Has Scriptshadow become the “I Care A Lot” channel? Is tomorrow a 5000 word breakdown on Peter Dinklage’s character in the film? No, but the Golden Globes are so weak this year (it feels like the bronze medal game at the Olympics) I don’t have anything to say about them other then they should come up with a new category called, “Most Boring Movie” and just put all the movies in that category because that’s how good these movies look.
On the plus side, this gives me an opportunity to talk about my favorite topic: “I Care A Lot,” a movie I just highlighted a scene from last week. At that point, I had only watched half the movie, mostly because everyone said the movie “fell apart in the second half” and that didn’t exactly motivate me to finish it. But this weekend I sat down and gave it a full watch and you know what?
You were all wrong.
This is a good movie from start to finish and I’m going to explain why. Now, you should know that this is a twisty turny flick and, therefore, you should check it out before you read this because I’m going to be spoiling the bejesus out of everything. But if you’re okay with spoilers, let’s continue.
“I Care A Lot” attempts to walk one of the thinnest tightropes in screenwriting – building the story around an unlikable protagonist. Marla is someone who makes her living off of conning old people. These seniors are perfectly healthy. Yet she thrusts them into assisted loving homes without their permission so she can take control of their finances and rob them blind.
The reason it’s so hard to make scripts like this work should be obvious. If we’re not rooting, in some way, for the main character, nothing else matters. You can have the most amazing plot in the world and it doesn’t matter if we detest the protagonist.
I want to highlight something I’ve never seen any other screenwriting enthusiast talk about. Which is that there are three degrees of unlikable protagonists. I bring this up because a lot of writers push back when you talk about unlikable protagonists and say that as long as they’re “interesting,” you can build a story around them.
But it’s actually more complicated than that because the different degrees of ‘unlikable’ dictate how hard you have to work to get the reader to root for your hero. The first and most common unlikable hero is the ‘bad but not really bad’ protagonist. This would be someone like the Mandalorian. He’s not very nice to anybody. He only does things if it helps him. He doesn’t talk a lot. But let’s be real. He loves Baby Yoda and at the end of most episodes, he’s helped someone else out. Readers will always root for these characters because they know, deep down, they’re good.
The second type of unlikable protagonist is the “genuinely bad” protagonist. This is someone slightly more sinister than the Mandalorian and truly in it for himself. A good comp would be Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) in As Good as It Gets or Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. These characters can be downright nasty, saying mean things to people or constantly screwing those people over. Still, if you know what you’re doing as a writer, you can keep us rooting for characters like this.
The third type of unlikable character is the “truly bad” protagonist. What separates this character from the others? These characters are morally bankrupt. Not only do they hurt others, but they hurt people who are lesser than them. Children. Old people. The poor. Underlings. This is what Marla is and this is the single hardest character to make an audience give a shit about.
Which is why so many viewers had a problem with I Care A Lot. We watched this despicable character get away with destroying numerous old peoples’ lives and then, once she’s finally met her match (the son of one of the old people she screws over turns out to be a crime boss), the writer asks us to get behind Marla and root for her in the last 45 minutes.
One of the best tricks you can use when you have an unlikable protagonist is to make the antagonist even worse than they are. That’s the method writer-director J Blakeson used when constructing this movie. He brought in crime boss, Roman, who was even nastier than Marla. Theoretically, at least. Roman tries to kill Marla and her girlfriend, but Marla survives and wants revenge.
Where Blakeson gets in trouble, in my opinion, is that Roman isn’t bad enough to make us Marla’s number one fan. What you have to remember with screenwriting is that how you introduce your character influences the lion’s share of how the audience perceives them. Even though Roman’s a big fat heartless meanie to Marla, we haven’t forgotten how horrible Marla is. How horrible are we talking? Well, I recommended this movie to a friend and she stopped me halfway through the pitch saying, “Oh, that’s horrible,” in response to what Marla was doing to people. She then said she wouldn’t watch the movie.
In other words, your villain has to be EXTREMELY TERRIBLE for the average viewer to change their mind and root for Marla.
While at first I thought Marla and Roman ending up on the same level was a mistake, I began to think that that was Blakeson’s plan all along. This feeds into why the movie works for me. After Marla survives, she kidnaps Roman and brings him to the brink of death, leaving him out in the middle of nowhere, which results in the police finding him, bringing him to the hospital, and labeling him a ‘John Doe.’
We then learn that when a John Doe is found and can’t take care of himself, a legal guardian must be assigned to them. And guess who that legal guardian is? That’s right. Marla. — When movies fall apart, it’s because the writer didn’t come up with a plan. So as they race towards their ending, they throw in a bunch of craziness hoping it’s enough to distract the reader from the fact that they have zero plan. But by creating this twist that pays off Marla’s job, the writer clearly had a plan in mind.
Next up, Marla says she’ll release Roman from her care if he gives her 10 million dollars, which is the amount of money she’s wanted all along. Roman comes up with an alternative idea. Expand her care-taking business. Enough of this small-potatoes shit. Let’s lean into the American dream and go national with this business model of yours. He’ll fund it. She’ll build it. They’ll become partners.
It’s an admittedly zany development. But here’s what I respected. Blakeson understood that neither character should win. They were both too despicable. If she destroys him, we’re upset. If he destroys her, we’re frustrated. The one direction we do not expect the plot to take is a team-up. And the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. They’re both greedy. Of course they want to team up to make even more money than they could separately. It’s the right choice for the story.
What Blakeson also knows is that you can’t have a negative character who doesn’t change over the course of the movie be rewarded. The audience won’t accept it. They need “the right thing” to prevail so they can leave feeling like the world is fair. And so Blakeson has one more payoff. After Marla becomes a multi-millionaire, she’s heading to her car when a crazed man who we recognize from the opening charges at her screaming that his mom died and because of her, he never got to see her, and he shoots Marla dead.
The wicked witch is dead. Order has been restored.
I was told that everything that happens in the last 40 minutes of this movie was random and dumb. But I didn’t see it that way at all. It was all clearly and cleverly constructed with setups and payoffs that make sense. Blakeson knew what he was doing, delivered the movie he intended, and I’m here to tell you he pulled it off. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the reason so many people are so passionate about this film not working is why it works. A movie only truly doesn’t work when our response is apathy. Passion, positive or negative, only comes when a movie affects us in some way. And while this movie made some unconventional choices, the fact that you care a lot about discussing it tells me it worked. :)
Are we getting a black Superman? What’s going on with Kinetic? Are there any updates? What the heck is a “programmer” and why is it now my least favorite word? A trip down memory lane on the eve of David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker re-teaming. What is the hardest character for a reader to remember? I review the SINGLE HOTTEST PROJECT IN HOLLYWOOD right now. Did I like it? And what is it like breaking up with Gerard Butler just 14 short days after Valentine’s Day? All of that and more in this month’s newsletter!
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Recently, I started watching “I Care A Lot,” on Netflix. I’m halfway through it and, although I’ve been told that it falls apart, I like it a lot. Specifically, there’s a scene at minute 37 (if you want to queue it up) that I loved. In fact, it’s the best scene I’ve watched all year and has some of the best dialogue I’ve encountered all year. So I thought I’d transcribe the scene for you (this isn’t the official script) and explain why the scene is so good.
Here’s what you need to know. Marla is a professional guardian for older people who can’t take care of themselves. But Marla’s real racket is putting old people in homes who are perfectly fine and then stealing a ton of money from them. Recently, she’s put an older woman, Jennifer Peterson, in one of these homes. What Marla doesn’t know is that Jennifer Peterson’s son is a criminal kingpin. That’s where we pick up the story. A lawyer, Dean, has shown up at Marla’s office and wants to talk.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) A chemical leak in a local water supply in Central Florida wreaks havoc on the invasive population of pythons, leading a family to the fight of their life to survive.
About: This script finished with 11 votes on last year’s Black List. It is the writer’s breakthrough script.
Writer: Creston Whittington
Details: 110 pages
Today was an extremely long and difficult work day for me.
And, after it was all done, I had to read a script. And review it. Starting at midnight.
To say I was in the best mindset to read a script would be an untrue statement. But I bring it up because when you’re on the come-up, your script is likely going to be low priority to whoever’s reading it.
Which means it will probably be read under similar circumstances as to how I read this script – at the end of the day when you’d rather call it a night. Which is yet another reason to put everything you’ve got into your screenplays. Because while you can’t control outside factors such as the mood of the person who’s reading your script, you can control how much effort you put into your script.
Let’s see what we’ve got today.
We start out with some daunting local Florida history:
“Every year, the state of Florida sponsors snake hunts in an effort to exterminate the Burmese Python, an invasive specie introduced to the Everglades by the Exotic Pet Trade.
Although the low detectability of these snakes makes population estimates difficult, most researchers propose that at least 30,000 and upwards of 300,000 pythons likely occupy southern Florida and that this population will only continue to grow.”
20-something Sharon Esperanza has just got off of work (at the local aquarium) and realizes that her 12 year-old brother, Bobby, isn’t home. It doesn’t take long for her to realize what he’s up to: The Annual Burmese Python Hunt! That’s right. Here in Florida, once every year, you’re allowed to go out and hunt pythons.
Sharon finds Bobby and yells at him. This is the kind of nonsense that got their dad killed, she tells him. But Bobby tells her how fun hunting pythons is and why can’t she please let him. Sharon is reluctant but she figures if Bobby’s going to be hunting pythons, she might as well tag along to make sure he doesn’t get hurt.
Meanwhile, there’s this giant political backstory going on involving Florida gubernatorial candidate Pam Huntley. It’s discovered that Pam was first eaten by, digested by, then defecated by, a 30 foot long Burmese python. This news coincides with a park ranger being swallowed up by another python. Who’s being hunted here. The pythons or the people???
As the hunt continues, the death continues. But it looks like the pythons are winning! As Sharon’s news reporter mother looks into the cause of the sudden attacks, she finds evidence that the local corrupt politician has been working with a giant Florida pharmaceutical company and that the drugs they’re disposing into the water have turned these pythons into serial killers!
Will Sharon and her brother realize how bad this is in time to get back home and protect themselves from the snakes!? Or is it too late? Have the snakes found their way into each and every home in town!!????
I struggled with this one, guys.
Big time.
I think there were twenty characters introduced before page 10? Do writers realize that readers actually have to remember people? And if you introduce a billion people, there’s no way we’re going to remember them all?
There was also a ton of 5-6 line paragraphs. Look, you can write as many 5-line paragraphs as you want in a script. The reader’s not going to read them, though. You’re not gaming the system by squeezing all that extra information in. People who open scripts expect them to read fast. When the scripts don’t read fast, readers simply adapt their reading style to ‘skim-mode’ so that they do read fast.
On top of all this, this script is titled Reptile Dysfunction. When I open a script titled Reptile Dysfunction, the ratio of work to entertainment should not be 5 to 1. Scripts like this should be the easiest scripts to read in the world.
Yesterday we talked about dead relative backstories. Most movies have them. So it’s a common thing you’re going to be writing a lot. Which means you want to be good at it. You want to understand what works and what doesn’t work and make choices that are right for your screenplay.
In this script, after the opening teaser, we watch old home video footage of two people getting married, having a kid (Sharon), watching the kid grow up, graduate from high school, blah blah blah. And then, somewhere along the way, the dad dies. And we finally get to present day where we are now with Sharon as a young adult.
What that montage did was it created context for our main character, Sharon. We were “there” when her father passed away. The argument FOR this montage, then, is that we feel closer to Sharon than had we not gone through that experience with her. The argument AGAINST this montage is that it takes up valuable script time where we could already be into the story.
It’s no secret around here that people will give up on your script within a single page. Everyone on this site has done it. You have read one of those Amateur Showdown pages and thought, “Nope, not good enough to continue.” A montage like the one in Reptile is not story. It’s not entertainment. It’s not dramatic or suspenseful. All it is is backstory. It’s INFORMATION. When you’re giving people information, as opposed to drama, they lose interest.
Now you may say, “But Carson. What about Pixar’s Up? That started with a montage of two people meeting, falling in love, getting married and one of them dying, and it’s considered one of the greatest scenes ever!” That’s true. But that movie was ABOUT THAT RELATIONSHIP. The whole movie WAS THAT RELATIONSHIP so it made sense to start the movie with the montage of their lives together.
This, meanwhile, is a movie about anacondas attacking a Florida town. It doesn’t need that montage. Yes, I agree that it brings us a LITTLE closer to the main character. But I don’t think it’s worth it when you can just allude to the fact, along the way, that she lost her father.
Screenwriting is so funny. Yesterday was all about a premise that was too simple for its own good. It didn’t have enough meat on the bone. Then you have today’s script which takes a simple premise – snakes invading a town – and approaches it like it’s a Woodward and Bernstein biopic. This is so over-plotted and over-populated, it gets in the way of what the script is meant to do – which is to give the audience a good time.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: When it comes to fun ideas, get out of your own way. Anything that gets in the way of a fun read – long paragraphs, overly complicated plots with lots of jumping around, character counts in excess of 40 people – need to be eliminated. We’re picking up your script with a certain expectation of fun. Just like if someone thinks they’re about to read War and Peace and instead gets The Da Vinci Code, they’re going to be pissed, the same thing is going to happen if your fun-sounding premise reads like a history book.
Genre: Horror
Premise: When a dangerous stranger shows up at her front door, a depressed widow must confront her own past in order to protect her two children.
About: This one finished in the middle of the pack on last year’s Black List. The writer, Samuel Stefanak, was a writer on Bill Burr’s Netflix animated show, “F Is For Family.” He was also a staff writer on the Mario Lopez Netflix show, “The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia.” This project is being developed by Blumhouse.
Writer: Samuel Stefanak
Details: 98 pages
The best horror is simple.
Come up with a scary situation and let it play out.
Halloween. It Follows. A Quiet Place. Freaky. Dawn of the Dead. Lights Out.
These horror stories are so simple, it hurts.
So the question has to be asked: When is a horror idea TOO SIMPLE? When do you not have enough meat on the bone?
Today’s script definitely tests that question. Scary dude in the back yard. That’s it. That’s all we’re looking at here. Is it enough? I don’t know. Let’s find out.
30-something Ramona is still recovering from a bad car accident that took her husband’s life. Every night’s sleep produces another nightmare. And every day she has to look at her wounds (a bad arm, a bad leg) that remind her what happened. Since life if cruel, she has to put all that pain aside and raise her two children, 13 year old Ben and 6 year old Annie.
The family lives on the end of a dirt road in the middle of Nowhere, America. So they’re left to deal with this loss all by themselves. Well, except for today, that is. That’s because when Ramona begins making breakfast for her children this morning, she looks out the kitchen window and sees, 100 yards away, an old man in a black suit sitting on a chair.
It’s too far away to see who this man is or get a sense of what he may be here for. So all the family can do is speculate. The kids are scared. And so is Ramona. But Ramona’s trying to be an adult about this. If someone’s here to hurt them, why would he be chilling out in a chair a hundred yards from the house where they can clearly see him?
Against the children’s wishes, Ramona heads out to confront the old man, who greets her with a smile. He’s very kind. Asks her how her day is going. Apologizes for scaring her like this. But he just needed to sit down and rest for a minute. We don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize this guy’s lying through his teeth and it doesn’t take long for him to fess up. He wants to come inside. And if she invites him in, he’ll spare her children. If she doesn’t, all bets are off.
Ramona immediately turns around and marches back in the house, where she lies to her children, saying it’s just some old man who’s tired and needed a place to sit. Let’s go play board games. Ben doesn’t believe his mom and keeps pressing her for details. Oh, and in case you were curious, all lines of safety have been eliminated from the equation (power is out, phone is dead, car is kaput). So the trio don’t have many options other than to wait this out.
After a lot of squabbling, which gives us some additional backstory on Ramona’s car crash, Ben leans into the idea that he’s the “man of the house” now and has to protect the family. So he locks his mother in the bathroom, grabs his father’s old rifle, and marches out to confront the old man.
The old man is just as friendly to Ben as he was with Ramona, though. Even locates Ben’s missing dog that Ben suspected the man had killed. There’s no reason to pull that trigger, the man says, smiling. Frustrated that he didn’t have the guts to shoot him, Ben marches back inside. And that’s when the old man decides he’s had enough. He’s going to come into the house and finish what he came here for. He’s going to kill Ramona. And her children too.
To address my earlier question, I don’t think any horror idea is too simple. But the simpler an idea is, the more you have to nail these two things: First, you have to understand that coming up with your plot is going to be a lot harder than usual. Simple stories don’t offer as many plot opportunities. Which means you’re stuck rehashing a lot of the same stuff from other horror movies.
For example, if you have some psycho holding a character hostage in their basement the whole movie, you’re probably going to have to write the scene where they check every crevice to see if there’s a way out or something that can be used as a weapon. And since so many writers have written that scene before, it’s harder to come up with a version of it that feels fresh.
Second, you have to think a lot more about characters and character development. When situations are simple, the bulk of the story’s focus will be on the character (as opposed to the plot). So you have to ask yourself, “Is my character deep enough to withstand all of that focus?” “Is my character compelling enough?” “Is my character interesting enough?” “Is my character flawed enough?” Where these movies fail is when both the setup and the characters are too simple. Cause then there’s no depth anywhere.
Also, you want to add depth to ALL THE CHARACTERS. Not just the hero. Again, your story setup is too thin to only have one deep character to explore. It’s been done before but it’s really really hard. And, most of the time, the scripts don’t deliver if you’ve got an extremely simple setup and only one deep character.
In the case of “Man in the Yard,” we have a mother and two children. You can’t do much with a six year old character. They’re not old enough to instill any depth in. They don’t have enough life experience. So Annie’s off the table. You have Ben, who’s still pretty young. The writer gives him this story of “becoming the man of the house.” And while it’s okay, I never cared enough about it to feel any emotion around this character.
That left us with Ramona. And this is where the writer tried to install 98% of the story’s depth. She just lost her husband and she was in the car when he crashed. So there’s something there to work with. However, I see dead car backstories so often that it didn’t resonate enough with me. It just felt too familiar. And, for that reason, I never cared enough about this family that I was desperate for their survival.
Which basically leaves us with the man in the yard. There’s no doubt that a man sitting calmly in your back yard in the morning is a scary image. It sure as hell scared me. For the first 20 pages of the script at least. After that, I grew too comfortable. The element of surprise was gone. And while there was some suspense as to what he was going to do next, it all moved a little too slow for my taste.
Which brings us back to the initial question. Can a horror idea be too simple? No. But the simpler it is, the more work you have to do on the plot and character end to make up for it. And I don’t think Man In The Yard got there.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Stay away from low-hanging fruit plot options. Car crash backstory deaths are fairly common in writing. And the inevitable reveal about the crash always plays out the same way (the person who was supposedly driving wasn’t). I always encourage readers to go with something fresh and different. So if you want to include a backstory death, come up with something besides car crashes or cancer. Those options are low-hanging fruit and rarely yield exciting new plot opportunities.
