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Let me ask you a question. Have you ever watched a movie or read a script and afterwards you thought… “That was decent. It was well done.” But it left you with absolutely no feelings whatsoever? It didn’t move you. It didn’t make you think. This is the majority of Hollywood movies out there, and it happens because Hollywood has created a middle-of-the-road formula that they’re afraid to deviate from. It leads us to one of the most primal truths about the business.

Hollywood knows how to make a movie that feels like a movie.

But they struggle to put together a movie that makes you feel.

And the reason that’s important is because you can’t make a great movie unless you make the audience feel something. So how do you make an audience feel? Probably the best way is to create strong relatable characters who go through a powerful transformation over the course of the story. Their transformation often feels like our transformation, which gives us that supercharged kick when leaving the theater – that lasting feeling that’s going to inspire us to tell our friends about the film.

Here’s the problem though. A lot of the transformations characters go through in movies are similar. You have the selfish hero who becomes selfless. You have the cowardly hero who becomes brave. So even when you do a good job with your characters, you still run the risk of your script feeling similar to all the other scripts out there.

And this is where today’s observation comes in. It actually occurred when I stumbled upon a cable-showing of “Castaway.”  You know, the Tom Hanks movie where the guy is stuck on the island. In that movie, the second leading character…….. is a volleyball. Now I want you to think about that for a second. This is not an animated film. It’s not a comedy. This is a straightforward drama. And one of the characters is a volleyball.

How many ways could they have fucked this up? Talk about taking a risk. This choice could’ve fallen flat on its face. There’s actually a scene in the movie where Tom Hanks is CRYING because Wilson the Volleyball is floating away in the ocean and he can’t save him.

That got me thinking about other great screenplays/movies. And I began to notice a trend. They all TOOK BIG CHANCES. Because see, here’s the thing. I can teach you how to structure a story. I can teach you how to build a character with flaws. But unless you take chances in your story, your script will never truly catch anyone’s attention. You need to do something different, something that you’re not typically supposed to do. And the bigger the chance you take, the bigger the reward will be.

Want proof? What’s the biggest movie of all time? It’s probably Star Wars. That movie takes the biggest chance of any movie I’ve ever seen in my life. It creates a goofy religion where people can die, turn into ghosts, and guide others, inside a FANTASY SPACE EPIC, a genre that’s already got a million crazy things going on in it. And what happened? That religion, “The Force,” became a part of the lexicon. Every single person in the world knows what you’re talking about when you bring up “the force.”

Here’s the scary thing though. Taking chances means a much higher chance of failure. And the bigger the chance you take, the more embarrassing the failure can be. Our friend George Lucas has seen this play out on the opposite end of the spectrum. Jar-Jar Binks. I give it to Lucas for going balls out and taking a chance with this character. Chastise him all you want, but this was a HUGE roll of the dice. Why, then, didn’t it pay off like the Force? Why was it such a disaster?

The question becomes, can you quantify chance-taking? Is there a way to do it that allows you a better chance at success than failure? Or is it, by its very nature, a crapshoot? The whole idea behind taking a chance is that you have no idea what the outcome will be.

Well, when I started looking at the chances that have paid off in films, I did start to notice a trend. The chances that tend to pay off the biggest are the ones that anchor directly into your hero’s development. Let’s go right back to the Force, the biggest chance ever taken in a movie. Why did it work? Well, I’m not going to pretend that there was only one reason. But it’s not a coincidence that the bulk of the Force was tied directly to Luke Skywalker’s development. He needed to believe in himself, which was represented by him believing in the Force.

We can see this with The Matrix too. What’s one of the biggest chances The Matrix took? Its characters only fought with kung-fu. Now I want you to think about that for a second. Sentient agents in a machine decided to fight with humans via kung-fu. Why?? Who the fuck knows? It makes no sense. That’s why it was such a risk. BUT it totally worked. And a big reason for that was that kung-fu was tied directly into Neo’s development as a character. That early scene with Morpheus teaching him how to fight? It’s not really about kung-fu. It’s about Neo believing in himself.

One of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams, does the same thing. There are some weird freaking chances they take in that screenplay. Cornfields talk to characters. A guy builds a baseball field on his farm. We go back in time. There are baseball-playing ghosts that, for some reason, only half the people can see. But it works because it’s tied directly into Ray Kinsella’s development. We know that these crazy chances being taken are going to end up in Ray finally figuring out what’s missing in his life.

The second level of chance-taking can be boiled down to emotional rooting. If you’re going to take a chance, look for one that has an emotional connection to the story. And you may notice a pattern here. If we’re attached to and rooting for a character, then anything you tie to that character, no matter how absurd, we have a better chance of buying into. So in the case of Wilson the Volleyball, that was Tom Hanks’ only outlet to avoid loneliness – was creating this companion. Wilson became his best friend during a time when he desperately needed someone. So no shit we’re crying when he floats off in the ocean. We’re emotionally invested in the bond these two developed while he was on the island. If Tom Hanks decides to masturbate every morning on the top of a coconut tree, sure that’s taking a chance, but it’s not rooted in any emotion, so it feels random and “off.”

The third level of chances is where we start to get more superficial. I think these are the most dangerous chances to take because they’re based almost solely on feel. Look at Guardians of the Galaxy. In that movie, you have a wise-talking machine-gun-wielding raccoon as one of the main characters. Oh, and let’s not forget that another one of the characters is a tree. Those are really weird and out there chances. But I will say this about these types of chances – they work best if they stick with the tone of the movie. Guardians was a wild wacky funny ride, so we’re more likely to believe in a talking fox here than had you written an intense drama, or a supernatural flick.

The last level of chances comes down to structure – how you physically decide to tell your story. Are you going to tell it like Pulp Fiction? Where the story is told randomly out of a order? Are you going to tell it like Richard Linklater’s “Slacker,” where we move from one character to the next, never to see the previous characters again? These choices have some of the farthest-reaching implications since they affect the entire read (where as a character like Wilson is only involved in part of the story). But I will say that if you take a chance with your structure and COMMIT to it, people will usually go along with it. For example, Pulp Fiction wouldn’t have worked if the first half of the movie was a straight narrative and the second half an out-of-order one. That chance would’ve been too jumbled and inconsistent for people to buy into.

And still, even if you follow all these guidelines, there’s still no guarantee that your chance is going to pay off. That’s why it’s considered taking a chance. For example, I just reviewed Sorkin’s “Steve Jobs” biopic in my newsletter (Are you not on my newsletter? Why not??) and he establishes a very risky structure, just like Pulp Fiction or Slacker did, but it proved boring. It just didn’t keep the script moving fast enough. And that’s one of the tough things about taking chances. Is its not just taking the chance. It’s how that chance fits in with all the other variables of your screenplay. If the other variables aren’t good, then probably no chance you’re going to take will matter.

But I will say this. It seems to me like the chances that best pay off are the ones that are rooted in the emotion or the concept of the screenplay. As long as your chances are anchored in one of those two areas, you’re usually good. Look at “Her” for example. That’s a movie where one half of the featured romantic couple is never seen. In the entire movie! That’s a huge chance right there. But it made sense because that was the concept. A guy falls in love with his new operating system. It was pretty much the only way they could go.

I’m curious to hear what you guys have to say on this topic. What do you think constitutes a good risk or a good chance? Share your thoughts in the comments. I’ll start looking for the best comment to feature in the next newsletter!

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A manager at a small town fast food restaurant must use every resource available to come up with 10 grand in 24 hours, after losing a “sure-thing” bet.
About: This finished near the middle of the pack of last year’s Black List with 11 votes. Writer Jeff Lock, who worked as an assistant for director Allen Coulter (Extant) made the unique choice of sending his script out without getting representation first. It’s a rare luxury people with contacts in the business can afford to do. As such, it creates a buzz on both the buying end and on the representation end, allowing you to get more bang for your buck. Of course, the script has to be good to pull it off. And Beef (described as the next “Fargo”) is definitely that.
Writer: Jeff Lock
Details: 106 pages – January 2014 draft

Rockwell for Jason?

Remember when spec script, Moonfall, with its infamous storm on the moon scene, was being trumpeted as “Fargo on the moon.” And everyone got all excited about the possibilities of that until they read the thing and realized the script couldn’t have been more un-Fargo if it had tried?

Well, luckily, today’s script, also described as “Fargo-esque” actually IS like Fargo. It’s got the small town feel to it. It’s got some fucked up weird characters. It’s got an anti-hero who finds himself falling deeper and deeper into his own concocted demise. It’s got that dark black humor that served Fargo so well.

The only thing it doesn’t have is that “Coens” branded name attached to it. And that’ll be its biggest hurdle in its attempt to become a film that people actually see.

“Beef” follows gambling-addict Jason, the manger of a Muncie, Indiana “Beefy’s” who’s just lost a bet on the Indy 500 of all things, and now owes 10,000 dollars to the local bookie. The problem is Jason doesn’t have 10,000 dollars. But he does have Beefy’s.

In his eternal wisdom, Jason decides to exploit a company policy which forces employees to acquiesce to anyone robbing the store. Jason tells the bookie’s assistant to come visit him after closing hours tomorrow, he’ll hand over all the money in the safe, plus an extra grand for the trouble, and then tell the police some black guy in a ski mask stole it.

It seems like such a simple plan. Until just about everything that can go wrong the next day does. First of all, Beefy’s only has about half of what he owes. So he needs to make another five grand by the end of the day before the “robbery” occurs.

His oldest employee, Florence, starts off the day by having a heart attack and dying. His two stoned minimum-wage employees both throw up and pass out when they see this. For this reason, all the roast beef burns in the oven, leaving Jason with five grand to make and not a single roast to work with.

So he sends the stoned employees over to the other Beefy’s across town to get more roasts – a tricky endeavor since the manager at the store hates Jason and would rather have sex with a cow than give away his precious roast beef. In the meantime, the bookie’s assistant starts spreading the word that you can just walk into Beefy’s and they’re forced to hand over whatever money they have, so now other people want to rob the store too.

And let’s not forget about the sociopathic freaky-as-all-hell Deer-Heads. These are the guys who work for the man who owns Jason’s bookie. They learn that the bookie is planning on skipping town and not paying up, forcing them to get involved with poor Jason, who doesn’t have anything to do with that end of the problem.

The truth is, all Jason wants to do is get past this and get the hell out of Muncie. Move to Florida, get a job he loves instead of one he loathes, and live a happy life. But as this day goes on, it becomes more and more unclear if he’ll make it out alive.

Beef was a juicy script. I mean, it’s a little bit frustrating because you know it’s probably going to be a movie that stars Sam Rockwell that will be shot in 23 days and therefore have that rushed look that only a Sundance mother can love.

But as a screenplay, this is a great piece of writing to study and I’ll tell you why. It uses one of the most powerful tools in screenwriting. The tool of “How can I make things as difficult as possible for my hero?”

Because that’s all this script is. Jason gets into a classic movie dilemma. He owes a lot of money within a timeframe that he can’t meet. His goal is to get that money. The stakes are if he doesn’t, they kill him. And the urgency is 24 hours.

Once you have a clear GSU situation set up, you can start to utilize the WTWTTCH (what’s the worst thing that can happen) tool. For example, what’s the worst thing that could happen when Jason walks into the store the next morning? Well, one of his employees is dead!

What’s the next worst thing? Well, all the beef he needs to sell that day has been burned. What’s the next worst thing? The only place he can get new beef won’t give it to him.

Almost every single segment of this screenplay is Jason needing something and something getting in the way of that need.

For example, Jason needs to make a ton of money today and the regular everyday foot traffic isn’t going to cut it. So he makes a call out to local sports teams, stores, universities – and gets them to order Beefy’s catering that day. This provides an opportunity to throw more obstacles into the mix. When these people show up to collect their food, he doesn’t even have the beef! So he has to figure out a way to get them the food.

In the business world, you’re supposed to come from a place of YES. When the customer wants something, you always say “yes.” In the screenwriting world – particularly in regards to your main character – you want to come from a place of NO. You always want to deny them what they want, as that will force them to find other ways to get what they want, and those ways tend to be more entertaining.

There’s one other tip I wanted to highlight with this screenplay. When you place your hero in a dangerous situation – one where they owe money for example – you must show the reader what will happen if the goal isn’t met. Because if we don’t get the sense that our main character is in any real danger, we’ll never feel that afraid for him throughout the movie.

I like to call this the villain’s “proof of concept” scene. It’s the scene where we show just how fucking evil and terrifying our villain is. So in Beef, when Jason initially comes to his bookie to tell him he doesn’t have the money, Lock writes this scene where the bookie calls his little niece down, gives her a giant shotgun she can barely hold, places an apple on Jason’s head, and tells her to shoot it off.

There’s this lingering sense of dread as the little girl’s muscles strain just to keep the gun propped up and pointed at the apple. At the last second, the bookie doesn’t go through with it, but the message is clear. This guy doesn’t fuck around. He will kill you in some sick sociopathic way if you don’t deliver. And now the rest of the journey feels purposeful, since we’ve LITERALLY SEEN what will happen if Jason fails.

Movies like Beef are at a crossroads these days. Unless you have that big a) director or b) actor that allows you to make an Oscar run, more and more of these films are going straight to Itunes, which means a lot of people are missing them. Beef is right on that cusp of being either the “forgettable Itunes” movie or the “Oscar contender.” It’ll all depend on who they get. I wish them luck because this was a good script.

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

What I learned: Take your script to Obstacle City – Just look for ways to place as many obstacles in the way of your hero as possible. Obstacles are where conflict comes from. And conflict leads to drama. This is what the Coens do really well, and it’s a big part of why they’re known as two of the best screenwriters in the business.

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Supernatural
Premise: An alcoholic preacher in a small West Texas town becomes the true voice of God.
About: Preacher was originally a comic book series created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon. Recently, Seth Rogan’s team snatched up the rights to turn the series into a TV show for AMC. It looks like Rogen’s producing partner Evan Goldberg is directing the pilot. And Sam Caitlin (Breaking Bad) wrote the pilot. This is Rogen and Goldberg’s favorite comic ever and they consider it a huge blessing to be able to bring the project to life.
Writer: Sam Caitlin
Details: 60 pages (undated)

You look at this bold new TV dominated entertainment universe and wonder why it’s taken so long to put something like Preacher onscreen. It’s a stylistic smorgasbord of wild characters and deep mythology that has “hit” written all over it. It’s no coincidence that AMC is very high on this. And of all the big TV announcements, this one seems to be the most talked about.

So will it be a hit?

If I had to take a guess, I’d say that Preacher, more than any other project coming out this year, has the chance to become a breakout phenomenon. That means this pilot script must be really good, right? Well, that’s where some debate may be in order. This is definitely a well-written pilot. Sam Caitlin, who wrote 10 episodes of Breaking Bad, knows what he’s doing. But this script is also a bit overwhelming. I’d never heard of the Preacher universe before this teleplay and now that I have, I wish someone would’ve given me some warning ahead of time.

The script follows a small-town Texas preacher named Jesse Custer. Jesse starts his sermons off with his best friends Jim Beam and Jack Daniels, and usually ends them that way too. Unfortunately the old saying, “You get what you project” is on full display. You’d be lucky to find even one person paying attention to what Jesse has to say.

But Jesse’s a good guy. He cares about people and wants to help the community. But just like all of us who want to better our lives and the way we exist within them, he can’t seem to find the motivation to actually do it. It’s so much easier to open another beer, to pour another drink.

Jesse’s past might help explain this. Before being a preacher, Jesse travelled the world as some sort of crime enforcer black ops specialist. To be honest, I don’t know what he did but it’s clear it involved lots of illegalities and violence. He was the exact opposite of a preacher.

This story isn’t only about Jesse though. We meet a hedge-fund billionaire named Cassidy who also happens to be a vampire. We meet Jesse’s old partner in crime, Tulip, who spends her days building homemade bazookas and using them to shoot down Blackhawk helicopters. We take visits to the Himalayas and Uganda, where we meet people bursting into goo. And let’s not forget the requirement of any good show – a disfigured  teenager who can’t stop drooling all over himself. And they thought giving Walter White’s son cerebral palsy was going to be a risk.

As all of these things start to descend in on Jesse in one way or another, Jesse’s life is turned upside-down by a gaggle of sparrows who shoot down into his throat. These sparrows happen to be the voice of God, which Jesse now possesses. Finally, all the doubts fade away, and Jesse becomes the man he’s always wanted to be. But Jesse has no idea just how intense his new power really is.

Let’s start off by putting our producer hats on. If I worked at a television network, I would put Preacher on my slate in a second. Like AMC has stated, this show is visual, it’s outrageous, it’s got characters you’d have to have a lobotomy to forget. This is something where if it all pays off, we could be looking at a show that rivals Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.

But it still has to pay off. And I’m not completely sold on if it will.

As much as I enjoyed the outrageousness of it all, let’s strip away all the bells and whistle, all the “style over substance” and get into what’s really going on in Preacher. What’s really going on is absurdity. We’re jumping to Uganda where men are bursting into goop. We’re watching women kill men by jamming full cobs of corn down their throat. There’s a battle on a plane with crossbows.

Fun, right?

But… none of it moves me. It doesn’t pull me into the story or the people inside of that story.

When Preacher is at its best is during its simplest scenes when we’re with Jesse trying to find some sort of beacon to guide his life. My favorite subplot of the pilot is Jesse confronting the man who’s abusing his wife and child. It gets to the heart of Jesse’s issue. Jesse is a trained killer. He could turn this man into maggot food within 3 seconds. But he’s chosen this new peace-preaching lifestyle and he wants to stay true to that. So when this man is beating the shit out of him, we’re right there on the edge of our seats going, “What is he going to do?” Part of us wants him to tear the man apart. The other wants him to be the good man of God that he’s trying to be.

That’s when you know a script is really working. When it’s pulling at the reader like that.

Unfortunately, that’s only a small part of this pilot. The rest of it is, like I said, lots of jumping around to these crazy characters engaged in crazy violent things.

I’m going to make a pretty big proclamation here. But it’s something I stand by after reading a lot of these pilots. When you’re going supernatural with your series. Or you’re writing a universe that’s really crazy. Don’t jump into the craziness right away. You have 75 episodes to do that. Focus instead on your hero – give us someone to care about – someone who’s unique and challenging and deep (like Jesse) and make the pilot just about him.

Then, either through your ending or maybe a couple of carefully placed clips, HINT at the chaos to come. HINT at the supernatural aspects to come. I always love when a fairly straightforward pilot ends with some supernatural cliffhanger. That’s the kind of thing that brings people back for week 2.

Because, in the end, TV is about character. Not how cool or crazy you can make a character. But giving us characters that we can relate to on some level (at least initially) so that we have somebody to root for. When we jump to Cassidy the Hedge Fund vampire, it was a cool scene but it was too much for me. My brain couldn’t handle it. But had that happened on episode 2 or 3? Once the universe had been established? There it might’ve worked.

This is a classic dilemma all writers face when they’re writing TV pilots with extensive mythologies. They want to prove how awesome and deep their mythology is right away so they throw all these wild crazy weird scenes into their pilot. But if you don’t hook the reader on an emotional level (Walter White needing to provide for his family before he dies of cancer) because you’re too busy showing off, you might lose that opportunity.

That’s the reason I didn’t love this pilot. As much as I appreciated the wide-ranging level of detail involved, at the end of the day, I just wanted to connect with someone and root for them. Preacher has some amazing upside and I hope the pilot does focus more on connecting the audience with its characters in the future. Because if it does, this could be the post-Walking-Dead network saving show that AMC has been hoping for.

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

What I learned: There’s a lot of material out there that has been deemed by Hollywood over the last 30 years or so to be too complicated or elaborate to be translated into a movie. Preacher would probably fall into that category. But with the recent revolution of television, particularly the big budgets being spent on shows, that same material is now prime real estate to be adapted into a TV show. So don’t be afraid to go back through all that material of the past 30 years and look for stuff that would be perfect for a long form translation. There are literally MILLIONS of books and comics out there so it shouldn’t be hard to find something.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: A down-on-her-luck maid gets kidnapped by aliens, only to discover that she’s the heir to an intergalactic fortune that includes earth itself.
About: Jupiter Ascending was supposed to be the Wachowski Siblings big comeback. Once considered the heir to movie geekdom, replacing an aging George Lucas, the duo have struggled to find a single hit since their Matrix franchise ended in 2003. Their efforts have included the bouncy curiosity that was Speed Racer, the ambitious art-house flavored Cloud Atlas, and now Jupiter Ascending, which made 19 million dollars this weekend after having a reported budget of 175 million. You could argue that this is the Wachowski’s 5th bad film in a row, as the two Matrix sequels were considered by many to be disappointments. It’s unclear where the Wachowskis go from here. They’re still a name, but “Jupiter” solidified that they’re not in tune with the public anymore. They have Sense 8 coming out on Netflix, which I’m sure will look amazing. But I read that pilot and it’s plagued with the same issues that have destroyed all of their movies, including Jupiter.
Writers: Andy and Lana Wachowski
Details: 127 minutes

No matter how misguided the Wachowskis get, I still root for them. The Matrix changed the way I looked at movies. I thought, like many others, that the Wachowskis were going to be responsible for nine or ten classic science fiction films by the time it was all said and done.

But it just goes to show how quickly fortunes can change in this business. M. Night was being trumpeted as the next Spielberg during this time as well. And we’ve seen how both careers have panned out. Although I give the Wachowskis credit. They at least take chances. I thought Cloud Atlas was a mess, but it was like Picasso painting after a heavy night of drinking. It was never going to be a true Picasso. But you still needed to see the end product.

Here’s the funny thing. The issue that has ruined all of the Wachowskis’ films since The Matrix is the exact same. And if they fixed just this ONE THING, they’d still be churning out classics. I don’t know if it’s ignorance or bullheadedness that convinces them to keep writing this way. But I’m hoping at some point they figure it out. Because they can still be great.

So, a quick plot breakdown of Jupiter Ascending… A young Russian maid, Jupiter (Mila Kunis), is attacked by some aliens who want her dead for reasons unknown. Enter Caine (Channing Tatum) a pointy-eared quarter wolf, quarter eagle-creature, quarter bounty hunter type person guy, who rescues Jupiter just before she’s assassinated.

Caine informs Jupiter that she’s really a member of one of the richest families in the universe. Enter some bounty hunters who steal Jupiter from Caine and bring her across the universe to her true family, where she’s asked to marry some dude who will, in turn, protect earthlings from any future alien attacks.

Turns out the dude – big surprise – was going to kill Jupiter right after he married her, so that he could inherit the earth and all its juicy human occupants. Caine swoops back into the picture to save Jupiter again (there’s a lot of saving in this movie) just as some galaxy cloud starts collapsing and destroying the rich family’s city. Caine and Jupiter escape just in time, fall in love, and Caine earns his wings for saving royalty or something.

The above is an EXTREMELY simplified version of the story. And the reason I bring that up is because this is why Jupiter Ascending doesn’t work. It’s the same reason that the Matrix sequels didn’t work, which is the same reason that Cloud Atlas didn’t work, which is the same reason Sense 8 (their Netflix TV show) didn’t work.

The Wachowskis actually make one of the most amateur mistakes a screenwriter can make. They over-complicate their narratives. How are the Wachowskis making a beginner-level mistake when they’ve been writing for 25 years? Simple. EGO. They believe they’re good enough to overcome it. And they’re not. They’ve proven this time and time again now.

Here’s the funny thing. If they stopped at over-plotting, their movies would at least be decent. Audiences would leave them and nod to each other – “That wasn’t bad.” But the Wachowskis aren’t satisfied unless they suck every ounce of entertainment marrow from their films – so they add ELABORATE MYTHOLOGY to the mix as well.

Do you know what you get when you add elaborate mythology to over-complication? You get Dune. You get disaster. Because it doesn’t matter how talented you are. If every scene is a fight just to make sense of where we are in the story, nobody’s enjoying themselves.

I’d estimate that 75% of Jupiter Ascending is either setting up plot or explaining mythology. This is the hidden price you pay when you write an exposition-heavy screenplay (lots of plot, lots of backstory, lots of mythology). Even if you pull off a seamless steady feed of information that doesn’t scream “Exposition Time!” to the audience, you’re still paying the price on the back end.

That’s because for every scene needed for exposition, you have one less scene to tell your actual story.

In an ideal world, of course, you’d do both. Move story and exposition along concurrently. But that becomes impossible if you’ve saddled yourself with mountains of exposition to convey in the first place.

You can see this happen all over Jupiter Ascending. For example, the Bad Guy asks Jupiter if she’ll marry him. And then FOUR SCENES LATER they’re having the wedding. How can a wedding feel important to an audience if we only just heard about it ten pages ago? It can’t.

How did the writers get themselves into such a predicament?  Well, they needed roughly 8 exposition-only scenes throughout the script to set up the information required to make a proposal make sense.  A scene to explain why Jupiter is an alien if she was born on earth.  Three scenes to explain who this weird King of the Universe family was.  And four more scenes of blah blah blah blah blah.  If you’re running on the ratio of 2 exposition scenes to set up every 1 scene of story, your script is probably in trouble.

Then there’s this bizarre scene mid-way through the story where Jupiter comes on to Caine in a jail cell. Up until that point, neither Jupiter nor Caine had shown any interest in one another. Now all of a sudden she wants him?? Again, this scene was forced in there awkwardly because there wasn’t anywhere earlier in the screenplay to build the chemistry up. Why? Because they were using it for exposition! Because they plagued themselves with an overly-complicated story in the first place.

Let me leave this review with some advice for any writers of sci-fi – particularly those who are going for something with a giant scope like Jupiter Ascending.

Cut out EVERY SINGLE SHRED of fat you see.

These information-heavy screenplays are always going to be a challenge for readers. So you want to make things as easy as possible for them. As a writer, you have a tendency to be precious about the details. You want that reader to know that you know EVERYTHING about your universe. But if it doesn’t affect the story, ditch it. The reader will thank you.

There’s this scene early on in Jupiter Ascending where an entire page of screenplay is dedicated to WHAT Caine is (he’s some sort of “lycan” werewolf thing with wings). That information was irrelevant compared to WHO Caine was. What was his job? Why was he after Jupiter? THAT was the relevant information we needed in order to enjoy the story. Yet because we were being confused by this pointless Lycan Werewolf crap, we were never clear on what Caine did. And it was all because the Wachowskis wanted to prove to us how much thought they’d put into Caine’s backstory. WHO CARES! Do you realize how much freaking information you’ve thrown at us so far??? Don’t continue to give us meaningless info. Just tell us what we need to in order to enjoy the story and that’s it. Nobody told me Yoda’s backstory when we met him and I was fine.

But really, the bigger takeaway here, is to avoid writing a movie where you have to spend 75% of the running time explaining things. The more explaining you’re doing, the less the reader can sit back and enjoy themselves. Some exposition is always going to be necessary. But never underestimate the power of simplicity in storytelling.

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

What I learned: There are two kinds of exposition. The first is FUN exposition. This is exposition that, when revealed, is interesting and cool and imaginative. Learning about The Matrix and how it worked and what it allowed its occupants to do – THAT WAS FUN! Then there’s WORK exposition. This is exposition that requires a lot of WORK from the reader, as they’ll have to suffer through a lot of boring details and logistics in order to enjoy other parts of the story. Readers will suffer through work exposition for a little while. But if it keeps coming, they will eventually lose interest and tune out. This is the very definition of the exposition that plagues Jupiter Ascending. Always pick a story that allows you to give more fun exposition than work exposition if possible.

I’ll start today’s Amateur Offerings out by offering a couple of tips.  It’s funny because the things I assume are common sense are mistakes I keep seeing over and over again.  First, when you’re submitting a script anywhere, don’t start your e-mail with “To Whom It May Concern.” Know where and who you’re sending your script to and address them personally. In a world where people are so busy that they’re looking for every excuse to say no, an informal greeting gurantees your query won’t be read. In addition to this, please know the difference between words like “it’s” and “its” and “who’s” and “whose.” I will, without hesitation, dismiss these queries as soon as I read the misused word. This may seem cruel. But my experiences have taught me that these are always the sloppiest scripts.  Okay, here are this week’s contenders!  Read and tell us what you think in the comments.

Title: New Coke
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: In 1985 the Coca-Cola company made the epicallly boneheaded decision to discontinue its original flavor in favor of a newer, sweeter one. A national nightmare ensued, which forever changed the destinies of three southern families.
Why You Should Read: It’s a mostly true story about one of the most fascinating marketing cases of modern times. Yes, it could be considered a long commercial for Coca-Cola, but it worked out for “The Lego Movie”, didn’t it?

Title: Wars of Eternal Spring
Genre: Martial arts/Asian epic
Logline: A rebellious-minded woman in ancient China seeks the help of Shaolin to save her village from a love-obsessed General and his bloodthirsty Captain.
Why You Should Read:  I’m a 44 year-old soccer mom who secretly loves kung fu. There are a lot of us out there – sneaking into Man of Tai Chi after the lights go down; snagging a $5 copy of Ip Man at 2nd & Charles so the Netflix queue stays “clean.” Every day we chauffeur, tend, cook, coordinate and cajole while desperately longing to settle things with a swift scorpion kick.

“Wars of Eternal Spring” took shape after the perfect storm of a “fu-binge,” Robert Downey, Jr. interview and spur-of-the-moment Google on “Wing Chun style.” Not long afterwards I read that Keanu Reeves was looking for his “next story” to direct. Filling needs is practically my raison d’etre these days, so the off-hand words of a man I’m never likely to meet were more than enough to fuel a feeble flame and get writing.

I gave myself a year. I even told my therapist. In between writing bouts I read screenplays and books on creative processes, story structure and character development. I searched high and low for a critique group. All the while I worked, re-worked and started to get a sense of how much time, realistically, writing anything worthwhile takes.

I believe that the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. Your professional, experienced review would go a long way toward helping me do that. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Title: Lights On The Lake
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: When a young woman fails to convince a small town that a former Nazi scientist is responsible for the death of her husband, she decides to destroy the menace herself.
Why you should read: I’ve spent a few years researching MK-Ultra and other Cold War mind control experiments from the early-1950’s. What I found most fascinating was the shadowy personnel employed by the government agencies as well as the strong resistance of the local populations, even though many of them where being completely misled by authorities.

Title: West Carver High
Genre: Horror
Logline: After all the teachers of a small-town high school disappear out of thin air, the students find themselves trapped in the building with man-eating wendigos… and no one is coming to save them.
Why You Should Read: You know what I hate in horror films? Dumb teenagers. I’d like to think this script is mostly absent of that, at least as far as “hey guys let’s put ourselves in danger because reasons!” I also wanted to capture how a group of teenagers would react in the face of an extraordinary, otherworldly event with no adult oversight. In this case, much of the student body reacts in a horrifying way: by building and supporting a monstrous social hierarchy just as threatening as the “real” monsters hiding in the school. I pitch it as in the vein of THE SHINING and LORD OF THE FLIES. Oh, and one more thing: an older draft of this made the semi finals in the Creative World Awards — so I’d love your perspective to help bring this script to the next level. Thank you!

Title: Condemned
Genre: Horror
Premise: Controlled-demolition experts tasked with bringing down an eerie grand hotel awaken the deadly supernatural force inside, putting them into a fight for their lives to escape (It’s the Overlook Hotel from THE SHINING meets explosive experts).
Why you should read: Since our last Amateur Friday appearance, we’ve been working hard to hone our craft and learn from our shortcomings on THE HOSTAGE. Have we made forward progress? We’re hoping Scriptshadow fans would like to know! Our latest collaboration, CONDEMNED, works in the same low-budget horror realm as THE HOSTAGE, but (hopefully) has richer characters and more satisfying surprises. Is the second time the charm? (Although, to be clear, the first time was definitely a charm–Scriptshadow got that script optioned.