This is the LONGEST newsletter I’ve ever done. There was so much Star Wars news to talk about that I couldn’t stop myself. Mandalorian, Episode 9, Rian Johnson. It’s all in there, baby. Then, of course, I had to talk about The Matrix. I mean, duh. I also rank August’s new trailers from worst to best. Anyone want to guess what my favorite was? I also review a recent sci-fi spec sale that got a DOUBLE [xx] WORTH THE READ. It’s a great spec to read if you want to see what sells. Also I tell you who bought it and why you want to send YOUR future action specs there. I’ve got two great screenwriting tips of the month, one about how to create awesome characters, the other about handling the “Bermuda Triangle” section of the screenplay. Oh! And there’s a consultation deal in there for four lucky people. This is a really good newsletter.
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SCHEDULE UPDATE – The Thursday Article is going to get pushed back to late Thursday afternoon. Labor Day Amateur Showdown will start early Friday evening and go through Monday (Labor Day). So get those scripts in if you want to be the next Cop Cam! Instructions here.
Genre: True Story
Premise: After Bill Alexander’s long-running show “The Magic of Oil Painting” was cancelled by PBS and replaced with Bob Ross’ show, “The Joy of Oil Painting,” Alexander accuses the soft-spoken afro’d Ross of stealing his act, inciting a bitter dispute that changed the lives of both men forever. Based on a true story.
About: This script made the Black List last year with 10 votes. Shawn Dwyer
is just starting to make a name for himself. He had another script, 73 Seconds, pitched as “Hidden Figures” meets “Spotlight” that got a producer attached. However, this script hasn’t yet secured a buyer.
Writer: Shawn Dwyer
Details: 112 pages
It’s fun reading these Black List scripts that are still searching for buyers because you can evaluate what it is about the script that gets one side of the industry excited but not the other. And this goes both ways. There will be specs that sell for a lot of money that don’t make the Black List. It happens all the time. The fact that this hasn’t sold implies that the subject matter is too obscure. Bob Ross is a cult hero. But he’s not necessarily a household name. I liked the concept here. The idea of two people sparring in an arena as peaceful as painting has a nice ironic ring to it. Let’s see if it’s any good.
We start in Prussia. 1927. Some boys, including our hero, Bill, are playing around in the forest when they find the remains of some old World War 1 equipment. In the midst of them joking around, one boy finds a grenade, prepares to throw it, only to have it blow up in his hand, instantly killing him.
Cut to 1982 and Bill, now 60 years old, is doing a landscape painting on PBS. In the middle of the painting, Bill stares off into nothing, only to snap out of it 60 seconds later. Apparently, this sort of thing has been happening a lot lately because a PBS suit sits him down to tell him he’s being replaced by an up-an-coming painter named Bob Ross. If it’s any consolation, they tell Bill, Ross used to be a student of his.
Determined to keep his gig, Bill meets Ross to give him the business. But Ross is just so chill, man. And after talking to him, Bill okays the transition, but on one condition. Ross will use Bill’s paint and hawk it on the program. That way, Bill still has an income source. After a few more flashbacks to Prussia, each one meant to convey how evil Bill’s father was, Bill learns that Ross isn’t living up to his end of the deal. In fact, he’s stolen Bill’s special paint mixture and called it his own!
This gives Bill an idea. He’ll sue Ross off the air! Bill’s lawyer says that if they can prove that Ross’s paints are replicas of his own, they’ll win the case. So Bill goes out and visits the totally chill Ross at his house, pretending to shoot a video with him so he can steal his paint. He barely gets a pale out of there and gets it tested. Indeed, it’s a replica of his paint. But by that point, it doesn’t matter. Bob Ross has become a superstar and there’s nothing Bill can do about it. Oh yeah, cut to 20 years later and Bob Ross dies of cancer.
Ooph.
Okay.
Whoa.
Um.
Not gonna lie. This was a rough read. I thought I was getting a comedy. But I guess this was a straight drama with the occasional flitter of humor (usually from Ross)?
There’s a lot wrong with this spec. A lot of mistakes young screenwriters can learn from.
For starters, there was a lot of repetition. After Bill gets fired, he and his wife seemingly have 50 conversations about what they should do next. Very little was happening in this section or the rest of the story, for that matter. Where’s the plot?
Plot can be described as a series of developments that evolve a story into something different from what it has been so far. The severity of the development will determine how radically the plot has changed. A basic example is a car driving on a freeway. Theoretically, we could follow that car for 90 minutes and call it a movie. In that case, there would be ZERO plot development and the movie would be boring.
However, let’s say the car blows a tire. Now we have a development. They have to pull over and figure out what to do about the flat tire. It’s not a severe plot development. But it does change the direction of the story slightly. Or let’s say we’re in the car, husband and wife are chatting. And, out of nowhere, the wife pulls a gun out and shoots her husband in the head. This would be a SEVERE plot development, right? It will have radically changed the direction of the story.
Yesterday, we had a writer who understood plot development. He knew that the story needed to change direction consistently, and sometimes radically. “Happy Little Trees” is the opposite of that. So little happens in this story that each time I had to turn the page it felt like I was lifting the heaviest barbell at the gym. After 20, 30, 40 pages of nothing happening, I knew each page was going to be a replica of the previous one.
After Bill gets fired, the next plot development – him wanting to sue Bob Ross for stealing his paint mixture – doesn’t happen for 60 pages. In the meantime, we’re getting scene after scene of Bill and his wife trying to figure out what to do. It’s simply not enough plot.
It’s not impossible to write good movies that are lightly plotted. But in order to do so, we really have to like the characters. Eighth Grade is a good example of a lightly plotted movie that still works because we empathize with the main character so much. I couldn’t find any reason to like Bill. He was negative. He complained a lot. He was whiny. I think the writer made the mistake of assuming that just because Bill’s job was taken away, we’d sympathize with and root for him.
But it doesn’t work like that. You still have to create a personality that we like on some level. Bill doesn’t have a single quality to him that allows that to happen. And it doesn’t help that Bob Ross is so likable. Sometimes what you can do in these movies is make the other guy a con man. So you’d have Bob Ross hypnotize the world, but when he’s alone with Bill, he’s a terrible person. We would then root for Bill to expose Bob. But Bob Ross is both good in public and good in private. So we don’t even want Bill to beat him.
I’m sorry but I have no idea why a writer would think we’d root for this person. It’s baffling to me, to be quite honest.
On top of that, there were tonal issues. The present day stuff has a light harmless feel to it, yet the flashbacks are brutally violent and uncomfortable for some reason. It was like two different movies. It only added to the struggle of keeping the pages turning.
There was a movie in here somewhere. Had the conflict between Bob and Bill been more intense, it would’ve at least given the screenplay some life. But between all the problems I mentioned and just an overall, way too relaxed, feel, I couldn’t get into this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Does your concept work better as a comedy? Sometimes we get blinders on when we come up with an idea. With some objectivity, you might find that the idea you’re taking so seriously actually works better as a comedy. This needed to be a comedy all the way. This is not a serious movie by any stretch of the imagination. Embrace the comedy. Make the characters more ridiculous. And have fun with it. This needed a fun touch.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Hit List) During an enormous wildfire, a fireman wrecked with guilt after the death of a colleague, searches for evacuees who have failed to leave their homes. But when he stumbles upon an isolated cabin, he makes a horrifying dis- covery — a young woman is being held captive inside – and he must now fight to get them both out of there alive before it’s too late.
About: Today’s writer used to be a sports journalist until he decided to place his head inside the guillotine known as screenwriting. Since then, he’s steadily moved his way up the ladder. He finished in the semi-finals of the Nicholl, got into writers room on the show “Helix,” and became a story editor on NBC’s “Manifest.” This script finished on last year’s Hit List with 16 votes
Writer: Bobak Esfarjani
Details: 91 pages
Fire scripts are all the rage these days! First Pyros and now this! Can somebody say “Fire Universe?” A forest fire pic. An in-depth true life adaptation of the Chicago Fire. A horror flick based on the Fyre Festival. A Firestarter sequel. A biopic on the first person to say, “Liar liar pants on fire” (I think that would be Jacob “Matches” Jones). Hey, we gotta find some way to compete with Marvel. Fight fire with fire. If this thing works out, you can move to water, air, ice – you name it.
I’ve always liked the idea of concepts set within the ticking time bomb that is a worsening fire. Yet nobody’s figured out how to do it right. There was that blink-and-you-miss-it Sam Jackson movie, Lakeview Terrace. But not much else. I can’t believe nobody’s written a recent movie on The Chicago Fire. I guess cows aren’t the most marketable villains. Anyway, grab your oven mitts and your smoke detectors. We’re about to find out if this latest fire flick burns down the house.
Firefighter Kyle is dealing with some massive PTSD. He believes it was his fault that his friend was killed in a recent fire. Kyle’s so distraught that even the biggest forest fire in California’s history can’t get him back up on the big red machine. When his small-town division is called in to help, Kyle stays back and cooks meals for his team’s return.
But when the fire takes an unexpected turn, people living up in the nearby hills will die unless Kyle helps evacuate them. So he drives around from home to home, yelling at people to evacuate. Kyle eventually stumbles upon a secluded cabin in the forest and knocks on the door. This is the home of Richard and Mary, two rednecks who have no desire to mingle with society. Oh, and they also have a secret. They’re keeping a 19 year old girl named Emily prisoner in a concrete room.
Kyle begins to get suspicious when Richard and Mary refuse to leave. Something doesn’t seem right. Then he hears a girl screaming. He charges into the house and finds the room, with a haggard Emily chained to the wall. Perhaps Kyle should’ve thought this plan through because pretty soon he’s whacked upside the head and wakes up in the room with Emily.
Meanwhile, Mary tells Richard they have to kill Kyle. But Richard thinks it’ll be too easy to trace Kyle here and they’ll get caught. Richard wants to kill Emily and get out of Dodge. But Mary has some strange obsession with Emily and refuses that option. This results in a stalemate and the two just stay in the house and do nothing – all while that raging fire gets closer. Back in the room, Kyle and Emily plan their escape. But bit by bit, he learns things about Emily that don’t add up, calling into question who the most dangerous person in this house really is.
A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed a contained thriller and preached the importance of evolving the plot. When you’re limited by geography, you have to have an “unlimited” plotting mindset. The story needs to twist and turn because we’re more likely to get bored when we’re in a stationary location.
Ashes starts out (spoilers) with our hero realizing that this family is keeping a girl prisoner. The first beat, then, is him trying to save her. This then evolves to him being stuck in the room with her. This leads to them scheming to escape. This evolves to them getting out into the house. This then evolves to ANOTHER firefighter arriving and helping them escape. This then evolves to Emily killing that firefighter, revealing the twist that she’s possessed. They were imprisoning her so she wouldn’t go into the world and kill people. This then evolves to Mary and Kyle working together to find her inside the fire-filled mountains.
I give Esfarjani a lot of credit. There wasn’t a single plotline that overstayed its welcome. We were always moving to the next stage.
But the big talking point with this script is obviously going to be the possession twist. Here’s the way I look at it. You get a maximum of two hooks per movie. The biggest forest fire in history forces a man to save a nearby family. That’s one hook. One of the houses he visits happens to have a couple who’s imprisoned a girl. That’s two hooks. The girl being a demon? That’s three hooks. Three hooks is where you get yourself in trouble.
It’s not that you can’t pull off three hooks. But it starts to look a little desperate from a reader’s perspective. You couldn’t keep us entertained with just two giant things going on, so you had to bring in one more? This can work IF the third hook is thematically connected to the story. But if it comes out of nowhere, you’re asking a lot of the audience. It would be like if in the third act of Godzilla, a superhero showed up. You’d be like, “Wait, so this is a superhero movie now?”
Having said that, screenwriting is an imperfect science. There’s no exact method for what an audience is willing to accept. Had you pitched me a movie about a guy realizing he was living inside a computer simulation and that once he freed their mind, he would fight everybody with kung-fu, I would’ve told you, “Thanks, but no thanks.” And Esfarjani leaves us enough breadcrumbs working up to the twist, that the possession makes sense. Which makes me think that maybe, just maybe, this could work.
The one big mistake Esfarjani makes is he doesn’t stay on top of the fire ticking time bomb. That’s the whole engine of the story, is that our hero is chained up in this room and a giant fire is coming. But nobody tells us how long it will be. At one point, I think two full days pass. It’s ridiculous. When you have a ticking time bomb – especially one as good as this – you need to keep updating your reader. The two captors need to have conversations like, “How long do we have?” “I don’t know. Maybe five hours?” Or heck, ask Kyle! He’s the expert on this stuff. Since I was never clear on when the fire would get here, I didn’t feel as much tension as I should’ve.
But this was a breezy read. It was a very good representation of what a spec script should be. 90 pages. Simple concept. Just a few characters. It’s easy for the reader to grasp what’s going on. I see so many specs die within ten pages because an overly complicated plot has been set up. Save those overly complicated plots for when you become a known writer. In the meantime, write for exhausted grouchy readers who don’t want to read another lame amateur script. Big simple concepts are your best bet at roping them in.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t expect your ticking time bomb to do the work for you. If the time allotted on your “bomb” isn’t clear, it will be up to you to periodically tell your audience how much time is left. How am I suppose to know how much time there was before this fire reached their house? One of the oldest screenwriting rules is apropos here – “We don’t know what you don’t tell us.”
Sorry if the site is loading slow today. My Server service is doing maintenance. It should be cleared up within 24 hours. Here’s a challenge in the meantime. Refresh Scriptshadow.net, then try and write ONE SCENE in your current script before the page loads. :)
Genre: Horror
Premise: (from IMDB) A bride’s wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game.
About: Today’s writing team has been together since 8th grade! 20+ years later, they’ve finally gotten their first wide-release film made. Ready or Not has been getting some nice buzz leading up to its release, nabbing an 87% Rotten Tomatoes score. But it ran into a Gerard Butler buzzsaw this weekend, and came away with a disappointing 7.5 million.
Writer: Guy Busick & Ryan Murphy
Details: 95 minutes
So let me tell you why I chose Ready or Not for the coveted Monday review slot. It’s quite simple, really. This is the kind of script you should be writing if you want to a) sell a script, b) get a movie made, or c) both. It’s a simple concept that’s easy to understand. It’s relatively inexpensive. And it’s highly marketable.
And let’s not forget that these scripts are effortless reads. Never underestimate the power of the easy read. That’s not to say stories set during the Revolutionary War with 30 characters can’t be riveting. But, typically, complex scripts that make noise in town come from already known writers with an established network of producers and executives who are aware of their work. As a “nobody” who’s given a much shorter rope, it’s in your best interest to keep things easy to follow.
In fact, this weekend’s box office is a major win for spec script writing. The number one movie, Angel Has Fallen, is the second sequel from a spec script. Good Boys is a spec script anyone could’ve written. Hobbs & Shaw stemmed from a franchise that started with a spec script. And then you’ve got Ready or Not. Lessons? Specs with a clear marketable genre (horror or action) get made. And comedy still sells if you can find a slightly different angle (kids in adult R-rated situations).
Ready or Not follows Grace, a regular girl who marries a really good guy named Alex Le Domas. Alex belongs to a billionaire family who’s made their fortune on board games. Which is why they have a little ritual for anyone who marries into the family. Each new member has to play a game.
A little box device randomly decides the game. But there’s a twist. Normally, the games are harmless fun. But there’s one game on the menu that carries with it a little more weight – Hide and Seek. Should this game be chosen, it will be up to the family to find and kill the bride. If she stays hidden until dawn, she wins. And if that happens, the rumor is the entire family dies.
Grace hasn’t been told this, of course. Alex is hoping that it won’t come to Hide and Seek. The last time it popped up was over 30 years ago. But it does come up. And Grace learns quickly that this is not some fun little game. But there is some good news for the bride. Everybody chasing her is a moron. From her coked up sister-in law to her chubby brother-in-law, who’s so clueless about the ordeal, he has to Youtube how to use his crossbow. And let’s not forget Aunt Helene, who’s more bloodthirsty than a swarm of mosquitos yet who’s only slightly taller than one. Will Grace succumb to this ship of fools or will they somehow pull it together and win the game?
For a horror film to work, it’s imperative that the audience feel fear for the hero. If they don’t feel like the hero is in danger, they’re not going to be invested in the story. I remember watching The Exorcist, arguably the scariest movie of all time, and thinking, “There’s nothing they can do for this girl.” That’s what propelled me to keep watching. I wanted, against all odds, to see if they could save her.
Ready or Not installs a different approach to its story. The characters chasing our heroine are bumbling morons. Most of them haven’t done this before. And they seem more interested in squabbling with each other than killing the bride. This immediately sets a less fearful tone. If no one is good at this, why would I be scared for the bride? Indeed, this made me feel safe during many of the film’s set pieces. When the bride was hiding behind a kitchen island to avoid a guy, I felt confident she would get out of it.
Contrast this with one of my favorite movies of 2017, Revenge, about a group of hunters in the desert who are “forced” by circumstance to hunt down a woman. While I wouldn’t call any of these men expert hunters, they were a lot more capable than the characters in Ready or Not. I remember feeling a level of fear in that movie that I never came close to here.
There’s an argument to be made, however, that this wasn’t Ready or Not’s intention. That it was more interested in making the audience laugh than scream. Many 80s horror movies built entire franchises on this setup. Jason from Friday the 13th has lots of funny kills. And he still remained scary. So why didn’t I feel that way here? Why didn’t I go along with all the goofiness and just have fun?
It’s really hard for me to forgive incompetent villains in a horror movie. UNLESS you’re talking about a straight horror-comedy, like Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. I need to be afraid of SOMEONE. I need to fear SOMEBODY. Because that’s the whole gig. Your idea cannot work if we’re not worried for the person in danger. I never once in this movie thought Grace was in danger.
On top of this, the rules governing the story were a little, shall we say, messy. When you come up with one of these ideas, you don’t want to overcomplicate things. It has to feel effortless. It may not have been effortless for YOU, the writer, but it should seem effortless to the audience. That’s one of the primary jobs of the writer. This whole thing where a game is randomly chosen every time someone enters the family… but only ONE OF THE GAMES is a deadly one? Uhhhh… I’m not sure that makes sense other than in the bowels of movie logic land. The games need to be either deadly or not deadly. They can’t be sometimes deadly.
Fixing this would’ve also fixed the “fear” problem. If the family did this every year, they would’ve been a lot more capable. Which would’ve made Grace’s situation a lot more difficult. But I know the screenwriting reasons they didn’t do it. For starters, there would be too many deaths tied to the family if they’re playing these games all the time. Also, they needed a plausible scenario by which a good man, Alex, would bring Grace into the family. He’s not going to bring her in if he knows for a fact she’ll be hunted. Unless you wanted to make Alex a sick psychopath, which I personally would’ve liked better (what’s more horrifying than the person you trust most hunting you – that’s why Revenge was so harrowing!).
These are the things that can drive screenwriters crazy – working through problems like this. But my approach is to always err on the side of logic. Once you start coming up with convoluted rules to create more convenient writing scenarios for yourself, you risk destroying the suspension of disbelief. I say this is a much better movie if they do the deadly game every time. It certainly makes more sense than, “We play a game every time someone comes into the family except sometimes it’s a deadly game cause, um, if not there wouldn’t be a movie.”
Are these the reasons Ready or Not couldn’t crack 8 million? No. People won’t feel the effects of these choices unless they see the movie. The low box office is all about the film being stuck in the “real world” horror genre. Horror movies that get into the 20 Million Dollar and Up club have a man in a mask, a monster, or a ghost. There is the rarity that slips through, like Get Out. But I don’t see it as a coincidence that “It” had the biggest horror opening of all time. And it also has one of the scariest monsters of all time. I give you this information because if you’re thinking of writing a horror film, you can boost the project’s box office potential just by adding one of those elements.
Ready or Not was not a bad movie. But it definitely wasn’t worth a trip to the theater. This is the kind of movie that works with zero expectations on Netflix and a large half-meatball pizza from Larchmont Village Pizzeria sitting in front of you. If you spent $15 on this, you’re probably leaving the film upset.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here are the top 2 box office grossing horror films from 2019 all the way back to 2010. Us and Annabelle Comes Home, A Quiet Place and Halloween, It and Get Out, The Conjuring 2 and Don’t Breathe, Goosebumps and Insidious 3, Annabelle and Ouija, The Conjuring and Insidious 2, Paranormal Activity 4 and The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 3 and Insidious. — Of these, only two were “real-world” horror. Don’t Breathe and Get Out (I’m not sure what you would categorize US as). This is why you want that monster, ghost, or mask. With that said, socially-conscious horror-thrillers (like Get Out) might be able to slip into the top 2 in the next few years.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A backwoods dry county is turned upside down by a bored housewife’s investigation into their bootlegging operation – and a crashed meteor.
Why You Should Read: I absolutely love the Coen Brothers, so I wrote this as if they might consider directing it, as long as a shot as that is. It’s got dumb people making bad decisions that leads to a lot of bloody death. It’s got a great starring role for an older actress. Most of all, I think it’s a funny script with a weird and interesting cast of characters and I really want to make it the best it can be. AOW has proven invaluable historically to writers open to feedback and I am hopeful with some help this can be the script that gets my foot in the proverbial door. (Carson note: Currently in the Nicholl QF)
Writer: Benjamin Hickey
Details: 92 pages
Benjamin has the unenviable task of following what may end up being the most successful amateur script story ever on Scriptshadow. And he’s not making it easy for himself. Dark comedies are arguably the hardest genre to get right. It’s difficult to make people laugh without comedy restrictions. Specifying that the humor can only be dark and you shrink the dart board down even more.
The Coen Brothers are the only modern screenwriters to routinely pull this genre off. And even they’ve had a tough time with it lately. Inside Llewyn Davis and Hail, Caesar were not exactly crowd-pleasers. But you have to admire a writer who’s willing to take on a big challenge. So as I slide my mouse over to click open this script, I wish Benjamin good luck!
We’re told Graham County is the last “dry” county in the state. That means no booze for anyone. Which also means there’s nothing to do around here! That is until dimwitted siblings Joe and Bobby Bird come upon a crashed meteorite which “smells like raspberries.” The glowing blue center implies this thing very well might make them rich, so they throw it in the back of their truck and bring it back home.
Meanwhile, 40-something Isabella Bailey is tired of sitting at home all day waiting for her traveling husband to come back from work trips. The only satisfaction she gets is from making sure everyone in town abides by the law. And she’s convinced that there’s illegal booze being passed around, which she’s determined to expose.
When word gets out that something alien has crashed in the outskirts of town, amateur astronomer and out-of-towner, Clay, zips into Graham County to learn more. Clay’s thrilled when he finds out that NASA themselves are here inspecting the matter. That must mean it’s a big deal.
We eventually learn that Joe and Bobby are secretly brewing beer, and that the meteor “juice” has accidentally dripped into a batch. This creates what may be the best beer ever. It’s too bad that Isabella ain’t having any of it and is determined to take down anyone who breaks this most precious of laws. Will Joe and Bobby survive Isabella’s wrath? Or will their brew, “Black Hole Blue,” make them famous?
This was a fun script.
But it was also a script that felt 3-4 drafts short of where it needs to be.
I’ll have Ben give me the lowdown in the comments but something felt off about the time and place here. It was as if the script was originally written to take place during the Prohibition and then was later re-drafted to take place in the modern day. I say that because nearly everything in this script felt like it belonged in 1925, except for one person mentioning “websites.”
I know there are a few places left in the U.S. where liquor is outlawed. I think this occurs in Utah maybe? But it’s so rare that it overshadowed the story. I was always thinking, “Why is this set in the present again?”
Another thing I had an issue with was the meteor. It wasn’t integrated into the plot enough. I know there are two paths you can take when you come up with an idea like this. You can make the “magical thing” an integral part of the plot, or you can make it a neutral McGuffin that acts as a motivator for all your characters to do crazy things. My belief is that if it’s in the story, it needs to be integrated into the plot. And the meteor was barely integrated into this.
The problem with that is there was so much to play with! What if the strange blue liquid inside this meteor were to get mixed up with their illegal beer brew? Everyone started drinking it and weird things began happening on a day-to-day basis. Instead of that, we get one late scene where everyone drinks the beer together and then… passes out? It was such a weak payoff for all that setup.
That brings me to the main screenwriting lesson I want to teach today. A common thing that happens in screenwriting is that we start with the “coming in too early” version of the story. Then, in each subsequent draft, we move that storyline up until it’s eventually where it should’ve been all along. I’ll give you a classic example of this. You might write a script where your main two characters, a married couple, are having problems in their relationship. Then, a couple of drafts later, you realize that it might be interesting if those problems result in a divorce. So you decide to have them get divorced at the midpoint. Then, a couple of drafts later, you realize that, wait a minute, we’d have a way more exciting opening if we start on these two getting divorced. That way we’re dropped right away into the thick of things.
I feel that the meteorite storyline in Black Hole Blue isn’t coming in early enough. It takes forever for an interesting plot development to happen with the thing. Why not get it going sooner?? We see Bobby stash the meteorite in their house in that opening, and then the very next time we see the brothers, Joe notices it’s been leaking into the brew. They have to make a delivery TONIGHT! What are they going to do? They decide to sell the tainted brew. And before we even hit the second act, people start acting bizarre.
Now if Ben isn’t interested in that story, I’m not going to tell him it’s the only way Black Hole Blue works. But I will say that the plot here didn’t move fast enough, and if it’s not going to be the meteorite that speeds things up, it needs to be something else.
I’m trying to think if I were a producer, would I encourage Ben to keep working on this. Dark Comedy has such a tiny bullseye and is such a gamble at the box office, that the script probably won’t go anywhere. With that said, it’s kind of an ideal writing sample script. It shows that Ben isn’t your typical writer writing your typical cliche Hollywood trash. So if he can make the plot more interesting, this could be a great resume script. It’s not there enough to get a worth the read. But if I worked at a production company, I would definitely ask to see any future scripts from Ben.
Script Link: Black Hole Blue
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There are two kinds of McGuffins as far as I’m concerned, active and inactive. The active McGuffin plays a large role in the story. It becomes involved in the plot in a more intricate way (think R2-D2). The inactive McGuffin is the McGuffin that’s just there as an excuse to get everybody doing things (think one of those cliche USB drives in a spy movie). The meteor here wasn’t completely inactive. But it wasn’t active enough. And I think with a couple more drafts, it could be. — The more active you make your McGuffin, the less it feels like a McGuffin.
