Genre: TV show – Drama
Premise: A young ballet actress with a haunting past joins one of the top ballet companies in New York. Once there, she quickly realizes just how competitive the New York ballet scene is.
About: As it became harder for actress Moira Walley-Beckett’s to find acting roles (she had parts in over 35 TV shows), she transitioned into writing, joining writing staffs for a few failed shows before eventually finding a writing gig on the short lived but heavily hyped, Pan Am. That exposure helped her become part of one of the most famous writing staffs in history, that of Breaking Bad. Walley-Beckett actually wrote two of the most talked about episodes in the series – first, Fly, with co-writer Sam Catlin. And then Ozymandias, which is considered to be one of the best television episodes in history. Now that Breaking Bad is over, Walley-Beckett is heading out into the scary world of show creation, where she’ll be the big writer in the room. Does her pilot warrant this promotion? Let’s find out.
Writer: Moira Walley-Beckett
Details: 60 pages

One of the first things you want to look for with any idea is irony, as it continues to be the best way to sell a show/movie. A lawyer who can’t lie.  A vegetarian chef opens the best steakhouse in the city.  The ballet profession’s dirty little secret – that it’s the most abusive and cruel profession of all.  Without irony, you’re forced to cram as much information about your show as possible into the logline to help the consumer get what’s unique about it. And no matter how hard you try, you can never seem to make it all fit.

Taking on ballet’s dirty little secrets felt right for a Breaking Bad alum. That writer’s room was used to dealing with dirty little secrets. But the ticket for this anticipation train comes with an asterisk at the top. Wasn’t this idea just done in movie form a few years ago in Black Swan?

I’m seeing more and more of this as scripted television continues its Big Bang expansion. Instead of looking for new ideas, writers are taking their favorite movies and simply turning them into TV shows.

Did you like Twister? Make a show about storm chasers. Neighbors? Make a show about a frat house. Lucy? Make a show about a secret agent who gets really smart. It’s gotten to the point where writers are being straight up lazy. And the only way lazy entries work is if you can bring something fresh to the idea. The fact that you didn’t work at all to come up with the idea in the first place sheds doubt on this possibility.  But I’m going to hold out hope.  I’d love to watch the ballet version of Breaking Bad.

When we meet 21 year old Claire Robbins, she’s running away in the middle of the night. What she’s running from is a mystery, but by the look on her face, you can tell it’s haunt-you-for-the-rest-of-your-life bad.

Claire escapes on a train and arrives in New York City the next day, where she knows a total of zero people. Luckily, Claire’s got one hell of a skill to fall back on. Girl can dance. So she heads to one of the best ballet companies in the city, snags an audition, and kills it. She makes it into the troupe.

If you don’t already know, ballet chicks are the most ruthless, the most jealous, the most nasty girls on the planet. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true or not. But that’s the way they were portrayed in Black Swan and since I base all my knowledge in life on movies, I’m assuming this to be fact.

When the other girls figure out how awesome Claire is, they get even more jealous. And when cut-throat bi-sexual troupe leader, Paul, decides to have her headline his next show, well, the jealousy hits an all time high.

Claire somehow makes a couple of friends, including Mia, who spends more time banging random hook-ups than breathing. And Daphne, who secretly works at a strip club in order to afford an apartment overlooking the Hudson River.

Unfortunately, that past she ran away from ends up finding her, a man she shares a terrifying secret with. Will she be able to handle the pressure of New York City and her elite ballet troupe, or will she falter and have to go back to her hometown, where, surely, this horrible secret will continue?

Well, let’s just get this out of the way. Flesh and Bone failed test number 1. It wasn’t fresh. This was almost EXACTLY like Black Swan. A timid little girl. A dance troupe where all the girls hate her. An overbearing troupe leader who uses his power for inappropriate means. The aging girl who sees the new girl as a threat to her spot. Our heroine gets the lead part. We even have a wild night out to a strip club, similar to the famous night out between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

It’s a weakness every writer seems susceptible to. We fall in love with certain movies, and we want to make something similar. So we go in with the best of intentions, oblivious to the fact that our movie/show is the EXACT SAME THING as our favorite movie.

I mean we could literally write a beat for beat remake of Titanic and not know it until someone says, “You do know they already made a movie about the Titanic with a doomed couple that revolved around a missing diamond that sunk with the ship, right?” Ohhhhh, we think as we’re counting future box office receipts in our head. Yeah, I guess I didn’t consider that.

But if you’re able to move past the show’s common bond with the Aronofsky thriller, you’ll find some good stuff. What a TV show allows you to do is explore the more specific areas of a subject matter, enabling you to go beyond the classic movie beats into stuff like bleeding ballet shoes at the end of a dance, pulling an entire toenail off before the next session, and those dirty ugly locker room sessions before and after practice (girls stuffing paper towels into their no-no area because they forgot to bring tampons).

Also, a few of the characters are well-drawn. I liked the sex-crazed Mia. I liked secret stripper Daphne. This easily could’ve devolved into wall-to-wall darkness, which can drown a show (AMC’s “Low Winter Sun”). These two lit things up with their overbearing personalities, a nice contrast to many of the unscrupulous things happening elsewhere in the story.

In fact, there was enough good for me to almost give this a worth the read… until the ending. Now this is a huge spoiler, so turn away if you don’t want to know. But basically, a guy from back home keeps calling Claire throughout the episode, but she keeps avoiding him.

Finally, in the last scene, she answers, and we cut to the caller, Bryan, sitting in Claire’s bedroom back home. After a few exchanges, we realize that Bryan is Claire’s brother. And he’s beating off. To Claire. This is when we learn that Claire ran away from an incestual relationship with her brother. Cut to black.

Uhhhh…SAY WHAT!??

Where the HECK did this come from??? Where was this set up? What in King Joseph’s name happened earlier in the episode to indicate that incest was going to be a theme in this story?

I couldn’t believe that after a pretty well-written pilot, I witnessed a classic rookie mistake. The twist ending that has nothing to do with anything, and is only there for shock value. Twist endings need to be set up with a series of hidden clues to work. We get none of that here, turning the ending into a desperate gimmick rather than an “Oh my God!” moment.

To be honest, I think Moira could’ve saved this pilot with only a slight shift in her approach. One of the friend characters, Daphne, secretly moonlights as a stripper. Why didn’t Moira move this character angle over to Claire??? That’s a hook for a show. A girl at one of the most prestigious dance companies in New York moonlights as a stripper. There’s your irony. Now you have someone who has to hide that world while she becomes a star in the ballet world. I don’t know how long you could keep that going. She might have to quit stripping during the first or second season, but it’s a great place to start a character. Way more interesting (and relevant) than Incest Ballet Chick.

Not a badly written pilot at all. But a few questionable choices kept it from reaching its potential.

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

What I learned: The “mystery box past” is a staple in television, and it’s a great way to hook your viewer for future episodes. You simply hint that something bad happened in your hero’s past, and if that something sounds dirty or scandalous or intriguing enough, the viewer will want to tune in for future episodes to find out what it is. We saw it with Scandal (the main character had an affair with the president), we saw it with Lost (with all the characters) and we see it here, with the incest shocker. I didn’t like the incest shocker, but the mystery box past is still a great tool to use when used well.

Jared is all about Mish-Mashing!

This whole month has been nuts, giving me very little time to get 5 posts a week up. Monday has been suffering, which I apologize for. But it may stay that way for the next few weeks so bear with me.

So what’s been going on in the world? Well, this past weekend was the worst box office frame of the year, ending an even worse summer. We’re down 20% in receipts from last year. Less and less people are going to see movies, and if they don’t figure out why and stop it, something bad is going to happen.

I recently watched the Jared Leto documentary, Artifact, about how his band sold 5 million albums, only to come home from their tour and be told by their label that they (the band) owed them (the label) 2 million dollars. The band tells them to eff off. The label then sues them for 30 million dollars. The documentary is about Jared and his group debating whether to release their next album independently in the midst of this lawsuit.

The doc is good, but it was a section near the middle that really got me. It covered the downfall of the music industry over the last couple of decades. Basically, everything was changing around the music business (most prominently, the move from physical to digital) and the people working at the music lables were too dumb to realize it in time. They watched as the entire world changed around them before doing anything, and by the time they did, it was too late. A company that previously knew nothing about music, was now taking all their money (iTunes). The labels now make half as much money as they did 15 years ago.

I often wonder – is the same thing happening to the movie industry? Like the music business, are we too slow to recognize the effects of the changes happening around us? Long-form media (television) with movie-like production value has pulled more and more writers away from the movie business, and now it’s pulling the talent too.

Indie movies are simultaneously debuting in both theaters and on Itunes, slowly moving towards a world where the indie producer skips the traditional distribution method and looks for ways to go straight to Itunes without having to pay a hefty cut to a third party.

Kickstarter is allowing filmmakers even more independence. If you’re a smart young director, you shoot a bunch of shorts, post them on Youtube, gain a following, get better, so that by the time your Kickstarter campaign begins for your feature, you have a kick-ass reel to show to inspire confidence from your investors. Ditto if you’re a writer. Learn how to direct and do the same.

I’m not saying the movie industry is screwed or anything. The international grosses are too big. But it doesn’t feel like the people in charge are moving fast enough to adapt, and they look out of touch in the process. The last time the movie business did something that actually made me want to go to the theater was adding the stadium seats. And that was 15 years ago. Itunes and Netflix intermittently come up with ways to make me want to use their services every month. They’re really staying on their toes – almost like they enjoy being cutting edge. I don’t get the sense that the studios are doing this at all.

The one thing the movie industry CANNOT do anymore is raise prices. When movies were under 10 bucks, I didn’t blink about seeing the latest movie each weekend. I’d even watch Step-Up 3 if it was the only thing playing. Why not? I love film and I don’t care how I’m entertained, as long as you entertain me. Now that I’m paying 18 dollars a film, I always calculate whether going to the theater is worth it. And many times the answer is no. In other words, there didn’t use to be a barrier to entry. Movies were priced in a way where you didn’t think twice about going. Now there’s a barrier, and you can’t put up a barrier at the very moment your business is losing 10% each year.

What’s the answer? I honestly don’t think it’s difficult. People crave something new. They think they want Spider-Man 2. But what they really want is a dancing tree. Until you show them the dancing tree, though, they’re never going to know they wanted it. Look, studios will always need their Transformers and their Fast and Furiouses. I get that. But each studio needs to set aside a division for taking risks, for trying out new things. Call it R&D. It’s the reason why Apple became the biggest company in the world. They knew if they didn’t allocate a bunch of money to trying out weird and new ideas, that they’d never grow, that people would eventually get bored of their products. I want to see some products that come out of the movie studios’ R&D divisions, not the cookie-cutter Teenage Mutant Ninja Electro Boogaloo nonsense I saw this summer. A decline of 20%  in a year is your consumer telling you you need to work harder.

Speaking of R&D (if R&D stood for “really depressing”), I finally saw Draft Day last week. Now some of you might remember that Draft Day was the number 1 screenplay on the Black List a couple of years ago, a story that seemingly came out of nowhere (a sports script topping the Black List??? Unheard of!). I thought the script was worth the hype. It was a different kind of sports movie. It had urgency. It had mystery. No cliche last second touchdown. Really lived up to the hype in my opinion.

Now a lot of people ask me how a good script gets turned into a bad movie. Well, this would be how. Three crucial mistakes were made that doomed this great screenplay. First, the edgy gritty script (about football in Cleveland – one of the dirtiest grungiest cities in America) was given a romantic comedy color-popping scheme for reasons beyond logic. If you’re looking to grab your core audience, the football fan, you probably don’t want to shoot your movie to look like Dolphin Tale 2.

Second, Kevin Costner played the role all wrong. Like wrong wrong wrong. In the script, our hero was a guy who knew his job was on the line, who was desperate to do anything to help his team win. He had fire, he had energy. And you could SMELL the pressure on him in every scene. It was exciting watching this guy scramble for his life while pretending to have it together on the outside.

Costner, however, played the part like a sad disinterested IRS agent. Whenever he was approached by any character, he looked like he was going to shake his head, say “I give up,” then go take a nap. He sucked away every ounce of energy this character had with his performance.  I felt horrible for the writers.

But the most critical mistake was a directing one. For those who haven’t seen the movie or read the script, a lot of it takes place over phone calls. Costner’s character is a general manager on Draft Day, and he’s calling everyone all over the country to figure out who he’s going to pick. Every 3rd scene was a phone scene. These intense mano-a-mano scenes, in many ways, defined the energy of the story.

So it was baffling when director Ivan Reitman decided to create split screens for all of the calls. But it wasn’t just that.  It was that CLEARLY none of the actors were actually talking to each other during the shoot. For example, P. Diddy would shoot his half of a phone conversation and then two months later, Costner, talking to a stand-in, recorded his half of the conversation.

Because the actors weren’t actually talking to each other and because Reitman insisted on using split-screens (which meant no cutaways), there were these giant gaping moments of silence after each actor’s line. Costner: “I want to go with Bryant as our quarterback!” 1 Mississippi . 2 Mississippi. 3 Mississippi. Diddy: “Fuck you. He’s not good enough!” Imagine an entire day of conversations with people where, after you said your line, they waited three seconds before responding. That was every phone call in Draft Day.

And the funny thing is, I know what Reitman was thinking. He thought he’d use the split-screen to infuse energy into the calls – having both the actors right there on screen together battling it out. Ironically, it had the opposite effect. It locked him into a situation where he couldn’t cut for timing, and the dialogue just died on the screen as a result. It’s scary how easy it is to screw up a good script. I mean you know Costner, notorious for being a hands-on actor, lobbied to play this character as a slow tired broken down General Manager, despite it being completely wrong for the story.  And what can you say when your lead actor tells you that’s how he’s going to play it? “No?” He’s just going to do it anyway.  A great script down the tubes based on one bad decision made by an actor.

Luckily, I’m going to leave you with something that’ll blow your little screenwriting mind and make you forget all about the Costner! It’s the best article about suspense I’ve ever read, and the author, Lee Child (author of the Jack Reacher books) gives one of the best analogies about a writing tool I’ve ever read. Any attempt to summarize it would cheapen the article, so I’m going to let you read it yourselves.

And finally, thanks to everyone who contributed to this weekend’s Pitch Post. It was fun to see some of your pitches get so much love from the community. Did anyone tally the best five so we have some surefire amateur scripts to review? I tried to go in there a few times and count myself but got lost in the 900 posts!

Hey guys.  No Amateur Offerings this week because in two weeks, we’re doing an all dialogue week, including on Amateur Friday’s slot.  However, I know a bunch of you are frustrated that your script still hasn’t appeared on Offerings.  Well, now’s the time to pitch it.  Pitch us your genre, title, logline and ‘why we should read’ right here in the comments, and the always awesome Scriptshadow Community will check them out.  Scriptshadow Community – This means you get to play Executive today.  Pretend these queries are being sent to you.  Would you read them?  Are any good enough that you’ve actually taken the time to download the script and open it?  If so, let the reader know.  If not, tell the reader why.

Genre (from writer): Satirical Dark Comedy
Premise (from writer): When his girlfriend becomes an overnight movie star, a lady shoes salesman must now become famous or he risks turning into the next Kevin Federline.
Why You Should Read: Everyone nowadays dreams of becoming famous. You hit upload, wait around like a child on Christmas Eve, only for someone to eventually gift you a “like” on social media. Our melting pot is currently overflowing with fame whores who move to Hollywood, begging her to make their dreams come true. — As a fame whore myself, let me tell you… life is tough, life in Hollywood is impossible. — Imagine being one of the few in Hollywood who’s not a fame whore. You finally meet the only “great girl” in town, and then somehow you get her to fall for you. Sounds like a perfect Hollywood ending, right? But the only things in Hollywood that have Hollywood endings are Hollywood movies. — Your “great girl” lands the lead in the biggest movie in the world, becoming the next Jennifer Lawrence overnight. You sell ladies shoes. The “great girl” thinks that’s fine, and loves you for you… but the world thinks that makes you a loser, the next Kevin Federline. — Your name is Ernest Pope, and #TRENDING is your story. It’s a satirical dark R-rated comedy.
Writer: James L. Leary
Details: 109 pages

Suki Waterhouse for Molly?

My initial impression of #trending was, “Catchy title.” It’s something that can be overlooked in the process, the title. But when everything else is equal and your script is on the table with several others, it may well be the catchy title that gets your script read.

Here, the “#” sign gives the title an untraditional but intriguing look, and “trending,” ironically, is a trendy word on the internet, so it’s no surprise that it grabbed more attention on Amateur Offerings than generic titles like, “Watching Over Remie” and “Treasure of Fate.” And I’m not saying anything about the quality of those scripts. I’m just saying “#trending” stands out as a title.

Now before I read the script, I have to admit I did a little pre-judging. Readers always do, despite the best of intentions. This was called #trending, implying some light fun faire, yet when I opened the script, I saw 110 pages. Ugh. That long? Really? This feels much closer to a 100 page idea. So I’m already on the writer’s case, even before I’ve read a word. If I see anything here that feels like it’s dragging, I’m going to be thinking, “Yup, I knew it. I knew the script was too long.” I don’t say this bitterly. I just want writers to know what’s going on in a reader’s head when they pick up a script so they can avoid making the same mistake. With that said, I hope I’m wrong, and that #trending is #trending tomorrow on Twitter, which would be so meta.

24 year old woman’s shoe salesman Ernest Pope is a lucky man. He happens to have found love with Molly Taylor, an out-of-his-league aspiring actress who’s doing a lot more aspiring than acting. How Ernest landed Molly is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear she loves him more than anything. For now, that is.

While dining at a Chinese food dump, the couple are bombarded by the paparazzi, who start snapping Molly’s photo and yelling her name. After narrowly escaping photographic death, the two learn that Molly’s landed the role of a lifetime, in a new novel adaptation called “Dawn,” where she’ll co-star with meaty heartthrob Channing Tatum.

I think we know where this is going. Cut to the premiere 9 months later and while Molly and Ernest are still together, he’s getting increasingly insecure. Rumors of an on-set romance between Molly and Channing are everywhere. And the public loves it. They’d much rather celebrate a Molly-Channing coupling than anything to do with this Ernest loser. I mean, the guy has a mustache!

Eventually, the two drift apart, and Ernest’s best friend, Juan Camacho, convinces Ernest that the only way to get Molly back is to become famous too. The quickest route to fame, of course, is to become an actor. With a little luck, Ernest gets a small part in a movie, and when the director’s a dick on-set, he pulls a Christian Bale and goes nuts.

The rant goes viral and, what do you know! Ernest is famous! Well, famous in that cheap internet sort of way. But everyone knows who he is now. This gives him the confidence to rekindle his romance with Molly, but Molly can see that Ernest has turned into a fame whore and leaves him. Ernest uses his fleeting fame to bang a lot of girls, but (major spoiler) he eventually is killed by fucking too much. The End.

#trending started out great. Every character introduced popped off the page. There were these weird asides (a male Sexy Santa contest) that had nothing to do with anything but were still hilarious. I loved James’s portrayal and deep-seated hatred of hipsters (drinking coconut water and standing by their vespas). And there’s this great “doggy bag moment” where we learn all about the thirty mile zone (the acronym for TMZ), which was fascinating. I said to myself, if he can keep this up, we have ourselves a winner.

But as is so often the case with amateur work, it didn’t keep up. The first time I blinked was Molly’s instant-fame moment. People find her at the Chinese restaurant because TMZ tweeted out she just won the Dawn role. But I didn’t know she was even up for the role. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her go up for any roles. I’d forgotten she was an actress. So this came out of nowhere, giving the scene that awkward “did I miss something” feel to it.

From there we make a nine month time jump. You guys know how I feel about huge time jumps in the middle of screenplays. I understand why James did it – he wanted to get to the Dawn premiere, where the fame would be at its highest. But coming on the heels of the sloppy Dawn role reveal, it felt like double sloppy joes to me.

From there on, the script had major structural issues. Molly sort of breaks up with Ernest, although it’s unclear if that’s what really happened or not, leaving the narrative in a confused purgatoric state. I mean if it was a break-up, we know he must get her back. If not, we know he’s got to keep her around. But if it’s neither, we don’t know what he’s supposed to do.

From there, Juan Comacho comes up with this idea that Ernest needs to become a movie star to get Molly back. That’s where the script officially lost me. Not only was I unsure if he and Molly were actually broken up, but now he and his friend are just making up rules for how this is going to work. When there’s no evidence that Molly even cares whether Ernest becomes famous or not, creating an entire section where Ernest pursues fame is strange.  There’s zero stakes attached to that choice.

This is what structure is. It’s creating strong goals with high stakes, so that whatever portion of the script we’re in, something important is happening. Your hero is going after something and there are major consequences to not getting that something. When the importance of those goals becomes muddled – if we’re not even sure that what our characters are doing matters – the script is dead.

If I were James, I’d stick with the opening, which is good. Just make sure we know Molly’s an actress trying out for big roles. Then, once Molly gets famous, I wouldn’t jump forward 9 months. You can create everything you got from the 9 month jump right here in the present. If you want Channing Tatum in the mix , maybe he wants to meet Molly so they can start “going over their lines.” This results in paparazzi photos of the two together a lot, which starts screwing with Ernest and Molly’s relationship. I actually think it’s funnier if you show all these Dawn fans going crazy NOW instead of once the movie premieres. It shows how freaking crazy they are (“Who are these people?? The movie hasn’t even shot yet!”).

From there, you follow the traditional formula that’s worked for a hundred years. Molly leaves him and he has to get her back. I don’t think the becoming an actor thing works. It appears out of nowhere (he had no acting ambitions prior to this) and therefore feels lazy (“made up on the spot” syndrome). It might be funnier if he tries to become an internet star. That’s such a crazy world and it hasn’t been fully explored in movies yet, giving you the opportunity to really do something original. If he tried to figure out the top 10 most famous internet people and replicate their success (he tries auto-tuning himself, kitten videos, saving a kidnapped woman from a home, a la Charles Ramsey), there could be something there.

I’m just spit-balling. You’ll want to come up with your own solution to this. Because the truth is, James, you’re a funny guy. Your first 20 pages had me lol’ing a ton. You just have to build a stronger narrative into the second and third acts. I wish you luck, my friend. Thanks for letting me and the rest of the world trend with you for a couple of hours.

Script link: #trending

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

What I learned: I want writers to know that when they submit a weird combination of words for their script’s genre, I immediately know it’s an amateur. It’s a huge red flag. The accepted genres are: comedy, period, fantasy, sci-fi, action, thriller, drama, biopic, sports, romantic comedy, black comedy (or ‘dark comedy’) and then there are some accepted derivations. Buddy comedy, action-thriller, science-fiction horror. What you don’t want to do is start using strange combinations of these words and then adding your own twist to them. “Satirical Dark Comedy” should just be “Dark Comedy.” Likewise, you shouldn’t submit things like, “Elevated Science Fiction” or “Coming-of-Age Dramedy.” Even if your script doesn’t fit perfectly within one of these genre tags, it’s better to use that tag than create your own.

note: For Thursday’s article, “Matt and Ben Are Bad People,” scroll down.

Yesterday’s dialogue experiment was such a success, I want to do an entire week of them.  Your dialogue scenes versus the pros.  Here’s how it’s going to work.  Send your dialogue scene to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line “ME VS. PRO.”  It needs to be 3 pages or less.  Set the scene up briefly.  Who the key characters are, what happened before the scene, and any important plot information we need to understand the scene.  I’ll pick five of these scenes and find pro scene counterparts for us to compare to.  I may do this next week or the week after, so get your scenes in quick!