I wanted to see Captain America about as much as I wanted to be on that plane that crashed into a helicopter a few weeks ago. Marvel hasn’t just lost its mojo. It’s lost its soul. So when the latest Captain America film made 100 million dollars this weekend, I had to check to see if that was good or not.
It’s actually not bad. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made 113 million. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania made 106 million. If you go back to Marvel’s best time period – Phase 3 – Thor Ragnarok made 122 million. I think, these days, that’s what you’re aiming for with a Marvel movie, is to get that 100 million dollar opening, which Captain America achieved.
EXCEEEEPPPPPPTTTT.
It’s one big lie.
What you’ll see buried in all of the box office reports of this film is that this is not a weekend tally, but rather a 4-day tally, as they’re including box office from the tiniest holiday of the year, President’s Day. The real tally for Captain America is 88.5 million.
This kind of garbage reporting annoys me because: just be honest. It’s not difficult to be honest. You can’t make something true just by saying it. 88.5 million is a different tally than 100 million. Cause it shows that there is a downward trend in these Marvel movie box office takes. Telling yourself it’s 100 million when it isn’t is preventing you from being real about your product and making the necessary changes to fix it.
Marvel has run into the same problem that every other genre, over time, has run into – which is that unless you’re giving us something new and fresh, we’re not going to be excited to see your film. This new Captain America looked like assembly-line superhero filmmaking. That’s not good enough.
But you wanna know what I *was* excited about this weekend? White Lotus! Season Three! Premiere episode! Mike White – a master screenwriter AND a master caster – is back. What does he have in store for us this time? And what tasty little screenwriting lesson morsels has he left for us peasants to chew on?
This time we’re headed to Thailand. We have Belinda, the masseuse from Season 1 who’s here to learn and improve her skills. We’ve got Rick, 55, and Chelsea, 25, a couple dominated by Rick’s nonstop negativity. We’ve got Timothy and Victoria Ratliff, a successful couple. Timothy is hiding from his fam a big negative article that’s about to be written about his company back home.
We’ve got the Ratliff’s weirdo children, Piper, Lochlan, and Saxson. Saxson is an oversexed weirdo who just wants to get laid. Lochlan as innocent as newly churned butter and is unsure of what he wants to do in life. And Piper is the whole reason the family came here. She wants to get an interview with the big Buddhist celebrity on the island, an interview the family is only learning now that she hasn’t secured yet.
Finally we have Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie, three childhood friends who lost touch and are reconnecting on this trip. Jaclyn is a TV star. Kate is her cool successful friend. And Laurie looks to be the loser of the group, and therefore is immediately uncomfortable with the trip.
So, question number 1: How does it hold up to the other seasons of White Lotus so far?
I would put it in third place but that’s not as damning a ranking as you’d think. The first two seasons were amazing. This one, so far, is only very good. There are no stand-out characters yet, although there are definitely a few who have the potential to be. Saxson (Arnold Swarzenegger’s son) is super weird and acts utterly bizarre around his siblings. I’m 70% sure that Mike White is setting up an incest storyline between him and one of the other siblings. Things are going to get messy in The White Lotus Thailand!
Like in previous installments, White has started the story in the future, showing or hinting at a death, then jumping back in time. He does this because he knows that this is a character-driven story and, if you don’t add a little bit of jus to character driven stories, they can fell like any other generic TV show. So we hear gunshots in the opening scene, and they’re coming from multiple directions. If I had to guess, I would say that gang activity has spilled over onto the hotel grounds. I don’t think it’s one of our characters who’s shooting.
If you want to get good at character work, watch Mike White play. This guy is like Mozart for character development. Count how many characters are in this story. There are a dozen.
He not only sets up all one dozen of those characters within 30 minutes (by the midpoint of the first episode). But he sets up the conflict within each group. I read a lot of pilots. Writers CONSTANTLY struggle to set up a single character that’s memorable. To set up 12 and already introduce the main form of conflict within their groups is genius-level screenwriting.
With Rick and Chelsea, Rick has clearly come here with a plan. There’s somebody he wants to meet and when he learns that that person isn’t on the island, he’s furious. This creates a lot of tension in his relationship because Chelsea thinks they’re here to have fun. And she can’t even get her boyfriend to look her in the eyes.
With Timothy and Victoria, the conflict is more deeply embedded and subtle. They have a happy marriage but it’s clear that the level of love that ignited it isn’t there anymore. There’s a quick moment near the end of the episode where Victoria is trying to cheer Timothy up and she’s telling him how lucky he is with all the stuff he has. She starts by saying, “You have this amazing wife…”. And she looks at him and waits for him to confirm but he hesitates. She looks at him a little more sternly and he says, “Yeah yeah, an amazing wife.” We can already see that she wants more than he does.
Their kids are all really weird. That, in and of itself, creates conflict because nobody is in sync with each other. But really, it’s Saxon, who constantly says or does things that are socially uncalibrated (such as hit on women when it’s inappropriate), which makes his siblings feel uncomfortable.
This is actually a great way to create a character who infuses conflict into a story – build a character who is socially uncalibrated. Pretty much everything they say is going to infuse the scene with an uneven tenor. Scenes can never be boring if that character is around.
With the three girlfriends, there’s this clear hierarchy. Jaclyn is at the top. She’s the TV star. She’s had the most success of the three girls. Then you have Kate, who isn’t famous but her husband is extremely successful, which has given her a lot of power and status. Yet, it’s clear that she’s a little bit jealous of Jaclyn’s success. Finally, you have Kate, who is living a normal life. And that normalcy is being spotlighted now that she’s alone with these two extremely successful women. And it’s starting to eat at her. We can see that she’s the first one who finishes her wine and refills it. Cause it’s hard to stay sober around these two where she’s being reminded of her lack of success.
A great screenwriting lesson to take away from this episode is LOOMING PROBLEMS. You should always be adding looming problems to TV shows because TV shows require a lot more time to be filled up. And, therefore, if you don’t place rewards down the road, the viewers will wonder why they’re hanging around for so long.
Here, we get this scene where Timothy takes an urgent call and learns that the Wall Street Journal is about to publish a very damning story about his company this week. And there’s nothing he can do about it. That’s a looming problem – a reason to keep watching the show. We want to see what happens when that news story drops. Will his entire career blow up?
Also, it does so much work for the character in the meantime. Cause every time we come back to Timothy, we can see the weight of that looming problem on top of him. Whether he’s happy, sad, having a good moment, a bad one, scolding his children, enjoying a fishing excursion – it’s another layer on top of the character.
This is how you create three-dimensional characters, guys. You add these layers so that the character is not just who he’s presenting himself to be in that moment. There are other things going on with him.
Ditto for Rick (Walton Goggins). He isn’t coming into this story naked. He brought a story with him. He’s coming here to do something. We don’t know what it is yet but we know it’s consuming him. Which creates the same effect. Everything he does is complicated by this thing that’s looming over him.
What also amazes me about Mike White is that he was able to set up all 12 of these main characters but then he also sets up 8 other characters! There are smaller characters, such as the two hotel workers who like each other. We have Belinda’s son. We have (spoiler) Tanya’s crazy husband back in the mix! We have a potential female love interest for Chelsea.
I don’t know how he does it.
Even if this wasn’t as good as Season 1 or 2, I was riveted the whole way through. This is easily my number 1 show. I can’t wait for next week. Mike White clearly has a plan here. You can see it in how confident he is in all of these characters. My only real complaint is that the title sequence song isn’t as catchy as the first two seasons.
:)
It’s time to learn WHY certain loglines didn’t have the power to push past my discerning eye and make it into the Logline Showdown.
Remember that I’m one person and, just because I didn’t like a logline doesn’t mean someone else won’t.
Which is the main reason I like posting these articles. It gives you some insight into why I choose (and don’t choose) certain loglines.
Let’s get into it!
Title: The Big Return
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Determined to right his father’s wrongs, the son of a legendary master thief embarks on an impossible mission: returning everything his father ever stole — without anyone noticing.
Analysis: I’ve come across ideas similar to this before. There may have even been a Black List script with an adjacent idea. My issue with these ideas is this: What are the stakes? Who cares if he succeeds or not? Let me give you a similar idea that uses stakes to make the concept a lot more exciting. You may recognize it. A history professor recaptures ancient artifacts and puts them back in the museums where they belong. He is then hired to find one of the most famous artifacts of all time, the Ark of the Covenant, before the Nazis get it first and use its powers to win the Second World War. Similar idea. But one adds an incredibly high amount of stakes, which improves the concept considerably.
Title: Help
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When a reclusive billionaire dies, the staff of his secluded estate makes an uneasy pact—hide his death and live in opulence, for once. But as greed, suspicion, and uninvited guests close in, their scheme quickly spirals into chaos.
Analysis: I wanted to include this one because I worked on it with the writer. This is a good example of how a logline and a concept must work in tandem. If they’re working against each other, you’ll always feel like something isn’t clicking. My issue here was not with the logline, but with the concept. My argument to the writer was, why would you risk everything to live in opulence for a week tops? Sooner rather than later, people are going to show up asking what happened to the billionaire. They’re then going to learn he’s been dead for a while and that you didn’t report it. You probably won’t get in a lot of trouble. But you’ll get in some. And for what? To waltz around the same grounds you’ve always waltzed around but this time without having to do any work? Where’s the upside? I told the writer we need a different angle for this to work. For example, add a murder-mystery to the plot. That gives the concept a lot more flexibility.
Title: Trust
Genre: Allegorical Thriller / Crime Drama
Logline: A farming couple on the brink of collapse is further divided when one secretly agrees to smuggle cocaine inside pineapples for a deceptive drifter. As tensions rise, a venomous snake slithers through their farmhouse—an ominous force that threatens to destroy them both in this modern allegory of Adam and Eve.
Analysis: You don’t want to send out loglines that put the burden on the reader to figure out the movie. The logline is supposed to do that for them. This idea starts off being about a struggling couple who decides to engage in criminal activity to pay the bills. Okay, it’s a small idea but it hints at a conflict that could drive a narrative. But then, out of nowhere, a snake arrives. Instead of explaining how this snake will engage in the plot, we’re thrown the very vague explanation of “an allegory of Adam and Eve.” Now it’s my job, as the reader, to guess what’s going on. My first thought is, “Well, if there are three people, then it’s not an allegory of Adam and Eve, is it?” This is what happens when you ask the reader to do the work for you. They will come up with things that I guarantee were not part of your plan.
Title: Override
Genre: SciFi/Action
Logline: When a suicidal but indestructible robot hitman botches his latest assassination, he teams up with the young girl he was supposed to kill when she agrees to give him the code that can rewrite his program and allow him to die, but only if he can help her escape to safety. -Leon the Professional, Logan in a cyberpunk world
Analysis: In my experience, when a logline starts to feel like a run-on sentence, it’s failing. NOT EVERY TIME. But, like, 95% of the time. That’s how this feels. Override is actually a pretty good idea when you break it down. I like the team-up between the hitman and the person he was supposed to kill. And their exchange of duties at the end makes sense based on everything that’s been set up. But there’s something about the abundance of wording that makes it hard to comprehend the logline on a single read. Case in point, I didn’t pick up the word “suicidal” until the third time I read it, which is probably because “suicidal but indestructible robot hitman” is a mouthful. Likewise, when you’re trying to work out the exchange of duties at the end, it doesn’t enter the brain smoothly. You really have to focus hard to get what’s happening. Reading a logline should be effortless. As proof, think of all the loglines that have worked for you. You understood and enjoyed everything after one read, right? You didn’t need an abacus.
Title: The Hunt for the White House
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi
Logline: A defeated Presidential Nominee must convince and unite his former military associates and incoming legislative friends that the opposition party and its nefarious worldwide allies are collaborating when they commit the most traitorous and audacious act in history – utilize radical technology to teleport the White House to an unknown location and exploit the President for their covert demands.
Analysis: This is an example of a cool idea – the White House gets teleported somewhere. It’s a concept I haven’t come across before that contains several different cool story directions it can go. But then you have to wade through a bunch of word salad to get to that part. When I read a logline like that, I think, “If the writer can’t come up with a cohesive presentation of their idea in the logline, why would I expect them to be able to tell a cohesive story through 110 pages?” Either that or they haven’t thought deeply enough about their idea yet to present it. You see, sometimes we come up with pieces of a cool idea rather than a full idea. It’s your job, then, to mold that crumb into a cake. And don’t show anybody that cake until it’s out of the oven!
Title: Omega Critical
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: When Miranda finally gets the chance to run her dream D&D campaign before graduation, she creates an epic, mind-bending adventure where her friends play as different heroes every session. But as the game nears its final showdown, the game begins to mirror her real-life battle for respect and validation from her long-time crush, the group’s former leader.
Analysis: This is the kind of logline you are forced to write once you’ve written a low-concept script. With any movie concept, you’re looking to generate a “special attractor,” that thing that makes the movie stand out from every other movie. Omega Critical has Dungeons and Dragons, which is slightly original. But it’s not big enough to drive people to the theater. That leaves us with the rest of the logline, which is essentially a woman who has a crush on a guy. That’s certainly not big enough to generate box office since anything that can be a subplot in another movie will struggle to be a main plot in its own movie. I bring this up because a lot of people come to me for logline help with these small ideas and they want me to juice them up, make them sound amazing. I can help make loglines sound as good as they can possibly sound. But I can’t make small ideas sound big. To be clear, I think this could be a good script! I’m not knocking its potential at all. But I’m judging it from the perspective of a producer. They read this and think, “Okay, that sounds like… maybe it could be okay.” The only chance you have of someone requesting this script is if they’re really really really into Dungeons and Dragons.
Title: Seeking Relationship Advice
Genre: Romantic comedy
Logline: A formerly anonymous sex and relationship columnist who based her advice on smutty fanfiction must pretend to be in a relationship with her best friend once her column goes viral and she is forced into the public’s eye.
Analysis: This is a pretty good idea. So, why didn’t I choose it? Because it wasn’t different enough. It feels like a movie seen already. It doesn’t have that unique differentiating factor that makes me want to pull the trigger. Some of you may say, “But Carson, you chose some ideas for the showdown that I felt like *I’d* seen already.” Fair enough. This is the subjective nature of picking ideas and it’s why if you gave 10 people these loglines, they would not all choose the same winners. I will say that with an idea like this, a great way to differentiate it is to modernize it. Can we use apps or programs or web sites or modern pop culture in a way to update the concept? Because a relationship columnist may have been common in the 90s. But not so much in 2025.
Title: Dead Stop
Genre: Horror
Logline: During their morning commute, passengers on a city bus are tested when the bus turns out to be a trap set up by a madman who demands one passenger be chosen to be sacrificed before every stop. (SAW meets SPEED)
Analysis: It’s hard for me to articulate exactly why I’m not a fan of this idea. But it comes down to not being a fan of overly forced concepts. This is what I mean: “A woman has 6 hours to run from the bottom of Manhattan to the top and a series of bombs are positioned across the city that will go off every time her heartbeat goes above 110.” For an idea to work with me, it has to meet a certain organic threshold, where it feels natural and believable (at least by movie-idea standards). I know that’s a vague target. I can’t tell you exactly where the line is. I just know that when I read this logline, it felt forced to me. I could feel the writer’s hand. When that happens, I tend not to connect with the idea.
Title: Hell Hole
Genre: Action/Horror
Logline: When a U.S.-Chinese drilling operation in the Arctic breaches the Gates of Hell, the crew must put aside their differences to seal it before its horrors emerge and destroy the world.
Analysis: This concept finished pretty high up in the contest. Which says a lot. Because, often, when the words “gates of hell” are in a logline, I’m out. Mainly because there’s something generic about it all. I just imagine a bunch of generic demons emerging from the ground and now it’s just a video game. Which is the whole reason I stopped playing video games. Every single game was mutated monsters/demons running at you. It didn’t seem like anyone cared about story anymore. So, I think if I had a better idea of what emerged from these Gates of Hell and what kind of plot resulted from their arrival – that would be the deciding factor of me either going in with this or staying out.
Title: How To Train Your Assassin
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When a financial analyst rescues an amnesiac stranger from a crash, he soon discovers she’s a hitman sent to kill him by his corrupt boss. As they grow closer, he must fight to survive, dodging the crypto crime syndicate hunting them while keeping her from remembering why she was sent.
Analysis: I’ll tell you why I wrote off this idea. The word “crypto.” “Crypto” is a word that has become so ubiquitous that it no longer means anything. To me it’s synonymous with “generic.” Therefore, its inclusion had me imagining a generic movie. In retrospect, I wish I wouldn’t have dismissed it so quickly. Cause I do like the idea of someone rescuing an amnesiac who, it turns out, was sent to kill them. And there is some connective tissue with the main character, since he’s a financial analyst. It feels a teensy bit similar to “Unknown.” But if you could create a unique and expansive mythology around this “crypto crime syndicate,” that solves the main problem I had with the idea – that crypto makes it sound generic. It’s not the most original idea but if I did the showdown all over again, I could imagine this logline making the top 10.
Title: Flooded Cage
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Logline: After a tsunami devastates a prison on a remote island, the warden must lead the survivors to higher ground, but when they discover a second, more devastating wave is approaching and rescue becomes increasingly unlikely, order begins to crumble forcing her to face unimaginable decisions.
Analysis: This was definitely one of the top loglines in the competition. I remember earmarking it early on, bringing it into my “maybe” document. But once I had to cut everything down, it was one of the last ideas to go. What’s clever about this idea is the second tsunami. Cause I think most writers wouldn’t have come up with that. And, by doing so, you add this extra element of urgency and tension within a group that historically doesn’t do well with tension. Looking back at this logline with fresh eyes, I’m thinking maybe I should’ve included it.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A broke TaskRabbit in debt to her estranged sugar daddy holds a stolen painting
she’s been tasked to deliver for ransom, leading to a deadly cat-and-mouse chase
across the weirdest corners of New York City.
About: This script finished fairly high on last year’s Black List. It is being produced by Rian Johnson’s production company.
Writer: Caroline Glenn
Details: 113 pages
Anger is helpful in some situations.
I’m not convinced it’s helpful when writing a script.
The pages start to feel more like you’re working out your issues than it does you’re writing a screenplay.
Let’s see where that experiment takes us.
25 year old Parker lives in New York where she’s barely surviving. She’s got her roommate, Hallie, an aspiring actress who does feet stuff on Only Fans. And the two are struggling to make this month’s rent. Parker needs 900 bucks by 8am tomorrow or they’re both kicked out. Parker tells Hallie not to worry. She’ll handle it.
Parker heads out on the town, turning on her Task Rabbit app. She does tasks like taking things out of boxes. Putting together Ikea furniture. Finally, she gets a legit job from someone named Grace, who gives her a box to deliver across the city.
Almost immediately, men start appearing out of nowhere attempting to snatch the box from her. So Grace runs into the M&M store in Times Square, opens the box, and finds a stolen painting worth 50 million dollars. Someone placed a tracker on the painting, which is why all these men are chasing her.
Back with Grace, we meet Ben, her boss slash fkbuddy, who screams at her when he learns that she gave the painting to someone instead of delivering it herself. Parker then calls them and says she knows what the painting is and wants 50 million dollars or she’s going to destroy it.
During this negotiation, her phone dies, which forces her to go to her old Sugar Daddy’s house nearby where she will have sex with him in order to covertly charge her phone and speed off. After she does this, she goes to her cruel ex-boyfriend’s place to steal his gun, just in case she needs it. While there, she talks to a girl who says their mutual friend is Hitler’s great grandaughter.
She eventually meets back up with Hallie, who informs her that these people she’s making a deal with probably aren’t going to give her the money. She then berates Hallie with insults and tells her she’s a terrible actress. We learn that Grace was actually playing Ben and was going to steal the painting from him. So now Parker has to deal with Grace. It’s time to make the exchange. Will she survive? Gosh, I sure hope she doesn’t.
A script that celebrates the worst of humanity – that asks us to endure 15 people who suck – is a hard sell to any reader. And it’s an especially hard sell to me.
The movies that most resonate with me are the ones that offer some element of hope. You’re introduced to a good person who’s struggling. That person then endures two hours of challenges where they keep getting knocked down and keep getting knocked down and keep getting knocked down. Despite all that, they keep getting up, until finally, they overcome the big bad wolf. I then leave the theater thinking, “If they can do it, I can do it.”
I’m not saying that’s the winning formula for all movies. But it’s the winning formula for most of them.
That formula, however, falls apart if the person taking us on that journey sucks.
And Parker sucks.
Throughout this story she demonstrates that she’s selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, judgmental, mean-spirited, not to mention morally bankrupt, as she’s invested a large portion of her life into being a sugar baby.
That’s not to say that a sugar baby character couldn’t be sympathetic under the right circumstances. One of the most beloved characters of all time is Vivan Ward, a prostitute (Pretty Woman). There were major differences in that character, though. She was nice. She was sweet. She had morals. She was funny. She saw the best in others.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
How you shape your main character is crucial, especially when writing something dark. If you’re not careful, the darkness can swallow your script whole, dragging it into the Sarlacc Pit. The experience can easily turn into a bitter, angry cry for help.
This script also proves that GSU is not a guarantee that your script will be good.
Cause this script has tons of GSU.
In fact, it uses the most reliable GSU formula there is:
GOAL – MONEY.
STAKES – IF YOU DON’T GET IT, YOUR LIFE IS OVER.
URGENCY – 12 HOURS.
Money money money money money.
Money, stakes, and urgency have been responsible for hundreds of great movies.
But, if you plop that formula down onto a script with not even a single likable character? It won’t work. Cause a reader isn’t going to be happy if they hate every time a character starts speaking.
And the thing was, the main character here started off so likable! If you would’ve just left that alone, we end up rooting for Parker the whole screenplay. In her first scene, she’s up for a job interview at a museum and when the interviewer makes fun of her lack of education, Parker digs in and fights. She makes strong points about how it isn’t her fault that she couldn’t afford Yale. She worked with what she had. Readers LOVE characters who fight. Love them! So we were all in.
Then Parker proceeded to insult and look down upon every single character who entered the script, even her supposed friends. Every time that happened, I liked Parker less.
So, you’re probably wondering how it is that this script is so high on the Black List. Note that I never said the writing was bad. Actually, it’s quite good. The writer clearly has a voice. I may not like that voice. But there are a lot of unhappy cynical people on the planet who are more likely to resonate with these miserable characters than I am.
And I suppose someone could make an argument that Parker is easier to root for than I’m making her out to be. I just, personally, don’t like people who hate everyone. In their world, they’re the only person on the planet who is worthy and everyone else sucks. That’s Parker in a nutshell.
This had the potential to work. Had you made Parker a good person caught in a bad situation, many of the script’s issues would have resolved themselves. But as it stands, this is the kind of story that lingers in the worst way, leaving the reader drained and disheartened long after they’ve finished.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be mindful of injecting personal commentary into your script. The goal is to immerse your reader so completely in the story that they forget they’re reading (this is the essence of suspension of disbelief). However, if you repeatedly insert your own opinions, especially overtly political or emotionally charged asides, you risk shattering that illusion. The moment the reader becomes aware of the writer’s presence, they’re pulled out of the narrative, making it far less impactful.
A peek into the mind of the modern successful spec script writer
Genre: Not going to tell you
Premise: A young boat cruise bartender who smuggles drugs up and down her ship’s route meets an intriguing but perpetually drunk man who takes an interest in her trade.
About: Zach Dean has been writing scripts that have appeared on The Black List for years. More recently, he wrote the Chris Pratt Amazon sci-fi movie, “The Tomorrow War.” He also wrote Apple’s upcoming “The Gorge.” He kind of reminds me of a supernatural sci-fi Taylor Sheridan. This script sold for big money to Lionsgate. It will star Johnny Depp in what he’s planning to be his big comeback role.
Writer: Zach Dean
Details: 112 pages
When it comes to what type of spec scripts you should be writing to both sell your script and get a movie made, Zach Dean is a good writer to study. He seems to have tapped into this formula for writing scripts in the 2020s that people both respond to and, ultimately, produce.
Like a lot of Zach Dean scripts, there are twists and turns galore in Day Drinker. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read the review. Or, at the very least, seek out the script and read it yourself first. Cause the only way to talk about this script is by talking about its unique plot developments. Someone in the comments section should have access to the script.
Lorna is a bartender on a cruise ship called the MS Amnesia which hobnobs around the coast of Spain, stopping at every little port to allow its passengers to enjoy the wares of Spain and its surrounding countries.
One day, while she’s getting ready for work, a man named Kelly shows up. All Kelly wants is a drink. All Kelly ever wants is a drink. She’s not open yet but she makes an exception. He seems jovial enough. But if there was any indication that this would be romantic, she shuts it down immediately. She doesn’t like men. She likes women. Strangely, Kelly seems unbothered.
When the two get to a port in Morocco, Lorna heads inland where she meets some sketchy dudes. These dudes, who we will later learn are heirs to the infamous Lauzzana crime family, give her a bag full of drugs. It’s clear she hates this job but, for reasons we’ll learn later, has no choice but to do it. She heads back to the ship and stashes the bag in the ceiling of her bedroom.
A few stops later, late one evening, Lorna is approached by two scary dudes who inform her that their bag wasn’t where it was supposed to be. She says that’s impossible. She placed it where she always places it. Before the bad guys can press her on that, Kelly appears. He’s drunk, as usual, and the men tell him to get lost. When he says he won’t, they come at him. And boy is that a mistake. Kelly obliterates them with terrifying precision.
Kelly then takes Lorna aside and asks her about her old girlfriend, who went missing. It then becomes clear why Kelly is here. Lorna’s old girlfriend, who was killed by the Lauzzanas, is Kelly’s daughter.
Cut to Barcelona where the Lauzzanas, headed up by Emile and Cara, learn of the deaths of their men. Furious, they send their sons after him, along with several assassins. Bad idea. Kelly disposes of them as well, leaving only one son to regale his parents with the gruesome details of what happened.
We’re getting into some MAJOR SPOILERS going forward so read at your own risk. Lorna is forced to strike a deal with the Lauzzanas in order to get her young sister back from them. The deal is Kelly. So Kelly is brought in, shot dead by Cara, and presumably, our tale is over. OR IS IT!? Let’s just say that, 24 hours later, a howl is heard across the land. And that maybe, just maybe, Kelly isn’t finished killing yet.
I want to bring to light something that not a lot of people in the industry talk about. Because it’s important for screenwriters to know. When you’ve built a reputation, readers will give you more time at the beginning of your script.
They do this because they assume, even if the script starts slowly, you’ve proven yourself and therefore must be starting slowly for a reason.
Day Drinker takes 30 pages before it hits you with its big first plot point – Kelly has more going on than we thought he did, and is able to effortlessly take down three high level mob enforcers.
I would NEEEEEVVVVVVVER advise a new screenwriter to do this. Wait 30 pages before you write your first entertaining scene? Not a chance. The reader wouldn’t even get to page 5 before they gave up, much less page 30. It’s just me reminding you that new screenwriters operate under a stricter set of rules. Entertain them early. Entertain them often. If you want to pull a slow burn, sell a few scripts first.
So, why did this sell?
Well, I think that, for one, it’s a unique set up. I don’t think I’ve ever read a script that takes place on a cruise ship that’s going up and down the coast, focusing on a single bartender’s relationship with a passenger. I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest setup for a story. But in the world of movies where everybody’s seen everything, you get points for ANY kind of unique setup.
Something else that Dean did well here was the strategic way in which he revealed information. I think a lot of writers are eager to tell you what’s going on in their story. Good screenwriters are more judicious about revealing key information points.
For example, we meet this young girl who’s in Emile’s care. We know that she’s not an official part of the family and that some people, like the mother, dislike her. But we don’t know anything else.
It isn’t until 70 pages into the story, after Kelly takes out Lauzzana’s son, that we reveal this girl is Lorna’s sister. She’s been taken hostage by the family to ensure that Lorna does her job. You could’ve easily told us this 50-60 pages ago. But I would argue it hits harder when you tell us now.
Dean is a good judge of that. He really thinks about information as something that can be split up and dispersed of when he sees fit. And I believe all screenwriters should do the same. Don’t always reveal information at the most obvious moment.
Now, let’s get to the final twist. MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW. I’m sorry but Kelly being a werewolf didn’t work for me. And, just like Dean has strengths, this seems to be one of his big weaknesses. I saw him do it in Tomorrow War and, to a certain extent, in The Gorge as well. He goes ONE MORE BRIDGE FURTHER than he’s set us up for.
Where was the werewolf thing set up?? And what are we supposed to believe here? That Kelly was both a world class secret agent assassin AND a werewolf?? I don’t even know how to process that information. It just doesn’t make sense and also feels like a cop out – a way to give Kelly one last hurrah.
Not that I didn’t want Kelly to win in the end. I was hoping beyond all hope that he somehow managed to survive Cara shooting him. But a werewolf feels too convenient.
Then again, this is Dean’s thing. He likes the supernatural. He likes going nuts towards the end of his stories. So it’s a creative choice. Some are going to like it. Some aren’t. I would just say that if you’re going to go this route, you need to set it up better. Cause it’s a HUGE ASK of the audience when your script has existed in the real world for 100 pages and now it’s going to exist in the supernatural world for the final 15.
I still liked this script, though. Despite its faults, it’s entertaining. It’s definitely higher quality than the current slate of Black List scripts I review on the site. Check it out if you can.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Show don’t tell. There comes a moment in the script where Kelly has to reveal that he’s Lorna’s dead girlfriend’s father. For big moments like this, avoid dialogue if possible. Dean does this by cleverly having Lorna take the locket off of her neck. Inside is a picture of Lorna’s girlfriend when she was a child with her parents. Lorna takes a closer look at the parents in the locket for the first time, and recognizes Kelly. This allows us to easily understand that Kelly is the father of Lorna’s dead girlfriend without a bunch of stilted exposition. Show don’t tell!
Calling it early…
Title: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy
Logline: Two feuding inventors with a lifelong rivalry use their newly created time machines to destroy the other’s past, present, and future, in order to be remembered in history as the father of time travel. TIME AFTER TIME meets GRUMPY OLD MEN
Time of Your Life is one of those ideas that looks like it’s going to be fun to write until you sit down and study the ingredients. Because I sat down to tried to come up with an abbreviated treatment for this script and spent the first 30 minutes staring at the screen with no idea what to do.
Part of the problem is the two protagonists thing. Focusing on two separate protagonists in the same movie is tricky. The easiest script to write is a script with a single protagonist. Cause all you have to do is establish the goal, the stakes, and the urgency for that character and off you go into your story, which will unwind in a straightforward manner.
The second easiest is a two-hander because it works exactly the same way as a single-protagonist narrative, except that you have two characters working towards the goal instead of one. But it will still follow that same basic formula of establishing a goal, attempting to achieve that goal, and running into a lot of obstacles along the way.
An ensemble script (Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Avengers, Toy Story) works by the same rules. The team works as one, essentially making the entire team the protagonist. As long as they all have the same goal (kill Thanos) the narrative will be easy to write.
But Time of Your Life is not that. You have two protagonists which means you have two stories. Which means you have to keep jumping back and forth between the characters as they attempt to pursue their goals (in this case, to take out each other). But because you’re splitting things up, you’re writing two 55-page scripts (each that follows a protagonist with a goal) as opposed to one 110 page script. In my experience, when you try and do that, the script becomes clunky.
So, how do you solve that problem? The most obvious way would be to have one scientist be your hero and the other the villain. We’d then give 65-70% of the screen time to the hero and 30% to the villain. This would allow us to create the GSU aspect of the story with our hero and our villain just keeps getting in the way.
I’m also having a hard time imagining what it is each character does to sabotage the other. I mean how dark do we want to go here? If we want to go full-on, then they’d go back in time to try and prevent the other from ever being born. Possibly even killing them when they’re a kid. It wouldn’t take much research to figure out when, in the 12 years that their rival was a child, a period where they were alone and vulnerable for 30 minutes. So, just go to that time and kill them. Problem solved.
If you want to make this a lighter execution of the concept and take murder off the table, the reader (and audience) is going to ask that question: “Why would that be off the table?” But let’s say it was.
If I were a producer guiding the development of this script, I would be wary of continuing to jump back in time a dozen times. It will get too messy. And it will reinforce the one time travel rule you don’t want floating around in the reader’s head, which is that it doesn’t matter if they succeed or fail because they can always jump back and try again.
Instead, I’d try and focus on one specific leverage point in the Scientist’s life and build the opposing scientist’s goal around that. For example, if Scientist A were to figure out that, back when Scientist B graduated from college, he had an amazing opportunity to join a tech company that would later be the place where he’d discover time travel, and he also learned that Scientist B was in love with a young woman at the time and had to make a decision between her and this company, then Scientist A could go back in time, befriend the girl, and try everything in his power to have her win over Scientist B, so he would never go off to work at the company.
You could then have Scientist A inadvertently start to fall for this girl himself. Then, in the future, you could have Scientist B figure out what Older Scientist A was doing and then go back to let his younger self know what’s going on. Maybe he even recruits the older version of this woman to help him convince his younger self not to end up with her. Now you’ve got five characters in one timeline all operating against one another, which feels more manageable to me than jumping back to the 90s to stop a scientist, then the 80s when that didn’t work, then the 70s when that didn’t work.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Back to the Future, which only goes to one time period, is simple and easy to follow, whereas Back to the Future 2, which goes to four different time periods, is clunky and not as enjoyable. So you need to find a structure like the one I presented above that’s actually manageable.
But I’m willing to stay open-minded. When I look at the AI-generated poster from above, all that stuff *does* look exciting. I would love to have dinosaurs in this story somehow. But can you do it in a way where it’s organic and makes sense? That’s the question. Colin has had this idea for a while but he can’t crack it. Well, Scriptshadow Nation, here’s your chance to crack it for him.
:)
