The last logline post got too big so instead of doing Amateur Offerings, I’m going to start a new one. Now a lot of you are probably freaking out. The average score I’ve been giving the loglines I’ve received is a 4. Why? I’ll get more into that with Thursday’s article, but basically, many of these loglines are too ambitious (A man goes to 7 galaxies to procure DNA from seven different alien species to save his wife), too vague, too bland (A mobster kills his victim and must dispose of the body within 24 hours), don’t contain a movie-level hook (Two best friends join a dating service but then fall in love with each other), have zero irony, elements are too disconnected (A flower shop owner learns he’s going to die in six hours so he decides to run a marathon for the first time in his life), go on forever (way too many wordy loglines that go on and on and on – be quick and succinct), or a series of other things.
If you’re freaking out about your low scores, share the loglines here and ask others what’s up. And in the rare case that the readers tell you I’m nuts and the idea is good, discount my opinion. Majority always rules. I’ve seen some writers freak out about wording their loglines just right when the logline isn’t the problem. It’s the idea. You can’t polish a turd. We’re going to have to do another post on what makes a good idea, but hopefully I can cover some of that this Thursday. And if I haven’t gotten to your loglines yet, be patient. There are a lot of them!
p.s. a piece of advice. since there will be tons of people asking for logline advice, only ask for opinions on the loglines you truly care about. throwing up all five will probably get you less of a response.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: When her Mother goes missing on Black Friday, a strong-willed Teen is forced to quest into the shopping chaos with the person whose company she enjoys least – her perpetually immature and inebriated Uncle.
Why You Should Read: Why should you read My Druncle Kevin? I can sit here and make bold, downright blasphemous claims about my script being “Hughes-ian” or in the vein of a “Family Style Hangover,” but no one wants to hear that. Instead, here are ten stone cold bullet points…
1. It’s a comedy with heart for days.
2. It’s a script set during a time of year that is oddly underrepresented in movies.
3. It centers on a refreshing “buddy coppy” duo not often seen in film.
4. It’s all about family at its core.
5. It features the best dopey small car action since “The Italian Job.”
6. It cracked the ScriptShadow 250!
7. Too much pressure, skip to #8.
8. It’ll make you appreciate your mother.
9. My friend Joe said it was “pretty good,” and he doesn’t even read scripts!
10. It will put you in the holiday spirit just in time for… Spring. I’m nothing if not topical.
Writer: Vin Conzo
Details: 102 pages
It was nice to see those two Uber projects (one a spec script) sell last week. There was a time when comedy used to rule the spec roost, the sales vastly outnumbering the number of specs sold in any other genre.
But that’s not the case anymore, and it’s no surprise why. Comedy doesn’t travel well internationally, so studios are less excited about the genre in this new global-driven marketplace.
Because of that, there are less comedy slots open. The problem is that the average comedy writer hasn’t adjusted to that. They’re still writing like all you have to do is come up with a half-baked premise and a semi-funny hero and you’re good. Remember how there were like 8 bro-mance specs sold when “bro-mance” was a thing? Yeah, that ain’t reality anymore, bro.
These days, if you want a shot as a comedy writer, you either have to grab onto a trend right when Hollywood wants it, like the Uber thing, or you have to be on point in all three key areas: Great marketable premise, great main character(s), great execution. To me, the gold standard is still The Hangover.
Does Druncle Kevin pass this test?
32 year-old Kevin Stanley is the loser uncle of the year. Hell, he’s the loser uncle of the millennium. His older brother-in-law died awhile back, and the addiction-challenged Kevin freeloads off his widowed sister, Sarah, sleeping in her basement while she desperately tries to raise a family of two children and an aging father.
On this particular Thanksgiving evening, Sarah is heading off to pre-Black Friday sales madness, and gives Kevin one task. Hold down the fort. He’ll have to do so with a father who despises him and a 16 year-old niece, Paula, who used to love her uncle until he turned into the most unreliable loser in history.
Well, breakfast comes around the next morning and Sarah is nowhere to be found. When a good samaritan shows up at their door soon-after, saying she found Sarah’s purse in the Target parking lot, Kevin and Paula start freaking out. Could something have happened to Sarah?
Paula reluctantly teams up with her druncle, and the two head to a Black Friday crazed mall to put together the pieces of what happened. What they eventually find is that Sarah, who was planning to surprise her daughter with a new car for Christmas, accidentally stumbled upon two Black Market car criminals, who subsequently kidnap her, and who are probably going to kill her.
Will the inadequate and irresponsible Kevin be able to save his sister in time? Or will his contentious deteriorating relationship with his niece sabotage any shot at a Black Friday miracle?
So I can tell you why I didn’t advance My Druncle Kevin past the top 250. And most of it has to do with the opening scene. We’re immediately thrown into this chaos that is a Thanksgiving dinner, which is supposed to be humorous, but isn’t due to one problem: I don’t know anybody yet.
I don’t know these characters. I don’t know whose house we’re in. There’s an empty chair that’s supposed to represent a recently deceased person. But I don’t know who that person is/was. I’m able to piece together some things – this is called “My Druncle Kevin” so I figure Kevin is the drunk uncle. But I don’t even know which side of the family he’s on.
And that may not sound like a big deal but it’s a HUGE deal. If Kevin was the dead husband’s brother, that’s a whole different story than if he’s Sarah’s brother. If he’s the dead husband’s brother, he represents him. The dynamic between him and the others would be more complex. But if he’s Sarah’s brother, that’s more of an “annoying brother” type of thing and way more simplistic.
Not that one is better than the other. The point was, I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know any of the characters yet. And therefore it was more an exercise in my trying to figure out who was who and what was going on as opposed to enjoying and laughing at the scene.
In one of my favorite comedy dinner scenes of all time, the famous dinner in the original Meet The Parents, the reason that scene works so well is because we’ve established not only the characters, but the relationship DYNAMICS.
Relationship dynamics are crucial to comedy. We need to know what’s going on between people before we can laugh at what’s going on between people.
So in that Meet The Parents scene, we know that the father doesn’t think Ben Stiller’s character is good enough for his daughter. That allows us to play with that dynamic. We can have Ben Stiller desperately try and impress the father. In doing so, we can have him repeatedly screw up. And with each successive screw-up, he can dig himself a deeper hole. And as that hole grows deeper, we can laugh while he tries to pull himself out.
When we don’t know the relationship dynamics yet – and this isn’t just in regards to dinner scenes but ANY scenes – it’s hard to find comedy outside of broad random humor. It’s what I call “clown comedy.” Because basically the only comedy that can work in a scene without context is a character acting like a clown. They can say and do wacky crazy things for laughs. And that’s basically what Kevin’s comedy amounts to in this opening. He drifts from wacky line to goofy impression to silly screw-up.
We talk about structure in relation to screenplays all the time. But structure is required in character. It’s required in jokes. You need that form to give the moment context. When you don’t have structure, you’re leaving your story or your character off on an island and you’re saying, “I’m not going to give you anything to work with. But be entertaining.”
So really, My Druncle Kevin was screwed (contest-wise) before it even got out of its first scene. Now once it did get out of that scene, it got better. A story began to emerge. There was a mystery there. There were personal stakes involved. So I did become engaged.
But here’s another reason why those opening pages are so important. They color the reader’s opinion on everything moving forward. Since I was confused by Kevin in that opening scene, even when the story gained form, I still never felt connected to him. That first scene always lingered.
It’s no different from real life, guys. A first impression is always the strongest impression. Characters are the same deal. We form strong opinions on them when we meet them and carry those opinions forward, even if the character evolves or becomes more interesting in some way. We never forget that first meeting.
And I’m not saying a character can’t start in a negative place. I’m saying you need to know EXACTLY how you want your character to be perceived and you need to be super-diligent in clearly conveying that. Like I said, I didn’t even know if Kevin was Sarah’s brother or the dead husband’s brother in that opener. And to me, that’s crucial.
I still love this title. That’s a huge reason why it advanced into the 250. And I think this is a premise worth working on. But I don’t feel like I know Kevin well enough after reading this. Comedy characters need to be clear. Say what you want about the recent hit, Daddy’s Home, but I knew who Will Ferrel’s character was in that movie after his very first scene. He’s an overly-sensitive “nice guy” desperate to be respected as a father. Who’s Kevin? He’s a drunk. He’s a clown. What else? That needs to be figured out.
Script link: My Druncle Kevin
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Build your comedy characters from a place of humanity, not a place of comedy. Let’s look at Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in The Hagover for this lesson. When building the character of Alan, instead of saying to yourself, “I’m going to create this zany guy who says the weirdest things at the most inappropriate moments,” say, “I’m going to create this guy who has no friends and is babied by his family, and because of that, he’s painfully socially unaware.” This way, the comedy is coming from a place of truth as opposed to a place of “Let’s see how wacky I can be!” Big difference.
So what’s the big news I was teasing on Twitter the other day? We’re going to write a screenplay! That is correct. Every Thursday over the next three months, I am going to take you through each step of the process, leaving you with a finished screenplay to go out into the world with. How cool is that??
What’s the idea here? A few things. First, to help those still trying to figure out how to write a script. Those of you in the beginning stages confused with all the jargon and the rules, I’m going to take you step by step through the process, making it as painless as possible.
Second, to give those of you with your own writing process a new way to look at things. I’m hoping that a fresh take on the process will allow you to see the craft in a whole new light. Even if you don’t adopt the process I lay out, I’m sure you’ll take a few things with you moving forward.
Third, and most importantly, I want you to have a finished screenplay. Writing is synonomous with procastination and we often find ourselves eight months into a script with no idea where to go next. With me breathing down your neck, you won’t be able to make excuses for not writing anymore. We’re going to have deadlines every week. And I’m going to make sure you meet them so that at the end of three months, you will have a 110 page screenplay.
To make this fun, at the end of the process, we’re going to have a tournament. I’m going to pick the top 40 or so loglines/pitches and stagger a series of Super Amateur Showdowns (10 scripts instead of five). We’ll have a quarter-finals, a semi-finals, and a finals, where you guys will vote the best scripts through.
During that time, you’ll be allowed to use the notes you get from each showdown to improve your script for the next round. This is what Scriptshadow does better than anywhere else – crowd-sourcing feedback. We’re going to take advantage of that to make these scripts the best they can possibly be.
Now I know a lot of you are rushing to meet that May 1st Nicholl Fellowship deadline. So we’re going to wait until that’s over and you’re free of any script commitments.
But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Since we’ll be starting in two weeks, YOU NEED A CONCEPT. The concept is the most important part of the process. If you don’t have a good concept, nothing you write during those three months will matter.
So here’s the deal: start thinking of concepts. Start sharing concepts with your friends. You can share them here in the comments or if you’re a private person, ask people to share privately via e-mail. But I strongly encourage you to get feedback on your concept(s) before committing. If people don’t sound excited about your idea, come up with something else.
In fact, I’m going to allow you each to send me a single e-mail with up to 5 loglines (carsonreeves3@gmail.com) and I will give you a 1-10 rating on each. If your logline doesn’t at least get a 7, go with something else. And because I’m going to get a ton of e-mails, I WILL NOT be able to get into detail about why I gave your logline the rating I did. This is just meant as a way to give you a quick opinion on if your loglines are working.
We’ll get a little more into concept next week, and then the week after, WE BEGIN. So sharpen those pencils cause we’re going to write a F&%$ING SCREENPLAY!
Genre: Horror
Premise: Fifteen years after the witch trials, the scars of Salem are reopened when young women begin showing up dead. Desperate for answers, the town elders turn to a man of science to uncover the truth.
About: This one comes from flashy upstart studio/prodco STX, responsible for last year’s awesome, “The Gift,” and more recently, the bold first-person flick, “Hardcore Henry.” The script, which also landed on last year’s Black List, was penned by upstart writing team, Mark Bianculli and Jeff Richard.
Writers: Mark Bianculli & Jeff Richard
Details: 108 pages – 2nd Draft
A lot of people are comparing this project to the recently released hit indie film, The Witch. I’m about to get a little controversial here, but I just have to say it. The Witch sucked. That movie was garbage. Don’t get me wrong. It was wonderfully directed and the acting was great and the score was amazing, and the atmosphere was intense. But there was one, oh, minor problem. NOTHING EVER FUCKING HAPPENED!!!
I kept waiting for something to happen in that stupid movie and it never did. And finally, we get to the end where I’m hoping we’re going to finally get some sort of payoff for all this time and energy we’ve put into this. And instead we’re treated to the most vague b.s. nonsense climax in the history of cinema. It made me want to throw my TV into the ocean.
Yeah, but other than that, I loved it. :)
No, I bring this up because Salem Village taps into the same world as The Witch did. It just does so way better. There’s an actual story here. And it’s one of the better horror stories I’ve come across in awhile.
It’s the early 1700s. The town of Salem is slowly recovering from their witch trials, an event whereby the town clergy hanged a group of women believed to be witches. It’s been 15 years since, and Salem thinks of itself as a bit more progressive. So when a young woman in town starts exhibiting witch-like symptoms, they call in famous doctor, Robert Curtin, a man of science, to figure out what’s wrong.
The confident, and at times, arrogant, Curtin, arrives at the town Inn, run by a beautiful pregnant young woman named Anna, who’s been forced to run the Inn by herself as her husband has been away at sea.
Curtin goes to inspect the supposedly afflicted young woman, who lays in bed all day and acts possessed n shit. And just when he thinks he’s figured out what’s wrong with her (she’s been eating rotten grain), she dies. This is followed by the mysterious deaths of two other women, one of whom was plastered to her ceiling via a pitchfork. Sweet.
Some townspeople think nasty spirits are at work here. Others find it suspicious that these women started dying right when Curtin arrived in town. Curtin does his best to preach the gospel of science – that there has to be a logical answer to all this. But when a few more women turn up dead, his pleas fall on deaf ears.
Eventually we realize what all these women had in common – they were accusers of the witches who were executed. And Anna, the Inn Keeper and Curtin’s closest ally, reveals to him a secret – that she provided an off-the-record accusation of the witches as well. Which means she could be next.
As the town is whipped further into a frenzy, Curtin will have to decide whether they are too far gone to accept a logical explanation for all this. Then again, Curtin is starting to have his own doubts about logic. Could there really be otherworldly forces at play here?
I’m about to blow your collective geek minds here. And I don’t want to oversell this. But Salem Village was like The Wicker Man meets Seven meets The Exorcist. There, I said it. Expectations have been set. But I’m serious. On the Seven front, some of the death scenes in here were amazeballs. There’s a scene where rats eat a woman alive. How awesome is that?
So what makes this so good? I always tell you guys that the scripts that impress me the most are the ones where I don’t know where the story is going next, yet when the story goes there, it still makes sense.
Let me explain that in more detail. Anybody can write a screenplay where we don’t know where you’re going with it. I can write some stream-of-conscious bullshit that starts with a man stealing a car and ends with that same man turning into an alien and running a burger joint on the moon. You would have had no idea I was going there, but the lack of connective tissue between where I started and where I ended results in the experience feeling random and unsatisfying.
What’s MUCH harder to do is to create a series of unexpected plot choices that still make sense. So for example, I thought this was going to be a possession movie. Our doctor was going to come in try and figure out what was wrong with this woman. But then the woman dies at the end of the first act and it’s like, “What now?” And “what now” is that women start getting murdered. So now we’ve moved from a possession movie to a serial killer movie. And yet, the writers manage to keep it all under the same roof. Explanations eventually come up that allow all of this to make sense.
To find that balance and to pull those bold plot changes off seamlessly is hard to do.
Another strength here was the scene-writing and I want to highlight one scene in particular that really sold me on these writers. It had to do with tension. You want to create tension in your scenes wherever possible. But it’s practically required in a horror script.
So the large majority of the people in Salem don’t want Dr. Curtin here. They think science is bullshit and want him gone. One of the first scenes, then, has Dr. Curtin going to inspect the possessed girl. Of course, all the major town players (the reverend, the Mayor, the judge) all come with him as they want to see what he’s going to do.
We’d previously established that this woman attacked and maimed a young nurse. So we know she’s dangerous.
Now here she is, laying on this bed, staring at the ceiling, completely still. Dr. Curtin is forced to lean down over her, get very close to her face, so he can examine her. It’s a classic horror set up. You know that at any moment this woman could leap up and attack Dr. Curtin. So each moment his face is down there, inches from hers, you’re on the edge of your seat. There’s tension oozing out of every pour of the page.
And you know what? If the writers would’ve kept it at that, it would’ve been a fine scene. But what makes the scene great is all the men behind Curtin. None of them believe in him. They think science is bullshit – that otherworldly factors are at play here. So you feel THEIR TENSION as well.
And so you had this great moment where there’s tension IN FRONT of Dr. Curtin and BEHIND Dr. Curtin. And even though it’s one of the quieter scenes in the movie, that SQUEEZE provides the moment with tons of energy. It’s just so intense.
The one strike against Salem Village, and the thing that almost stole an “impressive” from it was the ending. Now there’s a twist here. It’s pretty good. It maybe could’ve been better. But it wasn’t the twist itself that was the issue. It was the explanation afterwards that I had an issue with. It was one of those “good but not great” moments. And really, it’s a victim of its own awesomeness. The rest of the script was so damn good that the ending had a lot to live up to. I’m still happy with it. I guess I wanted a little bit more though.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Look to create tension in a scene from multiple angles. Tension in front of your character works great. But if you can add tension behind them or to the side of them, or even from within them, that’s going to make the scene even better.
Today’s pilot comes from one of the most successful spec writers of the decade and stars the biggest TV action star in the universe!
Genre: TV Pilot Thriller/Drama
Premise: When the president of the United States and his immediate chain of command are killed in a terrorist attack, the Secretary of State, a man ill-suited for the job, is thrust into the position.
About: David Guggenheim burst onto the scene when his spec, Safe House, went nuclear, garnering the rare “fast track” green light from the studio and nabbing Denzel Washington in the process. The success of the sale as well as the film allowed Guggenheim to follow up with several high-profile spec sales, and I’m sure untold lucrative writing assignments. Guggenheim has turned his focus to TV now, and Designated Survivor was probably the highest profile sale of the season, opening up a huge bidding war, no doubt helped by the addition of Keifer Sutherland in the lead role
Writer: David Guggenheim
Details: 69 pages (undated – no title page so I’m not sure what draft this is)
I swore it would never happen again. I was so disappointed with the straight-down-the-middle product that the Big 4 networks were churning out that I refused to ever read a Big 4 pilot again. Allow me to paddle down the stream of a Netflix adventure. Allow me to Hulu-hoop my way through a Hulu original. But one more of these cringe-worthy by-the-book eye-closers on a Big 4? I’d rather wrap my face inside of a Brisket Burrito (inside Twitter joke).
So let me tell you why I lifted my moratorium on these shows today. One, because I’m too tired to read a feature. Two, this is a very feature-like premise. Three, it’s written by one of the most successful spec writers of the last five years. And four, because it sparked a major bidding war. Now does any of this mean the pilot will actually be good? Probably not. But we can hope!
Man, can Tim Kirkman catch a break? The 41 year-old Secretary of State is seen by just about everyone as a governmental liability. His main issue? He isn’t strong enough. When the going gets tough, the tough may get going, but Tim Kirkman gets going in the other direction.
So it isn’t much of a surprise when the President of the United States calls him in and asks him to demote himself to a Canadian Advisory position. Kirkman tells the prez he needs a night to think about it (translation: I’ll do what you ask but pretend to think about it overnight to save face). And that’s when shit go cray-cray.
While giving a speech, someone blows the president and several other high-ranking government officers up, leaving guess-who as the successor to the presidential throne? None other than the guy who just got fired earlier in the day.
Kirkman is sworn in and, with the country on a high state of alert, immediately faces a whirlwind of problems. Is this just the first of many attacks? What’s coming next? What do they do? All eyes are on Kirkman, and not a single person in the White House believes in him.
Shit gets real when an oil tanker heading into an East Coast port won’t respond to a ‘stand down’ order. The tanker is just 60 seconds away from being capable of blowing up an entire East Coast City if, indeed, it’s being operated by terrorists. Everyone turns to Kirkman. Can they blow it up? Give the word. Their missiles are waiting. At the last second, the tanker stops, apologizing for a radio malfunction. Whoa, Kirkman thinks. A couple more seconds and he would’ve killed 250 innocent people. This job is hard!
Next up is the most important presidential speech in the history of the country. Kirkman must work hand in hand with a young speech writer to convince not just the United States that he’s capable of leading them, but every single man and woman working underneath him here at the White House. Will he succeed? We’ll have to see.
Straight up truth? This was good. A lot better than I thought it would be. And was it straight-down-the-middle Big 4 generic TV? Kind of. But what Guggenheim brings from his feature spec roots is an ability to MOVE THE STORY FORWARD QUICKLY. This pilot had a ton of urgency, preventing even the tiniest slivers of boredom to creep in.
You can usually spot a good writer by what they do after the setup. Because the setup of these shows/movies is always easy. Who’s going to screw up the president of the United States getting killed? Or our next-in-line being ushered by the Secret Service to get sworn in at the White House? Those scenes write themselves.
But once Kirkman becomes the president, what now? And Guggenheim immediately moves into a problem – the oil tanker. Our protagonist is immediately being tested.
And once that problem is solved, a new one arrives. Iran takes advantage of the U.S.’s distraction to secure the Strait of Hormuz, effectively choking off our access to oil. Kirkman now has to figure that problem out as well.
And while these scenes seem obvious in retrospect, most writers don’t know to write them. They’d rather deal with the mundane directionless details of “What happens when a new person becomes president?” You have an entire series to explore that. Right now, you need to place your protagonist in DRAMATIC SITUATIONS that test him. You’re going to find urgency in these moments and you’re going to find drama. I’d much rather watch that than a scene where Kirkman meets with his staff and discusses the do’s and don’ts of being a president.
Another smart move was not telling us who killed the president. There’s a tendency from TV writers to cram all the plot into the pilot. But remember, you have to give us reasons to come back. And you do that through big unanswered questions. The fact that who killed the president is going to be an ongoing mystery is a reason for me to come back. Otherwise, I’ve just a TV sized feature.
One of the more amusing discoveries from the script was when Kirkman was sitting with his wife, at a low point, thinking he couldn’t do this, and his wife takes him by the hand and says, “Do you remember STORY ABOUT HIS EARLY DAYS OF POLITICS?” As in, literally, that’s what’s written. And I just found it funny that even the top screenwriters don’t always know what to write and will put up a placeholder to figure it out later.
It’s a small thing but I know a lot of writers will refuse to keep writing until they figure out that problem. And what happens is, because they can’t figure it out, they’re not writing anything. One day of not writing turns into two. Two into four. Four into a week. A week into a month. Sometimes it’s best to leave a problem alone for now and keep writing so you’re getting pages down. Often what will happen is the solution to your problem will come while you’re exploring some other part of the story.
Look, is Designated Survivor going to be able to do what House of Cards did? Probably not. I don’t see Kirkman and his wife having a three-way with their security detail. But it’s a nice West Wing slash 24 hybrid that should satiate the wind-down-from-work crowd. I’ll probably check out the pilot this fall.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When in doubt, present your hero with a problem. The more elaborate the problem, the higher the stakes the problem, the better. I loved the oil tanker scene here. I loved the Iran scene here. And all Guggenheim did was present our protagonist with a problem. When you think about it, this is the lifeblood of television. You place problems in front of your protagonist. If you can make those problems unique, if you can make them DIFFICULT, chances are you’re going to keep the audience entertained.
