Genre: Comedy
Premise: A young man begins to suspect that his bosses are monsters – real monsters.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title).
Writer: Richmond Weems
Details: 94 pages

I had some major déjà vu going on when I picked this. I don’t know if there was a spec a few years ago similar to this, or if I read an earlier draft of the screenplay. But there is definitely something familiar about this concept.

As for the concept in question, it’s pretty good. While Lady Jane may disagree with me, the second you add monsters to your story, you get your screenplay a lot closer to high concept land. And I love the idea of a group of employees finding out that their bosses are secretly monsters. The question is – as it always is – did the writer execute?

Half of my notes on this one were destroyed in the great Chicago Fire so you’ll have to excuse me if I get some of the details wrong. Thirtysomething Zach Taylor works at a company doing a vague job with not a whole lot of upside. In fact, Zach, along with the rest of his employees, are all just mindlessly sleepwalking through their careers.

That is until one of their coworkers, John Miller, doesn’t show up for work the next day. The company has a long-standing practice of firing its employees who then disappear off the face of the earth. But these guys knew John Miller so they’re curious why he didn’t say anything to them.

The event results in Zach being a little more perceptive, and he quickly starts noticing a lot of strange things going on at the workplace. For example, the cleaning lady will be standing there one moment and then be gone the next. Instead of assuming she’s just a really fast cleaner, Zach thinks something fishy is going on. This is followed up by an urgent phone call from someone in the building screaming for help. And that’s when Zach really knows something’s up.

But it isn’t until Zach starts paying really close attention to his three bosses that he becomes convinced that they’re actually monsters. The problem is, the second he’s onto them, they’re on to him. And when they realize that Zach could potentially expose their long-running plan of gobbling up their downsized minions, they set up a big party at the end of the week for which Zach is certain will be the death of himself and all of his fellow employees.

So how was Inhuman Resources?

I got one word for you.

Plastics.

Actually, I take that back. I have another word for you.

Subplots.

This screenplay needed more subplots! It also needed fleshing out in almost every area. The idea is executed in the most minimal way, so it doesn’t feel so much like a movie as it does a short extended out to 100 minutes. Let’s start with the location. I may be mistaken because it’s been a few days since I read this, but I don’t remember a single scene that took place outside of the building. If you’re making a contained thriller that happens over the course of a few hours, then keeping everything in one place is fine. But if you’re telling a more traditional story, you need to get outside of that workplace and into the rest of the world so you can give your story some actual texture. With us seeing these people’s lives only within the walls of this company, it was like only seeing one fourth of who they were.

But back to subplots. What should the subplots be in a movie like this? I don’t know but I’ll teach you a trick to help you find them. It’s a simple trick. I call it “pretend that you don’t have a concept.” Pretend like the screenwriting gods came down from above and said to you “I can give this screenplay to the biggest producer in town. The only catch is that you can’t include the monster stuff.” What would you then do to make your screenplay interesting? Well, the only thing you really have at your disposal are your characters and your plot. So one thing you might do is create a love story between two of the people who work at the company. You might create a rivalry with one of the coworkers. You might create a work storyline where there’s some deadline they have to make. Those are very simple options and you would definitely want to dig deeper, but do you see how once you can no longer lean on your concept, you’re forced to actually come up with a story? And by doing so, without you even knowing it, you’ve created subplots.

Next up is a huge pet peeve of mine and something I’ve brought up many times before but in this instance it’s almost inexcusable. You need to know what your character’s job is. Why? Because people spend one third of their lives performing a job. It is one of the biggest insights into who a person is. If I introduced you to Joe and said he was a butcher, you’d get a pretty good idea of who he was, right? Now let’s say I introduced you to Stacy, and told you she was a divorce lawyer. Again, you’d have a pretty good idea of who Stacy was just by her job. Now I’m not saying you can’t play against those stereotypes and change things around once you get into the story, but you have to start somewhere – and knowing what your character does for a living is immensely helpful in figuring out who they are. If you don’t know what your character is doing for nine hours of every day, then you don’t know your character.

Now in this instance it’s even more of a problem, because the entire movie takes place at the character’s place of work. I suppose there is an off chance that keeping the workplace ambiguous is a part of the plan but I doubt it. But even if that was the case, I think it’s a bad idea. If you don’t know what these people do, then you don’t know what tasks to give them, what projects they need to work on, what their routine would be like. I mean think about it, if they work at a comic book company, it’s going to be a lot different than if they work at the IRS. Every single detail of their day is probably going to be different. But since this hasn’t been figured out, the characters are forced to do generic tasks (or in most cases no tasks), which contributes to the overall generic feel of the screenplay.

Plus, when you have a fun idea like this, it should be fun to come up with the company, because you can play off the monster angle. Maybe, for example, they’re a closet manufacturing company (monsters like to hide in closets). That’s pretty lame, but you get the idea. Now that you have a real company that does real things, you can start coming up with real tasks for your characters. Maybe they’re designing a closet for the richest man in town. Or maybe they’re designing closets for a new school (which the monsters picked specifically because it offered a lot of eatable children). Now you can get your characters out of the building and into the real world doing things. The point is, now you can flesh out your story.

Inhuman resources is an example of a script where the writer has thought of their concept and nothing else. Every single element in the screenplay needs to be fleshed out. I like the idea for the movie. It definitely has potential. But this thing won’t shine until it gets a giant makeover.

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

What I learned: A couple of lessons here. Never tell anyone that the script you’re giving them is your first script. Richmond was able to get away with it in this case but that’s mainly because I had a déjà vu moment when I read the concept. But most agents/producers/managers know that it usually takes about six scripts before writers really start to understand the craft. So usually, when a writer points out that this is their first script, I close that e-mail faster than George Lopez’s late-night show. You may be proud that you’ve completed your first script – and you should be – but if you want your script to be read, it’s best to keep that information to yourself. Another lesson to learn here– and I’m just bringing this up because the first lesson reminded me of it: Do not inundate your industry contacts with seven or eight different script loglines from your script archives in addition to the script you’re sending them. I don’t claim to know the exact psychology behind this, but whenever a writer does it, it gives off a desperate vibe. But the bigger issue is that readers will probably start wondering, if this person has all these old screenplays that no one liked before, what’s to say this one is any better? When talking about your screenplays, you should probably only mention the screenplay you just finished (that got you the meeting), the screenplay you’re working on, maybe the last screenplay you wrote, and then possibly some future ideas for screenplays. You can even cheat and give them “ideas you’re thinking about writing” that you’ve actually already written. Then, if they like them, you can “write them” really quickly and send them off to them. Now, not only have you given them a screenplay that you know they’ll be interested in, but they think you wrote it in a month, which is always good.  Hey, agents lie all the time. Why can’t we?

“Writing Movies for Fun and Profit” is one of the more interesting books to come along in the screenwriting community in a while. Its authors, the writers of such movies as Night at the Museum and Herbie Fully Loaded, seem to take the opposite approach when it comes to writing than mainstays such as Robert McKee and Blake Snyder. Gone are long chapters on how to develop your characters. Absent is any in-depth look at structure. In their place is a single core piece of advice: Write big fun family “four quadrant” movies and rake in the dollars.

Despite the actual screenwriting advice being some of the worst I’ve ever encountered, the backstage insider look into the business side of screenwriting is nothing short of amazing. Basically, the book tells you what happens after you break into the club. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s interesting, but if you ever wondered what it’s really like to be a working screenwriter or you want to prepare yourself for when you finally make that big jump, this is definitely a book for you.

Before I get into some of the more interesting aspects of the book, I’d like to warn you about its biggest weakness – its unequivocally terrible advice when it comes to writing a screenplay. You see, these guys believe it’s as easy as slapping together a bunch of funny scenes and making a $1 million sale. Let me tell you why they think this and why they’re wrong. As the authors point out in their book, on most big projects there are a lot of writers. Oftentimes, new writers are brought in to beef up the weak portions of the screenplay. So if the dialogue is bad, the producers will bring in writers who are good with dialogue. Once they’re finished, the producers may realize that the structure is sloppy. So they’ll fire the dialogue guys and bring in some structure guys. What our authors seem to understand but not acknowledge is that they’re the “comedy” guys. They’re the writers you bring in when you want jokes. But the between the lines message here – and I’m not even sure our authors are aware of it – is that when the producers want people who actually know how to write a screenplay, who understand the guts, the depth, how to add heart, and all those things that actually make a story resonate with people, they bring in writers who actually know how to write. So while our authors implying that none of that “deep” stuff really matters may be true for their own specific experiences, it has nothing to do with Joe Nobody’s approach to a screenplay. Joe Nobody still has to display an intrinsic understanding of the craft to impress a reader. It would be nice if all you had to do was tell a couple of jokes to make a million bucks. But that’s simply not the case.

The good news is, none of that stuff is the focus of the book. The main focus here is the business end. And I have to give it to these guys. They taught me a hell of a lot about how things work once you’re a highly paid screenwriter. Here are some of the highlights.

OH NO
My favorite chapter (and probably the most terrifying chapter you’ll ever read if you’re a screenwriter) is the one that deals with the authors’ experience writing Herbie: Fully Loaded. Now if you ask me, I’m not jumping up and down begging somebody to let me write another Herbie movie. But hey, everybody’s got their thing. So these guys pitched Herbie to the studio president and she loved it. She thought it was the greatest idea ever and quickly made Herbie the most important movie on the studio’s slate. She then set them up with a producer who basically had zero interest in making a Herbie movie and therefore tried to make a version of what she believed a Herbie movie for people who don’t like Herbie would be like. She then proceeded to make the writers change every single aspect of their story, even though those were all the things the studio fell in love with. And they couldn’t do anything about it. When you’re the writers, you can’t just call the studio president and say, “Hey, this producer is making us change all the things you love.” There is a hierarchy. You’re not allowed to go over anybody’s head. So all they could do was stand on the deck and watch the Titanic sink.

This is what I don’t get about Hollywood. It would seem to me that one of the more important decisions you would make as a president would be to match up a project with a producer who understands and cares about that project. It sounds like a producer was just randomly assigned to these guys. I don’t see how good movies could consistently be made under that process (note to readers: the authors assure us rather proudly that that producer is no longer working in the business). But what should really tickle your noodle is that these guys also wrote Taxi – a movie in which the development process went as smoothly as newly churned butter. Now comparing Herbie to Taxi is kind of like comparing Jersey Shore to Basketball Wives. But in a close race I would still say that Herbie comes out on top. Which begs the question: How much does development really matter?

PITCHING
One of the big changes in your life after your first sale is that you’ll now become a human pitch machine, pitching your own projects or pitching yourself as the best option for someone else’s projects. This is an element of the business that very few people talk about outside of working screenwriters. And these guys do a pretty good job of preparing you for it. Probably the most important advice they give you is that whatever movie you’re pitching should have a main character a movie star will want to play. Because no matter how much movie blogs and Hollywood insiders are trying to convince us that stars no longer matter, the easiest way to get financing and confidence behind a project is to have a movie star attached. They also point out that your idea should be different but shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. It should sound like a cross between two really successful films (they use the example “Die Hard” meets “Home Alone” but I’m pretty sure they were joking – although it’s hard to tell – these are the guys who wrote Taxi remember). The rest of their advice about pitching is rather practical – be excited about your movie, don’t be afraid to act out some of the parts, and keep it short (a typical pitch is 15 min. long). But the point is, this is the part of Hollywood that most screenwriters have no clue about until they’re thrown into the fire. It sure is nice to get a look at the logs before the match is lit.

PAGE LENGTH
One of the more amusing chapters I ran into was in regards to page count and page formatting. For everybody who thinks that the length of their screenplay doesn’t matter, wait till you start writing for a big studio. The studios are so obsessed with page length that they actually have their own specific formatting requirements. They give you specific indents and formatting rules you must enter into your screenwriting software when you write drafts for them. If you turn a script in that doesn’t follow that formatting data, they will chop off your fingers. The reason for this is, obviously, every page is roughly equal to a certain amount of screen time, usually 1 min. And each of the studios have perfected a formatting template that allows them to best measure the length of a movie based on the length of the screenplay. So for those of you freaking out about page length now, wait until you have to start formatting a studio script. That’s when shit gets real.

GETTING PAID
One of the most enlightening chapters in the book is the chapter about getting paid. I can’t tell you how many writers have asked me how much they should expect to make selling their first screenplay, and then, if the screenplay gets made, how much they should expect to make on the back end. These are the details I’ve always wanted answers to and the book goes into as much minutia as I’ve ever seen on the matter. So how much is the minimum one can make from selling a screenplay? The short answer is, the Writers Guild requires a writer be paid at least $110,000 for an original screenplay. However, you aren’t in the Writers Guild. And that means somebody could pay you 200 bucks. Where things get interesting though is on the backend. This is where the writing business gets messy. The reason that those writing credits are so coveted – even on total pieces of shit like Paul Blart 3 – is because as long as you have an official credit on the film, you’ll be getting paid for the rest of your life. All those writers who worked on the script but didn’t get credit? They don’t get diddly squat outside of their rewrite fee.

The fight for that coveted credit has created one of the most highly controversial arbitration processes in any union. Without getting into too much detail, in order to determine who gets the credit on a screenplay, a bunch of your fellow writers read all the drafts from all the people who worked on the project, and decide who to give the credit to. Each writer is also allowed to give a written argument as to why they believe they should get the credit. Oftentimes, credit is given to the writer with the most persuasive argument. So Writer A may have done a lot more work on the screenplay than Writer B, but Writer B came up with a much better argument, so he wins. This has become such an intense process, that there are actually arbiters out there that you can hire for thousands of dollars who’ll write your argument for you to give you the best chance at getting written credit on the film.

This has also led to some really shady practices in the screenwriting community, some of which actually encourage writers to sabotage a good script. If you’re hired to rewrite another writer, and you want to make as much money as possible, it’s in your best interest to rewrite as much of the story as possible, regardless of if that new story is better than the current story. If you know that the movie you’re working on is already getting made, then it’s practically demanded of you to change as much as possible so you can get final credit on the film. This is at least part of the reason why there are a lot of bad movies out there. The system is rigged to encourage writers to change what’s working. There are actually standard tricks of the trade – like changing all of the characters names – to help it look like you’ve written the majority of the story. Arbitration is one of, if not the, most heated topic amongst professional screenwriters. I can’t say I know how to fix it but from the way these guys lay it out, it’s clear that the process is broken. Maybe some savvy Scriptshadow readers have some ideas on how to fix it and can share their ideas in the comments section.

IN SUMMARY
What I’ve highlighted above is just scratching the surface. There are a ton of other topics that the book covers (including how to take notes from Martin Lawrence – well kinda). Despite some of the worst pure screenwriting advice I’ve ever read (please, don’t listen to anything these guys say when it comes to the actual writing), I have to admit that I’ve never seen this kind of insight into the professional plight of a working screenwriter. Not all of us are going to hang on long enough to become screenwriting superstars, but for those of you who are in this for the long haul and expect to be looking at real estate in the Hollywood Hills at some point in your life, you’ll definitely want to read this book. For those who have already bought it, feel free to offer your opinions in the comments section.

“Writing Movies for Fun and Profit” is one of the more interesting books to come along in the screenwriting community in a while. Its authors, the writers of such movies as Night at the Museum and Herbie Fully Loaded, seem to take the opposite approach when it comes to writing than mainstays such as Robert McKee and Blake Snyder. Gone are long chapters on how to develop your characters. Absent is any in-depth look at structure. In their place is a single core piece of advice: Write big fun family “four quadrant” movies and rake in the dollars.

Despite the actual screenwriting advice being some of the worst I’ve ever encountered, the backstage insider look into the business side of screenwriting is nothing short of amazing. Basically, the book tells you what happens after you break into the club. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s interesting, but if you ever wondered what it’s really like to be a working screenwriter or you want to prepare yourself for when you finally make that big jump, this is definitely a book for you.

Before I get into some of the more interesting aspects of the book, I’d like to warn you about its biggest weakness – its unequivocally terrible advice when it comes to writing a screenplay. You see, these guys believe it’s as easy as slapping together a bunch of funny scenes and making a $1 million sale. Let me tell you why they think this and why they’re wrong. As the authors point out in their book, on most big projects there are a lot of writers. Oftentimes, new writers are brought in to beef up the weak portions of the screenplay. So if the dialogue is bad, the producers will bring in writers who are good with dialogue. Once they’re finished, the producers may realize that the structure is sloppy. So they’ll fire the dialogue guys and bring in some structure guys. What our authors seem to understand but not acknowledge is that they’re the “comedy” guys. They’re the writers you bring in when you want jokes. But the between the lines message here – and I’m not even sure our authors are aware of it – is that when the producers want people who actually know how to write a screenplay, who understand the guts, the depth, how to add heart, and all those things that actually make a story resonate with people, they bring in writers who actually know how to write. So while our authors implying that none of that “deep” stuff really matters may be true for their own specific experiences, it has nothing to do with Joe Nobody’s approach to a screenplay. Joe Nobody still has to display an intrinsic understanding of the craft to impress a reader. It would be nice if all you had to do was tell a couple of jokes to make a million bucks. But that’s simply not the case.

The good news is, none of that stuff is the focus of the book. The main focus here is the business end. And I have to give it to these guys. They taught me a hell of a lot about how things work once you’re a highly paid screenwriter. Here are some of the highlights.

OH NO
My favorite chapter (and probably the most terrifying chapter you’ll ever read if you’re a screenwriter) is the one that deals with the authors’ experience writing Herbie: Fully Loaded. Now if you ask me, I’m not jumping up and down begging somebody to let me write another Herbie movie. But hey, everybody’s got their thing. So these guys pitched Herbie to the studio president and she loved it. She thought it was the greatest idea ever and quickly made Herbie the most important movie on the studio’s slate. She then set them up with a producer who basically had zero interest in making a Herbie movie and therefore tried to make a version of what she believed a Herbie movie for people who don’t like Herbie would be like. She then proceeded to make the writers change every single aspect of their story, even though those were all the things the studio fell in love with. And they couldn’t do anything about it. When you’re the writers, you can’t just call the studio president and say, “Hey, this producer is making us change all the things you love.” There is a hierarchy. You’re not allowed to go over anybody’s head. So all they could do was stand on the deck and watch the Titanic sink.

This is what I don’t get about Hollywood. It would seem to me that one of the more important decisions you would make as a president would be to match up a project with a producer who understands and cares about that project. It sounds like a producer was just randomly assigned to these guys. I don’t see how good movies could consistently be made under that process (note to readers: the authors assure us rather proudly that that producer is no longer working in the business). But what should really tickle your noodle is that these guys also wrote Taxi – a movie in which the development process went as smoothly as newly churned butter. Now comparing Herbie to Taxi is kind of like comparing Jersey Shore to Basketball Wives. But in a close race I would still say that Herbie comes out on top. Which begs the question: How much does development really matter?

PITCHING
One of the big changes in your life after your first sale is that you’ll now become a human pitch machine, pitching your own projects or pitching yourself as the best option for someone else’s projects. This is an element of the business that very few people talk about outside of working screenwriters. And these guys do a pretty good job of preparing you for it. Probably the most important advice they give you is that whatever movie you’re pitching should have a main character a movie star will want to play. Because no matter how much movie blogs and Hollywood insiders are trying to convince us that stars no longer matter, the easiest way to get financing and confidence behind a project is to have a movie star attached. They also point out that your idea should be different but shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. It should sound like a cross between two really successful films (they use the example “Die Hard” meets “Home Alone” but I’m pretty sure they were joking – although it’s hard to tell – these are the guys who wrote Taxi remember). The rest of their advice about pitching is rather practical – be excited about your movie, don’t be afraid to act out some of the parts, and keep it short (a typical pitch is 15 min. long). But the point is, this is the part of Hollywood that most screenwriters have no clue about until they’re thrown into the fire. It sure is nice to get a look at the logs before the match is lit.

PAGE LENGTH
One of the more amusing chapters I ran into was in regards to page count and page formatting. For everybody who thinks that the length of their screenplay doesn’t matter, wait till you start writing for a big studio. The studios are so obsessed with page length that they actually have their own specific formatting requirements. They give you specific indents and formatting rules you must enter into your screenwriting software when you write drafts for them. If you turn a script in that doesn’t follow that formatting data, they will chop off your fingers. The reason for this is, obviously, every page is roughly equal to a certain amount of screen time, usually 1 min. And each of the studios have perfected a formatting template that allows them to best measure the length of a movie based on the length of the screenplay. So for those of you freaking out about page length now, wait until you have to start formatting a studio script. That’s when shit gets real.

GETTING PAID
One of the most enlightening chapters in the book is the chapter about getting paid. I can’t tell you how many writers have asked me how much they should expect to make selling their first screenplay, and then, if the screenplay gets made, how much they should expect to make on the back end. These are the details I’ve always wanted answers to and the book goes into as much minutia as I’ve ever seen on the matter. So how much is the minimum one can make from selling a screenplay? The short answer is, the Writers Guild requires a writer be paid at least $110,000 for an original screenplay. However, you aren’t in the Writers Guild. And that means somebody could pay you 200 bucks. Where things get interesting though is on the backend. This is where the writing business gets messy. The reason that those writing credits are so coveted – even on total pieces of shit like Paul Blart 3 – is because as long as you have an official credit on the film, you’ll be getting paid for the rest of your life. All those writers who worked on the script but didn’t get credit? They don’t get diddly squat outside of their rewrite fee.

The fight for that coveted credit has created one of the most highly controversial arbitration processes in any union. Without getting into too much detail, in order to determine who gets the credit on a screenplay, a bunch of your fellow writers read all the drafts from all the people who worked on the project, and decide who to give the credit to. Each writer is also allowed to give a written argument as to why they believe they should get the credit. Oftentimes, credit is given to the writer with the most persuasive argument. So Writer A may have done a lot more work on the screenplay than Writer B, but Writer B came up with a much better argument, so he wins. This has become such an intense process, that there are actually arbiters out there that you can hire for thousands of dollars who’ll write your argument for you to give you the best chance at getting written credit on the film.

This has also led to some really shady practices in the screenwriting community, some of which actually encourage writers to sabotage a good script. If you’re hired to rewrite another writer, and you want to make as much money as possible, it’s in your best interest to rewrite as much of the story as possible, regardless of if that new story is better than the current story. If you know that the movie you’re working on is already getting made, then it’s practically demanded of you to change as much as possible so you can get final credit on the film. This is at least part of the reason why there are a lot of bad movies out there. The system is rigged to encourage writers to change what’s working. There are actually standard tricks of the trade – like changing all of the characters names – to help it look like you’ve written the majority of the story. Arbitration is one of, if not the, most heated topic amongst professional screenwriters. I can’t say I know how to fix it but from the way these guys lay it out, it’s clear that the process is broken. Maybe some savvy Scriptshadow readers have some ideas on how to fix it and can share their ideas in the comments section.

IN SUMMARY
What I’ve highlighted above is just scratching the surface. There are a ton of other topics that the book covers (including how to take notes from Martin Lawrence – well kinda). Despite some of the worst pure screenwriting advice I’ve ever read (please, don’t listen to anything these guys say when it comes to the actual writing), I have to admit that I’ve never seen this kind of insight into the professional plight of a working screenwriter. Not all of us are going to hang on long enough to become screenwriting superstars, but for those of you who are in this for the long haul and expect to be looking at real estate in the Hollywood Hills at some point in your life, you’ll definitely want to read this book. For those who have already bought it, feel free to offer your opinions in the comments section.

Genre: Slow Burn Drama/Thriller/Comedy

Genre: Thriller
Premise: As a pianist readies to play his concert, he is told that if he misses a single note, he will be killed.
About: Chazelle optioned a script last year titled “The Claim.” He went out wide with this spec in June but it didn’t sell (for those counting, roughly 25% of specs that have OFFICIALLY gone out this year have sold). Still, a longtime Scriptshadow reader highly recommended it to me so I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s always interesting to take a look at the professional stuff that *doesn’t* sell, so you can try and determine why.
Writer: Damian Chazelle
Details: 119 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

When I see ‘thriller’ and I see 120 pages, I don’t immediately think, “Good.” I think “Uh-oh, what’s going on here?” Thrillers are supposed to be taut. They’re supposed to move fast. So why would you create a thriller with all those extra pages? It makes me skeptical. It makes me suspicious. So I went into this one with my guard up.

27-year-old Tom Selznick is flying into Chicago. He’s not doing too well because Tom is a terrified flyer. At least that’s what we think at first. It turns out, however, that Tom is more terrified of what happens after the flight, not during.

Putting together the pieces, we learn that Tom is a pianist. But not just any pianist. One of the top pianists in the entire world. And tonight he’s going to give a concert that will define him for the rest of his life. You see five years ago Tom was at the top of his game. Nobody could touch him. But Tom had a big weakness. Stage fright. At any moment, he could crumble like an old Chips Ahoy cookie. Eventually he couldn’t take the pressure anymore, so he retired and planned on never performing again. But recently, his teacher and mentor died, forcing him out of retirement to give one last concert.

So Tom sets up with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and prepares to perform. Naturally, he’s terrified out of his mind. His girlfriend, Emma, is in the audience, cheering him on. The word around town is not so much, will Tom be great? But will he screw up?

Well Tom’s about to realize that stage fright is the last thing he’ll need to worry about. As he’s getting ready, somebody whispers into his headset, “Play one wrong note and you die.” At first, Tom thinks this is a joke. But our mysterious hidden killer offers a few visual cues which make it clear that this is anything but a joke.

With no time to figure out what the hell is going on, Tom must begin the concert. To make matters worse, our mysterious killer in the shadows is threatening to kill Emma if Tom tries anything funny. So not only must Tom play a piece that’s already impossible and not miss a single note, he must save his girlfriend.

Also of note, is that Tom is playing on his mentor’s old piano. And his mentor was like a billionaire or something. I don’t think I need to put two and two together for you. Clearly, there’s likely something very important inside that piano that our mysterious killer wants.

Okay.

I want to make clear that I have nothing against the writer here. But Grand Piano didn’t work for me on pretty much any level. And it all came back to the concept. If your concept is flawed, it doesn’t matter what you write afterwards, because the audience already doesn’t believe in your story. The concept here is preposterous. I don’t know any other way to put it. We are to believe (spoilers) that, first of all, a man would lock his money inside of a grand piano, then set up a complicated locking system in which the only way to get the money would be to play the most impossible to play piano piece in the world.

That alone is difficult to buy. But then we’re also to believe, that in order to steal this money, a man would hide in the shadows of a concert and hold the piano player at gunpoint, telling him if he messes up he will be killed.

So let me get this straight. In order to coerce someone who’s notorious for screwing up under pressure into playing the perfect piece, you tell him that if he screws up, he’ll die? I don’t know how that makes sense.

I mean, wouldn’t the far easier method be to get the piano alone, break it open, and steal the makeshift safe that’s inside? Then you could have a month, two months, six months, however long you wanted, to break the thing open. If you have the resources to break in to an auditorium and set up a gun in a hiding place, I’m sure getting the piano alone wouldn’t be too difficult.

The thing is, even if you buy into this, the events that follow become even more absurd. At one point, the red targeting laser from the killer’s gun is plastered on Tom’s forehead. Nobody seems to notice. At another point, Tom is playing with his right hand while texting on his phone with his left hand. Not only does the audience not seem to notice this, but the person who is obsessively watching his every move doesn’t seem to see it either. Finally, during the entire concert, Tom is talking back and forth with the killer into his headset microphone, and nobody in the audience seems to notice. I don’t see how these logic problems can just be swept under the rug and treated as if they’re not happening. There’s no way any of this goes unnoticed.

When you write a story, there are going to be leaps of logic, sure, but if those leaps are too big and too numerous, it becomes impossible to believe in the story. It seems like every choice here is a choice that would never happen in the real world. And I couldn’t ignore that.

I don’t think the characters were well thought through either. For example, if Tom is known for his extreme choking, how is he the most famous pianist in the world? It seems like the writer is trying to have it both ways. He needs the pianist to be great so that the concert can be big, but he also needs him to be a bumbling moron to add tension to his goal. I just don’t know how you can be one of the top three pianists in the world and also be blatantly incapable.

The friend characters were also a problem. They weren’t even Tom’s friends. They were Emma’s friends. So when Tom sends out a text to these non-friends for help, we feel like we’re jumping into another story. We don’t even know these guys. They don’t even know our hero. So we have no feelings towards them one way or another as they sort of try to save Tom.

Topping this all off, I’m going to jump back to my first concern, the length of the screenplay itself. No thriller. None. Should be 120 pages. Of all the genres you can write, the one that you cannot come up with a legitimate excuse for needing 120 pages to tell is the thriller. A thriller is supposed to thrill. It needs to move. If it’s a sentence over 105 pages, you’re probably doing something wrong. Either you’re including scenes you don’t need to include, or you’re repeating beats that don’t need to be repeated. The only reason for a thriller to be a bit on the meaty side is if you’re adding character development. And there isn’t any character development here in Grand Piano.

I’m probably beating up Grand Piano too much. The thing is, I can see why an agent or manager in theory would go out with this script. It does have something happening. There is a story here. It’s intense. This isn’t some self-indulgent semi-autobiographical piece about a twentysomething trying to figure out his life. At least there’s a story.

But I just don’t think the concept, in its current form, is believable enough for people to suspend their disbelief. Maybe if you create a more traditional story throughout the first two thirds of the screenplay and then make the concert, which we’ve been leading up to, the climax, there might be something there. But you have to totally rethink this idea that a man has to play a perfect concert in order to unlock a secret piano safe. I just don’t see how that works.

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

What I learned: It’s very important you put yourself in your villain’s shoes and ask the question, “If I was this person, would this be my plan?” Ask yourself if the plan makes sense. Ask yourself if there are better options. If there are better options, then why would you use this option? If you don’t have a good enough reason for using the least efficient option, then you probably need to rework your story. Because you can bet that the reader and the audience are going to be asking that same question. “Why wouldn’t he just do this instead?” The closer your plan mirrors reality, the more likely it is that the audience will buy into it.