Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Premise: (from IMDB) After a series of paintings by an unknown artist are discovered, a supernatural force enacts revenge on those who have allowed their greed to get in the way of art.
About: From longtime screenwriter Dan Gilroy comes Velvet Buzzsaw, his third directing effort. The film brings back the team of Gilroy, Gylenhaal and Russo (Nightcrawler) and debuted Friday on Netflix.
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Details:113 minutes

First of all, let me say that I love this practice of movies debuting at major film festivals then appearing on Netflix or Amazon days later. I’ve always hated hearing about Sundance movies then having no idea when or where I’d be able to see them. I might have to wait 8 months before I hear about the film again. More movies should do it like this where you hear the buzz (heh heh) then get the movie immediately. Call that a millennial mindset if you will, but I was so happy to see this up on Netflix Friday.

Now the way I see Dan Gilroy is that he’s 1 for 2. Nightcrawler was as close as we’re ever going to get to a modern day version of Taxi Driver. I loved that script from the opening page. Which makes it all the more perplexing that Gilroy followed it up with Roman J. Israel, Esq. That script was the opposite of Nightcrawler. It was verbose, unfocused, and lacked structure. Should’ve changed the “Esq” to “Ick.” I actually felt bad giving it a negative review because I thought maybe it was a super early draft. But nope. That’s the draft Gilroy went with. It’s hard to make Denzel Washington look bad. But that script achieved it.

This makes Velvet Buzzsaw the tiebreaker. If this is good, Roman was a misstep. If it’s bad, Nightcrawler was an anomaly. Time to place it up on the wall and see what this piece is about.

Josephina is a British art agent in the burgeoning LA art scene. She often rubs elbows with Morf, a bisexual art critic who she once had a fling with. The two are friendly with art gallery owner Rhodora, who has become so jaded by art that nothing impresses her anymore. Actually, that could be applied to everyone here.

After a long day, Josephina returns to her apartment where she sees that her neighbor, an old man named Vetril Dease (does anyone have a normal name in this movie?), has died in the stairway. In the coincidence of all coincidences, it turns out Vetril was an artist. But not just any artist. He was extremely talented, painting dozens of dark haunting paintings. Josephina immediately claims the paintings and starts selling them.

Morf is so taken by Dease’s work that his former feelings for Josephina are reignited. But as the two enter into a relationship, strange things begin happening around Dease’s paintings. A lowly intern crashes his car while transporting the paintings. A fellow gallery owner is found hung by his scarf near another.

It appears that these paintings are coming to life and killing the greedy art leeches who covet them. When Morf becomes the latest to see the paintings move, it’s only a matter of time before he ends up like everyone else. Unless he can figure out why Dease’s spirit is doing this and put it to rest first.

Ooh, a lot to get to with this one.

Let’s break down the first 10 pages since that’s been the theme this month.

The great thing about starting your story in a captivating manner isn’t just that it hooks the reader. It’s that it hooks an audience. It’s a good thing for the movie. Amateur screenwriters on the brink of breaking in understand this (as do struggling professionals who’ve been forgotten). They toil over those first ten pages because they know if they hook you off the bat, there’s a good change you’re going to like their script.

In Nightcrawler, Gilroy starts his screenplay with Louis Bloom stealing something. He’s immediately confronted by a cop and has to talk his way out of it. Not only is something interesting happening in this opening, but Gilroy does an excellent job establishing who Louis Bloom is through the interaction. There’s a moment where Louis says, “Excuse me, but that gate was open, sir. I was under the opinion that it was a detour. What kind of uniform is that?” Just the fact that Bloom is turning the questioning around on the cop gives us a great feel for who this person is.

But something funny happens when a screenwriter becomes an established professional, when they get to that stage where their projects are greenlit without anyone having to read their script. They get lazy with their openings. They rationalize that they can take their time, sometimes defiantly so. This can result in 20 pages going by before anything interesting happens.

Velvet Buzzsaw falls into this category. Some guy played by Jake Gylenhaal stumbles into an art showing, yet we have no idea who he is or what he does. He seems slightly arrogant and bored, but that’s all we have to go on. We watch as he ricochets between people and displays, never sure why he’s here or what he’s doing. It’s the complete opposite of Nightcrawler, which started with something happening that clearly established our hero.

We then ping pong over to the street where some British woman gets dumped on the phone. Who is this woman? What does she do? Why do we care that she just got dumped if we don’t know these things? As these questions linger, she joins us in the art showing as we continue to bounce around without purpose. Even if you make the argument that Gilroy is eschewing a compelling opening in order to introduce the cast of characters, it doesn’t work because none of these characters are well established. We only know that they work in the art world. I actually had to go to Wikipedia after the movie to find out what Josephina’s job title was. That’s bad writing.

If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that when the first ten pages are sloppy, you’re going to get a sloppy movie. And that’s exactly what happens. This movie is all over the place. First of all, who’s our protagonist? I thought it was Morf since we meet him first. But eventually I realize it’s Dumped Girl. And I only came to that conclusion because she’s the one who found the dead artist. But if you would’ve asked me if she was the hero before that, I would’ve said no. Morf was. Confusing confusing confusing.

On top of that, there’s no clear genre here. This starts off as a goofy satire about the art scene. Then it becomes a thriller. And then, out of nowhere, it becomes an out and out horror film, where paintings come to life. WTF??? I guess you can throw single protagonists and genre out the window if you want. There are no rules. But don’t be surprised when people leave your movie feeling like they watched some quickly thrown together experimental student film.

I mean everything was messy here. Louis Bloom was so carefully constructed, you understood him intricately. He’s a sociopathic capitalist who will try to talk his way out of anything. In contrast, Morf is vague and random. It seems like the only reason he’s bisexual is because Gilroy didn’t know how to make him interesting and threw the bisexual tag on him in the hopes that it would somehow make him more complex.

It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that filmmakers are using Netflix as a way to explore their weirder more experimental ideas that nobody else would let them make. In theory, that sounds good. In practice, it means we get movies like the pointless Mute, the jumbled Hold The Dark, the boring Roma, and now Velvet Buzzsaw, a sloppily constructed mish-mash of ideas in search of a protagonist, a genre, and a plot.

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

What I learned: A lot of writers don’t realize how much effort screenwriters put into their dialogue. They assume the words just magically come out of the writer’s head. But how can a writer understand the way someone speaks in an industry they know nothing about? I wasn’t surprised at all, then, when I heard Gilroy’s answer to this question about how he wrote authentic “art world” dialogue. Here’s the question and answer, from a Vulture interview…

One of the elements of the film that I can imagine was fun, certainly in the writing process, was the “art-speak” — the very obtuse, heady way in which critics and gallerists and artists create meaning around their work. Did you work with anybody while writing those parts of the script, or did you just immerse yourself in that language and read a bunch of “Art in America?”

Yeah, I researched it for months, read articles, interviews; I brought in three technical advisers. And it is its own world, and it is its own sort of language. And I thought I had the language down at times, and then somebody who runs a gallery in L.A. would come in and say, “You should change that word to this, because that’s not a word we use.” And it is its own lexicon. There’s no question about it. But I like going into a world and learning the language of it.

I’m trying to catch up on all the First 10 Pages entries so no Amateur Offerings this weekend, sad face emoji. As a reminder, you still have TEN DAYS to enter the First 10 Pages Challenge. If you’re interested, head on over to the announcement page which will explain what to do. I’ll be reviewing the new Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) Jake Gyllenhaal flick, Velvet Buzzsaw, on Monday. Check it out on Netflix if you want to participate in the discussion. In the meantime, here are, arguably, the best opening 10 pages of a screenplay ever. Would you keep reading?

It is Week 3 of the First 10 Pages Challenge! For those of you who don’t know what that is, the First 10 Pages Challenge is something I set up at the beginning of the year that asks you to write something unputdownable. You have until February 10th to enter your pages, which you can do at carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Every Thursday, I’ve been posting five entries and explaining why I stopped where I did. You can read last week’s entries here and the first week’s entries here. Today we’ve got five more.

Some of you have expressed surprise at how quickly I’ve given up on some of these entries. You went so far as to say, “I would’ve kept reading.” You know what my response to that is? Unless you contacted me or the writer and asked us for the rest of the script, you wouldn’t have kept reading. We’re not trying to write pages that someone keeps reading because they’re conveniently still in front of them. We’re trying to write pages that if you got to page 3 and the rest of the file was corrupt, you would immediately e-mail the writer and get them to send you the rest of the script because YOU NEEDED TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT.

You might think this is extreme. That I’m asking the impossible. But seriously, do you think Hollywood is some cocoon of good vibes wrapped in hugs and encouragement? Where each screenplay is read with rapt attention and responded to with the promise of a future job if you just “keep trying hard?” This is one of the most competitive industries IN THE WORLD. Nobody cares about you. In fact, because writers are faceless, people in this business have no issues actively hating you. You are someone who can chew up 2 hours of their day with wandering drivel when they’ve got 10,000 more important things to do. Do you think, under those circumstances, that someone’s going to give your script their full attention because you’re trying hard? Because you have a pretty good first scene with a decent main character and wait til they get to page 45 because that’s when your screenplay really picks up? Be real.

You need to TEAR THESE PEOPLE OUT of their existence with your pages. You need to make them forget about all that other s*&% they’ve got to get done that day. A good writer with a great opening 10 pages can achieve that. But if you’re going to play this b.s. idealistic card where people give you the benefit of the doubt regardless of how you start your screenplay, think again. You need to hook the reader. That’s what this exercise is about.

Now let’s get to today’s entries.

This is one of the more interesting entries we’ve had on First Ten Pages Thursday because the writer’s doing a lot right. We have a couple of paragraphs setting up the scene. They’re not great but they end with an intriguing detail – that this is a federal penitentiary ferry. The reason this is important is because I’ve seen tons of scripts start inside federal penitentiary BUSES. But I’ve never heard of a federal penitentiary ferry before. Already we’re starting off with something unique, which is a good sign.

The writer doesn’t waste any time setting up an intriguing potential problem – that there’s another boat trailing them. This is a critical component to the scene because the writer has opened a line of suspense. We will now stick around at least until we find out what that other boat is about.

However, this is where the first slip occurs. The interplay between the characters is too basic. “Hey, why don’t you tell me how it feels to be screwed for life.” “Maybe you should ask your wife.” I’m not even sure that comeback makes sense. Just lost a little confidence in the script. Then, when the bad guys in the other boat do show up, the attack is really straight-forward. A guy gets shot, Jimbo tries to speed away. I literally went from Level 9 Interest to Level 3. And this was when the real life nature of this First 10 Pages Experiment reared its head. I didn’t even realize it but I had switched over to my browser to check my e-mail. I stopped not because I was thinking, “Should I or shouldn’t I keep reading?” My mind literally wandered to the point where I didn’t even realize that I had left the script.

Let me repeat: The goal of this exercise is to keep the reader’s interest for ten pages. If the reader is checking their e-mail, you’ve lost. And here, as harsh as it sounds, it was simply one predictable page that did the script in. The excitement of the opening was undermined by too basic of a reveal. Don’t take any lines off, guys.

This is a common reason why most readers give up on scripts. It’s not even a question of “Am I captivated or bored?” It’s that the events happening on the page don’t even make sense. There’s a line between mysterious and nonsensical and a lot of new writers don’t know where that line is.

A bunch of faceless phone alarms go off? Is that an intriguing opening story question? I’m not sure it is. Are these morning wake-up alarms? I’m assuming it’s morning but the sluglines say “DAY” and there’s no mention of morning anywhere. I’m going to make an educational guess and go with morning. But that begs a new question. Why is a 17 year old on his bike in the morning before everyone else is awake?

We highlight that a door to one of the houses is wide open and that that’s “a bit odd.” I’ve seen lots of open doors in my life and never once felt that it was odd. Henry then calls his dad and “Julia,” who I’ll assume is his step-mother. The “no longer in service” automated message provides a modicum of curiosity until one second later when Henry pulls up to his house where his dad and Julia live. If his house was one second away, why did he call his parents?

This writer needs to work on the sophistication of his delivery. You need to think about why characters are doing things and not just do them because you think it would make for a cool moment. You have to think of your characters as living breathing human beings who are governed by the same laws of logic and reason we are. Nobody calls their father to see if he’s home when you’re going to see that he’s home in 3 seconds.

Kudos to the writer for starting their script with something that grabs our attention. However, this is another case of weird shit happening without a lot of thought put into why or how it fits together. Before we get there, the first thing that stands out is the weird spacing on this document. I’ll say it again: people who are serious about screenwriting use professional screenwriting software. If I see a mistake as basic as weird spacing, that’s a red flag.

Next up, we have a six inch canister with a window. What do you mean a “window?” Does Ant-Man live in this canister? Literally within the first paragraph, we’ve got two red flags. The only reason I keep reading is because at least something’s happening. And I’m briefly vindicated when the daughter stabs her mom in something that promises a “Bird Box” like concept. However, the father’s response to this killing is so bizarre (“Leave!” – then throws a bat at her) that I know this is seconds away from falling off the rails. This feels like it was whipped together in ten minutes. Not going to cut it.

I can’t enjoy something if I don’t understand what’s happening. This doctor says he’s going to make someone beautiful. The next thing we know we’re looking at footsteps. So I guess somebody is invisible? How did we go from a movie about beauty to a movie about invisibility? Then this girl is joined by two other patients? Where did they come from? Are they using a group invisibility plastic surgery discount? — Some writers write without ever considering the reader. They’re so far in their head that they don’t realize what they’re writing doesn’t make sense. Put yourself in the mind of the reader. Does your scene play out in a clear and concise way when reading it from the other side?

Well lookie here. The first submission to get me to read all 10 pages! Congratulations to Bill Lawrence. Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t LOVE these pages. But the scene was constructed in such a way where it was hard for me to put the script down. Now here’s where things get interesting. You guys DIDN’T like these pages. This script was an Amateur Offerings entry two months ago and only received one (!!!) vote. I’ve tried to figure out why.

I suspect that people didn’t vote for it because the situation is too generic. It definitely moves. It has tension and conflict throughout. But it lacks any sense of originality. There is nothing new or fresh here.

I realize this is confusing. This is the first script to get you to read all 10 pages and you’re not over the moon about it, Carson??? Look, I’m a little confused myself. I’ll tell you this though. The writing was so sparse and easy to read, there wasn’t a reason to STOP reading. That’s the power of writing clear and concise prose. I think that if Bill kept this structure but added some elements that were more original or unexpected, I would’ve e-mailed him and said, “I need to read more of this.” For example, of course the man who sexually assaulted Shannon is fat and ugly. It’s cliche. What if he was an upstanding well-put-together pillar of the community instead? Stuff like that that’s not so on-the-nose. With that said, this is the only script that got me to read all 10 pages. So in this unofficial competition, it’s in the lead!

Genre: Action Thriller Sci-Fi Romantic Comedy
Premise: Barret is a social media influencer, the worst guy ever, and the eventual President of the United States. Dixie is a badass freedom fighter, sent back from 2076 to kill him before he takes over the world and ruins the future. They fucking hate each other. Then they accidentally fall in love.
About: This script finished Top 10 in last year’s Black List, a surprising showing considering the main character isn’t a real person (biopic joke). Michael Daldron seems to thrive in the absurd. He was a writer on the bonkers Dan Harmon TV show, Rick and Morty.
Writer: Michael Waldron
Details: 104 pages

We’re going to keep the absurdity alive this week! Yesterday, we covered a character who fell in love with a toe. Today, we explore traveling back in time to wipe out social media influencers.

What’s a social media influencer? I only found out the other day after watching Netflix’s Fyre Festival doc, a task I initially resisted because the media’s become a scourge of evil intent on destroying people’s lives regardless of whether they deserve it or not. I figured they did the same thing to this Fyre Festival dude. But ohhhh no. This guy deserved to be taken down. The crap he pulled would’ve caused a coma patient to stand up and demand action. I loved it so much I re-activated my dead Hulu account so I could watch their competing Fyre Festival documentary, which turned out to be even better than Netflix’s.

Anyway, all this is to say that social media influencers (the people who made Fyre Festival a “thing”) are vapid black holes of emptiness, the bottom rung of entertainment. And the current generation is growing up on them, which means they’re going to be the primary source of entertainment at some point. Get your Logan Paul merch while you can still afford it!

20-something Dixie lives in the year 2076, a post-apocalyptic future that is the result of a stupid douchebag of a social media influencer, The Duke, becoming president and ruining everything. After searching far and wide, Dixie locates a time-traveling backpack, and after killing the future version of Duke, goes back to the year 2018 to kill the young version of Duke so that he can never become president in the first place.

Dixie arrives in 2018 and immediately attacks the young Duke (who’s simply named “Barret” here). But within seconds of the attack, a 16 year old Duke disciple, Miller, also from the future, appears in a jet pack and attacks Dixie. Dixie and Miller battle while the confused Barret watches on, tweeting and instagram storying his fans about the attack.

Barret hops in a car and drives off, but Dixie easily catches up to him. When she finally has a clear shot to take him out, she waivers. This Barret may be a nimrod, but he’s far from the megalomaniacal super-douche that runs the country in 2076. After he pleads for his life, Dixie compromises and gives him a last dinner, which they share at Chuck E. Cheese. Unfortunately, the more Dixie talks to Barret, the more she kinda likes him. And by the end of the meal, she decides to postpone the assassination for a little longer.

The next day, Dixie comes up with another plan. If Barret walks back his earlier posts about running for president, he’ll never become president, and the future will be saved without Dixie having to kill him. But this comes with a new problem. If he does this, Dixie will disappear, since the future will completely change and she’ll have never been born. Since the two are starting to like each other, they postpone this ‘not running for president’ post a little longer.

The next thing you know, the two are living together, Dixie is pregnant, and Barret spends his downtime traveling back in time to World War 2 trolling Nazis. When Barret learns that Dixie already killed the future him before she jumped back in time, the two get in a fight and Dixie takes her time-travel backpack, jumps back 65 million years, and starts training velociraptors to talk. I could go on but does it really matter at this point? More time travel. More fighting. The two live happily ever after. The End.

I used to get mad at these scripts – when the comedy is so absurd it takes precedence over plot and character. But now I realize different people think different stuff is funny and while I may not have liked it, younger audiences who don’t put a premium on logic and plot progression will probably enjoy it for the same reasons I didn’t.

I do think a world where Logan Paul is president is a funny setup. My issue is that these types of setups are great for a 22 minute episode of Rick and Morty, but become tiring stretched out to two hours. And you can see that play out as you’re reading the script. Once Dixie and Barret enter into a relationship (about 50 pages in), it’s clear the writer doesn’t know where to go. So he goes everywhere. I mean at one point we’re 65 million years in the past listening to a deep conversation between Dixie and velociraptor.

At times, Waldron’s script almost becomes the thing he’s making fun of. Here we are blasting narcissistic millennials obsessed with Instagram stories yet half the script is written in CAPS while being self-referential and breaking the fourth wall (for example, when a fight occurs, we’re told that it will get nominated for an MTV Movie Award for Best Fight). If that isn’t the screenplay equivalent of a douchey influencer posting an Instagram story, I don’t know what is.

I also think there’s a bigger discussion here about writing a script that’s trying to be fun and writing a script that IS fun. When you’re having fun, it comes off on the page. But when you’re TRYING to write that viral fourth-wall breaking screenplay, it can come off as try-hard and your script quickly goes from cool to lame. Deadpool constantly walks this line and one can make the argument the sequel crossed it. You could feel it desperately trying to make you laugh, instead of trusting its story so that the laughs came naturally.

The one thing I’ll give this script is that, just like yesterday’s screenplay, I didn’t know where it was going. I was dreading a 105 page wall-to-wall comedy action flick where Dixie tried to kill Barret the whole time. That’s what most writers would’ve done. One of the most boring things you can do is to hit the same beat over and over again in a screenplay. You have to come up with clever ways to spin the story in different directions so the plot stays fresh. And Waldron achieved that. I was surprised when these two got together. And I didn’t know where their relationship was going to go from there. I think it says a lot about how much readers value unexpected plotlines that both this and The Toe finished highly on the two big End of the Year lists.

In the end, however, this isn’t my thing. I can throw all the screenwriting gobbledygook at you I want to explain why I didn’t like it. The truth is that when we don’t like something, we can come up with a million reasons why. This script was too juvenile for me. But it’s probably just the right flavor of juvenile for someone else.

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

What I learned: Remember that the more words and sentences you cap in a screenplay, the less impact those words have. They become just as normal as uncapped words. Understanding, then, that the point of capping something is to bring to attention to it, use it sparingly, so that you can actually draw attention to the action you want to draw attention to.

Today I encountered something I never thought in a million years I’d read… the female Fight Club.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Hit List) On the night of her 30th birthday, Elizabeth accidentally comes into possession of a very special item…a severed toe. She soon finds herself obsessing over the toe’s owner and, desperate to shake up her own mundane life, must decide whether or not to give in to the darker impulses the toe has stirred within her.
About: Mallory Westfall was nominated for Tisch’s (USC) Oliver Stone Screenwriting Award with her script, Begotten. She has since been a staff wrier on Syfy’s horror series, Channel Zero. She currently works as an executive story editor on AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead.
Writer: Mallory Westfall
Details: 128 pages

Man, for all you Scriptshadow readers yet to graduate high school, I highly recommend going to NYU’s Tisch or USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. I’ve seen a TON of Hit List and Black List writers who attended one of those two schools.

A lot of people ask me if it’s worth going to college for film or screenwriting. If you can get into Tisch or USC, hell yeah. Not only do you get screenwriting teachers who’ve actually worked in the business. But if you can get into one of these schools and network your ass off, meeting and befriending as many people as possible, you will work in this business, one way or another, for the rest of your life.

The irony of today’s script is that it’s nothing like the stuff that usually comes out of these schools. While there is some level of structure present, it’s hardly what you’d call a tight script. For the first half of the screenplay, I had no idea where it was going. Every time I thought, “Oh, it’s THAT kind of movie,” it would change into something else. After awhile, I got frustrated. “What is this???” And then I figured it out. I was reading the female Fight Club.

Elizabeth is turning 30 tomorrow, which sucks because her life’s lame. Turning 30’s fine when everything’s on the upswing. But when you’re stuck in a dead end office job and everyone around you can barely remember your name, it’s no fun.

One day after work, Elizabeth is driving home, and the back door of the truck in front of her bursts open, giving her a view of an entire group of people tied up. One woman in particular, with purple toe nails and a moose tattoo on her leg, locks eyes with Elizabeth. Quickly, a man inside the truck slams the door closed, but not before something flies out of the truck and slams into her windshield. It’s a toe! A toe with purple nail polish!

Elizabeth takes the toe home and begins to worship it. Strangely, it begins to bring her confidence. She starts standing up for herself at work, even swearing in front of her co-workers! Elizabeth becomes obsessed with the toe’s owner, and begins investigating who she might be. This leads her to a mysterious bus stop (which happens to be right across the street from her apartment) where she’s picked up and taken to a warehouse. There she’s terrorized by men in masks who threaten to kill her.

Just when it looks like it’s over, Elizabeth is told that this place isn’t some twisted hellhole, but actually a company where people pay to have the shit scared out of them. The idea is to be “woken up,” jolt your mind so that you start appreciating life again. Invigorated, Elizabeth continues her hunt to find the mysterious, now toe-less, girl. Eventually she meets her at a party for people who have been through the company torture experience, and befriends her.

Keesiah loved her experience with the company but didn’t think they went far enough. So she recruits Elizabeth to give people an even more life-rattling experience, with one twist: They don’t sign up for it. Elizabeth is so obsessed with Keesiah at this point that she goes along with it. But she soon realizes that Keesiah is not mentally sound. And that if she doesn’t do something to stop her, Keesiah will end up killing someone.

I’m torn over this script. On the one hand, it’s weird as hell. On the other, we need more weird scripts like this. This is exactly what’s been missing from The Black List. These used to be on the Black List all the time. But with everyone writing biopics these days (it’s only a matter of time before someone writes a biopic about the person who invented the biopic), there aren’t as many slots for offbeat material like The Toe. So while I have problems with The Toe, I’m happy Westfall wrote it.

The first problem I have is that this script is waaaaaaaaay too long. 130 pages? For a script about a severed toe? Come on. That’s the screenwriting equivalent of a hostage situation. And you don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out why the page count is so high. It takes Westfall 10 pages to establish that Elizabeth is introverted and friendless. Established screenwriters can achieve that in 3 pages with their eyes closed. All you need is one quick scene at the office where it’s clear nobody hangs out with Elizabeth and you’re done.

Whenever I see slow opening pages, I know I’m in for a long read. The opening pages should move the fastest, not the slowest. Get us into the story as soon as you can. After that, the script sort of wanders into this strange romantic relationship between Elizabeth and her toe. This section was also slow. The same beats – Elizabeth needing to be around the toe – were repeated over and over again. Good lord. Screenwriting Rule 8a: Don’t repeat the same beats!

Yet strangely, I wanted to keep reading. The main reason being I had no idea where this was going. Was Elizabeth going to enter into a relationship with the toe, like that movie Lars and the Real Girl? Then later, when she was kidnapped, were they going to kill her? Then later, when she realized it was a company, was she going to expose them? Join them?

It was enough to get me to the point where Keesiah entered the picture. And that’s where the story officially picked up. Once you have a psycho in your script, people are going to keep reading if only to see what that psycho is capable of. It’s no different from Tyler Durden in Fight Club. What was this guy up to? What was he going to do next? A major reason for that movie’s success was the curiosity surrounding that character.

Still, The Toe could’ve been so much tighter. We literally don’t meet Keesiah until page 68. PAGE 68! That’s nuts. We should’ve met her by page 45. Page 55 at the latest (midpoint of a 110 page script, which is what this should’ve been). What happens when you introduce a main character that late is you have to cram their storyline into a much tighter space. If you meet her early, you have time to build up her character, lay out her story, give the character the time they deserve. When does Tyler Durden arrive in Fight Club? By the end of the first act, right?

Then again, there are no rules in this business. If you want to linger, you can linger. If you want to introduce characters late, you can introduce characters late. An argument can be made that that’s why this script was so interesting. The late-arriving plot points kept you wondering where all of it was going. I’m just not convinced that was the plan. I suspect it might have happened by accident.

Still, this was weirdly entertaining. I give it to Westfall for trying something different.

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

What I learned: One of the laziest devices you can use to get your hero out of a complicated situation is to have them hit their head and pass out then cut to later. Late in the script, when Keesiah is making Elizabeth help her sever the fingers of one of their victims, Elizabeth tries to stop her, the two scuffle, and Elizabeth falls, bumps her head, and passes out. This allows the writer to cut to later, with Elizabeth waking up and asking Keesiah what they did. Please writers, STOP DOING THIS! I have lived an entire life without ever seeing someone fall down, hit their head, and pass out. Yet if you read the screenplays I read, you’d think it was a daily occurrence in every single person’s life. If you ever make your character hit their head and pass out, ask yourself if it’s an organic action that makes sense for the story or if you’re just being lazy. If it’s the latter, go back and rewrite it.