Last week we had the official Logline Showdown. But there were so many good entries in the comedy genre, I decided to do a second showdown week just for the comedy entries. That’s what’s so great about Scriptshadow. You never know what’s going to happen next!! There are no rules!
Well, except that you have to vote for your favorite logline in the comment section and that you have until Sunday, February 9th, at 11:59pm Pacific Time to cast your vote.
Also, get those first pages ready for First Page Showdown, which is just 3 weeks away.
What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Onto the competition. Maybe the funniest logline win!
Title: Higher Than The Moon
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Convinced by a cocaine loving alien that they can make a fortune in the intergalactic drug trade, ambitious New Jersey mobsters kidnap a disgraced NASA scientist and task him with developing a space program for the mob.
Title: Globe Busters
Genre: Comedy Drama
Logline: A lonely NY journalist reports at a flat earth convention and joins an extreme conspiracy society known as the Globe Busters where together they embark on an expedition to Antarctica to climb the Ice Wall and reach the edge of the world.
Title: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy
Logline: Two feuding inventors with a lifelong rivalry use their newly created time machines to destroy the other’s past, present, and future, in order to be remembered in history as the father of time travel. TIME AFTER TIME meets GRUMPY OLD MEN
Title: UNPROTECTED
Genre: Comedy/Action
Logline: A former unwitting mob doctor turned small-town veterinarian must rally his skeptical family to survive after FBI budget cuts kick them out of Witness Protection and put them back in the mob’s crosshairs.
Title: Meet Me in the Middle
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A transgender rights activist and a January 6th rioter find themselves seated next to each other on a chaotic holiday flight out of D.C., only to be quickly added to the No-Fly List. What follows is a planes, trains, and automobiles journey through middle America, where the unlikely duo must navigate their differences, find common ground, and muster a bit of compassion—all in the hope of keeping America’s holiday dinners drama-free.
Title: Adultery Alert
Genre: Romantic comedy (meets Minority Report)
Logline: In the near future, technology can predict cheating, allowing couples to break up before experiencing the trauma. So when Mark discovers, ahead of his fiancée, that one of them is going to cheat before their wedding, he will do everything he can to prevent it and keep her from finding out about the alert.
Title: T’d Up
Genre: Comedy
Forced into retirement and facing bankruptcy, the NBA’s most notorious trash-talker becomes a referee to claw his way back into the league and prove everyone wrong.
Title: IPOwen
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a down-on-his-luck insurance agent in a dead-end town loses his wife, his job and his apartment on the same day he turns 40, he decides to reboot his life by putting himself on the stock market, with an army of shareholders controlling his every decision.
Title: DEI HARD
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Due to DEI cutbacks, a portly and aging female assassin is unceremoniously shit-canned and forced to take a job working the front desk at hotel, but her past skills become helpful when the building is invaded by her former employers sent there to kill a star witness, her new asshole boss.
I get it.
I post the 10 winning loglines. And every single writer not responsible for those 10 loglines is upset with the picks. How could you pick *that* logline when *my* logline is so much better!?!
Well, I’m going to tell you.
I’m going to take you behind the scenes and go into my decision-making process for every single logline in last week’s Showdown.
What you’re going to realize is that, when it comes to someone wanting to read your script based on the logline, there are some things that are out of your hands.
Are we ready? Let’s get into it.
Title: U-666
Genre: Supernatural Horror/WW2/Submarine
Logline: In the final days of World War II, a German U-boat tasked with smuggling high-ranking officials and occult artifacts to Argentina faces chaos when the captain’s son is possessed by a malevolent entity unleashed from the cursed cargo. As the possessed officer wreaks havoc, killing crew and sabotaging the submarine, the captain must confront supernatural terror and Allied forces closing in to exorcise his son, save his soul, and prevent the U-boat from becoming a tomb for all onboard.
Reason I chose it: You guys may have heard me talk about it on this site. I’m all about the next big sub movie. Hollywood’s always looking for one of these. What I liked about this idea in particular was that it added a supernatural element, which made it high concept. I liked how the writer connected the cargo to the supernatural element. And also, I liked the World War 2 connection as it allowed for even more plot possibilities. It’s a big fun movie idea and, therefore, a no-brainer.
Title: The Offering
Genre: Horror Thriller
Logline: A casual boat trip turns into a fight for survival when a young couple learns that their host is a servant to a pair of sirens and is offering them up as a feast. It’s Dead Calm meets Jaws.
Reason I chose it: I chose this one for similar reasons. For starters, Dead Calm is one of my favorite underrated films. So, maybe there’s a lesson there. There’s no harm in adding a little movie crossover at the end of your logline. I still probably would’ve picked this without the crossover mention. But maybe not. However, the main thing is that the writer took a well-known setup – people out on a boat. And then they added a supernatural twist. Also, I find sirens fascinating. They’re an underutilized monster so their addition, as opposed to werewolves or vampires, offers the concept a little extra originality.
Title: The Shot Heard Around in Time
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After traveling back in time and accidentally killing George Washington in a drunken duel, a bookish historian has to assume the identity of America’s first president and win the Revolutionary War.
Reason I chose it: I went back and forth on this one exclusively because of the title. That title sounds weird with the phrase “around in time.” But every time I read the logline, I giggled. And, for a comedy logline, that’s my main criteria. Does it elicit a response from me? Laughing is great but giggling is still good. It helps, with a comedy logline, if you can immediately imagine someone in the role. And I immediately imagined Nate Bargatze. Also, I’m a sucker for a good comedic ‘impersonation’ premise. There are so many potential comedic scenarios that can come out of pretending to be someone you’re not. Especially when the stakes are this high.
Title: Nether Cop
Genre: Action, Horror
Logline: A clandestine division of the government, Dark Ops, whose agents employ a device that kills them for three minutes at a time, allowing them to battle demons on common ground.
Reason I chose it: Someone was coming after me HARD about Nether Cop in the comments so I feel like I owe them an explanation. You guys might know that I was a big fan of the concept for Flatliners. However, the problem with Flatliners was that they didn’t have anything after the premise. Med students kill themselves for research and then… what? They see spooky shit? That’s not a movie. Nether Cop is an answer to that. If your enemy is a demon and there’s no way to fight that demon as a human, it makes sense that you would have to kill yourself in order to battle them on their ground. It’s kind of got a Matrix-y vibe to it. And I love the time limit. It creates urgency for every fight. It’s hard enough to try and kill a demon. It’s another when you only have three minutes! And, unlike other high concept ideas, the time limit is organic. You’ve got about 3 minutes before you need to be brought back to life, or else you’re dead for good. I just think it’s a really cool idea.
Title: LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After arresting an illegal immigrant, a border patrol guard must team up with him when a Mexican drug cartel lays siege to the border station intent on killing him.
Reason I chose it: You guys know I like the temporary team-up between the good guy and the bad guy. In screenwriting, you’re always looking for things that provide the most amount of conflict. The temporary team-up not only gives you tons of conflict but it’s effortless conflict. You don’t have to artificially construct scenes to create conflict. It’s there all the time. With that said, temporary team-ups are a dime-a-dozen in this town. So, you need to come up with a fresh situation. This logline did. I have not seen this situation before with the temporary team-up gambit. Easy choice to make the showdown.
Title: In the Crease
Genre: Sports/True Story
Logline: In an urban community torn apart by drugs and violence, a disgraced ex-Ivy League lacrosse player seeks redemption by coaching an inner city lacrosse team.
Reason I chose it: One of the things I’ve tried to make clear in my search for great scripts is that I’m looking for MOVIES – scripts that have a template that studios can market because they’ve made those movies before. The true sports movie has been a staple in Hollywood for decades. They love making these movies. So, from there, you just try and find a sports combination that hasn’t been done before. Enter “In the Crease.” It’s perfect. What better irony are you going to get in a sports idea than a bunch of inner city kids playing in the upscale white collar sport of Lacrosse? I think it’s a gangbusters idea. But I knew it wouldn’t get a lot of votes. People who love movies don’t tend to like THESE movies. THESE movies are more about the family in Iowa who goes to the theater four times a year and watches a bunch of Netflix. They would love In The Crease.
Title: 221C BAKER STREET
Genre: Action-Comedy
Logline: When Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go missing, the city’s only other detective duo finally get their shot at glory just as a criminal mastermind launches a plan to bring London to its knees.
Reason I chose it: I’m always looking for fun spins on old IP and this is one of the better ones I’ve come across . Cause I’ve seen EVERY Sherlock Holmes idea you can imagine. But an “Other Guys” spin on Holmes and Watson? Where they’re trying to solve the disappearance *OF* Holmes and Watson? That’s genius! I can see the scenes in my head of this bumbling duo, barely able to tie their shoes, trying to solve the case. So much comedic potential there. The only thing I’m worried about is that it would make you think of that Will Ferrel bomb, Holmes & Watson. So you would need to imagine it in a way where it doesn’t feel like that film at all. Oh, and the title of the movie needs to be the names of the replacements. Like, “Clodsworth & Jones.”
Title: I’m With Cupid
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: When an unlucky in love schlub finds out that his roommate used be Cupid, he coaxes him out of retirement to help him win the woman of his dreams… Only for a rusty Cupid to shoot himself in the foot and fall for the same girl.
Reason I chose it: Maybe you’re seeing a trend here. I’m looking for ideas that realistically could be MOVIES. Cupid is a movie character. Everybody knows who he is. Building a romantic comedy around him feels like a sure-thing. However, I do come across a lot of Cupid rom-com ideas. So it’s about finding a fresh one. And this is the first one I’ve read in a while that I’ve liked enough to feature on the site. The kicker for me was roping Cuipd into a love triangle. Love triangles are packed with conflict, since the conflict extends to three different relationships. I just think there’s something here.
Parasail (winner) – See my review
Title: Burner Phone
Genre: Found footage/Thriller
Logline: When a teenage drug dealer fails to trash a burner phone after a deal gone
wrong got an undercover cop killed, he has only one hour to retrieve it and erase
an incriminating video before his boss cut all the loose ends (including him). Told
in real time from the POV of the phone screen.
Reason I chose it: In retrospect, this logline was probably a little too sloppy to include. But you know I love a good real-time concept and when, in addition to that, the logline was capped with “told from the POV of the phone screen,” I thought, “That’s too fun to pass up.” So I included it.
Title: FORGIVE ME, FATHER
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A priest’s illegitimate son uses his father’s confessional to extort money from the wealthy congregation, but when he hears a confession that implicates a hitman in a string of high-profile murders, he attempts his most lucrative and dangerous extorsion yet.
Reason I chose it: This is an example of me liking the first half of the logline so much that I maybe didn’t pay enough attention to the second half. That happens to me RARELY but it does happen. I just loved the idea of taking advantage of confessions. I could imagine someone really doing that and yet I’d never heard of the idea before. Blackmail people for their secrets. Now, if you heard a hitman say he killed a bunch of people, I’m not sure you wanna mess with that guy. Maybe that’s the one guy you don’t extort? Then again, it could be interesting what happens when he tries to dance with the devil.
Title: Seven Minutes in Kevin
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a group of misfit high schoolers discover a closet that acts as a portal into the body of Kevin, their school’s popular golden boy, they must navigate his perfect life while trying to keep their secret—and their sanity—intact.
Reason I chose it: Best title of the year and it will probably retain that title for the entirety of 2025. But what’s great about this idea is that even beyond the clever title, it still works. Who, back in high school, didn’t want to experience the world through the eyes of the most popular kid in school? And a bunch of nerds fighting to experience that and the shenanigans they cause as a result seems like it would be comedic bugaloo. My only worry is that 7 minutes isn’t a lot of time. But maybe, if the movie took place within a limited time-frame (the day of the biggest party of the year)? Then 7 minutes could work.
And there you have it!
Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do next Thursday. I’m going to go over 10 of the loglines that DIDN’T make it. And I’m going to ask you guys for help on what those 10 loglines should be. I noticed there were several loglines posted in the comments that commenters liked. So, if there were any popular loglines, I want the writer to post their logline in the comments. And if any of those get 5 or more up-votes, I’ll include them.
Also, if you’re just someone who thought you had a worthy logline and didn’t get picked, put it up for competition in the comments and the same rules apply. If it gets 5 up-votes, I will include it in the list.
Otherwise, I’ll choose the ones that I want to break down.
Genre: Horror
Premise: Investigating the crime scene of a potential homicide in the Appalachian
mountainside, a deputy encounters a strange mountain community that claims to
be haunted by an evil witch that lives in the woods.
About: This script landed pretty high on last year’s Black List. Screenwriter Jonathan Easley has one credit, last year’s Orlando Bloom film, Red Right Hand.
Writer: Jonathan Easley
Details: 101 pages
I like Appalachia as a setting for shit to go down.
The place is creepy. It’s weird. It’s unlike anywhere else in the U.S.
The people are unique.
That was the main reason I was curious about this journey.
Anyone fancy joining me?
Lex Caudill is a deputy sheriff who just lost a good friend to a logging accident. Her boss, Jeremiah, thinks the best way to get over it is to investigate the discovery of a headless body deep within the Appalachian mountains.
For some reason, he thinks it’s a good idea to send a woman, all by herself, to this area. I mean, it’s not like people are getting their heads chopped off or anything. Lex heads out there, not exactly thrilled with the job. But at least it’s a change of pace.
Also, Lex has a secret. She grew up in a trailer park with her addict mother not far from there. So she gets to pay her mom a visit and see how bad her hoarding issue has gotten.
She eventually makes her way into a makeshift town in the woods where a bunch of hicks follow orders from a man named Otis. When Lex asks Otis who might have chopped this man’s head off, Otis warns her about “the witch.” The witch loves to chop off the heads of people who roam the forest alone.
Lex believes Otis is kookoo for Cocoa Puffs. That is until she finds a 7 foot crying miner taking a shower in her hotel bathroom. Technically, it was a nightmare. But it felt so real that Lex knows, subconciously, the guy was real.
During her investigation, Lex learns that one of Otis’s followers is her twin brother. She had been told her twin died at birth. But it was just her mother lying to her. As Lex pulls her brother into the investigation, she becomes more and more wary of what’s going on here in these mountains. Could it be true that a witch really does go around hunting people? And, if so, are she and her brother next?
Bloody Mingo does one thing well and another thing poorly.
What it does well is that the writer writes with a strong attention to detail. Which is important in a horror script because horror scripts need to pull you into their world. You’re not going to be scared if you don’t feel like you’re there, in the room, or in the forest, or in the cave. It’s up to the writer to convince us that we’re really in those places. Once a reader believes that, you can scare the heck out of them.
That’s why attention to detail, and using that detail to create a mood, is a superpower in horror screenwriting. This, Jonathan Easley does well.
You can also see this in places like character description. Writers who prioritize attention to detail are really good at describing characters. And Easley is no different. Here’s his description of a mysterious man early on in the script: “He looks to be somewhere in his 40s, but he’s probably younger than his emaciated, weather-beaten face appears. He’s dirty and his hair is wild. His clothes are threadbare and he carries all his earthly possessions in a rucksack slung about his shoulders.”
On top of that, he’s one of the few detail-oriented screenwriters who understand that it’s still a screenplay and that the eyes need to move down the page. So even though he’s very descriptive, he keeps most of his paragraphs at two lines or less.
Now, what did he do wrong?
He didn’t pack a strong enough plot into the story. Whenever you write a script, you will write a series of moments that impact the plot in a significant way. These moments are called “plot beats.” A classic plot beat is, someone’s gone missing. That impacts the plot and, therefore, forces characters into action.
Another plot beat might be our lead investigator getting a tip from the last guy saw our missing person. That’s a plot beat because it gives our characters another place to go, which, in turn, moves the plot forward.
There are two ways to mess up plot beats. One is that you don’t have enough of them. And two is that they aren’t big enough. They may technically impact the story but not enough that the reader cares.
The issue with Bloody Mingo is that the plot beats just weren’t that interesting. And I don’t think there were enough of them either.
But the more I thought about the script, the more I wondered if that problem was inevitable. Because the story here is that a sheriff is looking for a murderer. But we don’t really know this person who was murdered so we don’t really care. Therefore, any plot beat built around that is going to come off as muted.
More needed to happen in this movie. And when things did happen, they needed to be bigger. That’s advice you can use for pretty much any script. Audiences tend not to complain when you give them more plot beats and bigger plot beats.
This script is a great example of what happens when you send a script out to a producer and they respond like this: “This wasn’t for me but I’d love to read anything else you write.” What it means is you’re still raw but they can see the talent in one major area. And they’re hoping you’re going to improve in those other areas in your subsequent scripts.
Which is why you should all be identifying where you’re weak and work on improving those areas when writing new scripts. Because, if you don’t try and improve – whether it be dialogue, plotting, character development, conflict, suspense – and you send a new draft to that same producer? That’s when they begin to second-guess their assessment of you. They’re expecting you to go forward. Not stay the same.
I don’t think I can recommend this script. But I would recommend the writer. He’s got talent.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you are going to build an investigation around a murder in your movie, the murdered person should almost always be a woman or a child. Audiences become 100 times more invested in justice when someone helpless has been hurt. They just don’t care as much when it’s a guy. You can scream to the rooftops about inequality and how it shouldn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. But this is how it is, folks. And it really rears its head here. I did not care about avenging this homeless guy’s murder at all. That was a pretty big miscalculation.
A first ever! Scriptshadow reviews… a logline???
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Here was the entry:
Title: PARASAIL
Genre: Thriller
Writer: Arthur
Logline: After the speedboat operator pulling their parasail apparently collapses and dies beneath them, a honeymooning couple find themselves speeding hundreds of miles out to sea, suspended 400 feet in the air, in a passage of water known as ’Shark Alley’. (FALL meets THE SHALLOWS).
Let me ask you a question. How does one make a logline review 1500 words long?
Not sure that’s possible.
So, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll first review the logline. Then I’ll extrapolate on a direction for the script itself, so we can see what this logline could be.
A few of you pointed out that Parasail was just “Open Water” but on a parasail. Well, that’s EXACTLY what you should be trying to do with a logline. You want to find successful movies and then you want to unleash a new spin on them. If you can make the spin just familiar enough and just new enough, you’ve got yourself a winner. And that’s what Parasail was. Which is why it won!
You see, the end game here is MAKING MOVIES. Screenwriters forget that sometimes. They get lost in weird, quirky, or small ideas that can be fun to read but don’t feel like movies at all. So, when you build your concept on top of something that’s already been proven in the marketplace, you have a way better chance at selling it.
Now, is this the most original idea? Of course not.
But you don’t have to be super-original to write a great logline. You just need a good movie idea – and by that I mean, ‘a movie you truly believe people would pay to see.’ Parasail gave us that. I can imagine people paying to see this movie.
A couple of things stood out for me here. If two things were not in the logline, I probably wouldn’t have picked it. To illustrate what the logline would’ve looked like without those things, here ya go: After the speedboat operator pulling their parasail collapses and dies, a honeymooning couple find themselves speeding out to sea, suspended 400 feet in the air.
The two things that are missing are “hundreds of miles out to sea” and “Shark Alley.” One of the things that sucks me into a story is IMPOSSIBLE ODDS. So, when you say these two are stuck HUNDREDS of miles from land instead of DOZENS of miles from land, the first thing I think is, “They’re dead. There’s no way to survive that.” That’s exactly what you want the reader to think. That the odds are IMPOSSIBLE. That’s what draws us in – to see how our heroes will overcome the impossible.
Then you have “Shark Alley,” which hints at what’s going to happen later in the script and how it won’t be pretty. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to go down. And they’re in a strip of water that’s all sharks. You also gain a lot of story value from that plot point BEFORE they get in the water. Because it’s going to be so suspenseful reading this knowing that, even if they can find a way down, they’re still screwed.
Do I have any concerns about the script?
Of course.
Anything contained is going to have challenges regarding plot. Is there enough plot to flesh out an entire 90 minute story? I’m struggling to answer that question with a ‘yes’ here.
But let’s break it down. See if we can create a preliminary outline that lasts 90 minutes.
You probably want to spend 10-12 pages setting up the parasail situation. This is where you would meet the characters. Figure out what’s going on with them in life. You would introduce the speedboat operator. Foreshadow by describing him as looking a little sick. He explains the rules. And then up they go.
This next part would be the most challenging part of the script because, not many people know this, but parasailing is more ‘casual’ than ‘thrilling.’ I’ve done it before. Once you’re up there, it’s very slow and peaceful. So, how are you going to make that entertaining for the audience?
You could go with the typical “problems in marriage” gambit to create conflict up there. But something tells me, with a concept this simple, that would be boring. If you have a simple concept, you have to make up for it with the characters somehow. So, if you were going to introduce conflict, it shouldn’t be the obvious kind.
Since we’ve probably got 10-15 minutes up here of talking, we need something for them to talk about!
Then, you can cut to the operator slumped over, dead. From there, you should be okay for this script if you use some version of the Sequence Method. You’d have 6-7 sequences, all around 10 pages long, where the characters are attempting to achieve a goal in each. That goal will be what drives the sequence and keeps it entertaining.
So, the first sequence goal might be, figure out how to get down. Their driver is dead and they’re moving further and further away from land. They need to get down somehow. But how? Figuring that out will be fun to watch. And, when you have two people pursuing a goal, always have them feel differently about the solution. That creates even more conflict.
The midpoint would be something along the lines of: they’ve constructed a plan to both get down to the water AND get on the boat. It requires cutting some wires but not others – doing it quickly – so they fall down to the water, but are still pulled on the remaining rope by the boat so they can pull themselves up to it, get on it, and turn around.
This would be your big set-piece and, obviously, a lot would go wrong during the plan. One of their ropes snaps and they get left behind. The other has to decide whether to go with them or continue to try and get to the boat. They try to get to the boat but, at the last second, something catastrophic happens (maybe his rope gets caught on the rotor and chopped off) and there goes the boat.
He then has to swim back and find his wife. That could be a sequence. As long as you have a goal with real stakes attached to it, you can build an entire 10 page sequence out of that. Finding his wife is a big goal.
He finally gets to her. By this time, they’ve seen the sharks. They know they’re in trouble. So they’ve got to come up with another plan. Maybe, when they were up in the parasail, they saw some distant tiny island ahead. I’m talking like a 10 feet by 20 feet patch of land. So maybe their goal is to get to that.
It’s getting darker. More dangerous. The sharks are getting closer. But they keep pushing along, trying to swim to this island, even though they can’t really see it from water level.
At some point, they would hear a boat motor. They would realize that it was their boat, coming back around. They know the operator is still dead. It’s just that the boat did one giant circle and is now randomly coming back near where they are. They then come up with a plan to try and get in its path and grab onto it. To do so means they have to travel outside the path to the island and therefore further away from safety.
But they do it anyway, and that can be your second set piece. Build the suspense for this boat coming. And they have to figure out a way to grab onto it and get up in it. As they’re getting into position, that’s when the sharks start nipping at their toes and we know that, if this doesn’t work, they’re dead meat.
Yeah, I think that’s a movie there.
What about you?
Does anyone have any improvements for the plot?
Because my new e-mailer continues to suck, I’m putting my latest newsletter here on the site. If you want to receive future newsletters, e-mail “newsletter” to carsonreeves1@gmail.com
SUPER NOTES DEAL (HURRY UP AND CLAIM!) I’m only going to give THREE of these away. Half-off priced notes. You get 4 pages of notes on your feature or pilot script for just $249. If you’re interested, you need to act fast and e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. And your script doesn’t need to be ready. As long as you pay, you can send the script in whenever. I will give the deal to the 1st, 5th, and 10th people who e-mail me. So come get it!
I reviewed a writer-director Black List script titled, Carousel, just as I was finishing the Disney Plus Star Wars series, “Skeleton Crew.” What do a character study about divorce in Cleveland and a group of kids who travel the galaxy battling space pirates have in common?
One key thing.
To provide ample context, Skeleton Crew was a better show than the last four seasons of Star Wars content. Of course, that’s like saying you’re the brightest lamp in a room full of candles. Lucasfilm phoned in Mandalorian Season 3. Ahsoka appealed to kiddies who liked Star Wars cartoons. Andor was well-written but didn’t feel like Star Wars at all. And The Acolyte was so tone-deaf to its potential divisiveness that it went sour like a bad batch of witch’s brew.
At least Skeleton Crew was fun.
However, in the end, it was never “recommendable” due to its lack of scope. It was about a tiny group of people on a tiny adventure.
Which brings me back to Carousel. Carousel had some great dialogue. It had some strong character development. But you know what it didn’t have? IT DIDN’T HAVE STAKES. Just like these Star Wars shows, it didn’t give us a big enough reason to care.
Now, of course, “stakes” are relative. The stakes of The Brutalist aren’t going to be as big as the stakes in Avengers.
But, ya see, when it comes to Star Wars, a universe where evil Emperors blow up entire planets, something feels off when the stakes of a show are “kids getting back home.” Those stakes are fine for say… The Goonies. But Star Wars takes place in a much bigger universe than The Goonies. So the stakes have to reflect that.
This is the primary issue with all these Star Wars shows. They’re built around mid-level stakes. So they never feel important. The argument Lucasfilm might throw back at me is that I need to change my expectations because these shows are about character development. I’m sorry but Star Wars is not a character-development-first franchise. It is a spectacle-first franchise. And nothing you can do with these shows is going to change that.
In general, as a screenwriter, you want to maximize the stakes relative to the story you’re telling. I can’t remember a single instance where a writer said, “I think we should lower the stakes here” and the story turned out better for it.
Sticking with Star Wars, George Nolfi has been hired as Screenwriter #478 on the Rey Skywalker movie. Also, that Sean Levy (of Deadpool & Wolverine fame) Star Wars movie, which everyone assumed was dead is, somehow, still alive! In fact, Ryan Gosling is attached to star.
I am here to tell you not to take either of these announcements at face value. I can pretty much guarantee that neither of the movies is going to happen. So, why are they still in development? An old Hollywood trick, that’s how. Lucasfilm receives money from Disney. They’re not allowed to just sit on that money. They must spend it. This requires Kennedy to develop projects regardless of whether they’re going to happen or not.
I don’t feel bad for the screenwriters who come onto these projects. They’re going to get paid a lot of money to write a draft, even though they know no one will ever see it. I don’t feel bad for Daisy Ridley. She doesn’t have to do a thing until cameras start rolling so her time is not being impeded upon.
But I feel bad for director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose entire career is on pause while she works on a movie that’s never going to happen. They’re never going to greenlight a movie by a director whose most popular film grossed less than 5 million dollars at the box office. It makes zero sense from a business standpoint. So, any pretense that they’re going to make this movie is a joke. In the meantime, Obaid-Chinoy is stuck in a prison. And this is what annoys me so much about Disney. They’re so terrified to fire someone – especially someone like Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who helps Lucasfilm promote representation – that they’d rather string her along to save face. She’s going to be attached to this fake-movie until she’s 60.
Star Wars has only a single successful property left, which is The Mandalorian. And I do think that movie is going to be good. I predict it will be an All-Star team-up of some sort. Don’t be surprised if Luke Skywalker is involved.
But that movie has to figure out a way to navigate the problem that’s haunting all these Star Wars projects. WHAT ARE THE STAKES??? If they are sky-high, the movie will shine. If they are not, it’s going to feel like a Fast and Furious spin-off. You go to the theater, you have an okay time, and you forget what you saw before you arrive back at your house. That’s not Star Wars. Star Wars is supposed to be timeless. If Mandalorian is a “tasty but empty calories” snack, I don’t know if there will ever be another Star Wars film again. I really don’t. Because what Star Wars movie could you possibly make, after that, that would get anyone excited?
Now that I’ve bummed you out with my Star Wars rant, what do you say we gab about something good?
My favorite show right now is Severance.
Average writing keeps you engaged. Decent writing makes you think. Good writing makes you feel. And great writing does all three.
Severance does all three. Particularly that second one.
Mark, the main character, lost his wife. Which is why he severed himself. Being “severed” means you divide your life in two. Half of you goes to work, forgetting all memories on the outside. The other half stays on the outside, forgetting all memories at work.
This seems like a smart move for Mark. He’s consumed by the pain of losing his wife so it would make sense to live half your life not having to think about her. But what about the half that doesn’t go to work? They’re still stuck in hell.
The more you watch Severence, the more questions like that pop up. How would one cope with a life where work never ends? Yes, the second your work day is over, your new work day begins. That sounds like hell to me. So, you’re wondering, why did these guys choose to do this to their other selves? The most logical answer is selfishness. You sacrifice this “other” version of yourself so you can live a life of leisure and never have to work again. That sounds to me like the definition of evil.
I haven’t thought this deeply about a show since Lost. It feels cool to know that I can recapture that feeling with a more sophisticated version of that show.
There are a lot of writing lessons to take from Severence but the two biggest, for me, are, 1) High concept television can work. 2) Deliver on the promise of the premise.
For a while there, a ton of high concept TV shows were dying on the vine, forcing networks and streamers to shift to boring but battle-tested IP. But, if you look at the reason those shows, like “La Brea” and “See” didn’t work, it’s because they were shoddily crafted. You could tell that not enough time was put into the development of the series and the mythology. From cliched characters to lazy plot developments, nothing felt thought-through.
If you haven’t heard about the history of Severence, Ben Stiller and the writer worked tirelessly developing the show FOR YEARS. That’s because Stiller knew it was a complex show that wasn’t going to work without an acute attention to detail. As a result, when it came time to shoot, they were ready. The show was confident, sure of itself, and determined to deliver on the promise of its premise. It wasn’t like all these weak shows where you can sense the writers are trying to figure out the show as they go along (ever remember that show “Heroes” – Exhibit #1!).
Do the work. It’s the most basic screenwriting advice you’re ever going to get but it’s also the best. Do the work. Put in the time. Give it your best shot. And then all you can do is let the chips fall where they may.
NEXT SHOWDOWN
I hope you had as much fun as I did with the first showdown of the year – Logline Showdown. It was so fun, we’re going to do a comedy focused second Logline Showdown this Friday. So make sure you tune in. Remember, I did this with a larger plan in mind. Each month, the showdowns will grow into something further down the line in the writing process. So, this first showdown was about choosing an idea. The second showdown, which will take place on Friday, February 28th, is going to be for your first page. So, that’s our next showdown, people: FIRST PAGE SHOWDOWN. You can start submitting… RIGHT NOW. And if you want to check out the rest of the showdowns on Scriptshadow this year, head on over to this link.
What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
AROUND TOWN
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – Guess what, guys? This is going to be the closest thing you get to a Christopher Nolan Star Wars film. How do we know this? Because The Odyssey is a classic Hero’s Journey tale. And we all know that George Lucas obsessively used The Hero’s Journey to craft Star Wars. There are some differences. This story isn’t about leaving home. It’s about coming home. But it’s still got all those classic Hero’s Journey beats. If you haven’t read The Odyssey, it’s about Odysseus trying to get home after the Trojan War and encountering a bunch of obstacles along the way, like the Cyclops and the deadly sirens. Once he gets home, he has to disguise himself as a beggar to take back his kingdom before, finally, convincing his wife that he’s really Odysseus. Another notable detail about The Odyssey is that it’s a pretty clean story. A character journeys from Point A to Point B. Because of that, there shouldn’t be a lot of exposition required. Which is Nolan’s Achilles heel. He spends half of his movies explaining things, which always stifles the narrative momentum. With such a clear goal, we should get a clean exciting story here. And I’m excited. :)
White Lotus Trailer 3rd Season – Let’s get something out of the way. White Lotus is not a “trailer” show. It’s unabashedly character-driven, which doesn’t present well in trailer form. This is a situation where we’re not going to know if that character stuff is working until we’re in the trenches with these characters. And it’s a tall order for Mike White, my favorite writer in all of Hollywood. I still don’t know how he pulled off such a great second season of White Lotus with so little time. I’m never surprised by all the terrible second seasons I’ve seen on TV. Because I know how hard it is, as a screenwriter, to write good stuff quickly. And writers spend, probably, 1/10th the amount of time writing their second season as their first. But, somehow, Mike White wrote an Emmy-worthy season in a tenth of the time. Can he do that again? I don’t know but my instinct is skepticism. Cause the hardest thing in screenwriting is coming up with strong characters. And Mike White doesn’t get to carry any of the great characters he’s written from the old seasons into the new ones (except for a couple). So that means he’s starting all over again. If he pulls this off, it will be one of the greatest writing feats in Hollywood history. I’m not exaggerating. If you want to read my week of White Lotus screenwriting lessons, you can do so here.
Superman Trailer – Superhero movies are baaaaaaaaack! Maybe that’s an exaggeration but this trailer was great. James Gunn is one of the few writers who can balance the grandiosity of superhero films with the heart of character-driven films. We see that right away in this trailer. We do not focus on some cliche shot of Superman and Lois Lane. No, we show Superman on death’s doorstep. And if that isn’t emotional enough, man’s best friend comes along to save him! Opening Day ticket purchase moment right there. That’s all I needed. What I’m impressed by with Gunn is that he takes the emotion right up to the melodramatic line but he never crosses it. He only takes you to the brink. And that’s a huge reason why his films succeed. The emotion is offered but never forced. That, and he’s got that unique voice. He can be emotional, he can be weird, he takes risks. All of these things are what result in a boss-ass superhero film as opposed to Kraven The Hunter.
28 Years Later Trailer – The original 28 Days Later contained a highly risky creative choice. It asked the question: What if zombies were fast? Now, changing the rules of classic monsters has been a go-to throughout history. It’s one of the easiest ways to differentiate your take on the subject matter from the past. But the reason this was so daring was because of the zombie movie’s greatest attribute: since zombies are slow, you can draw out a lot more suspense. You can’t draw out suspense if a zombie sprints at your character, reaching him in 2 seconds. But, 28 Weeks Later counteracted that by making its zombies terrifying. These things looked like they wanted to rip every sinewy muscle from your body until you were just bones. That and it approached its situation from a more realistic place. This felt more like how a zombie apocalypse could go down in real life. 28 Weeks Later was a solid sequel. But I’m not sure anyone was pining for a 28 trilogy. And when I look at this trailer, I see something dark and beautiful. But I also see something depressing and inaccessible. There’s got to be a way in for the reader/viewer. We’ve got to attach to someone and feel that, if they survive, we survive. This trailer does not give us that. Which is why I’m not sure I want to see it. Point blank, it looks too depressing. That’s not why I go to see horror movies. I go to horror movies to be scared. To tap into that feeling of fear. But also to have fun. I think this movie is going to be good. How could it not be with Alex Garland and Danny Boyle guiding it? But I think it’s going to alienate a lot of people. At least based on this trailer.
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Screenplay Review – Test Drive
Genre – Action/Thriller
Premise – A down-on-his-luck car salesman takes a mysterious stranger on a test drive– which turns into a dangerous and unsettling crime spree across the rain-soaked streets of Los Angeles.
About – This made the top 10 of the Black List. Matt Venne has actually been writing for over a decade. He almost exclusively writes horror so this seems to be his attempt to transition to a new genre.
Writer – Matt Venne
Details – 96 pages
Fight Club meets The Game?
The one thing I’ll say about this year’s Black List is that it was concept-friendly. Almost every logline has a high concept or “high concept adjacent” slant to it. That’s something we haven’t had in a good 7 years with the Black List. Most of these scripts could actually be movies.
Imagine that!
And today’s script definitely leans into that high-concept theme.
Cooper Reed is a car salesman at one of the worst dealerships in Los Angeles. Still, he’s somehow managed to sell the second highest number of cars this month. In fact, he only needs one more sale to become salesman of the month. Which comes with a bonus. A bonus he desperately needs to cover the mortgage and expenses of his new child.
Unfortunately, it’s the worst day of the year for selling cars, as the rains are coming down hard in Los Angeles. But just when it seems Cooper is screwed, a mysterious cool dude named Jim Ryder shows up (Old Soul. Cool Motherfucker. Weird Witchy Energy). Jim says he wants to buy a car. All he needs is a quick test drive.
Cooper hops in the car with Jim, not believing his luck. Strangely, though, Jim doesn’t seem that interested in the car. He seems interested in Cooper. He wants to know everything about Cooper, especially what his dreams were before he became a car salesman. Cooper, eager to get the sale, explains that he wanted to be a writer, like his father, who committed suicide earlier this year. The death has been especially tough on Cooper.
Just as Cooper is settling into this share session, Jim has him stop across the street from a bank and says ‘hold on.’ Jim then goes into the bank and ROBS IT! WTF! He jumps back in the car and Cooper becomes an inadvertent getaway driver. Jim then informs Cooper that he has two more banks to rob. And Cooper’s going to help him.
The FBI immediately gets involved, with two agents jumping into action, following Jim around, and trying to figure out the big mystery of the case: Does Cooper actually have a passenger with him? Could it be that Cooper’s father’s suicide has so broken him, that he’s invented Jim? And might this invented Jim have a more nefarious mission? To have Cooper end up just like his father?
This script is sort of like the girl you meet at the bar who’s dressed like Billie Eilish but by the time the night is over, she’s revealed herself to be Celine Dion. I don’t know if that’s the best analogy but the point is, this started off as one script and became a completely different one.
And it caught me by surprise, to be honest.
Cause I was ready to write this one off.
(Spoilers) The moment in this script that got me happened around the midpoint. We get this line, which comes from Cooper’s wife talking to the cops: “It was a real shock for all of us. Nobody more so than for Cooper. Started suffering these horrible bouts of anxiety. Really severe panic attacks. Even experienced a few “hallucinatory events” – which I had no idea could happen in times of extreme mental strain. Eventually got him on some psych meds. Which helped.”
Notice how “hallucinatory events” is spotlighted. I read that and I thought, “oh boy. It’s a Fight Club ending. Cooper and Jim are the same person.”
But then, instead of boring us for the next 50 pages then giving us the twist ending we all saw coming, Venne leans into the question of, “Are Jim and Cooper the same person?” almost right away. Then, in the end (spoiler), it turns out Jim is a real person. It was almost like a reverse-twist.
When I read something like that, I know the writer has put a lot of thought into his script. Because 95 out of 100 writers would’ve gone with the easier “Fight Club” twist. A screenwriter who understands that that’s a letdown and that he needs to go deeper, is a good screenwriter.
And what’s cool about Test Drive is that it still gives us a twist. It’s not an earth-shattering twist. It’s a twist organically born out of the character development Venne’s been setting up all script and therefore more emotionally satisfying. (Spoiler). Here, we learn that Jim was a student of Cooper’s father. He came here because Cooper was on the same path as his dad and Jim wanted to stop it.
That’s what surprised me about this script. It started out as this, almost straight comedy about this wily guy taking a car salesman on a test drive from hell. But the deeper into the script we go, the more we learn about Cooper’s father, who committed suicide, and the script really leans into that reality.
What I mean by that is, a lot of writers will write in character stuff because it checks a box. They might even write that our hero’s father died recently, just like this script. But you can tell the writer doesn’t really care about that death or how it affects our hero. They’re just checking the box they’re supposed to check that makes their character “deeper.”
Instead, you should be doing it like Venne. If you’re going to include something that would have a major impact on your hero’s life, you have to commit to the reality of that. You can’t just say it’s there and hope readers feel sad. No, you have to integrate it into the story, like Cooper’s father’s death is integrated here.
Usually, I give scripts with strong character development good marks. Unfortunately, there was one aspect of this script that was so annoying, it counteracted all that great character development.
The philosophizing.
Oh my god the philosophizing. It’s everywhere!
I don’t want to inundate this review with some of these endless philosophical monologues so I’ll provide you with the shortest Jim monologue in the script: “Truth be told, everyone is “You” and everyone is “I” and everyone is “Me” – that’s our name. We all share that. Especially at the subatomic level where there are literally no separations. No distinctions. Everything One. Including “You” and “Me” and -“
There’s a whole script full of that.
It’s not all that bad but here’s the thing – if you’re going to make something a “thing” in your script, whether that thing is “snappy dialogue” or “killer set pieces” or “quirky characters” or “a twisty-turny narrative” — whatever it is that you’re going to feature in your screenplay – that aspect of the script needs to be great.
Cause if 90 pages of your script is snappy dialogue and you’re only mildly good at snappy dialogue, your script won’t work.
The philosophizing here bounced back and forth between average and decent. It never reached, “Wow, this philosophy is completely making me rethink everything I know about life,” which is what good philosophy should do.
And if you want a good example of that, go watch the original Fight Club. There’s a scene in there that I still think about today, which is when Tyler Durden puts the gun to the guy’s head and tells him to go live the life he’s always wanted to live. It’s not exactly philosophical. But it’s one person getting another person to change their life. That is ALWAYS going to affect the audience more than a character rambling about Buddhism for five minutes.
So that was unfortunate.
As for the rest of the script, Jim is, no-doubt, a character that actors are going to want to play. Even if I didn’t like his philosophy, he’s modeled after Tylder Durden and what actor doesn’t want to play this generation’s version of Tyler Durden?
The set pieces were okay but there was one really good chase scene with their car zipping around the Los Angeles Metro underground, dodging trains left and right. That was fun.
And the script gets better as it goes on. Which is a great asset for a script to have since most scripts get worse as they continue. For that reason, this hangs on for a ‘worth the read.’
Script Link: Test Drive
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Today’s writer is a reminder that, whatever the genre of the script is you break in with, that is the genre you’ll be asked to write going forward. And the more of those you write, the harder it will be to break away from that identity. Venne has made a solid career out of writing horror films. But he clearly wanted to branch out. So he wrote this. Will it be enough to get him a job writing in this new genre? Depends on if the movie is made and if it does well. The point is: make sure, whatever you’re writing, you LOVE that genre. Cause it will become your career.
