“Pop Quiz. You’re been told by two Hollywood stars exactly what they want to make next. You’re a screenwriter capable of writing an action thriller. What do you do? What. Do You. Do?”

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Confined to “the nest,” a Secret Service Sniper gets a strange call on the radio from a deranged mastermind who’s holding his family hostage in a box suite during America’s biggest game– The Super Bowl.
About: Despite the surface-level concept, this script finished very high on last year’s Black List, with 17 votes.
Writer: Aaron Benjamin
Details: 106 pages

We talk a lot about how to sell a script and get it made on this site.

The most consistent advice we give is: Write a great script.

And that’s true. If you write a great script, Hollywood is your oyster.

But what if you’re not a great writer and can’t write a great script? Well, in that case, you have to be more strategic.

A little-talked about way to sell a script and get a movie made is to GIVE A HOLLYWOOD PERSON THE EXACT SCRIPT THEY WANT.

You know that movie, No Hard Feelings, with Jennifer Lawrence? You know how that movie got made? The writer was friends with Jennifer and watched her fall down laughing when she read the real-life advertisement where parents were hiring someone to sleep with their virgin son.

That writer, Gene Stupnitsky, went home and, unbeknownst to Jennifer, wrote a script about that advertisement. And of course Lawrence agreed to star in the movie. She’d basically already told Gene that she loved the idea.

You see, the main reason why people in Hollywood are able to get movies made while you’re stuck in your apartment twiddling your thumbs to the beat of the latest Taylor Swift album, is that they HAVE INFORMATION.

They know what every bankable actor and director in Hollywood is looking for. So they can tailor the scripts they send to these people. Whereas, with you, you’re just shooting bullets in the dark. You may envision Tom Holland as the PERFECT star for your skydiving script. But you have no idea if Tom Holland likes skydiving. You’re literally throwing pages into the wind.

It’s so unfair. That they know what you don’t know. It gives them a gigantic advantage.

BUT! Every once in a while, Hollywood will tell you EXACTLY what it wants. And Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock just told y’all they want to work together again, particularly if they’re given a great Speed 3 script.

So there you have it! Go write Speed 3.

Today’s review is inspired by this Hollywood gift. Not because it could be Speed 3. But it’s very much in that 90s vein of fun thrillers with over-the-top villains. Let’s find out if the script is a Super Bowl winner… or a Super Bowl loooooooooser….

40-something Secret Service sniper, Jackson Hackett, is an American hero. He’s just shot a would-be assassin who tried to kill the president of the United States. And he’d be happy… if he didn’t just learn he’s got early-onset Parkinson’s!

One year later, Jackson has been hired for his farewell job – to occupy “The Nest” – a small room in the top level inside the Super Bowl stadium. He must shoot anyone who’s causing a deadly ruckus. What he’s about to find out is that HE will be the ruckus.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Jackson’s ex-wife and deaf daughter are at the game. As is Jackson’s sniper partner and cousin, Bobby. But when Bobby heads off to the bathroom, he doesn’t come back. And that’s when Jackson gets a call on his headset from this dude named Gordon Webb.

Gordon has taken hostage one of the suites where he’s kidnapped Jackson’s ex-wife and kid. Gordon explains to Jackson that he’s working for him now. He’s going to be asked to kill someone and, if he doesn’t do it, he can say bye-bye to his immediate family.

Jackson tells his partner, Agent Kiera, what’s going on and the two begin a low-key investigation into who this Gordon Webb is and what he’s planning to do. After a while, we learn that Webb is here to kill a Saudi Prince. The Prince, who’s going to be down on the field during the halftime show, will be shot by Jackson in the most dramatic way possible so that the whole world can see it.

Jackson doesn’t want to kill anyone but Webb’s got him by the deflated balls. Not only has Bobby been killed by this point, but his partner, Kiera, is working with the baddies! The plan is that, after Jackson kills the Prince, he’ll be framed by the U.S. Intelligence to look like he did this on his own. Unless, that is, he can find a way to foil the plan!

Mine the things within your concept that can only happen in your movie. That’s what makes a script unique. That’s what makes a script clever. And that’s what Benjamin did here. He asked, “What’s the worst thing you can do to a sniper?” Well, something that would make his hands shake. So, Jackson is diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

That’s good, right? By creating an obstacle that directly disrupts our hero’s “power,” you’re doing something you can only do in your script.

HOWEVER.

You still have to assess the residual effects of each creative choice you make. Parkinson’s is a very traumatic sad disease. So, sure, you give your hero an obstacle unique to him, but you also place this sad umbrella over the story, since we know our hero can never recover from this.

As the screenwriter, you gotta ask, “Is that worth it?” Am I GETTING MORE from this creative choice than I’m LOSING from it? I think you’re losing more. And when you lose more than you gain, you have to abandon the choice.

Despite this misstep, I found the script to be better than I expected.

The moment I committed to the story – cause I was on the fence for a while – was when Webb told Jackson that Jackson would be killing people today. I’m a sucker for when good people are forced to do bad things. I just think it gets to the heart of compelling character conflict. Whenever the external action does not match the internal belief, you’re watching nuclear inner-conflict.

And it helped that Webb was a good villain. He wasn’t Dennis Hopper in Speed good. But I liked a lot of his dialogue. And he gets a lot of dialogue here.

Hey, isn’t there a screenwriting guy who can’t stop talking about the importance of dialogue-friendly characters in scripts? Who’s that guy again? OH YEAH IT’S ME! That’s what Benjamin did here. He created Webb, who can’t shut up. And, most of the time, we’re the beneficiaries of it.

The reason the script doesn’t finish higher than “worth the read” is because Webb’s plot wasn’t as interesting as it could’ve been. Who cares about some Saudi Prince? It felt like it came out of left field. We needed someone bigger in play here. Particularly because the opening scene in your script is the hero saving the president of the United States. A Saudi Prince is ten steps down from that in importance. You needed to come up with something bigger.

But look – this script is Randy Moss sprinting down the sidelines. It never stops to catch its breath. It’s very “spec-y” in that way and I found that energy to be enjoyable.

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

What I learned: The big downside to writing a script that could only be used in one scenario (you’re writing Scream 3 solely for Keanu and Sandra) is that if either Keanu or Sandra says no, your script is worthless. You can’t do anything else with it. Well, there’s a way around that. You write a script that’s CLEARLY Speed 3, but you title it something else (“Fast Release”), and change the character names. That way, if the script catches fire, people will send it to Paramount and tell Sandra and Keanu that they have the perfect script for Speed 3. But if those two pass, you still have a spec that could be made into another movie. You win both ways!

Today I examine why this controversial episode was never made.

Genre: TV episode
Premise: As Elaine contemplates buying a gun, Kramer comes back from vacation, claiming to have slept with the stewardess on his plane, prompting Jerry and George to bet on whether he’s telling the truth.
About: This is the infamous unmade episode of Seinfeld that featured a gun. It looks like this would’ve aired in season 3 or 4. The episode spiritually died in the table read, when Julia Louis Dreyfuss read a line about shooting Jerry. After the table read was over, the producers and creators huddled up then came back and told everyone to go home. They wouldn’t be making the episode. You can hear the cast talk about the episode here.
Writer: Larry Charles
Details: 52 pages

When you run a screenwriting website, you’re constantly coming up with ideas for things you can do on the site. I remember an early morning, while still in bed, half-asleep, where I became convinced that I needed to have a contest to write a modern-day episode of Seinfeld. For a good hour of half-asleepness, I had convinced myself it was the greatest idea that had ever been invented.

Then I fully woke up and, within five minutes, reality slapped me in the face, as it became clear that a website dedicated to feature screenplay writing probably wasn’t the best forum to do a contest for a sitcom that had been off the air for 20 years. So even though my love for Seinfeld remained unparalleled, I put the sitcom to rest. Finally.

That was until today when I learned that there was a Seinfeld episode that had never been filmed! Based on a script that had actually been written! This was like a dream come true. I knew these characters so well that a script might as well have been a filmed episode since it was so easy for me to envision these characters in that world.

In The Bet, Elaine shows up at Jerry’s apartment and claims that someone she knows got robbed and she’s thinking about getting a gun for protection. Jerry tells her she’s not a gun person but Elaine makes a strong case about being a woman in a big city with a lot of crime. You need to be able to defend yourself.

A sunburnt Kramer barges in, recently back from Puerto Rico, and tells Elaine that he knows a guy who can get her a gun. His old buddy, Mo. Elaine is thrilled. Then Kramer shares a secret with the crew – he slept with the stewardess coming back from Puerto Rico.

As Kramer and Elaine leave, a frustrated George, bemoaning his lack of opportunities with women, is convinced that Kramer is fibbing. Jerry, however, thinks Kramer is telling the truth. Therefore, they make “The Bet.” They bet 1000 dollars on whether Kramer was telling the truth or not.

We then head over to Mo’s, where Kramer, Elaine, and Jerry, go to buy the gun. Mo is a weird loser who lives with his clueless mother. He has several guns for Elaine to choose from. It all becomes too overwhelming for Elaine and she decides not to get a gun. Instead, she goes down the street and buys a fake gun so she can at least scare people away.

The group, minus Kramer, then head to the airport to find the stewardess who supposedly slept with Kramer. They locate her and ask, in a myriad of ways without being direct, if she joined the mile high club with Kramer. The woman is freaked out and in the pandemonium, Elaine accidentally pulls out her gun from her purse, and the group gets swarmed by security.

A couple of months later, they’re all back in their homes and everything is fine. Kramer shows up at Jerry’s and reads the group a letter from the stewardess who hints at, in no uncertain terms, that they did have a physical tryst on the plane. So Jerry wins the bet and George loses at life, once again.

One of the things I’m constantly telling you guys to do is TAKE RISKS. But “risk” is a nebulous word. A risk to one writer may not seem like a risk at all to the next writer. So it’s important to identify when real risks are taken. That way, you guys know what I mean by “risks.”

This was a big risk for Larry Charles, the writer. He admits as much in the accompanying interview. He says that he was always looking to take darker subject matter and find a way to make it funny. Building an episode of Seinfeld around a gun is pretty dark, relatively speaking. This wouldn’t be risky for an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia. But that’s a show that got 1/20th the viewership of Seinfeld. It’s not mainstream so of course it can be darker.

The consensus from the Seinfeld group seems to be that Charles’s script was too risky. “You can’t make guns funny,” they concluded. I think that’s b.s. And I’ll tell you why. Suicide is way darker than guns. And suicide came up several times throughout Seinfeld. There’s one episode where Newman keeps threatening to commit suicide.  They even have a couple of episodes dealing with sexual assault (the masseuse and the woman with the toys), which turned out to be two of the funniest episodes in the series.

So I don’t buy that they couldn’t make guns funny. They just couldn’t make this episode work. The plot didn’t lead to funny situations. Going to buy a gun from a random guy who lives with his mom? Where’s the funny in that? I guess it’s ironic in that you’d normally expect to buy a gun from some sketchy hustler on the street. But they needed another angle. Mo was a dead-in-the-water character who didn’t generate a single laugh.

What I was really hoping to find in this episode was some classic Seinfeld dialogue, even if it was only one stand-out exchange. That’s where Seinfeld excelled, was in its dialogue. Because Seinfeld was the only show able to create funny dialogue out of nothing.

What I mean by that is, in most sit-coms, the scenes always had a point. For example, if you watched the first season of The Big Bang Theory, they’d have a scene where Penny was coming over to have dinner with our protagonist roommates for the first time, and Leonard would tell Sheldon, “Your job tonight is to just be normal. Don’t do or say anything weird!” And so the whole scene would be about Sheldon trying to be normal. And because Sheldon isn’t normal, he would end up saying and doing weirder stuff than usual. That’s where the comedy would come from.

But Seinfeld would just have the characters talk about nothing and it would still, somehow, be funny. So I was hoping to catch a glimpse of that here and learn something from it. There was a little bit of it and what I learned is that this brilliant team of people at Seinfeld had a particular voice that understood the minutia of everyday life in a way that the average person couldn’t articulate.

So when they picked apart that minutia (“I hate that guy. He stands so close to you when he talks. He’s a close-talker”), it was usually amusing. The lesson here is: pay attention to details in life. It’s those details – it’s those things that seem insignificant – that allow your characters to converse about things that you don’t usually see conversed about in movies and TV shows.

For example, if you’re on a plane and there’s a person sitting nearby who’s not doing anything – they’re not sleeping, they’re not reading, they’re not watching a movie, they’re not on their phone – they’re just sitting up straight and staring forward. You might see that, shrug your shoulders, think “That’s weird,” then never think about it again.

But Seinfeld used that premise for one of its plotlines. When Elaine is dating the dimwitted Puddy and the two are flying back from their trip to Europe, Elaine notices that Puddy is staring forward doing nothing. “You’re just going to sit there and do nothing?” “Yup.” “You’re not going to read?” “Nope.” “You’re not going to sleep.” “No.” Elaine is so flabbergasted by this bizarre behavior that she breaks up with him on the spot. She can’t handle it!

Paying attention to details, as a writer, pays off.

Speaking of dialogue (go buy The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written!), I wanted to share another dialogue tip with you. Here’s the scene with the tip.

The tip is: not every character in your scene needs to be participating in the same conversation. You can have fun with the fact that one or more people are having their own conversation. We see that here with George. George weaves in and out of the conversation, occasionally having a conversation with himself, obsessed with finding the punchline for his joke.

Everyone says this episode was TOO DARING FOR TV. I think it just wasn’t funny enough and they didn’t want to put a dud on the air. But they could’ve made guns funny. I’m sure some commenters will come up with some funny plotlines they could’ve used.

Script link: The Bet

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

What I learned: You never want dialogue to be too perfect. In real life, conversations are messy. That’s why you want to do things like have one character in the room having a completely different conversation from everyone else. It adds that “messiness” that mimics the kinds of interactions people have in real life.

Everybody in Hollywood is talking about the weak opening for The Fall Guy. Not just because of the movie itself but because it’s the official movie kicking off the summer movie season. That movie is always pulling double-duty. It’s got to do well for itself and it also has to get people in the movie-watching spirit for the rest of the summer.

The Fall Guy made only 28 million dollars. Which is, on average, a third of what movies usually make in this weekend slot.

The reason I didn’t see this movie is because I didn’t notice anything new in it. The movie may be about a unique subject matter (stunt men) but that’s not the impression the trailers gave. The trailers gave me a bunch of generic-looking explosions and guess what? I’ve seen about 10,000 generic movie explosions in my lifetime. Why would I pay 20 bucks to see a dozen more?

As I always say, YOU NEED TO GIVE US SOMETHING UNIQUE to have a shot at us showing up for your movie. The only chance you have at getting people to show up for a generic concept is if the direction is visionary. That’s, ironically, how Fall Guy’s director, David Leitch, got started. He took the most generic script ever – John Wick – and gave the world a tight slick carefully curated production that elevated a B-movie premise to look like an A-movie. No one had ever done that before.

Since then, Leitch has become sort of Michael Bay Jr. His movies are very slick-looking. They have that high production value with splosions everywhere you turn. But, just like Bay, there isn’t any soul in them.

Which is interesting because part of the reason John Wick worked was because of the soul. But I suspect it was Keanu Reeves who brought that soul. There’s something about that guy that elevates everything he’s in.

The Fall Guy’s failure is another reminder of how competitive the entertainment world has gotten. Cause, this morning, while eating breakfast, I watched a chess streamer on Youtube and then a “First Time Watch” video of The Princess Bride. Both of those videos, which added up to 1 hour of time, were highly entertaining. And that’s one hour I’m not spending on watching a new movie.

In other words, concepts have to be more compelling than ever to draw us away from countless other options. The only thing we know that gets butts in seats these days is the creme de la creme of comic book movies. Deadpool and Wolverine. Joker 2.

But, outside of that, you need to think long and hard about what’s going to get people into the theater. Challengers is a unique concept. So that did pretty well. Civil War as well. The Beekeper – a fresh spin on ‘guy-with-a-gun’ movies. Barbie felt completely different than anything that had come out. Even Anything But You, a generic rom-com if there ever was one, felt fresh to audiences because it had been forever since they had made a rom-com with a young cast.

It’s a bit of a mind-f**k, Hollywood. Because, on the surface, it seems like they only release generic stuff. But if you look closer, you realize that’s not true. Yeah, they love sequels, but those sequels were built on top of movies that broke out because they were fresh and new.

Wonka was different. The new Mean Girls is a musical. Guardians of the Galaxy was a total wildcard when the first movie debuted. As was the original Avatar. John Wick, as I pointed out, was sleek and cool and polished for a B-movie. Scream may have just come out with Scream 6, but the original blew the traditional slasher format out of the water.

Don’t get caught up in the fact that Hollywood loves IP because almost all of that IP was built on top of a movie that felt unique and fresh at the time. So that should still be the goal for you as a writer.

Speaking of uniqueness, how bout a movie about the Pop Tart?

I know this movie is getting a lot of sour milk poured on it, but you’re not going to see me bashing a Jerry Seinfeld film. You’re just not. I love Seinfeld. And if I can just get a few more jokes from him that remind me of the original sitcom? I’m happy.

Unfrosted feels like it was made in a vacuum. Which is both its biggest strength and biggest weakness. It’s a strength because you can tell nobody came in and “notesed” the writers to death, leaving them with a stale middle-of-the-road box of cereal. The joke-writers were unleashed. There were no restraints put on them.

Unfortunately, that led to the movie’s biggest weakness, which was an endless stream of the silliest jokes imaginable. I mean, there were at least 100 cereal-related puns in this script. But that’s a conservative estimate. It was probably closer to 200. I can handle a dozen cereal puns. I’m not sure anyone can handle 200.

What surprised me is that Jerry Seinfeld is 70 years old and yet he embraces some of the most juvenile humor this side of Johnny Knoxville. At one point, a rogue pop-tart comes alive and turns into a little creature that runs around and hides in drawers. It’s beyond wacky.

But the script does have its moments. My favorite set piece by far was the first test of the pop-tart. Our heroes are all safely hiding behind a big bunker (as if they’re preparing for a nuclear bomb test) and one of their assistants (in full oxygen hazmat suit) is tasked with putting the first pop-tart ever in the toaster. He has to operate within this “Fallout-esque” fake kitchen with fake family dummies and everything.

During the process of trying to toast the pop-tart, his oxygen tube gets loose and starts squirming around everywhere, then accidentally goes into the top of the toaster, causing the whole thing to explode and he just BLOWS UP AND DIES, lol. It was so wacky.

And they didn’t stop there! They follow this with a Kellog’s-funded funeral where, after they lower the casket into the ground, two people with giant boxes of cereal walk up and pour the cereal into the hole in the ground with the casket. Then another guy comes and pours a giant vat of milk into the hole. And then a final person comes with a giant spoon and starts stirring the milk and the cereal together. I admittedly could not stop cracking up, it was so stupid. But stupid funny!

And there were some good lines too. Hugh Grant plays this failed pissed off Shakespearean actor forced to be Tony the Tiger for Kellog. One day he’s drinking in a bar and a guy sees him and says, “I saw your one-man show of 12 Angry Men.” So there was at least one clever joke writer on this team.

Once you realize just how absurd the movie wants to be AND YOU ACCEPT THAT, it’s quite an enjoyable film. But I suspect some people aren’t going to be able to handle it. It’s one thing to not take yourself seriously. It’s another to be so dumb in places that it feels like you don’t care. This movie rode that line the whole way through.

It’s not going to be for everyone. But if you liked Seinfeld and you’re having a lousy day, this is definitely the movie for you. It’s going to cheer you up.

So, are there any lessons we learned from this weekend’s box office? The one lesson I’m reminded of is that the concept is always bigger than the actor. Hollywood bigwigs thought, “I’m Just Ken” was going to lead to a 75 million dollar Fall Guy opening no matter what. But people don’t see actors that way – at least not anymore. They see CHARACTERS. They see CONCEPTS. If they like a character, they’ll show up. They would definitely show up if this were a Ken spinoff movie. But as a totally new film about a stunt man? They don’t care that he was once Ken.

I’ll never forget the biggest example of this ever, which was Leonardo DiCaprio post-Titanic. There was never IN HISTORY a bigger actor than DiCaprio post-Titanic. You would’ve assumed that any movie he was in would’ve made 300 million at least. But the next movie he was in was The Man in the Iron Mask and NOBODY CARED. Nobody went to see it! It was a shocking lesson to me.

People don’t care about the actor. They care about the character and the concept. Which means YOU, the screenwriter, have the power. Give us that great concept. Give us that killer character. And we’ll show up, baby! :)

I would’ve had more Star Wars stuff to discuss in the newsletter if, you know, Lucasfilm actually released any new Star Wars information! But don’t worry, I still have you covered. We’ve got rumors that Tarantino was going to use tons of characters from his Tarantinoverse for his final movie. We’ve got screenplay tips from the best show currently on television. We’ve got some wild industry news to break down, including Post Malone becoming a woman and Silver Surfer becoming a screenwriter. Or wait, I may have got those two mixed up. Plus, a sneaky cool project that was announced recently that went totally under the radar. People are calling it the next Misery! I also review one of my top five most anticipated reads from last year’s Black List. Does it deliver? I’ve also got some killer screenplay notes deals for readers who are quick on the draw.

If you didn’t receive my newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the list!

Memento started as a short story.

I’ve got some bad news. We’ve been swindled! The Beckys writer e-mailed to inform me that there is no Beckys script. Honestly, he doesn’t sound like he knew the rules. He just thought it was a logline contest. So what we’re going to do is I’ll review the second place script, Devil in Transit, sometime this week. Maybe in the newsletter. Maybe on Monday. Maybe next Friday. So, a review will be coming.

In the meantime, start your engines. Your SHORT STORY engines that is. Cause this month’s showdown is a Short Story Showdown. It’s everybody’s chance to take a brief respite from screenwriting and try their hand at this other writing medium. What I need from you is your title, genre, logline, AND the first page of your short story, which will be posted in the showdown.

This is the most excited I’ve been for a showdown this year. I think short-story writing is fun. It allows you to be more creative. Try some weird stuff. It doesn’t take a lot of time to write them. But you’re not going to be in the competition unless you have a good idea. So make sure you’re writing from a strong concept. Or an interesting one. Here are the submission deets…

What: Short Story Showdown

I need your: Title, Genre, Logline, and FIRST PAGE

Competition Date: Friday, May 24th

Deadline: Thursday, May 23rd, 10pm Pacific Time

Where: Send your submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com