Genre: Comedy/Action
Premise: A secret CIA spy must save the day when her best friend’s destination wedding is infiltrated by terrorists planning to break into the rich fiancé’s vault and steal all his money.
About: This project will star Rebel Wilson. It will be directed by Simon West. The script comes from Shaina Steinberg. Steinberg has been at this for a while. She has a couple of produced credits from 2011, writing two episodes of the TV show, “Chase.”
Writer: Shaina Steinberg (story by Shaina & Cece Pleasants)
Details: 110 pages

I love these callback concepts to the giant spec sale days. This is the kind of script that would’ve sold for a million dollars back in 1998. It actually reminds me of the famous spec sale, “Monster-In-Law,” which, literally, sold on the title alone.

That’s pure spec script DNA right there, when you can sell a script off its title. It’s also something you can’t do anymore. I mean, yeah, this movie is getting made. But I don’t think it came together as a spec sale.

Sam and Betsy have been best friends since they were children. And both of them have difficult home lives so they promise each other never to get married.

Cut to 20 years later and Betsy is in Barcelona with Sam and several other girls for Betsy’s bachelorette party. Betsy is marrying a really rich guy so the wedding is going to be extravagant.

However, it turns out Sam, who’s now secretly a CIA agent, has a mission here in Spain and her team is able to take down a big terrorist. This means that Sam misses some bachelorette party activities and Betsy is so upset about it that she hands the title of Maid of Honor over to the snobby Vanessa, who accepts it with it a Cruella-like smile.

Although Sam is booted from the wedding, which is taking place on a private island in Malta two weeks later, she shows up anyway. No one seems to be enthusiastic about her presence. They assume she’ll disappear like she always does right when Betsy needs her.

But then, on the first night, some gnarly looking terrorists (or thieves?) swim onto shore and bust into the mansion everybody’s staying at, the family home of Betsy’s rich fiancé. They know about the secret vault in the house that contains millions of dollars and they begin their plan of breaking into it while holding all the wedding guests hostage.

Meanwhile, Sam happens to be off in some back room when this is happening, allowing her to morph into her kick-butt spy persona. From there, it’s off to the races, disposing of these terrorists one by one, until she can get to the big fat baddie, Kurt, and take him out, thus saving the day, as well as her friendship with Betsy.

I don’t know how funny this script is. But it makes up for any of its non-funniness by being such a fun film.

The setup is strong, mainly because of the central relationship, which is more complex than it looks like at first glance.

Normally, you have basic reasons why two friends aren’t friends anymore. Somebody got upset about something a while back and they never talked about it and, therefore, the two friends drifted apart. Or someone’s jealous of someone else, which was the case in Bridesmaids.

Here, Betsy is upset with Sam because Sam is never around when she needs her. We see this right from the start, when she misses an important gathering with all the bridesmaids.

But the reason Sam isn’t around is because she’s a CIA agent and literally trying to save the world. So it’s technically not Sam’s fault that she isn’t around. And because Sam can’t tell Betsy the real reason why she’s absent, their friendship fractures.

I like these complex reasons for broken relationships. There’s more to it, which gets the reader thinking. We’re frustrated cause we wish Betsy could understand that Sam isn’t doing this on purpose. And we’re mad because there’s no way for her to tell her.

Then, when the big terrorists takeover happens, you get the intersection of these two worlds that then exploit this unique relationship issue. Sam gets to utilize the skills of the very job that’s keeping her from Betsy to save her life.

And it’s all done in a package that feels like a fresh reinvention of Die Hard.

I’m actually surprised nobody’s come up with this idea before. Scott? This feels like it’s right up your alley. Of course, maybe people have thought of it, but the script never moved through the system like this one did.

The script’s only weak point is that it’s not funny enough. The only character who gets laughs is Vanessa. She’s so deliciously cruel that we love to watch her operate.

But these other characters aren’t funny. The pregnant character. The slutty character. I’m not saying that these archetypes can’t be funny. But what a lot of writers will do is they’ll include these character types that are funny *in theory,* but then they don’t do the work to actually make them funny.

A character like Alan in The Hangover isn’t just funny because he’s wacky. You can’t just throw a character like him into the mix and the laughs come. You have to think these characters through and understand WHY they’re funny. Where they came from. And how that shapes their comedy.

I tell writers this all the time. You want to know a chracter as specifically as possible. That’s why you do all that annoying stuff like write down a 5 page backstory about your character. Cause the more you know about that person and the life they lived, the more formed they will come off on the page. And if it’s a comedy, I promise you it’ll be easier to find the laughs from them.

And then there just weren’t any clever funny set pieces. There was some entertaining action. But where is the show-stopper laugh-out-loud set piece in Bride Hard? Die Hard is famous for all its cool set piece moments. If you’re going to use that template, your job is to write a bunch of funny action set pieces. That part of the script just wasn’t there, though. Not enough, at least.

Finally, I would’ve liked to feel more fear here. I never, for a second, felt like the guests were in real danger. The bad guys aren’t that bad. The one guest who gets shot – the husband-to-be – it happens as an accident. The bad guys just want their money and for these annoying wedding guests to shut up while they get it.

I understand that it’s tricky with comedy. If you go too over the top with danger, it’s not funny anymore. But if it doesn’t feel like there’s any danger at all, we’re not really invested in the story. Remember that laughing is a release of tension. Where does that tension come from? It comes from the fear that these terrorists are going to kill these people. If that’s not there, there’s no tension to release. Which means no laughs.

Despite that, this is worth a read. It’s one of those situations where the concept is too good to screw up. Which is a great reminder of how important concept is. It does a massive amount of the work for you.

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

What I learned: To make any relationship interesting, introduce a problematic element that’s hurting that relationship and that one of the characters CANNOT TELL THE OTHER CHARACTER about under any circumstances. In this case, it’s that Sam is a spy. But it could be anything. This secret creates a compelling dynamic because the audience is always frustrated by the fact that, if this piece of information was known, the friends, or the couple, would immediately resolve their issues. Because that’s not an option, the reader becomes even more invested cause they want to see how this unresolvable situation is going to be resolved.

Genre: True Story
Premise: The true story of the rise and fall of the Blackberry, a handheld internet device that become a phenomenon, only to get wiped out by the biggest company in the world.
About: Blackberry is the surprise movie of the year so far. It’s the little film that could. Glen Howerton, who’s famously played Dennis for the last 15 seasons on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has transformed himself for the opportunity to play Jim Balsillie, a part that is getting him tons of acclaim. Matthew Miller, who wrote the script for director Matt Johnson, didn’t have a single produced credit to his name until now.
Writers: Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller (based on the book by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff)
Details: 2 hours long

I know, I know.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse just made all this money. Which means it’s the movie I *should* be reviewing today. I give Spider-verse all the props in the world. The first movie made 35 million opening weekend. This one made 120 million. That’s got to be the biggest percentage increase in box office sequel history.

But there’s another verse out there. A verse full of villains and heroes. A verse that tells one of the most classic tales in our history. If you squint, this verse isn’t that much different from Marvel or DC. I’m talking…….. about the Blackberry verse.

I kept hearing great things about this movie. It got great reviews. Great acting performances. Everyone’s tweeting about it.

But let me tell you why I’m really reviewing it. I’m reviewing it because every movie that gets made in Hollywood goes through a process. At the beginning, the script/project gets sent around town to all the A-listers. The biggest actors. The biggest directors. The hope is that you get one of those perfect A-list packages and now you’re really off to the races. You’ve got tons of buzz and hype behind you. And money! Lots and lots of money.

Unfortunately, most scripts don’t ever get the A-listers. And when they don’t get them, they go for the B-listers. The B-listers are still big time. Uncharted, with Holland, Wahlberg, and Rubin Fleischer directing? That was a B-Team. Movie did okay.

If you don’t get the B-Team, you can still end up with a solid movie via the C-Team. The stuff Gerard Butler is in, like Plane? That’s C-Team. And wherever you land, the corresponding amount of money you get, which crews you get, how many days you get to shoot – all of that ties back to who you can secure when you first go out with your project.

Sadly, the quality of your movie is linked to where you finish on that ladder. Your movie’s fate is determined before you shoot a minute of film.

So when a movie like Blackberry comes along and throws this equation back in the industry’s face – I’ll always celebrate that. Blackberry was working with the F-team. I guarantee the producers of this project were not setting up face time meetings at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica with Jay Burachel begging him to be in their movie. Ditto Glenn Howerton. I would go so far as to say they were probably their 30th-40th choices.

And yet, despite that, they still made an awesome movie. How awesome? You know how I was busting Air’s chops a few weeks ago because of how lifeless the directing was? We were in small offices on phone calls the entire movie? Blackberry operates in the exact same business world deal-making space, had 1/20th the budget that Air, and managed to look a hundred times bigger than that movie. It really is amazing what a difference directing makes.

If you don’t know the Blackberry story, this tiny company, Research in Motion, created by a couple of computer nerds, Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin, came up with the first handheld texting/e-mail device. With the help of hothead outsider, Jim Balsillie, to run the business, they quickly became the makers of the coolest gadget in the business world, the Blackberry.

The movie focuses on the complex relationship between Mike, who’s great with engineering but terrible with people, and Jim, who’s terrible with engineering and also terrible with people. But Jim gets things done. He’s the guy who doesn’t care if you like him. He’s a force that is determined to take whatever business he’s running to the top.

Blackberry had a meteoric rise because of two things. One, everyone was addicted to the fun little click-y keyboard that you got to send texts back and forth with. And two, they didn’t have any competition. They were the first company able to capitalize on handheld wireless data and no one else was even close.

Of course, we all know what happened next. Apple showed up. And Blackberry made a big bet on the fact that nobody would want to give up their “crackberry” keyboard for some screen that you lifelessly typed on. The final act of “Blackberry” shows the company desperately trying to adjust to this new competitor even though they all know, deep down, that their product is dunzos.

You guys know I’m no fan of true stories and biopics.

With that said, the rise and fall of a person or a company is a very strong engine to write a story with. Because think about it. We all love to see the rise of something. It’s exciting to see someone get to the top, especially if we know beforehand that they do get to the top. Cause we have that fore-knowledge that the characters don’t. And we’re excited for them to reach the mountain top we’re waiting on.

And then, we all love a train crash as well. We all love the sinking of the Titanic. We can’t wait to see it. It’s part of our nature as human beings. So we like *that* part of the story as well – the fall.

In general, every story should be either rising or falling. That’s what keeps the story in motion. Where you run into trouble is if you’re staying neutral. You can stay neutral in a story for a little while. But not for long. The viewer wants to either start rising again or falling again. They need to be in motion.

So, plot-wise, this script was good to go.

The only thing left to make a great movie was characters. Glen Howerton’s, Jim, was fun to watch. He was, himself, an engine. He demanded that the story move. So we always enjoyed being in scenes with him because we knew he was going to be pushing other people to do things. Which results in conflict, which results in drama, which results in entertainment.

Plus, Howerton just had so much fun with the role. He knew this was his one shot at becoming a serious actor. And he took advantage of it. I don’t know if this movie has the financial backing to put together an Oscar campaign for Glen. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he got nominated.

The only downside of Jim is that Mike and Doug couldn’t possibly live up to him. Mike was so internal. He was so frustrated and could never quite get the right words out. In a way, that made me frustrated whenever he came onscreen. I wasn’t enjoying his character so much as enduring it.

And while Matt Johnson, who played Doug, exhibited the single greatest clueless expression I’ve ever seen in a film, that’s all he brought to the table. To be honest, it felt like an actor who wasn’t quite ready for this big of a role.

With that being said, Blackberry is such a win for movies. Like I said, it’s a feel good story of a movie that nobody was supposed to hear about. For it to be getting these great reviews and all this buzz, it’s just cool to see.

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

What I learned: If you’re going to write a true story or biopic, something with a clear rise and fall will do a lot of the work for you as a storyteller. You’ll always be in motion. Your only challenge will be making sure all the characters are compelling to watch. If you have that combo, your script will be unstoppable.

We’ve got Tarantino talking about his latest script. We’ve got that spooky new film coming out of Cannes. We answer the question, should you turn your script into a podcast movie? We’ve got more AI talk. Gareth Edwards, the man who directed Rogue One, is back with a film. How does it look? We gear up for the controversial new show on HBO, The Idol. Is the establishment determined to take the show down because it doesn’t play by their rules? Finally, I try to make nice by reviewing another one of Stephen King’s short stories that will be turned into a movie.

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!

“I want the truth!”

Every time I put the month’s logline winners up for Logline Showdown, I always get a dozen comments that amount to, “THIS IS THE BEST YOU HAVE????” I get it. It’s the internet. We want perfection. We want the posts on our terms. I do it as well on other sites.

But, just so you have more context, I want you to see the loglines that aren’t making it so you can better appreciate the ones that do. Because it’s hard to come up with a good concept and it’s hard to write a good logline. I think Scott said this – just being able to come up with a sentence that sounds normal is difficult. Much less one that effortlessly conveys a compelling movie idea.

For those interested, we do a Logline Showdown every month. Send in your title, genre, and logline. I pick the five best. You guys vote for your favorite. The logline that gets the most votes gets a script review the following week. We’ve found several good scripts already. Let’s find some more! Here are the details for the next showdown…

JUNE LOGLINE SHOWDOWN!

When: June 23rd
Deadline: June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: e-mail all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: include title, genre, and logline

If you’re struggling with your loglines, you can always get a logline consultation from me. They’re 25 bucks. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll have feedback to you within 24 hours.

Okay, let’s take a look at some of the loglines that didn’t make it into the showdown and why. Actually, none of these loglines are bad. But they were all missing something. Let’s find out what those somethings were.

Title: Unwind
Genre: Dark Comedy/Mystery
Logline: Desperate for new material after her editor rejects her article, a high school journalist teams up with her ex-boyfriend to uncover a school conspiracy when she discovers a photo of a paraplegic kid standing on two legs.

Analysis: The first thought that went through my head when I finished reading this logline was, “So what?” The stakes don’t feel very high. Why do I care about a random kid who may have been faking his paraplegic-ness? In the writer’s defense, it’s a comedy. And the stakes for comedy scripts don’t have to be as high. But there’s something underwhelming about this mystery that’s preventing me from feeling that excitement I need in order to open a script. That’s not to say the script would be bad. If the writer’s got a really witty and sardonic voice, the script could work. But I’m just going off the logline and the logline isn’t giving me a big enough reason to care.  This is one of those scripts that I’d read if someone else told me it was great.  But it’s not a script that wins me over on the logline alone.  Which is a good lesson for every screenwriter trying to write a spec screenplay.  Try to win us over with your concept alone.  It shouldn’t need any extra convincing.

Title: Kill and Make-up
Genre: Satire
Logline: Down on her luck and bearing the weight of her world, flight attendant Amanda meets Bailey, a solipsistic psychopathic serial killer, who might just be her key to happiness.

Breakdown: Fun title. Nice play on words. And the story is kind of intriguing. A love story with a serial killer. There’s some nice irony there. But it feels like it’s missing that element to put it over the top. Like the logline from a couple of months ago where the serial killer was done killing but then went to the engagement party of her rich fiancé and had to do everything within her power not to kill his insufferable family. There was more of a story there, more of a plot. This logline is an idea. “I fell in love with a serial killer.” But where’s the plot? What’s the end goal? Finally, I’ve included a lot of serial killer loglines on the Logline Showdown this year. And I just didn’t want to include another one so soon. That’s a tough reality about the industry. Sometimes you have a good idea but the producers you send the idea to just made a movie like that or they just started developing a movie like that. Your logline could just be bad timing. Which is one of many reasons not to take rejection personally.

Title: Influence
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A group of influencers stranded at the shoddy island resort they’ve been promoting is terrorized by a manipulative entity that wants to harness their immense reach.

Breakdown: There’s not enough meat on the bone here. We’ve got a group of influencers. They’re stuck together in some scary situation. This is a VERY COMMON setup right now. Lots of writers are starting with a similar premise to this. Which means you have to differentiate your idea somehow. An entity that “wants to harness their immense reach” is not enough of a differentiation. To be honest, I don’t know want that means. It’s not specific enough. A logline needs to place an image in the reader’s head. When you are vague, you are doing the opposite of that. We can’t imagine anything. And if we’re not imagining the movie, we’re not going to request your script. I would rewrite the second half of this logline and BE SPECIFIC.

Title: Wicked Morning Star
Genre: Horror
Logline: In 1986, two ambitious girls obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, heavy metal, and Lucifer ritually sacrifice a wealthy classmate and attempt to conceal the crime as their friends gather for his birthday party in the basement where they’ve hidden his body.

Breakdown: When I read this logline, I have a couple of concerns. One, you’re asking us to root for two people who killed someone. There is a chance, of course, that you’ve made them sympathetic and the victim unsympathetic, so that we’re okay with the killing. But that’s the thing about loglines. There is no context. We don’t know for sure. Going off just the logline, I don’t want to give these killers my time. The other issue is that the idea feels small. I’m imagining this small basement, since all basements are small. I guess they’ve put him in a trunk or something. And the appeal of the story is, “Will someone find out?” But I only see that trick working for a few scenes, 30 pages at most. We’re not going to be on the edge of our seats on page 75, still wondering if Lucy is going to look inside that trunk and find the body. The gimmick will be up by then. So those two issues are the reason I didn’t feature this logline.

Title: The Men in White
Genre: Supernatural Thriller/Action
Logline: When Mikey McKay, a kind but dimwitted drug dealer, dies searching for his missing brother, the two mysterious Men in White appear to protect Mikey from the dangers of purgatory and guide him to the portal to Heaven before his soul disappears forever.

Breakdown: You don’t usually want to include character names in loglines. It tends to be a rookie move. Which means the reader’s going to assume you’re a beginner writer, which means they’ll be less likely to request your script. The exception is when your hero’s name is in the title (Forrest Gump, Jerry Maguire). But you should stay away from this if possible. From there, it’s too standard of a premise. I get pitched a lot of concepts where somebody dies and they have to do something before they can get to heaven. The more original the plot is between the death and getting to heaven, the more likely I am to request the script. This seems like a vanilla version of that journey. He has to avoid bad ghosty people and get to heaven. Feels like we’re missing that sexy “strange attractor” that amps an idea like this up.

Title: No Body Recovered
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: After escaping a brutal police raid on his unhoused community, a wounded man flees downriver in search of his missing dog; desperate for survival, he accepts help from a local bowfisherman who unveils a sinister plan — remove the unhoused from his river one by one.

Breakdown: There may be something to this idea but the fact that I had to read the logline four times before I mostly understood it is a problem. First of all, “unhoused” is a weird word. I was annoyed that I had to look it up. I suppose it’s the latest politically correct way to refer to homeless people. But even if you get past that, this missing dog enters the equation out of nowhere. So I guess this is a “look for your dog” movie now? Then, also out of nowhere, a bow fisherman appears. That seems like a random character type to be introduced into this story. And then the bow fisherman wants to kill all the homeless people, I think? Or just scare them off? It’s a little unclear. But then he’s also going to help our hero find his dog? Even though he hates that our hero is homeless? Or does he not know he’s homeless and that’s why he agrees to help him? Or are you saying that, that’s the inciting incident of the story, in which case, they’re now mortal enemies? Our hero will look for his dog while the bow fisherman tries to hunt him? As you can see, the fact that there’s so much going on here makes it difficult to identify what’s happening. And the second a reader is unclear what the story is, THEY’RE OUT. They don’t give you a second chance. Cause the way they see it is: If you can’t be clear in one sentence, why would I expect you to write a clear 20,000 word story?

Title: 21 Shots
Genre: Slasher Comedy
Logline: On the eve of her sister’s wedding, a woman takes 21 shots to ring in her 21st birthday. When she wakes to a room full of dead friends, she must retrace her 21 shots to figure out the killer before the wedding begins… or the killer finds her.

Breakdown: Another confusing logline. I understood the story up to the point where she takes 21 shots to ring in her 21st birthday. So far so good. She then wakes up to a room full of dead friends. Okay, a mystery. It seems a little excessive but I’m still giving the logline a chance. Things fall apart with this segment: “she must retrace her 21 shots to figure out the killer.” How does one retrace 21 separate shots? “Hmm, I took my first shot over at the bed here. Then I took my second by the piano. Then my third in the bathroom.” Wouldn’t you be done with that investigation after five minutes?  Also, how is that going to help her solve the mystery? If you get past that, you run into the logline’s biggest problem: who cares about making it to the wedding WHEN ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD!!!!???? I’m pretty sure getting to the wedding is the least of your worries at that point. Not to mention, instead of figuring out where your 17th shot was, why not just call the cops? There are just too many questions that pop up with this logline.

Title: The Girl Who Lived
Genre: horror
Logline: A young woman must survive a night of horrific attacks both by the living and the dead when she sets out to discover why she was the lone survivor of a mysterious plane crash as a child.

Breakdown: Tal complains a lot that his loglines don’t get picked so I thought I’d extend him the courtesy of explaining why I didn’t pick his latest submission. To start, why isn’t “horror” capitalized?  You want to put your best foot forward.  It’s not a dealbreaker but it implies you’re not taking the submission seriously – that you’re rushing through it.   — Like a lot of Tal’s loglines, this sort of feels like a movie but, at least for me, I’m having trouble connecting the first part with the second part. She’s going to finally solve the mystery of being the only survivor of a plane crash. So as soon as she looks into that, random living and dead people start attacking her? I don’t get it. The fact that it’s not one or the other (dead or alive) scatters the focus of the idea, weakening its impact. If it was just ghosts that went after her – preferably dead passengers she remembers from the flight – at least then there’s a logical connection between the first part of the logline and the second. But trying to solve a plane crash mystery and having dead and alive people all try to kill you – it’s just not a very eloquent idea. It feels messy. Blunt. Quickly cobbled together without any self-scrutiny. I commend Tal for putting these elements in his idea that are high concept and sexy (plane crash, ghosts). But neither of those elements connect to one another in a harmonious way, at least from how they’re presented in the logline.

Title: Parousia
Genre: Psychological Horror
Logline: An apprehensive pregnant couple, still haunted by a past miscarriage at the hands of a doctor, go to a remote midwifery for the perfect birth but strange occurrences and sinister undertones soon signal the experience may not be so idyllic after all.

Breakdown: This is a good example of an intriguing logline that falls apart in the home stretch. I see this ALL THE TIME. You get to the part of the logline that may actually seal the deal. Then you shroud it in a fog of mystery. I get why this happens. You’re thinking: “I must create mystery!”  But that’s one of the more common misconceptions about loglines – that you want to be mysterious. You actually want to tell the reader exactly what they’re going to get. You do this because reading a script is a business proposition. People will take the time to read your script because they think it might make them money. It’s not an enjoyment proposition, like paying for a ticket to go see a movie. That’s a different type of pitch and, therefore, one where mystery can be strategically infused.  Know the difference!

Title: Her Deafening Silence
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a violent attack leaves her with a debilitating hearing disorder, a reclusive assault survivor fights to maintain her sanity as visions of her assailant and a distant, mysterious scream threaten her isolated existence.

Breakdown: You’re not giving us a movie here. You’re giving us a short film. I’m not saying that your script doesn’t have a full movie in it. But this logline? This logline implies a story that is, at most, 15 minutes long. A deaf person starts hearing a scream in the distance. Where’s the plot? Is it that the scream keeps getting louder? Closer? Okay. But screams happen all the time in horror movies. That’s not big enough to build an entire story around. I get the sense that there’s more that happens in this script. But then that needs to be in the logline. We need to be able to see the plot of the movie in order to gauge whether it’s something we’d be interested in.

Get a Script Consultation With Carson for $100 OFF! – In addition to logline consultations, I do full screenplay consultations, pilot script consultations, outline consultations, first act consultations. Anything you need help with, I can help! If you mention this article, I will give 100 dollars off a feature or pilot consultation to the first four people who e-mail me. :). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: Back in 1518, there was an infamous real-life “dancing plague” that took over a town and proceeded to kill dozens of people. To this day, there is no consensus on what happened.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. So far, the writer, Julian Wayser, has made a couple of short films.
Writer: Julian Wayser (story by Julian Wayser & Rebecca Dayan)
Details: 93 pages

If you’re anything like me, you have gone down that internet rabbit hole late into the night and found yourself exploring the many inexplicable mysteries of our planet. Most of the time, for myself, that involves aliens. Cause we all know that they walk amongst us.

But one of the weird mysteries I’ve always been curious about is the dancing plague. Every time I stumble upon it, I’m not sure what to think because it’s so odd! I’ve always wanted to know more. I’m not sure I ever thought of the subject matter as a movie. But now that someone’s written a script about it, I’m curious what the angle is. Let’s see what today’s writer came up with.

Our story starts with a farmer named Joss Frizt who’s out planting seeds one night when a meteor kablams into his field. The next day, a priest shows up and wants the meteor. So, he orders Joss and Joss’s men (who are all lepers, including his brother) to load the meteor up so he can take it into town.

Take it into town they do – the town of Strasbourg, of the Holy Roman Empire, July, 1518. Strasbourg is off on its own island. And it is also very close to collapse. There is little-to-no food in the area, so everybody is starving to death.

After Joss heads back home, we stay with a young woman, Frau Troffea, named after the rare French delicacy of the time, fromage toffee, aka toffee flavored cheese. Frau helps out at a local orphanage and has a mental breakdown when she realizes how malnourished the kids are. So she walks into the town square and starts wildly dancing.

Nobody knows what to make of it. Eventually, her husband shows up and drags her back home. But the virus has been set into motion. A few days later, several other peasants are performing the wild endless dance in town square. That quickly rises to several dozen. And now, the authorities are getting worried. They don’t have any idea why this is happening.

We then meet Ida, a basket weaver who cares only about her daughter, Agnes, who’s been married off to a wealthy businessman. Ida thinks her daughter is miserable in this man’s care and dreams of rescuing her. But Agnes turns out to be so taken by the crazy dancers that she, too, heads down to dance.

We eventually catch up with Joss again, who implores the rich church (who is hoarding grain) to save the dancers. It is his belief that this is the dance of the poor. It is the dance of the hungry. They do not have anything left in their life and this is their last resort – moving randomly and endlessly. It is a reality that the church is ill-equipped to solve.

Well that turned out to be sad!

Wow.

Here I was all excited to learn about this weird spontaneous event that happened 500 years ago only to get sadness, death, and starvation. We even get a guy who drowns his baby to death cause he can’t feed him. I don’t read nearly enough stuff that depresses me so I’ll keep this one nearby in case I ever catch myself feeling happy about something.

I mean… look. I guess you have to tell the story that was given to you.

But do you?

After doing a quick wikipedia search, it appears that everything surrounding this dancing plague was sad. So that’s where the writer drew his inspiration from.

But this is still a movie. You still have to give people an experience that fulfills them in some way. And when people are going into a subject like this in a fun curious mood, you shoot yourself in the foot when you provide them with a version that makes you want to wither up in your bedroom for 5 days and suck your thumb.

I didn’t like how the writers teased you from the outset with the fun version that included a meteor crash. We’re thinking – okay, this meteor had something to do with this. But it didn’t. It didn’t have anything to do with it. If anybody reads this and tells you they understand what the meteor has to do with this story, they’re lying. Including the writers. It’s unconnected nonsense.

Yes, I’m frustrated because I wanted a cool story! Instead I got the Manchester By the Sea prequel.

Always always always consider what your reader is expecting. Because if you give them an experience that’s too far removed from their expectations, they will eviscerate you. This may be the most depressing script I’ll read all year. And it’s ruined my curiosity about this subject matter.

As for the narrative choice to follow multiple characters throughout the story – I like that kind of stuff. I was a big fan of Richard Linklater’s first film, Slacker, which used that approach. It’s a fun way to tell a story.

But you do sacrifice structural cohesiveness when you go this route. Without a main character to latch onto, it’s easy for the reader to feel lost and unsure where the movie is heading. Whose story is this, really? Who does it affect the most? I don’t think that question was answered here. I definitely struggled to find someone to latch onto.

I suppose Joss Fritz is the obvious choice. He has a strong opening scene where the priest shuns him for relying on lepers for labor. Joss reminds the priest that the church takes all their money so the lepers are all he can afford. The priest disregards the criticism. So we immediately sympathize with Joss’s crappy situation. But then Joss disappears for most of the movie. Which renders his introduction moot.

Straight up, I wanted something more fun, something that didn’t take itself so seriously. It would be like writing a movie about Stonehenge and the whole film is about how they used to beat and torture people then used Stonehenge to sacrifice them to the gods. Might that be accurate? Sure. Does that mean I want to watch that movie. No. There are a million other way more fun ways to take a story about Stonehenge.

As writers, WE CONTROL THE NARRATIVE. We are god. So we get to choose what to write. It’s why Quentin Tarantino can change how Hitler died. It’s why Bridgerton can change the racial makeup of the aristocracy. It’s why Mel Gibson can make up “prima nocta” to ensure we hate the bad guys.

Coming at this story from such a sad depressing place makes one wonder, “Who would want to watch this?”

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

What I learned: If you are going to write a story that moves between characters instead of stays with a main character, you have to be GREAT at creating memorable characters in a short period of time. Because that’s what these scripts are about. We’re constantly ditching characters to meet new ones so you have to be great at setting those people up, making them interesting, making them impactful. Look at, literally, any of Tarantino’s movies. Almost every character he introduces makes an impact right away. They’re extremely memorable. You need that in these kinds of stories to make up for what we lose by not being able to connect with a main character. If readers aren’t constantly complimenting you on your characters, DON’T WRITE THIS KIND OF MOVIE.