Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: After a mission to destroy a black hole that endangers mankind goes wrong, an astronaut awakens in her escape pod to find that decades have passed seemingly in a moment. Now, with an old body and fragile mind, she battles against the elements of space & time to complete her mission.
About: This script finished in the Top 10 of last year’s Black List.
Writer: Nabil Chowdhary
Details: 84 pages
Today we have something special. It’s a Black List script from a writer who made his internet screenwriting debut right here on Scriptshadow with his very first screenplay. I went back and read my choppy review of that ghost script to learn that I liked the setup but felt the script took a dive in the second half.
But this is a documented roadmap for how to go from first screenplay to a Verve-repped Blacklist screenwriter in 4 years. And while that may seem like a long time to those new to the screenwriting trade, it’s a rare feat when a screenwriter can go from Beginner to Pro in under 5 years. Let’s take a look at what Chowdhary is up to with his latest script.
Clare wakes up in a pod in the middle of space. She doesn’t remember any event that led to this situation. Then Hex comes online (the ship’s nice version of “Hal”) and tells Clare she was on a mission to destroy the black hole that is quickly eating up the solar system.
Her and her team were sent out to Saturn to throw an anti-matter pill into the black hole, where, according to science, the matter and anti-matter would cancel each other out, and the black hole would disappear. But something went wrong along the way and Clare was spat out into space in her escape pod.
And there’s an unfortunate side effect to the event. Clare brushed up against the event horizon and, in the process, aged 30+ years. She’s now an old woman. It’s a real bummer when she finds this out but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it because Mary, from mission control, calls her, asking if their mission was a success. Uh no, Clare says. And I now look like Wilfred Brimley!
Mary tells Clare she’s going to set some coordinates for Clare to head to near Mars, where they’ll be able to remotely bring her back to earth. After hanging up on Mary, Hex brings up some questions about her, asking if Clare has ever even heard of her before. Clare agrees that, yes, there is something suspicious about Mary.
But she doesn’t have time for ’back at the house’ drama since her oxygen is running low. If she’s going to get that rose, she needs to hurry up! After navigating their way through our solar system’s asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, Clare starts to realize she’s probably not going to make it out of this alive. Which means making amends with her mom in a video selfie.
But then Clare gets a distress call from a mysterious woman who may have also escaped from their old ship. Clare commands Hex to ditch this whole Mary return-to-earth project and head back to the scene of the crime, where that hungry black hole is still munching everything up. Hex reluctantly brings her to the distress call’s location, only to realize it’s actually INSIDE THE BLACK HOLE. To find out what’s going on, they’ll have to travel inside. What will happen to our space-faring heroine? Check out “Pod” to find out.
The first thing I noticed is that just like when Chowdhary started, he’s still going into his screenplays with a high concept idea. He knows that the most likely way to get noticed is to start with a strong concept.
High concept ideas DO NOT automatically mean better screenplays. There’s a strong argument to be made that the best screenwriting comes in the lower-concept variety. But the reason high concept is still the better choice is that you’re getting more people requesting high concepts than low ones. And in a numbers game business you want to buy as many lottery tickets as you can. It’s not hard to do the math. 20 out of 100 script requests is going to yield a higher return than 2 out of 100 script requests.
I can’t emphasize this enough. I get so many writers coming to me complaining that they aren’t getting enough requests from their queries. I then ask them their concept and they say, “Oh, it’s a drama about friends trying to become actors in LA” or something like that. I mean, come on. You’re really surprised people aren’t requesting that?
I also noticed that Chowdhary has become more focused. This is a big key for screenwriters – learning that good storytelling isn’t following whatever whim pops into your head while you’re writing. That can be a valuable experiment, don’t get me wrong. It’s important to try a bunch of things early in your career to see what you’re good at and what works. But as you get better, start telling a tighter story with a strong focused narrative. “Pod” is definitely that.
Double finally, you’ve got a super cheap sci-fi project to shoot. And you’ve got a compelling mystery at the heart of your story. What happened that sent Clare’s pod shooting out of that ship? We want to know so we keep turning the pages.
But I struggled with Pod in two areas. The first is in the “obstacle” department. I read a lot more “isolated in space” scripts than you’d think. My guess as to why there are a lot of these scripts is because there are a lot of people who want to make their 2001. And the mistake a lot of them make is that the obstacles facing our hero are ones we’ve already seen.
You’ve got the oxygen running low trope. You’ve got the asteroid field trope. You’ve got the AI entity to give your hero someone to talk to. Just like we were talking about yesterday with garden variety suspect questioning scenes in procedurals, stuck in space movies always have these “been here already” plot points that are called upon again and again.
On top of that, I didn’t understand the flight capabilities of this pod. From what I could gather, it’s barely bigger than the person inside of it. But it has the power to travel around the solar system within a matter of minutes. I suppose this is an unknown future where, conceivably, major technological breakthroughs could have created something like this. But to travel from Jupiter to Mars in minutes? That was a tough buy.
There are two kinds of sci-fi out there. There’s broad sci-fi which is basically fantasy. And then there’s hard sci-fi, where the writers are careful about making everything seem plausible. Star Wars is broad sci-fi. Ad Astra is hard sci-fi. Where you’re going to confuse your reader is when you stuff both of these types of sci-fi into a single script. And that’s what’s happened here. This pod the size of my couch can travel from the sun to Jupiter in minutes?
With that said, I give Chowdhary props for creating a fresh contained thriller in the hardest genre to create reasonably budgeted stories in. He essentially asks, “What if you made Buried in space… and then added a killer black hole?” – And Chowdhary has come a long way with his writing. This script felt a lot more confident. As opposed to his first script, which had a “making things up as I go along” feel to it. This was a better script overall, but didn’t quite reach “worth the read” territory due to the problems I mentioned above.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There are some tropes that are so popular, you assume they need to be a part of your story. So if someone’s up in a space ship and something goes wrong, one of the first ideas that’s going to come into your head is that oxygen should be running low. I’m not claiming you should never use this plot development. But do you really want to use something that audiences have seen in 200 plus movies and TV shows? Obstacles are just like any creation in a script. The more unique they are, the more they’re going to help your script stand out.
Clarice Starling is back! And can someone tell me what the heck Conflict Coffee is??
Genre: 1 Hour Drama
Premise: The continuing exploits of FBI behavioral specialist Clarice Starling one year after the famous case that made her a celebrity.
About: The first attempt at creating a Clarice TV series happened back in 2012, around the same time when that Hannibal series went to air. But the show never made it. This time, the project is being spearheaded by hardest-working-writer in the business Alex Kurtzman and “Rachel Getting Married” screenwriter Jenny Lumet. CBS is said to be big on the show and are expecting it to be a breakout hit.
Writers: Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet
Details: 63 pages
Writing a script like this isn’t that different from writing a spec as an unknown. As an unknown, people go into your script assuming it’s going to be bad. So it’s up to you to prove them wrong. And the sooner you start proving them wrong, the better. Because readers are looking to confirm their bias. As soon as they can CONFIRM it’s bad, they can start skimming.
Writing a Clarice Starling pilot is similar. Viewers are going into it rolling their eyes. It feels like a cash-grab, an exploitation of a perfect movie following a character nobody is interested in seeing outside of those films. So you have to prove them wrong. And the sooner, the better. Because viewers have lots of other options. And they’re not waiting around to see if a bad idea gets better.
With that said, it’s not impossible to write a good Clarice pilot. Everyone thought the same thing about the Fargo TV show. You’re exploiting a perfect movie that isn’t asking to be fit into the TV format. But, what do you know, it turned out great and launched Noah Hawley’s career. Will this have similar success? I’ma let you know in a minute.
It’s been a year since Clarice came out of Buffalo Bill’s house of horrors with Catherine Martin and things are a lot different. Clarice is struggling to deal with the fame and the FBI’s head therapist isn’t convinced she should still be working. Clarice still hasn’t talked to Catherine since that day and the therapist thinks it’s because she still hasn’t processed what happened.
Then Clarice gets a surprise call from Attorney General Ruth Martin. Ruth Martin as in, yes, Catherine Martin’s mother. She flies Clarice to D.C. and tells her they’ve got two young dead women with bite marks on them who have turned up in the river. Ruth thinks it’s a serial killer and she wants Clarice on the case. But Clarice is still barely an agent (it’s 1993 and she’s just 26 years old). So she’ll have to answer to Task Force head Paul Krendler, who doesn’t like Clarice and her lucky serial killer capture one bit.
Immediately, Clarice and Paul disagree on what’s happened. The bite marks indicate a single killer. But Clarice’s training tells her there’s something odd about the bite marks. They aren’t… sexual, which was the operating thesis before Clarice showed up. There’s something weird going on here. But Paul doesn’t want to hear it, and forces Clarice to tell the media it’s a single killer.
Clarice, ever the friend to the freak shows and the misfits, befriends loner detective Tomas Esquivel, a Cuban American who’s still mad at the task force for hazing him by putting beans in his locker. The two go off and talk to family members of the victims, eventually learning that all of them have ties to autistic children.
Clarice begins putting together a working thesis that the women in the river were whistle blowers for a biolab company dabbling in autism medicine. What this means is that this isn’t a killer doing this. It’s a company. Which means this is much much bigger than anything she’s investigated before.
I’ll start by saying this. Sequels are always better than prequels and here’s why. The objective in writing any fictional story, particularly movies, is that you want this event you’re writing about to be the biggest moment in this person’s life so far. If it isn’t, then you’re telling the wrong story.
Luke Skywalker didn’t do anything interesting growing up. Which is why we don’t tell any of that story, as much as Disney would like to. Luke’s life only got interesting when that message from the princess showed up.
Same thing with Clarice. I was worried that they were going to do a Silence of the Lambs prequel with this show. Which would imply that Clarice had a bigger moment in her life than taking down Buffalo Bill. So I’m at least happy that they decided to set the events of “Clarice” after Silence of the Lambs.
But this is an auspicious start to the show. I get what they’re doing injecting some big bad government conspiracy into the mix as to generate enough of an overarching storyline to fill up an entire season. But I’m not sure that an autism conspiracy ignites my reading motor. I mean this is the franchise that gave us Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter. It feels like a step down.
And I’ll give you the exact moment in the pilot where I said to myself, “Uh-oh.” It occurs when Clarice and Esquivel go to the victim’s husband’s house to ask him questions. They go there, ask if they can come in and ask him questions, he says yes, and they come in and ask questions.
Why is this a problem scene for me? Because procedurals have been around for 100+ years. That means you have to always be on your game to keep them fresh. One of the laziest ways you can write an agent-suspect questioning scene is to have them come to the suspect’s house and, in a perfect setting, ask them questions. It’s such a lazy setup that the scene dies before it’s written. You’ve already chosen the least interesting way to tell this scene so, chances are, it’s going to be weak.
I’m not saying you can never write a procedural scene in a character’s home. But it has to be under the pretense that you understand this is a boring way to explore the scene. Therefore, you’re going to do something with it that uses that expectation against the reader. For example, if the suspect is the husband of the dead wife, as is the case here, they show up and he’s extremely chipper. He’s upbeat, happy, asking how they’re doing. Not acting like someone who just lost their wife at all. At that point, we forget where we are because we’re so focused on this character’s odd behavior.
But my preference is that you don’t send your hero to a garden-variety house questioning scene at all, ESPECIALLY when it’s the very first suspect visit of the series. A great hack for avoiding this mistake is to ask, “What’s the worst situation under which my detective would want to question this person?” And then write the scene under those conditions.
It could be as simple as them catching him leaving work during a huge storm. They corner him right as he’s about to get in his car, rain pounding, he says he’s late and has to go before finally saying he’ll give them two minutes. Right there with the rain assaulting their umbrellas, they must hurry up and ask him what they need to know. I guarantee you that’s going to be a better scene than if you sit down with the suspect in his quiet home with all the time in the world.
The best thing this pilot does is the conflict between Clarice and Paul. He really dislikes her. Not just that, but he feels like she didn’t earn this promotion. That she doesn’t belong in his presence, on this case. That created a desire in me to see Clarice prove him wrong. And, actually, that was the only drive for me to finish the story. I wanted her to make this guy look like the loser he was. Unfortunately, everything else was too generic. I felt like I’d seen this show before. The fact that this is Clarice instead of some no-name did help a little. But once the excitement of that died down, the show had to work on its own. And it didn’t work for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Brew your conflict coffee under every scene. What’s conflict coffee? It’s the coffee you brew under a scene before the scene starts that allows for conflict to play out. Most writers don’t brew conflict coffee under their scene. They just plant characters in a generic room with nothing else going on and let them talk to each other, then are confused when everyone says their scenes are boring. Your scenes are boring because you didn’t brew any conflict coffee underneath them!!! Take the suggested scene I created above in the rain. I brewed three heavy cups of conflict coffee under that scene. The first was the storm. That makes things difficult for our heroes. The second is a suspect who doesn’t want to talk to them. And the third is he’s in a hurry, he’s got to get home, so he only has time for a few questions. Imagine the scene WITHOUT those three cups of conflict coffee and then WITH those three cups of conflict coffee. Now tell me which is more likely to be the better scene.
It’s the WWEEEEEEKKKK-EEEENNNND.
Which means we’ve got THREE new movies being offered up at the cinemas. And it just so happens these three films give us the perfect snapshot of what the industry is looking for. We’ve got Gretel & Hansel – our horror movie. We’ve got The Rhythm Section – our Jane Wick flick. And we’ve got The Assistant – our socially conscious entry of the week. All three films, it should be noted, have female leads.
While none of these movies will do huge box office, this is the kind of stuff that Hollywood is looking for from spec screenwriters. The Jane Wick flick might be on the way out, especially if Rhythm Section doesn’t do well. But with the well-written “Ballerina” coming soon under the John Wick banner and therefore with a ton of those Wick marketing dollars, the Girl with a Gun genre might not be dead yet.
What are your thoughts on this weekend’s crop of films?
Let’s move on to Amateur Showdown. Is it ever coming back? Or is it DEAD? Let’s find out together, shall we? On March 13th, we will have SCI-FI SHOWDOWN. My favorite genre. Or wait, wasn’t contained thriller my favorite genre? Who cares. Sci-fi is my favorite genre now.
This gives you 43 days to get your s%#@ together and polish that sci-fi gem you’ve been tirelessly working on for the last six years. Oh wait, that’s me. We’re talking about you guys. Yes, starting today, you can send in your script for Sci-Fi Showdown. Just e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com and put “SCI-FI SHOWDOWN” in the subject line. Include the title, genre, logline, why you think the script deserves a shot, and, of course, a PDF of the script. You’d be surprised at how many people send me entries with no script. You have until Thursday March 12th, 8:00 PM pacific time to get your entries in.
And, if you’re still getting that Last Great Screenplay Contest script ready, a reminder that the deadline is Sunday, June 14th. I need the title, genre, logline, and PDF sent to the same e-mail (carsonreeves3@gmail.com). Except the subject line should be: “LAST GREAT CONTEST.”
Meanwhile, for those who’ve got time to waste, let’s talk about The Outsider. If you haven’t been on the site for a while, I gave a glowing review to the first couple of episodes of this show. I liked it so much, I thought I was watching one of the great TV shows of all time.
Two weeks later I find myself struggling to finish Episode 4. Welcome to the challenge of TV writing, where great television can nosedive in as few as two episodes. So what happened to The Outsider? I’m not sure. But I can tell you exactly when I sensed it was in trouble.
It came in episode 3 with the introduction of a new character named Holly Gibney, a private investigator. Since this character is so all over the place, I’ll leave it to the Stephen King wiki webpage to describe her: “Holly suffers from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), synesthesia, sensory processing disorder, and she’s somewhere on the autism spectrum.” In other words, she’s a “LOOK AT ME AND HOW WILD AND WACKY AND DIFFERENT I AM” character, one of the worst characters a writer can write.
Up until this point, the reason The Outsider was so good, outside of the fact that it had a great hook, was that it had embedded itself in authenticity. These felt like real people. This felt like a real town. These felt like real consequences. This felt like real mourning.
By writing in a totally unrealistic desperate attempt at a scene-stealing character, all that authenticity went out the window. We now had a WRITER (notice the capitalization) who wanted us to know he was WRITING. It doesn’t help that the actress is awful, but the important thing to note here is that, before, characters were authentic. I mean who’s more believable as a person than Detective Ralph Anderson? Holly Gibney might as well be in the next Bad Moms sequel (Bad Moms “Easter Shenanigans!”) she’s so outlandish and unrealistic.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing or how good it is. The second you start writing to impress the reader – whether it’s with your purple prose or outlandish plot twists or crazy characters – you lose. Because that’s the moment when the reader or viewer becomes aware that someone is writing this. And that’s when you’ve lost your audience, when they’re no longer suspended in disbelief. I wouldn’t say that Holly Gibney single-handedly ruined this show. But it’s hard to stay invested in a show when you’re rolling your eyes half the time.
I’m going to keep trying though. Ben Mendelsohn is such a good actor that it’s worth continuing to watch just for his scenes. I mean what other actor could’ve made Captain Marvel watchable? But I’m worried. I’m going to pray this Holly abomination gets knocked off at some point. And that they can ramp up the mystery again. There were full loaves of mystery early on. Now they’re trickling little breadcrumbs at us and expecting us to clap like dolphins.
What do you guys think? Am I being too hard on it? What’s your take on the last few episodes?
Lonestarr357 had a great question in yesterday’s comments. After Scott S. eviscerated the uncomfortably detailed opening scene of I Heart Murder, Lonestarr asked this:
I’m unmistakably reminded of a script from a couple months ago and the indelible scene where the investigating hero was caught, paralyzed and fellated by the villains, who told him to back off or they would not only kill his daughter, but deposit the sperm they just extracted inside of her, so it’d look like he raped her before killing her.
I feel like this ought to be an article in the making. We’re told to create memorable scenes to get the attention of readers, but how far is too far? Does the reaction you hope to elicit fall more toward ‘This is a memorable scene! Let’s give the writer lots of money!’ or ‘This is a memorable scene. I need a fucking shower?’
This is a great question.
I know it’s a great question because as soon as I began typing up my response, I realized I didn’t know the answer. I thought I knew. But this is a far more complex question than it first appears to be.
I remember the exact scene Lonestarr is referring to. And I thought the same thing he did when I read it. This is way too far. It’s uncomfortable. It’s a weird choice. And yet, I DO REMEMBER it. I’ve read thousands of scenes since then and have forgotten almost all of them in the process. But I do remember that scene. So does that mean the scene is a success? You must be doing something right if your scene is more memorable than two thousand others, right?
This leads us to a broader question of, “What makes a memorable scene?”
Strangely, when I tried to compile a list of standout scenes over the last few years, not a lot came to mind. I even googled, “Most memorable scenes of 2019,” and a lot of the scenes they listed were okay. But I wouldn’t call them TRULY MEMORABLE STANDOUT SCENES.
A few that people seem to agree on were The Spahn Ranch scene in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. The Baby Delivery scene in A Quiet Place. The Birthday Party at the end of Parasite. And The Beheading scene in Hereditary. Some of my personal favorites over the last few years would be the Pennywise sewer scene at the beginning of It. The failed Deadpool Team attack in Deadpool 2. And the highway border shootout in Sicario.
What do almost all of these scenes have in common? They’re SPECIFIC TO THEIR SUBJECT MATTER. The Spahn Ranch was Charles’ Manson’s spot in a movie where Charles’ Manson’s shadow is leaning over the whole movie. It made sense to set a major scene there.
What’s the worst thing you can put your characters through in a world where you can’t make a noise or you die? Force a woman to have a baby under those circumstances. A Quiet Place.
Parasite had been setting up the son’s infatuation with Native Americans the whole movie. So it was only natural to have a Native American themed birthday party that all of a sudden becomes violent and murderous.
What’s more “super heroey” than trying to put a new superhero team together. Hence a superhero interview process that ends with six heroes going after the bad guys, only for all of them to die horrible embarrassing deaths, was very specific to that genre.
When you have a movie about a clown who lives in the sewers who likes to eat children, you probably want to write a featured scene where a clown in a sewer lures a young boy in so he can eat him.
The best way to understand the power of writing a scene specific to your subject matter is to see what happens when a movie TRIES to write a memorable scene and fails. Look no further than the motorcycle chase scene in Gemini Man. Now this isn’t a bad scene. But it’s far from a memorable one. Chances are you’ll forget the details of it within 48 hours.
While I’m not saying a lack of specific subject matter is the only reason the scene is memorable, it is a major one. WE’VE SEEN MOTORCYCLE CHASES BEFORE. We just saw one in John Wick 3. And that one had freaking samurai swords. Yet you’re here trying to make a nuts and bolts motorcycle chase scene your big memorable scene of the movie? Of course it’s going to be forgotten. And the big reason for that is that motorcycle chases are a dime a dozen in action movies. You needed to come up with a scene that was SPECIFIC TO YOUR SUBJECT MATTER.
So let’s go back to Lonestarr’s original question. What is it about that fellatio sister rape-framing scene that, even though it *is* memorable, doesn’t place it in the same category as the scenes I highlighted above?
The main problem is you’re introducing SHOCK for shock’s sake. A truly shocking moment *will* be memorable. For example, I could have a character butcher a live elephant over the course of five minutes. It would be shocking. It would be memorable. But would it be the good kind of memorable? No, of course not.
These scenes also become a problem when the writer makes it more about them than the story. Again, if you look at all of the examples I used above, those scenes organically fit into the story. But when you’re having characters say and do things that are utterly disgusting and way further than they need to go, that gives off the impression that the writer is trying hard to make his scene shocking. And in those cases, it’s more about them than the story.
But that brings us to the curious case of Hereditary. As some of you remember, I hated Hereditary’s script. I thought it was the epitome of desperate shock-value writing. There’s no movie here. It’s just a collection of “look at me” shocking moments. And no moment was more “look at me” and shocking than the sister decapitation scene.
However, in director Ari Aster’s defense, it’s legitimately in the top 5 most memorable scenes of 2018. Many Hereditary fans will use it as proof positive of Aster’s genius. But this is a scene that does not pass the SPECIFIC TO ITS SUBJECT MATTER test. You could’ve written this scene into any horror film of 2018 without much story rearranging.
So that’s what’s tripping me up on creating a clear set of rules regarding MEMORABLE GOOD scenes and MEMORABLE BAD scenes. Clearly it’s in the eye of the beholder. However, I do think that focusing on creating a big clever well-set-up scene that’s specific to your subject matter is always going to yield better results than writing a shocking or vile or uncomfortable scene. Those will be memorable. But for all the wrong reasons.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A true-crime podcaster tries to solve a gruesome cold case, putting her in the killer’s crosshairs.
About: Sony Pictures picked this one up for six-figures. It went on to place on last year’s Black List. The writer, Tom O’Donnell, has written on a couple of Comedy Central animated shows.
Writer: Tom O’Donnell
Details: 120 pages
Reader bias.
What is it?
Reader bias is the factor you cannot control as a writer, nor should you try. It is when the reader simply does not like the genre or subject matter you are writing about. But here’s the good news about reader bias. Just as it can hurt you, it can help you. The reader can love your genre and subject matter. And that’s when you’re in the best position to succeed – when you’ve gotten your script in front of someone who likes that kind of script.
Theoretically, there are four reader situations you will run into.
(Hate – Hate) Reader hates your subject matter and hates your execution.
(Hate – Like) Reader hates your subject matter but likes your execution.
(Like – Hate)Reader likes your subject matter but hates your execution.
(Like – Like) Reader likes your subject matter and likes your execution.
So, assuming you have an objectively good script, you need to give it to at least four people for the odds to sway in your favor that one of them is going to be a Like – Like. And the odds increase if you can double that and get it to eight people (triple with 12, quadruple with 16!). However, this Netflix’esque algorithm only works if the script is actually good. If it’s an objectively bad script (you’re still at the beginning stages of learning screenwriting), you don’t even get the courtesy of being graded.
Today’s script was a Like – Like for me. I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that there’s a great podcast-driven script to be written. And I think today’s writer might have just pulled it off.
29 year old Ana Cohen has a “Serial” like hit podcast on her hands (called “I Heart Murder”). Five years ago, a young woman named Dora Bishop, who lived in a small town in West Virginia, was brutally murdered – burned alive even. After a flurry of interest, the cops in Dora’s town just… gave up. And since then, the murder has gone unsolved.
Ana and her trusty hipster producer, Seth, have raised the case from the grave. In the last few months, it’s become THE must-listen-to true crime podcast. They’ve determined that the murderer is one of three suspects. The cop with a temper, Joe Ivy. The Goth misfit high schooler, Cody Varga. Or the white nationalist, Ronnie Burnett.
The last few weeks, however, have been uneventful. The show is getting stale. So Ana decides to take it on the road to the very town where Dora was killed, a town she has made infamous, and which has a lot of people who don’t like her. While this is happening, Ana starts getting threatening DMs from a person who wants her to stop digging. But one of the reasons the show has become so popular is that Ana is relentless. She will do anything and everything for the show. She’s not stopping til she finds her killer.
Once in the small town, Ana seeks out the three suspects she’s made famous to interview them. Her number one suspect is Ronnie. I mean, heck, the guy has already served time for murder (his wife). It has to be him, right? But Ronnie seems genuinely confused by Ana’s pre-formulated ‘gotcha’ questions, making her question everything she thought she knew about the case.
She starts looking into the other two, but when the police lock up her producer and the threatening DMs start coming more frequently, Ana wonders if she’s finally gotten herself into a situation she can’t dig herself out of. Ana does end up finding the killer. But it’s the last person she suspected. And now they want to do away with her before she reveals the truth to the world.
The first thing that stuck out to me about this script was the main character’s edge.
Everyone in Hollywood is terrified of unlikable main characters. This is why you only see them in fringe independent movies, with maybe a single high profile edgy character making it into the spotlight a year (last year’s Joker).
The problem with that is, characters without an edge tend to be boring (with a few exceptions). Our “edge” as individuals is a big part of what makes us unique. So if you can give your hero an edge, they’ll pop off the page more. And characters who pop off the page tend to get better actors and actresses interested.
Ana is not a good person. She’s selfish and she puts the podcast above everything else, even the safety of her own co-workers. However, that same edginess makes us cheer for when she won’t back down when the locals tell her to leave, or when she sends a clever ‘F-U’ retort to the person who keeps trying to threaten her. You get just as much good as you do bad from her attitude.
But it’s not enough. You need at least one thing in your script that makes your ‘unlikable’ main character likable enough to root for them. For Ana, it’s that she’s doing the right thing. She’s trying to get justice for this victim. I’ve read other scripts that have had Ana-like characters who I hated because they were living vapid directionless lives and complaining about it.
You have to understand, when you’re creating the edgy or ‘unlikable’ protagonist, that everything affects the equation. What might work in one script doesn’t work in another because of the circumstances surrounding the plot or concept. But what I learned from this script is that Ana’s edge is a big part of what makes the script so readable. Had she been a goodie-two-shoes who just wants to do the right thing, I’m not sure I would’ve dug the script as much.
The writer also makes an interesting choice in that there’s no unresolved relationship between Ana and her producer, Seth. In other whodunnits, the central relationship is often the one that’s most explored. But Ana and Seth are co-workers here and that’s it. There’s no previous love story, current love story, issues between them, fundamental differences in how they view the world. Seth is a little more careful than Anna. But that’s it.
When it comes to the central relationship in your script, the reality is that the less there is going on with it, the more realistic it plays. Cause in everyday life, not everyone has drama with everyone else. Unless you’re a contestant on The Bachelor. So you do gain some realism by making that choice. However, you lose an opportunity to explore your characters on a deeper level and provide the movie with another subplot (how is their conflict going to be resolved)?
Silence of the Lambs could’ve been a movie where Clarice and Hannibal just exchanged information. But it was the way that the two explored each other and created that unresolved conflict that elevated the movie to the next level. In the end, it’s up to you what you think is right for your movie. But in this case, the reason I think it worked was because the ‘whodunnit’ aspect of the story was so strong. Had it not been, maybe we complain more about the ‘boring’ relationship between the leads.
Finally, it was a really cool move to send our hero into the belly of the beast. It seems obvious in retrospect but that’s only because we’ve read it. Those decisions aren’t as easy when you’re facing the blank page. But, yeah, once we went down to West Virginia, the constant tension that came from Ana and Seth being in danger made this a quick read, even at its aggressive 120 pages.
Definitely check this one out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t throw something bad at your hero when it’s convenient for them. Throw something bad at your hero when it’s INCONVENIENT for them. When Ana gets her first DM threat from the killer, it isn’t when she’s stuck in traffic on the 405. It’s right before she’s been asked a question in front of an audience of hundreds at a podcasting convention. The fact that she has to pretend like everything is okay in front of all these people is a lot more compelling than if she can have an honest fearful reaction alone in the car.
