Genre: Thriller
Premise: After a young girl is kidnapped on a remote island off the west coast, her mother teams up with a local mysterious older woman to get her back.
About: Tried out a few scripts before committing to one today. I’ll be honest – the only reason I tried this one was because JJ’s company bought it. If Lord JJ thinks it’s good enough, I’ll probably like it. The script also finished on last year’s Black List AND it was written by a female writer. Female writers represent!
Writer: Maggie McGowan Cohn
Details: 114 pages – 6/9/15 draft
With thousands of unread scripts at my disposal, it’s hard to choose what to read. So sometimes I’ll read the first page of several scripts to see what grabs me. Usually, I’m not grabbed. But when it does happen, it’s usually because an expectation is flipped on its head.
Expectation-flipping’s not just good storytelling. It establishes a desired precedent that we find in all well-told stories: unpredictability. As I’ve said here plenty of times, if the reader gets ahead of you for too long (even as few as four scenes), they get bored and they tune out.
So the way that “Lou” starts is we’re introduced to this beautiful little deer. Oh, what a pretty little cute deer. And then – BAM! – the deer is shot dead. Cut back to the shooter, a grizzled old woman who doesn’t give a shit about how pretty deers are.
And with that, you’ve gone against the expectation, against the stereotype. Old people are supposed to be, well, old. Sit down a lot. Nice. Not do anything to upset the status quo. We’re told in a single action that Lou is none of those things. And that’s why I wanted to keep reading. If this is what we’re learning about this person on page 1, I wonder what else she’s got going on.
It’s 1985, San Juan Island, which is off the state of Washington. It’s here where we meet Hannah and her five year-old daughter, Vee. Hannah isn’t exactly living the life of dreams out on Nowhere Island, but she’s got a few friends and seems to be happy. That is until her daughter is taken by her ex-husband who – fyi – was supposed to be dead.
Enter Lou, a woman on the northern side of 50, though how north is difficult to tell, seeing as she kicks ass and only takes names when she feels like it. Lou is seen as the island weirdo, but she’s about to become the island Hero. That’s because Hannah’s ex didn’t just kidnap her daughter, he blew up the airport and cut out all communications on the island. And Lou’s the only one who knows how to navigate through all that.
Somehow, the local police are able to contact the FBI, who, when they find out they’re dealing with Lou, call the CIA, who, when they find out they’re dealing with Lou, call Special Forces, and within a day, all of them come flying in. Apparently, this Lou woman is a really big deal. And this appears to be our government’s only shot at getting her.
Which means that in addition to Hannah and Lou trying to get Vee, every United States government organization is trying to get Lou. And that’s only the beginning. After some sleuthing by the Feds, it appears that Lou and Hannah’s ex know each other. But how well? And what does that mean? Could these two actually be working together? So many questions. So few answers!
That opening page was definitely a teaser of things to come. This script did NOT go as expected. I thought this was going to be a gritty indie tale where a hardened mysterious older woman befriends a clueless struggling single mom and the two work together to get her daughter back.
It was sort of like that. But I had no idea that the FBI would get involved, the CIA, special forces. That airports would be blown up. That there’d be this elaborate plan with trees being cut down ahead of time to create road blocks. That there’d be a game involved where messages would be left for our hunters.
And to be honest, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s so batshit wild, that you’re constantly questioning what the writer’s going for. Is this supposed to be like Taken? Or is it supposed to be like Red? I mean at times, I thought this may have been a comedy. The FBI agent shows up on a kayak. And yet, because you had no idea what the hell would happen next or how all of this madness was connected, and you really wanted to fucking know, you had no choice but to keep turning pages.
In the end, though, I don’t think it meshed, and here’s why.
For these movies to work, the relationship at the center of the story needs to be compelling. If that’s not there, it doesn’t matter how well the story is plotted. It doesn’t even matter how compelling the characters are individually. If we don’t care whether that relationship at the center gets resolved, we’re not invested.
So what does that mean? How do you create an unresolved compelling relationship at the center of your story? Well, the most basic version of this is romance. So in Romancing the Stone, the sexual tension between the male and female leads is what makes us want to keep watching. We want to see if they’ll get together.
But even in something as basic as the first Rush Hour, that was about embracing differences in cultures in order to achieve a common goal. And I didn’t see anything like that in “Lou.” Where was that clear ISSUE between Lou and Hannah? Why not explore the age thing, for example? Methodically thinking through things (Lou) versus jumping right into them (Hannah).
A few of you might be groaning about at this, thinking, “That’s what they always do.” But the truth is, the most compelling debates and problems between people are the universal ones – the ones that have been debated since the beginning of time.
And yeah, if you hack through the age-youth debate in a “Screenplay 101” way, it’s going to suck. But if you explore it honestly – if you really CARE about the debate – then it will work.
On the flip side, if the main relationship is ill-defined, we’ll always feel off-kilter around the characters. We won’t truly “get” them. And you’ll receive a bunch of notes to the effect of, “Something felt off about the characters. Can’t pinpoint what.”
So that’s why Lou never lou-red me in. Every time we came back to Lou and Hannah I was like, “These two are boring together. They need something clearer going on.” Which is too bad. Because the story definitely surprised me and kept me off-balance. And that’s really hard to do to someone who’s read a lot of screenplays.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use other characters’ reactions to tell us about your protagonist. When Lou goes to her hometown bank and there are two open tellers and she picks the first teller, Cohn (our writer) highlights the second teller letting out a relieved sigh. That tells us so much about Lou. Writers don’t do this enough. They don’t create specific moments to inform the reader of who their character is. They just hope the reader understands them through their “general essence.” It doesn’t work that way.
What I learned 2: “This is Who My Character Is” moments. Building on that, you want to include 3 or 4 “this is who my character is” moments early on in your screenplay. If they’re eternal fuck-ups, show us a big “fuck up” moment. They screw something up at work, for example. Then have them come home and realize they didn’t pay their rent on time (another fuck-up!). Drive that shit home because unless you’re deliberately trying to keep your character mysterious, you want to be clear about who they are. If you can’t think of any of these moments? There’s a very real possibility that you either don’t know your character well enough or they’re not very interesting.
I don’t know what to make of Finding Dory’s success or what it means to screenwriters. There have been few sequels less necessary than this one. How do I know this? Because in ten years, I’ve never heard someone say, “I wonder when they’re going to make a Finding Nemo 2.”
I suppose we can chalk it up to a couple of things. Number 1, there is NOTHING good out right now. Nothing. And there hasn’t been in months. People are desperate for something good – heck, even AVERAGE will do. And boy is this movie average. The plotting and exposition are some of the laziest in Pixar’s library. And it feels like entire sections were borrowed from Toy Story 3.
Which leads us to number 2: Never underestimate family films, particularly animated ones. The hardcore screenwriters don’t think much of them. But these are the movies that keep studios afloat, no pun intended. It’s the Parent Principle. Leaving young kids at home while you go see a movie is a major hassle for parents. Which means no one shows up. But give parents a movie they can take their kids to, and both of them show up.
So what’s the secret to getting nobody to show up? Ask Independence Day 2, which squeaked into the box office number 2 slot with a little over 40 million bucks. The irony here is that Will Smith just gave an interview where he admitted that studios can’t fool audiences anymore. You can’t go seven days at the theater before word gets out that your movie sucks. These days it happens on social media instantaneously.
The studios are still trying to control things though. Fox wouldn’t screen this for critics before its release. Here’s the funny thing about that. People are using social media to talk about how the studio isn’t letting critics see the film, which actually creates more of a negative buzz than had they just let critics see it in the first place.
Now this may seem like a weird vendetta I have against the film. But I’m really happy this happened. The original film ended with someone uploading a mac virus into the alien computer system. To me, that’s highway robbery. You pulled us in with this fun invasion story, and you concluded it with an ending a 3rd grader could’ve written. You are stealing money when you do that. I’m serious. It’s borderline unethical. So I’m happy that they’re paying the price for that now. I guarantee you, if that movie had ended strong – or just where it was clear that they tried, people would’ve begged for a sequel.
I know I sound like a broken record. But you need to start writing better scripts if you want us to show up. There’s no summer that’s proven that more than this one. Audiences aren’t responding to your lazy concepts (part of writing) and lazy execution (the nuts and bolts of writing). People in positions of power are going to have to look at themselves in the mirror come Labor Day and ask if they’re still okay with churning out risk-averse product. Sure, they can keep throwing ancient IP at us, like Tarzan and Universal’s upcoming monster universe, but they’ll pay the price if they do.
And let me be clear about something. Writers, directors, producers – these people are DYING to create original content. The only reason they’re not is because the studios won’t let them. The studios hold the keys to all movies that cost north of 40 million bucks. If you want to play in that sandbox, you have to make the movies they want to make. So the people that need to be targeted for the garbage we’re seeing are the studio heads and their executives.
The one highlight from the weekend is the showing of The Shallows. This is a spec script that made 16 million dollars on a 19 million dollar budget in its opening weekend in the heart of summer. For comparison’s sake, that’s a little less than half of what Independence Day 2 made, yet Independence Day 2 had a budget NINE TIMES that of The Shallows. It goes to show that if you choose a juicy subject matter (sharks always sell), and create a clever storyline that keeps the budget low, you could see your spec script opening strong against major tentpole franchises in the heart of summer. Pretty cool.
Before we wrap up, I want to share a conversation I had with a professional screenwriter this weekend. And he vocalized something I’d always considered but never had a term for. He calls it “burning reads.” And I thought it was apropos with our script rewrites coming up this Thursday.
The idea is this. Every time you read your script, you become one step more numb to it. More numb to the plot machinations, to the characters, to the dialogue exchanges, to the jokes, to the emotional beats. This becomes dangerous because, after a certain amount of reads, you feel nothing when reading your script. You know everything so well that it’s just words on a page. And how can you continue to improve your script if you can’t feel anything while writing it?
Because of this, this writer rarely reads his script from start to finish. He’ll identify a problem section (say, the sequence after the mid-point) and work on that individually. And he’ll do that for a number of other sections as well. Then only once he’s applied changes to everything does he go back and read the script all the way through.
And when you think about it, it’s a good strategy, because the more you can mimic the experience of a reader reading your script for the first time, the better. Now I realize this is an imperfect and somewhat tricky science. But I do believe in the principle of it. Only burn full reads when you absolutely have to. Otherwise, you’re numbing yourself to everything that works so well in your screenplay.
We’ll discuss more about rewriting on Thursday!
Until then, eat a crumb cake.
Brexit. Kanye West’s Famous video. Independence Day 2 tanking. So much madness happening at the moment. Let’s add to that madness. I mean, where else do you get to read scripts titled “Lazer Sloth” and “Mermaniac?” Only at Scriptshadow!
Read and vote for your favorite in the COMMENTS!
Title: 3 Sweet Things
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline: Three girls conducting door to door surveys are lured into a twisted and deadly all-night game of cat-and-mouse by a psychopathic home owner.
Why You Should Read: Because this is the dark and twisty home invasion thriller that KNOCK KNOCK should have been. Fuck you for that weak shit, Eli Roth. My girls don’t have to act like overheated whores to get what they want from a man.
Title: Lazer Sloth
Genre: Kids / Adventure
Logline: A trio of misfit kids must work together to protect a supernatural baby sloth from a deranged ex-child star and return it to the Oregon Zoo.
Why You Should Read: This is my first script. Awhile back, Carson talked about how we should write what we know. I spent the majority of my childhood outdoors — building forts, climbing trees and catching frogs. I wanted to write a fun live action kids script that captures what it was like growing up in a small town. Also, it’s got a sloth that shoots FRICKIN’ LASER BEAMS from its eyes!
Title: ALIEN DEATH DRIVERS
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: People around the city are being abducted by what appear to be alien beings driving super fast cars. When an illegal street racer discovers a connection to his beloved, missing sister, he hits the throttle and abducts the beautiful niece of the Death Driver’s leader, leading to a high-speed showdown.
Why You Should Read: I am an Australian screenwriter loose on the streets. I am currently working on a couple of projects with Eddie Brown Jr of MysterE Entertainment.
Why should you read ALIEN DEATH DRIVERS? – These aliens are not out to take over the world. They’re just gangsters out to make a quick buck selling drugs and enslaving humans for shipment off world. Human slaves fetch a good price. The love story between the lead character and the beautiful alien niece of the Alien Death Drivers’ leader is out of this world.
Title: SUCCESS-N-LIFE
Genre: Drama
Logline: Based on the true story of Robert Tilton, the king of television evangelism tries to maintain his sanity as his empire is shaken up by a widow looking for revenge, the cult-like leader of a small church, and a young Diane Sawyer.
Why You Should Read: My name is Michael Weldon and I am 26 years old. I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and have been an aspiring screenwriter my entire life. I’ve written over a dozen short films and feature length screenplays on spec, this being the first one I thought was mature enough to send out into the world. The screenplay is currently submitted to The Academy Nicholl Fellowship, The Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and the Final Draft Big Break Competition. If selected to be reviewed, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for always giving us readers great content.
Title: Mermaniac
Genre: Creature Feature
Logline: A screw-up cop needs the help of a conspiracy nut to convince a small resort town preparing for a bikini contest that there is a killer, alcoholic merman in the lake.
Why You Should Read: I realize that a tale about an alcoholic merman won’t reel everyone in, but as I cast the net wide enough I’m finding many who love sinking their teeth into this one. I’ve had some nibbles on previous scripts, but never any bites. This time we’re just going to shoot it ourselves, whether we raise money or not. What I’m really fishing for is any feedback I can get that will help improve this project.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: In 1987 New Jersey, an aspiring rocker can win the big break of a lifetime opening for Bon Jovi, but when handicapped by a life threatening hairspray allergy, he attempts to cleanse the world of all hair-metal, beginning with hometown heroes Bon Jovi.
Why You Should Read (from writer): So, did you see X-Men this weekend and say to yourself “Damn! They really nailed what it was like to be a teenager in the 80s!” Then have I got a screenplay for you.
As aspiring writers of film, we all love movies and have our concerns about the current state of cinema. If you’re anything like me, when you open up Rotten Tomatoes and see the latest 370 million dollar CGI crap-fest that was written and rewritten by a team of fourteen professional writers using source material that was based on a video game, that was based on a theme park ride, that was based on a cartoon, that was based on a Hasbro toy, that was based on a different Japanese toy, that was based on a religion, that was based on a fever-dream induced by syphilis, and it’s sitting number one at the box office with a very robust 18% on the tomato-meter, then a little piece of you dies.
Now imagine you wake up one day with a literal allergy to CGI. You can’t go to a Cineplex or pass a Redbox or “Netflix and chill” without developing a rash and having your throat swollen shut. Your dreams of working in Hollywood crushed, because movies are literally trying to kill you. Would you lock yourself in your basement and cry yourself to sleep every night on your pillow of unproduced, Oscar caliber spec scripts or would you do everything in your power to rid mankind of the Michael Bays of the world? Well, Bon Jovi Sucks! is a slightly more realistic version of just that but with rock n’ roll.
It’s a subject I think most of us can relate to on some level, even if you haven’t a recollection nor an opinion of 80s popular culture. Plus it’s a comedy so it better damn well be funny. I’m really looking forward to some of that always great SS community feedback.
Writer: Eric Boyd
Details: 99 pages
It’s going to be a wild weekend at the box office with a five-tet of new films coming to theaters. For starters we have Independence Day. I know people loved the first film but I always mark my viewing of Independence Day as the first day I learned about the importance of screenwriting. That was one of the worst-written scripts I’ve ever come across in movie form. Roland Emmerich seems incapable of understanding how writing actually works. And to think he made a movie about Shakespeare. At least Jeff Goldblum is back. We need more Jeff Goldblum in this world.
Then we have The Shallows – A SPEC SALE! Not many of these make it to theaters, so I’ll be rooting for it to do well. From there we have shameless Oscar hopeful, Free State of Jones. When your campaign screams, “Please give us the Oscar!” I’m out. A movie should stand on its own. Speaking about standing, Swiss Army Man is one of the most original films to come out in a decade. Dead Ratcliffe practically guarantees I’ll see this. And finally Nicolas Refn has a new movie out, The Neon Demon. I don’t trust Refn as a writer, so I won’t be seeing this. But, at the very least, it’ll be unique, which is nice.
What about Bon Jovi Sucks? Will it ever make it to a multi-plex? I suppose that depends on your definition of “multi-plex.” It may also depend on your definition of Bon Jovi.
17 year-old Eddie may be the only person living in 1987 who hates Jon Bon Jovi. While the rest of his band, Cured Herpes, thinks the fluffy-haired one is the next coming of Jesus Christ, Eddie thinks his music sucks ass. To add insult to injury, Eddie is allergic to hairspray. So even if he wanted to to be in a Bon Jovi inspired band, he couldn’t be.
After Eddie’s unhealthy hatred of Bon Jovi loses him his friends and band, Eddie meets the new girl in school, Stacy, a Seattle transplant who believes in cool music, JUST LIKE HIM! In fact, she starts teaching him about the upcoming Seattle music scene, and finally Eddie feels like he has purpose again.
No teenage music movie would be complete without a Battle of the Bands contest, and Stacy introduces Eddie to a new band of guys who ALSO hate Bon Jovi. They’re not very good, but with Eddie’s guitar-shredding skills, they may have just enough to win it all. But will Eddie’s obsession with a man who has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on his life be his undoing? Or will Eddie finally become okay with Jersey’s version of Jesus?
A couple of quick thoughts here. Celebrity names in the title are a cheap but effective way to get your script noticed. Remember that in a business this competitive, every little advantage counts. And if you can present a reader with some familiarity in the title, you’re more likely to get a response than having zero familiarity. For example, which one of these scripts are you more likely to read? “George Clooney Must Die” or “Fallen Fields?” The first one contains familiarity. The second is just words.
When you do go with these titles, you have two options: the obvious route or the ironic route. The obvious route would be something like, “Murdering Donald Trump.” People hate Donald Trump. So building a title around that is going to get those people charged up. Then there’s the ironic way, “How I Destroyed Oprah Winfrey,” where you go negative against someone beloved. I think the second option is more clever.
Unfortunately, Bon Jovi Sucks’ problems extend beyond its title. For starters, I don’t have an opinion on Bon Jovi. He’s so blase that it’s hard to care about someone loving him OR hating him. So right from the start, it was difficult for me to get invested. I kept saying, “Dude, who cares? He’s just a guy with a few hit songs.”
Bigger problems started creeping up during the dialogue. We have characters saying things like, “It’s amazing, right?” “Chode.” “Jihad.” “Mind-fuck.” “Take a valium.” These are terms that were not being used in 1987, and the reason this is relevant is because I now know that the writer isn’t old enough to understand the era he’s writing about.
Obviously, you don’t need to have lived in the era you’re writing about to write a good script. If that were the case, how would anybody write period pieces? But if you haven’t lived in that time, you better study your fucking ass off and be the resident expert on that era. Because as soon as we know you’re bullshitting? Suspension of disbelief is done, and we no longer believe what’s happening.
I read an interesting article on that Cold War show The Americans. One of the teenage actors in the show was in a high school classroom scene and was given a calculator. When they started shooting, someone noticed that she was pressing the buttons in the way one would text on a smartphone. They stopped, went in, and explained that, back then, you pressed buttons with a single finger. She changed the action, and they continued shooting.
Small thing? Sort of. But sort of not. Authenticity is a huge component of writing convincing fiction. Every mistake you make makes your script less convincing. Never forget that.
Structurally, Bon Jovi Sucks sort of limps along, not unlike a lazy 80s ballad. Thing are happening (Eddie’s rushed to the hospital due to his allergy, his band dumps him, his girlfriend dumps him), but there doesn’t seem to be any urgency to the story. I remember when I first saw American Pie, another teenage high school film, and you got the sense that there wasn’t a lot of time to find dates to the prom. The characters needed to make their moves quickly. There’s nothing like that here to propel the story forward.
Finally, I never really understood why Eddie hated Bon Jovi so much. The rock star didn’t personally do anything to him. Eddie just disliked his music. While that kind of setup might’ve worked in a really broad comedy where logic isn’t as important, Eric seemed to be going for something deeper here. And if that’s the case, we needed a more personal reason for why Eddie despises this man so much. Without that, it seemed like the only reason Eddie hated Bon Jovi was so that we’d have a movie.
Bon Jovi Sucks wasn’t funny enough to be a broad comedy. It wasn’t serious enough to be a thoughtful comedy. It leaves you unsure of why the writer wanted to write the script.
Script link: Bon Jovi Sucks!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s hard to make miserable characters work. I’m not talking about unlikable characters. It’s possible to make them work. But characters who are miserable – who don’t like their lives – who take that out on others – it’s hard for a reader to care for or want to root for them. Midway through Bon Jovi Sucks, Stacy says something that caught my eye: “Wow. I think this is the first time I’ve seen you really happy.” Duh, that’s why I don’t like this guy. He’s miserable. Nobody likes miserable people.
If you’re new to the Scriptshadow Script Challenge, here are all the previous posts…
WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
Holy Joe Estherez.
We’re here! Can you believe it?
The final 10-15 pages of our screenplay! By this time next Thursday, we will have an official COMPLETED FIRST DRAFT!
But we’re not there yet. We have to complete the last section, a section we shall refer to as… THE CLIMAX.
The climax is your hero’s final confrontation. Whatever they’ve been chasing, they’re finally confronting it. It’s John McClane staring down Hans Gruber in Die Hard. It’s Mark Watney trying to rendezvous with his crew’s ship in The Martian. It’s Michelle in Cloverfield Lane finally escaping the house and having to get past the aliens. It’s Jay trying to lure the spirit into the local pool to kill it in It Follows.
Now, here’s the thing. It’s called a climax for a reason. You literally want the audience to climax. Well, maybe not literally. But you want them to have this feeling inside of them that’s euphoric, that they will never forget. And the reason most endings are bad is because writers forget that.
In fact, I’ve found that there are three types of endings.
The Everything and the Kitchen Sink Ending – The EATKSE seems like you’re doing the right thing. EATSKE writers tend to adopt the philosophy “more is more.” You see these most often in comic book movies, Transformers movies, or any huge action-driven franchise. The writers come up with some gargantuan set-piece, and we watch it play out. Unfortunately, we feel NOTHING after these sequences because they were driven purely by visuals. The epitome of this is the island-lifting climax in Avengers 2.
The Give’em What They Want Ending – The “Give’em What They Want” ending is a step up from the EATKSE. The writers know that pure action isn’t enough to satisfy the audience, and work hard to come up with an ending that’s thoughtful, creative, and well-executed. You don’t necessarily orgasm after a “Give’em What They Want” ending, but you feel satisfied. The Martian is a good example of a “Give’em What They Want” ending. We couldn’t have asked for a more exciting and creative finish to that story, and we felt good afterwards.
The Character-Driven Ending – The Character-Driven Ending approaches the ending from inside the character as opposed to outside. What have they been struggling with this entire story? What have they been struggling with their entire lives? Good writers build their endings around THAT. Because the only way to give the audience that climax is to touch them from the inside. Look at The Martian’s inspiration, Cast Away. The climax for Cast Away had Tom Hanks escaping the island just like Mark Watney escaped the planet. But which escape moved us? Cast Away’s. Because Tom Hanks lost his best friend, the only thing that kept him company during this ordeal, Wilson.
Needless to say, the Character-Driven Ending is the climax I want you to use. Look at your characters, figure out what’s going on inside of them, and build the climax around that. This is why Star Wars is the biggest movie ever despite being a franchise film. Its climax is about Luke overcoming his flaw (he finally believes in himself) and Han overcoming his flaw (he finally becomes selfless). The actual destroying of the Death Star is the least impactful moment in that trio of events. It’s the characters CHANGING that moves us.
But it doesn’t just have to be about overcoming flaws. As long as you build the climax around something character-related, you’ll have a better chance of creating a great ending than if you go surface level.
Take my most recent fascination, Zootopia. I’ll tell you exactly how a bad screenwriter (or even an average one) would’ve handled that ending. They would’ve thought, “It’s Zootopia. There are tons of animals everywhere. Our hero will recruit all the animals and they’ll attack the corrupt mayor in a giant stampede set piece!” Would it have been visually impressive? Sure. Would it have moved us? No.
Instead, the climax takes place in a closed-down museum with our corrupt mayor throwing our hero bunny, Officer Hopps, into a pit with her fox partner, Nick, who’s just been shot with the predator virus, making him “wild” again. The whole movie has been about Officer Hopps trying to trust Nick, a natural predator who’s a threat to bunnies. Just when they’ve finally become friends, they’re put to the ultimate test. Will Nick be able to put his friendship above his primal instincts and not eat Hopps?
It’s all about the characters, baby.
The last thing I want you to remember about the ending is that THIS IS THE MOMENT WHERE YOU UNLOAD YOUR BIGGEST PAYOFFS. Screenwriting is about setting up and paying off, setting up and paying off. But your climax is reserved for your biggest payoffs of all.
There’s a magic that happens when you bring something back that the audience has forgotten about. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why it works every time. But it does. And when you combine that with a character-driven finale, it’s the recipe that results in that perfect unforgettable climax.
I mean one of the reasons The Shawshank Redemption stays with us 17 years later is because of the way it uses payoffs in its climax. The rock-hammer, the Raquel Welch poster, the “hidden within” bible moment. That’s the power of setups and payoffs in film. But this means, of course, you will have had to set all that stuff up in the first place. You can’t just decide to add a payoff at the last second. Or if you do, you need to go back and meticulously weave in a series of setups so the payoff works.
After your hero’s won the final battle, you have a choice. End it immediately (a la Rocky), or give us a post-script. The trend these days is to add a post-script and I have no issues with that. Just keep it short. We see Mark Watney teaching now that he’s back from Mars. But then we’re done. One of the biggest mistakes beginner screenwriters make is sticking around long after the climax. Once the air is out of the balloon, the audience doesn’t want to stay at the party. And the longer they’re forced to stay, the more bored they get. So show us a post-script scene (two TOPS!) to let us know they’re doing okay, then it’s time for credits.
Congratulations guys! It was fun going on this journey with you. Breaking the script down this way helped me see things more clearly as well.
But now the real hard work begins – rewriting. I’ll see you next week for when that madness starts. :)
Pages to write this week: 10-15
Page number to hit on a 110 page screenplay: 110 (THE END!)
