Is today a holiday?
Somebody told me today was a holiday. That because New Year’s Day landed on a Sunday, they didn’t feel it was right that we should waste a holiday on a day we already had off, so they added an additional day off and called it New Years Day Adjacent.
Man, I thought screenwriters were the worst procrastinators. Apparently our government is angling to steal our title. They don’t even want to start the year!
I’m curious what the new year is going to bring on the movie front. On the one hand you have the, “movies are dead, TV is king” crowd. And that’s a hard crowd to argue against. TV is pretty freaking amazing at the moment. You still don’t get the level of production value you do on a movie. But it’s close!
Then you have the, “Do you not see what Avatar is doing at the box office” crowd. And they’re pretty convincing too. Because you will never ever get the full experience of Avatar 2 at home. It’s so much better seeing it in the theater. And, apparently, a lot of people agree.
But once Avatar 2’s run is over, we’re in for some dark days, folks. They’re calling 2023’s movie line-up one of the worst in history. I don’t know if that’s true. But the very fact that some people think it’s true is scary.
With that said, I don’t want to get bogged down in theatrical prognostications. Instead, I want to highlight five interesting movie releases in 2023 and talk about the screenwriting obstacles they present.
As I’ve said many times before, every screenplay has its own unique challenges. One of the major jobs of a screenwriter is identifying these challenges and coming up with a game plan for how to tackle them. So let’s jump into it!
Cocaine Bear – Feb 24
Cocaine Bear has a classic screenwriting conundrum. It’s got a “poster-only” premise. What that means is that Cocaine Bear looks great on a poster. It looks great in a trailer. But because the story’s success is so dependent on its wacky titular character, what happens 10 minutes after the bear has been introduced and the shock factor has worn off?
I see this happen all the time in screenwriting. The solution is to come up with a plot that assumes the concept is weaker than it is. In other words, don’t mail in your execution. This is exactly what happened with Snakes on a Plane. It thought its concept was so great that they didn’t have to bother with good characters or a good plot. Never assume that the concept is going to do the work for you. You have to roll up your sleeves and give the reader a great story that could survive whether there’s a cocaine bear in your screenplay or not.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – June 30
(Spoilers) Rumor has it that this is going to be a time travel Indiana Jones movie. Anyone who has tried to write a time travel movie will tell you the same thing. It’s one of the hardest narratives you’ll ever have to write, cause you’re always dealing with a paradox. If the plan doesn’t work, you simply go back in time and try again.
Sure, you can come up with rules like, “You can only time travel two (or three) times,” but therein lies why the genre is so difficult. Cause the second you start adding hard rules, those rules need to make sense within the mythology. They can’t just be rules that the screenwriter needed to be there. That’s when movies start feeling fake.
So, with time travel, you have to outline like an insane person and rewrite like crazy. There’s no other way around it. A well-executed time-travel script will take you twice as long as any other genre script in order to work out all the kinks and make the time travel stuff as seamless as possible. If you’re willing to make that commitment, go for it!
Oppenheimer – July 21
When it comes to biopics, there are two versions you want to avoid. You want to avoid the cradle-to-grave biopic. It’s like the real life version of an origin story — predictable and bland. But you also want to avoid the two-years-in-the-life-of biopic. This is exactly what it sounds like. You’re covering two years of the main character’s life. The reason why both of these are bad is because movies don’t do well with extended timelines. They do well with short contained timelines. Most of the movies you’ve loved have taken place in under two weeks. Why? Because movies go hand in hand with urgency. When we feel like every minute spent onscreen is important, due to time running out, everything about the story feels charged. And if you’re going to write a movie about the biggest bomb in history, it only makes sense that you create a ticking time bomb element to it. If Nolan keeps this timeline tight, the movie has a chance at being good. If we do a slow-burn two-year lead-up to the bomb, I promise you the movie will fail. You can’t make slow-burn studio movies in 2023. You just can’t. And Nolan understands this. Dunkirk takes place in under two hours, right? Then again, Interstellar takes a year so who knows what Nolan will do.
Barbie – July 21
Barbie is, by far, the most challenging screenwriting assignment of the year. And it’s relevant because when you make it as a screenwriter, you will be given impossible assignments like this. And it’ll be your job to come up with an angle that’s compelling. The most notorious example of this is Charlie Kaufman’s, “Adaptation.” The book (about flowers) Kaufman was paid to adapt was so mundane, so boring, so without narrative, that he went crazy while adapting it, to the point of inserting himself into the narrative. I don’t see Greta Gerwig inserting herself into Barbie. But she’s going to have to come up with a really clever way to adapt this because not only is adapting a toy hard, but she’s adapting a toy that is thought of as a prime symbol of the patriarchy. Which means she’s going to have to change the character into something acceptable for modern-day audiences. And it never works when you change something that was super popular for being something else. Normally, that would be my screenwriting advice: Stay true to the character. There’s a reason the world fell in love with Barbie. Highlight that in your adaptation. But you can’t do that with Barbie. It would cause a Twitter meltdown. This is the one property that I have no solution for. If they hired me, I would not know how to turn this into a good movie. Which makes me all the more curious what they come up with.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 – July 14
If you are writing a big action movie, it is imperative that you have at least three set pieces that nobody’s ever seen before. Which is why I actually nudge people away from writing movies like Mission Impossible. Because Mission Impossible exists in the real world and, therefore, is going up against 100 years of action movies that have also existed in the real world. Finding three brand new set pieces in a 100 year old genre is its own mission impossible. Which is why I advocate for unique high budget concepts that grant you access to set pieces that haven’t been done before.
For example, if you make an action movie about dream heists, you’re providing yourself with a unique world that contains all sorts of new set piece possibilities. Mission Impossible has found the weirdest way around this issue, which is to promote Tom Cruise doing his own stunts. This way, even though we’ve seen the set piece before, we’re watching it with the knowledge that Tom Cruise really did the stunt, which heightens the experience. If you don’t have the greatest movie star in history to do his own stunts, though, you need to put off writing a traditional action film UNTIL you have three set pieces that have never been seen before. Because, I promise you, if your best set piece is something the reader saw last year at the movies, they’ll forget your script the second they finish it. Another thing to remember is that one hands-down amazing set piece can be enough to get a producer to want to make your movie. Even more incentive to take your time and come up with great original set pieces!
The new newsletter is in your inboxes. In it, I set up your screenplay gameplan for 2023, telling you the exact steps you need to take to achieve success. I also set up the LOGLINE SHOWDOWN, a new Scriptshadow feature of 2023 that’s going to be a blast. I review the original draft of a cult classic screenplay that is said to have been GENIUS before the film’s embattled director screwed it up. I also review a trailer of the coolest high concept script idea I’ve seen all year. How come nobody here came up with it??? HAPPY NEW YEAR!
If you want to get on the newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com!
“I know we just won the World Cup. But what we really want to know is what are Carson’s Top 10 movies of the year???”
It’s the final post of the year!
Yes, after this, I will be heading deep into the Scriptshadow caves to plot the ongoing goings-ons of 2023.
But before we get there, we must give 2022 its last dab by celebrating the best movies of the year (you can see my ‘worst movies of the year’ list here). It’s been a transitory year for the industry. Studios seem to be confused about what the masses actually want. And the indie outfits are watching helplessly as their films start their runs in hospice care. Justice for storytelling.
Despite this, there were some really good movies in 2022, even if Quentin Tarantino called it the worst decade of movies in history. Some notables that didn’t make today’s list include Deadstream, Smile, Emily the Criminal, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and X. Movies that I still haven’t seen yet include The Woman King, The Banshees of Inishirin, The Menu, The Fablemans, Aftersun, Knives Out 2, Babylon, and The Whale, most of which I’ll catch soon.
This is one of the most offbeat Top 10s I can remember putting together. The movies really run the gamut. Prepare yourselves… for the best films of 2022!
10 – Triangle of Sadness – I struggled long and hard about whether to put this movie into my top 10 or Emily The Criminal. In the end, I chose this because it’s so unlike any movie you’ll see this year. The “triangle of sadness,” by the way, refers to a term in the modeling industry regarding the three points between your eyes and nose. When they’re too scrunched up, it makes you look sad. Triangle of Sadness doesn’t do as good of a job as The White Lotus at satirizing rich people. But it has some gonzo scenes, such as the drawn-out 12 minute argument between two models about whether a woman should ever pay for dinner. There’s a lack of connectivity to the narrative that’s frustrating at times (we’re all of a sudden on a yacht yet no one tells us how we got there). It’s probably going to piss you off occasionally but the movie is guaranteed to stay with you. It’s worth checking out.
9 – Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers – Natural transition, right? One of the artiest movies of the year to an animated studio film! But don’t be fooled by Chip and Dale’s shiny exterior. This is the best deconstruction of an animated film, maybe, ever. It’s like Who Framed Roger Rabbit on steroids. And if you have any doubts about what I’m pitching here, this film comes from the Lonely Island crew – Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer. Those guys aren’t going to sign on to an animated film unless they can do something different with it. And that they do! One of those wonderful surprises where you turn it on, expecting to give up after five minutes, only to watch the entire thing.
8 – The Night House – If you’re like me, a red-blooded human being, you love Rebecca Hall. I recently watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona again for my dialogue book and Hall is excellent in it. Her only weakness is that she often plays the same character. But that doesn’t hurt this movie. The Night House follows a woman whose husband mysteriously committed suicide and she visits the old summer house they owned and starts to receive messages from the other side. Her dead husband seems to be trying to tell her something. And when she starts looking into his life, she discovers there are things about him that she never knew. This is “headier” than your average ghost movie. So it’s not for the “Smile” crowd. But if you like genre stuff that’s more adult-themed, this fits the bill.
7 – Barbarian – When I reviewed this, I said it had the best first act of the year. I stand by that. The first act is amazing. So much so that it’s disappointing the rest of the film doesn’t live up to it. But there’s something to be said about a film that is determined to get crazier and crazier as it goes on. I mean where else are you going to find a 6 foot 5 inch naked beast woman running around deserted Detroit suburbia killing anything she can find? I also love Justin Long leaning into his despicableness. Who doesn’t want to watch (spoiler) Justin Long suffer an agonizing death? Biggest WTF movie of the year. Constantly keeps you guessing.
6 – Hustle – How good is Adam Sandler when he tries? This is a huge part of the reason why Sandler has such a heated hater fanbase. It’s because we all know how awesome he can be when he puts in the effort. And this is the perfect role for him. Washed up, overlooked coach who puts everything on the line for some no-name basketball prospect from another country. I didn’t think you could do traditional sports movies anymore. The genre is too cliched. But you’ll note that one of the ways Hustle avoided getting too cliche was it didn’t have “the big game.” The climax, instead, is a workout. That alone made this feel different. But the real pillars of this film are Sandler and the guy who plays the recruit. It’s like a double-dose of underdog. I love films that make you feel good afterwards. This achieved that more than any other film on the list except my number one film.
5 – Avatar: The Way of Water – It’s been a week now since I saw the film, allowing me some perspective. My feelings remain the same. The film needed a main character. Jake Sulley was clearly the main character in Avatar 1. Who knows who the main character is here. The reason that matters is that the audience feels emotionally detached from a film in which they don’t have a guide. That really hurts the film. On the flip side, I’ve never been to another planet in any movie that’s felt this real. It’s weird because, on the character front, Cameron makes a mistake that keeps you at a distance. But on the technical front, he creates a world that feels as real as the one you’re living on. It all adds up to a strong movie that leaves the slightest bad taste in your mouth because you were hoping it would achieve ‘great’ status.
4 – The Worst Person in the World – What’s funny about this tiny Norwegian film is that it has something in common with Avatar 2, which is that I felt like I was in Oslo as I was watching the film. You wouldn’t think I would like a film like this. There seems to be nothing in the way of a plot. The main character is wishy-washy. But one thing film can do that screenwriting cannot is take you somewhere. And if you like that somewhere – and the director does a great job of enhancing it with cinematography and score – you’ll overlook a lot of story problems. Something about this movie and the way it covered a lost soul spoke to me in a way I can’t quite articulate. I just know that when I watched the film, it stirred something up. And isn’t that what it’s all about?
3 – Thirteen Lives – By far, the most underrated movie of the year. I hear no one talking about it. I don’t know if that’s because it was released by Amazon or what. This film had so much for going it, the most shocking of which was that Ron Howard left his schmaltzy storytelling crutch behind and, for once, let the truth be the focus. Maybe that’s why it didn’t resonate more. It was too realistic for people. But I’ll never forget the way these divers came up with this impossible solution for saving the kids, accepting the fact that there were going to have to kill some of them, but did the rescue anyway because it was better than leaving them all to die. I think the best movies put the characters in such a perilous situation that the audience wonders what they would do if they were in that position. And that’s where my head was at this whole movie. What would I do if I was one of those divers? Because there wasn’t a single simple solution to the rescue.
2 – Everything Everywhere All At Once – I saw somebody trashing this movie in the comments section yesterday. And I don’t begrudge them. The movie is so weird and makes so many odd choices, that there’s no way it doesn’t alienate some people. I mean, at one point, there’s a three minute scene with two rocks talking to each other. No matter how good your movie is, not everyone’s going to be on board with that. I tell you guys all the time that I like writers who take risks. But when push comes to shove, we’re all too afraid to truly take risks. We always revert back to the safety of our traditional choices. The Daniels are the only people in Hollywood making legitimately crazy choices and seeing where they take the story. And I think what makes it work is that, in the end, they have a traditional approach to character development. They give their characters flaws – like the mother giving up on her family – and then they arc that character over the course of the story. That dedication to character is what holds these wild choices together. This movie made nearly 70 million dollars at the box office which is insane. It’s the kind of arthouse fair that would normally make 10 million if it was lucky. Goes to show what an amazing job the Daniels did. I expect this film to be the belle of the Oscar ball.
1 – Top Gun: Maverick – How bout this? The director of my least favorite movie of the year, Joseph Kosinski, is also the director of my favorite movie of the year. If that isn’t proof that nobody knows anything, I don’t know what is. Top Gun 2 is bigger than just one movie. Not only did it make everybody feel good at a time when we all desperately needed to feel good. It was a reminder to Hollywood to lighten up. All my friends who never go to the movies saw Top Gun 2 so I asked them, why did you see this film over all the other movies that came out this year? And they said, “Cause it looked fun and it looked light.” When I pressed them on it, they said that movies out there are all too serious these days. They pointed to Black Panther and Eternals. These are Marvel films that people are complaining are too serious! If there’s a lesson to Top Gun, it’s to start making movies again that bring everybody together rather divide them. How crazy is it that a Top Gun film became the most important movie of the year? Joseph Kosinski recently stated, “There were a million ways this movie could’ve gone wrong and one tiny way it could go right.” It’s safe to say he found the right way.
SCRIPT CONSULTATION DISCOUNT 150! – I’ve got a couple of screenplay consultation slots open for the end of 2022. If you’re interested, e-mail me with the subject line, “CHRISTMAS 150,” and I’ll take $150 off my regular rate. If you’re never had notes from a professional before, I would strongly recommend taking this opportunity to do so. I can help you identify and fix things in your writing that would otherwise take you years to learn on your own. Not to mention, elevate your current script. So if you want to get a consult, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. I do features, pilots, first acts, short films, loglines, whatever you need me for!
MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!
Over time, I’ve gotten better at knowing what movies I’m going to hate ahead of time and, therefore, not go to them. I knew to steer clear, for instance, of the “M” movies this year: Marry Me, Morbius, and Moonfall. Or flicks that had ‘disaster’ written all over them from the start – Amsterdam and Bros.
There was a time in my life, however, where I was susceptible to indie hype. The indie film world had this amazing marketing gig going whereby they insisted that whatever the latest indie film was, it was the greatest film in the world. And I bought into it every time. Despite stumbling out of 90% of the films looking like a lost turtle.
Apparently, my bad movie radar has not been perfected yet because, as you can see, I still carved out 20 hours of my life to watch these duds. Let me know what you think of my picks and, of course, share you own Worst 10 in the comments sections. I’m curious to see what you guys disliked.
10 – A Christmas Story Christmas – As someone who religiously studies screenwriting, one of the things that frustrates me to no end is when a writer does everything technically right and, still, the result is flat. A Christmas Story Christmas should not have been as boring as it was. It’s a fun take on a sequel. The original film showed the quirkiness of Christmas through the eyes of a child. The sequel showed it through the eyes of a father. The script does everything in its power to create a main character who’s struggling in life and who has a fatal flaw he must overcome. Just like the original film, we have a wacky cast of characters meant to keep the story continuously entertaining. And yet it all lands with a giant thud. I suspect, like most scripts that never get off the ground, the problem started with the main character, specifically that seeing a holiday through the eyes of an uncynical child is a lot more entertaining than seeing it through the eyes of a cynical adult. I’m not sure the movie ever overcame this handicap. A lot of screenwriters are making this mistake recently. They’ve been handed these older legacy characters and try to make them the hero in a movie that, traditionally, would not have them as the hero. One of the most lifeless movies of 2022.
9 – The Adam Project – I debated whether to put this one on the list. There is passion in the way this movie is put together. Ryan Reynolds truly wanted to make a Back to the Future for this generation. But the screenplay makes a classic Scriptshadow mistake, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the story, and, as a result, creating a movie that’s all over the place. I’m not even sure who the main character is. Is it young Ryan Reynolds? Is it old Ryan Reynolds? The movie definitely suffers from an inability to understand whose eyes we’re supposed to be experiencing the adventure through. Can you imagine Back to the Future if it was unclear whether Marty or Doc was the main character? And Adam’s problems don’t stop there. There’s a ton of weird time-travel nonsense going on, which only gets in the way of a story that’s already got a lot to keep track of. A writer needed to come in and streamline the heck out of this thing.
8 – The Bubble – Say what you will about Judd Apatow. He was the last guy in America to consistently pump out feature comedy films that brought masses to the theaters. Since him, comedy has descended onto streaming channels. The Bubble proved one valuable piece of info to me – which is that nobody wants to watch movies about Covid ever again. Bo Burnham’s Covid film was great. And that was about it when it comes to good Covid films. This topic brings back feelings of depression and anger, with everything that went on during those two years. Who wants to experience that again? Not me. With that said, this movie did start to find its groove toward the last 45 minutes of the film where the characters legit started going crazy. Apatow seemed to finally figure out what his movie was about. But it was too late.
7 – Thor: Love and Thunder – The badness of this film hits me once in the gut and once in the face. Because, before this movie came out, I thought director Taika Waititi was going to be the savior of Star Wars. But this movie was so bad – and it only gets worse in your memory – that I’ve lost a considerable amount of faith in Taika. The film continues to perpetuate the Mary Sue myth, turning Natalie Portman into a God cause, um, cause women kicking butt is the number one priority for Hollywood films in 2022? The film also felt considerably low-stakes. Its biggest sin, however, is wasting a great performance by Christian Bale. This might’ve gone down as an all-time performance had the film not been so bad. This script also taught me that comedy needs boundaries. It can’t be “anything goes.”
6 – Nope – Yep. Whether you want to admit or not, Peele wrote and directed an awful movie. The number of flaws in this story is endless. The third act alone has more “wait a minute, what?” and “WTF” moments than a 1983 Saturday morning cartoon episode. The more I look back at this film, and knowing what I know about Peele through the interviews he gave, the more convinced I am that he spent an entire year high as f—, writing and directing this movie. It’s the only thing that makes sense considering how sloppy it all is. The movie’s climactic moment is a desperate attempt to photograph an alien ship with a fake amusement park water well camera, despite the fact that the alien ship is going to crash into the ground any second and be accessible for the whole world to see and take pictures of. Oh wait, the alien ship can’t be filmed on a digital phone (/eyeroll). Only physical film. Cause, um, yeah, those are the rules. What even was this movie??? A complete and utter clustrf—k of ideas conceived during copious amounts of weed-smoking. If you want to go smoke weed and make wacky short films with your buddies that you post on Youtube, like Donald Glover used to do, great. I’m all for it. But if you’re asking us to pay 20 bucks to see your film, do us the dignity of sobering up and thinking through your narrative and your rules so that the story you put on paper actually makes sense.
5 – Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness – As soon as they introduced the random Latina superhero sidekick who had absolutely zero chemistry with Dr. Strange, I knew this movie was doomed. But somehow it doomed itself even more, turning an alternate version of its main character into a zombie, despite the fact that nothing at all in the rest of the movie was equipped to handle a zombie character. But the biggest issue of all was that the movie squandered a fun idea. You’re on a road trip between multiple universes. You could’ve had so much fun creating all these different worlds. And yet that part of the script was relegated to a tiny 10 minute section. It was bizarre. One of the messiest movies I saw this decade. And that category is quite crowded these days.
4 – Matrix Resurrections – In retrospect, I know why this movie was so bad. Lana Wachowski said that, as they were shooting the film and Covid hit, she considered it a blessing in disguise because it meant she didn’t have to finish the film. Reading the subtext of several other interviews she gave, Lana seems to have been bullied into making the sequel. It was not something that was high on her priority list. It goes to show how important pure unadulterated passion is to writing and making movies. Screenplays and films are not forgiving mediums if you’re only kind of into what you’re doing. You have to be beyond passionate. Which is why Avatar 2 is such an experience. That is a movie made by someone obsessed with making that movie. Resurrections started out okay. It had some interesting ideas. But just like anything that you’re not giving 100% to, it eventually falls apart. There’s this moment midway through the film where a big fight is taking place and one of the characters from the former films, the Merovingian, is randomly screaming out obscenities, and you’re just sitting there wondering, “What is happening right now?” It’s so bad.
3 – Licorice Pizza – I know this was technically released last year but I watched it this year. I apologize to all of the Paul Thomas Anderson lovers out there. But I seriously question whether the modern day version of this man has any talent at all. His last good movie was There Will Be Blood. What has he done since? The Master, which was average at best. The Phantom Thread, which managed to be so uninspired that, despite having the greatest living actor in the world in it, no one watched it. Inherent Vice, whatever the heck that was. And now this movie. Which is so nonsensical and so devoid of a clear narrative, that you almost think Anderson is playing a joke on you. I kid you not, one of the plot developments is our high school main character opening a mattress store. That’s not a misprint. That actually happens. Literally, nothing in this movie makes sense. It’s so agonizingly bad. I will say, however, that, Alana Haim’s performance was good. I hope to see her in more films. And the main kid is a good actor as well. But there’s no story here for them to work with. At least not one that makes any sense. I say this with complete conviction – if this script appeared on Amateur Showdown, it would finish with the least amount of votes.
2 – Deep Water – For as confusing and untethered as Licorice Pizza was, it doesn’t hold a candle to how dumb, clunky, and amateurish Deep Water is. It’s movies like this that make me wonder if anyone in Hollywood knows anything. Here you have Ben Affleck, who is considered one of the smarter actors in Hollywood. He’s also on the A-List. So he gets sent the best of the best material. And he chose to make this movie?? If you have Hulu, I want you to go watch the first 20 minutes of this film and report back to me on whether you have any idea what’s going on. Cause I sure didn’t. And if you can manage to be that confusing in the opening of your film, you have a special kind of talent for being awful. There isn’t a single story beat that makes sense in these first 20 minutes. How did anybody allow this movie to happen???
1 – Spiderhead – I said it at the time. Spiderhead is an example of the worst thing about Hollywood. Which is that the industry is more interested in getting movies made than making good movies. To a certain extent, I understand this. It’s so hard to get films made that, if you have something that can get made, despite its low quality, someone will make it, because nobody wants to leave free money on the table. But boy is Spiderhead a cautionary tale on what happens if you let that philosophy guide you. Reese and Whernick were hot writers. They’re shepherding the Deadpool franchise. They had an old dusty script in their drawer. It was terrible but their agency and the studios knew they could get it made with their names on it. So they put the package together and made the thing without ever asking why anyone would want to a make a movie where not a single scene in the screenplay makes sense. I mean, this is a movie about a corporation forcing tests on its patients where the patients can just waltz up to the control room any time they want. I’m sorry but if those are the rules of your story, you’re not writing a movie. You’re writing garbage. Everything from the concept to the mythology to the timeline that was chosen to tell the story in ensured that you left this movie enraged that you wasted two hours of your life. This movie is the epitome of awful.
Tomorrow, I share my 10 favorite movies of the year. And a couple of them are going to surprise you!
Is the Screenwriting Grinch finally ready to smile? Do we have a Christmas script worth reading??
Genre: True Story
Premise: In the aftermath of WWII, a traumatized Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart use the making of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to attempt to find a way back into normalcy.
About: I promised myself I wouldn’t start reviewing Black List scripts until the new year. However, I couldn’t help myself when I saw a script celebrating my favorite Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. It felt quite festive to read such a script, which finished with 9 votes on the list.
Writer: Alexandra Tran
Details: 104 pages
A big reason I continue to be fascinated by It’s a Wonderful Life is that its inciting incident occurs in the third act. It’s just so antithetical to what we’ve been taught “works,” and yet even though the movie brazenly rejects this accepted premise, it thrives.
It makes me question everything. If a movie that rejects one of the most popular screenwriting rules in the world – your inciting incident should happen by page 15 – and can still become not just good, but one of the greatest films of all time, do rules even matter?
Ponder that while I summarize the plot.
World War 2 has just ended. Mega-director Frank Capra has spent the last three years making promotional movies for the military to keep recruitment up. So when the war abruptly ends, he has to decide what his first post-WW2 movie is going to be.
Meanwhile, legendary actor James Stewart has just come back from his service in the Air Force. He’s in a really weird headspace. Before the war, he thought acting was everything. Now, it seems trivial. So Stewart wants to move back to the Midwest and live a normal life, quitting acting forever.
That is until Capra shows up at his door and says I want to make this movie about a guy who dies and realizes what the world would look like without him. It’s ultimately a feel-good movie that no studio wants to make. They all want to make war movies instead.
At first, Stewart turns him down. But after speaking to his new girlfriend, Gloria, he decides to give it a shot. Right away, it feels like the wrong decision. Stewart can’t find his acting mojo. At one point, during one of the scenes, Stewart’s acting is so bad that one of the crew members laughs.
It’ll be up to Capra to shake Stewart out of his malaise and get a good performance out of him. Except the deeper into the shoot they go, the less likely that becomes. Will Stewart finally find his acting chops again? And will Capra’s big non-war-film gamble pay off? Maybe not right away. But something tells me it’s going to do well in the long run.
If It’s a Wonderful Life is a white Christmas, It’s A Wonderful Story is more like a light Christmas flurry.
There’s a major lesson that every screenwriter can learn here. Which is how important the introduction of characters is to your screenplay. Because I would argue that the bulk of this screenplay’s problems boil down to missed opportunities regarding the way the two main characters were introduced.
It’s a Wonderful Story wants to paint each of its two heroes in a particular way. For Frank, it wants to portray him as someone desperate to bring heart back to the cinema during a time when the movie industry just wants to make war movies.
For James, it wants to portray him as an actor who’s lost his way, who doesn’t see acting as important anymore after having experienced the horrors of war.
Here is the problem, though. Frank’s introductory scene has him gung-ho about cutting these promotional war films. He’s the guy responsible for charging young men up and making them want to go fight for their country. And he’s super into it. When a character comes into his editing session and tells him to stop, Frank is defiant. He wants to keep going. This is what he does.
So to then tell us, out of nowhere, that Frank is disgusted by those movies and that what he really wants to do is make a heartfelt movie, is confusing. Film is a show don’t tell medium. You just SHOWED us that he liked making those promotional films. So why does he hate them all of a sudden? It doesn’t make sense and it makes the character unconvincing throughout the rest of the script.
I know why the scene was written – and actually this is one of the harder things about screenwriting. The writer wanted to establish what Frank did during the war. Which is good. You want the audience to have that information. But screenwriting requires that you be able to do multiple things at once. Establishing information about a character is only one of several things you need to do within a scene. What wasn’t added was Frank’s resistance to war filmmaking and his pining to bring happiness and heart back to theaters.
With James Stewart, his whole thing is that war has changed him. It’s made everything else in life unimportant by comparison – especially acting. And that’s a noble character arc to examine. However, you never showed us James Stewart fighting the war. You never showed us him experiencing the horrors of war.
Let me repeat this because it’s important. Movies are a show don’t tell medium. You needed to show us James Stewart in the war seeing his friends die, almost dying himself, being scared out of his mind. THEN! When he’s ding-batting about trying to deliver a silly line of dialogue on a movie set, we understand why he thinks it’s stupid. Cause we saw, with our own eyes, him doing way more important things.
In many ways, a screenplay is a like a house of cards. If you screw up a few of the key pillars, the whole thing can come crumbling down. But you should find it helpful to know that most of those pillars are in your first act. So pay attention to them – moments like your main characters’ introductions – in order to make sure those pillars are strong.
These pillars were not strong and it kept coming back to haunt the screenplay again and again.
On top of this, I’m not really sure what this script is about. What is it we’re trying to say here? When you write period pieces, there’s more of an expectation from the audience that there be a lesson learned. If you look at a movie like The King’s Speech, that story was about placing the collective good above your own personal fears. He didn’t want to give the speech. He was terrified of it. But, in the end, he faced those fears because he knew it was important for the greater good of the country.
I don’t know why we’re revisiting this movie. What is important about it? I thought the script was going to do something clever like cover the production of It’s a Wonderful Life in a way that semi-mirrored the actual film. For example, what if James Stewart was feeling similar things about his own existence in relation to the fictional character he played? What does this world look like if James Stewart was never born? Fun stuff like that.
But it’s more of this traditional biopic “This is how it went down,” – main characters have their Screenwriting 101 fatal flaws they need to overcome. Nothing is natural or engaging. It’s a script that would do well in a UCLA screenwriting competition because it’s competently constructed.
But there’s no heartbeat to it. Which means Ebeneezer Carson strikes again! But all is not lost. Cause the script did remind me of what a great movie It’s A Wonderful Life is, and made me excited to watch it again this week.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t ever allow your character to say something that isn’t consistent with who they are. In this script, Frank Capra is presented as this thoughtful, sweet, humble man. However, when a studio head tells him that he’s old and out of touch, Capra replies with, “I’m the most successful director in Hollywood.” Does that response sound thoughtful, sweet, or humble? No. So watch out for this. I’m guessing the writer wanted the reader to know that Capra was a highly successful director. But you can’t ever give information out in a way that betrays the character. Always always stay true to the character. There’s always another way to slip that piece of information in there (have another character bring it up, for example).
