Genre: Fairy Tale
Premise: After being abandoned by a prince who promised to rescue her, an unhappy Rapunzel vows revenge on him and his kingdom.
About: Damsel made last year’s Black List, but only barely. It’s written by former male model slash actor, Bryan McMullin, which means we’re going to be answering the question that’s been debated among screenwriters since the beginning of time: Is it possible to be a screenwriter and also be really really really really good-looking?
Writer: Bryan McMullin
Details: 115 pages
One of the stronger trends as of late has been the live-action fairy tale. Driven mainly by Disney’s obsession with live-actioning their entire animated catalogue, it’s opened the doors for spec writers to deconstruct the more popular fairy tale characters (Snow White) or build new stories around less popular characters (Prince Charming).
As spec writers, we don’t have too many options these days, which is why the fairy tale option is a tempting one. There are a bajillion characters to choose from, and since many are in the public domain, it allows you to do what the studios are doing (write high profile IP scripts) without paying for the rights.
Of course, technically speaking, you can write about anything. If you wanted to write a Batman movie, you could write one. It’s not illegal. But you have one potential buyer and that buyer is probably going with one of the top 3 screenwriters in the world over Joe Nobody.
I suppose if you wrote the best Batman script ever, they’d buy it. But I’m yet to see an amateur writer pull this off with any high profile property. I mean if you want a chuckle, search out all the fan-written Indiana Jones scripts. It gets ugly folks. You’re much better off delving into the fairy tale world.
Rapunzel started off as a good person, particularly since she was raised by a witch in a tower all by herself, her only friends being animals. Then one day, Prince Edward came along and everything went to shit.
After Edward promised to come back and save her, the witch caught wind of the plan and moved Rapunzel somewhere else. When Edward couldn’t find her in this new spot, Rapunzel decided he was an evil heartless liar and vowed revenge on him for as long as she lived. Hey, before you judge, keep in mind her best friend was a raccoon. She wasn’t exactly socially conditioned.
Many years later, Edward has a son, Prince Cavill. Cavill is driven into the woods by a siren song he’s been hearing since he was a child, and along the way, meets Elise, a cute but poor young woman who’s immediately taken by Prince Cavill, and he with her. Unfortunately, he’s still gotta see who’s at the end of the song rainbow, so he leaves E-leaves.
Of course, the song is a trick from Rapunzel to take Cavill hostage so she can get her revenge on Edward. When Edward puts out a reward for whoever brings his son back, Elise realizes she’s the only one who knows where he is, and heads after him.
In the meantime, King Edward’s wife, even more desperate to get her son back, lets loose the nastiest criminal in the kingdom’s prison, Vel, to find him.
With Elise, Vel, the king’s soldiers, and everyone else in the land who wants to collect that reward money looking for Cavill, he’ll most assuredly be rescued. Unless, of course, Rapunzel has some master plan in her back pocket. And as I like to say, never underestimate a woman who spends that much time on her hair.
Let’s talk about plot. What is plot? And how does it differ from story? They’re often confused and that’s because there’s some crossover between the two. The best way I can describe it is that plot is the ingredients and story is the meal. When you have a great meal, you don’t think about how much paprika was added, or how many onions they used, or how many minutes it was baked. You just enjoy the presentation and the taste.
Plot consists of all the mechanical beats (the ingredients) required to move the story along. So in The Force Awakens, all this stuff about Kylo Ren coming to Jakku to look for the map to Luke Skywalker, to figuring out how to make Rey and Finn meet up, to finding a way to have them run into Han Solo, to deciding when the First Order was going to blow up a star system… all that is plot.
Story is more about the choices you make that result in the most pleasing movie possible. The overall concept of finding Luke Skywalker and how captivating the characters are and how we move through the narrative, that’s story.
If that’s confusing, let me put it a different way. Take Gravity. Gravity’s story is Sandra Bullock desperately moving from outpost to outpost in space, air running out, trying to survive long enough to make it to earth. Good story! Let’s say instead, though, it was about a panel on the International Space Station that had broken, and Sandra Bullock had to fix it. That’s not a very good story, is it? It doesn’t lend itself to a lot of interesting choices that an audience would be entertained by.
Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because a lot of writers get bogged down in plot to the detriment of their story. And there are two ways this happens. One, they simply add more plot than the story can handle. Every single scene is desperately trying to keep up with explaining what’s happening. Two, they’re not good at conveying plot CLEARLY. So even if the amount of plotting is average, they don’t hold our hand enough and clearly convey what’s happening enough, to keep things clear.
This happens all the time when you’re watching bad movies. You’ll forget what’s happening, why it’s happening, or what we’re doing at the moment. You’ll often chalk this up to “this movie is stupid.” What probably happened was the writer wasn’t being clear enough in regards to key plot beats.
I point this out because Damsel has a ton of plot, and yet it never gets in the way of the story. I mean we have to establish this whole backstory of how Rapunzel became the way she did. We have to establish King Edward visiting her, this evil witch’s plan, King Edward growing up, his son coming to Rapunzel, this forest girl he runs into, this plan to rescue the prince from several different groups. There’s a shit-ton of information here.
And yet I was never once confused because McMullin was so damn clear about everything. You could almost feel the dedication to clarity. Each section (for example, the King Edward visits Rapunzel section) is its own little story. It’s not some hastily-written piece of setup that’s only there to get us to the real story. Every moment is important.
And the writing is really good and really sparse. Why is sparse important? Because there are less words to overburden the reader with information. You guys give me shit sometimes for saying, “Stay under 4 lines per paragraph!” and yet the large majority of paragraphs in Damsel are 1 or 2 lines.
Simply put, this was a really enjoyable screenplay. If you’re a beginner screenwriter, in particular, try and get your hands on this script. You can learn a lot from it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Never write a section just to get to (or “set up”) the next section. EACH SECTION SHOULD BE ENTERTAINING IN ITS OWN RIGHT.
What I learned 2: Too much plotting is dangerous. If every scene feels like you’re trying to keep up with all the information you have to convey, you have too much plot. Figure out a way to strip some of that plot out so that you can focus on making scenes entertaining.
New to the Scriptshadow Screenplay Challenge? Here are the rest of the posts…
WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
So if you remember from last week, we left you at the beginning of the third act. Your hero was at his/her lowest point. They may have been fired from their job, lost the girl, been captured, or their best alien friend in the world who loves Reeses Pieces may have kicked the bucket. On top of that, they’ve destroyed all of their relationships, usually because of insecurities, stubbornness or focusing on their pursuit rather than those closest to them.
Where the hell do we go from here with our story?
It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? When you’re at the bottom, the only way to go is up.
But before we go up, it’s important to note that the third act is the shortest act of the three, and will land somewhere between 20-25 pages. You don’t want to linger forever in the third act. The audience isn’t interested in drawing anything out at this point. Once we get out of the low point, things have to move.
So assuming a 110 page screenplay. Your final act will look closest to this…
First sequence of Third Act: 85-98 (this week’s sequence)
Second sequence of Third Act: 99-110
Don’t freak out if it doesn’t fall perfectly within that range. The point is, you should err on the side of faster. And I personally think that the best breakdown is 12 pages for that first sequence and 10 for the final one. Why two extra pages for the first section?
Well what typically happens after the lowest point in the story is a couple of scenes of your character stewing around in their misery. I just watched the surprisingly awesome Zootopia. And the “lowest point” in that film is when Officer Hopps inadvertently divides the city, causing all of the “prey” species to discriminate against the “predator” species.
As a result, she realizes she’s done the exact opposite of the whole reason she became a cop in the first place (to help people/animals), and decides to go back home to her parents’ carrot farm and give up on her dreams.
As a side note, Disney and Pixar movies (most of them anyway) are AMAZING films to study for screenplay structure. Because they’re made for children, they hit the screenplay structural beats a little harder, so you can really see those beats in action. When watching a drama or a period film, those beats won’t be as apparent (nor should they be).
Anyway, after the two stewing scenes, your hero becomes motivated to give it one more shot. Usually what happens is they have a revelation. So in Zootopia, Officer Hopps realizes what’s causing all the predators to go “wild” and endanger the city and believes she can fix it. What’s great about using a revelation is that it propels your hero back into action, getting us from 0-60 very quickly.
Now if this doesn’t sound anything like your movie’s structure, that’s okay. Star Wars has a bit of a wonky “low point” of its own. It takes place when Luke, Han, and Leia attempt to escape the Death Star, and Obi-Wan is killed by Darth Vader. Does this really hamper their mission? Not particularly. It’s just a great big bummer. But using classic story beats, we do have the stewing scene (Luke being depressed) and then a jump right back into action (when Tie Fighters from the Death Star attack them).
The point here is to include a story beat where it looks like the gig is up for our heroes. And once that beat is over, have a moment or two to solidify that beat so we can really feel the effects of it. If it’s TOO short, it won’t register. However, after it’s over, it’s time to start moving again.
What tends to happen next is also dependent on the story your telling. But one of the most common situations will have your hero needing to repair a relationship before they can achieve their final objective. Because your hero will be at the lowest point IN EVERY ASPECT OF THEIR LIFE, that will mean at least one key relationship is broken.
So the next scene may have them going to repair that relationship so they can get the character on board. In Zootopia, we have Officer Hopps having to apologize to Nick Wilde, her fox partner, for ruining his and the rest of the predators’ lives in Zootopia.
Once you move past this moment, it’s time for your characters to form a plan that will set up the last sequence of the movie. In Star Wars, that’s the scene with all the fighter pilots sitting down and watching a demonstration on what they need to do to destroy the Death Star. Of course, if you’re writing a simpler story, it may just be two friends sharing a quick plan with one another.
One more thing before we go. This section needs to be the biggest challenge for your hero yet. For that reason, you want to strip them of as many resources as you can. This is why, in cop movies, the main character’s always been kicked off the force for the third act. That way they don’t have any help.
This is an often overlooked component of writing a good screenplay. Whereas the second act is mostly about conflict BETWEEN characters, the third act is about characters overcoming conflict within themselves. So whatever issue they’ve been ignoring their whole lives, they’re going to have to deal with it here.
So ask yourself, “What can I take away from my character?” For example, if they’re a cop, maybe take away their gun. That may be scary for you. Because then you’ll wonder, “Well then how will they kill the bad guy?” But guess what? That’s the EXACT same question the audience will be asking as well. Which is what you want. If the audience already knows and you already know how your hero is going to defeat the villain, you’ve failed as a storyteller. Because there’s no suspense.
Taking this approach will also force you to flex muscles you weren’t prepared to flex – figuring out how they win when the odds are so stacked against them. I’m telling you, it’ll suck balls trying to come up with those solutions. But when you finally do? There’s no better feeling as a screenwriter in the world. Because you know that you’re delivering to the audience as opposed to phoning it in.
Speaking of phoning, I’ll be calling you guys next week, where I’ll tell you how to complete the last section of your screenplay!!!
Pages to write this week: 10-15
Page number to hit on a 110 page screenplay: 96-100
Genre: Horror
Premise: A young inspector in 19th century Scotland investigates a serial killer who may or may not be Dracula.
About: This project was getting a ton of buzz a couple of years back, as it had Russell Crowe starring and Leonardo DiCaprio producing, with an eye towards possibly starring in the project as well. I’m not sure where the project stands at the moment, however. It’s written by Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, who created the Netflix series, Hemlock Grove. I do think a movie-star laden Dracula movie is due, so we’re going to get this story in one iteration or another. But who makes it and with what actors is still just as big of a mystery as the one at the center of the screenplay.
Writers: Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy
Details: 119 pages – undated
Ah, the power of buzz.
When you really boil it down, taking advantage of and managing buzz may be the key to making it in this business. For example, Shipman and McGreevy were able to use the buzz from their upcoming series (at the time), Hemlock Grove, to get this project onto the front burner at Warner Brothers. Yet when Hemlock didn’t maintain the following that some of the bigger Netflix shows nabbed, that buzz died down, and with it the buzz for this project, which now stands in limbo. Had Hemlock killed in the same way that House of Cards did? You better believe this movie would’ve been released already.
The reality is, Hollywood likes to bet on winning. When you’re winning – when you have stuff that’s going UP – they want to capitalize on you. When you’re even or going down, that’s when they start questioning any projects they have of yours.
It sort of makes sense and sort of doesn’t. But it’s how the industry works. And it’s something you need to keep in mind. The more ducks you can have in a row for when something of yours DOES create buzz, the more you can capitalize on that buzz, and keep climbing each buzz-cloud until you make it to the tippy-top. Every director, actor or screenwriter at the top of the Hollywood food chain rode a series of buzz-worthy projects to that spot. And everybody who had a chance to get there but didn’t? They ran up against negative buzz for something of theirs. It really makes you want to think about every single project you get behind.
Jonathan “The Hawk” Harker is the buzz of 19th century Scotland. The 30 year-old inspector is thrown into the hot seat when women start turning up dead and mutilated. The papers quickly turn on poor Harker, questioning just how safe the city is under his protection.
Harker’s finally able to nab the killer, a crazy dude name Renfield who keeps saying he’s doing this for his “master.” Harker’s fiance, Mina, happens to work at the nut house where they send Renfield, and becomes infatuated with helping him, to the tune of entering his cell unprotected to read him poems at night. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.
Meanwhile, a hot new dude has just come in by sea. They call him Dracula. Dracula is high-class in every way possible (he can dance like a fool), and has all the ladies swooning over him within hours. So when these ladies start dropping like Hollywood sequels, Harker is once again put on blast by the newspapers. Yo Harker, why you keep lettin’ our ladies be treated like Carpri Suns*?? (*This is not a real line from the script)
Harker’s pretty sure that Dracula is the killer, but he’s so damn charming that nobody else believes him. He’s going to have to get someone to believe quickly though. When Dracula gets chummy with Harker’s fiance, inviting her to his ball, Harker will have to revert to violence to get the job done. Except there’s one problem. You can’t exactly kill Dracula. So how do you stop him?
Harker is a very sloooooo-ooooowwww reeeeee-eeeeead.
Everything from endless action paragraphs to dialogue lines that go on three times longer than they need to. Sorkin’s Molly’s Game, which clocked in at 200 pages, read twice as fast as this script, which tips the scales at 119.
Granted, this is a different type of story and you always want to cater your writing to the genre you’re writing in. So I get that we’re trying to create an eerie atmosphere here and that generally occurs at a slower pace. But even if the writing is slow, the story itself needs to move. And this story didn’t move at all.
For the first 70 pages, we’re desperately waiting for Harker to catch up with what we already know. That this is Dracula’s doing. The second scene of the movie is of the Demeter (the ship Dracula famously comes in on) sailing towards the coast. So we know this is him.
I suppose you could argue this is a case of dramatic irony (the audience knowing more than the hero), but sometimes, when we have to wait this long for our hero to wise up to what we, the audience, already know, dramatic irony backfires.
I was about to jump in the nearest coffin and take a nap on Harker when it finally came alive in its second half. The introduction of Van Helsing revved things up. He was much livelier and way more interesting than Harker, to the point where I wondered – why not just center the story around this guy?
I also liked the exploration of the British Class system and how it played into the investigation. Harker was marrying someone a class higher than himself. This resulted in his fiance’s parents putting pressure on her to ditch him (and possibly find a man like Dracula?).
Harker’s boss was also routinely stifling his investigation when it involved anyone higher up than working class. And finally, when Harker wants to take down Dracula, he can’t, because the man is too high up the food chain.
All of this may seem like old hat to you Brits, but it’s something us Americans never had to deal with. I also like anything that adds an extra layer to the investigation. If it’s as simple as “I want to arrest this man, therefore I’m going to arrest him,” that’s boring. You want other factors involved that make that arrest difficult (more on this in the “What I Learned”).
I actually think Harker and yesterday’s American Gods suffer from the same rotund error. They’re too confident in themselves. They believe they can waltz through their story at a snail’s pace and lure you in one elongated beat at a time. But 70 freaking pages before anything truly interesting happens is too long. And while the script gets a lot better from there, that’s not going to matter if everyone’s already mentally tuned out.
I would’ve cut the Renfield investigation in half and brought Van Helsing in a lot earlier. Remember that time moves differently between writer and reader. Writers think time is moving a lot faster in their story than it actually is. Readers think almost everything is too slow. I can count the number of times someone complained that a movie was too fast on one hand. I’d need a million hands to count the number of times people complained a movie was too slow.
With all that said, this isn’t exactly my cup of tea. So I’m probably seeing this differently than fans of the genre would. If you liked the recent release, Crimson Peak, there’s a good chance you’ll like Harker as well. They’re definitely cut from the same cloth.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: So what do I mean when I say that more needs to be going on in an arrest than just, “I shall arrest this person now?” Imagine that Detective Joe’s wife has a criminal brother who she loves very much. She’s convinced he’s getting better, that he’s going to turn his life around. And he has to. Due to past offenses, if he gets caught one more time, he’ll be in prison for 30 years at least. Later in our story, let’s say Detective Joe breaks into a drug den and cuffs the head dealer, only to realize that he’s… (drum roll please) his wife’s brother. Now it’s not as simple as arresting this person. There are other factors involved. That’s the kind of complicated situation you want to routinely put your characters in. Nothing they do should be easy.
What I learned 2: You are the initial buzz creator. You, the writers, are the only people in the business who are capable of creating your own buzz. Directors, actors, producers, are all dependent on finding a great script/book/idea to start their buzz. So take advantage of that power and write something that will get people excited.
CHECK YOUR SPAM AND PROMOTIONS FOLDERS!
I’ve heard that Gmail’s getting super-harsh on anything that isn’t a personal e-mail, so if you didn’t receive my Scriptshadow Newsletter in your Inbox, make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. This is one of the bigger newsletters I’ve written in awhile and it contains a script review of the best screenwriter in the world’s hot new script. So if you didn’t receive it or want to sign up, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER,” and I’ll send.
On to today’s review…
Genre: Horror/Fantasy?
Premise: A recently released convict travels to his wife’s funeral, only to meet a mysterious man along the way who tricks him into becoming his employee. Employee for what though? That’s the question.
About: I’m surprised American Gods (a multi-award winning novel) hasn’t made it to our television sets sooner. The geek-friendly IP is a favorite amongst horror and fantasy savants and its author, Neil Gaiman, celebrated to the level of deity. You’d think with super-show Game of Thrones pulling in watch parties that rival that of The Bachelor, a show based on “Gods” would’ve been next on deck. Now that it’s finally here, the question is, will anyone be able to find it? The show will air on Starz, and while that network has put out some quality television, it doesn’t seem to have the footprint that buzzier destinations Netflix, HBO, and AMC have. This one’s being adapted by some heavy hitters though. Bryan Fuller is the creator of the beloved (but ultimately little-watched) NBC show, Hannibal, and Michael Green scripted the new Alien AND the new Blade Runner movies.
Writers: Bryan Fuller & Michael Green
Details: 57 pages
So let me tell you about my history with Neil Gaiman. At 12 years old, I, like every other kid, started reading Stephen King. And if you remember what it was like to read Stephen King at 12 year old… well it was akin to running through -12 degree weather with a pack of wild dogs chasing you. In a word – thrilling. And the metaphor truly is apt because when you finally escaped them, just like when you finally escaped “It,” you felt like you got away with something.
But then you hit your teens and all of a sudden books weren’t cool anymore. Sports were cool. Going out was cool. Girls were cool. And even if you didn’t totally agree with the notion, you felt like you’d outgrown King. I mean how does King compete with your first trip to second base?
Somewhere around that time I began to hear of Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman, people said, was the next Stephen King. With me being “over” King, I felt it only obvious that I couldn’t then read another version of King. Which means my history with Neil Gaiman is zip. I don’t know anything about the guy. I don’t know anything about any of his books or anything that he’s done.
As I’ve grown up, I realized that King still had a lot left to say and that being too cool for him or any author is silly. But I still never got back to Gaiman. That leaves me writing this review from a place of ignorance. But sometimes that’s for the best. It means I can judge the pilot solely on its story and not on if it’s meeting the expectations of everyone who loves the book so much.
Shadow is a 30 year-old prisoner with five more days left on his sentence. Luckily for Shadow, the warden calls him in to let him know he’s being released tomorrow. Unluckily for Shadow, it’s because his wife just died in a car accident.
Shadow hops on a plane to head home for the funeral, and that’s where he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, a 60 year-old chatterbox who looks like he should be hustling a 2 for 1 Miller Lite deal in some sleazy south Florida bar.
Sensing his taste for law-breaking, Mr. Wednesday wants to hire Shadow to work for him. Shadow kindly declines, but when the plane is diverted due to weather, and Shadow tries to drive the rest of the way, Mr. Wednesday keeps showing up at all of Shadow’s stops, inquiring about that hiring. We get the sense that there’s something otherworldly about this fella.
Shadow finally gets home, only to learn that there’s more to his wife’s death than he was told. As in she died with another man’s dick in her mouth. That dick belonging to Shadow’s best friend. This leaves Shadow in a very dark place, which we can only guess will spur him to take that job with Mr. Wednesday. Now if we only knew what Mr. Wednesday planned to do with him.
American Gods contains symbols, philosophy, and dream sequences. In other words, all the stuff that I hate. Why do I hate this stuff? Because it’s cheap. 9 times out of 10 it’s a go-to crutch for when you don’t know what to do with your story. Don’t know where the characters are going next? Uhhh… Here’s a tree made out of bones to distract you! And someone talking about how storms are like birds!
To put this in perspective, this is the same thing I knocked a little pilot script called True Detective for. And that turned out all right. Well, for you guys anyway. Not for me.
But American Gods gradually pulls itself out of that haze and provides us with a narrative (Shadow trying to get to his wife’s funeral). While things do start to pick up, I couldn’t help but feel like not enough was happening. Yes our hero’s got a goal. Yes there’s something intriguing about Mr. Wednesday. And there is a holy-shit scene where a woman swallows a man up in her vagina during sex.
But I was never compelled to find out what happened next. The goal didn’t seem important enough (if he doesn’t get to the funeral, so what?). The mystery didn’t seem mysterious enough.
But the biggest problem with American Gods is one that I’m assuming they discuss all the time in the writers room. This is a complex world. I don’t even know what the fucking genre is. The final scene has Shadow, our main character, as a stock ticker, and his value doubling. What the hell does that mean?
For readers of the book who know exactly what’s going on, a moment like this makes them grin. Me? I don’t have any reference points. There’s nothing for me to compare this to. And as I kept reading, I wondered if that was going to be a blessing or a curse. How “out of the loop” can non-fans of the book be before they give up? Do you try to play to them then? Or stay with the super-fans?
Another thing I still haven’t figured out in the TV world is how little plot you can get away with. You can’t have fast-moving plots in every TV episode. It’s impossible. It’s more about putting characters in rooms and exploring the conflict between them. Which is exactly what they’ve done here.
And yet it doesn’t feel like enough. At least in your pilot, you gotta go bigger, don’t you?? Then you can pull back in subsequent episodes. But I don’t think you can sneak into your story with a TV show these days. There are too many of them out there, too many reasons to turn the channel. If you don’t wow us right away, we won’t tune in again. I keep trying to remind people that the Game of Thrones pilot, while slow, ended with a brother and sister having sex and the brother pushing a young boy off a tower to his death. Uhhhh… I’m going to come back to see what happens next after that. I’m not so sure I’m coming back to see what Stock Ticker Shadow means.
Long story short, I wanted to be punched in the gut by this pilot. Instead I was massaged. And while that massage was relaxing, it’s not compelling me to come back for more.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I personally think choices are more dramatically compelling if we understand the stakes. The major choice driving this story is “Will Shadow work for Mr. Wednesday?” Unfortunately, we don’t know what Mr. Wednesday does. So we don’t know if working for him is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. And hence we’re not that interested in whether Shadow says yes or no.
ALERT! ALERT! – There will be a new Scriptshadow Newsletter hitting your E-mail boxes today! Keep an eye out for it in your spam and Promotions folders. I’ll announce here when it’s been officially sent out. The newsletter features a script review from arguably the best screenwriter in the world, who’s attempting to do something in his script that’s never been done before. If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter, e-mail me at: carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: NEWSLETTER
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A convicted felon at the top-secret facility of Spiderhead subjects himself to a dangerous mood-enhancement experiment in order to lessen his sentence.
About: Almost every newly minted professional screenwriter ditches the spec script in favor of the big money assignment. So it’s nice to see guys like Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick still betting on themselves. The Zombieland writers got hot again after Deadpool became the biggest box office surprise of the year. They quickly parlayed that into another Ryan Reynolds project, the Alien-like “Life.” Today’s script is purported to be their directing debut.
Writers: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (based on the short story by George Saunders)
Details: 102 pages – July 12, 2013 draft
In the newsletter I’m sending out today, I pose the question, “Where are all the new ideas?” We keep getting the same ideas repackaged again and again and because the booming Chinese box office has helped mask the lack of interest Americans have in these carbon copy catastrophes (a Huntsman sequel????), the options don’t look to get better any time soon.
Leave it to screenwriting superheroes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, then, to be two of the only writers unafraid to try different shit. And yet, their newest script forces Originality Proponents to ask some tough questions. Such as, is being different enough? Don’t forget that the reason we keep seeing the same stories over and over again isn’t ONLY because Hollywood is creatively bankrupt. It’s because those stories (the hero’s journey, buddy-cop, stop the villain with a plan, heist films, contained thriller) work.
If there were a boatload of great new story types out there, chances are, someone would’ve found them by now. It’s a reminder that whenever you go down this dimly lit path of originality, prepare for successful ideas to be tough to find.
30-something Jeff is a resident at Spiderhead (so named because it’s shaped like a spider), a giant facility in the middle of nowhere. Though we’ll later find out that Jeff is a felon, he’s treated more like a patient in a science experiment.
Jeff (along with the other residents) has something called a “mobipak” embedded in his back that contains various vials of liquid which, once administered, affect your mood. Our administration team, led by the snake-like Steve Abnesti, have control over these vials, and remotely inject doses into the residents to see how they react.
For example, they will bring a woman into Jeff’s room. Neither Jeff will be attracted to the woman or she to him. But Abnesti will release some happy juice into their system, and all of a sudden they want to fuck each other’s brains out.
On the flip side, Abnesti will release something called “Darkenfloxx” into their system. Darkenfloxx makes the patients sad, angry, even violent. Where things start to get really messed up is when Abnesti forces the patients to choose who he should administer the Darknefloxx to.
Jeff is tricked into choosing a young woman, who then stabs her face in with a giant wooden stake until she dies. The only person Jeff can talk to about any of this is fellow patient, Lizzie, a trouble-maker who Jeff is secretly in love with. As the intensity of the experiments increase, Jeff and Lizzy must decide if enough is enough, and do something about Spiderhead.
Reese and Wernick seem to be interested in something beyond mere entertainment with Spiderhead. This is a movie about depression first, story second. Here’s my problem with that. Movies always need to be about story first. Unless it’s story first, the audience won’t care about your message. Name me one good movie that’s ignored this rule.
The whole time I was reading Spiderhead, I kept thinking to myself, “What’s the point?” I mean, we’re watching these people walk around in this cage, get experimented on, talk about it, get upset, then continue to be experimented on, then talk some more about it, then walk around some more. There’s no actual story. There’s no problem that the characters have to solve.
Even the obvious problem and solution – Jeff and Lizzie realizing they need to do something about this place – is something they don’t even consider until 10 pages left in the screenplay.
There are two movies I believe could’ve served Wernick and Rheese well here for research. The first is one that hasn’t come out yet: The Story of Us, about an alien arrival where a famous linguist is brought in to try and communicate with the aliens.
That movie could’ve been set up just like Spiderhead, where we watch this woman try and find commonalities in language with the aliens until they finally break through and can communicate.
Instead, it added a subplot by which all the big nations were talking to the aliens and also trying to decode their language. It became clear that if one of them beat out the U.S., they would have access to alien knowledge and technology that could potentially put the U.S. in danger.
This urgency gave the story a bigger (and more entertaining) engine. Figure out the language fast or our country was fucked. In Spiderhead, there’s no impending reason for these experiments to matter. It’s all very, “Eh, hopefully this mobipak will improve lives at some point in the future. Thanks, patients, for doing your job.”
The other film is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In that movie, which also followed a group of patients in an institution, we had a DISRUPTIVE main character who was MIXING SHIT UP. So even though we didn’t have an impeding big problem that needed to be solved, there was constant drama. The main character was so active that something was always happening in the movie.
Jeff is a nice guy. He does what he’s told, even if he doesn’t like it. But that’s the extent of his character. He’s not very interesting. So both on a story and character front, Spiderhead didn’t go anywhere.
And it’s frustrating because it’s clear that Rheese and Wernick are trying to tackle something important here and I LOVE that they’re doing something different. But as much as I was pushing myself to like this, the story never went anywhere. A simple problem that our main character needed to solve which would’ve made him more active (and therefore more compelling) could’ve done wonders. I don’t think this is the kind of story you can just watch play out and hope the audience will care because it’s multi-layered. You need to entertain first. At this moment, in this draft, Spiderhead isn’t entertaining.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The famous Samuel Goldwyn saying, “If you’re trying to send a message, use Western Union,” isn’t exactly accurate. You can send a message in your script. It just can’t be the only thing you send. Send a gift, send money, send pictures. But if all you care about is your message, expect the audience to respond in kind.
