Genre: TV Drama/Thriller (first episode)
Premise: When his grandmother is killed in her home, a young man is visited by a mysterious older fellow who explains that Nazis have infiltrated America and they need to be hunted down and killed.
About: This is one of Amazon’s big-swing TV shows they’re hoping becomes the next water cooler franchise – as much as water cooler shows can exist in the age of “Everybody Watches Shows On Their Own Timeframe Now.” The show comes from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions (more on that in a second) and is created by David Weil. If that name sounds familiar to Scriptshadowers, that’s because you’ve heard it before. In fact, there’s a little bit of screenwriting infamy associated with the script he broke in with. More on that in a bit as well.
Writer: David Weil
Details: 90 minutes
This show’s backstory is almost as mysterious as its plot. “Hunters” was one of the first big shows announced from Monkeypaw Productions – Jordan Peele’s production company – after Get Out. Yet in the lead up this week to the show’s Amazon debut, Peele was never mentioned. His connection is so muted, in fact, I had to check to see if this was the same Nazi show he was a part of.
Even in the standard press releases on the trade sites, Peele’s name is never mentioned. I can’t convey to you how bizarre this is. It would be like someone producing a Tarantino script never mentioning the movie was written by Quentin Tarantino.
This has inspired me to throw on my tin foil anti-vax 9-11-was-an-inside-job hat and make a bold statement that, even though it’s pure conjecture, I’m 95% sure is true. I believe Jordan Peele saw the first cut of this show and said, “I don’t want my name associated with this in any way.” Because seriously, why else would Amazon not mention that this is a Jordan Peele show? It’s got to be because it’s terrible.
And it is. It’s very terrible.
The show opens on a small pool party in an undisclosed time period, although the clothing and hair imply it’s probably the 70s or 80s. All of a sudden, a Jewish woman starts screaming and pointing. Everybody stares at her like she’s nuts, even the host of the party, who appears to be the person she’s pointing at. Finally we get some semblance of what she’s yelling. Butcher. Killer. That man was a Nazi who killed tons of people in the concentration camps.
The host, who seems perplexed by this accusation, calmly walks over to his grill, takes out a hidden silencer gun, and shoots all eight people at the party, saving the last bullet for the screaming woman. Before he shoots her, his American accent shifts to German. She was right, he tells her. Bang.
Cut to our hero, a young college-aged kid named Jonah, who’s coming out of a screening of Star Wars with his buddies. Still have no idea what year it is. The kids speak like people today but are dressed like kids from the 80s. So confusing. Afterwards, Jonah meets up with an older kid, which is when we learn the nerdy Jonah is a hardcore drug dealer (he’s got like 2 pounds of weed on him). None of this makes any sense but whatever. The older kid only pays half price and then beats Jonah up for wanting the rest of his money.
Jonah then goes home to his New York townhouse. He lives with an older woman who I’ll later learn from summaries of the show is his grandmother. But when you’re watching the show, no relation is ever explained. He keeps calling her “Sultey,” to confuse matters even more. Later that night, someone breaks in and shoots Sultey.
Cut to Florida where an old Jewish woman is watching game shows. An evil looking Asian plumber man comes out of her bathroom and informs her that “it’s” fixed. The large old woman then goes to take a shower, which begins with gratuitous elderly nudity. Once inside the shower, she notices the door latch is locked, and instead of water coming down, it’s gas. The woman dies soon after.
Back to Jonah, who, at his grandmother-in-summaries-only funeral, is approached by an old man (Al Pacino) who implies that there’s something more going on here with his grandmother’s death. Jonah then takes the rest of his drug stash with the plan to hire a street gang to find out if they know anything about the guy who killed his grandma. The plan backfires, but Jonah eventually discovers a series of clues that lead him to the killer, who it turns out is a Nazi. Jonah will need to make a choice on whether he’s ready to kill a man and join… the hunt.
This show is awful.
But before I eviscerate it, I have to give props to the opening scene. I read a lot of not-so-good TV pilot teasers. But this one was great. First of all, if you’re going to have a scene with a Nazi killing a bunch of people, the obvious place to set it is somewhere dark and scary. Which is exactly why you don’t want to set it in someplace dark and scary. By setting this opening massacre at a bright happy pool party, you invite a sense of irony into the scene. Once Weil did that, he didn’t have to do much else. The acting between the screaming woman and the secret Nazi host was soooooo good that the scene killed.
It goes to show that setup is most of your job as a writer. If you set up a great scenario, the scene will write itself. And this scene did.
That’s where my praise ends, though.
Let’s move to the introduction of our main character Jonah. Actually, no, let’s go further back. Nobody tells us what year it is. Which would MAYBE be okay if your execution of the time was so perfect that we knew exactly what year it was. Like “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” You didn’t need to tell us anything for us to know it was 1969. But here, the dress code and the way people speak is vague enough that we could be in any year between 1970 and 1983.
Why is this relevant? Well, the introduction to our hero happens after he and his friends come out of Star Wars. As they’re coming out, the three are going into deep detail about what Star Wars is and what the characters represent in a manner no different than 1000 people debating Star Wars on Reddit today.
The thing is, people didn’t debate Star Wars when it came out. They just went and celebrated the movie because there was no complain culture back then and the franchise hadn’t been over-sold yet. And if they did debate it, it was only after watching it dozens of times. Not for the very first time. Which brings us back to the time period issue. Was this 1977 when Star Wars first came out? Or was it a re-release year? If this was a re-release, their debate would make a little more sense. But the fact that I’m so confused about something so simple within seven minutes of starting your show is a REALLY BAD SIGN.
But even if you look past that, you can’t look past the dialogue here, which is some of the most clumsy try-hard “written” dialogue I’ve seen in a professional production in a long time. In one scene, Jonah is hanging out with his two lame friends at the beach who are mindlessly looking at girls and calling out, “Jane” or “Tarzan.” Jonah finally asks them what Jane and Tarzan mean (which makes zero sense, by the way, since these three are all best friends and therefore would’ve already discussed this together a long time ago). Here’s their response:
“Oh, we call ‘Jane’ if the chick’s squish-mittens are trimmed. And then Tarzan if it looks like her Harry Manilow’s an all-out pube jungle.”
I can say with 100% certainty that in the history of the world, no person has ever talked like this. This is “written” dialogue, the kind of stuff you pat yourself on the back for coming up with despite the fact that no one would actually say it. And people will argue that movie dialogue isn’t supposed to be 100% realistic. I agree with that. But there’s a difference between upping the quality of conversation in written material and straight up try-hard gibberish.
Since Star Wars was a part of this pilot, let me reveal a quote from the great Harrison Ford to one George Lucas: “George, you can write this stuff. But you sure as s#@% can’t say it.”
Same deal with Hunters. Because people aren’t talking like real people, we don’t believe what we’re watching. The suspension of disbelief is broken. And that happens over and over again in this abomination of a show.
There’s so much WTF going on, I can’t chronicle it all. Like when Jonah’s maybe-grandmother is shot in her home and the shooter flees. Jonah races downstairs 3 seconds after it happens and starts screaming “HELP! HELP!!!!” Wouldn’t you be a little bit worried that maybe the person who just shot your grandma is nearby? And if they hear that someone else is in the house, they might come back to kill you too?
There’s no sense of people acting realistic in this or any situation.
Like the fact that Jonah is this lame little nerd who also happens to be a hardcore drug dealer. Or that when things go badly, he goes to this street gang that, I swear to god, was plucked right out of the movie Warriors, as if that’s the writer’s only exposure to the 70s. I was half expecting them to put on roller skates and start dancing around at some point. It was a parody of a gang to everyone but the writer.
In order to get the gang to help him, he offers them all his weed. Right at the moment, the cops show up, see Jonah holding all the weed, and arrest him (there was no setup to how they knew to show up here right at this moment of course). I’m thinking to myself, “Is that the only reason the writer made him a drug-dealer? Is so he could put this plot point in there where Jonah gets arrested and has to get bailed out by the Nazi hunter?” Look, I get it. Sometimes you place things in your plot to get your characters from point A (where you have them) to point B (where you need them). But you should never ever do so in a way that betrays the character.
Which takes me back to this Jordan Peele thing. Why isn’t he promoting this? Well, after I watched the show, I checked to see who wrote it. I saw the name “David Weil.” “I know that name from somewhere,” I thought. And I did a quick Scriptshadow search. When the results came back, EVERYTHING MADE SENSE. Weil is the writer who broke in with that abomination of a screenplay, “Moonfall!”
clip from my review of the script…
I’ll tell you the moment where I officially gave up on Moonfall. It’s when Hart and Cassie visit Dawn’s therapist to ask her if Dawn was acting strangely in the days leading up to her death. The therapist says Dawn was fine, but the two later go in and steal the therapist’s files on her.
In the files, there are a few dates mentioned in Dawn’s sessions. That’s when Cassie realizes – wait! These aren’t dates. This is code! Dawn’s trying to tell us something! So Cassie turns the dates into numbers (i.e. June 6, 2037 becomes 6062037) and realizes that these dates are – stay with me now – COORDINATES! So they now have to find those coordinates on the moon and dig up the clue Dawn left!
Okay, so let me get this straight here. Dawn, our murder victim, sensed that something bad was going to happen to her. So, in order to help her future investigators solve her murder, she decided to secretly work in a series of benign dates during her therapy sessions, which she assumed her therapist would then write down in her notes, that the police would later steal those notes, would look through them, notice the dates, think to convert them into numbers, figure out that those dates were actually moon coordinates, that they were to then dig up.
[end of clip]
To this day, I still have no idea how that screenplay became a thing. It was set on the moon and one of the featured scenes was a storm. THE MOON DOESN’T HAVE WEATHER. Cooler heads prevailed cause the movie never got made. But somehow he snuck this Nazi thing through the system. I know Peele is a big World War 2 Nazi buff. He made several sketches about Nazis in his comedy sketch show, Key and Peele. So maybe he was blinded by the possibilities and signed on. But when he finally saw the product, he realized, “If I don’t take my name off this, I’m not going to have a career in TV for long.”
If you both have Amazon Prime and a really low bar for entertainment? If things like logic, character motivation, and common sense don’t matter to you? Then by all means, check this out. It’s like a TV version of Southland Tales. I can’t believe they paid tens of millions of dollars for this. Wow.
[x] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In a screenplay, what you want to happen doesn’t always line up with what would actually happen. And how you negotiate this ongoing issue has a huge effect on how genuine your story reads. A famous example of this occurred in the movie Terminator Salvation. We were inside a human warehouse hideout in the middle of the desert. Out of nowhere, this 5 story tall robot’s hand crashes through the ceiling and everyone starts running. As many viewers pointed out afterward – how did a 5 story tall robot sneak up on a hideout in the middle of the desert without anyone hearing it? The reason is because the writer WANTED that scene. But it didn’t line up with the REALITY of the situation, which is that there was no way for a robot to get there without being heard. So the writer just…. ignored the issue. And while every once in a while you can get away with this, it more often than not erodes the viewer’s trust in the storyteller. — Jonah running downstairs and screaming “help” seconds after someone shot his grandmother creates this dramatic response from the character that the writer WANTED. But the reality of the situation dictated the character first act with caution, making sure the killer was gone. That didn’t fit with the scene the writer wanted so he ignored it.
I believe it’s time for another installment of, “Wait, that’s a pro script and mine’s not??”
One of the most frustrating things that an aspiring screenwriter faces is identifying the line where amateur ends and pro begins. I’m not talking about official titles here. Everyone knows a pro script is one where a writer gets paid. So maybe the better way to classify it is, where is the line for “Hollywood Ready,” – a script that gets sold or optioned by a reputable production company, a script that wins one of the big contests, or a script that makes the coveted Black List.
How do you know when you’ve written a script deserving of one of these accolades?
This post idea came to me after reading that hauntingly poor haunted house real estate script that made the Black List last week.
I hate when this happens because it’s confusing to writers. They read this terrible script and wonder, “Wait, this made the Black List yet I’m the one still struggling on the outside??” I feel your pain because scripts like this make this whole process feel random. And I promise you it isn’t. Everyone out there is looking for good material. I know because I talk to these people and they want nothing more than the next great script.
It’s important to remember that there is often information you’re not privy to with these bad script success stories. For example, I noticed with the haunted house writer that he was also a director. Therefore, he may have gotten repped by CAA as a director. Not a writer. This gave him an obvious leg up over unrepped writers when he wanted to send a new script out there. It doesn’t explain why 10 people voted for it, but still, it provides more context into how he might have gamed the system.
I remember reading an awful sci-fi script years ago that sold for a lot of money. I didn’t understand the business as well back then so I was miffed as to how anyone thought buying this script was a good idea. Then I learned that the writer was best friends with Channing Tatum at a time when every single studio was desperate to make a Channing Tatum movie. This studio thought that by buying Channing’s buddy’s script, who knows? Maybe he’ll star in the movie. Or, if not, we’ve built up some good will with him so he’ll want to make other projects with us.
But here’s an important thing to remember about these bad scripts. You don’t get to carry them around and when somebody rejects your script, pop them out and make the argument that “This script is worse than mine and it sold. Henceforth, you should buy mine so Hollywood remains a fair place.” Being better than the weasels who backdoor their way into success isn’t a convincing argument. Nobody cares if you write something better than that piece of garbage that sold.
At the same time, this is not a random system. Yes, there are outliers on both sides. But by and large, the scripts that are optioned and developed and purchased and made, these scripts and these writers are better than the slush pile of amateur scripts available. A lot better. And there’s nobody more ordained to make this claim than me. I’ve read more scripts on both sides of the line than anyone save for that Robservations guy. So I have a good feel for where that line is.
But how do YOU know where the line is?
The first thing we need to establish is that there is no line. There are too many variables that affect a screenplay to be able to say, “If you do a, b, c, you’ve written a Hollywood Ready script.” Someone can be weak with plot but if they write a game-changing character, their script can be pro-worthy. Look no further than Joker. Someone can have a weak voice but if they plot something together as strong as Parasite, their script can be pro-worthy. Marriage Story is a plotless wandering journey. But the characters, dialogue, and voice are strong, which makes it, you guessed it, pro-worthy.
If you’re GREAT at one of these four things – plot, character, voice, dialogue – you can write a pro-level script. But most writers will never be great at any of those things. So you have to become really good at two or three of them. I even know some working writers who aren’t ‘really good’ at any of them. But they’re ‘good’ at all of them. These are the “Gemini Man” working professional writers in Hollywood. They can do everything well but nothing exceptional. That should be inspiring. It lets us know that you don’t have to be brilliant to succeed in this business.
Another huge one is writing with strong concepts. I know SO MANY writers who have the chops to break in but they write weak concepts. Weak concepts often come in two flavors. Unexceptional Dramas and Tired Movie Ideas that no longer get people excited. In the Unexceptional Drama category you have stuff like Marriage Story and Call Me By Your Name. In the Tired Movie Ideas category you have stuff like Taken. Or even Die Hard. In both cases, the execution has to be exceptional for these scripts to stand out. And there are maybe 5-10 movies a year where you can legitimately say that the execution was “exceptional.” In other words, you can’t count on exceptional.
There’s a new show coming out called “Beforiegners.” It’s about a group of Vikings who get sent to the present day and have to integrate into modern society. Do I know if this show is going to be any good? No idea. But I know this. It’s a flashy concept. And flashy concepts GET MORE READS, which increases the odds you’ll get your ‘yes.”
They also increase the “yeah but” factor. The “yeah but” factor is when you’re reading average or below-average material, but you keep saying to yourself… “Yeah but, the concept is so fun.” The reader is willing to stay with the script longer. And that’s all this game is, folks. You’re trying to buy more time. Cause the longer somebody invests in your script, the more likely it is they’re going to want it.
Now let’s talk about something uncomfortable.
One of the biggest reasons it’s hard for writers to know where that Hollywood Ready line is is because most writers overestimate their ability. They’re great at pointing out what everybody else’s weaknesses are but are legally blind when it comes to identifying their own. In order to make this next statement, I’ll preface it by saying this was a FORMER COMMENTER. Nobody here right now. But this guy would tear screenplays apart left and right on this site. And I’d read a number of this person’s screenplays. All I kept thinking every time I read one of their critiques was, “Yeah but… you can’t even write a story that makes sense.” I mean they LITERALLY couldn’t put a coherent storyline together.
All of us have some level of that blindness in us. Which is why I tell writers to assume they’re not as good as they think they are. And therefore to work hard to make up for the weaknesses they’re ignorant to. Also, try to un-ignorant yourself. Give your script to people. Beg them for HONEST FEEDBACK (not ‘be kind to me’ feedback). When you get more than one person complaining about some aspect of your writing, you’ve been given a GIFT. You now have something you can work on!
You can attack this in two ways. One, stop writing scripts that highlight your weaknesses. If people keep telling you your character work isn’t good, maybe don’t write Marriage Story. Write Snowpiercer. Or Jane Wick in space. Or two, go out and study everything you can about that subject matter so you can get better at it. Not enough screenwriters work to improve their weaknesses.
Finally, be aggressive and get your script out there. This is a business of no’s. Even people who like your script are going to say no. I once read a friend’s husband’s script that was pretty good. The friend was thrilled because she’d given it to a bunch of people and none of them liked it and finally she had someone to work with on the project and get it made. But the subject matter wasn’t my jam. It was good for what it was. But it’s not a movie I was interested in making. So I had to clarify that to her.
If you’ve been at this screenwriting thing for a while? If you’ve written more than six screenplays? If you’re consistently getting positive feedback from multiple people? You breaking in might just be a matter of getting your scripts to more friends, more contacts, more contests, more screenwriting sites, more Amateur Showdowns. Put your script in front of more pairs of eyes. Funny enough, I find that the people who aren’t ready (who’ve written less than 3 scripts) are good at this. Whereas the people who are ready, don’t do enough of it.
Outside of that, it’s a matter of knowing that every script you write is going to be better than the last. And as long as you’re writing strong concepts that make getting reads easy, your odds are going to go up with each new script you write.
But please… PLEASE. Don’t buy into this idea that it’s all a game of luck and randomness. Trust me, this town is desperate for good material. Keep giving them your best and when you’re ready, your time will come.
Genre: Contained Thriller/Apocalypse
Premise: In the near future when air-supply is scarce, a mother and daughter fight for survival when two strangers arrive desperate for an oxygenized safe haven.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List, just below the top 20. Doug Simon co-created the 2010 TV show “Brotherhood” and co-wrote the 2015 horror movie, “Demonic,” starring Frank Grillo.
Writer: Doug Simon
Details: 97 pages
I’m expecting contained thrillers/horrors/sci-fiers to be well represented in The Last Great Screenplay Contest. Writers know that everyone is looking for the next great contained flick cause they’re cheap to produce and easy to market. They’re also some of the easiest reads (low character count, easy to understand situations) meaning lots of people will give them a shot. And, of course, there are tons of production houses who can afford them (compared to if you write a 250 million dollar superhero script, where there are only two places you can go with that). So I’m always happy to read the latest contained script. Even if it’s no good, there’s always something to learn from them.
40 year old Joel lives in a bunker with his father, Mike, his wife, Amy, and his 18 year old daughter, Megan. These four are surviving in a world that’s gone airless. Or, at least, oxygen-less. Luckily, Joel was one of those weirdo survivalist people who prepared for the apocalypse. So while everyone else died, he had his family high-fiving over bunker dinners within a week.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of our story, while Joel and Mike are looking for things in their abandoned farmhouse, Mike falls through the weakened floor and loses his oxygen backpack. These backpacks, which offer 2-5 hours of air, are the only way you can survive up top. Joel fails to save his father before his oxygen tank runs out, and after informing the fam of the accident, insists on burying his father next to his mother in a cemetery.
That cemetery is over two hours walking distance though. And in this world, two hours is a long time. If something goes wrong, you won’t have enough oxygen to get back home. And that’s what happens. Joel leaves and never comes back. Cut to five months later where Amy and Megan are holding up the fort by themselves. That’s going well until two mysterious people show up – Tess and stupid Lucas, claiming to have known Joel.
Tess knows Joel was an engineer. She and Lucas are part of a small group of people living in a similar larger system miles away. Tess wants to come in and inspect dad’s oxygen system in the hopes of understanding it better so they can go back and fix their own dying oxygen system. Amy is having none of it but Megan believes them, or at least wants to. It’s a lonely existence they live. If there are other people out there, that changes things.
After a drawn out Q&A and several precautionary measures, Amy opens the bunker door, only to have a new guy, Micah, fly out of nowhere into the bunker. Amy manages to slam the door shut, keeping Tessa and Lucas out. But now they have to fight off this crazed Micah dude. Megan, whose father trained her for situations just like this, pulls out a gun and shoots him in the shoulder, putting him on the ground. They’ve contained this situation. But Tess and Lucas are still outside, determined to get in at all costs. And to give them some incentive, they each have only 45 minutes left on their oxygen packs. Things are about to get messy.
Number 1 rule of Contained Thriller Club. Give us scenarios unique to your concept! If you have a world where you can’t make a sound or monsters kill you, think up scenarios where your characters have to make noise and deal with the consequences.
I will give “Breathe” this. It embraces Rule Number 1 of Contained Thriller Club with a vengeance. There are a good fifteen sequences in this script where people get themselves in situations where their oxygen is cut off or limited and they have to fix the problem or die. This created a ton of “ticking time bombs” that kept the script MOVING.
But there’s an issue with the setup. Running out of oxygen is not a new idea. We see it all the time in movies. Especially space movies and underwater flicks. So even though the writer, Doug Simon, is doing the right thing – engaging in scenarios that take advantage of his concept – it all feels a bit familiar.
That means we get a mixed bag of oxygen-starved scenarios. For example, the bad guys clog one of the vents up top, creating a 15 minute countdown inside the bunker to find a solution or run out of air – a situation that feels way too familiar. But it also gives us a scene where Megan, who wants to know what’s really going on with these people, puts the injured Micah in an airless room and promises to pump in one minute of oxygen for every question he answers truthfully. That was certainly a more entertaining scene than what we usually get, which is to tie the bad guy to a chair and ask him questions.
Despite its weaknesses, the script stays strong throughout most of its 97 page running time (a good page length for a contained thriller). Killing off the father after we’d gotten to know him made us way more sympathetic to Megan and Amy than had Dad only been someone referred to in dialogue. So I was engaged in most of the “oxygen running out scenarios” if only to make sure these two made it out alive.
But the writer makes a choice in the third act that we need to talk about because it’s something all contained thriller writers will face. Third acts are supposed to be BIGGER. Not just in contained thrillers. In all scripts. This is the ending. You want it to feel big and exciting. So the question you run up against is: Do you stay true to your contained thriller setup or do you move out of it in order to give the viewer that big fancy finale? Simon decided to go big and I think it hurts the script.
We get this whole third act where Amy has to take an electric car to the place where her husband died to get a key card to get back into the bunker, which at this point she was locked out of. Yeah, this adds a bigger, arguably, more exciting ending. But it also no longer feels like a contained thriller.
I’ve heard the saying that when you give someone your concept, you’re signing a contract with them to deliver on that concept. Once you move out of that concept, you’ve broken the contract.
To be fair, sometimes the contract is gray enough that it’s up to the writer to decide where the line is. But the moment I was the most invested in this screenplay was when we had one injured bad guy inside, with Amy and Megan, and two determined bad guys outside who needed to get in within the next 45 minutes or they would run out of oxygen. This occurred at about the midpoint and set up a perfect real-time story for the last half of the screenplay. And it was a good setup! All the motivations made sense. They were organic to the story. And you had this sweet x-factor inside the bunker in the third guy. So there were potential pitfalls everywhere. I would’ve been happy had we stayed with that setup.
But I get it. The thing all of us writers are terrified of is boring the reader. It’s our worst fear. This can lead us to inject sequences and storylines that, on the surface, solve this problem. But they’re often fool’s gold. Sometimes you have to trust that the situation you set up is capable of delivering.
Despite that, this script had more good than bad and I’d say it’s worth reading, especially for contained thriller writers who want to get better.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you write contained stories, make sure there are things for your characters to do before the main conflict (in this case, the bad guys) arrives. For example, here they have to check the oxygen levels every 12 hours. They have to go outside and clean the solar panels. Everybody has jobs. The reason for this is: IT KEEPS YOUR CHARACTERS ACTIVE. And this is important when there’s nothing interesting going on yet. Because at least your characters aren’t sitting around, playing cards, having boring conversations. Seven pages of stillness could be the difference between the reader closing your script or continuing to read it.
Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A girls high school soccer team flying to nationals crashes in the remote wilderness. Here, the girls descend into madness while trying to survive.
About: This upcoming Showtime show comes from Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, who created the Netflix show, Narcos: Mexico.
Writers: Ashley Lyle & Bart Nickerson
Details: 65 pages
The other day I was reading a consultation script and I found that one note kept popping into my head. I kept dismissing and dismissing it because I didn’t see any way it would improve the story. So the question was, why was this note so determined to be expressed? I realized, after finishing the script, that the reason the note wouldn’t leave me alone is because the industry is high on it right now.
That note was “Change the main character to a woman.”
There was literally no story reason for the writer to do this, though. Yet the note wouldn’t leave me alone. Which is frustrating because your character choices should be dictated by your story, not what Tinseltown’s latest obsession is. Yet the female-led project is so hot at the moment that when I looked up Yellowjackets, I learned that it wasn’t even the only girls in a plane crash who must fight for their lives in the wilderness show in production (there’s another one called “The Wilds” that’ll be on Amazon).
So if you’re a writer out there, what should you be doing?? Follow the trend or do what you want to do? I think a few things come into play. You shouldn’t blindly ignore a trend. If something markedly improves the chances of your script’s success, you should consider it.
Another big consideration if you’re *not* a female writer is how comfortable you are writing outside your gender. I remember early on when I started writing, I gave my script to a female friend and she eviscerated my main female character. She pointed out half-a-dozen things I’d written that “a woman would never do.” That was a big lesson for me.
Then again, you have writers like Nicholas Sparks and John Green who seem to have an effortless feel for writing female characters. So you need to do a self-assessment on how comfortable you are writing the opposite sex. Cause the advantage you gain from following the trend might be offset by the weakness of the character.
But the most important factor in determining the gender of your protag should be your story. I’m not going to say Fight Club couldn’t be made with all women but that’s an example of a movie specifically about masculinity. Exploring masculinity in an age where men were feeling less masculine than ever was one of Chuck Palahniuk’s main objectives when he wrote the novel. Same thing as I wouldn’t suggest re-imagining “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” as “Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants.” It’s probably not going to work. So that’s the biggest thing that needs to be considered.
Okay, despite this introduction, I’m super excited about today’s pilot. I hated every book they made me read in high school. EXCEPT FOR ONE. Lord of the Flies. It’s one of the most powerful setups I’ve ever seen for a story. Plus it’s got a plane crash. And I love plane crash stories! Let’s take a look.
We start off in a snowy wilderness where some kind of ritual is taking place. A teenage girl is running from something before falling into a tiger trap where she’s impaled by numerous wooden spikes. A group of similarly aged girls emerge looking emaciated and wild. They seem satisfied with their kill.
Then we learn that that event we just saw? It happened back in 1994. The people we’re following – the girls who crashed on that island – we’re watching them now in their 40s, long after they returned to society.
There’s Taissa, a popular player on the team who’s now a senator. Shauna, once the team’s best player, now a depressed housewife who masturbates to pictures of her daughter’s boyfriend. And Natalie, a gothy outcast on the team who, when we meet her as an adult, is leaving her latest rehab center.
We’re given bits and pieces of what happened since that life-changing crash but not much. We do know, however, that an eager reporter, Jessica Cruz, wants to do a new story on what happened after the plane crash. And from Shauna’s reaction, we get the feeling that these girls covered up a lot of terrible things, and if those things got out, they’d all be f%#@d.
The narrative jumps back and forth between the present day and the days leading up to the soccer team leaving for Nationals. It’s fun as we get to contrast who these people have become with who they once were. Taissa, for example, orchestrates a plan to injure the weakest character on the team, Allie, so she won’t be a liability on the field. Meanwhile, in the present, Taissa has become a senator.
The pilot wraps up with one big high school party before they head off to nationals and, in the present, Shauna realizing that Jessica Cruz could be a liability if she keeps digging into what happened. So Shauna calls up Taissa, the senator, and tells her that Jesscia has to be “taken care of.” All as we get one final look at a horrid ritual deep in the forest, as a group of teenage girls cook one of their own. Fade to black!
Can I just say something?
THANK YOU!
Thank you to these writers for not only being good writers but for taking a concept and pushing it to its limits. Too many times I read scripts where concepts are barely pushed at all. And when you don’t expand upon a concept to see its potential, you give audiences exactly what they expect. Which leaves them bored out of their minds.
As soon as I realized that this show was going to take place in the present *as well as* in the past, I knew they had a winner.
What usually happens when writers take a familiar concept and put a new spin on it is they execute the story exactly how it was already executed, just with different characters. That’s a recipe for a boring show.
To create a good show, you have to ask WHAT YOU CAN DO to make your version DIFFERENT. And once they decided, “We’ll show both what happened on the island AND what’s happening when these girls grow up,” they added an entirely new dimension to the idea.
For example, the team deliberately injuring their worst player so she can’t fly to Nationals is petty high school shenanigans in your typical one hour teen drama. But in this show, the first thing that comes to mind when they break Allie’s leg during practice is, “That injured girl doesn’t know it yet. But they just saved her life.” When people talk about stories that have depth, this is one of the qualities they’re referring to. The things that happen on screen extend beyond the initial event. There’s a contrast to them that allows the reader to experience a bigger picture.
Also, I think there’s this fear going on with writers right now where they’re afraid to write anything that could potentially offend someone. As a result, we’re getting all this safe p.c. boring nonsense. Lyle and Nickerson have zero interest in that. They know that this is a story where you need to lean into the things that you’re not supposed to lean into. People get killed here. People need to survive here. Peoples’ lives could be destroyed if secrets are exposed. You can’t sugarcoat a story like that. And they don’t. Characters are going to do horrible things in this show. Which is exactly why it’s going to be so good.
Whatever you’re writing, always try to find the truth of it. If you try to write what society says is right to write, you’re going to bore people. Guaranteed. It all has to be organic to the story of course. You never want to write controversial things just to be controversial. Just be honest with what your story is asking of you. For example, early on, we see a 40 year old woman masturbating to a picture of her teenage daughter’s boyfriend. It’s shocking. But it makes sense. A part of Shauna is always going to be stuck back in that traumatic experience that happened to her in high school. You’d be suspicious if she *wasn’t* f&%@d up in some way.
I loved about every decision here. I went into this pilot thinking I was getting a plane crash and a lot of girls trying to survive the aftermath. Instead, 95% of the pilot occurred in the present. And that created this intense level of suspense throughout because I so wanted to keep reading and get to the actual crash.
I’m telling you guys. This show is going to be savage. It’s Lost for grownups. I can’t wait.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A “beat” is a screenplay-specific term that denotes a small pause in time. “A beat as Joe recovers from the fall.” You can play with what comes before a beat to give it more of a mood. “A loaded beat.” “An extended beat.” “An unexpected beat.” Have fun with it. Here, in Yellowjackets, we get “An infinitesimal beat.”
What I learned 2: In one of the loglines I found for Yellowjackets, they used the word “talented” to describe the soccer team that was going to nationals. So, it was close to my logline but approximated this: “A talented girls high school soccer team flying to nationals crashes in the remote wilderness. Here, the girls descend into madness while trying to survive.” With loglines, you’re trying to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. One of the ways to do this is to eliminate redundant and repetitious words. We can already assume that a team going to nationals is talented. Which is why it’s a no-brainer to eliminate the word. (e-mail me to get a logline consultation at carsonreeves1@gmail.com)
While I continue to root for Margot Robbie, a part of me is happy that Birds of Prey underperformed. The message of that film wasn’t one of exclusivity. But it certainly wasn’t inclusive. That word has to work on both ends of the spectrum. So I’m hoping that sends Hollywood a message to give us films that unite us, as opposed to divide us.
A lot of people are saying that if Birds of Prey came out on Valentine’s Day weekend, it would be a totally different box office story. The film is about a breakup so the subject matter was perfect for the holiday. It also used Deadpool as its template. That film changed the game for Valentine’s Day openings, proving that it could offer humongous box office.
I realize now what happened. Birds of Prey got greedy. They thought to themselves, if we open the weekend BEFORE Valentine’s Day, we get that opening weekend money AND we get that big Valentine’s Day Deadpool haul as well. The problem with that strategy was they weren’t able to market the movie as a Valentine’s Day film. Who knows how much of a difference it would’ve made but if the difference was 10 – 15 million dollars, that’s the difference between the trades labeling the film a bust and labeling it a solid opening. And in this town, perception is reality.
I often wonder how big a difference a release date makes. People used to think you couldn’t open an action movie on Valentine’s Day. Then Deadpool came around. Studios supposedly scratch and claw to get one of those big summer slots. But in the summer, all your second weekend box office is swallowed up by the next big shiny blockbuster. So how desirable is one of those weekends really?
James Cameron famously thanked 20th Century Fox for moving Titanic from the summer, where it was originally slated, to a winter holiday opening. The film went on to break every box office record in the book. It begs the question, what if it had opened in the summer? Would it have made way less money? Would the world not have fallen in love with Leonardo DiCaprio?
The box office comeback story of the year may go to Sonic the Hedgehog. That film was dead as a doornail when that first trailer came out. Everyone proclaimed it the single worst animation of a creature’s face in history. In one of the rare instances of Hollywood admitting they were wrong, the director, Jeff Fowler, publicly apologized then had Paramount push the release date back so they could redesign the face. Flash-forward to today and Sonic the Hedgehog had the biggest video game adaptation opening in history with a 4-day holiday haul of $65 million bucks. Which equals its Rotten Tomatoes score. Not bad.
Let’s sit on that for a second. Sonic the Hedgehog is the BIGGEST VIDEO GAME ADAPTATION OPENING EVER. This continues to be one of the bigger curiosities in the movie business. Of all the things that should be a slam-dunk to adapt, you’d think video games would be at the top of the list. They take all their cues from movies anyway. In some cases, they even improve upon them. Go watch a level from Uncharted for proof. And yet they always land in theaters with a big thud. Assassin’s Creed is such a cool movie concept. But the film was unbearable, to the point where it made you retroactively dislike the video game.
I’m not sure what the reason is. My guess is that video games are built on top of flimsy mythology. Lord of the Rings was such an extensively researched world. Everything that came out of it felt solid and believable. That set the stage for a fully-fleshed out adventure. But these video games – all they care about is cool levels. And whatever janky paper-thin backstory helps them get there, that’s good enough for them. So when you extrapolate that out into a story, all the pillars holding up your screenplay are weak and crumbly. Curious what your thoughts are on this.
Speaking of adaptations, Blumhouse underperformed this weekend with their latest film, Fantasy Island. Blumhouse is in an interesting place at the moment. They blew up because they elevated the most reliable money-making formula in Hollywood – make horror films cheaply. Before Blumhouse, a lot of low-budget horror was schlocky and cheap looking. Blumhouse gave their movies a slightly shinier production design which allowed them to play in theaters as opposed to going directly to digital.
The problem with that is, it’s an easy formula to copy. There’s nothing proprietary about what they do (for example, nobody else can make Marvel movies but Disney – you can’t replicate that). This has allowed other horror movies to eat into their market share. Lights Out. A Quiet Place. Hereditary. The only thing keeping Blumhouse above these production houses is the fact that they make so many films. This allows them to take more chances and increases the odds that one of the movies breaks through and becomes a media darling, like Get Out.
Jason Blum knows this so he’s trying to innovate and take the next step forward that no one else is thinking of. This weekend, he adapted a successful TV show in “Fantasy Island,” but instead of staying true to the material, he put a horror slant on it. That was the innovation. I don’t know what their projections were but I know they were hoping for more than 14 million for the 4-day weekend.
I actually like this idea. Any “stuck on an island” horror concept has potential. And I liked the irony of characters stepping into what they believed was a fantasy, only for it to become a nightmare. But it just didn’t capture the public’s interest. The problem when you open things up in the horror world – when you try to be bigger – is it becomes more apparent that you’re in over your head. Audiences don’t think about the lack of production value when an entire haunted house movie takes place inside the house because it’s organic to the concept. But when you start incorporating more space, more sets, bigger shots, additional characters, we can see where you don’t size up with the Marvels, DCs and Fasts and Furiouses of the world. It’s almost like by going bigger you actually look smaller.
On the plus side, Blumhouse still has The Hunt, which is finally being released. I’m curious to see how this does. They’ll be able to sell it as “the movie they wouldn’t let you see!’ And what gets people more interested in something than being told they can’t see it? What’s your prediction on The Hunt? I think it could open in the $25-30 million dollar range assuming they open wide (3000 theaters). But they might do one of those “feeler” releases (800 theaters), in which case I have no idea how much it’ll make.
A movie that continues to impress me is 1917, which has been around for 8(!) weeks and pulled in another 8 million dollars this weekend. I’m learning a lot from this film. There’s this giant potential audience of History Channel geeks – people who watch shows like “Hitler’s Bunker” and “World War 2 in color” who are dying for a larger-than-life version of what they get in those shows. Because History Channel shows have relatively low budgets. They can only do so much. So if you promise them something that’s just like those shows but bigger and more expensive with great production value, they’ll leave their houses and pay for it. 1917 proves that.
Another thing this movie’s taught me is to look for fun angles in war movies. I don’t mean fun as in “comedic.” I mean using war movies as a ride as opposed to being big glorified dramas. War films are traditionally downers. I mean, it’s war. Lots of people are getting killed. So there’s a dire tone tugging at most of these films. If you can find a way to make a war movie fun, that’s a huge advantage because people generally go to the movies to have fun and feel good.
That’s why these Oscar movies, despite getting endless advertising, often struggle to make money at the box office. Audiences know that it’s not going to be a traditional “fun” experience. The way 1917 became fun was by condensing the timeframe.
I’ve been telling you this for years. One of the easiest ways to supercharge an idea is to create a condensed timeframe. An idea that feels tired and played out can all of a sudden seem fresh and exciting if the right timeframe is applied. Where writers make the mistake is to apply this advice to the usual suspects – pairing it with an action or thriller concept – “A guy’s fake heart is actually a bomb so he’s got to get from the top of a skyscraper to the bottom in 2 hours or everyone in the building dies.” But, actually, where a tight timeframe stands out is when it’s paired with a non-traditional concept. When we think of World War 1, we don’t think of narratives taking place in less than 24 hours. That’s what helped 1917 stand out. You can apply this to any non-traditional setup. A Western. A drama. A romantic-comedy. Just in my head right now, that sounds exciting. A romantic comedy told in a single day.
As for the rest of the box office, I’m shocked to see that Jumanji crossed the 300 million dollar mark. I didn’t think anyone saw that movie due to the risky but ultimately failed choice to have The Rock and Kevin Hart mimic a couple of old men for two hours. Parasite got a small bump from its Oscar win and it’s cool to see Bong Joon-ho celebrate his most successful movie ever. Finally, in what can only be titled “The Ultimate Revenge,” Star Wars Episode 9 fell out of the top 10 to number 15, whereas Rian Johnson’s Knives Out has now pulled ahead of it, taking the number 12 spot. Why is this significant? Because Rise of Skywalker has been out for 8 weeks whereas Knives Out has been out for 11! Does this mean that Rian Johnson was right to kill Luke Skywalker all along? Should every movie from here on forward subvert expectations? Are Rey’s parents’ nobodies? I have to revaluate everything!!!
