Genre: Thriller
Premise: A new mother finds the perfect nanny in AI, only to learn that a “perfect” caregiver might be the most dangerous kind of all. This psychological thriller examines the disparity between human nature versus AI nurture and asks the question, could AI ever replace us as parents?
About: This script made the Black List last year. Screenwriter Alexis Jacknow has projects in development with James Wan’s Atomic Monster as well as 21 Laps.  Jacknow has also directed theater for over ten years.
Writer: Alexis Jacknow
Details: 102 pages

One of the hardest choices we can make as writers is that first one – what kind of script are we going to write next? And the question that usually follows is, “Do I write something that I passionately care about? Or do I write something that Hollywood would want?”

It’s not an easy question to answer. Because if you really truly submit yourself to writing something Hollywood wants, there’s an aspect of embarrassment to it. It’s harder to say that you’re writing “Red One,” or “Smile,” or “Terrifier” than it is “A Beautiful Mind,” “Lost in Translation,” or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Cause the former movies are so clearly made for the Hollywood system that there is something soulless to writing them.

Which brings us to today’s script. AIDa. This feels like one of those concept choices that the writer has zero personal attachment to. It is only written in the desperate hopes that Hollywood will see its marketability and pay up for the rights.

Set in the near future, Erin (late 30s) is married to Noah (40) and the two have just had their first baby, Shiloh (0). Erin is having trouble with the whole mommy thing, though, so Noah wants her to consider getting an AI Nanny bot.

Erin vehemently refuses, thinking that she and Noah’s mother’s friend, Tanya, can handle the workload. But when Tanya trips while holding Shiloh (only barely shielding him from a terrible tragedy) Erin realizes that she can’t trust Tanya.

After a round of interviews, Noah tricks his wife, pretending to bring in a final candidate. The candidate, a Mary Poppins-like figure, easily wins Erin over. Only then does Noah reveal that the woman is an AI bot. He just wanted to prove that these things are the best option.

Erin buckles and they get their own AI bot, one whose appearance and actions will mold and transform as she gets to know the family. Welcome to AIDa.

One of the first things AIDa does is have Erin confide in her what her fears as a mother are and Erin basically tells her all her insecurities, which amount to her feeling like she’s a terrible mother. AIDa asks what is most important to her about this process and Erin says, “That Shiloh is safe above all else.”

This seems to trigger a malfunction in AIDa’s coding as she interprets “Safe above all else” as, “Save Shiloh no matter the cost.” This begins a chain reaction of AIDa gradually taking over all child-rearing duties with an end game of eliminating, you guessed it, her primary competition.

I spoke above about the challenge of picking a concept. But another big challenge in screenwriting is the choice of how fast you want to keep the story moving versus how much you want to slow down and sit inside the story beats.

We’re always told that the faster the script moves, the better. The problem with that advice is, if you move too fast, the audience never feels anything. If you want a story where the audience emotionally connects with what’s going on, you have to slow down and sit inside a lot of the script’s main beats.

The downside of that, of course, is that sitting inside beats for too long could result in stagnation and, subsequently, boredom. So what do you do?

My opinion? You have to sit inside the beats. It’s the only chance you truly have at connecting with the audience. The thing that makes it either work or not work is how the audience feels about the characters. If we think they’re boring, we don’t want to sit in any moments with them. And, in those cases, you probably *do* want to move the story along as quickly as possible. But you have to operate under the assumption that the audience likes your characters. Cause if they don’t, your script isn’t going to work anyway.

We see that in play here with the pursuit of someone to help take care of Shiloh. It’s actually a long process (Erin’s resistance, the family friend’s deteriorating condition making her unsafe for the child, the interviews, the continued refusal to go with the robot, her husband’s ruse with the fake nanny, and then Erin finally trying out AIDa).

It takes about 10-12 pages. After a while, I was getting antsy, thinking to myself, “Why isn’t the author moving faster here?” But the payoff of finally finding AIDa made me realize that I valued that conclusion more since I went through the journey to get to it. If the writer would’ve just handed me AIDa right away, there is no backstory to her hire, there is no perseverance to her emergence in the story.

Now, let’s get back to what I was saying earlier about concepts (passion vs. marketability). The big secret is, you don’t have to choose one or the other. You can choose both. You must look for a marketable concept INSIDE the type of story you’re passionate about.

I love aliens. Whether it’s UFOs or Area 51 or alien abduction stuff. Luckily, Hollywood likes that stuff too. So, it should be theoretically possible for me to come up with a concept that I’m passionate about that Hollywood would like.

As I started reading AIDa, I got the sense that Alexis was passionate about telling a story about raising a baby. I could tell from some of the highly specific details that she’d had this experience herself. So, my initial assumption was wrong. This wasn’t just a Hollywood concept. The writer did what I just said I should do regarding aliens – she wrote a marketable story about something she was passionate about.

Which also connects with sitting inside the main story beats. You’re more likely to stay in the beats of scripts you’re passionate about. The ones you’re not, you’ll rush through those moments and everything will feel thin. The best a fast script has the chance of being is “an effortless ride.” To be fair, I’ve seen “effortless rides” sell before. But I still think the best scripts come from the things you’re most passionate about.

As AIDa went on, I found it much better than the competing Netflix movie with Megan Fox (Subservience). That movie leaned more into what I was just talking about – move through the story quickly. Play everything out exactly as the audience would expect.

This script is more creative and thoughtful. I liked the stuff about how AIDa transforms over time. This idea that the baby can only see in black and white at first so AIDa doesn’t have to be fully formed yet. So she makes these little visual changes over time. Until, of course, she’s fully morphed into an Erin clone. I wonder if the plan is to have one actress play both these roles.

It also has some shock factor scenes. There’s a moment where a pent up Erin allows herself to be “relieved” by AIDa that will definitely get some chatter going on Twitter.

Unfortunately, the script becomes a victim of its genre. It eventually turns into that more expected storyline, with AIDa killing people, tricking the husband into thinking Erin has severe depression, and planning to integrate herself into Erin’s place, all so she can meet Erin’s initial directive – keep Shiloh safe at all costs.

I would’ve preferred the writer stay closer to that thoughtful creative execution that was going on earlier in the story. With that said, this was much better than I expected it to be and a testament to how important individual execution is. If you hold AIDa next to Subservience, it’s clear that this is the better screenplay.

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

What I learned: Whatever the knee-jerk idea of the execution of your concept is, be wary of it. The knee-jerk version of this concept is a sexy AI bot that first wins the baby over and then wins the husband over, eventually replacing (or trying to replace) the mother. At least through the first half of this script, we don’t get that. And that’s when the script was at its best. We get this thoughtful deep dive into what it’s like to raise a baby and some real smart research of how an AI bot might be integrated into that process.

The Shining, the small town version.

Genre: Small Town Almost Horror
Premise: (from Black List) Lukas and Sofia’s new life in a small town is shattered when they return home one night to find their dog gruesomely killed–was it a wild animal, a neighbour or a sinister, supernatural force from the valley? Desperate for the truth, Lukas embarks on a witch hunt after evidence points to a young local boy–but as they are plagued by further unexplained, malevolent events, the family unit unravels with devastating consequences.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Lucy Campbell, is also a director, and has directed quite a few short films, which you can check out here.
Writer: Lucy Campbell
Details: 102 pages

I call these sorts of scripts “Almost Ideas.” There’s some semblance of a movie here but the overall concept – all of the characters, all of the beats, all of the creative choices – never quite feel big enough.

Almost Ideas are not to be confused with Low-Concept (Whiplash, Nebraska, The Descendants) or No-Concept (Belfast, Nomadland, Marriage Story, Roma) ideas. They have more of a hook than those scripts. But they’re not big enough to be legitimate movie ideas.

Just like anything that you write that has a high level of difficulty, you can write a good script with an almost idea. But it’s much tougher than when you have a solid premise.

That’s because an “Almost Idea” inevitably leads to a bunch of “almost” scenes. It’s hard to escape a weak story engine, guys. Many of the elements that stem from a weak concept will be, by association, also weak.

Let’s take a look.

We’ve got a middle-aged family here. 52 year old Lukas has recently moved his family to this small town because his wife, Sofia (44), got a good job at a local university. This means that Lukas will be taking on a high school teaching job.

The two have a 17 year old son, Ezra, who’s an amazing cellist. And they have a 13 year old daughter, Chloe.

One night, when they’re coming back from one of Ezra’s performances, they find their dog bleeding and nearly dead. He dies soon after. Lukas is enraged. He immediately gets the cops down to his house and demands justice. Except the cops aren’t really interested in a dog murder, which makes Lukas even angrier.

The prime suspect is a weirdo loner kid named Oliver. Lukas’s suspicions are confirmed when he looks at his neighbor’s Ring cam and sees Oliver sneaking into his backyard on the day their dog was murdered. Things get complicated when Lukas learns that Chloe has befriended Oliver.

The next door neighbors, led by the uber religious prepper, Tony, talk about how there are always spooky things going on in this town. Tony seems to tap into something deep within Lukas and, before long, Lukas is radicalized. He thinks supernatural forces and this Oliver dope are responsible for all the weird things that are happening.

The tipping point occurs when Ezra accidentally chops off his finger while cutting up the kangaroo he and his friend had hunted. This means he’ll never be able to play cello again. The dad freaks, goes wacko, and now nobody is safe – not the people in town, not even his own family.

I started this review by saying that this was “The Shining” but in a small town. To the untrained eye, that may sound like a good pitch. It isn’t. Let’s discuss why. Cause this goes into my whole point about what “almost screenplay ideas” are.

The difference with The Shining was that the story was placed up in a remote deserted hotel in the off-season. That’s a hook right there. That’s a larger-than-life scenario, which is what makes it a movie idea. Once you’re covering a regular family in a regular situation, it’s no longer a hook. That’s what makes it “almost.”

What also makes it “almost” is this mysterious “supernatural” entity that’s causing all of this chaos in the town. Except there’s never any explanation of what this supernatural entity is or what the rules are that govern it. When readers read vague plot elements like that, they become less interested, not more.

Readers want to know what they’re up against. Or, if the writer wants to take their time to reveal what they’re up against, it better be a good reveal. In this movie, there is no reveal of what this supernatural entity is. It’s an excuse to make the story seem bigger than it actually is.

This comes down to a father going insane. And that’s not the worst story idea! But it’s pretty plain and, therefore, hard to work with from a dramatic sense.

I do think the script had some good moments. I liked learning, for example, that Chloe was secretly hanging out with Oliver. But even that didn’t go anywhere. And the more you dug into it, the less sense it made.

Why would a young cool girl want to hang out with the weird loser who everyone beats up? The relationships in your script need to make real-world sense. You can’t just make two characters friends because it results in an exciting reveal. Case in point, that was the most excited I was in the story cause I wanted to see what was going on with the two. But it was never explained. And that’s probably because the writer didn’t know why they were hanging out. She only knew that that would provide a surprising reveal.

I just think you’re in trouble territory when you explore “almost” scenarios. There’s “almost” a supernatural presence here. Readers and audiences don’t like “almost” stuff. They like that bigger larger than life stuff that drives all the best stories.

There wasn’t anything hugely wrong with this script but its “almostness” plagued it from start to finish.

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

What I learned: If you’re going to hurt a character, hurt him where it’s relevant. You never want the things you do to your characters to be random. You’d prefer them to have some connective tissue to the plot, or the character, or the other characters. That consistent connective tissue is what makes your script feel like a story and not just a series of random events. So, here, we set up that Ezra plays the cello. He’s amazing at it. Then, when he accidentally cuts his finger off, it’s more relevant than, say, a random car accident injury. Now, he can never play cello again. The writer has successfully connected the accident to Ezra’s primary character talent.

I bristled all weekend long about whether to go to 28 Years Later. It wasn’t even the movie itself that had me reticent. It’s the Hollywood theatrical business model that’s the problem. These days, they don’t make things as easy as they could. It used to be that if I was on the fence about a movie, the barrier for entry was so low that I would always go. Nowadays, the barrier for entry is high, so whenever I’m on the fence, I usually *don’t* go.

The fact that a single ticket is 20 bucks. Then parking at the Grove is another 10 bucks. That makes me think hard about whether I want to see a film.

This means that any other negative thing will be the tipping point. And when I watched this trailer, it looked so dark. I’m okay with dark. Once you get insanely dark, though, that’s too much. The capper, however, was the reviews. I heard that this was a super depressing story. Dark and depressing is not my idea of a fun weekend activity.

Now, the movie ended up making 30 million dollars. Depending on who you talk to, that’s either decent or bad. But, I still think any non superhero movie that clears 30 mil on its opening weekend is a success. It cost 75 million to make. They’re going to make that back when it’s all said and done.

But the real success – and the big lesson for all of you aspiring screenwriters out there – is that the movie got made DESPITE BEING dark and depressing.

Why is that? I’ll tell you why. BECAUSE THE MOVIE EXISTS WITHIN A MARKETABLE GENRE – ZOMBIES. Too many writers write dark and depressing movies about real-world issues and act surprised when nobody wants to read their scripts. They come to me for a logline consult and they say, “Nobody wants to read this script, Carson. What’s up?” And I look at them and I say: Look at your concept! It’s about a disfigured woman who loses her job and decides to euthanize herself.

In one of the hardest businesses to break into, you cannot handicap yourself with a “tough sell” type of script. The good news is, you can still tell THE EXACT SAME WEIRD OR DEPRESSING OR OFFBEAT story you want to tell. You just have to do it within a marketable genre!

Want to tell a story about hospice? Write an apocalyptic horror movie like A Quiet Place: Day One. Want to tell a story about cancer? Write a teenage romantic comedy like The Fault in Our Stars. Want to write a movie about mental illness? Write a psychological thriller like Black Swan. Want to tell a story about the inevitable extinction of mankind? Write a sci-fi thriller like Children of Men.

We’re playing a game here, man. We writers want to write stuff that’s more thoughtful and rich. Hollywood wants us to write stuff that’s popular and makes them money. The game is to make them BELIEVE they’re getting what they want when we’re actually getting what we want.

I’m willing to bet Universal thought Get Out was some basic “meet the parents” contained thriller. That’s what allowed Jordan Peele to get his movie made. In actuality, he was trying to say a lot more about society. And that’s what smart writers do. Peele could’ve easily ditched the thriller aspect and focused on an intense weekend with a white family and the daughter’s black boyfriend. But it wouldn’t have existed in a genre that Hollywood could market. And Hollywood is right! Nobody would’ve wanted to see that movie!

***

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the disparity between critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. I know some people think Rotten Tomatoes is a joke but I see Rotten Tomatoes as the primary checks and balances for Hollywood. You have to understand that, back in the day, Hollywood had ZERO incentive to make a good movie. They ONLY had to make a marketable one.

That’s because they had way more control over the narrative of a film than they do today. They could make you think a bad movie was great a full 3-4 weeks into its run!

Nowadays, at least, Hollywood is scared of that Rotten Tomatoes score and, as a result, they put a lot more effort into the script than they used to. They know they’ve got no shot at a successful movie if that score sucks. And, by the way, that score is almost exclusively evaluating the screenplay. Hollywood production levels are the best they’ve ever been. A movie’s failure is never about weak production value. It’s about the script. So at least now we have this thing that scares Hollywood into putting more effort into the script.

It’s not a perfect system. James Gunn recently came out and said that the main reason that Hollywood is struggling right now is because they make movies from scripts that aren’t ready. He’s built his whole DC universe on the promise that he won’t make that mistake himself. He’ll only make DC movies when the script is good and ready. As proof of that, he recently canceled a mystery DC project because the script sucked. And he’s allowing Matt Reeves to take as long as he wants to write The Batman 2.

But I have to wonder – who decides when a script is awesome? James Gunn?? So when he finishes one of his own scripts, does he go into a separate room and evaluate it and say, “Yup, it’s awesome!” Cause Gunn writes too fast to be good sometimes. So I don’t know how that’s going to work.

But the point is, when Hollywood was making movies like iRobot, it was way way way way way worse than it is now. They had ZERO incentive to make that movie good and everybody saw the result, as well as the results of all those other movies that didn’t have to worry about repercussions of being shitty either. I’m talking about The Day After Tomorrow, Catwoman, Kangaroo Jack, S.W.A.T., The Time Machine, Maid in Manhattan, and hundreds more.

So, if anything, we should be happy that Rotten Tomatoes exists, if only to strike enough fear into Hollywood to make them try harder.

Getting back to that score disparity, some of these disparities are shocking! 28 Years Later has a 90% critics score and a 65% audience score. That’s a humongous difference. And it’s another reason to think long and hard about how depressing you want your script to be. Audiences generally go to movies to be picked up, not pulled down. So, when you depress the hell out of them, they react in kind.

A good example of that would be Ballerina. It has a 76% critics score but a 93% audience score. Ballerina only wants to be fun. It wants to be a good time. Audiences appreciate that. Not in some ‘audiences are dumb’ way. But because you go to the movies to escape the dredges of life. You want to let go for two hours and have fun. Writers forget this. It’s why A Minecraft Movie is the number one movie of the year. It’s why Barbie made twice as much money as Oppenheimer.

Then you have shocking score pairings, like Thunderbolts getting an 88% critics score and a 93% audience score, yet the movie was a bomb. How does that work? And it’s in a marketable genre, too! Guessssss what? If you’re paying attention, you know the reason why. Thunderbolts was about depression.

On the one hand, that’s AWESOME for the writers. They were able to slyly slide tough subject matter into a Marvel film. That’s what I just told you to do if you want to be successful. But that’s just to get the movie made! The problem with injecting too much darkness into your Hollywood movie is that audiences don’t like too much darkness. They like just enough to add balance to the story. But they ultimately want to have fun. And Thunderbolts wasn’t fun enough.

This is why I think Superman will be a massive massive hit. It embodies that spirit of having a good time at the movies. Its tracking says it’ll make between 115-130 million on its opening weekend. I think it will go higher than that. Superman is going to be the big movie of the year. And I’m not even HESITATING at paying that 20 dollar ticket and that 10 dollar parking fee. That’s how I know everyone else is going to see it as well. :)

I am offering 2 HALF-OFF script consultations. The first two people to e-mail me get them. You don’t have to have the script ready but you do have to pay to secure the deal. E-mail me the subject line “JUNE BOOM” at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to grab one!

MEGA SHOWDOWN SCREENWRITING CONTEST IS COMING!
What: Mega Showdown
When: Friday, August 1
Deadline: Thursday, July 31, 10pm Pacific Time
Send me your: Script title, genre, logline, and a PDF of the script
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

One of the things I love about Mega Showdown is that it forces me to focus on what truly makes a script good. I love you guys. I really do. And I want all of you to be successful. But I do have an ulterior motive when I give you advice for this contest. I want you to write the best scripts possible because it’s way more enjoyable for me to read those submissions than the terrible ones.

The problem is, not enough writers take what I teach to heart. I’m trying to teach you INSANELY IMPORTANT lessons about screenwriting that you can’t ignore if you want to write something good. And yet writers continue to put their heads in the sand and ignore the most basic (yet effective) advice.

That got me thinking. What can I tell you today that will massively upgrade your screenplays? I’m talking about getting them 50% better. 200% better. Even 500% better! And I came up with five game-changing things that will make your script so much better than the average screenplay.

Let’s go over them.

The more passionate you are about your story, the better – I hate this tip whenever I see it somewhere else because I don’t like screenwriting tips that aren’t actionable. “Be passionate” is a tip that someone who knows nothing about screenwriting could give and, therefore, it’s a bad tip.

However! — Stay with me — let me explain why I included it here. What I’ve found is that when a writer is very passionate about their material, they always go the extra mile. If their protagonist isn’t perfect, they’ll keep working on him until he is. If an important scene is clocking in at a 6 out of 10, they’ll keep rewriting it until it’s a 9 out of 10.

Conversely, when writers write scripts they THINK the industry wants, rather than stuff they’re passionate about, they never put in as much effort. And the stuff that makes a script go from good to great is the effort. And the only people I see caring about that extra effort are the writers who are passionate about their script.

Take the directors of Final Destination: Bloodlines.  These dudes were OBSESSED with the Final Destination franchise.  You could’ve spent a decade interviewing directors for the job and not found anyone even close to how passionate these two were.

Do you know the first thing they did before writing the script?  They watched all seven movies in the franchise and RANKED EVERY KILL from best to worst.  They then marked where they felt the kills dipped below an acceptable quality and made sure that every kill they came up with for their movie stayed above that level.  That’s only something passionate people do.

Another example is Oppenheimer. Let’s be real with each other here. Who the hell cares about Julius Robert Oppenheimer? STOP IT! Stop thinking about the comment you’re about to write where you tell me I’m wrong and that a lot of people care about Oppenheimer. Hollywood had 75 years to make a biopic about this guy and they didn’t. If people cared about him, one of the studios would’ve made the film, trust me. But boy could you feel the passion dripping from every frame in that movie due to Christopher Nolan’s obsession with Oppenheimer. It was his passion for that character that made the difference.

A script that starts strong and never lets up – We’ve forgotten about this on the site. Or maybe I’m not talking about it enough. There are a couple of common patterns I encounter with the scripts that I read. One is that a script will start off BIG and then, after that flashy cold open or sexy opening sequence, it will settle in, mellow out for a while, before eventually ramping back up in spurts.

Another pattern I encounter is scripts that spend the majority of their first halves in slow burn territory. And then, finally, they start paying off all that setup, leading to a fun and exciting final act.

Absent are the scripts that start strong then never let up. The writers who can pull this off start out with a great scene then say to themselves: “This is the bar for every scene in my script and I’m going to try and meet or exceed that bar.” I understand why writers don’t do this. CAUSE IT’S FREAKING HARD. It’s hard to give 100% of yourself every single scene. But there are so few scripts out there that do this, that if you’re one of the few writers who can pull it off, your script becomes way better than the competition.

What does this look like in execution? Mad Max: Fury Road. 1917. Memento. The Social Network. The original script for Source Code. The screenplay, Clementine.

But, believe it or not, you don’t need to write some big fast action thriller to meet this standard. Heretic is a script that starts strong then never lets up and that one is a slow-burner. The operating idea here is to continue to try and entertain with every scene. Too many writers take these little breaks during scenes that can last two scenes, three scenes, four scenes, or more. That’s not how you write a script that gets people’s attention.

Create at least one character who we really truly deeply connect with – I want to start off here by explaining what I *didn’t* just say. I *didn’t* just say to create a likable main character. Likable main characters are great. But what I’ve found is that “likability” is mostly for Hollywood-type movies. Those movies need to be easy breezy fun adventures so your main character’s likability is a key part of that.

Instead, if you want to write a script that RESONATES with someone – that they think about days, even months, after they’ve finished it – you have to write a character that resonates on a deep level. Yes, the equation for resonance is a complex one. There is no perfect formula. But it’s a combination of sympathetic traits, aspects of the character we feel empathy for, a character who is wrestling with conflict inside of them, a character who needs to overcome some flaw that has held them back from finding happiness for most of their lives, and a character who is battling unresolved issues with other characters in their lives. All of these things help create a character we want to root for.

I just read this book, The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Nighttime. It’s told through the eyes of a 15 year old autistic boy. The next door neighbor’s dog is murdered and he sets out to find out who killed the dog. The character exemplifies everything I listed above. His condition makes us sympathetic. We empathize with his troubles connecting with other people. He is against lying but realizes that in order to solve the murder, he will have to lie (internal conflict). His flaw is his stubbornness. And he has major unresolved issues he’s battling through with the two closest people in his life. It’s impossible to read that book and forget about that character.

Be unpredictable – You’ve heard me exhaustively talk about this on the site. In that sense, ironically, I’m being quite predictable with this tip.  But the reality is a predictable script is a boring script. But creating an unpredictable experience inside a formulaic medium is a challenging proposition. However, that’s exactly why you want to do it. You want to do it because most other writers don’t. It takes too much effort and is too hard to push yourselves and come up with unpredictable plot points and unpredictable character actions and unpredictable story revelations.

When a reader is reading a script, you want to imagine that they have a meter above their head. And the meter is showing, at any particular time, where their interest is on a 1-10 scale. The deeper into a script they read where they’re able to generally predict what’s going to happen next, the more that number will fall. Once it gets to a “6″ and it doesn’t rise back up within the next few scenes, that’s when the reader checks out.

I remember never quite knowing where Parasite was going next. I remember having no idea where Anora was going once Alexi disappeared. Final Destination: Bloodlines did a great job tricking us several times, mixing up who was getting killed next. Even though Speak No Evil was a relatively formulaic movie, I was never quite sure what was going to happen next. And that’s a key point to this tip. I’m not looking for giant twists every other scene. I just want you, the writer, to be ahead of the reader most of the time. Not the other way around. Cause for the large majority of scripts that I read, I’m 40-50 pages ahead of the writer.

Be exceptional in at least one major part of screenwriting – There are too many screenplays I read where writers do everything well but nothing great. And for a script to truly leave an impact, you have to do at least one thing great. You have to be great at dialogue. You have to be great at writing unforgettable action set pieces. You have to be amazing at creating deep interesting thoughtful characters. You have to have an exceptionally unique voice.

The trick to nailing this task is to ask yourself BEFORE you write your script what it is you are best at. Then, make sure the next script you write allows you to feature that skill. A great failed example of this was Wednesday’s script, “Turnaround.” There wasn’t a single aspect of that script that stood out. Which is relevant because the writer had already proven, by landing on the top slot of the Black List with a previous script, that she was a good writer. But it doesn’t matter if you’re a good writer if you pick a script that doesn’t allow you to feature what you’re good at.

A positive example of this is Aaron Sorkin. It doesn’t matter what project you ask him to adapt, he will turn it into a talky “play-like” movie because he’s so damn good at writing those types of movies.

We’ve got about 40 days left. Plenty of time to institute some of these tips. Good luck and KICK ASS!

A former Black List topping author whose great script only failed to get developed because it, ironically, got blacklisted by Madonna is back with a new take on Macbeth

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) After beloved movie star Tom Adair is found dead, the outpouring of grief and sympathy quickly elevates his best friend Alec Donavan to movie star status. Now Alec must contend with his newfound fame and success–and the fact that he and his agent/girlfriend Karynn Pieper secretly murdered Tom and are haunted by his vengeful ghost.
About: Today’s writer has topped the Black List before with a Madonna biopic that was awesome. She’s back, and this latest script of hers is an adaptation of one of the most popular stories of all time – MacBeth.
Writer: Elyse Hollander
Details: 100 pages

Perfect casting?

For a long time, it has been thought that scripts about the industry don’t work. The failure of HBO’s The Franchise seemed to confirm that pulling off the subject matter was impossible. But then The Studio came along and proved that it could be done!

Has “Turnaround” also cracked the code on stories based on the industry? Let’s find out!

Set in the early 2000s (why? who knows??), 30-something Alec Donovan, an actor, is struggling to make ends meet. He’s resorted to writing his own script. But all the big producers in town tell him that the only way this script will get made is if he has a movie star in the lead role.

It just so happens that Alec has a movie star best friend! Tom Adair. But he and Tom haven’t spoken in forever. Ironically, the two have the same agent, Karynn Piper. And Alec is sleeping with Karynn. But even she tells him it ain’t happening with Tom, who’s on the set of his latest movie, about Caesar.

As it so happens, one of the actors on the movie ODs on some bad coke, and Tom figures he’ll throw his buddy a bone, hiring him onto the movie. Later on, Alec decides to see if Tom will be in his movie so he goes over to his house. That’s when he sees that there’s a young attractive naked dead guy in Tom’s bed. Another OD!

Soon, Karynn is over and the three are deciding what to do with the body. But when Tom starts commanding them around, Alec loses it and pushes his friend down the stairs, killing him. Alec and Karynn decide to stage the house like it was just these two here and jet out.

Cut to a year later and Alec has used the publicity of his friend’s death to become a hot commodity in Tinseltown. He even stars in the sequel to that Caesar movie. Alec has to deal with all the responsibilities of his newfound position, which include being a sellout, something he vehemently detests.

But that’s not nearly as big of a problem as his dead friend deciding to haunt him. “Haunt” is a strong word. I’d say it’s more like trolling. He doesn’t threaten Alec. He just says a lot of things that make him feel bad. Of course, Alec thinks he’s going insane, which interferes with his movie star life. He eventually has a mental breakdown before realizing he must take care of this problem once and for all.

Oof.

Oof oof.

Double oof.

This was not good.

You can always tell, too.

You know immediately if a script isn’t going to work, even if it’s a good writer, like today.

The second I saw that we were randomly setting the movie in the early 2000s I said, “Uh oh.” If stories are set in random near-past time periods for no reason, that’s a good sign that a crappy script is coming.

And then the structure was… nonexistent. Things just happen like they’re being made up on the spot.

This supporting actor dies of an overdose on the set of Tom’s movie and then Alec replaces him. Then that production ends and we cut to another death, when Tom’s boy toy ends up overdosing at his house. Then, not long after that, we get the THIRD death of the first 30 pages, with Tom himself getting murdered.

That’s what we call “all over the place storytelling.”

We cut to one year later because of course we do. Remember yesterday how I told you that extremely tight time frames were screenplay catnip. This shows you what happens when you go the opposite direction. After that one-year jump cut, all the air left the balloon. The story basically starts over with Alec now being a movie star in Tom’s stead.

Then we just… hang out for a bunch of scenes. At a certain point, I checked the page number. It was page 65 and NO PLOT HAD BEGUN YET! There was no engine underneath the pages. The script existed solely to wait for every instance that Tom could haunt Alec. And he didn’t even haunt him that much!  Want to know what a script that actually has structure and an engine looks like so you can compare good to bad?  Check out any version of A Christmas Carol.

I’d go so far as to say, I don’t think this script did a single thing right. Even the humor wasn’t funny. “Some would say, thirty-five is too old to die young, you know?” Is that a funny line? I know it “presents” as funny. But does it make you laugh?

“Hanging around funny” is not the same as funny. A lot of writers forget that. They think that if they can place some jokes near funny, that will be enough. But funny needs to actually be funny.

The thing is, we’ve got a comp for this on how to do it right. “The Studio.” The Studio is covering the same ground but it’s doing it in a way fresher and funnier way. Note that The Studio does what I was teaching everybody yesterday – using The Big U for all of its episodes.

It also had much clearer characters with clear characteristics, which is imperative to the humor hitting. You have the new studio head who loves artsy movies yet is forced to make brainless big-budget shlock. You have the “That Guy” producer, a talentless douchebag who knows it’s only a matter of time before people figure out he doesn’t know what he’s doing. You have the overly ambitious assistant. And you have the over-the-top marketing girl.

Here in Turnaround, Alec’s character is pretty clear. He’s living in his friend’s shadow. Karynn is clear – she’s the cold-blooded agent. But she’s so cliche that everything she does is boring and obvious. But the real difference in these two character groups is that we don’t like either of the characters in this script. Whereas we like all of The Studio characters.

Here’s one certainty I have learned over 20 years of reading – If you have unlikable leads and no plot engine, there is NO WAY your script will work. It is literally impossible to pull off.

And I think that the pushback to my criticism would be that this is an adaptation of one of the most successful stories of all time in MacBeth. But there’s a slight difference in the time periods that the two versions of the story are released in. And I’m pretty sure that in 1606, Shakespeare didn’t have to compete with an infinite-scrolling app of endless entertainment.

You gotta change with the times, baby. A stronger structure. More urgency. And characters we can actually get behind. This was very close to a “What the hell did I just read.”

The sad thing is that those improvements would probably only make this script average. The DNA here is full of too many cobwebs to turn this into a winner.

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

What I learned: It is VERY DIFFICULT to make a big time jump after the first act and have the script work. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But in all the scripts I’ve read that have done it, I’d say 99.9% of them sucked. So, don’t do it unless you absolutely know what you’re doing and you have a good reason to do so as well as a strong game plan for executing it.