A reminder that the June Logline Showdown deadline is THIS THURSDAY! Scroll down for details on how to enter!

Genre: Action/Comedy
Premise: A stunt man on location in Italy is mistaken for a famous assassin who just tried to take out one of the country’s biggest businessman. The businessman puts his entire financial weight behind finding and killing the “assassin.”
About: This script finished in the middle of the pack in last year’s Black List. The writer, Will Lowell, received his masters degree in film and television from USC. Up to this point, he has written and directed several short films.
Writer: Will Lowell
Details: 111 pages

A reminder that THIS THURSDAY is the deadline for LOGLINE SHOWDOWN.  So get those loglines in!

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

On to the review!

If you’re a writer hoping to become the next Christina Hodson, Joby Harold, or Michael Waldron, screenwriters being hired to tackle these behemoth franchises, the genre you want to choose for your next script is Action-Comedy.

Those are the two most important ingredients for these mega-franchise movies. They want you to be able to come up with awesome set pieces (like babies falling from a building) and they want you to be funny. Studios need audiences coming out of their movies feeling like they had a good time. And the number one way to accomplish that is to make people laugh.

Some say the spec sale is dead. That’s incorrect. It’s just delayed. You write a great action-comedy spec and don’t get paid for it. But if someone hires you to write Iron Man 4 because they loved your spec, you, essentially, just sold the script that got you the assignment.

But what this means – if you want to make a lot of money as a screenwriter – is that you have to be strategic about the genre. You have to choose a genre where the biggest potential extrapolation of that route equals the biggest payday. Action-Comedy is the big enchilada in the payday department.

Sam Clark is one tough stunt man. The guy did several tours in the military. Now he gets to travel to unique places all over the world and do stunts for movie stars. He’s currently in Italy doing stunt work for an annoying Channing Tatum. During a particularly difficult stunt, he badly cuts his hand.

Elsewhere in Italy, a notorious masked assassin named Il Pistone attempts to assassinate a business magnate named Giuseppe Greco in his mansion, but unintentionally kills his adult son. Pistone aborts the mission but when he’s escaping, he cuts his hand on the fence. Giuseppe then puts the word out to every criminal in Italy to kill Il Pistone!

After a tough day on set, Sam goes to get a drink at a bar and meets a hot young lady named Clara and the two sleep together. The next morning, while Sam heads to set, he’s attacked by a random man. Sam’s military training allows him to escape. But soon, he realizes this is just the start. More and more men come out of the woodwork to try and kill him.

It becomes clear that Sam, because of the whole injured hand thing, has become mistaken for Il Pistone. And even going to the U.S. Embassy doesn’t help. Greco has too much influence here and so even Sam’s Murica brothers are after him.

While running around the city, Sam bumps into Clara again, who’s pissed off that she hasn’t received a text after their tender lovemaking session the night before. (Spoiler) But it turns out Clara isn’t being totally honest with Sam. That’s because Clara is Il Pistone! Eventually, Sam figures this out, and the two decide to team up to take down Giuseppe Greco.

This script was good.

But I’m still frustrated by it.

How can that be, you’re wondering. A good script is a good script. What else is there to discuss?

Here’s the problem. Good scripts are great. But great scripts are better.

The thing about good scripts is that there are a lot of them. Therefore, when you write one, you’ve only succeeded in getting lost in a sea of good scripts. You haven’t separated yourself.

Take the opening scene here. It’s as assassination scene.

It’s well written. It’s paced well. It’s described well. There’s a little bit of suspense. It has an emotional moment between father and son.

But I have read, literally, one thousand scenes just like it.

That’s the problem with a good script is that a good script is code for “good enough.” But “good enough” doesn’t get you much. It gets you acclaim from bored Black List voters who are used to reading lots of bad screenplays. They’re just happy that, for once, they’re not clawing their eyes out.

But this business is so freaking competitive that “good enough” is almost as bad as bad. Some might even argue bad is better. Because readers remember bad scripts. I remember Orbital. But good enough scripts? I’ve usually forgotten those by Sunday.

Someone just e-mailed me the other day for a script I reviewed a couple years ago. I had no idea what he was talking about. He kept telling me that I liked it. I gave it a “worth the read.” I finally found the script and, like this one, it was good enough. Good enough to get that ‘worth the read.’ But not good enough to be memorable.

I don’t know if there’s an existential plane for screenwriting discussion. But if there is, I would ask, after every script, “Does this script have a soul?” Or is it just a screenwriter executing a concept according to the steps he’s been told to take?

I watched this Black Mirror episode last night called Beyond The Sea. It’s complicated to explain but, basically, two astronauts on a deep space mission can link up with perfect human avatars of themselves back on earth so they don’t go insane in their tiny ship with nothing to do for years at a time.

One of the astronauts starts inhabiting his partner’s body back on earth and falls in love with his partner’s wife in the process.

That script had soul. It explored the human condition in a complex and, yet, universal way. It displayed tragedy, sadness, falling in love, happiness, jealousy — all these universal human experiences that, when added up, gave the script a soul. And, to be honest, I didn’t really like the episode. It was too dark and sad for my taste. But did it have soul? You bet it did.

Now, you may say: “Action/Comedy, Carson. None of those movies have souls. They’re dumb escapist fun.” Wrong. I just watched an action comedy yesterday that had a soul. The Flash.

It’s frustrating because I can go into a lot of the things that this script did well, particularly its plotting. The reveals (Clara is Il Pitone) and double-crosses (the Embassy is going to kill Sam) and the dramatic irony present late in the script when Sam thinks he’s protecting Clara when it’s really her protecting him.

Or when when Sam realizes that the only way out of this is to find and kill Il Pitone, and Clara is trying to talk him out of it because, of course, she’s Il Pitone.

All that stuff was fun.

But then you get this really over-leveraged Channing Tatum joke. If there’s anything that’s going to steal the soul of your script, it’s a drawn out Channing Tatum joke. Channing Tatum plays himself for a joke in EVERY MOVIE! That’s all he does these days. Which makes it a soulless creative choice. Go with someone unexpected. Josh Gadd in his first action film. Or weirdo Joaquin Phoenix. When you go below the surface with your creative choices, it’s like massaging your script with soul moisturizer.

This is more important than ever in the era of AI. Because AI is about to start spitting out really generic screenplays. Therefore, if you’re not consistently making interesting/risky/unique creative choices, your scripts are going to start getting mistaken for AI scripts.

Don’t get me wrong. Match Cut is not AI bad. But it is by-the-book. The writer masked a lot of that because his execution is strong. But it still feels like a script I’ve read many times before.

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

What I learned: As you know, I always appreciate a good character description. Here’s one I really liked in Match Cut: “AGENT GRANT (60s, ill-fitting suit, a Cold War relic lost in a sea of data analysis and predictive algorithms).” The writer uses something I call “essence description.” This is when you describe someone in a way that allows us to understand the essence of who they are.

Genre: Superhero
Premise: Barry Allen, The Flash, goes back in time to save his murdered mother but inadvertently unleashes one of the most ruthless villains ever.
About: The Flash is the fifth-to-last entry from the former DC slate of films (we still have Blue Beetle, Aquaman 2, Batman 2, and Joker 2). When David Zavslav came in and took over Warner Brothers, he kicked Zack Snyder to the curb and brought in James Gunn. Despite WB wanting to move on from the past, there were whispers everywhere that The Flash was a verified gem, a superb movie that rivaled Spider-Man: No Way Home. The film was originally projected to do huge business. But those hopes were crushed this weekend when the film took in a measly 55 million dollars. The Flash was written by Christina Hodson, who wrote Bumblebee and Birds of Prey. It was co-written by Joby Harold, who wrote on the Disney Plus Obi-Wan show. Flash Star, Ezra Miller, is also said to have contributed a lot to the script.
Writers: Christina Hodson (story by Joby Harold)
Details: 2 and a half hours long

There are a lot of opinions being thrown around in regards to why The Flash did so poorly this weekend. This movie was supposed to be DC’s answer to Spider-Man: No Way Home. It turns out it was playing more in the sandbox of The Smurfs 2 and 80 For Brady.

A popular theory is that Ezra Miller’s image is keeping people out of theaters. But I think it’s more complicated than that. Hollywood tends to think that what they notice, everybody notices. But trust me when I say Ned Wollumbach of Porsthaven, Iowa isn’t aware Ezra Miller has had any run-ins with the law. Ned is more concerned about the price of Mountain Dew Blast at Walmart.

However, the average moviegoer *does* notice when the typical marketing machine is out of whack. When a big superhero movie comes out, they’re used to Tom Holland or Chris Hemsworth doing Jimmy Kimmel, Hot Ones and Saturday Night Live. When the star of a big movie doesn’t appear in any marketing push, it subconsciously says to the average moviegoer that this movie isn’t important enough to go out and see.

I have this little conspiracy theory that Warners Brother purposefully tanked the promotion for this movie cause they’ve moved on. There are all these rumors that WB doesn’t have any money in the bank so they’re not marketing their films as much as they normally would. I just find it hard to believe that everyone thought this movie was great three months ago and now it’s not. Let’s find out the truth.

Barry Allen is a geeky anxiety-ridden scientist with no friends. Much of Barry’s quirky existence can be tied back to the mysterious murder of his mother when he was ten. After a chat with Batman, Barry realizes he can use his super-speed to go back in time and change the circumstances that led to his mother’s murder, saving her.

While Barry succeeds with his plan, he also creates a rift in the space-time continuum, creating a multi-verse. He must now team up with the version of himself who exists in this new universe, a version without all the anxiety and trauma baggage, since this Barry, Barry 2, never lost his mother. In fact, Barry 2 is the chillest happiest cat around.

The time-space rift that Barry created brings back Superman villain, Zod, who’s determined to destroy the planet. Barry 1 & 2 can’t possibly kill Zod, especially since Barry 1 loses his powers! This means they must recruit superheroes from the very thin draft that this universe has available. One is ancient Michael Keaton Batman. And two is Supergirl.

But while Batman and Supergirl are helpful, it’s all going to come down to whether the two Barrys can become the ultimate super-friend team and take out Zod… one last time, or two last times, or three last times, or four last times…

THIS.

MOVIE.

WAS.

FREAKING.

AWWWWWWWEEEEEESSSSOMMMMMMEEE!!!

This may be the only overly CGI superhero movie I’ve seen that I’ve liked. The CGI in this movie is pretty bad – I suspect because they stopped pouring money into it once WB ran out of money. But it didn’t matter. The movie was still great. There’s a very prominent reason for that, which I’ll get into in a second.

There’s just so much good here, I don’t know where to start.

Let’s take set-pieces. The set-pieces were way better than the set pieces we’ve been getting in all these bunk superhero movies recently. There’s a set piece early on that has a high-rise hospital collapsing where a bunch of babies fall out the window and are hurtling towards their death – that then has Barry using his super-speed to save them – that is so clever and well-done, my jaw was literally on the theater floor afterwards. I know this because the bottom of my jaw is still sticky.

I already knew the movie was going to work before that. But that sequence cemented it. It was just such a fun scene. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun during a superhero action set piece. They’re usually so rote, like they’re going through the motions. This one had some real imagination thrown into it.

Speaking of, this was the best use of comedy in a superhero movie since Deadpool. It’s a really funny movie! There’s this moment where Barry 1 hasn’t yet realized that he’s lost his powers. So he goes into his prep Flash running pose and starts running like the Flash. But he’s running just like you or me would run. Slow.  Clumsy.  Sad.  There’s a lot of funny jokes like that that work so well because they’re authentic to the premise.

There’s another running joke (see what I did there) about how good Erik Stoltz is in Back to the Future. And Barry keeps saying, “What are you talking about?? Michael J. Fox was the star of Back to the Future!” But, in this universe, Erik Stoltz never got fired from Back to the Future.

It’s a fun joke but it also shows just how much thought was put into this script. We’ve seen so many Back to the Future references in movies about time travel. The Avengers make fun of it in Avengers Endgame. So it’s not an original joke. But The Flash figures out how to make it an original joke. They reference Back to the Future just like any other time travel movie, but they incorporate their specific situation – the multiverse – to make it feel fresh.

But there’s one aspect of this movie above all else that is responsible for how great it is. And, ironically, I JUST WROTE ABOUT IT IN THE PREVIOUS ARTICLE!

The Power of Two.

The Power of Two here, is Barry and Barry.

But it’s more than that. Barry 1 is a lonely guy who’s barely able to make it through the day. So we like him immediately. We feel sympathy towards him. At one point, he just wants to hang out with Batman to have a drink and Batman rebuffs him. We feel so bad for the guy. We want him to have a friend!

Then, Barry 2 shows up. And Barry 2 is the complete opposite of Barry 1. He’s easy-going. He’s relaxed. He’s got friends. He just wants to have fun. So we really root for these two. But, on a larger scale, we’re rooting for Barry 1 to finally get that friend that he’s never had.

This movie is so good, guys. I’m not going to lie. I’m shocked. I didn’t know superhero movies could be this good anymore. I thought maybe I was getting too old for them or I’d seen too many of them, so they didn’t have an effect on me anymore. No. This is reinforcement of the things I always teach on this site. Which is GET US TO LOVE YOUR FREAKING CHARACTERS AND WE WILL GO ANYWHERE WITH YOU.

We fell in love with Barry 1. We fell love with Barry 2. We fell in love with them as a team. After that, you don’t need to do much to write a winning movie. You’ve already got us. But what’s so great about The Flash is that they still get all the plotting stuff right too.

The choice to have the original Flash lose his powers for the second act was such an amazing creative choice when you think about it. Now Barry has to teach someone who’s never used the Flash powers before to do all the power stuff while he can only look on and coach from the sidelines.

Not to mention, it’s a complete reinvention of Save The Cat’s “Fun and Games Section.” This is the first time we’ve ever seen a superhero learn all their fun superpowers who ISN’T OUR PROTAGONIST. Our protagonist, Barry 1, already learned these powers years ago. There are so many well thought out moments like that throughout this movie.

Literally my only critique besides the gooey special effects is that Supergirl was kinda lame. But she’s a small part of the movie so it doesn’t matter. What’s crazy is that this film is going to go down in history as this big fat failure when it’s one of the best superhero movies ever made.

How good is it? This is my favorite movie of the year so far. That’s how good it is.

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

What I learned: There’s got to be a tax to any good things your hero is given. If there’s not a tax, the plot’s going to suffer. Barry is given his mother back. But there’s a huge tax. Zod is back to destroy the planet.

James Gunn helped me remember one of the most powerful components of a great story

I was watching James Gunn do an interview with actor and podcaster, Michael Rosenbaum. For reference, they’re good friends. And, also, Rosenbaum played Lex Luthor in the show, Smallville.

One of the topics that came up in the podcast was “superhero fatigue,” which Gunn admitted was a huge problem for moviegoing in the current era. But he went even further than that. He said he’d grown fatigued by all spectacle movies.

One thing he said really stuck with me. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he watched the third act of one of these spectacle movies AND ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT WHAT WAS GOING ON.

This is the same reason why I’ve been so reluctant to see Hollywood movies lately. It’s why I didn’t see Ant-Man. It’s why I didn’t see Fast X. It’s actually why I didn’t see Guardians (as I assumed it would be yet another third act Marvel mess).

But it was what Gunn said next that really hit hard. He said, “You don’t feel anything for the characters. And if you don’t feel anything for the characters, you don’t care what’s going on.”

This immediately got me thinking about how to get the audience to care. What makes me care about a story? Luckily, I just read a great story yesterday, in “Wild,” about a werewolf who takes in a thief on the run. What was it about that script that made me care?

Simple, really.

The central relationship.

We put so much focus on the hero in screenwriting that we’ve lost sight of the fact that what really makes us care is our main story pairing. Because just like in real life, there’s power in numbers. Why rest everything on a lone hero’s accomplishment when you can pair two people up and have them experience that victory together?

There is something about watching two people connect and overcome obstacles that hits the audience harder than when just one person does it. Would it have been cool, yesterday, to see just Liz beat up all the bad guys with her werewolf powers? Sure. Would it have been cool to see just Nick kill all the shady gangsters who chased him into town? Sure.

But watching them both do it TOGETHER?  Watching them depend on each other? That feeling of accomplishment is multiplied because we’re not just happy for him or happy for her. We’re happy because each of them helped SOMEONE ELSE. It was not a selfish act. It was a selfless connective act. And that’s what gets audiences feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

I relate this to playing tennis. I kinda hated singles growing up. I felt good when I won, I guess. But I was never happy when I was playing the match. I was always screaming at myself and upset that some part of my game wasn’t working. When I won, I was just happy that I didn’t lose. I felt like Jokic after winning the NBA finals. Just let me go home.

But I LOVED doubles. The specific reason I loved doubles was because when I won, I got to share that victory with someone else. Usually, a good friend. There was nothing better than that feeling.

What James Gunn is talking about is the erosion of the screenwriter’s focus on this tool. The reason we don’t care about the ending is not because of all the cheesy VFX – although that’s certainly part of it. The reason we don’t care is because we don’t care about these characters and we certainly don’t care about their connection with one another.

None of this is to say these companies aren’t trying.

No producer is going out there and saying, “Who cares what the audience thinks of our characters.” Quite the opposite. If you listen to Kathleen Kennedy, she can’t stop talking about the importance of characters.

So then why do all her characters suck?

It’s because they’ve forgotten that it isn’t just about making your hero likable. It’s about the Power of Two. You have to make the hero likable and then you have to develop a compelling relationship with another character who we care about and now your story is turbocharged. Cause we’re not just rooting for the hero. We’re not just rooting for the co-hero. We’re rooting for them as a team.

“Okay,” you’re saying. “But how do you develop a Power of Two who we actually care about, Carson? Cause just saying ‘create two characters instead of one’ doesn’t automatically result in a great script.”

True dat.

We can look to yesterday to get our answer to this. There’s one primary ingredient you absolutely must inject. And that’s CONFLICT. You have to create conflict within that primary relationship.

What that conflict does is it PUSHES your central characters apart. And then, in order for them to be victorious, they must PULL together. If you get that push-pull right? That’s your golden ticket to screenplay nirvana. If you do nothing else right but that, you’ll have a good screenplay. That’s the secret sauce.

So, yesterday, what’s PUSHING them apart is that Liz is a werewolf. But they can’t defeat the sheriff’s family or the criminals unless they PULL together.

But don’t take some unproven Black List script’s word for it. Look at two of the most successful movies of all time – Titanic and Avatar. Jack and Rose are pushed apart by society. But they must pull together to survive the sinking of the ship. Jake and Neytiri are pushed apart by being from two different cultures but must pull together to defeat the human’s military attack.

That’ll do the majority of the work for you.

But if you want to really make people care, follow this one-two punch: Make the central relationship interesting in some way. And make it specific to your movie.

You can’t just have two people be friends and we’ll magically care about their relationship more than anything in the world. Use the conflict to create an interesting pairing.

That’s what I liked about Wild so much. It was such an interesting dynamic. He was on the run and needed a place to stay. He doesn’t like this woman but he’s got no other choice so he stays in her barn. She’s a werewolf. She could potentially kill him. Talk about a messed up way to start a relationship. This interesting pairing that has conflict up the wazoo and was specific to the movie made for two people we instantly cared about.

Contrast that with Jason Reitman’s Labor Day where the female lead pretty much likes the criminal right away. He likes her right away. They’re reenacting the pottery scene from “Ghost” within five minutes of getting to her house. It’s just boring. Without that genuine conflict and interesting connection, we’re bored by them. And if a relationship starts off boring, it’s almost impossible to salvage it.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies growing up, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is the perfect example of this formula’s power.

You have selfish Ferris, who just wants to have the best ditch-day ever. And then you have Cameron, who’s sick as a dog and just wants to be left alone. That’s the conflict that’s pushing them apart.

I can’t emphasize this enough. John Hughes could’ve easily made Ferris and Cameron the best of pals, party animals who were both on the same page about ditching school that day. Many lesser writers would’ve written that exact setup. By Hughes creating that conflict, he makes their relationship instantly more compelling.

And if they’re going to have the best day ever, they’re going to have to pull together despite that. That push-pull is the movie-within-the-movie that makes Ferris Bueller’s Day Off so iconic.

That scene at the end? The one where they’re sitting in Cameron’s dad’s car trying to run back the odometer? The level of emotion in that scene? That’s what Gunn is talking about when he says we don’t see that anymore. Because writers and studios aren’t doing the character work required between the two leads to make moments like THAT happen.

If they made that movie now, that scene would just be words. We wouldn’t feel a thing.

So, on your next script, make us care about your hero, yes. But, also, make sure the central relationship with that other main character is in place. Because we will care more about two people succeeding together than one person succeeding alone. Always.

Get a Script Consultation With Carson for $150 OFF! – In addition to logline consultations (just $25!), I do full screenplay consultations, pilot script consultations, outline consultations, first act consultations. Anything you need help with, I can help! If you mention this article anytime this week, I will give you 150 dollars off a feature (or 100 off a pilot) consultation. :). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

(TOP 25!!!) – One of the cooler crossovers I’ve read in a long time. A History of Violence meets An American Werewolf in London meets Let The Right One In.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A werewolf living on a remote farm with her older sister takes in a thief on the run just 72 hours before the next full moon.
About: This script finished on the Black List. The above logline you read was my logline. But since I’ll reference it in the review, here’s the very un-horror sounding logline from the Black List: “A young woman is determined to protect a thief on the run when he holes up in her small town, even if it means revealing a darker, more violent secret of her own.”
Writer: Michael Burgner
Details: 110 pages

It can be VERY difficult choosing a script to review from the Black List. Make the wrong choice and you could find yourself sifting through 120 pages of high school freshman level writing. Make the right choice, and you may find yourself the next Nightcrawler.

The stakes are high.

For this one, I noticed that Sugar23 represented it. I know they represent creators who did True Detective and 13 Reasons Why. I also noticed that even though the Black List logline made the script sound like a drama, that the writer had a couple of short films to his name that were horror. So I figured… hmmmm, maybe that means this one is a horror film too.

That was enough to seal the deal. And boy did that research pay off!

We meet Liz, who lives in a Kansas farmhouse with her sister, Jean. Liz has ugly scar tissue all around her neck. What’s that about? She walks downstairs where Jean is waiting. The two walk outside, across the yard, to the storm cellar. They go inside. There’s a big rusty chain and collar attached to a concrete wall. Jean and Liz place it over Liz’s neck, lock it, and Jean heads back into the house.

Later that night, a semi-truck screeches to a halt on the nearby highway. Jean sees this. Oh no. Jean runs across the field to the truck, hollering at the driver to get back in his truck. The driver, who thinks he hit something, gets WHACKED by a blur, pulled into the nearby corn field. Jean turns around and sprints with everything she’s got back to her house. It doesn’t take long for us to figure out what happened. Liz is a werewolf and got free from her restraints.

Cut to a medium-sized town several weeks later where Nick and Crispy barge into a strip club to rob it at the end of the night. After Crispy goes rogue and gets shot, Nick is able to get away with the money. But the owner’s security, a Navajo psychopath named Hashke, along with the owner himself, are already planning on how to retrieve his dough and torture this man.

During the getaway on his motorcycle, Nick’s battery was shot. So when the motorcycle dies, he’s forced to hitchhike. This is where he meets Liz, who looks like she’s going to pick him up, but instead tells him to get cleaned up and drives off.

Furious, he walks the rest of the way to town, where he runs into Liz again, ignores her, and heads to the hardware store to get a battery for his bike. The owner says it’s a special delivery and will take 72 hours. When Liz sees Nick throwing around money, she offers him a place to stay at her barn. Realizing that people will talk if he stays in town, he decides to take her up on her offer.

Meanwhile, Ruby, a sheriff, has made her way into town to find out exactly what happened to her husband (the trucker), and Hashke, taking a page out of Anton Chigurh’s book, has arrived in town in search of Nick. Oh yeah, and did I mention there’s a full moon in three days? About the same amount of time that Nick plans to stay at Liz’s? Yeah, I’m starting to think we’re going to get one hell of a climax.

When people talk about the difference between amateur and pro writing, it often sounds arbitrary. A lot of times it just means the reader likes this script better than that one.

So let’s get specific. Cause this script is a a great example of what a truly good screenwriter looks like when they’re putting together a story. I can show you specific examples of what the difference between advanced and intermmediate looks like. So let’s get into it.

For starters, there’s the robbery that opens Nick’s storyline. Nick is robbing a strip joint with Crispy. They get in there, it’s a room full of people, and when the initial threat of a stick-up doesn’t receive the proper fearful response, Crispy slides open his jacket to reveal that he’s strapped with explosives.

Nick stares over at this the same way everyone else does, with a giant “WTF” look on his face. This was the first indication that we’re dealing with an advanced writer. 99% of writers are going to have their robbers in lockstep, cause they’ll think of them as one entity.

But it’s so much more interesting to the story if one of these two go rouge. It instantly turns a black and white situation gray. And that’s where all the fun is.

Cut to a few scenes later. Nick’s motorcycle breaks down and he’s hitching on the side of the road. Liz is driving down that same road, sees him, and stops. Keep in mind, Nick still has blood on his face from the botched robbery.

Now, let me explain to you how an amateur writer thinks in this moment. They know that Nick is going to stay at Liz’s place. They know that’s the next major plot point. So they view things through the eyes of getting to that plot point ASAP. Therefore, they have Liz see this bloody man hitchhiking, pick him up, and take him to her home.

But in what reality would that happen? What woman is going to pick a bloodied hitchhiker up. That’s how the advanced writer looks at it. They look at it more from a perspective of reality. Of course you’re not going to pick him up. So after a few words with the man, Liz tells him that if he expects anyone to pick him up, he’s going to have to get cleaned up first. Then she drives off.

But here’s where the writing goes from advanced to very advanced: That scene does double duty. Not only is it more truthful but it establishes REAL CONFLICT between the two. Nick hates this girl now. The beginner screenwriter just has his two leads hate each other because it works better for what he’s trying to do.  Who needs a *reason* for that? Here, the writer actually creates a reason for Nick to dislike Liz, establishing the necessary conflict between the two leads.

Later, the two re-meet at the hardware store. Liz sees Nick throwing money around. Liz’s farm is going under. Money is everything to her right now. So she offers him a place to stay while he waits for his battery to come in (another well-done, underrated, part of the plotting – the time constraint) and when she brings him back to her place, Ruby is sitting there, the wife of the dead trucker.

This is an EXTREMELY strong writing choice and let me tell you why.

Nine of out ten writers would’ve taken a break at this moment in the story. We just went through Liz meeting Nick on the road, Nick buying the new battery, the two negotiating him staying over… it would’ve been easy to take a couple of scenes off with Liz just sort of sitting in her room and looking tired. Or showing a “day in the life” of living on the farm. I know a lot of writers who would’ve done that. Five pages of mush before we get back to the plot.

By having this obstacle waiting for her – the wife of the man she killed sitting on the couch – tells me that this writer gets it. He knows that movies in small towns on farms die a lot quicker on the page than the Mission Impossibles and the Jurassic World’s of the world. So he knows that he has to keep things moving. It was moments like this that elevated this script above 99% of the other scripts out there.

And then, like any good horror film, you have this looming danger that’s coming. We know that the full moon is 3 days away. We know that Nick is the perfect food source. Nobody will miss him if he disappears. So we’re wondering, is he dead meat?  Or is she going to start liking him enough that that doesn’t happen?  Or maybe still happens?

And then, as if all that isn’t enough, you have not one, but TWO looming obstacles imposing on the central storyline. One is Ruby, a cop who wants to know what happened to her husband. And two is Hashke (and ultimately the strip joint owner), who want to kill Nick and get his money back.

I honestly don’t know if you could’ve come up with a better series of creative choices than was made here.

All of this sitting on top of the best creative choice of all, which was to make this a horror film. Too many writers would’ve written the version of this that the Black List logline implies. Which is a criminal who stays with a woman while avoiding the bad guys chasing him. That story ISN’T SEXY ENOUGH for a screenplay. You need a genre element to make people care (not to mention, make it marketable!). And that’s what we get here. We get the werewolf element.

How do we know that the non-genre version doesn’t work? Cause we’ve seen it. Jason Reitman’s snore-fest, Labor Day. Same premise. But no werewolf. Which equaled 1000x more boring.

This is the kind of script that, if you can internalize all the choices made here, starting from the concept then moving into the plotting itself, you will massively improve your own screenwriting. Every screenwriter should read this script.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: The “Meet Mean.” We’ve all heard of the “Meet Cute.” But how much more interesting is it when your male and female leads are introduced via a “Meet Mean,” as was the case here? Liz drives up to Nick, asks him a few questions, lets him know there’s no way she’s letting him in her car, then drives off. I find that WAY MORE interesting than if they had an instant obsessive infatuation with one another.

Genre: Heist/Thriller/Period/Romance
Premise: Set in 1962, a male and female jewel thief must put a team together to take down a sinister German business mogul who made his untold riches during World War 2.
About: This newest version of Oceans is being spearheaded by Margot Robbie, who is said to be the creative leader of the direction and feel of the project. She took it to director Jay Roach. And, I’m assuming, Robbie chummed up with Gosling on Barbie, where she asked him to be in Oceans as well. Robbie says she was more interested in the romantic aspects of the story than the heist stuff. I’ve reviewed one other script from newcomer Carrie Solomon, a Black List script titled, “My Boyfriend’s Wedding.” I found that script to be a bit messy.
Writer: Carrie Solomon
Details: A very reader-unfriendly 129 pages

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

Are they the new Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant?

Cause after Barbie, they’re doing this!

It’s a smart play to make an Oceans movie right now. The number of genres that have the box office potential to risk a theatrical release is shrinking by the month. But this is one of the remaining few that could work – the sexy heist genre.

It’s a simple but powerful formula. Get a couple of hot movie stars, dress them up to look even hotter, write a script that’s dripping with sexual tension, and VOILA. A hundred fifty million domestic buckaroos.

UNLESS…

Unless the script is bad. Let’s (hopefully) learn that that’s not the case.

It’s 1962. 30 year-old Elsie Brunner, one of the most beautiful women in the world, is at a mansion party trying to steal some really expensive earrings. Once she finds the bedroom where the safe is, she sees 37 year-old safe-cracker Jack Mason. Jack is one of the most handsome men in the world. He also wants these earrings.

After Jack steals the earrings, the two of them (who instantly hate each other) must pretend to be a couple when others from the party find them. They use this ruse to escape, flirt, separate, and for Jack to sadly realize, afterwards, that Ellie took the earrings from him.

A few months later they’re in Monte Carlo because some super-baron named Aristotle Onassis has a jewel worth more than 50 Mona Lisas. It’s here where we learn about Jack’s dark soldier past and his experiences in the war, where the evil Aristotle wiped out his entire team!

That’s the real reason Jack wants the diamond – to get back at him! Elsie wants to join him, not because she has a personal beef with Aristotle: “Because I’m all out of mercy for pathetic men with no concern for what’s right. Their breed has wreaked enough havoc.” Put that through the 2023 movie dialogue translator and you get: TOXIC MASCULINITY

Which means getting the diamond isn’t enough. They want to destroy this man as well. Aristotle wants to buy the Hotel de Paris to stabilize his shaky financial portfolio. But he currently doesn’t have enough money. His plan to remedy this? He’s rigged the Monaco Grand Prix so that his car will win. He’ll bet untold gobs of money on his car, win a small fortune, and use that to buy the Hotel.

Therefore, if they can stop him from winning the race AND steal his diamond, they’ll basically bankrupt him and ruin his life. Of course, if they’re going to pull this off, they need a team. To do so, they’ve decided to use a half-retro Oceans approach (all men) a half-modern approach (all women) and come up with the first Oceans team that has an equal amount of men and women. And we’re off! Oh wait, that’s horse racing. “Ready, Set, GO!”

Let’s start with the good.

I love the setting here. I knew nothing about this script when I opened it. So I wondered, “How are they going to make this different? Why do I want to watch another group of people who like to make a lot of jokey quips with one another try and steal something?” I just didn’t see anything they could do that would make the concept feel fresh.

But the second I learned the script was going to take place in Monte Carlo in 1962, I started reading with a lot more interest. It goes to show that SETTING ALONE can really freshen up a stale concept. Especially with these franchises, since they all feel the same. I remember they did the same thing with X-Men: First Class, and that ended up being one of my favorite superhero movies.

I’ve also realized that movies set in the 1960s give your characters backstory access to World War 2. That war has the potential to come up with some of the most interesting backstories imaginable. So there’s a lot to play with. And they do that here with both Jack and Aristotle.

Although I’m all for peace on earth, the fact that there hasn’t been a big war in the last 75 years has left a lot of writers with nothing to work with on the backstory side. Sure, you can use the Afghanistan War but it doesn’t exactly hold the same weight as a character who participated in the battle for Iwo Jima.

That rich texture can shape characters in really interesting ways and this script is proof of that. I found Jack to be quite generic for the first 25 pages. But the second we learn about his World War 2 roots, along with his connection to Aristotle, I saw him in a whole new light.

Also, a rule I have with heist scripts is that the heist needs to have something in it that isn’t just about money. Money is boring in these types of movies. Who really cares if our heroes score 5 million dollars? Or 50 million? Or 100 million? It’s just monopoly money to a moviegoer. So you want to be creative – find other ways to make the heist fun.

Adding a car race, of all things, is something I haven’t seen in a heist film before. You have to win a race to complete the heist? Count me in!

But I didn’t enjoy everything here. If I have to read another sexy heist team-up where the opening scene has the guy steal something, only for the guy and the girl to go their separate ways afterwards, and the guy realizes that the girl stole the object from him, usually during a kiss, I’m going to sauté myself at 450 degrees in an air-fryer. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve read this scene in 75 different scripts.

C’mon. This is your first scene. You have to show us why you’re a real writer and not just another movie fan who got into screenwriting. Give us something different. Even if it’s just the guy discreetly stealing from the girl! Why is it, in all 75 of these scripts, that the girl steals from the guy? It just shows how unoriginal we all are. Or how lazy we are. Dig a little deeper. Try a little harder. Declare to yourself, “I’m going to give the world an opening scene that they’ve never seen before and I’m going to rewrite it 100 times if I have to to get there.”

Luckily, after that opening, the writing got a lot better. I don’t remember the last time the setting of a movie did so much of the heavy lifting for a screenplay. This 1962 Monte Carlo setting turns another run-of-the-mil heist film into something potentially special.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Ocean’s movies, especially as they’ve only gotten worse with each new entry. But I honestly think this could be the best of the series. It may not have the charm and star power of that original remake (what a funny phrase to type), but it has a way more interesting plot, a more creative heist, and the romanticism of the 1960s at its back. This movie could be the real deal.

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

What I learned: From this point on, when I am imagining a potential project, I’m going to imagine what the concept looks like in the 1990s, 1980s, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, to see if any of those options is better. Take, for example, the logline we were kicking around yesterday: “A disgraced airline pilot turned plane crash investigator is hired by a mysterious outfit to investigate a recent crash in a remote part of Siberia, only to learn, when he gets there, that the crashed vehicle is alien.” Imagine that scenario set in 1957. Or 1943. Or 1969. Each of those movies is completely different.