It may have taken an entire calendar year, but we may have just found the best script on the 2022 Black List.
Genre: Thriller/Dark Comedy
Premise: 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.
About: Jason Hellerman is an example of why it’s hard out there for screenwriters. He wrote a movie, Shovel Buddies, in 2015, but has struggled to find work since. At this point, he doesn’t even have an agent or manager. But he was still able to get this script onto last year’s Black List.
Writer: Jason Hellerman
Details: 90 pages
Jacob Elordi for Kevin Kreamer?
I forgot which commenter recommended this to me.
But THANK YOU!
Wow, this gem was hidden beneath all these vanilla obvious straightforward Black List screenplays and we didn’t know it! But if we were smart, we could’ve figured it out. Himbo was the only script on the Black List that didn’t have an agent, manager, or producer.
For those who don’t know, agents and managers pump their clients’ scripts into as many hands as possible in the hopes that when voting time comes, the sheer number of people who read it will result in enough votes to make the Black List.
But if you didn’t have someone pimping your script and you STILL got enough votes to make the list??? That’s nearly impossible to do and a sign that you have a REALLY good script. Cause it’s the rare instance of your script getting passed around organically. Which is actually how the original Black List was conceived, before people learned to manipulate it.
This one’s so wild, I’m going to need you to put on your hazmat suits.
We’re in some mid-sized town in Arizona and 20-something dimwitted Kevin Kreamer (stage name) is a male stripper working at Hot Dawgs Strip Club. Hot Dawgs is owned by 50-something Argento Papadakis, who’s one of the few people around town who actually has real money.
One night after Kevin performs, he asks Argento for a ride home, but first Argento has to help his wife, former stripper Lisa, who got a flat tire on the highway. As Kevin helps change the flat, Lisa stares at him like a dog in heat. It’s clear that Argento and Lisa’s marriage is not going well.
Later, when Kevin gets home, none other than Lisa is waiting for him. We learn that the flat tire was a setup so that they could both throw Argento in front of a passing semi and get away with murder. That’s right. Kevin and Lisa are banging. And as soon as they kill Argento, they can run off together with his money and live happily ever after. But Kevin chickened out during the plan. So now they’ll have to do it some other way.
A couple of nights later, after work, Argento and Kevin get wasted, and Argento shows him his big secret. You see, Argento was actually dead broke. Until he stumbled upon a small hidden cave in the Arizona desert. And in that cave? Gold shavings everywhere. You set up a dozen sieves in key places where the water weaves through the cracks, bringing unlimited gold shavings with it, and those sieves are full of gold every time you came back. Argento, who’s been secretly in love with Kevin, offers him all of this if they can be together. And Kevin says yes.
Kevin then heads home to Lisa and tells her it’s over. He doesn’t want to kill Argento anymore. Lisa is furious and starts yelling at him. What neither of them know, however, is that Argento’s been dying to get out of this marriage and only needed proof of Lisa cheating to meet the prenup’s standard of her getting zero in the divorce. So he hired a PI to catch her in the act.
He finally confronts her. But he had no idea Lisa was cheating on him with Kevin. Devastated, he goes home, butthurt, and he tells his PI, “You want to make some real money? Kill them both.” The PI (a crazed woman named Melanie) doesn’t blink. She’s in. Until she overhears something about this cave of gold. Now she, and Lisa, and Kevin, all want what they believe they deserve – a literal money-making cave. Will they get it? Or will they all perish in their greedy pursuit?
This is a small thing but as soon as I saw that this story was set in a small Arizona town, I had a good feeling. Let me explain. When I pick up a script, it is almost always set in New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Paris, London, sometimes Chicago — all the big obvious places.
My belief is that most screenwriters are on cruise-control without realizing it. They’re not trying to be cliche. But they go with the first thing that pops into their head – whether that be a character, a scene, a location. So they’re setting their stories in these locations without even realizing it.
You have to understand that, as a reader, we’re always wanting to be taken to some place new. Cause the new places have things that we haven’t experienced before. For a writer to set their story in Arizona tells me that they’re not like every other writer. So, immediately, I felt good about this script. It turned out, my instincts were right.
The descriptions here were a cut above the average script. Like when we first get inside Kevin’s tiny house, here’s the first description line:
“A front door that has a view of the backdoor.”
Simple. Clever. Descriptive. I rarely see that combo.
This was followed by several fun exchanges. Such as this one…
KEVIN: My mom said money makes you more of who you really are on the inside.
ARGENTO: That’s how I know you’re poor.
And then you had these characters. Every one had something that differentiated them from the characters that I usually come across. Here’s the introduction of Melanie, the PI who Argento hires…
You also have a writer who understands shorthand. He understands that a script needs to move. So, at a certain point, Argento decides he wants to catch his wife in the act of cheating. Now, normally, when you’re writing a plot line such as this, your mind thinks linearly. You think, “Okay, Argento has to hire a PI. He doesn’t know any PIs. So he has to go to some office, interview the guy, tell him what he wants, and then the guy accepts the job and we’re off to the races.”
But that’s boring and logical and there’s too much boring setup involved. So, instead, we show Argento at a diner, ready to meet the PI, and this woman sits down across from him and she’s like, “Okay, let’s rock.” He has no idea who she is. He’d sent a message to an old PI friend he knew from before to come help him out. But it turns out that guy is dead and his daughter, this woman, has taken over the company. As soon as he realizes that, we’re off to the races.
This is what I mean by “shorthand.” Instead of taking time out of your script to do logical boring stuff (go find a PI and tell the PI your whole reason for being there) so that you can get to the fun stuff, you come up with a way to fast-forward through that. He always knows this girl’s family. Her dad worked for him. A thousand times more interesting and we move quicker into the PI plot.
And then, the dialogue was just so good here throughout – a cut above 99% of the dialogue I read. Even some of the dialogue hawks who snipe down any dialogue I post here are going to have to admit this dialogue is better than all the other scripts on the Black List.
Finally, the script has this “lived in” quality. What I mean by that is, the writer has lived with this script for so long that he’s added a million little things so that it all feels connected. It doesn’t feel like one of those scripts where the writer was figuring it out as he went along.
For example, there’s this whole running gag with dumb Kevin trying to keep up with Lisa, who’s really smart. So his bible is Google. He loves googling and learning things. And he’s always telling these things to Lisa and it pisses her off. She always tells him to stop with the Google. Late in the script, when she’s trying to make this grand point, she brings up the infamous story of the guy who sold Victoria’s Secret for 500 grand only to then “put a gun in his mouth after he sold out because he couldn’t deal with missing a chance at a fortune that lasts past this life.”
While she’s been telling the story, Kevin has been pecking at his phone, clearly googling the story, and he turns to her and replies. “It says he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.” And she’s, of course, livid.
That’s a very lived-in response. You don’t figure that moment out the first time through the script. You’re still feeling everything out. That’s the kind of thing where you’re going back through the screenplay numerous times, have read through the same sequence over and over, and then it finally hits you – hey, this is a good place to use that running google joke.
Outside of getting a little sloppy at the end, this was a really good script. It’s definitely going to finish in the top 5 of my 2022 Black List re-ranking. If you can find it (and someone may have it in the comments section) definitely read it!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The power of the “WTF” script element. 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.
******REMINDER – NOVEMBER LOGLINE SHOWDOWN COMING UP!******
We’re moving our normal Thursday deadline back a week due to Thanksgiving. So if you have a great logline and you want to compete in the Logline Showdown, send that entry in! You’re got until a week from Thursday.
What: November Logline Showdown
Send me: the logline for any script you have (features will take precedence over pilots but if you’ve got the best tv show idea ever, send it in)
I need: The title, genre, and logline
Also: Your script must be written because I’ll be reviewing the winning entry the following week
When: Deadline is Thursday, November 30th, 10:00pm Pacific Time
Send entries to: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Okay, let’s get down to business.
I like superhero films.
The Marvels looking at their second weekend drop.
I do.
With one caveat.
They actually have to be good.
And I don’t think anyone in the industry has cared about making good superhero movies for a while. I think that they believe they’re trying their hardest. Nobody starts out trying to make a bad movie.
But over-saturation combined with the prioritization of message-over-concept has shot a poison arrow into Marvel’s magical money-generating organism and the damage is so severe that they can no longer continue with this strategy. Unless their goal is to hemorrhage every single money-generating artery in their body.
It’s long been known that opening weekends are not representative of how good a movie is. Second weekends are. Opening weekends are about concept and marketing. If you have a well-known superhero in a fun-sounding movie and a 100 million dollar marketing campaign, you are guaranteed a huge weekend, regardless of how good your movie is.
But second weekends are all about word-of-mouth. If people are coming back from the theater and bashing your movie or, worse, not talking about it at all, no one’s going to show up the second weekend. The Marvels had the biggest second weekend drop in Marvel history, with 80%. This, just several months after the previous Marvel film, Ant-Man 3, had the biggest second weekend drop (70%).
These are not good numbers. And I’m hoping that this is a wake-up call for everyone. I don’t think we should stop making superhero films. If that happens, I’m afraid the theatrical business might crumble entirely. But we should stop making second-tier superhero films. For example, the next Marvel entry – and the only one of 2024 – is Deadpool 3. That movie’s going to be awesome! Because it’s got a premier superhero at the helm.
It’s no secret why Batman and Iron Man started this movie superhero obsession. Their value had been established via millions of sold comics. So why should we be surprised when these smaller unestablished comic book heroes (Blue Beetle) don’t pull in the same amount of dough?
That’s what was so strange about The Marvels. The first film grossed a billion dollars. So you would think people would’ve shown up for the sequel. Why didn’t they? For one, the first film had a way better premise. This was back when Marvel was wisely exploiting sub-genres to provide templates for their screenplays. Captain Marvel was a buddy-cop movie. And using a younger Nick Fury as the other half of the team-up was a fun idea.
The Marvel’s biggest problem was that the concept was ill-conceived. Why are you downgrading your billion dollar superhero star for her sequel? That was a really odd choice. When people saw this trailer, they no longer saw “Captain Marvel.” They saw Captain Marvel playing second fiddle to the lowest rated Marvel TV character as well as the single most forgettable superhero in history. Who came up with that idea? If anything, Captain Marvel should’ve graduated to riding solo in her sequel. A billion dollars certainly earns you that, don’t you think?
Maybe they were concerned about Brie Larson’s likability. The Brie-ster is an odd duck. I think she has a good heart but she comes off socially uncalibrated so she’s got a bigger share of haters than your average celebrity. The girl who plays Ms. Marvel is certainly more likable than Brie. So I can see why they were able to talk themselves into putting her into a Captain Marvel sequel. But nobody knows who that character is!
And let me just say something screenwriting related, as it appears that everyone in the superhero business has forgotten about this. Rules are important. With superheroes, it is imperative that we know the rules of their powers. The more vague someone’s power is, the less we care about them. There are a couple of minor exceptions to this. But it is otherwise a hard and fast rule.
Spiderman, Batman, Superman. The most popular superheroes ever. What’s the concurrent numerical element? We know the rules behind their powers. And they’re simple. There’s nothing vague or unclear. Contrast that with Captain Marvel. Do you know what Captain Marvel’s powers are? I don’t. I certainly don’t know her biggest weakness. Which means she’s unstoppable? Is that interesting? And I know even less about the other Marvel girls’ powers. So you’re asking a bunch of people to show up to a superhero movie where we don’t understand any of the characters’ superpowers??!!
The new Hunger Games movie didn’t open much better than The Marvels (55 mil) but it cost half as much. So you have to consider The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes a mild success. But the film could’ve opened much bigger had it understood one of the core principles of screenwriting: A clear concept.
Are you seeing a theme here? Clear rules on the superpowers. Clear concepts. Clear clear clear clear clear clear clear. Too many screenwriters throw clarity out the window. They think they can jam in as many ideas and plots and characters as they want and it will all work out. That’s not how this works. Especially if you’re writing for the masses – you need to be simple and clear.
I bet I could ask 100 people, after they watched The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes trailer, what the plot was and 95 of them would have no idea. That’s a problem. I know it’s a nuanced conversation in that you’re working with IP and, therefore, are betting that people are going to show up due to their familiarity with that IP. But the super successful movies are not ones that only cater to their fan base. They’re the ones that break out and pull in the average moviegoer. And for those additional seat-butts, you need a clear story.
Look at how simple and clear the number 1 movie of the year was: Doll living in her doll world goes into the real world. That’s it. Fish-out-of-water. We understand it immediately.
As for the rest of the top 10, “Thanksgiving” did okay with 10 million. Mixing up horror and Thanksgiving is one of the stranger genre choices I’ve seen in a while. But hey! Some people went to see it, so cool. Oscar-hopeful The Holdovers is squeaking by. The highly-rated film is struggling to pull people in as it is only making $1800 per theater (for comparison’s sake, The Marvels’ per theater average was $2500). You can read my review of the script here.
But the film that’s really struggling is Taika Waititi’s, “Next Goal Wins” ($1100 per theater average). Here’s the thing with Taika. At heart, he’s a goofy guy. But he’s one of the few goofy writer-directors who’s earned a level of critical acclaim, especially with JoJo Rabbit. So we hold him to a higher standard. Therefore, when he makes his version of The Mighty Ducks, it all seems a bit juvenile. I think people are confused. They were hoping for something more from him.
But I just watched an interview with Taika and he doesn’t want all this serious stuff. He would prefer to goof around. If you’re Taika, I say go back to your roots and make another movie with Jermaine Clement. I can practically guarantee that it will be great. If you haven’t seen Eagle vs. Shark, do yourself a favor, cancel everything you’re doing today, and rent this movie. It’s awesome.
I was going to head out and see Saltburn this weekend, Emerald Fennel’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman, one of the best scripts I’ve read in the last five years. But the reviews scared me off. It seems to be hovering near 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. These indie movies cannot have sub 80% RT scores. They have to be at least close to the 90s. By the way, this is another Jacob Elordi movie. Elordi is the Australian hunk coming out of Euphoria. He was also cast in Priscilla. Common denominator with these two films? Female directors. The ladies love this guy. He’s primed to be the next big movie star. He and Paul Mescal are going to be fighting over those top leading man roles for the next couple of decades.
Have you seen any good movies lately, at the theater or on streaming? If so, share them in the comments! I’m always looking for something good. I rented Equalizer 3 this weekend and the Italian backdrop spices things up a little bit (what a fun opening scene). I would’ve preferred a faster-moving narrative but it was still solid.
The secret to writing a great screenplay with the least amount of effort.
Jayne Mansfield, star of the 1963 film, “Promises Promises”
I’m always thinking of new ways to crack the screenwriting code. Screenwriting is funny in that, at its core, it’s simple. Write a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Make sure it’s interesting. Voila. That’s it!
But like any skill, in order to attain mastery, it can get quite complex. I still remember when my first screenwriting teacher told me that each scene needed to achieve five different things. Pretty sure, in that moment, my brain short-circuited.
What happens to most screenwriters is that they start off believing in the former – that screenwriting is easy. They’ve seen movies. They know what movies they like and don’t like, so they figure they’ll write movies similar to what they like and that’s all you need in order to be a good screenwriter.
What happens to the majority of these writers is that their scripts don’t get any success or recognition and they figure that the system is rigged, probably to reward nepotism, so they peace out, never to write another screenplay again. Many of the remaining screenwriters become obsessed with cracking the code and, over the years, delve into the most minute details of the craft, figuring that if they learn EVERYTHING, they’ll be able to write a great script.
Most of these writers never return from that dark place. They just go deeper and deeper into the minutia, looking for the meaning of it all. I’m here to tell you that if you get trapped in that place, it’s just as hard to write a good script there as if you’re a beginner and think writing is easy. Down there, you’re writing from a place of technicality, which is hard to build a moving impactful story around.
Now let me be clear. I’m not saying all technical thought is wrong. There’s a mathematical element to screenwriting that cannot be ignored. The fact that you have to keep your story between 100-120 pages alone means you have to be strategic about how you plot, how you approach your character arcs, where you place your setups and payoffs. But we never want that aspect of your writing to impede upon the ultimate goal. Which is to write a great story.
Today’s article was born out of my newsletter article (sign up if you haven’t already: carsonreeves1@gmail.com) where I discussed “story engines.” This is the same idea but I wanted to make it even simpler for you. In fact, I would say this is the simplest strategy to create a good story. You don’t have to learn any technical terms. You don’t even have to know how to structure a script. As long as you follow this one rule, you can write a good screenplay.
Want to know what it is?
Promise.
No, that’s it. A promise.
All writing is is a promise. You extend a promise to the reader that if they keep reading, they will be rewarded.
Think about it.
Barbie is dancing at the beginning of Barbie, living her best life, when she freezes and asks everyone, “Does anybody else here ever think about dying?” That’s a promise. It’s a promise because we now want to find out why Barbie is having these thoughts. To prove why this promise works, imagine if Barbie had never vocalized these thoughts. She just goes about her perfect day and then goes to sleep. Why should we keep reading?
Promises can be big. They can be small. As long as there is at least one compelling promise in play at every stage of your story, the reader WILL TURN THE PAGE. Let me say that again. As long as at any point in your story there is a compelling promise that has been made, the reader will want to find out what happens next.
What does a bad promise look like? “Here’s a funny character.” That’s not a promise. The character may be funny to you but who knows if it’s funny to others. So we might not want to see any more of them. Remember, the key to the “promise” strategy is that we want to turn the page. If the promise isn’t good enough for that, the strategy won’t work.
So what are some actionable promises to keep the reader reading?
A dead body – This is one of the strongest promises you can make because who doesn’t want to find out who killed this person? Or why?
Will these two people get together? – We were talking about this in the story engine article. One of the early promises in Killers of the Flower Moon was, “If you keep watching, you’ll get to find out if these two get together or not.” This is one of the most often-used promises in the trade.
Will these two people resolve their issues? – This is popular in the team-up genre. Two characters who don’t get along are forced to team up with one another. The promise is that if you keep watching, you get to find out if they eventually find peace with one another.
Promises can be more immediate as well. And should be, depending on the situation. Early on in screenplays, the reader’s attention span is shorter. So you should be looking to introduce promises that have quicker resolutions.
A trained killer gets locked in a room with a group of thugs (The Equalizer). The dramatic irony is through the roof here (we know the thugs are in a lot of trouble) so the promise is strong. We can’t wait for him to kick their a$$. How do I know this promise is effective? Because I know every single one of you reading this right now would turn the page to find out what The Equalizer does to those thugs.
One of the most powerful promises is a strong mystery. I was just watching the pilot episode for the show, A Murder At the End of the World. Early on, we see a couple discover a dead body and then (spoiler) the killer catches them in the act, raises his gun to shoot, but before we show what happens, we cut to the present day. We know one half of the couple, the girl, is still alive, since she’s talking to us. But there’s no mention of what happened to the boyfriend. Was he shot that day? That’s a promise that the writer is making to you. “If you keep reading, I will answer that question.”
Later still in the episode, a man shows up at the woman’s door and says that she’s invited to meet one of the richest men in the world. Another promise. If you keep reading, you get to find out who this man is and why he’s inviting her.
You should have multiple promises going on at all times. They shouldn’t all be giant promises (a girl is possessed, a billionaire is murdered, a man is still in love with his girlfriend after spending 42.6 years in cryogenic stasis) or the promises will compete against each other. But you should be injecting smaller promises on top of your larger promises. I call this “layering.” Because you want the reader to stay engaged in the short term. So you make these immediate promises (The Equalizer just got locked in this room with these thugs. I promise you that if you keep reading, I’ll let you know what happens within the next two pages).
Just like all of writing, there is subjectivity involved in how compelling a promise is. You may think I want to learn more about how all this plastic got into this whale’s stomach, but you’d be wrong. So you’re always gambling in that sense. Which is why you want to lean into the types of promises that have proven to work over time.
Compelling mysteries, whodunits, will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together, unresolved relationships, a loved one has been kidnapped.
Here are some promises from popular movies throughout the years:
An alien is after me: No One Will Save You
Bank robbing brothers are trying to stay one step ahead of sheriffs: Hell or High Water
A giant shark is terrorizing the beach, killing everything in its path: Jaws
A dangerous violent man is coming unhinged: Joker
A man is erased from existence and sees what the world is like without him: It’s A Wonderful Life
People are stuck in a dangerous video game: Jumanji.
In each of these stories, a giant promise is made that makes it nearly impossible for us not to want to keep reading. Now, of course, you do have to write compelling characters for this strategy to work. But if you can do that, you can basically keep a story going forever. And if you think that’s not true, let me point you to Marvel, to Fast and Furious, to Star Wars, to your favorite TV show. Those stories go on and on and on without any real end because the writers keep making compelling promises. Marvel does so at the end of every movie with their post-credit scenes. Now you can do the same. And reap the rewards from doing so. :)
Hey! You want to get a screenplay consultation from me? You should! I’ve read over 10,000 screenplays. I’ve seen every trick in the book. If there’s anyone who can help you turn your screenplay into the masterpiece you and I both know it can be, it’s me. And if you mention this article, I will take 40% off my pilot script or feature screenplay rate. Just e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com!
Is 42.6 Years, from the co-writer of “The Menu,” the next “Passengers?” (The script not the movie)
Genre: Sci-Fi/Rom-Com
Premise: 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.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List and comes from Seth Reiss. You might recognize Reiss’s name as the co-writer of The Menu. He also wrote another weird script I reviewed on the site called, “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.” The movie will star Andy Samberg (who came up with the concept) and Jean Smart, who stars in, “Hacks.” Craig Gillespie, the director of “I, Tonya,” and more recently, “Dumb Money,” will direct.
Writer: Seth Reiss (story by Reiss and Andy Samberg)
Details: 122 pages
I have a question for you. What’s the difference between a romantic comedy and a comedy with romance?
Is Jerry Maguire a romantic comedy or a comedy?
I thought about that after reading this script. I think it’s a romantic comedy but I’m not sure. You might be able to convince me that it’s a comedy.
Oh, by the way, we’re getting close to my year end RE-RANKING of the previous year’s Black List. This is where I tell you guys what the real rankings should be. Not the fakey rankings that all the agents and managers manipulate.
I’m not going to get to read every script on the list. There are some I know it will be impossible for me to like. But I’m curious which ones I should read before making the list. If you’ve read any of these scripts listed below and liked them, please tell me in the comments section, as I’ll want to check them out.
Himbo
Black Dogs
Eternity
The Seeker
The Trap
Caravan
Cheat Day
The Homestead
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
I Love You Now and Forever
You’re My Best Friend
Okay, onto today’s review!
It’s fifty years in the future, New York City, and 30-something Ben is breaking up with 30-something Ruth. Don’t get Ben wrong. He still loves Ruth. But Ruth’s issue is that she is the most unemotional person on the planet. The woman doesn’t have an emotive bone in her body. And it’s driven Ben crazy.
Immediately after Ben dumps Ruth, he finds out he has a rare disease and will die within a year. So he agrees to a cryogenic stasis – for exactly 42.6 years – in the hopes that when he wakes up, the disease will be cured. So that’s what Ben does. He freezes himself for 42.6 years.
Unfortunately for Ben, when he’s unfrozen, they still haven’t figured out how to cure his disease. Cured cancer, though! So that’s cool. For the folks with cancer. Feeling all nostalgic, Ben goes to visit Ruth, who’s now in her 70s, and is pleasantly surprised to learn that she’s single. So Ben makes a move.
The two start hanging out together again. They even have dinner with Ruth’s jealous ex-husband and her adult son. But Ruth is still having issues emoting. And it’s, once again, driving poor Ben nuts. Can’t this chick give him anything??
Eventually, Ruth learns that *SHE* has an incurable disease. Ben is shocked when she decides to use the exact same cryogenic procedure that he did. Which means she’ll be gone for 40+ years. Ben lets her have it. What is the point of doing this?? Why not spend her last moments here with him? But she’s defiant. She’s freezing herself. Unless… unless Ben can convince her with one last grand proposal.
The title of this script tells you a lot about what to expect.
It stems from the doctor explaining to Ben how long he needs to be in cryo-sleep before his disease is cured. When Ben presses the doctor on how he can possibly know it will take exactly 42.6 years, the doctor concedes that he doesn’t know. It could very well be cured in half that time. But he wants to play it safe.
Much of the script plays out with similar ambiguous logic. Ben glides through the randomness of this future where every apartment comes mandatory with its own French chef hologram. This sort of ambiguity usually bothers me but, somehow, Reiss makes it work.
I’ll often reflect on why something bothers me so much in one script while not bothering me in another. A lot of it, I presume, has to do with the way the writer writes. Reiss is so comfortable writing in this casual style, so confident, that I just believed it. It didn’t feel sloppy. It felt like a deliberate choice.
The humor here is specific and, just like all comedies, you’re either going to like it and, therefore, like the script, or roll your eyes and think the script is terrible. Here’s a little dialogue sampler. This is when Ben comes over to Ruthie’s house for dinner and meets her ex-husband and son.
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.
How many romantic comedies have you seen with that setup before? There’s Harold and Maude. There’s the cinematic classic, “Hello, My Name is Doris.” And I think that’s it. And this concept sounds way more interesting than both of those.
What surprised me about the script is that it manages to tackle pretty deep subject matter (getting old, dying) without ever getting depressing. The setup really helps in that sense. It’s so goofy that it offsets a lot of these conversations that, if they were had in a traditional movie setting, would feel depressing as hell. Yet “I’m going to die at the end of the year and there’s nothing I can do about it” registers only as melancholy in 42.6 years, since it’s often sandwiched between jokes.
The writer does make one unfortunate mistake, which is that Ruthie is borderline impossible to root for. She’s so selfish. She gives poor Ben nothing. Ever. Not even an, “I love you.” Here’s a perfect example. Before the dinner scene with Ben and her son and her ex-husband, Ruth is trying to figure out what to make. This is her thinking: “I know Ben likes Italian. So I’m thinking sushi so he doesn’t feel too comfortable.” This woman is straight up cruel.
It’s that age-old screenwriting dilemma of creating a character with negative traits that need to change but not making them so negative that we dislike them. It’s a fine line to walk. I always say, if you’re unsure whether your character is on the right side of that line, give them one extra positive trait for insurance purposes. For example, Reiss could’ve made Ruth funny. If I’m laughing at the things that she says, I’m much more likely to overlook her selfishness.
In the end, I liked 42.6 Years. It’s a tad too melancholy, particularly in its final act. But there’s more good here than bad. Ben is easy to root for. It’s a unique concept. Reiss did an understated but effective job of world-building here. For my money, I prefer the other high concept sci-fi comedy on this list – Dying For You – But 42.6 Years is pretty good.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Your script should be 110 pages or less. Ideally, it should be between 100-110 pages. That’s the sweet spot. However, if your script is all dialogue, like this one, you get 10 extra pages. That’s why I’m completely fine with this script being 122 pages. It was all dialogue so it read fast. Here’s a pro-tip, though. If you’re going to do this, make sure you’re giving us ONLY DIALOGUE starting page 1. Cause the second the reader sees that number – 122 pages – they will hate you. I’m serious. They will. They will grumble and shift around and mutter to themselves things like, “Who does this writer think he is?” But if you start right away with straight dialogue so that their eyes fly down the page, they’ll forget all about hating you. And if you do your job and write a great script, they’ll love you.
Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: A young diver heads deep into the ocean to try and retrieve his diver-father’s remains but in the process gets swallowed up by a whale and has the time it takes for his air to run out (roughly 2 hours) to escape.
About: The rights to this novel sold to Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard) earlier this year. Novelist Daniel Kraus is best known for writing the novelization of “The Shape of Water,” which would go on to win Best Film, after helping del Toro come up with the original concept for his movie. Kraus has a keen eye for picking ideas that both have a level of depth to them but also contain the marketable elements that Hollywood likes. Maybe the coolest thing he did was, after George Romero’s death, completed his unfinished zombie book, “The Living Dead.”
Writer: Daniel Kraus
Details: about 50,000 words (roughly half of most novels)
When I first saw this sale, I thought, “This is the kind of project that would’ve sold as a spec script back in 2004.” It has that “strange attractor” (a man being swallowed by a whale with only 2 hours of air). It fits inside a cost-efficient marketable genre – contained thriller. And it’s not like anything else out there. It’s almost like the Gen-Z version of Moby Dick.
But, unfortunately, these days, if you want to sell something like this, you gotta write it as a book or a short story (ironically, “Whalefall” is both).
The book poses a unique adaptation challenge in that, despite this being a wacky idea, the setting is decidedly tame – we’re inside a stomach the whole movie. I like to place myself in the producer’s stomach for purchases like this and try and figure out what their plan is. Do they stay true to the contained nature of the story and keep it in the whale’s stomach the entire time? Or do they take advantage of the illustrious and unique setting, occasionally taking us outside the whale?
Jay is 17 years old when he loses his father, Mitt. But don’t feel bad for Jay. Jay haaaaaaaaat-ed his father. His dad was a diver and a drunk. He was one of those crusty opinionated dudes who was friends with everyone but would also get into a fight with those friends at the drop of a hat. And he wasn’t a good father. The few times he did pay attention to Jay, it was usually to scold him for being girly or weak.
Mitt got cancer and, instead of fighting it to the bitter end, he took a trip out to where he felt most comfortable – the sea – and simply plunged off the back of the boat, sinking to his demise.
For reasons Jay isn’t even sure of, he decides that he’s going to dive into that same area and retrieve his father’s remains. Jay is not as good of a diver as his dad. But because his dad forced him into so many dives as a kid, he’s good enough. So away he goes, with about 2 hours of air, all by himself. Not advised, by the way.
Not long after he starts diving, Jay sees a fantastical sight. A sperm whale attacks a giant squid! The sperm whale only has one animal it is predator to and that is the giant squid. The squid tries to get away and, in the process, grabs onto Jay. The whale then eats the squid and, with it, Jay.
Jay soon finds himself in one of the whale’s three stomachs. Luckily, the squid gets sucked into another stomach. But it leaves a trail of bioluminescence, which lights up the stomach he’s in. Thank god cause I don’t know how they were going to light this movie otherwise (quick movie fact: The flashlights in Titanic were the sole historically inaccurate element but James Cameron used them because there was no other way he could think of to light the final rescue scene).
As the whale dives deeper into the ocean, Jay must figure out how he’s going to get out of here before his air runs out. Along the way, he develops a close bond with the whale, who is dying himself. Jay begins to see some similarities between the whale and his father, which will allow him, should he not survive this, to at least find closure with his father.
I gotta say: this was one weird book!
For starters, every chapter was 1 and a half pages. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book with chapters that short. It made for a faster read (almost like a screenplay) but it led to an unfamiliar rhythm that I had trouble adjusting to.
One thing I liked, though, was it placed the amount of air (psi) at the top of every chapter. So it starts out as “3000” and then, with each successive chapter, it goes down. So we know exactly how much air he had left.
I bring that up because sometimes writers will assume that the reader knows things that they don’t know. I’ve read versions of stories like this where the writer didn’t give any indication at all of how much air was left, clearly assuming we knew. So you wouldn’t know if the character was totally safe or at the precipice of dying. I always have to remind writers: “If you don’t tell us, we won’t know.” All the better if you tell us in a creative way, which Kraus does.
Kraus also knows he’s battling his own whale here in that the location is limited. So almost every other chapter is a flashback to some moment in Jay and Mitt’s life. There isn’t any real story to these flashbacks. They’re just meant to fill us in – hopefully create a better understanding of their relationship so that we care more about it being resolved.
The author additionally understands that, even in book form, where it’s easier to ignore dialogue, that he needs some sort of interaction in the stomach. So he creates the voice of the whale, who starts talking to Jay. The whale is the most interesting character in the book. There was something very sad about the fact that it was dying and knew it.
That connection Kraus builds between us and the whale helps lead to the book’s best scene, when a group of orcas attack the whale. They know it’s old. They know it’s dying. So they go after it. But we never see it. We only hear it from Jay’s point-of-view. And then, what happens, is this really cool rescue operation by a group of other whales.
Unfortunately, outside of that great scene (and the initial whale-squid attack scene), there isn’t a whole lot here. I’m not even sure if the setup makes sense. First, you establish that this kid hated his dad. So why does he want to find his remains? And second, what are the chances of diving into the ocean and finding the remains of your father? 1 in 500 million? That never made sense to me.
Kraus is clearly searching for this deeper emotional connection between Jay, Mitt’s death, and the whale, but, if I’m being honest, it’s hackneyed. At first, the whale starts talking to Jay. But then, the implication is that it’s not really the whale who’s talking. It’s Mitt. But then there are clearly times where it’s the whale again. It all just felt very convenient. It was Mitt when the author needed it to be. It was the whale when he needed it to be. Readers and audiences don’t respond well to writing conveniences. It may make your writing easier. But it almost always makes the story worse.
Kraus also tries to shove in an environmental theme. It was actually interesting learning about how much plastic whales inhale because of all the litter in the ocean. But we’re already focused on this whole other storyline so it didn’t feel organic at all and seemed to support the idea that Kraus was never really sure what he was writing about.
We all have this issue in the early drafts of our scripts. You’re not quite sure what your screenplay is about yet so you add a bunch of ideas and a bunch of themes. But that’s what rewrites are for, to weed out the stuff that is no longer relevant. I suspect that because this novel is so short as is that Kraus didn’t have the option to get rid of the environmental stuff because he couldn’t afford to. It would’ve made a miniature novel even shorter.
Regardless of the fact that I didn’t love the execution here, I’m still intrigued to see what they do with the movie. It’s too unique of an idea for me not to be curious. Best case scenario, we could be looking at the next Life of Pi, which was a good movie.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You have a couple of options when you do the death of a loved one in a story. Option 1 is that they really loved each other. Option 2 is that they had a contentious relationship. In my experience, option 2 is the better way to go, as was the case in this book. For whatever reason, if your two characters loved each other, it feels too much like a love-fest and therefore inauthentic, potentially even melodramatic. Whereas, if there was contentiousness between them, it feels more like real life. Also, there are more complex emotions involved in option 2, which tends to make the character who matters (our protagonist) more interesting. If our hero loved the person who died with all their heart, and that person loved them, then it’s just straight sad. There’s not a whole lot to do with “straight sad.” I’ve seen option 1 work well for secondary characters, like Sean in Good Will Hunting. But not with primary characters.
