Today’s script is The Fifth Element meets Guardians of the Galaxy meets Stranger Things meets Avatar. Is that a good thing?
Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: A thief-for-hire is sent on an assignment to steal an unknown package from a laboratory, only to have a crisis of conscience when he discovers upon arrival that the package is actually a superhuman little girl.
About: This script finished on the 2016 Hit List with 44 votes (Top 20). The writer, Emily Carmichael, broke out upon creating the animated web series “The Adventures of Ledo and Ix.” She would go on to write Pacific Rim 2. She is also a director and was one of the primary candidates for Captain Marvel. She is making this movie with Colin Trevorrow producing. She’s also working on another project with Trevorrow called “Powerhouse,” that’s set up at Amblin.
Writer: Emily Carmichael
Details: 95 pages
Why is there a part of me that thinks Max Landis wrote this script under a pseudonym? We’ve got a human alien team-up. A 1980s(ish) setting. A series of zany characters who communicate via insult-driven dialogue. We’ve got space prisons. Hmmmm… maybe Max Landis wrote an AI program that created Emily Carmichael so that he didn’t have to write his 15 scripts a year all by himself?
Nobody knows everything. I only know 98.7% of everything. So even my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Today’s script is proof of that. I tell as many screenwriters as possible NOT to write a sci-fi fantasy script that isn’t based on IP. It’s not only expensive. But even the most well-described fantasy worlds are hard to visualize in screenplay form. Which means you’re often going to be writing to an audience who barely understands what you’re saying.
With that said, sci-fi fantasy is the most imagination-driven genre of them all. So if you can write a good script here? You’re a different level of screenwriting awesome.
“Eon” introduces us to a world that isn’t anything like our own. It’s the 1980s and cyborgs are sprinting onto earth via space-time portals. This means that Brooklyn, where our story begins, is a strange hybrid of old, futuristic, and alien. Oh yeah, that’s because aliens exist in this world as well.
And space prisons.
Actually, one of these aliens, Stryka, a 6 foot tall blue-skinned lizard like thing, is our co-hero. Stryka is teamed up with Callen, a decidedly un-alien white guy. Actually, he’s Scottish so he’s a little bit alien. The two of them are thieves willing to steal or transport anything for a buck. Except nobody told them that their latest job entailed stealing a 10 year old girl from a research facility.
When the pair deliver the cargo to their employer, they get the sense that whatever he plans to do with her, it’s not good. So they grab the girl – who they’ve named “Eon” – and run away. Soon they learn that it’s not just the bad guy employer who’s the problem. It’s the freaking government(!), who’s sent an entire team after them.
Callen and Stryka have always been about the money, so this is new territory for them. Especially for Callen, who gets a kick out of teaching Eon how to speak. Unfortunately, they soon learn that Eon’s got some special blood. And when it’s coupled with a big jolt of electricity, Eon becomes a bomb that will blow up the entire planet. That means Callen will need to make a horrifying choice – kill Eon and save the planet, or let her go and risk the end of mankind.
Except for anyone living on the space prison.
If there’s one area you don’t want to mess with when it comes to writing sci-fi, fantasy, or a combination of the two, it’s clarity of mythology. The worst thing you can do when creating a unique world is to be sloppy about it. There needs to be an internal logic to said world and that logic needs to be clear as day to the reader. Otherwise, everything feels murky.
And that was my big issue with Eon. The rules of this world are too murky, starting with the rewriting of history. In this world, cyborgs showed up in the 80s and space travel accelerated in the 90s and now we live on a planet with aliens and robots?
It’s not impossible to make this work. But you’re already asking so much of an audience to believe in a completely fabricated world. Why would you, on top of that, also ask them to accept rewritten history? I mean, why not set this in 2070 and not have to rewrite a single year?
Unfortunately, when you’re writing inside a murky universe, nothing feels tangible to the reader. It’s all a bunch of unformed images. Which is why if you’re going to create a new universe, you need to spend some time at the outset explaining what that world looks like and how it works. Lots of sci-fi fantasy writers will shy away from this because they hear how exposition is the devil. However, you don’t solve that problem by ignoring it. You need to get creative.
That’s what The Matrix did. It gave us a TON of exposition. But it did so creatively, with Morpheus taking Neo through a series of lessons designed to both inform and entertain.
With that said, Eon does move along at a brisk pace, due to the chasey nature of the narrative. Our criminals have to run Eon around the city while avoiding baddies. And I liked the inherent conflict within our characters as to whether to do the right thing or the profitable thing. I talk a lot here about making sure your primary characters have conflict between them. But it’s even better if those characters contain conflict within themselves. If Callen is struggling to figure out whether to get paid or help this girl, that adds an extra layer to the story.
And that’s the very definition of depth. A layer is something you lay on top of something else. So the more layers there are, the more depth there will be.
Which is why it sucks that there’s nothing else to celebrate here. “Eon” is trapped in a so-so story. The mythology is too murky. The MacGuffin is too cliche (yet another 10 year old lab girl with special powers). And even though the characters are moving around a lot, it’s all very circular. I didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. The writer even acknowledges that the final twist is weak, delivering it via the caveat of, “Of course so-and-so is who you thought they were the entire time.” If it’s that obvious, maybe we need a different twist.
I wish I could say I recommend this because we don’t get enough writers taking chances like Carmichael does with Eon. Any sci-fi that costs more than 10 million dollars these days is ignored by studios unless it’s giant IP. So when scripts like this are good, it opens up the possibility for other sci-fi writers. But, sadly, this didn’t have enough of any one thing to make it stand out. :(
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Running Away (Eon) vs. Running Towards (Raiders) concepts. The only thing Running Away stories promise is escape. Whereas Running Towards stories promise gold at the end of the rainbow, a reward for all your hard work. If you have a choice between writing one or the other, choose a Running Towards concept.
Genre: Drama/Comedy?
Premise: (from Black List) An undisciplined boy is sent to Florida for the summer with his grandparents, and the drive south changes him forever.
About: This script received 13 votes on the 2012 Black List. The writer, Austin Reynolds, hasn’t broken out since making the Black List that year. However, he did secure the writing gig for The Sandlot prequel.
Writer: Austin Reynolds
Details: 106 pages
I hope everyone was able to add at least 10 pounds to their frame this Thanksgiving, as well as a brand new 200 dollar PS4. I’m sad to say that I wasn’t quick enough on the draw and all $200 PS4s were gone before I could click that yellow ‘buy’ button. I DO have a theory about that. I don’t think those stores really have those super-low-price items. They advertise that they do. Which conveniently makes you aware of their store on Black Friday. You then go to the site (or store) on the day, find out they’re all “sold out” of that item, but oh yeah, as long as you’re there, why don’t you do the rest of your Black Friday shopping.
Then again, it may just be sour grapes.
Speaking of sour grapes, 15 year old Max Anders has had enough. During a high school test, he tells his teacher to fuck off, wanders out the front door, then proceeds to hurl a trash can through the principal’s car windshield. Max’s mother (who he refers to by her name, “Laura,” instead of “mom” – a choice that almost always guarantees I’m reading a first-time screenwriter) is barely able to talk Max out of an expulsion. However, he’s suspended for two weeks, after which he must appear in court to defend his actions.
When Max starts lounging around the house all day like he owns the place, Laura calls her ex-husband’s parents, who happen to be going on a road trip down to Florida, and asks them to please take Max with them. They’ll drive down to Florida and then, once they get there, send Max back on a plane.
Max resists, of course, and his grandfather, Thomas, isn’t that keen about the plan either. But Max’s grandmother, Carol, really wants to help Max out, and convinces her husband to give him a chance. Once on the road, Max begins causing trouble immediately (when a cop drives by, he holds up a sign that says, “Help! I’ve been kidnapped!”) but settles down some when he meets a pretty 17 year old girl named Megan, who happens to also be on a road trip with her parents down to Florida.
After continually running into each other at gas stations and renaissance fairs, the two families find themselves staying together at a resort in Virginia for a few days. Finally, Max can put the moves on Megan! But that plan is thrown into disarray when he catches Thomas coming out of another woman’s room. As Max decides whether to expose his grandfather’s cheating ways, the woman Thomas slept with ends up dying! Carol finds out what happens soon after, and the trip is ruined. The good news is that Max has learned… well, I’m not really sure what he’s learned. But it was a hell of a way to end an adventure. And I assume he’ll be a better person for it.
Today’s script is one of the most frustrating kinds of scripts I read.
On the surface, everything is a-okay. You’ve got a character goal – write the letter to the judge before the trip is over. You’ve got a contained time frame – the trip takes place over two weeks. You’ve got conflict between the primary two characters – Max and Thomas. And road-trip narratives are always easy-breezy reads, due to the fact that the story is always moving forward (literally).
The problem with this script, however, is that it’s too lightweight. And I see this quite a bit. Writers write these tame harmless stories about characters doing things that are sort of interesting but not really. The other day, in my Wednesday article, I talked about how your movie has to feel important. It has to feel like the events we’re watching matter. Another way people put this is, “Your script should cover the most important event that’s ever happened to your hero.” And that kind of makes sense. Why should I be excited about watching the second or third most important moment in a character’s life if I know the most important moment is floating out there somewhere?
Everything here is fine. But “fine” doesn’t get a movie made! All I kept thinking while I was reading this was, “This would be a lot better if he was on a road trip with his actual dad, the guy he has a problem with. And not this grandpa character who he has next to zero history with.” I can imagine a scenario where Max’s dad left him and his mom a couple of years ago. He’s in and out of Max’s life. Now that Max is suspended for two weeks, his mom forces his dad to take him on the trip he’s going on with his (the dad’s) girlfriend.
I say that because this movie was never about the grandfather. It was about the dad. So it’s bizarre that the dad doesn’t make an appearance.
The script also suffers from a lack of thematic focus. I don’t usually condemn a script for this unless it’s blatant. But the script starts off with this kid throwing a trash can through his principal’s window and then getting suspended. So it’s beyond strange when the second half of the movie shifts exclusively onto Thomas cheating on his wife. What in the world does that have to do with a kid who needs to figure out shit with his father? I guess you could argue that they’re both guys who need help sorting their lives out. But when the reader has to work hard to find a message, you’re probably not doing the best job sending the message.
On top of this, the script is very writer-constructed. Things are only happening because the writer needs them to. Not because that’s what would really happen. The writer needs to send his character on a road trip with his grandparents. So he has him get suspended by throwing a trash can through his principal’s window. But why did he throw the trash can through his window? That question is asked repeatedly throughout the script and never answered. Leaving one to believe that the only reason it happened was so that the writer could write his movie.
Ditto the Megan love story. In what reality do you randomly spot a girl in a car whose family happens to be taking the exact same 2000 mile road trip as you, and who is stopping along at all of the same places you’re stopping at? I’ll tell you what reality. The reality where the writer needs his characters to see each other if there’s going to be a love story. And therefore, he’ll eliminate all real-world logic to get them around each other.
Individually, none of these issues are script-killers. But when you add them all together and place them on top of an extremely bland hook, the reader’s not going to be able to ignore it. I don’t even know what kind of movie this is. It’s not dark-comedyish enough to be Little Miss Sunshine. It’s not goofy enough to be National Lampoon’s Vacation. And it’s not gross-out humor enough to be Dirty Grandpa. So what is it? It’s just some movie about a teenager who sorta doesn’t want to go on a road trip with his grandparents but has to go anyway? Is that a movie?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Note the difference in the artificiality of these two set ups. National Lampoon’s Vacation. A family goes on a road trip vacation to “Disney” World. You don’t doubt that for a second. It’s happened hundreds of millions of times to many families. Contrast that with, “You need to go with your grandparents on a 2 week road trip to Florida because I don’t want you in the house while you’re suspended from school, and then once you get there, they’re going to put you on a plane and fly you back to New York.” Could a situation be any more artificially constructed?
At times, screenwriting can feel overwhelming. From flaws to acts to conflict to irony to theme to subtext to arcs to suspense, the sheer number of stuff we’re asked to incorporate into a screenplay can seem paralyzing. Which sucks because once we start to fear writing, we’re less likely to write. And you’re not going to finish any screenplay, much less a great one, if you’re not writing. Which is why today, we’re going to strip all the complexity away and remind ourselves that writing is simple. Here are ten guidelines that should make your next screenplay easier to write than baking a pumpkin pie.
1) Make sure your idea is built around a goal – A goal driven narrative is one in which the hero is going after a goal. Raiders of the Lost Ark (find the Ark), Avengers Infinity War (stop Thanos), Searching (save the daughter), Murder on the Orient Express (solve the murder). The majority of problems screenwriters run into come when they write non-goal driven narratives. That’s because it’s less clear what the main character should be doing (since they’re not chasing a goal), and this leads to wishy-washy plots. Yesterday’s script, The Toymaker’s Secret, is a good example. There wasn’t really a goal in the story. It was a bunch of toys trying to stay out of the way of the new owners. Not surprising, then, that the script had a “Where the heck did that come from?” third act.
2) The goal comes from the problem – If you don’t know what your hero’s goal should be, it’s simple. It’s whatever the result of the problem is. In almost every movie, somewhere in the first fifteen minutes, a problem arises. In Jaws, it’s the arrival of a killer shark. In Misery, it’s that the writer’s car has crashed and he’s been kidnapped. In Halloween, it’s that Michael Meyers has escaped. In The Martian, Matt Damon is stranded on Mars. To find the goal, introduce a problem.
3) Make sure the story feels like it matters – There must be a sense of importance to your story or audiences will be uninterested in it. One of the reasons Tag was such a dud was because there was no sense of importance to the story. Who cares if a bunch of friends finally tag their elusive buddy? Meanwhile, in the movie that the film was modeled after, The Hangover, if the friends don’t find the groom, he misses his wedding and possibly dies.
4) Make your hero likable – I realize not everyone likes this rule. But since we’re talking about KEEPING SCREENWRITING SIMPLE, I suggest you adhere to it. If we like your hero, we will forgive nearly any other mistake you make. Check out Swingers. It’s an AWFUL plot. There’s no overarching goal. The characters wander from party to party, state to state. There’s no purpose, no destination. But Jon Favreau made sure, at the beginning of that screenplay, that you fell in love with Mikey (who gets dumped) and Trent (who cares only about making Mikey feel better). And so we didn’t care about the plot. Also check out “The Gal Who got Rattled” in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. That narrative is a little wonky. But boy do they make sure you fall in love with Zoe Kazan. She’s earnest, thoughtful, kind, and wants to do the right thing no matter what.
5) Show don’t tell – This is one of the most oft-quoted screenwriting rules in existence. Yet writers continue to fail at it in almost every amateur script I read. A character, for example, will shoot an arrow to kill the bad guy in the climax. Except I’ll have no recollection of the hero ever knowing how to shoot an arrow. How does that work, I ask the writer. “It’s on page 27,” the writer replies, defiantly. “His best friend, Nick, says, “You don’t want to mess with Jake. He can shoot an arrow 100 yards and hit his target dead-center.” WELL OF COURSE I didn’t remember it. A character SAID it. Readers never remember that. They only remember when a character DOES it. If you want us to know that Jake can shoot an arrow, you have to SHOW us that he can shoot an arrow!
6) Obstacles, obstacles, and more obstacles – If you really want to distill a story down to its essence, all it is, is a) a character with a goal, b) that goal matters, and c) he encounters a bunch of obstacles along the way. Your job, then, is to create those obstacles. His wife leaves him. He wakes up in the trunk of a car. His house just blew up. The bad guy keeps popping up at every turn. The monster is getting smarter. The cops think he’s the murderer. He loses his only weapon. His best friend double-crosses him.
7) When writing dialogue, make sure the characters aren’t on the same page – They can be butting heads like rabid mountain goats, or have a respectful disagreement on what needs to be done next. As long as they’re not on the same page, you’re going to have conflict, which is essential for good dialogue. If your characters are on the same page, there’s no reason for them to speak, and therefore no reason to have a scene. Watch virtually any scene in Little Miss Sunshine to see this in action.
8) Instead of summarizing everything in agonizing detail, utilize highly descriptive words or phrases – Screenwriting is about distilling everything down to its bare essence. Therefore, instead of taking five paragraphs to describe how disgusting your hero’s apartment is, simply describe it as a “rotting pig sty.”
9) Stay away from the past – That means avoid flashbacks. That means stay away from elaborate backstories. Movies work best when characters are trying to figure things out NOW, in the present. This doesn’t mean the past won’t come up (Obi-Wan telling Luke he remembers fighting with his father in the Clone Wars). This doesn’t mean you can’t allude to the past (a character mourning the recent death of their spouse, for example). But this should never be the focus. The focus should always be the present. That’s where stories possess the most energy.
10) Contain your time frame – Movies work best when the timeframes are contained. Under two weeks is preferable. 72 hours is perfect if you really want your script to move. But any timeline that “frames” your movie will work. For example, Jaws takes place during one summer. There’s something about knowing where the destination is that solidifies the structure and comforts the viewer.
And there you go. Now get some writing done this holiday weekend. I’ll see you on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!!!
P.S. This pizza has turkey, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Now if only I could convince my family to adopt it as our Thanksgiving Day meal.
Genre: Family/Drama/Fantasy/Animation
Premise: A group of old fashioned toys live comfortably in an abandoned house. However, their world is turned upside-down when a single mother and her daughter move in.
About: This is Alex Garland’s latest script. He wrote it for his wife, Paloma Baeza, to direct. This would be her first feature. She’s directed four short films. The most recent, Poles Apart, is an animated film about a polar bear who meets a grizzly bear for the first time. Helena Botham Carter voiced the polar bear.
Writer: Alex Garland
Details: 106 pages
Alex Garland is one of my favorite writers. I loved his last two films, Ex Machina and Annihilation. And if you want to go back a ways, I thought his novel, The Beach, was excellent. So I’ll read anything he writes. Even if it’s a children’s story! That is, of course, if this is a children’s story. The Toymaker’s Secret is a bizarre amalgam of genres – family, horror, fantasy, ghost story, comedy, drama – which works in its favor sometimes, and against it in others. I guess you might call this a “darker” version of Toy Story. Let’s check out the plot.
In East London, 1891, the Toymaker is on his deathbed. It’s here where he tells his apprentice that it’s time to pass on his secret – the secret of bringing toys to life. The apprentice is crawling out of his skin, he’s so excited. But first, he brings up a quibble.
“Master, one question.”
“Speak.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why wait for the deathbed? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have told me this days ago?”
“I just said. It’s the way it’s always been. Since the days of Merlin.”
“Yes, but just given the importance of the secret, it seems so risky to wait until now.”
“Well, there’s a nice symmetry, isn’t there? At the moment of death. Passing the secret of life.”
“But it does make the timing unnecessarily critical.”
“Well quite. And given that time is fast running out — “
“— But what if something had happened to you? You could have been hit by a horse-drawn carriage.”
“That’s exactly why I look both ways before crossing the road.”
“Or been struck by lightning.”
“Could we address these questions after I’ve imparted the secret, rather than before?”
The Toymaker then brings the apprentice close and whispers the secret. Moments later, he’s dead. The apprentice jumps for joy. But not for the reasons we think. “You old fool. I see it all now. The greatest secret in the history of mankind. And for centuries, it has been wasted on children’s toys. But no longer. I shall use it for a very different purpose. I shall build an army of mighty automatons. All shall fall before me like dry wheat beneath the scythe! And I shall rule THE WORLD!”
The apprentice then runs outside, gets hit by a horse and carriage, gets struck by lightning, and dies.
Cut to Alfred, a teddy bear, Tulip, a doll, Celine, a snake, and Gawain, a knight, watching from the window. The toys realize they’re on their own now, and when a new family moves in, they’re forced to relocate to the walls, where they build a new home. They watch this family live for 80 years, until they are no more. Then they spend the next couple of decades living in the house alone.
That is until Catherine, a single mother, and Emily, her 9 year old daughter, move in. The toys are annoyed, but they’ve done this dance before. Then everything changes when a local contractor stops by to look at the house, and announces that the kitchen ceiling is going to need to be replaced. Since 90% of the toys’ secret home is above the kitchen, this forces them to uproot and move everything to a different section of the house.
When more contractors show up and suggest more changes, the toys realize that if they don’t think of something fast, their secret existence will be discovered. That’s when they come up with a plan to haunt their inhabitants. They do a pretty good job of this, with Tulip allowing herself to be “discovered,” only to pull an Exorcist, twisting her head around and making weird noises.
The only problem is that Emily is on to them. She finds her way into the secret world of the toys and demands to know what’s going on. They confess that they’re terrible “people” and tried to get them to leave. Emily forgives them, but both sides then encounter a new threat. It turns out that a toy the Toymaker never finished has also been living in the bowels of the house. And now he wants revenge for being left by the other toys…
While Rian Johnson may have forever turned the phrase “subverting expectations” into a screenwriting swear word, it’s still something you want to be doing when you’re writing. Subverting expectations doesn’t have to be the opposite of a big twist we were expecting, or the opposite of the climax we all wanted. It can include going against any expectation the reader has, even the smallest ones.
When I started The Toymaker’s Secret and he was on his deathbed and he prepares to tell his apprentice his big secret, I groaned. I’d seen this scene way too many times before. I got ready for a lonnnng read. But then the apprentice asks, “Why wait for the deathbed? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have told me this days ago?” and I laughed. Not only did it subvert my expectations, but it was a dead-on observation that I’d always wondered myself. I went from skeptical to intrigued.
Then, after the apprentice learns the secret, he screams out how he’s going to make an army of automatons and take over the world, and I groaned again. “Oh,” I thought. “It’s going to be one of those movies.” Then the apprentice runs outside and gets killed. My expectations were subverted a SECOND time. Once more, I was intrigued. I should’ve known better. This wasn’t some weekend screenwriting warrior we were talking about. It was Alex Garland. Lesson learned.
The best thing about The Toymaker’s Secret is the characters, specifically the toys. I loved three of the four toys immediately. Each of them had such distinctive personalities. Alfred was the rule-follower and task-master. Tulip was the overly curious one. And Gawain was extremely serious about his duty. That’s one of the most important parts of the game, guys. You want the reader to know who your characters are. They should never be confused or wishy-washy about them. The lone wishy-washy character here is Celine, the snake. And she disappears into the background as a result. The same will happen to your characters unless they’re DISTINCT. We must know who they are and what they represent. Never forget that.
The worst thing about The Toymaker’s Secret is the plot. Remember that when you stick your characters in a single location for the majority of the story, you are limiting your narrative options. It’s not a coincidence that the word “movie” comes from the verb “move.” Movies like stories that MOVE SOMEWHERE. The exception is when there’s an outside force inflicting conflict on the characters in the location. Like David Fincher’s movie, Panic Room. Those characters are constantly threatened by an outside force.
The Toymaker’s Secret’s narrative is driven more by the impending collision between humans and toys. That’s really the only reason to keep watching. We’re curious how the two are going to meet, and what will happen when they do. This type of story engine can work. It’s just hard. And you can see Garland struggling with it throughout. The plot never truly gets going.
It all catches up to him in the third act, where we throw in the insane toy who’s been locked in the basement the whole time. The “late-arriving villain” is another toughie to make work because we don’t know him well. Therefore we don’t know what he wants. Therefore we’re not scared of him. Therefore we don’t give him a lot of weight. When you try and build your climax around a plot point like that, the results are predictable.
Which is too bad because I loved these toys. I thought Gawain, in particular, was hilarious. And Tulip was adorable. The scene where she sneaks into Emily’s room and uses a VR headset for the first time – rocking everything she knows about life – was wonderful. There’s a movie you can build around these characters, for sure. But this script tries to cover too many bases and, in the process, never discovers what kind of movie it wants to be. With that said, Garland keeps it readable, and I was never bored. So I’d say this is worth checking out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One word can add so much to an image. When Tulip is stabbing the contractor’s toe through the wall with Gawain’s sword, Alfred comes flying in to stop her before she’s discovered. Here’s the description.
We are with TULIP, about to JAB SAM again —
— when suddenly she is RUGBY TACKLED by ALFRED.
Garland could’ve easily used “tackled” all by itself. It does the job. But by adding “RUGBY” before it, it creates a much more specific image.
The Coens remind us why they’re two of the best screenwriters of all time.
Genre: Drama/Western/Dark Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) An anthology film comprised of six stories, each dealing with a different aspect of life in the Old West.
About: It’s been eight years since the Coen Brothers’ last hit (True Grit). Since then they’ve hit us with the hard to like Llewyn Davis, then cast George Clooney at his most muggiest to give us the messy waste of time, Hail Caesar. Perhaps the Coens knew they needed to stretch their creative muscles and try something new. Which is why they went to Netflix. Streaming didn’t require anything resembling a three-act structure, and they went all in with that freedom, giving us six short vignettes as opposed to one giant movie.
Writers: Joel and Ethan Coen
Details: 2 hrs and 12 minutes
It isn’t a stretch to say that while the Coens are technically living in the year 2018, spiritually they’re living in, like, 1870 or something. So it’s apropos that their latest film is set in the Old West. I have to admit, I’ve lost a lot of faith in the Coens recently. I thought Llewyn Davis was one of the most miserable characters ever conceived. If the U.S. military ever wants to build a weapon that injects depression into its target, all they need to do is show their enemies that film. But with today’s review, I’m happy to say that the Coens aren’t just back. They’re back with a vengeance.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs isn’t a single narrative. It’s six separate narratives, all set in the same universe of the Old West. The first follows Buster, an oddball outlaw who enjoys talking directly to the audience, using his impressive shooting skills to dust his adversaries, then joyfully singing about it. We watch Buster kill a couple of local tough guys before finally meeting his equal. Will this man, who is also strong with song, be the end of Buster?
The second vignette is Cowboy James Franco robbing a bank. After failing to do so, he’s strung up to a tree to be hung by the local sheriff. But when Comanches come galloping in and kill the sheriff and his gang, Cowboy James Franco is left at his horse’s mercy. Should the horse move too far from the tree, James will fall from the saddle and choke to death.
Vignette three follows a broken down drunk played by Liam Neeson who makes his living wheeling around a performer with no arms or legs. The performer recites high-brow material, such as poems about Cain and Abel, and while at first, he kills it, every city they visit, his audience gets smaller and smaller. Liam Neeson realizes he has to find a new act if he’s going to survive. But then what to do with the performer, who’s completely dependent on him?
The fourth film follows an old failed prospector who finds a stream in a picturesque valley. He sets up shop and begins sifting for gold. Weeks go by until finally, shockingly, he finds it. He hops down into the hole he’s dug to get a closer look, only to be shot in the back by a cowboy who’d been watching him this whole time, waiting for him to do the work so he could could glide in and collect the gold effort free. But maybe our prospector is more resilient than we first thought.
The fifth film introduces us to Alice, who’s to be married to a friend of her brother’s in Oregon. The siblings lead a caravan down the Oregon Trail, but, on the way, her brother dies. After burying him, we learn that Alice’s brother made an arrangement with the caravan’s leader to pay him $400 for the job. The only problem is that Alice can’t find the money. As each day passes, she dreads confessing to the man that he’s doing all of this for nothing.
The final film follows a group of five people in a stage coach that is carrying a mysterious dead body on its roof. The five pontificate about life, interjecting the conversation with the occasional song. Eventually, we learn that the owners of the stage coach are bounty hunters.
Look, I get it. Sitting down to watch a Coen Brothers film isn’t like sitting down to watch a Marvel movie, a horror flick, or even a biopic. It requires a certain level of mental commitment that can be agitating in this day and age. You have to put yourself in a state of – gasp – concentration. Some people don’t want to do that. And that’s okay. I’m the same way with movies like Call Me By Your Name and Ladybird. I know I’m going to have to invest in some boredom at first to ultimately appreciate something that, hopefully, affects me on a deeper level.
But, man. If you pass this one up, you’re missing out on something special. This is the Coens bringing their A-Game. You’re watching something you can’t get anywhere else. In a medium that’s been so oversaturated, nobody bats an eye when franchises get remade five short years later, it’s amazing to witness true originality.
Which is ironic because it’s this very originality that makes it so difficult to learn anything from “Ballad.” I mean, it’s not a feature. So there are no screenwriting lessons about feature-length structure. It’s not a TV show, so you can’t explore it as a series of episodes. We’re talking about six short films. What the hell do we learn from that?
I suppose one lesson is the “Aftermath” narrative. The most popular narrative structure in storytelling is the Goal-Driven narrative. And we actually have that here in the fourth film, where the old man is digging for gold. Finding the gold is the goal. But the Coens like to work with the “aftermath” of a goal – what happens after our hero succeeds or fails at his goal. You see this in the second film, when Cowboy James Franco’s goal is to rob the bank. He attempts to rob the bank, fails, and is then sentenced to be hung. The rest of the film focuses on the aftermath of his failure.
You can look at Fargo as an “Aftermath” narrative as well. The goal is for a husband to fake his wife’s kidnapping in order to con her rich father out of a bunch of money. The wife is accidentally killed during the “fake” kidnapping and the rest of the movie is the aftermath of this error.
The cool thing about the Aftermath narrative is that you can start it anywhere you want. For example, the first 60% of the movie can be the goal. And the final 40% can be the aftermath. The reason you would do this is to keep the audience guessing. Most movies deal with their goal during the climax. So if your characters accomplish the goal before that, the audience has no idea what’s coming next, which is exciting. A recent example of this is the script “Triple Frontier.” If I remember correctly, the first 65% of the narrative is goal-driven: Steal the money from the drug dealers. The final 35% is the aftermath, which is trying to get 300 million dollars from deep South America into the U.S.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this anthology is that the short I was most bored by initially ended up being my favorite. That would be the Liam Neeson one. The first half of the short kept hitting the same beat, with the performer reciting his poems over and over again, which would end with Neeson packing up and moving to the next city. There didn’t seem to be any point to it.
But as the audiences began to shrink, I realized we were heading towards an impasse. Neeson was going to have to figure out what to do with this guy. It then occurred to me that while the story itself had been repetitive and boring, the Coens had sneakily been developing the characters in the background (The performer couldn’t go to the bathroom without Neeson’s help – that’s how close their relationship was). So by the time Neeson finally has to make his decision, it’s devastating. Is he really going to do this to this man we’ve fallen in love with? I was shocked at just how much I cared about the answer. And I loved how the Coens showed the final action. It was something only they could’ve thought up.
I don’t know why we haven’t seen anything good from these two this decade. But I’m willing to forgive their missteps, because The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is freaking fantastic. Probably the best thing you’ll find on Netflix. At the very least, check out the fifth story, “The Gal Who Got Rattled.” It has a killer ending. This better win some Oscars.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: While the Coens make some exotic writing choices from time to time (fourth-wall breaking singing cowboys who are the polar opposite of the cowboy stereotype), they often use very simple storytelling devices. If you look at the fourth vignette, “All Gold Canyon,” that story has two devices – a goal (find gold) and an obstacle (a man shoots him once he finds the gold). Sometimes, that’s all you need, a goal and an obstacle.
