serves a purpose here, which is to make clear to the audience, nobody is safe in this world. And that’s important in a TV show because we’re more likely to watch if we think people are legitimately in danger. Isn’t that when Walking Dead and Game of Thrones were at their best? When you had no idea who was going to make it out of an episode? Once it was clear every main character was getting out of a season alive, those shows went south.
It’s not easy for me to grade this pilot because there’s plenty of things to celebrate. But between the weird time-jumping and the lack of anything that truly set this Western apart from anything I’ve seen before, I’d have to say this just misses a ‘worth the read.’ But Alex should be proud. There’s plenty of skill on display here.
Script link: Odyssey
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m always looking to see if I can simplify a story. And something bothers me about the structure here. We move from New York to Kansas…. so we can move from Kansas to California. Why can’t we redistribute the whole story so that we start in Kansas? That way it’s simpler. We start the movie in Kansas and the pilot is used to set up the rest of the show – which is to move to California. And here’s why plot simplicity is important. The way it is now, Alex is forced to create all of this exposition to explain New York and Joseph and her husband and her father. If we could build this dilemma in Kansas, we wouldn’t have to use precious screenplay energy to rehash a bunch of backstory.
I received an interesting e-mail last week which I initially disregarded but couldn’t stop thinking about. It was a beginner screenwriter who said he’d been reading my site and others for the last three months in order to learn everything possible about screenwriting so that he could write a great screenplay his first time out. He wanted to know my thoughts on if that was possible.
If you’ve been screenwriting for any length of time, you’ve heard the old coda that your first script is going to be terrible. And, actually, that your first five scripts are going to be bad. My experience with this statement has been that it’s true. Screenwriting is a deceptively difficult skill to learn. It looks easy because you don’t have to write as many words as a novel. And everyone assumes that if they love movies, they can also write them.
What these people eventually find out is that there’s a mathematical component to screenwriting (seeing as movies need to be 2 hours long) that must be effortlessly intertwined with a creative side of screenwriting, and mixing these two elements naturally is challenging. And when you really get down in the trenches, you learn that a reader’s attention span is way shorter than you think it is. Which is why most people reading your script won’t even give you the courtesy of reading past page 1. Look no further than Amateur Showdown for that.
But I tried to look at this question from a unique point of view – one might say, a movie concept point of view. I’m given a classroom of 30 people who have never written a screenplay before. ONE of these writers MUST sell a screenplay within the next six months or I’m dropped in a vat of acid by the evil screenwriting super-villain, Juan Augustian. What would I tell these writers in order to best give myself a chance to live? Or maybe the more interesting question would be, do I think there’s any chance at all that I would live?
I’m going to wait til the end of this post to answer that question. And, in the meantime, I’m going to tell you what I would tell those 30 aspiring screenwriters.
The first thing you need to do is read five produced screenplays cover-to-cover, five purchased but not yet produced screenplays cover-to-cover, and five amateur screenplays cover-to-cover. This is mainly to familiarize yourself with the screenwriting format and to compare the differences between amateur and professional work. But also, it’s to track when the story has you captivated and when you’re bored. You want to write down, in detail, why you believe you’re feeling this way.
Say you’re on page 20 and you’re bored. Why. Is it because nothing exciting has happened yet? Or is it because you don’t like something about the main character? If so, what don’t you like about them? The more detail, the better. Are they a sad sack? Are they passive, always allowing life to dictate their actions? By doing this, you’re creating a roadmap for what to avoid when you’re writing your own hero.
I should note that most amateur screenwriters have never read five amateur screenplays cover to cover. Which is sad. It wasn’t until I started reading amateur screenplays that I realized how many of these terrible mistakes I was making in my own scripts. Honestly, it’s like seeing the Matrix of Screenwriting. The green code disappears and is replaced by total clarity. I would even encourage writers to read more than five amateur scripts. But you should read at least five.
After you’ve read all your screenplays, it’s time to come up with a concept. This is probably the most important thing you’ll do. Not just because a good concept gets people’s attention. But because a good concept gives your script a framework whereby it’s easier to write good scenes. Say you like dinosaurs. Well, the concept of visiting a dinosaur island in modern day has more potential than a concept about a paleontologist who’s trying to prove his theory that dinosaurs were almost as smart as humans. There’s a very specific reason for this. In the first example, you can imagine tons of good scenes. In the second, all the scenes you’re imagining revolve around research and writing and conversations with other people. Which means you’re going to have to move mountains to come up with entertaining scenarios. You’re writing a MOVIE so you want an idea that gets people imagining a great movie.
Next up, keep things as simple as possible. One of the hardest things for new writers to manage is too many characters and too much plot. You can see them struggling right there on the page as you’re reading it. To avoid this problem, keep your story simple so you have a reasonable chance of staying in control. No complicated timelines. No overwhelming character counts. No jumping to 50 different locations throughout the story. You want a story that’s manageable.
Now I want to be reasonable here. Every good story has one element that’s troublesome. For example, 500 Days of Summer. It jumps around in time a lot, which is something I’d ordinarily steer a new screenwriter away from. However, that’s what makes the concept fun. So you have to bend somewhere. But make sure that troublesome component is the only troublesome component. You’ll note that 500 Days of Summer, outside of the jumping around, is about two characters in a relationship and that’s it. So it’s still manageable. If the writers would’ve added four other relationships that were also jumping around, the script would’ve imploded.
An ideal concept for a first time writer would be something like Murder on the Orient Express. Yes, it has a fairly large character count. But it’s high concept and it takes place in a contained setting – a train. Also, the story engine does a lot of the work for you – someone’s been murdered and they need to figure out who the murderer is. When you have crystal clear concept like that, it’s easier to write the characters since you know what everybody is trying to do (solve the murder).
The next thing I would do is try to come up with a really interesting main character or secondary character. A great character is a screenwriter’s best deodorant against a sub-par story. That’s because if you write an interesting character, we’ll want to watch them through anything. They become the focus of our interest. Not so much the plot. Think Joker. Think Monster. Think Nightcrawler. Think Venom. Think Lizbeth Salender. Think Fight Club. As much as I gushed over “Yesterday” in the newsletter, one of the things that held it back from being great is the fact that all the characters were safe and normal. There wasn’t anybody truly interesting.
And I’ll make you this guarantee right now. If you have a good concept and an interesting main or secondary character, you will sell your script. Cause those are the two big ones. A producer’s eyes will light up because they know the movie is both marketable and can fetch a great actor.
A few of you may be calling me out on that. “Oh sure, Carson. I’ll just write an all-time great movie character. Awesome advice. I never thought of that.” Fair play. Seasoned screenwriters know that creating strong characters is one of the hardest things about screenwriting. So here’s a hack specifically designed for the new screenwriter. Think of someone you know personally, or who you’ve met in your life, who you’d consider an extremely interesting person. Then use them as the inspiration for your character. We’ve all met some wild people. Why not capitalize on that? Put them in a movie! It’s not as good as creating the character from the inside out, but it’s way better than some plain average Joe.
Finally, come up with an idea that does the work for you. That means give your character a clear goal. Make sure the goal has major consequences attached to it. And make sure there’s some immediacy to the story – what needs to happen needs to happen NOW. Not in three years, not in three months, not even in three weeks. Now! If you create a framework that follows these rules, your hero will always have something to do. “Nightcrawler” is a good example. Louis Bloom wants to become the best nightcrawler in the business. When you have a goal that’s this clearly stated, you’re never going to be confused about what happens next, because you only have to ask yourself one question: “What does Louis Bloom need to do to get closer to his goal?” That’s what I mean by coming up with a concept that does the work for you.
Do I think it’s possible to write a great screenplay the first time out? If you follow these rules and you have some real talent? You have a chance. It’s a small chance. Probably around 2-3%. But it’s better than every other beginner’s chance, which is somewhere around .00000001%. So it CAN be done. Will you do it? Let’s find out!
Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Hit List) A young teacher reunites with her reclusive, scientific genius grandfather for the first time at his isolated country estate, uncovering disturbing truths about her childhood.
About: Jay Russell focuses mostly on directing. He directed the firefighter movie, Ladder 49, with Joaquin Phoenix. He’s making a movie about Lou Gehrig called “The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth.” But here he’s turning to writing-directing and doing so in the horror genre. He sold this project to Paramount. Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road will produce. The script finished with 18 votes on the 2017 Hit List.
Writer: Jay Russell
Details: 118 pages
Just as I was putting this review together, I saw the news over at Deadline about “10-31,” a horror script that has been “much pursued” by everyone in Hollywood. It’s about a Halloween night that goes awry due to a message in a piece of candy. Horror director Eli Roth will helm the movie. This is what he said after reading the script: “Very rarely do you get a script that grabs you by the throat, holds you until the last page, and gives you nightmares after. I don’t want to reveal too much, but this is one of the best, scariest premises for a horror film that I have read in years.” You know when someone starts talking about a great spec, I have to read it. And since it’s Halloween Month, we absolutely have to get this reviewed. So if you have 10-31, send it my way!
Today’s script explores the good old fashioned horror premise of a main character who’s convinced she’s seeing a bunch of scary things, but is told by everyone else that she’s going crazy. Let’s find out if it’s any good.
30 year old Lizzie Fleischer is a first grade teacher whose life is on the up-and-up. She’s about to marry her boyfriend of four months, Stephen, who she’s madly in love with. Before she does, however, she has to put her past to rest. When Lizzie was a child, she used to go to her rich grandfather’s mansion, until one day when the family got into a horrible car accident and both her parents died. Lizzie wants to finally move past this trauma and seeing her grandfather again is the final step.
So up she drives into an endless forest until she finally comes upon the mansion. It’s a little more dilapidated than what she rememberers, but her grandfather still has a groundskeeper, the creepy Ben, who’s doing his best to keep things presentable. After she takes a look around and spots a few expensive pieces of hospital equipment (what are those for?) she finally meets her grandfather again, Dr. Rupert Fleischer.
We soon learn that the trauma was so intense after that crash, Lizzie barely rememberers anything about this place. So Rupert does his best to catch her up. It’s here she learns about the wing of the house that’s been “closed down” and not to be entered. Hmmm… I wonder what that’s about? Later, Liz wanders into the forest where she’s convinced she hears children playing. But this is both in the middle of nowhere and private property. There can’t be any kids around here.
That night, Liz wakes up to hear kids’ voices IN THE HOUSE. When she asks Ben and Rupert about this in the morning, they look at her like she’s nuts. But Liz’s childhood memories start coming back, and some of them include a hospital. A children’s hospital here on the premises. The deeper Liz digs, the more skittish her grandfather gets, until he informs her that, in his professional medical opinion, she may be psychotic. Not to worry, however. He’s a doctor and will treat her. Aww, what a nice guy. What ever could go wrong in this scenario? Read “You’re Not Real” to find out!
The challenge with “main character may be crazy” movies is that the writer has too much power to fudge the world we’re in in order to fit his puzzle pieces together. Literally any strange thing that happens that makes zero sense or doesn’t work for the plot, the writer can lean on the fact that the main character was imagining it. Or not imagining it. It’s such a convenient position to write from. Technically, nothing in your script needs to make sense.
The other big issue I see in these scripts is that the authors have no clue what real psychosis is. The extent of their medical knowledge rests on a few quick wikipedia searches and a friend of theirs who used to be a pharmacist named Todd. True psychosis, or anything that has do with mental health, is a complicated subject matter. And most writers just don’t want to do the research to figure out how their character’s condition actually works.
The combination of these two pitfalls is what often dooms these scripts. Which is why I’m happy to say that Russell manages them well. He doesn’t knock it out of the park. But there’s a sophistication to both the characters and the plot that, over time, gives you confidence that he has a plan here. And that’s all I want when I read one of these “crazy person” mysteries. I want to feel like the writer has a plan on where he’s taking me and it’s going to pay off in a satisfying way.
The area where Russell’s script shines the brightest is in its detail. He does a very good job of describing the area and the house and the things Liz is seeing. Normally, it takes the screenplay’s beefier cousin, the novel, to pull this off. But Russell manages it do it in script form, despite the craft’s minimalistic requirements.
In the end, the only thing that needs to work when writing a mystery is, does the reader want to find out what happened? Your mystery has to be compelling enough to pass that test. And the thought of this man taking advantage of children, doing experiments on them, possibly even doing experiments on Liz, made me want to find out what was really going on. While I wouldn’t say the final explanation was great. It was interesting enough that I felt satisfied. This spooky little script was definitely worth the read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Not every car driving deep into the woods needs to include almost hitting a deer (an early scene that happens to Liz). If you have an instinct to write something – a beat, a scene, a moment, a surprise – the most common reason for that is that you’ve seen it before. So if you’ve seen it before, do you really want to use it? If you like the idea, find a twist on it. At least that way, you’re bringing something new to the table. A very basic example of this is, how do you make two superheroes fighting interesting if we’ve seen a million superheroes fight each other already? Well, what if a superhero had to fight himself? Which is what Captain America has to do in Endgame. It’s hard to come up with these ideas because your brain always wants to do the least amount of work. You have to push yourself.
What I learned special DVD extras: Consider the fact that this is the second horror script I’ve read IN A ROW that had a major plot point where parents died in a car crash. That should tell you, when you come up with that idea, it’s probably because you’ve seen it before. Honestly, sometimes I think the only thing that separates the good writers from the bad ones is effort. Screenwriting really is a medium where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
Genre: Drama
Premise: A young woman gets a job at an investment firm where she’s the only African-American at the company.
About: This script made last year’s Black List, finishing with 7 votes. The writer, Meredith Dawson, wrote on Mindy Kaling’s Hulu adaptation of Four Weddings and a Funeral. She also wrote one episode of The Mindy Project 2 years earlier.
Writer: Meredith Dawson
Details: 107 pages
What I was hoping for when I opened this script was something akin to a workplace “Get Out.” Not only would that be a great pitch, but it’d probably make a good movie. If a friend told me, “You have to see this movie. It’s like Get Out, the New Girl at Work version,” I’d throw that in the Netflix queue right away.
Unfortunately, that’s not what we get. And I’m trying not to hold that against the script. One of the first lessons they teach you in review school is to review the movie you saw, not the movie you wish they’d made. I’m not sure that applies as much on a screenwriting site because sometimes the best way to explain something is to show how you could’ve done it better. And there’s a lot here I think they could’ve done better. Let’s take a look.
Naomi is a 27 year old African-American recent graduate of Stanford Business School who watches way too much Frasier on Netflix. On the night of her graduation, she hooks up with a gorgeous bearded white guy named Ben (page 9). The two are going their separate ways in life, however, so after they sleep together, they don’t talk again.
Naomi then starts her job at Harvey, Larter, and Saw, a venture capitalist firm where she quickly finds out that she’s the only African-American there. No worries. Naomi is used to this dynamic. But what she isn’t used to is when GUESS WHO shows up to team with her on her first job? That’s right, Ben (page 26). It turns out he works here as well!
Despite her attempts to keep her private life separated from her career, Naomi can’t help but fall into a steamy relationship with the sexy Ben. But Naomi’s beta-male co-worker, Nick, who secretly loves her, warns Naomi that Ben is bad. “How?” She asks. Nick says he knows these things and just has a feeling.
Noami and Nick put together a proposal for a new company to finance but Naomi’s boss, Iyana, flippantly rejects it. Weeks later, during a big company party, Naomi is shocked to see that Ben has brought a date. But not just any date. His girlfriend of six years (page 62)! Needless to say, Ben and Naomi’s relationship sours quickly.
But it gets worse. Ben tells Iyana she should invest in the same company Nick and Naomi liked, and this time Iyana likes the idea. So much so that she puts Ben in charge. Naomi asks Iyana what’s up and she says Ben was just more convincing.
Later, Naomi goes to a business dinner meeting with a client they’re trying to sign, an older man, and he puts his hand on her leg (page 88). Noami tells Iyana about it but Iyana does nothing. Disgusted with the way she’s been treated, Naomi decides to let the press know just how little her company cares about keeping women safe.
You’re probably wondering why I included page numbers in today’s summary. I did so for a specific reason. These are the only plot points in the script. By plot points I mean major plot developments that send the story in a new direction. Page 9, page 26, page 62, and page 88.
Four plot points for the entire movie doesn’t provide enough dramatic entertainment for an audience to stay invested. These are movies. They’re not real life, where it takes time for big things to happen. In movies big things need to happen consistently. We go nearly 40 pages between Ben’s arrival at the company and the reveal of Ben being in a relationship. And I would even argue that that’s B-story stuff. It shouldn’t even be the main plot.
Another issue is that there isn’t enough conflict. Conflict is the screenwriter’s best friend. You should always be looking for it. Your hero should be encountering obstacles and problems and issues from every direction. That’s what makes watching characters interesting, is seeing how they deal with the things that are thrown at them.
The first 60 pages of “Spark” is basically Naomi loving life, a party on the page, a 1 hour drive down Easy Street. That’s unacceptable in a feature screenplay. It also makes the ending weird. Because for 60-80 pages, this is a light soap opera. Girl meets guy. She falls for him. Turns out he’s in a relationship. So to then make the ending incredibly serious with major sexual misconduct allegations felt like it came out of nowhere. Had there been more conflict at work and had the tone been darker throughout, it might’ve worked. But in its current iteration, the final act felt like a different movie.
How would you fix a script like this? For starters, you have to understand the 3-Act structure. Something big needs to happen at the end of the first act. Something that sets the story in motion. Today’s writer made Naomi starting work the end of the first act. That’s not enough. It’s just continuing the good vibes. A seasoned writer would’ve gotten Naomi into work within the first five pages. And they would’ve had the sexual misconduct happen at the end of the first act. The movie, then, would be about dealing with the ramifications of what happened, trying to get someone to do something about it while, at the same time, trying to maintain your professionalism, your relationships, and your job. I haven’t read the Roger Aisles script that’s coming out but I can guarantee you the first instance of sexual misconduct isn’t going to happen on page 88. What this essentially means is that Spark has an 88 page first act. And that’s just not understanding screenplay structure.
There were other problems as well. 10-line paragraphs (this is one of the easiest ways to spot a new writer), a lack of clarity in the genre (is this a drama, rom-com, a dramedy?). All the business-speak consisted of buzz words and buzz acronyms minus the necessary specificity to connect it to the story (“But HEAL is puttering out high dividends for a company as young as it is AND we’re on track for FDA approval within the next year.”).
With that said, the writing itself was strong. Unlike that awful script I reviewed in the newsletter where I could barely get through a sentence, the prose was never overbearing and the writing was insanely easy to read, to the point where my eyes were shooting across the page and I never got lost.
But this script is not ready for primetime. There are too many Screenwriting 101 mistakes here. I was hoping for more.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As a screenwriter, one of the things you have to be good at is getting a lot of story across quickly. Take the storyline of Naomi sleeping with Ben and then finding out he works with her. That took 26 pages here. In the Gray’s Anatomy pilot episode, they use the same storyline. And yet it took them less than 8 pages. And that was a TV show! Where they don’t even have to move fast. Whatever you think is the proper pacing for moving your plot along, it could probably move along faster.
