Genre: Horror
Logline: Trapped by a blizzard in a remote truck stop as it burns to the ground, a recovering addict and her young daughter must fight for survival against an alien horror
Why You Should Read: I hope everyone has room for holiday leftovers as this is my version of a Christmas story. There are some holiday family film tropes, but with minor deviations. When some travelers get stranded at a mountain truck stop during a brutal blizzard, they don’t discover the real meaning of Christmas or the importance of family. There’s no time for any of that treacle when you’re cowering in pants-filling terror. Unfortunately, the nocturnal visitor isn’t Santa Claus. It’s a grotesque alien creature that interrupts the festivities in a grisly way. The young child isn’t slumbering with visions of dancing sugarplums in her head, the reality is that she’s doing something very disturbing in the storage room. There’s no Yuletide log burning, instead the whole damn place catches fire. A goodhearted mall Santa is present, but he dies a horrible death, poor bastard. Where eggnog is the disgusting holiday beverage that is typically consumed, in this story the monster liquifies the internal organs of its paralyzed prey and slurps the bloody puree like some ghastly smoothie. (which is nearly the same drink, in my opinion) I appreciate anyone who takes a peek at the script and am grateful for any comments/notes. Thanks.
Writer: Jeff Debing
Details: 109 pages
Monster in a box.
It’s the oldest movie setup in the world.
I’d go so far as to say if you write a monster in a box screenplay, you increase your chances of selling that screenplay by a thousand percent. The genre will always be one of the easiest to market.
But there are a couple of catches to writing one of these scripts. First, your angle must be somewhat original. There has to be SOME element of “I haven’t seen this before.” And second, your execution needs to be on point. This setup is so ubiquitous that if you’re executing it by the numbers, it’s going to feel like every other monster-in-a-box movie.
Does It Drinks You pass this test? I’ll let you know in a minute.
Allison Evans is just now recovering from a pain medication addiction that was the result of a nasty car crash where her husband was killed. She’s heading up to the snowy mountains where her father-in-law, Dick, runs a truck stop diner/motel. Dick has been taking care of Allison’s daughter, Cordelia, while Allison went through rehab. Allison’s finally going to get her daughter back.
While this is going on, Zachary Yates, a young soldier, is escorting his superior, Will Venton, with a truck full of top secret canisters. The further both parties get into the mountains, the snowier it gets. Soon after Allison’s car gets caught in a snowdrift, Venton’s truck comes up behind her, sees the obstacle at the last second, swerves, and the truck goes plummeting down a hill.
Allison runs down, gets the injured Yates out, and the two carry a comatose Venton back up to her car, which they’re able to get started again and drive up to Dick’s Truck Stop. Once there they call 911 to come get Venton, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to be able to drive here until morning. Meanwhile, a reluctant Dick makes it clear he sees Allison as an addict and doesn’t want her taking care of his granddaughter.
While this is going on, some sort of creepy spider (called a “Spiderlike”) crawls out of Venton’s mouth. The Spiderlike creature operates by spitting venom into your body, turning your innards into liquid, and then drinking them. Yummy. Unbeknownst to anyone, the Spiderlike begins creeping around and killing the truck stop folks one by one, growing bigger with every kill.
Unfortunately for Yates, everyone thinks he’s the one killing people, forcing him to play a game of hide and seek around the truck stop. It isn’t until well into the story that Dick and the truckers realize that it’s a really creepy spider killing everyone. But by then, it’s too late. The Spiderlike is lining up his kills like a good bowler lines up pins. Since it’s too cold and dangerous to flee, it will be up to Allison and her terrified daughter to kill this nasty creature.
It Drinks You passed!
Okay, I wouldn’t say I needed to keep reading (that’s my ultimate hope for the First 10 Pages Challenge – for someone to write something so captivating that the reader NEEDS to keep reading). But I definitely wanted to.
The script starts with the aftermath of the spider attack. We show up and see this truck stop burned to the ground with only one survivor. I’m intrigued. I want to keep reading. Allison’s introduction also intrigues me: “Despite her wrung-out appearance, her haunted eyes often show a glimpse of determined hope.” What happened to this woman? Then we cut to these military folks preparing to leave their facility with secret canisters. Hmm, what does the military have to do with this situation? Want to keep reading. Very quickly after this we get the car crash. Something is happening immediately. I want to keep reading. By the time we get to the truck stop, we’re 10 pages into the story and firmly invested. Nice job!
In addition to passing the First 10 Pages Challenge, Debing does a great job setting up his main characters – Allison, Dick, and Cordelia. I like that Allison is coming to pick her daughter up from a man who doesn’t trust her. I like that she’s responisble for Dick’s son’s death (in her car crash that brought on her addiction). There’s a lot of meat there, so I know we have more to play with in this story than monsters running down hallways with characters screaming.
Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends. The second I saw two legs creep out of Venton’s mouth, I thought, “Alien.” And I never stopped thinking that throughout the rest of the screenplay. You’ve got a creature that looks like a spider (which is how the Alien creature starts out) and gets inside of people to kill them. Yeah, the rules are a little different. But I’d argue they’re different in a worse way. The Alien creature has the dramatic climax of bursting out of people when it’s finished with them. The Spiderlike simply craws out.
In addition to that, the central relationship revolves around a mother and a daughter, which, of course, is the central relationship in Aliens, the sequel to Alien. So now I’m just thinking about Alien more.
I also had some problems with the execution. First of all, there’s a manhunt to kill Yates when everyone believes he’s a murderer. But while Dick and the truckers go looking for him, the rest of the characters are sitting around chilling out most of the time. If you think there’s a murderer out there, why is half the group so relaxed?
Even worse is when Allison voluntarily leaves her daughter with someone else. You’ve set this very elaborate backstory up so that this woman is finally reuniting with her daughter. And then she just lets her hang out with someone else, with a crazed murdering soldier out there, no less? It didn’t make sense.
When you have these monster in a box group situations, you have to be careful about splitting people up. I understand that there will be groups within the group. But if you’re going to separate everyone, it’s best to have a scene where someone lays out a plan. One of those, “We’re going to be looking for him here. You guys all need to stay here” talks. You can’t have it so people aren’t communicating when something this dangerous is going on. You need that person who lays down the law: THIS IS WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO. Ripley is a perfect example of that in Aliens.
Debing is a good writer. You can tell this is written by someone who has been at this for awhile. It’s very professional. He understands how to set up a story and how to keep it moving. He also understands the little things, like how a brief action (Allison trying not to take her prescription pill bottle but ultimately surrendering to it) can tell us a lot about a character. But ultimately this story is too familiar. It’s too similar to Alien.
With that said, I see familiar stuff get made all the time. So I’m not saying this doesn’t have a chance of getting picked up. But I think Jeff needs to rethink his monster so that it doesn’t feel like an Alien clone, and a lesser Alien clone at that. This was the same issue that the dreadful “Life” ran into. They tried to do Alien but with a monster 1/100th as cool as Alien.
Anyway, you’ve got the chops Jeff. Send in something more original for another Amateur Offerings and I’m sure it will do well.
Script link: It Drinks You
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Remember that step father and father-in-law situations aren’t the easiest for readers to pick up on. So you have to be clear with them. I thought for a good 40 pages that Dick was Allison’s father. I didn’t know he was her dead husband’s father, which made their relationship so much more interesting (with her being responsible for his son’s death). It would’ve been nice to be clear on that right away.
What I learned 2: Genius move to give Allison burn marks all over her body (from the previous crash with her husband). Actors and actresses freaking LOVE THAT. It’s actor crack. Stuff like that honestly improves your chances of getting an actress attached.
It’s back. Live breakdowns of First 10 Pages submissions! For those of you unfamiliar with the First 10 Pages Challenge, you can go back to the original post here. You can also check out my breakdown of five entries from last week. The short of it is you’re trying to write 10 pages that are impossible to put down. In order to emphasize this, I will stop reading someone’s entry the second I get bored. If that’s the first line, that’s the first line.
Now there have been some commenters who question the point of this exercise. Don’t listen to them. This exercise is one of the most important you will ever learn when it comes to screenwriting. It is teaching you two invaluable lessons. The first is the importance of grabbing the reader right away. And the second is being able to write an un-put-downable scene on command.
I’m hoping today’s analysis helps you understand where a reader might lose interest and why. In case you were wondering, I’m picking these entries at random. I’m not reading through scripts and finding the best examples for my argument. If your pages show up today, use the feedback to go back in and improve them. Or write something better. Most writers never experience this – someone detailing, out loud, why they gave up on a screenplay. So take advantage of it and get better.
You have until Sunday, February 10th, 11:59pm to submit your First 10 Pages. If you’d like to do so, send them to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line “FIRST 10 PAGES.”
Let’s get started!
The very first thing I read here is a character introduction. However, there’s no character description. Without a description, I’m imagining the most generic version of a man possible. Here’s a description of the main character from yesterday’s Black List script: “Drudge has a twitchy demeanor and horrific posture. He talks with a weird sense of confidence despite a nasally voice and the occasional stutter.” Do you see how big of a difference that makes?
Next, the character’s big action in the first image of the movie is to rub away a smudge. Now I know what the writer is thinking in this moment. He’s using it to tell us something about this character. And that’s a good instinct to have. But it doesn’t matter if the action itself is boring. The second we then cut to a shot of the sun, I’m finished. This is the opposite of immediately capturing our interest. You have to hook us right away. You can’t start with a boring action and follow it up with a static establishing shot.
What is it with writers and the sun? A reposting of Brenklco’s best comment ever: “Pretty sure that a reader who’s had to read thousands of screenplays no longer gives a f&%k what the sun and moon are doing or how they’re doing it.” We also have no space between the slugline and the action lines. Since all screenwriting programs do this automatically, this tells me the writer doesn’t have a screenwriting program, and therefore isn’t as serious about the craft. But even if you’re just broke (which some writers are – I get it), you should still know that you can’t do this.
The good news is, something is happening. We’re moving through the woods. We’re obviously pursuing something. And that’s enough to get me to keep reading. I want to find out what these characters are after. Unfortunately, the second it’s revealed that they’re after a deer, I’m out. I’ve read hundreds of deer-hunting scenes, many of those with a father and a son (and the son usually lacks the courage to shoot). I was hoping for something more exciting and original.
Before I even get to the first line of action, I’m confused. The slugline says this is a “mine shaft” and a “tower.” Aren’t those two different things? One’s underground and one’s way above it? I was literally about to give up on the slugline. But I figured, mine’s are interesting. I don’t encounter them in screenplays that often, so I keep going. I like that Jim is about to do something dangerous. That’s the one thing keeping me reading here. The strange double-space between Jim’s final line of dialogue on the first page throws up a red flag. Dan talks about arrangements for their sister. I’m not sure what that means. What arrangements? Seems strange to bring up now either way. The daughter line with the cheese grater to the dick is a jarring contrast to everything that’s been said so far. It sounds more like a comedy script line. So that’s where I stop.
I’m glad this one came up because it’s a common mistake writers make. The writer here starts out with a scene that has the potential to be interesting. A human is being born artificially. But they don’t do anything with it. All that happens is this clone is born and they’re put into a chamber. That’s not interesting. Think about how Neo is woken up in The Matrix. He’s bald, he’s in this endless tower of clones, a machine comes up and detaches a mechanism from his head, he’s flushed down some tube. Something is HAPPENING in that scene. This is just a quick empty moment of a clone being born. There’s not enough going on to hook us. I’d rather the writer build an entire scene around this than simply showing us a brief non-contextualized moment, a moment that is, quite frankly, one we’ve seen before.
I want to make something clear about this page. It’s fine. It’s completely fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. But that’s not the exercise. The exercise is not to write something that’s fine. It’s to write something that a reader can’t put down. It would make your head spin to know how many scripts I read that start with terrorists doing something. So the second I see that this is another one, I’m already checking out. I can’t figure out if experiencing this through CNN footage is better or worse than experiencing it as it happens, but I don’t think think it matters because this is a garden variety terrorist attack to begin with. If you want to give us a terrorist attack, it has to be a type of attack we haven’t seen before. Or it has to be executed in a way we haven’t seen before. Or preferably both. Another issue here is that no character is introduced. So there’s no one to latch onto and care about. This might as well be CNN on my own television. So again, there’s nothing wrong with this page. But that’s not the goal. You’re trying to blow the reader away. Make it impossible for them to stop reading.
For those wondering, I’ve read about 30% of the entries so far. And to answer the obvious follow-up question: I haven’t made it through an entire 10 pages yet. Mainly because writers are making mistakes like the ones highlighted in today’s entries. Hopefully, this gives you some insight in to how to make your pages better. Get back in there and keep trying!
Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of how oddball internet reporter Matt Drudge broke the Lewinsky Scandal and nearly took down a presidency, all from a desktop computer in his one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood.
About: Today’s script is the 4th most liked script of 2018. Cody Brotter is a Boston University graduate who’s written for TV, most notably on the show, Comedy Knockout. He also has a podcast, Hollywood Terriers, where he interviews fellow BU graduates in the entertainment industry.
Writer: Cody Brotter
Details: 118 pages
Today we have a totally original screenplay idea that was conceived 100% from someone’s imagination. Just kidding. We have another biopic from the Black List. Writers be working hard on ideas these days. There will come a time – it may be after the Apocalypse with only 20 people left on earth I’m sure – but there will come a time where writers once again attempt to create original stories. Until that time, it’s a biopic world. The rest of us are just living in it.
With that said, if you want to get on Franklin Leonard’s Biopic List, there are two things you can do to improve your chances. One is to find an underdog story. And two is to paint your hero as sympathetically as possible. “Drudge” does both. And once you get past the frustration you feel from having to read another biopic, you realize it does them quite well.
We’re introduced to Matt Drudge through his parents, both staunch liberals who are getting divorced after 15 years. The two are in court for a custody hearing. Except this isn’t your average custody hearing. Instead of the parents fighting FOR custody of their son, they’re fighting to get rid of him. The dad is too busy starting a new family to take him and the mom can’t keep up with Drudge getting in trouble. The judge stares on, flabbergasted. He’s never seen this before.
Cut to a decade later (the early 90s). Twenty-something Matt has moved to Hollywood with no money and managed to beg his way into a Gift Shop job at CBS Studios. When his father flies in for business (not for him), he’s so disgusted by his son’s life, he buys him a computer out of pity. This was right when AOL was sweeping the nation and everyone was talking about getting on this “world wide web” thing.
Little did Matt know, that computer was about to change his life. Through his job, Matt would hear CBS employees gossiping about box office results and who was getting fired, so he started a little newsletter (The Drudge Report), sending this information out to people. It wasn’t long before people began e-mailing HIM to get on the list.
A young conservative named Andrew Breitbart called Matt to meet, and was soon working for him, developing a web page version of the newsletter. The more politically-inclined Breitbart encouraged Matt to include more political news, and that’s where things got interesting. Back then, everyone was still operating by the journalistic rules that had been set up for over a century. You couldn’t just print something. You had to do your “due diligence.” Well, this wasn’t a publication. It was an internet site. So if Drudge got a hot scoop, he could just post it.
A group of young female conservative pundits (pundettes) in D.C. (Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, and KellyAnne [soon to be] Conway) recognized they could use this to their advantage. The three were trying to take down Bill Clinton through all of his philandering but the Clinton-loving liberal media were dragging their feet about posting these stories. So they asked Drudge to post them. And he did.
This began a two-front war. The first with the White House and the second with traditional media. You couldn’t just post a story like that, the news networks said. That was… that was… well, you just couldn’t! But Drudge did. And then, when the bombshell story of Monica Lewinsky hit the airwaves and the traditional media still wouldn’t report it (supposedly due to liberal bias), Drudge was all too happy to. And that’s how a little nobody reporter working out of a one bedroom apartment broke one of the biggest news stories in history.
Drudge is a good screenplay mainly because this is a good story. It’s a strange depiction of a person though. I can’t tell if Brotter loves or hates his main character. He starts off painting him with a sympathetic brush. Who’s not going to root for a guy who was abandoned by both of his parents? However, Brotter relentlessly makes fun of his hero’s thinning hair, repeatedly uses the word “creepy” to describe him, and relishes in his lack of friends.
I just don’t understand why you would write a story about somebody you detested. This is why I’m uninterested in seeing Vice. Both Adam McKay and Christian Bale call Dick Cheney the devil. Well if you can’t look at someone objectively, how are you going to portray them accurately?
And yet Drudge works. At least for me it did. Part of that is I went through something similar on a smaller scale. For example, I must’ve received hundreds of e-mails when I started Scriptshadow from people telling me “You can’t do this.” And when I asked them why, the answer was basically, “because it’s always been done this other way.” And I was like, “Well tough cookies. Things are changing.” There will always be resistance to change but, in the end, you can’t change progress.
I do think the script missed some opportunities though. I liked this idea of Drudge’s parents being liberals and Drudge running a conservative website to get back at them. But it’s only casually explored. If Drudge wasn’t actually conservative, but doing this solely to stick it to his father, that would’ve made his character a lot more complex. Maybe with a few more drafts Blotter can explore that angle more.
But by far, the biggest takeaway from this script is the importance of creating sympathy for your hero. You want to do that right away. The cheap way is to have your character give a homeless person a 20 dollar bill (or some do-gooder equivalent of that). Good screenwriters don’t go the cheap route, however. They work harder. Here we create sympathy for Drudge without even meeting him. We see his parents in court trying to pawn him off on each other. Right then, we feel sorry for this guy, and we haven’t even met him yet.
I will continue to rail against biopics. I’m so bored by the genre at this point. But the underdog nature, the high stakes, and the relentless pace of this script made it worth the read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned 1: This was a great character description. You should aim for a character description as specific as this every time out: “Drudge has a twitchy demeanor and horrific posture. He talks with a weird sense of confidence despite a nasally voice and the occasional stutter.” I know exactly who this guy is after that description.
What I learned 2: The most clever thing Brotter did here was identify that there are major controversial players today (Laura Ingraham, KellyAnne Conway, and Ann Coulter, an Andrew Breitbart) who played a big part in a story that happened a long time ago. This makes an older story feel current. So if you’re going to write a biopic about someone in the last 30 years, it will have more punch if some of the players in that story are relevant today. For example, if you’re writing a biopic about Rudy Giuliani centering on 9/11 (oh God, I hope I’m not giving anyone ideas), you know you can include a young Trump in that story.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: In the far-off future, where the galaxy is protected by an equation that watches over them, an evil force arrives, putting the equation, and all who believe in it, in doubt.
About: The Hugo award-winning Foundation series was said to be one of the influences for George Lucas’s Star Wars, and you can see why almost immediately as its main villain, The Mule, is tall and hidden behind a suit and mask. A defining image even has The Mule choking someone, their feet dangling just off the ground (Foundation also has a “Galactic Empire”). Hollywood has been trying to figure out how to turn Foundation into a movie forever, and the property has endured many failed adaptations. This is one of those adaptations, written in 2004, by Jeff Vintar, for Fox. Vintar was hot at the time, having just written a movie (I, Robot) for the biggest movie star in the world (Will Smith). Unfortunately, Vintar does not have a credit since then. A reminder of just how brutal this town is!
Writer: Jeff Vintar (based on the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov)
Details: 110 pages
We’ve been talking about Hollywood’s recent obsession with short stories lately. Well guess what? Foundation started off as a series of short stories! I’m telling you, folks. You want to get Hollywood’s attention? Write a kickass short story. And if nothing comes of it but you still love your story, do what Asimov did – expand it into a novel.
I’ve actually tried to read Asimov’s Foundation series several times, only to fall into the Roma trap. I read for five minutes, get bored, try again the next day, read for 10 minutes, get bored, try again the next day. Ultimately it was the mythology that stopped me. It was goofy and weird and hard to get into. Before you throw your weirdo mythology at me, you have to rope me in with the characters. Star Wars doesn’t start with someone explaining the Force. The Matrix doesn’t start with someone explaining the Matrix. But Foundation starts with someone explaining Foundation, and it reads like the musings of the weird kid draped in black in the back of your class who eats his dandruff.
Doctor Hari Seldon is standing trial for spreading fear amongst the people. He has predicted, due to his expertise in “psycho-history” (what???), that within three centuries, the quadrillion human beings spread throughout the galaxy will all die. However, if humanity listens to Seldon’s equation, the galaxy will survive this implosion and rise again in 1000 years. The judges think this is whack, so they kill Seldon.
However, Seldon’s psycho-history equation is followed anyway, and 1000 years later, humanity is thriving, just like he predicted. This equation, guarded by an elite political force known as the Foundation, keeps writing the future, and telling the Foundation what to do so that peace and prosperity remain. Unfortunately, the Foundation becomes too dependent on the equation, and when a man named The Mule takes over an entire planet, they have no idea what to do.
Bayta, a spy working against the Foundation, is on that planet. After the Mule loses his main sidekick, a Gollum-like character named Magnifico, Bayta finds and befriends him. A Foundation officer named Pritcher is also on the planet, as he happens to be looking for Bayta so he can arrest her. But after the Mule takes over, the two are forced into a shaky alliance. The three of them fly off in Pritcher’s ship, and head to the Foundation headquarters on Terminus, where Seldon’s equation resides.
Once on Terminus, Bayta tries to tell the Foundation dummies that their equation doesn’t work, that The Mule is coming for them. But they don’t believe it. The equation hasn’t let them down in centuries. Why would it now? Needless to say, they eat their words. But not the way they expect to. A shocking arrival from someone other than the Mule informs them (spoiler!) that they are not being protected by the equation, but rather, the culmination of it, a sacrifice that will ensure peace and prosperity reign after they are destroyed.
Foundation is a script with a high burden of investment. You have to learn a complex mythology if there’s any chance of enjoying the story. This is the challenge any fantasy or sci-fi writer faces: Keeping things entertaining while explaining all the rules. Which is why you rarely see these scripts succeed as specs.
Nobody in Hollywood wants to learn a giant new mythology in a spec script. They’re only okay with it when it’s a book adaptation. This is why I nudge sci-fi and fantasy writers away from giant stories. If you love these genres, find a tighter more contained story to tell. Source Code over the next Star Wars. Bright over the next Lord of the Rings. There are a few instances of heavy mythology specs succeeding. Killing on Carnival Row comes to mind. But for every 1 that shines, 100,000 are rejected. So proceed with caution.
To Vintar’s credit, once he establishes the rules, the story moves well. I liked that mere seconds after setting up Bayta, her planet is attacked. It’s not easy to make these giant lumbering stories move quickly. In the book, I’m sure we’re cutting between several different planets, setting up numerous plotlines and characters before this happens. But Vintar understands that this isn’t a book. It’s a movie. And in a movie, the engine has to run at a higher RPM.
But where the script really excels is in the characters. Each character had more going on than what was on the surface. For example, Bayta was a loving honeymooner. Until we found out she was a spy trying to take down the Foundation. Pritcher was a businessman. Until we found out he was a spy trying to take down Bayta. The Mule also had secrets, as did Magnifico and Hari Seldon. What you saw wasn’t always what you got. And that kept things interesting.
In fact, it led to the best moment in the script (MAJOR SPOILER). When we find out Magnifico is The Mule. Now you’re probably wondering how someone who’s read everything could be duped by what, in retrospect, seems like something I should’ve figured out. Especially since Magnifico was acting so sketchy the whole movie. The truth is, Vintar cleverly introduces The Mule searching for the escaped Magnifico. So how could they possibly be the same person? If you’re ever going to pull a surprise character reveal, you have to set up a moment earlier in the script that ensures we’ll never make that connection. And that’s exactly what Vintar did with these two.
The only problem with Foundation is the lack of imagination regarding the future itself. 1000 years in the future and we’re all still biological beings with an 85 year lifespan? And pretty much every aspect of life is exactly the same as it is today, the only difference being we have more planets to live on? This is the problem with setting things too far in the future. While it’s easy to imagine what things will look like 100 years from now, it’s impossible to imagine what they’ll look like 500 years from now. So you should think long and hard about anything too far forward in time. Unless you’re talking about an apocalyptic scenario. Then you don’t have to worry about technology.
All things considered, Foundation is a fun script. Can it survive in the ultra-competitive feature market against titans like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy? I don’t think so. But it could be a cool TV show, which I hear is where they’re planning to go with it. So that’s good.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Mythology before character equals gobbledy-gook – In screenwriting (I’m distinguishing between novels here), if you try and throw mythology at the audience too quickly, it will come off as gobbledy-gook and they will rebel. Imagine if you read my story, which started with a guy named WOZAR who lived in Rashclank, which is the moon-tree capital of NUNGO, the fifth biggest asteroid in the BLICK-7 BELT. Wozar is currently finishing up his degree in The Kl’ar’ens, an ancient belief system that allows people to transport to other parts of the universe through dream-dodging. Are you going to keep reading? Of course not. Instead, start by connecting the reader with your characters. Once we feel something for your characters, we’re more willing to invest in the eccentric parts of your universe.
Hang tight, everyone. Today’s script review is coming soon. In the meantime, feel free to make over-the-top opinionated statements about the Oscars since that’s what we do. I still haven’t seen all the best picture nominees myself. The problem with these movies is all of them fall under the “I guess I have to see that” category, lol. None of them are movies you actually want to see, save for Black Panther. Are those really the movies we want representing Hollywood? Movies that people begrudgingly agree to see?
The Oscars are experiencing a major identity crisis at the moment. The Oscar board feels that they need to celebrate smaller more diverse films while the industry in general is worried that ratings will keep plummeting unless they start celebrating mainstream films (which is why the Oscars announced and then cancelled the addition of a “Mainstream” category early last year – the Oscars have been doing that a lot lately, announcing and then cancelling something immediately afterwards). The only film in these three categories that I have strong feelings about is Buster Scruggs. I want that to win Adapted Screenplay. And then, going the other way (I don’t want it to win), maybe Roma. The fact that that movie is nominated for a screenwriting award goes to show that nobody in the Academy understands screenwriting. Interested to hear if anyone’s seen these films and what they thought. Is there a sleeper I’ve written off here I should give a chance to?
Best Picture
Black Panther
Kevin Feige, Producer
BlacKkKlansman
Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Raymond Mansfield, Jordan Peele and Spike Lee, Producers
Bohemian Rhapsody
Graham King, Producer
The Favourite
Ceci Dempsey, Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday and Yorgos Lanthimos, Producers
Green Book
Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga, Producers
Roma
Gabriela Rodríguez and Alfonso Cuarón, Producers
A Star Is Born
Bill Gerber, Bradley Cooper and Lynette Howell Taylor, Producers
Vice
Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, Producers
Adapted Screenplay
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
BlacKkKlansman
Written by Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
If Beale Street Could Talk
Written for the screen by Barry Jenkins
A Star Is Born
Screenplay by Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper & Will Fetters
Original Screenplay
The Favourite
Written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
First Reformed
Written by Paul Schrader
Green Book
Written by Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly
Roma
Written by Alfonso Cuarón
Vice
Written by Adam McKay
