Genre: Action/Adventure
Premise: Indiana Jones is pulled into one last adventure when his goddaughter asks him to help her find a dial created by Archimedes that has the power to travel through time.
About: The fifth and final Indiana Jones film, which is said to have cost 280 million dollars, pulled in just 60 million dollars over the weekend, continuing a trend of weak box office showings this year.  This is the first Indiana Jones movie not directed by Steven Spielberg.  It was directed by James Mangold, who Lucasfilm was so happy with that they hired him to make a Star Wars movie about the origins of the Force.
Writers: Jez & John-Henry Butterworth AND David Koepp & James Mangold (characters by George Lucas and Phillip Kaufman). Phoebe Waller-Bridge is said to have done some script work as well
Details: 150 minutes

As I approached the digital ticket kiosk to purchase my entry into Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, I attempted to bypass the annoying button prompts by simply humming the Indiana Jones score, figuring the kiosk would know what movie I wanted and simply ask for my credit card info.

Not only did that not happen, the pleasant pimple-faced teenager tasked with monitoring the kiosks came over to ask me if I was okay.

But you know what did happen?

I got to see a good Indiana Jones movie.

It’s unfortunate that Indiana Jones number 5 wasn’t number 4. Cause number 4 was a disaster of epic proportions. It was so bad, in fact, that the screenwriter, David Koepp, came out and said that he knew he was going to be taking bullets for the screenplay. That NEVER happens, where the screenwriter admits before the movie has come out that it’s bad.

Dial of Destiny, even though it’s not a perfect film, is a film where you can tell they did everything in their power to write a good screenplay.

The thing with the scripts for these gigantic blockbuster movies is that they’re often less about writing a cohesive story than they are pleasing the 10 major creative forces on the film, and patching together the ugly disconnected mess of ideas from those forces with bridges just strong enough to keep the movie together.

That’s not the feeling I got from this movie at all. Maybe it’s because this was the last Indiana Jones and they didn’t have to worry about setting up future storylines. Which meant they could write the best story possible. Or maybe they just sat down and kept at it until they got the screenplay right.

The film is set in 1969. I think Indiana is 75 years old in this iteration. He lives in New York by himself in some apartment downtown. Unlike the glory days when he was young and sexy and girls used to blink at him with “I luv you” written on their eyelids, now Indiana is old and no one cares about his lectures anymore. Which is probably why he retires.

Indiana gets a drink at a local bar and is approached by Helena, his goddaughter. Helena tries to get Indiana to don the hat and whip one more time to search for something called the Antikythera, a dial that Archimedes created that is rumored to be able to manipulate time. Indiana then surprises Helena by bringing her back to the school and showing her that he already has the Antikythera. Or, at least, one-half of it.

This is when it’s revealed that Helena is not a very cool goddaughter. She steals the Antikythera and heads off to Africa to sell it. Around this time, Indiana learns that a Nazi named Dr. Voller is looking for the Antikythera as well and may have some nefarious use for it. Which means that old Indy will have to don the hat and whip again. And off he goes.

In true 2023 blockbuster McGuffin fashion, there are multiple McGuffin pieces to search for. Indy and Helena reluctantly join forces, traveling around the world to find out where the second half of the Antikythera is. Just when they find it, Dr. Voller sweeps in and takes it, and then takes *them* on a time-traveling trip to the beginning of World War 2, where he plans to win Germany the war. Except they don’t end up in 1939. They end up in 214 BC. And not even Indy knows how they’re going to get back home from here.

Here’s the thing about this movie. It’s probably the best Indy movie outside of the first one. With that said, I’d still rather watch the first three again than I would this one. How does that make sense? Because an action movie with an 80-year-old star just doesn’t work. To be fair, Harrison Ford is probably the only actor on the planet who could make an 80-year-old action movie work. But it still just feels wrong. Which is why I’d still rather watch those first three films.

But anyone saying this isn’t a good movie is crazy.

It’s a good movie. Maybe even a really good movie.

And I’m going to give you a comp so you understand why this movie is good. Jurassic World Dominion. Both these movies are trying to do similar things. They very much operate in the same universe. They even try to rip off a combo of Indiana Jones and Han Solo to make that awful pilot character Kayla Watts.

The difference is that this screenplay is a million times tighter. Jurassic World Dominion is the bad version of Dial of Destiny. It’s what could’ve happened if bad screenwriting would’ve reined.

The McGuffin was cool. There were always goals, stakes, and urgency. The bad guy was cool. The dynamic between Indiana and Helena was strong. Keep in mind that this was the first we’ve ever seen a female co-star with Indy that wasn’t a love interest. That alone made their dynamic feel fresh. Most importantly, the writers did a really good job keeping the reader up to date with what was going on.

I always knew what leg of the story we were on and what they were after. This is something Hollywood has gotten so lazy with recently, especially in the last phase of Marvel films, where the plot not only got convoluted, but the writers didn’t prioritize keeping you up to date with what the characters were after and why it was important. These writers on Dial of Destiny did a great job of that.

It sounds like some people had a problem with Helena. Like I said, I thought the dynamic was interesting between her and Indy. I always look for twists on the conflict between the movie’s primary team-up characters and this movie had that. If Helena would’ve just been some random chick who hated Indy and that’s where the conflict came from, that would’ve been boring. The fact that she’s family, though, adds another layer. It creates a “positive” that’s pulling at their dynamic as opposed to just a “negative.” I liked that.

I just want to take a moment to appreciate what’s happened in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s career. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was a nobody until someone forced her to write this play called “Fleabag,” which she then turned into a show, which received a lot of acclaim, which got her meetings everywhere. And the next thing she knows SHE’S SHARING SCREENTIME WITH HARRISON FORD ON AN INDIANA JONES MOVIE.

ALL THIS HAPPENED BECAUSE SHE WROTE SOMETHING. I said the same thing about Taylor Sheridan in my newsletter. He was a nobody. Now he owns a ranch as big as Los Angeles. All because he wrote something. Everybody who’s reading this right now. Know this: You have a very powerful tool in your hands. If you use it well, who’s to say you can’t be on a giant franchise set in three years? It seems impossible but it obviously isn’t. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is proof of that.

Okay, back to the review.

Some people didn’t like the crazy third act. A few of you will probably wonder how I can prop up this screenplay with a third act this bonkers. I’ll admit that the third act doesn’t quite work. The movie didn’t do a good enough job setting it up. What does this time and this war really have to do with Indiana Jones’s legacy?

In regards to screenwriting, though, here’s the way I see it: Good writers take risks. They take big swings. So I admire Mangold and all the writers who worked on this taking a big swing like that. It didn’t quite work. Okay. But I’d rather take that big swing than aim for that double out to right-center field. If you’re going out, as the Indiana Jones franchise is, go out swinging!

This is the second best-written Indiana Jones movie of the five films. Period. But, as a movie, it’s limited by its 80-year-old action star. Which is why I wish they would’ve made this the 4th film and ended the franchise there. Indy at 63 could’ve made everything here a lot more convincing. RIP Mutt.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Pacing vs. Character Development.  You’ll often have to balance how much character development you can include in a script versus how fast you can keep your story moving.  One of the problems people had with Helena is that she’s very capable in dangerous intense action-packed situations.  But how?  We’re not given enough information on that.  Here’s the answer: I can almost guarantee that that information was in earlier drafts of the script. But they needed to keep the pace moving.  And when you need the pace ratcheted up, the first thing that goes is character development on SECONDARY CHARACTERS.  You don’t take character development away from your hero.  You take it away from the other characters.  Which is why Helena feels a little thin.  In the end, they left us with some quick mug shots of Helena, which indicated she did have a rough and tumble past.  But it wasn’t enough to truly explain everything she was able to do.  In a perfect world you would have both pace and character development. But if you have to choose, script pace is more important than secondary character development. So lean towards pace.  A sloggy script read will negate any care we have about your characters anyway.

Note: I am taking the holiday off tomorrow.  Happy 4th everyone!  Seeya Wednesday!  

Genre: Teen Comedy
Premise: 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!
About: This is the logline that won the June Logline Showdown. Congrats to E.C. for the big win. He had to beat out six contestants instead of the usual four. So good job, E.C. Next month’s (July) logline showdown is for TV pilots. If you have a TV pilot logline you would like to enter, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, and logline, by Thursday, July 20th, at 10pm Pacific Time!
Writer: E.C. Henry
Details: 118 pages

Not many people had E.C. destroying the Logline Showdown competition on their bingo cards. Yet here we are. His win comes with a collective question from the Scriptshadow community: Does the script contain lit expression, E.C.’s trademarked writing style that includes varied colorful fonts?  I can answer this question, which will excite some but upset others. Because this script was a written a decade ago, it is PRE-lit expression.

Now, on to the logline itself. Why did this logline do so well? Obviously, it’s funny. A robot shows up and says, “Your entire world is in danger,” and the guys respond by reprogramming it to help them score some ladies.

But I think there’s a deeper level to this concept that elevates it above just a quick laugh. Which is that, to a 17 year old male high school virgin, getting laid is EVERYTHING. It is all you think about. So, in a weird way, there’s this universal truth to their clueless decision. For them, OF COURSE getting laid is more important than the impending end of the world.

Now let’s check out if the script is any good.

High school teens, Chip, and his best friend, Dennis, are trying to make it through senior year. Chip is stuck with a girlfriend, Gretchen, who he doesn’t like. Who he really wants is the prettiest girl in school, Daphne. The problem is that Daphne is with cool jock, McGroover.

So Dennis and Chip try to come up with creative ways he can win Daphne over, which include sneaking up to her bedroom unannounced wearing a Three Musketeers outfit. And what do you know, it kinda works! Daphne thinks Chip’s gesture is creative and gives him a kiss through the window.

Meanwhile, a billion miles away, we meet an alien race of hawk-winged people called the Teltides, who send a scout to earth, who immediately impersonates a father in the neighborhood named Mike. On that same planet, an underwater species sends their robot, Bubblehead, to warn earth what the Teltides are up to – which amounts to destroying humanity.

When Bubblehead arrives, it is Dennis and Chip who first run into him. And right as they do, Bubblehead stumbles out of his ship and short-circuits. So the friends take him back to Dennis’s where Dennis works on him and brings him back to life. The annoyed Bubblehead warns them about the alien invasion but Dennis and Chip ignore him and bring him to school.

Hilariously, bringing a walking talking robot to school doesn’t provoke much attention. Even the teachers seem okay with Bubblehead hanging around. When a big party then gets announced, the best friends realize that their female problems are going to come to a head. Will they be able to overcome them? And, oh yeah, will the aliens attack and destroy the world?

I could sense E.C. was a little nervous about this review. I think we’d all be nervous about revealing decade-old writing. But I remember Harrison Ford promoting the 1997 special edition of Star Wars where a previously unused scene of him would be placed in the movie. Ford was asked whether he was nervous before the screening and he said, “Yeah,” defiantly. “It’s 20 year old acting.” If Harrison Ford can be afraid of an extra scene with Han Solo, I’ll allow E.C. to be afraid of an old script.

So, Bubbledhead Saves the Day is similar to a lot of the stuff I read from E.C., which is that it has these brilliant little moments but they get usurped by issues with the storytelling. For example, when Bubblehead is first called upon to give his opinion on Chip and Dennis, this is what he says: “Fine. I’ll tell you what I think. You are a conspirator. A man of low, moral character.” And then: “That’s right. I came to this planet with a message of dire importance for the leaders of this world to consider, yet those who discovered me saw it more fitting that I be reduced to serving typically overpriced, caffeinated beverages to their fellow members of this low order of education, as a means of subversively elevating their own social status amongst their peers.”

This is EXACTLY what I was hoping for when I read the script. A goofy funny robot that these guys are trying to use to their benefit.

But there’s so much standing in the way of us getting that. For starters, there needs to be 70% less description in this script and 70% more dialogue. High school comedy scripts are DIALOGUE-DRIVEN SCRIPTS. The only time there should be a lot of description is during the set pieces. Otherwise, I shouldn’t see any descriptive paragraphs at all. It should be all dialogue.

In fact, the majority of this script should’ve been ONLY Dennis, Chip, and Bubblehead talking. If this was a dialogue script that had these three arguing with each other 90% of the time, it would’ve been hilarious.

To E.C.’s credit, he added an element that I didn’t expect, which was that Bubblehead is resistant to his programming. Which I think is perfect for a 2023 version of this movie, because you could have Bubblehead be a stand-in for the ultra-socially-progressive Chat GPT, which doesn’t want these guys hitting on women. It could be giving them all the “socially acceptable” advice to pick up women, which of course never works. That could be really funny.

But, none of that stuff matters when I can’t even get a feel for who the main characters are in the first act. I thought Mike and Todd may have been the main characters at first. I didn’t even know Dennis and Chip were best friends until the second act, when we actually start getting scenes of them together.

I understand that writing a high school comedy is tough because you’re going to have a lot of high school characters in the story. And you have to introduce them somewhere and somehow. But those introductions shouldn’t come at the expense of us understanding who our lead characters are.

I can’t emphasize this enough. If your first act is confusing in any way, it’s very hard to recover from that. It’s like trying to recover from a bad first impression. The other person has already given up on you. I had to fight my way back into understanding this story after the first act.

And the fix is easy. 75% of the first act, focus on Chip and Dennis. Use the other 25% to introduce the other key characters. And then you can always introduce anyone else who didn’t make the first act at the beginning of the second act.

The other major faux pas is that we’re not delivering on the promise of the premise. I didn’t start getting anywhere close to the logline I read until page 60. And even then, it wasn’t enough. Bubblehead is probably your funniest element and he’s barely in the movie.

That’s not to mention that Chip isn’t even having problems with women! He’s got two women on his jock! If the whole premise is that these guys need help to get laid, then let’s show them as cute hopeless incels. They can’t get women to notice them for their life. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t even think that Dennis cares about getting laid. Which is supposed to be the point of the movie!

So, unfortunately, this didn’t have the necessary foundation to breathe life into the fun premise. I still think it’s a great idea. But it needs a reevaluation and fresh approach in order to work.

But one more prop for my man, E.C. Anybody who names their principal character, “Principal Bumpkins,” gets a smile from me.

Script link: Bubblehead Saves the Day

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

What I learned: It is critical in genres (high school movies, war movies) that have a large group of central characters, that you really strategize how you’re going to introduce them so that they’re all unique and easy to identify. Cause, as readers, if we’re meeting 15 high schoolers, how easy do you think it is for us to remember who’s who? And how all those characters relate to one another? It’s not easy at all. So introduce your main characters first if possible. Give them big luxurious descriptions so we know they’re important. Give them names that are easily differentiated from one another, and that, hopefully, sound like the person. “Waldo,” for example, would place the image of a nerd in the reader’s head. And just be very specific and detailed in regards to how everyone is related (Joe is best friends with Frank. Emma is the daughter of John). You have to hold our hand with that stuff because it’s some of the easiest stuff for the reader to forget.

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.