Okay everybody. When I originally set this deadline, I forgot about the long Labor Day weekend. So I’m EXTENDING the deadline for the Scriptshadow Tournament (go here for submission rules) by 1 day. That means everyone has until Monday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time, to get their script in. And let me assure those who submitted today and are thinking of resubmitting their script tomorrow, there is NOTHING you can do in a day that’s going to make your script any better than it is now. So trust in your writing and be content.
Here’s how this is going to work (rules are subject to change because this is an experiment). Starting next Friday, every weekend, 5 scripts will compete for your votes with the winner being announced Sunday evening. We are going to do 8 rounds of this (2 months). That means there will be 40 scripts chosen for the tournament in total. 8 of those scripts will go on to the next round (the quarterfinals). From there, two scripts will battle it out each week which will take us through the semifinals, and then, the final round.
Voting will be up to you guys and I encourage everyone who follows the site to vote. But, as we know, there will be writers who try and rig the voting. A fair warning. The Scriptshadow crowd is keen on cheaters. It’s pretty obvious that when a script not a single known Scriptshadow contributor votes on magically gets 30 votes from people who have never commented before, something is up. I do expect there to be more voters than Saturday Showdown because of the tournament. But if anything looks suspicious, I’ll be making the final judgment call on which scripts move through.
Looking forward to this. Can’t wait to find a great script!
So in my most recent group of consultations, I got this question a lot: “What about my dialogue?”
I remember when I first got into screenwriting, I came across an interview where a professional screenwriter was asked, “How do you write good dialogue?” His answer: “Dialogue is the least important part of a screenplay. Learn everything else first.”
I subsequently discarded this screenwriter as insane, refused to watch any of his movies, and wrote a handful of e-mails to him explaining everything that was wrong about his proclamation that I never sent. But over time, I realized there was some truth to his statement. I mean how else do you explain writers rewriting dialogue the day of shooting a scene and coming up with something perfectly suitable?
What you eventually learn is that it’s the structure of the scene that enables the potential for good dialogue. Good dialogue rarely emerges on its own. For example, if a director came to you with a structure-less scene and said, “I need new dialogue here,” you’d be fucked. You could try and write some clever Quentin Tarantino shit with some Diablo Cody witticisms and a Paul Thomas Anderson monologue about milkshakes. But no matter what you did, it would be a mess.
However, if the director came to you and said, “Here’s the scene. This wife is about to cheat on her husband, and while he doesn’t know that yet, he’s suspicious of her recent behavior. This is their phone call. I need you to rewrite the dialogue,” now you have something to work with. You have some underlying tension in the scene. You have subtext. You have conflict.
With that setup, you could have a hundred screenwriters come in and write your dialogue and most of them would come up with something good. Why? Because there’s an underlying STRUCTURE to the scene that is built for dialogue. And that was the inspiration for today’s lesson. I wanted to look at the three big elements responsible for good dialogue.
Before we get to that, though, I want to make something clear. None of this will help if you don’t have the basics down. You can’t have a bunch of on-the-nose dialogue. You can’t have a bunch of melodramatic dialogue. The dialogue can’t be robotic. It’s got to sound like real people talking to one another. Ironically, there should be a slightly heightened quality to movie dialogue, yet not so heightened that you look like you’re showing off. And finally, like all of writing, there can’t be any laziness. Come up with a better word, a better sentence, a better analogy, a better turn-of-phrase. You have to try hard. When you’ve done all that, you’ll be ready for the below.
1) DIALOGUE FRIENDLY CHARACTERS
Last week a writer asked me, “Why does my dialogue suck in this scene?” I re-read the scene which took place between “the boring friend” and “the quiet guy.” In other words, of course the dialogue sucked. Neither of the characters was built for dialogue. If you want to write good dialogue scenes, you need characters who are good at talking. It’s no different than sending a couple of socially awkward introverts into a bar and telling them to pick up women. Their personalities aren’t built for that.
If you look at Pulp Fiction, one of the reasons the dialogue is so memorable is that the movie has a dozen characters who are dialogue-friendly. If you look at Deadpool, one of the reasons the dialogue rocked was because it starred the most dialogue friendly character of the year. Jokesters, anybody opinionated, motormouths, philosophical potheads, people who “just tell it like it is and if you don’t like it, fuck off,” really smart people who love to hear themselves talk, really dumb people who who love to hear themselves talk, weird people who have weird views of the world, idiots, the list goes on. If you want more good dialogue scenes, this is something you should be thinking about during the character creation stage. “Is this a character who’s going to say interesting things?” If you don’t have at least one of these guys, your dialogue is going to suffer.
2) CONTRAST
Many of the best dialogue scenes come from a contrasting dynamic. Two characters who are on different ends of the spectrum. Take one of the best dialogue movies ever – When Harry Met Sally. Harry was brash, opinionated and pessimistic. Sally was reserved, thoughtful, and optimistic. It was no wonder their dialogue was fun. Clementine and Joel in Eternal Sunshine. She was extroverted and a motor-mouth. He was introverted and chose his words carefully. 500 Days of Summer. He wanted to make it work badly and she didn’t. Silence of the Lambs. She was timid and scared. He was brilliant and manipulative.
What happens when you don’t have contrast? Let’s look at Mad Max: Fury Road. Great movie, right? But do you remember the dialogue? Did it stand out in any way? No, it didn’t. Why? Maybe the fact that Max and Furiosa were essentially the same person (alphas who did things their own way) contributed to the lack of interesting conversation. There wasn’t enough contrast in their dynamic. Not to mention, neither was dialogue-friendly. It should also be noted that “contrasting” can be momentary. It doesn’t have to be built into the characters from the get-go. For example, two characters who are similar may enter a situation where they disagree. In that case, the contrast is momentary, but it’s still contrast. It still enables the potential for good dialogue. With that said, it’s beneficial for your key characters to have a contrasting dynamic, since they’re going to be in the most scenes together. If they’re too similar or agreeable, you’ll have a lot of sub-par dialogue scenes.
3) THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT
Now this is a working theory so it’s not 100% there yet. But what I’ve found when I’ve broken dialogue down is that in almost every circumstance, the dialogue gets better when you introduce a NEGATIVE ELEMENT. The example I always like to use is a couple (NICK and LISA) talking at a diner. If all Nick and Lisa do is talk, that’s boring. But if we know that Lisa plans to dump (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) Nick at some point during the conversation, you now have interesting dialogue. And even if she dumps him at the start of the conversation (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) you’re going to have interesting dialogue.
Or maybe, for whatever reason, you want Nick and Lisa happy in the scene. That’s fine. But if you want to keep the dialogue interesting, you need to introduce the NEGATIVE ELEMENT somewhere else. For example, maybe Lisa’s abusive ex-boyfriend shows up (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) and sits a few tables away. I guarantee you the conversation between Nick and Lisa is going to get a lot more interesting, even if neither acknowledges that the ex has shown up.
Likewise, let’s say Nick’s just joined the army (I guess Lisa dumped him). If you write a scene where, when Nick gets to the base, he sits down with another soldier and the two discuss where he came from and how he got here, it’s going to be boring. But if the second Nick gets there, he’s thrown onto a Humvee to go check out an IED explosion, and the route they’re taking is laced with insurgents (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) and THAT’S when Nick is asked where he came from, the dialogue’s going to be a lot more interesting.
The negative element could also be subtle. Let’s say we’re following Nick and Lisa (he survived his tour of duty and they’re back together) to a concert. She’s been looking forward to this all week whereas he doesn’t want to be here (NEGATIVE ELEMENT). We’re more likely to get good dialogue out of that than if they’re both happy and excited to be here.
And it’s important to note that you have OPTIONS once the negative element’s been introduced. For example, Nick can be transparent about not wanting to be at the concert OR he can keep his feelings to himself. Either scenario will lead to some interesting dialogue. The idea is that a negative element creates conflict, and conflict necessitates resolution, or at least an attempt at resolution. So there’s more curiosity on the reader’s part on how this situation’s going to end.
Finally, just like there are characters who aren’t built for dialogue, there are genres and movie-types that aren’t built for dialogue. Dramas are one of them. You rarely come out of a straight drama going, “Wow, the dialogue in that was amazing.” It’s the same with Thrillers. Since they’re always on the move, you don’t have many long conversations. So it’s harder to write memorable dialogue.
For those types of movies, you want to place less focus on dialogue-friendly characters and contrasting dynamics and more on the NEGATIVE ELEMENT. As long as you’re introducing negative elements into your scenes, whether they be from the characters themselves or from outside forces, it should lead to better dialogue.
Negative Element Theory reminds me of Rashomon both in its simplicity and complexity. Feel free to comment on it, as well as offer your own dialogue tips, in the comments section.
Genre: True Life Story
Premise: The true story of how an intoxicated Ted Kennedy drove a young woman home, crashed into a pond, and didn’t attempt to save her life, instead focusing on saving himself and his political career.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. It will feature rising star Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy and Kate Mara as the doomed Mary Jo Kopechne. A lot of democrats are not happy this movie is being made as they feel it will permanently tarnish Ted Kennedy’s reputation. The film will be directed by Fifty Shades of Grey director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, who you may know is married to Kickass and Godzilla star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Writers: Taylor Allen & Andrew Logan
Details: 140 pages
I’m telling you, guys and gals. True-life stories are the hot new spec path. They give your script the prestige feel of a biopic, but the focus of a feature concept, since you only have to cover one event as opposed to an entire life.
Up until this point, the majority of true story features were coming out of World War 2. But with studios closing their wallets to original ideas, it’s forced (allowed?) the true story market to expand. And the great news about that is there’s a million great untold stories out there.
And most of them are right under your noses! I’ve been hearing about Chappaquiddick for 20 years and only now is someone writing a script about it. So imagine what else is out there for the taking.
Speaking of taking, this one takes some patience. You’re going to get angry. Chappaquiddick is about a group of men so concerned about covering their asses, that they didn’t even realize the death they were covering up hadn’t happened yet.
Senator Ted Kennedy is still dealing with the loss of his brother, Bobby. But where there is tragedy, there is opportunity, and Ted’s name has been mentioned in some circles as the next president.
The problem is, Ted’s a drinker. And while partying it up in his lakeshore cottage, he convinces his 28 year-old girlfriend, Mary Jo Kopechne, to go for a joy ride with him. During their drive, Ted takes a wrong turn and his car ends up in a shallow pond that’s just deep enough to submerge his vehicle.
Ted, freaking out, escapes the car, not giving two shits about Mary Jo. Meanwhile, the car begins filling up with water slowly. So Mary Jo is still alive in the car while Ted is up on the shore, figuring out how he’s going to get away with this.
He goes back to the party, grabs his cousin, Joe Gargan, and heads back to the pond to ask him what he should do. Joe’s pissed as hell that Ted hasn’t checked to see if Mary Joe is actually dead and jumps into the pond to save her, but the water’s too murky. It’s impossible to see anything.
So the two head back to the party and start strategizing on how they’re going to spin this. Meanwhile, we keep cutting back to Mary Jo, who was alive and well in the car for hours, but trapped and unable to get out. Eventually, the car filled up with water, and Mary Jo endured the slowest and most agonizing death imaginable.
The rest of the script is Joe getting together with the powerful Kennedy trust and figuring out how they can make this look like an innocent accident. If they fail, Ted could go to prison, ruining his chances at becoming president, and permanently taking down the Kennedy clan with him.
Chappaquiddick starts off with a Roshomon-like sequence that has Ted explaining his version of events to the local police chief, where Ted heroically attempted to save Mary Jo’s life multiple times, only for him to eventually run out of options.
We then cut to what really happened, which is that Ted escapes the car, doesn’t attempt to help Mary Jo at all, and Mary Jo watches helplessly as the water rises up until there isn’t any air left to breathe.
By the way, if you ever want to sound smart in a film conversation? Bring up Roshomon. It doesn’t even have to make sense. “You guys see Captain America: Civil War? It was basically a Rashomon remake, am I right?” “Angry Birds, man. The Roshomon influences were through the roof.” I’ve found that most people won’t know what you’re talking about but assume that you’re really smart and simply agree with you.
Back to Chappaquiddicth, starring Ted Kennedy as Dumbledore. Structurally, I think the script took the best route. They throw the car crash at you early on and the rest of the plot is the cover-up.
Whenever you’re writing these true stories, you’re looking for a) the part of the story that has the biggest dramatic punch and b) the part of the story that has enough legs to last two hours. Unfortunately, these two things are often at odds with one another.
So here, the part of the story that possesses the most dramatic punch is the crash. But you can’t extend the crash into a 2-hour ordeal. It doesn’t last long enough for that. Luckily, the cover-up story has legs, so you can use that as the central plot.
This is the same problem the upcoming “Sulley” is facing. The part of the story with the most dramatic punch is the plane crash. But the plane crash only lasts two minutes. So they need to find something in the concept that has legs and I don’t think there is anything.
Ideally, you find an idea where the element with the most dramatic punch is also the element with legs. Titanic is a good example.
I only had one major issue with Chappaquiddick, and it’s something we never talk about here on Scriptshadow.
IMPORTANT DESCRIPTION
Description is often set dressing. It’s there to paint an image for the reader. It should almost be invisible. But there are moments in a script where description becomes extremely important. And that’s when we’re in a big scene where important things are happening and the setting isn’t easily imagined.
That’s the definition of the car crash in Chappaquiddick.
How is it, for example, that Mary Jo is in a car where all the doors and windows are closed? That’s the only reason the car doesn’t fill up with water immediately, right? But then how did Kennedy get out of the car??? Did he teleport? He must’ve had to open a window or a door. But then how did that window or door get re-closed?
This description problem continues when we’re describing Mary Jo “swimming” up to the front of the car. Why does she have to swim anywhere? In every car I’ve ever been in, all you have to do is reach forward to the front seat or slide in between the two front seats. “Swimming” makes it sound like she’s competing against Michael Phelps at the Olympics. Is this a car or a bus? Spatially, I don’t know what the hell’s going on.
These are super important details that the reader has to know in order to visualize the scene correctly. Especially in a scene like this where the reader’s going to be asking, “Why can’t she roll down a window?” “Why can’t she open a door?” “Why doesn’t she use something to break the window?” You have to make it clear why these aren’t an option.
Whatever it is you’re writing, when you get to the key moments, make sure they’re clear as day. Get specific. Err on the side of too much detail. Cause what you don’t want is the reader imagining a haze of fog.
Despite some good things here, I went back and forth with this one. The story crackles in places. But it’s also 140 freaking pages long. It shouldn’t have been a hashtag over 115. You’re essentially writing a thriller here. Thrillers need to move fast.
And I don’t care how compelling your story is. If you’re making the reader wade through 30 extra pages because you’re too lazy to focus on what’s important, that’s a screenwriting sin.
I mean, I guess this is worth reading but it’s right on the border between ‘wasn’t for me’ and ‘worth the read.’
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re writing a really important scene and it’s essential that the reader not be confused, I’m okay with you bucking screenwriting rules and speaking to the reader directly. So in a case like this, it’s okay to write: “NOTE TO READER: The car is angled front first, straight up and down, with water coming into the front of the car and rising six inches every ten minutes. Because the car is vertical, the back of the front seat is horizontal, and that’s what Mary uses as a seat.” The point is, the reader MUST understand what’s happening in the key scene. So if you have to cheat to help them understand, do it. Put a fucking diagram in the script if you have to. Seriously. Cause nobody cares if you stayed true to screenwriting rules if they have no idea what happened.
Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: A weekend tryst between two cheating spouses goes south when the husband of the woman finds out and makes them pay in the most unimaginable ways possible.
About: This one was acquired by 1984 Defense Contractors (“The Grey”) a couple of years ago. Before selling the script, the writer, Elliot San, wrote and acted in a comedy troupe in Muncie, Indiana.
Writer: Elliot San
Details: 96 pages
What caught my attention with this script was that it was said to be in the same vein as Hard Candy, the 2005 film about an older man who preys on a younger girl online, and when he brings her home, realizes that he’s the prey.
It was a good movie (Ellen Paige’s debut) and I realized that we haven’t had a good contained thriller in the vein of Hard Candy in forever. So let this be an official shout-out to those of you looking to sell a script, that this is the perfect sub-genre to write in.
It costs NOTHING to shoot. And it stands out from 90% of the other contained thrillers just by not being a horror script.
Assuming you go this route, You’ll Be The Death of Me is your competition. It’s already made a splash. I’m sure someone is out there trying to make it. Let’s see if it’s good enough to be the next Hard Candy.
40-something Holly seems to have a good life going for her. She’s got a husband, Russell, who loves her, and a daughter in college. Yet we get the sense that the recent uptick in Holly’s business trips is straining the marriage.
When Holly heads out on one of those trips, we learn that they’re more personal in nature than she’s letting on. As in, she’s been banging some pool boy for the past six months. And this particular getaway in Palm Springs is going to be the biggest and craziest sex-a-thon yet.
Oh, it’ll be big and crazy all right. Just not how she planned it. You see, Russell figured out what was going on. And instead of going the whole “lawyer up,” route, he’s going to have some fun at his wife’s and Everett’s expense.
He kidnaps Everett ahead of time, brings him to the hotel room, and tells him that his only job is to keep Holly in that room until tomorrow morning. If Holly leaves that room before then, Russell will kill Everett’s wife and daughter, who he’s holding hostage.
Russell then leaves, Holly never knowing he was there, and calls her, pretending to be back at home. He informs Holly that he knows she’s with Everett and that Everett is a killer. Holly, he believes, will be his next victim. Holly must get out of that room at all costs.
And hence begins a life-or-death game of both lovers attempting to outwit one another, unknowingly going up against a likewise manipulated foe. Who’s going to come out with their pants on? I can promise you this. You’ll have no idea unless you read the script.
I LOVED the way this script started. You guys should all read the opening of You’ll Be The Death of Me. It starts out by breaking the rules, giving us a dialogue scene (you rarely want to start with a straight dialogue scene) that takes place on the phone in a car (the characters engaging in the dialogue aren’t even together!). Can you ask for a scene that’s more designed to bore an audience?
Here’s why it works though.
SUBTEXT
Holly, who’s in the car, is talking to her husband, Russell, about seemingly unimportant things (their daughter’s college life, for example). As they continue talking, we get the sense that the conversation is boring Holly. Not in a normal husband-wife know-everything-about-each-other way. But that she has something else she’d rather focus on.
And what that does is it creates a question in the reader: “Why does she want to get off the phone with her husband so badly?”
Once you have the reader questioning the situation, you’ve got them hooked, at least temporarily. And San starts dropping more bait crumbs for us. Holly mentions her “conference” that she’s going to. Russell says, “I thought you said it wasn’t a conference.”
Okay, now we know Holly is lying. Why is she lying? Whether we like it or not, the writer has us in the palm of his hands. We want to know where this is going and that, my friends, is how you pen an opening scene that hooks the reader.
Once Holly gets to the hotel, we sense that something is off. Everett, the man she’s cheating with, isn’t around. He’s left messages with instructions for her instead. Something’s up. The suspense is building. We want to see what’s going to happen here because we know it’s probably going to be bad (pro tip: simple suspense is implying something bad is going to happen then suspending the outcome of that moment).
For the first 15 pages, I was so onboard with You’ll Be The Death of Me.
And then San makes a risky choice. He has Russell threaten Everett, secretly telling him that if Holly leaves that room before tomorrow morning, he will kill Everett’s family.
He then calls up Holly, and secretly tells her he knows she’s having an affair, and that Everett is a killer.
In the immortal words of Saturday Morning Cartoons: “WAH WAH WAHHHHHHH.”
First of all, if you’re a wife having an affair and your husband calls you while you’re with the other man and tells you he’s a killer, what’s your first response going to be? I’m assuming it’s something along the lines of “bullshit.” Your husband has every reason to want to get you away from this man or make you scared of him. So of course he’ll lie.
And this is something I’ve been trying to tell screenwriters forever, and something they don’t want to listen to: Before you have a character do something incredulous, ask yourself if this were the real world, would that character still do what you’re having them do?
If the answer is no, readers are going to call bullshit on you. Russell is written as a smart man. A real life smart man isn’t going to try and pull something over on a wife that she would never believe. And likewise, a real-life wife would never believe that thing even if her husband was dumb enough to try it.
Unfortunately, when a mistake like this is built into the conceit, it disqualifies everything that happens after it. If we don’t believe in how we got here, we can’t believe in what follows.
But here’s the thing about You’ll Be The Death of Me. It adds ANOTHER twist that throws everything you thought you knew out the window. It becomes a completely different story.
And I’ll be the first to admit, despite the thousands of screenplays I’ve read, I had NO FUCKING CLUE what was going on. I couldn’t venture a guess at who was pulling the strings if you gave me temporary access to Einstein’s brain.
Now was the script perfectly constructed? It was not. But it takes chances and after it hits that midpoint, it always stays ahead of you. It’s enough to keep you entertained, that’s for sure.
The contained relationship thriller is like a secret weapon sub-genre. Not many people write them, so the competition is minimal, they’re cheap to make, since they’re one location, and they’re easy to market, so producers want them. It’s the trifecta! So if you’ve got a good idea for a contained relationship thriller, the market is due for one. Take advantage!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful with scripts where there’s no one to root for. They can still work as thrillers because the audience is there for the thrills as much as they are the characters. But in You’ll Be The Death of Me, you have a cheating wife, a cheating husband, and a man who’s torturing them. Who do we root for in that scenario? Even if we’re left thrilled by the breakneck pace and clever plotting, we feel empty at the finish line because we never had anyone to latch onto. So if you’re going to write one of these films, try and add someone to root for!
SCRIPTSHADOW TOURNAMENT CONTEST REMINDER: Remember guys – Your Scriptshadow Tournament scripts are due next Sunday!!! Here are the details if you’re interested in submitting. Get cracking on those scripts!
Genre: Comedy
Premise: A corrupt politician recruits an aspiring law school student to help him escape New York before the cops can capture and throw him in prison for life.
About: This script sold to Sony a couple of years ago for three-quarters of a million bucks. Say what you want about Sony’s trouble as a studio, but they buy more specs than anyone. That makes them friends to screenwriters everywhere! Writers Matthew Bass and Theodore Bressman are former assistants to comedy titans Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It’s said that they’ve written dozens of drafts of this script, as every few months a new political scandal hits the news that either gives them new ideas or makes their previous version dated.
Writers: Matthew Bass & Theodore B. Bressman
Details: 110 pages (8/30/13 draft)
So Saturday I popped in the Sundance winning documentary, Weiner, about the infamous politician’s attempt to get back in the political game, and found myself mesmerized.
It’s a tough watch. You will never feel worse for a human being more than you will for Anthony Weiner’s wife after watching this movie. I almost had to stop watching because I felt so bad for her. And yet it’s one of those documentaries that you can’t look away from.
This jogged my memory about The Politician’s sale from a few years ago. So I pulled it out and gave it a read.
Now I advise against writing political comedies. While politics is one of the easiest things to make fun of, it’s a sober reminder of real life to most people. And people don’t go to the movies to see real life. They go to the movies to escape life. Look no further than Rogen and Goldberg’s hit, Sausage Party, as proof.
Political comedies never do well. The best ones are Wag The Dog. Bullworth. Primary Colors. All of which had their fans but were box office duds. Even The Campaign, which had the two biggest comedy stars in the world at the time, couldn’t reach the 100 million mark.
So write in this genre if you must. But I have warned you!
The Politician follows Henry Cashin, a low-life governor who cheats on his wife with hookers, uses dirty money to fund his campaign, and can’t go five minutes without doing a line of coke.
When Cashin gets caught for all his naughty deeds, he decides to make a run for it. If he can get to the airport, he can fly his private plane to his secret house in the Maldives and do lines of coke on hammock ropes for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, across town, we meet Joe, a kind-hearted aspiring lawyer who’s able to quit his job at the Apple Store when he finds out he’s been approved for a full ride at the New York City School of Law. This is much needed since his fiancé is the daughter of one of the biggest judges in the city. In Joe’s eyes, this makes him a legitimate contender to be a part of the family.
Unfortunately, when he gets to the school, they tell him that the man responsible for approving these city scholarships, Henry Cashin, did so through corrupt means, and that since Henry is now a criminal, they can’t offer Joe the scholarship.
Joe storm out, and by serendipitous fate (or lazy plotting) Henry rear ends Joe while on the run. Henry jumps in Joe’s car and tells him he’ll fund his law school if Joe will help him get to the airport. Joe reluctantly agrees, and is now abetting the most wanted man in the country.
In addition to the cops, we have by-the-books FBI officer, Jefferies, teaming up with fuck-the-books Federal Marshal, Gardini. They hate each other’s guts. And there’s also professional hitman Axel Wallace, who’s been hired by corrupt real estate developer, Sam Shankrow, to assassinate Henry before he’s able to reveal just how corrupt Shankrow is.
This shit show stumbles and bumbles its way around Manhattan leaving so much collateral damage, it’ll be a miracle if the city is still standing by the end of the day. You get the sense, though, that if there’s anybody who can survive this mayhem, it’s Henry freaking Cashin.
The Politician has a nice approach to it. Give us a scorched-earth be-as-politically-incorrect-as-possible comedy, leaving no fearless joke unturned. If it had had a little more variety, I may have been on board with this. But The Politician’s biggest weakness is its over-reliance on a single joke.
Henry Cashin’s coke obsession is funny the first few times. I even laughed the tenth time it came up. But once the joke hits the 50 counter and we’re not even at the halfway point? It starts to seem like you don’t have any other jokes in the joke shed.
Recurring jokes are an essential part of feature-length comedy. But at a certain point, you have to give us some variety, man! I don’t think Cheech and Chong mention pot in all of their movies combined more than this movie mentions coke in its first act alone.
So that bothered me because there’s a couple types of comedy out there. There’s blunt force comedy where you keep hitting them over the head with the same shit. And then there’s clever comedy, where there’s an attempt to be thoughtful with your jokes.
I’ll give you the one clever example I saw in The Politician. Corrupt real estate developer Sam Shankrow hires hitman Axel Wallace to kill Henry. Having never done this before, Shankrow is terrified that his phone calls will incriminate him if discovered.
So he uses an analogy, calling for Axel to “deliver the pizza.” The problem is, the analogy is so bad, neither of them are that sure what they’re saying to each other. Does “delivering the pizza” mean that Alex has killed the man? Does it mean he’s just now getting to Henry’s location?
It gets even better when Henry escapes Axel and Axel must relay the information to Shankrow. Shankrow responds, “So you’re telling me you’re just sitting there with a cold pizza?!” Axel rolls his eyes. “Pizza’s still warm. I just gotta drop it off at a different location. And I have a good idea of where that is.” “So you have the pizza?” “No! I don’t know! Fuck.”
Whether you think that’s funny or not, do you see how there’s an attempt to actually be clever? There’s some thought that went into the joke there. There’s not a lot of thought that goes into having Henry do a line of coke every page.
This percentage breakdown is reflective of the rest of the script. 80% is over-the-top “MORE COKE!” type humor while 20% is clever thoughtful humor. And that leads me to today’s big piece of advice.
This past week, I’ve read a lot of amateur scripts that are making a huge mistake. They aren’t giving the reader a single “I haven’t seen this before” element in their script. If there’s nothing new about your screenplay, why would somebody buy it?
What does The Politician offer us that we haven’t seen before? Running around New York? Acting crazy for laughs? We’ve seen that, haven’t we? I’ll tell you what we haven’t seen before – animated sausages. That’s something that nobody’s ever seen before.
Now you may say, “Well, this script sold, Carson.” Or “Taken wasn’t unique and it sold.” And you’re right. But you shouldn’t be trying to compete with bland ideas that managed to sell for reasons that may have nothing to do with the quality of the script.
As a spec writer, your job is to STAND OUT. I want you to say that out loud. “As a spec writer, my job is to STAND OUT.” Because you’re nobody right now. You’re not Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s assistant hearing what kind of movies they’d love to make every day. So you need to stand out in some way. And the only way you’re going to do that is with a major UNIQUE element that nobody’s seen before.
Nobody saw cars transforming into robots in movies before Transformers.
Nobody saw a buddy cop movie where the cops took down aliens before Men in Black.
Nobody saw a Godzilla-like destruction movie told from the point of view of a video camera before Cloverfield.
Nobody saw magicians pulling off heists before Now You See Me.
Nobody saw a single man stranded on Mars before The Martian.
Nobody saw a buddy comedy between a man and his talking teddy bear before Ted.
Nobody saw a dream heist movie before Inception.
If you don’t have a big “unique attractor” in your script, you will have trouble convincing anyone to read it, much less buy it. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But a) the pool of people willing to read it will go down one hundred-fold and b) the level of execution will need to rise one hundred-fold. Do the math on what that does to your chances.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: So how big does the “UNIQUE ATTRACTOR” I referred to have to be to get people interested? Unfortunately that question is as hard to answer as “What makes an idea high concept?” But I can tell you this: The bigger and more involved your unique attractor is, the better off you’ll be. For example, a vacation island with real-life dinosaurs that goes bad would be a more attractive idea than “Taken on an airplane.” And if your unique attractor is something like, “Well, nobody’s ever seen a female main character as smart as mine before,” then it’s time to pack your bags and go back to the drawing board cause that’s not unique at all. This is a question all of you should be asking yourselves before every script you write. “What do I have in my movie that nobody’s ever seen before?” If your answer is some tiny insignificant thing, you’re in trouble.
