Scriptshadow turns to its own for today’s screenplay review, the runner-up in the November Logline Showdown! The Equalizer meets Nosferatu.
Genre: Horror/Action
Logline: An elderly shop owner in San Francisco’s Chinatown sacrifices himself to become a goeng-si–a Chinese hopping vampire–so that he can get revenge against the gangsters terrorizing his neighborhood.
About: Today’s script finished SECOND in the November Logline Showdown to The Mentor, losing to the therapy thriller by just a single vote!
Writer: Mark Steensland
Details: 95 pages
There were lots of fans of this logline. And since it was one of the more unique concepts I’ve seen on Logline Showdown, I had to review it.
72 year old Dai, a shop owner in Chinatown who sells special papers that you burn to connect with your ancestors, is running out of time. He’s got cancer of the lungs and it’s bad enough where he can’t hide it from his family anymore.
His granddaughter, 18 year old Susan, informs her father, Chen, and mother, Zhu, that grandad is ignoring his deteriorating health. Unfortunately, the family has other pressing issues to deal with. Three gangsters – Fang, Bin, and Ko – are demanding more money for “protection” of their shop. When Chen hems and haws, they slice his arm and say they’ll be back tomorrow.
The family tries to tell the cops but when Officer Poole comes by, he erases their security footage and encourages them to pay up. He’s obviously working with the gang. They’re all part of a bigger mafia outfit run by a dude named Han.
Dai realizes that, since he’s going to die anyway, he might as well go out with a bang. An old Chinese folk tale suggests that if you hold your breath while you’re dying, you turn into a goeng-si, a hopping vampire. So Dai confronts the gang and Officer Poole, forcing them to shoot him dead. He then holds his breath and turns into a hopping vampire.
Chen knows how the hopping vampire lore works. You can use something called a “fu” to place on their forehead to freeze them. This is what he does to his father. But Dai is still able to get away and kills the three gang members. This sets off a panic in Han’s operation except nobody inside the outfit can fathom that hopping vampires really exist.
When Susan recruits her boyfriend to take down the last member of the group – Officer Poole – she gets in over her head and Han kidnaps her. This forces Chen to make a trade with the mafia boss, a trade that will include an enraged Dai, who wreaks havoc on Han’s operation.
All us readers want is for you to give us a script that’s the same but different.
Is that too much to ask?
I, of course, ask this question tongue-in-cheek, because the age-old request is one of the most self-contradicting in existence. Nobody really knows what it means.
But if there was a concept that encapsulated this request, A Chinese Vampire Story would be it. We all know what vampires are. So that’s “the same” part. But we’ve never heard of a Chinese-hopping vampire. That’s the “different” part. Voila. You’ve now given Hollywood exactly what it wants.
The only catch is that “the different” part must be conceptually strong. I could make a romantic comedy with a fork and a spoon as the lead characters and call it “the same but different” but, conceptually, it’s too weird of a premise for anybody to care. So there is some nuance to this request. You have to find that “difference” that connects with the reader. A Chinese Vampire Story achieves that.
Kudos to Mark for doing something else I always say on this site: KEEP YOUR STORY SIMPLE. This script is as simple as it gets. Bad people are robbing struggling people of their hard-earned money and, therefore, we want to see them go down. That “going down” part comes in the form of a Chinese Hopping Vampire.
It’s not just the simplicity in the plot that I like. It’s the simplicity in how Mark gets the reader invested. One of the easiest ways to get readers invested is to stir up their emotions. You can do this in a positive way. You can do it in a negative way. However you do it, once we’re stirred up emotionally, WE CARE. If we care, we want to turn pages.
One of the easiest ways to stir up emotion is to create characters the reader likes then have bad characters take advantage of them. It’s such a simple formula yet so effective. When Fang, Bin, and Ko are stealing the hard-earned money of our struggling family, we are angry, and therefore committed, to seeing them go down.
Enter our Chinese Hopping Vampire. This is the script’s “strange attractor,” – the unique thing the reader is intrigued by and wants to learn more about. The Chinese Hopping Vampire attacks by hopping (obviously). All hopping vampires are blind. So they hunt by smelling peoples’ breath. Therefore, the only way to avoid an attack is to hold your breath.
The way to kill off a hopping vampire is to stuff sticky rice in their mouths. Which is how Chen kills Fang, Bin, and Ko when they become hopping vampires.
While I liked this script, I thought it could’ve done a few things better. For starters, we’ve got a main character problem. Who’s the main character here? It starts off being Dai. Then the implication is that it’s Susan. But then it’s Chen who commits to taking out the vampires. Then it’s Susan again, who wants to kill off the cop.
Yeah, you can call it an ensemble piece and jump from character to character if you want. But this feels like the kind of movie that needs an official lead. Go with Chen or Susan, whichever character you feel is more complex and interesting.
The biggest missed opportunity is not leaving one of the gang members (Fang, Bin, and Ko) alive as a hopping vampire. If you had a villain hopping vampire running around along with a ‘hero’ hopping vampire, there are more opportunities for things to get interesting, most notably having a vampire showdown at the end.
I also felt that Mark could’ve done more with the breath-holding stuff. I’m imagining a scene like the kids stuck in the kitchen with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Put our characters in a similarly confined room with Fang the Hopping Vampire, and make them hold their breath for a full three minutes as he sniffs around. That scene writes itself.
Finally, the second half of the script isn’t as good as the first half and that can’t be the case. The script loses something when all the gang members are killed. I think the solution is to give Officer Poole a partner – so there are two bad guys we still want to kill after the gang members die. And, also, make the Chinese Mafia Boss a much bigger personality in the script. He’s our top dog and, supposedly, the guy we should want to kill the most. But we barely know him so we don’t care. He needs to be more present and more evil.
Having said all that, this is a movie. I have no doubt about it. The writer needs to put his foot on the gas more. But if he can do that, I see no reason why this script couldn’t sell.
Oh! One more thing. This script needs a cold open. Start 200 years ago and show a hopping vampire do something crazy in a shadowy sequence. Or show a murder scene and when they open the person’s mouth, it’s filled with sticky rice, which creates mystery going forward.
Script link: A Chinese Vampire Story
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful about killing the villains we hate the most too early in your script. Once we feel that satisfaction, we’re not as invested in the story. Either keep one of the thugs alive, make Poole a lot worse, or make the mafia boss the worst guy ever. That way we’re still highly engaged and want our heroes to take these guys down.
The most clever horror premise I’ve read all year. It Follows meets The Ring!
Genre: Horror
Premise: A young woman finds out, after breaking up with her boyfriend, that everyone who breaks up with him dies exactly three days later.
About: The short story sales continue! In addition to “It’s Over,” we also have the new Ridley Scott short story project, “Bomb.” I’m trying to get my hands on that one as well so maybe I’ll be reviewing it soon. “It’s Over” sold for mid-six figures to Sony and will be adapted by Akela Cooper, who scripted, “M3GAN.”
Writer: Jack Follman
Details: 28 pages
Prey’s Amber Midthunder for Jen?
Short stories taking over Hollywood. Who would’ve thought?
I wonder if the reason these things are selling is because Hollywood realized they were going to rewrite any spec sales anyway. So why not substitute in a piece of writing that allows them to craft the script from conception? There is no script with a short story so you can build the building however you want, as opposed to having to redesign it, which can be deceivingly difficult.
Jen has been with Lucas for five years. The two began dating in college and Jen is finally realizing that they were in a relationship of convenience. She doesn’t love him anymore. Therefore, it’s time to break up. So she meets with him, tells him it’s over, and gets the shock of her life.
Lucas says she can’t break up with him. “Why?” She asks. “Cause you’ll die. Every girl who has ever broken up with me dies exactly 3 days later.” Jen is weirded out, and after arguing with Lucas about this insane statement, she heads over to her best friend, Maggie’s, house for some girl support.
She’s shocked to find Maggie wasted, and after picking up her computer, sees e-mails between Maggie and Lucas. Maggie ended their illicit affair a couple of days ago and he’s been trying to get her back ever since. After screaming at her best friend, Jen storms out, only to hear, seconds later, something dreadful happen to Maggie. When she opens the door, Maggie is dead.
The police bring Jen in and are none too convinced that she didn’t have something to do with Maggie’s death, seeing as she had ample motivation to remove her from the planet. But now Jen knows that there may be something to this whole 3-day curse and hurries back to Lucas to get back together with him, at least until she can figure out what the heck is going on. Except Lucas has bad news. “It doesn’t work that way,” he says. Even if they get back together, Jen is already on the clock. In less than 2 days, she’ll be DEAD.
I want to highlight the importance for writers of choosing a concept. Because I looked Jack Follman up and saw that he had one other credit. It was for a movie called “Snorkeling.” Here’s the description for that film: “An authentic coming-of-age film about love, addiction, and mental health. A young couple tries a new hallucinogenic street drug called Snorkeling which explores the highs, and ultimate tragedy, of drug dependency, via a unique journey of adolescent self-discovery.”
Okay, now here’s the description of today’s story: “A young woman finds out, after breaking up with her boyfriend, that everyone who breaks up with him dies exactly three days later.”
I’m placing the producer hat on you right now. You have 10 million dollars. You HAVE to make a movie this year. The above two movies are your only choices. Which one do you make? Is it even a question? Of course you pick “It’s Over.” “It’s Over” is 100 times more marketable – not an exaggeration – than “Snorkeling.” If you don’t understand why, I guarantee you, you’re picking bad ideas to write about.
I’m not saying Snorkeling can’t be a movie. I’m saying that this business is hard enough even when all the factors are in your favor. So why not pick a concept that has wide appeal? That gives you a chance to break out?
It’s Over is one of the better concepts I’ve come across all year. It’s “It Follows” meets “The Ring.” What a great salable combo. Oh, and one other thing, IT’S INCREDIBLY CHEAP TO MAKE. I can’t imagine a scenario where this DIDN’T sell. That’s how perfect of a concept it is.
The great thing about a great concept is that all you have to do is not screw up the execution. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to write a great story. You only have to write a great story if you have a concept like “Snorkeling.” But with great concepts, the producers, in a lot of cases, are already leaning towards buying your script/story before they’ve read it. Cause they know how movie marketing works and they know that this is a concept they can sell to audiences.
It’s Over starts out great.
I’ve been doing a lot of consultations lately, which allows me to see things more clearly. It’s easier for me to notice patterns when I’m consistently analyzing scripts. One of the things I’ve been noticing is that writers aren’t taking advantage of their concepts enough.
They’re writing up the kinds of scenes (and scenarios) that can be in any movie as opposed to asking themselves, “How can I write scenarios that specifically take advantage of my unique concept?” The more you do that, the more your story will stand out from the pack.
There’s a great example of that here. Jen’s best friend, Maggie, has been sleeping with her boyfriend. Now, we’ve seen friends sleeping with character’s boyfriends in a lot of movies, right? This is not a new plot development.
However, within the construct of this premise, it’s the perfect development. Cause what it means is that Maggie and Lucas were in a relationship. Therefore, if she just ended it with him, that means she will die. This works as a catalyst to solidify to Jen that what Lucas is saying is real. Cause when Maggie dies, that’s proof he was being truthful.
As soon as I read that scene, I knew, “This writer gets it.” More writers need to do this. I’m telling you – you get so much more mileage out of your screenplays when you do.
So I was upset when, later on, Jen gets stuck in a bathroom and hides in one of the stalls, and the evil “It’s Over” beast starts kicking down the stalls one by one. It’s a scary scenario, sure. But this WAS NOT a scene specific to this premise. This scene can literally be in any horror movie out there (and is). So it doesn’t work the way the Maggie reveal does.
It’s a reminder to keep pushing yourself. Don’t pat yourself on the back after the Maggie reveal and say, “I’m good now.” Keep trying to come up with scenarios that take advantage of your specific premise. That tip is creeping into my top 10 all-time screenwriting tips. That’s how important it is. And yet very few writers actually do it.
The rest of It’s Over does a decent job wrapping up the story but it’s one of those deals where the couple has to go find someone who started the curse and figure out how to reverse it. That scenario needs time to breathe and, unfortunately, short stories are good for letting things breathe. You have to wrap stuff up quicker. You can feel that pinch as Follman attempts to do it. Still, the execution is more than adequate.
There are a lot of sales in Hollywood that make you scratch your head. This is not one of them. This is the sale you read and you go, “Yeah, I know exactly why that sold.”
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If a scary scene you just wrote can appear in any horror movie, you need to get rid of it and replace it with a scene that can only happen in your specific movie due to your specific premise.
How did one of my most anticipated films of the year hold up to all that expectation??
Genre: War/Drama/Period
Premise: A wealthy German family goes about their daily lives living several feet away from the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War 2.
About: This film won the esteemed Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival. Director Jonathan Glazer wanted things to feel so realistic in his film that he set up 10 cameras throughout the home his characters lived in and would do 90 minute takes where the characters would just walk around the house and improvise lines.
Writer: Jonathan Glazer (based on the novel by Martin Amis)
Details: 1 hour and 45 minutes (feels like 5 hours and 45 minutes)
It’s the holiday season.
What better way to celebrate than with a Holocaust movie!?
I’ve been looking forward to this film ever since I heard about it. The premise was so unique. A family living happy unburdened lives several feet from the most death-centric piece of land in human history. The irony was irresistible. People have called it the best horror film of the year.
Well, I checked it out this weekend and, long story short, I’d imagine some forms of heart surgery are more enjoyable than this piece of cinematic torture. I’m canceling the French for endorsing this.
But I’m not going to spend the entire review ripping on it because nobody here is going to see it so what would be the point? Instead, I want to use the film to remind screenwriters of a handful of key screenwriting tips. Because The Zone of Interest is what happens when you ignore the power of good storytelling.
I was debating whether to even write a synopsis for the film since so little happens. But for the sake of context, we follow a family (a father, a mother, and their four young children) who literally live right up against the Auschwitz wall. It turns out that the father is the head administrator of Auschwitz.
The movie follows them through their mundane daily activities, eating or playing in the backyard. The father, Rudolf, who, oddly, is the nicest person in the family, is stressed out by the burden of running his camp. Later in the movie, orders come down to transfer him to another camp. His family stays at the house, though. The climax is Rudolf learning that they need him back at Auschwitz, allowing him to reunite with his family.
By the way, I’m being SUUUUUUUPER generous by making that sound like an actual story. Everything that happens in the script does so randomly. There’s no design behind anything. It’s as if writer Jonathan Glazer threw darts at a dart board for which scenes to write next.
Screenwriting Tip #1: The novelty of your concept runs out quickly. Have a plan for what follows.
The film’s best attribute is the horror that’s happening off screen. We hear the screams. We hear the cries. We hear the gunshots. We see the smoke coming out of the incinerators.
The problem is, the novelty wears off quickly. We get the message in the first ten minutes. With that not working for your movie anymore, what’s your plan to keep us invested? You didn’t have one. You were hoping the off-screen horror would do the lion’s share of the work.
This issue is true for every screenplay. The reader comes for the concept. But the novelty of the concept gets old quickly. Which means you have to come up with an entertaining plot. You have to create compelling characters we want to follow. You have to tell a good story. You can’t rely solely on the concept that got the audience in the door.
Otherwise, make a short film. Which is what Zone of Interest should’ve been.
Screenwriting Tip #2 – Subtlety does not make your script deeper. It makes it more confusing.
The big mistake so many drama writers make is that in their determination to avoid being on-the-nose, they go in the opposite direction and make everything super subtle. These writers then seem surprised when audiences miss key story beats or character motivations.
Rudolf spends the majority of this movie staring off into the distance looking stressed. While Glazer may know what Rudolf’s thinking, how the heck are we supposed to know? Are we mind-readers? This is the problem with being too subtle. We have to guess Rudolf’s thoughts, which means we’re deviating from your, the writer’s, intent.
Is Rudolf scared? Does he feel bad about what he’s doing? Does he want to keep rising in the German ranks? Or is he satisfied with where he stands? We never know ANYTHING because Rudolf never speaks to other characters about how he feels.
Rudolf is just one example of the excessive subtlety in the film. One of the maids may be Jewish. There are subtle hints that this is the case. But we’re never certain. We don’t know if she’s Jewish but pretending not to be. Or if she’s Jewish and the family is aware but letting her work anyway?
Note how either of those scenarios are fertile ground to explore drama. But Glazer ignores both. That’s a running theme throughout this movie. There were so many opportunities to make this a compelling story that were ignored in favor of vagaries and subtleties.
Be clear about things when you’re storytelling. There are times when you want to be subtle, yes. But subtlety only works if we are clear about everything else surrounding the subtlety.
Screenwriting Tip #3 – Put some stakes behind your big plot points.
A major plot point only works if there are stakes supporting it. The lone plot point in this movie is that Rudolf gets transferred. But there are zero stakes attached to it other than he’s going to be traveling away from his family. In a movie about the holocaust, the audience isn’t going to care that the main character is inconvenienced. You need real stakes built into that plot point for it to be effective.
Maybe Rudolf made some major blunder at work, screwing something up enough that it’s being reported to Hitler. The implication is that, if Hitler feels the mistake is bad enough, Rudolf could lose everything. He and his family would be removed from this cushy lifestyle and relocated to some ghetto. You would then play that suspense out over 30-40 minutes. He’s waiting on that decision from Hitler that’s going to determine the rest of his life. That one single change would’ve made this movie five times as interesting.
Without stakes, plot points are lip service. They make it seem like something is happening but the audience doesn’t care because there are no repercussions.
Screenwriting Tip #4 – It’s cause and effect, not effect and cause
This seems obvious to me but I guess Glazer never got the memo. You need to show the cause first AND THEN THE EFFECT. Not vice versa.
A little after the midpoint, Rudolf goes in for a checkup from the doctor. The doctor gives him a basic exam to make sure everything is in order. Then, later on in the film, Rudolf is walking through a building, doubles over, and starts having intense vomiting episodes. It comes out of nowhere (more vagueness instead of clarity). The movie ends quickly afterward.
Consider how much better for the story this would’ve been if they’d shown the vomiting (the cause) first. Now you can draw out the suspense. Does he have a disease? Now that same doctor’s visit (the effect) has more meaning to it. They could find out he’s really sick.
This is Drama 101 but it wasn’t until I saw this movie that I realized some people are so ignorant when it comes to storytelling that they don’t understand the most basic tenets of the trade.
Screenwriting Tip #5 – It’s not “All or Nothing.”
Too many writers think that when they’re writing big Hollywood movies, they should be as big and surface-level as possible all the time. The same problem happens with indie writers. They’re so terrified of betraying their indie sensibilities, they won’t give you a single entertaining plot development in the screenplay.
It’s okay to add thoughtful character development to big blockbuster scripts just as it’s okay to write in entertaining plot developments into your holocaust film. It’s never all or nothing.
In retrospect, I should’ve known The Zone of Interest would be bad. Jonathan Glazer is so artsy, even indie directors find his films pretentious.
Still, I’m left with a longing for what could’ve been. There were so many interesting ways for this story to go. For example, the longer the story goes on, the more we like Rudolf. There’s something borderline sweet about him we connect to. Meanwhile, the wife, Hedwig, becomes less and less likable as the story continues, at one point lashing out at one of the maids by saying her husband could have her ashes scattered all over Auschwitz by tomorrow.
That could’ve been an interesting character study had Glazer committed to it. We think that Rudolf is the monster. But we learn, over time, that Hedwig is the true monster. She’s the one steering the ship from behind the scenes.
Alas, Glazer doesn’t have a single writing bone in his body. It’s too bad. Cause this film could’ve won numerous Oscars if he did.
[x] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: While audiences do enjoy doing *some work* in a movie, they don’t enjoy doing *all the work*. If you don’t tell us anything about the characters, if you don’t give us any interesting plot developments, if every scene is too subtle to decode, and you’re hoping we, the audience, will put all that together and come up with some profound feeling about your film for you, you’ve failed. That’s not our job. You have to do the majority of the work as the creator to get us to feel something.
The Black List is rigged. It’s time for Scriptshadow to un-rig it
Which Top 10 script is this?
As we all know, by this point, the Black List is rigged. This is not the creator, Franklin Leonard’s, fault. It’s just that the list has been around long enough that managers and agents have figured out how to manipulate it.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think the scripts on the list aren’t worthy. I just think they’re ranked incorrectly. If a prominent manager wants to get his client’s script near the top, he can get it there as long as he’s willing to do the work. This is what skews the Black List. And it’s why you need someone who goes in there, reads all the scripts, and figures out which ones are truly the best.
Since there’s a lot of confusion about if these are really the best of the best scripts, the answer is no. I can tell you that I’ve read five consultation scripts this year that would’ve made the top 10 of the Black List. But, for various reasons (i.e. 3 out of the 5 are repped writers who have no interest in blasting their scripts around town) the scripts won’t come to the attention of voters.
And then, of course, you have the unending list of professional screenwriters doing big-time assignment work that would blow every script on the 2023 Black List out of the water. But most of these scripts are kept under wraps and, therefore, never seen by Black List voters.
The Black List has become more a celebration of new screenwriters. Which I think is a good thing. But it also puts undue pressure on the list to deliver when, in actuality, the writers who made the list, aren’t ready to deliver. They’re new (relatively speaking). They’re still learning the craft. If we’re lucky, five of them come up with something brilliant.
Which leads us to today’s list. I’m re-ranking all of last year’s scripts so that you know what the TRUE best scripts on the list are. There are 18 scripts (out of 74) that will not be included on the list because I didn’t read them. They were scripts that, mostly, sounded like I wouldn’t enjoy them no matter how well they were written. However, if anybody has read any of these and believes I’m missing out, by all means, tell me in the comments section. I’ll read the script and, if necessary, change the rankings.
Those scripts are: Resurfaced (biopic), Dumb Blonde (biopic), Total Landscaping (2020 election), Cheat Day (flimsy premise), Going For Two (gay NFL QB falls for teacher), Popular (GOP strategist hero), An Oakland Holiday (princess at an Oakland H.S.), Better Luck Next Time (gender vs. gender), Jerry! (Biopic), The Homestead (never got to it but best-looking of these options), The Twelve Dancing Princesses (title alone kept me from this one), Caravan (demon in the Silk Road – could maybe be good), It’s Britney, B*tch (I mean, do I have to explain?), Wildfire (mute and a trans woman), Black Dogs (Led Zepplin heist – could be good), Eternity (felt like one of those aimless indie films), The Trap (twin trapeze artists), You’re My Best Friend (felt like a bad YA book).
Are we ready? Okay, good. To create some suspense, I’ll be starting from the bottom and moving all the way to the top.
56. A Guy Goes to Therapy by Shane Mack
Logline: When his girlfriend catches her boyfriend doing something unthinkable, she leaves him, forcing him to consider the unthinkable – therapy.
Votes: 19 (Top 10)
From Review: “If the main plot is something that can be a subplot in another movie, your concept probably isn’t big enough.”
55. Viva Mexico by Miguel Flatow
Logline: When a washed-up superhero gets betrayed by a Mexican government, he must lead a populist social movement to fight the Narcos, topple the government, and free the people.
Votes: 15 (Top 15)
From Review: “It wasn’t even clear, at the beginning, if John *was* a superhero or a guy wearing a suit pretending to be a superhero. And then when we do find out he’s a real superhero (he’s kind of a low-rent Captain America), we’re told that he only got half-a-dose of the super-serum. So he’s not a true superhero. And, also, I think his shield is the only thing that allows him to have his powers?”
54. The Seeker by Camrus Johnson
Logline: A childhood folktale comes to life when children of the neighborhood start to go missing after playing hide and seek.
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “What do we have here that is in any way redeeming to Black List voters? This isn’t a marketable idea. It’s not a cool idea. It’s not a heady idea. It’s not a clever idea. It’s not written in a unique voice. The execution is okay but far from exceptional. Why would people vote for this?”
53. They Came From A Broken World by Vanessa Block
Logline: The year is 1955. The small town of Boon Falls has provided a local forest as refuge to aliens fleeing their war-torn planet. When Mia–young woman dealing with the trauma of her mother’s death–stumbles upon an Alien woman who needs her help, a series of haunting revelations in the refugee forest leads her to an unimaginable truth.
Votes: 14 votes (Top 20)
From Review: “The script tried to do too much. We’ve got the illegal alien issue (some people in town hate the aliens). We’ve got climate change (people escaping a world that’s falling apart). We’ve got racism (the backstory alludes to discrimination in the 50s). We’ve got sexism (the aliens are all women). I’m not going to lie. At a certain point, it felt like a Black List bingo card.”
52. Jambusters by Filipe Coutinho
Logline: A mystery about what paper jams can teach us about life. After an inexperienced detective starts investigating a death at the Paper Jam department of a major corporation on the verge of its centennial, she unwittingly embarks on a life-altering spiritual journey that unearths her small town’s dark secrets.
Votes: 17 (Top 10)
From Review: “In the end, though, this script makes you wade through so much text to get to the relevant plot points, that it violates one of the most important rules of screenwriting, which is that a script is supposed to entertain the reader. The second it crosses over into making them work, you’ve lost them.”
51. Baby Boom by Jack Waz
Logline: A married couple attending a gender reveal party are quickly informed that they must stop the reveal party at all costs… or the world will blow up.
Votes: 17 (Top 10)
From Review: “The script is written in a brisk effortless style, as every comedy should be. The structure is solid, as it’s divided into five sections, each with a big goal (prevent the world from blowing up). But for me, it’s more of a “smile” comedy than an “lol” comedy.”
Additional: The comedy with the most potential on the list and they botched it.
50. There You Are by Brooke Baker
Logline: When a non-confrontational playwright loses her engagement ring, she must travel through Italy to get it back with a man who was supposed to be just a one-night stand, discussing love and lying along the way.
Votes: 15 (Top 15)
From Review: “You can make the argument that this movie is exploring reality as opposed to the bubble gum version of relationships and dating. Sometimes, as human beings, we do dumb illogical s—t. Sleep with the wrong people. Hurt those we love. The problem is, the script doesn’t have the requisite touch required to hold up to this more complex view of humanity.”
49. I Love You Now And Forever by Robert Machoian
Logline: After exhausting all financial options to save their dying daughter, Frank and Abby are forced into a final act of desperation: rob a local bank.
Votes: 8 votes (bottom 50%)
From Review: “You need narratives that give your characters purposeful things to do throughout the movie. Not just during the big obvious set pieces.”
48. Craigshaven by Nicole Ramberg
Logline: A Wisconsin high school girl teams up with her friends to look for a ghost ship she believes is connected to her mother’s disappearance.
Votes: 6 votes (Bottom 10)
From Review: “But in being so hyper-focused on this ghost ship plotline, everything else falls by the wayside. Not just the characters but the plot. It’s too standard and basic. With screenwriting, you have to do it all. Or you at least have to try. From the concept to the voice to the characters to the storytelling to the dialogue to the relationships to the plot to the structure. You can’t half-ass any of those if you want to write a great script.”
47. The Sisters by Alexander Thompson
Logline: Twin sisters live in a commune where, once they hit puberty, one of the twins becomes a monster and must be killed. But when the twins learn that their community is keeping big secrets from them, they make a run for it.
Votes: 9 (Lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “The YA genre has always been underwhelming. Anyone could come up with one of these concepts in thirty seconds. Here, I’ll come up with one right now. Children are all raised in a remote commune. At 10, all girls become vampires and all guys get telepathy. Boom, there’s a YA concept for anyone who wants it.”
46. Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
Logline: A pregnant pizza delivery girl becomes infatuated with a customer, a mother desperately trying to raise a son on her own.
Votes: 21 (Top 5)
From Review: “Like a lot of Black List scripts, Pizza Girl has some strong pieces to it. But the overall experience feels uneven and too depressing. I think I understood what the writer was trying to do but was just never able to get past that down feeling the story gave me.”
45. Oh The Humanity by Gillian Weeks
Logline: A dark comedy about the Hindenburg Disaster; or, the mostly true story about one of the biggest f—kups in history, the a—holes who tried to cover it up, and the female gossip reporter who made some Nazis very angry.
Votes: 15 (top 15)
From Review: “I wouldn’t say this was the most frustrating script I’ve read all year. But it was up there. There was a ton going on and I was always playing catch-up, trying to figure out the tone, trying to figure out the type of movie, trying to remember who was who and what they wanted. Trying to figure out who the heck the main character was.”
44. Marriage Bracket by Liv Auerbach & Daisygreen Stenhouse
Logline: Ten years after a group of girlfriends bet on which of them would be the last to get married, their adult lives and relationships are completely upended when they discover the $80 they drunkenly invested in Bitcoin
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “I’m fine with a little sloppiness in comedies. It can actually help the comedy at times. But if I don’t even believe that what’s happening would happen, it’s hard for me to invest emotionally. And if I’m not invested emotionally, it’s hard for me to laugh. I’ll chuckle. I’ll have a few of those surface-level laughs. But for those deep uncontrollable laughs, the screws have to be way tighter than they are here.”
43. It’s a Wonderful Story by Alexandra Tran
Logline: In the aftermath of WWII, a traumatized Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart use the making of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to attempt to find a way back into normalcy.
Votes: 9 votes (middle of the pack)
From Review: “I thought the script was going to do something clever like cover the production of It’s a Wonderful Life in a way that semi-mirrored the actual film. For example, what if James Stewart was feeling similar things about his own existence in relation to the fictional character he played? What does this world look like if James Stewart was never born? Fun stuff like that. But it’s more of this traditional biopic.”
42. Jingle Bell Heist by Abby McDonald
Logline: At the height of the holiday season, two strangers team up to rob one of New York’s most famous department stores while accidentally falling in love.
Votes: 12 votes (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “My advice if you’re going to write a heist screenplay is to stay away from a straight, sexy thriller, unless you’re one of the best dialogue writers in the world. Because these movies are all about the banter between the two main characters, as well as the sexual tension underneath that banter.”
41. Fog of War by Peter Haig
Logline: When a retired war journalist returns to the outpost where her son was stationed to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, she uncovers unspeakable horrors.
Votes: 12 votes (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “I struggled with the storytelling here. The script relied too heavily on “crazy stuff happens” moments. Monkey attacks, 1900s era soldiers, goats voluntarily committing suicide, characters going insane. I’m all for something crazy happening in a script. It can be fun. I just felt there was an over-reliance on it.”
40. Pop by James Morosini
Logline: A 13 year-old boy blackmails his favorite pop star into being his best friend.
Votes: 8 votes (bottom 50%)
From Review: “The screenplay feels rushed. The writer never commits to any details to make me believe this is a real pop star. If you’re covering a specific subject matter, you have to give us AT LEAST ONE THING that we don’t know. In one of my favorite movies of the year, Blackberry, we get this early scene in the boardroom that goes into highly specific territory about how the Blackberry works. That helps sell us on the world, which, in turn, pulls us in. If anything, I got the opposite impression from “Pop.” Alice sells CDs at her concert! Because we all know those Gen Z 15 and 16 year olds love CDs. It’s just as important to them as improving their laserdisc collection.”
39. Match Cut by Will Lowell
Logline: A stunt man on location in Italy is mistaken for a famous assassin who just tried to take out one of the country’s biggest businessman. The businessman puts his entire financial weight behind finding and killing the “assassin.”
Votes: 11 votes (middle of the pack)
From Review: “Take the opening scene here. It’s as assassination scene. It’s well written. It’s paced well. It’s described well. There’s a little bit of suspense. It has an emotional moment between father and son. But I have read, literally, one thousand scenes just like it.”
38. Break Point by Zachary Joel Johnson
Logline: Courted by colleges and sponsors alike, a burnt-out tennis prodigy fights to maintain dominance against her Academy rival as she hurtles toward the existential decision of turning Pro–a choice that will force her to double down on her dream or walk away from the future she’s fought for.
Votes: 7 votes (Bottom 20)
From Review: “You need to create stakes that hold up in the real world. For example, Faheema decides she’s going to play the Nationals in the hopes of winning in order to double her contract offer from Prince. But what does that really mean? She’ll make 160 thousand dollars instead of 80 thousand. You have to think about these things from the perspective of the reader. Is the reader really going to say, “Oh man! I wasn’t interested when she was only going to make 80 grand. But now that she’s going to get 160 grand?? I’m all in!”
37. Life of the Party by Julie Mandel Folly & Hannah Murphy
Logline: Two teenage feminists struggle to create the perfect boyfriend, only to watch their experiment deteriorate as he succumbs to the ultimate perpetrator of casual high school misogyny: the football team.
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “I just couldn’t get past all the technical errors, like the motivation, character inconsistency, the writers making things too easy for our heroes.”
36. The Boy Houdini by Matthew Tennant
Logline: When aspiring magician, Harry Houdini, discovers a mysterious puzzle-box, he must use his talent for illusion and escape to unlock the box’s powerful secrets and keep it out of the hands of a vengeful sorcerer.
Votes: 12 (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “You can’t spell “movie” without “move.” A movie’s gotta move. A side quest THINKS it’s moving. It creates the ILLUSION of moving since your characters are going after something. But the main plot is stalled and therefore we feel stalled.”
35. Mega Action Hit by Sean Tidwell
Logline: After Hollywood’s leading action star hits his head on set and wakes up thinking he’s a real-life action hero, he embarks on an international mission to track down a real stolen nuke before it’s too late.
Votes: 11 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “Mega Action Hit is fun. But like a lot of these scripts, the fun is too empty. It’s not genuine fun. It’s the kind of fun you have passively watching TV while messing around on your computer. In other words, there’s not enough here for me to endorse it.”
34. Gather the Ashes by Vikash Shankar
Logline: Two young Indian brothers living in England head back to their dying grandmother’s home in a remote part of India only to learn that her house may be haunted.
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “If you’re stuck in one location – which often happens with haunted house scripts – you need to move your plots along quicker because we’re going to get bored faster in contained locations. Characters sitting around is script ambien. So you need your plot to offset that.”
33. Goat by Zack Akers & Skip Bronkie
Logline: A promising first-round draft pick is invited to train at the private compound of the team’s legendary but aging quarterback. Over one week, the rising star witnesses the horrific lengths his hero will go to to stay at the top of his game.
Votes: 16 (Top 15)
From Review: “The script has its charms. I love the spec-y nature of it. Contained time frame. Low character count. Organic heavy conflict between the leads. Urgency. And the genre element makes it easier to sell. I was into all that. But the execution felt too basic and repetitive. Very repetitive.”
32. Weary Ride The Belmonts by Josh Corbin
Logline: After staging his death many years ago, an aging gunslinger is forced to reunite with his outlaw daughter during the dying days of the west.
Votes: 8 (low bottom half)
From Review: “There’s still 40 pages remaining in the script and we’re left to wonder, “Why are we still here? What’s left to figure out?” I guess there are some questions that need answering regarding why Ophelia hates her dad. But that’s the kind of question you want piggybacking on top of a bigger story goal. And you just ended your story goal.”
31. Undo by Will Simmons
Logline: A down-on-his-luck former getaway driver comes into possession of a mysterious watch that allows the user to go back in time by one minute. As he starts to uncover its uses and gets pulled into one last heist by his former crew, a dangerous group after the technology gets on his tail and will stop at nothing to get the watch back.
Votes: 8 (low bottom half)
From Review: “Let me think out loud here for a second. A minute ago, Benji was worried about some second-tier street thug maybe following Vince and figuring out where Benji lives. But Benji has no problems with a DEAD KGB AGENT IN HIS HOME?????!!! I’m thinking on the scale of “this is a problem,” that’s about a million times worse than a Latin King.”
30. Americano by Nico Bellamy & Chase Pestano
Logline: An everyday guy who accidentally starts working as a barista inside the CIA headquarters building gets lured into a spy mission by a beautiful secret agent, known only to him as Carmel Machiato.
Votes: 12 (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “I like “in over your head” comedy. You risk a little bit when you make your hero incompetent. If a protagonist is too dumb or too idiotic, the reader can rebel against them. Hubie Halloween comes to mind. But as long as he’s funny, we’ll forgive a lot of that incompetance.”
29. Who Made The Potato Salad? By Kyle Drew
Logline: A family’s Christmas dinner goes awry when a xenomorphic demon starts to duplicate and imitate each member of the family. What does it want? To show them their greatest fears.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of pack)
From Review: “I was ready to tap out after the first act. There were a lot of character introductions. A lot of dialogue that, because there was so much setup, was boring to read. I was worried this was going to be one of those scripts where we sit at a table the whole time and engage in endless dialogue. But then Bryan commits suicide. Which is followed by him coming back to life. And, all of a sudden, I found myself turning the pages with more energy.”
28. Let’s go Again by Colin Bannon
Logline: When her domineering director makes her film the same scene 148 times on the final night of an exhausting shoot, actress Annie Long must fight to keep her own sanity as she tries to decipher what is real, and what is part of his twisted game.
Votes: 13 (upper middle of pack)
From Review: “I’m, self-admittedly, not a fan of descent-into-madness screenplays for one simple reason. The screenwriter never gets the line right between keeping the script understandable and the story crazy. They always bring the craziness and messiness into the writing itself so we’re not sure what’s going on. These scripts have to be understandable even if what’s going on in the story isn’t supposed to be understood. That’s a hard balance for even experienced writers to master. While Bannon’s tackling of the problem isn’t perfect, he does a pretty good job.”
27. What We Become by Amy Jo Johnson
Logline: A successful author/wife/mother plans a trip to a bucolic island to crack her next book and finds herself in a surprising situation.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “Sex scenes are tricky, to shoot as well as to write. Because if you’re too soft, they’re boring. If they’re too hard, they become exploitative and overwhelm the moment, pulling the reader out of the story. I thought Johnson wrote these perfectly. The scenes are sexy, slightly original, occasionally push the boundaries, and most importantly, remain authentic.”
26. Vitus by Julian Wayser
Logline: Back in 1518, there was an infamous real-life “dancing plague” that took over a town and proceeded to kill dozens of people. To this day, there is no consensus on what happened.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “If you are going to write a story that moves between characters instead of stays with a main character, you have to be GREAT at creating memorable characters in a short period of time.”
25. Chatter by Chris Grillot
Logline: A drug addict returning from rehab kidnaps her daughter from her father then tries to skip town, only to end up at an old BnB chased by an evil tooth fairy determined to take her daughter from her.
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “With that said, there’s a teensy bit more good to Chatter than bad. Like I always say, get the main characters right and that will act as deodorant for many of your script’s weaknesses. I felt that Grillot got the characters of Ceilia and Imani right. And then I always love when writers take a goofy idea and treat it really seriously. It always creates an unexpected tone.”
24. The Midnight Pool by Jonathan Easley
Logline: Burdened by the loss of his wife to a suicide cult, an embittered investigative journalist infiltrates an elite secret society, only to find something far more sinister.
Votes: 14 (Top 20)
From Review: “If you like absurdist stuff – David Lynch and those types of movies – you might dig this. It certainly has its charms. It just gets too messy.”
23. Court 17 by Elad Ziv (no review)
Logline: An over-the-hill tennis pro, trying to salvage her career, finds herself stuck playing the first round of the US Open over and over again against one of the top players in the world. The only way to stop the loop is to win the match, a seemingly impossible task due to how overmatched she is.
Votes: 22 (top 2)
Thoughts: I didn’t review this one because, as some of you know, I worked extensively with the writer on it. I couldn’t review it objectively no matter how hard I tried. Plus, when you work on a script, you only see the things that are wrong as opposed to what’s right. I did read the new draft though and I thought it was pretty good. Elad took the script in some new directions. But I can’t get over the fact that I thought this could be great. To me, it wasn’t just about a tennis match. It was a metaphor for life. Every day you keep getting knocked down and you have to get back up and keep fighting or give up. That’s what I wanted to capture in the script and I don’t think we ever got there.
22. Pure by Catherine Schetina
Logline: A young woman obsessed with eating healthy becomes convinced that all the food she puts in her body is rotting, leading to her having a meltdown at her sister’s wedding.
Votes: 25 (number 1 script)
From Review: “I like creepy obsession stories. We all feel like we’re close to being one of these people. We all have our unique obsessions. What would it take for them to become a legit medical condition? The line between the two is probably a lot smaller than we think.”
21. White Mountains by Becky Leigh & Mario Kyprianou
Logline: The famous 1961 UFO case of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who had a close encounter of the 4th kind with aliens on a remote highway.
Votes: 17 (Top 10)
From Review: “It’s a solid script, especially if you like this subject matter. I would’ve preferred more UFO geekery in the end than social commentary but that’s just me.”
20. Pikesville Sweep by Brendan McMugh
Logline: After a young, newly widowed janitor in a small mining village is unexpectedly elected Mayor, she navigates a new relationship with a mysterious man from the city and tries to determine how to use her new position of power to confront the corruption that has plagued the town for years.
Votes: 13 (Upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “Main character was great. Villain was great. Any time those two were in a scene together, I was on the edge of my seat. But nothing else in the script worked, unfortunately. So I can’t endorse this.”
19. The Demolition Expert by Colin Bannon
Logline: Blasting out of prison after being double-crossed by the Mastermind of a heist, a Demolition Expert uses his genius with explosives to enact revenge on the Caper Crew who set him up while simultaneously picking up the pieces of his personal life.
Votes: 8 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “This is clearly Bannon’s modern-day take on Speed and it’s probably how a modern-day version of Speed would look like. There wouldn’t just be one scenario (a bus that couldn’t drop below 50 mph). The social media generation needs more stimuli, which is what The Demolition Expert gives you. It entertains you with multiple bomb situations.”
18. The House in the Crooked Forest by Ian Shorr
Logline: A mother and her young son fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland are forced to take shelter from a blizzard in an isolated manor, where they discover the Nazis may be the least of their worries.
Votes: 10 (Lower middle of the pack)
From Review: You know what this script reminded me of? Barbarian. It’s like a 1942 World War 2 version of Barbarian, with its horror waiting in the innards of the house and its weird monsters waiting to make mincemeat out of the home’s guests. I could totally see Craig Zegger directing this.
17. Ravenswood by Evan Enderle
Logline: To save her friend, a maid in a decaying manor must unravel the secrets of its inhabitants while confronting spirits, her own terrifying abilities, and the very real horrors of Depression-era America lurking outside the door.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “This is DEFINITELY one of the better written scripts on the Black List. The writing is simple, descriptive, and, most importantly for a horror script, haunting. It feels professional right from the bump.”
16. Subversion by Andrew Ferguson
Logline: When her family is abducted, a disgraced submariner must pilot a narco submarine to its destination in less than eight hours or her husband and daughter will be killed.
Votes: 11 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “You wouldn’t be wrong to call this “Die Hard on a sub.” In fact, if the lead character was a 40 year old man and this spec was written in 1994 as opposed to 2023, I have no doubt it would’ve sold for 1.5 million dollars.”
15. Semper Maternus by Laura Kosann
Logline: On a private island off San Francisco, a nanny goes to work for a mother who is one of America’s most powerful tech entrepreneurs. Things slowly begin to devolve as the mother’s hyper-monitoring and surveillance become suffocating.
Votes: 11 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “I have to say, I LOOVVVEED the first half of this script. It was everything I wanted my contained thriller on an island screenplay to be. It was very much a female version of Ex Machina. I’m sure that was a big inspiration for Kossan.”
14. 42.6 Years by Seth Reiss
Logline: After waking up from a failed experimental lifesaving procedure in which he was cryogenically frozen for 42.6 years, a young man realizes he wants his ex-girlfriend back. He’ll have to overcome the fact that while he hasn’t aged a day, she’s lived an entire life without him.
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “It was probably inevitable that I would like 42.6 years seeing as it nails one of my concept prerequisites: whatever genre you write in, come up with an idea that allows you to explore it from a fresh angle. Here, we have a romantic comedy whose premise sets up a scenario whereby a 30-something man is dating a 70-something woman.”
13. Below by Geoff Tock & Greg Weidman
Logline: A lonely bounty hunter trying to improve his life goes around LA killing secret monsters hiding inside human bodies. His job gets a lot more complicated when he’s forced to team up with his first partner.
Votes: 6 (bottom 10)
From Review: “Something happens to this script when Boxer (the older female co-lead) arrives. Because, before Boxer, this was a cold sad depressing world. She then comes in with this enthusiasm that not only gives Our Man (the hero) hope – it gives US hope! I loved that she was older, which is a different kind of dynamic than we’re used to with these pairings. I loved that all she wanted to do was be friends with Boxer. And she wouldn’t let him off the friend hook.”
12. Colors of Authority by Kevin Sheridan
Logline: Based on a true story, a young Los Angeles Sheriff’s dream job sours when he realizes that the department he serves in is mired in corruption and a systemic culture of moral depravity. Based on a true story.
Votes: 14 (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “I would be shocked if this didn’t become a movie with a big director and some heavy-hitting actors. It’s got that “Departed” aroma wafting off of it. And Kevin is really good at placing his hero in these impossible-to-navigate situations.”
11. Ripple by Max Taxe
Logline: A relationship is put to the ultimate test when time ripples keep reinventing one of the partners, forcing the relationship to begin again… and again… and again… and again… and again…
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “Once we’re in the throes of over a hundred ripples, we start to feel the desperation of Miles, as well as the realization that he may have to come to terms with letting Sadie go.”
10. Madden by Cambron Clark
Logline: After being forced into retirement by the Oakland Raiders, fiery former NFL head coach John Madden teams up with a mild-mannered Harvard programmer to rewrite his fading legacy by building the world’s first football video game. Based on a true story.
Votes: 19 (Top 10)
From Review: “That’s when this script shined the brightest – when Madden was in the room with these dorks, who were all way more interested in Klorgan the Elf than an option shovel pass, trying to find a common language to get this game completed.”
9. Beachwood by Briggs & Wes Watkins
Logline: Shunned by elite society as a member of the gig economy, a sociopathic dog walker infiltrates an exclusive L.A. community with designs of reaching the top of the neighborhood’s social ladder.
Votes: 20 (Top 5)
From Review: This script is the most unpredictable script in the Top 10 of the Black List. It’s weird. It’s fun. Even though it has problems, it does leave an impression on you.
8. Sang Froid by Michael Basha
Logline: After a botched delivery of fresh blood, a world weary vampire and a pregnant nurse team up to rob a hospital of their supply.
Votes: 18
From Review: Sang Froid is the unofficial “grown up” sequel to Let the Right One In. It has that same tone but it feels more adult. I thought it was great. And I think it’s an awesome example of how to write a spec screenplay. A few characters. Sparse description. Keep the plot moving. This is what all of you should be doing!
7. Pumping Black by Haley Bartels
Logline: A desperate cyclist and his charismatic new team doctor concoct a dangerous training program in order to win the Tour de France. But as the race progresses and jealous teammates, suspicious authorities, and the racer’s own paranoia close in, they must take increasingly dark measures to protect both his secret and his lead.
Votes: 22 (Top 5)
From Review: “I love stuff like this. I love when you add multiple consequences and those additional consequences get bigger each time. At first, it’s just getting kicked off the team. Then, it’s possibly getting caught by the doping federation. Then, it’s death!”
6. Black Kite by Dan Bulla
Logline: After a devastating wildfire wipes out a small California town, a teenage girl is missing and presumed dead. A year later, an obsessive mother and cynical arson investigator begin to suspect that she’s still alive…and in the clutches of a predator.
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “I thought I was on page 60 and it turned out I was on page 85! Usually, it’s the opposite. I think I’m on page 60 and I’m on page 20. That’s screenwriting code for: this script was awesome.”
5. Wild by Michael Burgner
Logline: A werewolf living on a remote farm with her older sister takes in a thief on the run just 72 hours before the next full moon.
Votes: 13 (upper middle of pack)
From Review: “We’ve all heard of the “Meet Cute.” But how much more interesting is it when your male and female leads are introduced via a “Meet Mean?” Liz drives up to Nick, asks him a few questions, lets him know there’s no way she’s letting him in her car, then drives off. I find that WAY MORE interesting than if they had an instant connection.”
4. The Pack by Rose Gilroy
Logline: A documentary crew in contention at the Emmys for their film about wild Alaskan wolves is hiding several big secrets about their troubled 3 month shoot.
Votes: 10 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “When it comes to mysteries, nothing really matters unless the big reveal is great. But The Pack taught me something new about reveals. It doesn’t have a show-stopper “Sixth Sense” reveal. The reveal is character-driven. Which actually makes it even more impactful.”
3. Himbo by Jason Hellerman
Logline: A male stripper in Arizona who’s sleeping with his boss’s wife is propositioned by her to kill her hubby and run away together but things get complicated when they learn about the boss’s improbable money-making venture.
Votes: 7 votes (bottom 20)
From Review: “I already liked this script. But the second this random gold cave entered the equation, I loved it. I have never encountered something like that in a script like this before. Getting a WTF moment into your script that feels believable yet not too random is incredibly challenging. But when you nail it, like Himbo does, it takes your script up to a whole new level.”
2. Clementine by David L. Williams (newsletter review – to sign up for my newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com)
Logline: Set in real time, a Colombian mother barely escapes a pawn shop shootout and goes on the run from her violent ex-husband, a terrifying mob boss, and a bloodthirsty hitwoman sent to collect an overdue debt, all while trying to keep her diabetic daughter safe.
Votes: 12 (upper middle of pack)
From Review: “The script is just freaking RELENTLESS.”
1.Dying for You by Travis Braun
Logline: A low-level worker on a spaceship run by a dark god must steal the most powerful weapon in the universe to save his workplace crush.
Votes: 18 (Top 10)
Thoughts: Wow! Wow wow wow wow wow. How good was this script? It’s been an entire year and I STILL remember it better than any other script on the list, even some scripts I read as little as two weeks ago. It’s so funny. The tone is perfect. The story is fun. The world-building is great. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like The Princess Bride but set 200 years later in space and everyone is a lot cooler. Whichever young actors sign on to this movie are going to become superstars. No script made me feel better than this one. Wow!
If I’m being honest, there are only six scripts that I would say every screenwriter should read from this list. Those are the top 6 from my rankings. Every script below that feels more and more amateurish. They still have good moments. But they all have issues. The difference with the top 6 is that the stories are so compelling, you get lost in them and forget you’re reading a script. That’s the true mark of a great script – when the reader is no longer aware they’re reading it.
Congratulations to the biggest riser, Black Kite, which crawled out of the bottom of the heap to get into the Top 5. And also, Himbo, which was in the bottom 20 and finished in the Top 5. Biggest faller was A Guy Goes to Therapy. Jambusters and Baby Boom also faltered. Make sure to share your favorite scripts from the list in the comments section. Also, if there are any scripts I haven’t read yet that you thought were great, let me know!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A man wakes up on his wedding day with a text that simply says, “Run,” and what follows is 8 straight hours of people trying to kill him.
About: Another HUGE short story sale. This one sold to Universal. Sam Hargrave (Extraction) will be directing. This is writer Aaron Jayh’s second sale of the year. The other went to Amazon for a project called The Dwelling about a man who discovers that a house is buried in his backyard.
Writer: Aaron Jayh
Details: 45 pages
I know you want me to start right in on these Black List scripts but I want to introduce a revolutionary new practice the rest of the world is aware of you but you, apparently, are not. It’s called PATIENCE. We’ll get to the Black List scripts in the new year. We have a ton going on in these last couple of weeks so I gotta squeeze it all in. Starting with the newest form of spec scripts in Hollywood – short stories!
Our nameless hero, a good guy who runs a non-profit, wakes up on his wedding day with a text that says, “Run.” Our hero ignores it but then gets another text. If you don’t run, you die. The next thing he sees is a giant man breaking into his house. Yeah, our hero thinks, maybe running is a good idea.
He evades the man and grabs an Uber, getting a call from his future wife, Sara, in the meantime. He’s told by the mystery texter to not let on that anything is wrong to Sara. Which would be fine if a car didn’t come out of nowhere and sideswipe his Uber! And now people with guns are getting out and trying to kill him.
Somehow, our hero gets away. He’s guided to a store by the texter where he’ll be able to buy a gun. He’ll need to shoot the man who plans to kill him in five minutes. Huh?? This is not how he planned to spend his wedding day.
Despite numerous attempts by our hero to get the texter to tell him who he is, the texter will not oblige. Just get through the day and get married, the texter says, and we’re all good. That’s the important thing.
Along the way, we learn that the wife-to-be has a father who absolutely HATES our hero. He runs this giant tech corporation and works on top secret projects and needs his daughter to run the company when he retires. But she’s instead wasting her time at our hero’s non-profit, marrying the loser who works there (our hero).
If you’re a savvy reader, you’re starting to put the dots together. This father must have something to do with the attempts on our hero’s life, right? However, when our hero confronts him, the father is convincingly confused. He has no idea what the hero is talking about. Our hero then spends the last three hours trying to figure out what’s going and, more importantly, getting to his wedding alive. Does he get there? And if he does get to the finish line, will he finally find out who was trying to stop him?
Will Poulter for our runner?
The most shocking thing about this sale is that IT ISN’T A SCRIPT EVEN THOUGH IT COULD’VE BEEN. This is, roughly, the same amount of words as a screenplay. This is written in a high-octane, eyes-flying-down-the-page fashion, just like a screenplay. Why, then, did the writer choose to write it as a short story?
Isn’t it obvious? Cause short stories are selling bigger than specs right now. Which doesn’t even make sense if you think about it. It used to be that the short story sold because it was a shorter time investment on the reader’s end. But today’s short story is going to take you just as long to read as a screenplay. So now I think it’s just in the marketplace consciousness that this is where they’re finding material. If you don’t have a buzzy short story as part of your portfolio, now is the time to consider one.
Okay, I’m going to upset some Die Hard fans here but I need to bring this up in order to explain why I struggled with Run For Your Life. Remember Die Hard 3? The one with Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson? I remember going to that movie and being let down. Not in “this was a bad movie” way. More in a, “I wanted a better Die Hard movie” way.
I wouldn’t realize until many years later, when I got into screenwriting, why that movie underwhelmed so much. I learned it was because it made its protagonists passive. Even worse, it made the coolest action hero in the world, John McClane, passive. McClane just went where he was told. That’s not John McClane and that’s not the setup you want for an action movie.
An action movie needs an ACTIVE protagonist. I mean, the words – action, active – are practically the same, right? It wouldn’t be for another several years before the entire puzzle came together. I learned that that Die Hard 3 script wasn’t originally a Die Hard script! It was some other random script called “Simon Says” the studio had already purchased and they just changed all the names to make it a Die Hard movie in order to move into production quicker. It proved to be an early nail in the franchise’s coffin, as the franchise never recovered after that.
Lesson? Don’t make your action hero passive.
Yet that’s exactly what they do here in Run for Your Life. The hero is not making any decisions on his own. Like John McClane, he’s going wherever people tell him to. The story is still entertaining because it’s action packed and it has this mystery component and ticking time bomb. But those things only provide so much cover for the passive protagonist.
This is a long-winded way of me saying I’m not a huge fan of these “follow-my-orders” narratives. They turn your hero into an errand-runner, which, of course, can be overcome with clever writing but, as I always say, writing is hard. Theoretically, any large script issue can be overcome. But it probably won’t be because it’s really freaking hard to write a good story without having to overcome large script issues, much less with them.
That’s not to say Jayh doesn’t give it his best shot. The best thing the script has going for it is its central mystery and I did want to find out who the heck it was who was calling (spoilers follow). I figured it had to be the hero, probably from the future. As soon as we started talking about the father-in-law being this giant CEO tech guy, I figured that made the most sense.
(Major spoiler followed). So there was something really sweet about it being Sara instead. It wasn’t what I was expecting and it wrapped up this backseat theme the story had been promoting all along of: “love conquers all.” This was a woman who was doing everything in her power to save the love of her life and her marriage. It worked!
Maybe too light and airy to become a movie. Echoes of “Ghosted” were ringing in my ears. But it’s still a fun read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The nice thing about writing a short story over a script is that you can get directly inside the hero’s head. This gives us a much better idea of how the hero is feeling and coping during the story, which makes for a different experience. The hardest thing about screenwriting is you can’t do this unless you do voice over, which many find clunky. Your job, as a screenwriter, is to show how your hero is feeling THROUGH ACTION. For example, in a novel, if you wanted to convey that the hero was angry after getting duped by a work friend, you might have him say to himself, “I can’t believe Joe betrayed me.” In a script, you’d show him hurling his phone across the room. In other words, you’d use ACTION to convey what the hero was feeling.
