What: August Logline Showdown
Deadline: Thursday, August 24th, 10pm Western Time
Send: Title, Genre, Logline
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

We have a fresh Logline Showdown at the end of the month! For those who haven’t participated in a showdown yet, you send me your title, genre, and logline for a feature screenplay. I choose my favorite five loglines, which then compete on the site over the weekend with you, the readers, voting for your favorite entry. Whichever logline gets the most votes, I review the script the following Friday. I can’t wait to see what you guys come with this month!

The other day, I was engaged in an e-mail exchange with a professional screenwriter with high-level studio credits so I was curious what they thought about Oppenheimer.

I’ve been curious what a lot of people think about Oppenheimer not just because it’s the movie du jour. But because I’m less than impressed with Christopher Nolan’s writing.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s still using Final Draft 2 or if he writes his scripts in notebooks like Tarantino then runs out of space therefore can’t rewrite.  Whatever the case, we can all agree his writing is inferior to his directing.

Yet it’s hard to argue with both a 97% critic and 96% audience score. So I’m wrestling with this contrary opinion of mine, even if I’ve been running into more and more people who I share secret whispered conversations with about their dislike of Oppenheimer. These Oppenhaters point out the same problems I had with the movie.  It’s long.  It’s messy.  It’s unfocused.  The multiple timelines hurt more than help.

Here’s what the writer said in their e-mail…

Regarding Oppenheimer, I genuinely, unequivocally, passionately detested it. I thought the first hour played like a trailer. There was no scene work. I hated the bombastic score meant to cover up the sh—y writing and act as collagen throughout the film. I was bored and confused for the entire second half (or 3rd act, or whatever you want to call it since the movie is so absurdly disjointed).

Arguably the most important beat in the film – the moment in which Oppenheimer chooses to build the bomb – was not articulated in the slightest. I am not saying it should have been this crazy exploration of how he got the “lightbulb” moment. But even a slow push-in as he studies his rivals’ equations or something would have worked. Another thing I don’t f—ing understand: Downey Jr giving interviews in which he praises Nolan’s direction, saying that he, Nolan, compared ‘Oppenheimer and Strauss’ to ‘Mozart and Salieri’ and Downey was like “ah! Yes! Now I know how to play it”. WHERE WAS THAT DYNAMIC IN THE FILM? It was completely non-existent. 

They make several points I agree with.

I, too, thought the first hour was constructed strangely. I wondered why we weren’t getting any actual scenes. It was pasted together almost like a montage, or, as the writer said, a “trailer.” Think about the scene in The Dark Knight where The Joker shows up at the bad guys’ meeting and imposes his plan to take down Batman. That’s a scene. Why didn’t we get anything like that in Oppenheimer?

I’m also right with this writer on their “absurdly disjointed” comment. We seemed to be bouncing back and forth between timelines with no clear purpose or logic. It felt random. Watching that, knowing that audiences bought into it whole-cloth, has me utterly confused. Am I expecting too much here? Am I over-analyzing? Or do I just not gel with Nolan’s storytelling style?

There was an argument in the comments section of my Oppenheimer review pushing back on my frustrations with the third act. My belief was that the movie was over once the bomb dropped. “Why are we still here?” Oppenlovers pointed out that the movie was called “Oppenheimer,” not “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” Therefore, it made sense to stay with Oppenheimer 45 extra minutes after the bomb had been dropped. We hadn’t yet concluded *his* story, was the argument.

But here’s my pushback. If “Oppenheimer” was more about Oppenheimer than the making of the atomic bomb, how is it that I still don’t have a great sense of who Oppenheimer was as a person?? If I asked you to tell me who Oppenheimer was after seeing this movie, would you be able to easily do so? Or would you stumble around and throw a bunch of adjectives at me and expect me to make sense of it myself? Cause I’m guessing you would do the latter.

When I watch The Wolf of Wall Street, I know Jordan Belfort was a man done in by his insatiable appetite for excess. When I watch Taxi Driver, I know Travis Bickle was a man done in by his intense loneliness and isolation.  I know this because the writers hit on those flaws again and again and again.  They wanted the audience to understand their protagonist intimately.  I don’t know what I’ve learned about Oppenheimer after watching this film. That he really liked physics, sometimes almost kills professors, and gets involved with bats—t crazy chicks?

In my newsletter review of “Armored” yesterday, I talked about connecting the character’s internal life with the plot and how bad writers never make that connection. That’s exactly how I felt watching Oppenheimer. What issues in Oppenheimer’s tumultuous family life bled into his job? Where were the parallels?

A primary character flaw is all-encompassing. It stretches across all aspects of your life. In the Oscar-winning screenplay, Promising Young Woman, the main character, Cassie, is consumed by revenge. It informs every nook and cranny of her existence. For that reason, we know exactly who that character is. Can you tell me the same about Oppenheimer? Do you “get” him as well as you get that character? If you say “yes” I say you’re lying. I say that the only reason you feel like you have a sense of this character is because his name is in the title.

And by the way, I’m not trying to crap on this movie. I’m trying to understand it. I’m trying to understand what others saw that I didn’t. Cause there’s a part of me that thinks people are falling for the Nolan effect. Oppenheimer is an extremely pretty movie. It’s got movie stars for days. The attention to detail is insane. It’s got this, almost, old Hollywood feel that makes it shine in a way that other movies don’t. But, in the end, isn’t it just a beautifully directed film? Does anyone come out of this movie feeling emotion? If so, what was that emotion? I’m curious. Cause I felt way more emotion watching the first act of The Flash.

Obviously, something works in the film. This movie might end up becoming Nolan’s most successful movie ever. So I ask you, what am I missing? What is it that I’m not seeing? I truly want to know. One of my favorite movies ever is Terrance Malick’s The Thin Red Line. That movie does not stand up to narrative scrutiny. It is an uneven plotless experiment. But the cinematography is gorgeous. The score is amazing. The acting is incredible. There’s a realness to the way the film is shot that makes it feel like you really are in the middle of a war. So maybe that’s what people are feeling here? It’s more of a feeling they get while watching this movie? Help me. Help me understand why I don’t see the genius in Oppenheimer. Be as harsh as you want!

A voice from above spoke to me this weekend. Gave me some life-changing screenwriting advice that I pass on to you guys. I’ve got some Christopher Nolan trivia that only true Nolan fans will be able to answer. We’ve got some amazing trailers to dissect, including Wonka, Napolean, and Neil Blomkamp’s latest. I reflect on one of the great screenwriting runs of our time. I highlight a James Cameron AI quote that I couldn’t agree with more. And I’ve got a new script review for you that’s going to inspire the heck out of you action-thriller writers.

No official post today. Sorry about that. If you haven’t received this newsletter or haven’t received any others, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the list!

I’m way too busy at the moment to do a proper post. However, I’ve been wanting to post about the “Give it 3 Pages” test for a while now and this seems like the perfect time.

The “Give it 3 Pages” test is this idea that it’s impossible to get people to read your script. But anyone will read 3 pages. So you should be asking people not to read your script. But to read the first 3 pages of your script.

And guess what? If you’ve done your job, they’ll keep reading. In other words, it’s a cheat code. You get people to read your script who would never otherwise read your script.

There’s a caveat, of course. Those first 3 pages need to be good enough that people want to keep reading. But guess what gift you receive if they don’t keep reading? You get the gift of knowing you need to improve your first 3 pages.

So here’s what I want everyone to do. In the comments section, ask as many people as possible to read your first 3 pages. As the reader, you simply tell the writer if you stopped after page 3 or kept reading. If you kept reading, that’s a win for the writer.

Since I know [almost] everyone here is nice, a lot of you are going to say you stopped on page 3 but “plan to keep reading.” No no no no. Sorry writers. That doesn’t count if the reader says that. They have to actually have kept reading. Not say that they plan to keep reading.

If you’ve done your job, they will keep reading because they will not have been able to stop.

All right.

Have at it, everyone.

The “Give it 3 Pages” Test.

I want everyone who’s reading this post to stand up.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Are you standing?

Good. Now, I want you to start clapping.

And Hollywood? Take a bow. Because you’ve earned it.

Over these last three years, there was a strong belief that the theatrical box office was dead.

Even when mega-hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way of Water, racked up gobs of money, those were still sequels. Audiences were coming “back” as opposed to coming “to.”

Would people still come “to” a movie?

It turns out they will. And this is such a great development because I was honestly scared. I thought theatrical film might really be on its way out. When a goofy movie like Barbie and a 3-hour historical film chronicling 200,000 deaths can both dip less than 45% on their second weekend after gigantic first weekend takes, that’s not just unheard of in 2023. That’s rare throughout the history of cinema.

To give you some perspective, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning dropped 65% in its second weekend. And that was off a much smaller opening than either Barbie or Oppenheimer.

So, what’s happening here? Why are we getting this amazing surge in moviegoing interest?

I get it when it comes to Barbie. Barbie isn’t so much a movie as it is a movement. A big part of that movement is that the movie oozes fun. You see the marketing and it makes you feel good. It’s bright. It’s goofy. It’s pink. It’s exactly what you want out of a summer film.

The movie that’s perplexing me is Oppenheimer. This is the kind of movie that you release in October and market it as an Oscar contender for six months. How a film with such depressing subject matter is performing so well in the middle of summer is something box office aficionados are going to be studying for years.

It’s funny, I overheard a couple of people discussing Oppenheimer at Trader Joe’s the other day and I couldn’t help but join in. They both loved the film. I asked them if they got bored after the bomb dropped and they said no. They liked seeing the fallout and how Oppenheimer dealt with it.

It’s something I’ve thought a lot about since the movie. Am I such a slave to structure that I’m unable to comprehend a movie that doesn’t use it in a traditional way? Usually, when the bomb drops, you get to the epilogue and roll those end credits.

In the interest of full disclosure, both those guys I talked to were clearly cinephiles. After we finished our Oppenheimer discussion, they were trying to sell me on an outdoor silent showing of Lawrence of Arabia. I told them, politely of course, that I’d rather take a long walk off a short pier.

In other words, I know cinephiles will love anything Nolan does. But regular moviegoers seem to like the never-ending story as well and I think I know why. When you like a movie, you don’t want it to end. So I suspect that’s what’s going on here. Instead of Mr. Obsessed Structure Guy (me) mechanically complaining that now that the bomb has dropped, the movie should end, they’re just happy this movie they’re enjoying isn’t over yet!

I’m not going to try any harder to figure it out. Regardless of whether I liked it, I’m very happy it’s doing well. Cause this is going to give studios confidence again. Studios with confidence are a lot more fun than studios without confidence. Because studios without confidence bank on boring safe IP. Studios with confidence take chances.

A question a lot of smart people are asking in the wake of this success is, “How do you create a movement?” A movement is bigger than a movie in that the audience becomes both customer and disciple. The experience isn’t just a passive trip to the theater. It’s a party.

This is particularly true with Barbie and it goes back to one of the oldest rules in the Hollywood book – one that they often forget – which is to GIVE US SOMETHING FUN. It may be cool to write something dark. But outside of LA and New York, audiences want something fun. They want to ESCAPE THEIR EVERYDAY LIVES for two hours AND FEEL GOOD WHILE DOING IT. And I’m not sure there’s ever been a more perfect option than Barbie.

I’ll never forget what Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio said when they were on one of the most lucrative screenwriting streaks ever (Shrek franchise, Pirates franchise, Zorro). They said they don’t understand why writers handcuff themselves with super dark material when there’s way more money to be made by writing fun stuff that people feel happy while watching.

Of course, this fails to explain Oppenheimer. But like I said. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to explain why this movie is doing so well. There are several factors (Nolan is his own brand, the impossible-to-foresee Barbenheimer movement, one of the most star-studded press tours in history) that are making it hard to nail down.

But like I said – WHO CARES??!! All that matters now is that people are coming to see movies and they’re really excited about it. So suck it Netflix, TikTok, and video games. Movies are back, baby!