Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Blood List) A rebellious teenage girl is sent to stay with her strict grandmother in the sleepy town of Cedar Falls, a place with many strange traditions, including a curfew banning anyone from going out at night.
About: This script finished #6 on last year’s Blood List, which is an unofficial list of the most liked Thriller, Horror, and Sci-Fi scripts in Hollywood. The writer, Dick Grunert, has a very active resume, working as everything from Assistant Director to Writer’s Assistant. He’s written on the highly popular animation shows Samurai Jack and Adventure Time.
Writer: Dick Grunert
Details: 112 pages

Today’s script, Curfew, attempts to build an entire plot around the simplistic concept of curfew. And you know what? I can see that working. Drop our poor hero in a remote town where nobody’s allowed to go out at night. You’ve got the mystery of curfew. The mystery of “What’s out there?” Sounds fun to me!

But, as always, the thing a reader is worried about when they open a script like this is that there isn’t enough meat on the bone. In fact, I’ll tell you exactly what goes through a seasoned reader’s mind when a script like this lands on his laptop:

Hero gets to town by page 10. Establish curfew rules by page 20. Our hero sees a few weird/scary things by page 30. Hero goes out after curfew at some point by page 45. Monsters chase her.

THEN WHAT??

What happens for those final 60 pages?

Because usually with a script like this, the characters run amok for 60 pages in a structureless free-for-all mess of repetition. The writer who knows how to navigate this problem is the one who gets the movie made. Let’s see if we’ve found that writer.

16 year old Megan O’Connell is doing the sorts of stuff a teenager does after her father dies. Drinking, smoking, and wrecking shit. After her and best friend Bekah total a stolen car, Megan’s mom has had enough. She dooms her daughter with the ultimate punishment – a stay with Grandma, who lives in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin.

Actually, the place is called Cedar Falls, and this is the first time Megan’s meeting her grandmother, Dorothy. Dorothy is not keen on having this troublemaker around, but she feels an obligation to do so, seeing as Megan is her son’s daughter. Dorothy instructs Megan that she only has one rule to follow – stay inside after curfew.

You’re talking to a girl who lives for the night, so Megan is immediately looking for ways to break curfew. When she meets a group of kids her age – Derek, Amy, and Brad – she thinks she’s found her partners in crime. The problem is her new friends are the Dork Squad. Especially when it comes to going out after curfew.

However, when a local church has a weekend “Lock-In,” Megan finally sees an opportunity to stir shit up. Once there, she and her gang make the bold choice to sneak into the night. And boy do they regret it. Within minutes, a shadowy creature yanks Derek into the shadows and tosses his head back at the rest of them. That can mean only one thing – RUN!

Eventually, Megan is able to make it to the sheriff’s station, who lays out the town’s deep dark secret. What are these things who come out at night? And why are they so strict about curfew? You’ll have to get your hands on the script to find out. Or just go to the comments section.

So…

Did the script fall victim to my “Simple Premise” fears?

Yes and no.

Grunert uses another method to battle the Simple Premise issue known as the “Delayed Reveal.” Instead of introducing the monsters in the first 15 pages of the second act, he draws things out. We don’t get our first monster until page 64.

This is a perfectly acceptable approach to the problem. If you introduce monsters too soon, it’s easy to run out of gas. How many “run from monsters” scenes can one person write before they start getting repetitive? I’ll give you a hint based on reading hundreds of these scripts – NOT MANY. So Grunert’s solution to delay all that monstering is clever.

However, delaying the candy being advertised in your commercial for that long only works if your character work is impeccable. By that I mean, you need to set up a couple of strong emotionally unresolved relationships. Look at A Quiet Place. It should be noted that they had their first attack way before page 64. Even so, they established a strong unresolved relationship between the father and daughter.

Here, there isn’t a single emotional thread for the script to hang its hat on. The central relationship, Megan and Dorothy, is as empty as this town’s streets after curfew. Dorothy has never met Megan. She doesn’t care about her. Megan doesn’t like Dorothy and there’s no attempt TO like her. The two never have a conversation that doesn’t involve exposition.

What you probably wanted to do here was build an unresolved relationship with the dead father. I have a friend whose father died young and he never forgave him for that. He felt abandoned. What if you did something similar with Megan? Dorothy, then, could be a conduit for Megan to finally find closure with her father’s death.

It’s not ideal. These things work better when the two characters who have a problem with one another are forced to work things out together. Like the son and the mother in The Babadook. But it’s better than nothing, which was what was on display here.

Why is this relevant?

Let me explain it this way. Have you ever gotten notes back on a script where the main critique was, “I didn’t feel anything.” Or have you gone to a movie where you enjoyed the overall experience but you felt like something was missing, like the overall experience was empty?

Lack of an emotional core explored through character relationships is usually the reason. When you don’t have that, it’s hard for us to connect on anything more than a surface level.

And look. If you don’t think that opportunity is there in your story, you can still explore the human experience within your hero. What are they battling inside? What do they need to overcome? If you look at Tully – which just came out on video – here’s a movie that’s all about what’s going on inside. This mother is overworked to the point where she’s lost her sense of self. And she needs to get it back. How much more of an emotional journey can one go through?

As much as writers think this stuff doesn’t matter, it does, if you want to stand above the pack at least. Cause anyone can put a plot together. But there are far fewer screenwriters who can explore the human condition. Which makes those writers a lot more valuable.

Curfew wasn’t bad. It could be a good movie. But it needs a rewrite focusing specifically on the stuff I brought up.

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

What I learned: Split up dialogue between characters to make it more naturalistic.

There’s a scene in the script where Megan is talking to Amy, Brad, and Derek. The ritual of “curfew” is brought up. Even amongst the teens who live here, it’s controversial. Not everyone believes in it. Derek, the jokester of the group, isn’t sold, and says so. Amy replies, “Then what about Jeremy Singer?” Megan asks, “Who?” Amy then responds with this line….

“Jeremy was a few years older than us. He was having trouble at home — his father was an alcoholic and beat him.”

Notice how unnatural this sounds. It reads like a written checklist of things that need to be known about Jeremy. The thing is, Grunert had the solution to this clunky line at his fingertips. The very next line is Brad correcting Amy with, “It was his stepfather.” That correction makes the moment feel a bit more like a real conversation. That’s because real conversations have people chiming in, mistakes being made, other opinions being offered, corrections, laughter, finishing each other’s sentences. So when you have multiple people in a scene, you want to take advantage of that. A better exchange might look like this…

AMY: “Then what about Jeremy Singer?”
MEGAN: “Who?”
AMY: “A guy we knew. He was a few years older than us. His dad was an alcoholic.”
BRAD: “You don’t know that.”
DEREK: “I heard his dad beat the shit out of him.”
AMY: “Stepdad.”
DEREK: “Whatever.”

See how much more natural that sounds? Looking back at it, I’d probably eliminate “He was a few years older than us” even. That information doesn’t add anything. And since the line reads cleaner without it, I see no reason not to take it out. The point is, use the other characters in your scene to split the dialogue up and, in the process, make it feel more natural.

I’ve noticed a trend in a lot of the amateur scripts I’ve been reading in regards to scene-writing. To many writers, a scene is a way to dispense information that the reader needs in order to understand what’s happening. For example, they know that in this scene, they must explain to the reader what a flux capacitor is, so that they understand how time travel works. In the next scene, they know they must introduce Henry the Neighbor, since Henry the Neighbor will play a crucial part in the story later on. The problem with this approach is that their focus is on themselves as opposed to the reader. They don’t care if the reader is satisfied. As long as they were able to successfully dispense the relevant information, they’re happy.

Here’s the problem though. You may have achieved what you’ve needed to achieved. But you sure haven’t kept me entertained in the process.

Writing a good screenplay isn’t about getting your checklist of story points down into a cohesive narrative. It’s about telling an entertaining story. So many writers want a cookie for the mere fact that they finished a screenplay that makes sense. Sorry, but if you want to play with the big boys, you have to tell a story that’s entertaining all the way through.

That’s the focus of today’s article. Making sure every single scene in your script has entertainment value. Now before we get started, I want to make something clear. I’m not using “entertain” in the hyperbolic sense. I don’t mean it like a roller coaster ride or a giant car chase. “Entertain” simply means that there’s something about the scene that makes it compelling on its own.

The most basic way to add entertainment value is through conflict. Conflict comes in many forms, and essentially refers to an imbalance in the scene. There’s something unresolved which adds tension to the proceedings. Let’s say that your hero, Joe, is at his son’s baseball game. You could certainly write this scene to establish the basics: Joe’s son plays baseball. But why not add some entertainment value to make the scene more interesting?

Let’s say Joe’s son is batting, and the pitcher’s belligerent father is sitting a few seats in front of Joe. “C’mon Frankie! Strike this bum out!” We can see the discomfort on Joe’s face, but he doesn’t want to make a scene. “Look at this kid! He’s afraid to swing. Lay it right down the middle!” Joe’s getting more angry now. Is he going to say something? This example may be a little excessive, but you get the point. You’ve taken what could’ve been a straight-forward establishing scene that your hero’s son plays baseball and turned it into a moment that’s entertaining on its own.

Another way to conjure entertainment out of a scene is to place your character in a situation of discomfort. As soon as you introduce something that impedes on a person’s comfort, they have to react. And, in doing so, you create an entertainment seed that can grow. Let’s say your character is a prisoner who keeps to himself. And you want to show his daily routine, specifically how meal time works. The boring screenwriter will simply put the prisoner in line and sit with them as they move their way forward until finally getting their food. Again, you’ve achieved your technical goal. You’ve shown us a component of the character’s shitty day. But you didn’t entertain us in the process. How can you change that?

Well, what if there are two options on the menu that day: pizza and a casserole that looks like vomit. As our prisoner is getting closer, we’re showing those pieces of pizza fly off the pan. It’s going to be close by the time it’s his turn, but it looks like he’s going to get one. Then, when he’s almost there, you impede upon the hero’s comfort. Four thugs come up. “Yo man, you mind if we jump in front of you?” Our hero glances at the last three slices of pizza, then at these guys. We can see the torture in his eyes before he finally relents. Sure enough, the thugs take the last slices of pizza, and our hero’s stuck with the gruel. You’ve just turned a scene where nothing happens into a scene where we’re entertained by a man who wants pizza.

Another easy way to add entertainment value is to introduce a problem. If there’s a problem, the audience will want to see if it can be resolved. In Thor: Ragnarok, one of the most entertaining movies of last year, virtually every scene is prefaced with a problem. We meet Thor while he’s hanging, tied up in a net. Later he gets stuck in a waiting room that he needs to get out of. Then he gets placed in a gladiator arena where he must survive. Afterwards, him and Hulk are placed in a holding bay that they have to escape from. The simple act of needing to solve a problem, no matter how small, adds instant entertainment value to a scene.

Something as simple as a time limit can make a scene entertaining. If a character has to clean up his extremely dirty apartment because his parents are in town, you could certainly show us a typical yet boring montage of him cleaning up. Or you could have his father call and let him know that they’re coming an hour early and should be there within the next 30 minutes. Now the clean-up session is a race with an uncertain ending. Much more entertaining.

You can add entertainment value by raising the stakes. Let’s say your character is a waiter. You could certainly give us a boring scene of him doing his typical waiter duties. Or you could have a fellow waiter point out that his new table is a famous food blogger. “Don’t screw it up or none of us will have jobs next week.” All of a sudden, a normal waiting scene becomes packed with tension.

A scene can become entertaining merely by changing the order in which the information is given. For example, let’s say your hero, Beth, has a long day at work. Later, when she gets home, she finds out her husband died in a work accident. Why not show us her husband dying in that accident BEFORE we show Beth’s work day? That way, we’re filled with anxiety as we wait for Beth to find out what we already know. Even a mundane task such as driving home becomes compelling since we know it’s only a matter of minutes now before she finds out what’s happened.

The lesson here is to assess when a scene is boring and to CREATIVELY SOLVE THAT PROBLEM. You don’t even need to know any of these tips to do this. You just have to be honest with yourself about the scene and come up with a way to make it more interesting. You’d be surprised at how easy this is.

Changing locations can do wonders for a scene. If you have a typical boring scene where two characters are talking, you can move them from a coffee shop, where it’s okay to talk, to a movie theater, where it isn’t. Now, every word risks someone nearby telling them to shut up.

Adding characters to a scene can do wonders as well. If you have a typical conversation scene between a guy and his girlfriend, add the girl’s best friend, who HATES the guy. Same conversation, except now the friend is constantly looking up from her phone, giving our guy judgmental looks after everything he says.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “Come on, Carson. Not EVERY scene can be entertaining. What about quick scenes whose sole purpose is to convey information?” Yes, even those scenes. You’ll vary the intensity of the entertainment value to fit the smaller scale, but you still want to entertain. For example, let’s say Alice calls her friend Claire to set up a later dinner party scene. “Pick you up at 7 for the party?” “Could you make it 7:30? I’m running late.” “Sounds good.” They hang up. Sure, that could work. But you could also throw a joke in there to make the conversation more fun. “Pick you up at 7 for the party?” “I can’t go. I have the flu.” “You used the flu excuse last time.” “I mean influenza.” “That’s the same thing, Claire.” “Fine. But come as late as possible.” It’s a small adjustment, but it makes a difference.

We live in a world where people don’t give a shit about anything other than how they feel in the moment. Back in the 70s, you could go 15 minutes in a movie without worrying about whether the audience was bored. These days, people are used to options. Entertainment is a phone-pull-out-of-a-pocket away. More than ever before, you have to make sure you’re keeping people entertained. I’d go so far as to say if you write two boring scenes in a row, the reader is already drifting out of your story. I don’t say that to scare you. I say it to keep you honest. Go into every scene with the intention of adding entertainment value and you will be fine.

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (from IMDB) When the creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune.
About: Time to answer that question I asked a couple of months ago. Which movie will do better at the box office? A Wrinkle In Time or Ready Player One? RP1 took in 53 million this weekend. If you look at percentage return on investment when compared to A Wrinkle in Time, (Wrinkle’s budget was 100 million, RP1’s was 175 million), Wrinkle actually fared better on its opening weekend. We called that movie a bomb. So this has to be a bomb too, right? I would say that RP1 isn’t so much a bomb as it is a grenade. The reason being that RP1 is going to do way better internationally than A Wrinkle in Time, which should make the film profitable. Wrinkle in Time, however, will be a loss for Disney. That’s not to say RP1 hasn’t used some trickery to make its less-than-stellar opening weekend look better than it is. RP1 opened a day earlier than usual (on Thursday) AND got an extra day after the weekend with the holiday (Monday). This helped them to claim a “weekend” haul with two extra days’ worth of money lumped in. Looks like the Easter Bunny isn’t the only one hiding a few extra eggs around the yard. The reality is, when WB did their pre-film projections, they were banking on a 75 million dollar opening weekend AT LEAST. And if you look at it that way, RP1 is a financial disappointment. But is the movie actually good!? That’s the ultimate question. Let’s find out.
Writer: Zak Penn (based on the novel by Ernest Cline)
Details: 140 minutes

I’d heard some disappointing things leading up to the release of Ready Player One, the most frustrating of which was that Steven Spielberg went off and shot The Post while Ready Player One was being edited.

Some of you may see this as a non-story. But to me it’s everything. One of the biggest issues with Ready Player One is that it’s all over the place. And because its subject matter made it particularly susceptible to being “all over the place,” it needed someone who was 100% committed to keep it on track. If Spielberg was shooting The Post while Ready Player One was being edited, it meant he was also involved in pre-production and casting and scheduling and meetings for The Post while Ready Player One was being shot. His mind was in two places at once. Which is why this movie feels so scattered.

Problem #2: Spielberg gave a Ready Player One promotional interview where he was asked about getting the rights to all the properties in the rights-heavy film. Spielberg responded with a befuddled, “Oh yeah, I didn’t deal with that. The studio people were in charge of all that.” I’m sorry but whhhhuuuhhh did you just say? Shouldn’t you be the one leading the charge on this!? Not just because getting the rights was everything with Ready Player One, but because you’re STEVEN SPIELBERG and can get anything you want.

Because here’s the thing. The novel for Ready Player One was all about Halliday’s love for the 80s. I know nostalgia is controversial right now but the 80s were the heartbeat of this book. Halliday built the Oasis as a way to live forever as a child in that decade. So there was thematic unity – From Pac-Man to Back to the Future to Tears for Fears – in every pop culture reference. By contrast, this movie is a mish-mash of whatever the hell pop culture references you can think of over the last 40 years, which contributes to the pervasive messiness. I mean Iron Giant missed the 80s by a decade! Why is he featured in this??? It’s so random.

A more dedicated director would’ve put his foot down and said, “No. It doesn’t make sense if it’s ALL pop culture. It needs to be pop culture from ONE SPECIFIC time period.” There’s some SUPER GEEKY screenwriting history connected to all this. Zak Penn, the screenwriter who adapted RP1, is forever enshrined in screenwriting lore for losing his shit after his breakthrough spec, The Last Action Hero, was rewritten to expand the 80s pop culture movie references Penn had based the movie on, to movie references from every era. I’m getting off track though, just like Spielberg! So let’s loop back.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Ready Player One, it’s set in 2040-something, and focuses on a world that spends the majority of its time inside the “Oasis,” basically the virtual version of the internet.

Wade (or “Parzival” as he’s known in the Oasis), our plucky teenaged hero, is one of millions who are hunting for three keys inside the Oasis by its since-deceased creator, Roy Hallidy. Hallidy wrote into his will that whoever finds these three keys will inherit the Oasis itself, which is worth in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars.

With his two best friends, the super-hot Art3mis and the super-cool “H,” Parzival must hold off the evil organization, IOI, from finding the three eggs first and turning the Oasis into a heartless money-thieving conglomerate.

So Spielberg didn’t get the big picture stuff right. What bout the characters? Let’s start with Parzival. In the book, Parzival was a walking nobody in the real world. So when he gets that first key and becomes an instant Oasis celebrity? It felt like something huge had happened. Imagine being no one and then becoming the most famous person in the world overnight. The book documented that transition beautifully. In the movie, this was lost. Parzival’s introduction is used strictly to dish out narration and set up the rules of the universe. As a result, we never feel like we know Parzival. And that’s been reflected in how people have reacted to Tye Sheridan’s performance. It’s all very polite. “Yeah, it was okay.” And that’s because they botched the setup for this kid.

One of the oldest screenwriting tips in the book is to “establish your character’s normal world before throwing them into the crazy world.” Look at one of the inspirations for Parzival, Marty McFly. In Back to the Future, we see Marty McFly at school, we experience his aspirations to become a rock star, we get to know his girlfriend, we hang out with his weirdo family. We see HIS NORMAL LIFE. Therefore, when he’s thrown into the crazy world (the past), we have something to contrast it with.

That never happens here. Parzival’s “normal life” is limited to a quick slide down a pole and a giant glob of narration that has nothing to do with him. We’re into the Oasis before I even know if Parzival goes to school or this is summer break or what he does with his average day. This is an admittedly different situation from Back to the Future. An argument can be made that the Oasis IS the “normal world” of this reality. But if I was guiding this project, I would’ve established more of Percival’s real world life first. I never truly connected with him and I have a sneaking feeling that was the reason.

Where Ready Player One really falls apart, however, is in the second half of its second act. The characters are all having realizations that none of us are in on (the equivalent of: “Halladay’s pocket protector wasn’t protecting his pocket. It was protecting the planet.” “So you’re saying we need to go to the Zanzibar System?” “Yes!”), the muddy rule-set of the mythology is getting muddier with every scene (If a bad guy dies in the Oasis, his perfectly healthy real-world counterpart has to be replaced with someone else??), and a climax is birthed out of thin air (Uh, I guess we’re all trying to stop the bad guys from playing Atari 2600!).

It’s a shit show.

And looking back on it, Spielberg’s visualization of the Oasis itself is a metaphor for the screenplay. The virtual world of the Oasis is dark, muddy, and unflattering. Which is exactly how this story is treated. You could never quite see what was going on through all the haze. I mean that opening car race scene, which I featured in my screenplay review as having the potential to be legendary, was a giant piece of Transformers-inspired tomfoolery. You never knew what was going on because the camera was always zipping between every street corner, wrecking ball, giant gorilla, and T-Rex it could find. There isn’t a SINGLE CLEAN SHOT of the action. And it made me sad. Steven Spielberg taking his directing cues from Michael Bay? What has this world come to?

There’s a moment deep in the script where our five heroic avatars meet each other in the real world for the first time. In an INSTANT the movie came alive. Gone were upside-down gravi-dancing set pieces and in their place were simple medium and close up shots of REAL PEOPLE. Who were playing off each other. Who were having REAL MOMENTS. You could feel how comfortable the director was. It was like, “Where the hell has this been all movie?”

I get it, guys. It’s a movie that takes place in a virtual world. You can’t have a ton of real-world scenes. But the reason those scenes popped was because they were based in simplicity. There was no nonsense going on. It was pure character-driven storytelling. And that’s what we needed more of in the movie, whether that meant more real-world scenes, or applying that ‘simple’ mindset to the Oasis.

I’ll finish off with something that’s going to nip your belt buckle but who am I if I’m not being honest? This is trigger-bait folks. Read at your own risk. Ready? I didn’t like the Shining sequence. This is the sequence everybody’s talking about and I know firsthand people loved it cause audience members were going crazy for it in my screening.

But to me the sequence confirmed why Spielberg doesn’t get the material. The Shining, while released in 1980, is considered by everyone to be a 70s movie. That’s how it identifies. And it’s not what Cline had in mind at all (the sequence wasn’t in the book). Because I’ve read a million articles on Spielberg, I know he’s a Kubrik fanatic, and that this sequence had nothing to do with what was right for the movie, and everything to do with a director who selfishly wanted to recreate one of his directing crush’s famous sets.

Don’t get me wrong. The sequence works in a vacuum. But it doesn’t fit into the whole. It contributes to the “anything goes” mentality where nothing in this film needs to connect, either logically or thematically. The Shining in the same movie as Iron Giant? What??

So is the movie bad? No, the movie isn’t bad. What it is is average. It has a few moments. The stuff in the real world where you could actually see people interacting and expressing emotion was when the film worked best. But the Oasis should’ve been crisper. And cooler! Parzival should’ve been better-constructed. And the screenplay needed to be simplified. The more I think about this, the more I think it should’ve been a TV series. It needed time to breathe and the feature format wasn’t going to allow that. There were a couple of fun scenes here. But Ready Player One was a mess in the Scriptshadow notebook.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Establish your “normal” world before sending your hero and the audience into the “crazy” world.

Genre: Black Comedy/Drama
Premise: When a 13-year-old social misfit hacks into the financial life of his reclusive 70 year old neighbor and finds she’s being short-changed at her home office job, the two embark on an epic journey to seek justice from the shady for-profit “university” that’s been cheating her for decades.
Why You Should Read: The short version? Lili & Will is dark and funny and has loads of heart, with two very cool parts for an “actress of a certain age,” and pretty much any kid from “Stranger things.” The enhanced version? I’ve been working on this thing for years, and even though lots of people said they loved it, no one ever loved it enough to open a checkbook. At first I shrugged this off to “Nobody wants to make a POKER movie.” Yes, for years this script was about two characters on their way to a poker tournament, and nothing at all like the logline above. But then I got a NOTE I never expected — that my characters were GREAT, but they were drowning in technical b.s. about card playing that bogged everything down. I was DEVASTATED by this, knowing I would have to change pretty much EVERYTHING. But for the first time in my life, I buckled down, took the note, and actually did the work. NEW third act. NEW plot. NEW character arcs. NEW pretty much everything. Anyway, this is the result. I hope you enjoy it.
Writer: Jeff Stein
Details: 110 pages

Diane Keaton for Lili?

I’ve read a few of Jeff’s scripts now and whenever I do, I think, “Man this guy has talent. Not only that, but he understands the craft.” Some writers have one, some have the other, but rarely do writers have both. And that’s my conundrum with Jeff. I know he has what it takes. Getting so many votes on this script proves what I’ve always believed. But there’s something in his writing that’s holding him back. And it’s not easy to figure out what.

After reading Lili & Will, I think I have an idea. At some point in his scripts, Jeff makes one major choice that sends his script into Troublesville. And it’s hard to come back from a bad choice. If he can eliminate that mistake, he can thrive. Let’s take a look at his latest!

Lili & Will follows 13 year-old Will, a middle-school nerd who has the unfortunate honor of living with a single mother who strips for a living. Will hopes that one day his mom can quit so they can have a normal life. But things seem to be getting worse, not better. His mom books a “Strip Tour” where she’ll be impersonating a once-famous Playboy Bunny. This should give them some breathing room financially, but it leaves Will alone for the summer.

Concerned, his mom asks the old reclusive weirdo next door, Lili, if she’ll keep an eye on her son. Lili says no thanks. Meanwhile, Will looks into online poker in the hopes of winning big so his mom never has to strip again. He needs a fake ID to sign up, which leads him to Lili. But after sneaking through her computer, he finds out she’s being ripped off by her employer, one of those spammy pyramid schemes that has its “employees” mail thousands of letters to people, paying them fractions of a cent for each one.

When Will tells Lili about the scam, she agrees to drive with him to the company headquarters and shake the CEO down. That’s the plan anyway. Neither Will or Lili know how to drive. They manage though, and do so in style, as it turns out Lily still has her dead brother’s never-driven Roadster.

This oil & water team come from two completely different sides of reality, but develop an operating friendship along the way. Unfortunately, Lili falls ill with a mysterious ailment and must go in for emergency surgery. It’s only when Lili’s life is in danger that Will realizes just how good of a friend she is. But it may be too late for that. Then again, it may not.

The thing I love so much about this script is the pairing. One of the tips I give out when it comes to two-handers is to make sure there’s conflict between the characters. We’re going to be with these two the whole movie so they better not be boring and agreeable the whole time. But a tip I should promote more is to make sure the pairing is INTERESTING. Give us two unique characters. Two people we’ve never seen together before. Or two people so different we have no idea what to expect when they’re thrown together. That’s Lili & Will for you, and it’s the script’s biggest strength.

The script’s got a pretty sweet plot, too. I like that Will initially tries to take advantage of Lili, only to find out that she’s being scammed, and then decides to help her instead. I love that it’s based around one of these pyramid schemes. Everybody hates pyramid schemes so you’ve got the audience 100% on your side from the get-go. It reminded me a bit of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, but with a better concept, since our heroes’ goal was one of justice.

However, once we get on the road, the script hits some rocky patches. The scenes feel rushed, many of them in a “blink and you miss them” manner, as opposed to Jeff stopping, figuring out what the scene is about, and milking everything he can out of the scene. For example, two threatening thugs come up to buy Lili’s car. This scene could’ve easily been 5 pages as we built up the tension behind these guys and whether they were going to do something bad to get the car. Instead it’s 6 lines of dialogue and we’re on to the next scene. This happened a lot.

Compare that to another “car buying” scene, the one in Psycho, where Marion goes to buy a car. But instead of 6 lines, we get a drawn out suspenseful purchase with a cop from across the street watching her every move. I needed the scenes to breathe in Lili and Will, especially because the characters were so good to begin with. Both were perfectly capable of sitting in scenes and talking for a long time.

In regards to the “choices” comment I made, we encounter that problem late in the script. We finally get to the company. They’re getting all jazzed up to go in there and take these scammers down. And ten seconds into a conversation with the manager, Will EXCUSES HIMSELF TO GO THE BATHROOM???? It made absolutely zero sense, both for the story and for the character. This is Will. He’s the “Get it Done” guy. And he leaves during the climactic showdown with the corporate bully? Come on!! That simply cannot happen.

Unfortunately, the script never recovers after this scene. We ditch the more interesting plot that’s been set up for another “We’ll get our money another way” sequence at a local casino. If I were Jeff, I would stick with the taking down the pyramid company plot. That’s where the audience is going to find its satisfaction. But there’s a bigger issue here. Why did Jeff make this choice? Because it’s choices like these that can send a solid script off onto a snowy unmarked road. It feels a bit like an ADD choice – this need to come up with something different, to constantly switch things up, keep giving the audience something new.

You’ve come up with a good plot. TRUST IT. Believe in what you’ve created and stick with it to the end. Nebraska, about a man who begrudgingly drives his elderly father to a lottery office to pick up his “winnings,” doesn’t end with some Rodeo heist that had nothing to do with the original story. It sticks with what we’ve set up.

I really really really want Jeff to succeed, man. He cares so much about this craft. He cares so much about getting better. I mean, “Vlad the Inhaler?” the Russian thug with asthma? Does it get any more genius than that? Or this exchange after Lili and Will first meet – LILI: “Er, would you care to come in for a cup of coffee?” WILL “Well, it’s three in the morning and I’m a kid, but sure.” I read that line five times and laughed harder each time. There are a lot of these genius nuggets scattered throughout Lili & Will. So do me a favor; if you’ve read the script, give Jeff your thoughts on anything you believe could make it, and Jeff, better. Thanks. And thanks to Jeff for letting us read his script!

Script link: Lili & Will

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

What I learned: Treat each scene like a script. Give it your all. You have to make each scene its own little great thing. If you’re writing a bunch of scene-fragments? – stuff that bridges the gap between writing the previous scene and that next scene you REALLY want to write, you’re leaving a lot of dead space in your screenplay.

What I learned 2: If you ever rush though anything in a script, we’ll know. That’s not something you can hide.

The Queen of Dialogue is here. A new Diablo Cody script. We’ll be learning a few dialogue tips today as well as whether Cody is back.

Genre: Drama
Premise: An overworked borderline depressed mother of two is forced to hire a “night nanny” to take care of her newborn.
About: Tully is Diablo Cody’s latest. But don’t close your browser window while simultaneously rolling your eyes just yet. Cody is teaming up with the director responsible for her two best efforts – Juno and Young Adult – Jason Reitman. Charlize Theron, who starred in the latter film, will be joining the two again.
Writer: Diablo Cody
Details: 91 pages

I was going to review Cloverfield today but everyone’s saying it’s terrible. That’s a bummer because the Super Bowl release strategy (“Here’s our trailer – go watch the movie now!”) was possibly the greatest of all time. Here’s my old review of the script. Keep in mind this is before they Cloverfielded it.

Not to worry because we’ve got the latest Diablo Cody script. Let’s jump right into it!

Marlo has an 8 year-old daughter, Sarah, and 5 year-old son, Jonah, who is autistic. She’s also nine months pregnant. Already overworked and under-slept, Marlo is afraid of what this new baby is going to do to a life that’s already in Stage 3 survival-mode. Even with a loving husband, she knows she’ll be testing the limits of human ability.

While at her brother’s house for dinner, he tells her of this thing that helped his wife – a night nanny. The night nanny shows up in the evening and stays with the baby all night, bringing her to you when it’s time to nurse, then whisking her away when it’s over. It’s the perfect solution, according to her brother, and saved his marriage.

Marlo is resistant at first, but comes around when her sleep deprivation hits the breaking point. Tully, a 20-something cool chick, arrives a night later, and wins Marlo over immediately. Not only does Tully remind Marlo of herself when she was younger, but she’s so damn calm. She can handle anything. Within days, Marlo’s life turns around. She’s getting sleep now. She has more energy. She’s the life of the dinner party.

But Tully isn’t just here for the baby. She wants to help Marlo. She wants to get to know her. And so Marlo confides in this perfect yogi-like presence about what her life used to be like (fun!), about what her life is like now (not fun!), about her sex life (nonexistent!). This leads to the script’s most controversial scene. Marlo, disgusted by her worn down baby-bearing body, has Tully have sex with her husband as a “gift” to him.

Things take a turn when Tully confesses she’s thinking about quitting. Marlo sensed this was coming, and the two decide to have one last crazy night out. Unfortunately, that night ends in disaster.

They say write what you know. But what if what you know is boring? Clearly, Cody is writing about her ongoing experience with motherhood. The question is, does she find a way to make it interesting? The answer is mostly yes. We know that something is up with Tully and we’re willing to go through this journey to find out what it is.

But before I talk about the plot, I want to talk about dialogue. I don’t care what any of you say. Cody is still one of the better dialogue screenwriters in the business. I’m sure she’s made a ton of money doing uncredited dialogue polishes for huge movies. And while I don’t have time to get into all the reasons her dialogue rocks, I’ll highlight a couple of things.

Early on, Marlo’s brother, Craig, and his wife, Elyse, visit her in the hospital after she’s had the baby. One of the best ways to gauge whether your dialogue is working is if the characters are reacting to things differently. If they’re reacting the same, there’s no contrast, and contrast is where you’re going to find a lot of good dialogue.

So Craig apologizes that they can’t stay but their daughter “is in the middle school musical tonight.” Marlo asks what show they’re doing. Elyse answers, proudly, “Rent.” Craig then says, “I don’t get it. It’s like, just pay your fucking rent. Problem solved.” As you can see, these two react to the same information differently. It would’ve been easy (and lazy) to have Elyse say, “Rent,” and Craig respond, “She’s been working so hard on it.” Losing that contrast instantly softens the dialogue, making it boring.

Another dialogue tip is to steer away from absolutes. When Marlo first meets Tully, she’s shocked by how young she looks. This woman is about to take on an immense amount of responsibility. So the first thing Marlo asks is, “How old are you?” Tully smiles. Marlo ‘checks herself,’ then says, “I’m sorry; I just wasn’t expecting—“ “Don’t apologize,” Tully says. “I get that a lot. I’m older than I look.”

In this exchange, most writers would’ve had Tully answer the question, “How old are you?” with her age. That’s boring. Steer away from absolutes. As you can see, Tully doesn’t even answer the question! She just smiles, forcing Marlo to respond to her own question. Already this exchange has become more interesting. Then, to top it off, Tully doesn’t directly answer the question. She just says, “I’m older than I look.” By avoiding the absolute, you write better dialogue.

One of the hardest parts about writing good dialogue and what Cody excels at is sprucing up responses. Not all the time, but sometimes when a character says something, the other character gives us a clever or “spruced-up” response. After Tully unexpectedly cleans the house one night, Marlo thanks her. “I just wanted to thank you for cleaning the house. You really, really didn’t have to do that.” Okay, now think for a second. The other character in this scene, Tully, is going to respond. What is she going to say? 9 times out of 10, the writer is going to have her say, “Oh, it was nothing.” I know because I read everything. That’s what everyone writes. But if you have in your head, “I’m going to spruce this response up a bit,” you come up with something more interesting. Tully’s response in the script is, “I enjoyed it. I have an energy surplus. Like Saudi Arabia.”

Now that’s pretty clever. But here’s the real trick in writing a line like that. You have to create a character who says interesting things (or says things in an interesting way) to begin with. Cody gave Tully two qualities. One, she was ultra-mysterious. And two, she had an endless storage of high-school-like facts at her disposal. So this line wasn’t created in a vacuum. It was something Cody integrated into the character from the start.

As I wrap this up, I’m going to talk some BIG SPOILERS. So if you don’t want to know, turn away now. Okay, so the big reveal is that our night nanny, Tully, isn’t real. This whole thing has been happening inside of Marlo’s head. I have to give it to Cody. I didn’t figure it out until page 75. I knew something was up, obviously. Tully was just too weird not to have something going on. But for some reason my mind didn’t go there. I kept waiting for her to kidnap the baby or something.

Does the twist work? Sort of. It’s set up well. We know that Marlo already had a mental breakdown. So it makes sense that she would have another one. The blowback might come from the husband character. He conveniently goes straight to the bedroom every night at exactly the same time so he never sees Tully. I think Cody sensed this, which is why she created the free sex with our hot nanny scene. But that scene was so weird and so out-of-place, it only got my spidey sense tingling more.

But who knows, this ending might dupe audiences. And a great twist ending is word-of-mouth gold. We’ll have to see if that happens with Tully.

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

What I learned: Script Bait – You guys all know what click bait is, right? You give’em an article title that’s impossible not to click on. Well scripts have that too. It’s called “Script Bait,” and what it is is a line of bait that makes it impossible for the reader not to read on. Script bait is ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT in character driven scripts where you don’t have a ton going on plot-wise. So early on, when Marlo’s brother is encouraging her to get the night nanny, he lays out this script bait line: “I don’t want what happened last time to happen again.” We’re not informed what he’s referring to. But you bet your ass we want to know. Which means we’ll keep reading until we find out. Script Bait baby. Make sure you’re dropping it.