One of the questions I’m often asked is, “Do I need to obtain the rights to someone’s life in order to write about them?” I’ve brought in Lisa Callif, a partner at the law firm of Donaldson and Callif, to help answer that question. Callif has helped steer many independent producers through this process, including on such films as “Devil’s Knot,” the real life story of three teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of killing three boys, and “Welcome to New York,” about Dominique Strauss Khan.
SS: Let’s start off simple. A lot of writers ask me, “Can I write about a real life person or do I need the ‘rights’ to them?” Is there a simple answer to this?
LC: The simple answer is yes. The law does not require you to obtain life story rights to make a movie that accurately portrays that person.
SS: What is one of the biggest misunderstandings about obtaining the rights of a person to write a movie about?
LC: That a life story rights agreement is an acquisition of an underlying right. The facts of a person’s life are in the public domain, so there is no need to acquire them. Rather, it is a person’s waiver of certain personal rights and an agreement by them to cooperate and consult in the making of the film of which they are a subject. The agreement is formatted like a normal acquisition of underlying rights because that is the tradition in Hollywood, and because most lay persons have the notion that they own something called “life story rights.” Besides, no one would sign it if it were correctly labeled as a “waiver of right to sue no matter how badly you muck up my life.”
SS: I notice that in almost every case with the studios, when they have a movie about a real-life person, they’ve either purchased a book about that person or obtained life rights through the person themselves or the family. If it’s okay to write about people without obtaining official permission, why do they do this?
LC: Despite one’s legal right to make a film without life rights, there are lots of good reasons to obtain them. Let’s look at the two most important: first, when you purchase someone’s life story rights, they waive the right to file a lawsuit based on a violation of their personal, privacy and publicity rights. In fact, it is the waiver of the right to sue you, no matter what you do to the person’s life story, that is at the heart of the life story rights agreement (especially for a deep-pocketed studio). This waiver not only provides you (and the others involved in the film) with great protection, it makes it easier to obtain Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance, which provides you with coverage if anyone portrayed in your film decides to sue you. Second, the agreement gives you access to the person about whom you are writing. The person who lived the story always has information that is not publicly known and perhaps more interesting than what has already been published. Simply put, you often make a better movie with the participation of these people.
SS: Let’s take a specific example. Studios are constantly trying to make movies about Martin Luther King and getting rejected by the family. Why don’t they just ignore the family and make the movie anyway?
LC: Well, they just did. As I understand it, the filmmakers of “Selma” did not have the rights from the estate. That said, the hesitation to make a film without rights is the fear that someone will get upset and file a lawsuit. No one wants that. The King estate is very protective of its rights and not afraid to file a lawsuit. However, if a story is told accurately, the chances of a lawsuit lessen dramatically. It’s only if the filmmaking is sloppy or people aren’t honest that you can really get in trouble.
SS: But I’ve heard things like that the family owns the “I Have a Dream” speech and that you can’t use any parts of that speech in print or movies without paying them ridiculous amounts of money (I heard a recent quote of 300 words from the speech were going to cost one journalist $10,000). I’d consider that “facts” from the character’s life, but maybe speeches fall under a separate category that’s treated differently by the law?
LC: It’s true that the MLK estate has established copyright ownership over that speech, however, that would not prevent a filmmaker from using portions of it pursuant to fair use (of course, the use would have to fall within the parameters of fair use and that is something we would determine based on how it is used). And yes, a speech is quite different from “facts,” especially a speech that is written before it is recited. Under the 1976 copyright act (our current law), copyright protection attaches the minute you put pen to paper. It is debatable whether the “I Have a Dream” speech should have been granted copyright protection due to certain formalities that may or may not have been met, but the bottom line is that the estate was able to establish copyright ownership over that speech. The fact that MLK delivered that speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 is a fact and may be used freely, but his written words, which have been copyrighted, may only be used with permission from the estate or pursuant to fair use.
SS: If there was ever an opportunity for a subject to sue over a movie about them, it was The Social Network. Mark Zuckerberg had gone on record as saying everything about that movie was false. Here’s a guy with a multi-billion dollar bank account. A lawsuit is a drop in the bucket for him. And there seemed to only be a positive outcome for him filing a suit (he repairs the bad image that the movie painted of him). Yet he did nothing. Did the studio dodge a bullet or did Zuckerberg not sue because he had no legal cause?
LC: I didn’t have any direct involvement in this film, but I would certainly guess it was the latter. There are potential other reasons as well – perhaps Zuckerberg/Facebook have other skeletons in the closet that they didn’t want known. Litigation is not only costly, time consuming and lengthy, but it also has the potential to expose things a person may want to keep private. Perhaps there were business and public relations reasons they did not file. Is it the right move for Facebook to sue, even if some of the allegations made in the film were false? How would Facebook users view that? Do Facebook users care about the allegations made in the film? Did it harm their business? Obviously not. Would it have if they filed a lawsuit? Probably not, but maybe litigation would not have provided any real benefit to the company.
SS: Just the other day, I reviewed a script called “Pale Blue Dot,” that covered the real life story of an astronaut love triangle (the famous “astronaut drove 500 miles in a diaper” story). The writers, however, changed all the names. Is this a simple way to avoid a lawsuit? Can I pick any real life story and simply change names and be immune from litigation?
LC: Short answer, no. Simply changing a name does not get a filmmaker even close to being safe. If you really don’t want a person to be recognizable, then you must make that person unrecognizable. Changing a name doesn’t do that.
SS: Last year, one of the studios optioned a huge article about the famous Venezuelan case where a dead man accused the president of assassinating him in a posthumous Youtube video. Do they now officially “own” that story? Would a rival studio be able to release their version of the exact same story without an option on any material? Or would the first studio be able to sue them?
LC: The studio will own that story as it was told by the author. However, the studio won’t own (and no one will own) the facts of that event. Anyone can write about these facts without obtaining permission to do so. What another filmmaker cannot do is take the way in which those facts were told in the article and use that expression without permission. The essential ingredient present in creations, but absent in facts, is originality. The question to ask yourself is – am I telling a story that has already been told? Or am I using facts to create my own story?
SS: One final question. There was another script sale awhile back that covered the real life story of that girl who freaked out in a Los Angeles hotel elevator and was later found floating dead in the hotel’s water supply. The writers just went ahead and created this whole ghost story out of it (with supernatural elements and all). So can you just take a real-life person and create an entirely made-up story around them?
LC: Because that girl is deceased, the filmmaker has a lot more leeway. When a person dies, their personal rights die with them, including defamation. One does need to be cautious about claims by heirs and others connected to the subject who are still alive. But if you’re writing about a deceased public figure, you can pretty much write anything. Also, even with living subjects, a filmmaker can take some creative liberties in establishing elements that are unknown (such as conversations). Courts call this “fictional embroidery.” This is permissible so long as the fictional elements naturally flow from the known facts and do not violate the personal rights of that individual.
I hope this was helpful. I might be able to send a couple of follow-up questions Lisa’s way. I’ll do so for the two most upvoted questions in the comments section and put those answers up within the next 24 hours. ☺
Today I talk about how to be funny, dammit!
Genre: TV Pilot (comedy sci-fi)
Premise: A support group whose members believe they’ve been abducted by aliens is furious when a journalist makes fun of them in an article. The only problem is, the journalist begins to think he may have been abducted as well.
About: Writer David Jenkins has been writing scripts for a good ten years now. I know he won a couple of smaller screenplay contests back in 2005, and has been steadily working his way up the ladder since. This project was picked up by TBS last month.
Writer: David Jenkins
Details: 39 pages
I’m going to cut to the chase today. I thought The Group was okay.
But I noticed my mind wandering and exploring a bigger question during the read: “How do you make funny?”
Because funny is dying on the big screen. Unless you can mix your comedy into a bigger genre (sci-fi, horror, action, adventure), comedy is a tough animal to sell overseas. And since that’s all studios care about these days, they’re making less and less lol for us to rotfl at.
I asked someone the other night: “What was the last great comedy you saw?” The answers I got were “22 Jump Street” and “Horrible Bosses 2.” Whoa. If this is what passes for great comedy, we might run out of laughs before the end of the decade.
But then I realized that this golden age of television is providing a new venue for comedy. So much has been made of the gritty dramas that have come out of this new era, but what’s been lost is that some pretty cool off-beat comedies that never would’ve been put on the air ten years ago are now gracing our flat screens.
Which brings us back to our question of the day: “How do you make funny?”
Obviously, there are a lot of ways to make people laugh so I’m not going to claim I know the definitive answer. Comedy is too subjective.
But what bothered me about The Group was that it depended too much on the “wily cast of characters” comedy approach.
This approach was popularized by Community. Put a bunch of wacky people in a room and let them be wacky. I think that works to an extent if you’re as talented as Dan Harmon. But it’s not an approach you want to depend on. Cause most comedy is situational. You need to put people in weird, intense, or awkward situations and then watch how they react. That’s where most good comedy comes from.
I’m going to use another offbeat comedy to make my point here. The awesome Fox show, “The Last Man On Earth.”
This is that Will Forte show where he plays Phil, the last man on earth. After spending two years without seeing a single human being, Phil meets Carol, the last woman on earth. He’s beyond thrilled. He can’t believe that he finally has someone to talk to, to share a life with.
There’s one small problem. Carol is the most annoying person ever. And even with the two being the last man and last woman on earth, Phil STILL cringes at the thought of marrying this woman.
But after a lot of soul searching (who else is he going to marry??), he reluctantly ties the knot, and no less than five minutes later, they run into Melissa (the gorgeous January Jones). This is the most beautiful person in the universe. And Phil could’ve had her had he waited just five more minutes.
The reason this show is so funny is because it uses the “goal-obstacle” technique to get laughs. This technique works by giving your character something he REALLY REALLY wants (his goal). Then you place a series of obstacles in his path to prevent him from achieving that goal.
If you do this right, you have an endless supply of laughs.
So in The Last Man on Earth, Phil is desperately in love with and wants to be with Melissa (goal). But he can’t have her because he’s married (obstacle). So he has to come up with a solution to the problem (these are the “situations” in the term “situational comedy” you’ll now put your character in).
One of the scenes that follows, then, is Phil sitting Carol down, and benignly suggesting the idea that, if they’re going to repopulate the earth, they can’t have their babies having sex with one another. Phil, despite how horrid it’s going to be, will probably need to have sex with Melissa as well.
The scene’s funny because we know what Phil’s up to and we’re wondering if Carol’s going to buy it.
Through a lot of deft maneuvering, Phil actually convinces Carol and Melissa that multiple pregnancies need to be done for the good of mankind. After some hemming and hawing, they agree. He is the only man left in the world. There’s no way around it.
So Phil goes through this over-the-top preparation for his first night with Melissa (another “situational scene”). He can’t believe his luck and that he’s going to have sex with this stunning creature. Then, just a couple of minutes before the deed, a car shows up and “Todd” steps out, the 300 pound nicest guy in the world.
All of a sudden, Phil is no longer the last man on the planet, and so, Carol and Melissa point out, he no longer needs to procreate with both Carol and Melissa. Just like that, we’ve rebooted the goal-obstacle. Phil wants Melissa (goal) but now Todd is in the way (obstacle).
What follows are further situational scenes where Phil points out to Melissa how overweight and unattractive Todd is, and, quite frankly, the last person’s DNA you’d want to repopulate the earth with. Ironically, this only drives Melissa further way, making Phil’s goal even more difficult.
You can just keep doing this over and over but there’s a critical component to making it work. The character with the goal must DESPERATELY WANT IT. The more they want it, the funnier it is when they don’t get it.
Going back to The Group, I couldn’t get past the over-dependence on the “wily personality” aspect. The characters were kind of funny but there wasn’t enough “situational” humor. And I think that’s what you should be looking for in comedy – whether it’s using the goal-obstacle technique or one of the many other techniques to get laughs (hey, some people like projectile vomit jokes!).
Try to put your characters in tough situations that force them to act. If you’re just going to try and be funny with dialogue, it’s probably not going to work unless you’re a dialogue ninja master (which some writers are).
I liked that The Group was different. I liked that it’s mining humor from a science-fiction idea instead of giving us yet another wacky family sit-com. And some of its faults are no doubt due to the fact that it needs to set up its story. I just didn’t see the construction of a single comedic situation here. It was more characters talking and being weird around each other. And that left me wanting more.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The end of the pilot “mini-bible.” While I haven’t seen this in many pilots I’ve read, I wish more writers did it. A pilot, unlike a feature, isn’t the end. It’s the first 1% of the story. To not know what’s coming next just seems odd. On the flip side, I don’t want to read some giant 30 page boring show bible. So this one page “mini-bible” at the end of The Group was a nice compromise. Jenkins broke down (in Cambria font, not Courier), what we should expect from the rest of the series. It was just enough to make me curious about future episodes. I’d suggest throwing a mini-bible final page on your pilot script and also having a larger bible ready should a network/company request it.
Today’s review isn’t so much about Jurassic World as it is about changing your life.
Genre: Action-Adventure
Premise: In order to draw in more customers, a dinosaur theme park genetically modifies a T-Rex to make it bigger, badder, and scarier. Yeah, like that’s going to turn out well.
About: Universal’s been desperate to make another Jurassic Park film for years. The problem was always, “Why would an audience want another Jurassic Park movie?” The last one was terrible. And there are only so many ways to go back to that park. But Universal stayed the course, believing in their product, and boy did it pay off this weekend. The movie made 205 million dollars. Some say it even saved the summer movie season, as the box office numbers this summer have been dismal. One of the biggest gambles for Universal was the hiring of director Colin Trevorrow, a director with only one feature credit to his name, the well-received but microscopic indie film, “Safety Not Guaranteed.” Spielberg himself signed off on Trevorrow.
Writers: Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Colin Trevorrow & Derek Connolly (story by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver – some characters by Michael Crichton)
Details: 124 minutes
If you had told me four months ago that Jurassic World was going to gross 200 million dollars on its opening weekend and have the largest global opening of all time (north of 500 million), I would’ve said, “Yeah, and I’m a stegosaurus.”
Yet, improbably, the franchise many thought was out of pterodactyl juice, has positioned itself to be the number 1 grossing film of the year. That’s in a year that has The Avengers 2 and Star Wars 7! We’re still a ways away from that announcement, but however the raptor claws choose to slice it, it’s gotta be considered the biggest surprise of the year. I guess people still really like dinosaurs!
The plot for Jurassic World is pretty much this: Genetically-spliced killer dinosaur gets loose on an island. It starts killing everything.
This dinosaur’s potential appetizers include Owen, a rough-and-tumble grease-monkey who’s been training raptors to obey human commands. There’s brothers Zach and Gray, both struggling with the impending divorce of their parents. And then there’s Claire, the uptight manager of Jurassic World who, as Zach and Gray’s aunt, has been charged with taking care of them for the weekend.
Claire is really the centerpiece of the movie, as these two poles (Owen on one side and Zach and Gray on the other) try to warm the ice queen up. If you really break it down, Jurassic World is about how life doesn’t always go as planned and the importance of learning to accept that and adapt to it.
And dinosaurs killing each other of course.
I’m sure you’d like to hear what I thought of Jurassic World but, to be honest, you could look at 20 other reviews online and get a close approximation of how I felt. This is a big dumb movie meant to be enjoyed with the lights turned off. Both in the theater and in your heads. It’s not groundbreaking but it’s better than you expect it to be, nudging itself into the “second best” position of the four Jurassic Park films. Which means Trevorrow outdid one of Spielberg’s entries. Not bad for someone who’s never made a blockbuster before.
So all that’s fine and dandy. But there’s a much bigger story here for those paying attention. And it’s a story that could change your lives. A guy wrote and directed a dirt-cheap indie film with one special effects scene and was handed the reins to a major studio franchise. I want you to think about that for a second. I mean really think about it.
Tomorrow, you could start developing a feature film. In five months, you could be shooting it. In a year, you could be in Steven Spielberg’s office discussing the success of that film and be offered a major franchise. Sound impossible? We JUST saw it done. And now that it’s BEEN done, you can bet your ass that studios are going to give chances to MORE up-and-coming directors with only one small film on their resume.
I mean, have you heard some of the names being considered for the next Spider-Man film? The director of Napolean Dynamite. The director of Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl. This is happening. The ride has started. Get on it!
But why is it happening? Well, here’s how I see it. The special effects industry has things figured out on their end. So studios feel confident they have that covered. They know the computer wizards are going to give them those “wowee” shots they can highlight in a trailer to bring audiences in.
What the studios don’t have covered is good storytellers, people who understand how to build a story, how to create suspense, but most importantly, how to arc characters.
Movies, at their core, represent our connections with people. We must connect in some way with the souls who are taking us on this journey. And during that journey, those souls must learn something through the experience they’re put through. They must come out on the other side better people in some way, giving hope to the human experience – that we are capable of becoming better versions of ourselves.
It sounds like screenwriting book bullshit but I would say the ability to show character change in a convincing and emotionally compelling way is what separates the men from the boys. Because anyone can write an action scene. Anyone can scribble, “And then the T-Rex crushes the copter in half with its jaws.”
But not everyone can take the character of Claire, establish her inability to connect in any emotional capacity, and then use the story to challenge that flaw until, in the end, she figures out how to open up. It’s just not done in the vast majority of amateur screenplays I read. And, often times, it’s the reason one’s story leaves so little emotional impact. If everyone in the story is the same at the end as they were at the beginning, then what was the point of telling the story in the first place?
But I don’t want to get hung up on negatives. I’m just thrilled to see what was once thought to be impossible opportunities now presenting themselves regularly. The industry is always going to be hard up for great storytellers.
Make your movies. Let them see what they’re missing. Then celebrate when you get that call from Spielberg.
[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you want to make big sci-fi movies like Jurassic World, write or direct an indie film with some sort of sci-fi storyline. Colin Trevorrow doesn’t get the Jurassic World call if Safety Not Guaranteed is about a horrible-with-women CEO who falls in love with a Speed Dating coach. His movie was about a guy who claims he’s going to travel back in time. This might seem obvious but I see a lot of writers writing in genres that have nothing to do with the genre they eventually want to make big movies in. So just be smart about that.
I hope nobody’s experiencing any lasting psychological effects from Weird Scripts Week. I know I’ve been unaffected by it. The pet monkey I purchased yesterday has been working out splendidly. Still learning how to deal with the beating of the chest and the feces throwing. But other than that, I think this was a wonderful decision. Still trying to figure out how I came up with the idea. You guys have 47 days left til the Scriptshadow 250 Screenwriting Contest deadline, so keep writing. In the meantime, here are five juicy distractions.
Title: Triumph and Disaster
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: A man with frontal lobe damage teams up with a sex addicted widow and a porn-obsessed autistic teenager to race to Las Vegas to meet Lynda Carter, aka Wonder Woman, in an attempt to get the man’s restraining order lifted — all while their respective loved ones do everything they can to stop them.
Why you should read: I know there’s been some opposition to scribes getting reviewed more than once, but my script NERVE AND SINEW got a ‘worth the read’ last year, and I think this one is at that level (or even hopefully beyond it). It’s a low budget, simple story with memorable, complex characters. And sex. A pretty good amount of it. Also, this script takes the opportunity to honor Lynda Carter before she gives way to Gal Gadot.
Title: A Harry Dick Apocalypse
Genre: Horror-Comedy
Logline: A cynical poker player who must become America’s ace in the hole when he bluffs his way into the president’s secret bunker during a global cataclysm.
Why you should read: I’ve been writing for much of my adult life but exclusively screenplays for the past eleven years. One of the best compliments I’ve received about the script is that the reader didn’t have to read the character slug-lines to know who was speaking. The best compliment I’ve had is that it’s a funny story. My inspiration was “Dawn of the Dead” (I know you hate zombies but they are just garnish on the plate) and “Dr. Strangelove,” with a dash of Woody Allen’s “Banana’s.” I tried to make the characters as neurotic as those on the TV series, “The Office.”
Random Submission E-mail found in Carson’s Inbox:
HI, there,
I understand from the web that you are looking to have a movie script reviewed.
Please feel free to Google me (Ab Vegvarry) and if you are still interested get in touch, and you won’t be disappointed.
regards,
Abb Vegvary
(no script attached)
Title: Chickin Lickin
Genre: Drama/Coming of Age
Logline: A tentative young woman gains confidence after the rescue of a baby chicken brings her under the tutelage of a Miyagi-style mentor who trains roosters for cock-fighting.
Why you should read: Cock-fighting is outlawed in the continental U.S. but still legal in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. I’ve been living in St. Thomas for the past 20 years and wanted to utilize an unusual dynamic which might feasibly only exist there, in order to write a different sort of coming of age story. Hope it works! Thanks for checking it out.
Title: Every Good Intention
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: In the wake of their mother’s death, estranged brothers Darren and Reed Holt find themselves at odds with one another after “the perfect robbery” goes horribly wrong, threatening both of their lives.
Why you should read: EVERY GOOD INTENTION is set among the backdrop of Cleveland, Ohio, where the lifestyles of its citizens can be as harsh as the ever-changing seasons. If you love a great character-driven story, you will appreciate this tale of complicated relationships, wasted pasts and foolish pride. If you prefer the intensity of an action-driven script, then you will certainly enjoy the dramatic consequences and fallout that arise from a robbery gone awry. To sum it all up, think OUT OF THE FURNACE meets A SIMPLE PLAN. This is a script that reads like a 90 minute gritty Bruce Springsteen ballad. I realize it can be a challenge to pull off a satisfying character story these days that lacks all the CGI and big-budget effects, however, sometimes real life can be pretty interesting. I wanted to write a story that someone could read and say, “I know a guy like this, and could see that happening…”
Title: Death of the Party
Genre: Thriller/Slasher
Logline: A privileged teen is terrorized by a Snapchat serial killer, while her party guests fall prey at her secluded mansion.
Why you should read: When writing this script, our main goals were to always keep the reader guessing, always keep the reader entertained, and to write a movie we would want to see on opening night. — DOTP is lean. It’s fast-paced. It’s a suspenseful, genre-bending tale, written to maximize mystery, tension, and fear. But most importantly, it’s FUN! — We are graduates of The Second City Chicago (commonly referred to as the Harvard of Comedy). Although this isn’t a comedic script, SC gave us the tools to know how to concoct a story that gets to the point quickly, has no fat, and packs a wallop. In sketch format, there’s no time for unnecessary frills. You have to hook them quickly, and keep them riveted, or die a horrible, horrible death in front of an unforgiving crowd that’s not afraid to boo you right off the Windy City stage.
Is today’s script a spiritual sequel to yesterday’s entry? They’re both about bubbles. As long as we’re on the topic, David Lynch should ditch Saliva Bubble and direct this. It would be EPIC!
It’s finally here! The culmination of Weird Scripts Week! On Monday you saw us deal with James Bond and robot sharks. On Tuesday, talking cows. On Wednesday we went into the mind of a man living his own musical. Yesterday’s script was about spit. But today is truly the pinnacle of weirdness. Get the drugs out and enjoy…
Genre: Biopic
Premise: I told you I was saving the craziest for last. How ‘bout a biopic of Michael Jackson told through the eyes of his chimpanzee, Bubbles!
About: This script went out earlier this year, and while it’s got about as much chance of getting made as Uwe Boll does helming a Star Wars movie, it wins the “Oh I’ve gotta read this” premise of the year award. While writer Isaac Adamson doesn’t have a legendary list of IMDB credits, he’s far from a stranger to Hollywood. His first novel, Tokyo Suckerpunch, has been in development for years at Sony. If Allan Loeb’s Collateral Beauty is ending up number 1 on this year’s Black List like everyone is telling me it will (I still haven’t read it – saving it for when I can relax and enjoy), my guess is that Bubbles ends up at number 2.
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Details: 122 pages
Isaac Adamson, I don’t know who you are. But you’re a genius, my friend.
This is one of those ideas you and your screenwriting friends come up with at 3 in the morning after a night of drinking, laugh uproariously about, then after the laughter’s died down, you proclaim, “No, but really, what if I ACTUALLY wrote it?” And then everyone laughs and says, “Yeah, you should TOTALLY write it.” “Oh my God. Yeah. That would be hilarious!”
And then the next morning through the foggy haze, before you’ve emptied your loose change on three Sausage McGriddles, you remember your crazy premise about telling Michael Jackson’s story through his chimpanzee’s point of view and you grimace and say, “Was I bananas??”
Isaac Adamson must have put down the McGriddles because he not only wrote it, he committed to it. And really, that’s the only way to do it. When you come up with a gimmick premise, you quickly find that there’s nothing to really say past page 15. You’ve introduced the gimmick. What’s left to do?
If you want to extend an idea like that into feature length, you have to embrace and treat the characters like real people, with real problems and real conflicts. And with the exception of Bubbles’ thoughtful meanderings, that’s exactly what Adamson does.
“Bubbles” opens up with a voice over from Bubbles himself. It’s present day and Bubbles lives in a cage along with a number of other animals. He’s not thrilled about it, but as he explains to us in the coming pages, he’s not sure he prefers his previous life either.
Flash back to 1985, the height of Michael Jackson’s fame. Michael has just come out with Thriller, the biggest album of all time! And he wants more. He wants his next album to do the impossible – to sell 100 million records.
He also doesn’t want to be alone during that journey. When you reach that kind of fame, it’s difficult to find friends. This is usually where your family comes in, but Michael’s family, particularly his evil father, Joe, is more interested in using Michael’s fame to jumpstart their own careers than support and love their son/brother.
So Michael buys a monkey! Whereas Michael is childlike and simplistic, Bubbles is a cross between an overly-educated Oxford graduate and a Roman philosopher. He ruminates about Michael’s life choices with such voice over lines as: “Should I have been alarmed that the notion of myself as sovereign provoked such laughter from The King? Or that seeing me festooned in the regal accouterments induced only befuddled discomfiture from these hirsute gentlemen of New Jersey?”
Michael and Bubbles become fast friends, and Bubbles takes pride in that a man who everyone refers to as “The King” has made him his prince. We follow the two through Michael’s struggles to make that impossible 100 million copy album, and during that time, Bubbles, too, becomes a celebrity (particularly in Japan).
But things start to change when Michael moves into Neverland Ranch, a place where he’s finally free of his blood-sucking family. Neverland brings with it many children, distracting Michael from Bubbles. And when one particular child, Jordan Chandler, becomes Michael’s best friend, Bubbles feels like he’s on the outs.
When Jordan’s father (who happens to be a screenwriter!) threatens to sue Michael for molesting his child, Michael’s kingdom, as well as his friendship with Bubbles, unwinds to a point where it can never be salvaged again.
We always talk about how once you find your idea, or your subject, you need to find your angle. Your angle can take what’s, at face value, a generic idea, and bring it to life. I mean, imagine if this was just another Michael Jackson biopic. Adamson would be lucky if Lifetime requested it. By exploring Michael through the angle of his pet chimpanzee, we get a completely unique perspective of the pop star. What was once dull is now fresh. This was the first great choice Adamson made.
The second was to treat everybody here like real people. Once you treat your characters like real people, your reader will actually invest in them. This doesn’t work if you play everyone as a farce. This was my problem with yesterday’s script. Nobody in One Saliva Bubble was real. They were all goofy gimmicks, and therefore we could never get inside of them. For a short movie, gimmicks are fine. For a feature, though? If you’re going to ask someone to sit still for two hours? You need to give them something to invest in.
With that said, I was surprised how far Adamson went down this path. I was curious how he would treat the child molestation charges on Michael but he faces them head on – to the point where they’re the climax of the story (okay, that was unintended, I swear). And because we’d invested so much in Michael by this point – seen how everyone around him existed only to take advantage of him – we really cared about what happened next.
Bubbles the character is a mixed bag. His high-brow observations do get a little tedious at times, but more often than not, they’re fun. For example, when Michael leaves the house only to come back with bandages on his face, Bubbles assumes that his “King” must have gone off to battle, defending his kingdom and defeating his many foes.
And it’s not like he’s unconnected to the plot. His jealousy of the people who hang around Michael are what drive his actions, and it’s why (spoiler), in the end, he’s forced to leave Neverland Ranch.
My issues with “Bubbles” are tempered by the commitment to the idea, but I did have a problem with the script length. This is the kind of premise you want to get in and out of faster than a Hollywood and Vine escort. There’s an entire “Michael in the UK” section that Bubbles doesn’t even participate in that easily could’ve been excised.
I also wished there was more Joe. When you have any script that doesn’t fit nicely into a movie-like structure (which is the case with most biopics), a great villain can be a huge help. You get the audience so wound up about the antagonist and so obsessed with seeing his demise, that they don’t even notice the movie’s flying by. From everything I’ve read, Joe Jackson is a terrible person, especially to Michael. So I would’ve loved to have seen that conflict explored more.
This script will probably never sell and most definitely will never be made. But it does so much more. It shows Hollywood that you’re not afraid to think outside of the box. And while Hollywood loves its formulas, the people who work within it secretly pain for these new voices, for new ideas, for new angles. Those angles may never make it to the big screen, but those writers are admired and called upon again and again for potential writing assignments because they showed that they could go where other writers were too afraid to. So while Bubbles isn’t a perfect story, it’s perfect in its uniqueness, which is why I’d be an idiot not to call it impressive.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As simplistic as this sounds, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this week, it’s that if you want to write something weird, utilizing animals in some unique way is a good place to start. Especially if you want to make the Black List, which thrives on celebrating weird stories. High-ranking Black List scripts The Beaver, The Muppet Man, and The Voices all focused on animals in some weird way. Add Bubbles to that list.
