Genre: Superhero/1 Hour TV Drama
Premise: (from Wikipedia) In a world in which super-powered “heroes” have become commonplace, they are syndicated, monetized, and marketed by a company called Vought International. Unfortunately, money and privilege corrupt, and many of the “supes” give in to their darker impulses. A clandestine group of normal-human vigilantes then arises to counter the corrupt “supes.”
About: Eric Kripke, coming over from Supernatural, has teamed up with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Amazon, to bring this best-selling comic book to the HD screen. Amazon is fast moving away from artsy-fartsy shows (they cancelled Forever, The Romanoffs, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Too Old to Die Young) to focus on big-budget fare. They love their Jack Ryan series, are putting together that Lord of the Rings show, and The Boys doesn’t look cheap either.
Writer: Erik Kripke (who’s working alongside Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) (based on the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson)
Details: 1 hour show, 8 episodes, on Amazon Prime
The Boys is a reminder of just how difficult it is to write a good TV show.
A couple of years ago, I said to everyone, “Don’t write traditional super hero stuff. Come up with ideas that involve superheroes in non-traditional ways.” Since then, the industry has moved squarely in that direction, trying to leach off of the superhero box office boom any way it can. We saw a couple of pilots about cleaning up after mass superhero destruction (neither succeeded). We got that spec script about a group of criminals who pull a heist on a superhero’s lair. There’s Legion, which I’m pretty sure is a superhero-adjacent show. And Agents of SHIELD, which has managed to stay on the air somehow.
Well now Amazon has introduced The Boys, about a group of superheroes who SEEM like the smoothest greatest coolest things since sliced bread. However behind closed doors, they’re a bunch of toxic, evil, manipulative, deceitful scumbags.
The story follows two main characters. There’s Annie, aka “Starlight,” a superhero who’s just made it to the big time. She’s joining “The Seven,” the biggest superhero group in the world. However Annie’s world is rocked when her childhood crush, Aquaman-like superhero The Deep, forces her to perform a sexual act on him.
And then there’s Hughie, who’s deeply in love with his girlfriend, and who, after getting out of work one day, is staring her in the eyes, only for her to turn into a big blob of goo. 200 feet down the street, he sees Flash-like superhero, A-Train, come to a stop, covered in the blood of his beau. Oops, he accidentally ran into her while running 10,000 miles an hour. Hughie watches in shock as A-Train shrugs and runs off.
Annie must quickly decide if this group of people she’s aspired to join her entire life is worth its ugly underbelly. It doesn’t help that her mom has groomed her for this and would hate her if she gave up. Meanwhile, Hughie tries to find justice for his murdered girlfriend but unfortunately the government and the superheroes are in lock-step. They tell him superhero collateral damage is an unfortunate part of keeping the city safe. Oh, but here’s $45,000 for your trouble.
Not long after that, Hughie gets a visit from a rough-and-tumble FBI agent named Billy Butcher. Billy says he sympathizes with Hughie’s situation and maybe they can help each other. He wants Hughie to use his girlfriend’s recent death to get into Vought International (the superheroes’ skyscraper), then plant a bug underneath their conference table. Unfortunately, Translucent (who has the power of invisibility) sees Hughie do this, and follows him and Billy back to Hughie’s work, where he attacks them. Will he succeed? Get Amazon Prime to find out!
The Boys is a frustrating show. At times during the pilot, you see the potential there. Other times, they make baffling choices. A-Train crashing into and killing the girl was a great inciting incident. What superhero fan hasn’t thought about that? That someone with super speed might occasionally bump into someone. And when you bump into someone at 10,000 miles an hour, it ain’t gonna be pretty.
The mythology is clever as well. In this universe, superheroes are like NBA athletes. They get shoe deals, cereal deals, their faces plastered all over billboards. Not only that, but Vought International is a privatized business. When your city’s crime rate goes up, Vought calls you and says, “We’ll offer you Superhero #11 for three years for 300 million dollars.” All that was great.
But then there’s the sleazy superhero sexual stuff, which felt a little tone deaf in today’s Hollywood. In the second episode, Starlight has to go on a mission with The Deep, and I thought, so we’re just going to follow these two as a team even though he sexually assaulted her? I get that we’re approaching these superheroes through a realistic eye, but you can still be judicious about how slimy you get.
Then there was the sloppiness of the plotting.
Here’s how I look at plotting. There’s three tiers. There’s the Bottom Tier. This is where you can feel the writer actually coming up with ideas as he’s writing. Typically you only see this in amateur writing and really bad straight-to-digital movies. But it can also pop up in sequels where they were rushing and didn’t care about the quality of the film so much as meeting a release date. Pretty much the entire last Indiana Jones movie would fall into this category.
On the flip side of this, you have the Invisible Tier. This is when the plotting is so invisible, you aren’t aware of it. The scenes don’t feel like a writer stuffing all the information they need into the scene to move the story forward. Rather, it just feels like you’re watching people’s lives. Characters never sound like they’re setting up important plot points or dishing out exposition. Eighth Grade was a good example of this. Nobody’s going to watch that movie and think, “The plotting was so obvious!”
The majority of plotting, however, exists in between these two extremes, in the Middle Tier. This is when writers are good enough to hide the majority of their plot points. But there’s an inherent lack of effort to want to get it right. And these writers are stuck in the middle for that reason. Because they’re not willing to do the extra work to make the plot in their movies or their TV shows completely invisible.
So what am I talking about?
Well, there’s this sequence in the pilot of The Boys that’s low Middle Tier plotting. In fact, it’s borderline Bottom Tier. Billy Butcher comes to Hughie with a plan to bug the superhero conference room. He tells Hughie, who previously rejected the 45,000 dollar compensation from Vought International for killing his girlfriend, to go back and say he’s willing to accept it. Then, while he’s there and they’re signing the check, slip the bug under their conference table.
Okay, let’s think through this here. Vought International’s building is 70 stories tall. The Seven’s Conference room, where they talk about superhero stuff, is on the top floor. In what reality would the business division of Vought International bring a random guy up to the most exclusive room in the world to sign a check? Wouldn’t they have some other room to do this in considering there are hundreds of rooms in the building?
So why then, do the writers have it happen in the most important room? Because if it didn’t, then there could be no scene where Hughie places the bug under their conference table. That’s the plot point that’s driving this whole sequence. So the writers figured, even though it makes ZERO SENSE that they would do this check transaction in this room, we’re going to do it anyway because we’re too lazy to think of a better way to do it.
That, my friends, is Low Mid Tier Plotting. It’s just not good enough.
And here’s why that’s a problem. Because if that’s going to happen in THE PILOT – the script you have the most time to write – then how sloppy are things going to get in episodes 2-8? When you don’t have any time to write? Sure enough, we get to episode 2, and there’s this really boring A-plot where Hughie hangs out with Translucent, who’s in a cage, for the whole show. And that’s when I turned this off.
I think everybody is living in some fantasy world where because there are so many TV jobs, they don’t think they have to bring it. They can just coast. But the other side of that argument is that people have more options to watch than ever. And if your show drops the ball for even half-an-episode, they’ll never come back. Which is why there are 1000 shows on TV yet people have only heard about five of them. So if you want to be one of the invisible shows that people hear about when it first premieres because of the promotional campaign and then never hear from again, go ahead and be as lazy as you want. But if you want something that’s going to make an impact, lazy plotting will be your downfall.
It’s too bad because the mythology to this show is really cool. And that’s what I responded to. I’m guessing that’s why the comic book is so beloved. But the show itself is messy. And that’s inexcusable.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the best movies ever to watch when it comes to hiding plot is Back to the Future. Specifically, watch the scene where Doc first explains to Marty how the time machine works. The scene conveys around 20 important points for later in the movie. And yet you don’t notice one. That’s because the scene is framed as Doc needing to document the time machine for science (which is why Marty is recording with a camera) combined with his utter excitement about his creation. It’s truly genius stuff.
In this newsletter, I go over my thoughts on Marvel’s experimental Phase 4, give some candid opinions on this month’s trailers, with a special shout out to Knives Out. I sneak into the muddy waters of that new Matt Damon Ben Affleck project. I come up with an epiphany regarding that new “Wishing Tree” project sale. And, oh yeah, I just happen to review ANOTHER SCRIPTSHADOW TOP 25 SCRIPT! You wanna know how you know you’re reading a good script? When you’re not thinking about what you’re going to do next. When all you can think about is the next page. And that was me with this script.
So, check your Inboxes, guys and gals! If you don’t receive the newsletter within the next hour, make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders in your e-mail program. If you can’t find it there, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER!” and I’ll send it to you. Enjoy!
p.s. For those of you e-mailing me saying that you keep signing up but don’t receive the newsletter, try sending me another e-mail address. E-mailing programs are notoriously quirky and there may be several invisible reasons your e-mail address/server is rejecting the e-mail.
Genre: Drama
Premise: A fading moving star and his trusty stuntman navigate the perils of Hollywood in 1969.
About: Psychologically, it was imperative that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood cross the 40 million dollar mark this weekend. So thank goodness it was BARREELLLLY able to do so, grabbing 40.2 million dollars. The film has been working up a big lather of discussion and I hope to add to that today.
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Details: 2 hours and 45 minutes
[MAJOR SPOIIIIILLLLLLERRRSSS]
Quentin.
Vs.
Marvel!
Don’t ignore the reality. This is what this really is. This is original auteurs versus the giant moviemaking machines. I remember people complaining when Star Wars and Jaws came out. “Oh no! Now it’s going to be all about the blockbuster!” And, yes, it eventually became about the blockbuster. But that’s nothing compared to today. Today it’s about the superstar IP franchise-starting make-stockholders-happy mega movie. And nobody embodies that better than Marvel.
Which means that whether you like Quentin Tarantino or not, you should support him. Because the fewer of him there are around, the closer we are to an all-Marvel Hollywood. And don’t get me wrong. I like most Marvel movies. I’d just like to have the occasional choice, you know.
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is set in 1969 and Rick Dalton, the star of a popular Western TV show called “Bounty Law,” has since tried his luck at becoming a movie star. However, it’s not going well. With each passing part, he’s getting cast more and more as the bad guy, which means he’s just there to get killed. This has driven Rick to lots of drinking.
Rick’s best friend is his stunt double, Cliff Booth. Cliff stopped getting work when rumors began swirling that he murdered his wife. Therefore, the only time Cliff gets to be a stunt double is when Rick demands that they hire him. Meanwhile, Cliff drives Rick around and takes care of his house.
Sharon Tate, who was infamously murdered by the Manson family, is an aspiring actress here who just happens to have moved into the house next to Rick’s with her husband, Roman Polanski. Rick often ponders the randomness of the world and how if he could just bump into them, he would go from Rick Dalton, TV extra, to Rick Dalton, starring in a Roman Polanski movie. But alas, that will never happen. Will it?
If there’s a plot to be had here, it would be Rick’s journey to do good work. He’s trying, despite all odds, to become a movie star. So we follow him to movie sets and watch him try, with all his might, to give the best performances possible, in the hopes that somebody important will notice that he can still be the next Steve McQueen.
Wow.
I mean, is there a writer who’s more confusing to new screenwriters than Quentin Tarantino? On the one hand, you can use his scripts to convey some of the most useful tips in screenwriting. On the other, he does tons of things you should never allow a screenwriter to do. And I think this script highlights that better than most.
Take Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Pitt). What’s one of the first things they teach you in screenwriting class? That the main two characters who are teamed up in your story should have conflict with one another. That doesn’t mean Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker over-the-top conflict. It could mean Miles and Jack conflict from the movie, Sideways, where they don’t see the world the same way and are always banging up against each other about what to do.
Rick and Cliff have zero conflict with one another. They’re like two peas in a pod, the best of pals. And it stays that way THE WHOLE MOVIE. Now, ultimately, the only question that matters is, does it work? If we enjoy watching these characters together, it shouldn’t matter that there’s no conflict. And I enjoyed watching these two. But there’s another question we have to consider, which is, if Tarantino HAD created conflict between them, would we have enjoyed the movie MORE? And I think the answer to that question is yes.
There’s a moment in the script that hints at the idea that Rick isn’t trying hard enough to get Cliff stunt work. That maybe he only sees him as a 24/7 caddy. If that thread would’ve been explored more, and had Cliff grown some resentment towards Rick, I think their relationship might’ve been more interesting to watch. Instead they’re the bromance to end all bromances.
The individual character journeys were also interesting from a screenwriting perspective. The most obvious conflict in the movie comes from Rick Dalton, who’s battling his falling star. And, once again, Tarantino stays away from conventional structuring. In a conventional movie, you would have an upcoming role that if Rick Dalton nailed, the studio was going to sign him to a new 5 picture deal. This gives the story a goal and stakes. Instead, we just sort of travel around with Rick as he goes to set and acts. We’re not all that sure what the stakes are other then, if he does a good job, he’ll feel like he’s still “got it.” When people complain about the rambling nature of this story, this is what they’re talking about. If your main character isn’t trying to accomplish anything, the narrative focus is going to suffer.
Then there’s Cliff. Cliff isn’t trying to accomplish anything. Nor does he have any sort of internal conflict. He appears to be dependent on Rick for work. And yet he doesn’t seem scared about what would happen if Rick stopped getting work. If a character’s journey doesn’t have any stakes attached to it, then that journey will feel pointless. What’s crazy is that Cliff’s character has the tools to be compelling. Everybody believes that he killed his wife. Maybe he even did kill his wife. So if he’s out there trying to gain everyone’s respect back, if he’s trying to become a stunt performer who doesn’t need Rick Dalton to get work, then at least he’s moving towards something. But in the Bruce Lee scene (he fights Bruce Lee, which gets him kicked off the set), he’s completely unconcerned with losing that job. He’s even smirking about it. So if he doesn’t care about losing his job, why would I worry about him? Or what happens to him?
Finally, there’s Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), whose character is another Tarantino Screenwriting Paradox. If you got rid of all of Sharon Tate’s scenes, nothing about the movie would change. And that’s another Screenwriting 101 lesson. If it’s not necessary for the story, get rid of it. BUT there’s a counter argument to this. Most people who go into this movie know Sharon Tate was brutally murdered in the Manson murders. Therefore, by keeping her in the movie, you’re building up an association between her and the audience, who knows her fate is coming. Therefore, when she lives instead of dies, all of that earlier time spent with her pays off. Cause we actually care that she lived. Had we not seen her at all, we wouldn’t have cared. Now could Tarantino have better connected her storyline to the plot? Probably. Could he have given her more to do than watch a movie in Westwood? I’m guessing yeah. So I do understand why people have a problem with her.
The truth is this script probably needed two more drafts. And I’m going to tell you how I know that. What is everyone’s biggest complaint about the film? It’s that there’s no plot. That we sort of drift around Hollywood without purpose. Now, what are the two sequences in the film everyone is talking about? They are when Cliff Booth goes to the Manson Farm and the ending scene where the Manson followers break into Rick’s house.
So what do those two things tell you? You need a plot and the thing that’s working best in your story is the Manson stuff. With a couple more drafts, Tarantino could’ve shaped this more around the Mansons. And here’s where screenwriting gets hard. I think Tarantino went into this script not wanting to center the story on the Mansons. To him, this was always about an actor and his stunt man. So even if the Manson stuff becomes the best thing in the script? He’s already created a bias by which he won’t center the story around it. All screenwriters do this. I’ve done it a dozen times myself. We write with a certain type of movie in mind, forgetting that the only rule in storytelling is to entertain. So if another, more exciting, story starts to present itself over the course of a screenplay, you have to follow that. Well, you don’t have to. But you probably should.
The ending of this script is its biggest talking point. Some people aren’t sure what to make of keeping Sharon Tate alive. What’s the message there? I actually think the ending is the most powerful moment in the film because here’s the thing about the Manson family. Everybody was obsessed with how nonsensical and random the murders were. And what I think Tarantino was trying to say was that they could’ve just as easily walked into a different house and the result would’ve been totally different. That a certain set of circumstances had to go right for them to be able to do what they did. Because these weren’t trained killers. They were clueless acid-tripping hippies. And had they walked into a house with a couple of big strong dudes, they might’ve gotten their a**es handed to them. Tarantino is showing just how random Hollywood and life is. That one little decision here or there changes EVERYTHING. In that ending, Rick Dalton does end up meeting Roman Polanski. And maybe he does become a movie star.
So where does this leave me on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Believe it or not, I loved it. Even with all my criticisms, Tarantino brings a knowledge and a love to filmmaking that you can’t quantify in sluglines and parentheticals. As much as the lack of plot hurt the script, it helped the movie. The less we thought about plot, the more realistic everything seemed. When characters aren’t saying things like, “We need to get the tesseract before Loki,” we’re less likely to remember that we’re watching a movie. And that’s what Tarantino does here. He brings us back to 1969 and presents a narrative that’s so easy-going, it doesn’t feel like a movie at all. It feels like we’re really there. And for me, it felt like like I was REALLY REALLY there, because I was. I watched this at the Arclight on Sunset, and 70% of Once Upon A Time was shot right in that area.
So it was just a very immersive experience. There are always screenwriting lesson to be learned from Tarantino. But I wouldn’t look too deep into what he’s doing here and say, “I’m going to do that, too.” This guy is operating on another level. But if there is a lesson to take away from this, I’d say that it’s, write about something you love more than anything. Cause it really comes through on the page when you do.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s a line of dialogue in the last scene of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that exemplifies why Tarantino is so far ahead of everyone else. Major spoiler by the way. In the scene, ambulances and police cars have just left after cleaning up the Manson attack. Sharon Tate’s friend, Jay, standing behind the gate, spots Rick and asks what happened. Rick introduces himself. “Hi, I’m Rick Dalton. I live next door.” I don’t remember the exact response, so I’ll paraphrase it. Jay says, “Are you kidding? I know. Sharon Tate always says to me that if we ever need to take someone out, Jake Cahill from Bounty Law lives right next to us.” The fact that Tarantino went so far as to create a conversation off-screen that a character would then reference later in order to create a bond between two characters who have never met each other shows just how extensively he digs into his characters. It’s very likely Tarantino wrote some “off-screen” scenes, which are scenes between characters that won’t make the movie, but you do it as a writer to get to know the characters better. Does Jay have that line ready without that off-screen scene written? Probably not. Writers these days don’t take the time anymore, which is why we have so many empty surface-level films. Which is why we’re lucky to still have people like Tarantino working in the business.
Genre: Spy/True Story/Thriller
Premise: In 1985, when CIA Officer Aldrich Ames sells what he believes to be useless intelligence to the Soviets to pay for his divorce, he inadvertently sets off an international Cold War crisis that finds him heading up a special CIA unit — a unit created to find out who sold secrets to the Soviets.
Why You Should Read: Being true, it’s a spy story that’s more grounded than most, but also barely believable in how it plays out. There are absurdities that could only come from real life. It’s based on research drawn from the Senate Committee report published after Ames’s arrest, as well as testimony from the Soviet Intelligence Officer who ran Ames as an agent. Personally, I could use some writerly interaction with my work as I’ve been more-or-less blocked for the better part of a year, and need to get back into the flow. I’d be very grateful for any and all response to the script. Thanks.
Writer: Will Alexander
Details: 133 pages
Man, I had one heck of a long day today. I had to do 10,000 things around town. I then had to do a ton of reading. Some analysis. And then, when I was dying for some sleep, I still had to get this post up. I bring this up as a reminder that sometimes – in fact, probably most times – these are the conditions your script is being read under. If you’re not turning in a draft of the latest Marvel movie to Disney, your priority level is, unfortunately, pretty low. All the more reason to grab the reader right away and make them forget about all of that. That’s what writing is. It’s creating a story so compelling that whatever the reader has going on in their life, in their head, all of that disappears because they’re sucked into your world. So let’s see if Will can pull that off. I’m opening the script now…
It’s 1985. Washington D.C. Aldrich “Rick” Ames, is 42 years old and one of the better CIA agents. He’s in the midst of a divorce and fighting with his wife over the settlement. It’s looking more and more like he’s going to have to pay her a lot of money. Meanwhile, he’s fallen in love with a Columbian woman named Rosario. Rosario likes to tally up $1500 monthly phone bills to Columbia.
Ames’ main contact in the Soviet Union – who, by the way, we’re in a nuclear arms race with – is a man named Sergey. It’s not entirely clear to me why he meets with Sergey, but as best I can tell, he makes his superiors believe that Sergey is a good contact who he can convert into a spy. This allows him a lot of face time with Sergey, and, at a certain point, Sergey starts asking for info. A light bulb goes off for Ames. He can demand 50 grand, give Sergey a couple of names, and not have to worry about money anymore. Which he does.
What he doesn’t know is that Sergey has already figured him out. Rosario is a money succubus. This 50 grand won’t do anything. Which means Ames will have to come back for more. And when he comes back for more, Sergey will ask for more names. And that’s exactly what happens. The CIA is baffled when all of their spies start getting caught. They figure there’s a mole but nobody suspects Ames at all for some reason. Ames continues to trade contacts for cash to the tune of 4 million dollars. A decade later, after he’s settled into the high life, they catch him. Ames is said to be responsible for 10 CIA agents’ deaths.
Okay, I’m about to go on a rant here. You’ve been warned.
133 pages?
If there’s a top 5 rules in screenwriting, “Don’t write a script that’s over 120 pages if you’re an amateur screenwriter,” is in it. It might even be number 1 on the list. Because what happens is what happened today. I’m overworked. I’m tired. But I have to read this script. I open it up. And then I see that number. And once I see that number, I’m enraged. My night has just gotten a lot longer.
It’s not just that. It’s that when you have a long script and a reader with not a lot of time, they’re not going to be able to give your script the focus it requires. When they encounter something they don’t understand in your story, they’re not going to go back and reread it. They’re going to keep going. And in a script like this? With unfamiliar Russian names and the need to keep track of agents and double-agents and who’s lying and who’s not. You’re digging your own grave.
So, look. You can be the person who ignores this stuff and does it your own way. It’s not like no one’s ever succeeded by breaking the rules. But I’m just trying to help you guys avoid basic pitfalls that infuriate people in the business. I want you to succeed. So I’m going to keep reminding you about this stuff.
And by the way, this occurs in contests as well. I know some people will say, well this is more of contest script anyway. Okay, tell that to the guy who has to read 4-5 contest scripts a day.
Moving onto the script, here’s what I liked. There’s a sophistication to this script. There’s a love of the genre. There’s a crazy amount of attention to detail. The writer swung for the fences. He wasn’t trying to write Zombie Vampire Date Night From Hell. This is an Oscar aspiring script. On top of that, this is actor and director bait of the highest order. Steven Spielberg signed onto a similar project, Bridge of Spies. So the counter-argument to everything I just said is THAT. This project has tremendous upside.
If it’s well-executed.
Was it well-executed?
Well, I’ll put it like this. This is a great character-study. And Ames is a perfect metaphor for America. We’re often assumed to be a nation of greed. And that’s what we see play out here. So when I look at the movie as a whole, I like that component of it.
However, when I look at its individual parts, it wasn’t an easy read. You’d get a lot of long scenes with men sitting down talking. And in those scenes, the chunks of dialogue would not be 2-3 lines long. They would be 10-15 lines long (not all of the time, but enough to say it happened frequently). This verbosity took its toll on the pacing and overall enjoyment of the script. In fact, I think you could eliminate 10 pages here just by cutting down how much everyone says every time they open their mouth.
Also, the story didn’t evolve enough. I got the same feeling in a scene on page 80 as I had on page 40. The boiling pot of Ames getting closer and closer to being discovered kept the story moving. But there was a lack of differentiation to the scenes. It felt like I read 20 scenes between Ames and Rosario that were exactly the same. And Ames always seemed to be sitting at a table talking to someone. I don’t know. I wanted more variety in what I was seeing.
One of the skills that’s important for a screenwriter to remember is the skill of condensing. Anybody can write some rambling 160 page story. But one of the reasons they need screenwriters is because non-screenwriters don’t know how to condense story. They don’t know what parts can be thrown out, what parts can be combined, what characters can be jettisoned. This is what great screenwriters are masters at. If a director comes to them and says, “Look, I don’t have the money to shoot all three of these scenes. Can you write a scene that combines all of them?” they can do it in a heartbeat!
And I get that there’s no rules. But, at the same time, you can’t be too precious. You have to think of the reader and the pacing and make tough choices so that the script is not just an accurate telling of your story, but an entertaining telling of it.
This is a strong topic. I can totally see a studio wanting to tell this guy’s story. In fact, I can imagine the trades write up of it and I wouldn’t blink an eye if I saw it. But for me it was too big, too repetitive at times, and probably needed a couple of “HOLY SH*T” scenes in the middle that were unforgettable. I wish Will all the luck in the world because he’s an awesome contributor to the site. However, next time, I want that easy read from him! :)
Script link: Year of the Spy
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I wouldn’t intricately weave well-known music into a montage. By that I mean, you give us a few montage images, then a lyric from the song, then more montage images, then another lyric. Here’s why. While this stuff works GREAT on screen, it’s actually really hard to follow on the page. Often times, we don’t know the song as well as you do. So when you give us a lyric, we have to stop, sing the song in our head, get to that lyric to know what we’re listening to, and then get back to the montage, which is already a disjointed experience, considering we’re jumping to different moments in time. And, on top of that, they never get the song you want anyway. They always have to pay for something cheaper. So I would leave that part up to the filmmakers and just make your script as easy to read as possible.
So far in our Dialogue Series, we’ve talked about how to set up a scene for good dialogue. We’ve talked about the importance of adding personality to your characters, as that’s a driving force behind good dialogue. Today I want to talk about the kind of dialogue that makes me want to kill myself. Because I read it all the time. And if I can just steer screenwriters away from these two things, I can ensure that all the screenplays I read from now on will have 50% better dialogue. So what are these script-killers?
ON-THE-NOSE DIALOGUE
and
GENERAL DIALOGUE
On-the-nose dialogue is dialogue where the characters are speaking only to service the plot and the scene. It’s as if they have a direct line into the writer’s head and are making sure that they’re saying exactly what the writer needs them to say for the reader to understand what they’re thinking and what’s going on. On-the-nose dialogue is obvious and straightforward. “I am so tired this morning.” “You should sleep in.” “But I have the big meeting today.” “Oh yeah. I’ll cook you breakfast.”
On-the-nose characters speak like cave men. Whatever they’re thinking, they share it. This gives the entire conversation a false reality. The audience isn’t even sure why they’re so bored. Characters are speaking on the screen. Usually they like this. But nothing the characters are saying is interesting. And that’s because there’s no human element to the conversation.
What’s the human element? Well, for starters, humans rarely say what they’re thinking. If Jane shows up at work with a disastrous new haircut and asks her friend, Sally, what she thinks, is Sally going to say what she thinks? Probably not. Conversation is a dance where you’re balancing what you’re thinking against what you’re saying. And I think that’s what a lot of newbies get wrong. They have the character say what they think as opposed to considering how that character might present that thought once it goes through their filter.
Here, in The Breakfast Club, Andrew (the Jock) is mad at Bender (the Burnout) and lets him know it….
You can see that John Hughes even wrote it into the script. Bender wants to say something nasty. He’s angry. But instead of being a robot who conveys exactly what he thinks, he pretends that he’s unaffected and comes back with a jab. This is the human element. We think about what we’re going to say so that when we do say something, it frames us in the light that we want to be perceived in.
I can tell a writer is thinking “off-the-nose” (which is what you want!) when obvious questions are asked and non-obvious responses are given. Here’s a quick exchange in Erin Brokovich, where Erin is going to a woman’s house to get some information on the water scandal that’s hit the county.
I’ve read a hundred scripts where a character asks a question just like this. “Are you a lawyer?” And the on-the-nose response from the lawyer is, “Yes, do you have a moment?”
It should be noted that on-the-nose dialogue becomes harder to avoid the more heavily plotted your script is. If you have a ton of plot, then your characters will become mouthpieces for the plot instead of real people having real discussions. This was a problem with yesterday’s script, Escher, which had a lot of plot going on, so all the characters needed to say exactly what needed to be said.
I bring this up because on-the-nose dialogue is often a result of circumstance. You’ve created stories or situations whereby the characters have to say exactly what they’re thinking. This is why you want to leave enough freedom in your story to let your characters talk without the constraints of needing to convey a plot point every three lines.
To avoid on-the-nose dialogue, avoid logic. Logic is your enemy in dialogue. Try to be playful. You want to have fun with your characters as opposed to just asking and answering questions. And try to incorporate scenes where one character isn’t being completely honest with the other. Or is holding back on some truth or their feelings. Once you have characters who aren’t being 100% honest, it’s hard to write on-the-nose dialogue.
Let’s move on to GENERAL DIALOGUE. General dialogue is dialogue that is the bare bones generic version of what a character can say. For example, if a character is at Thanksgiving dinner and wants more mashed potatoes, he might say, “Can someone please pass me the mashed potatoes?” This is a perfectly acceptable thing to say in real life. But in a movie, the line is so generic, it’s invisible.
The way you battle general dialogue is through specificity and playfullness. You add words and phrases and angles that add flavor to the line. Your hungry character might nudge his sister and whisper, “Hey, snag me the mashed potatoes before Uncle Rick engulfs them.” It’s not a crazy better line. But it’s more specific. The word “snag” is a little different. “Uncle Rick” makes the line unique to the story. “Engulfs” is a slightly dressed up way of saying “eats.” How specific you get will depend on the character, the story, the situation, and the genre. This line wouldn’t work in, say, Schindler’s List. Let’s take a look at an exchange from Deadpool.
Notice how specific this dialogue gets, particularly towards the end with those last few lines. The two get into some pretty graphic experiences. Of course they’re not real, which makes the dialogue “off-the-nose,” and a solid example of everything I’m trying to teach in this post.
For the next exchange, we’re going to Fast and Furious 4. In the scene, Han is paying Dom for the job they just did…
Look at the specificity in the words and phases. “Skippin’ out?” “Simple economics. Profit’s drying up here.” “Getting a little tired of rice and beans.” “I hear they’re doing some crazy shit in Tokyo.” “This nickel and dime stuff.”
All that’s really happening here is that the writer is willing to play with words. That’s the attitude you want to have whenever you’re writing dialogue. Obviously, the extent with which you’ll play will depend on the scenario and characters. But even if it’s two stiff accountants sharing plot information, you should still find ways to play with the words so it doesn’t come out like two robots talking.
That’s the worst thing that can happen to dialogue. On-the-nose generic “just the facts ma’am” conversation. Throw in some off the nose specific dialogue – be willing to play with words and phrasing – and your dialogue’s going to get a lot better.
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