Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: On a safari trip, a family are driven off-road by rhino poachers and forced to survive a harrowing night in the bush.
Why You Should Read: In 2017, a reported 1,028 rhinos were poached in South Africa. At this current rate, wildlife experts warn that rhinos may become extinct as early as 2020. About me, I’ve been a dedicated screenwriter for over six years and like the majority on this site are determined to move to the next level. “Night of Game” is a unique concept with high stakes, emotional conflict, and bloodthirsty action within an urgent timeline. It’s a movie that will spread awareness of the barbaric act of poaching horn to sell to China and Vietnam. I’m truly passionate about the cause and hope that Carson and the scriptshadow faithful can help this scripts journey to the silver screen.
Writer: It’s a Mystery
Details: 113 pages

Ava DuVernay gets a DC movie nobody’s ever heard of and the INTERNET EXPLODES. While everyone else debates whether film geeks are racist, here’s the question I want answered. Why did Disney let DuVernay go? If you like someone and what they’re doing, you wrap them up. You keep them in the company fold. For Disney to let her flee says loads.

You may think the answer is Wrinkle’s box office. But these deals take time. This DC thing was put together awhile ago. Which implies Disney knew they were dealing with a stinker and were more than happy to let Ava exit. DC, meanwhile, probably signed DuVernay during that 1 month “Ava DuVernay is the greatest filmmaker of our generation” tour. So will DC now have buyer’s remorse? Will box office hindsight lead to a text break-up? This is more dramatic that anything in a Wrinkle in Time so I can’t wait to see what happens next.

On to today’s AMATEUR OFFERINGS WINNER…. Night of Game! No, this is not a sequel to Game Night.

First impressions after reading the logline? This could be a movie. That’s the first question you need to ask with every concept: Is this an actual movie idea? And I believe it is. Sort of a real-life version of Jurassic Park.

But skimming through the comments section, I saw a lot of, “The writing’s not very good here.” The writing’s not very good yet it won Amateur Offerings in a landslide?? What’s going on? I must find out.

20-something Miles Abbot is on vacation in South Africa with his family. He’s with his mother, Lori, his cute 11 year old sister, Caitlyn, and I think his dad. Though that’s up for debate for reasons I’ll get into later.

The three (four?) of them decide to take a safari ride to see all the wild animals. They meet up with a group of tourists which include the hot Anna, her dick boyfriend, Logan, an older couple, and Barry, their driver.

The safari seems to be going well until they’re attacked by an elephant. Luckily, they get away. But moments later, they’re attacked by the most dangerous animal of all – PEOPLE. Poachers to be exact. Miles’s father is shot and killed, even though I was never clear he was with them in the first place, and soon after, Miles gets split up from Caitlyn and Lori.

It turns out the poachers are trying to slaughter a group of rare white rhinos. It just so happens that on the night of their big poach, these tourists got in the way.

While Miles tries to avoid getting eaten by lions, tigers, and bears, he eventually teams up with his crush, Anna, who was somewhere else for some reason. He recruits her to help him find his mother and sister and she’s game. But in the meantime, THEY’RE GAME – as in game for the poachers who can’t leave any witnesses behind.

This script should’ve worked. The core elements are sound. Characters have to survive a night in the bush with deadly animals all around them. AND we have a Taken-like goal of saving a mother and a sister.

So where does it go wrong?

Well, first of all, I had no idea who this family was. I didn’t know why they were in South Africa. I didn’t know what their normal lives were like. I didn’t know why there was this random 14 year gap between siblings. You don’t just throw that in there and not explain it. The most I could gather was that they were a rich entitled bored family with houses on multiple continents. Why am I rooting for people like that exactly?

That’s not to say audiences can’t root for rich people. But you need to then give us a reason to root for them if the first image you give us is that they don’t have a care in the world.

But there’s a bigger issue here. How you set up your core group of characters will determine EVERYTHING that happens after. Cause if we don’t know the characters, understand the characters, sympathize with them on some level, like them on some level, then we won’t care what happens to them on page 40, or 60, or 80.

Therefore it doesn’t matter how dire of a situation you place them in. We never gave a shit about them in the first place. So the first change that needs to be made is an entire backstory needs to be written for this family. We need way more information about them and why they’re here. Also, add some texture to the family dynamic. Right now, it’s so generic.

Off the top of my head, maybe the mom died recently. The dad took the kids here to get their minds off their mom. Miles suggests to Caitlyn, who’s taking mom’s death really hard, that they go on the safari. She’s reluctant but agrees. It’s a chance to heal. At least now you have some history with the family – something they have to overcome.

This leads us to the bizarrely over-complicated plot. You had these poachers who wanted the white rhinos. You had a break within the ranks of the rhino poachers. You had a random local female getting kidnapped. You had a rival tribe warring with the poachers. What the heck is going on here?? I thought this was supposed to be about a family. Instead, it’s about these poachers.

The lesson here is KEEP THINGS SIMPLE. You hear me talk about it all the time on the site yet writers continue to make the mistake. There are some seasoned PRO-FES-SIONAL screenwriters who can pull off complex plots. But if you’re not yet a professional, keep it simple. All we needed was good guys and bad guys here. We didn’t need Rhino Poaching meets The Godfather. Staying in line with that, I like ONE PERSON being kidnapped. Not two. The sister should be kidnapped. That’s all.

Finally, the writing here was EXTREMELY taxing to read. Every paragraph was 3 lines long. And while I’ve said before that you should limit your paragraphs to no more than 3 lines, that doesn’t mean that every page should be twenty 3-line paragraphs. That’s just a sneaky way of writing one 60-line paragraph.

Vary your paragraph lengths. 2 lines here. 1 line there. 3 lines occasionally. You don’t want to get too predictable or monotonous. But the bigger tip here is to ask if you really need three lines in the first place. In screenwriting, you’re trying to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. Constantly be asking yourself, “Do I really need to include that detail?” Don’t get sloppy and always write the long version.

Here’s an example (this paragraph is three and a half lines long in courier font)

Miles watches Logan act like a monkey, swinging on the tire, then swooping down to give Anna a kiss. Trying to act disapprovingly, she pushes him away. A half-smile appears on her face. He pulls her in close.

You could’ve said this…

Miles watches Logan act like a monkey, swinging on the tire, then swooping down to give Anna a kiss. She playfully pushes him away.

This is the tip of the iceberg. We’ve got Screenwriting 101 problems, such as the writer not even writing in the active voice (in the above example, you’d change the tense of the sentence so that “swinging” would be “swings,” “swooping” would be “swoops”). The script needs a lot of work. But if I could give the writer one piece of advice, it would be to stop making the story so complicated. 3-5 tourists stuck in the bush all night is enough. Stop jumping around to so many locations. Miles has to survive the local animals and get to his sister. That’s what we came to see. We’re not interested in poaching politics.

Script link: Night of Game

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

What I learned: The Wall of Text Loophole – Most of you know that readers hate “walls of texts,” pages full of 6-7 line paragraphs with little-to-no dialogue. They’re script killers. But the loophole to this isn’t to write a page full of 3-4 line paragraphs. It’s still going to look like a wall of text. You should be mixing in 1-2 line paragraphs. And unless you’re writing a silent movie, there should be a good amount of dialogue to even it out.

The topic of villains has been hovering in the Scriptshadow background for the last month or so. We found out what a great villain can do for a movie like Black Panther. We found out what no villain does to a script like The Man From Tomorrow. Tuesday’s script was straight-up titled “Villains.” Yet when I thought about it, I realized we haven’t directly discussed villains in ages. Let’s change that. And let’s change it by identifying the number one mistake writers make when trying to create a villain. Are you ready for it?

They try to create a villain.

There’s no such thing as a “villain” in real life. It’s a made-up term to identify fictional characters who do bad things and want to hurt the hero. And therein lies the problem. When most writers put their villain together, they make them a vague bad dude who does bad things because… well because he’s the villain! This is a guaranteed way to make a villain forgettable.

The first thing you need to understand about villains is that they’re real people. They don’t not exist until it’s time to hang the hero over a lava pit, or when it’s time to hold the hero’s wife hostage. Even when they’re off-screen, they’re doing something. And if you don’t see them as a real person, you won’t know what those somethings are.

It doesn’t stop there. Your villain has had an entire life with ups and downs just like your hero. It’s just that somewhere along the way, due to a series of unfortunate events, their perception of right and wrong got warped. Which is how they ended up being the bad guy. But here’s the catch. They don’t believe they’re the bad guy. Villains believe they’re the good guy. And that the hero is the bad guy.

In other words, a villain doesn’t rob a bank because he’s a villain and that’s what villains do. He robs a bank because he believes the system’s been fucking him over the last 40 years. That the government and the banks have pushed him around, stolen what’s his, and disposed of him in the process. He’s robbing that bank because he believes he’s OWED THAT MONEY. That’s an important detail when it comes to villains. They always have a reason for why what they’re doing is right.

Keeping all this in mind, I’ve compiled some miscellaneous thoughts on villains that I think should help you the next time you need to write one. Let’s get started…

MAKE SURE YOUR VILLAIN’S BACKSTORY IS AS EXTENSIVE AS YOUR HERO’S
The reason most villains suck is because they’re too simplistic. They’re “the bad guy” because they’re “the bad guy.” For this reason, the more you know about your villain’s history, the more you’ll be able to fight this, adding dozens of unique characteristics that build life into the character. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is to write a big fat backstory for your villain, as big as your hero’s. Hannibal Lecter is considered the greatest villain of all time in part due to how extensive his backstory is and how much Thomas Harris, the author who created him, knew about the character.

IF POSSIBLE, MAKE IT PERSONAL BETWEEN YOUR VILLAIN AND YOUR HERO
It’s a good idea for your villain to have a personal motivation for taking down the hero. Black Panther’s Killmonger hated T’Challa because T’Challa’s father killed his father and left him to grow up on the streets. He’s not just coming back to be the king of Wakanda cuz. He’s doing it to avenge his father’s death. There’s so much more weight to a hero-villain dynamic when the two have history with one another.

VILLAINS ARE OFTEN RIGHT, THEY JUST TAKE IT TOO FAR
A lot of great villains are villains sheerly because of how much further they take their pursuit than is acceptable. Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction is technically right. This married dickhead lied to her, fucked her, then ditched her. But it’s how far she took the retribution that made her the villain. Ditto with Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He’s right! This smarmy little entitled dipshit shouldn’t be able to keep ditching school and get away with it. But it’s the lengths to which Rooney goes to catch him that make him the villain. Remember, villains are heroes in their own minds. They believe they’re doing the right thing.

GIVE YOUR VILLAIN AN ANGLE TO PLAY OTHER THAN ‘VILLAIN’
I would go so far as to not even think of your villain as a villain. Once you see them that way, you start making them do a bunch of generic “villain” things. Instead, be as specific as possible in how you categorize them. Maybe they’re a weasel, like Paul Reiser’s lawyer character in Aliens. Or a bully, like Prince Joffrey in Game of Thrones. Or controlling, like The Governor in The Walking Dead. The right negative-skewing adjective can do wonders for focusing your villain.

THE MOST MEMORABLE VILLAINS PRESENT THEMSELVES AS ANGELS
There’s nothing more terrifying than a villain who acts as if she’s your best friend right before bashing your feet in with a hammer. From the ultra-polite Hannibal Lecter to the bubbly Annie Wilkes (Misery) to the gospel-spewing Warden Norton (Shawshank) to the friendly Colonel Hans Lunda (Inglorious Basterds). This formula is the best shot you have at creating a villain for the ages. But even if you don’t use it, the spirit of the tip – that every villain has an offsetting positive trait – is something to keep in mind. Even the ruthless Hans Gruber was charming.

GIMMICKY VILLAINS ARE THE HARDEST TO PULL OFF
Beware of gimmicky villains who are known more for their eccentric qualities than their broken humanity. I’m talking about characters like Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men and even Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. These are the flashiest of the villains but they’re hard to pull off because writers approach them the wrong way. Instead of asking, “How did this person get this way?” they ask, “How can I make this guy really fucked up?” So they try and come up with the dance moment with Buffallo Bill tucking his penis in or Anton’s unique weapon. But those things don’t come out of nowhere. Thomas Harris and Cormac McCarthy are authors who are willing to do the deep dive into characters’ psyches to find out how they got to this place. The average screenwriter is lazy as shit and thinks a half-hour brainstorming session is enough is to come up with the coolest villain in history. If you’re going to write weird quirky villains, make sure you do a deep dive on how they got to this point in their lives.

CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE BAD PEOPLE BY ASKING HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY
When you read about a man who robbed a 7-11, don’t think of him as a bad person. Ask WHY they would do such a thing. Chances are they needed the money. Okay, why? A lot of times it’s for drugs. Okay, why do they want drugs so bad? Because they’re likely an addict. Okay, how did they become an addict? They probably got mixed up with the wrong crowd when they were young and never learned how to properly discern right from wrong. Okay, why did they get mixed up with the wrong crowd? Maybe their dad was never around and their mom had to work three jobs. They had no parental guidance or father figure, leaving them to make their own decisions. Hard to know the right path when you’re 12. Knowing this, would you consider our robber a villain? A bad person? Maybe. But, as you can see, it’s never as simple as a label. Every “villain” has a past and it’s up to you to figure out what that past is so that you can build some authenticity into them.

And there ya go. The advice I most want you to leave with today is to stop thinking of your villains as villains. Think of them as misguided souls who got shoved down the wrong path at some point in their lives and now have an axe to grind. That axe might be against society, it might be against a symbol for who they believe wronged them, and it might be against your hero himself. The more you know about how your villain got to this place in life, the deeper and more memorable a character he’ll be.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of how Elon Musk juggled two of the riskiest business ventures in history, creating a direct-to-consumer electric car and building a privatized space exploration company.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Jordan Barel, is new to the game. He doesn’t have any produced credits yet, but he has worked in the business as an assistant to celebrated comedy actor Paul Scheer.
Writer: Jordan Barel
Details: 120 pages

You.

Can’t.

Stop.

The biopic.

Can’t stop it folks. Don’t even try to stop it with your anti-biopic kill spray. Like cockroaches, biopics are immune to serial biopic killers. Yesterday I gave you the best genre to write in to get your movie made (the Contained Thriller). Today I’m giving you the best genre to write in to get noticed (the Biopic).

There is no genre the industry is more forgiving of than the biopic. You could literally copy and paste a Wikipedia page and sprinkle a few pages of dialogue in and have a shot at making the Black List. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it’s not THAT big of an exaggeration.

For this reason, I only read biopics to torture myself. But I’ve picked The Man From Tomorrow for a specific reason.

Because Elon Musk is crazy!

Musk ROUTINELY makes promises he doesn’t keep – such as saying a few years ago that he’d have a colony on Mars by now. He’s made TWO DEADLINE PROMISES with the new Tesla Model 3 that he’s missed. And it’s not even close. There’s no clear date on when the car will arrive. Oh, and he thinks we’re living in The Matrix AND in danger of being killed off by A.I. No, I’m serious. He really does. Google it. And we’re looking up to this guy as a genius??

It’s the Mars one that gets me though. We haven’t even put a person on Mars. And he’s planning colonies? That’s not a miscalculation. It’s delusion. Not only that, but he’s doubling down! He’s saying he’ll have someone on Mars by next year! Which means they’ll have to leave by… well, tomorrow! I guess that’s why the title is “The Man From Tomorrow.” Cause he’s been to tomorrow and therefore knows that he’s launched a person to Mars.

I don’t know what I’m talking about. But let’s get to this script anyway.

We meet Elon Musk in 2000 when he’s getting ousted from the company he co-founded, Paypal. Musk was fired because instead of wanting to make billions of dollars by selling the company, he wanted to change the way banking was done. Those noble aspirations got him terminated.

No problem. Musk still came out of the venture with a cool billion. Why not put his money where his mouth is? If he really wants to change the world, let’s change the world. Musk’s current fear is that if an asteroid hits earth, humanity will be lost forever. No, I’m serious. He really worries about this. Which is why he wants to colonize Mars. But that means getting to Mars. How do you do that?

By founding SpaceX, a private space company that will do everything that governments have done for decades, but at a fraction of the cost. Everyone thinks Musk is nuttier than a can of Planters but he doesn’t care. He’s on a mission.

Meanwhile, Musk deals with his wife of 10 years (who he’s had 5 children with) questioning why he has to change the world so much that he can never be around to change some diapers. But in Musk’s mind, he’s done everything for his family. They’ve got a mansion, money, the best health care. They’ve got it made! Why does he have to be around?

As SpaceX roars towards creating a cheap rocket that can reach orbit, he starts another billion dollar venture – Tesla. He’s so sick of us recklessly poisoning the world with all these carbon emissions, he’s determined to create an affordable electric car that everyone in the world can own.

This propels us into our third act, when Musks’s wife files for divorce, and both of his companies, after several failures, plummet towards bankruptcy. Musk will have to pull off the biggest coup of his life. Bring the first car to market built from a new company in 50 years, successfully launch the Falcon 1 to prove to the world that he’s capable of bringing mankind into space, and save his marriage. Can he do it?

The Man From Tomorrow is a tale of two movies. The first half is the dreaded Wikipedia article, an exposition-fest that might as well have an audiobook narrator so you can do other things while you listen to it. And the second half is where things get good. I want to help you understand why.

The reason the first half is a struggle is because there’s no drama. And by drama I mean two things. There are no problems that lead to interesting situations and there’s no conflict. For example, Paypal could’ve been a problem that led to an interesting situation. Musk starts feeling the board move against him. He must form a plan of attack to keep the company. And then a showdown happens. It would’ve been fun to watch that showdown.

But there’s no showdown. Musk gets a call while on vacation that he’s been ousted. The drama, it turns out, happened off-screen.

Likewise, there’s no conflict in the first half. Lack of conflict is easier to spot because its easier to define. It’s a resistance to your character’s objectives. But there’s literally no resistance in the first half. Everything Elon Musk does is working. Someone will occasionally call him out in the media for being delusional, but nothing gets in his way.

I suppose you could make an argument that this is setup time. You’re setting everything up so that you can throw all the conflict at your hero later. But I don’t buy that. You can always add conflict. In Arron Sorkin’s “Jobs,” Steve Jobs hit the ground running with conflict in his face – Could he pull off the Mac Computer announcement? The tension was in the air from the get-go. The Man From Tomorrow asks the reader to be bored for long enough to get to the good stuff.

Luckily for the script, good stuff arrives. Barel wisely injects our hero with a double-dose of likability to ensure we’ll root for him. The first dose is Musk getting fired by someone he trusted. We always root for people who get fucked over. And second, Elon Musk keeps going despite everyone telling him he’ll fail. I would argue this is one of the most powerful ways to make us root for a character – a hero who says ‘yes’ in the face of so much ‘no.’ And the effect this script had on me is proof. I wanted Elon Musk to succeed.

I also liked how all three of these major parts of Musk’s life – his marriage, SpaceX, and Tesla – were falling apart at the same time. That almost made up for the lack of drama early on. Barel also did a nice job of establishing the stakes of this moment. If the rocket fails, SpaceX is done. If they can’t get the price of the car down to what they promised, Tesla is done. And these “the sky is falling” portions of the script always hit harder when the hero’s personal life is falling apart as well.

So by the end, I was in full Musk-Fever mode. Hmm… That sounds weird. But you know what I mean!

As far as what could’ve been improved, I would’ve liked a real antagonist. A villain. We had some tech giants chirping in from newscasts that Musk would fail. But we needed A FACE. Some of you will argue that Musk was both the protagonist AND antagonist, but at the risk of sounding crass, I find that dual protag-antag stuff to be bullshit. It’s cool to say that in film school. But in reality, it’s better to have an actual villain. And it wouldn’t have even been hard! There’s got to be someone out there who’s a noted anti-Muskite.

Not a perfect biopic by any means. But if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded.

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

What I learned: When you hit the end of the second act, you want your main character’s work AND personal life to come crashing down at the same time. This needs to be the lowest point in your character’s journey. If ONLY their work fails or ONLY their personal life fails, it doesn’t seem as hopeless. You need this moment to feel completely hopeless on every level.

Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) Two small time robbers become prisoners when they break into a house and discover a ten year old girl chained up in the basement.
About: This one popped onto my radar because they just signed up two actors who I really like. The first is Bill Skarsgård, who played Pennywise on “It.” And the second is Maika Monroe, who played Jay in “It Follows.” The script comes off of 2016’s Black List, where it finished in the middle of the pack with 13 votes. The writers, Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, are trying to take that next step in their careers, as they have, up until this point, only worked with actors like Dolph Lundgren. Not that I have a problem with Dolph “If he dies, he dies” Lundgren. But it’s much better to be writing for two of the hottest young stars in Hollywood as your leads.
Writer: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Details: 89 pages

Today we’re going back!

Back… to the screenplay.

That’s right. We’re actually reviewing a script today, folks! Let me hear ya’ll in attendance give me an “Amen!”

I can’t hear you! I said give me an “Amen!”

We’re going to be reviewing one of the standard sub-genres in the spec screenwriting world – the Contained Thriller. Why are so many specs written as Contained Thrillers? Limited location equals cheap. Small character count plus a simple situation equals a fast easy read for overworked readers. And the Thriller genre is easy to market.

If you want to write something that has a legitimate chance of getting made, I’d put Contained Thriller or Contained Horror at the top of the list.

The ONLY reason I’d tell people not to write in this genre? Is because the competition is stiffer than the ubiquitous corpse that shows up in Act 2. That and the limited location makes it hard to keep the plot fresh. Let’s find out if today’s writers pull it off.

20-somethings Mickey and Jules are an aspiring Bonnie and Clyde. Not that they have any idea who Bonnie and Clyde are. You get the feeling neither of them are very cultured. Hell, I’d be surprised if they made it past their sophomore year in high school. Which is probably why they’re robbing a gas station when we meet them.

Because they’re high on coke, the stick-up gets sloppy, and they forget to do the one thing you’re supposed to do at a gas station – fill up your car with gas. So their runaway lasts barely five miles, and the baffled duo stumble up to a nearby farm house with plans to steal a car. After they break in and can’t find any car keys, they explore the basement, where they find a 10 year old girl chained up to the wall.

Mickey wants to jet and pretend none of this ever happened. But Jules looks at him like he’s a monster (which he is. He’s Pennywise). There’s no way they’re leaving this girl here. Mickey reluctantly agrees and when they go upstairs to look for a saw to break through the imprisoned girl’s chains, they run into 50-something homeowners George and Gloria, who’ve just walked in. Mickey and Jules scream at the couple that they’re taking the girl with them, but former salesman George asks them to sit down and think this through. They just committed a crime. Do they really want to make things tougher on themselves?

It’s all a trick to buy time, of course. And the suave George gets the upper hand soon enough. The next thing you know Mickey is tied to a bed with a sexually repressed Gloria ready to turn him into her love slave and Jules is tied up in the basement in place of the little girl they were trying to save. It seems as if Mickey and Jules are 48 hours from becoming human manure. But these two feisty criminals aren’t going down without a fight. No matter how ugly that fight gets.

Remember what I told you last week? 4-6 characters is ideal for a spec script. This keeps your story focused AS WELL AS allows you to spend the time to properly develop all the characters. Every new character you add is time taken away from the characters you already have. So you want to add characters judiciously. That doesn’t mean you never do it. I’m not against movies with 10 characters or even 20 characters as long as the story calls for it. But when you’re writing specs, concepts that focus on 4-6 characters are the sweet spot.

Onto the story. Villains is a classic example of where most successful Contained Thrillers end up – in the “decent” category. Actually, let me retract that. The vast majority of amateur Contained Thrillers end up being terrible. But I’m talking about the ones written by competent writers. Most end up in the “yeah, that was pretty good” category. And that’s because this genre is hard! What’s hard about it is that after the hook, it’s nearly impossible to come up with fresh fun ideas.

Cause that’s where the real writing begins. Writing to where there’s a girl in the basement is the easy part. It’s almost impossible to do wrong because the reader already knows that moment is coming (assuming they read the logline). So they’re excited to get to that point. From there, they give you about a 10 page grace period. A sort, “Okay, now let’s see what you’re going to do.” And what most writers do is retread a bunch of scenes from other Contained Thrillers.

Villains hangs on for awhile. My favorite scene was when George and Gloria arrive and suggest talking this out like adults. A lot of writers would’ve jumped right into the violence or the running around and hiding. This scene worked specifically because it goes against that expectation. Not just that. But George made a lot of good points. You two are criminals. Is saving this girl really the best way to handle this? A lot of writers would’ve written this scene with George spouting out a bunch of movie logic. It was refreshing to hear some arguments that actually sounded convincing.

The stuff where Gloria is prepping Mickey to become her sexual toy was also pretty good. But you could sense that the writers were running out of creative steam. I find that whenever writers dip into weird sexual territory, they’re running out of ideas. Strange sex plotlines contain a certain amount of shock value. But shock is the antithesis of substance. It has a short shelf-life. I’ve encountered a few scripts where the sex stuff was so unique that I remained engaged. But it’s rare. And it turns out I was right. Quickly after this scene, the script turns into a conventional series of scenarios where the characters try and escape.

Another key problem the writers should address before production is that George and Gloria aren’t scary enough. They’re too rational. And so I was never worried that something bad was going to happen to our heroes. If you’re going to lock our characters in a house with two supposed psychos, you need to sell their psychoness. That never happened.

With that said, this is worth the read in that I genuinely wanted to know how it was going to end. That’s my litmus test for a ‘worth the read.’ If I want to read the ending, something’s working. Because the large majority of the time, if you told me I could stop reading a script whenever I wanted, I would stop. These two made me like Mickey and Jules enough that I cared about their fate. Which is saying something. If you’re thinking about writing a Contained Thriller, add this one to the list.

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

What I learned: A recent obsession of mine is differentiation in dialogue, which is a fancy way of saying make sure your characters sound different. Check out these slices of dialogue. The first is from Mickey and Jules after the gas station robbery and the second is from George when he encounters Mickey and Jules in his house.

MICKEY: FUCK yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ bout baby! You were incredible in there! The way you ripped that thing of chips down? Fuck!

JULES (excited; flattered) I don’t know, I was just, like in the zone you know? I don’t even remember doing it!

And now George…

GEORGE: I understand. You’re the ones with the gun, you’re making the rules. All I’m asking for is a chance to state my case, maybe enlighten you as to a couple of things you may not have thought of. You can keep the gun pointed at me all you like, I just ask that you sit down and listen to what I have to say.

Notice all the ways the dialogue is different. There’s a difference in education level, in command of language, in the use of swearing, in length. If I told you to close your eyes and I read those two blocks of dialogue to you, you’d have no doubt that they came from different people. And that’s what you want your dialogue to do.

I was going to try to get out to A Wrinkle In Time this weekend until I found out it wasn’t playing at the Arclight Hollywood! It was the first indication that something was up. Arclight ALWAYS has the best movies. For them to say, “No thanks,” told you what they thought of the film’s financial prospects. Then I saw the RT score, remembered that abysmal trailer… and all of a sudden getting in my car and driving to that nightmare parking structure at the Grove sounded like the worst thing I could do with my day. It turns out I made the right choice. The film bombed.

While we’re on the topic, I don’t get the protective bubble being placed around Ava DuVernay. Why is everyone so scared to say her movie was bad? I’m reading these reviews, many of which have negative scores, yet 95% of the review is qualified by how much the reviewer loves DuVernay and loved “certain aspects” of the movie. I bet every director in Hollywood is wondering where that positivity is when their films are being reviewed.

I think three things pushed people away from this film. The first is DuVernay herself. There’s a self-importance to her presence that’s off-putting. The second is that Wrinkle promoted itself too aggressively as a “diverse female empowerment” film and, in doing so, pushed half of America away. I was not surprised to hear that the demo split for this film was an unheard of 70% female, 30% male. Finally, the film looked bad. Plain and simple. When a film looks bad, people don’t show up.

I hope Hollywood learns a lesson here. People don’t go to the movies to support messages. They go to be entertained. It seems like Wrinkle failed at that basic level.

Documentary watch! A couple of documentaries I need to comment on. One that I hated, the other that I lurrrved. The first is called Icarus. It’s the Netflix documentary about doping that won Best Doc at the Oscars. I am here to tell you that THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST FILMS I’VE EVER SEEN!!! Do NOT. EVER. SEE THIS FILM. Everything about it is scammy and weird and suspicious and manipulative.

I’m going to let you in on a secret. Always be wary of out-of-work actors making documentaries about themselves. They have zero interest in pursuing anything resembling the truth (which is the whole point of making a documentary). All they care about is promoting themselves. And you could see that right from the start with Icarus. There isn’t an honest bone in the main subject’s body. From the second the cameras are on, this guy’s looking for his close-up.

For those who don’t know anything about the doc, it’s about an American cyclist who wants to see if steroids will help him win a bike race so he hires a Russian doping specialist who lives in Russia to help him. That sounds kind of interesting until you learn that the race he’s entering isn’t the Tour De France. It isn’t even the Tour De French Toast. It’s some low-level non-professional event where it doesn’t matter if you dope or not! You could literally show up and say, “I’m on steroids” and nobody cares. And why exactly am I rooting for a cheater again?

Anyway, he meets this Russian doper who they then try and turn into a sympathetic figure. But this guy is so creepy and weird, your skin crawls every time he’s on screen. To provide some context, our star (aka “the out of work actor”) has to keep sending urine samples to the Russian to get them cleaned so they don’t test positive. On multiple occasions, it’s implied that the Russian guy has a sexual fetish with the urine. Oh, okay. Yeah. That’s what I want to see. A weird 55 year old Russian man swirling urine in a tube and staring at it sexually. Sign me up, brother.

You’re probably wondering how in the world this won an Oscar then. The answer is surprisingly simple. Nobody in the Academy watches the documentaries they vote for. They saw “Russia” in the description. They saw, “scandal,” in the description. And they voted for it based on that. I would not be surprised if not a single person who voted for this movie knew it was about cycling. Consensus: Steer clear of this movie!

Now on to a documentary that you MUST see as soon as possible. Yes it came out a couple of years ago. But it ran into so many legal snafus, it became impossible to find. Just to give you a teaser of how crazy the production of this film got, here’s what happened during a Sundance screening when a representative for the film’s subject encountered the co-director in the lobby beforehand.

The film is called Tickled. It’s about a gay New Zealand journalist who finds out, through the glories of the internet, that there’s a competitive tickling league. As in, people tie each other down and tickle each other. They have to endure as much tickling as possible to “win.” The “sport” is so bizarre that the journalist can’t help but dig deeper. And what he finds is that, strangely, this league of ticklers only includes young fit good-looking men between the ages of 16-22.

So he e-mails the league’s president, a woman, and says he’s interested in doing a story about the league. The woman instantly e-mails back and berates the journalist for being “gay” and a “faggot,” telling him that if he does a piece on the league, he’ll regret it. Keep in mind he never told this woman he was gay. So how did she find out?

The president then continues to e-mail the journalist every day with similar e-mails. This only piques the journalist’s interest more. Why was this woman so cruel in regards to his homosexuality when the sport she was funding was so… well… gay?

And thus began a deep dive into the history of this league and its mysterious president that has a shocking revelation every 10 minutes. The deeper they dig, the crazier this insane president gets, to the point where we’re certain these filmmakers are going to be spending the rest of their lives crawling out of a mountain of legal debt.

There are a couple of reasons why Tickled succeeds while Icarus fails. The first is something I always tell you guys to look out for – IRONY! Who would think that a documentary about tickling would tackle bullying, aggression, homophobia, legal threats and anger? Irony can sell a concept like nothing else. The second is that, unlike the fraud at the center of Icarus, the Tickled journalist is interested in getting to the truth. He wants to expose a man who’s used his lies and money to destroy dozens of young men over the years. You won’t believe where this one goes, guys. I’m telling you.

A few other quick reviews. I finally saw Jumanji, which I loved. I may do an article on it because they successfully went back to the 1996 screenwriting playbook to write this one and I’m curious if that winning formula was specific to this movie or if more screenwriters need to start using old school screenwriting tactics to write great scripts. I would argue this is perfect high-concept non-superhero blockbuster execution. It got EVERYTHING right.

I also saw Ladybird. This was either the best average movie I saw all year, the most average decent movie I saw all year, or the worst great movie I saw all year. What’s interesting about Ladybird is that, 10 years ago, this is a random coming-of-age indie that makes 10 bucks at the box office. In 2017, it’s a defining piece of inclusive art. There’s something to be said for timing, folks. Oh, and I saw this great little Icelandic movie on Netflix called, “The Oath.” It’s about a man whose drug-addicted daughter falls in love with a dealer. He does everything possible to get her out of his clutches but she’s so far gone that no matter what he does, she won’t leave the dealer. It’s so frustrating to watch but the movie takes some unexpected twists and turns that only a non-American movie could pull off. I really liked it.

Finally, what are these rumors about a disastrous Deadpool 2 screening?? How is this not bigger news? They’ve been forced to do reshoots with less than a month until release! What the fuhhhh???? I’ve been worried about Deadpool 2 for a couple of reasons. The first is Tim Miller leaving the project. It’s never good when a key collaborator leaves a project. Deadpool may be Ryan Reynolds’ baby. But it was Tim Miller’s movie. He’s the one who came up with that fx reel that brought that project out of development hell. On top of that, it’s hard to pull off the “breaking the fourth wall” thing two movies in a row. It’s always cute the first time around. But by definition, gimmicks don’t have staying power. I’m guessing the asides to the audience are inducing eye-rolls this time around (“Haven’t we already seen this?”). With that said, I’d be first in line to see Deadpool team up with the Avengers. That’d be so rad.