But Mega-Showdown is Ready to Rise!

It was not a good weekend to be any writer who liked ballet. Etoile, on Amazon, didn’t even make it to its second season. And now we’ve got Ballerina, toe-scuffing its way to a 25 million dollar opening.

I don’t think you need to look far to figure out what happened here. The issue is two-fold. You can’t just create a brand new character in a universe and hope we’re going to love them. It doesn’t work that way. The way it works is you prove yourself as a secondary character in a bigger franchise. The audience falls in love with you. Then you go make your own movie (or TV show).

This formula has worked for decades. I don’t know why you think you can change it. It speaks to the value of great character writing. Creating a strong character that audiences resonate with remains the hardest thing to do in screenwriting. Which we’ll talk about more in a second.

The other problem was that Ana De Armas is not a movie star. It’s not even that audiences don’t like her. It’s that they don’t REMEMBER her. She doesn’t have that “must see” quality that only a dozen people in this profession have. The combination of those two things doomed this movie.

It’s too bad because Ballerina, as some of you remember, started out as a spec sale. This was one of those dream scenarios for a screenwriter. Most spec sales get stuck in forever-development. For your script to be pulled into a billion dollar franchise is the stuff dreams are made of. The fact that the movie has now flopped means less of that will happen in the future.

But I’m not here to dwell on the negative. I want to focus on the positive: What can we learn from this? Especially considering that the greatest screenplay competition is coming back to Scriptshadow. How can you use the lessons from Ballerina to create better characters and win the Mega-Showdown?

One of the tougher lessons I’ve learned over the years is that you come into every script with a handicap. With studio scripts, your hero must be grounded in reality. They can’t be wacky or wild or untethered. Why is this problematic? Because grounded people are boring. How’s that for a challenge: With every studio script, you must figure out a way to make your boring hero compelling.

The default solution to this is to make them likable. There’s only one problem with this. Likable people are still boring. We want to find a way to make these characters COMPELLING.

Lucky for you, I know how to pull this off.

You have to lean into real life and create a flaw for your hero that’s relatable and that resonates with others. You have to see grounded characters as an advantage. It allows you to explore the “real shit” and the “real shit” is what everyday people relate to.

Let’s say you want to write about someone who’s stubborn, someone who only sees the world the way they want to see it. It is their way or the highway. They are such a prisoner to their world-view that they cannot accept the views of anyone else around them, even their closest friends and family.

That may seem like a relatively boring flaw on the surface. But if you truly commit to it and explore it like you were researching a real person in real life, that character is going to feel REAL to the audience.

Once you achieve that reality in their eyes, they can now compare that person to people THEY KNOW. This is the trick to getting audiences to become obsessed with a character – when the character becomes a stand-in for real people.

This means that reading your script, or watching your film, offers the viewer the chance to CHANGE THEIR LIVES by reading your script to the end. You see, to them, if your hero can change, it means their friend or family member can change too! So they have no choice but to read to the end.

If you want to see this play out in a movie, check out Hoosiers. When Gene Hackman died last month, I watched a few of his old movies, including this one. Sure, it’s a formulaic sports movie about a tiny basketball team trying to win the state championship.

But what elevates it beyond the traditional sports flick is this stubborn coach at the center of the story – this guy who only does things his way. The writer and Hackman committed to that flaw so thoroughly that the character became real to the audience. I knew people like that Coach. Seeing him gradually bend and listen to others gave me hope that the people I knew could change as well.

Do you see what’s happening here? Your script is connecting the imaginary world (yours) with the real one (theirs). Now you’re playing in 4-D space and this is when movies become magical.

Absent a flaw, the other thing you can do to make us care about your main character is to create a genuine relationship in their life that contains an issue that is unresolved in some way.

I use the word “genuine” aggressively. If it’s not genuine, it won’t work. You have to dig into your own life and find these unresolved relationships that you can draw from and transplant onto the hero of your script. Only then will this work.

If you have never had your heart broken and try to write about a relationship where one character breaks another character’s heart, I guarantee you it’s not going to work. We won’t care. It will feel disingenuous. You have to draw from real life to pull this off.

The trick is to pinpoint WHAT, in the relationship, is unresolved (in a marriage one person does all the work, in a friendship there’s zero communication). If you don’t know, you won’t know what to build their scenes around. But once you know, it becomes extremely powerful because to explore any unresolved issue, your characters must push through conflict, and conflict is where all the drama is.

More importantly, the audience again gets to compare what they’re seeing onscreen to their life. And if it’s genuine enough, they will be able to mentally work through those same issues with the person they share that problem with. Whenever the character onscreen does something, they will be able to think, “I could do that. And maybe that will fix the issue we have.” Or, “Ugh, that’s what my person always does! I hate that.”

When they are thinking these things, they are EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED in your movie as opposed to casually involved. And once you’ve got them emotionally, they are captivated.

But it’s not easy! You have to draw from real life and you have to make sure the characters’ actions reflect how things would genuinely go down in the real world. The second you start cheating and making up reactions or lines based on what you want to happen rather than what would happen, you will lose them. Which is why so few writers are able to pull great characters off.

But the point is, when you’re writing these bigger movies, and you’re forced to ground that main character, you don’t have many avenues to make that character interesting. Is that why Ballerina didn’t work? I don’t know. I didn’t see it and it’s been forever since I read the script. But if I had to guess, I’d say that nobody’s coming out of that movie feeling like they’ve connected to the Ballerina character for the reasons I just brought up.

So, to summarize. If you like to write wacky heroes, write an indie movie that costs less than 5 million bucks to produce. Or use the secondary characters in your studio scripts to have fun with. But if your script depends on a hero that must be grounded, the main ways you’re going to make those characters compelling to an audience are to explore a genuine flaw or explore a genuine broken relationship.

Remember this when writing your Mega-Showdown screenplay.

VIVA LA MEGA SHOWDOWN!!!

Mega Showdown is back, baby! The 2-Week event is coming to your doorstep in roughly two months, which gives you plenty of time to tighten up your screenplay. Unlike the 700 dollar price tag that the Nicholl Fellowship charges, Mega Showdown is completely free! So there’s literally NO reason not to enter.

HOW TO SUBMIT
What: Mega Showdown
When: Friday, August 1
Deadline: Thursday, July 31, 10pm Pacific Time
Send me your: Script title, genre, logline, and a PDF of the script
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Now that it’s been officially announced, you’re probably wondering how you’re going to win the Scriptshadow Mega-Showdown. Well it turns out I have an inside guy at the site and may be able to help. Here’s what he told me.

STEP 1 – A GOOD CONCEPT

We’re going to start with the obvious. You need a concept that pops, something that grabs the reader’s attention. Not just for me. If your script gets picked, it will be standing along with nine other entries and the readers of the site, aka, the voters, are not going to read every entry. They’re going to pore over the loglines and decide on which scripts to open depending on the concept. So if you have a boring logline in a sea of sexy loglines, you’re toast.

Remember, a concept doesn’t have to be gigantic (Jurassic World) to create curiosity in a reader. But it must at least be thoughtful – clever, fresh, or original. Here are some loglines that would probably do well in the contest…

When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.

A group of workers at an Ikea-like store find themselves lost within its maze-like interior after a late-night seance goes wrong.

In a claustrophobic race against time, a woman must unravel the mystery behind a malevolent crowd before she succumbs to their relentless pursuit.

A team of financially desperate hotel employees embark on a deadly treasure hunt to recover priceless diamonds from a wrecked yacht in the middle of “The Red Triangle,” the world’s most dangerous hunting ground for great white sharks.

When their embarrassing, sometimes filthy, possibly cancellable group chat falls into the wrong hands, a group of dudes must go on a madcap scavenger hunt around town to appease a mysterious blackmailer.

And here are ones that would not do well…

Eve and Anders dated for a decade. Now, Eve is going to see Anders for the first time in years… at his dad’s funeral. Together, they confront their shared past and the infinite nature of love, even after it dies.

Nothing says “It’s complicated” like breaking your crush’s arm. Set in rural Spain against the backdrop of a passionate soccer rivalry, the story follows young protagonists Sophie and Gloria as they navigate their relationship.

Three people at different points of the immigrant experience come together when the mother of a 10-year-old musical prodigy is arrested in an ICE raid.

A family doctor in East Cleveland juggles his personal life, as he reconnects with an old flame, deals with his teenage daughter’s problems, and selling his family’s medical practice.

Note the difference. The first ones are sexier. They have higher concepts or bigger ideas. The second group chronicles more day-to-day stuff. That’s not to say you can’t write good stories about everyday events. But they have to be way better to get noticed because they get 1/10 to 1/20 the amount of script requests.

Also, beware the “big idea” that feels dated (A trio of sassy, elderly women receive a unique offer from Death for a week of youth in exchange for their lives) the flashy concept that feels random (A struggling screenwriter’s life spirals into chaos when he becomes obsessed with telling the true* story of a mermaid’s life and death.) or the big big concept that lacks a clever angle (A young dad revives his 24-year-old cryogenically frozen mom, unleashing terror and forbidden tension that haunt his family and threaten to unravel his marriage).

STEP 2 – A GOOD FIRST PAGE

The first page is even more critical in a Scriptshadow Showdown than it is in the real world. The reason a first page is important is that this is the page where you are being evaluated on whether you can write. Are your sentences clean and clear? Is the style of your writing pleasant? Is your writing lean and concise? Is there a confidence to your writing? Is there a polish to your writing? Is there a voice to your writing? The second the reader determines any of these things aren’t up to par, they will bail. It’s actually much easier for a reader to bail on page 1 than page 7. So they will do it more often. This is why a good first page is so critical.

STEP 3 – A GOOD FIRST FIVE PAGES

The first five pages are important because they will contain your first full scene. And it is in a scene that readers are able to evaluate whether you are capable of telling a story. As I’ve pointed out many times before, you want to show that you can write a scene with a clear beginning, middle, and end, that it is dramatic, and that makes readers want to turn the page. This is a very difficult skill to master, which is why 95% of writers cannot do it. Cause if you can’t tell a story in one scene, there’s no chance in a million years you can tell a good story over the course of 100 pages. A great recent example of this is the Skyview Restaurant opening scene in the new Final Destination movie. A riveting story-within-a-story. If you write an opening scene like that, I guarantee you, you will hook the reader.

STEP 4 – AT LEAST ONE CHARACTER WE REALLY WANT TO ROOT FOR

A character that the audience loves is a cheat code. Because falling in love with a character isn’t that different from falling in love with a real person. What happens when we fall in love in real life? All of that person’s faults disappear. We are unable to see anything but hearts. Same thing in a script. If we love that character of yours, we don’t see any of the plot’s weaknesses. We don’t need the scenes to be perfect. Mark Watney in The Martian, Ani in Anora, Nate in Novocaine, Roz in The Wild Robot, Deadpool, Willy Wonka in Wonka, or Robert McCall in The Equalizer. A cheat code on top of that cheat code is to ask if an extremely likable or charming actor would want to play that part. If you could imagine Glen Powell wanting to play the role, it’s probably a very likable character.

This is not to say that you can’t write challenging characters – characters like Oppenheimer, or Mad Max, or Bella from Poor Things, or Arthur Fleck from Joker, or Driver from Drive. But your command of character must be VERY VERY HIGH to pull this off. Honestly, all you have to do to make people like your character is give them a good ‘save the cat’ moment and then make them sympathetic in some way (they’re blind, such as in Bring her Back).

But challenging characters require a deft knowledge of character equilibrium, which is the process by which you balance your character’s negative traits against their positive ones, and always have them at a net +1. So: one more positive trait than however many negative traits they have. You must also be obsessed with human psychology to pull off these characters. You have to want to dig into the depths of what makes humans tick. Cause if you don’t love that stuff, it’s very hard to create the depth you need to make these characters three-dimensional. But, the good news is, if you can’t, you can always just make the character likable, which as I just pointed out, is relatively easy.

STEP 5 – A SCRIPT WITH A PLAN

If you can do all of the above, you will be in the top 10 of the Mega Showdown. But if you want to win, you have to know how to write a good script. Obviously that takes more explanation than the last few paragraphs I’m going to write in this article. But a key component of any great script is an engine that’s always running underneath the story. Whether you create that engine with a compelling goal (“Companion” – survive everyone trying to kill you) or a compelling mystery (who’s sending all these drops in “Drop”?), the degree to which we will want to turn the page will be dependent on how strong that engine is. If it peters out at any time, we will lose interest. So there must always be something pushing your characters forward with force.

From there it’s a matter of throwing a lot of obstacles in the way of the objective. Throwing some curveballs at the characters that twist the plot in unexpected ways. Showing your characters grow by fighting through their flaws (and ultimately overcoming them). Creating compelling broken relationships that you eventually resolve in satisfying ways. And putting 100% of your effort into every scene. There shouldn’t be a single scene in your script that you don’t rate at least a 7 out of 10. And the large majority of them should be at 8 out of 10 or higher. Effort alone will get you ahead of most of the screenwriters out there.

Do these things and you will have a winning script. But remember, it all starts with that concept. If that’s weak, the reader will never get to steps 2-5.

Good luck!

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: When a lonely and socially-stunted young woman mistakenly receives a severed thumb in the mail, she makes it her life’s obsession to return it to the hand it once belonged to–putting her on a collision course that will upend her world forever.
About: This script got on last year’s Black List, with 10 votes. Screenwriter Cesar Vitale has one TV credit, a show starring Peyton List (Cobra Kai).
Writer: Cesar Vitale
Details: 104 pages

Jessica Gunning for Addie?

The other day I said you either need to give us a strong concept or a strong character. Your script cannot survive without either. Today’s script shows that you can actually include BOTH if you want. We’ve got a flashy plotline as well as a flashy character. Let’s see how it worked out.

Addie has a serious case of antisocial personality disorder. In other words, she’s a psychopath. It’s not her fault. Her parents were drug addicts who both overdosed, which means Addie got tossed around the foster care system for years.

These days, she lives alone and works as a bagger at a local grocery store. Every day is a battle with Addie because she doesn’t feel empathy. If someone spills their groceries in front of her, she will not help. She just watches them pick their own groceries up right in front of her.

One day, Addie receives a thumb in the mail. The thumb is from a rich guy named Tyler. Tyler’s been kidnapped by his drug dealers, Dakota, Shawn, and Bug. They want a million bucks from his father to return him. Which is why they sent the father the thumb. Except they’re so stupid, they messed up the address and the thumb went to Addie’s address instead.

Excited about figuring out the thumb’s origins, Addie heads to the money drop-off point where Bug is waiting. She tasers him and brings him back to her apartment and starts questioning him. Unfortunately, Bug hit his head hard when he fell and soon dies. Addie then cuts him up and puts him in her fridge.

After some more investigating, she locates the business where Tyler is being held and heads there. She kills both Dakota and Shawn to save Tyler. But there’s a caveat to releasing Tyler. She wants to be his friend. She’s tried to make friends her whole life and she figured, if you save someone’s life, they HAVE to be your friend.

Tyler realizes that this girl is batshit insane and that he still has to escape, just like he had to before. But before he does, the cops show up, confused about who’s good and who’s bad. They start shooting and not everyone survives.

A quick side story regarding this review. The logline created a different expectation from what the story ended up being. The logline made it sound like us and the main character were on this journey together, trying to solve the mystery of where this thumb came from and why.

But that’s not the script. The script starts off in the villains’ lair, so to speak. We’re there when they cut off the thumb. As the story evolves, we’re with the bad guys just as much as we’re with Addie. In that sense, we’re waiting for Addie to catch up with what we know.

It’s a slight difference but an important one. Because you want your logline to convey what the accurate experience is going to be when the reader reads the script or else you risk disappointing them. I was disappointed for a while because I liked the logline version of the story better.  Eventually, the new way won me over. But just be careful about that as screenwriters. And, by the way, I do logline consults. They’re just 25 bucks (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). So I can help you with this.

Moving on to the script itself – the other day I was talking to a producer because a writer had sent me a good dark comedy. I asked the producer if he’d want to read it and he said, “Too hard to get off the ground. They never make any money.” I bristled at the response but after reading this script today, I understand where he’s coming from.

When I finished “Thumb,” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be crying, laughing, or satisfied that the goal had been achieved. In other words, these scripts can be hard to track. They’re riding a finer line than a straight comedy or a straight drama. Sure, when you ace the test, they’re great. But when you don’t, you always leave the reader a little confused about what they were supposed to feel.

I will say this, though – dark comedies are great canvases to create memorable characters. Whether you like Addie or hate her, you will remember her. Some of the strongest characters you can write in movies are characters who react the opposite to how normal people react.

There’s this funny yet heartbreaking scene where Addie goes on a date for the first time and has no idea what she’s doing. All she knows is that she hates sushi and that’s where the guy invited her. So, in her world, if you don’t like something, you simply bring your own food, which is what she does.

Addie’s every move is counterintuitive to normal human beings, which makes her fun to watch. You may not like what she does at times, but you’re always on the edge of your seat anticipating what she’ll do next. For all the fireworks behind The Hider’s recent sale, Robert Downey Jr. probably would’ve done better securing this role and playing Addie. She’s a more interesting character than The Hider for sure. :)

But I think this script breaks down as we move into the third act. I was not convinced I was viewing the authentic actions of a psychopath. It felt like sometimes we chose laughs (Addie’s obsession with Jack in the Box) or buzzy imagery (Addie watching TV with the decapitated head of Bug on her lap) as opposed to more genuine actions.

That’s one of the tricks when you write about mental disorders. You have to do a ton of research to make sure that the character stays consistent with their mental disease. Cause once you start guessing what they’d do or have them do something for a laugh instead, we lose faith in the character. The suspension of disbelief cracks.

Once we make it into the third act, Addie becomes obsessed with finding a friend. Every third sentence  is some variation of, “I want friends.” And I don’t think psychopaths want friends, right? Or they don’t care? Maybe I’m wrong but it didn’t feel honest. Which contributed to an already shaky tone that had been bee-bopping its way around throughout the second act.

WITH THAT SAID, I still thought the script was fun. I liked not knowing what was going to happen next. The plotting was pretty tight – it evolved in a pleasant way. And Addie was such a weirdo that anytime she was in a scene, you were at least entertained. For those of you who want a story with a better version of this character, check out the book, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. But, otherwise, this is still pretty good.

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

What I learned: When relevant to the story, we need to know whether your character is attractive or unattractive. Addie works as a bagger at a grocery store. A handsome man named Nathan asks her out. Which was confusing. Addie is clearly strange. She doesn’t seem to wear nice clothes. She doesn’t work out. Her daily diet consists of coke, ice cream, burgers from Jack in the Box, chicken nuggets, and potato chips – which means she’s probably severely overweight. Why in the world would this handsome shopper ask her out? UNLESS she’s just a genetic beauty. In which case WE NEED TO KNOW THAT. In almost every story where there’s romance or dating involved, it’s important that we know how attractive the characters are.

Or, if it isn’t, it will be soon

The first newsletter in three months is a doozy. We’ve got a great script notes deal for the first four people who grab it. We have the announcement of a major SHOWDOWN. We have a breakdown of a sexy new horror film. I dissect a ton of new trailers, including one that shocked me with how good it makes the movie look. In another trailer, I pose the question: is a young horror auteur’s career already over? Did the Emperor ever have clothes? I then take on another short story sale, this one that nabbed an A-list actor, with a nifty little concept.

It is always a great day when there’s a new Scriptshadow Newsletter. If you’d like to be included in future newsletters, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and ask nicely. :)

Genre: Drama
Premise: Four of the richest people in the world, all of whom work in the tech sector, meet up for a weekend getaway, while the tech tools they’ve created incinerate the world.
About: Succession creator Jesse Armstrong wanted to make a movie about the tech bro world, specifically the “lack of self-awareness” prevalent with most tech billionaires. Word on the street is that he wrote and directed the film all within a six months period. The movie is now available to stream on HBO Max.
Writer: Jesse Armstrong
Details: 110 minutes

This was one of the movies I was looking forward to the most this year. Jesse Armstrong, of Succession fame, getting his first big shot at a feature, staying squarely inside of his wheelhouse by tackling another bunch of richy-riches. Felt like a home run.

We’ll get into whether it lived up to the hype in a second but first, I have to mention the strange Rotten Tomatoes scores for this film. As of today, it has an 80% critic score and a 25% audience score.

This is the oddest scoring pair I’ve seen on the reviewing aggregate site. Whenever there’s this much disparity between critics and audiences, it’s ALWAYS for some political reason. Yet, while politics are mentioned in the movie, it is blatantly apolitical. Which makes the low audience score even harder to reconcile.

Maybe this will make sense once we delve into the plot.

Mountainhead follows four tech bros: Randall (Steve Carell, aka Jeff Bezos), Jeff (Ramy Youseff, aka Mark Zuckerberg), Venis (newcomer Corey Michael Smith, aka Elon Musk), and Souper (Jason Swartzman).

Although the movie doesn’t do the greatest job explaining how these four know each other, they’re apparently best friends who come together every year to celebrate how many billions of dollars they have. This year, they’re meeting at Souper’s new mansion up in the mountains.

We know exactly how much money each of them has thanks to one of the most forced scenes that’s ever been written. In it, the group goes to the top of a mountain, takes off their jackets so they’re bare-chested and, in some sort of ritual, Souper writes their net worth on each of their chests. Venis has the most money. Randall is second. Jeff is third. And poor Souper isn’t even in the billion dollar club. He only has 600 million.

The crux of the plot is that Venis has just released new AI software that allows people to make realistic videos of whatever they want. Everybody starts making videos of charged subject matter and, because these videos are indistinguishable from reality, others believe they’re real, charging up the opposition, who then start attacking these people in real life.

But the real story emerges later in the script when Randall, who has just learned his cancer has returned, starts manipulating the group so that all of their resources can be put towards digitizing the human brain as soon as possible, allowing humans to upload their consciousness to a computer. Randall has been assured by Venis that, if Venis has the help of everyone here, he could digitize the human brain within five years.

The only problem is that Jeff doesn’t want to help Venis in this area. Keep in mind, nobody knows that Randall is terminal. That’s a secret. So, when Randall learns that Jeff isn’t on board, he soft-launches the idea of killing Jeff to the other two. At first, they don’t love it but Randall is convincing and soon, they plan the murder for that night. Unfortunately, none of these guys has the capacity or know-how to murder someone, which results in all sorts of attempted-murder hijinks.

Okay, so here’s the thing.

I have complicated feelings about this movie, lol.

At first, I hated it. But then it grew on me. And while I’m not convinced that it ever made its way into “good” territory, it definitely stayed within “interesting” territory throughout. It’s not like any other movie you’ve seen and, whether you liked Mountainhead or not, there’s value to that.

The main problem with the movie is the forced camaraderie.

Matt Damon notoriously called this out after Good Will Hunting. He said that the worst thing in movies was characters pretending to be friends despite it being clear that the actors had never spent a day with each other in their entire lives.

That’s why Good Will Hunting felt so genuine. All the actors in it really were friends. At the same time this was going on, Swingers came out. That movie also had a bunch of real-life friends in it. And you could see that on screen. The chemistry was genuine throughout.

When you watch Mountainhead, you’re very aware of what Matt Damon is talking about. These guys just showed up on set and had to act like they’d known each other their whole lives. So when the lack of chemistry bumped up against the writing, that inauthenticity became apparent.

Which is why I believe the movie grew on me. This was all shot on one set, this house. That means they shot it linearly. And you can feel that. Once we get to that second half of the movie, the chemistry got better, the timing got better, the line-reading got better. That’s because the actors had been hanging out for 15-20 days.

This brings us to the murder plot and that’s when the script almost salvaged itself. I know that portion of the movie was working because when Randall, Venis, and Souper sneak into Jeff’s bedroom to smother him with a pillow, I was insanely anxious. I was so nervous that Jeff was going to wake up and say, “What the fuck are you guys doing??” If the viewer is that anxious, your script is working.

From there, Armstrong makes a bold choice (spoilers). Normally, in a movie like this, they’d kill Jeff. And then they would have to figure out how to explain it away afterwards. But Armstrong doesn’t go in that direction. He makes all three of these tech bros the Pink Panther. They’re bumbling morons who have never had to do anything physical or real in their lives. They exist only on their computers. So they don’t know how to kill someone.

Which felt genuine to me. I know that Armstrong is being satirical here. But it actually makes sense that these people would be clueless about how to murder someone. There’s this sequence where they have Jeff locked in the sauna and they’re so clueless about how to kill him that they come up with this idea to pour gasoline in the room and then light it on fire.

But once they get the gasoline, they don’t know how to get it in there. So they pour it on the floor, then get a squeegee, and start pushing the gasoline in with the squeegee. It’s so ridiculous but it’s also kind of hilarious.

I think back to American Beauty and how it was critical for Sam Mendes to get two weeks of rehearsal time with the actors. Remember, he came from a stage background so practice was a huge part of his process. Kevin Spacey repeatedly mentions the importance of that rehearsal time as it allowed them to really figure out the characters.

That’s what Mountainhead needed. I would go so far as to say that if Armstrong had two weeks with these actors ahead of time, this is a vastly better movie. Cause you can see it on the screen as the actors get more comfortable with each other. In that end scene where they’re all at the table, after having forced Jeff into a deal that gave Venis a major part of his company, the timing and chemistry with all the little side remarks between everyone, was worlds apart from where they were in that awful mountain top scene.

I started this review thinking I was going to give this a “wasn’t for me.” But it’s too interesting of a failure for me to do that. I value movies that are different, that are not like other movies out there. And although Mountainhead has its faults, I still think it’s worth checking out.

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

What I learned: Armstrong is not a believer in meeting people in real life for research. He says he’s too anxious to meet people in the real world. He likes to do his research the old-fashioned way, through reading. He read a ton of stuff about real life tech bros and used little bits and pieces of them to fill in his characters.