Congrats to Paul Schellens! Who yesterday won the “Introductory Character Scene” Contest. Really good scene – did everything I asked for. Was even clever enough to use a scene I’d previously suggested, which always gets you points. :) Nice job, Paul!
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Premise: After accepting a gig to craft a demon mask, a makeup effects artist must protect her and her daughter from her abusive husband and the sinister forces that stalk them.
Why You Should Read: I’m not a mother but I want to be (eventually). I also want to be a paid screenwriter, proficient Japanese speaker, dog owner and in another life, Cirque du Soleil performer. What most people know (especially in this industry), is it’s really hard to find balance and sometimes you must sacrifice something to get your heart’s desire.
Besides that idea, I wanted to pair movie horror with the real horror of domestic violence. I researched, googled and trolled forums to craft my story. It wasn’t until after a reading when a woman approached me that I realized I was telling her story. It hurt to hear her share her accounts of abuse that she’d mostly kept to herself. I hope if anything this story inspires people to take control of their own lives.
Details: 103 pages (updated draft from last week)
Guys, I’ve been doing this for awhile now. So please stop. Stop trying to game the system. It’s not just a bad idea here at Scriptshadow. It’s a bad idea for your pursuit of success in this business. If your script didn’t get the requisite number of votes to win a review, read the comments and figure out what the problems were. This is one of the only places on the internet where you can do that. So take advantage of it.
I love self-promotion. It’s a huge under-talked-about element of this business. But self-promotion cannot prop up subpar writing. You have to get the writing part down before you blitz the world with your work. But how do you know when you’re ready, you ask. That’s a bit harder to determine. But Scriptshadow is a great place to start. If legitimate people aren’t voting for your script and if those same people are agreeing on common issues, accept that you have some work to do and then go get the work done. There are no shortcuts here. So stop trying to create them.
Okay, I don’t want to take away the spotlight from the true winner the week, Devil’s Workshop, so let’s get to it! Note that I’m reading a newer draft than the one you guys read, I’m guessing because Katherine incorporated a few of your suggestions.
Serena Berkin is in an abusive relationship in every sense of the word. At the center of the abuse is her husband’s, Isaac, desire to have a child, something Serena has been secretly preventing by taking birth control pills.
But when Isaac discovers her secret, he eliminates that problem and the two end up having a daughter. Flash forward nine years where the bulk of our story takes place. Serena is now a struggling make-up artist secretly using the money she makes from jobs to save up so she and her daughter, Charlotte, can get out of this dungeon of a marriage.
So Serena takes a job on a low-budget film that needs a demon character quickly. As she starts creating this demon, strange things start happening around the house, such as Charlotte talking to people when no one is around and waking up with strange bruises on her body.
At first Serena assumes that the culprit is Isaac. But when Isaac is sent to jail, Serena notices that Charlotte’s strange behavior and mysterious injuries continue. In comes Isaac’s mother, a rich old hag who would stick up for her son if she found out he was one of the 9/11 terrorists. She’s convinced that it’s Serena abusing the child, and begins proceedings to gain custody of Charlotte.
In the meantime, as Serena continues to create this monster, stranger and stranger things begin happening, such as the actor cast to play the demon taking on the persona of the monster when he wears the suit. Is he just method acting? Or could this be something more?
Serena holds off on the assumption that this suit could actually be demonic until the evidence is too strong to ignore. But by that time, there are so many people closing in on her, trying to steal the daughter she, ironically, never wanted in the first place, that this demon may be the least of her worries.
Wow, this was a good script!
I really only have one major complaint, and it’s the opening scene. The scene shows our main character, Serena, secretly taking birth control pills, her husband discovering her, and then him pinning her against the wall. We then see: “9 YEARS LATER.”
I bring this up because I see it a lot. The starting-off-with-a-flashback scene that isn’t big enough to necessitate a major time jump afterwards. Look, it’s a good scene. Our main character is discovered pulling off some shady shit by her abusive husband.
But that’s not a “CUT TO 9 YEARS LATER” opening scene. If you’re going to cut to 9 years later, you have to hit us with something huge in that opener. Somebody needs to die. Something utterly unforgettable needs to happen.
A couple of weeks ago we had “American Witch,” which started with a group of people carrying a witch into the caves and burying her alive as she stuck an acorn up her vagina which we then watched grow over the next 100 years. THAT’S a scene worthy of jumping forward in time after. This is just a normal well-written scene.
But after that, the script gets good. Katherine does a really nice job of building an emotional core into her story. Sure, this is about a demon suit that may or may not be associated with the devil. But it’s also about a woman who’s trying to protect her child from an abusive husband.
And what’s cool about The Devil’s Workshop is that it isn’t straightforward. It’s not black and white. I loved that this is a daughter Serena never wanted. And now, ironically, she’ll do anything to protect said daughter against the man who DID want her.
Another thing I want to touch on is originality. Look, we’re all trying to come up with that premise that nobody’s heard of before. That’s what turns heads in Hollywood. But it’s hard to find anything original when you’re competing against 100 years of film.
Lucky for writers, there’s a “next best thing.” Which is a world or a job that not many people know about. In this case, that’s a make-up artist. The reason this still works is because a lot of what you’re going to be writing about are things that the average person doesn’t know about. Which means your script is going to feel “new” and “fresh.” And that’s exactly how I felt here. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of horror films like this. But not from a make-up artist’s point of view. So that was fun.
Katherine wraps all this up by writing about something she cares about, that she’s emotionally invested in – abuse and the power of standing up to it, of getting out of it. Never underestimate the power of something you care deeply about. It comes out in the writing and it turns your script from just another horror flick or just another thriller flick, into something that hits people on a gut level. And that’s how you write a screenplay that stays with someone. You hit’em in the gut.
I really liked this. The only other change I’d suggest is possibly making Isaac more three-dimensional. You want to be careful not to make your villains too villain-y. Isaac coming home and calling his wife’s make-up work garbage is a bit on-the nose. What if that’s what he loved about her? Her artistry? That would make him even more fucked up that he’d be able to go from that to beating her.
Just a thought. But in the end, these problems were minor compared to the script’s strengths.
Script link (new draft): The Devil’s Workshop
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Everybody says, “Write what you know,” but then you have writers who all they do is play video games all day, so they write about a character who plays video games all day. “Write what you know!” they defend their script with. Uhh, no not really.
So today, I’m going to make two addendums to this famous piece of advice.
1) Write about the most interesting thing you know.
2) Package your “write what you know” idea inside a marketable premise or genre.
Let’s say you’re a housewife. You could write a story about being a houswife because you know it well. But is there enough to work with there? Is it that interesting? Probably not. But being a make-up artist? That’s a pretty unique job with some potentially interesting avenues to explore. I’d pick that over a housewife in a second.
Next, create a marketable component around your “write what you know” subject matter. For example, Katherine could’ve written a drama about a make-up artist who’s in a custody battle with her child. But that’s not going to sell tickets. Instead, she placed her subject matter in one of the most marketable genres in the movie business – horror. And the result is something that could actually be a movie. Well done!
One of the most important scenes in a script is your protagonist’s introductory scene. I can’t stress this enough. One of the biggest mistakes new screenwriters make is not conveying who their protagonist is in that opening scene and not showing us why they’re a character we should be interested in.
You can have a great story and be excellent at plotting and dialogue and lots of other things. But if your main character is uninteresting, vague, unappealing, or just plain boring, it doesn’t matter.
This isn’t just true in movies. It’s true in real life. Have you ever gone to a party and started talking to someone only to find out they’re the most boring person in the universe? You don’t want to keep talking to that person, do you? You want to find someone who’s more interesting!
Obviously then, getting that introductory scene right starts long before you write it. After constructing your premise, you should make sure you have an interesting/unique protagonist to drive that premise.
Once you have that, you will use your first scene to highlight that uniqueness. If your main character is mysterious, have them be mysterious. If your main character is a chatterbox, open with them chattering. If your main character is weird, open with them doing something weird.
Note this isn’t just about creating quirky characters that would serve as Charlie Kaufman masturbation material. “Interesting” could mean someone who’s passionate, energetic, charming, or a number of other things.
Let’s take a look at recent Academy Award winner, Leonardo DiCaprio, in his most famous film, Titanic. We meet him betting everything on a poker game. That tells us everything we need to know about this guy. He lives life by the seat of his pants and goes wherever it takes him.
Next, you want to convey what a character’s ISSUE is. By issue I mean what’s plaguing their life at the moment, making things sucky? In Star Wars, Luke’s issue is that he doesn’t want to be on this planet farming any more. He wants to be a pilot, fighting for the Rebellion. Or Neo in The Matrix. We meet Neo alone in his apartment, fallen asleep in front of his computer. This man’s issue is that he lives a boring, lonely, introverted existence (note how in the first example, the main character is aware of his issue, in the second he is not – either approach is fine).
Now here’s where things get juicy. If you want to REALLY do your job, you want to convey in that first scene what your main character’s FLAW is. This will indicate to the audience what your character needs to “fix” to become whole by the end of the movie.
Remember when we were discussing dramatic questions a few weeks ago? And how if you pose a dramatic question, the reader will stick around for the answer? Identifying your main character’s flaw in that first scene works in a similar fashion. Once we see what’s wrong with them, we’ll subconsciously want to stick around to see if they can overcome it. “Close the loop” so to speak.
Now here’s the thing. The “flaw” opener is most prominent in comedy scripts. Like Liar Liar. Jim Carrey DEPENDS on lying. We see that in his opening scene in the courtroom. This tends to be the case because audiences are okay with comedies being over-the-top in conveying important story points.
It’s a lot harder to pull this off in other genres, like drama or science-fiction, because you can’t be too overt about it. For that reason, most writers tend to avoid it and deal with the flaw later on, if at all. I would caution against this. If you can make your main character interesting, identify their issue, AND announce their flaw all in their first scene, you are not only a masterful writer, but you’ll have bought yourself that reader’s eyes for 30 more pages AT LEAST. Readers will want to stick around to see what’s up with that character.
Remember, you’re not always going to be able to pull all three off. Each screenplay has its own unique set of problems. For example, in the Bourne series, Jason Bourne has amnesia and therefore doesn’t remember who he is. How can you establish someone’s flaw if they don’t know who they are? Or in Braveheart, we meet William Wallace before he’s an adult. So you can’t really give him a flaw since his flaw will be born through his experiences growing up. The point being – don’t try to force everything in there if it doesn’t work for your particular story.
But today is different. Today we ARE going to try and pull off all three. So your challenge is to write a scene introducing us to a main character who we a) want to see more of (conveyed through making them interesting/unique in some way), and b) know who he is by the end of the scene (conveyed through issue and flaw).
Upvote the character you MOST want to read more about in the comments section and we’ll give a shout out to the winner tomorrow. Good luck!
First Edit: Okay, not sure if this has sold yet. I thought it sold to Warner Brothers but someone said not true? Can anyone confirm?
Second edit: Wow, just 5 hours after the review was posted, Netflix came in and bought Bright. This is easily going to be their biggest original film yet.
HUUUUUGE spec sale reviewed today folks. And from the most controversial screenwriter working today. Days like this are what Scriptshadow was made for.
Genre: Cop Drama/Fantasy
Premise: In a world where fantasy creatures live alongside humans, a cop and his orc partner stumble upon a magical item so rare, everyone in the city comes after them to get it.
About: This is that super big spec sale that just occurred a few days ago. And yup, you’re correct, it was written by Max Landis. Although this time, Landis has teamed up with David Ayer (who wrote one of my favorite cop movies of all time – Training Day), and his revised draft is the draft I’ll be reading today. Ayer is also planning on directing the film. Lots of folks wanted this one. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.
Writers: Max Landis – Current Revisions by David Ayer
Details: 96 pages – 2/29/16 draft
Here’s a brief through-the-years synopsis of how to sell a spec script:
1990 – Come up with any idea that resembles a movie that could conceivably make money, don’t have to write the actual script, get a million dollars for it.
1996 – Come up with a cool hip indy script with tons of dialogue (note: dialogue does not have to be story-relevant).
1998 – Come up with a “high concept” summer blockbuster idea that likely involves the end of the world.
2003 – Write high-concept horror. Bonus points if there’s a big twist at the end.
2008 – Come up with a cool contained thriller. Anybody trapped in a small location will earn you a sale.
2009 – Anything found-footage. ANYTHING!
2014 – Low-budget horror gets you in like Flynn.
2015 – Biopic Party. Write a script about anybody from any time period who was reasonably famous. Bonus points if World War 2 is mentioned in even a cursory manner.
2016 – Be Max Landis.
Today’s script is going to be interesting because on the one hand, you have Max Landis, the social media rabbel-rouser who’s six months away from having an Amanda Bynes-like public meltdown. On the other you have David Ayer, a screenwriting superstar who’s a writing badass on every level. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but I do know it’s going to be worth talking about.
Scott Ward is a good cop who used to be well-liked until he teamed up with the first orc-cop in the department, Nick Jakoby. There’s tons of tension between humans and orcs in the real world as well as this precinct, and this politically correct hire has pissed a lot of cops off.
Scott and Nick receive a dispatch to check out some gunshots fired in South Central, only to walk into a home and see people dead in ways they’re not supposed to be dead. That’s when Scott sees it. A magic wand! Just lying there. Now magic wands are a big deal in this world. As another cop points out: “You wanna be rich? Tall? Have a bigger dick? Live forever? A magic wand can give you anything.” And it’s just lying there.
The second group of cops on the scene realize just how rare this opportunity is and inform Scott that they’re keeping this motherfucker, and he’s going to stay quiet about it. Not only that, but since his orc partner can’t be trusted, he has to kill him right now.
Scott freaks, and when the moment of truth comes, he spins around and kills the other cops instead. Him and Nick then take the wand and book it into the bowels of South Central, where word quickly spreads that they have a magic wand. And everybody wants that wand.
Latino gangs, Orc gangs, LAPD, the Feds, even private companies are coming after that wand. And let’s not forget that the owner of the wand, the witch, probably has a “find my wand” app on her phone. As Scott and Nick realize that nobody’s playing by the rules anymore, they’ll have to escape South Central and come up with a plan to get the wand into safe hands. That’s assuming there are any safe hands left.
There’s a lot to learn from this script, guys. For starters, what are the scripts that are most likely to sell? We’ve discussed this before so you better know the answer. What? You’ve forgotten??? A fresh take on an established idea. That’s the first thing Landis does with Bright. What’s cool is that this plays out like a typical grimy LA cop drama. But the introduction of orcs and magic and witches and elves – it gives it all an exciting fresh feel.
Next, we have a SIMPLE STORY. How many times have I babbled about this one? If you’re writing a spec, you don’t want to get too complicated. And actually you don’t want to get too cpmlicated with any screenplay you write. You only have 2 hours so keep things basic. Here we have cops who have found a wand and must escape South Central LA without getting killed. Easy-peasy bag of cheesy.
Next, we have the tried-and-true McGuffin setup. One item that all the characters are after. The McGuffin setup is particularly effective when you’re following multiple groups of people in a script. That’s because if you have to create unique goals for 5-6 groups of people in your story, you’re going to spend 10-15 pages of your screenplay dishing out exposition (“We have to go here now so that we can get that thing that will helps us solve that other thing.”).
What a McGuffin does is it takes out all that exposition. Because everyone’s chasing the same thing – the wand! We know that. So when we jump to the Feds or the orc gang or the bad cops, we know exactly what they’re up to and don’t need to be constantly updated.
Something else is going on here that I’d like to weigh in on. I’ve heard this a lot lately: “Don’t write a big-budget spec.” Everybody says that. Guess what? It’s bullshit. What these people are really saying is, “Don’t write a big-budget spec with a lame-to-average idea.”
They’re probably not even aware that that’s what they’re saying. To them, they’ve seen all these big-budget specs passed over by their bosses with the feedback: “Too expensive.” So they disperse that information into the ranks. But what the boss is really reacting to is the fact that this movie is going to cost all this money and the idea isn’t even very good.
“Bright” is a good idea. So it doesn’t matter if it’s going to cost a bunch of money. And that’s what you have to remember when writing a big-budget spec. The more your movie will cost, the better the idea and the more marketable the concept will have to be.
Whenever I read big-budget specs, 95% of them fall victim to the same mistake. They’re a carbon copy of another big movie from the past. Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Independence Day, Armageddon. You can’t change the character names and the time periods and expect to win the “fresh take on an old idea” argument. It’s more like a “fresh coat of paint on an old ass house” argument.
If you really want to write something fresh, you have to perform a tear-down. “Bright” really does nail that “same but different” feel, and that’s why it’s gotten all this heat.
But what’s great about this script is that it also executes. I have no idea how much of this is Landis and how much is Ayer (Ayer is the cop-movie expert so I’m sure a lot of the specific cop-related stuff was his), but this is solid storytelling here. The scene where we find the wand and the other cops tell Scott that he has to kill his partner – and we build up that suspense of “what is he going to do?” – that was a great scene and the moment I got hooked.
If I had to nitpick, I’d say I wish they’d spent more time on the other creatures and not just the orcs. More variety. But the story was so strong that it didn’t suffer much from the issue. It’ll be interesting to see how this comes together. Isn’t Ayer signed on to Suicide Squad 2? When is he going to have time to make this movie? Anyone know?
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whenever you write a script that requires a lot of world-building (fantasy and science-fiction), it’s essential that you convey exposition in as few lines as possible. You don’t want to weigh down your script with Monologue Mike never shutting up about how the Orc Castle of Targenhale once birthed a young orc cub, who would later become the king of Smokerbasin until he lost his right eye. That may fly in Game of Thrones. But movies are short and need to move quickly. Here Landis and Ayer did a great job of explaining the magic wand. This wand is driving the entire story, so a lesser writer might’ve thought a flashback and three page monologue were in order to build it up. Here’s what we get instead:
HICKS
: Ever seen a wand in person?
WARD
: What? Sure … yeah. That broken one in the Smithsonian.
This conveys two things quickly. One, that seeing a wand is very rare. And two, that they’re such a big deal, they’re displayed in museums. That’s all we need to know going forward to understand that this wand is going to change their lives.
Remember everybody, this Saturday I’m posting 5 Amateur PILOT SCRIPTS for you to vote on. If you want in, submit a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should be chosen (something interesting about yourself or your script). We still haven’t found a kickass pilot script through the site. Let’s change that!
Genre: TV Pilot – Sci-fi
Premise: A terrorist group steals a time machine, forcing the government to chase them around through time.
About: This was a huge TV Pilot sale that comes from high profile producers Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan. That team-up, from the guys who brought us the never-ending series Supernatural, and the mega-successful cop drama, The Shield, proved irresistible to buyers, who clamored to secure the high-concept pitch. NBC outbid them all, and we’ll be seeing the show later this fall. But can it survive the big-budget network curse that killed fellow big-budget wannabes Terra Nova, The Event, and Revolution? The time travel lover in me hopes so.
Writers: Eric Kripke & Shawn Ryan
Details: 63 pages – 3rd Network Draft, January 15, 2016
“Time” is one of the biggest pilot sales of the year. When you consider that AND that it’s about time travel (I love time travel!), you’d think I’d be dying to read this. But there were two things holding me back. The first is Revolution, another Kripke show. Let me first say that I respect the hell out of anyone who can get a show on the air. You’re competing against tons of talented people for those coveted slots, some of them major celebrities. To beat them out? That’s a big deal and deserves acknowledgement. But Revolution was like the dad joke of TV shows – trying to be hip but coming across oh so clumsy and awkward.
But the bigger problem here is NBC. That network is so enveloped in genericness and so clearly lacks anyone with vision, that sending a show there is like throwing cake batter in the microwave and expecting a soufflé to pop out. I’ve lost so much faith in NBC, and the big networks in general, that if this pilot sucks, I’m done reviewing network pilots for good. These guys don’t get that they’re Blockbuster if they don’t evolve. Shows don’t get 30 million viewers anymore. Catering to the middle is no longer an effective approach. You must embrace niches to survive.
30-something Lucy Preston is one of those hip professors who all the kids like but all the faculty hates (they won’t give her tenure cause she talks about how big former presidents’ penises are!).
Lucy’s minding her own business when the government shows up at her door and ubers her over to Lark Industries, a company owned by the latest screenwriting incarnation of Elon Musk. It turns own Mason Lark has created a time machine and some dangerous dude named Garcia Flynn, along with the Flynn Followers, has stolen said time machinery.
It just so happens that Lark has a backup machine, but it can only carry three people. And the government wants Lucy to be one of those people, since she knows history better than anybody, especially president penis size history. Hey, you know never know when that might come in handy. I mean shit, it would’ve been relevant in 2016.
She’ll be teamed up with Rufas Carlin, a young black genius engineer, and some mysterious dude named Wyatt, who’s so mysterious that I never even figured what he does. The government has reason to believe that Garcia is going back to the infamous 1937 Zeppelin accident to turn the event into an even larger catastrophe.
So the trio travels back to 1937 New York and starts looking for Garcia, but by the time they find him, it’s too late. He already has access to the Zeppelin. But here’s where shit gets crazy. He doesn’t create an even bigger catastrophe. He actually SAVES the Zeppelin. Huh. That throws the group for a loop. What the hell do they do now?
After a quick stint in jail, the three hypothesize that Garcia saved the Zeppelin to use it for an even more sinister plan. But what could that plan be? And will they be able to get to him in time to stop it!
One of the telltale signs of professional writing is if they can “getcha.” Yes, I’m using “getcha” as an official term today. You’ve been “gotchen” when you were sure the script was going to go this way and instead it went that way. I have to admit that when Garcia saved the Zeppelin instead of destroying it, I was “gotchened.” I didn’t see that coming.
Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing I liked here. As expected, there’s a safe network quality to the writing, right down to the robotic way in which it’s written. Sentences are very short. They’re mixed in with lots of sentence fragments (So instead of saying, “She smiles flirtatiously.” we get, “A flirtatious smile.”). There are a lot of dashes — a lot of punctuation,,,,. And what all this does is it creates too much “start-stop” reading.
I’m not saying this is the wrong way to write. You can write any way you want and there was a time when this style was quite popular. But the way you write DOES psychologically affect the reader. If you’re writing in short clips, the reader receives that information like a mathematical equation. If you write in full sentences, the reader receives the information as a single continuous thought.
Here’s a line from the book, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” I want you to pay attention to how the flow of the sentence makes you FEEL.
“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
Now here’s the same information, but conveyed in a more clipped format.
“My bones. I feel them straining — under me. The weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
Different, right?
This morse code-like approach has led to an even bigger problem in professional writing, the need to distill everything down into packet-sized moments. The one thing professionals do a good job of is they keep the story moving. Whereas amateurs will get stuck in a scene for too long, professionals know that the goal is to get in and out quickly. But this can be taken too far. If you treat it too much like an equation, you won’t stay inside the scenes long enough to create a connection with the reader.
A perfect example is the scene where we find out Lucy’s mom has cancer. The scene reads like a checklist: “Okay, let’s establish that she’s bald. Check. See her in a hospital bed. Check. Show her too tired to respond to her daughter. Check. Got it, let’s move on.” You can’t do that with these scenes if you want the reader to be emotionally affected by them. You need more time and you need to creatively build a memorable moment. The “establish our list and get out” approach doesn’t work if you’re trying for genuine emotion.
Finally, there’s a lack of logic dictating some major plot points here. Namely, of all the people in the world to send back in time to stop terrorists, why are they choosing the local history professor who’s not even good enough to secure tenure?
There’s an argument to be made that details like this don’t matter. It’s a TV show. You’re not supposed to think too much about it. Just go with the flow. That’s fine if everything else in the pilot is perfect. But if you have the attitude where an important plot point can be overlooked, you likely have the attitude that other things can be overlooked as well. And it’s when you start amassing multiple “overlooked” moments that the viewer starts sensing something is off. They don’t even know what it is. But they FEEL that the story is taking too many shortcuts and that’s what leads to that permanent channel change.
You have to know what you’re getting into when you tackle time-travel. It’s a “can’t fuck around” genre. You get lazy for a second and people start asking questions like, “Well, if the terrorists already went back in time and destroyed the Zeppelin than why is everything still the same here in the present?” It’s a genre where you really have to be on your game. They still have time to figure it out. But going off of what I’m seeing so far, this looks like it could be a lazy exploration of the genre.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I want to reiterate that there’s no “right” style to write in. It’s even okay to use multiple styles in a screenplay. What I want to get across though is that your writing style has a psychological effect on the reader and how they’re processing information. Clipped abrasive styles feel colder and more robotic and can be harder to follow if done sloppily. Longer natural writing styles feel soft and inclusive and connect with the reader on an organic level. Keep that in mind!
What I learned 2: It’s official guys. No more incarnations of Elon Musk in your screenplays. I’ve read five versions of the character in the last two months alone.
Today’s Black List screenplay imagines Anchorman as an extremely dark comedy.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A news anchor’s life starts to unravel when he leverages a contract renewal by auditioning for a host position on a new game show.
About: This script finished just outside the top 20 on last year’s Black List. Writer Brett Conrad has written on some pretty high-profile TV shows over the last 7 years, which include Sons of Anarchy, The Killing, Marco Polo, and Wayward Pines. The project isn’t officially set up anywhere yet, but should that happen, it will become his first feature credit.
Writer: Brett Conrad
Details: 116 pages (undated)
We’re going there, folks. Hot diggity dam we’re flying business class to one of the most well travelled screenplay cities in the world. Yup, we’re talking about unlikable protagonists YET AGAIN. But there’s a new angle to this suffering sucatash of a discussion today. I call it “The unlikable Black List bias.”
It’s true. That Black List loves dastardly anti-heroes more than any subset of Hollywood. Whether it be assholes, philanderers, cranks, liars, this is the destination for dickery. I mean they voted The Libertine (a script that has the single most unlikable protagonist in screenplay history) the number 3 script of the year.
And I think I finally understand WHY. Whereas the rest of the industry is concerned with getting movies made, and hence knowing that unlikable curmmudgeons are impossible to slip past studio suits whose data suggests that even a hint of a frown could cost the film 3 million dollars at the box office, the Black List doesn’t need to worry about that shit. They’re just voting for what they like.
And I think Black List voters relate to these characters. These are people not yet at the top of the mountain and therefore frustrated, just like these protagonists. So whereas a studio suit might say, “He didn’t save the cat. Why do we like him?” A Black List voter says, “I’m in the same place, brother. I feel your pain.” It’s a possible explanation for these scripts making the Black List so frequently.
43 year old Colin Weston is a news anchor in Phoenix. Colin is losing it. Those softball interviews he used to give local figureheads have turned into him decking the assholes the second they go off the air.
Naturally, the station doesn’t like this, but Weston is their top draw, so he can deck the fucking halls for all they care. But that loyalty is about to be tested when Weston sneaks away to Los Angeles to audition for a game show host position.
Eventually, his employers find out, and Weston decides to use their discovery to his benefit, as he has a new contract coming up. If the game show gig doesn’t work out, maybe the station will give him more money. The thing is, the rest of Weston’s life is such a mess, that this calculated move adds up to a shit-show circus.
There’s his mistress, Mona, who’s just informed him that she’s pregnant. There’s his 16 year-old daughter, Daisy, who’s doing everything in her power to try and get pregnant, there’s his wife, who keeps pushing Weston for the down payment on Daisy’s private school tuition, and there’s the car dealership he co-owns which is so far in the red, his partner got an ill-advised loan from the local version of the Hell’s Angels. Oh, and let’s not forget Weston’s hanging-by-a-thread sobriety.
As all of these pressures start adding up, Weston finds himself taking it out on his nightly audience, which his bosses are becoming increasingly less tolerant of. That’s when the reality of the situation rears its head. There’s a strong chance that when this is all over, Weston could end up with nothing.
Whenever you write one of these “spiraling out of control” stories, the key ingredient is pressure. You must pressure your protagonist from all sides. And Conrad does a brilliant job of that here. We’ve got the Hell’s Angels loan, the pregnancy from his mistress, the alcohlism, a game show job that’s looking bullshitier by the second, the private school tuition, and a book he got an advance for that was supposed to be finished months ago.
This pressure creates CONFLICT, and as we all know, conflict drives drama, which is the lifeblood of a good story. If nothing’s going wrong for your hero, then your hero’s not going to find himself in any interesting situations. And it’s this good storytelling technique that helps offset the offputting main character. If you’re going to make your protagonist a jerk and then just have him be jerky for 120 minutes, we’re going to be bored. You need to put him in dramatic situations and that’s what constant pressure does.
I also want to point out a scene in Pandemonium that uses one of my favorite devices – the scene agitator. For those who’ve forgotten, a scene agitator is a third variable in a scene (typically outside of the two main characters in the scene) that agitates the situation. It just gives the scene a bit more texture so it doesn’t feel too one-note.
Here in Pandemonium, Weston goes to visit his co-owner in the car dealership business. The co-owner starts explaining to Weston how they have no money and they had to take on a bad loan. The scene agitator is a couple who recognizes Weston from the news. So the wife comes over and asks for a picture with Weston. The reason this particular scene agitator is so effective is that it CONTRASTS the situation.
Weston is pissed off at the bad news but has to smile and play nice when someone asks for his picture. This scene doesn’t work if Weston is receiving good news and is therefore happy. It works because of the contrast.
There’s a lot of good writing throughout Pandemonium. The only reason I don’t rate it higher is because it gets you down, man. There’s no way getting around that the hero is a jerk and responsible for the shit-show his life has turned into. So it kinda leaves you bummed out, and it’s always hard for me to give high marks to stuff that leaves me feeling that way. But for those of you who like your screenplays dipped in anger and frustration, this very well might be for you.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A dual-job allows for more variety in a screenplay. That second act can be tough to find enough story for. You hit page 45 and all of a sudden it’s like, “What now?” If you’re covering two jobs, you can create two subplots, which fills up space. So here, Weston is both both a news anchor and a car dealership owner.
What I learned 2: There’s a little-talked-about skill in this business called the “conceptual pitch,” which is a quick and dirty marketing pitch that sells your screenplay. Think of it as a verbal billboard for your script. Now there are ideas out there that don’t need conceptual pitches. Jurassic Park is a cool idea that sells itself. But when your script is offbeat or low-budget or unique, you need a way to explain it that gets people excited. One of the most famous examples of this was when David Twohy pitched a Pitch Black franchise, calling it, “Star Wars’s evil twin brother.” That’s the conceptual pitch that got everyone excited and helped greenlight the film. Here, I used, “Anchorman re-imagined as a dark comedy.” You don’t have to use a known film in a conceptual pitch. As long as it’s creative and nails the feel of the story, you’re good. So I’ll pose a challenge to you guys. Let’s say that neither The Revenant or Room have been made into movies yet. What would your conceptual pitch be to a studio to get these films greenlit? Make sure to up-vote your favorite answers!
