Genre: TV Pilot – Half-Hour Comedy “Documentary”
Winning Logline: A parody of ‘makeover’ reality shows, Beyond Help with Handy Andy follows overconfident yet completely incompetent “Handy Andy” Cornwall as he travels the country documenting his attempts to fix everything from failing restaurants to broken marriages, in the hopes of selling his half-assed reality show to a network. Look out, America. He’s helping!
About: Today’s pilot script won the TV Pilot Script Showdown, a rare opportunity for TV writers to battle it out on the, otherwise, feature-focused Scriptshadow. It comes from Scriptshadow vet, Colin O’Brien (CJob).
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Details: 36 pages
Adam Devine for Andy?
The half-hour comedy, once the cornerstone of the TV industry, has fallen on tough times.
They say that feature film comedies have become non-existent and that’s because everyone can get their comedy fix on TV. But where is that comedy show that’s giving us earth-shattering knee-slappers these days?
A lot of today’s comedies seem to want just as much drama in them as humor. Succession. Barry. Shrinking. The last bona fide “everyone watched it” TV comedy was The Office. Ted Lasso was pretty big but I don’t know if it got anywhere near “Office” level.
The most interesting half-hour comedy show I’ve seen lately was Jury Duty. It follows a fake jury during a fake Los Angeles court case where one of the jury members is a real person who has no idea that he’s participating in a facade.
It was fascinating, kind of messed up, and doing something different with the struggling comedy genre.
Let’s see if Handy Andy can carve out its own slice of the comedy pie!
Andy is a 40-year-old dude who just decides, out of nowhere, that he’s going to start one of those “fix it” reality shows. He only has one employee, the non-English speaking Miguel, who holds the camera for him. It’s not clear how Andy gets production sound for his shoots.
Andy’s first fix-it job is the Carters, a family living in a slightly dilapidated house that the city may tear down if it doesn’t start looking nicer soon. Simon, the father, Vanna, the wife, Sandra, the teenage daughter, and Kevin, the young son, are reasonably happy to have someone who’s going to take care of this issue for them.
The problem is, Andy has no idea what he’s doing. Nor does he listen. So despite the outside of the house being the part that needs to be fixed, Andy focuses on the inside. For example, he buys a slightly better couch for the living room.
Also, Andy doesn’t really have a production plan, so he just sleeps at the houses of his clients, which is the first sign to the Carter family that they may have signed up for something they shouldn’t have.
After Andy does several pointless things around the house, he finally decides to work on the outside, and when the Carters are gone, he re-does their driveway. The only problem is, he places their car on that driveway before the wet concrete has set. Which means the car is now stuck in the driveway.
That’s it for the Carters, who not only fire Andy immediately, but warn everyone in the community about this scam reality show host. Problem is, Andy is so clueless that he doesn’t care. A few days later, he’s on to his next assignment: a restaurant. What ever trouble is Andy going to get into there?
Beyond Help is an amusing pilot.
But, if I’m being honest, I was hoping for more laughs.
Every 15 pages or so, Andy would say something that made me chuckle. For example, Andy has this wife who’s left him. And he still thinks they’re going to be together. So he shows a picture of her to the camera. But, of course, because she hates him, he has to blur her face out.
This is my beautiful wife, Jan. You can’t actually tell she’s beautiful because we had to blur her face for legal reasons. You know how that is. (shrugs) Anyway, her loss. I’m sure once the show’s a hit she’ll come crawling back. (sad smile) Because I’ll tell you one thing, they can’t blur her out of my heart.
Little jokes like that always make me smile.
But I’m not watching a show like this to chuckle or smile. I’m watching a show like this to laugh. And I don’t think there was a single LOL moment for me in the cleverly titled, Beyond Help.
The problem, in my opinion, was that the execution of the comedy was too safe and predictable. You don’t want to hear either of those critiques in comedy feedback. But I’d ask Colin, where are you pushing the envelope with the comedy? Where are you giving us that unexpected joke or doing comedy we haven’t seen before or pushing the limits of the “documentary format” half-hour comedy? Or just giving us a genuinely fresh joke?
Again, Jury Duty gave you a character who didn’t realize he was in a comedy. Which created some highly interesting moments.
Even the 15 year old Office was pushing the envelope. One of their most famous episodes was titled “Gay Witch Hunt” and you watched Michael try to find out if anyone else in the office was gay after finding out the shocking truth that Oscar was gay.
Leslie Knope’s defining characteristic in Parks and Rec was her undying optimism for improving the community despite the fact that her department was created specifically to do nothing.
I don’t know what Andy’s primary comedic characteristic is. He just seems to be clueless. I’m not sure that’s enough. Note how with The Office and Parks and Rec, the main character’s defining comedic characteristic was in direct opposition to what needed to be done. Michael wants to be every employee’s friend. But if you do that, employees aren’t going to be incentivized to work hard. Leslie Knope wants so badly to help the community. But the government doesn’t want her to work at all.
I suppose, once people meet Andy and realize he’s an idiot, they don’t want his help anymore. And I guess that’s the primary obstacle creating comedic conflict? But just as I wrote that, I’m not convinced we’re getting enough out of this character.
Also, some of the comedy feels dated. Miguel is a clueless non-English speaking Mexican who never understands what Andy says to him. This feels like Napoleon Dynamite humor circa 2004.
On top of that, the world-building here has a lot of holes in it. Andy is broke yet he still has enough money to buy a new couch for the family. Andy is broke yet he can afford to re-do someone’s driveway. The rules were confusing. And while you may think that it doesn’t matter in a comedy as long as it’s funny, that logic only works when the rest of the script is firing on all cylinders.
When it’s all said and done, Beyond Help reads like a lot comedies that come across my desk. Which is that the overall concept makes you laugh. But when get into the nitty-gritty – the execution – nothing is elevating above the page.
It’s a reminder of how hard comedy is. Once you come up with a funny idea, a lot of writers think the work is over. But the real work has only begun. You gotta go through every scene and honestly ask yourself how funny it is on a 1-10 scale. And then keep rewriting until every one of those scenes is at least at a 7 out of 10 on the funny scale, but preferably at an 8 out of 10 or higher.
The majority of the current scenes here were at a 4 or 5 out of 10 on the funny scale. That’s not good enough. Especially for a pilot. Producers and audiences will give you leeway on season 3 episode 4. But the pilot has to sing. It’s got to be next level. And when I read this pilot, I didn’t feel like Colin was giving me everything he was capable of.
Moving forward, it would help if we got to know Andy’s real life a bit. The thing with comedy is that the audience needs to know who the character is in their real life so they understand the dynamic of what they’ve been thrust into.
I couldn’t place who Andy was in his real life. Was he just some dimwitted idiot who decided to do this job one day? Or was there a progression that led him to this point? For us to understand the comedy, I think we need some insight into that, either through 5-10 pages of main character setup or, if you wanted to be more artsy, you could intercut flashbacks of how Andy came upon this idea throughout the pilot.
I’ll now call upon the comedy experts of this site to give Colin some funnier prompts to work with. What scenarios can we explore in the Handy Andy universe that are going to give us more laughs? Cause I still think there’s something to this idea. But it definitely needs a jolt to the comedic heart. It’s way too casually executed.
Pilot Link: Beyond Help
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I need to first see that Jim Carrey obsessively lies in Liar Liar for the comedy in that movie to work. It’s only once I see his dependence on telling lies that I’m able to laugh when he can no longer tell them. This pilot needed that. I need to know who Andy is in the real world before I can appreciate who he is in the fix-it world. Cause he can’t just be a generic moron. That’s not funny enough.
SUPER SCRIPT CONSULTATION DEAL!!! – If you e-mail me and mention today’s pilot script, “Beyond Help,” I will give you 200 DOLLARS off a feature screenplay consult (4 pages of notes) and 100 DOLLARS off a pilot script consult. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com by the end of the weekend!
Shocker: It’s only three things.
As I come up on two decades of meticulously studying this craft, I’ve been thinking, what is my “theory of everything” when it comes to screenwriting? What is the “whole ball of wax” in regards to how to write a script that’s genuinely good?
I use that phrase “genuinely good” because the screenwriting world is packed with screenplays that range from bad, to not very good, to okay, to good. It’s actually kind of easy to write a good screenplay if you’re a working screenwriter. Cause you know all the tricks of the trade.
But how do you write something that’s genuinely good? Something that moves people?
I wanted to use today’s post to explore that question because a lot of writers are misguided in regards to how they approach screenwriting, shooting themselves in the foot long before they’ve typed a word of their screenplay.
There is not, nor will there ever be, a perfect formula for writing a great script and that’s because the world is constantly changing and the things that people like and accept and are interested in are changing with it. So something that was exciting six months ago might feel stale and uninteresting today.
There are also too many variables within a screenplay to be able to control them all. No matter how good of a writer you are, there are always going to be things that get away from you when you write.
There was a recent interview in Variety with the director of the infamous cinematic dud, Gigli, Martin Brest. He stated in the article that, during editing, he was looking at this scene that wasn’t working and he thought to himself, “I knew why this scene used to be in the movie and what its purpose was. I don’t have any idea why it’s in the movie now.”
That’s screenwriting in a nutshell. You have all these grand ideas but, over the course of writing a bunch of drafts, some of those ideas stick and others falter. Despite this, the remnants of every one of those ideas are still stuck in your script’s DNA, making your screenplay part story, part time capsule.
At times, it makes screenwriting feel impossible. Screenplays are like children. You can try to parent them. But, at a certain point, they want to become their own person.
So, in the pursuit of writing a great screenplay, you have to accept that there’s a certain lack of control. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set yourself up for success. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. Here are the three most important things when it comes to writing a genuinely good screenplay.
CONCEPT
Field-testing a concept is probably the most important thing you can do in your pursuit of writing a great screenplay. And it’s the part of the process that the majority of writers get wrong. Especially beginner writers. Cause beginner writers assume that any idea they come up with is amazing.
The reason concept is such a problem is because the idea-inspiration process is antithetical to the idea-generation process. Most of us get inspired by something and want to write a movie about it. But just because it inspires us doesn’t mean anyone else would want to watch it. I may love the scientific exploration of algae. But would any sort of reliable audience be interested in a movie about algae? Probably not.
On the flip side, when you try to manufacture a concept, you may come up with a more technically marketable premise. But gone is the inspiration. And because you’re not personally inspired, the idea has no soul. It’s nearly impossible to write a great script if you don’t feel that soulful connection with it.
This is why you have to field-test concepts. You have to come up with ideas that both inspire you as well as contain marketability then run them by at least five people who you know aren’t trying to make you feel good (you know you’ve got a good field tester if they’ve told you one of your previous ideas was garbage). You need at least a couple of those people to be really excited about your concept. Preferably more than that. And five testers is just the minimum. Try to get as many opinions as you can.
I’d estimate that 80% of all screenplays written are doomed before the writer writes a single word because of a weak concept.
AN INTERESTING MAIN CHARACTER
There are three facets to the main character that you have to get right. The first is that we must make our main character interesting. A huge mistake writers make is they create a boring protagonist. This is rarely done on purpose. Most writers assume their hero is interesting simply due to the fact that they’re in the center of their story’s chaos for two hours. All these crazy things may be happening to your hero. But that doesn’t make *them* interesting.
So, look for ways to make your main character unique, charming, weird, have a big personality. Maybe a more succinct way to put it is to make them larger than life. Ferris Bueller was this untamed nuclear blast of energy. From Tony Stark to Deadpool to Daniel Plainview to Elle Woods to Juno. These characters are not wallflowers. They exert their force upon the world. As such, it is impossible for them not to impact us.
Next, we need a hero we can root for. That doesn’t mean they have to be likable. In fact, complex “unlikable” protagonists (Louis Bloom, Travis Bickle, Arthur Fleck) produce some of the best movies. But that complexity can never come at the expense of rootforabiality. Which essentially means, if one lacks likability, they must possess our sympathy. “Joker” is a masterclass in creating sympathy (getting bullied, takes care of sick mother, has a mental condition) for a genuinely unlikable person.
Finally, I’ve found that the best scripts have characters that are torn. They’re being pulled in different directions and the attempt to reconcile the chaos within them makes them compelling to read. Because even when there’s zero plot going on, there’s still something going on within the character himself.
A good recent example of this is Hijack, the series on Apple. Sam Nelson is torn. He just wants to get back to his family alive. And to do that, he’s willing to help the hijackers. But he, of course, also wants to protect the passengers. So he’s constantly having to make these tough choices regarding what’s more important – the safety of the passengers or himself.
And this doesn’t just have to be a dramatic thing. One of the most famous comedies of all time, Liar Liar, has Jim Carrey’s character in this never-ending battle of wanting to lie but having to tell the truth. There isn’t a single moment in the film where he’s comfortable. That’s a good indication that you’ve constructed a character with some genuine inner conflict.
A GREAT PLOT
Finally, you need to nail your plot. An understanding of the basics is essential here. You’ve got to have a character who wants something badly (their goal). You have to give that goal consequences if it’s not obtained (stakes). And you have to create urgency in the plot somehow.
You also want your plot to build. Every 15-20 pages has to feel bigger than the previous 15-20 pages. And you want to throw a lot of obstacles at your protagonist. It must feel like the universe is against them. Everywhere they look, there’s a new problem (see the second season of “The Bear”).
But the real trick with plot is that YOU MUST STAY AHEAD OF THE READER. 99% of the scripts I read, I know what’s going to happen in the next scene, five scenes from now, ten scenes from now. The weaker the writer is, the less they monitor where the reader is in relation to them. Which is how the reader gets way out in front of you, impatiently waiting for you to catch up.
You should always be asking yourself, “What is the reader expecting in this moment?” Sometimes, you should give them what they’re expecting. But you should also surprise them occasionally. Because if your reader isn’t sure what’s coming next, they’re a lot more interested in turning the pages.
Some recent movies where I didn’t know what was coming next were Parasite, Coda, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Us, Jojo Rabbit, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and Avatar: The Way Of Water.
Obviously, this is more difficult to do when you’re writing mainstream movies. But it’s definitely possible. Who saw that Liz’s father twist coming in Spiderman: Homecoming? And the great thing about throwing a twist like that in is, you place the reader on shaky ground. They no longer think they know what’s coming. Therefore, even if you decide never to include another twist again, you’re ahead of the audience just by the mere fact that they know one *could* come.
Obviously, having a unique perspective on life that informs your writing, giving it its own unique flavor, is going to improve all three of the facets I mentioned above. But this post is more for the writer who doesn’t have that game-changing unique voice. I want those writers to know that, with word work, they can still write a genuinely good screenplay.
There will never be a one-size-fits-all-formula for screenwriting. It’s why even AI will never master this craft. How can you master a moving target? But if you focus on the above three steps, you will give yourself the best opportunity to write something great.
What’s your personal “Theory of Screenwriting Everything?”
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) When a non-confrontational playwright loses her engagement ring, she must travel through Italy to get it back with a man who was supposed to be just a one-night stand, discussing love and lying along the way.
About: Brooke Baker is fairly new to the screenwriting scene. Although she did write one episode of the TV mini-series, “Pam and Tommy.” This script finished on last year’s Black List with 15 votes.
Writer: Brooke Baker
Details: 104 pages
Kaitlyn Dever for Eleanor?
We’ve got a feminist interpretation of the rom-com genre in the latest Black List entry. Seeing the world though any socially progressive lens is going to give you a huge leg up on your Black List competition. Even if the script isn’t very good.
Eleanor is an English playwright who lives in New York and is vacationing in Rome. Eleanor is engaged to Noah, who she’s known since college. The whole reason she’s in Rome is to research an acting role in an upcoming play.
While there, she stumbles upon a funny handsome tour guide who delivers comedic zingers like, “This is the Fiumi Fountain, or Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. It was sculpted for Pope Innocent the tenth representing the four continents of papal influence. The cost of it could have fed people on those continents, but what’s hunger when you have the opportunity for an homage.” We may not be smitten by this lumbering joke. But for Eleanor, it’s the best joke she’s ever heard.
The two run into each other later, get a few drinks, and the next thing you know they’re performing a highly inappropriate naked variation of the Macarena. The next morning they concede it was a nice one-night stand and off Eleanor goes to meet a friend in Milan.
But while there, she loses her purse, which contains the engagement ring she wasn’t wearing. After a series of confusing actions that bring us back to Rome, Eleanor reunites with Lucas, who agrees to escort her back to Milan to locate her engagement ring.
That ring becomes an empty McGuffin as it’s only there to allow Lucas and Eleanor to spend more time together and commit more sins against humanity. It turns out, by the way, that Lucas is cheating on someone as well, the girlfriend he hasn’t told Eleanor about.
The two then proceed to look down on others to build up themselves, endearing them to us even more. Eventually, Eleanor figures out that Lucas has a girlfriend, storms off, and is lectured by her lesbian best friend who, for some reason, considers this the optimal moment to scold Eleanor for being straight. If she was gay, she says, her life would be perfect. It inspires Eleanor to dump Noah. But will she still reconnect with Lucas?
Let me start off by saying this is one of the most ideal types of scripts you can write – something with a light easy-to-understand premise, it’s marketable, it has a lot dialogue, and it’s easy to keep up with.
That doesn’t mean it’s the best *movie* to write. But script readers love scripts like this because they require so little investment. The reader can just sit back and enjoy themselves without thinking too much.
To that end, I commend “There You Are.” I read this script at a coffee shop. I tend to be a spaz at coffee shops, looking around at everyone every five seconds. This makes it nearly impossible for me to read scripts there.
But I had zero issues reading this script. So that says something.
However, when a script is really simple and only has a few characters, it is imperative that we like those characters. And I didn’t like Eleanor.
One thing that all writers should watch out for is writing characters who think they’re better than the rest of the world. Eleanor starts the movie out highly judgmental of some guy who hits on her. Then, seconds later, proceeds to fall in love with a man she hasn’t even met despite being engaged. Objectively speaking, which individual is more in the wrong here? The fact that the writer doesn’t realize that it’s Eleanor is odd.
And because this happens right when we meet Eleanor, we formulate a big fat negative opinion about our protagonist. Which means now you’re in the hole with the reader. It doesn’t mean you can’t change their mind. But you’ve added a ton more work for yourself if you plan to get yourself out of that hole.
A great comp for a movie that did this correctly was Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The character of Vicky, just like Eleanor, is engaged and she’s in another country and some attractive man hits on her. But Vicky is aggressively resistant towards him. This gets us on her side. We like that she’s done the right thing.
It’s only through a series of unpredictable events that Vicky is forced to spend time with Juan, where she finds out he’s actually much deeper and more thoughtful than she originally assumed. We watch them start to fall for each other in an organic way. So that when they finally sleep together, it feels natural and not like Vicky was instigating it.
Meanwhile, Eleanor’s over here raising her hand in the middle of the Collesum screaming, “Yaz, queen! Hit me up with that Italian D!” Which we would champion if she wasn’t engaged. But since she is, we’re, like, “What are you doing??” And we don’t like Lucas either. Because he’s cheating on his girlfriend as well.
As the movie goes on and the two begin exhibiting some guilt about what they did, they inch back towards respectability. But, by that time, the hole they dug was too deep. We despised what these two were doing, Eleanor in particular.
Also, there seemed to be these spotlight moments where both the writer and character say things that are completely un-self-aware. Late in the film when Eleanor’s friend points out that, despite everything, Eleanor seems to have enjoyed the experience, Eleanor replies, “God that’s depressing. The best time of my life was hanging out on a train with some a$$hole cheating on his girlfriend.” Wait a minute. Does Eleanor have access to a mirror??
You can make the argument that this movie is exploring reality as opposed to the bubble gum version of relationships and dating. Sometimes, as human beings, we do dumb illogical s—t. Sleep with the wrong people. Hurt those we love. The problem is, the script doesn’t have the requisite touch required to hold up to this more complex view of humanity.
Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s exploration of young love while traveling contains much deeper and more thoughtful conversations, the likes of which support the complex mistakes we make. Everything in There You Are made me think of a Netflix rom-com. And you can’t have brazenly unlikable leads in a Netflix rom-com. That’s not what we’re looking for when we press “play.”
Another story that did all of this way better was the second season of White Lotus. Portia falls for this guy, Jack, and their experience takes on this weird unpredictable journey where it turns out Jack’s life is a lot more complicated than it first seemed. And Portia starts to realize that she’s in over her head.
Meanwhile, “There You Are,” is a wish-fulfillment female fantasy that avoids the consequences of being selfish. The girl still gets the guy, despite both of them making deeply flawed choices they never have to answer for.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If your characters ever act like they’re better than others, we won’t like them. There’s this scene where Eleanor and Lucas are out at a bar and they meet some cool Americans and immediately start lying to them about who they are and acting like these other people, who just want to hang out, aren’t worthy of their time or respect. It solidified my dislike not just for them as individuals, but for them as a couple. From that point on, there was no way these two were ever going to climb back out of that unlikable hole.
What I learned 2: Don’t describe your characters with adjectives in your logline that are unconnected to the rest of the logline. Today’s logline starts with: “When a non-confrontational playwright loses her engagement ring…” How does being non-confrontational connect to anything else in this logline? If you had described her as a “commitment-phobe,” now you have a connecting adjective since the movie is about her cheating. But “non-confrontational?” That’s random and, therefore, makes the logline feel amateurish.
Genre: Biopic/Historical
Premise: The story of the development of the atomic bomb by its creator, J Robert Oppenheimer.
About: While it may not be getting Barbie-level love, Oppenheimer still somehow pulled in 80 million dollars this weekend, putting it on pace to become the biggest non-musical biopic ever. Believe it or not, writer Christopher Nolan wrote the Oppenheimer script in the first person! He also finished the script in a matter of months (not surprising after seeing the finished product).
Writers: Christopher Nolan (based on the book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin)
Details: 3 hours long
The computer seat layout for my AMC showing of Oppenheimer showed a 98% full capacity. But when I got into the theater, it was only 40% full. Looks like this fake seat-buying scam is becoming an epidemic!
But the important thing is that I finally got into the theater and saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Yahoo!
How was it?
Let’s find out.
I’m going to present the plot summary the way I saw it. I’m not going to look up anything online to help me because I want the movie to do the work on its own. If I got something wrong, it was the movie’s fault for not making it clear enough.
Oppenheimer starts in the late 30s when a clumsy young Robert Oppenheimer begins teaching a new form of physics – quantum physics. When World War 2 starts, a guy named Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) approaches Oppenheimer to start the Manhattan Project, which is the building of the first atomic bomb.
We then start jumping between three other storylines. One is set in the future (aka, present) where a man named Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) is testifying in front of Congress about – I think – whether the building of the bomb was the right thing to do and, also, whether Oppenheimer had been too sympathetic with the Russians during that time.
A third timeline has Oppenheimer, himself, being interrogated by a separate group of people about a couple of his Russian friends.
A fourth timeline seems to be embedded between these sections – although it’s unclear where – where we see Oppenheimer fall for a co-worker who’s a bit of a crazy pants (Florence Pugh). Oppenheimer eventually leaves her for a woman named Kitty (Emily Blunt).
I was never entirely clear on when everything took place. I was most comfortable in the Manhattan Project section because it was the only section where I was clear on what was happening. And it definitely was the best section.
It wasn’t as much of a race against time as I was hoping for. But the narrative was, at least, pushing forward. And when they finally do build the bomb and send it off to the military who then blow up Hiroshima, we never see any of that. We, instead, stay with Oppenheimer, who has very complex feelings about this bomb he built.
We then spend the last 45 minutes of the film in some political bugaboo plot where Oppenheimer and Strauss battle it out over issues that nobody who didn’t read the Oppenheimer biography understood. The end.
I’ve never questioned Christopher Nolan’s ability as a filmmaker. He may be the best pure filmmaker on the planet, his only competition, David Fincher.
Nolan clearly went into this thing wanting to catch a feeling. The feeling of what it was like at that time working on the most important project humanity had ever worked on.
And the way he went about it was… okay, I guess.
As per usual, Nolan is determined to prove he’s no ordinary storyteller. He laughs in the face of structure, eschewing 3 acts for this topsy-turvy maze of cross-cutting between the past, the semi-past, and the present. Taking a chapter out of Sorkin’s handbook, we get this “courtroom” present plotline that helps us look back at the building of the bomb, similar to what Sorkin did with The Social Network.
Nolan’s approach doesn’t have a rhyme or reason to it other than to keep us on our toes in hopes that we don’t get bored by watching 10,000 characters have 5000 conversations in medium-sized government rooms.
Indeed, I spent much of the running time trying to keep up with all the dots I was tasked with connecting. That kept my mind active enough that I wasn’t bored. Yet I was constantly asking myself what this was all about.
The only driving force behind the narrative was the construction of the bomb itself. Much like how we knew the ship was going to sink in Titanic, we know the bomb will be completed and blown up in Oppenheimer. Except in Titanic, we were with the people who were going to die, making the proceedings a lot more personal. Here, we never meet any of the people who are going to die by the bomb’s hand, eating into the drama considerably.
One of the most disappointing choices Nolan makes is not showing us the bomb exploding in Japan. And I know exactly why he didn’t show us. Because he rationalized: “Oppenheimer didn’t get to see it. So why should we?” It is one of the weaknesses that makes Nolan such a spotty writer. Everyone in the audience wanted to see that bomb go off. That’s what we’ve been waiting this whole movie for. And you’re not going to show us? It is the curse of the faux auteur. When you believe in yourself so highly as an artist, you deliberately make your audience suffer. It’s bad form.
Instead, Nolan seems way more interested in the less compelling storyline of “Is Oppenheimer sympathetic to communism or not?” The audience’s collective response to that question is, “Who the hell cares?” Nobody!
Oppenheimer ended the war. That’s what we care about. If he had a few Russian friends along the way, what does that matter? HE STILL ENDED THE WAR. He still won the war for the United States and the Allies. Why are we quibbling over his drinking buddies?
Nolan doubles-down, forcing the audience to stay in their seats a full 45 minutes after the movie has ended (the bomb has been dropped and Japan has surrendered) so that we can wonder if one of the Russians on the Manhattan Project spied and took all of Oppenheimer’s nuclear secrets, resulting in the Russians learning how to build nuclear bombs and starting an arms race.
Why do we not care about this? Because WE KNOW NOTHING COMES OF IT! We’re all still here. No nuclear wars have happened. So who cares? This is the most pointless plotline to focus on. Not to mention, Russia would’ve figured out how to build nuclear weapons regardless of whether there was a spy or not. The movie makes it clear early on that several countries were making rapid progress on building atomic bombs.
Because Nolan doesn’t know how to write, he missed the much better story option of leaning into the thriller aspects of this story. You had the most natural ticking time bomb ever (a LITERAL ticking time bomb). We have to build this bomb or hundreds of thousands more people will die in this drawn out war with the Japanese. Add the threat of someone else building a bomb before we did and you have yourself a much more effective narrative. Think The Imitation Game, which executed its war story much better.
But the biggest stumble by the brick and mortar director was his final act, if you can call it that. It went on and on and on and on. Rocky’s already won the goddamned fight! Find Adrian, kiss her, then GET THE F OUT! You’re done. The movie’s over.
Nope. Not Nolan. The man’s confused writer mind thought the better route would be to climax then keep you around for 45 minutes of pillow talk. Pillow talk is an apt metaphor, as half the things you say post-coital are mumbling incoherence. There was some beef between Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr.’s character that was the worst combination of super complex and completely irrelevant. WE DON’T CARE! WE CARED ABOUT THE FREAKING BOMB! Not whether two crybabies can say sorry to one another. Sheesh.
I’m sorry. I just can’t hold it in with this guy. He’s so talented in some respects but has this giant blind spot when it comes to his screenwriting. Oppenheimer reminds me a lot of Fincher’s “Mank.” Self-important. Pretentious. More about the director’s experience than the audience’s.
I’m not saying it doesn’t have anything to celebrate. Seeing all these great actors in one place was cool. Rami Malik, who lead his own billion dollar movie, is an extra in this film. That should give you an idea of the level of acting that was on display here.
Florence Pugh’s character was interesting. It provided the most human touch to the film.
And everything was beautiful to look at, of course.
But where’s the structure, man? Someone needs to sit Christopher Nolan down and explain to him that when you give the audience a climax, you’ve got about ten minutes max before they want to go home. Forcing them to stay at the party long after it was over was what turned this into a ‘not for me.’
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You can’t have your cake and eat it too in screenwriting. According to Nolan, he was fascinated by delayed consequences for one’s actions. So he really wanted to know what effect this bomb had on Oppenheimer long after it’d been used. But he also wanted to show the building and use of the bomb. Those are two different stories. You can tell a story about one. You can tell a story about the other. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. At least not in a movie. Maybe in a TV show. No one other than the most obsessed Nolan Stans are anything other than bored out of their minds during the final 45 minutes of this film because Nolan was trying to do two things that don’t complement each other.
I tried to go see Barbenheimer this weekend but I didn’t see the Barb or the Heimer. And it wasn’t my fault! I have been going to the movies for the past 3 years and the rule that has always worked for me is that if I go before noon, all the theaters are empty.
That wasn’t the case on Friday. When I arrived at the Grove – at 9:30 am mind you! – I saw a wave of pink. It was as if I was on some boat in the middle of a cotton candy ocean during a glitter-stoked hurricane.
There were a total of 4 seats in the first three Barbie showings and they were all that seat in the front of the theater all the way on the right.
So I said, “Okay, no problem. I’ll just see Oppenheimer.” But then, to my utter confusion, all the Oppenheimer showings were sold out as well! What the heck is going on here, I said out loud to myself, to which a nearby glob of hot pink-clad men responded, “Okay Barbie, he’s not invited to the party.”
Through my deductive skills, I arrived at the theory that families had come to the multiplex and split in two distinct directions the second they neared the concession stand. The women headed to Barbie and the men went off to see Oppenheimer. Which left me out of the movie loop for the weekend because I’d already had plans for Saturday and Sunday.
So what I think I’m going to do is go and see Oppenheimer tomorrow and write a review for Tuesday. It shouldn’t be hard to get a ticket for a historical biopic on a Monday morning, should it? The Barbenheimer train can’t possibly have that much steam.
Strangely enough, I’m okay with this delay. It just builds up the anticipation even more. We don’t get to feel anticipation for films like we used to. These days it’s superheroes all the way down and their promotional campaigns are all so orchestrated and predictable that we know exactly what we’re getting by the time we walk into the theater.
Oppenheimer’s and Barbie’s campaigns harken back to the days when Hollywood still left some mystery on the table as to what you were going to see. The reason for that is that all of Hollywood’s market research up to this point has told them that audiences are more likely to show up if they know exactly what’s going to happen in a movie.
Director Robert Zemeckis used to get a lot of flak for this because he began the trend of showing you the entire movie in the trailer. And when people complained about it, he said, “Sorry, this is what the research tells us. That you guys want to know what’s going to happen ahead of time.” And so every other marketing campaign started doing the same thing.
But the reality is, every movie is different and should approach its marketing campaign differently because some movies benefit from a sense of mystery. I’ll never EVER forget the marketing campaign for Cloverfield. That trailer showed up out of nowhere with nobody knowing it was coming and then there was no other information about the movie until it came out. Surprise surprise, it became this huge unexpected hit. There need to be more creative people on the marketing side who think like this in 2023. And Oppenheimer and Barbie prove that a few still do.
Cause I think a HUGE reason these movies both did so well was that each had a curiosity factor to them.
Plus, whoever made the decision to tell Nolan to take the giant pole out of his a$$ needs their own Academy award. The “got Nolan to take a pole out of his a$$” Oscar. This genius idea to pair Nolan with a Robert Downey Jr. who just drank 14 cups of coffee did something I thought impossible – make Nolan look like a fun guy.
Nolan is so far up his own butt when he talks about movies that he’s become a parody of an auteur and it doesn’t help when he makes sweeping mistakes in his films, mainly on the screenwriting side. The guy is still working towards building the most exposition-heavy library of films of all time. And I’m assuming this film is only going to add to that Guiness book of world records.
So when you think you’re the bee’s knees yet you’re inundating us with second-rate pollen, we’re not going to be as tolerant of your “I am the arbiter of cinema” persona.
But watching Nolan desperately try not to laugh at everything Robert Downey said but being unable was so endearing that it made me see him in a whole new light.
I think Nolan studies not just how to make great movies but also how to be perceived as an all-time great artist. He’s, no doubt, studied the way people like Alfred Hitchcock talked to the media and the way Stanley Kubrick created an aura around him. Everybody knows how Kubrick used to say to his lead actors that when the press tour came around, he would tell them how amazing the actor was if the actor went out called him the greatest director he had ever worked with.
Relating this all back to this weekend, what does the 155 million dollar take of Barbie and the 80 million dollar take of Oppenheimer mean?
If every box office tells a story, this one is telling studios that the days of superheroes ruling the box office are over. I’m not saying no superhero movie will ever do well again. But Marvel so oversaturated the market that it’s impossible for anything other than one or two superhero movies to break out during the year. Cause we’re tired of them.
So much so that we’d rather show up for a plastic doll and a 3 hour talky period piece about one of the most depressing subjects of the last century.
Marvel did this to themselves. They drank so much of their own kool-aid that they thought we’d like shows like the 200 million dollar Secret Invasion, a Marvel misfire that’s been so badly received, it will alter the way Marvel shows are greenlit moving forward.
But seriously. The way these two movies are being received by audiences is screaming to studios, “We want something different!” Are those studios going to listen? History has told us, no, they aren’t. Hollywood is terrified of moving away from proven models. They get very nervous in times like these where they’ve been unable to predict how a movie would do.
Just a few weeks ago, Barbie was being projected for a 60 million dollar weekend and Oppenheimer for a 45 million dollar weekend. It was only because of early ticket sales that those numbers went up. Not because Hollywood figured that out on their own. Which means they were nowhere close to understanding how well these movies would perform.
Which isn’t supposed to happen, by the way. Hollywood has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into being able to gauge what a movie’s return will be. If they’re off by even 20 million bucks on that opening weekend, it shines a light on the fact that they’re not good at their jobs. But being off by 100 million dollars? That means they’re utterly clueless.
I’d make the case that this is the most important box office story of the last five years. Movies like this aren’t supposed to perform better than Marvel movies. They aren’t even supposed to perform better than Mission Impossible movies. And throw Sound of Freedom in there as well. When a small conservative-leaning film is beating out a 400 million dollar film on certain weekends, Hollywood has lost the thread in regards to what audiences really want.
I’m supportive of this change. Even if it means more big-budget biopics during the year. Because you’re not going to get people out into the theater without some variety. Barbenheimer proved that this weekend.
