If I had to guess why Fast and Furious didn’t do boffo numbers this weekend (it came in at 67 million – Fast 7, six years ago, made 150 million its first weekend), I’d venture it’s for the same reason I chose not to see the film myself – It doesn’t look different enough from previous incarnations of the franchise.
In Fast’s defense, it becomes difficult to differentiate yourself when you’ve had nine sequels. But it is doable. When I look back at the Fast franchise, there are three things that have gotten me to watch their films. One: doing something different. I liked the Tokyo Drift angle cause they were trying to do something different from the first two films.
Two, they promoted an action scene that was so amazing, you couldn’t not go. That fuel robbery action scene on moving fuel trucks was one of the coolest action sequences I’ve ever seen in my life. It was also the best edited action scene I’ve ever seen.
And the last thing they do well is stunt casting. They bring in some name that bathes the entire franchise in a new exciting light. That was the case with The Rock. The Rock vs. Vin Diesel? Sign me up!
They went with choice number 3 again this time around but they crapped the bed with their casting. Jason Mamoa. I’ve taken naps more interesting than Jason Mamoa’s performances. Bless Jason. He seems like a genuine guy. But the man does not move any of the needles on the dashboard.
If they want to bring us back for Fast 11, they need to do all three. New fresh concept. Come up with the best action set-piece in the entire franchise. And give us the coolest stunt-casting ever. Maybe a de-aged Jean Claude Van Damme AND a de-aged Steven Seagall? I’m kidding. Or am I? (I’m not)
I’ve been keeping tabs on the Cannes Film Festival. And by keeping tabs, I mean keeping track of how long each standing ovation is. It’s tough to keep up. At one point, a random journalist came back from the bathroom, crossing in front of the audience, and ended up getting an impromptu 3 minute standing ovation.
Indiana Jones got a respectable 5 minute standing ovation but word on the street is that the movie is kind of a mess. Indiana is running up against the same issue Fast and Furious is, which is that you’re attempting to squeeze a new experience out of an old ratty towel.
But you know what? I DON’T CARE. Because it’s Indiana Jones and even though I got burned worse than twice-cooked toast with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there’s nothing quite like the Indiana Jones experience. I’m doing my best to avoid spoilers and I’m hoping that the de-aged Indiana Jones stuff figures out a way to get us some vintage Indiana.
On Saturday night, Killers of the Flower Moon got a NINE MINUTE standing ovation, a full six minutes more than Bathroom Guy. I’m bit a torn about this movie. As you remember, I loved the book. LOVED IT. It was so freaking good. And the trailer they just released? A-PLUS. Stunning. Best trailer all year. Maybe even the best in the last five years.
But listening to the press conferences of the movie, it seems like they’ve made a major change to the book. The story of the Osage is, no doubt, sad. But what balanced out that sadness was the investigation into who was doing the killing of these Osage members. The author had built this procedural element into the mix, which had us curiously turning the pages. And that made it exciting.
But, apparently, Scorsese took that out. Which has turned the movie into one giant sad-fest. Maybe even a moralizing sad-fest. If their plan here is to make people feel bad for things other people did 150 years ago? I don’t want to be rude but go walk barefoot in a room full of loose legos.
Sure, if you go that route, it gets you standing ovations and pats on the back from people within the industry, not to mention those back pats you’re giving yourself. But it leaves audiences feeling cold. No actual moviegoers want to see a movie designed to make them feel bad about themselves.
What I’m hoping is that this is just the media doing its media thing. They have to play up these narratives cause it makes them feel good about themselves. But the reality is, we moviegoers just want a good movie. That’s it! We don’t want to be preached to. So, hopefully, that’s what this movie is. Because I’m rooting for this film. I want it to be great. It’s such an interesting story. And I’m a sucker for a great ironic premise, which is exactly what this is.
I have a feeling it’s going to be a neck-and-neck Oscar battle between this and Oppenheimer. I can’t wait to see who wins.
Okay! I’m going to finish up with a quick script-to-screen breakdown of “Air.”
I LOVED the “Air” script. It made my top 25. What made the script so good was that it FLEW BY. It had a great underdog main character whose relentless determination gave the story incomparable momentum. You both loved Sonny Vaccaro and were swept up by his pursuit of Michael Jeffrey Jordan (whose face is never seen in the script or film – love it!).
For these reasons, I was more than excited to see what it looked like in movie form. I knew that, if it hit on all cylinders, it had the potential to be the next Jerry Maguire.
I probably shouldn’t have placed those expectations on it. No, the movie isn’t bad. But it’s not nearly as good as the script. And there is one big reason for that: It doesn’t look like a movie.
It looks like a student film.
I’m sorry but it does. This is Ben Affleck’s worst directing effort to date. And while Matt Damon may not have phoned it in, he occasionally barks it in from the other room.
The entire movie feels like it was done via a series of second takes. Not a single scene feels thought-through or lived in. You could practically hear the A.D. saying, “We’re running out of time. We gotta keep moving. You only get two takes for this setup!”
Matt Damon is giving us these perfunctory performances where you can sense that he hasn’t fully memorized his lines. Compare his acting in this movie to Good Will Hunting where you could tell he’d tried EVERY SINGLE ANGLE in every one of those scenes so he knew what worked best by the time the camera was rolling. Not even remotely the case here.
And where is the money? Show it to me!
Where’s the money on the screen?? That’s one of the ways you can tell a good director. They can make a movie look amazing for way less money than they wanted. This film is the opposite! It cost 90 million dollars! Yet it looks like a 15 million dollar film!!! They shot it in a bunch of rooms! I could’ve done that.
The one set they built – Nike headquarters – is dark, boring, and empty. Where are the people??? Could you not afford extras? Compare that to the agency set in Jerry Maguire. You could feel the life in that set. Here, it looks like they turned half the lights off to save money.
You may say, Carson, the money is in Matt Damon and Ben Affleck! They’re movie stars. You gotta pay for that. Sorry: BUT NO! This is Matt and Ben’s first movie for their new production company. They shouldn’t be getting paid anything. They should be putting every single dollar on screen.
I cannot emphasize how lifelessly this was directed. It was as if they went to each actor’s home and did close-ups and had them read lines and then stitched the performances together via clever editing. Go watch this film. It’s 90% talking heads in dark rooms. What is this? A 1970s TV show??? Where did the money go???? 90 million dollars!?? Robert Rodriquez made a better looking film for 7000 dollars!!!
I’m baffled.
But you know what? This shows the power of a great script. The movie survived this dreadful display of directing solely because of how good the script was. Even with Matt Damon getting his lines phoned in through an earpiece, the dialogue was still good. His character’s desire to sign Michael Jordan kept us engaged.
But it never ceases to amaze me how a director’s interpretation of a script can screw up what the original author had in mind. The directing here needed a shot of adrenaline. Ben Affleck is a good director. He won an Oscar! Which is why I will never understand what he was thinking with this one.
Every second-to-last Friday of the month, I will post the best five loglines submitted to me. You, the readers of the site, will vote for your favorite in the comments section. I then review the script of the logline that received the most votes the following Friday.
If you didn’t enter this month’s showdown, don’t worry! We do this every month. Just get me your logline submission by the second-to-last Thursday (June 22 is the next one) and you’re in the running! All I need is your title, genre, and logline. Send all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com.
If you’re one of the many writers who feel helpless when it comes to loglines, I offer logline consultations. They’re cheap – just $25. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Are we ready? Voting ends Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time!
Good luck to all!
Title: Personal Statement
Genre: Drama
Logline: When her family hires an independent admissions consultant to help craft Ivy League-worthy college application essays, a Chinese-American high school student must fight to control her life story and protect her identity.
Title: Petal to the Metal
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: Maggie finds herself the target of her sister’s wedding-thirsty bridesmaids after unintentionally catching the bouquet, messing up the bride-to-be queue.
Title: Broken Vessels
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A book collector replies to an ad for one of the rarest books in existence, only to be held captive by the seller, who makes the jaw-dropping claim that the two of them have been locked in a centuries-long battle over the murder of his wife.
Title: The Dinosaur War
Genre: Drama/True Story
Logline: In their quest to unearth long-hidden fossils, America’s first two paleontologists (and bitter adversaries) wage an epic feud that includes bribery, theft, vandalism and violence. As the rivalry intensifies, they risk their reputations – and their lives – in an all-consuming race to discover new species of dinosaurs.
Title: The Head Writer
Genre: Dark comedy
Logline: A schlubby, long-suffering late night comedy writer’s simmering anger and jealousy begin to boil over into madness as he suspects that his telegenic A-list boss is trying to replace him.
The May Logline Showdown deadline is tonight (Thursday)! If you want to compete, send me your title, genre, and logline to carsonreeves3@gmail.com. The five best loglines compete over the weekend. Winning logline gets a script review next week! So the script has to be written. You have until 10pm Pacific time to get your loglines in.
Every screenwriter has been bombarded with the advice that they must start their script strong. It’s hammered into their stubborn noggins on the daily. Why is it important? Because nobody likes to read. Everyone’s impatient. And everyone expects a script from a writer they’ve never heard of before to suck. So when someone opens your script, they’re expecting to be bored out of their minds.
By adopting this mentality of writing a great opening scene, you at least give yourself a chance against these scruffy-looking nerfherders. However, despite everybody knowing this advice, no one’s ever talked WHAT KINDS OF SCENES you should write to immediately capture the reader. That’s what I want to do today. I want to give you ten opening scene options you can use to lasso onto that reader and pull them in. YEEE-HAWWW.
In Media Res – “In Media Res” just means that you’re dropping the reader into “the sh*t” right away. You’re not taking your time to set the scene. The scene is already going on and we’re being air-dropped into it. A classic example of this is Star Wars. We’re literally dropped onto a ship that’s being chased by another, much bigger ship. Remember, Star Wars originally started down on Tatooine with Luke Skywalker mowing dust. Imagine how much weaker that opening would’ve been. Especially in script form. A more recent example of this is Source Code. We’re thrown into the mix of a guy who wakes up in another person’s body on a moving train. About as ‘in media res’ as you can get. By starting out in the middle of something, we’re immediately pulled into the story whether we like it or not!
The Mini-Movie – The Mini-Movie opener is when you create an entire story, in your opening scene, that has a beginning, middle, and end. The reason this is so effective is because the audience gets an immediate payoff. They don’t have to wait for 2 hours to get their ending. They’re going to get it within the next 5-10 minutes! To that end, these work best when the stakes are high and the purpose of the scene feels important. Inglorious Basterds’ milk scene is a mini-movie. Scream is a great mini-movie. Up is a great mini-movie. It is a little different in that it contains a montage. But it has that clear beginning, middle, and end.
The high-stakes dramatic choice – A great opening scene option is to have a character (preferably your protagonist) given a difficult dramatic choice. The thing about choices is that audiences lock onto them immediately as they’re curious which choice the character is going to make. One of the most famous examples of this is the opening of American Sniper. Chris, our protag sniper, is covering his team when out walks a kid and his mom who may be carrying a bomb. Which gives Chris the most difficult choice ever. Does he murder a mom and her kid? This specific scene also reminds us that the bigger the consequences behind the choice, the more compelling the scene is going to be.
Suspense and Action – Action, all on its own, is boring to read. But action and suspense are captivating to read. Which is why Raiders has the best opening scene ever. It vacillates, for 8 full minutes, between suspense (how do we get through all these trick sections of a cave) and action (killer darts, pitfalls, boulders). Most beginner writers don’t get anywhere with their writing until they understand suspense. Suspense is something that has power on the page AND onscreen. You tell the reader that a potential bad result is coming and then you string out the buildup to that moment. There’s a big fat golden statue sitting on this stone table. But it’s clear that, if you take it, something bad is going to happen. So we build up to that moment through Indy’s careful deliberation and planning on how to deactivate the bomb. One of the most suspenseful 15 seconds you’re going to see.
Suspense and Danger – Give us an opening scene that places our character in danger and then draw the suspense out as much as possible until the dangerous moment comes. This is the most old school version of writing a great scene you can use. It can be (and should be) used anywhere, not just \ your opening scene. A brilliant example of this is the opening scene in The Hurt Locker. Our main character has to defuse a bomb in an active war zone. What makes the scene so good is not just the suspense of deactivating the bomb itself. But the fact that the area is teeming with additional dangers. They could be attacked at any moment. It’s a great scene.
Mystery – This one is kind of obvious but boy does it work well. And it can be combined with suspense and danger to create an even more potent opening. Jurassic Park uses all three. We start with the suspense. A bunch of workers look terrified as they wait for this shipment to arrive. Then we see this giant box and hear noises inside. There’s your mystery. What’s in this thing??? Now we’re totally hooked. But then you add danger (whatever’s inside is clearly dangerous) and we can’t wait to turn the page. The Matrix is another one. We build all this mystery around Trinity and these cops who are going into the building to capture her. Then we get more mystery with her being able to achieve all these supernatural feats. It’s a mystery party.
A Dead Body or a Death – It’s simple. It’s straight to the point. But an immediate death tends to draw the reader in. Especially if the death is unique or intriguing. Because the more intriguing/weird/interesting the death is, the more curious we’ll be. Watching the young woman choose to plunge to her death in the opening of Lethal Weapon definitely pulls us in. Just as the opening of Sunset Boulevard, with the dead body staring at us in the pool, pulls us in.
Make sure something happens – We’re not always writing some big action movie, or suspense movie, or horror, or sci-fi. Sometimes, we’re just writing character-based stuff. But that doesn’t give you an out when it comes to your opening scene. The reader doesn’t say, “Oh, he’s got less to work with. I’ll give him a break.” No. If anything, they demand more from you because they’re assuming your script is going to be even more boring than normal. So prove them wrong. You can do this by starting your story with something important happening. A great example is The Social Network. We don’t start with Mark Zuckerberg arriving at school as a freshman with stars in his eyes. No. We start with him getting dumped by his girlfriend. The resulting scene is their discussion about that break-up. Remember, “stillness,” “inaction,” “taking your time,” — these things never work for opening scenes. We don’t meet The Joker taking care of his sick mother. We meet him at work, with kids stealing from him, and then see him get beat up. Something important in this character’s life should be happening in your opening scene. Trust me: We’ll want to keep reading.
Time Crunch – Any situations where your protagonist is in some sort of time crunch is a great way to start your movie. Because readers have a natural desire to see people catch up with time. When we meet Marty McFly in Back to the Future, he’s late for school. So he has to hurry the heck up and get there. The script could’ve easily started with him meeting up with his girlfriend at the school entrance with plenty of time before class. Bob Gale and Bob Zemeckis would’ve probably loved that because they could’ve taken their time and helped the reader get to know those characters and how much they liked each other. But that would’ve been boring. By making Marty late, you pull us in right away because we want to see if Marty gets to school on time. I know it seems silly that we’d be invested in such an objective. But that’s the power of a time crunch.
Shock – It’s becoming harder and harder to shock audiences. To be honest, I don’t love this option because shock is over quickly. It doesn’t take up a lot of space, like suspense. But if you have a great shocking moment, you better believe you can pull a reader in with it. The opening of Goodfellas, with the men in the car, is a good example. The scene actually starts with some mystery. They hear a banging from inside the car. That’s initially what draws us in. But after they stop and open the trunk and we see the bloodied but still alive guy begging for his life, that’s when the shock comes. Tommy Devito lunges at the dying desperate body and viciously and repeatedly stabs him. That’s followed by James shooting him five more times. It’s unsettling and very shocking. If you can shock a reader, you can buy a good 20 pages from them easy. Cause they now think you’re capable of surprising them again. They got their dopamine hit and they want more!
There you have it. If you’re not using these 10 scene templates to open your script, you probably aren’t doing everything in your power to hook the reader.
Logline Showdown tomorrow. GET THOSE LOGLINES IN!
May Logline Showdown
Send me: title, genre, logline
Deadline: 10pm pacific time, Thursday, May 18th
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Black List) A mother and her young son fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland are forced to take shelter from a blizzard in an isolated manor, where they discover the Nazis may be the least of their worries.
About: Screenwriter Ian Shorr has made the Black List many times. He’s also sold a few spec scripts. One of those became the 2021 Mark Wahlberg film, Infinite. In an interview with Go Into the Story, Shorr said this about why he chooses to keep writing spec scripts instead of chasing assignments: “Specs are still one of the most reliable ways to break in – having a calling card script that showcases your voice, where you just put all your chips down and bet on yourself. Once you’re already in, the question is: why keep gambling with your time? And for me, it comes down to this: if I’m doing nothing but chasing assignments, I’m just servicing other people’s visions. I don’t have something that I can call 100 percent my own thing. When I’m writing a spec, it’s one of the few times in my life that I have total creative control over something.”
Writer: Ian Shorr
Details: 110 pages
Rachel Brosnahan for Rivka?
Ahhh, horror.
We all love it.
So why is it so darn hard to write?
You’d think it would be one of the easiest genres to master. Introduce a crazy dude in a mask. Put your hero in a scary house with a lot of unexplained noises. Possess someone.
I think the key to horror is the pact you make with the reader: Something bad is coming. You do this in, both, a macro sense, and a micro sense. The very promise of a horror screenplay is that something bad is going to be delivered. And you’re going to want to read the script to find out what.
And then, once you’re in the script and the concept is established, the reader makes a new promise that a series of “bad somethings” is coming. Something scary is waiting in the other room. The first reveal of the monster. Someone just called from inside the house.
As long as it’s coming and it’s bad, there’s hope for your horror script.
But the rest of the script has to work as well – I’m talking about the things that need to work in every script. We have to root for the main characters. There has to be a reasonably compelling plot. The story has to keep us on edge. There has to be some development inside the main relationships in the story that we care about. Let’s see if Crooked Forest meets all this criteria.
It’s 1942 in occupied Poland. With the war heating up, Nazi soldiers are becoming reckless, storming into Polish homes and gunning down people. During one of these exterminations, 30-something Rivka and her 9 year old son, Hugo, barely escape.
They make a deal with the underground resistance to get transferred to a Polish military base about 15 miles away. However, in the car ride there, they’re attacked by Germans and must flee into the nearby forest. It’s freezing outside and Hugo is getting frostbite but they luck out and find a large unattended mansion in the forest, Vormelker Manor.
The giant house with weird aristocratic paintings is a needed refuge. But then Rivka and Hugo start seeing things in the shadows. There’s a man with no legs. There’s a naked skinny man with a body full of tattoos long before it was cool. There’s a freaky elongated woman. Rivka figures out very quickly that they need to get out of here.
Unfortunately, the Nazis catch up with them. With no other houses in the area, they know Rivka and Hugo have to be here. So, as the night kicks in, the Germans start looking around. Rivka comes up with a plan. They’ll hide, waiting the Nazis out. When the Nazis go to sleep for the night, Rivka will steal their Jeep keys and they’ll make a run for that elusive base. But, as you’d expect, the plan doesn’t work. And the real terror, which includes a dark history for this home, is just beginning.
There are some things in a script that it’s hard for me to get past. If I see them, I immediately turn on the screenplay. One of those things is asthma inhalers. I don’t know what it is, but I get triggered when I see an asthma inhaler. Triggered in a “come on, seriously???” kind of way.
You have to understand, anybody who reads a lot of screenplays reads certain scenarios over and over again. So, when we see these things, you’re bummed out. You’re bummed out because it gives you the sense that you’re not going to be getting anything new today. It’s going to be another cookie-cutter experience.
Isn’t that every movie, though, Carson? To an extent, yes. But every creative choice is a representation of your script. If you make a cliched creative choice, my history of reading scripts tells me there will be a lot more where that came from. It’s never an isolated incident.
To tie this into yesterday’s review, Kazuo Ishiguro would never EVER write an asthma inhaler scene. He knows that’s something any writer could come up with. As a writer, you want to be the guy who comes up with new stuff. Or, take old stuff and repackage it in some way we haven’t seen before. So that asthma inhaler moment deflated me.
To Shorr’s credit, the script rebounds once we get to the house. The choice to add TWO VILLAINS (Nazis AND scary ghost-demons) gave this a little more pop than I was expecting. If it was just Nazis or just scary demon things, I probably would’ve mentally checked out.
And I liked the “false midpoint” in this script, which had Rivka and Hugo making it to the jeep to escape, only to see the car’s engine, disassembled and wrapped together in a giant hunk of mismatched metal, hanging from one of the nearby trees. This forces Rivka and Hugo to go right back into the house — once again at the mercy of the dual-threat.
You know what this script reminded me of? Barbarian. It’s like a 1942 World War 2 version of Barbarian, with its horror waiting in the innards of the house and its weird monsters waiting to make mincemeat out of the home’s guests. I could totally see Craig Zegger directing this.
But the whole mixing of Nazis and horror DEFINITELY has a ceiling to it. I come across this combo all the time. In fact, I just got a consultation script a couple of weeks ago that was a Nazi-horror crossover. I want writers to be aware of this because we all think that we’re super-oringinal. And I’m here to remind you that whatever you think is original, you probably need to dig several layers deeper to get to the real original.
Either that or just be the world’s greatest writer, like Kazuo Ishiguro. Then you can write about anything you want, no matter how mundane it is, and it will still be awesome.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful when writing analogies, which can go from clever to forced in a heartbeat. This script starts off with the analogy, “Blacker than the inside of your fist.” The reason I don’t like this analogy is because it doesn’t invite the proper image of darkness into your head. If you said, “blacker than the inside of a coffin,” that analogy makes me think of darkness in a more relevant way than “blacker than the inside of your fist,” which sets me off for a good minute trying to imagine what the inside of a fist even looks like. Always imagine what your reader is going to think when you make an analogy. If it’s effortless, good. But if there’s any chance they might be confused by the analogy, come up with another one (or don’t use an analogy at all).
Taika Waititi’s flight stick is shaking. The onboard computer is repeating, “Stall imminent! Stall imminent!” Will this next project save his career from spiraling into the ocean?
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: A young female robot becomes a companion for a sick rich girl who is trying to navigate her increasingly difficult life.
About: Taika Waititi just signed on to direct the adaptation of this book, which was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
Writer: Kazuo Ishiguro
Details: About 450 pages
I could speak for days about Taika and Star Wars.
Okay, screw it. I’m going to get it all out here. The thing I hate so much about Kathleen Kennedy is that she insists that everything is fine when it’s clearly not. She’s the ‘house burning down everything-is-okay’ meme in real life.
She tells us that Taika’s Star Wars movie is still happening when it’s CLEARLY not. The guy has signed onto three different movies now since the Star Wars announcement. Just be honest with us. Tell us it’s been canceled. Stop living on Da Nile River with your Rian Johnson canoe and your Patty Jenkins gambling boat. The movies are dead.
And you know what? Thank God for Taika that they are. Because Taika’s career is in flux right now. Love and Thunder was a disaster. Our Flag Means Death was made for Twitter points. Nobody cares about Next Goal Wins.
He needs his next movie to be a hit and Star Wars is starting to look like a cursed franchise as long as Kennedy is in charge.
So good for Taika for escaping the Sarlac Pitt. And better for Taika to choose Klara and The Sun. Because Klara and The Sun very well might be the best thing I read all year.
13 year old Klara is an “artificial friend.” Or, to put it in today’s terms, an AI robot. But unlike a lot of robots, Klara is more perceptive than others. And when a 14 year old girl named Josie comes to the store and zeroes in on her, Klara is convinced that she’s found her match. This girl is pure kindness. Klara was meant to be Josie’s lifelong friend.
Josie’s mother buys Klara and they head back to their remote upscale home. We learn very quickly that Josie is sick. Every day, she gets a little bit weaker. However, the addition of Klara in her life is making the sickness more bearable. Josie is candy-apple sweet and Klara will do anything to keep her that way.
Soon after, we meet Rick, Josie’s neighbor. Rick is a nerdy middle-class weird kid, the kind of kid that upscale families like Josie’s don’t mix with. But Josie and Rick are so close that Josie’s mom tolerates him. Josie brings Klara into her special friendship with Rick and the three become the most offbeat trio ever.
As Josie’s health worsens, reality sets in, and Klara senses that the mother is preparing for the worst. But the worst is different from what Klara, and we, thought it was. It turns out Mother had a plan all along for her daughter’s doomed future, and Klara is going to figure into that quite prominently.
I want you to imagine something for me.
Remember that movie, “A.I.”, directed by Steven Spielberg? Okay, now imagine if that movie was actually good.
That’s Klara and the Sun.
One of the ways I determine good writing – which I encounter less and less these days – is by asking if I could’ve written the story. Given enough time, could I have approximated what the writer did here? For 98% of the Black List scripts, that answer is yes. And for most spec sales, same thing. I could’ve written something equivalent.
But that wasn’t anywhere close to the truth here. Kazuo Ishiguro writes in a way that scares other writers. He writes in a way where you think, even if I came up with my best concept, and I conceived of my best characters, and every day I wrote was a charmed day, I could never come up with anything close to this.
This guy is writing on another level. I spent half my reading enraptured by the story and the other half marveling at Ishiguro.
I usually have a good sense of how the writer is coming up with their approach to the story. But I was at a loss while reading Klara and the Sun. I guess I understood, in some ways, the broad strokes of what Ishiguro was doing. But I could never grasp the reasons he was making the choices he was making.
For example, there’s a chapter in the book where Klara has to attend a party for other teenagers her age. I guess, in the future, a lot more people are homeschooled, especially the smart ones, and so in order to socialize them before they go off to college they create these meetings, where the kids meet up so that they know how to interact with other people.
The chapter was tense and uncomfortable, and contained a couple of memorable moments, as the kids endured an accelerated obstacle course into high school politics. But I couldn’t figure out what the chapter had to do with the larger story. As it turned out, it didn’t really have much purpose at all.
And yet, I couldn’t imagine the book without it. It provided context to the story in a unique way, sort of like how, when you’re looking at a painting, you’re taking everything in at once, as opposed to understanding each individual piece of the puzzle. I could see everything – the whole story – in each of Ishiguro’s chapters. It was nothing like what I’m used to seeing in my daily script readings, where you see all the little strips of Matrix code the writer is clumsily stringing together to write the story he thinks he’s supposed to write.
I know what some of you are thinking.
Cancer.
And Kid.
Cancer Kid.
I was thinking the same thing. As soon as I saw, “cancer kid,” I groaned. I have long insisted that there’s no way to write about cancer kids that works. It’s just too freaking sad. And people don’t go to movies to be bummed out. They just don’t.
So that’s where my head was at first. I would read every five pages skeptically, ready to bail at the first red flag. But like any good story, each five pages was better than the previous five pages. Ishiguro knew how to keep us there.
For example, we start the story with Klara in the store, waiting to be bought. There’s a lot of exposition and world-building Ishiguro has to set up before the story begins. So what he wisely does is he brings Josie into the store early on. Josie immediately falls in love with Klara and Klara her. Josie says, I want to buy you. I’ll come back for you, I promise. And then she leaves.
As each day goes by, we wonder, where the heck is Josie???
What this does is it creates suspense. As Ishiguro continues to set up this world, we continue reading because WE WANT TO SEE IF JOSIE COMES BACK FOR KLARA. It’s a small thing but it’s a device that all good writers use. Cause they know that if a reader is going to quit on a book, it’s most likely going to happen early. So they have to give you a reason to keep reading during those early pages.
From there, the story is simple. Josie is sick. We don’t know how sick, which keeps us curiously turning the pages. And then Klara cares only about keeping Josie happy. Klara is different from the other AFs in that she will disobey an order if she thinks it will make Josie unhappy. All the other robots have to follow orders. She does not. So it creates a special bond between them and we become fully invested in that bond.
In fact, I was more worried about how Klara would take Josie’s death than Josie dying. Cause I knew Josie was Klara’s everything. So what happens when she’s no longer around? Does she lose all purpose? And would the family just throw her away? But don’t think you know where this story is going. Another great thing about Klara and the Sun is that it has its share of twists and turns.
On top of all that, it’s one of the most fascinating character studies I’ve ever read. Since we’re in Klara’s POV, we’re basically learning how to be a human in real time. Everything that Klara experiences is a first-time experience. And because she’s so ignorant to it all, it highlights the complexities of being human from an angle we haven’t seen before.
For example, Klara will do anything for Josie. But then Josie’s mom takes Klara out for the day and makes her do something really weird. She then tells Klara that she cannot, under any circumstances, tell Josie about what Klara and the mom did. For Klara, she can’t comprehend this – lying to Josie. It doesn’t compute. But she understands that if she loses the mom’s trust, she could be booted from the family and no longer have access to Josie. So what does she do? There is no correct choice.
There are a lot of moments like this that we, as humans, learn to navigate over time. But Klara learns all of them at once. And it’s interesting to see how she tackles these challenges.
This is going to be an amazing movie. I have zero doubt about that. It’s going to be up for multiple Oscars. And it could be Taika’s opus. Even better than JoJo Rabbit.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I used to think you couldn’t touch kid cancer. But this book has made me rethink that position, and the position of handling difficult subject matter in general. What I’ve learned is that you can cover kid cancer if you don’t dwell on how depressing it is. The thing about this book is that, although Josie is dying, the story mostly focuses on her positivity and her happy moments, as well as her perseverance. Only occasionally do we delve into her pain. And, even then, Ishiguro covers it with a neutral brush. He doesn’t dwell on the pain and sadness.
For example, there’s a chapter where Josie has been wanting to go to a waterfall but her mother will only allow her to do so if she rests up and gets well. So Josie fakes being well so she can go on the trip. Halfway there, her mom figures out what’s up, and they get into an argument about it. This is, technically, a depressing scene. Josie’s health deteriorates to a point where she’s so weak, she can’t even walk. But that’s not the chapter. The chapter focuses on the mom being upset that Josie wasn’t honest with her. Ishiguro consistently skates around any truly depressing moments. He, instead, finds a way to dramatize them or talk around them. I swear to you – this is a movie about kid cancer and, yet, it never feels depressing. I did not know that was possible.
