Genre: Sports/Drama
Premise: In the violent world of underground horse racing, a wannabe female jockey and her trainer brother-in-law become entangled in an illicit relationship full of blood, sweat, and sex that pushes the limits of their bodies and the law.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. It is the final script I wanted to read from last year’s Black List.
Writer: Leigh Janiak
Details: 120 pages

One thing that always perplexes me about The Black List is its pairing phenomenon. There will be a script with an entirely unique subject matter that hasn’t been seen in half-a-decade in Hollywood, only for there to be a SECOND script covering the same subject matter that year.

That’s what we see today. Million dollar spec “Stakehorse” finished number 2 on the Black List last year. The script covered the darker side of horse racing. And now we’ve got a second script from that list that covers the dark side of horse racing. This one appears to go even darker than the first.

So, microwave up some apples and hay and let’s find out if this race is worth betting on.

Ruth and her older sister Diana were brought up by a gritty horse trainer. At 10 years old, they were thrown onto thoroughbreds. When they would inevitably fall, their dad would say, “Get up,” and they’d be expected to race again. Talk about tough love.

Cut to when they’re adults and Ruth is determined to be a jockey, a path that’s dominated by men. How bad is it? Ruth is routinely sexually objectified in the locker room. In one scene, a penis is literally thrown in her face as everyone else chants “suck it.”

Ruth doesn’t care. She just wants to be a jockey and she sees her shot with an 80,000 grand prize Derby race. But she needs a coach so she goes to Hector. Once inside Hector’s place, we see that there’s a quadriplegic woman on a bed. This is Diana. Hector was her coach and is her husband.

If Ruth teams up with Hector, they bypass all the money-shaving aspects of the Derby and get to keep the entire pot. They just need to find a horse for Ruth to ride on. Oh, and I should mention that they also seem to have read 50 Shades of Gray together because, out of nowhere, they start having wild S&M sex between practice sessions. Will it get in the way of her pursuit? We’ll see!

Writing dark material is the drug of choice for many a screenwriter.

Dark material may not keep the lights on at any studios but it *does* give you street cred. It gives the writer street credit, the director street cred, the producers, all the way up to the studio.

Fight Club famously made no money. But it made 20th Century Fox cool for a while. And when you’re the cool studio, other cool filmmakers and actors want to come and make stuff with you. So, while dark material doesn’t directly show up in the bank account, it helps everyone associated with it indirectly.

But here’s the thing about dark material. The darker it is, the harder it is to wrangle. I can make you fall in love with Marty McFly in three minutes. But making you fall in love with Travis Bickle? That takes a whole lot longer.

The reason that matters is because there needs to be a connection between the reader and the script for the script to work. And that connection is most often found between the reader and the main character. Darker characters take a better writer to pull off. That’s because strong writers understand the hole they’re in when they write dark characters and they make adjustments accordingly (in order to balance the darkness out). Whereas weak writers ignorantly believe that you’ll like their dark character no matter what.

I never liked Ruth.

I never understood why I would like her.

She’s cold. She’s bitchy. She’s selfish.

That’s three-strikes-you’re-out.

But if that isn’t enough, she hates animals. If you hate animals – especially the animals that you build your life around – that’s unforgivable. Here’s a line from her…

“Machines can be fixed when they’re broken. I treat these horses like they are — dumb and fickle —”
(There’s venom in her voice)
“I hate them. I hate that I have to depend on these dumb, unreliable animals.”

Why would I even keep reading after that?

Let’s look at the best dark sports movie made in the past 15 years – The Wrestler. The main character in that movie WAS EXTREMELY LIKABLE. He was the nicest sweetest guy. He checks to make sure his opponents are okay after the match. He’s a GOOD DUDE. Ruth is not a good person. I would even go so far as to say she’s hateable.

From there, you have this quadriplegic sister. Why? What’s the point other than to create more melodrama? This script is already dark and sad. Now you’re going to add a quadriplegic sister??

This is why dark material is hard to execute. You’re asking the reader to go with you in spite of all this sad, depressing, angry stuff. It takes someone with a ton of talent to present that in a digestible way. Here it felt like the writer just kept punching us every couple of scenes to make sure we were down as much as possible.

Maybe my bias towards stories with hope is getting in the way of my analysis here. But I still think this was way too dark and sad for no reason.

There was potential for this script to be good, though.

There’s an early scene where Ruth is on her horse, preparing for this underground horse race. To her left is a 13 year old jockey. To her right is a jockey in his underwear. That’s the script I was hoping to read.

Pro Tip: You always want to lean into what’s unique about your concept.

What’s unique here is underground horse racing. Where there are no rules. But there wasn’t nearly enough of that. It was replaced by… S&M sex??????

The counterargument to my analysis is that Harness is unlike any script you’ll read this year. I will give it that. So if you like offbeat stuff, this is definitely that. But the characters never brought me in enough for me to care about that offbeat story.

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

What I learned:

This script lost me on the first page of our heroine as an adult. Here was that beat…

Bare feet step on a scale.

A YOUNG WOMAN, wearing only cotton underwear. Small, compact. This is RUTH.  All grown up.

She looks down at her weight: 116.

Her face betrays no emotion.

Early on, a script is a puzzle to readers. They’re using the pieces that you, the writer, give them in order to figure out who our characters are and what they’re trying to do.

This is the first moment I’m meeting Ruth as an adult. Therefore, I’m looking for the puzzle piece that’s going to help me understand who she is. If a woman looks at her weight on a scale in a moment that’s important enough that she’s checking her weight and her face “betrays no emotion?” Then I am literally learning *nothing* about that person. If she had been angry, I would’ve learned something. If she had been happy, I would’ve learned something. If she had taken out a note card that had her last 5 weights recorded and this one was higher than the others, that would’ve told me something. But this tells me nothing. You cannot tell me nothing about your main character in the first moment that I meet them.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: A group of suburban kids stumble upon an old ship that shuttles them out into the middle of the galaxy. Now they must find their way back home.
About: Skeleton Crew comes from Spider-Man director Jon Watts. It was developed during a time when Lucasfilm had a dozen shows planned. The money-stuffed prodco wanted a Star Wars show for every demographic. As many of those shows fell by the wayside, Skeleton Crew somehow survived, probably because of Jon Watts recent pedigree. Dude is directing some of the most beloved Marvel movies around. Why not give him a chance? He teams up with Christopher Ford for this first episode. Ford is a good screenwriter. He wrote one of my favorite underrated movies of the last ten years, a little serial killer movie called The Clovehitch Killer. He also wrote several drafts of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Writers: Christopher Ford and Jon Watts (based on the universe created by George Lucas)
Details: about 45 minutes

I still believe in Star Wars.

Or maybe it’s just that I still want to believe.

But, in order for me to have this belief, I must believe that Star Wars is bigger than the people in charge of it and that those people will pass. And when people who actually understand Star Wars get a hold of it, they will finally mine the stories that Star Wars is capable of telling.

Skeleton Crew comes at a difficult time for the franchise, mere months after its most disastrous output, a show called “The Acolyte.” Well, maybe The Acolyte wasn’t as bad as The Star Wars Christmas Special. But the fact that it’s in the same conversation is damning enough.

I don’t need to re-litigate all the other mistakes the franchise has made lately, namely the 17,000 movies that it’s canceled. But let’s just say that it’s in a lot of trouble, leaving Skeleton Crew with an almost impossible task that it was never meant to take on: SAVE STAR WARS.

Does Skeleton Crew save Star Wars?

Let’s find out.

The story for Skeleton Crew is simple. Four suburban kids, Wim, Neel, Fern, and KB, are inadvertently thrust on a wild adventure. 12 year old Wim lives with his single workaholic father. Since his dad is never home, it’s up to Wim to do almost everything, including getting to school every day.

On the day of his big “placement” test, he wakes up late, forcing him to take a shortcut with his hoverbike. In the forest, he stumbles upon a Lost-like hatch in the ground. He tells his best friend Neel, which is overheard by two cool girls (Fern and KB). The four head to the hatch to find out more.

Once there, they somehow get inside, where they learn it’s an old buried spaceship. Wim accidentally turns it on and the ship lifts out of the ground and shoots into space. Once there, they realize they’re not alone. Broken robot SM-33 is there with them. When they ask him to take them home, he points to all the stars and says, “Which star does your planet belong to?” It’s then when they realize they’re f&%*ed.

SM-33 says there’s a spaceport where they may be able to find some answers so off they go. Except that the spaceport SM-33 brings them to is a PIRATE SPACEPORT! The kids dodge and dance around a number of nefarious aliens before finally running into Jod Na, a man who says he can help them get home. But do they believe him?

There are three things that hit me right off the bat with this show that separated it from other Star Wars shows.

One, it’s a simple story.

Overcomplicating your stories is one of the quickest ways to frustrate readers UNLESS you are a master at plotting. And most writers are not masters of plotting. This is such a simple story: Kids lost. Kids need to get home. That’s it. We get it right away.

Two, the character work.

Character work can be a large and overwhelming process. But when you break it down, character work is simple. You give us reasons to relate to the character, you give us reasons to like the character, and you give that character something they’re trying to achieve that matters.

Wim is lonely. He misses his mom. His dad isn’t around much. These circumstances make us care about him immediately. And we like the fact that he doesn’t want to do some mundane job for the rest of his life. He wants something bigger for himself.

Then, of course, when he gets lost, his goal arrives: Get home.

Three, the tone.

Tone is always the hardest thing to get right because it’s a feel thing. But janky tones have been plaguing Star Wars for years. The closest we’ve gotten to a proper Star Wars tone since Disney bought the franchise was The Force Awakens. But nothing’s really come close since. I mean The Acolyte was practically anti-Star Wars tone.

For Star Wars, the tone should be a combination of adventure, mythology, whimsy, and mystery. And Jon Watts got those ingredients… if not perfect, then close.

I mean, the man finally put aliens back in Star Wars! I must’ve watched 8 episodes of Andor before I saw an alien.

Here, there are more aliens than you know what to do with. My absolute favorite alien was the little monkey guy who shuttled them from their ship to the spaceport. He literally made me lol five times. That moment when he gets the payment, looks at it, giggles maniacally, then shoots off? That’s Star Wars right there. Jon Watts gets it.

The first two episodes are so good that I didn’t have many criticisms.

I suppose the girl characters were bitcher than they needed to be. But I get it. Watts is trying to create conflict. If the girls are exactly like the boys, that’s boring. But it does have a teensy bit of that “girls are superior to boys” stink that was being forced into the development of 90% of projects three years ago.

Then, of course, I have to remember that I gave The Acolyte’s first two episodes a good review. But I did so with the same caveat I will use here, which is that the screenwriters spend the bulk of their time getting those first two episodes right. Then, because they’re not spending as much time on episodes 3-7, the writing drops off. I mean it dropped off so badly in Boba Fett that they just abandoned two episodes altogether, replacing them with Mandalorian eps. So we’ll have to wait until next week to see if that’s the case here.

But something gives me more hope for Skeleton Crew over other Star Wars shows. Like Watts’ ability to direct children. The actor who plays Wim has that perfect balance of naivety, likability, and acting chops. Unlike those poor excuses for actresses who played the young twins in The Acolyte, we actually believe this actor.

This is DEFINITELY worth checking out, even if you’re not into Star Wars. It’s got this holiday feel to it that will work for most audiences. It’s sweet. It’s innocent. It’s fun. I’m in!

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Do not be afraid to take your time setting up your characters in TV shows. This is what TV was made for – long-form storytelling. It’s not like movies where you have to set your hero up in one scene. After its cold open, Skeleton Crew takes its first 17 minutes setting up its young characters and boy does it pay off. Because sometimes you need that moment of quiet – your hero all alone in their house – feeling empty, isolated, abandoned. You can’t rush through a moment like that. And that moment has its roots in Star Wars lore. Luke Skywalker walking off to the end of his home and staring up at the setting suns – that moment DID NOT NEED TO BE IN THE MOVIE. It didn’t move the plot forward. A producer with ADD probably told Lucas to cut it. But those moments help sell what’s going on internally with your character. Watts understood that and took his time setting these characters up.

When a film does unexpectedly well, I believe it’s important, as a screenwriter, to ask the question: “Why?”

I don’t care if it was a Michael Bay flick, a goofy horror movie, a love story, a slow-moving biopic, or whatever. To be dismissive of any movie that does exceptionally well at the box office is to ignore the very audience you are hoping to court later on when you start making movies.

So… Moana 2.

Best Thanksgiving opening ever at 220 million bucks (for 5 days).

That’s too many bucks, man. You can’t chalk that up to, “Kids animated movie on Thanksgiving. Of course it did well.”

No no no no no no no.

Don’t oversimplify it.

The first movie made 56 million dollars its opening weekend. This film made 135 million (over the three-day weekend). So the sequel made over two times as much. When do sequels make twice as much as the first films at this scale? It’s rare.

And it wasn’t one of Disney’s billion dollar franchises either. The first film topped off at 640 million. In fact, when the original Moana finished its run, it was seen as a soft failure by the studio. It did solid business. But not the kind of business expected out of a Disney animated movie.

So, what happened?

Why did this previously forgotten movie birth a sequel that became a smash hit?

The first reason has nothing to do with screenwriting. Disney is able to track, with terrifying exactness, what their audience watches simply by checking their Disney+ database. And Moana was getting a lot of love on streaming.

But from a storytelling perspective, its success is obvious.

The “mismatched pairing” is one of the most reliable storytelling mechanisms around. Why? Because what you’re trying to do with a screenplay is entertain the reader. You do this by creating drama. And the best way to create drama is through conflict.

The problem I see in a ton of screenplays is that the writer struggles to keep the conflict consistent. He’ll write one scene that has strong conflict. Then there will be 6-7 scenes with little to no conflict. Finally, after 25 pages, another scene with good conflict will arrive.

When you place a mismatched pair of characters on an adventure, you have conflict built into EVERY SCENE AUTOMATICALLY.

And if you want to get more advanced, you can create even more conflict by widening the difference-gap between the pair. The wider the gap, the more conflict you’ll get from them. Moana is compassionate and selfless. Maui is self-centered and insensitive. They see the world in completely different ways.

That’s what you need for an effective pairing.

And the great thing about this is that you can use it in any genre and it will work. In action, we have Hobbs and Shaw, a no-nonsense cop and a suave criminal. In Drama, Green Book. A quiet thoughtful pianist and a brash Italian driver. In Romance, When Harry Met Sally. A womanizer and a woman desperate to find love. In sci-fi, The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian is stoic and driven by duty. Baby Yoda is playful and mischievous.

Think about that for a second. How different Mandalorian and Grogu are. I mean they are so so so so so different. When you do this, you will never have to find conflict for your scene. It will naturally happen.

So the next time you want a guaranteed formula that works, create a pairing that’s not just different from one another. But VERY different.

Moving onto movie number 2. That would be Wicked. The film dropped just 30% to an 80 million second weekend. I have to give it to that little green witch. She didn’t drop much at all.

As I like to remind people, the first weekend take comes from the marketing. The second weekend take comes from the screenwriting. If you wrote a good script, people will tell others about the movie fondly, which means a lot of those referals will show up for weekend #2.

How big of a deal is this?

It’s actually made me consider seeing the film.

Now granted, it raises that possibility from -6% to +3%. But that’s still an improvement. I think I need to do some pre-movie hypnosis therapy preparing me for 2 hours of Ariana Grande creepiness. If I can somehow mentally block out her bizarre movements and 2nd grade voice, I might go.

Of note is the audience for these films. Wicked and Moana 2 have a 70% female audience. Gladiator 2, which took in just 30 million in its second weekend, is the big male movie. And they’re not showing up.

This is a strange glitch in the box office matrix because female-led movies have been declining faster than Jamba Juice stock over the last three years and it was looking like we were moving back to a male-dominated box office.

But with the ultimate male movie barely putting up a Gladiatorial fight and these other two films becoming box office bonanzas, we may have to rethink that strategy. Should we be propping up female protagonists once more? Or is the disappointment of Gladiator 2 rooted more in poor storytelling?

I’m still on my holiday weekend, watching whatever movies my parents force me to. The latest one I’m checking out is The Long Goodbye, a 1970s film about a PI looking into a disappearance. I’m 30 minutes in and, so far, it’s quite good.

If anyone has time to check it out, watch the first 15 minutes. It’s a fun little 1970s version of GSU. The hero wakes up in his apartment, hung over, and his cat is hungry. His goal is, simply, to get his cat food. Hmm, saving the cat. Where have I heard that before?

Not long after, the inciting incident arrives. It’s classic screenplay structure, playing out all the way back in 1974! We’ll see if it continues to use that classic structure tonight. :)

What’d you see this weekend? How was it?

And a really important screenwriting lesson on how to create tension in scenes

First of all, I’m giving out THREE Black Friday Half-Off Screenplay Consultations. That’s $249 for 4 pages of notes on a feature or pilot script. These will go quickly so e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you want one. Make sure the subject line reads: SCRIPTSHADOW DEAL.

Okay, I wanted to leave you with some screenwriting advice over the weekend.

I’m with family right now and my parents love World War 2 movies so I was stuck watching two of them whether I wanted to or not. The first one was Steve McQueen’s Blitz on Apple TV which is about how, during World War 2, when Germany bombed London, the British sent all the kids out of the city to safety. The story follows one kid who jumps out of the train and travels back to London to return to his mom.

The second movie is Lee, about model-turned-war-photographer Lee Miller, who captured a lot of powerful photographs during World War 2 for Vogue magazine.

Both films are what I would call “Almost Films.” They were almost good. But weak writing reared its ugly head enough times to keep them from ever rising above average. In fact, there were two scenes, one from each film, that best represented this bad writing. And I wanted to highlight those scenes.

Let’s start with Blitz.

In that film, the little kid, George, makes it back to London but is picked up by an evil group of criminals who raid bombed buildings for valuables. They need children, specifically, to fit into tight spaces. So one of the following scenes has George crawling through a bombed jewelry store to snag every watch and necklace he can find.

However, while he’s there, a couple of policemen burst in on the other side, looking for looters. The musical score becomes tense as George hides behind some debris. The score increases in intensity as the cops get closer and closer to him until, right as they’re about to spot him, George kicks some debris, causing a partial building collapse that sends the cops running back outside to safety.

To an average writer, this may seem like a good scene. You place your hero in a somewhat dangerous situation. Then, to make it worse, he might get caught. But let’s look at this scene more closely. Who is it that George is with? He’s with REALLY BAD DANGEROUS GUYS! Therefore, if the cops were to spot him, THAT WOULD BE A GOOD THING! The cops would get him away from this dangerous gang AND, after everything was cleared up, reunite him with his mom.

You must design your tension-filled scenes so that they actually create tension. There is no tension if the people who might find you and take you are better than the people you’re currently stuck with. This seems obvious to me. I don’t know why it isn’t for a WGA writer getting to write a 30 million dollar movie.

You didn’t even need to bring cops into this scene to create tension. Have George snag a bunch of jewelry. He squeezes back through the little pathways to the bad guys back at the entrance. Then, Head Bad Guy says, “No, you need to go back and get [the item that’s placed in the most dangerous place in the bombed room]. You can’t come back until you get it.” Have it be some item that requires George to maneuver up a very shaky foundation of bombed debris. A single wrong step and it’ll all come tumbling down and he’ll be buried under 20 tons of rubble. THAT’S A TENSION-FILLED SCENE.

Let’s move on to “Lee.” This movie was VERY poorly written. There was zero plot. The only thing it has going for it is a twist ending that packs an emotional gut punch. Other than that, it was your classic biopic: Wikipedia life highlights. The End.

In one particular scene, deep into the story, Lee and her assistant, Davy, have made their way into Germany immediately after the war has ended, and are at Hitler’s apartment. They pay a guard to get inside and find a couple dozen Americans lounging around.

Just like the scene in Blitz, a tension-filled score plays in the background. Lee and Davy walk through this large apartment as, literally, NOT A SINGLE PERSON LOOKS AT THEM. Yet the score keeps ratcheting up the tension. If you’re like me, you’re wondering, why is this supposed to be a tense scene? These are their allies. There is, literally, no reason to feel any tension. And yet, that’s how the scene continues to be presented.

Finally, Lee and Davy get to the bathroom. They close the door, and Lee quickly disrobes. Davy, catching on, sets up the camera. And as the tension-filled score reaches a climax, Davy takes a picture of Lee in the bathtub. End of scene.

The inaneness of this scene was so baffling to me that I went online and looked for more context. I eventually learned that this was a real picture that Lee Miller took and that was published.

In other words, the writer’s plan, in order to create tension, was to assume that everyone who watched this movie already knew about this photo. Because that is the ONLY REASON why there would be tension to this scene – that we already knew what it was Lee and Davy were going to do.

Except if I went into the middle of any city in the U.S. right now and asked 1000 random people if they had heard of Lee Miller Hitler’s bathroom photo, all 1000 of them would tell me that they had no idea what I was talking about.

I see this mistake a lot. Biopic screenwriters assuming that others know as much about their subject as they do. They never do. And, hence, you will get zero tension out of this scene.

To create tension, place her in a room FILLED WITH ACTUAL NAZIS. Have her and Davy have to squeeze past that. I guarantee you that scene will be a million times more compelling than this scene. Heck, this Key and Peele sketch has more tension than the Hitler bathroom scene. I’m not exaggerating. I have more fear for Key and Peele here than I ever did Lee and Davy.

The lesson of today is, put the pot ON THE BURNER. Don’t put it near the burner. Don’t put it half on the burner. If you want to mine the most tension out of your scene, put the pot on the burner and jack up the heat as high as it will go.

Today’s script attempts to CARVE its way into our turkey-loving hearts.

Genre: Thriller/Horror (Serial Killer)
Premise: After losing his mother, a man finds the birth certificate of an, up to this point, unknown brother. He connects with him, only to learn that his new brother engages in a particularly violent hobby.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer has one smaller produced credit, writing the 2018 movie, The Night Sitter.
Writer: Abiel Bruhn
Details: 106 pages

I don’t know if any of you saw this but John Krasinski just signed onto a serial killer show called Silent River, about “the cracks that emerge in a small town when it’s discovered a serial killer lives among its residents.”

Serial killers are big business.

And I know that confuses some people. Why does anybody joyfully tune in to people murdering other people? Innocent people at that!

I’ll tell you why. Because DEAD BODIES SELL. And what’s more high stakes than the life of a human being?

James has been taking care of his cancer-stricken mother for two years when she finally dies. After going through her things, he finds an old birth certificiate… for a son she had TWO YEARS BEFORE HIM. James can’t believe his eyes. He finds out his mother gave her first son up for adoption. Which means James has a brother!

James seeks this brother out and is shocked to learn that the dude, Rob, is a high-roller. He’s got a cool car. He lives in a baller condo in the city. And boy does he do well with the ladies. Not only is James infatuated with Rob. But Rob is infatuated with him too! This is all Rob has ever wanted – a sibling! So it’s brotherly love at first sight.

It doesn’t take too much hang-out time before James realizes his brother is… interesting. He oozes positivity, leaning hard into Andrew Tate energy. The world is the matrix, Rob tells James. You can have anything you want. All you have to do is take it.

It’s then when Rob introduces James to his secret hobby. Rob likes to watch. Usually women. He takes out his fancy telescope, he picks a condo across the city, and watches people live their lives. Even better, Rob explains, he gets to watch them live their lives thinking that nobody can see them. You see the true unedited person that way. And we can tell that turns Rob on.

James isn’t so sure. He thinks it’s weird. But when Rob offers to Ryan Gosling Crazy Stupid Love his brother up, James loves the result. He’s got a cooler haircut, nicer clothes, people start paying attention to him. If James has to do some weird things to live this new exciting life, maybe doing so is a minor price to pay.

But when James is looking through the telescope one night and sees Rob in the apartment of one of the women they were looking at, he puts two and two together and figures out his brother is a murderer.  Not only that, he’s likely the one responsible for all these recent killings in the city.  James freaks out and runs across the street to stop the impending murder. When he gets there, the woman is fine. But her neighbors have been slaughtered!

The cops bring James in, convinced he had something to do with this. But when they can’t prove his guilt, they let him go. From there, we start to wonder if James even has a brother. Maybe there is no Rob. And, oh yeah, if you’re wondering about the title, it’s because each brother carves out a mask made of wood. Or did only ONE brother carve out the mask of wood? CAUSE THERE’S ONLY ONE BROTHER.

It’s Thanksgiving.

I don’t want to be negative on Thanksgiving!

I want everyone to eat food that they would normally never eat in a thousand years and pretend to enjoy it. Stuffing. Who created this anomaly? We’re going to stuff a bunch of junk into something else and then we’ll serve it also. “But what are we going to call it my good sir?” “Let’s call it… stuffing!” “Brilliant, your majesty.”

I’ll start by saying this. Woodwork is better than the 3 million dollar script I reviewed on Monday. That’s a positive, right?

There’s some voice and creativity on display here. The whole angle with the woodworking was kind of unique. And there’s an interesting relationship between the two brothers. We’ve got a little Fight Club inspired plot going on between them. That’s fun, isn’t it?

I also believe this to be a solid example of, “You can create an entire franchise with a good mask.” It’s true! Hockey mask. Michael Myers mask. Scream. Saw. This wooden mask will certainly stand out.

But the script is just so messy.

Instead of a perfect melodic blend of turkey, biscuits, green beans and mashed potatoes, someone added hot pockets, Cheetoes, and ramen. Individually, these things are wonderful but, together, they resulted in a meal that looks like it was made by Guy Fieri on ayuscha.

And that’s no exaggeration. We get a couple of drug-induced sequences here. Rob is convinced that LSD is the key to helping you unlock your killing potential. After sneakily giving James a thousand doses, James is more than happy to slash some people up. I would’ve preferred the LSD unlock a cohesive plot.

Let me give you a more obvious example of the messiness, though.

In the scene where James runs across the street and into the other building to try and stop James from killing the woman, he must first recruit the building manager woman in the lobby. To do so, he screams at her that there’s a man about to slash a woman to death.

So the woman joins him, rushing up to the floor the apartment is on.  They bang on the door, and the woman comes out. She’s alive. Confused, James charges in. AS DOES THE LOBBY WOMAN. When they can’t find him, they hear screaming from the next apartment. So they charge into that apartment where they find a mangled bloody dead body. When the lobby woman sees this, SHE CHARGES INTO THE BEDROOM.

You can sell me on Rob charging forward. The killer is his brother. So conceivably, he can talk him down. But why is Lobby Woman blindly running into rooms that contain SERIAL KILLERS THAT CARVE BODIES INTO HEAPS OF FLESH??????

Because most scripts aren’t good enough, there’s a specific moment in each one when I mentally check out. This was that moment in Woodwork. Some writers will ding you for this. They’ll bring up that, on page 74, this amazing scene happens and you didn’t acknowledge it. Or you missed some key plot point on page 89. And it’s like, “Dude, don’t have women willingly running into rooms with killers in them and I’ll continue to place all my attention on your story.”

Attention is not guaranteed. It must be earned. In the scripts that I love, I don’t even consider whether I’m engaged or not. I’m so lost in the story that I couldn’t lose focus if you spent the next half hour tickling me.

Woodwork is okay. There are hints of a good movie in here. The brother angle. Does Rob really exist? The striking imagery of the wooden mask. Rob’s view on existence. But there’s too much noise and not enough melody when it’s all said and done.

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

What I learned: I find it hard to know who a character is if I don’t know what he does. In fact, I would say that I have NO IDEA who a character is if I don’t know what he does. Therefore, if you never show me the character working and you give them a job title like “customer relations representative,” (James’s job) I’m going to be lost trying to figure that character out. I know that some writers like to give their characters bland jobs to convey that they are bland. But there’s a difference between a bland job and a job like this, where I don’t even understand what it means. This puts you in a poor position as the writer because you’re heading into the meat of your story (the second act) with the reader not sure who your lead character is. That’s a bad place to be and it definitely hurt this script, as I never had the best feel for James.