A period serial killer piece from the writer of Drive and the director of True Detective? Sign me up!

Genre: TV Pilot – Serial Killer
Premise: When a boy prostitute is brutally murdered in 1896 New York City, an “alienist” – a special type of doctor who studies mental pathology – attempts to find the killer.
About: The pilot for today’s show comes from powerhouse artists Houssein Amini (Drive), Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), and Eric Roth (Benjamin Button). It will star Daniel Bruhl (Inglorious Basterds), Luke Evans (The Hobbit), and Dakota Fanning. The show is based on the novel by Caleb Carr. The show will surprisingly air on TNT, which realizes that if it wants attention, it needs to get into the premium television business.
Writer: Houssein Amini (adapted from the novel by Caleb Carr)
Details: 66 pages

We’re in an interesting time with television. It reminds me of the reality TV craze that hit in the early 2000s where anybody who ended their pitch with “and it’s a reality TV show,” would get their show on the air.

But then, after 10,000 terrible reality TV shows hit the air, the ratings dried up, and no one was sure what to do anymore. Eventually much cheaper productions moved to ancillary channels. But for awhile there it was touch and go on what would happen with the format.

Right now there are SO MANY FREAKING SHOWS spread across SO MANY CHANNELS that casualties are a foregone conclusion. There just aren’t enough eyeballs to watch everything. And even when there are, you have to first find the shows, then find out where they’re on, then find out when they’re on. And how do you do that when all the high profile shows are saying, “Look over here instead!!”

You have guys like Matthew Weiner making some bonkers mega-budgeted show on Amazon. You’ve got the Tom Hardy show, Taboo, which is good, but the average viewer has no idea what it’s about. You’ve got this misconceived Ryan Murphy’s show, “Feud,” which is a 90 minute movie at best being stretched into a season of television. You’ve got award winning shows like Atlanta, yet I haven’t met a single person who’s actually seen it.

The Alienist fits into that mold. You have really smart creative people making this show. But it’s so dark and so intense, that to stand out amongst this endless list of competition is going to be darn near impossible unless the show is great.

So, is the show great?

Well, I know one way to find out.

Local newspaper reporter John Moore has been sent to check out a gruesome murder at the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. “Unfinished” because this is 1896 New York. I’ll tell you who is finished though. The prostitute boy who’s been sliced open and had his eyes gouged out.

Moore, horrified by this sight, is only able to recover once his friend, Lazlo Kreizler, enters the fray. Kreizler is a new breed of psychologist called an “alienist,” whose main job it is to decide whether criminals are sane enough to be punished for their crimes. But Kreizler’s talents will have to be used for something far greater – catching a killer.

The two are indirectly helped by Theodore Roosevelt. That would be POLICE COMMISSIONER Theodore Roosevelt, in the job he held before racing up the political ladder. Roosevelt is a bit of a forward thinker, even hiring a young woman, Sara Howard, to work at the precinct – something that was unheard of back in the day.

Roosevelt realizes that this killer is way beyond anything the police force has dealt with in the past. But he also knows that if he allows an alienist on the case, he’ll be seen as a fool. So he assigns Kreizler and Moore to find the killer on the down low.

While Moore is more of an observer, Kreizler is the kind of bizarre soul who keeps jars of fetuses in his office. Of course, they’re going to need that bizarreness to take down the single most perplexing serial killer New York has ever seen.

A question I’m often asked is: What are differences between an amateur writer and a pro writer? Writers feel that if they can work off a defined set of rules, they can mirror what the pros do.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. As an amateur writer, you don’t know what you don’t know what you don’t know. I can tell you that the plot choice you made on page 54 doesn’t fit, tonally, with the rest of the script. Or that the supporting character you like so much is redundant. Or that the majority of your scenes don’t push the plot forward. But you don’t see that. To you, all of those things make total sense. And they’ll continue to make sense until all the mysteries of screenwriting open up to you, something that only happens by writing script after script after script, by reading script after script after script.

When you read a pilot like The Alienist, you are seeing a professional writer who knows this medium inside and out. The attention to detail here is as impeccable as Mozart concerto. The research of this period is as good as an historian’s. And the writing itself has a sophisticated edge to it. For example, we get this line: “The murdered boy kneels in supplication, the falling snow settling on his long hair and blood soaked dress,” instead of this one “The dead boy lays there, mangled and bloody.”

I also find that pros tweak a familiar situation so that it’s not quite like what we’ve seen before. For example, a common scene I run into is the john hiring the prostitute, and then, to show that our john is “likable,” he stops the prostitute from trying to have sex with him and, instead, “just wants to talk.” Fucking kill me if I ever read that scene again.

But anyway!

We meet John Moore with a prostitute and, as he’s having sex with her, he’s angry because she’s telling him that she’s in love with another man. At that moment, the madame bursts in and the girl “drops the act.” It was all a little game they were playing.

It was a small thing but the point is, I’ve read a lot of prostitute scenes, and the fact that the writer gave me one that I hadn’t seen before is what separates him from the standard amateur.

But the place where professionals really separate themselves is in the characters. They create characters who are complex and different. I’ll give you guys a little tip here to help you get closer to these million-dollar-a-project screenwriting studs – create characters with CONTRAST.

So here you have Lazlo Kreizler, who is into some really dark disturbing shit. As I mentioned before, he keeps fetuses in his office. And yet he’s always happy, always having fun. That contrast between the light and the dark is what makes the character interesting to watch. If Kreizler was into dark shit and he was also really depressed, his character would seem on the nose, or worse, boring.

That’s not to say you can’t create characters who are of one mind. You could argue that Rust Cohle from True Detective was into dark shit and also acted dark. What I’m saying is, contrast is an easy hack you can use to make a character pop.

And, actually, that’s my only complaint with The Alienist, is that the character of John Moore doesn’t have enough going on. Not as much time was put into him as was Kreizler. To be honest, I don’t even know why he’s in the story. Why would the police force, or even Kreizler, want a journalist hanging around? Isn’t that the opposite of what you want? Someone who might blab about your investigation to the local paper?

It would’ve been more interesting to pair Kreizler with the lone woman at the precinct, Sara Howard. At the time, women were barely allowed inside a police department, nor were they allowed to be exposed to gruesome murders. Imagine the conflict involved with her co-heading up this investigation with weirdo Kreizler.

Whatever the case, The Alienist should pull in people who liked that first season of True Detective. It’s just as dark, if not darker, than that beloved show.

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

What I learned: You change the eyes, you change the view. One of the best ways to breathe new life into familiar situations is to change the eyes through which we’re experiencing those situations. If you give us a murder investigation through the eyes of a cop, you’re giving us the same thing we’ve always seen. But if you give us a murder investigation through the eyes of an alienist, now the exact same situations feel different. That’s because an alienist has a different set of objectives. They have a different set of criteria for why they do what they do. So the next time you come up with an idea, ask yourself how that idea changes depending on whose eyes you explore it through. You may find that a character you didn’t think twice about actually has the most compelling POV on the matter.

We’re back like a Shamrock milkshake, baby. For how long, I don’t know. So enjoy it while you can taste it!

To submit your script for Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, why your script deserves a shot, to: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the ramifications of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or script title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every few weeks so your submission stays near the top.

The rules of Amateur Offerings are as such: Read as much of each entry as you can, then, in the comments section, vote for your favorite script. The script with the most votes gets reviewed next Friday. If that script is really good, there’s a chance the review will kick-start the writer’s career.

And with that, here are this weekend’s entries!

Title: Rift
Genre: Fantasy
Logline: A team of Victorian monster hunters must save the universe from their biggest threat yet, themselves.
Why You Should Read: I’m a Benihana chef, mandolin player and a broke as a joke screenwriter living in LA now for two months shy of a year and I’ve written about 10 screenplays. I’ve got about thirty dollars in my bank account so there’s not much there to submit this screenplay to a formal contest which sucks, but I’m living the dream…which is cool. It would be very helpful if you would review it so I could know if I was heading in the right direction and if my diet of peanut butter jelly sandwiches in front of my computer monitor is paying off.

Title: The Keepers of the Cup
Genre: Action/Comedy
Premise: Two die-hard New York Rangers hockey fans steal back the Stanley Cup from vengeful Russian terrorists and travel across the country to deliver it in time for Game 7.
Why You Should Read: When you read this, I can promise you one of two reactions: either you will laugh and enjoy the ride, or you will find this a big swing-and-miss — such is life as a writer. Oh, if it helps, I graduated from USC’s screenwriting program, was named a finalist for Universal Pictures’ Emerging Writers Fellowship for this script, and was mentored by the writers of “Top Gun” and the famous unproduced screenplay “Smoke and Mirrors.” I can also bench 250 and avoid my mother’s phone calls. Honestly, who cares? An entertaining story is an entertaining story. I hope you enjoy “Keepers.”

Title: All Rise
Genre: Thriller
Logline: ALL RISE follows a reprobate judge sentenced to a prison populated with convicts whose lives he’s destroyed.
Why You Should Read: I won the FinalDraft Screenwriting ages ago with a script called “8Track”. My writing partner – Gary Waid – did 8 horrible years in prison for smuggling 19 tons of marijuana. We were both involved with an international smuggling ring. Meanwhile, Gary and I wrote a script a few years ago entitled “Goliath”, sent out by UTA. It’s now a novel, selling at Barnes and Noble and around the world. Great reviews from best-seller authors (including Frederick Forsyth) as well as a covered STARRED review from Publisher’s Weekly. We have another novel coming out in June. “GITMO” is also adapted from my original screenplay which was sent out by APA. Edel Rodriguez is designing the cover this week. Google EDEL RODRIGUEZ NEWS, it’ll blow you away.

Title: Beyond The Front Lines
Genre: Action-Adventure
Logline: Two American spies pose as Nazi Officers to track a German train from the Belgian Congo to Germany’s border in order to discover the whereabouts of Hitler’s secret nuclear program and destroy it before the Nazi’s most notorious female Officer, Belinda “the beast of Berlin” Von Halder discovers their plot.
Why You Should Read: The best way to describe this script is Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid meets Indiana Jones. Like those two films, the script is funny at times but also gives way to some great action-packed sequences. I’ve always wanted to write a WW2 script, but every attempt got bogged down in needless details and maintaining historical accuracies; which always led me back to writing Sci-Fi. So I decided, “to hell with it,” I’ll just write a fictional story, one that would address a very simple theme; a single question to be precise. Does the end justify the means? Will our heroes, US spies, shoot at US soldiers to continue their mission? Will they sacrifice one another if it means “Mission accomplished”? Will they overlook the atrocities of this war and press forward to their destination? I hope you’ll consider reading and I look forward to the feedback… Good Luck.

Title: Stand Tall!
Genre: romantic comedy
Logline: A Vegas waitress, made 16 feet tall, falls in love with the scientist who accidentally enlarged her. She sacrifices her size and fame to save him when he’s kidnapped by a blackmailing mobster.
Why You Should Read: I’m a journalist-screenwriter, a fan of romantic comedy and classic Hollywood. I’ve run the site Carole & Co., named for my all-time favorite actress Carole Lombard, for nearly a decade. “Stand Tall!” blends romcom and sci-fi in a retro yet feminist fashion, with vivid, fun characters — as our oversized heroine says, she would “rather entertain people than attack them.”

I was looking through the top 10 movies of the year so far and realized that almost all of them had great screenwriting lessons embedded in them. So don’t write your next script until you go through these breakdowns!

1) THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE ($160 million so far) – Animated films from major studios always make at least 150 million dollars, so I’m not sure if any lessons can be learned from Lego Batman. I will say this though – this film would never have existed without the original LEGO movie doing so well. And that movie did well because it took chances – such as breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, and ending in the real world. You have to take some chances in your writing or your scripts won’t stand out.

2) LOGAN ($160 million so far) – Logan contains the biggest lesson on this list because we live in a box office world of spectacle. Industry types have been predicting the downfall of the comic book film for a decade now and they’ve only grown stronger. What Logan teaches us, like Deadpool before it, is that audiences are looking for new ways to enjoy a flooded genre. Aging a well-known superhero and making his story more personal and character-driven ended up being exactly what audiences wanted. For some perspective, Logan is predicted to make 100 million more domestically than the last Wolverine film, and some 250 million more globally. Find the fresh take in a superhero premise and you can cash in.

3) SPLIT ($120 million so far) – This movie proves that not only is horror still the best bang-for-your-buck genre out there. It also reminds us of the importance of the “strange attractor,” that sizzle component that makes your idea stand out. The “standard” version of this concept is a normal kidnapper who kidnaps three women and holds them hostage. Night’s “strange attractor” was giving that kidnapper multiple personalities. I have to give it to Night. I thought he went too far here (too many personalities). It goes to show that taking chances (see Lego Batman) is necessary to get that big payout.

4) GET OUT ($115 million so far) – I don’t think people realize how big of a surprise this movie’s success is. This is NOT a traditional horror picture by any means. And it teaches us a couple of screenwriting lessons. First, take a premise from another genre and see if you can add a horror spin to it. “Get Out” is “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” with a horror twist. Go ahead, do it now. Think of some of your favorite non-horror films. What would they look like with a horror spin? Get Out also reminds us of the power of triggering. If you can trigger your potential audience, you can get them to come see your film. Racism is click-bait. And this whole concept is built on top of it. There are lots of things that trigger people these days. Ask yourself, is there a movie idea that can take advantage of them?

5) FIFTY SHADES DARKER ($113 million so far) – The only lesson I can take from this is that the bored middle-aged housewife is underserved in their box office options. Remember, this is the demographic that used to have a romantic comedy thrown at them every other month but doesn’t anymore. So they’re desperately looking for something to rally behind. Anyone have ideas?

6) JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO ($88 million so far) – This is the most exciting entry on the list for me because it proves that if you write a spec script inside a well-known genre (in this case, “Action”) you can create an entire franchise out of nothing. As a nobody writer! Also, this is THE spec script to be writing at the moment. Guy-or-Girl-With-A-Gun action specs. Make sure you find a new angle though! I don’t even think changing the lead to a woman is enough anymore as half-a-dozen of those have already sold in the past 2 years. We’re getting our first with Charlize Theron’s “Atomic Blonde,” directed by… the same director of John Wick! (bonus lesson: Write and shoot a short film focused on something you’re an expert in. What made John Wick such a success were its bad-ass stunts. Who directed the movie? Two stuntmen. Whatever you’re good at, write and direct a short film that features that).

7) KONG: SKULL ISLAND ($88 million so far) – While it’s not a definitive failure, Kong did way lower numbers than WB had hoped. Remember, they were using Jurassic World as their comp, which made $208 million its opening weekend. Kong made $61 million. The truth is nobody was clamoring for this movie, yet I can’t put my finger on why. My lesson here would be “check the temperature in the room.” When they announced this as a teaser two years ago at Comic-Con, people were like, “Eh.” When you tell your friends your idea for your next script, what’s their buying temperature? If they react with, “Eh,” you probably shouldn’t write it.

8) A DOG’S PURPOSE ($62 million) – Man’s best friend ensures that any dog-centered script will make a decent return on its investment. If all I cared about was money, I’d write a Benji-Lassie team-up film. Or maybe Benji vs. Lassie. Hmmm, that could be a funny short film.

9) XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE ($44 million) – I don’t think it’s a good idea to highlight the return of someone when nobody noticed that he left. Xander Cage is the result of a studio that’s so out-of-touch with the mainstream (Paramount) they’d greenlight a Steven Seagall sequel. They have zero clue what people want to see. Which is probably why they’re getting a new head of production. With that said, XXX is doing pretty well overseas and there isn’t a studio in town who doesn’t want to get their hands on a fresh new big-budget action franchise (for the very reason that you can suck balls here in the U.S. and still come out in the black). So you’d do well to write in this genre. Just try to be a little more original than this piece of garbage.

10) THE GREAT WALL ($44 million) – Thank God this maiden China-U.S. major co-production voyage bombed. I’ve been terrified that major U.S.-China collaborations were coming where even more artistic compromises had to be made and the movies became even more homogezined and vision-less. The truth is, while China is open to mainstream American films, China’s sensibilities don’t work over here. We’re too different. Hollywood will paint this as a bad thing since it shrinks potential revenue streams. But for us moviegoers who care about, you know, enjoying films, it’s a very good thing. Screenwriting lesson? This may be the best example ever of when you try to please everyone, you please no one.

Genre: True Story/Drama/Love Story
Premise: Based on a true story, a young woman with barely any sailing knowledge, must navigate a handicapped boat back to land before her boyfriend succumbs to the injuries he sustained during a massive storm.
About: This project got all red hot recently and was finally purchased by upcoming financier/mini-studio STX. The flick will be a starring vehicle for Shailene Woodley, and will be directed by Everest director, Baltasar Kormákur. The writers, Aaron and Jordan Kandell, are fairly new on the scene, but did secure an impressive ‘story by’ credit on Moana. For those unfamiliar with what that means, here’s how the ‘story by’ credit came about. It used to be that an assembly line of writers would work on a script and the WGA would decide who had the most input and deem those writers the official writers on the project. Then someone said, doesn’t that seem strange? That the people who originally came up with the idea and wrote the first draft that every successive writer based the story on, didn’t get any credit? They finally said, “Yeah, that does make sense.” So now, the original writers on the script usually get a “story by” credit, to indicate their contribution at that crucial early stage.
Writers: Aaron Kandell and Jordan Kandell (based on the book “Red Sky In Mourning” by Tami Oldham Ashcraft with Susea McGearhart)
Details: 107 pages

When I first heard of this project, I thought, “Didn’t they already make this movie?” We had the lost at sea pic, “Life of Pi,” which was a great film. We had “All Is Lost,” with Robert Redford, which was also a good movie. You’re telling me we need a third lost at sea movie so soon after these two? What new angle were they bringing to the table?

It turns out they added a simple twist on the genre – a love story. And that’s what’s going to make this movie either a mega-hit or a mega-hit-by-an-iceberg. So which one do I think it is? Well, you’re talking to the guy who, after reading La La Land, thought the love story was boring, cliched, and uninspired. Newsflash: I heard that script was going to win an Oscar. So maybe I’m not the love story guru.

But I have some observations about Adrift, and I’ll get to those right after my synopsis…

23 year old Tami Ashcraft has woken up in the aftermath of a huge storm. She’s inside a boat, barely able to move, trapped underneath a shitload of shit, trying to find her bearings.

“Richard!” she screams.

Who’s Richard? We don’t know yet. But we’re about to find out. We shoot into the past, with Tami hanging out on a marina, where she meets the strapping 32 year old Richard Sharp. Richard is an adventurer, the kind of guy who when he says he’s going to go to Greece for the weekend, he goes.

This gets Tami all googly-eyed and goosebumped, since she’s lived her entire life in fear. She’s the kind of girl who TALKS about going to Greece, but never goes. The two engage in numerous flirtatious sparring matches, each trying to one-up each other, and each falling in love more after every line.

But before we can appreciate that love, we jump forward to the present again, where Tami somehow makes it out of the cabin and spots Richard on a distant life raft. Knowing little-to-nothing about sailing, she cobbles together a sail (using duct-tape!) and manages to get over to Richard.

Richard, it turns out, is in bad shape. He’s alive, but his back is probably broken. If they’re going to make it back to land, it’s going to be up to Tami. And that’s how the movie unfolds. We make a little headway in sailing back towards land, then jump into flashback to show the two falling in love, back to the struggling present, back to falling in love.

Will Tami get Richard back to safety before he succumbs to his injuries? You’ll have to ask Shailene Woodley (or go to Wikipedia).

It’s clear that Aaron and Jordan Kandell really love their subject matter. I could feel their passion for Tami’s story on the page, as well as Richard’s.

My worry is they loved them a little too much. Almost everything here in the present is solid. But once we go into flashbacks, the script starts to get shaky. That’s because the flashbacks aren’t so much a love story as they are a 1980s rom-com. While reading these passages, I thought I’d mistakenly stumbled upon the 1987 Kurt Russel Goldie Hawn script, Overboard.

Nearly everything in the flashbacks is a meet-cute scene. I’ll give you an example. Here’s an exchange from early on, when the two are getting to know each other:

“It’s hard to sweep a girl off her feet when you’ve got sea legs.”
“You don’t strike me as a girl who needs sweeping.”
“And you don’t strike me as a boy who gives up easily.”
Then, at the end of this conversation, she pushes him off the boat.

That’s EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION they have. I understood one meet-cute scene. But 20 scenes full of rom-com zingers? It was in such stark contrast to the serious present-day stuff, where Tami is trying to stay alive. It felt like two different movies.

And when things did finally get serious in the past, we’d get scenes like Tami running away from Richard. He finally catches up to her, spins her around, and says, “Whatever you’re running from, it isn’t me.” Every line was either so rom-com’y or so melodramatic like this one, that it was hard to take the story seriously.

Another issue I had was the pacing. We’d have one scene in the present, then one scene in the past, then once scene in the present, then one scene in the past, then one scene in the present – you get the picture.

The problem with this is that it made the pacing too predictable. Once the reader gets ahead of you on anything, they start getting bored. If they know exactly where you’re going after this scene, and after the next one, and after the next one, they’re eventually going to tune out.

I was hoping for some variety in that pacing just so I could wonder what was going to happen next. I never wondered once. So hopefully that’s something they address in the film.

I will say this about the script. It has a good ending. And since good endings are hard to come by, it’s nice that these guys have that ace up their sleeve. But they need to rewrite this dialogue, like, yesterday. It’s so dated that it impeded upon my enjoyment of a story I desperately wanted to like. If I were these guys, I’d watch The Notebook. That script managed to capture two people falling in love without resorting to over-pasteurized dialogue (well, for the most part).

Or maybe I don’t know love stories and this dialogue is fine. With La La Land closing in on 250 million dollars worldwide, that could certainly be the case.

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

What I learned: If I see any variation of “Are you stalking me?” in a guy-girl interaction in a script, I know the dialogue is in trouble. Any line that’s been used over 100 times in films is a line that should probably be avoided.

What I learned 2: Switch up your pacing! If a script has the exact same pace the whole time, the reader gets ahed of you and gets too comfortable. You want to keep your reader off-kilter. You never want them too relaxed.

What I learned 3: This is another example that studios are going gaga over true stories. So if you’ve found a great true story that nobody’s written yet, write it!

Sorry about the lack of posts. I was at LAX all night yesterday trying to get back to the Midwest. I didn’t make it but it looks like a Christmas miracle might get me out tonight. Before we move on to today’s article, I want to beg every traveler out there to please never fly American Airlines for the rest of your lives. Not only is it a terrible airline as far as comfort and customer service, but they have to be the most clueless airline company on the planet.

After being bumped 3 times last night to later and later flights, my last flight changed gates ELEVEN TIMES. That is not a printing error nor is it an exaggeration. In addition to this, I saw three women break down, fall to the floor, and start crying, due to how much they’d been dicked around all night, and one man lead a 30 person revolt against the gate attendant. It was insane.

After we’d changed gates for the 10th time, American Airlines kept saying we couldn’t board because the plane outside was broken, and they needed to tow it out before they could bring in “our plane.” We waited an hour for this towing to happen. Finally, when they moved us to our 11th and final gate, which did not have a plane in it, many astute passengers pointed out that since they no longer needed to tow a plane away, they could bring “our plane” up and start boarding. American Airlines, clearly caught in a lie, quickly moved to a new excuse about air traffic being broken or something.

I know the holidays are crazy for air travel but I’m not basing my critique here on just this experience. Every time I have flown American Airlines, it has been terrible. I only flew them this time because I had to. But I will never fly them again after this. It was the last straw.

Now, on to funner topics!

Because I don’t have time to write an in-depth article or review, I thought I’d share with you some brief thoughts on a screenwriting concept that’s always frustrated me: THEME

Theme has always been a tricky concept. To this day, I’m yet to meet someone who’s given me a definition for theme that doesn’t sound bullshitty (this is why theme posts get debated so vigorously – since there is no definition, everyone’s interpretation is different). But the other day I stumbled upon a Youtube video covering academia and had a mini-revelation. As I retroactively tested that revelation, I realized how much sense it made.

The idea is this. “Theme” comes in two flavors – simple and complex. BOTH can work effectively. You can use the simple version of theme and still write a good movie. In fact, I’d argue that the simple version gives you a better chance at writing a good movie. However, the complex version gives you a chance at writing a GREAT movie.

But before we get into that, let’s remind ourselves why we’d want a theme in the first place. A theme is there to keep your story focused. Whenever you lose your way, like a lighthouse, the theme is there to steer you back on course. Without a theme, your script seems scattered, confused, and unsure of what it’s trying to say.

If you were to grade this article on theme, for example, it would fail. I started out talking about how shitty American Airlines was before moving onto a screenwriting article. That’s thematically inconsistent, which is why this article feels messy. You could argue that because I just referenced my opening to prove a point about theme, that the theme for this article is intact, but that’s a debate for another time.

On to “simple theme.” The simple version of theme is the act of wrapping everything around a single idea. That idea can be anything! Take the Star Wars movies. A common theme I’ve heard thrown around for them is “Good vs. Evil.” As long as you play out the struggle of good vs. evil, the movie’s going to feel consistent and whole. However, if a storyline popped up in Star Wars about a character who was obsessed with money and needed to have all the money in the universe, you’d be like, “Uh, what the hell does this have to do with Star Wars?”

Or take Zootopia. The theme there is that we can be anything we want if we put our minds to it. It’s a simple easy to follow formula that gives your movie a point. And since Star Wars and Zootopia are both awesome movies, we know this type of theme works.

Now let’s move to the complex version of theme. To achieve this, we’ll be transforming the word itself. “Theme” will now become “Thesis.” The idea with a thesis is to create a question or theory that has to be proven or debated over the course of the story. Whereas bigger budget Hollywood fare will lean on theme to power its core, character pieces rely more on a thesis. And the best way to understand the power of a thesis is to compare two similar character pieces, one that used a theme, the other that used a thesis.

The first is Sully. Sully was boring as shit. Why was it boring as shit? Because the theme was boring as shit. What was that theme: Heroism. That’s it! A man being a hero. Now yes, that kept the story consistent throughout its running time. We were never confused about what Sully was about. But because this was a character piece, it needed a thesis, something that forced us to think a little more.

Bring in Flight. Flight based its screenplay on a thesis, that thesis being: “Can a bad person still be a hero?” Denzel Washington’s captain character put 250 peoples’ lives at risk by drinking all night and snorting up coke before he piloted that flight. But he still ended up pulling off a radical maneuver that saved most of the passengers’ lives. Notice how, by using a thesis, the story becomes a lot more complex. We’re not sure what we think of Whip. Yeah, he saved all those people, but he shouldn’t have gotten on that plane fucked up in the first place.

In both cases, we have something to center the story on. But in one, that something merely represents what’s going on, whereas in the other, it forces us to continually ask a question. Can bad people be heroes?

Hey wait a minute. My last two examples were about airplanes. Maybe this article is more theme-centric than I gave it credit for.

I’ll finish by saying this. If you’re just starting out in screenwriting, whether you’re writing a Hollywood movie or a character piece, go with a theme. Even if you’re experienced and you’re writing a Hollywood movie, go with a theme. The only people for whom I’d encourage using a thesis are seasoned screenwriters who are writing character pieces. I say this because I’ve seen beginner screenwriters try and use theses and they always make it too complicated on themselves. By trying to make their stories so intelligent and thematically resonant, they forget to actually make them entertaining. Don’t be one of those guys.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!