Before we get to today’s regularly scheduled programming, there’s something that’s been bothering me about Rotten Tomatoes. There’s this contingent of low budget horror movies that get unusually high scores on the site that don’t match up with the quality of the film. “Alone,” about a man stalking a female driver – 94% RT score. 58% audience score. I saw that movie and it was literally “first movie out of film school” weak. “His House,” which focuses on two displaced refugees in a haunted house. 100% RT score. 76% audience score. Extremely serious for a horror film. Disarmingly so. “Relic,” about an elderly mother’s erratic behavior, scored a 91% RT score with critics and only a 48% audience score. I don’t know if someone has figured out how to game the system for indie horror films on RT but there’s clearly something going on here and it’s annoying because I’m always looking for a good horror film and if I go by Rotten Tomatoes, I get burned every time. Anyone know what’s going on?

With that upbeat announcement, let’s get to the ten films I refused to watch this year because I knew they’d bore me to pieces. Trigger warning in advance! Some of you might get upset that I’m reviewing movies without seeing them. That’s not what I’m doing, though. I’m reviewing these movies from a conceptual/marketing perspective only. I’m fascinated by what makes the average person decide to watch a movie. The concept, the marketing, the trailer, the pitch – all of this is stuff you should be obsessing over as a screenwriter when you write something. Because even if you write the best script you’ve ever written? If it looks like Nomadland, a movie that makes you want to kill yourself when you watch the trailer, you’re going to have an insanely difficult time getting anybody to read the script. And with that, here are the ten movies in 2020 I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole!

I’m Thinking of Ending Things – There are certain topics that are so depressing, they don’t work well within the cinematic format. Suicide is one of those topics for me. The exception to that is when you play off the expected tone and have fun with it. The 1985 comedy, Better Off Dead, comes to mind. Even the recent Netflix show, 13 Reasons Why, created this fun mystery component to the story that implied, for most of the season, that this might not have even been a suicide, but rather a murder. My issue with I’m Thinking of Ending Things is that it leans into the tone of depression and suicide so heavily that it’s too on-the-nose. It’s not a surprise to me at all, then, that the audience score for Kaufman’s latest was only 47%.

Bad Boys for Life – Bad Boys was the poster child for empty-calories entertainment in the 90s. You had the director – Michael Bay – who may be the director most uninterested in the human condition in all of Hollywood. This guy’s deepest thought every day is whether to add mild or hot sauce to his Taco Bell Grande burrito. This meant that the actors in Bad Boys, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, were relegated to improvising as many variations of “Aww, helllll no!” as possible. Ironically, if I were asked to classify this franchise in three words, it would be: “Aw, hell no.” The biggest mystery about this movie is why did they want to make it? I would rather have seen a sequel to the underrated Martin Lawrence film, The Black Knight, than this. But I do give it props for making a lot of dough. I didn’t think the appetite would be as high as it was. And it managed to beat the pandemic.

Mank – “You can’t include “Mank,” Carson. You saw Mank!” That’s the funny thing. This movie was so forgettable that I actually forgot I saw it when I added it to the list. And it only came out a couple of weeks ago! Despite this, I realize that Mank is a rare achievement in Hollywood that only a select few filmmakers every generation enjoy. It’s when a director is so successful for so long that they can make a movie that only one person cares about – them. Nobody else asked for this movie. It has one fan and one fan only. That fan is David Fincher. And, hey, all the power to him. If I’m ever that successful, I’ll probably make a movie only I like as well.

Nomadland – Carson, why do you hate indie film so much? The truth is I do not hate indie film. In fact, here are a few indie I’ve enjoyed over the last few years: Parasite. Jojo Rabbit. The Favourite. Three Billboards. Do you notice a trend with all of these movies? Oh yeah, it’s that THEY’RE NOT DEPRESSING AS SHIT!!!! That’s all I’m asking for from my indie movie. That it not depress the hell out of me. And there is nothing in this universe that looks as depressing as this film. It isn’t even that I can’t take depressing narratives. But there has to be variety of emotion in a movie. It can’t be one single depressing note the whole way through. It irks me that movies like this get made because they seem to be saying, “Suffer through our depressing film so you can hear our message.” I’m sorry but I don’t watch movies to suffer.

First Cow – Without question, the single worst title of 2020. And maybe the worst title of the decade. It really says something that this movie is so highly reviewed yet I will never see it because of the title alone. A title is supposed to inform. Create curiosity. Give us a feel for what kind of movie we’re watching. Unless this is literally about the first cow in existence, this title does none of these things. This is another thing about indie film that bothers me. They don’t have people pushing back as much. So there’s no one to challenge anything. This is especially relevant in this case since someone needed to say, “I refuse to distribute this movie unless you change the title.”

Songbird – There’s miscalculation and then there’s stupidity. People don’t like to watch movies about upsetting subject matter while the subject is still happening. Michael Bay’s decision to make a movie about the pandemic during the pandemic would be second only to making a movie about 9-11 two months after 9-11. Oh yeah, I think somebody did that, too. In times of crisis, people don’t like to be reminded of said crisis. They like to laugh. They like to get lost in a fun story. There’s a good example of how to do this right and I have to thank Poe for it because he alerted me to the movie. The film is called “Host” and the whole story takes place over a Zoom meeting during the pandemic, which isn’t even about the pandemic. Check it out if you like horror.

The Lovebirds – The Lovebirds represents one of the oldest mistakes Hollywood makes. They take two quickly rising actors and assume that because everybody likes those actors individually that everybody will like them together as well. That’s not how it works. Every couple has its own personality just like every individual has their own personality. Nobody wanted to see a movie with these two together. Literally nobody. You see them in a poster and it’s the easiest “no thank you” you’ve ever said. Same thing happened with Passengers. You took one look at Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt and said, “Something’s not right here.” I guess I understand, logically, why this happens. Actors are commodities and attaching hot ones are one of the best ways to move a project forward. But somebody needs to solve this particular problem because nobody wants to see movies like this.

The Last Days of American Crime – If anybody anywhere understands the plot to this movie, please let me know. I’ve never watched twenty minutes of something and been more confused than while watching this. This is only a movie that could’ve been made in this time, in this environment, with this business model, because Netflix is still so new to the feature game that they don’t have any quality control in place yet. The thing is, “Last Days of American Crime” has an interesting concept at its core – a blocker that the government initiates in all individuals makes them unable to perform a crime. But like so many bad writers before him, this writer took that idea and decided to make it as complex as possible instead of as simple as possible. Let this be your 6785th reminder that simple narratives win out over complex ones 99.9% of the time.

Fatman – I wanna pitch something to you. Are you ready? Miracle on 34th street meets Fargo. “Um, what exactly?” “You know, a movie about Santa Clause but it’s a crime film.” “But that doesn’t make any sense.” “Egggsaccctly.” “Um, no I don’t think you’re hearing me. That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” Look, I’m all for doing something different. But when you’re doing something different, it can’t be forced. There are certain genres that don’t want to be mixed together. Sure, I could pitch a new version of “A Christmas Story,” told in three chapters, all of them backwards, in the style of a sci-fi Christopher Nolan film, for which I would win the “found a new angle” award. But did I create a good idea that audiences would actually want to pay for? No. I did not. And that’s the case with Fatman as well. I mean, this is a really poor idea for a movie.

Sound of Metal – I know I’m going to get some blowback on this one but there’s something about this movie, despite the critical praise, that’s keeping me away. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the concept. A drummer for a rock band is losing his hearing? My first thought when you pitch me that is: I don’t care. I’m sorry. I don’t care if a drummer loses his hearing, lol. So what! I hate movies that put messaging over entertainment. But the flip side of that coin is when a movie isn’t about anything. This just seems so devoid of depth to me. Some of you may say, “Give it a chance, Carson!” That’s the point I’m trying to make, though! We all only have a finite amount of time. Which means we can’t watch everything. Which is why it’s so damn important to get the concept right. Millions of people are going to be looking at that concept and asking, ‘Do I want to check that out or no?” And they’re going to be making that decision within three seconds. So the more powerful you can make your pitch, the better off you’re going to be. Who the hell cares if a drummer loses his hearing?

Stand by for my favorite movies of 2020! Have there even been 10 good movies in 2020? Find out tomorrow! And share the 2020 movie you refused to watch!

Mayhem Jones, you ask? Who’s that? Isn’t the writer of the number one script, Sophie Dawson? Well, around here we’ve always known her as Mayhem. Not just because it’s her online alias, but because she’s always up to some kind of mischief. The good kind of mischief, of course. Speaking of mischief, Mayhem’s script, Headhunter, follows a cannibal who selects his victims based on their Instagram popularity. Today I ask her about that script, how she develops her ideas, and how she crafted the voice that won her so many fans around town. Enjoy the interview!

I know who I want to play Alan

SS: First off, congratulations! This all must be a bit overwhelming.

MJ: Thank you! I work a crappy retail job and this customer was arguing with me about leggings as my phone was blowing up with the news. I’m obsessed with Franklin Leonard and his annual Black List – my goal was to make the very bottom of it at some point in my life, so HEADHUNTER hitting #1 left me speechless. I quickly texted a friend who squealed: “I just showed the manager of H&M your name in Deadline!” and I was like, “Do you even know this person??” and he went, “No, but we’re both FREAKING OUT!!”

SS: By the way. There are many a rumor about where you live and what you do. I recently heard you live off the grid in a forest so big that it hasn’t been fully charted by the United States government yet. Can you tell us anything about where you reside or is that top secret?

MJ: TOP SECRET. I enjoy being incredibly difficult to reach, so when my managers insisted I set-up my cell phone’s voicemail (for the first time ever, I might add) stating my actual name and stuff… I was livid. It’s been 4 months and I’m still pissed! It’s really bizarre seeing people mention a script using my real name now. Don’t they mean Mayhem Jones??

SS: Why do you think, of all the scripts you’ve written, that Headhunter is the one that clicked with people and helped you break out?

MJ: Let’s face it, most of my earlier dialogue-driven work exploded all over the page in an insane, uncontrollable frenzy. With HEADHUNTER, I slowed down a bit. It’s still weird – but with less spin outs, more control! The producers and executives I talked to said it was a fun, interesting read that felt so different from what they’re normally given. Most importantly: you only need to find ONE PERSON to love and champion your script, and I hit the freakin’ jackpot finding a team who immediately took to the material. (Ha ha, sickos!)

SS: Can you tell us a little about your process for writing a screenplay? Do you jump right in? Do you meticulously outline?

MJ: I have a 40-beat chart that I use color-coded post-its to fill with one sentence scene pitches. I transfer that over to a word document where I go deeper: scene summary, links of research I might need, and “dialogue ideas”. I’ll transfer that into a Final Draft document with each beat numbered for clarity. I then write 2-3 scenes per day – withholding sleep, and sometimes food – until I make that quota. Once I have a more formal draft, I change my quota to 5-10 pages per day to more closely shape the scenes. I see dialogue and scene descriptions as totally different things, so I’ll do 10-20 pages a day of ONLY scene description work/polish, then switch to 5-10 pages a day of ONLY dialogue polish. I then do more broader passes of 20-30 pages per day.

Towards the end, I’ll do a “reader engagement” check – do I skim quicker over certain scenes? Those need more work. With a dialogue-heavy script like HEADHUNTER, I’ll have easily gone through it 100+ times, sometimes only changing a few words or moving a comma. I’ll go over the first 5-10 pages an extra 30+ times because it’s critical to gain the reader’s trust early.

SS: Headhunter has a BIG main character. Can you share your approach to character creation?

MJ: When I’m writing more voice-y stuff, it’s essential I relate in some way to the main character. This way, they can serve as a vector for my thoughts and opinions – which will lead to more energetic prose. I wanted to do a commentary on everyone’s 24/7 addiction to social media, so it made sense to make a cannibal character (us!) literally consume Instagram models (social media!), right? In general, I love the exploration of dark/demented characters that are presented in a more digestible way (uhhh, no pun intended). When people heard about HEADHUNTER early on, they were like: “Ewww! I’m not reading a script about a CANNIBAL!!” But once they found out I wrote it, they were like “Oh… OK. I know Sophie will do something different with it.”

SS: I suspect your dialogue was a big reason this script got passed around. What’s your secret to strong dialogue?

MJ: Dialogue succeeds when it’s natural, so I go with my “first take” as much as possible. The more you tweak it, the more awkward it sounds. I’m neurotic about looking up words I don’t know, and keep notes of dialogue ideas that pop into my mind. Even if I’m about to fall asleep – I’ll wake up and write it down. I’ll then go through my script and input these lines where they’d make the most sense. I was in Whole Foods listening to a pretentious douche brag about the price of avocados, and was like – my main character in HEADHUNTER could totally troll someone like that before killing them. Later, I read an article about how it rains diamonds on the planet Neptune. That fact was incredible! It’s a little too random to work into a conversation, but seemed like the perfect annoying ice breaker for an Uber driver.

You can even get more nit-picky if you want, and use rhythmic cadences. In HEADHUNTER, every time the main character wanted to close his eyes and disappear to another place – the description of the places he was daydreaming about had a certain rhythmic pattern. Towards the end of the script, when these daydreams were becoming more violent/unhinged, I slightly changed the rhythm (achieved by simply using words with different amounts of syllables) to be a bit “off” – so the sequence was more jarring.

SS: You get endless compliments about your unique voice, and rightfully so. Can you give other writers tips on finding their unique voice?

MJ: Ask yourself: what annoys the SH*T out of you? Start ranting about it. Seriously. Pull up a word document or whatever and write a paragraph about what pisses you off the most. Now, read it. Notice how animated you are? Notice how specific you are? Listen to yourself when you get angry – whether it’s about the Tesla that just cut you off, or the friend trying to offload their $1 Lake Tahoe timeshare on you – that super raw, inner monologue of yours is your “voice”. Apply that inner energy to scripts that deal with topics you have opinions on, and I guarantee you’ll notice a different kind of writing.

SS: What everyone is always asking is how to get an agent, how to get a manager, how a script goes from one’s computer to “sale.” Can you tell us, in as much detail as possible, how you got your agent/manager?

MJ: HEADHUNTER made the quarterfinals/semifinals in the 2020 Academy Nicholl Fellowships, and my friend was like, “YOU GOTTA QUERY PEOPLE RIGHT NOW!”. I hate querying so much, but I trolled the interwebs for awesome managers – begrudgingly sending the simplest/least annoying pitch I could to one per day. Someone on Reddit posted a Twitter thread by literary manager John Zaozirny, head of Bellevue Productions. It was about how he manages clients… I instantly became obsessed! I sent him a quick pitch, and amazingly he responded with a read request.

I was getting more read requests and even meetings – but after a zoom with John and his colleague Zack Zucker, I knew I wanted them in my life ASAP!! (I was right – they don’t mind my freak outs, ALL CAPS EMAILS, and ridiculous ideas, ha ha!) John and Zack started sending out HEADHUNTER, and it led to an astonishing six agencies wanting to know more about me. It was excruciating to decide (as many of these fabulous, fabulous agents have clients on this years Black List!!) but I have a wonderful team of people as crazy as me.

SS: Headhunter won Amateur Showdown and was reviewed on Scriptshadow a while back. Was there any feedback from the commenters you got that day that helped you improve the script to what it is now? If so, can you highlight some?

MJ: Honestly, the biggest complaint from that weekend was the genre. Everyone HATED that I called it a drama, saying it was more of a dark comedy. So I started labeling it as a dark comedy/satire. Except for some minor tweaks, it’s pretty much the same! The biggest change? A modified title. My manager John went all Sean Parker (from that famous scene in THE SOCIAL NETWORK) and said: “Drop the ‘The’. Just – HEADHUNTER.”

SS: I’ve found that there’s a direct correlation between a writer’s ability to stay positive and the length of time they stick with the craft. And since it takes a while to get good at this screenwriting thing, possessing the skill of remaining positive is very important. You are well-known for your positivity. Can you share your secret?

MJ: First off, you have to be in complete and utter denial about your odds of becoming a screenwriter. Like, it can’t even occur to you that it might not work out. You have to – naively as possible – keep marching forward. You gotta be a video game character that just keeps dying then regenerating. Second: you have to get over yourself, and get over yourself QUICK. I’m not perfect, not every script I write will be great, and I still have an unimaginable amount of things to learn about screenwriting. Self-deprecation and an overall humorous outlook on life (and its setbacks) is essential!

If one script doesn’t work out, maybe the next one will. Enjoy the hell out of any praise you get, but also get rejected often and early. I’ve been called EVERYTHING – from a “ranting maniac who probably spends her free time assembling robots out of old dishwasher parts” and “a mind numbing, insufferable dialogue hack” to a “plot-less blowhard who only writes to hear the sound of her own voice”. I’ll then dramatically read these jabs to my Mother, who’s like: “Sophie, most of those things are true.” HA!

SS: What are some of the tips you’ve learned over the years that have really improved your screenwriting? I like to call them, “Ah-ha,” moments. Can you give us a few of those tips that, when you heard them, you thought, “Oh my God, I need to start doing that!”

MJ: There’s so many great lessons everywhere, but for me one really stands out: I love the complexity of the opening scene in Aaron Sorkin’s THE SOCIAL NETWORK. The way the conversation is so out-of-step – with Mark Zuckerberg both jumping forwards and backwards on different topics – while Erica Albright just tries to keep up (being a few paces behind, or ahead). I’ll never be qualified to breathe the same air as Aaron, but this kind of jagged word play is interesting to watch and incredibly fun to write! If it fits the script I’m working on, I really like having an aloof character not quite on the same page as whoever they’re talking to.

SS: You’ve sent me, I believe, 5 scripts over a period of 8 years? And I believe you’ve written 20 scripts in total. In an industry where you get so little positive feedback until you make it, how did you stay motivated during that time?

MJ: WOW, has it been that long?! I feel like I started to take screenwriting “seriously” about 3-4 years ago. Because I was just writing off-and-on as a hobby (taking year-long breaks) during extremely demanding publishing jobs in New York City. But as my scripts got more and more positive feedback, I was like – wait, should I try to make this a career? I was just so swept up in climbing the ladder in a completely different industry that I wasn’t thinking about it. I just wrote for fun, experimenting in drama, dark comedy, and sci-fi to figure out my strengths and weaknesses.

I wouldn’t even use the term “motivated” to describe how I kept going… I’d rather say: have malignant, narcissistic masochist tendencies (seriously, be a complete sadist) with an urge to keep writing and throwing your work online. Amateur Offerings Weekend is one of the BEST things your site has ever offered to aspiring screenwriters – and was one of my biggest motivations to write, knowing I could pitch you some wacky crap and maybe you’d give me a chance. Thank you so much!

SS: You are, of course, welcome. One last question. You’ve got such an incredible imagination. What was your craziest script idea? Can you pitch it to us?

MJ: I had a terrible experience at the retail store JCPenney a couple years ago, so I came home and decided I was going to write a screenplay called: JCPENNEY IS A WHORE. I basically just listened to Beck albums on repeat while crafting this story about a suicidal man having 24 hours to locate someone’s stolen Justin Bieber concert ticket – before a bomb under that seat blew up the LA Staples Center. It opened with the protagonist tied up in Richard Simmons basement, having been lost in a human poker match to his insane maid.

There was only one scene that took place in an actual JCPenney (right before the main character went to Leonardo DiCaprio’s house for a party). It basically had everything you NEVER want in a script: sex robot-addicted cops, murders at Jack in the Box, a pimp with itchy pants syndrome who’s obsessed with vintage Nintendo systems, Chuck E. Cheese, and cameos by Amanda Bynes and Tish Cyrus (Miley’s mom). It never got past the outline stage, DON’T WORRY!!

The saddest thing about Scriptshadow Showdowns? Only one gunslinger survives.

Tomorrow is the SUPER SHOWDOWN we’ve all been waiting for where the winners of the last four Amateur Showdowns face off. Considering that a previous Amateur Showdown winner took the top spot on the 2020 Black List, I can only imagine what will happen with the winner of Super Showdown!!! Is an 8-figure sale on the table? I don’t see why not.

But that’s not what today’s article is about. Today is about the eight scripts that finished at the bottom of the last four showdowns. Amateur Showdown mirrors Hollywood in that if a potential reader doesn’t think the script sounds interesting, they won’t open it. You almost have to imagine Amateur Showdown times 100. Or Amateur Showdown times 1000. That’s how many entries you’re up against. It’s only once you internalize that, that you realize how enticing your script idea needs to be to stand out from those other 5000.

So I’m going to break down the eight loglines that finished in last place and see if we can identify weaknesses that might help the writers – and, in turn, you guys – understand why the scripts didn’t score well. It may have nothing to do with the concept. Sometimes it’s the execution that’s the problem. But usually, if a script isn’t getting a lot of love, there’s something faulty in the concept. Today, we’re going to identify those faults.

Before we get to that, for reference’s sake, here are the winners of the last four Amateur Showdowns…

FIRST WEEK WINNER
Title: Our Hero
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: When 3 nerdy middle school kids discover the secret lair of a burned-out superhero; the world’s most powerful man agrees to be their friend in exchange for keeping his secret.

SECOND WEEK WINNER
Title: Bad Influence
Genre: Horror Comedy
Logline: After a popular child influencer gets possessed by the devil, her family, who rely on her income, struggle to keep her brand alive.

THIRD WEEK WINNER
Title: Archer
Genre: War
Logline: 1415 — As the English army marches towards doom in the greatest battle of the medieval age, a young archer seeks redemption for his past under the cruel tutelage of his ruthless and invincible sergeant. A medieval FURY meets PLATOON.

FOURTH WEEK WINNER
Title: POSSESSIONS
Genre: Horror
Logline: An estranged daughter returns to her childhood home to help with her mother’s extreme hoarding only to discover her mother’s cursed by one of her many, many possessions.

They will be facing off tomorrow so get ready to vote! Okay, now let’s try to fix the scripts that got the lowest number of votes.

Title: Violet Sun
Genre: Horror
Logline: Born with a severe allergy to sunlight, a maladjusted teenager struggles to cure his disease by consuming the healthy blood of unsuspecting victims so he can win back the girl of his dreams before she leaves his life forever.

Analysis: I thought this was going to do a lot better. One of the most common pieces of screenwriting advice you hear is to identify a successful concept then find a fresh angle on it. This is a vampire movie without actual vampires. I felt that was a good pitch. Not to mention, it’s been a while since we’ve had a big vampire movie. And since vampires ALWAYS come back, I thought this was showing up at just the right time. But that’s the weird thing about timing. It’s always too soon until one day it isn’t. And it usually “isn’t” when someone comes up with a killer screenplay in the genre. Alas, maybe Violet Sun just didn’t stick the landing.

Title: IN A FIX
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Amid growing tensions with a rival gang, a fixer must quit her job before her controlling crime boss discovers she is pregnant.

Analysis: I’m not as surprised that this one struggled. For starters, I don’t think everyone knows what a “fixer” is. It’s a general enough term that a lot of people won’t know what’s going on. And like I always remind everyone, generalities get you nowhere in loglines. It’s the specifics that win over the reader. In other words, it isn’t the “family lives on a farm and must avoid a world of monsters” that gets you to read A Quiet Place. It’s that the monsters have super-hearing which means even the slightest sound can get you killed. I’ve also found that words like “gang” without context can be logline killers. What gang? There are thousands of gangs. What’s unique about this one? Again, BE MORE SPECIFIC. Finally, it isn’t clear why the complication in the logline – being pregnant – is so bad. Is there a known pregnancy bias in this line of work? So this one had a lot of issues and my guess is that it’s low vote count had a lot to do with readers simply not opening the script. This is my weekly reminder to get a logline evaluation, guys (e-mail “logline consult” to carsonreeves!@gmail.com). I can help you avoid these problems.

Title: Get Woke
Genre: Buddy-comedy
Logline: An old-school police officer joins forces with his tech-savvy teenage daughter to crack the case of a social media influencer’s cyber stalker.

Analysis: I was so bummed when this one didn’t do well. It was one of my favorite titles. I think this is another case of choosing the wrong things to focus on in the logline. I don’t know what the actual story is (it’s been forever since I read the first ten pages) but I would hope that the specifics of the setup are more interesting than what I’m seeing here. We start off with too common-sounding of a team-up. It’s the “old school” police officer. How many times have we seen that in a logline? A million? That’s okay, though, if you get us excited about the team-up partner. But all we hear about her is that she’s “tech-savvy.” That’s the wrong thing to focus on in a concept like this. When you hear “Get Woke,” you’re immediately thinking of political correctness and social issues. But there’s no mention of either anywhere in the logline. In fact, if this wasn’t titled “Get Woke,” I would think it was silly comedy about the internet. So there’s a disconnect there. Lesson? Make sure your logline and title are simpatico.

Title: Unchained
Genre: Action
Logline: Two fallen out sister-soldiers must reunite and reconcile as they fight their way through a train of mercenaries to reclaim a mysterious WMD-classified object that drove them apart — before the ride reaches its destination.

Analysis: One of the reasons I put this one into the showdown is because I wanted some variety and there weren’t a lot of straight action scripts to choose from. But even as I was putting it up, I sensed that it would struggle. As someone pointed out in the comments, I don’t know what a “sister-soldier” is. Is it two sisters who were also soldiers and the writer just wanted to pare that down into a combo-word for faster reading? Is it that whenever two women fought in the army together, they are known as “sister-soldiers?” It’s frustrating because I don’t know. One of the fastest ways to kill a logline is to confuse the reader early. And there’s a specific reason for that. The reader says to himself, “If this writer can’t make one sentence clear, how is he going to make 110 pages of sentences clear?” I would’ve also told the reader what the WMD is. Once again, you do not pull in readers with generalities. You pull them in with specifics. “WMD” makes this sound like every other action movie ever.

Title: The Article
Genre: Contained Drama/Thriller
Logline: When the CEO of a large media news company invites a troubled Male escort to her apartment……things are not as they seem.

Analysis: I thought this one was going to do better. I liked the twist of a female hiring a male escort instead of what we usually see, which is the other way around. I liked the contained component of the story. I liked how the large media company implied that there were some stakes on the line. It’s not like this escort is showing up at some middle manager’s one-bedroom apartment. But now that I’m looking at the logline again, I can see why it didn’t do well. It contains the logline-killing “ending to nowhere” tag. “They get stuck in a haunted house where they realize… they are not alone.” “An antiquities dealer is presented with a choice… that will change her life forever.” “A politician must win the election while keeping… a horrifying secret from his past.” TELL US THE THING!!! TELL IT TO US! The “thing” is what gets us excited. It’s what gets us to read. Why would you ever not include it in the logline? Do you really think someone’s going to get excited to read something where someone… “experiences a terror they’ve never experienced before?” What’s the terror???? I think if the writer had included what ‘wasn’t as it seemed,’ he would’ve gotten a lot more reads and, therefore, a lot more votes.

Title: Big Stick
Genre: 1 Hr. TV Drama
Logline: After a crushing fall from grace, a Boston cop/mom with an anxiety disorder retreats to her California surf community where her rogue investigation into a young girl’s murder teases a career do-over requiring the takedown of a powerful judge and her surf-hero son.

Analysis: To be fair, this is a feature-driven contest. Having a TV idea is a handicap. With that said, there are a LOOOOOOOOTTTTT of TV ideas being pitched all over town. And while they don’t need to be as high concept as movie concepts, they do need some aspect of them that stands out. The most specific component of this logline is surfing. Everything else is general to the TV landscape(fall from grace, a girl has been murdered, returning home). So I would at least hope that there was something interesting going on with the surf aspect in the logline. But it feels like window dressing. ‘Oh yeah, and people surf here too!’ Maybe if the girl murdered was a surfer and the protagonists’s son is also a surfer, and the logline hints at the idea that he may be involved, now you’re getting closer to an appealing concept. But as it stands, nothing in this logline screams, “Oh my God, I have to read this now.” I’m not saying every logline has to do that. But I started out this article reminding you of just how many concepts your script is in competition with. So if you’re not going to write something that has an “Oh my God, I have to read this now” concept, you have to accept that your job just got a lot harder. Cause you’re going to be trying to get people to read something that, when they hear the pitch, they’re not going to be excited to read. That’s always a tougher road.

Title: Kelsey’s Crossing
Genre: Drama
Logline: When the helicopter she’s riding in over the Sonoran desert crashes in Mexico, the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel has to rely on a group of migrants to survive the dangers and brutality of the desert and help her travel 40 miles to get back to American soil.

Analysis: I was surprised this didn’t do better. This logline was one of, maybe, twenty-five in the entire contest, that truly understood how to develop a concept with irony. I don’t know if the execution was lackluster or what. But as I’m re-reading the logline now, I’m noticing one thing that may have hurt it. This part: “the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel.” While that does convey the concept to the reader, it doesn’t put an image in their head. It doesn’t even tell us if it’s a man or a woman (even though pronouns tell us later and the title implies it). Nailing the identity of this person is key to making this logline work. For example, if I told you the main character looked like Natalie Portman and wore a hoodie, that’s going to put a different movie in your head than if I told you she looked like Blake Lively and was quickly becoming Fox News’ next big anchor. Imagery is so important in envisioning movies so when you have an idea like this one where look is so important, make sure to tell us what the person looks like.

Title: Ambrosia
Genre: Time Travel/Heist
Logline: Three anxiety-ridden young adults discover an experimental drug that allows them to time travel back 36 hours after each overdose. As the side effects intensify and their tolerance builds, each time travel back becomes reduced (16 hours, 8 hours, etc), but they keep going back anyways to perfect a bank robbery. Meanwhile, the town’s leading detective chases them down.

Analysis: I think this is a pretty good idea but anyone who’s read a lot of scripts before knows that when time-travel rules get even a little bit complicated, the story falls apart quickly. Props to Alex because he makes the concept sound as simple as it can. But I heard right away in the comments that people were getting confused reading the script, and that wasn’t surprising at all. I do think this idea of continuing to go back in time to execute a heist could work. But I’d encourage Alex to simplify the rules. It’s like beating a dead horse at this point. I always warn writers away from complicated time travel. But they keep ignoring me!

Sorry! I was out all yesterday so I wasn’t able to catch up on the Black List madness until the evening. Count me both shocked and thrilled, then, when I saw not one, but two active Scriptshadow readers in the Top 5!!!

I still remember meeting Angela and her newborn baby a few years ago when she was moving to San Deigo, worried about her chances of getting a staff writing job if she was outside of LA. Looks like, in the end, her decision was the right one! She’s also been killing it with her blog, LA Screenwriter, for a full decade now. So happy for you, Angela!

And then what can you say about Mayhem Jones (Sophie)? Is there anyone on this planet who possesses more positivity than her? I remember how bad I felt that I didn’t give Headhunter that ‘worth the read’ mark because I like Mayhem as a person so much. But you know what she said to me afterwards? She said, oh god, I don’t care about that at all, I was just happy to get a review on Scriptshadow.

I bring up that positivity because I’m always happy to see the people who remain positive succeed. It confirms the power that staying positive has. It’s so easy to become bitter. And I think the more bitter you become, the harder it is to succeed. Not so much because your writing gets worse. It’s more that people don’t like to be around people who bring them down. Or who are always complaining. Or who think the world is conspiring against them.

Now despite me missing the boat on my Headhunter rating (I’ll gladly take the L on that one!), I think we all agreed on one thing with Mayhem during that review – she has voice for days. A really strong voice. And those are the scripts that tend to do well on the Black List. Clever concepts do well. But dating back to the Diablo Cody days, Black List has always been about finding unique voices. And we all said during the day of her review that she had that part nailed.

Okay, with that, let’s take a look at this year’s Black List!

Title: HEADHUNTER – 29 votes
Writer: Sophie Dawson
Logline: A high-functioning cannibal selects his victims based on their Instagram popularity, but finds his habits shaken by a man who wants to be eaten.
Thoughts: WAY TO GO, MAYHEM! By the way, I don’t know if this is a new draft that went out. I’ll be curious to hear from Mayhem about this. Would love to know if she took any of your notes. And for those of you wondering where the review is on the site, Mayhem informed me a couple of months ago that her script was picking up steam and I didn’t want my review to affect any buzz so I took it down.

Title: CHANG CAN DUNK – 28 votes
Writer: Jingyi Shao
Logline: A young Asian-American teen and basketball fanatic who just wants to dunk and get the girl ends up learning much more about himself, his best friends, and his mother.
Thoughts: This is one of those loglines that only works when it has a big “28” behind it, indicating the number of votes it got on the Black List. Cause as a logline alone, this is screaming to me, “Too thin!” But with 28 people vouching for it, the cuteness of the idea all of a sudden sounds a lot more appealing. Plus, it’s one of the best titles in the bunch.

Title: NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY – 26 votes
Writer:Dave Collard
Logline: An adaptation of David Sharp’s book The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation that chronicles the clandestine CIA operation that risked igniting WWIII by recovering a nuclear-armed Soviet Sub, the K-129, that sunk to the bottom of the ocean in 1968.
Thoughts: Scriptshadow Rule 2156b-L. Never ever write a screenplay about the Cold War. Nobody goes to see movies about the Cold War. People go to see movies about real wars all the time. Because, you know, it’s war! And war is exciting. But a war where there was no actual warring? People aren’t interested in that. BUT! Scriptshadow Law 78-9864E. Hollywood is due for a great submarine movie. And this sounds different from your usual submarine subject matter. This puts me on the fence for this one. I’m not sure if I want to confirm or deny.

Title: IF YOU WERE THE LAST – 25 votes
Writer: Angela Bourassa
Logline: Two astronauts who think they’ve been lost in space forever fall in love, becoming content with their isolated lives, only to suddenly have to return to Earth.
Thoughts: I’ve read 4 of Angela’s scripts and the thing that always strikes me about them is that they’re a) always easy to read, and b) cerebral. There’s always an element in the storytelling that makes you think a little deeper. If You Were The Last sounds like it fits in that camp. Simple story. Complex situation. Can’t wait to check this one out.

Title: TWO FACED – 25 votes
Writer: Cat Wilkins
Logline: A high school senior attempts to get her principal fired after observing racist behavior, but she quickly learns he won’t go down without a fight.
Thoughts: I don’t think I’m going to like this one if it’s super serious. I’m in more of a ‘heal the nation’ mindset these days so when it comes to social subject matter, I’m looking for lighter fare. If this is more of a satirical take on the topic, like Election, count me in. (P.S. Election is one of my favorite movies. If you haven’t seen it, check it out!).

Title: BRING ME BACK – 22 votes
Writer: Crosby Selander
Logline: When a woman on an interstellar voyage falls in love with someone during a cryosleep simulation, she attempts to discern whether the man is a real passenger on the ship or just a figment of her imagination.
Thoughts: I reviewed this one in the newsletter. Definitely one of the more interesting concepts of the year. Its weakness is that it’s so ambitious you’re expecting more from it than it’s able to deliver. That’s the thing when you get really really ambitious with a concept. The execution has to be amazing in order to live up to what you promised. But it’s a pretty good script.

Title: BUBBLE & SQUEAK – 21 votes
Writer: Evan Twohy
Logline: Two newlyweds traverse a fictional country on their honeymoon but slowly realize they’re yearning to take separate journeys.
Thoughts: Some great titles this year. Love this title. The thing that sticks out to me about this logline is the “fictional country” part. I don’t even know what that means. Which leads to me being half frustrated and half intrigued. What is this fictional country? What is it like? With that said, somebody should’ve taken Scriptshadow’s logline service. I could’ve helped Evan nail the back half of this thing.

Title: EMERGENCY – 21 votes
Writer: KD Davila
Logline: Ready for a night of partying, a group of Black and Latino college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an emergency.
Thoughts: Whoa. Speaking of needing a logline service. Yikes. WHAT’S THE EMERGENCY??????? This is my yearly reminder to everyone that, often times, the writer of a Black List script does not write their own logline. Their agent or manager does. And those people do not know how to write. So you get this. The emergency needs to be in the logline.

Title: FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE – 19 votes
Writer: Emma Dudley
Logline: Twenty-four-year-old, quiet, self-conscious Hazel has struggled with her sexuality ever since her conservative dad walked in on her kissing a girl at a middle school sleepover and flipped his absolute shit. On the way back to her hometown for her dad’s wedding, Hazel gets drunk and makes out with an older, attractive female flight attendant. She’s thrilled to have moved past her hang-ups and had some fun until she arrives home and realizes that the flight attendant is her dad’s fiance.
Thoughts: I will fix this logline. “On the flight home to her conservative father’s wedding, Hazel hooks up with a female flight attendant, only to later find out the flight attendant is her father’s fiance.”

Title: VIDEO NASTY – 18 votes
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Logline: Three teenagers who rent a cursed VHS tape are pulled into an 80s slasher movie that threatens to trap them forever.
Thoughts: This is one of those projects that’s more a movie than a script. As a script, it’s average. But you can envision how fun this would look from a marketing standpoint. It’s one of those ideas where, if it’s done well, it’ll look like a good time. And it’s a pretty decent concept. Not the most original. But still, fun. You can read my review here.

Title: SATURDAY NIGHT GHOST CLUB – 17 votes
Writers: Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman
Logline: After being haunted by a terrifying entity, a twelve-year-old boy teams up with his eccentric uncle and three other misfits to form their own ghost club, investigating all the paranormal sites in town so that he can find and confront the ghost that’s tormenting him.
Thoughts: Everyone is still trying to come up with the next Goonies or the next Ghostbusters without it feeling like Goonies or Ghostbusters. Which, when you think about it, is almost impossible to do. But this seems to strike the right balance. My only complaint would be mixing up a 12 year old with adults. It should be either all kids or all adults.

Title: THE SAUCE – 17 votes
Writers: Chaz Hawkins
Logline: A depressed, selfish black man fights for his life after taking a job at a white-owned beauty parlor, whose monstrous owners concocted a wildly popular shampoo that requires a sickening ingredient.
Thoughts: This sounds like it’s cut from the same clothe as Hulu’s “Bad Hair.” I’m not sure anybody saw that movie. But, for those who did and liked it, this script may be for you.

Title: SHARPER – 17 votes
Writers: Brian Gatewood, Alessandro Tanaka
Thoughts: A chain of scam artists goes after one wealthy family with the perfect plan to drain them of their funds. But when love, heartbreak, and jealousy slither their way into the grand scheme, it becomes unclear whether the criminals are conning or the ones being conned.
Thoughts: I love a good con movie. But just remember, whoever wrote this logline, that it isn’t the generalities that make a script sound appealing. It’s the specifics. You need to tell us what’s specific about these characters or this setup that makes it different from every other film in the same space.

Title: BIRDIES – 16 votes
Writers; Colin Bannon
Logline: When Tabitha, a struggling foster kid, wins a contest to become part of the BIRDIES, a popular daily YouTube channel featuring the radiant and enigmatic Mama Bird and her diverse brood of adopted children, she soon learns that things get dark when the cameras turn off.
Thoughts: This sounds good. Balancing these kids shows or kids personalities against a dark backdrop has been a proven recipe for Black List success. Dating back to number 1 scripts, The Muppet Man and The Beaver.

Title: POSSUM SONG – 16 votes
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Logline: After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
Thoughts: Without question, this sounds like the most whacked screenplay on the list and, for that reason, I’m all about it. Shades of “The Voices,” here, which used to be in my Top 10 list.

Title: THE BLACK BELT – 15 votes
Writer: Randall Green
Logline: Eighth grader Simon Paluska dreams of being a Taekwondo Black Belt, but he’s not allowed to take lessons. So he buys a Black Belt on Amazon for twenty-five bucks. Then, he has to use it.
Thoughts: This is a fun idea that has the potential to be a thoughtful commentary on the state of humanity in 2020. Why spend 20 years attempting to master a discipline when you can get it sent to your door in 48 hours?

Title: RIPPER
Writer: Dennis MaGee Fallon
Logline: London, 1888: When their friends begin dying at the hands of a brutal killer, an all-female crime syndicate, The Forty Elephants, must work together to take down the predator stalking them – Jack The Ripper.
Thoughts: Is it even allowed to have a screenplay list without a Jack the Ripper concept on it? I don’t think so. With that said, this doesn’t sound like any Jack the Ripper script I’ve ever come across before. That means it’s either going to be amazing or awful.

Title: A BIG, BOLD, BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY – 14 votes
Writer: Seth Reiss
Logline: After both attending the same wedding solo, David and Sarah embark on a big, bold, beautiful journey with a little help from their 1996 Passat GPS and a little bit of magic for the road trip of their lives.
Thoughts: Quite possibly the worst logline on the list. That’s not at all saying that the script is bad. But your logline is basically, “Two people go on a road trip!!!” Wow. A road trip? I HAVE TO READ THAT. The most specific thing in your logline can’t be the car. You have to highlight something about the characters or the plot that separates it from other movies. If you’re not separating it from other movies, what makes you think we’d want to read it?

Title: ENEMIES WITHIN – 14 votes
Writer: Cat Vasko
Logline: In the 1950’s, Joseph McCarthy and his right hand man Roy Cohn sit at the height of their influence, casting aside democratic norms unchecked – until the Army’s lowest-level lawyer, John G. Adams, stumbles upon the shocking truth behind their power grab, and makes it his mission to reveal this to the public.
Thoughts: I mean, I guess if you’re going to do a political movie, McCarthy is a good subject. But, I mean, aren’t we all politcaled out at this point?

Title: THE MAN IN THE YARD – 14 votes
Writer: Sam Stefanak
Logline: When a dangerous stranger shows up at her front door, a depressed widow must confront her own past in order to protect her two children.
Thoughts: Pro – Strong setup. Con – Unoriginal. There are certain setups that work well. A dangerous person, or people, showing up at a house is the beginning of a lot good scripts. So this one will come down to the execution.

Title: SUNCOAST – 14 votes
Writer: Laura Chinn
Thoughts: An awkward teenage outcast comes of age against the backdrop of the hospice where her brother (and coincidentally, Terri Schiavo) are dying.
Thoughts: There are certain subject matters that don’t get my reading juices flowing. Hospices are definitely in my top 5.

Title: FISH IN A TREE – 13 votes
Writer: Jeff Stockwell
Logline: Based on the eponymous novel by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. A young girl in an intimidating new school finally faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her learning and in her social life when she crosses paths with an energetic-but-inexperienced substitute teacher.
Thoughts: It’s based on a book so I guess the logline doesn’t matter. But these movies are supposed to highlight the ironic differences between the two main characters. This doesn’t do that. It’s just some “young” girl who meets an “energetic” substitute teacher.

Title: THE NEUTRAL CORNER – 13 votes
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Logline: A Nevada court judge who moonlights reffing high-profile boxing matches must face his demons when he’s assigned to the Olympic fight of an ex-con he’d previously sentenced for murder.
Thoughts: When I saw this title, I thought it was going to be the true story about how Kathleen Kennedy greenlit Rogue Squadron. But seriously. Contrary to “Fish in a Tree,” this is how you connect your two characters in a logline. A judge has to face a man he sentenced to murder. There’s conflict in that setup. There’s history. We see that and we can start to envision the movie. That’s how it’s done.

Title: GUSHER – 12 votes
Writer: Abigail Briley Bean
Logline: Based on the story of Anna Nicole Smith, a shrewd young mother rises out of a small Texas town to become a famous Playboy centerfold, but when she falls in love with an eighty-nine-year-old billionaire, his son and the entire world believe she’s nothing but a gold digger.
Thoughts: My friends. I never thought we’d see that day. But it’s finally here. An Anna Nicole Smith biopic. May screenwriting rest in peace.

Title: BIKRAM – 11 votes
Writer: Silpa Kovvali
Logline: In the truly unbelievable story of Bikram Choudhury, his young wife Rajashree catapults the yoga guru to the heights of fame and fortune, and is left fighting for her survival when he brings their brand toppling down.
Thoughts: I’ve heard things about Bikram here and there that would indicate there’s an interesting story to tell here. But it’s the kind of thing I’d rather see in documentary form than fictional film form.

Title: BORDERLINE – 11 votes
Writer: Jimmy Warden
Logline: A bodyguard protects a pop superstar and her athlete boyfriend from a determined stalker in 1990s Los Angeles.
Thoughts: This is another script I would never read unless I’d heard that other people read it and liked it first. It’s too generic of a premise to get me interested on the logline alone. But it has the kind of dramatic elements that could result in a good script if the writing is strong.

Title: LURKER – 11 votes
Writer: Alex Russell
Logline: An obsessed fan maneuvers his way into the inner circle of his hip hop idol and will stop at nothing to stay in.
Thoughts: Am I having deja vu? Music star. Stalker. Same management. Same vote tally. If you spell Alex Russell backwards do you get Jimmy Warden?

Title: MY DEAR YOU – 11 votes
Writer: Meghan Kennedy
Logline: Based on a short story by Rachel Khong. A love story set in the afterlife about our struggle to let go of the past, even when our present is heaven… literally. Tess keeps searching for the love of her life without realizing he’s right there next to her the whole time, helping her look.
Thoughts: A love story set in heaven. In theory, these ideas have potential. But they’re always hard to pull off because heaven isn’t easy to conceptualize. It’s easy to come off as cliche. Yet, if you get too specific, you could put some people off. But anyway, I just noticed there are lots of love stories in this year’s list! Yay for love.

Title: OCCUPIED – 11 votes
Writer: Tara Cavanagh
Logline: When a tactless Nordstrom’s store manager denies two trans women access to the bathroom, Fran and Althea seek restitution and occupy the ladies room in protest.
Thoughts: If this is a “contained thriller” situation where they set up shop in the bathroom for the whole movie, that’s kind of a genius idea. Hot button topic. Contained thriller. Who’s not going to pass that script around?

Title: REPTILE DYSFUNCTION
Writer: Creston Whittington
Logline: A chemical leak in a local water supply in Central Florida wreaks havoc on the invasive population of pythons, leading a family to the fight of their life to survive.
Thoughts: Can we get a quick amen for this title? I am totally down for snakes in a Florida house. Although I’d be lying if I told you I knew how this script was going to be longer than 20 pages. “The front door is blocked! What do we do!??” “Try the back door!” The family runs to the back door. There are no pythons. They charge out the door and to their car. They drive away. The end.

Title: ST. SIMMONS
Writer: Greg Wayne
Logline: When a very fat and possibly gay boy from New Orleans is visited by an angel called Barbra Streisand, he sets out on a holy crusade in daytime television to touch and save the soul of every obese person in America before his demons consume him – if only to make his daddy proud. It’s the true gospel of Richard Simmons.
Thoughts: I will never be a fan of biopics. But if you’re going to write a biopic logline, this is how you write one. With a little style. Side story. I once saw Richard Simmons in the airport. He literally said “Hello” to every single person in the terminal. And there were more than 300 people. All with booming energy.

Title: THE U.S.P.S. – 11 votes
Writer: Perry Janes
Logline:: Following in his murdered mother’s footsteps, Michael Griffiths enlists in the United States Postal Service… only to discover a mail route full of surprises and a job that means maybe, just maybe, saving the world.
Thoughts: Another logline only 75% finished. You need to tell us more about the mail route in the logline. WHY it may be about saving the world. As it stands, I don’t know if this is an inspirational small story about a guy who finds meaning through his mail route or a wacky balls-to-the-wall supernatural comedy.

Title: ANNALISE & SONG – 10 votes
Writer: SJ Inwards
Logline: Annalise is a girl who quite literally “sees the world differently” than everyone else and finds herself a lonely, misunderstood outcast who keeps her “cursed sight” a secret as a consequence. But everything changes when Annalise meets her new neighbor, Peter Song — a fellow teenager whom everyone else sees as a disfigured boy, but whom Annalise sees entirely differently.
Thoughts: A lot of vagueness going on in this logline, making it hard to evaluate. While I’m all about the message of inspirational stories like “Wonder,” they’re just not my cup of tea. So I probably won’t be reading this one.

Title: BLOOD TIES – 10 votes
Writer: Aaron Katz
Logline: Based on the New Yorker article by Nathan Heller. A true-crime thriller based on the story of two brilliant college lovers convicted of a brutal slaying. An obsessed detective investigates the true motives that led to a double homicide, and the decades of repercussions that follow.
Thoughts: After just having finished “Murder on Middle Beach,” I’m reminded of how awesome true crime stories can be. But the thing is, they play out so much better in that documentary format. So while this does sound interesting, I wonder why not focus on it in doc form where it can truly shine.

Title: THE BOY WHO DIED
Writer: Monisha Dadlani
Logline: A young girl creates a robot version of Harry Potter while her father simultaneously is treating Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe for a terminal disease.
Thoughts: Okay, that comment about the possum wall script I made above about it being the wackiest of all the ideas? I take that back. This is it. I have a feeling that Monisha has deep conflicted feelings about Harry Potter and they’re all coming to light in this script. This sounds so weird, I have to check it out.

Title: CRUSH ON YOU – 10 votes
Writer: Shea Mayo
Logline: Summer on a secluded campus takes a dark turn for three college girls when a supernaturally sexy mystery man begins haunting their dreams.
Thoughts: All I can say about this logline is that I laughed as soon as I read it. Are we about to get 50 Shades of Gray meets Nightmare on Elm Street? I think so. And, for some reason, I want to read it.

Title: THE CULLING – 10 votes
Writer: Stephen Herman
Logline: A troubled priest confines himself to a remote cabin in the middle of the woods where he attempts to make a last stand against the demon that terrorized his family when he was a child.
Thoughts: I reviewed The Culling in the newsletter. Decent script. This is the one where I said it’s a good lesson in how to create metaphors in your writing. The monster he’s trying to kill in the movie is a stand-in for his alcoholism. Herman doesn’t nail the execution but does a good enough job that the script works.

Title: MAY DECEMBER – 10 votes
Writer: Samy Burch
Logline: Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
Thoughts: This sounds old fashioned. Like a play to me. For that reason, I’m thinking it only works if the dialogue is awesome.

Title: 1MDB – 10 votes
Writer: Scott Conroy
Logline: The incredible true story of the multi-billion dollar Malaysian government corruption scandal which led to the conviction of Prime Minister Najib Razak and almost $5 billion in settlements paid out by Goldman Sachs.
Thoughts: This is a documentary. It’s not a feature film. Let me take that back. It can obviously be a feature film. But its true identity is in doc form so that’s the version I’ll wait for.

Title: REWIRED – 10 votes
Writers: Adam Gaines, Ryan Parrott
Logline: Harvard. 1959. A young Ted Kaczynski is experimented on by Dr. Henry Murray during a secret CIA psychological study that may have led to the creation of the Unabomber.
Thoughts: Some subjects are so sad, they don’t translate well to storytelling. I’m not sure I want to know anything more about the guy who blew up a bunch of pre-schoolers. (edit, sorry! wrong killer)

Title: STORY – 10 votes
Writer: Emily Siegel
Logline: When a journalist turned stay-at-home mom relocates to Los Angeles to rebuild after a personal trauma, she blurs the lines between fact and fiction… only to find herself at the center of her own story.
Thoughts: If Franklin Leonard was smart, he’d start advertising logline consulting on his lists. What does this logline even mean? Is she writing a novel or something and the novel starts becoming reality? That’s what the end of the logline indicates but there’s nothing that comes before it to confirm whether that’s the case or not. I’m confused.

Title: COSMIC SUNDAY – 9 votes
Writer: MacMillan Hedges
Logline: A small percentage of the population is stuck in a time loop and have had to create a society that functions within the same day, repeated day in and day out. One man struggles to find himself for the first time in ages amidst a society clinging to a sense of normalcy.
Thoughts: This actually sounds like a fun angle into the time loop sub-genre. I do sense a complication in that, if everyone is aware of the loop, then they can keep living each day as if it’s different from the last, and essentially cancel out the loop’s influence. But I guess if the rest of the world isn’t changing, that’s where the conflict comes from. Oh, and the day needs to be the worst day of the week – Monday. And the title needs to be changed to, “Somebody’s Got a Case of the Mondays.”

Title: EARWORM – 9 votes
Writer: Austin Everett
Logline: A former music therapist is recruited to use a mysterious machine to dive into the memories of a serial killer on death row.
Thoughts: I’m struggling to connect the protagonist’s job to the events of the story. Is her singing going to inspire him to tell the police where the bodies are buried? Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, if this were a musical, it would be awesome.

Title: EXCELSIOR! – 9 votes
Writer: Alex Convery
Logline: The true story of the meteoric rise (and subsequent fall) of Marvel Comics and the star-crossed creators behind the panel: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby.
Thoughts: Hmmm. This or Falcon and Winter Soldier? If you held a gun to my head, I’m not sure I’d be able to give you an answer. Which means I’m dead. Which means I don’t have to read this.

Title: FLIGHT RISK – 9 votes
Writer: Jared Rosenberg
Logline: An Air Marshal transporting a fugitive across the Alaskan wilderness via a small plane finds herself trapped when she suspects their pilot is not who he says he is.
Thoughts: Ooh yeah, baby. I’m digging this. I love planes. I love contained tension-filled situations. This has a good setup. Shades of The Grey.

Title: HIGH SOCIETY – 9 votes
Writer: Noga Pnueli
Logline: A depressed, progressive woman stuck in a conservative small Texas town starts micro-dosing the entire town with marijuana to make them all get along.
Thoughts: Not sure I love this premise but Noga has one of my favorite unproduced scripts out there, Meet Cute. So I’ll be reading this for sure.

Title: HORSEGIRL – 9 votes
Writer: Lauren Meyering
Logline: Living under the full time care of her cancer-stricken mother, a twenty-six-year-old, socially awkward, horse-obsessed woman attempts to prove her independence by winning a hobbyhorse competition.
Thoughts: Hmmm… this sounds just weird enough that I think I’d like it. But they just had that other weird horse girl movie and that convincingly portrayed the weirdness of horse girls so I don’t know how this script tops it.

Title: MAGAZINE DREAMS – 9 votes
Writer: Elijah Bynum
Logline: A Black amateur bodybuilder struggles to find human connection in this exploration of celebrity and violence.
Thoughts: I mean, I wish I could comment on this entry but this isn’t even a logline. It does have shades of last year’s Black List script, Apex.

Title: MOUSE – 9 votes
Writer: Kelly O’Sullivan
Logline: When seventeen-year old Minnie’s best friend Callie is killed in an accident, she struggles to find an identity of her own and forms a complicated friendship with Callie’s grieving mother.
Thoughts: Where’s the unique element? The unique element is what allowed for The Big Sick to stand out. Right now, this feels like a subplot.

Title: MURDER IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Writer: Jonathan Stokes
Logline: The President is murdered during a private dinner, and Secret Service agent Mia Pine has until morning to discover which guest is the killer before a peace agreement fails and leads to war.
Thoughts: I’m getting an Agatha Christy meets As The World Turns vibe from this. Also, isn’t this the plot of every James Patterson book?

Title: NANNY
Writer: Nikyata Jusu
Logline: Aisha is an undocumented nanny caring for a privileged child. As she prepares for the arrival of her only son, who she left behind in her native country, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, jeopardizing the American Dream she’s carefully pieced together.
Thoughts: This is a new sub-genre that’s becoming more and more popular. We saw it recently with the release of His House. Very serious social-minded subject matter mixed with horror. I do like that Jusu is not going with the obvious here. Most writers would’ve made the heroine South American. It sounds like Aisha is Japanese. By the way, does anybody find it strange that His House has a 100% RT score and only a 6.4 IMDB score?

Title: A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE – 9 votes
Writer: Terry Huang
Logline: Journalists race to expose how Boeing knowingly misled regulators, pilots, and airlines to cover up a problematic flight software system on the 737 MAX, leading to two major airplane crashes and the deaths of 346 people. Based on real events.
Thoughts: This is definitely a documentary, not a narrative feature. But I’ll watch it because: plane crashes! The story with this is pretty fascinating. When these planes started having problems, then crashing and killing people, Boeing took the approach of, “It’s only because you don’t understand the plane, pilots.” Yes, I’m sure that multiple planes almost crashing and two crashing has nothing to do with the makers of the plane.

Title: STATE LINES – 9 votes
Writer: Rachel Wolf
Logline: When headstrong but well-intentioned college student Sara Jane bails on Senior Spring Break to drive a fourteen-year-old girl to get an abortion, she’s shocked to discover that her passenger is an undercover pro-lifer who has kidnapped her.
Thoughts: I like the twist on this one. These controversial political topics are not my cup of tea these days, though. I might read this.

Title: VICELAND – 9 votes
Writer: Chris Parizo
Logline: The true story of how Vice magazine grew from a free magazine in Montreal into a multi billion dollar media empire, making two of its founders multi-millionaires while the third founder was kicked out and went on to modernize the white supremacist movement by creating the Proud Boys.
Thoughts: Right on cue we get… a big political script! There’s a better chance of me going to my local grocery store and reading the ingredients of every single item in there than reading this script.

Title: EMANCIPATION – 8 votes
Writer: Bill Collage
Logline: Based on a true story, a runaway slave has to outwit bounty hunters and the perils of a Louisiana swamp to reach the Union army and his only chance at freedom.
Thoughts: Ooh, if they wrote this like 1917? This would be awesome.

Title: FIGHT OR FLIGHT – 8 votes
Writers: Brooks McLaren, DJ Cotrona
Logline: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they’re surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
Thoughts: If you’ve been paying attention you saw “plane” in the logline and thusly recognized that this would be something I want to read. I’m always down for a good “unexpected team-up” too. This looks like it’ll be a fun read.

Title: THE GORGE – 8 votes
Writer: Zach Dean
Logline: A brazen, high-action, genre-bending, love story about two very dangerous young people, who despite the corrupt and lethal world they operate in, find a soulmate in each other.
Thoughts: It isn’t a Black List unless there’s a Zach Dean script on it. Dean continues to be one of the only big writers who routinely writes original ideas. And I’m guessing this script is better than 90% of the scripts listed above him.

Title: HERE COME THE BANDITS – 8 votes
Writer: Ethan Dawes
Logline: Mickey Bradley, a wildly talented minor league baseball player in his early twenties who returns home to Los Angeles after an injury and coaches a little league team full of misfits who remind him why he fell in love with baseball in the first place. And theres a sweet romance in there too.
Thoughts: I mean, I’m trying to think of a way to phrase this that’s respectful. But is this for real? Hasn’t this movie been made 624,872 times already? I suppose if the voice is unique. Or maybe it’s a reminder to me and everyone else that Hollywood has certain movies it will always make every 3 years and this is one of them. So maybe we’re the dummies for not profiting off that.

Title: PLUSH – 8 votes
Writer: Alexandra Skarsgard
Logline: Sex, money, and one schoolyard fad that took a nation by storm. Based on the true story of Ty Warner, the enigmatic entrepreneur behind a ‘90s toy craze that sparked madness, murder, and a billion-dollar empire.
Thoughts: Sometimes I think a computer writes these Black List scripts. With that said, if there was indeed murder involved in the plush craze, maybe this is good. You know what they say. If you have a dead body, you have a movie. However, something tells me the only thing that’ll get murdered with this script is the time I spent reading it.

Title: TOWERS – 8 votes
Writer: Aaron Rabin
Logline: A businessman’s obsession with his competitor leads him down a rabbit hole of self-discovery, fantasy, and delusion.
Thoughts: Not enough information to judge the concept but I do like stories about people who become unhealthily obsessed with other people. Definitely a fast way to driving one’s self insane.

Title: TRESPASSER – 8 votes
Writer: Gabe Hobson
Logline: A father and daughter living in remote isolation must fight for survival after aliens arrive seeking revenge for killing one of their own.
Thoughts: Okay, first off. Aliens. So I’m in. I’m not sure I like the thing about them already having killed an alien though. But I do like the attempt to make a sci-fi idea cheap to produce (one location – out away from everything where that location would be cheap to secure).

Title: UNCLE WICK – 8 votes
Writer: Gabe Delahaye
Logline: An action comedy wherein Benji Stone, a lovable but deeply unpopular sixteen year old, is pulled into an international assassination plot by his uncle, a retired undercover assassin charged with babysitting Benji for the weekend.
Thoughts: This sounds fun. When I read the title, I thought, “How cool would it be if this was a John Wick spinoff and they were so obsessed with building a franchise that they were actually going to make comedic offshoots?” Cause that’s basically what this is.

Title: WHAT IF? – 8 votes
Writer: Alvaro Garcia Lecuona
Logline: An unassertive seventeen year old turns his high school on its head when he asks out his crush, a transgender classmate.
Thoughts: I believe this is one of five trans-centered scripts on the list? Hey, if you know a certain topic is going to be popular on the Black List, why not take advantage?

Title: BELLA – 7 votes

Writer: Jason Markarian

Logline: Set against the backdrop of an unprecedented crime wave that gripped New York City in the 80s, a hyper-stylized action thriller about a cop’s daughter who, after her father clings to life following an assassination attempt, goes on a rampage to unearth her father’s assassin and weed out deep-rooted corruption in the NYPD.

Thoughts: In one of my articles, I said that if a writer was smart, they’d write a female version of Joker. I guess someone listened!

Title: DUST – 7 votes
Writer: Karrie Crouse
Logline: A young mother in 1930s Oklahoma is convinced that her family is threatened and takes drastic steps to keep them safe.
Thoughts: I think this is the dust storm project? It’d be nice if that was somewhere in the logline. It is nice to know what a movie is about sometimes.

Title: FRENEMY – 7 votes
Writer: Ariel Sayegh
Logline: A chronicle of the infamous Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton feud of 2004-2006 over who would be Britney Spears’ best friend.
Thoughts: I like how it says “the infamous.” I had zero knowledge that there was ever a Lindsay Lohan Paris Hilton feud over anything. You know what would be hilarious? If this had never happened. But the movie operates as if it did. Cause you can believe that it happened. If you told me that Mr. T and Vanilla Ice warred with each other, I’d probably believe it. It sort of makes sense. I guess I’m setting myself up for disappointment if this turns out to be a true story.

Title: GABI SEEMS DIFFERENT – 7 votes
Writer: Victoria Bata
Logline: After spending several years recovering from a devastating car crash that pulled her out of the spotlight, Gabi, a famous pop star, gets ready to perform again for the first time. But with the pressure mounting and her memory failing her, the young woman begins to doubt who she really is — and if Gabi really survived the crash at all.
Thoughts: Maybe it’s because I’m getting to the end of the list and I didn’t intend for this to go on for 10,000 words, but I have no idea what this is about. I think they should wrap this script up into “Frenemy.” There are some crossover components that work well. The more I think about it, the more obvious this decision is. I want royalties when that makes these writers billionaires.

Title: GENERATION LEAP – 7 votes
Writers: John Sonntag, Thomas Sonntag
Logline: After a global pandemic causes NASA to send a crew of astronauts into deep space to find another habitable planet, the crew is unexpectedly awoken from hypersleep and must survive a mysterious new threat that comes from the future generations they sought to save, and the one place they never expected – Earth.
Thoughts: As a narrative structure, the setup of leaving someplace at the beginning and having to come back later – it doesn’t work well. Audiences like moving forward, not backward. You can start the movie with the astronats coming back. That might work. But if you build up to them leaving and then put them in space and then have wake up, talk to each other, realize they have to go back. All that stuff is logistical and sucks the momentum out of a story and, on top of that, it just feels messy. So we’ll see where the writers took it.

Title: GET LITE – 7 votes
Writer: Eric Gross
Logline: Saunders, a headstrong Bronx teenager, is caught between his love of Litefeet subway dancing and his strict father’s insistence on becoming an engineer. After he finagles his way onto a ragtag Litefeet crew, he’s exposed to an electrifying new world as well as a new crush. Now he has to decide who and what he’s willing to sacrifice in order to compete in the biggest dance competition of the year: Kingdome.
Thoughts: Uh oh. Did somebody say an updated Footloose? Uh Footlooose. Uh Footlooose. Kick off the Sunday shoes! Yes, I’m now singing my thoughts on Black List scripts. I don’t know how much I have left. Of course, I learned earlier that music can help you enter a serial killer’s mind. And there’s a serial killer in the number one script on the list. This is like… all coming together, man. It’s like a giant equation. Parallel universes. Kevin Bacon!

Title: GOOD CHANCE – 7 votes
Writer: Tricia Lee
Logline: A feisty transgender teen helps a church-going, undocumented Asian woman escape deportation, and they form an unlikely friendship that helps them heal the rifts in their own families.
Thoughts: This one’s not doing it for me. You want the disenfranchised character to have to team up with a member of the patriarchy. That’s where things get interesting. That’s where you get conflict. The unexpected team-up is so much juicier than the expected team up.

Title: HANDSOME STRANGER – 7 votes
Writer: Greg Navarro
Logline: Based on the incredible true story of serial killer Paul John Knowles and the week he spent with British journalist Sandy Fawkes in the midst of a murderous killing spree.
Thoughts: These serial killers just won’t go away, will they. I haven’t heard about this story and it does sound kind of interesting. But I’m giving the ribbon to Mayhem right now. Her serial killer concept is definitely the best so far.

Title: I.S.S. – 7 votes
Writer: Nick Shafir
Logline: At any given moment in time there are roughly six astronauts living on the International Space Station (ISS). The station itself is divided into two segments one half Russian, one half American. When a world war event occurs on Earth, America and Russia find themselves on opposing sides. As such, both nations secretly contact their astronauts aboard the ISS and give them instructions to take control of the station by any means necessary. The six astronauts must each secretly choose between their friendships with each other and their allegiance to their country.
Thoughts: I’m having deja vu here. Did I review this script? If not, I know I’ve encountered at least a couple of other similar ideas. And, look, it’s a good setup for a movie. But I don’t think anybody’s figured it out yet. The space station is the most cinematically-unfriendly location in existence. There’s nowhere to go that isn’t ugly to shoot. It’s all cramped. That’s why I suggest, if you’re making something like this, to set it in the future, where you can create your own space station.

Title: MARGOT – 7 votes
Writer: Emily Adams
Logline: Annie Mills has always known Margot Ellison to be two things: her best friend and a devout Mormon. But as high school graduation nears and Margot starts to crave change, the girls must grapple with the fear that growing up might require growing alone.
Thoughts: Where is the strange attractor? This was a subplot on like 150 episodes of 90210.

Title: THE PEAK – 7 votes
Writer: Arthur Hills
Logline: A troubled young surgeon travels to a desolate peak to climb the mountain where her father suffered a mental breakdown years earlier, only to realize halfway up the rock wall that she might be subject to the same fate.
Thoughts: Deja vu again! Did I review this already? Definitely a familiar sounding concept.

Title: REALITY – 7 votes
Writer: Heather Quinn
Logline: A woman abruptly discovers nothing she’s known until now is real, and she must recover the truth in order to save the rest of the country, still trapped inside of the lie.
Thoughts: I think my head just exploded.

Title: RUBY – 7 votes
Writer: Kat Wood
Logline: After her husband is attacked, assassin Ruby is lured into the open to hunt down those responsible, leading her back to the boss who wants to keep her in the fold at any cost.
Thoughts: This is that big project that sold to Amazon, I believe. I would’ve thought this would’ve done better as it was one of the more high profile specs of the year.

Title; TIN ROOF RUSTED – 7 votes
Writer: Michelle Harper
Logline: When two life-long best friends discover that they’re both pregnant, they promise to embark on their journey together. But with the constant pressure of outsiders, the two struggle midst personal differences and must re-learn that what connected them as children can still be their glue as adults.
Thoughts: I am definitely not the audience for this.

Title: WAR FACE – 7 votes
Writer: Mitchell Lafortune
Logline: A female U.S. Army Special Agent is sent to a remote, all-male outpost in Afghanistan to investigate accusations of war crimes. But when a series of mysterious events jeopardize her mission and the unit’s sanity, she must find the courage to survive something far more sinister.
Thoughts: Ugh. TELL US WHAT THE SINSITER THING IS. Just so everyone knows, seasoned readers usually throw these scripts out when they read the logline. You have to tell us what thing is that’s going to sell the movie so that we know it’s a sellable movie. Anybody can write a logline that reads, “A mysterious woman meets a strange man and the two become roommates in an odd home that has a history no one in town wants to talk about.” Give us the hook.

Title: THE WOMEN OF ROUTE 40 – 7 votes
Writer: Erin Kathleen
Logline: A struggling single mother must confront dangerous forces – and sins of her past – when her world collides with that of a serial killer. Inspired by the true story of Delaware’s only serial murderer, the Route 40 killer.
Thoughts: Mayhem, you’re still winning the serial killer concept contest.

Title: YOM KIPPUR – 7 votes
Writer: Brett Melnick
Logline: After getting high on the night of Yom Kippur, three distant cousins wake up with muddled minds and empty stomachs as they find themselves in the middle of a kidnapping and a major drug ring.
Thoughts: I like mixing something that’s supposed to be pure with something impure. That’s the recipe for a lot of good concepts. This does feel a little disjointed, though. I was hoping for the two elements to mesh a little more organically. But this isn’t a bad idea.

Originally, I was going to do a “Mank” script-to-screen review but after spending an hour with the film and realizing Fincher hadn’t changed a word from the disastrous screenplay, that the review would’ve been a bloodletting and sent everyone into the week feeling miserable.

Conversely, my weekly Friday night whipping boy, The Mandalorian, had one of its best episodes. Which set up an interesting question. How is it that someone who is so good can make something so bad, while something so bad can manage an episode so good?

Let’s start with Mank.

I mean… I’m just going to say it. This movie was a disaster.

Now you may say, “But Carson! Look at the Rotten Tomato score! It’s high!” A couple of things. Critics love David Fincher. And rightly so. He’s one of our best directors, hands down. But for that reason, their default setting for every Fincher film is a thumbs up. I’m not sure they’d be able to give Fincher a negative review if they tried. Also, what critics are scoring here is not the movie as a whole. They’re scoring the direction. They love how Fincher has recreated a 1940s film to chronicle what is, arguably, the best movie ever made

But as a story?

AS A STORY!????

This is one of the worst scripts of the year.

With almost every bad script, lack of focus is a problem. And that’s exactly what I’m seeing here.

A good movie has a focused narrative. Somewhere in the first act – preferably as soon as possible – you explain to the audience what the problem is, which necessitates that your protagonist solve that problem. This creates the hero’s goal and the rest of the movie follows his struggle to achieve that goal.

In the recent hit film, The Invisible Man, the problem is that the heroine’s evil dead husband has found a way to come back to life and torture her. The goal, then, is to prove that this is happening then defeat him. You can break almost every good movie down into this formula.

The thing about Mank is that it PRETENDS to incorporate a problem, but it’s a sham. A lie. A misdirect. The movie starts with Mankiewicz being placed in a hotel room and told by a studio suit that he has 90 days to write the screenplay for Citizen Kane.

Except the movie then proceeds to COMPLETELY ABANDON THIS SETUP. The next 50 on-screen minutes contain scenes that literally have nothing to do with Mank’s pursuit of this goal. They are, rather, flashbacks of him hanging out on movie sets and in studios. And whenever we do manage to get back to that room, we get conversations between him and his typist that – how do I put this nicely – have nothing to do with fucking anything.

It takes until HALFWAY THROUGH THE MOVIE before we get a scene of our suit returning to Mank’s drab hotel and saying, “You only have 10 days left! And you haven’t even finished the first act!” Normally, an escalation like this would pump life into the movie. But everybody in Mank treats the goal with such a lack of importance that we don’t feel anything.

You’re only ever as good as a) your concept and b) your execution. If either of those things is weak, you cannot recover. I would argue that Mank is weak in both areas. I don’t even understand what the concept of Mank is! Mank needs to write Citizen Kane, which is followed by a movie that has nothing to do with Mank writing Citizen Kane? Anyway, this is how a great filmmaker can make a bad movie. Latch onto a concept that wasn’t any good in the first place and then abandon all pretense of a hero resolving a problem.

I mean the scenes in Mank are so aggressively disconnected from one another you must draw on an insane amount of concentration to keep track of what’s going on.

There was this scene where Mank and Marion are walking around the Hearst Castle babbling about the most inane things, and I thought to myself, “What is this scene about? How is it pushing the story forward? Where is the conflict? Why is it important that this scene exists?” It seems like all but a few scenes fail to answer these questions.

I remember one good scene in the entire first half. It’s the scene where Mank and his brother come to MGM and studio head Louis B. Mayer a) gives them a tour while explaining to them the rules that dictate MGM before b) making a speech to the entire MGM staff that he’s cutting their salaries by half.

Why does this scene work while all the others don’t? Because it incorporates the only two scenarios in the movie that we actually understand. We understand when someone gives someone else a tour of their domain and explains the rules of the house. We understand the concept of a man standing in front of his employees and having to give them bad news. For once in the movie, it was actually CLEAR what was going on.

I don’t have any clarity on why Mank and Marion are stumbling around Hearst’s house mumbling about shit that doesn’t have anything to do with the story.

The failure of Mank comes down to the ignorance of one simple reality – Decide what your movie is about or face the consequences.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far far away, a certain show has decided that it actually wants to become entertaining again.

The problem with the Mandalorian is that it had eased into this relaxed storytelling style by which Mando was assigned some directive which he then had all the time in the world to achieve and, even if it didn’t work out, it wasn’t a big deal. In other words, each episode had a goal. But both the stakes and urgency regarding that goal were low.

This is why the latest episode of Baby Yoda, err, I mean Mandalorian, was so good. Directed by Robert Rodriquez, we got our first full GSU episode in Mandalorian history.

Goal – Protect Baby Yoda while he sits on the sacred rock to see if a Jedi teacher arrives.

Stakes – Losing Baby Yoda (Darth Gideon has arrived to kidnap him)

Urgency – The onslaught of storm troopers to retrieve Baby Yoda starts and never stops the whole episode.

That’s what stood out to me most about the episode. It contained an urgency that no other episode up until this point had. Remember, that’s what made the original two Star Wars movies so good. Urgency. Darth Vader relentlessly pursuing Luke Skywalker and the rest of the gang from the start of the movies to the finish.

It’s something I felt, before the show even began, it would struggle with. Could Star Wars sit inside those slow moments? It’s been able to every once in a while. I like the little scenes with Mando and Baby Yoda hanging out in his ship together. But mostly these moments have been a dud. In order for slow moments to work, the character writing must be exceptional. That’s because if we like a character, we don’t need the plot to be “go go go.” And, unfortunately, Mandalorian has had a lot of dud characters.

But the last two episodes are changing that. This Ashoka Jedi chick is pretty badass. And Boba Fett (who arrived this week) is VERY badass. I get a little weak in the knees imagining all three of them teaming up together, Avengers style (let’s not forget that Jon Favreau began the Avengers universe with Iron Man – so he knows a thing or two about team-ups).

But the bigger takeaway from these last two weeks of Mandalorian is that the show works better when the plot is ramped up. There seemed to be more purpose in both of these episodes – from Mando needing to find Ashoka to Boba Fett needing his armor and the Empire trying to kidnap Baby Yoda – and that’s what’s been missing in the Mandalorian so far.

A lot of this harkens back to an age-old screenwriting problem, which is that the idea you originally conceive isn’t always the idea you should go with. My guess is that Favreau originally conceived of this show as a straight Western. That’s why it was so slow. He liked the idea of his character lazily strolling into a new town, hanging out, chatting, building up a little suspense, then resolving whatever villain-of-the-weak problem the town/planet had.

But I think the Star Wars DNA requires importance and urgency. We see that in these last two episodes. Last week was the importance of finding a Jedi to take Baby Yoda. And this week’s episode was all about the urgent nature of holding off the Empire as they tried to kidnap Baby Yoda.

So if I could tell Favreau anything, it would be that you’re good with the G(oal). But you need to embrace the S and the U. The S(takes) and the U(urgency) are what made these last two episodes of the show two of the best.