One of the biggest short story sales of 2023!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: An American negotiator in London is called in to help deal with a unique situation – a construction worker is stuck on top of an old World War 2 bomb, which could detonate in response to the slightest movement.
About: This is the big flashy short story sale that happened recently, which landed Ridley Freaking Scott as director. Ridley Scott, who’s making Gladiator movies, for goodness sake, is not easy to lock down into a director role, especially at 85, when he only has so many bites at the apple left. So to say my anticipation levels for this one are soaring would be an understatement.
Writer: Kevin McMullin
Details: 5250 words. I know this because the writer tells us that on the first page. Will this now become the standard for short stories? (An average script is 22,000 words)

I have one question for you. Are you on the short story train yet?

Cause the train is moving people. It’s zipping and zapping its way around Hollywood – down through Culver City into the Sony Lot, up Highland before stopping at Paramount, over to Pico to give all the Fox Studio execs high fives, before muscling up the 101 into the Valley to visit all the valley girl studios.

Someone asked me the other day, “Is the spec script dead?” I said, “No! It’s just morphed into the spec short story.” And here’s the trick that writers are starting to get wise to – when you send your short story out there, you sell it with the stipulation that you get to write the first draft. Which means – if you’re paying attention – you ARE selling a spec script. You’re actually selling it before it’s written. Which means you’re a screenwriting time machine. That’s so much cooler than being a boring spec script writer.

Fear not, script purists. The short story craze does not mean you should drop all your screenwriting aspirations. The industry still needs screenwriters. They can’t live without them. So you should still be writing scripts that wow people so that you can get hired to write all those other projects Hollywood wants to make.

Today, however, we’re doing another short story dance. So throw on your dance shoes and join me. I’ll lead.

American Francis Ipolito, a negotiator, is getting married in the UK over the weekend. He’s staying alone in his hotel room the night before the wedding. That is until his best friend and best man, FBI officer Dwight, calls him and tells him to check the news. Francis does and sees that Piccadilly Circus (London’s Times Square) is cleared out.

In a dug-up construction area, a construction worker is standing on top of an old World War 2 bomb. These bombs are known to be delicate. Even the slightest move could detonate them. So the man is frozen. Less than ten minutes later, a UK government official shows up at Francis’s hotel and says to come with him. Francis says, “Only if my buddy Dwight can join me.”

Once at the bomb site, Ministry of Defense Aoife Greggor tells Dwight to beat it and informs Francis that the whole World War 2 bomb thing was a lie. They put that out there for the press. The real deal is that the construction worker BUILT THIS GIANT BOMB he’s standing on top of and has demanded to talk with Francis.

Francis heads over to the Piccadilly construction site, with no idea of who this dude is, only to learn that he’s his fiancé’s ex-husband! Francis is called back to base, where he’s then informed that his buddy, Dwight, was given clearance to join a UK reconnaissance team charged with clearing the surrounding buildings.

Their first building they’re clearing is actually the one Dwight happened to be staying in via Air BnB. Francis freaks out, tells them to get the team out of there as soon as possible. But it’s too late. We hear a big BOOOOM. Dwight is now dead from a second bomb that the bomber planted earlier. Francis turns to Aoife: ‘How many bombs are there?’ The End.

I kid you not. That’s the end of the story.

I sensed something was off with this one right away.

The writing was clunkier than a ride in a square-wheeled wagon. I was constantly having to go back and re-read things to properly understand them. Even then, I didn’t always get what had been written.

This caused me to lose confidence in the writer as the story went on. For that reason, I knew it wasn’t going to deliver. But what I didn’t know was how spectacularly it would fail to deliver. I mean this isn’t just a bad short story. This is bad everything.

I don’t want to be mean because it isn’t the writer’s fault that his story sold and nabbed one of the best directors in the business. But with that success, readers are going to go into this with high expectations. And man, let me tell, this is not the kind of story you want people reading with high expectations. You want them going in with subterranean expectations. Even then, though, they’ll be disappointed.

Let me give you an example of how bad the writing is. It’s late in the story. There are a few pages left. Francis has just come back from talking to the bomber dude and asks Aoife where Dwight is.

Aofie, who mind you hated Dwight and was trying to get rid of him since the second he showed up, informs Francis that Dwight has joined the British reconnaissance team. Even if we stopped there, that’s terrible writing. There’s no way any British service is going to have some random off-duty American FBI guy join their team on the spot. Also, you’ve set up that the Ministry of Defense hated this guy. So why would she allow him to join one of her teams?? In less than five minutes no less!!????

But it gets worse!

Aofie tells Francis that the team is investigating a building nearby, a building that just so happens to ALSO be the AirBnb apartment Dwight is staying at. In that moment, Francis realizes that this was all part of the bomber’s plan. So he tells Aofie to get the men out of that building as quickly as possible. But before they can act, the building blows up from a DIFFERENT BOMB the bomber planted earlier, and Dwight is dead.

Think about that for a second. The number of hoops we need to jump through for this to make sense is astounding.

In order for the bomber’s plan to work, he would’ve had to secretly set up a bomb weeks ago below Dwight’s AirBnB building AND THEN, since Dwight wasn’t actually at the building, the writer needed to construct a scenario by which the British bomb team recruited Dwight on the spot, and then, of the hundreds of surrounding buildings they could’ve gone to, the writer made the team coincidentally go to Dwight’s AirBnB building, so that the bomber could kill him.

All of this was done via a payoff THAT WAS NEVER SET UP. Because we didn’t even know about any other bombs until the second one blew up. So none of it feels earned or realistic. It’s the kind of sloppy writing that even low-level Hollywood execs don’t let fly.

Everywhere you look in this story, it’s bad. There are no positive attributes at all other than it’s sort-of high concept. It was one of those situations where I actually thought I got duped – that someone sent me the wrong “Bomb” story. That’s how ugly it got.

This begs the question. If this story is so bad, why was it purchased? One of the frustrating things I’ve learned about Hollywood is that every working individual has their specific movies that THEY WANT TO MAKE. Only that person and their close friends know what those movies are. We, outside the business, don’t know what they are. So we can’t write the script that Denzel Washington is desperate to make or pitch the movie Jacob Elordi has wanted to be in since he was five.

I suspect that Ridley Scott really wanted to make a negotiator movie or a bomb movie and this came across his desk. Boom. That’s it. He was in because this is the exact type of movie he wants to make right now. And make no mistake, after he lets McMullin write his contract-guaranteed first draft, he will bring in a much more established screenwriter to write a version of this that actually makes sense. Cause if he goes with this version, it will be one of his worst movies ever.

Of all the short story sales I’ve seen so far, this is by far the worst.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned 2: Is getting married a short story sale hack? This is the second big sale in a row (the last was Run For Your Life) where an impending wedding was the centerpiece. Weddings give you ticking time bombs and heightened emotions, both of which create more drama. Not saying you SHOULD use a wedding. But there’s clearly something to it.

I want to take yet another opportunity to convince the unconvinced that Wonka is a great movie. It’s REALLY good, guys. I think ALL screenwriters should watch this movie SPECIFICALLY if you like writing big-budget stories. Writing big-budget screenplays is the most unfulfilling job there is for a screenwriter because the studios don’t let you do anything. You have to stay very close to formula and any creative risk you take, they force you back towards the middle.

The only time I’ve seen studios let writers loose on 9 figure budgets was with Marvel. When Marvel was hitting a home run every time out, the development oversight got less and less rigorous. They felt the script didn’t even matter at that point. That gifted us the awesome Thor: Ragnarok. Of course, that leniency ended up doing them in because then we got The Eternals, Doctor Strange 2 and Thor: Love and Thunder, big screenplays that took lots of creative risks, many of which failed.

Wonka doesn’t take any gigantic risks but it takes all these smaller ones and knocks every single one of them out of the park. For example, a weaker screenwriter would’ve brought Wonka into town and had him stay at a random cinematically beautiful apartment while he attempted to build his chocolate empire. Good screenwriters know that there’s no conflict in that. You’re not pressuring your hero enough.

So King invents this nifty idea where Wonka gets trapped inside this evil Inn that he’s never allowed to leave. This creates a dramatic question that injects constant conflict into the story. If Wonka can never leave, how does he build his empire? The answer is he has to get creative. He has to find ways to escape. He has to find ways to get all his work done even though he’s snuck out all day. All of this creates a much more robust and active storyline where pressure is constantly being placed on the hero.

Pro Tip: The more pressure you can place on your hero, the better.

Wonka nails every single one of its subplots as well. In most of the scripts I read, the subplots are filler. You can tell that the writer doesn’t really care about them. They know they need to fill up space and, therefore, they add the requisite number of subplots to do so. Good writers don’t write subplots to fill up space. They write them because they care about them. A character subplot may not be as big as a protagonist subplot. But it can be just as fulfilling.

That’s what we get with Noodle’s storyline. It’s a story we’ve seen a million times before. A kid is searching for direction in the absence of having a mother or father.  But there’s something about the way King writes where he gets us invested in these characters no matter how familiar their storylines are. Here, he makes Noodle likable in such a simple way. Noodle’s entrance into the story has her trying to warn Wonka away from this Inn. That’s the thing about likability. It’s often created within simple actions. If you have someone trying to help our hero, we’re obviously going to like them!

But it isn’t just that with Noodle. It’s finding the perfect balance between sad but not so sad that we don’t want to be around her. Cause that can happen. You create a character who’s in a bad situation in life and they’re such a downer about it that we get annoyed by them. Noodle is sad because she doesn’t have parents and she’s stuck in this Inn. But she’s still upbeat and game for doing anything exciting, which is how she forms her friendship with the more risk-taking Willy.

Go see this movie, people.  It’s got like a million screenwriting lessons in it.

The other movie that’s surprising people with its longevity is Anything But You. Hollywood is DYING for the rom-com to make a comeback. They’re so cheap to make that a revival would print money for th industry.  So why haven’t they made a comeback yet? Kate Hudson has a theory. She made headlines recently for saying that male actors don’t want to be in rom-coms. Rom-coms aren’t “cool.” There may be some truth to that. The only way to make these now is to identify a very particular type of actor – one who MIGHT become a star but there’s just as much of a chance that he’ll amount to nothing.  You take a chance on them hoping female audiences like him enough that your movie becomes a rare hit.  I’m sorry but you’re not going to get Paul Mescal or Jacob Elordi in your rom-com because they’re shooting towards stardom.  They’re not interested in light and fluffy.  But you might get Glen Powell.  He was in the biggest movie of the year a couple of years ago, Top Gun: Maverick.  He just wasn’t the star.  So you take a chance on him and hope he delivers.

And it worked. Because Anyone But You has now taken in 43 million dollars. That’s A LOT for a romantic comedy in 2024. A LOT. Not only that, but its ticket sales went UP from the previous weekend (10 million). No other movie came close to that other than The Iron Claw, and for that movie it was easier cause it’s not making nearly as much money overall. Throw in a big side salad of Sydney Sweeney and you’ve got a formula for success.

As for this Night Swim movie, I have mixed feelings about it. Night Swim finished in second place this weekend, behind Wonka, with 12 million bucks. The movie will turn a profit. I mean all they had to pay for was a swimming pool, right?  How much does it cost to rent a swimming pool for 2 weeks? 200 bucks a day? Times 14. 2800 bucks. That’s how much this movie cost to make – $2800. So it’s already up $11,997,200.

Here’s the thing, though. On the surface, this looks like a stupid idea. They built an entire movie around a pool. M. Night Shalayhamn could’ve taught these guys a thing or two about what happens when you do that. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything has been done in horror. You have to take chances with your concepts if you have any shot at standing out. You can’t have killer dolls all the time. The nice thing about Blumhouse’s model is that you can take chances on concepts like this.

They took that shot and it’s going to make them money. It’s not going to be a hit. Blumhouse won’t be threatening the town with the prequel to this one, “Luke Warm Jacuzzi,” or a sequel, “Olympic Sized Pool Grand Reopening,” or a spinoff, “Old People With Questionable Bladder Doing Laps.” If anyone’s going to do a pool sequel, they need to go back 200 years to find out what resulted in that Native American graveyard in Poltergeist. But Night Swim is going to keep Blumhouse’s lights on for a month or two, giving them time to find their next M3GAN or Get Out.

The lesson from this weekend’s box office is my favorite lesson to regurgitate: A great script pays off. When Wonka opened to mild box office numbers, everyone wrote it off (including me). But the movie is SO WELL WRITTEN that everyone is telling everyone else how good it is. That is 100% because of the script. So keep writing, people. Cause if you do, there’s no reason why this kind of success can’t happen to you.

Wanted to get this on everyone’s radar. We have the first Logline Showdown of the year in three weeks (edit: old post – it’s on the 25th)! I want to get as many entries in as possible so we can find a truly great script. If you haven’t done a logline showdown yet, here’s how it works. You send me your title, genre, and logline. I pick the five best loglines I receive. I place them up here on the site. And you, the readers, vote for your favorite. The winner gets a script review the following week, and all the accolades that potentially come with it. One of the recent winners, Last to Live, got his script optioned. This is how scripts get discovered in the modern age, people. So stop being a scaredy-cat and let’s see what you’ve got!

What: January Logline Showdown
Deadline: Thursday, January 24th, 10pm Pacific Time
Send me: Title, Genre, Logline
You can send: feature scripts, short stories, or pilots
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Prize: Winner gets a script review the following week!

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Premise: A corporate spy poses as a personal chef to the disgraced founder of a neuroprosthetics firm in order to steal his seismic-shifting new invention from his secluded villa in Greece.
About: This script finished number FOUR on the most recent Black List, a list of the best scripts in Hollywood. Unlike a lot of the Black List writers, Colin Liddle does have a produced credit to his name. He penned an episode of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels.
Writer: Colin Liddle
Details: 117 pages

I’m not sure what you’d call this sub-genre but I know it’s growing in popularity. The idea is to send a “normal” person into the home/compound of a much more powerful person and then explore the dynamic between the two in an entertaining way.

This was the setup for Ex Machina. It was also the setup for two of last year’s Black List scripts, one where a rookie quarterback goes to train with a Tom Brady-like character and another where a nanny goes to work for a female CEO on her remote island home.

I like the setup but both that Tom Brady and Nanny script showed me that it’s harder to pull off than you think. Both those scripts limped to the finish line. Ex Machina had a few extra elements in its arsenal to play with, which is why it was able to finish strong.

Let’s see how Head Games finishes.

Jacob Dalton is in his late 20s and is an impeccable rising chef. In fact, he just got invited to work with a world-renowned chef, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But then tech billionaire Graham Caldwell, one of Dalton’s customers at his cafe, offers him a job to be his private chef in his Greek villa. The money is too big to turn down so Jacob says yes.

But just as we arrive in the villa, we’re given shocking information. Jacob is secretly working for Niles Caldwell, Graham’s son, who runs his own tech company. Graham, apparently, is working on some game-changing brain tech and Niles wants Jacob to steal it. It turns out they’ve been working on this plan for months. Jacob went off and learned how to be a great chef then got hired at the one cafe Niles knew his father went to. After months of Jacob blowing Graham away with his cooking, Graham decided to hire him, setting the rest of the plan in motion.

Once at Graham’s villa, Jacob realizes his job is going to be a lot more complicated than he thought. There are cameras everywhere so he can’t just sneak into Graham’s office and swipe a jump drive. He’s going to have to build more trust with Graham and look for another way in.

As this trust-tree process is happening, Jacob learns more about what Graham is working on. Graham has created a way to physically experience memories. So instead of just remembering that great date you had, Graham can make it seem like you are right back in that moment. When Graham shows Jacob the power of this by allowing him to relive a moment with his deceased father, Jacob is shocked.

But it turns out that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The technology can be used for much more nefarious purposes, such as mind-control. You think you see things. You think you’re doing things. But it’s all just manipulation by a puppeteer. When Jacob becomes hip to the likelihood that Graham is controlling him, he has to do the impossible: get out of here despite someone controlling his every thought.

Not long ago, I consulted on an amateur screenplay that had a very distinct issue. It made you work too hard for your meal. It wasn’t a bad screenplay by any means. But the amount of description and setup you had to push through in order to get to the payoffs, get to the good scenes, get to the meat and the climax, was A LOT. This script felt similar to that.

It’s a fun premise. But there are too many scenes describing character actions and listening to characters talk to each other… that don’t push the story forward enough. This is a little-talked about aspect of screenwriting. One of the first things we learn is that every scene must PUSH THE STORY FORWARD. Wherever the characters are trying to go, at the end of the scene, we should feel closer to that destination.

But what nobody talks about is that a scene can push the story forward 3 feet or 3 inches. If your scene is only pushing the story forward 3 inches, it’s not doing enough to keep the narrative active. It’s better than not moving the story forward at all but I read too many scenes in this script with Jacob and Graham talking to each other where, after the scene was over, it felt like we’d barely moved

[example pages removed at request]

This is what I mean when I say, you’re making us do a lot of work for not a lot of reward. The reader needs to be rewarded to want to keep reading. If you’re not consistently providing us with captivating mysteries, interesting unresolved relationships, and satisfying payoffs to earlier setups, we’re going to get restless.

What’s odd about this script is that it should still work better than it does despite these issues. It has a classic dramatically ironic setup at its core. Our hero is going into a scenario undercover to steal something. We know this. And we also know that the antagonist, Graham, *doesn’t* know this. This means we have superior knowledge over Graham, which should provide a level of suspense every time the two chat.

The thing about dramatic irony is it always works better when we know that the hero is in trouble but the hero doesn’t know this (think John McClane when he runs into Hans at the top of the building in Die Hard). In Head Games, it’s the antagonist who’s “in trouble.” So we don’t feel that same worry as we do when it’s the hero in danger.

Dramatically ironic antagonist situations can work but they often require our hero to still be in danger if discovered. For example, if we’re following an FBI agent who infiltrates a gang – that’s a situation where if he gets found out, he’s dead. So the stakes are much higher. Here, if Jacob is found out, it feels like he’s going to get a very angry scolding. That changes *a little bit* in the third act when major reveals up the ante. But it’s too little too late.

A few of you probably spotted some other issues as well, such as the fact that what our hero had to do to get into Graham’s home was mimic a world-class chef. As if learning how to cook Michelin-star-level meals was easy. Pretty sure it takes most chefs 15 years before they can cook a meal that blows the most discerning people in the world away. Also, building a plan around hoping someone hires you to be their personal chef is not a very good plan.

In the end, this script reminded me of a very specific movie, the 2001 film, “Antitrust,” starring Ryan Phillipe and Tim Robbins. It had the same young-old cat-and-mouse technological slant to it. But just like that movie, it never did anything strong enough to grab you and pull you in. It was all just a little too light and airy. For that reason, this wasn’t for me.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you come up with your hero’s plan, you don’t want that plan to contain parts that rest on SOMEONE ELSE doing something YOUR HERO HAS NO CONTROL OVER. That’s why the “Graham hires Jacob as his personal chef” part doesn’t ring true. Nobody in the real world would build a plan around that cause they have no control over it. In general, your hero should control their own destiny – or at least be attempting to. If they’re ever hoping for a coincidence in order to succeed, you haven’t constructed their plan correctly.

Is today’s script “The Player” for Gen Z?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: After passing on a hot new screenplay, a studio executive finds himself trapped as the protagonist inside the film and must regain control before the credits roll.
About: This script finished NUMBER 3 on the most recent Black List.
Writer: Jordan Rosenbloom
Details: 111 pages

Cooper needs a snazzy fun script after the dudtopolis that was Maestro.

“Bad Boy” has set a high bar for the 2023 Black List. I’m doubtful that any script can top it. Oh, and if you’re wondering why I’m jumping from the number 1 script to the number 3 script today, it’s because I’ve already reviewed script number 2! It’s called Stakehorse and you can check out my review here.

As for “Spoiler,” I knew nothing about it going in. Yes, I do those Black List logline breakdowns in my annual Black List Logline Assessment post. But I’ve forgotten almost every script since then. That’s the way I like it. I enjoy going into a script as blind as a bat. It gives me the best chance of being surprised.

Sam Feldstein is a 40-something executive at Silverhead Studios. Sam is about to be named the new head of that studio. At least, that was the plan BEFORE his latest movie, “Captain Queer,” plunged to a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes the morning after the Thursday evening showings. It’s looking like the 200 million dollar movie is going to suffer an Aquaman 2-like weekend.

Sam tries to ignore this while taking a breakfast meeting with the hottest writer in town, “The Kid.” The 20-something “Kid” is all the rage and boy is he eating up the attention. Which, of course, makes Sam’s breakfast with him insufferable. Less than five minutes into The Kid’s pitch for his next movie, Sam tells him to F-off. He’s too douchey for Sam to handle. As far as he’s concerned, Silverhead will never work with this guy.

But before Sam leaves, The Kid makes him take his latest screenplay, and informs him that he WILL read it. Sam throws it back at him and heads to work. Once there, we get bits and pieces about this Captain Queer movie, which stars a young actor named Rocky Jones, who the married Sam had a secret affair with during production. Now, he wants nothing to do with Rocky. ESPECIALLY with the movie underperforming.

When Sam finally makes it to his office, he’s shocked to find that The Kid’s script is waiting for him. Annoyed, he rears back to toss it in the garbage, but out of curiosity, reads the first few pages. And the first few pages include Sam as a character. In fact, the first ten pages are the exact same meeting, word for word, that he had with The Kid earlier.

Convinced this is a sick joke, Sam asks his assistant if she’s seen anything suspicious, only to be told that he doesn’t look okay. When Sam delves further into the script, he’s horrified to see that EVERYTHING that has happened so far in his day IS IN THIS SCRIPT. Determined to find out what’s going on, he barrels into the city to search for The Kid.

When he finally finds him, The Kid comes clean. Sam is not a real person. “What did you do before breakfast today?” The Kid asks him. Sam racks his brain. He can’t remember. “That’s because you didn’t exist before that breakfast. I created you.” Horrified, Sam’s brain starts spinning. That can’t possibly be true. But the further into the day he gets, and the more of the script he reads, he comes to the realization that he is, indeed, a figment of The Kid’s imagination. Which means that when this movie is over, Sam is over. Can Sam find a way out? Or is this the one Hollywood problem he won’t be able to solve?

These scripts always work best on readers who’ve never read them before – these meta “what’s real, what isn’t” living-in-a-movie-or-a-video-game-or-a-book screenplays. But I’ve read a lot of them. So my bar is higher than most. Taking everything into consideration, I thought Rosenbloom’s take was pretty good. But it’s clear that the writer isn’t aiming for “pretty good.” He’s aiming for great.

Here’s the catch with these scripts – once we get used to the gimmick, the script has to deliver on a plot and character level, aka, the same level any other script has to deliver on. Without being able to lean on the wacky meta x-factor to carry the reader’s interest, can the script still be entertaining?

I’ll say this: Rosenbloom gives it his best shot. He is trying to say something here, both with the character of Sam (a man who’s abandoned his family for his work) and with life itself (ya blink and it’s over). I’m just not sure it was presented in a way that changed the game for me. It walked right up to the line of profound but then stepped back and retreated. Yeah, when the movie cuts to black, his life is over… okay. But I’m still sitting there saying, “So what?” Who is Sam? He’s a workaholic borderline a-hole executive. There’s nothing likable about him. I don’t care if he dies.

That’s not to say there weren’t things to enjoy. I liked how the script lures you into a sense of normalcy with its real-time first act, only to then shock the heck out of you later on, when the story starts jump-cutting. When we go that breakfast meeting, drive to the studio, head into work, it’s all happening in real time. Therefore, when the CUTS start happening, they hit us hard. Sam is in his office one second and then – BAM – he’s at a party. For a movie, this is normal. But imagine being a person in a movie and jumping from scene to scene with nothing in between. It’d be terrifying. And that’s exactly what it is for Sam.

I also loved that opening scene. All it is is a ten page breakfast scene. But the dialogue is strong and Rosenbloom does a good job building the tension. It starts off so casual but then the importance of what’s happening becomes more and more evident and The Kid becomes this, almost, ethereal figure, as he imposes upon Sam to read his script at all costs. By the end of that scene, I wanted to keep reading.

Sam’s backstory also had some nice moments that intersected nicely with the plot. You had this movie that was tanking on its opening weekend. We then reveal that Sam was sleeping with the star. The star, who’s mentally unwell, is stalking Sam, begging to be in his next movie. He then kills himself which, ironically, pumps up interest in the movie. So now Captain Queer is going to be a hit. That kind of plotting isn’t easy to pull off in such a tight space but I thought Rosenbloom did it well.

I was also impressed by how Rosenbloom rode this line between criticizing and championing the industry. “Captain Queer” is obviously a dig at Hollywood’s obsession with wokeness. Yet Rosenbloom plays it straight (no pun intended). He never makes a big deal out of the ridiculousness of the film’s subject matter.

They say to never write a script about the industry. I have an addendum to that. Never write a script about the industry UNLESS YOU’RE IN THE INDUSTRY. Because if you’re in the industry, you can inject the requisite specificity required to sell this world. I don’t know anything about Jordan Rosenbloom but I’d be surprised if he didn’t work in the industry in some capacity. There’s enough specificity here that I believed in his world.

I still think if you’re going to dip your toes into the fourth-wall-breaking meta movie-verse, your entry point should be “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.” That’s the best I’ve seen tackle this subject matter. But I’ve never seen anyone master it. It’s insanely hard. Still, Spoiler does a decent job.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: It’s easy for these meta concepts to go off the rails. So I always recommend containing the story in as many other ways as possible. That way, even though you have this meta-weirdness going on, it’s still easy for the reader to keep up with the plot. That’s exactly what Rosenbloom does here by restricting this timeline to a single day (with a minor caveat at the end). By keeping everything in the here and now, it makes the weirdness easier to navigate.