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Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When a desperate man drags his depressed wife and step-daughter to rural Germany for family support; what he discovers instead are dark cult roots, an isolated hippy haven, and the terrifying realization that they may not be free to leave alive.
Why You Should Read (from writer): My name is Alex Ross, and my screenplay, HEXEN, won the grand prize in the Script Pipeline competition (out of 3,500 scripts) and is also highly rated on the Black List as “top unrepresented horror”. Here’s why I would like the script to be reviewed: I see HEXEN as a fresh take on a very stale and predictable genre. It’s a throwback to the thrillers from the 70’s (Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, Don’t Look Now), but with a modern, realistic approach. It purposely breaks the tired “rules” of horror storytelling, which audiences have come to expect by now. A main protagonist vanishes half-way through, character’s motives are ambiguous, and the ending is left somewhat open-ended. Say what you will about the script… one thing it’s not, is predictable. However, it has alienated some who are looking for something a little more mainstream, and I’m finding it difficult to find industry pros who can see outside the box, and who are willing to take a chance and get behind it. I need all the help I can get…
Writer: Alex Ross
Details: 97 pages
Swweeeeet. We’ve got a contest winner here! Always fun to see which script beat out thousands of others. No time to waste so let’s get to it!
40-something Julian Nichols never expected his life to turn out this way. He recently got laid off. He and his wife, Anna, have grown so distant, they barely talk anymore. And they’ve got a beautiful young daughter, Jenny, who they’ve got to support with no income.
That’s why we meet them at the airport. The family is headed to Germany, where Anna used to live. She had a tough childhood, growing up in one of those commune-cult situations with a crazy fucking dad who thought mass-suicides were the bee’s knees.
They’ve gotten word that her father is on his deathbed and if they come and show their faces, sign a few documents, that large piece of land he owns could result in a desperately needed slice of the profit pie. Neither of them want to be here, but it’s a necessary evil.
Once they get to the secluded commune-turned-farm, they start meeting the folks that run the place, including Anna’s brothers, alpha-male Christian and mentally disturbed Thomas. Rounding out the Trio of Weird is Michael, a large man who has a strange fetish for calling people “moron.”
Julian’s surprised by how forthright Christian is. He tells him the whole story about their fucked up commune life and how Anna’s dad used to video tape her 24-7. Not creepy at all. But the longer the stay goes on, the sketchier Christian gets. He and the rest of the former compounders like to do drugs. Like, a LOT of drugs.
It isn’t long before Julian and Anna realize every drink they’ve had has been spiked, and therefore they start hallucinating, trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. Julian also wants to get to the bottom of where the fuck Anna’s dad is. He needs that money and he can’t get it until they deal with these documents.
What Julian will soon find out is that documents are the least of his worries. This friendly drug-loving bunch may not have left compound life behind after all…
I’d say all the way up to page 45, I was tagging Hexen as a double-worth-the-read. I thought the setting was scrumptious, the conflict was original, the suspense (something we’ve been obsessed with all week) was off the charts. And even the one thing that, if the writers master the other stuff, they eventually fail at – the character development – was strong. All the characters here had rich and intriguing backstories that added sweetness to an already sugary story.
And I’ll tell you the exact moment I knew I was dealing with something good here. It was the introduction of Christian. We see him through a child’s eyes. Jenny, the daughter, spots him butchering a still squealing pig for the compound’s food supply. I’m a huge believer that you sell a character not through what they say or what they look like or what they’re wearing (although those help). You do it through action. Meeting Christian butchering this pig immediately set up who he was.
Alex continued this throughout the script. For Thomas, the half-retarded brother, we see him playing with a group of young girls. When Jenny pricks her finger and it starts bleeding, the other compound girls say, “Lick it and make it better.” So Thomas looks both ways, sticks her finger in his mouth to “stop the bleeding,” and pulls it out, blood free. Whenever a writer is looking to convey character through action, he’s ahead of 80% of writers out there.
And then there was the suspense. It’s almost like Alex went forward in time to read my Pay-As-You-Go article, then went back and wrote this script. There were so many mysteries about this compound, about the people in it, about our heroes’ own histories, about what these compound people were going to do to our heroes. With all these unanswered questions, we had no choice but to keep paying.
In fact, Alex was so good with suspense that even when I stopped enjoying the script, I STILL had to see what happened next.
Wait a minute, Carson. You were so excited about this script a second ago. What do you mean when you “stopped enjoying it?”
Here was my problem with Hexen. It started out strong. But then it got sloppy. Once the script brought in the drug angle, and characters started hallucinating, the strong and sure hand of the writer seemed to get replaced by a genetically engineered jello man afflicted with Parkinson’s. It was almost like Alex stopped trusting himself. It was one drug-induced scene after another. Lots of hallucinations. Lots of “did that really happens.”
And don’t get me wrong. A good drug-induced vision can kick ass. The Rosemary’s Baby drug-induced group-rape scene is one of the most memorable in film history. But when you’re doing it over and over again, it starts feeling sloppy. And I know Alex built the drug-culture into the story. So these visions were motivated. But I can’t support a choice that deliberately makes a script feel sloppy. I just can’t.
And with the last 40 pages of this script reading like this, I had to concede that a script that started off destined to win Best Amateur Friday script of the year, left me feeling frustrated and confused.
This is a tough one. Hexen is like one of those relationships where the two parties fight all the time but still love each other. Those relationships are worth fighting for. I’m just not sure Alex is interested in bringing this script to the place it needs to be to get industry people interested.
He says in his “Why I Think You Should Read” that he’s finding it difficult to get industry pros to see outside the box. That’s the wrong way to think. It’s not up to anybody to see outside the box. It’s up to you to make the world outside the box so alluring that the industry has no choice but to see outside of it. If people are having trouble getting something from your script, take it upon yourself. Never put it on them.
Part of the problem is that Alex won this contest. That’s validation that what he’s done is right. So it’s natural to think nothing should be changed. But I know exactly why this script won that contest despite being imperfect. Because Alex is a good fucking writer. He knows concept, he knows character, he knows dialogue, he knows description, he knows suspense. The average contest-entrant is lucky to know one of those things.
But just like being a great singer doesn’t always equate to releasing a great song, being a good writer doesn’t mean you’ve written a great script. I think Alex needs to take a long hard look at this decision to make the second half of his script one giant drug-trip. He’s right. It’s different. But as I’ve said a million times before, different doesn’t always mean “good.”
I’d advocate for a cleaner and clearer second-half structure. What about you guys? Did the drug-trip second half work for you? If not, why? What can he do to fix it?
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but first half xx worth the read!)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re resting on the black-out move a lot, you’re probably not trying hard enough. The black-out move is when your character gets hit over the head and wakes up later. This is considered sloppy because it’s an easy way to get your character from one setting to the next without having to do the hard work of figuring out the transition. Alex uses versions of the black-out move nearly a dozen times here. I’d suggest re-watching The Wicker Man. That movie is similar to this one, and they never once use a black-out move. It’s possible. It just takes more effort.
After yesterday’s review of an older (better) draft of I Am Legend, it became clear to me just how few writers understand suspense. And by that I mean REALLY UNDERSTAND IT. Not understand it in an abstract sense, which I think most writers do. But understand it in a way where they can draw upon the technique when needed to keep a reader’s attention. I find this frightening as the more I study screenwriting, the more I believe that suspense is the gas that keeps the car moving.
My big issue yesterday came when the writers replaced the “capture the creature” storyline with Robert (our hero) finding more survivors (a woman and her son). In the first case, we have suspense up the ying-yang. We’re not sure what the creatures look like yet since they’re hidden under wrappings. We’re unsure what’s going to happen when Robert tries to nurse it back to health. When it starts to become human, we’re curious whether Robert will be able to change it all the way back. We’re curious if the two will build a trusting relationship. We don’t know if Richard’s blood will run out before he can save the creature.
On the flip side, with the woman and her son, the level of suspense amounted to: “Yeah, we survived just like you did. Cool.” We know everything about their situation within a scene or two. That’s not to say the writers couldn’t have created suspense with the mom-son characters. Maybe we imply that she’s dodgy, or that there’s something off about the kid. Could she be hiding something about him? Those are elements of suspense that [maybe] would’ve kept us interested in that storyline. But again, the re-writers clearly didn’t understand the technique and therefore were incapable of using it.
So to help you guys avoid the disastrous trap that the I Am Legend re-writers found themselves in, I’ve come up with a different way to look at suspense. It requires that you see a movie not as one giant story, but rather a series of smaller sections.
The goal is to make the audience want to keep getting to the next section. I refer to this approach as “pay-as-you-go.”
I want you to imagine you’re going to see a movie, but instead of plopping down 20 freaking hard-earned dollars to get in the theater, you only have to pay 2 dollars to get in. Then, if you still want to watch after 15 minutes, you have to pay 2 more dollars. Then 15 minutes later 2 more dollars. And so on and so forth until the movie ends. So under this scenario, if at the end of the first 15 minutes you’re bored as shit, you can leave the theater and save 18 dollars! Ditto at any point in the movie. If you’re halfway in and bored, you can leave and still keep 10 bucks.
Now I want you to imagine someone watching YOUR movie under this pay-as-you-go system. Be honest. Would people for sure, without question, pay 2 bucks after your first 15 minutes to keep watching? “Maybe” doesn’t count. “Maybe” is always “no.” I’m asking if they’d pay to keep watching without even hesitating.
While this may sound like a hypothetical scenario, it’s the scenario hundreds of producers/agents/managers/readers go through every day. Because while they may not be investing money for every 15 pages they read, they’re investing TIME, which to them is more valuable. Hence, “pay-as-you-go” still applies. You must be able to hook them from section to section all the way until the end.
But Carson, you say, how can you possibly create a screenplay that does this? Screenplays are complicated. They ebb and they flow and what happens on page 15 is 180 degrees different from what happens on page 75. How in the world can anyone design a script to make sure that a reader always wants to read the next 15 pages?
I’ll tell you exactly how.
Suspense.
Inside of every 15 pages, you introduce a question and then withhold the answer to that question until the next 15 pages (or the 15 pages after that, or the 15 pages after that). As long as the question you introduce is intriguing, and as long as you don’t tell us what it is right away, the reader won’t have any choice but to keep reading into the next section. And yes, if you’re doing this right, they’ll pay you 2 extra dollars for access to those next 15 minutes every time.
Whether it’s the uncertainty brought about by Robert Nelville capturing and nursing back to health a zombie, the curiosity of whether Matt Damon is going to solve his food problem in “The Martian,” or the mystery of why the grandparents are acting so bizarre in M. Night’s, “The Visit.” Set up a question, wait to give the answer.
You’ll usually create one giant question (Will the groomsmen find the missing groom in The Hangover?) that drives the entire script and then a series of smaller to medium questions that drive the scene-to-scene interest of the reader. These are the elements you use to keep the reader reading from one section to the next. Drop the ball on one section by not including any suspense? The reader gets bored and stops paying.
Now when I trumpet this method to writers, there’s invariably a group that cry foul. “But Carson,” they argue, “There are some sections of a script that are designed to be slow. Not every section can be entertaining. Sometimes you have to be boring now in order to be exciting later. You know, cause of set-ups and payoffs and what not.” Um, to put it bluntly. NO. No no no nonnononononono. nO. nooo. Nononononoo NOOOOOOO. No nononononoonononoon. NonnONOnonOno.
And no.
While the intensity of your script’s entertainment level will vary over the course of the screenplay, the reader MUST ALWAYS BE ENTERTAINED, including during the “slow” sections. I’ll give you an example of exactly this since I just finished an amateur script which contained no suspense.
The script followed a group of backpackers into a mountain looking for a sasquatch-like creature. The group was being led by a local Sherpa. The first 50 pages of this script were slow as molasses dipped in peanut butter. We meet all these characters but nothing interesting is happening. We’re just getting to know them and their situations as they climb higher and higher into the mountain. This ended up being my biggest note on the script, and I made it clear that if the writer didn’t address the issue, the script was doomed.
The writer adamantly defended his work, saying he wanted to make the first half of the script a slow-burn and more “realistic.” I mentally winced. Whenever I hear someone say they’re going for a ‘slow-burn’ under the pretense that it’s okay to be boring, I want to jump out of my skin. I explained that that’s not how slow-burns work. Slow-burns ONLY WORK if the writer is actively injecting suspense along the way (read that five times before ever writing a slow-burn script again).
So I said to him, start with this. Early on in the mission, after they’ve set up camp, have your main character go to ask the Sherpa something. When he comes up to the Sherpa’s tent, have him hear the Sherpa talking to someone. He gets closer and listens. He hears bits and pieces of a phone call. “…don’t worry, they have no idea…” And “…yeah, the youngest is going to go first.” The Sherpa then senses someone outside and quickly hangs up.
This is the perfect example of “pay-as-you-go” writing. Our screenwriter is still able to set everyone up nice and slowly like before. But now he’s injected some questions into the story that the audience needs answered (susssspensssse!!!). Who is the Sherpa talking to? What does our group have “no idea” about? And what does he mean the youngest is going to go first? Go first into what? The only way for us to find out is read the next 15 pages. So we pay to move on.
That’s an admittedly simplistic example but I’m trying to make the point as simply as possible. And once you get good at this stuff, you can start adding more complex versions of suspense. That’s what I liked about Logan’s draft of I Am Legend. Robert capturing one of the creatures wasn’t a simple question-and-answer version of suspense. It led to multiple questions (can he save this creature? Who did it used to be? Will he make a connection with it?) all of which could only be answered after spending numerous scenes with the creature.
So to summarize: Every 15 pages of your script should pose at least one question that will not be answered within those 15 pages. This is the pay-as-you-go approach. If you’re not utilizing the pay-as-you-go format and are, instead, answering every question right there in the moment (or worse, not posing any questions at all), readers will have no incentive to keep reading and audience members will have no incentive to keep watching.
You’ve just leveled up as a screenwriter.
I beg of you to only use this new power for good.
Today I explore one of the most famous film drafts in history, the Logan draft of I Am Legend. Is it as good as everyone says it is??
Genre: Sci-fi/horror
Premise: In near future Los Angeles, the last known man on Earth must battle a host of increasingly hostile monsters.
About: Doing something a little bit different today. This is the John Logan draft of I Am Legend, which most everyone whose read it has agreed is way better than the script/movie they eventually gave us. You have to understand that I Am Legend was a movie Hollywood desperately wanted to make. So they brought in a lot of different voices, both on the screenwriting and directing side, to create that perfect franchise-starting movie. Logan’s draft, while popular, was said to be “too dark” for the studio. So they brought in Ridley Scott, who seemed to agree, and threw that draft out. Scott would shepherd a much more studio-friendly version of the film, before eventually leaving the project himself. This new Scott-inspired draft became the template for the remaining drafts, leaving very little of Logan’s draft in tact. It’s high time that Scriptshadow figured out just how good this draft is.
Writer: John Logan (based on the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson)
Details: 113 pages (September 8, 1997 draft)
I don’t remember much about I Am Legend other than feeling like I’d wasted my money.
For a movie that had such an interesting premise, the whole thing amounted to Will Smith walking around a barren city with a dog.
I’d always heard about the famous “John Logan draft” of I Am Legend. But all those claims of “the original script was soooo much better” are usually folklore, a way for Hollywood types and movie geeks to sound hip and cool, not unlike music nerds who insist, “The Rolling Stones sounded sooooo much better when they played in small venues.”
And truth be told, unlike what some of the commenters on this site will have you believe, Hollywood doesn’t routinely ditch better drafts of a script for stinky ones. Writing a good script is an act of divine inspiration. So when you find one, you hold onto it, even if it doesn’t achieve the studio’s ideal marketing requirements.
Which makes me all the more curious about Logan’s draft. Would a studio really have passed it over if it were that good? Let’s find out.
Robert Nelville is an architect, which is in some ways ironic, since he’s the sole witness to society falling down and crumbling into dust. Everyone is dying, and dying quickly, including Robert’s lifeline, his beautiful and loving wife, Virginia. As much as Robert wants to believe, he knows her fate is the same as the rest.
The question is, why isn’t Robert’s fate the same? Why doesn’t he get this disease? Cut to five years later and Robert has secured a beautiful house in the Los Angeles hills, safe from the things that go on down in the city, things we soon see for ourselves, when Robert is forced to drive down there and scavenge.
This is always done during the day. And it isn’t until Robert’s car dies and he’s forced to stay in the city all night that we learn why. There are creatures, monsters you might call them, who wrap themselves in the remnants of the previous world like mummies. They are big, tall, and strong. They only come out at night. And they want to kill Robert really bad.
After nearly getting slaughtered by a group of these creatures, Robert’s able to knock one out and take it home. He sets it up in a secured room, and since these things crave blood, uses his own stored blood (kept for emergency transfusions) to start feeding it. As the days go by, the creature becomes more and more human, revealing a woman. It appears that Robert’s blood, no doubt special since it survived the sickness, is turning this monster back into what it used to be – a human being.
Soon, the woman, Emma, is talking, and remembering her past. The two form a bond. Robert begins to dream. If he can bring this woman back, there’s hope to bring others back. Maybe there’s a shot at saving humanity after all.
Unfortunately, the leader of these city monsters is on a mission to kill Robert. (spoilers) He finds his home, burns it, and kills Emma along with it. Once again, Robert is alone. Robert tries to flee but the creatures follow, until they finally meet in a Western-like showdown in a small town. Will mankind’s last hope finally be eliminated? Or will Robert, once again, find a way to keep the legend alive?
Let’s get right to it. Was this the same, better, or worse than the movie?
It’s not even close. This was A LOT BETTER.
And this is one of the reasons I love reading old drafts of scripts that became movies. Because you can see exactly where the writers/filmmakers made their choices, and pick out whether those choices were right or wrong. It’s one of the best forms of screenwriting education there is.
So what were the big differences here? Here’s the short list.
1) Logan’s draft starts slow as we meet Richard’s wife who’s dying. The final draft starts with a big Hollywood scene where thousands of people are running across bridges, trying to get to helicopters.
2) Logan’s draft takes place in Los Angeles. The final draft takes place in New York.
3) Logan’s draft has Richard as an architect. The final draft has him as a scientist/biologist.
4) Logan’s draft has the monsters wrapped up like mummies. The final draft has them as clear-to-see ugly monsters.
5) Logan’s draft focuses on the relationship between Richard and the captured creature. The final draft focuses on the relationship between Richard and another survivor (a woman) along with her son.
Now you’ll have to pardon me for any errors. I haven’t seen I Am Legend in a long time. But these are the differences to the best of my memory. So, let’s take a look at each change and figure out if they were better or worse for the film.
1) Slow start vs. Big start – To be honest, I could go either way on this one. In the end, I believe both worked. But if you put a homicidal zombie-creature to my head, I’d say I preferred Logan’s version as it was a little more emotional. We don’t really know what’s going on yet. We just know that Richard MUST see his wife, who’s in the hospital. And when he cons his way up to her floor and she’s a shell of a woman, we feel for him.
Slight Edge: Logan
2) Los Angeles vs. New York – New York is more iconic which makes seeing it overcome by nature more visually captivating. I think New York actually works better.
Edge: Final Draft
3) Richard as an architect vs. Richard as a scientist – This one we could debate for awhile. I know why the subsequent writers made this change. It gives Richard a much stronger goal, which gives the movie a much bigger engine: Richard trying to find a cure. And he can’t do that unless he’s a scientist or doctor. So that’s what they made him. However, Logan’s decision to make Richard an everyman led to a much more elegant and unobtrusive plot. The only man left on earth would probably have special blood. So it makes sense that it might cure these creatures. It didn’t feel so forced, I guess you could say.
Edge: Logan
4) Mummy-monsters vs. Unwrapped monsters – This isn’t even close. The wrapped up monsters in Logan’s draft were waaaaaay more interesting. They created a sense of mystery. What’s under all that wrapping? What do they look like? It’s basic Suspense 101. Later writers screwed that the fuck up by throwing the monsters in our face immediately. Boring. Hadn’t they heard the Jaws story (wait to show the monster)? Really pissed that they didn’t keep this.
Strong edge: Logan
5) Capture a monster and nurse it back to health vs. find a woman and her son and become BFFs – I think the one universal consensus after watching I Am Legend was that it fell apart when the woman and her kid entered the story. Both versions of the script realized they needed to change things up for the second half of the script. They couldn’t keep sending Richard into the city to bump heads with the creatures. We were bored of that. But here’s why Logan’s draft worked better. It created a sense of mystery. Much like how the unwrapped monsters lacked suspense, the woman and her child lacked suspense. They could just tell us everything they knew right away. That’s boring. With Emma (the captured creature), a whole new story was presented. Richard had to nurse this creature back to health, back into being a human. It was only over time that it learned how to speak and could convey where it came from. This choice pulled double-duty. It kept us curious and it allowed us to get to know and care for Emma. This choice along with the non-mummy one showed that the subsequent writers had no idea how suspense even worked, and that ignorance killed the movie.
Game-changing edge: Logan
Man, I’m so bummed! We actually could have had a classic movie had they filmed Logan’s draft! Whoever was in charge of making these decisions – particularly that last one – needs to lose their job or be fired or not be in the movie business (assuming they still are). You screwed up, man!
Here’s the script for you to read for yourself! – I Am Legend (Logan Draft)
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: SUSPENSE!!!! Or, if this definition works better for you: HINT-AND-SHOW. For suspense, you want to hint at something then show us later rather than showing us the second you introduce it. Like I said, the lack of suspense in the new draft killed this movie. Logan kept the creatures a mystery, forcing us to stick around to find out more, then made us wait for Emma to become human, forcing us to stick around to find out more.
Genre: Musical
Premise: An aspiring musician and an aspiring actress meet and fall in love in LA, only to find that life is rooting against them ending up together.
About: Damien Chazelle is a force to be reckoned with. After landing one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood, Miles Teller, for his previous film, Whiplash, the director secured an Oscar for Teller’s co-star in the film, J.K. Simmons (little-known fact – Simmons has shot 32 films and TV shows since 2014’s Whiplash). Whiplash may not have wowed the masses (it only made 13 million at the box office), but once you win an Oscar for an actor? EVERY ACTOR wants to work with you. Which is how the 30 year-old Chazelle has found himself directing two of the biggest stars in the world for La La Land, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Details: 95 pages
Reading a writer-director draft of a musical without any lyrics is sort of like looking at an architect’s notes for his next house. “I want a round window in the bathroom.” “Still wondering if we should open up the living room area.”
Since the director’s writing for himself rather than the reader, you feel a bit like an outsider looking in, trying to decipher what the hell this guy thinks he’s doing. With that said, Quentin Tarantino writes some of the best scripts in the business. So it’s not like it can’t be done. Where it gets complicated with La La Land is that we’re missing out on the make-or-break aspect of the movie – the musical numbers. Say what you will about the power of screenwriting, but there’s no way to convey how a song and dance will feel until you see it on the big screen. The written word cannot compare to music.
Now some of you might ask, “Well then why even review the script?”
Good question. It’s because what’s left is pure story. Stripped of all its bells and whistles, La La Land is pure character and plot. And I’m curious to see if those characters and that plot worked.
Sebastian is a 28 year-old Thelonious Monk wannabe, a guy from another era who shuns the catapult-to-Youtube-fame the current system celebrates. Sebastian wants to suffer for his art in order to find that inspiration to create the kind of greatness Monk used to create on a nightly basis.
27 year-old Mia is also from a bygone era, the kind of girl who will quote Ingrid Bergman over Kim Kardashian, and is trying to use that energy to break into the toughest business in the world – ACTING.
After a failed one-night stand, Mia finds herself looking for a way home, only to drift into a dark club playing some of the most beautiful piano music this side of Sam from Casablanca. And what do you know? It’s Sebastian playing the tune.
The two don’t get along at first, but soon find mutual respect in their unique approaches to their craft. Within a few weeks, they move in together. From there, Mia focuses on writing a one-woman play to raise her acting profile. And she encourages Sebastian to branch out from being the James Dean of jazz and join a band, even if their music is more pop-centric than he’s used to.
That band ends up becoming bigger than expected, and soon women are throwing themselves at Sebastian after his bring-the-house-down solos. Mia begins to wonder, “What have I done?” This leads to friction in the relationship, which leads to them breaking up, and us wondering if they’ll ever get back together.
Oh yeah, and musical numbers are interspersed throughout all of this. The opening scene is probably the best, a giant number on a carmageddon highway with every driver getting out and singing their frustrations. As the movie goes on though, the numbers become more intimate, focusing on Sebastian and Mia’s love.
Here’s the big question with La La Land, though: Is this the next Once? Or is it the next Begin Again?
So yesterday we were talking about voice. Voice consists of the way you see the world based on your life experiences up until this point. Say for instance, two different writers are writing a funeral scene. One of those writers may focus on the faces of the crying family as their loved one is lowered into the ground. The other writer may focus on the beauty of the moment – the way the sunlight hits the tombstone or the way the wife leans down to kiss her infant son. A third writer may find humor in the moment. The drunk priest stumbling over his words or the coffin unexpectedly dropping and slamming into the grave.
How different people see different things is how voice is expressed. And sadly, I don’t line up with Chazelle’s voice. I don’t know what it is but there’s a disconnect somewhere. He went to music school. I went to fuck-around school. I felt it with Grand Piano. I felt it with Whiplash. And I feel it here.
My biggest problem with La La Land is that it all feels so cliché. The pretentious angst-ridden musician who’s too good for pop music. The eager young actress who’s so hip she likes Audrey Hepburn and Janet Leigh over Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.
And when these two hang out, they go to all the well-known places in LA. The Griffith Observatory. The La Brea Tar Pits. The Getty Center. Ironically, it may be me who’s the problem here, as I live here and know these places well. The rest of the world, likely, does not. But still. It always felt to me like Chazelle wasn’t digging deep enough. He always seemed a minute away from setting a scene at Mann’s Chinese Theater.
It looks like he’s banking on the musical element being the “originality” aspect that makes up for all the rest of the unoriginality. And maybe that will be true. We do get a zero-gravity dance number at the Griffith Observatory so it’s not like it’s pure cliché.
But I kept waiting to care about these two and it never happened. Sebastian is self-absorbed. Mia’s SO obvious with her “I only like old actresses” vibe. And it’s safe to say that if I don’t like your male lead and I don’t like your female lead, then I sure as hell don’t care if they get together or not. And since this movie is predicated on us caring about these two getting together, La La Land felt more to me like Hannah Montana than Adele.
In the end, La La Land feels like a movie from someone who’s lived in LA for six months and is basing his story on the surface level version of the city he’s experienced during that time. Los Angeles is actually much deeper and more complex than it’s being made out to be here, and when you couple that with two empty lead characters, the musical numbers are going to have to be off the charts to save this film.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The 20-something character who idolizes famous dead actors/musicians is a trope that’s been used so much in film that I’d think long and hard before including it in your own screenplay.
What I learned 2: I don’t think this script had a single surprise (outside of Sebastian’s harsh rejection of Mia’s initial advance). Everything was too perfect, too predictable. You HAVE to surprise your reader/audience to keep them on their toes.
O.M.G. Do we have a new contender for the top spot on the 2015 Black List??
Genre: Drama
Premise: A small-town boy goes hunting for a mythical figure known to cheat death in order to save his cancer-stricken mother.
About: This script sold to Disney a few months ago. It’s said to have shades of “Stand by Me” and “E.T.” to it. The writer, Emily Needell, is a first-timer, however she did work in a small capacity as a writer’s assistant before the sale. She also went to NYU film school, no easy feat after growing up on a 750-acre cattle farm. Hey, who says you can’t find screenwriting success living in the middle of nowhere?
Writer: Emily Needell
Details: 99 pages – undated
Disney isn’t exactly known for their spec-script buying prowess. More than any studio, they plant their feet firmly in the IP sector. So when they do buy a spec, it’s a big deal and worth checking out who they made the exception for. It also gives you an idea of what kind of material Disney is looking for tone-wise.
Despite that, I wasn’t expecting much out of The Water Man. I thought the title was bland. In a world where writers have come up with names like Hannibal Lecter and Freddy Krueger, we’re supposed to get excited about someone called, “The Water Man??” The cancer angle also implied this was headed into Melodrama Nation, a destination I had no interest in visiting. Oh how very wrong I was.
10 year-old Gunner Boone lives in the tiny town of Willow Spur, Montana. To say that Gunner isn’t like other kids is the grand poobah of understatements. The boy writes graphic novels, and really good ones at that. His current novel follows a dead detective who’s trying to solve his own murder. Hell, I’d read that book.
But since creativity isn’t exactly celebrated in the 10 year old demographic, the only friends Gunner has are the local plump librarian and his mother, Mary. Even his father, Amos, seems confused by his son’s weird interests. He’d rather Gunner come out hunting with him, which is probably why he gave his son his name in the first place.
But everything changes when Gunner finds out his mother has cancer. Really bad cancer. Gunner being Gunner, though, thinks he can solve the problem by reading enough books, by doing enough research. But the only thing he comes across that gives him hope is the story of Edward Shaal, a local man who died in a flood back in the 1920s and somehow came back to life two days later.
Gunner believes that if he can find Edward, who the locals refer to as “The Water Man,” he can save his mother. So he grabs his father’s rifle and some supplies, and finds the one boy in town who claims to have come in contact with The Water Man, 12 year old Joseph Riley. Riley, not exactly the nicest kid, demands a hundred bucks to take Gunner into the woods where The Water Man lives. Gunner, who doesn’t have many options, agrees and off they go.
As the two head deeper and deeper into the forest, Gunner senses that something is off about Riley’s story. The details of his encounter with The Water Man are non-specific, and he doesn’t really seem to know where he’s going. As Gunner’s mother lies precariously close to death, his trip into the forest becomes more uncertain, and that’s when we come to a horrifying realization, that it may not be a son who’s about to lose a mother, but rather a mother who’s about to lose her son.
So the other day I was reading a script from a good amateur writer – a guy I feel is on the precipice of breaking into the industry. But while his latest script was chock-full of big ideas and spectacle, I finished the script feeling empty, like I watched a bunch of people I didn’t know do some cool stuff. To put it bluntly, the script was missing an EMOTIONAL COMPONENT.
The emotional component is what allows the audience to FEEL SOMETHING DURING A MOVIE. If you don’t include it, they don’t feel. That’s why you watch a movie like Transformers and you think, “Ooh, that was cool,” a few times, and yet the movie evaporates from your mind at a dizzying rate once you leave the theater. It’s because there was nothing to emotionally tie you to what was going on.
The Water Man is the opposite of both that script and that movie. Before it takes you anywhere, it establishes an emotional connection. “So Carson,” you ask, “Are you saying that all I need to do to establish an emotional connection is stick a cancer mom in my script?” Oh if it were only that easy. Sticking cancer people in your script is actually the worst thing you can do to create an emotional connection. Because it’s cliché and melodramatic.
However, if you can build a specific set of circumstances surrounding that cancer, one that feels inventive or different or complex, you’ll find the connection you’re looking for. You see, it isn’t Gunner’s dying mom that gets us reaching for the Kleenex box (although that’s part of it). It’s the fact that Gunner and Amos (Gunner’s dad) don’t have anything in common. Mary knows she’s going to die. Her worry is that she’s the only thing that has kept this family together. Without her, you’ll have a father and son who don’t connect on any level.
The Water Man, then, is about much more than a boy irrationally trying to save his mom. It’s about a son and a father needing to find a connection before it’s too late. I know it’s not easy to categorize what I’m explaining here. But basically, by building a more complex situation around our dying person’s life, the story doesn’t feel cliché. It doesn’t feel melodramatic.
But The Water Man doesn’t stop there. Once on the trip with Joseph Riley, we realize that Riley isn’t the tough kid he presented himself as. He’s got a shitty life back home, enough so that he’s run away. And so even when we move away from the emotion-centric Gunner-Mom storyline, we still have a relationship to explore. This one between two misfits. Watching Riley start off deceiving Gunner, only to eventually come to the conclusion that Gunner is his only friend, was one of the many heartwarming moments in the script.
I also liked how Needell played around with traditional structure. I tell you guys to inject a clear goal into your story. And we have that here. Gunner needs to find The Water Man. But she adds this soft twist to the goal, in that we’re not sure if Riley really knows where The Water Man is. So we’re heading off on this adventure that may be a total farce, which gives us all sorts of anxiety. I mean, how are we going to save mom if our guide is making his entire story up? I guess you could say it was a goal with a twist.
(spoiler) I even loved the way Needell treats the eventual meeting with The Water Man. It’s hard as hell to gear an entire script towards meeting someone and then have that character live up to the build-up. I see writers strike out on this about 90% of the time. But Needell treats this moment with just the right amount of restraint, just the right amount of mystery, and just the right amount of, “Wait a minute, did that really happen or didn’t it?” It was immensely satisfying.
I’m not surprised Disney broke their “no original material” rule for this one. It’s a real gem.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use your unique circumstances as a strength, not an excuse. So many people are convinced that because they live in some faraway country or in the middle of nowhere that it’s impossible for them to make it as a screenwriter. You don’t realize how wrong you are. A lot of people in Hollywood come from very privileged middle to upper class upbringings. Unfortunately, that means their scope of real-life experience is limited. By living outside of that scope, you have the power to craft a story that feels unique. Just use your unique surroundings as inspiration. That’s clearly what Needell did here with this small-town story.
What I learned 2: To expand on this, your unique experiences growing up are part of what shapes that elusive “voice” everyone says you need in this craft. So if you’re not tapping into one of the key things in your life that makes you different, you’re not giving us everything you can in your screenplays.
