I tried to go see Barbenheimer this weekend but I didn’t see the Barb or the Heimer. And it wasn’t my fault! I have been going to the movies for the past 3 years and the rule that has always worked for me is that if I go before noon, all the theaters are empty.
That wasn’t the case on Friday. When I arrived at the Grove – at 9:30 am mind you! – I saw a wave of pink. It was as if I was on some boat in the middle of a cotton candy ocean during a glitter-stoked hurricane.
There were a total of 4 seats in the first three Barbie showings and they were all that seat in the front of the theater all the way on the right.
So I said, “Okay, no problem. I’ll just see Oppenheimer.” But then, to my utter confusion, all the Oppenheimer showings were sold out as well! What the heck is going on here, I said out loud to myself, to which a nearby glob of hot pink-clad men responded, “Okay Barbie, he’s not invited to the party.”
Through my deductive skills, I arrived at the theory that families had come to the multiplex and split in two distinct directions the second they neared the concession stand. The women headed to Barbie and the men went off to see Oppenheimer. Which left me out of the movie loop for the weekend because I’d already had plans for Saturday and Sunday.
So what I think I’m going to do is go and see Oppenheimer tomorrow and write a review for Tuesday. It shouldn’t be hard to get a ticket for a historical biopic on a Monday morning, should it? The Barbenheimer train can’t possibly have that much steam.
Strangely enough, I’m okay with this delay. It just builds up the anticipation even more. We don’t get to feel anticipation for films like we used to. These days it’s superheroes all the way down and their promotional campaigns are all so orchestrated and predictable that we know exactly what we’re getting by the time we walk into the theater.
Oppenheimer’s and Barbie’s campaigns harken back to the days when Hollywood still left some mystery on the table as to what you were going to see. The reason for that is that all of Hollywood’s market research up to this point has told them that audiences are more likely to show up if they know exactly what’s going to happen in a movie.
Director Robert Zemeckis used to get a lot of flak for this because he began the trend of showing you the entire movie in the trailer. And when people complained about it, he said, “Sorry, this is what the research tells us. That you guys want to know what’s going to happen ahead of time.” And so every other marketing campaign started doing the same thing.
But the reality is, every movie is different and should approach its marketing campaign differently because some movies benefit from a sense of mystery. I’ll never EVER forget the marketing campaign for Cloverfield. That trailer showed up out of nowhere with nobody knowing it was coming and then there was no other information about the movie until it came out. Surprise surprise, it became this huge unexpected hit. There need to be more creative people on the marketing side who think like this in 2023. And Oppenheimer and Barbie prove that a few still do.
Cause I think a HUGE reason these movies both did so well was that each had a curiosity factor to them.
Plus, whoever made the decision to tell Nolan to take the giant pole out of his a$$ needs their own Academy award. The “got Nolan to take a pole out of his a$$” Oscar. This genius idea to pair Nolan with a Robert Downey Jr. who just drank 14 cups of coffee did something I thought impossible – make Nolan look like a fun guy.
Nolan is so far up his own butt when he talks about movies that he’s become a parody of an auteur and it doesn’t help when he makes sweeping mistakes in his films, mainly on the screenwriting side. The guy is still working towards building the most exposition-heavy library of films of all time. And I’m assuming this film is only going to add to that Guiness book of world records.
So when you think you’re the bee’s knees yet you’re inundating us with second-rate pollen, we’re not going to be as tolerant of your “I am the arbiter of cinema” persona.
But watching Nolan desperately try not to laugh at everything Robert Downey said but being unable was so endearing that it made me see him in a whole new light.
I think Nolan studies not just how to make great movies but also how to be perceived as an all-time great artist. He’s, no doubt, studied the way people like Alfred Hitchcock talked to the media and the way Stanley Kubrick created an aura around him. Everybody knows how Kubrick used to say to his lead actors that when the press tour came around, he would tell them how amazing the actor was if the actor went out called him the greatest director he had ever worked with.
Relating this all back to this weekend, what does the 155 million dollar take of Barbie and the 80 million dollar take of Oppenheimer mean?
If every box office tells a story, this one is telling studios that the days of superheroes ruling the box office are over. I’m not saying no superhero movie will ever do well again. But Marvel so oversaturated the market that it’s impossible for anything other than one or two superhero movies to break out during the year. Cause we’re tired of them.
So much so that we’d rather show up for a plastic doll and a 3 hour talky period piece about one of the most depressing subjects of the last century.
Marvel did this to themselves. They drank so much of their own kool-aid that they thought we’d like shows like the 200 million dollar Secret Invasion, a Marvel misfire that’s been so badly received, it will alter the way Marvel shows are greenlit moving forward.
But seriously. The way these two movies are being received by audiences is screaming to studios, “We want something different!” Are those studios going to listen? History has told us, no, they aren’t. Hollywood is terrified of moving away from proven models. They get very nervous in times like these where they’ve been unable to predict how a movie would do.
Just a few weeks ago, Barbie was being projected for a 60 million dollar weekend and Oppenheimer for a 45 million dollar weekend. It was only because of early ticket sales that those numbers went up. Not because Hollywood figured that out on their own. Which means they were nowhere close to understanding how well these movies would perform.
Which isn’t supposed to happen, by the way. Hollywood has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into being able to gauge what a movie’s return will be. If they’re off by even 20 million bucks on that opening weekend, it shines a light on the fact that they’re not good at their jobs. But being off by 100 million dollars? That means they’re utterly clueless.
I’d make the case that this is the most important box office story of the last five years. Movies like this aren’t supposed to perform better than Marvel movies. They aren’t even supposed to perform better than Mission Impossible movies. And throw Sound of Freedom in there as well. When a small conservative-leaning film is beating out a 400 million dollar film on certain weekends, Hollywood has lost the thread in regards to what audiences really want.
I’m supportive of this change. Even if it means more big-budget biopics during the year. Because you’re not going to get people out into the theater without some variety. Barbenheimer proved that this weekend.
Every second-to-last Friday of the month, I post the five best loglines submitted to me. You, the readers of the site, will vote for your favorite in the comments section. I then review the script of the logline that received the most votes the following Friday.
This month we’re doing something different. We’re reviewing TV PILOT loglines. As much as I love movies, the bread and butter of the writing industry is TV. So we gotta give TV folk some love! This is your time to shine, TV folk. Don’t disappoint us!
If you want to participate in a future showdown, we’ll be back to highlighting feature film loglines next month. The deadline for that is Thursday, August 24th, 10pm Pacific Time. All I need is your title, genre, and logline. Send all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com.
If you’re one of the many writers who feel helpless when it comes to loglines, I offer logline consultations. They’re cheap – just $25. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Okay, time to get to the loglines. Voting closes on Sunday, 11:59pm, Pacific Time.
Title: BEYOND HELP with Handy Andy
Genre: 30-minute mockumentary sitcom
Logline: A parody of ‘makeover’ reality shows, Beyond Help with Handy Andy follows overconfident yet completely incompetent “Handy Andy” Cornwall as he travels the country documenting his attempts to fix everything from failing restaurants to broken marriages, in the hopes of selling his half-assed reality show to a network. Look out, America. He’s helping!
Title: Quiet Zone
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Logline: In a small town located within the ‘Quiet Zone’ – an area of the country where cell service, WiFi and other transmissions are banned due to a secretive government research facility – an ambitious journalist investigates a string of missing persons cases and finds herself unraveling a larger conspiracy as she begins to expose the dark secrets within the zone.
Title: CREATURES OF HABIT
Genre: Supernatural Comedy
Logline: An impulsive vampire searching for her soulmate and her eclectic group of friends struggle with love, morality, immortality, and keeping their supernatural identities secret in New Orleans’ French Quarter. It’s Friends meets The Vampire Diaries.
Title: Mr. Pink
Genre: Half-Hour Adult Animated Comedy
Logline: Set in Key West amidst eccentric locals, drunken tourists, and a cult-like butterfly conservatory, an insecure flamingo fights to maintain his macho persona in order to win over the heart of his potential mate.
Title: The President’s New Clothes
Genre: Comedy, Absurd Comedy
Logline: A blue-collar construction worker from Texas struggles to maintain his integrity in the murky swamp of Washington D.C after he’s suddenly elected to Congress.
Title: Critical
Genre: Comedy/Horror 30-minute
Logline: A famously sour film critic learns that the characters and creations belonging to the works he’s given his most scathing reviews to have come to life to kill him.
Title: MR. HOLLYWOOD
Genre: Drama
Logline: Mercurial movie star Nate Moore, self-loathing and borderline narcissistic, is at an emotional crossroads. On the verge of a breakdown because of vapid Hollywood excess he returns to his small hometown, where he left a trail of destruction six years ago, determined to win back the heart of his childhood sweetheart and reconnect with his estranged family.
TV Pilot loglines are due tonight (Thursday) by 10pm Pacific Time!
“Pick me!”
Get those TV Pilot Loglines in! Here are the details!
What: TV Pilot Logline Showdown
When: The Showdown is on July 21st
Deadline: Thursday, July 20th, 10pm Pacific Time
What: send your title, genre, and logline
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
When we do these, “Why didn’t my logline get picked” posts, we usually do them after the fact. But I decided to change things up because we have a lot of TV loglines and I know all of you are eager to see if your entry made the top 5. So, at least this way, a few of you will know where you stand ahead of time. Let’s jump into it!
Title: THE LOCAL
Genre: Drama (one-hour)
Logline: A labor union president facing a tough re-election hires the estranged daughter of a hospital CEO to go behind enemy lines and help the union organize her father’s workforce.
Analysis: One of the tougher things about judging TV pilot loglines is that they’re rarely as concept-heavy as movie loglines. So I’m inherently aware that I’m not going to get “Source Code” in any of these pitches. With that said, your logline still has to leave an impression on the reader. There has to be some level of excitement on our end. And all that happens when I read this logline is I think, “That’s it?” There’s very little specificity to help this idea stand out from all the other TV shows out there. I mean, contrast this with the TV Pilot I just reviewed the other week with a group of rich people who hide out in a countryside mansion while they wait out the Black Plague. Note how specific that is. You feel like you’ve never seen anything like that before and that’s because you haven’t. Re-elections and unions and workforces… it goes right through one ear and out the other. The one specific element in the logline is the hospital CEO. But it isn’t woven into the presentation in a way that feels interesting.
Title: The Villainesses
Genre: Action/Comedy/Indie
Logline: In a small town where Villains are banished to live out the rest of their days, three female Villains must ban together to stop the other Villains from destroying the town. But the sociopathic Dictator that put them there, disagrees…
Analysis: It’s always a red flag to me when a logline contains unnecessary capitalization. Cause what I immediately think is, “If this person doesn’t even know that certain words shouldn’t be capitalized, how can I trust them to write a full story?” I know it seems trivial to some why industry people reject ideas. But, at the very least, your presentation should be spotless because too many people have come before you with bad presentation and taught those readers that their subsequent scripts are always bad. So the readers are just going off of past experience. Maybe your sloppy presentation is the one time where the script is still awesome. But most people aren’t going to give you that chance. And these are easy things to take care of with a quick logline consult ($25 – carsonreeves1@gmail.com). As for the idea itself, I don’t dislike the idea of villains being relegated to a, sort of, purgatory. And a showdown between villains in the town seems fun. But I don’t know why they have to be female villains who take on everyone else. Seems kind of random. And the final sentence about the dictator feels tacked on and inelegant, destroying any momentum that the logline may have had.
Title: Pwned
Genre: Action / Adventure
Logline: After being transported to a strange world where their earth-bound video game skills are manifestly real, four gamers use their respective skills of driving, shooting, athletics, and impersonation to join an uprising against a fascist politician in order to win their freedom and return home.
Analysis: So, with an idea like this, you run into a huge problem, which is that a great version of this concept has already been made, in Jumanji. I’m sure the writer would contend that his movie is nothing like Jumanji. But you have to look at things through the reader’s eyes. The reader is ALWAYS looking to compare movie ideas. It’s automatic. So you can’t really escape comparison if your idea is even slightly similar to another idea. And when you’re going up against a really great execution of that idea, your idea will almost uniformly feel like the “not as good” version. And that’s kind of what I felt here. Jumanji was just so fun because the characters got stuck in bodies that allowed them to play the complete opposite of who they were in real life. It was quite clever. Whereas this just seems more straightforward. Gamers who each have a particular skill team up inside a game to try and get home. It’s not a bad idea. But you don’t get points for writing “not bad” ideas. Your idea has to be something special. Despite this critique, I liked the title.
Title: The Wilderness
Genre: Dark comedy
Logline: A lonely, workaholic lawyer risks spending his entire life in prison after he chooses to harbor a mysterious fugitive with whom he’s fallen in love.
Analysis: I wanted to get one in here that had a specific “TV” reason for why it wasn’t picked. Can anybody guess why this didn’t make the cut? I’ll give you a second because I think it’s obvious. Ready? It doesn’t have enough meat on the bone to extend out into a full series. You’ve only got two characters, for starters. Most TV shows have a ton of characters because they need enough people to cut back and forth between to fill up a full season of television. On top of that, the central conflict is too simple. Someone is allowing a fugitive to stay with them. You have to put yourself in the eyes of the logline reader and ask, ‘what kind of show does the reader imagine from this logline?’ I’m imagining a guy talking to a fugitive in his house for 48 minutes a week. And the conflict isn’t even strong enough to support one episode of that. There was a show on Apple TV not long ago where Domhall Gleeson was holding his therapist (Steve Carrell) hostage. At least that setup had some genuine conflict. This feels too small time. I hope there’s more to this. If there is, it needs to be in the logline.
Title: Horror Adjacent
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: Fed up with living next door to a haunted house, the Peevey family are desperate to move, but soon discover how hard it is to sell when your neighbor is a poltergeist.
Analysis: So, with this setup, we’ve at least got something marketable to work with. There are the beginnings of a fun idea here. My problem is a similar problem I have with half the loglines sent to me, which is that the end of the logline peters out. It doesn’t make sense. Why would the poltergeist in the house *next* door prevent you from selling *your* house? Maybe there’s a reason in the script. But we don’t have the script. We just have this logline. I see this mistake ALL THE TIME. The writer assumes we know just as much as he does. Honey, I got news for you. We only know what you show us. And I’m not making the logical connection of why a neighbor’s poltergeist won’t let you sell your own home. I could maybe understand why a poltergeist wouldn’t let you out of the house you both shared. But even then, I’m not sure why the poltergeist would want you to stay. That probably needs to be in the logline.
Props and thank you to the five writers in the line of fire today. You guys are brave for allowing your loglines to be put on blast. And just so you know, LOGLINES ARE HARD. Don’t feel bad. 99% of writers can’t come up with a good concept AND write a good logline. It’s hard.
The only reason I know how to do it is because I spent a decade having no choice but to write up loglines for the scripts I was reviewing. So if you want to practice, do that. Watch a movie and, afterward, write out the logline. Do that for every movie you see and script you read and you will get better. If the only time you ever write loglines is whenever you finish a script? You’re only going to be practicing loglines once a year.
Seeya tomorrow where our top 5 TV loglines will be revealed. And if you need help crafting your logline, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. A basic logline consult is just 25 bucks.
Genre: Biopic
Premise: (from Black List) After being forced into retirement by the Oakland Raiders, fiery former NFL head coach John Madden teams up with a mild-mannered Harvard programmer to rewrite his fading legacy by building the world’s first football video game. Based on a true story.
About: This script finished in the top 10 of last year’s Black List. It’s written by Cambron Clark, who has one previous credit for writing on one of those documentary dinosaur shows back in 2014.
Writer: Cambron Clark
Details: 123 pages
I’ve seen my fair share of concepts that sound like bad movies but none quite like this. Which is why it’s taken me this long to review one of the highest-rated scripts on last year’s Black List.
Here’s an idea for a movie. You know that football coach announcer guy? Well, he once made a video game. Let’s tell a story about that!
Ah, who knows? I would’ve thought Blackberry was a terrible idea and I loved that movie. Wait, no. Blackberry actually was a good idea because it was one of the most famous rises and falls of a company ever. What is this? A making-of-a-football-video-game movie? Have we officially run out of movie ideas? These are the kinds of scripts that make me understand why studios go all in on Marvel.
It’s the 1980s and John Madden, the coach of the Raiders, has just lost the last game of the regular season to Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers. The loss means the Raiders won’t make the playoffs so Madden is called in by the team owner and fired.
At just 42 years old, Madden is a retiree. He clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself. At first he tries to coach his 11 year old son, Michael, in Pop Warner football. But Michael doesn’t even like football. So you can tell where that’s heading.
Eventually, Madden runs into a dorky Harvard alum named Trip who just started a video game company called Electronic Arts, which he’s running out of his parents’ garage. Trip has an idea for the first ever football video game and he wants John to be the face of the game.
Madden ignores him at first but comes around, eventually. The two then need to hire programmers to program the game. The problem is, no programmers play sports. Much less football. So whoever they hire have to code a game they don’t understand. Which means Madden will have to teach them.
Madden soon gets word that his nemesis, Joe Montana, is also making a game! So now it’s a race. But Madden is wholly unprepared for just how challenging it’s going to be to teach a bunch of dorks football.
For 45 pages, I hated this script.
This thing is a cornucopia of dad-joke wordplay. Here’s a typical exchange, this one between Madden and his wife, Virginia. MADDEN: “I told you, it’s a temporary workspace. The guy who invented apples started in a garage.” VIRGINIA: “Jobs?” MADDEN: “Honey, for the last time, this is a real job.” VIRGINIA: “No. Steve Jobs.” MADDEN: “What does this Steve guy have to do with my job?”
If you like that humor, godspeed. But I’ve laughed harder at a puppy funeral. And it wasn’t just the dad jokes. It was the try-hard-ness of all the lines. There’s a line early on where Coach Madden tells one of his players, “I want you to hit him so hard Hertz stock drops.” This is supposed to be a clever line but I could read it 20 times over and still not understand what it means. That’s what I mean by “try-hard.”
Then something happened, something that made me understand the script. Or, at least, understand what the writer was going for.
A programmer being interviewed for one of the game-coding positions walked in in a cape. And Madden looked at him like he was an alien.
I realized, “ohhhhhhhh. This is a movie about the big alpha sports guy having to work with a bunch of geeks who have never played a sport in their lives.” I wish that would’ve been in the logline cause then I may have actually been interested in reading this! It just goes to show how much loglines matter. I see so many writers going away from what’s actually interesting about their ideas when writing loglines. Get a logline consultation (carsonreeves1@gmail.com) They’re just $25. Sheesh!
So why is this Madden-Geek matchup so great? Cause there is tons of comedy gold to mine from MISCOMMUNICATION. Put people who don’t speak the same language in a room and have them push towards the same goal… if you do that, you’ll come up with funny dialogue without even trying.
That’s when this script shined the brightest – when Madden was in the room with these dorks, who were all way more interested in Klorgan the Elf than an option shovel pass, trying to find a common language to get this game completed.
Another nice quality of the script was the relationship between John and his son, Michael. Michael, ironically, was way more into video games than football games. So when Madden started working with this video game crew, all of these guys were superstars in Michael’s eyes. So Michael then becomes a part of the crew, which allows Madden to connect with his son.
Unfortunately, whenever Madden strays away from those two zones, the script falls apart. It’s super dialogue heavy despite it’s aggressively unfunny try-hard nature. This is a script that wants to be “Air,” but the dialogue isn’t as sharp, clever, or purposeful. You get the feeling that the writer really loves his dialogue. And that’s not helping.
Because regardless of whether you’re a good dialogue writer or not, if you love writing dialogue, you have a tendency to do so just to show off. But that’s not how good dialogue works. Good dialogue doesn’t shine when a writer is showing off. It shines when it’s in service of the story. The dialogue is about that moment between the characters. Not that moment between the writer and the reader.
A random thing this script reminded me of was how interview scenes are comedy gold. They always work. Just the image alone of a frustrated Madden, who’s already seen twenty potentials, sitting there, tired and hungry, when a guy walks in IN A CAPE. That image alone made me laugh. And all the video game references the geeks bring up in an attempt to understand what Madden means — all of that was great.
Which, by the way, should be a major lesson to everyone here. When you come up with the right situation and dynamic, anyone is capable of writing good dialogue. But if you stray away from the fun dynamics and just try and generate good dialogue all on your own… I’m telling you, you better be one of the 25 funniest dialogue writers in the world if you expect that to work. The majority of us need the right situations to write good dialogue.
I’ll leave you with Madden trying to show the nerds football plays on a white board and all the nerds being utterly confused.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Lean into what works. Stay away from everything else as much as possible. What works here is Madden and the video game nerds. Madden and these kids trying to work together was comedy gold. But a good writer would’ve reazlied that he needed to start exploring that team-up way before page 45.
The big million-dollar sale from the flight attendant turned writer who’s become one of the hottest new names in Hollywood.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: Passengers must hope for a 1 in a million rescue after their plane crashes in the ocean and sinks, settling on an underwater cliff.
About: A couple of years ago I reviewed T.J. Newman’s first plane book, Falling, which also sold for a million bucks to Hollywood. Newman didn’t take long to capitalize on her buzz. Selling two books is always better than selling one. And staying in her lane was smart. If she would’ve tried to write a romance novel, she would’ve heard a lot of crickets. More planes, more dolla bills!
Writer: T.J. Newman
Details: 280 pages
I’m a T.J. Newman, the person, fan. This is a woman who spent 20 years trying to break into Hollywood. She got rejected by every publisher you can name. She represents resilience and persistence, two of the most critical qualities a writer must possess if he/she wants to succeed.
Those qualities can not be underestimated. Everyone talks about the sexy stuff that a writer needs. They need “voice.” They need to have their pulse on the people, knowing what concepts sell. They need to be a whiz with dialogue and plot and structure and pacing.
And you do need all those things.
But they mean nothing if you’re not resilient to rejection. LOTS of rejection. And if you’re not persistent. You gotta be able to keep trying. Not let the many negatives that come with the pursuit of art get you down.
Now, do I like T.J. Newman, the writer? That’s a more complex question. I thought her first book was okay but straightforward. It didn’t surprise me enough. I’m someone who needs a script to give me what the concept promised but also keep me on my toes. Let’s see how Newman did in those departments.
Engineer Will and his daughter, Shannon, are flying from Hawaii to the mainland where he’ll drop her off and then head back home. Unfortunately, Will doesn’t have a home to head to because he and his wife, Chris, an underwater construction director, are separated.
Will’s plane starts losing altitude just several minutes after takeoff due to an engine blowing up. Not long after that, the plane is in the ocean. The pilot, Kit, was successfully able to pull a Sully. But unlike the Miracle on the Hudson, the fiery engine is causing all sorts of issues outside the plane.
When everyone tries to head out to the water, it’s Will who screams at them to close the door. The fire is about to get a lot worse and anyone who’s out on the water will get roasted. He somehow manages to convince Kit of this theory and she closes the door.
Not long after that, the plane sinks to a little cliff a thousand feet underwater. Without getting too complicated, the plane is tilting over the cliff and slowly taking in water within its cracks. Will estimates they have about six hours of oxygen.
Cut to topside where Chris, Will’s wife, who’s currently on a job, hears about what happened and rushes over to join the Navy and help out with the rescue. The Navy wants to pull the thing up to the surface by its tail. But both Chris and Will use science to explain how that dumb plan will actually kill everyone.
Chris has a better plan that involves a slick rescue vehicle. Only problem is that the vehicle is broken. So she’s going to have modify the rescue and pull off a miracle. Will she do it all before the dozen people in that plane run out of air? Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock.
If you want to write a book – or a script – that sells for a million dollars, you can’t go wrong with a big flashy situation and an ultra-tight timeframe.
I don’t think the average writer realizes just how powerful timeframes can be in storytelling. If you tie a 6 hour timeframe to a life-or-death situation, it’s hard for a reader not to get pulled in by that.
This movie doesn’t play the same way, for example, if they’ve got a full day of air. I see this problem a lot. I just gave a note to a writer in a consultation who had a 90-day timeframe on their story. 90 days is a long time for anything! I suggested 1 month.
If the reader doesn’t feel the urgency of the situation, you’re missing out on a major dramatic anchor for your story.
So the setup here was good. I was pulled in.
And then the writer did something that nearly killed it for me. Yup, we’re talking about DKB (Dead Kid Backstory). I know some of you like it. You’re all wrong. I am here to tell you it is a failed dramatic device 99% of the time any writer tries to execute it. Are you really betting you’re that 1%?
Here, Chris, Will, and Shannon have a DKB. Their other daughter died in a pool accident six years ago. Look, it wasn’t the worst use of DKB I’ve seen. But the big reason DKB doesn’t work no matter how much you want it to is because it’s lazy. It’s the laziest form of emotional manipulation a writer can use. “Love my characters cause their child died!” It’s desperate.
And I know that it’s a lazy choice because it’s not even the only time Newman used it in this novel! There’s ANOTHER character with a DKB. Which tells me that the writer is only willing to pick the low-hanging fruit when it comes to her backstories.
So this put me back in a neutral place. Strong opening. Weak backstory. Back in the middle.
What you’ll hear most writing teachers say is that there’s the external story and then there’s the “real” story, which amounts to the human story at the center of your script/novel. The external story is a plane settling on the bottom of the ocean. But the real story is about this family reuniting.
The problem is I’m not sure whether Chris coming to save Will and the two having jobs that are perfectly suited to figuring out this problem is serendipitous or coincidental. One is good for storytelling. The other is bad. And it did feel a little too perfect for me. That this man’s wife just happens to be the only person in the world who knows how to save this plane.
But I get what Newman was doing. She didn’t want this to be a nuts and bolts rescue. She wanted an emotional core to the story. A family reuniting is, technically, the right approach to these things.
I’m just not sure I ever cared that much. That’s the problem with making lazy choices (DKB). They affect how much you care about the characters involved in that backstory. Cause you know you’re being aggressively manipulated. You can see what the writer is trying to do. And that’s when the suspension of disbelief breaks.
Also, there’s a difference between choosing sad backstories and choosing depressing backstories. A sad backstory is one where we can tell it hits the characters hard but we can still distance ourself from their experience. A depressing backstory feels lousy to everybody. You’re telling about dead kids? Why do I want to read about dead kids in a movie about a plane rescue? That’s just depressing s—t. I don’t read thrillers for that.
In case you hadn’t noticed, DEAD KID BACKSTORY BOTHERS ME.
Despite this, the story moves fast. And the scientific stuff seems surprisingly well-researched. It felt real. What TJ Newman did well is that she truly made you wonder how they were going to save these people. Cause there was no clear solution. Too many writers make it easy to figure out how they’re going to solve the big problem. I didn’t know here. And I liked that two of the plans failed, leaving them without any options left. NOW what are they going to do? I genuinely didn’t know.
So, much like her first book, I thought this was okay. It was like a less good version of Ron Howard’s Thai cave rescue film. But it’s also a much flashier concept than that. So it could end up being a good movie. And I will always champion when studios make an original film.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here’s a dialogue trick. Let’s say you have to dish out some backstory about a character. The way you normally do this is to have a second character ask your character questions about themselves. Then our character answers them and, in the process, shares their backstory. The mistake writers make in these scenes is focusing on our character explaining his backstory. Writers do this to make sure that all the information about the character’s backstory gets to the reader. For that reason, these scenes never work. They’re written to a disembodied audience rather than someone in the story. To solve this, FOCUS MORE ON THE PERSON ASKING THE QUESTIONS. In other words, make them genuinely curious. Make them WANT THE ANSWERS. Cause if the person asking the question genuinely wants to know the answers, then our character will be speaking more to him than to the reader. And that’s how you write genuine backstory dialogue in that circumstance.
