Genre: Superhero/Procedural
Premise: (from Hit List) A grief-stricken mother sets out to murder the world’s only superhero when he accidentally kills her daughter while battling his nemesis.
About: Today’s script finished NUMBER 1 on the 2018 Hit List. As a reminder, the Hit List is a list of the year’s best SPEC scripts, not to be confused with the Black List, which includes mostly assignment work (writers getting paid before they write the screenplay). As such, Hit List screenplays tend to be a little more raw. Still, there are plenty of scripts that make both lists, which is why it’s so peculiar that this – the top script on the Hit List – didn’t even appear on the Black List. One hint may be that it’s being produced by Joel Silver. Silver isn’t interested in managing social justice quotas or biopicing cineplexes to death. He just wants to make fun kick ass films, something the Black List has mostly moved away from celebrating. The writer, Russian-born Yaroslav Altunin, got his MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, where the script won that school’s Screenwriting Showcase. Screenwriters Showcase is an annual UCLA event at the end of Spring Quarter designed to introduce outstanding student work to the industry. Students can submit feature-length and TV scripts which are read and critiqued by industry experts.
Writer: Yaroslav Altunin
Details: 92 pages

Identify a popular genre and find a new way into it.

Today’s writer takes the most popular movie genre in the world – Superhero – and asks, “What if an everyday person wanted revenge on a superhero?”

Chop out all the pomp and circumstance and instead focus on the real-life human emotions of grief and anger? Make it personal instead of pyrotechnic? Sounds interesting. Sounds like the kind of script that, if written well, could finish number one on a screenplay list. That makes me excited to check out Absence of Courage.

When we meet her, police officer Maggie Temple is inside the wreckage of her car, staring at the dead body of her teenage daughter, Alex. The Guardian, a stoic superman-like superhero, has just laid waste to downtown Los Angeles while trying to kill super-villain, Nemesis. Over 100,000 people were killed during the carnage. And Maggie blames The Guardian for it all, especially the death of her daughter.

A month later, Maggie yells at her husband for encouraging her to sit around and do nothing. She wants to get back on the beat. So she puts on her new special bionic leg (she lost a leg during the attack) and heads to work. Maggie’s thrilled to see her partner, Ray, and the two are assigned to clean-up duty. Lots of fake superhero vigilantes are running around town and it’s the cops job to keep them in order.

But work doesn’t quench Maggie’s real thirst, which is to find the real identity of the Guardian and kill him. One day, while mourning in front of the wall of casualties, Maggie meets a mysterious religious doctor named Henry, who keeps all the candles lit in front of the dead’s pictures. Maggie feels like she can trust this man and the two quickly become good friends.

But Maggie can’t shake the anger inside of her, and slowly descends into the female version of Travis Bickle. Investigating the whereabouts of the Guardian, she learns that the commissioner may have orchestrated the downtown battle to gain popularity (or something). Finally, Maggie charges into the off-limits center of the city, where she finds The Guardian waiting there (just hanging out I guess?). With the help of Nemesis, she fights him, only to learn that he’s… yeah, you’re pretty dumb if you didn’t figure this one out… Henry. Maggie, then, has to come to terms with her anger and decide if killing this man is really going to make her happier.

You can probably tell how I felt about Absence of Courage from the way I phrased my plot summary. Look, I can see how this script gained traction. It’s IP Appropriation. It’s a different way to explore superhero movies.

But man, there’s so much wrong here.

For starters, the script is achingly slow. We’d get scenes like Maggie moaning to her husband about the loss of their daughter and then, 30 pages later, we’d get that exact same scene again. There was a lot of that, where scenes either echoed or repeated stuff that had already been established. The plot had virtually zero momentum, which is hard to do when your subject matter is superheroes.

The script also suffered from something I call Inevitability Syndrome. If you’ve ever watched a sporting event – a soccer, football, tennis, basketball game. – and right from the start, one team is destroying the other, you’ve experienced this. You know, even though there’s two hours left of the game, what’s going to happen. The result is inevitable.

The way this plays out in movies is when the writer follows a genre’s tropes too closely. In this case, we’ve got a cop procedural. Maggie is attempting to find the identity of someone. So there’s a lot of “talk to this person,” “threaten that person,” “lose yourself along the way.” I felt like after page 15, I could turn to page 85 and still have a good idea of what had happened. That’s not good.

I mean even the villain was the most obvious reveal ever. When a character appears out of nowhere, befriends your protagonist for no reason, and acts really mysterious every time they’re around each other, chances are the audience is going to figure out something is up.

A little red herring action could’ve solved this problem. Add a few more characters. Have those characters acting weird too. Keep the audience off-balance. The way to defeat Inevitability Syndrome is to keep the game close. One team goes up, the other team goes up. We should have no idea how the game is going to end. And Absence of Courage might as well have plastered a giant sign at the top of the title page telling you how it was going to end because that’s how obvious it was.

To be honest, I was worried from the very first scene. We meet Maggie right after her daughter has died. There’s nothing technically wrong with this choice, but it’s a choice that has consequences. If you kill off Alex before we meet her, we never have an emotional tie to her. We never see, ourselves, what was so special about their relationship. What this forces the writer to do, then, is create that emotion via Maggie’s emotion. So we have to see Maggie complain to her husband that she can never get over her daughter. We have to see her tear up when she sees her daughter’s picture on the wall of remembrance. And that’s never EVER going to be as powerful as if we’d met Alex.

And all it needed was a two minute scene between them right before Alex was killed. That would’ve done the trick. Or you need to take advantage of the visual medium that is cinema and SHOW us that emotion, not tell us. The most recent version of this is Three Billboards. I mean who doesn’t know how painful Mildred’s loss is after putting up those billboards?

This script was an odd duck. Even beyond the things I’ve mentioned, there were these awkward choices, like the fact that Maggie had a bionic leg. Except the leg played no part in the movie whatsoever. It gets a ton of coverage as a leg of the future but it didn’t give her superpowers or anything. So why include it at all?

I don’t know, guys. I suppose I can see how this script might impress a panel of people coming out of nowhere. But when you read it with all the hype that comes from topping a major screenplay list, it’s a big letdown. Which is too bad because it’s got an interesting premise. However, this thing needs a professional grade punch-up if it’s going to be the next Hancock.

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

What I learned: If you’re hiding someone’s identity, and that person’s reveal is a major part of the plot, you need plenty of red herrings. You need at least four other characters who garner suspicion from the reader. Otherwise, we’re going to know who the killer (or, in this case, superhero) is with an hour left to go.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Interactive
Premise: In 1984, a young programmer, determined to create the best video game ever, begins unravelling during the programming process when he suspects that an unseen force is dictating his actions.
About: How cool it is to be Charlie Booker? You’ve created a show that allows you to tell ten new science-fiction movies a year. I’d sign up for that every day of the week. Today’s film, like a lot of Netflix titles, came out of nowhere, arriving on the service the last week of 2018. Its choose-your-own-adventure narrative has created a lot of discussion – some negative, some positive. But everyone seems to agree that it’s worth talking about. Bandersnatch was directed by David Slade, who has an interesting Scriptshadow connection in that he’s attached to direct, “Meat.”
Writer: Charlie Booker
Details: 90 minues

Choose-your-own-adventure stories were always more appealing in theory than they were in practice. Even as an easily entertained kid, I remember awkwardly jumping back and forth through these books and feeling like I was doing a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.

So I was skeptical when Black Mirror announced a choose-your-own-adventure movie. It’s hard enough to write a screenplay using all your best choices. Multiple-choice narratives force the writer to incorporate options he wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. Which begs the question: How do you write a good story if you’re not always using your best stuff?

But Black Mirror is the one property I’d trust with this setup. Their brand is designed to take chances and, more specifically, incorporate technology into the story. The rules are simple. Every 5-10 minutes, a character will ask a question (Therapist: “Do you want to talk about your mother?”), and two choices will appear on the bottom of the screen (“Yes” or “No”). An unobtrusive white line appears, casually shrinking inward, signifying the amount of time you have to make your choice.

The central storyline of Bandersnatch places us in the year 1984. 20-something game programmer Stefan Butler wants to turn his favorite choose-your-own-adventure book, Bandersnatch, into a video game. He interviews at the best company in town, Tuckersoft, where his programming hero, Colin Ritman, works. The president loves the Bandersnatch pitch and asks Stefan to develop the game.

Quickly, however, Stefan runs into gamer’s block. Something is missing to bring the game to that next level. Part of the problem is Stefan feels like he’s being controlled. Seconds after we’re asked whether we want Stefan to bite his nails and we answer yes, Stefan slams his hand down, refusing to engage in the activity. A new theme begins to permeate the story – that of free will. Stefan doesn’t believe he has it.

Stefan eventually goes to Colin for help with his gamer’s block, and Colin regales him in a story about how Pac-Man is a metaphor for how we’re all stuck in a maze, consuming, with no way out. The good news is, we can jump to parallel realities to alleviate the resulting insanity. Colin insists that they both get high, and we know Booker wanted this scene because we don’t get the option to say no. After they get really high, Colin suggests jumping off his high-rise to prove his parallel realities theory. We get to choose which of them jumps. I chose Colin, who jumps and dies.

The trippiest moment in Bandersnatch occurs when Stefan starts screaming to the skies that he knows someone is controlling him and wants to know who they (you) are. We’re given the choice of saying “Netflix” or a story relevant symbol. I couldn’t resist choosing Netflix, which results in “me” explaining to Stefan that I’m from the 21st Century watching him on Netflix and controlling his actions.

When Stefan brings this up to his therapist, she replies, “If you were really in a movie, wouldn’t there be more… action?” The movie then asks you if you want more action (you can only answer “yes”) and the two proceed to beat each other’s ass.

Stefan goes deeper down the rabbit hole, embracing the insanity of what’s happening to him, which results in him brutally murdering his father (or maybe I was responsible for that, since I told him to). Eventually, he creates the perfect game, which becomes a cult hit that 35 years later is turned into a Netflix show.

Ten minutes into Bandersnatch, I suspected I’d stumbled into a big waste of time. I’m choosing which cereal Charlie eats. Whether to talk about his mom or not. Borrrrr-ing. But the movie picks up once we start breaking the fourth wall.

One of the things I keep telling you guys it that when you come up with a concept, you want to explore everything you can that’s unique about that concept. Most writers don’t do this. The concept is their way into the story. But once they’re in, they write a bunch of characters and scenarios and action that we’ve seen before. If you’re going to make a “choose your own adventure” movie, you want to ask what you can do with that format that hasn’t been done with traditional movies before. If all you’re going to do is offer the viewer a bunch of fake choices that lead us to the same ending, there’s no reason to make the film.

By connecting you directly to the characters to the point where they’re recognizing that you’re controlling them fully immerses us in the experience and makes Bandersnatch unlike anything we’ve seen before. I mean think about. You couldn’t do this five years ago, much less twenty years ago. There’s no way to do this in a movie theater since everybody’s choice would be different. And movie theaters don’t have the necessary technology to be real-time interactive anyway. So all that was great.

Was the story good?

That’s tougher to answer. I was engaged throughout the movie. But a lot of that had to do with the format. I started to enjoy the fact that I was controlling this person’s decisions, which made me more focused on that than whether character arcs were being fulfilled or the pacing was on point.

But the core plot point kept things focused. By setting up the goal of Stefan needing to create the game, we always knew where we were going. And it wasn’t just that. It was that Stefan was highly motivated. We could tell that this game meant everything to him. And that’s something that’s always going to supercharge a protagonist – if they’re obsessed with achieving their goal.

It also sounds to me like there’s a lot more to this show. Some people have been obsessively watching it and choosing every different direction so as to experience every version of the movie. I’d be interested to hear if your plot breakdown is different from mine. I suspect they can only offer so many alternative storylines, or else they’d be shooting for years. But I’d love to hear if someone watched a completely different movie than I did.

That’s what’s so cool about this project. It’s different. And not only different. It took a gimmick and it did something with it. The gimmick didn’t stop at the conceptual phase, which is what happens with so many gimmicky ideas. All in all, Bandersnatch was a refreshing film. I was pleasantly surprised.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: While it kind of worked here due to the unique format, I strongly discourage writers from using the “Kid’s Mistake Led To Mommy/Daddy’s Death” flashback. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this trope. Let’s get rid of it once and for all.

It’s a new year. A new 365 days of possibility (well, 361 now). And what better way to break through than being endorsed by your own peers!? It’s the first Amateur Offerings of 2019, a bi-monthly tournament whereby five screenwriters square off against each other in a good old fashioned writing brawl. You, the readers, download and read as much of each script as possible, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes gets a review next Friday.

If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck to this week’s contestants!

Title: Insectum
Genre: Horror (subgenre: Slasher)
Logline: A group of high school girls and their teacher are taken in by twins with an obsession for insects after they are unexpectedly stranded on the way to an overnight field trip. There, they must fight for their lives as their teacher attempts to atone for a sin from her past.
Why You Should Read: Prom Night. The Prowler. Class Reunion Massacre. Tenebrae. City of the Living Dead. Old school slashers, giallo. Are you someone who wants to see more of a renaissance of these horror subgenres from the 1970s and early 80s, but with a sick feminine twist? We were influenced by these movies, and also wanted to write about people on the fringe…people whose inner secrets and desires and losses drive them in unexpected directions, both positive and negative. Insectum could be produced on a minimum budget, but to maximum effect, creating a unique female-centric slasher. Stephen King says to write the story you want to read. That’s exactly what we’ve done with Insectum.

Title: Rat Bastards
Genre: Crime
Logline: A mob enforcer escorts a nameless corpse to its final resting place with the help of a young recruit, tasked with eliminating the older mobster turned informant once the job’s done.
Why You Should Read: Earlier this year, the news dropped that the “company” I work for is being absorbed by the succubus of children’s programming. It got me thinking of some of my co-workers’ situations… Middle aged and suddenly without work once the guillotine falls. There’s an inherent terror in that idea, situation. And, like every writer, I thought about how I can exploit their impending misfortune for a story.

“RAT BASTARDS” is the product of that mental trek and a simple question – how the fuck would the mob lay you off? Well, they kill you, spoiler alert. At a certain age, that is what being fired/laid off becomes… Murder. Murdering whatever life you had known or future you had planned out. You’re too old to be desirable and too young/poor to retire. This script is my way of exercising that anxiety in a genre vein that hopefully comes off as entertaining.

The script is a smaller addition to the gangster genre; indie in scope and, as it currently exists, something within reach of getting made on the cheap. I like writing that kind of script. I feel like it gives me a fighter’s chance of reaching the screen.

I appreciate all notes, good and bad and everything in-between. Thank you for giving “RAT BASTARDS” the time of day.

Title: No Man’s Land
Genre: Drama
Logline: Disgraced tennis player Izzy Vardi must pause his comeback and move back to his homeland of Israel to take care of his catatonic father after a vicious suicide bombing.
Why You Should Read: There have been movies that involve tennis and there have been movies set in the Middle East, but there has never been a sports drama that looks into the tumultuous Israeli/Palestinian conflict while showcasing the struggle and loneliness that is tennis. I grew up both in Israel and America and played tennis at a high level in college and professional tournaments. The relationship between an athlete and tennis is a cinematic one that I look forward to sharing with readers while also painting a picture of the frustrating standstill happening in my homeland.

Title: Rival Cities
Genre: Adventure/Giant Monster
Logline: A young couple’s dreams to make it in the big city are put on hold when New York City literally stands and crosses the country to pick a fight with Los Angeles.
Why Should You Read: In the January 1st post “2019 is here!!! YAHOOOOOOO!!!”, Carson listed three problems on the way to a good screenplay, which led me to question if Rival Cities is a good screenplay or not. Let’s see. First, effort. Research was a problem, as I couldn’t find any city that has risen from the ground to kick another city’s ass, but that doesn’t mean there was no research, like the countless hours measuring stuff on Google Maps. Then, there’s the hard work in outlining, writing, rewriting. The struggle to find the perfect balance of how serious the story should be. Too serious and no one gets on board with the preposterous premise. Too goofy and people forget it as soon as the story is over. Second, “Is this a movie people would actually pay to see?” Hell yeah! Larger than life? Check! Heavy conflict? Check! Clever? Check, I guess! Ironic? Alanis would check! Taps into the zeitgeist? I don’t know! Controversial? Hardly! Finally, execution. Everyone who reads this not only “gets it,” but also enjoys it. It even got to the second round in the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition, which is a feat for an outrageous popcorn movie like this one. I tell ya, that’s not what a badly executed screenplay looks like. So. Is Rival Cities a good screenplay? I’m too biased to say. So crack it open and find out for yourself.

Title: Blood Hound
Genre: Horror
Logline: Trapped in a strange house, a young woman with a fear of dogs must escape the jaws of a bloodsucking hound and its master.
Why You Should Read: I find phobias fascinating. The crippling impact they can have on a person’s life. I wanted to take that fear to an extreme level. There seems to be room in the horror universe for an update on Cujo (other than a remake), pitting a protagonist against a vicious, bloodthirsty beast. I set out to write something simpler and more contained than my last work with 100x more blood. Hope you enjoy sinking your teeth into this one!

Genre: Biopic
Premise: (from Black List) The true story of Richard Williams, the hard-nosed and uncompromising father of tennis prodigies turned superstars, Venus and Serena Williams.
About: This script finished number 2 on the 2018 Black List with 36 votes. The writer, Zach Baylin, is no stranger to the Black List. Last year he made the list with “Come As You Are,” about a young woman who becomes undone while moderating X-rated content on a social media platform. Before that, Baylin worked in the art department on Stephen Soderbergh’s, “Side Effects.”
Writer: Zach Baylin
Details: 122 pages

Ah, biopics and the Black List. They go together like peanut butter and fried bananas. Why is it that we groan loud enough to trigger the Richter Scale every time we see a biopic on the Black List? Why does the genre inspire such negativity?

Because we operate in an industry that’s becoming less imaginative every year, that’s why. Two decades ago, Hollywood was open to any weird idea you could come up with. In 1998, one of the biggest script successes was a story about a guy who was trapped inside actor John Malkovich’s head. As writers, we celebrate ingenuity. We celebrate imagination and fresh ideas. Biopics are the opposite of that. They take zero brain power to come up with. You find a person and say, “I’m going to write about them.”

Snore.

It’s sort of like a musician covering a famous song. It’s an easy way to get air play. But in the end, it’s something that already existed. All you did was repackage it. This is not to say I bemoan writers who write biopics. You give the customer what he wants. And Hollywood wants biopics. Not to mention, a great character journey can be a transformative experience, which is exactly what I’m hoping for from today’s script, King Richard.

The year is 1988. The setting is Compton, Los Angeles. It’s here where 45 year old Richard Williams is teaching a form of tennis to his two athletic young daughters, Venus (8) and Serena (7). I say a “form” of tennis because Richard’s never actually played tennis before and therefore doesn’t know what he’s doing. He routinely calls out “nice shot” when Venus or Serena launches a ball ten feet over the fence.

But Richard has a plan. How extensive is this plan? Try this on for size: He specifically conceived Venus and Serena so that he could turn them into tennis champions. It isn’t long, however, before Richard realizes that his unique brand of coaching isn’t going to be enough. These girls need professional training, and so Richard starts sending awkward video tapes of himself touting his girls out to every big tennis coach in the country. Three years later, he gets one to bite, Rick Macci, the Florida coach best known for training Jennifer Capriati.

Richard, his daughters, and the rest of the family move to Florida to enlist Venus and Serena in Macci’s program. But then Richard drops a bomb on Macci. “I don’t want them to play any tournaments until they turn pro.” For the uninitiated, every ranked tennis player in history played junior tournaments first. The experience that comes from competition is what allows young players to prepare for the big dogs on the pro tour. But Richard is skeptical of how this pressure will affect his daughters, and opts instead to put them in school for three years while they train. Macci is furious. He’s now being asked to spend the next three years of his life getting paid nothing to train these girls, with the hope that they’ll be ready for the pro tour when they debut.

To Macci’s credit, however, he takes a chance on the sisters. Meanwhile, paradoxically, Richard begins a three year media campaign preparing the sports world for the second and third coming of Jesus. The girls become mysterious legends due to New York Times and Sports Illustrated articles about their practices in Compton, which include dodging drive-by bullets while hitting balls. By the time Venus enters her first tournament, it can be argued that there wasn’t a more hyped sports debut in history. With the world watching, a 14 year old Venus walks out to play the number 58 player in the world. Will Richard’s decades-plus plan pay off? Or will the Williams sisters be yet another product of unsubstantiated hype?

The nice thing about biopics is that they teach screenwriters how to write characters. Because in a biopic, the movie is the character. Richard the Great is a perfect example of how to do this well. I can give you two qualities right off the bat that make him someone you want to root for.

The first is obvious. He’s an underdog. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Underdog characters are some of the best characters to write because they’re impossible to dislike. And the cool thing about Richard the Great is that we get two different levels of underdog. The first is the environment. Tennis stars aren’t made on the streets of the ghetto. So that alone makes you root for him. Also, there aren’t a lot of black tennis players. It’s a predominately white sport. So the Williams family is trying to break into a sport that doesn’t recognize their culture as applicable to its own.

The second quality is that Richard is a fighter. Literally. One of the early storylines is that the gangs don’t like Richard and his daughters practicing on the court. So he gets in fights with them every night so his daughters can keep playing. And after they beat the shit out of him, he fights back. At one point, he takes a shotgun to the park and starts shooting at them. I don’t know if that really happened. But the main note here is that we like characters who fight. We don’t, conversely, respond well to wimps. If you’re ever writing a movie where you have a geeky character who gets bullied, it’s much better to have that character fight back (even if they get beat up) than curl up into a ball and let it happen.

Another thing I liked about this script is that it never went backwards and it never stagnated. Every ten pages, the stakes felt higher than the previous ten pages. The story wasn’t just moving forward. It was getting more exciting as it moved forward. That may seem like an obvious observation but the vast majority of scripts I read do the opposite. They get less interesting as they move on, not more. You really felt the rise of Venus and Serena, and the pressure, in the end, to live up to the hype that Richard had built for them. I mean, when that first tournament – the climax of the script – comes around, I was genuinely nervous for Venus. And you’re talking to someone who watched all five of her Wimbledon title matches. I know the story ends well for her.

The only place where the script falters is in its central conflict. Baylin focuses on Richard’s decision to delay his girls turning pro so that they can get educated and learn to be girls first. He was particularly afraid of them meeting the same fate as Jennifer Capriati (a famous tennis phenom at 12 years old who turned pro too early and subsequently became a drug addict). The three problems with this were that, one, we never saw the girls in school. So we never believed that was truly a priority. Two, during this whole time, Richard was barking to the world that his girls were superstars. If he didn’t want his daughters to experience the pressures of early superstardom, why was he putting more pressure on them than any junior tournament could? And finally, Venus didn’t wait until she was 18 to become a professional. She waited until she was 14. So how much education did she really get?

Despite these issues, this is too good of an underdog story not to like. Biopic or not, King Richard is worth a read.

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

What I learned: Remind the audience early on how impossible the plan is. An easy way to do this is to have another character tell your character how insane the odds are. We get that here, when tennis coach Vic Braden tells Richard that what he’s hoping to do is ridiculous: “It’s like the violin. It takes hours and hours a day, year after year, tens of thousands of dollars in precise, expert instruction just to hold the racket right, and then, even then, even for a family with unlimited financial resources, the chances of achieving the kind of mastery and success you’re talking about — with one kid, let alone two — well, it’s like asking someone to believe you got the next two Mozarts in your house. It’s just very, very unlikely. I’m sorry. That’s just my two cents. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong.”

What I learned 2: An “I’ll Show You” Screenplay. An I’ll Show You Screenplay is when you tell the early years of a real life success story. It’s one big dramatic irony narrative. We all know that Venus and Serena go on to become superstars. So every step of the way, when naysayers are trying to stop them, we’re raising our fists joyfully saying, “I’ll show you!” We can’t wait for the moment when they’re proven wrong since we know for a fact it’s coming.

Save the Cat. The phrase sounds so innocuous and yet it’s become the most popular screenwriting tip in history. More popular than even GSU! For those who don’t know, “saving the cat,” is a term the late Blake Snyder coined that refers to a moment early in the screenplay when your hero does something nice, endearing or helpful to someone or something else. As long as it’s not too generic or too on-the-nose (would we believe that Ethan Hawk would stop running from the bad guys to help a little old woman cross the street?), it’ll make us like your hero. Why has the Save The Cat scene endured for 20+ years? The reason is important so I want you to pay attention. One of the most crucial aspects of making a story work is the reader connecting with the main character. And the easiest ways to solidify that connection is to make them likable. What’s more likable than “saving” someone?

Well the other day I stumbled across one of the best movies ever, The Shawshank Redemption, and I came across a scene that, in retrospect, was the scene that made me fall in love with Andy Dufresne. The reason this particular scene is so important is because Andy Dufresne is considered one of the most likable protagonists in cinema history. After that scene, myself and millions of movie fans liked this guy more than we liked our own friends. So if we can identify what made us fall in love with Andy, we can harness that power to use in our own screenplays. I know all of you are scrambling to figure out which scene I’m talking about. Shawshank has so many good ones, it’s hard to keep track. But before we get to the scene, let’s break down the explanation.

I would argue a more impactful scene than even saving the cat, is a hero’s ability to cleverly out-maneuver the bad guys in the face of adversity. The more clever the character is in the moment, and the more intense the adversity, the better this tool will work. For those of you who’ve read my book, you’ll remember me highlighting one of these scenes. This was before I realized how powerful this scene was so I didn’t give the weight it deserved. But the scene occurred in Terminator 2 at the psychiatric ward when Sarah Connor is running away from the guards. She reaches a locked gate, opens it with her stolen keys, then, as the guards are approaching, reaches back through the bars, inserts the key and then RIPS the top of the key off. When the guards get to the gate, they find that their key is worthless, as the bottom half of Sarah’s key has jammed the lock. This is the epitome of being clever in the face of adversity.

Let’s get back to Shawshank. Now that you have this extra information, do you know what scene I’m referring to? Well, you can watch it right here. Yep, it’s the famous rooftop tarring scene. Now there are a few things going on in this scene but the part I want you to pay attention to is the moment Captain Hadley is running to throw Andy off the roof. This is the highest level of adversity a character can face. His death. Andy then yells out the line that saves him – “Cause if you do trust her, there’s no reason you can’t keep that $35,000.” Captain Hadley stops at the last second, demands an explanation. Andy goes on to inform him of a tax loophole that will allow Hadley to keep his inherited money tax free. After some back and forth, Andy says he’ll even do the paperwork for him, so he won’t have to hire a lawyer. In less than 60 seconds, Andy’s gone from public enemy number 1 to the Captain’s new best friend. You gotta be mighty clever to pull that off. And because Darabont is such a genius, he doubles down! He buttons the scene with a Save The Cat moment – Andy getting beers for his fellow inmates. Is it any wonder, now, why Andy Dufresne is one of the most liked characters ever?

An important distinction I want to make is that being clever is good. Being clever will always make your hero likable. Ferris Bueller was clever. He was always outsmarting everyone. But what turbocharges this tool is being clever in the face of adversity. Real adversity. When we see someone who’s doomed reach into their back pocket and outsmart the bad guys, that’s when the audience feels the warmest and fuzziest. It’s that energy that allows you, the writer, to reach out and join hands with the audience. The both of you are now interlocked as presidents of your hero’s fan club.

Now it’s important to note that the action your hero performs must actually be clever. It has to be something that surprises the audience, something they wouldn’t have thought of themselves. For example, your hero palming a paper clip he later uses to discreetly unlock his handcuffs with won’t do the job. We’ve seen that so many times that we could’ve thought of it ourselves. It must be an act that we wouldn’t have thought of.

Ever wonder why Wesley, from The Princess Bride, is one of the most popular characters of all time? It has a lot to do with William Goldman giving him three scenes IN A ROW where he’s clever in the face of adversity (first the sword fight with Inigo Montoya, second the brawl with Fezzik, and third a duel of wits with Vizzini). One of the reasons The Martian became such a huge book (and later a huge movie) is because Mark Watney is handed a series of obstacles, each of which would ordinarily kill a man, that he cleverly overcomes. First is lack of communication. Next is food. Next he’s critically injured from the air lock explosion. The more we see characters overcome these moments using their intelligence, the more we love them.

So why don’t we see more of these scenes in movies? Because they’re hard to come up with! It’s much easier to save the cat. Have your hero toss a twenty into a homeless man’s cup, follow it with a conversation between the two to show that our hero knows and cares about him, and boom, we’ll like the hero well enough. But that’s child’s play. I can teach a sixth grader to do that. Creating a scenario to show off how clever your hero is is much harder. Which is why, I’d argue, it’s more powerful.

So Carson, if coming up with these scenes is so hard, how do you do it? You do it by identifying your character’s biggest strength. What are they known for? Once you figure that out, you can build a scenario that allows them to show off that strength. Sarah Connor spent a decade preparing to survive. She’s a survivalist. So it would make sense that she’d have a few tricks up her sleeve to outrun pursuers. Andy Dufresne is a tax lawyer. So of course he’s going to know about tax loopholes. Wesley spent years pirating on a ship. He’s spent a decade fighting people. So he’s going to know a few things about sparring with opponents. Find the strength, then create a scenario to highlight that strength.

The reason this works is because it’s built on the concept of us liking people who are good at things. It’s why we can’t look away when Lebron James drives the lane. It’s why we wait with baited breath when Neil deGrasse Tyson is about to answer a question about the universe. It’s why people loved watching Bobby Fischer play chess. We’re drawn to people who are great at things. All this tool is doing is placing that expertise to the most extreme test, when it matters most. And even though it’s complete fiction, we’re entranced by it. We love to see the people we love overcome adversity with their wits.

Sadly, I haven’t been able to come up with a catchy nickname for this type of scene. I’m not clever enough (heh heh). So, I’ll leave that up to you guys in the comments. Whoever comes up with with the best nickname, I’ll give you a free logline consultation. So go at it!