One of the most important skills in a screenwriter’s tool bag is being able to convey a character’s attributes through action. So if you want to show that a character is a dick, show him kicking a dog. If you want to show that a girl is kind, show her holding the door open for an old lady.
Where this skill becomes truly powerful, though, is when you use it to highlight a character’s fatal flaw. This combination not only has the power to tell the audience what kind of person your character is, but also highlight the thing that’s holding them back in life, and therefore the weakness they will need to overcome by the end of the movie.
Weak or inexperienced writers try and sell these flaws through dialogue. So if their hero’s flaw is that they don’t believe in themselves, they’ll make sure that character utters the words, “I just don’t think I’m good enough.” Or “I don’t believe I have what it takes.” Not only is this on-the-nose. It’s lazy. If you want to be a power writer, find an action to sell that flaw. A good example is Neo in The Matrix. Whether he’s fighting Morpheus in the dojo or about to jump between buildings, his demeanor is fear. He’s not sure he can do it. That action (or non-action) tells us he doesn’t believe in himself yet.
I’ve figured out a few things about conveying flaws over the years. In comedies and animation, we’ll see flaws expressed through action right when we meet our hero. The first moment we meet Stu in The Hangover, he’s being pushed around by his wife. The first moment we meet Joy in Inside Out, she’s obsessed with everyone being happy. Because these genres tend to celebrate the extremes, being more “in your face” with actions is acceptable.
However, once we get into more dramatic films, writers tend to take their time, exposing flaws gradually and subtly over a series of scenes. Going back to The Matrix, we don’t know that Neo doesn’t believe in himself for awhile. We spend some time getting to know his daily life first, and the Wachowskis drop hints here and there, but we don’t really know that that’s his issue until we get to his training.
I’ve also found that certain flaws are more “actionable” than others. For example, selfishness is a popular flaw in modern cinema at least partly due to how easy it is to convey through action. All you have to do is show Han Solo decline an invitation to do something for the betterment of the group and we know he’s selfish. Ditto with arrogance or stubbornness or envy. These are very “actionable” flaws.
The REAL writers out there can express even the toughest “non-actionable” flaws through action. And that’s today’s challenge. I want you to write a scene – it can be about anything – but you must convey the main character’s fatal flaw through an action. What’s the flaw in question? The character is emotionally distant. They don’t make emotional connections with anybody. Oh, and did I mention that the scene had to be entertaining? Yeah, that’s the thing with screenwriting. Just pulling off one thing in a scene isn’t enough. You have to do it while entertaining the audience.
Hey, I warned you this would be hard. So write out your scenes in the comments. Upvote your favorites. I’ll give a shout-out to the winner tomorrow. Good luck!
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A female urologist and a retired hooker form an unlikely friendship when they team up to take down a notorious sex trafficker in Miami.
About: Cut and Run finished near the middle of the pack in last year’s Black List. Zoe McCarthy is new on the scene. This is the first script she’s been recognized for. She also has another project in development called Bitches in a Boat.
Writer: Zoe McCarthy
Details: 114 pages – undated
Whenever I read a script, I’m always looking for things I haven’t seen before. Because let’s be honest. We’re all stealing pollen from the same flowers. So the chances that your honey’s any sweeter than mine ain’t that good, ya backyard little bumblebee. But every once in awhile, you do run into something new. And it’s these writers who stand out, since they’re clearly seeing the world in a way we aren’t.
However, I’m not sure I was prepared for today’s level of unique. Starting on close-ups of a man’s “bulbous ball sack” and then, a scene later, a woman’s “errant pubes,” left me wondering if I was reading a screenplay or reliving childhood memories of Fourth of July parties at Uncle Mick’s house. With that said, it guaranteed that what I’d be reading today was unusual, and I was game for that. Pubes and all.
34 year-old Anna Rockport is one of the best urologists in Miami. But her OCD behavior and man-like personality has kept the dudes away in droves. But tonight – tonight is different. Because Anna Rockport’s gonna get laid.
She gets done up in her Friday night best and heads out to some swanky Miami club, the kind where the tables shine due to a combination of cheap hair gel and last night’s errant semen, and corners the hottest guy in the bar, Eddie, letting him know she’s ready to bang-a-lang.
Eddie takes the eventually wasted Anna back to his crib, which has a 150 shades of grey back room that has anything and everything you could imagine for a sexual escapade, including, for some reason, lots of My Little Pony outfits. Anna decides it would be fun to pop one of these on and buck around in circles while singing the My Little Pony theme song.
Unfortunately, the repeated circular motion makes her sick and she pukes all over Eddie’s penis. Naturally, Eddie is furious and kicks her out. But that isn’t the worst thing that happens to Anna. No. Not by a long cum shot. Anna wakes up the next day to find that her escapade was taped and is now trending all over the internet. As if she even needs to go into work to find out she’s fired, Anna realizes that her 12 years of medical school is now worthless.
Wanting to drink away her misery, she meets a local hooker, Angel, in a bar. It just so happens that Angel knows Eddie, and the two team-up to get that bastard back. They sneak into his home just as he’s priming a group of foreign girls he’s sex-trafficking, and while one of them has her mouth around Eddie’s penis, Angel and Anna jump in, causing the girl to inadvertently chomp off Ed’s member.
All hell breaks loose and Angel and Anna are able to sneak out, with Eddie’s severed penis in tow! What follows next is a dangerous game of dick and mouse. Eddie wants to kill them and Anna wants Eddie to admit to the world he’s a sex trafficker.
Of course, Anna’s got the upper handjob since she’s in possession of Eddie’s privates. The two eventually agree to a deal where the pee-pee will be reattached. But as you’ve already stupendously imagined, nothing goes according to plan.
I’m sure a lot of you are thinking what I’m thinking. Which is that this had to be influenced by the infamous Zola Twitter blowout story from last year (which they’re also making a movie of, in case you were wondering). I’m guessing it was, but since that story broke in late October and the Black List was released in the middle of December, that would mean Zoe McCarthy would’ve had to write this in a month, which is pretty impressive.
The thing about that story, though, is that it’s impossible to compete with. It was too fucking crazy. Yet somehow, McCarthy gives Zola a run for her hard-earned money. This woman is so deranged, so unafraid to go anywhere and everywhere, that reading Cut and Run was like watching Thelma and Louise after the two had injected horse roids into their craniums after doing coke all night.
McCarthy embraces the insanity, and like a weekend bender in Vegas, rides it until there’s nothing left to ride. This gives the script a first-draft feel. But I think that works in its favor. You don’t want to clean this up. You want it to be rough around the edges. And this certainly is that.
Still, this isn’t all stream-of-conscious. There is structure to the story. McCarthy uses the basic McGuffin approach that works so well for big tentpole films, and isn’t it hilarious that our McGuffin is a severed penis. So I guess that’d be called a McCockfin?
I was also surprised that she attempted to inject some heart into the story. For example, we find out that the reason Anna wanted to become a urologist is because her father died of testicular cancer and she wanted to make sure other little girls’ daddies didn’t die of the same thing when she grew up.
And there’s this whole subplot with Irina, the 17 year old model-hopeful who had the unfortunate experience of orally severing a man’s penis off, that covers her desperate attempts to find a passport so she can go back to friendly Ukraine. That story is treated with almost as much compassion as it is craziness, which did the impossible, occasionally grounding a sky-high plot that had as much desire to stay on course as Malaysian flight MH370.
Then of course there’s the fluctuating relationship between Anna and Angel. That’s what these two-handers always come down to: How well the writer is able to place that relationship on a roller-coaster so that it stays fresh and unpredictable and hooks the reader into wanting to find out if the two end up together. I’m not going to say that the execution was perfect. But it was certainly solid.
Zoe McCarthy is undeniably talented. Had my sensibilities been more in tune with hers, this might’ve been a life-changing experience. But there are only so many close-ups of ball sacks, penis-puking, and hookers and johns beating each other up that a man can take. If you’re that kind of dirty, this might be for you. If you’re a testicular tale prude like myself, you might find yourself looking away occasionally. Still, you can’t dismiss a voice this brave. It’s a great example of how to get noticed through the power of fearless writing.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Screenwriters, stop mentioning the movie (Thelma and Louise in today’s script) that inspired your movie in your movie! I don’t know why screenwriters do this. It makes your work look less original in the reader’s eyes and it encourages them to draw comparisons. Don’t you know there’s a secret deal every writer and director makes where they don’t mention all the sources they’re copying and we the consumers don’t ask? That way we can pretend everything is original.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: After an astronaut’s space capsule crash lands in the African desert, we discover that he’s carrying a secret that may change the world forever.
About: Ares finished on last year’s Black List. Geneva Robertson-Dworet is a writer who has quickly risen up the ranks to become one of the bigger sci-fi writers in demand. She’s part of the writing team writing Transformers 5. She’s writing the new Tomb Raider. And she co-wrote Hibernation, a script I reviewed on the site, which will be directed by one of the hottest young directors working today, Justin Lin. All of this and she doesn’t even have a produced credit yet. Crazy!
Writer: Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Details: 105 pages – May 2015 draft
Hey, we had some success with yesterday’s screenplay so I thought, why not go with another “List” script, this one having finished in the middle of the 2015 Black List.
Also, Ares is an example of the power of changing locales. Moving the location of your story can be the difference between it feeling exactly the same as every other movie in that genre and being fresh and exciting.
Think about it. If you were writing a romantic comedy, wouldn’t it be beyond cliche to set it in New York? But if your romantic comedy took place on the moon? We ain’t never seen that before. So you’d have our attention.
The location change here is the African desert, a place I haven’t seen a whole lot of sci-fi scripts take place in. Let’s see if it paid off.
Evan Lange is an astronaut, but that’s all we know when we meet him, hurtling towards earth in a re-entry capsule with his two co-astronauts, both dead and rotting for who knows how long.
Evan is deliberately trying to steer his capsule towards an African city, where he plans to tell the world “the truth” about what he’s found on his mission. But we get the sense that this won’t be easy, since there seem to be people who want to make sure this information doesn’t get out.
Evan shoots 200 miles shy of his destination and lands in the African desert. As he travels across the endless sand, we flash back to better times when Evan met the love of his life, Chloe, who he had a son with.
That relationship gets a big fat “no longer together” tag on Facebook though, since leaving your fam to hang out in space for three years doesn’t exactly build family bonds.
Anyway, Evan is trying to deliver some secret piece of material he’s secured to the U.S. Embassy in this African City, but must navigate a desert swarming with cops who are looking for him due to a “wanted – reward” poster gone up everywhere.
We eventually learn from flashbacks that Evan was working for a Russian billionaire who secretly sent Evan to Mars. Now that Evan is going to expose what they found, our billionaire is doing everything in his power to get to Evan first so he can kill him.
Evan meets up with his ex-wife, who’s working in the city, as well as his son, who’s now 14. Now’s a good time to let you know that Evan has a mental condition where he hallucinates. And if we believe Chloe, everything Evan’s been telling us is in his head. He needs to see a doctor, pronto.
Or is it? That’s the question, as Evan tries to lead the family to safety in the hopes of exposing this Russian billionaire’s scam. That’s assuming there really is a Russian billionaire. And that there was ever a mission in the first place.
I’m a strong believer that spec scripts (and by that I mean specs that unknown writers write on their own to sell or get noticed) need to bring you into the story right away. If you’re being hired to write Spotlight and you’ve got your director set and financing behind you and the studio figuring out their release strategy, you can start as slow as you want. Hell, start with the history of the Catholic church if you’re feeling frisky.
If you’re a “nobody” writer writing a spec, bring us into the story right away. Imagine it this way. Spec scripts? They go to a special kind of reader who works inside of a special kind of building where every single person there has ADD. You are not allowed to walk into that building unless you have ADD. These are the people you’re trying to win over.
Ares starts with us in that cockpit, speeding towards earth, two fellow astronauts dead and rotting nearby, our main character disobeying a command from control. Hell yeah. You’ve got my attention.
And despite the rest of Ares taking place in the desert, it never lets up. We’re always moving forward. Even when we’re doing flashbacks. I guess we can call this an extension of yesterday’s discussion, since this is yet another way to do flashbacks right.
Now normally I’d say don’t do flashbacks unless they’re built into the concept. Ares’s spiritual cousins and inspiration, The Martian and Gravity, could’ve used flashbacks for cheap backstory. But neither did. Because both writers know the law of flashbacks. Which is that if you’re going backwards, you’re not going forwards. And movies always work best when they’re moving forwards, dammit.
BUT.
If you place a mystery at the center of your story – in this case: what the hell happened in space that put Evan in this position? Then you can use the flashbacks to gradually feed the audience clues that will lead them to the answer of your mystery. They’ll allow the flashback because it’s GIVING THEM SOMETHING.
That’s important to remember. Flashbacks tend to take. They’re like shitty relationships. Take take take. If you can get your flashback to give though? It just might be okay.
However, now we get to the question of all questions. Was the answer to the mystery satisfying? That depends on how you like your movies. Do you like them grilled? Baked? Deep-fried? If you like ambiguity, if you like when writers make you formulate your own answers, you might like this.
Because it’s one of those movies where you’re constantly asking, “Is this really happening or not?” I’m not going to answer that question but what I can tell you is that I’ve grown skeptical of this format. It seems to be a free pass to fuck around with the reader instead of tell a clever story.
With that said, Robertson-Dworet does a pretty good job with the device. And as with all good sci-fi stories, it’s not really about the plot so much as it is about this broken family. I was discussing this with a writer the other day. She said “I don’t get sci-fi. It seems too complicated to write.” And I explained that actually, the best sci-fi isn’t complicated at all. It’s rooted by a simple relationship or two. Like Ex Machina. Get the main relationships sorted out and build the bells and whistles around that.
That’s what Ares does, and it does a good enough job that I wanted to get to the end. That makes this worth the read, baby. Let me know if you feel the same.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The two main story engines in screenwriting are the GOAL (find the Ark – Raiders) and the MYSTERY (What happened to Amy Dunne? – Gone Girl). But remember you have a third engine. I’m talking about the MYSTERY GOAL. This is what powers Ares. Evan’s goal (get this information to the Embassy) is coupled with a mystery (the mysterious element he’s found that’s going to change the world). And it works. I definitely wanted to know what he had found and I also wanted to see him get to the Embassy. So, bravo!
Guys, the submissions have to get better. I cycled through 75 submissions in a row at one point and not a single idea showed promise. Ideas either weren’t big enough, had no inherent stakes attached, or were unfocused to the point that I didn’t understand what the movie was about. If you’ve submitted to Amateur Offerings in the distant past and never got picked, it may have been because you got lost in the shuffle, not that your premise was rejected. So re-submit (carsonreeves3@gmail – include title, genre, logline, why we should read, and a PDF of the script). We need a better pool of scripts to choose from. P.S. If your script isn’t getting chosen, feel free to post the logline in the comments and ask for help. Just remember that the primary duty for today is to read and vote for your favorite script. Good luck.
Title: The Ballad of Will Scarlet
Genre: Action/historical
Logline: An older Will Scarlet leads the woodsmen of Sherwood Forest, protecting the lands from the sociopathic Robin Hood. Their frayed bonds are tested when the Sheriff of Nottingham hires a legend to rid history of Robin once and for all.
Why You Should Read: I’ve written and directed some short films and standalone TV projects, directed some commercials, got some moderate festival play, in all likelihood nothing you’ve seen. Professionally, I know just enough to tie my own noose. I also teach filmmaking on occasion, and as some of my students are now making features that are getting decent buzz and international distribution, I don’t feel my path is idly travelled. I have no complaints about being a Mr. Holland. — So, with all this on my mind, I figured I’d take a big ol’ swing for the bleachers with the first feature-length screenplay I’ve written in quite a few moons. Also, I’m deeply concerned about the dwindling supply in the National Strategic Reserve of Robin Hood spec screenplays and figured I should do my part.
Two things I’ve long found fascinating about the Robin Hood mythos are the elasticity of its timeframe before it was codified as being of the era of King Richard I, and the extremely brutal nature of some of the early Robin Hood ballads. This was the starting point for what I hope is an involving and idiosyncratic spin on the Robin Hood story.
Title: The Wrong Stuff
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: A terminally uncool Dad accepts a mistaken invitation into NASA’s astronaut training program, believing it will redeem him in the eyes of his son, but sadly unaware of how much it will test him.
Why You Should Read: I think this will be a good example of the power of a great, simple concept. In the comments for Carson’s review of Pale Blue Dot, Scott Crawford jokingly suggested the title, The Wrong Stuff. I think it’s a brilliant title, but for another story. Why? Because it says so much in just three words. It immediately conjures up images of space flight training and daring test pilots, but the juxtaposition created by the word ‘Wrong’ suggests the irony of a trainee who is totally unsuited for the training. We can immediately picture some scenes: Imagine the G-force training centrifuge with a shit-scared passenger screaming his head off. — So the title leads to the concept which easily lead to the premise in the logline above. — And that ease continued into the planning and writing. I had way more material than I could use, so it allowed me to keep just the good stuff. (Hopefully I’ve done the material justice.) But I can say that though this is an early draft, it is easily better than anything else I’ve ever written.
Title: Dude, Where’s My Ferret?
Genre: Stoner Comedy
Logline: After accidentally losing her company’s mascot, an uptight junior food scientist reluctantly enlists the help of her pothead building superintendent and together they battle against a relentless vermin exterminator to recover the missing ferret before her career goes up in smoke.
Why You Should Read: With marijuana being legalized all over the place, it’s a topical subject, plus it has a fresh twist with the ferret angle. Stoners and ferrets go together like macaroni and cheese! I’ve directed several short films featuring ferrets, including a short called DUDE, WHERE’S MY FERRET? that is meant as a teaser for the feature version, featuring Bubbles from The Trailer Park Boys. I also directed THE MAGIC FERRET, which was Jacob Tremblay’s (Room) first leading role. I like working with ferrets because it’s something different than what most people are used to seeing – and I know something about them because I have one as a pet (used to have two, R.I.P. Falcor the Ferret). I think this is a great recipe for a stoner comedy – but we need some help to get it to where it needs to be. I say ‘we’ because I’m the director but not the writer – I found someone to write this for me while I learn the craft. We could highly benefit from a review by Carson and our peers. I’m smishsmosh22 and promise to participate in the comments if we get chosen!
Title: Hard Copy
Genre: Drama
Logline: In 1994, a narcissistic co-host of a tabloid news show struggles to keep his job and life from unraveling as a young challenger emerges touting a new form of media, the internet.
Why You Should Read: Look, this is a bit of a tough sell based on the logline, I know that. It’s my eighteenth script, and I’ve been writing for eight years now, so the pressure is starting to mount, especially with this one. I wanted to write a drama that was big enough for the screens I hope to see it on. I wrote it the way I felt it needed to be written, and I took chances whenever possible. Honestly, it was time to stop writing handcuffed and just trust that I know what I’m doing. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this, and I look forward to all the notes. Good luck to everybody and thank you!
Title: The Odd Symphony
Genre: Comedy
Logline: An aspiring conductor who’s fallen on hard times starts a revolution by uniting New York’s various street performers into a misfit symphony.
Why You Should Read: This script was on the top of the blacklist for a long while (not the main blacklist but the web version). This is a funny, sad, uplifting, overly ambitious romantic, slightly expensive…independent film. A number of directors have courted this project and right now Trish Sie who directed all those wonderful OkGo viral movies is the latest suitor.
I recently submitted one of my TV pilots. I have written a ton of stuff over the years. I developed, wrote, and sold an adaptation of Kurt Busiek’s award winning comic book Astro City a few years back to Working Title. I am now back on the market with another comic book adaptation for Johnny Depp’s company. I have written 13 films and 5 or 6 pilots. The Odd Symphony is one of my favorites.
A HUGE shout out to yesterday’s mini-contest scene winner. Deanb absolutely NAILED the “show two people fall in love without any dialogue” scene. Head back and sort the comments by “best” to read his killer interpretation of the challenge. Also, Nick Morris finished in second place with a strong emotionally charged scene of his own. You guys exceeded my expectations with this challenge. Congrats!
Genre: Thriller/Anthology (aimed at Netflix/Amazon/HBO, etc)
Logline: When the main suspect commits suicide on the twentieth anniversary of her mother’s disappearance, a woman soon finds out that everything she held true about what happened all those years ago is shattered and she must partner with an unstable Texas Ranger to save her own life and uncover the truth.
Why You Should Read: I grew up in a small Texas town (pop. 2000). After a local woman simply vanished in the ’90’s, I would listen to my dad come in late at night and tell my mother about the case, which he was investigating. The stories were replete with local scoundrels, psychics, and drugs. — Even as I entered adulthood and went on in the world, the case never left my psyche. It’s exacerbated each time I see her daughter, who was a few years younger than me, posting on Facebook each year on the anniversary. — Although the real-life story and my version are vastly different, I still owe the seed being planted, so many years ago, to those late night stories about the case. A case that I feel is hard for me to let go of emotionally, although I have no deep personal connection to any of the parties that were involved.
Writer:Randall Alexander
Details: 63 pages
I’m on a Scriptshadow Reader high right now. Last week’s amateur script was kick ass. The scenes you guys have been writing for the Scriptshadow Lesson series have been awesome. I just feel like the hardcore readers of this site are starting to come into their own. It’s all starting to click.
And it goes to show that this strange code known as screenwriting can be cracked with hard work and perseverance. You target the key areas of the craft (structure, drama, character, dialogue, goals, stakes, urgency, obstacles) and try and master them one by one. Once you have a good feel for all of them and you pick the right concept? You’re going to write something good.
The Remains feels like it’s going to continue the hot streak. The script won a lot of fans over last Saturday, and Randall’s passion for the material ensured that we weren’t going to get some run-of-the-mill AMC clone. Let’s check it out!
Trina Littlejohn is 30 and has a beautiful young daughter and a brother she loves more than anything. But Trina’s been carrying a monkey on her back since she was a child. Her mother disappeared 20 years ago and she’s convinced that her neighbor, Red, killed her.
This has caused a really awkward 20 years in the community as Trina and her brother, Jesse, have dedicated their lives to making Red’s life hell. And when Jesse is released from his latest stint in prison for beating the shit out of Red, he and Trina are shocked to find that Red has hanged himself.
Trina has mixed feelings about this. Yeah, the asshole’s finally dead, but now he’ll never be able to tell them where he buried their mom.
As if that isn’t frustrating enough, there’s a new cop in town, Shane Webb, a Texas Ranger who isn’t buying into this whole suicide scenario. I mean, what suicide victim handcuffs himself before a hanging? Is that even physically possible?
Maybe what Trina’s really afraid of is if Shane is right. What if someone framed Red’s suicide? And if that’s the case, why did they do it? Could it be to stop Trina from looking into her mother’s disappearance. Could it be to stop her from finding out what really happened that day?
The Remains is like a lot of scripts I read. It’s really good in places. And not so good in others. This is the issue that holds back a lot of “almost there” writers.
Inconsistency.
It’s no different at the top of any profession. What’s the difference between Joe Benchwarmer and Lebron James? Joe Benchwarmer can occasionally throw down the dunk to end all dunks. But he can’t do it consistently. Lebron James is able to do it every single night.
A script isn’t going anywhere if you write a great opening scene, followed by two decent scenes, followed by three not-so-good scenes, followed by another good scene, followed by a bad scene… You have to bring it scene-in and scene-out.
The Remains starts off great. Our main character has stashed someone in her trunk and is driving him somewhere to kill him. All the while, she’s giving us a smoothly constructed voice-over of who she is and what’s most important to her. I’d give this scene an “A.”
But then things get clunky when we realize (I think) that the opening scene was a flash-forward. And quickly after bouncing back to the present, we get a flashback scene (to Trina’s childhood). One of the reasons I dislike flashbacks is because they ask the reader to split their brain in two. On one side, they’re told to keep up with the present-day storyline, and on the other, they’re told to keep up with the past storyline.
Things get even more complicated with every new time frame you add. And that’s what happened here. My mind started doing somersaults trying to figure out where we were. And when you’re telling a story, the last thing you want your reader expending energy on is “Where are we again?”
Also, once you get into three-timeline territory, you’re presenting the possibility of four, five, six, seven timelines. Where does the time-jumping end? Your reader doesn’t know. And when they don’t know, they start wondering where they are.
I’ll give you an example. The movie starts with Trina drilling into our heads how important family is. So when Jesse gets out of prison, why isn’t Trina picking him up???? Trina has pretty much been YELLING AT US for the past five pages how important family is, yet she doesn’t pick up her only brother from prison??
For this reason, I assumed we had to be in a fourth timeline where Trina couldn’t pick Jesse up for some reason. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you start fucking around with multiple timeline trickery. Our answer to confusion is, “Oh, we must be in another timeline.”
After that, the script starts to pick back up. Randall lets us in on all the valuable pieces of information he’s been keeping from us (who is this woman everyone keeps talking about? who is this man Trina keeps screaming at?) but by that point, I was so frustrated with how much energy I had to expend just to keep up with basic plot points, I’d checked out.
And it’s too bad, because the pilot does set up an intriguing mystery. And the characters were really well-developed and given the kind of depth required for a long-running TV series. But we have a simple story here that was muddled up due to too many bells and whistles.
Now whether those bells and whistles could work with a “clarity rewrite” or they need to be ditched altogether, I can’t say. I’d need to see the clearer version first. But I do believe the lesson of the day is one I’ve droned on about for years now: You go down Complex Avenue and you’re asking for trouble. Keep it here on Simple Street.
Script link: The Remains
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s a fine line between being clever and being too cute. Time-jumping is fun. Keeping important details from the audience for extended periods of time is fun. But if you go overboard with those sorts of things, you’re no longer serving the story. You’re serving yourself. Stop trying to be too cute and just tell your story.
