Don’t forget. You have one week left to turn your script in for the HOLIDAY AMATEUR SHOWDOWN. Must be a late-year holiday-themed script. I’m giving you til next Thursday, December 12, at 8:00 pm Pacific Time. Send the title, genre, logline, why you think it deserves a shot, and, of course, a PDF of the script (you’d be surprised at how many people forget that part), to carsonreeves1@gmail.com
Genre: Action
Logline: A disaffected NYPD cop visiting her daughter in a state-of-the-art hospital is unwittingly caught in a hostage situation when extremists raid the building seeking the cure of a deadly virus.
Why You Should Read: I got my start writing for B-Movie King Roger Corman, which basically means your creative flexibility gets completely strapped by ultra-low budget constraints. I wrote “Hemorrhage” to break free of such restrictions and focus on telling a story about a hard-pressed mother struggling to mend old wounds between her sick daughter, albeit with armed extremists threatening to rip apart what little bond they have left. I love the thrill of a good action movie, especially ones with compelling antagonists whose motives aren’t simply black or white and make us truly fear for the principal characters’ lives. If you get a kick out of the same thing, then you’ll have a blast reading “Hemorrhage.”
Writer: Justin Fox
Details: 108 pages
When I conceived of Action Week, this is exactly what I imagined. A good old-fashioned balls-to-the-wall action flick. But I realized something while reading “Hemorrhage,” which is that reading action scripts is challenging. Action is meant to be experienced visually. It isn’t meant to be conveyed in words. There are only so many “He jumps,” “She shoots,” “They runs,” “It explodes,” a reader can take before they tune out.
This is why I encourage writers to come up with action concepts and set pieces that are unique in some way. The more uniqueness you can bring, the more you disrupt the pattern. “Gravity” comes to mind. That movie had so many unique action scenes because of the story’s unique setup. Or that library book attack scene in John Wick 3. That’s the sort of stuff you need to put on the page.
Let’s see how Hemorrhage fared in this department.
An American doctor in Afghanistan is trying to help contain a deadly virus when she, herself, gets infected. She’s tossed on a plane and flown back to New York City so she can be treated. Meanwhile, 35 year old cop Laken Atwood is finishing up the day’s beat so she can get to her daughter, Piper’s, lung surgery. Piper’s lung was punctured due to a car accident where Laken was driving. So Piper’s not exactly thrilled to see her mom.
While this is going on, terrorists led by creepy frenchman, Cedric, creepier fake doctor, Mateo, and Mateo’s angry younger sister, Ana, show up at the hospital the Afghanistan doctor is being sent to and start killing everyone they see. They then withdraw blood from the woman, which no doubt they will use to kill large portions of populations at some point in the future.
In case you were wondering, this is the same hospital Piper is staying at. So when Laken and Piper hear all the shooting, Laken knows it’s time to high-tail it out of here. There are a few problems though. One, Piper is connected to a computer thing that’s keeping her lung pumping. Two, Laken’s husband, Danny, is downstairs grabbing snacks. And three, New York is in the midst of a storm so bad the streets have turned into lakes.
Laken tries to construct an escape plan but the terrorists are on them quickly. Laken kills Emil AND Ana, which makes Mateo so angry, he momentarily ditches his plan to destroy the world so he can find this pesky cop and kill her. Eventually he’s able to get his hands on Piper and does the unthinkable – HE INJECTS HER WITH THE VIRUS!!! This gives Piper a couple of hours to live. So now Laken will have to retrieve her daughter from the terrorists and somehow find the vaccine before Piper bites it. Will she succeed?
I like what Fox did with his characters.
He made this about the mother-daughter relationship. A lot of action writers don’t care about character stuff. But if you can create characters who a) we want to root for, and b) have a conflict that we want to see resolved, we’re going to be a heck of a lot more invested in your story.
I also liked the way the setup made our hero’s job more challenging. Laken isn’t the female John McClane. She doesn’t get to roam free through a building wherever she wants. She has to protect her daughter who’s only got one lung and has to lug around an apparatus in order to breathe. That was good.
And my favorite part of the script was when they jammed the virus into Piper. Now you’ve got this literal ticking time bomb that’s going to go off ON TOP OF Laken needing to get her daughter back from the terrorists. All of that was great.
But every time it felt like this script took a step forward, it would take two steps back. Let’s start with the storm. If you’re using something to create a convenience in your story that is so big it could be a movie on its own, that’s a problem. Fox needed to create a reason why cops couldn’t just descend upon this hospital and rescue everyone. So we get a storm so intense it’s creating rivers on the streets. I don’t know if that’s ever happened in New York history. If the thing you’re using to plug up a pot hole is so big it could be its own film (A flooded New York City!), people aren’t going to buy it.
Then you had the dad. He was clearly the weakest character in the script. The guy goes missing for long stretches of time without an explanation. What I’m guessing happened is that Fox never truly understood the dad so there wasn’t any commitment to the character. All writers run into this problem. At a certain point, if you’re not going to fully commit to a character, you have to cut bait. The dad could’ve died a few years ago. He and Laken could be divorced and he lives in another state. But he definitely shouldn’t have been here in this hospital.
And, finally, I didn’t understand Mateo’s plan. At first we learn that the terrorists fighting for him are doing so because he planned to use this virus to save people. How do you use a virus to save people? It didn’t technically matter since he was lying to them and was always going to use it as a weapon, but we still have to buy into why the terrorists believed such a thing in the first place. And even once we learn that he’s going to use it as a weapon, it isn’t clear who he’s going to target or how. And then, late in the movie, we establish that Piper needs to get the vaccine which means that… there’s a vaccine. So how is this virus going to kill a bunch of people if we have a vaccine for it? As your villain’s ultimate plan emerges, we should feel more and more satisfied, not more and more confused.
But hey, this is Amateur Action Showdown. So what about the action, Carson!?
The action was fine. My favorite sequence was the sky-bridge. That felt unique to the situation and therefore it popped as the most memorable of the action sequences. But everything else was standard shoot-shoot-duck-hide-shoot-fight-shoot. There wasn’t a lot of creativity. I implore action writers everywhere to do as little of the generic action stuff as possible. We can get generic action anywhere. What action can we only get from your movie? Figure that out and you’re going to come up with tons more creative action scenes. Like the “attacked at the border highway” scene in Sicario. I’d never seen anything like that before.
This is probably stale advice to you, at this point. I talk about it all the time. But, it’s one of the main things that distinguishes the writers who stay stuck on the outside from the ones who make millions of dollars. The writers who can come up with original situations within the genres they specialize in will stand out PRECISELY BECAUSE the majority of writers do not bother to go the extra mile.
This isn’t to say Fox’s script was too generic. Not at all. It’s simply that it wasn’t creative enough. If I were to rate it on a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 6. Which is respectable because most of the action scripts I read are 5 and below. I could even see Hemorrhage sneaking into the 9 or 10 slot on my Best Amateur Screenplays of the Year list. However, I think this script has another gear or two to it and that Fox needs to really push himself if he wants to get it there.
Script link: Hemorrhage
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “The Baby Yoda” – In order to make your hero’s journey more difficult, add something fragile that they have to protect. In Mandalorian, it’s Baby Yoda. Here, it’s a physically impaired daughter.
When you’re writing a screenplay, every little thing counts. Even spelling words correctly counts. So if you can make your script 1% better by adding a cool plot development on page 40, you do it. And if you keep doing that over and over, making little improvements here and there? Before you know it, your script is pretty darn good. But improvement take time. Heck, writing takes time. So I got to thinking, how could I help you guys significantly improve your current script in as short a period of time as possible? That’s how we got this article. Here are a handful of things you can do to make your script a full 25% better THIS WEEKEND. Enjoy!
Write a Better First Scene
Improvement Potential: 8%
Implementation Time: 3-5 hours
I want you to go read the first scene in your script right now. I’ll wait. Now I’m going to ask you a question. Is that the best you can do? Because I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s not even close to the best scene you can write. Screenwriting is challenging in that there’s a lot of things you have to do at the same time. Set up characters, provide exposition, write strong dialogue, start the scene as late as possible, end it as early as possible, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH. Blah. You shouldn’t be thinking about any of that stuff in your first scene. The number one thing you need to be focused on in that scene is ENTERTAINING THE F#%@ OUT OF THE READER. So write a scene that entertains. Yes, hopefully you’re setting up character. Yes, hopefully you’re setting up plot. But if at any point in the opening scene you have to make a choice between entertaining and anything else, choose entertaining. Cause we’re not going to keep reading unless we’re enjoying ourselves.
Eliminate Your Three Most Boring Scenes
Improvement Potential: 3%
Implementation Time: 2-4 hours
It is a rare script reading experience where I say, “Man, this is all going by too fast.” It’s more often the opposite. “Oh my God, this script is so sloooooowwww.” There are many reasons your script might be reading slow but one of the most common is that you’re adding scenes you don’t need. These scenes aren’t pushing the story forward in any significant or entertaining way. The solution to this is simple. Get rid of them! You probably already know the weakest scenes in your script but do a quick skim, note your three most boring scenes, then drop them. If there’s plot or character information in those scenes that are required for the story to work, move them to other scenes. Pro Tip – You’ll find most of these scenes in your second act.
Just Raise The Stakes Man
Improvement Potential: 5%
Implementation Time: 9-12 hours
A big reason why so many screenplays are boring is because there isn’t enough on the line. Whatever your hero’s journey is, make sure there are genuine high stakes attached to it. Yesterday, a lot of you liked my plot suggestions to improve First Harvest. All I did was raise the stakes. Here was a man who was struggling to take care of his dying wife. He’s given this baby to take care of after a local tragedy. The baby has powers. The baby causes a few hiccups around the farm but that was it as far as stakes. I changed it to: the hero *secretly* takes the baby, the baby’s powers begin healing his wife, and the FBI starts looking for the baby. The Feds taking the baby means losing his wife. What is all comes down to in writing is making the reader care. If they care, you’re good. And one of the best ways to make someone care is to increase what’s on the line. One extra point about this. There’s a sliding scale of effectiveness with this tip the more uninspired or generic the stakes are. For example, your hero has 12 hours to deliver a package or the bomb in his head blows up. Sure, there’s a lot on the line, but it’s so artificially orchestrated, so “basic action movie setup,” we don’t feel anything. You want to come up with your stakes in a way that’s creative and organic to the story. If you nail this, every single scene in your script becomes better because you’ve raised our overall investment in the character’s journey.
Give Your Hero the Best Save the Cat or Kick the Dog Moment You Can Come Up With
Improvement Potential: 5%
Implementation Time: 90 minutes – 3 hours
You guys hear about that tiny movie that came out a couple of months ago? “Joker?” The first character piece film to make a billion dollars at the box office? Do you know why that movie made so much money? Because of its Kick the Dog scene. Here Arthur is, dressed in his clown suit, advertising for a store, doing his best to bring joy and happiness to the world, and then a bunch of thugs steal his sign and beat him to within an inch of his life with it. After that moment, after getting kicked by the dog, we feel MASSIVE SYMPATHY for Arthur. Which is why we care so much about his journey. Even when he goes all psycho killer Qu’est-ce que c’est on everyone. Okay okay, maybe that’s not the ONLY reason the movie made a billion dollars. But it was a critically important introduction to the character that shaped our feelings towards him. And that’s what a good save the cat or kick the dog scene can do for your hero. So come up with the best one you can think up and write it. I promise you it will pay huge dividends down the line.
Give Us One Set Piece We’ve Never Seen Before
Improvement Potential: 4%
Implementation Time: 4-5 hours
The best scripts I read almost all have one thing in common – A great set piece scene I haven’t read before. You should think of your set pieces as commercials for why your concept is so awesome. For that reason, they shouldn’t be standard generic car chases or shootouts or explosions. They shouldn’t be that scene that’s in every 200 million dollar movie now where a plane starts falling apart and everyone flies out. They should be creative and original and unique. Take A Quiet Place. What’s a commercial for a movie about not being able to make noise or else you’re killed? A wife giving birth. Who can give birth without making a noise? Or say you’re writing a movie about Hollywood in 1969. What’s a commercial for that setup? A mini-horror movie about trying to see an old friend on the Manson farm with 50 crazy cult followers in your way. The Wrestler. A former star wrestler working at a deli has a mental breakdown in front of all the customers. You can usually figure out these scenes by asking what’s unique about your concept and then building a scene around that. If you nail one of your set pieces, that’s the scene people will leave the theater talking about. So it’s important you come up with the best set piece you can possibly come up with.
Happy Writing this weekend!
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Blood List) A goat farmer discovers a newborn baby among the bodies of a cult’s mass suicide. In nurturing the baby, the farmer’s cancer-ridden wife starts getting better. But there’s something dark about the child’s power.
About: We’re just 10 days from The Black List. Going off what I’ve read from the Blood List, expect at least three of those script to make the list. If today’s Blood List script is good, I’ll raise that number to 4. The writer/director is Kevin McMullin, who penned and directed this year’s dramatic thriller, “Low Tide,” starring one of the biggest young actors in the business, Jaeden Martell (It, Knives Out).
Writer: Kevin McMullin
Details: 94 pages
I like when I see a unique setting in a logline. I read so many scripts that feel the same that any break from the familiar is appreciated. If you’re writer number 782,213 writing a haunted house movie, you’re going to find it very hard to differentiate your script from every other haunted house script.
So when I saw “goat farm” in this logline, I thought to myself, “I’ve never read a script about a goat farm before.” That’s not to imply that goat farming is going to lead to storytelling nirvana, but when you start from a unique place, you’re more likely to deliver a unique experience.
It’s 1979. Texas. 69 year old George Viske is barely making ends meet on his goat farm. A major part of the problem is that his corn crop isn’t growing to full term. He’s considering pesticides as a last resort but doesn’t have much faith that they’ll work. Things on the inside of the household aren’t so great either. George’s wife, Alice, is suffering from Stage 4 cancer.
One day after selling goat meat in town, George stumbles across a stray goat who he follows into a valley, where he sees over 100 dead bodies from a doomsday cult. There is only one survivor, a newborn baby. The local sheriff is overwhelmed and asks George if he can take care of the baby while he coordinates all the incoming press and federal agents.
Alice immediately takes a liking to the baby and, wouldn’t you know it, her cancer starts regressing. And that corn crop? All of a sudden, it’s growing just fine. But the good luck baby can’t help everyone. For some reason, all of George’s farm hands start developing intense fevers. Whatever’s going on here appears to be selective. Or random.
George is lukewarm on the baby, who they name Eli. Alice, conversely, becomes obsessed with it. She seems to sense it has special powers and wants to raise it. So when a couple of surviving members of the doomsday cult church arrive looking for Eli, Alice doesn’t want to give him away. Little do they know, they’re going to have to fight to keep him. And to stay alive.
Before I get into my analysis of the script, I want to point out that this is a writer-director and that he clearly has a vision in mind for the story. The script has that quasi “writing it for myself” quality that you see in a lot of writer-director scripts. And after seeing the disaster screenplay that was Three Billboards turn into one of my favorite movies of 2017, I’ll never discount a writer-director until I see the finished product.
With that said, this script had issues.
We talk about STORY ENGINES a lot on this site. What is the engine that’s driving your story – that’s making the reader want to turn the page? The most common example is a character goal. Ad Astra – Get to dad and bring him back.
But a character goal isn’t the only narrative engine out there. It’s just the best one. Another common engine is a mystery. “Get Out” is about a guy who visits his girlfriend’s parents for the weekend and starts to sense that something is off. We keep watching to see how that mystery will unfold. What is going on in this house with these people?
First Harvest doesn’t have a clear engine as far as I can tell. It’s more of a “an older couple inherits a strange baby and weird stuff starts happening” movie. Now if you were debating me about this, you might argue that the baby is the mystery. The reader will keep reading to figure out what’s going on with this baby.
And therein lies why there’s no true formula for writing a screenplay. The writer thinks that mystery is compelling enough to drive the entire movie. I don’t. Who’s right? Whoever reads this script or sees this movie – they’ll decide if that mystery is compelling enough. But I don’t think it is.
Part of the problem is that the mystery is passive. We’re just sort of waiting around to see what happens next. Is the corn going to grow? Are the farm hands going to die? Is Alice going to keep getting better? Strangely, the biggest storyline – 100 dead people in the adjacent farm lot – is barely explored. We instead focus everything on George and Alice’s household, which, again, amounts to a lot of waiting around. As I’ve made clear in dozens of script reviews, I don’t like storylines where people wait around. It’s like you’re deliberately shooting your screenplay in the leg. You make it so hard for the script to get anywhere.
One of things you’re trying to do when you come up with an idea is find the narrative that gets the MOST out of the concept. With a little more brainstorming, I think we could’ve come up with a much better storyline here.
For starters, the sheriff shouldn’t have handed the baby to them and said, “Figure this out yourself.” It would’ve been a lot more compelling had George found the baby before anyone else came along and brought it back home. Now your main characters are trying to keep a secret, which is a lot more interesting. Especially with the nosy farmhands nearby. Throw a plot point in around page 40 where the feds find out a baby is missing, and things really get dramatic.
Then you have Alice, who was literally on her deathbed, start to get better. George believes it’s because of the baby. This means losing the baby doesn’t mean giving something back you found a week ago. It’s George losing his wife. How far would you go to make sure that didn’t happen? That’s your movie right there. I could see George killing the farmhand who knows about the baby when he threatens to go to the police.
Instead of all that, we get one of those scripts that feels like the writer is figuring things out on the page. For example, there’s a scene where George wakes up to find his wife floating above the bed. When you’re writing a scene like that, it feels fun and exciting. But it doesn’t elevate the story in any way (no pun intended). It doesn’t lead to some plot point that takes the story to another level. It’s just a fun isolated moment. A cute effect.
I’ll finish things off by saying this. You want to avoid writing situations where the only thing you know going in is “weird stuff is going to happen.” A baby with strange powers. Okay. There’s a way to turn that into a movie. But if all you’re going to give us is weird stuff happening with an arbitrary rule-set (some people are healed by the baby, some people are hurt by it), the reader is going to find that frustrating. They want a script where the writer understands the magical force at the center of their story and what the point of it is. And I didn’t get that feeling here at all.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: What is the most unique part of your life? Do you have a weird job? Know a weird person? Do you live in a unique area of the country? Did you go on a trip once that was unlike anything else you’ve experienced? These are the things you want to build movie ideas around – the stuff from your life that’s unique. Not only are you giving readers something different. But because you experienced these things yourself, you can write from a place of knowledge. Which means your story will be specific and, therefore, believable.
Genre: Crime/Period
Premise: An Irish hitman joins the Italian mob, allowing him to meet Jimmy Hoffa, who he develops a deep friendship with.
About: After 10 long years of development, Scorsese’s latest passion project, The Irishman, is here. Unable to get studios interested in a 150 million dollar flick that didn’t have superheroes in it, Scorsese turned to former enemy Netflix to make the film, who was all too happy to bankroll another shot at their current obsession – a Best Picture Oscar. The film’s sky-high budget is due mostly to de-aging its trio of stars, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, and Robert DeNiro. Here’s my old review of the script.
Writer: Steve Zallian (based on the book by Charles Brandt)
Details: 3 hours and 30 minutes long!
The Irishman is a weird movie.
Its biggest expense – the de-aging of its actors – is so unimpressive as to make you wonder why they went through all the hassle. The idea was strong in theory. Use new technology to turn back the hands of time and give us one more performance from three master actors in their prime.
Except when I think of these actors’ primes, I think ages 30-45. Not 55. Yet that was the age Scorsese covered. While I’m not sure make-up and hair could’ve achieved the same effect, there had to be other options. 80 million bucks seems like an enormous expense for what they delivered. If you’re going to spend that money, we need to be truly transported.
Something tells me that if you would’ve aged these guys to 35 instead of 55, this movie would’ve been a monster hit everyone was talking about. We’d truly feel like we were back in the Pacino and DeNiro hey day. As it stands, the whole thing comes off as a curiosity, an old dog trying new tricks and not executing them well enough to earn a treat.
If the 3 and a half hour running time of The Irishman scared you off, here’s my TLDR. The movie follows a guy named Frank Sheeran, an Irishman who became a hit man for the Italian mob. He took care of people whose interests weren’t aligned with his employers. Sometimes that meant people outside the mob, sometimes it meant people inside.
Big boss Russel Bufalino (Pesci) takes a liking to Frank, and the two work in tandem with Jimmy Hoffa, the teamster leader who has more power than the president of the United States, to rule the roost in the 1960s. But when they get greedy, the government comes after them, and all three end up in prison at one point or another.
When Hoffa gets out, he wants to be reinstated as teamster president. But that ship has sailed. Unable to accept this arrangement, Hoffa keeps pushing and pushing until Bufalino’s had enough and orders Frank to kill him. Frank drives him to an empty house and shoots him in the head. They then burn Hoffa’s body. Frank is conflicted since Hoffa was a friend but this is the life he chose. This is the bed he must lie in.
All of this is told in Scorsese’s trademark MONTAGE-VOICE OVER style, using an older Frank to narrate the events for us. This allows us to speed through years at a time when needed and get full-on bios of the movie’s endless cast of characters.
Something I realized while watching this style is that it’s perfect for big sprawling stories. One of the reasons I always tell you to keep your stories as contained as possible is because contained stories are easier to manage. The more sprawling things get, the harder it is to wrangle it all in in a cohesive manner. Of particular importance is pacing. It’s hard to keep the pace up if you’re randomly jumping forward years at a time. Scorsese’s never-ending voice over montage helps keep these traditionally slow transitions crackling along.
As far as how the script changed since its initial draft 10 years ago, I’d say it both changed a lot and yet not at all. The overall feeling of the movie is EXACTLY the same as that early draft. All of this is exactly how I pictured it would look and feel. But they made some wise choices, like de-emphasizing the plot line where Frank and Hoffa drive to a wedding together. Scorsese seemed to realize, either in the script or in the editing room, that nothing much happened in that storyline, and that the stuff in the past was where it was at.
Another change made was giving a bigger storyline to Frank’s oldest daughter. I’m guessing this choice was made specifically because Scorsese is often critiqued for not providing enough strong female roles in his movies. It was a surprisingly effective plot line, especially the stuff where Bufalino became increasingly upset over the years because Frank’s daughter was the one person on the planet who didn’t like or pretend to like him. Anna Paquin’s nearly dialogue-free performance was one of the most memorable in the film for me.
Conversely, the most disappointing thing about the film were the performances of the big three. They were all nice. But you’re not going into a Pesci, DeNiro, Pacino movie looking for “nice.” You’re looking for great, performances you’re going to remember for the rest of your life. We didn’t get that. One of the most surprising choices was that none of the characters was given a “chews up the scenery” type character to play. Everybody was various levels of reserved. Bufalino was extremely reserved. Frank was fairly reserved. And even the king of overacting, Pacino himself, played Hoffa reserved most of the time.
This robbed the characters of any contrast between one another. If you want great dialogue and great moments, you need contrasting characters. And with everyone so chilled out here, we rarely got that. Some of the better scenes with the three came late when Hoffa began losing his cool. It’s not surprisingly why. The more he lost his cool, the more in contrast he was with Frank.
For that reason, Irishman had to look elsewhere for its good scenes, and my favorite came when Hoffa had to ask rival Tony Pro for his endorsement to get back the top position in the union. The last time we saw these two, Hoffa told Tony he wouldn’t be getting his million dollar pension. Tony then shows up late for the meeting, which pisses Hoffa off, who tells him he wants an apology for showing up late. It only gets worse from there. It was these moments where The Irishman shined brightest – where one person needed something from another and there was all this s#$% in the way that made it difficult. As a writer, tension needs to be one of your best friends. Treat him well and he’ll give you some of your best scenes.
One final beef I had with the script was the lack of a clear narrative for Frank. The title of this movie is “The Irishman” and yet, if you didn’t know that, you wouldn’t have known Frank was Irish. Or that being Irish in this world even mattered. If I remember correctly from the script, Frank’s dream was to become a mob boss. He wanted to get as high up into the mob hierarchy as possible. That goal gave his character purpose and it gave the audience an opportunity to participate.
That’s what a good character goal does – it recruits the audience to root for the hero to achieve what they want. Since we didn’t get any targeted storyline about Frank wanting to be the first Irishman to lead the mob, Frank’s character felt more like an unimportant drifter, a dude who was called upon when an important hit needed to be made. Otherwise, go stand by the wall and shut up. A narrative more focused on him climbing the ranks and getting pushback due to his non-Italian roots would’ve elevated this movie considerably.
And one final problem this movie has that not many people are talking about is there was another movie that came out this year which also faithfully placed us back in the 60s that did everything The Irishman did, just better. That movie, obviously, was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Pitt’s and DiCaprio’s performances were so much more fun to watch than these three.
All of this is not to say I didn’t enjoy The Irishman. But to say that the film didn’t meet my expectations would be an understatement. It needed one of these guys – just one of these guys – to give a great performance. And because that didn’t happen, I’d say that this film is best enjoyed as a passive viewing experience while you mess around on your computer for four hours.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Look for contrast in the characters who are going to have the most screen time together in your script. If the characters are even a little alike, you’re going to run into a lot of scenes where you’ll find it hard to bring the dialogue alive.
Welcome to The Mandalorian Teleplay Chronicles. I will be reviewing every episode of The Mandalorian’s first season with an eye towards helping writers learn TV writing. Whether the show is a breakout hit or a Jar Jar Binks level bust, we’re going to be focusing on how to become better TV writers. Here’s a link to my review of the first episode here, a link to the second episode here, and here’s a link to episode 3.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: The Mandalorian takes Baby Yoda off to a remote planet to hide from pursuing bounty hunters, but runs into a problem when members of a nearby clan ask for his help.
About: Jon Favreau wrote this fourth episode and Bryce Dallas Howard, who starred in Jurassic World and is the daughter of “Solo” director, Ron Howard, directed the episode. Dallas Howard has one directing credit to her name – a short film.
Writer: Jon Favreau
Details: About 38 minutes
It’s days like these that I wish I didn’t know as much about Star Wars as I did. It definitely affects my judgment. I knew, for example, that Jon Favreau wrote three episodes when he pitched the show to Disney. That means Chapter 4 would be the first episode of the show Favreau wrote *after* his original 3 episode self-contained story. So I was expecting something clunky, or, at least, not as purposeful, and that’s exactly what I got.
Something else I knew was that Bryce Dallas Howard would be directing this episode. I’ve been annoyed about this news ever since it was announced. You’ve got the first ever Star Wars show. You’ve got eight episodes. You want to make the show as amazing as it can possibly be. Your first job is choosing directors for each episode. In ANY room with ANY group of people, is there ANY scenario under which ANY person says, “You know who we need directing one of these? Bryce Dallas Howard.”
Of course not. It would never ever happen. There is a list of, probably, 2500 directors in the world who have more experience and deserve more of a shot and who are more qualified to direct a Star Wars episode than Bryce Dallas Howard. Which means that the only reason Bryce Dallas Howard is directing an episode is because someone got her the job. And you don’t have to look far to figure out how that happened. Her dad, Ron Howard, probably said that one of the conditions for him to come in and save “Solo” was that his daughter get to direct an episode of The Mandalorian. And that’s exactly why we get the worst episode of The Mandalorian yet.
Now I’m not going to lay all the blame on Howard. Favreau wrote this episode and he didn’t do her any favors. But when your episode looks like something out of a bad Syfy series, that responsibility usually falls on the shoulders of the direction. Especially when you’ve been given more money than 99% of the shows out there.
This silly episode starts off with the Mandalorian flying Baby Yoda to a remote planet to, I think, hang out for a few weeks and let the heat die off them. Immediately, they go to some Star Warsian Starbucks, and that’s where the Mandalorian sees a woman drinking a puppychino. For some reason, he believes she’s a threat to him, and therefore follows her out back where they get into a fight.
The fight ends in a draw which means that now they’re best friends. Um, okay. Soon after, a couple of locals approach the Mandalorian and ask for his protection. Their nearby clan is being bullied by some neighbors. Mandalorian sees this as an opportunity to get Baby Yoda further away from danger so he takes the deal. And New Chick comes with cause why not?
Once at the village, a hot widowed woman flirts with Mandalorian, telling him he needs to take off his helmet more. Then Mandalorian and New Chick teach the locals how to fight and shoot, a task that takes all of 40 seconds. They then wait for the bad guys to approach. They come that night with an Imperial AT-ST walker and the fight is on. The good guys win but Star Wars fans lose. The end.
In television, the fourth episode is really where you start to see if the show is working. The novelty has worn off. We’re a month in. Are we getting consistent quality entertainment or aren’t we?
From a writing perspective, your approach to episode 4 shouldn’t be that different from your approach to episode 3. You’re trying to expand the mythology to imply a bigger world, a bigger threat. Why are you doing this? Because we want viewers to start making a mental long-term commitment. It’s like dating. You want the other person to start seeing you in their future, not just the next dinner date or next late night booty call.
The Mandalorian didn’t go there though. There was one moment where it had the opportunity to but it didn’t follow through. The Mandalorian makes a comment about, “Why would an AT-ST be way out here in the middle of nowhere?” That’s a good question. Why? Is some fallen Empire villain putting together a nefarious plan? Nope. Turns out it was just some random happenstance thing! Oh well.
What the episode DID do was create a contained story for the episode. This I endorse. Too many TV shows use their episodes as formless blocks of time to move individual character storylines further along. If you’ve ever watched an episode of your favorite show and been disappointed that the episode felt empty and unfocused, this is often the reason.
Remember the very simple formula for creating a storyline for a TV episode. Present a PROBLEM and then have your hero try and SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Here we get this clan’s problem that a nearby clan keeps attacking them. So the whole episode is about teaching the clan to defend themselves and, at the end, fighting off the threat once they arrive.
In theory, the bones for a good episode are there. But there were too many problems.
The most obvious one was that there wasn’t enough time to make an episode like this work effectively. Who is this clan??? We’ve known them for two seconds. Why should we care whether they fight off the bad guys or not? You need time to build up an entire group of people, to build up the characters within that group so that we care for them. When you don’t effectively develop characters, they become cliche. They have no choice other than to be cliche because we don’t know enough about them to differentiate them from other characters we’ve seen. The same principle goes for the group. Don’t know what makes them unique = cliche.
But the real problem with this episode was all of the “Of Course” moments. “Of Course” moments are when something happens in a show/movie because “of course” it does. “Of Course” moments are things we’ve seen in a million other shows and movies, things that have become so ubiquitous that the use of even a few of them can destroy any chance of creating originality. The things we remember in a story are never the things we’ve seen before. They’re the things that are different.
Of course when the Mandalorian sees New Chick they get in a fight with each other that ends in a draw. Of course they both teach the clan how to fight in a cheesy montage. Of course someone is about to shoot Baby Yoda but at the very last second we hear a blast then see that New Chick has shot the killer first. A huge reason why this episode was so lame were all the Of Course moments. Nothing you write is ever going to stand out if you’re drenching your script in Of Course moments.
Another problem with this episode is that it was the first episode that moved from an ACTIVE storyline to a PASSIVE storyline. Your characters weren’t going out there and trying to achieve something. They were waiting for the fight to come to them. WAITING is often a storytelling death sentence. It can work. But the skillset required to make it work is more extensive than simply having your character go after something. The pairing of a “waiting around” narrative combined with a first time director doomed this episode before it was even shot.
Finally, I want to talk about THREADING in television writing. Threading is the act of weaving setups into episodes so that later episodes don’t feel too self-contained. With television, you want the fabric of every episode to connect to the fabric of every other episode. You do this by threading in moments or information in previous episodes.
The show “Evil” has been dropping nuggets throughout the first six episodes that our heroine’s husband is a tour guide on Everest. So when he finally shows up in Episode 7 and they dedicate a whole storyline to him, we’re not asking, “Wait, who is this guy and where the heck did he come from?” The show has been threading in little moments throughout its running time to prepare us for his arrival.
The Mandalorian could’ve threaded in a number of things that would’ve made this episode more connected, starting with the planet. For example, maybe the Nick Nolte alien used to live on this planet and told him about it. As it stands, he chooses the planet because his Navi-computer indicates it’s habitable. It feels random, which subcommunicates a lack of importance to the action. Again, a big reason why you felt nothing for this clan was because they were so random. Had they been more connected to the story, that could’ve changed.
Sticking with my “Playoff Series” analogy, The Mandalorian has now won two games and lost two. My biggest concern is that we haven’t provided the series with an overall goal. If anything, you’re setting up a reactive storyline (keep running away with Baby Yoda) which doesn’t work as well as an active goal (“Lost” – Get off the island). I’ve going to give Favreau the benefit of the doubt because, well, “Baby Yoda.” But this series isn’t on strong enough ground to be giving inexperienced directors jobs based on nepotism. This is freaking Star Wars. Let’s bring in some All-Stars and give the viewers the experience they deserve.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use “tell by showing” moments to improve your dialogue. In this episode, the clan’s widow character asks the Mandalorian when was the last time he took off his helmet in front of others. When a character asks another character a question, one of the WORST things you can do is have the other character give a straight-forward literal answer. “Twelve years,” would’ve been a boring answer, for example. A trick is to look for visual cues in the environment to give the answer more pop. There are a group of kids playing nearby while they have their conversation. The Mandalorian says to her, “I wasn’t much older than them.” Boom. A WAAAAAY better answer. You can’t do this for EVERY response, obviously, but you should be using it every once in a while.
