Genre: TV Pilot – Half-Hour Comedy “Documentary”
Winning Logline: A parody of ‘makeover’ reality shows, Beyond Help with Handy Andy follows overconfident yet completely incompetent “Handy Andy” Cornwall as he travels the country documenting his attempts to fix everything from failing restaurants to broken marriages, in the hopes of selling his half-assed reality show to a network. Look out, America. He’s helping!
About: Today’s pilot script won the TV Pilot Script Showdown, a rare opportunity for TV writers to battle it out on the, otherwise, feature-focused Scriptshadow. It comes from Scriptshadow vet, Colin O’Brien (CJob).
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Details: 36 pages

Adam Devine for Andy?

The half-hour comedy, once the cornerstone of the TV industry, has fallen on tough times.

They say that feature film comedies have become non-existent and that’s because everyone can get their comedy fix on TV. But where is that comedy show that’s giving us earth-shattering knee-slappers these days?

A lot of today’s comedies seem to want just as much drama in them as humor. Succession. Barry. Shrinking. The last bona fide “everyone watched it” TV comedy was The Office. Ted Lasso was pretty big but I don’t know if it got anywhere near “Office” level.

The most interesting half-hour comedy show I’ve seen lately was Jury Duty. It follows a fake jury during a fake Los Angeles court case where one of the jury members is a real person who has no idea that he’s participating in a facade.

It was fascinating, kind of messed up, and doing something different with the struggling comedy genre.

Let’s see if Handy Andy can carve out its own slice of the comedy pie!

Andy is a 40-year-old dude who just decides, out of nowhere, that he’s going to start one of those “fix it” reality shows. He only has one employee, the non-English speaking Miguel, who holds the camera for him. It’s not clear how Andy gets production sound for his shoots.

Andy’s first fix-it job is the Carters, a family living in a slightly dilapidated house that the city may tear down if it doesn’t start looking nicer soon. Simon, the father, Vanna, the wife, Sandra, the teenage daughter, and Kevin, the young son, are reasonably happy to have someone who’s going to take care of this issue for them.

The problem is, Andy has no idea what he’s doing. Nor does he listen. So despite the outside of the house being the part that needs to be fixed, Andy focuses on the inside. For example, he buys a slightly better couch for the living room.

Also, Andy doesn’t really have a production plan, so he just sleeps at the houses of his clients, which is the first sign to the Carter family that they may have signed up for something they shouldn’t have.

After Andy does several pointless things around the house, he finally decides to work on the outside, and when the Carters are gone, he re-does their driveway. The only problem is, he places their car on that driveway before the wet concrete has set. Which means the car is now stuck in the driveway.

That’s it for the Carters, who not only fire Andy immediately, but warn everyone in the community about this scam reality show host. Problem is, Andy is so clueless that he doesn’t care. A few days later, he’s on to his next assignment: a restaurant. What ever trouble is Andy going to get into there?

Beyond Help is an amusing pilot.

But, if I’m being honest, I was hoping for more laughs.

Every 15 pages or so, Andy would say something that made me chuckle. For example, Andy has this wife who’s left him. And he still thinks they’re going to be together. So he shows a picture of her to the camera. But, of course, because she hates him, he has to blur her face out.

This is my beautiful wife, Jan. You can’t actually tell she’s beautiful because we had to blur her face for legal reasons. You know how that is. (shrugs) Anyway, her loss. I’m sure once the show’s a hit she’ll come crawling back. (sad smile) Because I’ll tell you one thing, they can’t blur her out of my heart.

Little jokes like that always make me smile.

But I’m not watching a show like this to chuckle or smile. I’m watching a show like this to laugh. And I don’t think there was a single LOL moment for me in the cleverly titled, Beyond Help.

The problem, in my opinion, was that the execution of the comedy was too safe and predictable. You don’t want to hear either of those critiques in comedy feedback. But I’d ask Colin, where are you pushing the envelope with the comedy? Where are you giving us that unexpected joke or doing comedy we haven’t seen before or pushing the limits of the “documentary format” half-hour comedy? Or just giving us a genuinely fresh joke?

Again, Jury Duty gave you a character who didn’t realize he was in a comedy. Which created some highly interesting moments.

Even the 15 year old Office was pushing the envelope. One of their most famous episodes was titled “Gay Witch Hunt” and you watched Michael try to find out if anyone else in the office was gay after finding out the shocking truth that Oscar was gay.

Part of the problem is that I don’t understand what Andy’s comedic core is. With Michael Scott, we know that his defining comedic characteristic is his desperate need to be liked by everyone in the Office. He was more concerned about being the “cool boss” than he was doing good work.

Leslie Knope’s defining characteristic in Parks and Rec was her undying optimism for improving the community despite the fact that her department was created specifically to do nothing.

I don’t know what Andy’s primary comedic characteristic is. He just seems to be clueless. I’m not sure that’s enough. Note how with The Office and Parks and Rec, the main character’s defining comedic characteristic was in direct opposition to what needed to be done. Michael wants to be every employee’s friend. But if you do that, employees aren’t going to be incentivized to work hard. Leslie Knope wants so badly to help the community. But the government doesn’t want her to work at all.

I suppose, once people meet Andy and realize he’s an idiot, they don’t want his help anymore. And I guess that’s the primary obstacle creating comedic conflict? But just as I wrote that, I’m not convinced we’re getting enough out of this character.

Also, some of the comedy feels dated. Miguel is a clueless non-English speaking Mexican who never understands what Andy says to him. This feels like Napoleon Dynamite humor circa 2004.

On top of that, the world-building here has a lot of holes in it. Andy is broke yet he still has enough money to buy a new couch for the family. Andy is broke yet he can afford to re-do someone’s driveway. The rules were confusing. And while you may think that it doesn’t matter in a comedy as long as it’s funny, that logic only works when the rest of the script is firing on all cylinders.

When it’s all said and done, Beyond Help reads like a lot comedies that come across my desk. Which is that the overall concept makes you laugh. But when get into the nitty-gritty – the execution – nothing is elevating above the page.

It’s a reminder of how hard comedy is. Once you come up with a funny idea, a lot of writers think the work is over. But the real work has only begun. You gotta go through every scene and honestly ask yourself how funny it is on a 1-10 scale. And then keep rewriting until every one of those scenes is at least at a 7 out of 10 on the funny scale, but preferably at an 8 out of 10 or higher.

The majority of the current scenes here were at a 4 or 5 out of 10 on the funny scale. That’s not good enough. Especially for a pilot. Producers and audiences will give you leeway on season 3 episode 4. But the pilot has to sing. It’s got to be next level. And when I read this pilot, I didn’t feel like Colin was giving me everything he was capable of.

Moving forward, it would help if we got to know Andy’s real life a bit. The thing with comedy is that the audience needs to know who the character is in their real life so they understand the dynamic of what they’ve been thrust into.

I couldn’t place who Andy was in his real life. Was he just some dimwitted idiot who decided to do this job one day? Or was there a progression that led him to this point? For us to understand the comedy, I think we need some insight into that, either through 5-10 pages of main character setup or, if you wanted to be more artsy, you could intercut flashbacks of how Andy came upon this idea throughout the pilot.

I’ll now call upon the comedy experts of this site to give Colin some funnier prompts to work with. What scenarios can we explore in the Handy Andy universe that are going to give us more laughs? Cause I still think there’s something to this idea. But it definitely needs a jolt to the comedic heart. It’s way too casually executed.

Pilot Link: Beyond Help

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

What I learned: I need to first see that Jim Carrey obsessively lies in Liar Liar for the comedy in that movie to work. It’s only once I see his dependence on telling lies that I’m able to laugh when he can no longer tell them. This pilot needed that. I need to know who Andy is in the real world before I can appreciate who he is in the fix-it world. Cause he can’t just be a generic moron. That’s not funny enough.

SUPER SCRIPT CONSULTATION DEAL!!! – If you e-mail me and mention today’s pilot script, “Beyond Help,” I will give you 200 DOLLARS off a feature screenplay consult (4 pages of notes) and 100 DOLLARS off a pilot script consult.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com by the end of the weekend!

Shocker: It’s only three things.

As I come up on two decades of meticulously studying this craft, I’ve been thinking, what is my “theory of everything” when it comes to screenwriting? What is the “whole ball of wax” in regards to how to write a script that’s genuinely good?

I use that phrase “genuinely good” because the screenwriting world is packed with screenplays that range from bad, to not very good, to okay, to good. It’s actually kind of easy to write a good screenplay if you’re a working screenwriter. Cause you know all the tricks of the trade.

But how do you write something that’s genuinely good? Something that moves people?

I wanted to use today’s post to explore that question because a lot of writers are misguided in regards to how they approach screenwriting, shooting themselves in the foot long before they’ve typed a word of their screenplay.

There is not, nor will there ever be, a perfect formula for writing a great script and that’s because the world is constantly changing and the things that people like and accept and are interested in are changing with it. So something that was exciting six months ago might feel stale and uninteresting today.

There are also too many variables within a screenplay to be able to control them all. No matter how good of a writer you are, there are always going to be things that get away from you when you write.

There was a recent interview in Variety with the director of the infamous cinematic dud, Gigli, Martin Brest. He stated in the article that, during editing, he was looking at this scene that wasn’t working and he thought to himself, “I knew why this scene used to be in the movie and what its purpose was. I don’t have any idea why it’s in the movie now.”

That’s screenwriting in a nutshell. You have all these grand ideas but, over the course of writing a bunch of drafts, some of those ideas stick and others falter. Despite this, the remnants of every one of those ideas are still stuck in your script’s DNA, making your screenplay part story, part time capsule.

At times, it makes screenwriting feel impossible. Screenplays are like children. You can try to parent them. But, at a certain point, they want to become their own person.

So, in the pursuit of writing a great screenplay, you have to accept that there’s a certain lack of control. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set yourself up for success. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. Here are the three most important things when it comes to writing a genuinely good screenplay.

CONCEPT

Field-testing a concept is probably the most important thing you can do in your pursuit of writing a great screenplay. And it’s the part of the process that the majority of writers get wrong. Especially beginner writers. Cause beginner writers assume that any idea they come up with is amazing.

The reason concept is such a problem is because the idea-inspiration process is antithetical to the idea-generation process. Most of us get inspired by something and want to write a movie about it. But just because it inspires us doesn’t mean anyone else would want to watch it. I may love the scientific exploration of algae. But would any sort of reliable audience be interested in a movie about algae? Probably not.

On the flip side, when you try to manufacture a concept, you may come up with a more technically marketable premise. But gone is the inspiration. And because you’re not personally inspired, the idea has no soul. It’s nearly impossible to write a great script if you don’t feel that soulful connection with it.

This is why you have to field-test concepts. You have to come up with ideas that both inspire you as well as contain marketability then run them by at least five people who you know aren’t trying to make you feel good (you know you’ve got a good field tester if they’ve told you one of your previous ideas was garbage). You need at least a couple of those people to be really excited about your concept. Preferably more than that. And five testers is just the minimum. Try to get as many opinions as you can.

I’d estimate that 80% of all screenplays written are doomed before the writer writes a single word because of a weak concept.

AN INTERESTING MAIN CHARACTER

There are three facets to the main character that you have to get right. The first is that we must make our main character interesting. A huge mistake writers make is they create a boring protagonist. This is rarely done on purpose. Most writers assume their hero is interesting simply due to the fact that they’re in the center of their story’s chaos for two hours. All these crazy things may be happening to your hero. But that doesn’t make *them* interesting.

So, look for ways to make your main character unique, charming, weird, have a big personality. Maybe a more succinct way to put it is to make them larger than life. Ferris Bueller was this untamed nuclear blast of energy. From Tony Stark to Deadpool to Daniel Plainview to Elle Woods to Juno. These characters are not wallflowers. They exert their force upon the world.  As such, it is impossible for them not to impact us.

Next, we need a hero we can root for. That doesn’t mean they have to be likable.  In fact, complex “unlikable” protagonists (Louis Bloom, Travis Bickle, Arthur Fleck) produce some of the best movies.  But that complexity can never come at the expense of rootforabiality. Which essentially means, if one lacks likability, they must possess our sympathy.  “Joker” is a masterclass in creating sympathy (getting bullied, takes care of sick mother, has a mental condition) for a genuinely unlikable person.

Finally, I’ve found that the best scripts have characters that are torn. They’re being pulled in different directions and the attempt to reconcile the chaos within them makes them compelling to read. Because even when there’s zero plot going on, there’s still something going on within the character himself.

A good recent example of this is Hijack, the series on Apple. Sam Nelson is torn. He just wants to get back to his family alive. And to do that, he’s willing to help the hijackers. But he, of course, also wants to protect the passengers. So he’s constantly having to make these tough choices regarding what’s more important – the safety of the passengers or himself.

And this doesn’t just have to be a dramatic thing. One of the most famous comedies of all time, Liar Liar, has Jim Carrey’s character in this never-ending battle of wanting to lie but having to tell the truth. There isn’t a single moment in the film where he’s comfortable. That’s a good indication that you’ve constructed a character with some genuine inner conflict.

A GREAT PLOT

Finally, you need to nail your plot.  An understanding of the basics is essential here. You’ve got to have a character who wants something badly (their goal). You have to give that goal consequences if it’s not obtained (stakes). And you have to create urgency in the plot somehow.

You also want your plot to build. Every 15-20 pages has to feel bigger than the previous 15-20 pages. And you want to throw a lot of obstacles at your protagonist. It must feel like the universe is against them. Everywhere they look, there’s a new problem (see the second season of “The Bear”).

But the real trick with plot is that YOU MUST STAY AHEAD OF THE READER. 99% of the scripts I read, I know what’s going to happen in the next scene, five scenes from now, ten scenes from now. The weaker the writer is, the less they monitor where the reader is in relation to them. Which is how the reader gets way out in front of you, impatiently waiting for you to catch up.

You should always be asking yourself, “What is the reader expecting in this moment?” Sometimes, you should give them what they’re expecting. But you should also surprise them occasionally. Because if your reader isn’t sure what’s coming next, they’re a lot more interested in turning the pages.

Some recent movies where I didn’t know what was coming next were Parasite, Coda, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Us, Jojo Rabbit, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and Avatar: The Way Of Water.

Obviously, this is more difficult to do when you’re writing mainstream movies. But it’s definitely possible. Who saw that Liz’s father twist coming in Spiderman: Homecoming? And the great thing about throwing a twist like that in is, you place the reader on shaky ground. They no longer think they know what’s coming. Therefore, even if you decide never to include another twist again, you’re ahead of the audience just by the mere fact that they know one *could* come.

Obviously, having a unique perspective on life that informs your writing, giving it its own unique flavor, is going to improve all three of the facets I mentioned above. But this post is more for the writer who doesn’t have that game-changing unique voice. I want those writers to know that, with word work, they can still write a genuinely good screenplay.

There will never be a one-size-fits-all-formula for screenwriting. It’s why even AI will never master this craft. How can you master a moving target? But if you focus on the above three steps, you will give yourself the best opportunity to write something great.

What’s your personal “Theory of Screenwriting Everything?”

Every second-to-last Friday of the month, I post the five best loglines submitted to me. You, the readers of the site, will vote for your favorite in the comments section. I then review the script of the logline that received the most votes the following Friday.

This month we’re doing something different. We’re reviewing TV PILOT loglines. As much as I love movies, the bread and butter of the writing industry is TV. So we gotta give TV folk some love! This is your time to shine, TV folk. Don’t disappoint us!

If you want to participate in a future showdown, we’ll be back to highlighting feature film loglines next month. The deadline for that is Thursday, August 24th, 10pm Pacific Time. All I need is your title, genre, and logline. Send all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com.

If you’re one of the many writers who feel helpless when it comes to loglines, I offer logline consultations. They’re cheap – just $25. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.

Okay, time to get to the loglines.  Voting closes on Sunday, 11:59pm, Pacific Time.

Title: BEYOND HELP with Handy Andy
Genre: 30-minute mockumentary sitcom
Logline: A parody of ‘makeover’ reality shows, Beyond Help with Handy Andy follows overconfident yet completely incompetent “Handy Andy” Cornwall as he travels the country documenting his attempts to fix everything from failing restaurants to broken marriages, in the hopes of selling his half-assed reality show to a network. Look out, America. He’s helping!

Title: Quiet Zone
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Logline: In a small town located within the ‘Quiet Zone’ – an area of the country where cell service, WiFi and other transmissions are banned due to a secretive government research facility – an ambitious journalist investigates a string of missing persons cases and finds herself unraveling a larger conspiracy as she begins to expose the dark secrets within the zone.

Title: CREATURES OF HABIT
Genre: Supernatural Comedy
Logline: An impulsive vampire searching for her soulmate and her eclectic group of friends struggle with love, morality, immortality, and keeping their supernatural identities secret in New Orleans’ French Quarter. It’s Friends meets The Vampire Diaries.

Title: Mr. Pink
Genre: Half-Hour Adult Animated Comedy
Logline: Set in Key West amidst eccentric locals, drunken tourists, and a cult-like butterfly conservatory, an insecure flamingo fights to maintain his macho persona in order to win over the heart of his potential mate.

Title: The President’s New Clothes
Genre: Comedy, Absurd Comedy
Logline: A blue-collar construction worker from Texas struggles to maintain his integrity in the murky swamp of Washington D.C after he’s suddenly elected to Congress.

Title: Critical
Genre: Comedy/Horror 30-minute
Logline: A famously sour film critic learns that the characters and creations belonging to the works he’s given his most scathing reviews to have come to life to kill him.

Title: MR. HOLLYWOOD
Genre: Drama
Logline: Mercurial movie star Nate Moore, self-loathing and borderline narcissistic, is at an emotional crossroads. On the verge of a breakdown because of vapid Hollywood excess he returns to his small hometown, where he left a trail of destruction six years ago, determined to win back the heart of his childhood sweetheart and reconnect with his estranged family.

I love The Bear. It’s an extremely well-written show. So I thought, let’s bring “10 Screenwriting Tips” out of retirement so we can learn what screenwriting tricks The Bear is using to be so goooooood!

1) Obstacle Mania – Whatever your characters’ giant goal is, your job, especially in a TV show, is to place as many obstacles in front of that goal as you can. The Bear, Season 2, does this better than any show I’ve seen in recent memory. The goal is to open a new fancy restaurant. We’ve got IRS issues. Fire regulations. Finding an investor. Open in just three months. Mold. Walls falling down. Hiring competent staff. The list is never-ending. Obstacles create UNCERTAINTY IN THE NARRATIVE. Which is what you want. You want the reader to be unsure if the characters can do it.

2) Put your characters where they least want to be – Where you find the most drama in a story is when you place characters in places they do not want to be. Richie, the screw-up of the family, hates order and responsibility more than anyone in the world. This guy only thrives in chaos and disorder. In season 2, episode 7, Carmy gets Richie a job in the kitchen of the best restaurant in Chicago. Needless to say, the restaurant thrives specifically on order and responsibility. You can see Richie boiling over just standing in this place. It is the antithesis of him. Which is exactly why we can’t look away. This episode, “Forks,” is my favorite episode of Season 2 because of this lesson.

3) Intense conversations work better when at least one of the people in the conversation doesn’t want to be there – Intense dramatic conversations about life don’t usually play well. They often feel self-indulgent and fake cause kumbaya “I’m all up in my feelings” moments don’t happen all that often in real life. So a way to make them more palatable is to have at least one of the characters in the conversation not want to be there. In season 2, episode 1, an “up in his feelings” Richie is downstairs in the basement feeling bad for himself. Carmy comes down to grab something and Richie blurts out, “You ever think about purpose?” Carmy looks at him and says, “I love you but I don’t have time for this.” But then he sees Richie is really in the doldrums and decides to stay, reluctantly. Richie then makes his big, “I don’t feel any purpose” plea, and Carmy’s not really into it. He has a million things to do. But he stays and listens to the best of his ability. Carmy’s half-interest is what makes this scene work. Cause if they’re both really into this conversation, it’ll feel false.

4) Compounding outside pressure – One of the things The Bear does really well is it places pressure on its characters. But that’s par for the course. Every character should have pressure on them. What The Bear does, though, is it compounds that pressure. It adds ADDITIONAL PROBLEMS to the characters’ lives, which makes every scene feel even heavier, even more important. In “Forks,” midway through the episode, Richie calls his ex-wife, who he’s secretly hoping to get back together with, to manage a situation with their daughter. And the ex-wife tells him that she just accepted a guy’s proposal. This is what compounding pressure looks like. You never let your character off the hook. And the great thing about compounding pressure is that now, whenever Richie encounters an issue in the restaurant, we’re more afraid he’s going to crack. Cause we know that there’s additional things going on in his life.

5) The Scene Agitator – I would be surprised if creator Christopher Storer has not read Scriptshadow Secrets because this man LOVES the scene agitator. As a reminder, the scene agitator is any element you can add to a scene that agitates the characters in some way. Storer rarely lets two characters just talk to each other. He almost always has a third variable in play. For example, in season 2, episode 7, when Richie calls his cousin, Carmy, back at the restaurant, to ask him some questions, the team’s fix-it guy, Neil, is trying to fix a faulty outlet wire, which keeps electrocuting him. So Carmy is trying to talk to Richie while occasionally stopping the conversation to yell at Neil. “Neil! What are you doing! Get away from that thing.” Neil is the agitator here, and provides a more unpredictable conversation between Carmy and Richie.

6) Pronouns and Role Play – This is a preview tip from my dialogue book. A great way to spice up dialogue is to have the characters in the scene playfully use the wrong pronouns as well as use role play, pretending they’re not the people they really are. It allows for a unique conversation that always feels more creative than the on-the-nose version most writers write. In season 2, episode 8, Ebraheim, an old-timer chef at the former restaurant who bailed when Carmy decided to upgrade the restaurant, comes back a couple of weeks before the new restaurant is opening. He runs into his old buddy, Tina, who still works there.

7) Nobody’s angry just because they’re angry. They’re angry because they’re scared – I read a lot of scripts where characters are angry because the writer wants an angry character. But they don’t think about WHY that character is angry. And WHY they’re angry is the whole ball of wax. Because most of the time, they’re angry because they’re scared. Cause they don’t think they can hack it. Like Richie. Richie is my favorite character in this show because of that inner conflict. He’s the loudest. He’s the harshest. He screams at people all the time. When he messes up, it’s always somebody else’s fault. And it’s all because he’s terrified. He’s terrified he’s going to be exposed for the scared little kid he actually is. So when a character is angry, give them a reason for being angry. I promise you, the character is going to come off as so much more genuine if you do.

8) Money makes the TV show go round – Money money money monaaaaay. MONNNAAAY. Money is a wonderful friend in any dramatically told story, but especially in television. The thing with TV is that it doesn’t have that ticking time bomb urgency that a movie can have since a movie is only 2 hours. With TV, the timespan is always longer and so we lose out on that urgency. You can compensate for this by adding a money issue. Your main character(s) should be under some sort of monetary deadline. With The Bear, in order to get the investment for the restaurant, Carmy has to agree that if his uncle isn’t paid back in full within 18 months, the uncle gets the building. Never having enough money is such a universal experience that we always relate to money problems in stories.

9) Make sure to balance the sour with the sweet – The Bear puts its characters through the wringer. It really whacks them up against the head with a lot of crap. If all you do, though, is hurt your characters, your reader will grow frustrated. We’re not sadists. We need good amongst your bad. And The Bear is good at this. It makes sure to intersperse the bad with a nice little occasional scene that gives you the warm and fuzzies inside. In the first episode of season 2, there’s a scene near the end of a tough episode where Sydney, the smart-as-a-whip prodigy sous-chef, runs after Tina, the old school “been here forever” cook who’s accepted her lackluster lot in life. Sydney asks Tina if she would be her assistant. And we just see Tina’s eyes light up when she realizes what Sydney is asking. It’s such a sweet moment as well as a NEEDED ONE. Because we need the sweet within the sour.

10) Scenes With a Lot of Characters In Them – The Bear has a ton of scenes with a lot of characters in them. For these scenes to work, you need to know who your CONTROLLING CHARACTER in the scene is. Your controlling character is the character who wants the most out of the scene. They have the big objective that’s driving the core of the conversation. So in Season 2, Episode 5, five minutes in, Uncle Jimmy (the investor) shows up to the restaurant to check on things. He walks into a room with, literally, seven other characters and everyone in the scene talks at some point. But the scene keeps coming back to Uncle Jimmy because he’s the controlling character. He is the one who wants the most out of this scene. He wants to know that they’re going to be ready to freaking open when they said they’re going to be ready. So that’s what drives most of the conversation, is his questions and directives regarding that topic.

100 dollars off a Screenplay Consultation (feature or pilot) if you e-mail me with the subject line, “THE BEAR!” carsonreeves1@gmail.com.  What are you waiting for??

Genre: Action/Adventure
Premise: Indiana Jones is pulled into one last adventure when his goddaughter asks him to help her find a dial created by Archimedes that has the power to travel through time.
About: The fifth and final Indiana Jones film, which is said to have cost 280 million dollars, pulled in just 60 million dollars over the weekend, continuing a trend of weak box office showings this year.  This is the first Indiana Jones movie not directed by Steven Spielberg.  It was directed by James Mangold, who Lucasfilm was so happy with that they hired him to make a Star Wars movie about the origins of the Force.
Writers: Jez & John-Henry Butterworth AND David Koepp & James Mangold (characters by George Lucas and Phillip Kaufman). Phoebe Waller-Bridge is said to have done some script work as well
Details: 150 minutes

As I approached the digital ticket kiosk to purchase my entry into Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, I attempted to bypass the annoying button prompts by simply humming the Indiana Jones score, figuring the kiosk would know what movie I wanted and simply ask for my credit card info.

Not only did that not happen, the pleasant pimple-faced teenager tasked with monitoring the kiosks came over to ask me if I was okay.

But you know what did happen?

I got to see a good Indiana Jones movie.

It’s unfortunate that Indiana Jones number 5 wasn’t number 4. Cause number 4 was a disaster of epic proportions. It was so bad, in fact, that the screenwriter, David Koepp, came out and said that he knew he was going to be taking bullets for the screenplay. That NEVER happens, where the screenwriter admits before the movie has come out that it’s bad.

Dial of Destiny, even though it’s not a perfect film, is a film where you can tell they did everything in their power to write a good screenplay.

The thing with the scripts for these gigantic blockbuster movies is that they’re often less about writing a cohesive story than they are pleasing the 10 major creative forces on the film, and patching together the ugly disconnected mess of ideas from those forces with bridges just strong enough to keep the movie together.

That’s not the feeling I got from this movie at all. Maybe it’s because this was the last Indiana Jones and they didn’t have to worry about setting up future storylines. Which meant they could write the best story possible. Or maybe they just sat down and kept at it until they got the screenplay right.

The film is set in 1969. I think Indiana is 75 years old in this iteration. He lives in New York by himself in some apartment downtown. Unlike the glory days when he was young and sexy and girls used to blink at him with “I luv you” written on their eyelids, now Indiana is old and no one cares about his lectures anymore. Which is probably why he retires.

Indiana gets a drink at a local bar and is approached by Helena, his goddaughter. Helena tries to get Indiana to don the hat and whip one more time to search for something called the Antikythera, a dial that Archimedes created that is rumored to be able to manipulate time. Indiana then surprises Helena by bringing her back to the school and showing her that he already has the Antikythera. Or, at least, one-half of it.

This is when it’s revealed that Helena is not a very cool goddaughter. She steals the Antikythera and heads off to Africa to sell it. Around this time, Indiana learns that a Nazi named Dr. Voller is looking for the Antikythera as well and may have some nefarious use for it. Which means that old Indy will have to don the hat and whip again. And off he goes.

In true 2023 blockbuster McGuffin fashion, there are multiple McGuffin pieces to search for. Indy and Helena reluctantly join forces, traveling around the world to find out where the second half of the Antikythera is. Just when they find it, Dr. Voller sweeps in and takes it, and then takes *them* on a time-traveling trip to the beginning of World War 2, where he plans to win Germany the war. Except they don’t end up in 1939. They end up in 214 BC. And not even Indy knows how they’re going to get back home from here.

Here’s the thing about this movie. It’s probably the best Indy movie outside of the first one. With that said, I’d still rather watch the first three again than I would this one. How does that make sense? Because an action movie with an 80-year-old star just doesn’t work. To be fair, Harrison Ford is probably the only actor on the planet who could make an 80-year-old action movie work. But it still just feels wrong. Which is why I’d still rather watch those first three films.

But anyone saying this isn’t a good movie is crazy.

It’s a good movie. Maybe even a really good movie.

And I’m going to give you a comp so you understand why this movie is good. Jurassic World Dominion. Both these movies are trying to do similar things. They very much operate in the same universe. They even try to rip off a combo of Indiana Jones and Han Solo to make that awful pilot character Kayla Watts.

The difference is that this screenplay is a million times tighter. Jurassic World Dominion is the bad version of Dial of Destiny. It’s what could’ve happened if bad screenwriting would’ve reined.

The McGuffin was cool. There were always goals, stakes, and urgency. The bad guy was cool. The dynamic between Indiana and Helena was strong. Keep in mind that this was the first we’ve ever seen a female co-star with Indy that wasn’t a love interest. That alone made their dynamic feel fresh. Most importantly, the writers did a really good job keeping the reader up to date with what was going on.

I always knew what leg of the story we were on and what they were after. This is something Hollywood has gotten so lazy with recently, especially in the last phase of Marvel films, where the plot not only got convoluted, but the writers didn’t prioritize keeping you up to date with what the characters were after and why it was important. These writers on Dial of Destiny did a great job of that.

It sounds like some people had a problem with Helena. Like I said, I thought the dynamic was interesting between her and Indy. I always look for twists on the conflict between the movie’s primary team-up characters and this movie had that. If Helena would’ve just been some random chick who hated Indy and that’s where the conflict came from, that would’ve been boring. The fact that she’s family, though, adds another layer. It creates a “positive” that’s pulling at their dynamic as opposed to just a “negative.” I liked that.

I just want to take a moment to appreciate what’s happened in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s career. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was a nobody until someone forced her to write this play called “Fleabag,” which she then turned into a show, which received a lot of acclaim, which got her meetings everywhere. And the next thing she knows SHE’S SHARING SCREENTIME WITH HARRISON FORD ON AN INDIANA JONES MOVIE.

ALL THIS HAPPENED BECAUSE SHE WROTE SOMETHING. I said the same thing about Taylor Sheridan in my newsletter. He was a nobody. Now he owns a ranch as big as Los Angeles. All because he wrote something. Everybody who’s reading this right now. Know this: You have a very powerful tool in your hands. If you use it well, who’s to say you can’t be on a giant franchise set in three years? It seems impossible but it obviously isn’t. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is proof of that.

Okay, back to the review.

Some people didn’t like the crazy third act. A few of you will probably wonder how I can prop up this screenplay with a third act this bonkers. I’ll admit that the third act doesn’t quite work. The movie didn’t do a good enough job setting it up. What does this time and this war really have to do with Indiana Jones’s legacy?

In regards to screenwriting, though, here’s the way I see it: Good writers take risks. They take big swings. So I admire Mangold and all the writers who worked on this taking a big swing like that. It didn’t quite work. Okay. But I’d rather take that big swing than aim for that double out to right-center field. If you’re going out, as the Indiana Jones franchise is, go out swinging!

This is the second best-written Indiana Jones movie of the five films. Period. But, as a movie, it’s limited by its 80-year-old action star. Which is why I wish they would’ve made this the 4th film and ended the franchise there. Indy at 63 could’ve made everything here a lot more convincing. RIP Mutt.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Pacing vs. Character Development.  You’ll often have to balance how much character development you can include in a script versus how fast you can keep your story moving.  One of the problems people had with Helena is that she’s very capable in dangerous intense action-packed situations.  But how?  We’re not given enough information on that.  Here’s the answer: I can almost guarantee that that information was in earlier drafts of the script. But they needed to keep the pace moving.  And when you need the pace ratcheted up, the first thing that goes is character development on SECONDARY CHARACTERS.  You don’t take character development away from your hero.  You take it away from the other characters.  Which is why Helena feels a little thin.  In the end, they left us with some quick mug shots of Helena, which indicated she did have a rough and tumble past.  But it wasn’t enough to truly explain everything she was able to do.  In a perfect world you would have both pace and character development. But if you have to choose, script pace is more important than secondary character development. So lean towards pace.  A sloggy script read will negate any care we have about your characters anyway.

Note: I am taking the holiday off tomorrow.  Happy 4th everyone!  Seeya Wednesday!