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.

I’m obsessed with Wrinkle in Time and Ready Player One. They both have interesting storylines behind them. Wrinkle in Time is a film that Diversity-Destined-Disney was counting on to become a hit but, based on tracking, isn’t looking like it will be. What does that mean?? Ready Player One was supposed to be the ultimate geek smorgasbord. But the trailers promise a muddy generic CGI-fest without any vision. Has Spielberg lost it? If this doesn’t do well, this will be his weakest stretch as a filmmaker in his entire career. Which sucks! Cause I really loved the Ready Player One novel. Also, if movies like this don’t do well, it means more Marvel movies. Do we really want more Marvel movies??

If you’re new to Amateur Offerings, read as much as you can from each script and vote for your favorite in the comments section.

As always, winner gets a review next Friday. And if you believe you have a screenplay that will light the world on fire, submit it to Amateur Offerings! Send me a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and why you think people should read it (your chance to pitch your story). All submissions should be sent to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com.

Title: The Notorious Natalie James
Genre: Post-Apocalypse / Action-Western (“John Wick” meets “Mad Max: Fury Road”)
Logline: In a deranged post-apocalypse, a renowned twelve-year old killer plots to steal a mysterious map from the illusive crime-boss responsible for her father’s brutal death.
Why You Should Read: Based on my well-received children’s book, “THE NOTORIOUS NATALIE JAMES” is JOHN WICK meets MAD MAX: FURY ROAD with a dash of SCOTT PILGRIM and is exactly what you’d expect when you put those films together – over-the-top action, insane fight choreography, kinetic, feverish energy as well as a unique blend of deliriously fun and weird, gonzo humor that elevates this above the other Jane Wick wannabes. — I’ve always wanted to explore the importance of childhood in a unique way, and with this, I believe I’ve done it in a way that will make for a good discussion! Plus, it isn’t that hard to market. I’ve wanted McKenna Grace to be Natalie, but who do you think should be her, Scriptshadow?

Title: The Exchange
Genre: Political Action, Thriller
Logline: A determined woman breaks an African terrorist leader out of prison, in order to exchange him for her kidnapped husband.
Why You Should Read: This film sheds light on a social economical problem that has plagued one region for decades, while also delivering an entertaining thriller about a woman who has already experienced a devastating lost, desperately doing everything she can to hold on to all that she has left. Money is a major theme throughout the film. Not just greed and the evils that is spawns, but also equality. Wanting what is rightfully yours, wanting what you feel you deserve. Unlikely bonds are formed, loyalties are questioned, and hearts are sent racing in this political action thriller that spans across two continents.

Title: Helldorado
Genre: Crime/Noir
Logline: On a case to track down a missing girl, a detective partners with the tortured ghost of his dead brother to uncover a conspiracy that will prevent the construction of the Hoover Dam in 1920s Las Vegas.
Why You Should Read: I recently watched “Mute” on Netflix and was instantly underwhelmed. I thought to myself, how can something so cool have been so unsatisfying. I love crime/thriller/noir films. ​But mute left me silent. ​This reminded me that I wrote a similar screenplay that I think is much better. I called it, “Helldorado”. This story is based 100% on an out-of-body experience I had where I was partnered with a detective and the ghost of his dead brother as they solved a crime in 1920’s Las Vegas. ​I immediately put the story to paper…and this was the result.

Title: Night of Game
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: 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.

Title: Reminiscence
Genre: TV Pilot Sci Fi / Drama 60p
Logline: A young student dies in an accident and unbeknownst to his family is replaced with an Artificial Intelligent being that is tasked to socially integrate.
Why You Should Read: Produced writer in South Africa. Always loved SciFi and an interest in AI and I hated the dumbing down of AI beings and with Musk’s open AI and the other tech giants starting something I wanted to up the game on WestWorld, Alita-battle angel, Blade Runner.

Usually I give you guys formal screenwriting advice. But today I’m going to change things up and give you screenwriting HACKS, flashy tips that aren’t meant to guide you to the perfect screenplay so much as spice your script up. You can use two of them. You can use seven of them. It’s up to you. They will never make nor break your script. But they will HELP. Let’s begin!

1 – A concept you don’t have to defend – I see this all the time. Someone will pitch me an idea like, “A group of people trying to make it in Los Angeles endure a series of obstacles but eventually come out on top.” The writer will then immediately launch into a defense of his logline before I even say anything. “I know that sounds generic. But what it’s really about is this guy who runs an acting workshop and see…” I’m not saying the above idea would make a terrible script. If the writer knows character, it could be great. But we’re talking about hacks here, things to make your job easier. You do this by coming up with a concept that speaks for itself, that isn’t so boring that you have to defend it. “A young African-American man visits his white girlfriend’s creepy parents for the weekend, and begins to suspect that they’ve brought him here to hurt him.”

2 – At least one big character – Big characters jump off the page and get big actors attached. The kind of character you’re generally looking for here is a chatterbox with opinions who’s a little bit crazy. Juno. Ladybird. Walter from The Big Lebowski. Louis from Nightcrawler. Mildred from Three Billboards. Dixon from Three Billboards. This is one of the easiest ways to make your script stand out.

3 – A flashy opening scene – This is a TV pilot staple. But they’re available to you feature writers as well. Give us a scene that grabs us right away. If it doesn’t fit into the timeline of your story, you can make it a flash-forward. Those first 5 pages are when you’re being judged the harshest. It’s when the reader is literally thinking, “I have to read another terrible script before I can get to my own writing??” Give’em a hell of a great scene, like the opening of Scream (one of the most famous spec scripts ever), Inception, or all the James Bond films, and they’ll want to stick around.

4 – Efficient description – Keep your paragraphs to THREE LINES AT MOST. Make most of them TWO LINES AT MOST. If that scares you, good! Scripts are supposed to be easy to read. Not a chore. Learn to be a poet, to say as much as possible in as few words as possible.

5 – A small group of strong characters as opposed to a large group of average characters – Spec scripts work best with a tight cast of characters. Fight it all you want. It doesn’t change the fact that the screenwriting format LOVES setups with 4-5 main characters. Cloverfield 13, Get Out, Ex Machina, Room. All of these superhero movies with 30 characters are not spec scripts and therefore don’t require an overworked reader to keep track of all 30 people. Also, a small group of characters allows you to focus the story and give those characters more attention. So look for ideas that favor this setup.

6 – Dialogue that’s a model, not a mannequin – Mannequin dialogue is the bare essentials. It’s the shape of the human, but there’s no expression or individuality to it yet. A model, on the other hand, has a face that can express emotion. Hair that can be styled. You can dress her in something classy, sassy, slutty, distinguished, whatever you want. Here’s a scene from Three Billboards, where Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is drunk and badgering Mildred at the bar. A patron tells Mildred she sounded great in her TV interview yesterday. Here’s the “mannequin” version of Dixon’s dialogue: “Why are you encouraging her? What she’s doing is wrong.” Note how straightforward and generic that is. Anybody in the world could’ve said it. Now here’s the “model” version, which was used in the movie: “I didn’t think you came across really good in the things you were saying. I thought you came across stupid-ass.” Dixon is an idiot, a 6th grader in a man’s body. We see that here in his butchered grammar and low level vocabulary. This is how you dress up dialogue. You have it express the individual who’s speaking.

7 – An antagonist with personal motivation rather than general motivation – Marvel keeps screwing this up but there are signs of course-correction. Having a bad guy who wants to collect some item so they can harm the world is boring because it’s generic. But a bad guy who has a personal beef with the hero, as we saw with Black Panther, is interesting because it’s specific. If that doesn’t work, consider a personal beef adjacent to your hero. This is what Spider-Man: Homecoming did. The Vulture wanted to hurt the city because they went back on their contract with him, leaving him high and dry in his career and his family. Villains with solid motivations juice a story up.

8 – One giant setup and payoff – You can have as many setups and payoffs as you like. But you need one great one. Setups and payoffs are so fun and audiences LOVE them. Unfortunately, I don’t see as many of them as I used to. The Rita Hayworth poster in The Shawshank Redemption. The snakes in Indy. The clock tower storm in Back to the Future. Where are my current setups and payoffs at?

9 – A twist ending – I hesitate to put this here but nothing affects a reader more than a twist ending they never saw coming. It’s got to make sense for the movie. But there isn’t a single device that can upgrade a script faster than a great twist ending.

10 – At least one scene you KNOW everyone will be talking about when they leave the theater – I can’t tell you how many scripts I read without a SINGLE memorable scene. You need a scene that defines your movie. Achieving this is easier than you think. Just come up with a scene idea that you know audiences will have a strong reaction to. Fish sex for The Shape of Water. The peach scene in Call Me By Your Name. Dixon throwing the advertising agent out the window in Three Billboards.

There ya go. Now go hack at it!

Devastating news, my friends. I’m under the weather. I couldn’t muster the strength to read and review a script. This stuff takes more brain power than you think. But I hate leaving you guys with nothing, so I wanted to highlight something someone brought up in the comments section yesterday. Jordan Peele quit writing “Get Out” 20 times. Think about that for a moment. If any one of those times took, he would not have been standing at the front of the most prestigious movie awards ceremony in the world accepting an Oscar on Sunday. One of the most difficult things about writing is that you get so close to a script that all you can see are its faults. You may even start to hate it. These are the moments when you want to hang it up. Don’t. If you believed in your script with all your heart when you started it, there’s something there. It’s your duty to finish it and get it out there. You never know what could happen. :)

Is Apple’s flagship “See” the “Game of Thrones” slayer it so desperately wants to be?

Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: In the distant future, after a virus has left less than 2 million souls on earth, tribes of people attempt to survive without the most basic human sense – sight.
About: When a media company worth 900 billion dollars lets everyone know they’re entering the TV space, everyone in that space gets really f’ing nervous. We live in a TV world that’s increasingly becoming harder and harder to stand out in. The only way to do it is with big money. And no one has more money than the house that Jobs built. “See” is one of their flagship programs, and it comes from Francis Lawrence (Red Sparrow, The Hunger Game sequels) and Steven Knight (Eastern Promises). Lawrence is quoted as saying that they’re going to be able to do stuff with this show that you never get to do in TV. Can’t wait to find out what that’s all about!
Writer: Steven Knight
Details: 69 pages (Third Draft)

With all of the screenplays I read, it is rare that I come across an idea that I truly consider original. I’ve never seen an idea like this in the television world. I’ve seen a movie covering similar territory – Blindness – but that was one of the worst movies I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting through.

Sight-challenged subject matter, unless you’ve got Al Pacino, is a TOUGH thing to film. I mean, you’re watching people literally stumble around in the dark. To put an entire cast into that world is one of the riskiest things I’ve ever seen. And when you’re introduced to the world-building here, with entire towns built around strings and ropes that the inhabitants use to pull themselves around, you’re thinking, “They’re going to do this for 70 episodes?”

I kept waiting for the moment where some miracle light came down and all of a sudden everyone could see. But I don’t think that moment’s coming. We’ve got babies who can see. But that isn’t going to pay off for another 15 years. What do we do in the meantime?

Maybe I should break down the plot for you. The year is 2600-something. We’re high up in the mountains in a weird village that has, like I said, ropes and pulleys and shit. Through some title cards, we learn that back in the 22nd century, a virus swept through the planet that killed almost everyone. Anyone who remained was left sightless.

Over in a cave, a strange woman, an intruder of sorts named Maghra who only joined this clan weeks ago, is pushing out twins. Meanwhile, the clan’s leader, a giant of a man named Baba Voss, is dealing with an approaching army. He can’t see this of course. No one can. But in a world with no sight, you use your other senses acutely, and sense-specific generals use their hearing to note that hundreds of horses are coming up the mountain. They will be here soon.

Via a series of conversations throughout the village, we learn of a mysterious man named Jerlamarel. He was the man who got Maghra pregnant then disappeared. It is rumored that Jerlamarel had sight (vision is considered witchcraft in this time, so sight is never talked about). Jerlamarel left a message (messages are written via a series of knots in ropes) that there is a secret bridge off this mountain that will take everyone here to a new land.

Because they are vastly outnumbered by the approaching army, the village decides to flee to this rumored bridge. After they cross it, they find their way into a valley, a valley overlooking a once-familiar but now dead skyline, that of New York City. What they don’t know is that they’re moving towards another village, a village led by a woman with one goal – to find and kill the witch babies who have inherited the power of sight.

Does the word prayergasm mean anything to you?

Oh, it will.

What I really liked about “See” was that it had an extremely complex world it needed to set up, but said, “Fuck it. I’m not only going to set this world up. I’m going to entertain you while I do it.” It kills me when young writers make the mistake of believing that because everything in their fantasy world is soooooo complex, it needs 70 entire pages of dry setup. There can be no fun when you’ve got the Squybar language to establish, and the Tenth Thistle Law that the reader has to know to understand why the War of 2119 ended in the Calagar Revolution.

Your job as a writer is to tell us those things WHILE ENTERTAINING US AT THE SAME TIME. Trust me. However complex you think your world is? It’s not a tenth as complex as this one. And yet we already have a war on page 10 in “See.”

This is a testament to the old advice: Start your story as late as possible. Sure, Knight could’ve given us 30 pages of setup before the war. But that’s not how good storytelling works. Especially these days when viewers have LITERALLY 400 other options to turn to. You have to grab people fast. So we grab and go with a war and then an evacuation.

I was shocked they made that choice, to be honest. Usually, when you have TV shows, money is tight. If you’re going to build an elaborate village on a mountain with an intricate system of movement and engagement? In a normal show, you’re going to use that set for AT LEAST your first season. That set gets torched by page 50 here. I guess this is what Apple was talking about with their deep pockets. You think you’ve got money Netflix? That’s pocket change for Apple.

So I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen once they left. But I’ll tell you one thing that happens. Prayergasm. Queen Kane, who rules the only town in the world that still has electricity, masturbates whenever she prays to God. And hey, why not? Nobody’s going to catch her. Even if they hear her, it’s easy to deny. “Queen? Are you buttering your muffin again?” “Um, no!” “I thought I heard something.” “Prove it.” Argument won.

The cool thing about this concept is that it places the audience in the unique position of knowing more than the characters. So, for example, in the scene where the fleeing village people are approaching the cliff and looking for this rumored bridge. Everyone is desperately looking around, dangling perilously near the cliff that the bridge crosses, tempting fate with each step. WE can see that the bridge is right there. But they’re clueless. That adds a unique form of dramatic irony that allows us to ball our fists and scream out, “It’s right there! It’s right in front of you! Just keep walking.” This opens up avenues you can explore on multiple levels throughout the series.

What I wonder about is the staying power of this hook. Its biggest asset is also its biggest weakness. Will audiences stick with characters flailing around like drunken sailors season after season? I don’t know. There are no old comps to compare this to. Everything is brand new and therefore unknown.

But I like that. If these are the kinds of risks Apple is going to be taking, then they can definitely take on “I don’t know how to make good movies” Netflix and “We Only Have One Good Show” HBO. All you need is a couple of winners and you’re a player baby.

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

What I learned: Knight will occasionally use a tactic where we meet an important character, but due to the way the story’s set up, the intro to that character needs to be brief. So Knight will write, right after the character intro: “We will get to know this person well.” Knight understands that when tons of information and new characters are being thrown at the reader, it’s difficult to know what needs to be remembered and what can be filtered out. Adding that little tag is a thoughtful way of saying to the reader, “I don’t have time to get into this person’s deal now. But since you have to remember so much shit, I want you to know he’s important. So don’t forget him.”