With financiers and mini-studios and Blumhouse and A24 and Focus and Amazon and Netflix’s industrialization of the production process, more movies are being made than ever before. Yet you still can’t get your script sold, or even noticed for that matter. What’s up? I’m going to address that right now. Here are 10 things you can focus on that will improve your chances of getting your script purchased.
1) Is your concept marketable? – If your concept isn’t a proven successful movie template (contained horror, guy with a gun, action-comedy, etc.) or a current trend (biopics, true stories, WW2, etc.), you’re not going to get a lot of interest. Less interest equals less reads equals less of a chance someone says yes.
2) Can your movie be made for under 5 million dollars? – Put simply, the less your script costs, the more production companies can afford to make the film. Which increases your selling options exponentially.
3) Negative attitude – Lots of writers believe that the journey is impossible. They’ve convinced themselves that the big evil conglomerate known as Hollywood is conspiring against you. This becomes a self-serving prophecy as everything you do is dictated by negativity. For example, if you query a producer, the e-mail is dripping with a bitter subtext, which puts the producer off, so they never bother getting to your script. I know this because I receive these e-mails. Writing is hard. But breaking in is harder. You have to stay on the path and continue to be positive. This is how most artists break into their respective industries. Positivity and persistence.
4) Keep pumping out material – Work hard on each script, but don’t be the writer who keeps hitting people up with a new revised version of a script they’ve already read several times. Everybody likes NEW. NEW is almost as important as MARKETABLE in Hollywood. There’s nothing more powerful than being able to say, “I’ve got this NEW script you have to read.” To be more specific, try and write 2 scripts a year, and promote those scripts for 6-9 months. While you’re promoting, you should be concurrently working on your next two scripts.
5) Do you know how to write a query letter? – I can suss out 95% of bad writers just by reading their query letters. They spell words wrong. They use weird fonts. Their grammar is off. They ramble aimlessly. If you can’t even say “Hi” correctly, I know there’s no point in opening your script. So get feedback on your queries before sending them out. And put more of a premium on presentation going forward.
6) Are you blanketing the world with your screenplays? – This is where I see most writers fail. They don’t get their scripts out to enough people. Get coverage. Get notes from me. Submit to Amateur Offerings. Submit to the Black List. Submit to Page. Submit to Sundance Labs. Submit to Nicholl. Get a writing group. Trade reads with them. Cold e-mail managers, agents, and producers. Hell, cold call them. A writer was just telling me that he cold-called a mid-major production company, asked for the head guy, and was shocked when they sent him through. It gave him the confidence to call other managers and agents, and while not all of them took his call, more of them took it than he expected. And he was able to send his script out to a handful of them. But the point is, this is a numbers game. If 2-3 people a year are reading a script, you’re never going to break in. The odds aren’t in your favor. Set a goal to get a script to 10 people a year at least (that could be contest readers, writing group friends, whoever).
7) Are you being realistic about where you are on your journey? – If you’re pissed off that nobody’s giving you the time of day on your third ever completed screenplay, or if this is your first year screenwriting, you may need to accept that you’re not ready yet. I mean in what business does someone shoot to the top .001% of the company in a year? You haven’t even figured out how to order coffee yet. You have to be realistic. Get a handful of scripts under your belt, get to at least 3000 hours (5000 would be better) of practice, and then start sending your stuff out there.
8) Are you getting into your story quickly? – Readers are quick to judge. Think about how many of you won’t even open a script after reading the FIRST PAGE on Amateur Offerings. Believe me when I say busy producers and agents are doing the same. There are caveats to this. If the script comes highly recommended, they’ll read it no matter what. But if you’re a newbie, chances are your script is coming with zero fanfare. Even a few seconds of boredom could get you the hook. So get into your story quickly, even if it’s an indie-drama. The Social Network starts with an intense breakup. Juno starts with a 16 year old getting a pregnancy test. Don’t make excuses. Hook the reader immediately and they’ll give you their attention.
9) Have you given us one great character? – One of the first things producers and agents ask when they’re reading a script is, “What actor can we send this to?” If you don’t have a compelling or fascinating or unique or complex or scene-stealing character (doesn’t have to be the hero – just one of the characters in your script), it seriously lowers everyone’s interest in the project. I always say, write a character that an actor would die to play. Recent examples include Harper from yesterday’s script, the mom in Hereditary, Jennifer Lawrence’s character in Red Sparrow, or JK Simmons’ dual-roles in Counterpart.
10) Is your script under 110 pages? – It better be. You can start writing 120 page scripts when you’re established. But right now you’re an unknown spec writer. Nobody knows you and therefore they don’t owe you anything. One of the first things a reader does is check the page count. If they see 120 pages from an unknown writer, I GUARANTEE YOU they’re rolling their eyes and going into your script with a chip on their shoulder. Keep your break-in script lean and mean. Trust me on this.
Genre: Dark Comedy/Satire
Premise: (from Black List) When a liberal white girl who knows exactly how to fix society accuses her equally liberal professor of hate speech, it throws the campus and both their lives into chaos as they wage war over the right way to stop discrimination.
About: Today’s script is a perfect example of workshopping something until it’s solid enough to make some noise in the industry. Writers Emma Fletcher and Brett Weiner first got their script accepted into the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, where they got some notes from professionals, and were able to then rewrite the script (presumably several drafts) and get it on last year’s Black list (with 7 votes). Let this serve as a reminder. Pursue every screenwriting avenue you can afford. And if you can’t afford any, there are plenty of free options (Ahem, Amateur Offerings). This is a “No thank you” business. So the only way to break in is by getting as many people to read your script as possible. Then, and only then, do you have a chance of landing that life-changing “yes.”
Writers: Emma Fletcher & Brett Weiner
Details: 115 pages
“I want to open it up to anyone who had an uncomfortable moment, a difficult feeling, or an experienced micro-aggression.”
One of the many great, and terrifyingly accurate, lines from today’s script.
Social Justice Warrior is so accurate at times, that you wonder if it’s a satire, or if this is the world we live in.
It was only a matter of time before somebody wrote a script on this topic. The question was whether it would be any good. Lucky for these two, they got it workshopped at one of the best places in the world to get a script workshopped – Sundance. Getting the tone right is so hard with satire and I’m sure the people at Sundance helped them nail it.
18 year old freshman Harper Penzig (female, white, cisgender) is so taken by classmate Deshaun Barnes’ story of discrimination that she immediately declares herself a fierce advocate for race and LGBT equality.
A few days later, in a European Intellectuals class, Harper takes exception with professor Susan Brodbeck’s (female, 40’s, white, cisgender) use of the word “ugly” in the sentence: “In your reading, Oppel claims that Nietzche is actually employing irony here to comment on societal attitudes that he finds ugly.”
Harper immediatley raises her hand and says she has a problem with the word ugly as it “alienates important segments of our community.” Specifically as it relates to her sort-of trans-friend Liz, who’s also in the class, and has been called ugly before. Liz, for the record, couldn’t give a shit about Harper’s argument.
When Susan refuses to apologize for her use of the word, Harper takes her fight to the school Dean, demanding a hearing for Susan violating the right that all classrooms must be safe spaces.
Within days, Susan has recruited a small army to picket in front of the history department, calling for Susan’s resignation. When Susan realizes this problem may affect her tenure, she apologizes to Harper. But Harper’s already on a roll, uploading her protest to social media.
Meanwhile, Harper starts “SAFES,” a group that will define every single word and action that constitutes hate. Beginning with a “Privilege Walk,” Harper shows everyone in the group just how privileged and, therefore, hateful they are. Which only reinforces how important the group is. Can a white man eat a burrito? Is this not cultural appropriation? SAFES says it indeed is.
Eventually, Harper’s fight goes viral, and she gets drunk on her social media power. Every injustice is instantly uploaded, where half the world can celebrate and the other half decry her. After awhile, the lines become blurred. Is she doing this because she believes in it? Or is she doing it for the attention?
In the end, Harper and Suzanne will battle it out, in a “safe space” room of all places. Whoever comes out in one piece may dictate the direction of social justice for us all.
This script was great.
What made it so great will surprise you, since I rarely talk about it on the site.
Social Justice Warrior built its entire plot around a thematic question: “Have we gone too far in our quest for social justice?” Every scene was built around that question. And what’s so great about the script is that it gives both sides an equal voice. Harper and Susan have several debate scenes together and in each one, they both make solid points. I bring this up because I read so many scripts where the writer has a clear agenda. So when he’s (she’s? they’s?) writing argument scenes, the point he agrees with always gets the best argument. This script proves that it’s way more interesting when you make the debate even because the writer has to keep reading to get to the conclusion.
For those of you who want to construct screenplays around a thematic question, here’s something to keep in mind. It doesn’t work unless the question is a) charged and b) difficult to answer. So if you built your script around the thematic question, “Is it okay to steal if you’re poor?” that’s not a question people are dying to know the answer to. SJW is built around a charged question that people have intense opinions on. And that means readers are going to keep turning the pages.
There are a few plot related things I want to bring up as well. The script starts off with Harper’s pursuit of getting Susan fired. I could see an early iteration of this script where that was the only plotline. If that were the case, the plot would’ve been too thin. So Fletcher and Weiner added the SAFES plot, where Harper’s goal is to define hate speech and implement it around the school.
As a screenwriter, you’re always feeling out if you have enough plot or if you need more. If you need more, this is an option – using dual-goals. Goal #1: Get Susan fired. Goal#2: Define hate speech for the school. This allows us to bounce back and forth between two storylines, keeping each of them fresh.
I also liked Fletcher and Weiner’s choice to make sure EVERYBODY in this story had something at stake. A common mistake is to only give stakes to your hero. But we had it for our “villain” as well. Susan is going to lose tenure if Harper wins this battle. And the Dean gets a call from the president that if this keeps blowing up, he’ll be fired.
What this does is it gives WEIGHT to these characters’ scenes where there otherwise wouldn’t be any. Because Susan has so much riding on this, we can feel her desperation in her scenes. If tenure was never mentioned, her scenes become infinitely less dramatic. Who cares if she loses this battle? As far as we’ve been told, her job will remain the same.
Finally, I liked the message of the script. That there are legitimate strides that need to be made in the area of social justice. At the same time, there are narcissists out there using the cause as a weapon to gain attention. And because they’re the loudest voices, they get propped up as the faces of the movement, which places said movement in a negative rather than a positive fight.
Where is all of this social justice headed? We’ll need a sequel about a year from now to find out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Thematic questions result in dialogue-heavy scripts. If you want to write a lot of good dialogue, you might try building your script around a thematic question. That’s because you’ll spend many scenes having characters debate the question. And questions that don’t have easy answers are often fun to write and to read. Social Justice Warrior was 95% dialogue for that reason. It set up its question then it let its characters battle for the answer.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (from Hit List) In the face of a massive extinction event on Earth, a team of scientists are chosen to restore the human species once the planet is hospitable again. However, when they wake up millions of years later, Earth is nothing like they expected.
About: Today’s script landed on the 2016 Hit List with 31 votes. The mythology-heavy sci-fi spec comes from the mind of Andrew Baldwin, who wrote the stylish Netflix drama, “The Outsider,” starring Jared Leto. Genesis was scooped up by mega-producer Simon Kinberg at 20th Century Fox. Baldwin is also the latest writer to take a stab at the Logan’s Run remake, a project they’ve been trying to revive for several centuries now. I would not be surprised if they’ve spent upwards of 30 million dollars on developing that script (serious).
Writer: Andrew Baldwin (story by Baldwin and Kyle Franke)
Details: 128 pages
If you think the Black List is hit or miss, you haven’t checked out The Hit List. I was in the mood for an action script today so I tried to read something called, “Bravado,” which, as it so happens, finished ahead of today’s script. It was about policemen and former soldiers (or something) tracking a series of heists. I have never read something that was trying so hard to make you love the writing and that was as ON THE NOSE as this script. I was convinced it was a parody of an action film. So much so that I double-checked the genre. It’s listed as an action-drama.
Anyway, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Ditching that script meant running into this one. And while Genesis has its faults, the mythology behind it is intriguing. Friday I reviewed a mythology-heavy script (Most Dangerous) and one of the critiques was that we’d seen that world before. We haven’t seen the world of Genesis. Which is its big selling point.
We meet Aaron Bishop in a near future where earth is dying – as in, humanity will be extinct within a year. So science has come up with a Hail Mary. Drop a bunch of people (sleeping in high-tech cryo-beds) into the ocean and have them wait while the earth reboots. It should take somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years. They’ll wake up and start repopulating.
But when Aaron awakens, he senses something is off. He’s in a swamp. And the other 99 cryo-beds are nowhere to be found. After stumbling around, he eventually finds Reeves, a female biologist with a grim outlook on life. And with the help of their robotic AI sidekick, Michael, they find a third member, Noorani.
Noorani, it turns out, isn’t part of their mission. He was sent down in a secondary mission six months after their mission. And there’s a very specific reason for why. Mankind was able to create something called “Genesis” that would, basically, speed up the process of bringing earth back “online.” But Noorani doesn’t know where Genesis is. Nobody does.
Aaron is determined to find this magical device and leads an expedition into the nearby mountains to find it. It’s around this time when our group learns that they’ve been asleep for a little more than 100,000 years. Try 100 million years. Yeah. And in that time, an entirely new set of plants and animals have evolved. Imagine the gnarliest dinosaur mixed with a rhinoceros. That would be one of the nicer species.
Up in the mountains, Aaron and crew come across two warring human tribes, both descendants of the dual cryo missions. One of them, led by a dictator, wants to find Genesis, which we now learn has a glitch that will destroy the earth’s ecosystem. The other tribe is doing everything in their power to stop him. The arrival of Aaron clues the bad guys in on where Genesis is. So the race is on between the tribes to get there first.
I really liked the first half of this script. I’m a sucker for “wake up and where the hell are we?” setups. So I was drawn in immediately. I wanted to know where we were. I wanted to know what year it was. I wanted to know what happened to all the other team members. The first 40 pages are driven by this mystery and I was riveted the whole time.
The script starts running into trouble, however, when they find the other tribes. On the one hand, I understand why Baldwin did this. When you’re writing these movies, every section has a lifespan. “Where are we?” and “What year is it?” aren’t questions that the reader is willing to wait 120 pages for to have answered. So Baldwin gave us a mid-point twist that offered new plotlines.
The problem with these new plotlines is that they moved us away from the simplicity that drew us in in the first place. Cue the record scratch because I’m about to repeat myself. The best stories – especially sci-fi – are simple. Or, at least, if they’re complex, the writers do a good job of making the plot easy to understand.
Star Wars is complex. It’s got a masked dude running around on a giant ship, a princess sending secret messages, a boy on a wind farm, a planet-destroying weapon, we’re parsecking all over the galaxy. But they did an amazing job of keeping everything simple and easy to understand by framing it inside of a giant chase.
Genesis does the opposite. We’re after this “Genesis” thingamajiggy, which was sent back with humanity because it’s going to regrow our planet. But then once we’re in the future, we learn that because it’s been 100 million years instead of 100 thousand, Genesis will actually destroy the ecosystem instead of rebuild it(??) and then humans will die, not now, but in a generation or three? So now we have to stop Genesis instead of activate it?
Whenever you have to write out a giant explanation in science-fiction for why something needs to do something to achieve something, there’s a good chance you’ve made it too complicated. The long-winded explanation of how Genesis was originally good but is now bad was the moment I officially stopped suspending my disbelief. It was obvious that the writer was trying to write himself out of a corner.
Look at two of the most successful movies in this genre: Mad Max and Mad Max: Fury Road. Look at how incredibly simple both plots were. In one plot, the bad guys were trying to get oil from the good guys. And in the other, the bad guys were chasing the good guys. Screenwriters keep trying to write these Lord of the Rings like mythologies only to get lost in the weeds. I would’ve preferred if Baldwin kept things simple. Or at least SIMPLER.
With that said, I like this world. I don’t know many movies that take place 100 million years in the future. I like the idea of rebuilding earth. I like the idea of creating a whole new flock of predators that rule the planet. And if we reconstructed the narrative into something simpler, I think there’s a movie here. The first change I’d make is limiting the tribes to 1 instead of 2. But I’m not sure you even need that. Watching a group of people traverse a dangerous world in search of the thing that reboots the planet may be enough assuming all the characters are compelling. I hope they figure it out cause it’s either this or X-Men 9.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Characters should never be used as pawns to escape from the corner you’ve written yourself into. It’s always better to fix the plot point at the source. In the case of Genesis – how it being 100 million years instead of 100 thousand reverses the entire design of the program – you need to fix that plot problem at the core. You’re not going to be able to explain something that preposterous without alerting the reader that you’re digging yourself out of a hole.
What I learned 2: Make sure your stakes have immediate consequences. Saying that Genesis will kill all of them…. within 100 years of being turned on, is not threatening. It means everybody here is going to be able to live their entire lives regardless of what happens. With movies, the stakes have to be immediate and permanent. If you don’t stop Genesis, we all die. That’s it.
I’m going to make a prediction. At some point in the next two weeks, Rian Johnson will announce he’s stepping away from the Star Wars franchise to pursue, “exciting new original endeavors.” The Blu-Ray numbers have finally come in for the sequel to the trilogry threequel and it’s not good. In its first week, Last Jedi sold 1,940,241 Blu-Ray discs. Compare that to The Force Awakens’ first week, which sold 3,420,540 discs. For more reference, Rogue One sold 1,862,376 discs in its first week. Between this and Solo, Star Wars fans have spoken and they’ve spoken loudly. Time to get rid of Johnson. And it’s probably time to get rid of Kathleen Kennedy as well, as she was Johnson’s number 1 backer.
The box office numbers are in and Ocean’s 8 is the big winner with a 42 million dollar opening. It’s hard to say whether this is a success or a failure in the eyes of the studio. The Ghostbusters reboot made 46 million its opening weekend and everyone considered that a bomb. Then again, I don’t know what Ocean’s 8’s budget was. It didn’t need any special effects so it’s probably lower than Ghostbusters. But only the studio knows for sure.
The clear winner this weekend, though, is Hereditary. True, I didn’t like the script. But we’re talking about a movie that, a week ago, nobody had heard of. To build a marketing campaign in such a short amount of time and land the biggest opening ever for its company, A24, with 13.5 million, is a huge accomplishment. I’m still on the fence with A24. They do an amazing job finding filmmakers, but a horrible job developing screenplays. Clearly they allow the directors to do whatever they want and it’s costing them a pretty penny. There’s got to be a way to stay director-friendly but still have script input. You can’t last forever on 5-10 million dollar opening weekends. I’ve seen many prodcos fall by the wayside trying to make that strategy work.
A lot of people are confused why Blumhouse’s “Upgrade” hasn’t fared better (it currently sits at 9 million after two weeks). Everyone who sees the movie says it’s great. The reason it’s not doing better is because it doesn’t fall into any identifiable genre or movie-type. It’s not a horror film. It’s not an action film. It’s not a sci-film. It’s in that tweener territory and this is often where movies go to die. Every once in awhile a tweener will break through (Get Out was a “social horror film”). But usually these films die an ugly death. The average person sees the Upgrade trailer and says, “I’m not sure what that is.” So it shouldn’t be a surprise that they didn’t drive to the theater.
I saw a good movie last night, one that all aspiring screenwriters should check out. Thoroughbreds. It’s about two troubled teenage girls who decide to murder the older girl’s creepy step-father. There’s a few reasons I endorse checking this out. First, it’s great spec material. We’ve got a contained thriller situation (almost the entire movie takes place in a mansion). And we’ve got the threat of murder. Like I always say, a mundane idea can become an exciting idea with the simple addition of a dead body. Those two things alone give this potential to sell.
Also, these scripts are great practice for aspiring screenwriters. Since you have two characters driving 80% of the story, you have to be on top of your character and dialogue game. The writer here, Cory Finley, smartly made these characters polar opposites. One is preppy and social, the other alternative and sociopathic. Nothing shines a light on what’s unique about someone more than placing them in front of their opposite.
And he gave these girls history. They used to be best friends until the richer one drifted away. This was a double whammy when it came to dialogue. You have two polar opposites, which provided plenty of conflict to drive dialogue. AND you had the unsettled broken friendship, which provided an undercurrent of subtext between the two. This allowed the dialogue to shine even brighter.
But the script isn’t without its faults. Keeping the character count and locations low stresses the third act, where a few scenes leading up to the climax suck the energy out of the act since they didn’t need to be there. And Finley fell into that classic trap of movie-logicing his ending. (spoiler). The “disturbed” friend agrees to be roofie’d so that the rich friend can kill her father then plant the murder weapon in her friend’s hand to make it look like she did it. Uh-huh, I’m sure she’d do that. I see this SO OFTEN, where writers give up in the end because it’s hard to come up with a great ending. But you gotta fight it. A great ending is the best advertisement for your script. When a reader finishes a script on a great-ending high? The first thing they do is call someone and tell them “you have to read this.”
Has everyone recovered from Trailerpacalypse yet? A barrage of trailers hit the internet over a span of 48 hours and we’re all trying to figure out who the winner is. You have the new Halloween reboot. The third How to Train Your Dragon movie. A Star Is Born. Wreck-It Ralph 2. First Man. Bad Times at the El Royale. Bumblebee. The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Lego Movie 2. And Serenity. Luckily, I’m here to provide you with the definitive rankings of these illustrious trailers. Don’t bother arguing with me. I’m right.
1) Bumblebee – Nailed what Transformers should’ve always been. Loved it.
2) A Star Is Born – Surprisingly moving. Could Cooper be a director to watch out for?
3) Halloween – Once that classic score hit, I was putty in this trailer’s hands. Why don’t we get great score riffs like this anymore?
4) First Man – Apollo 13 for a new generation.
5) Serenity – Matthew McConaughey Matthew McConaugheyin. Slick and sexy. Anne Hathaway, you are my sunshine.
6) Bad Times at the El Royale – Weird, odd, tonally all over the place. But a spec script! (note: please send me this script if you have it.)
7) The Girl in the Spider’s Web – No Steig Larson? No problem!
8) How to Train Your Dragon 3 – A hidden blacklight dragon world? Nailed it! + sarcasm.
9) Wreck-It Ralph 2 – That princess sequence made me cringe. That’s the best they got?
10) Lego Movie 2 – Everything that was clever about the first movie is missing here.
Finally, share with the world your rare movie finds! See an obscure great movie on Netflix? Downloaded a tiny film on Itunes you assumed would be bad but turned out awesome? Find a killer TV show on Hulu that nobody knows about? Let us know in the comments so that we may enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Genre: TV Pilot (Drama)
Premise: (from writer) In a dystopian future where death comes early for most, the hyper-violent game of Bullseye keeps the downtrodden masses pacified. The stars of the game trade a shortened life expectancy for luxury and carnal pleasure. But when Bullseye’s most famous star tries to retire, it’s the seed of resistance that ultimately leads to a revolution led be the men and women who play the most dangerous of games.
Why You Should Read: This script originally started as a feature spurred on by an article you wrote about mining public domain IP for ideas. I was going to write an adaptation based on the famous short “The Most Dangerous Game”. Set in a dystopian future, in my story the island is used as a place to hunt famous athletes who dare to leave a violent sport called ‘Bullseye’. Then something happened. After the 1st act, I didn’t want to go to the island for the rest of the story. Rather, I wanted to continue to explore the characters and world I had created. **** So I hit on another Carson mantra, always have at least one pilot in your arsenal. While I have written 9 features, this is my first pilot. And I discovered that I enjoyed this format much more than I ever anticipated. One last thing – I’ve been writing for a good fifteen years now. Writing screenplays is much like climbing Mount Everest. You actually have to go backwards a few times before you get to the top, and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get there. Most writers fall into a crevasse and are never heard from again. I’m hoping this script is my rope bridge to the summit. I’d appreciate anything the SS community has to say.
Writer: A.C. Shelby
Details: 65 pages
One of the hardest things to do is write compelling sports action. That’s because to a reader, everything looks like: “And then he runs over to the ball!” “He dodges and leaps, barely making the first down.” “Just as the opponent turns his head, he speeds past him!” “He dribbles over to the right side of the field, scanning his options.” Imagine reading 6, 7, 8 pages of that. I’d rather drink a lava smoothie.
So I always tell sports screenwriters to focus on the game within the game. Focus on conflict between the players. Focus on your hero’s weaknesses and how he’s going to overcome them. Try and find moments that engage the audience, as opposed to describing that perfect move. I can’t remember how a single game unfolded in the movie Bull Durham. But I remember the scene where Crash tells Nuke to throw the ball at the mascot like it was yesterday.
Does this issue plague “Most Dangerous?” Or does it have other problems to worry about? Join me in the ring and we’ll find out together…
34 year old Benedict Haven is the star player in a future sport that makes football look like curling. Part hockey, part handball, all violence, Bullseye is just as much about killing as it is about winning.
While the threat of death, or worse, tests the psychological limits of its players, there’s no doubt that there are perks to playing the game. We live in a world so plagued by smog, that if you don’t have a high-quality “breather,” you’ll suffocate before you’ve even made it to work. Benedict and other players don’t have to worry about that. They have the kind of money that protects them from the elements.
But Benedict is sick of the game. After killing an opponent via a controversial move, he’s had enough. So he tells the team manager that he’s done. The manager asks him to cool down for a couple of days and make a decision then.
In the meantime, Benedict’s best friend on the team, Dynamo, is cut after suffering a debilitating headshot. When Benedict goes to visit him, he’s told he’s been shipped out to an underground team. Benedict is forced to visit the grimy underworld of this city to retrieve his friend, only to find him lobotomized.
Benedict eventually heads back to the nice part of the city, where the manager allows him to sign his retirement papers. Finally, Benedict can move on with his life. However, in the final scene, Benedict is called in to see Titus, the team owner.
Titus informs him that he should’ve paid closer attention to the papers he signed, because they actually place him in indentured servitude for the rest of his life. Benedict isn’t going anywhere. He’s going to be playing Bullseye for a looooooong time.
Before we get to the game of Bullseye, I want to bring up a few things.
I read a lot of scripts set in the future. And almost every one describes the future in the same way. So my disbelief is never suspended. It’s just one more copy of a place I’ve already been to. Look no further than Mute and Altered Carbon, as worlds that rip off something we’ve already experienced. Shelby adds just enough new detail to this world to overcome this problem.
For example, when a girl Benedict slept with the previous night is about to leave, he asks her, “Do you have your breather?” She says she doesn’t, but she should be okay. “No,” he says, “Take one of mine.” He retrieves one. She looks at it, surprised. “Top of the line.” Then we go outside and see everybody has these breathers. And as the woman heads into the subway, we see a man splayed across the steps, dead, sans breather, people paying him no mind. This sequence solidified this world to me. It felt slightly different than what I’d seen previously.
Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I can praise this pilot for. Because after this opening, the script becomes one long monotone note.
Let’s begin with the game. I’m not sure I like this game. The way it’s described, with people launching off of springboards and “goalies” who are swinging back and forth on ropes, I imagined this to be a really dark performance of Cirque de Soleil. And I’m not sure that’s what Shelby was hoping for. But I mean you have players flying through the air and you have people swinging around. What else are we supposed to imagine?
The bigger problem, however, was the killing rules. This is your concept. A game that’s deadly. A game where it’s okay to kill your opponent. That’s why I’m tuning in. However, there is no explanation as to what the rules for killing are, or why you’d want to kill someone in the first place. As far as I can tell, you don’t get extra points. So what’s the benefit of it?
We get one game of Bullseye in the pilot, and towards the end of the game, Benedict, away from the action, grabs a woman from the other team and snaps her neck. The crowd starts booing. The announcers call it a cheap shot that will be looked at after the game. In the meantime, I have no idea why any of this is happening. Why randomly kill someone at the end of the game away from the ball? It didn’t seem to affect anything. And why is the kill controversial? Since I haven’t been given the rules, I don’t know. And that was frustrating.
This pilot could of benefitted from a big bucket of clarity and a tub full of stakes. What is the importance of this particular game? Where are we in the season? Does killing help the team advance in the standings somehow?
The beauty of Stephen King’s The Running Man (another futuristic deadly game movie) is how easy it is to understand the game.
You run. You try not to get killed.
This is what so many writers forget. They’re so obsessed with creating big futuristic worlds with a big futuristic mythology that they forget to make things easy to understand. At the very least, Shelby needs to explain the purpose of killing. That was the main reason I was interested in this premise. A modern day gladiatorial battle. For me to be confused about what’s going on is inexcusable.
Another problem with this pilot is that it takes itself too seriously. You got the feeling that if someone cracked a joke in this story they’d be shot on sight. Everything is sooooooo over-the-top dire. Everything is soooooooo over-the-top depressing. If I’m miserable visiting your world, I’m probably not going to show up next week.
One of you posted a clip from Braveheart yesterday – the one where the two men join William Wallace’s team, one of them a goofball. It was such a great example of a writer understanding that his story was getting too serious and needed a release. So he added this scene that made us laugh. And stories need that. They need to go up and down, up and down. They can’t stay on one continuous level the whole time. That’s a sure path to boredom.
Finally, you have to restructure this plot. The game shouldn’t be at the beginning. It should be at the end. One of the problems here is we’re watching this depressing dude retire. Why would I look forward to that? What do I get from that as a viewer? I don’t care. But if you placed the game at the end of the pilot, everything changes. Now, I have something to look forward to.
It would allow you to build up the game. You can have people talk about how dangerous it is. You can have Benedict get interviewed by ESPN – asked by the reporter what he thinks about the double-kill from last night’s game. Identify people who love Benedict (+ others on the team) and show how terrified they are of their loved ones competing in this sport. We see the effects this game has on all these people BEFORE the game, which, in turn, makes the game itself almost mystical. We’ll be dying to see what it’s all about, turning the final act into a true climax. Also, Benedict killing someone (assuming we understand why he did it) is a great cliffhanger for the next episode. I can imagine a scenario where Benedict is the one player on the team who’s never had a kill. And they say your first kill changes you. Changes everything. And we can see it in his eyes after he’s killed the player. A mixture of shock, adrenaline, anger, maybe a pinch of excitement… CUT TO BLACK.
Script link: Most Dangerous
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One can not appreciate the bitter without the sweet. You need levity, even in the most serious of scripts. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to add a fun character. Someone who takes life a little less seriously than your hero. Being able to bring that character in whenever you need a laugh is a nice option to have. Here’s the clip that was posted in the comments yesterday from Braveheart, which is a good example of this tip in action.
