I remember back in the day where all I needed to start a screenplay was an idea and a little inspiration. I wrote a lot of bad screenplays with that approach. The problem with those scripts was that there wasn’t a whole lot of substance to them. Either the idea was too light, the characters too bland, or the plot petered out. Over time, through my own experience and by reading a lot of screenwriter interviews, I learned that professionals approach movie ideas a lot differently than beginners.

Most beginners will get a new idea and, just because the idea excited them, start writing the screenplay. They don’t need anything besides that. Some of the advanced beginners (a screenwriter who’s written 2-3 screenplays) might go one step further and ask, “Is this a movie I would pay to see?” If the answer is yes, they write it. Believe it or not, there’s an advantage to this approach. If the only question you have to ask is that one, you cut through all the bulls*&$.

But there’s an advantage to the Hollywood approach as well. A lot of the criteria they ask for does end up helping the script. So if you completely ignore these things, you are potentially ignoring stuff that would make your script better. What are the questions pros asks themselves before starting a screenplay? Let’s take a look.

1) Is the idea fresh? – All this means is, is your idea current in some way? Are you giving us something new? Or, if you’re giving us something old, have you found a new spin on it? I’ll give you a couple of examples. The “Don’t Worry, Darling” spec that had a huge bidding war last month was exploring #MeToo issues as well as creating a new spin on that subject matter, with its “1950s altered reality” component. “The Hunt” spec is another good example. It follows a group of elite liberals who’ve created a game of hunting down conservatives. Ironically, the idea turned out to be a little too current, and therefore, too hot to handle. But that’s why it got made. Because it was a fresh take on an old idea. An example of an un-fresh idea would be the 2017 Reese Witherspoon movie, “Home Again.” Haven’t heard of it? Exactly. Look it up. It’s a movie about a woman coming back home. There isn’t a single fresh exciting element to that concept, which is why nobody saw it.

2) Is there at least one character that an actor would die to play? – Seasoned professionals know that a project doesn’t take off and start getting people excited unless it’s got a hot actor or a hot director attached. So you want to create at least one character that would be exciting for an actor to play. Maybe they get to chew up the scenery like Tony Stark. Maybe they’re extremely complex – they’re a high school teacher heroin addict, like Ryan Gosling in Half-Nelson. Maybe they live a double-life. Maybe they’ve got complicated medical issues. There’s a reason Chris Pratt signed onto the project, “Cowboy, Ninja, Viking,” where a somewhat mentally deranged guy slips in and out of those three characters. The project was later delayed, but that’s not the point. If you can come up with a character that one of the top 10 grossing actors in the world wants to play? Hollywood will eat out of the palm of your hand.

3) Is the idea/genre trending? – A long time ago, when I was thinking about trading stocks for a living, my dad talked some sense into me. He explained that the people who were successful doing this were people who spent every waking hour inside of it, and therefore had all the information way before I did. The same could be said for the professional screenwriter. They are on top of what’s trending, what trends are ending, and what trends are right around the corner. Ideally, you want to write something in a trend that’s just starting. You wanted to be writing the female-centric comedy one day after Bridesmaids came out. Or, if you’re really on top of it, you know of a unique movie coming out in four months, you’re convinced it’s going to be a hit, and you’re writing a script in the same spiritual genre. That way you’ve got your script ready right when that trend begins.

4) Does the concept have legs beyond the first act? – As creatives, you’re coming up with ideas all the time. Or, at least, I hope you are. But not every idea is a movie. Some ideas are just a hook (see yesterday’s review – The Phantom Hook). This is a spot where professionals have a HUGE advantage over beginners. They’ve written so many screenplays that they have a better sense of which concepts are going to peter out and which can last an entire 110 pages. Namely, you’re looking for ideas that have a clear goal after the first act, and also, enough character conflict that you have something to do with your characters in the second act. Remember that the second act is the “conflict act.” So if you don’t have any character relationships that are hampered by deep-seated conflict, your second act will be all plot, and we won’t feel a deeper connection to the story.

5) Am I passionate about this?/What am I trying to say with this story? – Passion is like gasoline. There’s a finite amount of it. So you want to start with as much passion as possible. Seasoned writers know that there will be second drafts, third drafts, if they’re lucky and a producer becomes interested, 10th drafts, 15th drafts. So if you’re not all-in on an idea, you will run out of gas at some point. Also, do you have something to say with this story? It might seem like an unimportant question initially. “It’s a cool idea, Carson. Who cares about all that deep English class nonsense.” One of the reasons writers give up on scripts 6, 7, 8 drafts in, is because they’re empty. It was a cool idea and nothing more. When Jon Favreau was at a low point in his career, having made the dismal Iron Man 2 and the dismaler Cowboys and Aliens, he came up with this idea, “Chef,” about a disgraced Michelin Chef who decides to start a food truck, and the reason it grossed 20 times its budget can be attributed to Favreau wanting to say something with the movie. He talked about it in his interviews. This movie was all about making mistakes in life, owning up to them, and getting back on the saddle. Because that’s a universal theme everyone can relate to, it helped that movie become something more than a lol food truck flick.

So look, am I saying that you have to do it like the pros do it? No. The pro way has its own downside in that these writers are so far inside the system, they sometimes struggle to see the forest through the trees. I’ll give you a real world analogy. There’s this NBA player, Joakim Noah. He was on the Chicago Bulls for awhile and even made the All-Star team. But Joakim Noah started breaking down in his last couple of years with the Bulls to the point where he was a fraction of his former self. The following summer, when Joakim became a free agent, the New York Knicks shockingly signed him to a 72 million dollar 4-year contract!

Here we have a general manager who’s being paid tons of money for his expertise and who has an entire staff dedicated to understanding the value of players around the league. And not only did they get it wrong, they got it REALLY WRONG. Joakim would average 5 points a game his first year with the Knicks and 2 points a game his second year before they booted him. Now here’s the remarkable part of this story. There wasn’t a single NBA fan surprised by this. In fact, they all said at the time of the signing that it was one of the worst signings they’d ever seen a team make. How is it that the casual fan knows more than the general manager? The answer is the same as the professional screenwriter evaluating an idea. Professionals have a propensity to over-think things. Whereas all the beginner cares about is whether he likes the idea.

So which way is right? That’s up to you. I like the way Jordan Peele puts it: “Write the best idea you have that hasn’t been a movie yet.” But I think it’s worth going through these five questions just to see where your idea stands. Because good ideas are rare. I know that as I’ve seen over 10,000 loglines. So the more punch you can start your script with, the better the chance you have of writing something great.

What boxes must be ticked for you to write a screenplay?

Yo, do you have a logline that isn’t working? Are those queries going out unanswered? Try out my logline service. It’s 25 bucks for a 1-10 rating, 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I also have a deluxe service for 40 dollars that allows for unlimited e-mails back and forth where we tweak the logline until you’re satisfied. I consult on everything screenwriting related (first page, first ten pages, first act, outlines, and of course, full scripts). So if you’re interested in getting some quality feedback, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “CONSULTATION” and I’ll get back to you right away!

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: A young man man tragically loses his wife on the day of their wedding. He is devastated, until four years later on their wedding anniversary, he awakens to find his beloved wife alive and well beside him.
About: This script crept onto last year’s Black List with eight votes. Alanna Brown used to be an actress, where she was able to get a few small parts. But she seems to have moved on full time to writing. This script caught the eye of Greg Berlanti who currently has 6000 shows on TV.
Writer: Alanna Brown
Details: 110 pages

Today I want to talk a screenwriting no-no that is so powerful in its no-ness, you want to avoid it at all costs. We’re going to be looking at another one of these drama sci-fi concepts. As I told you last week with The Second Life of Ben Haskins, these are tough sells. TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH sells. That’s because the thing that makes them cool – the sci-fi element, is always neutered by the dramatic element. Sci-fi seems to work best when it can fly. And drama keeps it from flying.

The 29th Accident is about a guy named Bennett Carter. Bennett is a Californian who got a full swimming scholarship to the University of New Orleans. It’s here where he meets Dulcie, an African-American girl, and it’s love at first site between the two. In fact, they don’t wait long before they decide to get married.

But Dulcie’s father, Robert, is not a fan of Bennett, and doesn’t approve of the marriage. It doesn’t matter what either of them think, though, since one night when Robert’s driving Dulcie home with Bennett right behind them, they swerve off the road and plunge into a lake. Despite Bennett’s kick butt swimming skills, he is only able to save Robert and not Dulcie.

Cut to four years later. A subdued unhappy Bennett heads back to New Orleans for the first time to find some closure with Robert, and the strangest thing happens. While at the airport waiting for his bags, he spots Dulcie’s bag. And then he spots Dulcie! And then he spots his young daughter, Emma! That’s right, cause Dulcie was secretly pregnant when she got into that crash.

Bennett is trying to make sense of all this, despite the fact that Dulcie and Emma are like, chill dude, we’re real. They head back to their house and Bennett experiences the best day of his life! His wife is still alive! Except that the next day he wakes up and the two are gone. Were they ever really here? Bennett seeks help from anyone he can find, his dad, Robert, a shrink, a doctor, a psychic. Some of them say he imagined it. Others think there’s more to this. Specifically, he gets this idea that the multiverse may be involved in his wife’s reemergence.

A few days later, Dulcie and Emma are back! This time, Bennett comes clean with her. He thinks she’s dead, that she’s not real. But she keeps insisting that he is. Eventually, he buys into this multiverse theory and starts looking for something called an “anchor” that will lead to a “porthole” that connects his world to Dulcie’s world. Will he find it? Will he make the leap? Or is this all just a really sad guy who can’t get over his dead wife? What do you think?

Writers LOOOOVE mutliverses. LOVE THEM. I have been reading multiverse scripts for over a decade. But recently, for some reason, they’ve become really popular. I’m guessing the multiverse has been in the news more? Maybe that’s why?

Whatever the case, the multiverse is not a great story device. I mean, go ahead. Count the number of good multiverse movies out there. I’ll save you the trouble. There aren’t any. And the reasons for that is the multiverse is the ideal writing crutch. It’s a catch-all explanation for anything weird the writer wants to come up with. There’s three versions of Jake? That’s cause of the multiverse! Only our minds can travel through parallel dimensions, not our bodies. That’s cause of the multiverse!

The biggest problem I have with multiverse stories is that the writer usually thinks they’re first ones to have thought of them. That leads to them believing the word “multiverse” alone will hypnotize the reader.

There’s another problem problem with this script. It’s got a PHANTOM HOOK. A phantom hook is a movie hook that sounds good but has no legs. A great example of a phantom hook is Flatliners. Some people flatline themselves to see what the other side of death is like. Except once they do this on page 30, there’s nowhere left for the story to go. You’ve shown us the cool thing. Now what? Yesterday’s script, Spontaneous, about spontaneous combustions, was also a phantom hook. It’s cool to see people spontaneously blow up the first couple of times. But then what is the movie about?

So here I was, reluctantly turning the pages of 29th Accident, feeling very much like I’ve been here before. And then, about midway through the script, it actually started to get better. And I can tell you exactly when that was. It was the moment THE MAIN CHARACTER DECIDED TO PURSUE A GOAL.

What do I tell you guys? I drone on and on about it all the time. But the reason I have to keep saying it is because writers keep not doing it. The big problem with yesterday’s script was that the main characters weren’t pursuing anything! People were blowing up and our characters kept walking around, doing absolutely nothing about it, talking to each other. You want your characters to be drivers in your story, not passengers.

This script was boring when Bennett was a passenger. When he was stumbling around, sometimes seeing Dulcie, sometimes not, the script went nowhere. But once he started trying to figure out if this was real and coming up with a plan to permanently be with Dulcie, the story took shape. It still had the wishy-washiness of the multiverse weighing it down. But Brown did a better job explaining the rule-set of the multiverse than most writers. For example, coming up with specific words like “anchor” and “porthole” give us physical things we can envision and places we know we have to go. A lot of these multiverse-as-catchall-explanation writers fudge their way through the mythology, making weird stuff happen and then screaming out “multiverse!” As if that explains all.

You guys know at this point that I like structure in my stories and I like simplicity in my stories. If you’re not simple, you’re going to have to do an ace job explaining the rules of your world so that I understand what’s going on. The 29th Accident did enough of that that I was able to get to the end. It even had a nice little twist ending I didn’t see coming. But I can’t cosign the first half of this screenplay. It was too directionless and if I wasn’t reviewing the script on the site, I definitely would’ve stopped reading. So I’m afraid this wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: Beware the Phantom Hook – The phantom hook is an idea that has a great first act hook, but then gives the rest of the story no structure to work with. It’s easy to figure out if you have a phantom hook. Just ask if you have a story to tell after the big hook in your movie arrives. If you don’t? And you’re merely hoping to “figure it out along the way,” it is HIGHLY LIKELY you are wasting your time.

Had to check the date. Not April 1st right? Not anywhere close to April. So this is true. Could this be true? No way it can be true? Matrix 4?

MATRIX 4??????

Not sure how I feel about this. The last two movies were so so bad, practically the definition of bad screenwriting. And yet, you want to see them get it right. You want to see a comeback story (for the Wachowskis and the franchise). There had been rumors about a new Matrix film the last five years. They were developing it. But it was going to be a new Matrix. A new set of characters. Well, apparently Keanu’s revival via the John Wick franchise has convinced WB to go back to the original cast, and more astoundingly, the original director!

This is both so whoa-ish and so uh-oh-ish. I so want the whoa version of a new Matrix. I was so excited when I read this news that I didn’t even finish reading the article about it. So I don’t know all the details. If it says at the end of the article, “Just kidding,” I’m going to pillage Variety.

Genre: Sorta Horror/Teen
Premise: A high school begins to fall apart when its students start spontaneously combusting.
About: This project is based on a recent novel written by Aaron Starmer. It will star Katherine Langford from 13 Reasons Why. Brian Duffield not only adapted the screenplay but is also making his directorial debut. The movie was shot in January of last year so I’m not sure why it hasn’t come out yet. Spontaneous is one of the first films to come from AwesomenessTV, which is one of the biggest channels on Youtube.
Writer: Brian Duffield (based on the novel by Aaron Starmer
Details: 110 pages (First Draft)

I like going into Brian Duffield scripts as naked as possible. Not physically of course. But I don’t want to know anything. One of the great things about Duffield scripts is that crazy things can happen at any moment and I don’t want to spoil them before they happen.

With that said, I heard through the grape vine that this was an adaptation, and that definitely colored my reading experience. Duffield has worked almost exclusively on original material, which has been great because his mind doesn’t work like anyone else’s. So if he’s working off of someone else’s idea, he has to reign in some of that famous creativity.

And as we’re about to find out, that’s not the best way for him to work.

Spontaneous is Thirteen Reasons Why meets John Hughes meets Warm Bodies. 17 year old Mara is sitting in Pre-Calc when the girl in front of her, Katelyn, explodes. At first, everybody assumes it’s a school shooting so they run around the hallways like chickens with their heads cut off. But eventually they learn that Katelyn wasn’t shot. She spontaneously combusted. Or exploded.

While Mara and her best friend, Tess, struggle to make sense of what happened, fellow senior and kinda weirdo, Dylan, crashes the party to say hi. Dylan, it turns out, has been in love with Mara from afar all throughout high school. Lucky for Dylan, Mara’s kind of liked him, too. So the two start dating. Which should be a happy time. Until another senior, a gay football player, spontaneously explodes.

Now it’s an epidemic. Which means the media and the authorities descend on this small town, E.T.’ing it so no one can come in or out. They start doing all these experiments on the kids, until they eventually develop a pill that keeps people from spontaneously exploding. And so it’s BACK TO SCHOOL for everyone, where it seems like everything is normal again. That is until a mass of spontaneous explosions occur (spoiler) including Dylan!

With the love of her life gone, Mara suspects that she’s the curse that killed everyone. I mean, Katelyn was right in front of her when she exploded. Dylan was around her all the time and he exploded. So it must be true. But eventually Mara philosophizes that life sucks no matter what and that all you can do is your best before you die. The end.

Hmmm…

I don’t know who to direct my disappointment towards here. While Duffield wrote the script, everything is based on the book. And, as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your source material.

Look, the good news is that this is an original premise. No zombies. No vampires. No aliens. No monsters. The spontaneous combustion premise is unique.

The problem is, the author didn’t know what to do with that premise. For starters, it’s a terrible premise for building tension. At least when you have zombies, you can create suspenseful situations as those zombies slowly move in on our trapped characters. But with spontaneous combustion, it’s random. There’s no way to build tension with randomness. You’re sitting around for 25 pages of dialogue and then you hear how a new person just blew up. I’m not sure there’s any way to fix that problem.

Nor is the structure here story-friendly. It’s a car ride where nobody tells us where the destination is. So we’re not even the annoying kids in the back screaming, “Are we there yet?” We’re the annoying adults screaming, “Where are we going?”

Theoretically, this sets the stage for what Duffield does best. He can plant two characters in a room and let them dialogue away. Indeed, the dialogue here feels effortless and flowing. The problem is, because there’s no plot, and therefore nobody’s trying to get anywhere in these scenes, they start to get tiring. And repetitive.

And this is why it’s so important to figure out your structure ahead of time. Because if you repeatedly drop characters into scenes where they don’t want anything other than to talk to each other, the story’s never going to feel like it’s advancing.

When you’re writing a story like this, you have two directions you can go in. Direction 1 is to create a mystery behind the problem (spontaneous combustions) that the characters are trying to solve. This gives your heroes a goal and therefore a purposeful journey. “Why are people exploding,” Mara can say. “Let’s investigate.” They don’t do that here. Scientists come in and try to figure things out. But our heroes spend that time sitting around waiting. The other option is to use your story as a metaphor for something. At least that way, we get the feeling that there was a purpose to the experience. If this teaches us a powerful lesson about life, it can work.

But this didn’t do that either (or, at least, this draft didn’t). And I think it’s a source material problem because I went to Amazon afterwards and I was seeing the same complaints in the reviews. The author had his characters talk the whole time while a bunch of people blew up without explanation and in the end, capped it off with, “that’s the randomness of life.” I think I speak for writers everywhere when I say that if your theme is, “randomness of life, bro,” you probably haven’t dug deep enough.

I’ll say it again: you’re only as good as your source material. You’re never going to teach Danny DeVito to be Roger Federer. Then again, it’s important to note that this is a first draft, that Duffield likely added more structure in the subsequent drafts. But for this to have worked, somebody would’ve needed to come up with a radical idea on how to make this concept movie-friendly. I hope that’s what Duffield did. Cause if this movie does well, he’ll get to make some of his own scripts. And that’s what I’d really like to see.

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

What I learned: It’s dangerous to give characters other than your heroes the active storyline. In other words, the goal here is to find out why these spontaneous combustions are happening. But that goal is given to the FBI and scientists while our heroes sit around and wait for them to finish. You want your heroes to be involved in the ultimate goal of the screenplay. 99 times out of 100, that results in a better script.

Don’t be jealous.

I cooked a pizza.

ALL. BY. MYSELF.

Yup. We’re talking FROM SCRATCH.

Many a moon ago, I gave up on being a chef. I couldn’t even get scrambled eggs right. And then I found Bon Appetit’s Youtube Channel. Cue chorus of angels singing. I’ve never come across a Youtube channel that’s had more likable personalities than Bon Appetit. Brad, Claire, Molly, Carla. Every single person on that channel manages to be knowledgeable, humble, and likable (let’s put a bookmark in “likable” as that’s going to be big theme in this Mish Mash). Since I’ve found this channel, I’ve been a non-stop recipe binging beast, making things that I did not know I was capable of. If you’ve ever been scared to cook, I suggest this channel. They have figured out how to make cooking unintimidating.

Speaking of, I have identified Bon Appetit’s videos as a new genre called “Learnertainment.” It’s a Youtube-specific type of entertainment that offers genuine instruction in an entertaining manner. If you’re a gym rat, why watch some boring bench press video when you can watch the Buff Dudes do it? It’s another example of the fractionation of media. Why pay $15 to go see a bunch of kids swearing for two hours when you can get your entertainment fix in watching five Youtube videos?

The reason I keep drilling this into your head is to remind you just how good a script needs to be in order to drag people away from all these other forms of entertainment, which as we’re seeing, are multiplying by the day! Good Boys is getting some good press and while I’ll admit launching an original comedy without any names to the top of the box office isn’t easy (you try it!), it’s still a 20 million dollar opening. In a time where nobody blinks at a 100 million dollar opening, do we care about 20 million anymore? I do think this means R-rated comedy specs will be hot for the next six months, though. So if you’ve got the perfect R rated comedy, time to start writing!

As for the rest of the week’s opening films, there were, unfortunately, no breakouts. I remember downloading a sample of the novel, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” when it came out. It was an odd book where everything was written in e-mails and texts and social media. As a result, it wasn’t easy to get into. So the more I read, the more I answered the title’s question with, “I don’t care.” Needless to say, I’m not surprised it tanked. And what is Richard Linklater doing directing this movie? Does he have a variable interest mortgage rate that kicked in recently?

Angry Birds and 47 Meters also opened to about 10 million each. I thought the first Angry Birds was surprisingly funny. The premise of this bird dealing with anger issues was explored well. But I’m not sure this franchise was meant for longevity. 47 Meters – hey, shark movies sell. We’ve said it here a million times. I’m guessing they wanted more than a 10 million dollar opening. But the marketing didn’t give anyone a “must see” vibe. Finally, there was Blinded by the Light, which feels like an exec from the year 1997 was accidentally sent forward in time to make this deal. Blinded by the Light was purchased for 15 million dollars after it debuted at Sundance. 15 MILLION! It is a movie about a Pakistani boy in the 1980s who learns to deal with life through Bruce Springsteen music. Uhhh, I’m all for originality. But if there was such thing as too much originality, this concept would qualify. I hear this is good but it’s WAY too weird of a concept to have a 2000 theater release. A lot of people who work at the studios are so out of touch with anyone living inland. This is the kind of movie that only does well in New York and LA.

Moving on to more positive vibes…

I’m obsessed with the HBO show, Succession. I just did a dialogue piece about it Thursday. So if you haven’t checked that out, you have detention for the rest of the week.

The reason I’m obsessed with this show is that it features a bunch of patently unlikable people. And one of the things I always talk about on the site is that audiences need to root for your hero(es) in order for them to like your script. And the easiest way to get people to root for your hero is to make them likable. But the flip side of that is if you can make a movie or a show good with an unlikable lead (or leads), you are taken more seriously as a writer. These are the shows and movies that get all the awards and I think that’s why so many writers travel down this path, even though the path is dark and often leads to death.

The hierarchy goes something like this. Try to make your hero likable in some way. That way, we’re sure to root for them. If you can’t make them likable, make them relatable. Lester Burnham in American Beauty was a man going through a mid-life crisis who just wanted to find happiness. That was relatable to a lot of people. If you can’t make them relatable, make them interesting. Louis Bloom from Nightcrawler wasn’t very likable and definitely wasn’t relateable. But he was interesting. The problem is, each step down this ladder increases the difficulty of writing. So while we have a few breakout success stories of unlikable but interesting characters, most of the time, when writers write an unlikable hero, we don’t like the movie. Check out the 2002 movie, Rules of Attraction, to see the ultimate embodiment of this. We hated every character in that film. So of course we hated the movie.

And yet Succession somehow succeeds. It’s about a Rupert Murdoch like media tyrant who’s given birth to a bunch of selfish narcissistic a-holes who are so out of touch with reality that the only thing they know how to do is hurl insults at one another. I mean I just watched an episode where Logan (the Rupert Murdoch guy) hits a child. This is the kind of stuff that goes on in this show. Why do I keep coming back?

For starters, the characters are routinely funny. And one of my big rules for unlikable characters is that if you can make them funny, you stand a better chance at getting people to overlook their flaws. We all have a dark side in us and we tend to explore that through humor. So if you’ve got a character who spews out the same kind of inappropriate jokes as your best friend would, you’re going to like that person on some level. And in Succession, everybody has a cutting wit that makes every conversation the genesis for a potential gut-busting laugh.

This is why whenever I give notes to writers writing unlikable characters, I encourage them to give the characters a sense of humor. Writers, on the whole, tend to be frustrated people. And they often use their characters to unleash those frustrations. But if you’re not careful, it can come off very, “Bitter basement dweller ranting about the world.” Or “Pent up angry guy ready to shoot up a school.” People don’t relate to characters like that. The mere act of providing them an outlet through humor, however, can make them a lot more attractive.

Also, if you look closer, creator Jesse Armstrong does a good job counter-balancing the unlikable traits of his characters. The more unlikable the character is, the bigger the counter-balance. For example, Roman (Kieren Caulkin), is a terrible selfish person. So Armstrong makes him the funniest of the group. Roman is an unfiltered motormouth who just likes to have fun in an argument. Or Tom, Logan’s daughter’s fiance, isn’t the nicest guy. But his desperation to be liked by the family is endearing. Or Kendall, the successor son, is a cruel guy who wants to rule the world. But he’s also extremely vulnerable and, at his core, cares only about his father’s acceptance.

The point is, the writer is calculating how these characters will come off and counter-balancing that negativity with things we traditionally root for in people. A lot of beginner writers don’t know how to calculate un-likability. Or, if they do, don’t know all the positive traits available to them that would evolve the character into someone more likable. But I’ll be the first to admit, this is a dangerous game Jesse Armstrong is playing. He’s producing a Shakespeare play on a tightrope. The margin for error is so thin that the writing alone doesn’t guarantee success. You have to hope that all the actors understand the characters as well. Which is why you usually see these shows and movies crumble. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. It does so many things you’re “not supposed to do” and yet somehow thrives.

That’s all for today. However, I’m going to leave you with a tease for the September Newsletter. There’s been a lot of Star Wars news leaking lately and I have more opinions than a geriatric tauntaun at the Hoth senior rec center. I have to talk about it at some point. And with Disney’s D23 Expo happening this weekend, I expect there to be even more Star Wars news coming soon (might we get a second Rise of Skywalker trailer?). So it will be a Star Wars heavy September Newsletter. Seeya then!