Genre: Period Drama (although the filmmakers swear it’s a comedy)
Premise: (from IMDB) In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah, governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah.
About: They say it takes forever to get a movie made. The Favourite proves that’s no joke of a statement. The first draft of this script was written in 1998. Deborah Davis, the writer, admits she was so green at the time that she had to go to night school to learn how to screenwrite. Even then, the script caught the interest of producer Ceci Dempsey. Almost a decade later, Dempsey got the script into Yorgos Lanthimos’s hands (Yorgos’s film, Dogtooth, had just been nominated for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards), who brought in another screenwriter, Tony McNamara, to improve the script. At that point, financiers were reluctant to fund the film because there was no male lead. Flash-forward to present day, where having three female leads gets your project greenlit faster than a Mission Impossible sequel. After Davis passed the torch to McNamara, he and Yorgos began a 7 year process where McNamara would write a draft, Yorgos would read it, they’d meet for 2 weeks, Yorgos would give notes, and McNamara would go back and write another draft, and so on and so forth.
Writers: Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
Details: 2 hours long

For those of you keeping track, I’m not the biggest Yorgos fan. Reading The Lobster is still one of the most unpleasant reading experiences of my life, akin to doing my taxes while standing in line at the DMV while someone peels my eyelashes off one by one. Yorgos tackling a walk-and-talk dress-up drama didn’t inspire confidence that things had changed. But so many of you have asked for my thoughts on The Favourite, I thought I’d give it a try. I super-promise I’m going to give the movie a fair shot.

Since most of you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll break it down for you. It’s 1708. Britain is without a king. So Queen Anne sits on the throne free solo (sorry, I’ve watched five dozen Alex Honnald Youtube videos since Wednesday). Anne is sick from a debilitating disease, meaning her top general, Sarah, who is also her secret lover, is covertly running the country. This perfect dynamic is thrown into disarray when Sara’s younger prettier cousin, Abigail, shows up looking for a job. Abigail’s once high-ranking family has fallen on hard times, meaning she’s now a nobody.

Abigail uses her charm to weasel her way into Sarah’s graces, then uses her new access to the queen to weasel her her way into Anne’s graces. It works. The temper-tantrum prone Anne starts requesting Abigail instead of Sarah, which pisses Sarah off. Sarah tries to get rid of Abigail, but Abigail is too smart. She executes a plan to get rid of Sarah, which works for awhile, until Sarah finds her way back. As war rages between Britain and France, it becomes clear that these three ladies won’t be settling their drama any time soon.

Well, this is a lot better than that Lobster script, I’ll give it that. Probably because Yorgos wisely passed writing duties on to actual writers this time around. It’s also better than Roma, although all you have to do to achieve that is film your movie in color and not include 10 minute shots of water flowing down a drain.

Like a lot of these movies, The Favourite lacks an overarching plot. It’s a character piece through and through. And if you’re going to go that route, instituting a well-understood story device helps a ton. In this case, they use a love triangle. A love triangle isn’t a plot (there isn’t a goal inside of it). However, the unresolved nature of a love triangle can be enough to keep the reader reading. That’s because human beings inherently want to stick around until something is resolved. And a love triangle is kind of like a regular love story on steroids. There’s only so much you can do with two people. But with three people, a lot of new avenues open up, especially in a setting like this, where immense power is a part of the equation. That’s why this film works – because we have to see how this love triangle ends.

Something I’ve found (generally speaking) with character-driven material is that their second acts are better than traditional plot-based screenplays. That’s because the second act is the character conflict act. It’s not only about getting the MacGuffin. It’s about hashing out all of the issues. Plot based material always starts out strong. It sets up a cool situation where terrorists have taken over a building or the hero has to recover the nukes. But it’s for this very reason that when it’s time to slow down and explore the relationships in the story, the script seems confused, like a Ferrari being asked to use a Camry engine.

Meanwhile, the character-driven film thrives in this section because it’s what the story’s all about. Once we’ve set up who these women are, what they want, and how they plan on getting it, we can sit back and enjoy the complex dynamic and all the conflict that comes along with it. One of my favorite moments in the film is when Sarah and Abigail are off shooting and a squire (?) runs up and says that the Queen is requiring “your” presence. Sarah steps forward but is told, “Um, not you. She requested her,” and he points to Abigail. It’s a pivotal moment that ups the ante considerably between the three women.

But therein lies my first issue with the film. Things never get that bad. I wanted at least one of these women to be relentless – go full Machiavelli. But it never happens. There’s a politeness to the jockeying that always left me wanting more. This extended into the story itself, which pulled way too many punches. There’s a moment where Sarah is drugged by Abigail, falls off her horse, and is found by prostitutes at a brothel. I was expecting the film to go super dark here. This esteemed hand of the Queen is now relegated to pulling tricks for the rest of her life. But no. She doesn’t have to prostitute herself at all. And within a few days, she’s back at the castle.

The script also suffers from a weak third act. McNamara says that he and Yorgos struggled with the ending, and you can see that plain as day. This is always always ALWAYS the problem when you write a script that isn’t GSU centric. Without a destination (an overarching goal guiding your hero towards a specific situation), you will never have a concise way to end things. This almost always results in a fizzling third act.

Think about it. When you’re on a road trip, when is the most exciting part? It’s those last 20 minutes. You’re finally getting close to your destination. Well imagine if there was no destination. How would you know when to get excited? I’m not even sure what the ending here was. It was a sad close up. Par for the course with these plotless movies.

With that said, I didn’t dislike the movie. The woman who played the Queen did an amazing job. The overall production was impressive. And the second act, as I pointed out, was strong. But outside of that, I couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to give this movie a pass.

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

What I learned: I would’ve made the war a bigger component of the plot and not just a meaningless background story. When you’re writing a character driven screenplay, you have to find ways to give the story structure. Outside plots (a war, in this case) can do that for you. But only if you fully embrace them. If you deal with them halfheartedly, we won’t take them seriously, and, as a result, they won’t add the structure the script so desperately needs.

Genre: Dramedy
Logline: A blackballed entertainment lawyer puts her negotiation skills to the test when her beloved oldest daughter announces that she’s putting off college to become a feminist porn star.
Writer’s Pitch: This script examines just how messy and complicated modern feminism can be when ideals get translated to real life. The story is personal and timely and incredibly important to me. I think it will elicit strong reactions — both positive and negative — and it would be invaluable as I continue to develop this story to hear a variety of takes from readers male and female, young and old — not just Carson. (I’m saving my cash for a private consultation on my next script :) ) Bonus: At 89 pages with a lot of white space and humor, it’s a very fast read.
Writer: Angela Bourassa
Details: 89 pages

Last week’s Amateur Showdown comments section got a little messy, as it does whenever a writer attempts something different. Bourassa wrote her script in first-person, a huge no-no when it comes to screenwriting. Why is it a no-no? Because screenplays are supposed to act as instructional manuals for another group of people to go off and make the movie you’ve written. You’re writing to them. Under that logic, it doesn’t make sense to write in first person.

But as screenwriting has evolved into a more personal relationship between writer and reader, there’s been some flexibility in that rule. Screenplays have arguably become pseudo-noevellas, and, in the process, lost a lot of their strictness. While a first person screenplay is the most extreme version of this, it’s not the first time I’ve encountered it. However, if you’re going to use it, two things must be in order. One, you should have a good reason for doing it. And two, since the device will lead to more scrutinization, your script will have to be better than most.

Jenny, a proud 40-something black entertainment lawyer, is being handed a couple of pills in the doctor’s office when we meet her. We don’t know what those pills are for yet, only that Jenny looks stressed out about what the doctor’s just told her. From there, Jenny heads to middle school to pick up her 14 year old mixed-race daughter, Priya, who she spots making out with a 16 year old white boy.

Immediately, we sense that Jenny is fighting a daily battle – a battle to be progressive and supportive of her family, despite the permissive narrative in her head to be traditional and protective. So Jenny tries to smile about her daughter’s new boyfriend who, no doubt, will be pushing to have sex soon. Even if she’d do anything in this moment to make him disappear forever.

It turns out Priya is the least of her worries, though. When she gets home, her 19 year old super-cool beautiful perfect daughter, Indiga, informs her and Jenny’s husband, Amit, that she has something to tell them. She’s a) queer (they’re thrilled), b) wants to take a year off of college (sounds reasonable) and c) wants to make porn.

I’m sorry say what?

Indiga assures her mother that this isn’t “porn” porn, but rather porn for women. It will be feminine centric, body positive, instructional, and fill a market need. What Jenny isn’t yet aware of, is that she’s just been given the BAR exam for feminism. She should support her daughter if she wants to get into the sex industry. It’s what an empowering feminist would do. But she’s still this girl’s mother. And it’s porn!

Jenny huddles with Amit and the two discuss a plan to talk their daughter out of this. This problem is compounded by the fact that whatever Jenny was at the doctor for is eating at her, her professional career is floundering, her other daughter, Priya, wants to get an IUD, her husband’s artistic pursuits don’t bring in enough money, and her other child, Zack, is having trouble attracting girls. It will be up to Jenny to sort all this out in a way that makes both herself and Indiga happy, a task that will put her feminist ideals to the test.

Let’s begin with this first-person thing since I know it will be a hotly debated issue in the comments. While the first-person angle grabs our attention right away and makes the script different, I don’t see it as necessary for this story. Angela mentions the Pruss Passengers script, which also had a first-person perspective, but if I remember correctly, the first person there was relevant to the story. Aliens were “riding” human beings, and that allowed us, the first person narrator, to occasionally become an alien, which was crucial to the experience.

With The Dirty Work, I could see this being written in 3rd person and nothing changing. Maybe we don’t know Jenny as well, but there are tell-tale actions you can use to make up for us not being in her head. With that said, it does help the script stand out. So I’ll leave it up to Angela on whether she wants to keep it or not.

As for the script itself, it feels a bit thin to me. I liked the hook a lot. You set up the most progressive feminist mother ever and then give her the ultimate test – her daughter wants to become a porn actress – and see if she’ll stay true to her feminist ideals. But the script doesn’t really know where to go after the hook. There’s no narrative drive.

I know that yesterday’s film was as different from today’s as could be. But the narrative drive was always clear – climb the mountain. Here, the goal is to, I guess, stop her daughter from being in porn. But it’s dealt with in too casual a manner. One of the issues I had with the script was that I knew what the end result would be. I knew Jenny would support her daughter. So the goal is more symbolic than actual. She’s not REALLY trying to stop her. And we feel that in their scenes together. Jenny will make a point, but then immediately feel wrong about that point. This created an overall lack of suspense and the rest of the plot suffered as a result.

A good script problem has to have an uncertain answer in order to keep the reader engaged. Since this is Oscars weekend, we’ll use a famous Oscar winning script as an example. In Good Will Hunting, the question dictating the story is whether Will Hunting will remain a “nobody” working blue-collar jobs the rest of his life, or go off and use his talent to do something special with his life. The movie does an excellent job making you wonder which way he’ll go. The best stories ride that line the whole way through.

Part of the reason The Dirty Work is predictable is because of the type of porn Indiga is doing. She’s doing the nicest most pleasant most neutral form of porn possible. If your daughter did porn, this is literally the form of porn you’d choose for them. That was a major factor in me being able to predict what Jenny would do. This got me wondering, if you changed this to a more severe form of porn (regular male-female porn) would we be less certain what Jenny would do. I think we would. Then again, that alters the tone somewhat, so you’d have to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages.

As for the rest of the script, I felt the male characters were underwritten. Indiga and Priya have legitimate problems whereas Zack’s biggest issue is relegated to will he ask a girl out or not. And I definitely think we could do more with Amit. From my understanding, Indians have a very complex relationship with porn. The traditional culture out there looks down on it. That seems like the perfect opportunity to create more conflict between both Amit and Indiga and Amit and Jenny.

Finally, the script had a weak climax, no pun intended. The big final scene has Jenny negotiating Indiga’s porn contract. The idea behind this isn’t bad. Jenny’s entertainment law business has struggled. This is her “opportunity” to show that she’s still got it. But there are too many things hurting the scene, the biggest of which is that if she loses, she wins. If she loses this negotiation, it means her daughter doesn’t do porn. So why wouldn’t she lose on purpose? To be honest, it feels like this ending was rushed and that there’s a better ending out there.

Moving forward, I would dial everything up in this script. There’s not enough conflict. We never truly feel there are any problems between Jenny and Indiga. Even when they get mad at each other, it’s a polite mad. The more conflict you create in this relationship, the more doubt we’ll have that things are going to end well. And that’s what you want every story to feel like right up til the end – that things aren’t going to end well.

But I think this idea has potential. It has something to say in this day and age, and the hook is a strong one. A few more drafts and this feels like something that could make the Black List. It’s just not there yet.

Script link: The Dirty Work

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

What I learned: Scene Agitator Deluxe – A scene agitator is an outside force that repeatedly bumps against your characters while they’re trying to do something else in a scene. Say your characters are having a fight. Well what if, during the fight, the fire alarm keeps going off, forcing them to pause the fight while one of the characters deals with it. They fix it, go back to the fight, then a few moments later, it goes off again. That’s a scene agitator. Today taught me that there’s a deluxe version of this. This is when you add a scene agitator during a pivotal scene, allowing that scene to level up even higher. During the pivotal moment when Indiga tells her parents that she wants to do porn, Priya has just come home and the car pool parent who drove her is outside waiting for gas money he’s owed. So Priya keeps asking her mom for the money (the agitation) while Indiga is dropping this bomb on her. Clever move! You can read more about scene agitators in my book.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, Free Solo is a documentary about a climber, Alex Honnold, who engages in the most difficult and dangerous version of climbing that exists – free solo’ing. This is when you climb mountains without the help of ropes or partners. One mistake and it’s a 2000 foot drop to your death, where you’ll have about 30 seconds to wonder, “Why did I get into this sport again?”

Alex is considered the best free soloer in the world. But despite climbing hundreds of mountains, there’s one he can’t get out of his head – Yosemite’s El Capitan, a sheet of rock that goes straight up for 3000 feet. It is considered the most dangerous free solo ascent in the world. So much so that nobody’s even attempted to climb it. Alex has spent the last eight years gearing up for this climb. This movie documents him finally achieving the feat.

As soon as I finished the movie, I thought of screenwriting. This is one of the best templates for how to write a screenplay I’ve seen in years. That’s because climbing a mountain is the perfect metaphor for the hero’s journey. In the GSU (Goals, Stakes, Urgency) model, climbing the mountain is the story’s “G.”

But what Free Solo reminded me was that it can’t just be any mountain that the hero climbs. Is has to be the most impossible mountain. This film doesn’t work without the phrase, “the most dangerous free solo ascent ever attempted.” You sub in, “one of the harder free solo attempts in the world” and the movie loses its spine. Who cares about conquering a “sort of difficult” mountain?

Free Solo also reminded me just how big of a deal stakes are (the “S” in GSU). We’re always told that the stakes of our hero’s journey must be huge. Well what’s bigger than you slip and you die? I’d say the stakes of this movie are 75% of the reason it’s become a sensation. It just so happens there’s another climbing documentary out right now called The Dawn Wall that follows a climber climbing an impossible wall. The difference? He’s using ropes. He can slip 100 times and it doesn’t matter. Is it a coincidence that Free Solo is blowing that documentary out of the water?

But the great thing about Free Solo is that it doesn’t just explore the outer journey. Like any good screenplay, it focuses on the inner journey as well. Alex has a classic fatal flaw. He’s unable to connect with others. There’s an early scene where he’s dragged to a party and you can see how uncomfortable he is around others. Alex, it turns out, feels best when he’s by himself… when he’s solo.

What do you do once you establish your hero’s flaw? You place something in front of them that challenges that flaw. In this case, Alex gets the first serious girlfriend of his life, Sanni. Throughout the film, Alex talks about how, normally, he doesn’t tell anybody when he’s soloing. He just goes and does it. He isn’t afraid to die because… well, if you die you die. So what? But Sanni throws a wrench into that equation. Now, if Alex dies, he leaves pain and suffering. He emotionally destroys someone who loves him. Alex attempts to dismiss this, saying Sanni will be upset for awhile but eventually find someone else and move on. But when Sanni fights him on this, we get the sense that Alex is saying this to rationalize his solo’ing. If he’s forced to connect with others, it could mean the death of what he loves.

Bringing it back to screenwriting, a battle with one’s flaw creates conflict inside the hero just as compelling as the conflict on that mountain journey. Will Alex back down now that he has someone who cares about him? Or will he continue to put himself first? Continue to ride solo?

This brings up another thing Free Solo does well, which is incorporate Alex’s friends into the movie, all of whom have deep reservations about Alex free soloing El Cap. The director of the movie is one of Alex’s best friends. He’s conflicted about the project because he could be documenting his friend’s death. Alex’s mentor (who, coincidentally, is the star of that other climbing movie I mentioned above) thinks Alex is in over his head with this one. He’d be happy if Alex let it go.

The reason bringing these characters in is important is that they act as emotional multipliers. The more people who care about our hero’s success, the more people we’ll be happy for when the character “wins.” It isn’t just Alex we’re ecstatic for. It’s his girlfriend. It’s his mentor. It’s his best friend. Ironically, we don’t feel that same level of emotion if Alex has no one in his life and does this alone.

As I close this out, you’re probably wondering about Urgency. Free Solo’s got a great G. It’s got an even better S. But what about the U? They focus on urgency a little bit in the film. If Alex doesn’t climb El Cap by the end of the season, it’ll be winter and they’ll have to wait until next year. But the truth is, if you have a goal and stakes that are THIS STRONG, the urgency doesn’t have to be perfect. Especially if you’ve also got a compelling character at the center of the story, which Free Solo does.

If you haven’t seen this film, I recommend it. Let it become the metaphor that drives all of your screenplays moving forward. An impossible mountain to climb where the stakes are sky high.

Today’s script is a bizarre cross between Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Groundhog Day, and 500 Days of Summer. You are not prepared!

Genre: Dark Romantic Comedy
Premise: When a woman finds a time machine in a downtown Manhattan nail salon, she uses it to keep traveling back in time 24 hours to make her previous night’s date perfect.
About: Today’s writer, Noga Pnueli, graduated from NYU. She had her script “My Teenage Daughter Is An Alien From Outer Space” make the 2016 Hit List. This script made last year’s Hit List with 52 votes, and was picked up by Akiva Goldman’s Weed Road production company, where it’s being developed in cooperation with Warner Brothers.
Writer: Noga Pnueli
Details: 118 pages

After Source Code and All You Need is Kill burst onto the scene in 2008, I never thought the 24 hour time loop movie would become its own sub-genre. Yet here we are, ten years later, and it seems like every other film/show has a time loop element to it. I suppose the reason it’s become so popular is because a) it’s high concept and b) it has an easy-to-follow structure built in. You just keep repeating the same day.

And therein lies the genre’s biggest challenge. It is, by definition, repetitive. And repetition is one of the fastest ways to illicit boredom. Which means you have to find creative ways around this. In Russian Doll (a Netflix 24 hour time loop show), they don’t spend much time on the repeated moments. They get you in and out of the repetition quickly, moving to the newer, unfamiliar, plot beats. Meet Cute obliterates this issue with one of the oldest tools in the screenwriting book: good storytelling. Let’s get into this near masterpiece, shall we?

(I suggest reading the script yourself before reading my plot summary. A big reason this script works is the surprising way in which it evolves. If you read the summary, all the surprises will be lost)

When we meet Sheila, she’s at a bar in the East Village, staring down the charming cynical Gary, who’s the only guy in the bar not watching the stupid sports game on TV. Sheila approaches him, nervous, and yet we feel something off about the moment. Like some of her movements are… rehearsed. After buying Gary a drink, she playfully informs him that she’s from the future via a time machine in the back of a nail salon that allows travelers to go back exactly 24 hours in time.

Gary finds this weird girl intriguing so the two grab a bite at a nearby Indian restaurant. Between the playful banter, Gary keeps asking Sheila about this “time travel.” She informs him that this is actually the 7th time they’ve been on a date. And after it’s over, she’ll go back in time and do it again. “Why not just continue hanging out like normal people do?” he asks. She informs him that, unfortunately, he dies in a horrific accident the next day, making this the only night she can spend with him. He smiles. Weird chick.

On the next Sheila-Gary first date, it’s been 30 days. Sheila’s getting a little bolder, a little less reserved, and this time informs Gary that time traveling is actually kind of complex. You see, the first thing you have to do when you go back in time is kill the former version of yourself. Gary lets this one sit for awhile. Is this girl saying she’s murdered herself 30 times? Is that even funny? He begins to wonder if this is really a joke.

Cut to the next Sheila-Gary first date and it’s been 90 days. Sheila is still in love with this man, but she’s getting annoyed by some things, such as the fact that he’s passive and doesn’t take charge. Gary senses her frustration, which is strange, since this is supposedly the first night they’ve met. She also busts this tidbit on him, “Remember when I told you the machine could only go back 24 hours? That’s not exactly true. I can go anywhere. And I have.” Gary’s really freaked out by this girl and leaves. But that’s okay because Sheila gets an idea. She can go back to all the moments in Gary’s life that defined his passive weak character and change them!

Cut to the next first date which is a year later. Gary is now a completely different person. He’s bold, active, even watches sports! Sheila thinks she’s created the perfect guy. But in the process of Gary becoming Super Gary, he’s lost a lot of his charm. Sheila believes she’s made a mistake, and that now she has to go back and unchange all the changes that she changed about Gary. I could go on about what happens next, but it’s best you find out yourself. Go grab this script as soon as possible because if you want to write a screenplay that gets people talking, this is one of the best examples I’ve seen in years.

When I encounter a familiar premise, one of the first things I say is, “Please don’t play out like I think you’re going to.” When I saw this premise, a specific formula rolled out in my head. I saw all the quirky ha-ha scenes where she corrected her previous mistakes. I saw the cutesy rom-com dialogue. I saw her lose the boy after it all then get him back in the end. This was going to be an extended version of the Groundhog Day sequence where Bill Murray tries to seduce Andie McDowell over a year of repeated dates.

But I’ll tell you the exact moment when the script let me know it was different. On the first date, Gary asks Sheila, “Well if you came back in time 24 hours, what did you do about your previous self?” Sheila dismisses the question flippantly as if to say, “That’s a nerdy unimportant sci-fi question” and continues with the date. However, on the second date, she says to him, “Remember how I said I wasn’t concerned about my former self? That’s not exactly true. The first thing I did when I got back to the past was kill her.”

Why was this moment so pivotal for drawing me in? Because it told me this wasn’t Groundhog Day. Bill Murray doesn’t purposefully kill anybody in Groundhog Day. This told me this was going to be much darker. And that’s exactly what it becomes. What we learn, as each new date progresses, is that we have an unreliable narrator. Sheila keeps revealing that the things Gary and us thought were truths were actually false. At one point she explains to him that she’s gone back to every pivotal moment in Gary’s life and changed it in order to turn him into the perfect man. That’s how creepy and weird things get.

I find it bold when writers embrace the crazy in their characters. We’re repeatedly told how important it is for our characters to be likable and good and heroic. So anytime you cross that line into making your hero a monster, in whatever capacity you choose to do so, you’re taking a big risk, but you’re also making your character more interesting. That’s one of the reasons Travis Bickle is one of the most memorable characters ever. They allowed him to go to dark places and be unlikable. Sheila is a monster here. But she’s a fascinating monster. Her pursuit is to shape the perfect man. And she’ll do anything to achieve it. And maybe we don’t like her. But we’re sure as hell curious where this pursuit is going to end up.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so incredible Pnueli manages to reel this monster of a character in by the third act and actually arc her in a satisfying way. When you have a script that’s dictated by pyrotechnics (gimmicky premises with lots of time jumping, for example), it can be hard to control your character arcs. The plotting is dictating everything. But the theme of this script, which is Sheila’s fear of embracing what happens next, is so perfectly executed by the end that I felt like standing up and clapping. That’s how rare someone nails the landing on one of these scripts.

This script also challenges the previous belief that when you’re writing a time-loop script, you have to start linearly. In other words, we have to be with the character when they go into the time loop and progress along with them. Meet Cute starts us inside the time loop, and it’s better for it. Why? Because the script’s biggest strength is its unreliable narrator. We keep learning, along the way, that Sheila isn’t telling the whole truth. Those revelations are what keep the story fresh. Had we gone into the time loop with her, the script would’ve played out in the predictable manner I expected it to.

But this is also a great lesson about how genres and story types evolve. If writers are pillaging a sub-genre, the rules of that sub-genre become staples. So the audience understands them going in. This allows you to play with the genre in ways you couldn’t do when it first began. We now know time-loop rules. So why can’t we jump in in the middle? Especially if that allows us to do new things we couldn’t do had we followed the original blueprint.

There’s so much to like here. Even at the end of the story, Pnueli is taking chances. At the conclusion of the final date, where every single time we’ve watched Gary walk away from Sheila’s point of view, this time we follow and stay with Gary, bringing the last few scenes to completely unexpected places. To somebody who doesn’t read a lot, this might not register. But when you’ve seen everything, writers unafraid to take chances and go in unexpected directions all the way up to the final credits is hard to find.

The only thing I see this script getting dinged for is the dialogue. It’s a bit try-hard at the beginning. But once we get to the second act, it’s more natural.

It’s true that dark and comedy are words of death at the box office. But this has the potential to be one of the few in the genre to break out due to how good the script is. They just need to cast it right. That’s the only way this movie will suck, is if they get the wrong individual actors or two actors who have no chemistry. Remember that Passengers was considered the best unmade spec in Hollywood at one time. Then they got two actors who had the worst onscreen chemistry of the year and the movie died a sad death. Please don’t let that happen here. What do you guys think? Who should play the leads? I’ll ‘thumbs up’ the best suggestions!

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (NEW TOP 25 SCRIPT!!!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the great things about trends is that you can use the expectation they create to surprise the reader. We’ve had so many time loop scripts over the last couple of years. They all follow a similar formula. By coming into this time-loop script mid-loop, the writer was able to give us a version of the story we hadn’t seen before.

Genre: Horror
Premise: When the crew of an oil rig begins to drill on one of the deepest stretches of the ocean floor, they awake a dark and dangerous creature that has been hidden away for hundreds of years.
About: Today’s SPEC script (Yay, go spec scripts!!!) was snatched up by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company. But the more impressive feat, without question, was making the Black List as a non-biopic. The writer, Nelson Greaves, created the “Unfriended” franchise and was a staff writer on both Sleepy Hollow and 24.
Writer: Nelson Greaves
Details: 120 pages

I was going to do a whole Oscar Theme Week, reviewing big “important” screenplays that exhibited all the qualities of an Oscar contender. But then I thought, “Screw it. Let’s have some fun.” Today we get a classic monster-in-a-box screenplay. For those who don’t know what that means, “Monster-in-a-box” movies are any movie where your heroes are trapped in a contained area with a monster. It is seen as one of the most reliable and marketable movie setups that exist.

David Travis is the captain of an oil rig at the bottom of the sea. We’re told that down here, there is no light. And that, actually, 90% of living things on this planet live in this light-less existence. So it must be a shock to these critters when this crew comes down here and lights up an entire football field worth of sea floor to get their oil rig pumping.

Along with Davis there’s attitude-to-spare, Ox, alternative Chinese-American, Jen, parent of the group, Levan, lesbian, Rae, still acts like he’s in college, Craig, and cowgirl hottie, Anna. After the crew initiates their oil slurping, it’s time for a celebration. But just as corks start popping, the entire rig goes dark. It takes a second for the power to be restored, and once it is, they discover that the lighting system outside has been damaged.

Jen heads out to fix it, but when her toolbox falls outside the lit area and down a small hill, she must retrieve it. There’s only one problem. There’s no light down there. It’s DARK. And they’ve been told never to travel into the dark. Jen’s got beer muscles from the party earlier, however, and heads out. Should we be surprised that she doesn’t come back?

Control Man Craig notices on the radar that Jen is somehow half a mile away. That’s impossible. The rest of the crew throws their suits on and goes after her… into the dark. They get to where Jen’s supposed to be but there’s nothing. “But she has to be there,” Craig pleads. “The radar says so.” That’s when someone realizes, “She’s underground.” They all start digging, find Jen’s arm, pull her up, but her entire suit is filled with guts. Eww. But wait… this isn’t Jen’s suit. This suit is older. Then someone finds a second suit under Jen. These people are not a part of their crew. What’s going on?

Craig relocates Jen’s tracker, which is further away than previously thought. They keep walking and find a giant hole on the sea floor. It appears Jen is at the bottom of that hole. David volunteers to go down, and is slowly lowered via rope. He notices that in the walls of this hole are tons of little tunnels. Who made these? Where do they go? David gets to the bottom and finds a barely conscious Jen. He grabs her and starts back up the hole. And that’s when things get bad. A giant light-sucking beast starts chasing them. It’s able to snatch poor Jen, but David gets away.

Because this beast doesn’t reflect light, the crew realizes that walking back the traditional way is a death trap. There’s no way to see if it’s coming. So they take one of the tunnels and, once below their rig, dig upwards and get back to home base that way. Somehow, this inane plan works, but getting inside the rig doesn’t solve anything. This light-sucking beast is not going to stop until it kills them all.

Fun script desired.

Fun script achieved.

Dark is by no means perfect. The dialogue, in particular, was brutal (DAVID: “Two miles. Jesus. Can you scoot under the engine, check the converter belt?” RAE: “Not for what you’re paying me.” DAVID: “I’m paying you the GDP of Tonga.” RAE: “Which I can’t collect if I’m dead.”). What does that line even mean? What’s Tonga? And how much is their GDP? And since we don’t know either of these things, how can we understand this joke? A classic “camaraderie dialogue” fail, which I’ll cover more in the “What I Learned” section.

But luckily for Dark, the pacing is excellent.

The biggest issue with these monster-in-a-box screenplays is that there’s a lot of sitting around in rooms, gearing up for the next set piece. As that formula sets in (wait around, set piece, wait around, set piece, wait around, set piece), we get used to the pacing, and once the reader gets used to anything, they become bored. After getting out on the ocean floor in Dark, Greaves not only keeps our characters moving, but keeps throwing in unexpected developments as well.

I particularly liked the addition of these tunnels and thought Greaves could’ve done even more with them. If they had to maneuver in and around these things to escape the monster, that would’ve been cool. Making their trek a straight shot back to base was fine, but felt a little ‘first idea’ to me.

This is a great conversation topic for writers. Often what will happen is towards the end of your writing process – your last couple of drafts – you’ll come up with a great new idea. But because you’re basically finished, you don’t explore the idea. I can imagine a scenario where through six drafts in Dark, the hole was just a hole. It was only on the last two drafts that the writer came up with these tunnels. And, unfortunately, two drafts isn’t enough to fully explore how those tunnels could add to the story. Which is why we got this straight shot back to base. (I don’t know that this was the case. I’m only guessing)

If this happens to you, it’s your duty to explore it, even if it’s going to extend your writing out further than you planned. Cause good ideas are hard to come by. And you don’t really get everything out of an idea unless you’ve some spent some serious time with it. There’s a version of this that plays out more like The Descent, where these tunnels lead to a larger truth about what’s living down here. But the writer didn’t go there.

Greaves could’ve also made this much better if he’d taken 5 more pages to set up his characters. These characters are thinner than an electric eel. One character is literally described as “a lesbian.” Lol. As if that tells us everything we need to know about her. I see this a lot in these types of scripts, as writers know the characters are being written to die. “Why spend all this time on setting someone up if they’re just going to die” goes the logic. You should have the opposite mindset. The better we know your characters, the more we’ll care about them. And in cliche setups like this one, good characters are often what separate the winners from the losers.

In order to write memorable characters, start with the basics. Give us a thoughtful character description that lets us know exactly who the person is. Here’s a description of Matt Drudge from the number 4 script on last year’s Black List (“Drudge has a twitchy demeanor and horrific posture. He talks with a weird sense of confidence despite a nasally voice and the occasional stutter.”). Then, ideally, you want to provide an action for that character that further defines who they are. For example, to show that Drudge is annoying, you might have him send back his breakfast at the diner because the eggs are “10 percent too runny.” If you do those two things, your characters will stand out. You still want to give them flaws and vices and inner conflicts. But everything starts with the introduction.

Dark was a good script. It’s a little derivative but it moves quickly and never gets boring.

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

What I learned: Try to inject TRUTH into your camaraderie dialogue. Camaraderie dialogue (dialogue between a tight knit group/crew in a movie) is some of the most cringe-worthy dialogue I read. It’s clear the writer has never been anywhere near a military unit, or, in this case, an oil rig crew. So they write some version of camaraderie they saw in a similar movie – in other words, a copy of a copy. Don’t do this. To write good camaraderie dialogue, work off your own life. Think about any time when you and a group of friends were joking around. It’s never perfect. Nobody ever nails that trailer-ready zinger. The conversation is more raw and messy. Start there and try to find the truth of the situation, as opposed to popping in that old Aliens DVD and rewriting the scene after they come out of hyper-sleep.