We’ve got aliens. We’ve got submarines. We’ve got some criminally affordable notes to the lucky few who e-mail me quickly. We’ve got the COVER FOR MY NEW DIALOGUE BOOK. That’s right. It’s really happening! I share my thoughts on the new Zendaya tennis movie trailer, that controversial Taylor Sheridan profile in The Hollywood Reporter, and I review yet another short story that sold, this one directed by one of my favorite young horror directors.
Unfortunately, there will be no official post today (Thursday) so you’ll have to get your full Scriptshadow fix from the newsletter. However, don’t worry. The Scriptshadow week is not over because tomorrow we review our Logline Showdown winner: Bubblehead Saves The Day – “When two high school seniors discover a robot from outer space, they ignore its warning of an imminent alien invasion and reprogram it to help them score with chicks!”
If you haven’t received this newsletter or haven’t received any, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the list!
Genre: Dystopian/Horror
Premise: Twin sisters live in a commune where, once they hit puberty, one of the twins becomes a monster and must be killed. But when the twins learn that their community is keeping big secrets from them, they make a run for it.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 9 votes. Alexander has written a couple of short films that he’s directed.
Writer: Alexander Thompson
Details: 117 pages
Jenna Ortega playing twins?
Reading scripts that don’t fall under your genre preferences is always a difficult thing. But you have to do it. You have to step out of your comfort zone. Because you never know when you’re going to read that really unique screenplay that blows you away.
With that said, these dystopian commune/lab stories have always felt like a house of cards to me. They never have a lot of meat to them. From Spiderhead to The Giver to Divergent to Equals to The Maze Runner. They give you that one rule that makes their story different from all the others. But the rule is so basic that it doesn’t have the strength to hold up an entire movie.
The only one that worked was The Hunger Games and that’s because it leaned more into its high concept than its dystopian commune genre roots. A movie about kids who have to kill each other, the ultimate irony, is a slam dunk. But all the rest of these might as well be constructed with balsa wood.
I hope to be proven wrong.
Aurora and Gabrielle are 16 year old twins. Which is unusual in our odd dystopian setting. They live in a giant commune in the countryside full of twins. And when the twins go through puberty on this commune, one turns into a rabid monster and the other doesn’t. The town then quickly kills the dangerous monster and the surviving twin moves on with their life.
Aurora, the good girl, and Gabrielle, the bad one, are way past due. Which makes them the focus of everyone’s untrusting eyes wherever they go. One day, when a guy friend of theirs turns, Gabrielle and Aurora find his new monster-self hiding, and realize that he’s totally coherent. He’s not some violent crazy monster like they’ve been educated to believe.
With this shocking new information, Aurora and Gabrielle go on the run, heading into the countryside and staying at a motel. But when they’re recognized, the cops come and grab them, but don’t take them back home. It turns out these monster things are worth a pretty penny on the open market. So Aurora and Gabby escape THEM and that’s when they meet Marty.
Marty is a kind woman who lives in the middle of nowhere. She knows who they are and doesn’t care. She feeds them and tells them they can stay here was long as they want. But one day Aurora follows Marty into the forest to find that she’s locked up a monster in a barn. Not just any monster – Marty’s twin. Yes, Marty once belonged to the commune as well.
It appears that Marty is either going to feed these two to her monster brother or have them mate or who knows what else. Aurora and Gabrielle will have to make one last escape, an escape that will be aided by one of them finally turning.
Ooh boy.
Okay.
This is a typical 2020s Black List script.
It’s got some good stuff in it. But there are just as many times when it feels like it’s being written by a beginner.
The overwriting in particular. Goodness me!
I’ve read so many scripts at this point that I know, when I see the genre, EXACTLY what the page length needs to be for that script to be in its genre sweet spot. If the page count is either shorter than that or longer than that, I know the script won’t be good. This is a 105-110 page concept.
The problem is that it’s overwritten. Every paragraph could be cut in half. For example this: “AURORA has followed her. Gabrielle shakes her head, ‘You needn’t come along’… But Aurora ambles quietly to her side, and onward they go together.” Could easily be: “AURORA follows along. Gabrielle shakes her head, ‘No.’ But Aurora insists and they continue on.’”
You may look at that and think I’m nitpicking. Trust me. When there are 1000 paragraphs in a script that all read too bulky? That drives the reader insane. More importantly, it slows your script waaaaaay down. Which was a huge problem here. I thought I was on on page 45. I checked and I was still on page 24. That issue was specifically due to this overwriting.
And by the way – yes, it’s better to break your action-description paragraphs up into 3-line chunks as opposed to writing 10-line paragraphs. But if you’re writing an entire page of 3-line paragraphs with no dialogue, it’s not that different from a reader having to read 2 15-line paragraphs. It’s still a wall of text.
So the solution is to cut down the overall words that you’re writing. Cause chances are you’re using a lot more words and sentences than you need to. ESPECIALLY if you’re a beginner. Beginners always make this mistake. And it’s a huge reason why they don’t get responses after script reads. It probably doesn’t have to do with the story content as much as the reader getting frustrated by the endless of chunks of needless sentences they have to endure.
This script suffered big time from that.
Now, like I said, it wasn’t all bad.
The story is built around a strong line of suspense. We know that one of these girls is going to turn into a monster at some point. That’s a nice dangling carrot to keep us turning these overwritten pages.
There’s contrast between the two main characters, the sisters. Gabby’s a shark. Aurora’s sweet. What this does is that every time the two encounter an obstacle, they’re going to have different opinions on how to solve the problem. That’s where you get your conflict. And if you add some urgency to those situations – such as there’s a cop coming downstairs in five seconds and a decision needs to be made – you’re going to come upon some entertaining moments.
Also, once they leave the commune, the script becomes a million times better. Getting through that sludge-like opening act was like trying to run during a nightmare. You’re not going anywhere. I think at one point I had turned the page only to find out I’d somehow gone backwards.
Why is that? Well, because the first act was built entirely around WAITING AROUND. I’ve told you guys this before. “Waiting Around Narratives,” are some of the most boring narratives you can write. Movies work best with active characters, not passive characters. Once these two become active and go on the run, the script gets a shot of adrenaline.
It wasn’t enough to win me over, though. The YA lab genre has always been uninspiring to me. I feel like anyone could come up with one of these concepts in thirty seconds. Here, I’ll come up with one right now. Children are all raised in a remote commune. At 10, all girls become vampires and all guys get telepathy. Boom, there’s a YA concept for anyone who wants it.
I’m joking but they really do come off like that sometimes.
I will give this script credit for making me care more than I usually do for this genre. But the overwriting and the fact that it’s not my thing makes this a ‘no thank you’ on my end.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t listen to me when it comes to the commercial viability of YA concepts. I may not like them but a lot of people do. So if you like YA, write a YA script. I would extrapolate that advice beyond YA. Don’t make decisions about what you do or do not write based on one person hating that type of movie. In the end, if you’re passionate about the concept and think you’ve got a great idea where you can bring something fresh to the script? Then go ahead and write that script.
What I learned 2: Also, for all my bickering about this subject matter, I give credit to the writer for writing a coming-of-age movie with a marketable slant. This is way more interesting than if it had been yet another script about a girl coming of age in her boring small town.
Genre: TV – 1 hour drama
Premise: Two dads in Suffolk County engage in an intense feud that bubbles over into their innocent childrens’ baseball league.
About: A huge article purchase from over on Esquire (article has a paywall unfortunately). Jason Bateman and Netflix continue their love affair as the streamer paid big bucks to bring their Ozark pal back into its arms (Netflix beat out SEVEN other rabid suitors). Bateman will direct and star in the show about two little league fathers who get into a very intense rivalry that involves criminal activity. They’re going to have to figure out a better title though because when I first saw this, I thought it was a story about a Cinderella-type ball that dads attended.
Writer: David Gauvey Herbert
Details: About 6000 words
One of the best ways to sell anything in this business is to write a story that’s similar to a recent hit.
This actually used to be harder because the strategy was built almost entirely around giant movie successes. So if Armageddon made a billion dollars its opening weekend, you’d be competing against thousands of other screenwriters with your “Armageddon adjacent” spec script. A giant Astroid threatens the world? Well, what about a giant tidal wave!?
But these days, there are a lot more opportunities because success has become more relative and diversified. A crafty screenwriter looks for smaller “mini-successes” and pitches projects similar to them.
Case in point, today’s sale. The Daddy Ball project was clearly pitching itself as “The next Beef.” And boy is that a powerful pitch when all of the elements align. You have to be in the minds of these buyers. They’re terrified of buying something that sucks. So any little image you can put in their mind that indicates success – like a recently popular show – helps out.
With that said, I’ve found that you have to be careful not to jump onto mega hits. I experienced this myself a couple years ago while trying to pitch a really good racing pilot with a writer. We pitched it as a Succession set in the south. What I didn’t realize was that, literally, EVERYONE was pitching “Succession set in the [blank].” And when that happens, the pitch goes right through one ear and out the other.
This pitch was perfect because Beef was a hit but a low-key hit. Not everyone saw it. And not everyone who did see it, liked it. However, the people who did like it, loved it. And, so, when you pitched “Beef set in the world of little league baseball,” your competition was small and the people who loved Beef were DEFINITELY going to request the script.
Back in the late 2000s, in Suffolk County, Bobby Sanfilippo was excited to get his 10 year old son into the local little league scene, which was becoming a big deal. To get on one of these traveling teams, you had to fork up a couple grand. But Bobby was more than happy to, since his son (who can’t be named) loved baseball.
Bobby’s son joined a team called the Inferno and that’s when Bobby first met John Reardon, a sort of daddy psychopath. John’s son Jack would come onto the team and be an instant star. He had all the makings of a kid who could go pro one day. Much better than Bobby’s son, who was just a good player who loved baseball.
When the team started to get really good, parents wanted to get rid of the weak players. John seemed to spearhead the movement to get rid of people like Bobby’s son. So Bobby, who was doing well financially, took his son and STARTED HIS OWN TEAM, naming it, “Vengeance.”
Not long after, the two teams would play, Jack’s team would win, and John would scream some really terrible things at Bobby’s son. When the Vengeance coaches called him out on it, John pulled out a bat and came at them. In the end, everybody calmed down, but this daddy rivalry had gone up a notch.
One day John started getting all these text messages sent from an anonymous phone that contained pictures of his family doing everyday activities accompanied with threats that John was “done.”
Several months later, during a Vengeance game, the police showed up, arrested Bobby for the messages, and made him do the perp walk of shame in front of his team. Although Bobby denied sending the messages, the damage had been done. The team was never the same since many of the parents believed Bobby was guilty.
Bobby had always contended that John was friends with the local police chief and the two had constructed this hit job together. A couple years later, this gained more credence when that police chief was taken down by the FBI for running his precinct like the KGB. In the end, both fathers still think they were right in all the things they did. And both still hate each other.
I’m not sure what to make of these non-traditional magazine article sales. You guys remember that Monopoly one from a couple of years ago? The one that Matt and Ben bought? That thing died in a blaze of glory quicker than you could say, “How bout them apples.”
I understand why this sold. In addition to the “Beef” connection, you’ve got that all important conceptual irony to hang your baseball cap on. It’s because this is set in the world of little league baseball that it has a juicier taste. You shouldn’t be sending life-threatening messages over junior sporting events.
But I was hoping for a lot more chaos. I actually thought, when I read about this in the trades, that it was going to end in murder. That’s the expectation with these true stories now. So, when you don’t get all the way there, the audience is like, “That’s it??”
At the very least, I was hoping for an ongoing rivalry between the two teams. But there were only two games and both of them were uneventful except for Jack striking out Bobby’s son and John bringing out a bat afterwards, a bat he didn’t even use.
That’s what this story felt like to me. A whole lot of blue baseballs. It was always on the brink of something gnarly happening but nothing gnarly ever happened. In fact, any sort of issue between the two dads was an adjacent issue. When Bobby’s son left the Inferno, for example, it wasn’t John who kicked him off. It’s not even clear if John had any opinion on getting Bobby’s son off the team.
And then there’s this big thread about how John was distantly related to the local police chief, which is why the two had worked together to illegally take down Bobby. But that’s never proven. The evidence actually leans towards the two never having spoken to each other in their lives.
Stories work best when the attacks ARE DIRECT. Not adjacent. In Beef, it wasn’t that Danny *might have* kidnapped Amy’s daughter. He *DID* kidnap her daughter.
Unfortunately, this feels like a writer who thought there was more to this story than there was, spent a couple of years and a lot of interviews on it only to find out, in the end, it was really a rather tame story. He then did his best to imply a lot of bad things happened.
To be fair, it worked out. It’s being turned into a TV series. But for this to work, they’re going to have to add A LOT MORE to the story. This needs to be completely fictional if it’s going to be as entertaining as Beef. If they filmed this as is, people are going to leave this series saying, “Did you really just make a TV show about two people who yelled at each other a couple of times?”
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In a script like this, you need at last one “Holy S—t” moment. If you don’t have a “Holy S—t” moment in a movie or show about a bitter feud, then the feud you’re writing about isn’t nasty enough. Beef has that shocking traumatic ending. There’s also the house burning down. There’s Danny secretly sabotaging his brother’s future. There isn’t a single “Holy S—t” moment in Daddy Ball.
This weekend, I found myself checking the box office numbers for the weekend and noticing that the two top movies (Elemental and Spider-Verse) were holdovers, and that neither cracked 20 million. The big new release, No Hard Feelings, sputtered to the finish line with 15 million dollars.
We are in the middle of summer! Summer is when everyone’s supposed to go to the movies! And not a single film made 20 million bucks? What’s going on here??
When I fell in love with movies, box office was everything.
Because box office was the unequivocal deciding factor on whether a movie mattered or not.
Some of the most exciting moments for a movie geek like myself were when a film would come out of nowhere and do these amazing things at the box office that had never been done before.
For example, I remember how The Sixth Sense made 26 million dollars its opening weekend. And then it made 25 million its second weekend. That had NEVER happened. Not for a movie that had already gone wide. A 1% drop? It was unheard of. Three weeks later, it actually made MORE money that weekend than the previous one.
Then you had the opening weekend record-setters. The Phantom Menace opening to 65 million. Harry Potter opening to 90 million. Spider-Man opening to 115 million. Dead Man’s Chest opening to 135 million. The Dark Knight opening to 160 million!
There was excitement in the air whenever a big movie opened. Everyone talked about how much it could possibly make.
But these days, the numbers don’t seem to matter to people anymore. I don’t say that in a sad way. I’ve just noticed that people don’t talk about box office like they used to.
Consider Avatar 2. The film made 2.3 billion dollars at the box office. That’s the third most money a movie has ever made. Have you heard anyone touting that number? Have you heard anyone care about it? “Hey! Did you see Avatar 2 crossed 2 billion?!” Nobody’s said that to me. The trades felt like they had a gun to their head every time they reported about the film’s box office success.
So, what’s causing this change? Where is this apathy coming from?
The most obvious reason is the pandemic. Going to the movies was a habit people had. When you take that habit away for two years, it makes people evaluate whether that habit was valuable to them. Somewhere between 20-30% of the people who had that habit realized it wasn’t very valuable. And now they’re not going to movies anymore.
Rise of streamers – I’m not one of these people who think that being able to watch a movie or a new show at home is automatically better than being able to watch a movie at the theater. Because a big reason you go to the theater is to get out of the house. It’s cheap entertainment. And it’s fun to meet a friend or to go on a date and watch a movie together. With that said, streamers have given us SO MUCH MORE content that theatrical movies face more competition than they ever have before.
Also, streamers re-introduced a notion that had been absent from the industry for 40 years – no box office reporting. When a movie came out on streaming, you literally had no idea how many people had seen it. I remember when I Care A Lot came out. That movie got people talking. But we still had no idea, relatively speaking, how many people cared. Was it a 20 million dollar opening level of interest or a 50 million dollar opening level of interest? After we got 30+ streaming releases without that box office answer, we started to get used to the idea that box office didn’t matter all that much.
Next we have the politicization of movies. Mainstream films have more politicized themes than at any other time in history and it’s definitely hurting the box office. If there’s even a whiff of a movie promoting some political angle that conservatives or liberals don’t like, you’ve lost half your audience right there. It’s put moviegoers on edge and made them less trusting. Anything that gives people pause about going to the movies is going to eat into the box office. Which makes you wonder why they’re doing it.
The King of The Box Office has already happened – Avengers Endgame ruined everything. The movie made 350 million dollars its opening weekend. Nobody’s going to beat that. One of the things that audiences used to get excited about was, “Will this movie beat The Dark Knight?” Or, “Will this movie beat The Force Awakens?” Avengers Endgame is Wilt Chamberlin’s 100 point game. It ended the discussion. Which takes a lot of the fun out of the box office. If we’ve already hit our limit, it implies that we’re not growing anymore.
The younger generation doesn’t care – The GenZ’ers don’t get excited about this stuff. They’re more interested in how many views a tiktok video got. Or how many subs a content creator has. Box office isn’t on their list. Also, since this generation is growing up on streaming, their world of content is more immediate, and less about going out and seeing a film. Especially because if you go out and see a film, you risk getting triggered on the way there. I kid. But seriously, content on devices is more important to this generation than content on giant screens.
Finally, movies are no longer our zeitgeist moments – Back in the day, if a big movie came out and everyone was seeing it, you felt like you needed to see it too so you were in the know, so you were a part of the cool club. Movies aren’t like that anymore. The best example of this is the fact that we don’t have people quoting movies anymore. Everybody in the world knew the line “I’ll be back,” after The Terminator. Does anybody know one memorable line from last summer’s biggest movie, Top Gun? They’re more likely to know Paul Rudd’s line from his Hot Ones interview (“Look at us”).
This is because interest has been specialized. Instead of us all liking one big thing, our interest is divided into 20 smaller more specialized things. I love The Bear. But I just tried to have a conversation about it with my neighbor and they thought I was talking about a traveling circus. “No, it’s a show about a fast food restaurant in Chicago.” “I’m confused. When does the bear come in exactly?”
This used to be the reason why everyone would watch the same things. Cause they all interacted with each other and wanted common ground to talk about. But the internet and, more specifically, social media, changed that. If your neighbor or chem class partner didn’t watch The Bear, no problem. You can go online and talk to your pal, Choi, from Hong Kong, who loves The Bear so much he’s redecorated his place to look like the inside of Carmy’s apartment.
So what does it all mean? Is this a bad thing?
Sort of. Yeah.
In a way, the industry set themselves up for this. They’re the ones that celebrated the numbers. They’re the ones that touted from the rooftops that a Hollywood film had made 350 million dollars in a single weekend.
So now when Transformers Battle of the Armadillos makes 60 million dollars its opening weekend, you’ve conditioned the masses not to care about that. It’s literally one-sixth of what Avengers made. Why would I watch that film? Or Fast X at 67 million. Or No Time to Die at 55 million. Even when The Batman came out and made 134 million, I remember thinking, “Is that good for a Batman movie? Is it bad?” I didn’t know!
But the discussion is broader than that. Because I don’t think people care even when a movie does make a lot of money. The discussion is less about the money and more about the movie. When Top Gun became such a big hit, I didn’t hear anyone discuss how much money it was making. I heard people talking about how fun it was. How it was the perfect summer movie. But nobody was like, “Top Gun just passed 400 million!”
Which may be the silver lining here. Maybe now that we don’t have box office chains wrapped around our wrists and ankles, we can just appreciate that a movie is good. I’m fine with that. Box office has been a camouflage for bad movies for too long. Doing away with that unnecessary distraction allows us to see more clearly. I think I’m going to like a post box office Hollywood.
Every second-to-last Friday of the month, I will post the best five 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.
If you didn’t enter this month’s showdown, don’t worry! We do this every month. And next month, we’re having a special showdown JUST FOR PILOTS. I’ve gotten a ton of e-mails asking me why I don’t give pilot writers their time in the sun. Well, now their time has come. The deadline for Pilot Logline Showdown is Thursday, July 20th, 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.
I’m adding a little surprise this showdown since there are a full two months before the next feature logline competition. We’ve got SEVEN loglines to choose from. Oh yeah, baby!
Voting ends Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time!
Title: Bubblehead Saves the Day
Genre: Teen Comedy
Logline: When two high school seniors discover a robot from outer space, they ignore its warning of an imminent alien invasion and reprogram it to help them score with chicks!
Title: Fragments
Genre: Mystery & Suspense / Thriller
Logline: A blacklisted nurse is approached by a detective with a unique job offer: become the caretaker for an acquitted murderer who may be faking his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Title: DEADLY FORCE
Genre: True-life crime drama/thriller
Logline: The true story of Jim Simone, one of the most decorated and reviled cops in the nation, a real-life Dirty Harry and Serpico, touted as a hero and a serial killer, he waged a deadly one-man war against criminals, corrupt cops, and the press, meting out his own brand of justice no matter what it cost him or his family.
Title: The Man Who Came From The River
Genre: Sci-fi / Period / Thriller
Logline: When his time machine malfunctions, a black man from a post apocalyptic future must team up with a young Confederate soldier to find his son in Civil War era Virginia.
Title: ALIMONY
Genre: Romantic-Comedy
Logline: When a founder of a dating app realizes her deadbeat husband’s alimony payments are bleeding her dry, she embarks on a mission to find him a new wife before her company goes public.
Title: The King of Ghosts
Genre: Drama
Logline: When a Haitian fencing master is reunited with his estranged daughter, he must decide between pursuing a new life with her, or remaining in a violent world of underground machete fighting with the orphan boy he’s caring for.
Title: Death’s Jaws At Her Back
Genre: Action/Horror
Logline: An ex-soldier is forced to confront her traumatic past when she becomes hunted by the product of a decades old Nazi experiment — an indestructible monster known as the Überkrieger.
