Genre: True Story/Comedy/Drama
Premise: Based on the true story of James Hogue, a talented student and long-distance runner who was admitted to Princeton University under the false identity of “Alexi Indris-Santana”–an orphaned, self-educated, teenage ranch hand.
About: James Hogue is a real person and, if you google him, he’s had a pretty adventurous life. The writer, Ryan Hoang Williams, wrote 11 episodes on the highly-rated show, “The Lincon Lawyer.”
Writer: Ryan Hoang Williams
Details: 121 pages

You know what I realized the other day?

The system in place for getting movies made is a meat grinder.

That’s how you have to think about it. It’s got a million of those little grinding wheels that you have to push your script through to get to the other side – the side where someone makes the movie.

If your script isn’t tough enough, every single one of those pages is going to get ripped to shreds. That’s why you have to fortify every page with your best effort. Your best effort is like encasing those pages in a diamond sheen. They cannot be ground up.

Let’s find out if today’s script is tough enough.

It’s 1989. A 21 year old man named James Cooper Hogue from Texas, decides he wants to go to Princeton. But he knows he can’t get in with a boring life. So he invents one. He names himself Alexi Indris-Santana, says he lived in Switzerland with his mother for most of his youth. He has since come to the states where he is now a ranch hand in Texas. He is not like other students they have because he has had no formal schooling. His school is the School of Life. He is also a long-distance runner, which is the one thing about him that’s true.

Princeton eats it up and accepts him and James quickly finds himself on campus mixing it up with the cross-country team. James gets along with everyone just fine. He starts dating a philosphy teacher’s assistant named Erica. He starts going to parties with the Old Money students. He’s really only got one issue. A student named Todd.

Todd is suspicious of James’s origin story and looks for any opportunity to catch him fibbing. He finally decides to challenge James and invite his father figure from back on the ranch, Mr. Oswalt, to come to the school and meet everyone. Except there is no Mr. Oswalt. James made him up. So James runs over to a local theater group and hires an actor to play Mr. Oswalt in order to save his butt.

Despite the actor convincingly portraying his father figure, Todd is still convinced James is a fake. So one night, while drunk, he confronts James and tells him he knows his true identity. James freaks out and murders him then disposes of the body. Will he get away with the murder? Or will James finally be exposed for the gigantic murdering fraud that he is?

One of the screenwriting strategies out there when trying to come up with the next idea you’re going to write is to take a ripped-from-the-headlines story and write a story about a similar situation from the past.

Writers do this for a couple of reasons. One, they’re not competing with anyone else if they’re digging up an old version of a similar idea. And two, your script is more likely to be labeled as “clever” since you’re not telling some on-the-nose tale about the latest ripped-from-the-headlines story.

This is what we get today.

There were all those shenanigans recently about rich people illegally getting their kids into schools. Others were pretending to be minorities to get into elite schools. So this script explores that idea except back in the late 80s.

And…….. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it.

There’s something that feels too small about the idea if I’m being honest. That’s a question every writer should be aware of when coming up with movie ideas: “Who cares?”

Would people actually care about your story?
Is it big enough?
Are the stakes high enough?
Why should we care about what’s happening?

The answers to those questions have to live up to outside scrutiny, not just your late-night flimsy personal wall of persuasion.  Why do I care if this guy gets caught? Let’s say he’s thrown out. Well, he was never supposed to be here anyway so… what has he really lost?

That was my big issue with Personal Best. I never thought it was that big of a deal if he got thrown out. This was back before the internet where, if you pulled a con and got exposed, you just moved on to the next con. There were no digital 1s and 0s immortalizing your crime for anyone curious enough to pop your name into a search bar.

There was also something quite convenient about the idea. The main character is pulling this giant con. He’s pretending to be this farmer. He’s from Switzerland. He faked his perfect SATs. But, oh, by the way, he also happens to be one of the best cross-country runners in the nation, which is a big reason why he’s accepted.

But I thought the whole point was that this was a con. It’s not really a con if the biggest reason you got accepted into the school was based on truth. It would’ve been better if he had made that up too and had to dance around it in order to keep his con going (i.e. shown up with a “sprained MCL” so he wasn’t able to run “full on” yet).

You see, the element that pulls the reader in is never the thing that’s easy for your character. It’s the thing that’s impossible for your character. In last year’s Willy Wonka, they don’t just hand him his chocolate store the second he arrives in town. There are three competitors determined to KILL HIM if need be to protect their market share and a hotel that enslaves him for the rest of his life. You’re genuinely wondering how Willy Wonka is going to succeed.

If we sense EVEN A LITTLE BIT that the writer is on the hero’s side, we tune out. That’s what bothered me so much about yesterday’s movie, Rebel Ridge. The writer allowed the main character to antagonize, humiliate, and even attack the local cops again and again. Yet the cops never killed him or threw him in prison. 100% that’s a writer padding his character with plot armor.

Despite this, I give props to today’s writer for understanding the low stakes of his story and introducing a plot point that never happened in real life – James kills Todd.

As I’ve told you a million times, if you’re unsure whether your script has high enough stakes… introduce a dead body. Even better, have your main character create the dead body! Which is exactly what James does when he kills Todd.

This is how powerful this plot device is: Before James killed someone, I was at a 3 out of 10 on the “interest” scale. Afterwards, I was 7 out of 10. Still not great. But all of a sudden I cared what happened next.

The problem was, the murder didn’t hit the story until page 80! So that’s 80 pages of 3 out of 10 compared to 40 pages of 7 out of 10. I would’ve at least made that plot point the midpoint shift. I don’t know why it comes so late in the story.

The thing that ultimately doomed the script though – and I give credit to the writer for acknowledging it – was that James didn’t just have to graduate school to complete the ruse, he has to carry this name and backstory with him for the rest of his life. It just seemed like a really dumb plan – not a lot of thought put into it.

The script has its moments. It’s not bad by any means. It’s just one of those scripts you read and nod your head every once in a while thinking, “That was a pretty good scene.” But the totality of the experience doesn’t move you so you’ll never recommend it to anyone else. And that’s what every script needs. It needs that RECOMMEND quality because, otherwise, not enough people are going to read it to push it through that meat grinder.

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

What I learned: A good show to compare this script to is Inventing Anna. In that real-life story, Anna Sorokin was conning people out of millions of dollars. And she was doing it to the upper-crust New York party scene. Those two high-level elements (conning millions and the elite NY party scene) made that feel larger than life. Not to mention, that person became infamous. This script only ever gets up to the line of being larger than life. It’s an old story. Nobody’s heard of this guy. Yeah he murders someone later on but, for most of the script, he’s got nothing to truly worry about. So the story experience was too casual.

When you read that title, you’re probably thinking, “That sounds kind of clickbaity, Carson.” I agree. It does sound clickbaity. But, actually, the message in that title is the key to saving Hollywood.  No, I’m serious.

I am speaking to producers with this article. I am speaking to studios. I am speaking to streamers. I am speaking to agents.  If you want to bring good screenwriting back to this town, you need to start spending 7 figures on scripts again. And, just as importantly, you need to publicize it. As in, START CONTACTING THE TRADES AGAIN AND PUBLICIZE YOUR SALES!  Let me explain why.

The other day, I saw an article announcing that someone was trying to put together a Pacific Rim prequel series.

Let me repeat that: Someone is trying to make a Pacific Rim TV show.

Pacific Rim was one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen. It had the intelligence quotient of Transformers and the filmmaking ability of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.

The fact that Hollywood is now trying to make a TV series out of this bottom feeder IP shows that they have nothing left to make. They’ve scoured through every single IP in their basements, from both the television and feature side, and, since most of those shows bombed, they don’t have anything left!

How did this happen?

It happened because there aren’t anywhere near enough talented screenwriters in town to support the amount of product being made. There are 750 scripted TV shows out there at the moment with an average of 12 episodes per season. That’s roughly 9000 episodes being written every year. The industry does not have 9000 good screenwriters.

My rough estimate is that there are about 5 great writers in the industry, i.e. someone who can write a Succession.

There are 15 or so really good writers, people capable of writing a Ted Lasso.

And there are 40-50 good writers, people who can write a Silo.

From there, there are a ton of average and, even, bad writers. People who write stuff like Secret Invasion.

That total number of good-to-great screenwriters in town equals about 1/10 of how many shows are getting made. Which means 90% of the TV shows out there are garbage.

And it doesn’t take long to figure that out on your own. How many times have you watched a pilot and thought, “This is pretty good.” You then watch the second episode and think, “This is okay.” And then you watch the third episode and notice that the show is falling apart right before your eyes. If a show manages to get me past the pilot – which is rare – that cycle happens almost every time.

Why?

Because the creator of the show obviously spends a lot of time on the pilot script, making it perfect. They then spend less time on the second episode, which is why it’s only okay. And then the third episode is usually the first time a staff writer comes in and writes an episode.

I just watched this happen on The Acolyte. When Headland was writing the first two episodes, they were, at least, decent. But the second they brought in a staff writer with virtually no writing experience to pen the third episode, the show completely fell apart. And this is for a 180 million dollar show! We’re giving below-average screenwriters with zero experience 25 million dollar episodes! Which is insane!

What does this all mean?

A couple of things. Number 1, we’ve got way more shows than we have writers with the ability to write those shows. Number 2, we have a weak overall pool of writers in town. I would say way weaker than we’ve ever had.

The reason for this is, everybody gets a bite at the apple now, even if they don’t deserve it. In the previous era, you had to scratch and claw and fight just to find the seed that would allow you to grow the apple tree, that would then take years to grow big enough to give you an apple that you could then bite into. The competition and the dedication required to get in the game were way more extensive and, as a result, only rewarded those who were willing to put in years of work.

So I gave some thought to why that was. Why are we giving shots to bad writers?

Simple. We don’t have a choice. There aren’t enough ones.

Let’s face it, screenwriting isn’t nearly as cool today as it was 30, or even 20, years ago. I can’t remember the last time I read an article about some cool new screenwriter who wrote a great script. These days, articles focus on the hot new podcaster or the hot new influencer. These are the people who are getting press in this industry. Not screenwriters.

Well, why is that?

The answer can be found by asking when did Hollywood get the biggest influx of screenwriters? It was in the 90s. Why? Because every freaking week the trade magazines were reporting a million dollar script sale. What does that do to people reading those articles? It makes them want to become screenwriters!

I don’t think Hollywood ever intended for it to do so. But all those stories were de facto advertisements to become a screenwriter. They had inadvertently infused the Hollywood pool with an endless supply of writers. If you take away the advertisements, you don’t get the aspiring screenwriters anymore.

There’s a lot of talk in town about the movie business declining. About the golden era of TV being in the past. The reasons they give are that there’s more choice out there (podcast, YouTube, internet, etc). But I don’t buy that. Movies and TV are great because they’re such passive watching experiences. Which means they don’t require a lot from the viewer. It doesn’t take much to turn on your TV.

The real problem – the one the studios don’t want to admit to themselves – is that they’re giving people a subpar product. And guess what? It ain’t because of the directing. It ain’t because of the production value. The production value of TV and movies has SHOT UP EXPONENTIALLY in the past 20 years. What does that leave?

THE WRITING.

It’s the writing that’s the problem.

Good writing HOOKS PEOPLE and KEEPS THEM HOOKED.

Very few writers working in the industry have enough experience to have learned the tools that allow them to do this.

If you want better writing, you gotta advertise to those potential aspiring writers out there in Iowa and Florida and Illinois. I’m telling you – if you start publicizing stories about people making a million dollars from selling scripts again? You will get a whole new wave of people racing to Hollywood to write scripts. I don’t care if they’re doing this on the feature side or the TV pilot side but they need to do it! They need to do it if they want to survive.

Cause the more poorly written shows and poorly written movies they give us, the less we’re going to want to watch the next movie or show.

Okay, so what does this mean for you! For the writer who’s been writing for a long time and still hasn’t had their big break?

It’s AMAZING NEWS for you.

It used to be that, if you spent 10 years trying to become a screenwriter and you hadn’t made a dent, you were washed up. That’s no longer the case AT ALL. Now, you actually know how to write! All these people they’re putting on these Star Wars and Marvel shows? They don’t know how to write! You’re better than them!

But the industry isn’t going to come to you. If there’s one thing these bad writers have over you it’s that they’re hitting the ground harder. They’re putting themselves out there more, either through social media or directing their own scripts or just good old fashioned hustle. Studios choose these people because these are the people standing in front of them. You need to put on some nice clothes and stand in front of *those people* if you want a shot.

Cause the industry doesn’t know you.  Or know you’re better. You have to advertise yourself for them to know. So, blanket every outlet online with your best scripts until you get that yes. Again, people don’t say “yes” often. So, if you get 10 no’s, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re screwed. What did TJ Newman, the writer of the book Falling (essentially a book-screenplay) say? That she got rejected 44 times in a row before she got that yes?

You have to fight and promote a lot harder than you think you do.

And please do!

Cause I want to have a freaking good TV show to watch!

There will be no post on Monday, as it’s Labor Day here in the U.S.  But I will be sending out the newsletter over the weekend, which includes a review of a buzzy new project from one of the industry’s best directors.  If you’re not already on the newsletter list, e-mail me: carsonreeves1@gmail.com

If Monty Python announced they were writing again, this would probably be their first movie adaptation.

Genre: Period/Comedy
Premise: The long-lost twin sister of a Duchess infiltrates the kingdom’s walls, impersonating her dead sister, who, unbeknownst to the kingdom, fell victim to the fast-rising killer pandemic known as “The Red Death.”
About: Screenwriter (and director) Charlie Polinger has been making waves with his short films and just recently signed Joel Edgerton onto his first feature, “The Plague,” about a 12 year old boy who gets bullied at a water polo camp (the bad kids convince others to stay away from him by saying he has “the plague.”). Today’s much more extensive concept would conceivably be his third movie, after he proves he can handle escalating budgets in his first two.
Writer: Charlie Polinger (story by Edgar Allen Poe)
Details: 122 pages

We have another great example here of utilizing IP from the public domain. There are thousands of stories out there that, if found, could easily be turned into movies. You must be alert to that.

I asked ChatGPT for the five best Edgar Allan Poe stories that have not been turned into movies yet and this is what it gave me. Feel free to start writing one today.

“The Devil in the Belfry”: A humorous tale about a small town’s chaotic experience when a devilish stranger disrupts their routine.

“A Tale of the Ragged Mountains”: A mysterious story involving mesmerism, hallucinations, and a strange adventure in the mountains.

“The Spectacles”: A comedic narrative about a young man who mistakenly courts his great-great-grandmother due to poor eyesight.

“Hop-Frog”: A dark revenge tale about a court jester who enacts a gruesome revenge on the king and his ministers.

“The Man of the Crowd”: A psychological tale focusing on a man who obsessively follows a mysterious figure through the streets of London.

The Spectacles is definitely the funniest one. I don’t know if you could build an entire movie around it. Hop-Frog has some potential, especially if you update it to modern day. And it looks like Christopher Nolan already stole one of these for himself, adapting it into his first feature, “Following.”

Let’s see if today’s script is as good as any of these…

It is the 14th century and Prince Prospero’s people are being ravaged by the Red Death, a virus so nasty you could be pulp within hours of getting it. The cowardly Prospero orders the gates of the kingdom to be closed so that all of the upper-crust folks are safe from what is thought to be a ‘peasant disease.’

When Prospero’s sister, Duchess Margarita, conveys her disdain for such action, she’s kicked out of the council and she leaves the kingdom. She just so happens to run into her doppelganger, Isabel, who it turns out is her long-lost twin sister, who was supposed to be killed due to being the offspring of the chambermaid.

After Margarita quickly succumbs to the Black Death, Isabel and her 13 year old daughter, Rose, decide that they stand a much better chance against the Red Death inside the kingdom’s walls compared to out. So they head to the castle where Isabel pretends to be Margarita. Rose pretends to be the young peasant who found and saved her life.

Prince Prospero is thrilled that his sister is back but both Isabel and Rose quickly find out that Margarita is kind of hated around these parts and some people – the Princess’s handmaiden in particular – are desperate to kill her. That would seem like the worst of it but Isabel also must fend off people like 60-something Franz (who presents as 80-something), eagerly anticipating (assuming that she’s Margarita) their next hookup. Isabel is horrified.

Isabel will have to navigate a world – royal family politics – she has no reference for, which has numerous family-members dying around her for the most shocking of reasons (Poor Franz is dressed up like a bear to be killed in a pre-dinner duel so that Prospero may slaughter him and therefore be seen as a “powerful” prince). It isn’t long before Isabel starts to wonder… is it really better inside these walls than out?

“Bring out yer dead!”

This was surprisingly good.

It’s got a healthy dose of Myton Python guiding it.

I think the biggest surprise is how timeless the humor is. A lot of the funny moments from this story would work in movies today! Which is probably what Polinger saw in the story.

The scene where Isabel is hanging out in her bedroom and this lecherous old man comes in ready to do the dirty and she has no idea what’s going on – that joke works in 1850 and 2050.

As does the head guard, Sven, who spends every day waiting for anyone to show even the barest signs of the Red Death and then beheads them on the spot, lol. Again, that joke works in 1400. It works 2200.

Even Hop-Frog (from the earlier loglines) makes an appearance at dinner, swinging awkwardly from the windows, stumbling around, accidentally tearing curtains off, failing to land flips. His jestering antics are funny anywhere.

The script also has some edge to it. Prospero is such a wimp that he craves humiliation in all its forms, succumbing to regular golden showers from his ditzy wife’s power-hungry handmaiden.
There isn’t a lot of humor celebrated on this site. Most of the comedy scripts are barely able to scrape together a few chuckle-worthy jokes. This one’s got lol jokes from start to finish.

It’s also built on a powerful storytelling device – LYING. Lying is a very powerful engine in and of itself because it requires characters to hide things. And that’s always fun to watch. We just saw this in yesterday’s script. The main character, whatever her name was, was built around her dependence on lying.

In this case, lying takes even more of a front seat because there’s more at stake. Isabel is lying about her identity and if she gets caught, she’s killed. So every situation she’s in feels big.

And for those who bought my dialogue book, you will recognize this as REVERSE DRAMATIC IRONY, or some call it “Superhero Dramatic Irony,” because we know who the main character really is but nobody else does (just like we know Clark Kent is Superman but nobody else does).

This means that every interaction she gets in is going to have subtext attached to it.

But the script does have a major flaw, which is that it doesn’t have a plot. Once Isabel gets into the kingdom, she doesn’t have much to do other than avoid getting exposed. A negative goal doesn’t power a narrative. You can get 5, 6, maybe even 7 scenes out of the initial comedy of Isabel trying to fit in and pretend she’s a Duchess. But, sooner or later, the audience wants to know where we’re headed.

For example, something you might do is reveal that there’s a secret plan, from some power-hungry character, to kill Prospero in five days. And maybe Isabel doesn’t like Prospero so she’s initially fine with this. But, as time goes on, she kinda likes the guy. And now she has to decide whether to tell him and save him.

That’s just one example of what you could do. Notice that it gives the reader a destination. It provides some suspense. We’re going somewhere with the story as opposed to wandering around the halls waiting for things to happen.

They finally figure out who Isabel is and now she has to fend for herself. After that, we get a really wild weird ending which is what ALWAYS happens when you write a narrative that doesn’t have a purpose. Your ending comes around. You’re not sure what to do. So you THROW THE CRAZIEST SH*T YOU CAN THINK OF at the reader to try to shock them into forgetting that there hasn’t been a plot for the last 60 pages.

I don’t know if that’s what happened in the original story or how much of his own ideas Polinger is adding to the script. Not to say the script was bad. It was just that, so much of this script is really fun. So the messy ending stands out as a sore spot.

But the script’s definitely worth a read. This is one of the better scripts on the 2023 Black List for sure.

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

What I learned: Be careful about any creative choice that forces your hand for the rest of the script. Early on here, when Isabel first impersonates Margarita, she also pretends to be blind due to falling off her horse and hitting her head. It leads to some funny moments early on. Everyone will have to walk across the room and Isabel will walk in the other direction. The problem is, you now have to commit to that blindness FOR THE ENTIRE REST OF THE MOVIE. Which is a hassle. Cause I guarantee there will be dozens of times when the scene would be a lot easier to write if the character could see. So you lock yourself into this annoying trait for, what amounts to, two minutes of funny jokes. Always weigh every major creative choice against how it affects the rest of the screenplay. Sometimes these things just aren’t worth it.

Genre: Horror
Premise: When a park ranger ventures into the wilderness to find a missing hiker before a storm, she finds herself lured into the woods by a dangerous, unearthly predator mimicking her dead daughter.
About: Today’s screenwriter, Nick Tassoni, graduated with an MFA (’21) in screewriting at the prestigious University of Southern California. His script, Lure, finished on this past year’s Black List.
Writer: Nick Tassoni
Details: 87 pages

Let’s get Rose Byrne in this movie.

Micro-script alert!

What’s a micro-script? It’s any script under 90 pages.

Micro-scripts were hot seven years ago. Are they making a comeback?

40 year old Evelyn Yang is a national park forest ranger (“sad skin hanging off her bones”). She’s teamed up with 22 year old newbie, Colby Roth, and the old veteran of the group, Jen Parker. We hear little whispers during conversations about how the only rangers who get stuck out here are the ones running away from something.

Evelyn is definitely in that camp. She was a working single mother who went camping with her 10 year old daughter, Angelica, a few years ago and Angelica disappeared. Now she pours vodka in her coffee every morning and does her best to make it through the day.

Well, today is a little harder than most. A huge storm rolls in and they get word that a flash flood is coming. This means that Evelyn has to run around the forest and tell campers to get the heck out. This is exactly what she does but there’s a complication when a camper claims that his brother went out for a hike this morning and never came back.

Evelyn heads deeper into the woods to find this guy but, due to all the rain, she injures herself, cracking a bone in her leg. She tries to radio for help but coverage is spotty. While she considers her options, the brother hiker appears at a distance and asks for help. Although he’s too far away to see clearly, Evelyn notes that something is wrong with his face. It doesn’t look like everything is in the right place.

The guy eventually disappears and Evelyn sees someone new in his place. Angelica. She’s alive. And she’s asking why Evelyn stopped looking for her. Evelyn knows something is off but the sight of her daughter blinds her and she begins to follow her into the forest. Eventually, she heads into an old mine shaft and that’s where, deep within the shaft, she finds a pit, and in that pit, a terrifying monster known as the Angler.

The Angler nearly lures her into his lair but Colby appears out of nowhere and pulls her back just in time. We soon learn that Colby escaped out here because his father was dying of cancer and he couldn’t handle it. So, naturally, Colby starts seeing his father, who wants him to come back to the lair. Both of these two must figure out a way to not only detach themselves from the Angler’s spell, but destroy the thing so it can never do this to anyone again.

A little love thrown to Nick Tassoni. Having his script reviewed a day after the screenplay of the year is like being a first-time stand-up comic following a Bill Burr set. How can you possibly measure up?

Let’s start by discussing…

Repetition.

It is the scariest word in all of screenwriting.

Well, that’s an exaggeration. But to repeat anything over and over in a script is dangerous because good scripts EVOLVE. They provide us with a series of new locations, new plotlines, new conversations, new characters, new relationships, new dynamics within those relationships, new twists, new turns, new information – all things that keep us on our toes and make us want to turn to the next page.

It was one of many reasons that yesterday’s screenplay excelled. New developments were constantly happening that would change our hero’s situation.

But when you write a script like Lure, one where someone’s stuck in the woods, one where there are very few story variables to work with (the forest, our hero, her daughter’s death, two other rangers), you are at risk of boring the reader to pieces. Cause it’s hard to keep that scenario fresh and different.

At this point, I’d guess I’ve read 300 screenplays about people stuck in a forest. It’s a very common setup. So if you’re going to play in that sandbox, you better be ready to bust out the best toys. Otherwise, why would we bother playing with you?

Lure is built on that old horror conceit of being stuck in a place where your dead family member keeps showing up to test you in some way. I’m never thrilled with this setup. Yes, it does allow you a good way to explore grief and healing within your hero.

But you lose so much due to how forced the setup feels. I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s obvious that the writer is artificially creating a “monster” to achieve the character transformation they want to achieve. It never feels as natural as you want it to.

That doesn’t mean the script still can’t work. But in order to achieve that, you need BOLD CREATIVE CHOICES. If you can surprise me and bring me to cool unexpected places, the script still has a shot.

The closest Lure gets to that is the Angler. I’ve never seen this type of monster in this type of movie before. So that part did feel fresh. The problem is that, by the way it’s described, it seems very close to the Sarlac Pitt in Return of the Jedi.

When you steal things from other movies, this *is* the way you want to do it. You bring the item over from a completely different genre. That kinda tricks the audience into not making the connection. But it gets tricky when you take something from an iconic movie. Cause everyone knows iconic movies. Which means, now, everyone’s at least acknowledging that this monster is based on something they know.

I’m also looking for good fresh scares in these scripts. I don’t know if I got any. But there was one scare I liked. When Evelyn is injured and sitting at the fire early in her journey, she sees this man in a raincoat at the edge of the trees. He’s standing there saying, “Help me.”

The reason it’s scary is that he seems totally fine. If he needs help, why not just walk to the fire? It’s that confusion, that contrast between what he says he needs and his lack of need, that freaked me out.

It’s actually a good lesson for horror writers. The imagery rarely scares us on the page. Every horror image has been done a hundred times over anyway. It’s the things that seem out-of-place, the things that are being done or said that don’t make sense – that’s what scares us. Why is there a clown in the gutter in It? That doesn’t make sense. That’s why Pennywise is so terrifying in that moment.

One last point I want to make here is to introduce a concept called “Assumed Execution.” I tell you guys all the time not to write plot beats that the reader expects. And, to your credit, a lot of you listen. The problem I’ve found, however, is that when you do make these unexpected plot choices, it doesn’t change the story enough that the reader still isn’t ahead of you.

In other words, even if I don’t know EXACTLY what’s going to happen in your story, if I generally know where everything is going, that’s still bad. The second I get a good read on how your script is going to be executed, you’re toast. I’m ahead of you. Maybe I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen but I know enough that I’m bored.

Look at one of the breakthrough horror movies from a couple of years ago, Barbarian. I had no idea where that movie was going.

That’s why, even though this script had a few nice parts, I always knew where the story was headed. I knew the daughter was fake. I knew we were going to get some voice over or flashback showing that Evelyn wasn’t paying attention while her daughter wandered away. I knew we were going to get all these fake people or imagery trying to lure Evelyn to the monster. I knew the framework of what would be happening on page 80 by the time I was on page 10. You have to work harder to stay ahead of the reader. That’s one of the things that separates today’s writer from yesterday’s writer.

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

What I learned: I’m not going to beat this dead horse about “be more unexpected.” I’ve said that way too much on this site. But I will say that when it comes to your big “this is what happened” backstory reveal, for the love of all that is holy, please make THAT DIFFERENT. Cause you’ve been talking about it all movie so our expectations are high. But when we find out what happened to Angelica, IT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE EXPECTED. Please. That ONE PART OF YOUR SCRIPT: BE ORIGINAL! Just like I know that if I see ants on my table at McDonald’s, then it’s obscenely dirty back in the kitchen, I know that if you’re not being original during your FEATURED SCRIPT MOMENTS, you’re not putting effort towards being original everywhere else.

More dialogue tips in today’s review!

Genre: True Story
Premise: The true story of the most insane Broadway production of the modern era, where visionary director Julie Taymor attempted to make a Spider-Man musical and had everything go wrong in the process.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. It’s written by Hunter Toro, who wrote on Pete Davidson’s show, Bupkis.
Writer: Hunter Toro
Details: 107 pages

Although I’ll probably never do it, I’ve always wanted to write a musical about tennis. I think it would be funny to have this big Broadway singing-dancing play that revolved around tennis balls flying everywhere and people wearing Wes Anderson-inspired Lacoste bodywear singing about double-faults and drop shots.

But that’s the extent to which I’m interested in anything that has to do with Broadway. It’s not my jam. It’s not my jelly.  It’s not even my almond peanut butter.  Which is why even the craziest story to come out of Broadway in decades – this one – never landed on my radar. I heard about it peripherally. But I didn’t care.

Then a few people told me, “No, Carson, this story is ABSOLUTELY NUTS. It’s worth checking out.” Normally, I don’t like real-life stories. But if you throw a doozy my way, I’ll give it a go.

Glen is a PBS writer for a children’s show when he gets the call every writer dreams of. Julie Taymor, the creator of the Broadway sensation, “The Lion King,” is putting together a musical about Spider-Man, and none of the previous writers worked out.  Mainly cause they couldn’t deal with the insanity that is Julie Taymor. 

Glen goes in for the interview where he not only learns that Julie is directing, but that freaking U2 is doing the music. As far as New York Broadway musicals go, this is the top of the top. It’d be like Christopher Nolan calling you tomorrow and asking you to write him a sequel to Memento.

But Glen instantly learns that Julie has… shall we say STRANGE ideas for a Spider-Man story. She’s never read the comics. Never saw the movies. And that’s the way she likes it. She wants to bring something completely original to the IP. And believe me, this is IP. There are many meetings with Marvel over the course of the story about what you can and cannot do with Spider-Man throughout the script.

The biggest thing Julie wants to do is, instead of using the endless number of comics to find a villain for the story, she wants to create her own: a Greek Goddess with spider-like powers. Actually, that’s not everything. She also wants to make Spider-Man sexy and dangerous. She envisions the Jacob Elordi version of Spider-Man. And it freaks Marvel the heck out.  Julie likes that.  Julie likes that a lot.

What happens next is insane. Julie wants the aerial spider battles to happen above the audience’s heads, which is basically impossible. We see how impossible when Stunt Spider-Man Actor falls 60 feet and becomes semi-paralyzed. Then U2 goes on tour and decides to not work on the musical at all. Bono’s never even watched a musical and hates all the music in them. And then you have poor Glen who has to leave his wife and kids to be next to Julie 24/7 so that he can always be nearby when she has an idea.

The Marvel company does everything in their power to convince Julie to make Spider-Man less sexy and to get rid of the terrible villain that makes no sense within the mythology of Spider-Man. But Julie does as Julie wants. And even when their producer dies of a stroke, Julie demands that Glen come over and write new pages on the day of his funeral.

When it’s all said and done, the production costs 65 million dollars. But it becomes a semi-must-see musical due to all the press calling it the biggest disaster in Broadway history. It’s somehow enough to give the play 3 years. But, in the end, it would lose over 75 million dollars and tarnish the legacies of everyone who worked on it.

Reeve Carney, who played Spider-Man, just oozing innocence here.

As I pointed out yesterday, in the coming weeks, with every script I review, I’m going to be focusing on dialogue. I just wrote a book about dialogue so I want to talk about this stuff while it’s fresh on my mind.

Today, we’re going to cover Tip 105 in the book:

Use dialogue to reveal character – What a person says tells us a lot about who they are. So, when applicable, try and write dialogue that reveals something about your character.

Too many writers use dialogue as a means to move the plot (or scene) forward and nothing more. They’re not taking advantage of the fact that every time a character opens their mouth, it’s an opportunity to tell us who they are.

Why is this important? Because a common weakness in screenplays is characters who we have no feel for. We don’t understand them. What is their defining characteristic? What is their worldview? We can never truly understand a person unless we know these things. So, here’s a scene on page 23 of today’s script where Julie explains to Glen why she chose him to write her play.

How do we know that the writer has revealed character in this scene? Because we know more about Julie after it! We know that she’s a risk-taker. We know that she fears nothing. We know that she pushes the envelope and is willing to fall on her face and we know that she expects the same from others in her orbit. That’s HUGE information about the character and we learn it within a single page.

You’ll also note within this scene that there’s another major dialogue tip covered in the book.  Actually, it’s THE VERY FIRST TIP.

Create dialogue-friendly characters – Dialogue-friendly characters are characters who generally talk a lot. They are naturally funny or tend to say interesting things or have a unique perspective on the world, are quirky or strange or offbeat or manic or see the world differently than the average human being. The Joker in The Dark Knight is a dialogue-friendly character. Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad is a dialogue-friendly character. Deadpool is. Juno is. It’s hard to write good dialogue without characters who like to talk.

Julie Taymor is our dialogue-friendly character in this story. She’s weird. She’s unpredictable. She’s demanding. She says a lot of strange things. Dialogue cheers from the mountaintops when it finds out a character like this is in the script. Which is why you want to give your script the gift of dialogue-friendly characters as often as possible.

What about the rest of the script?

The great thing about crazy true stories is that they do a lot of the work for you. You don’t have to go looking for great scenes, like stuntmen falling 60 feet to their near-deaths. They come to you.

But I have found that, when you have a wild story and you have a wild character, like Julie, you must be cautious that your main character doesn’t disappear on the page. And that’s exactly what happens here. The Glen character gets swallowed up by all the craziness and leaves little to no impact, despite being the main character.

I’m not saying it’s easy to deal with this imbalance. But if you’re aware of it, you can take steps to offset it. You probably need to make your hero bigger than you originally planned. If all Glen is here to do is stare up at Julie in utter amazement, audiences aren’t going to play nice.

They want heroes that charge forward and have their own agency. At least at some point in the script. Glen has that moment but it’s so late in the story that it might as well be nonexistent.

As I said, I don’t like true stories. Yet if you’re going to write one, this is the exact type of story you want to re-tell. It’s big, it’s weird, it’s chaotic, and let’s be honest – it’s funny to watch something fail so spectacularly. For that reason, this is definitely worth the read. It’s too fascinating of a story not to be entertaining.

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

What I learned: When you’re creating your two main characters (the characters who are going to be in your script together the most), you have to imagine each of them on a scale. One on one side, the other on the other. On that scale, does one character clearly weigh down their side of the scale? If so, you’re going to need to add more to the other character. You have to make them more active, or talk more, or be funnier, or be tougher, or be smarter, or bring SOME WEIGHT to the table. Because if they’re getting overshadowed in EVERY SINGLE SCENE, readers will consider the character to be weak. And that’s what happened here. Glen comes off as a very weak character since he can never hang in any of the scenes he and Julie are in.

If today’s dialogue talk intrigued you, I have over (that’s right, OVER) 250 dialogue tips in my new book, “The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written.” You can head over to Amazon and buy the book, right now!