A shocking Christmas miracle. An IMPRESSIVE script review before the end of 2022!

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: A unique young woman enters a hobbyhorse dance competition that she’s way too old for while dealing with her mother’s cancer struggle.
About: Lauren Meyering has made a few short films. This script finished with 7 votes on the 2020 Black List. Script link is at the bottom of the review if you want to read the script first.
Writer: Lauren Meyering (story by Mackenzie Breeden & Rachael Moton)
Details: 103 pages

No idea who would play this role so I’m going to put Haley Lu Richardson down for now!

I’ve seen plenty of gender-swapping in the last five years.

I’ve seen John Wick get gender-swapped, Lethal Weapon get gender-swapped, I’ve seen Thor and Iron Man get gender-swapped, I saw All The President’s Men just get gender-swapped.

But never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever think that they would gender-swap Napoleon Dynamite. That came out of left field, did a detour in the dugout, quietly hid inside the mascot’s costume, before stripping down and singing God Bless America on the pitching mound.

We are watching something truly unique here.

And I’m about to find out if it’s any good.

Margarita, 26, is different. She’s got giant red unruly hair. She loves horses way too much. And she doesn’t have a filter. She says whatever she wants whenever she wants. Because she’s also socially unaware, she tends to make people uncomfortable. Which is why she doesn’t have a job and lives with her mom.

The problem is her mother, Sandy, has cancer. And Sandy’s worried that if she leaves this great green earth anytime soon, Margarita is not going to know how to take care of herself. So she encourages Margarita to get a job, which she surprisingly does (at a Halloween store).

Beaming from the confidence her newfound employment brings, Margarita joins a dance troupe of prepubescent girls who are currently working on a hobbyhorse dance. Yes, that means dancing with one of those stick horse things, something we all used to have as children. Neeeeeiiiighhhh!

When the dance coach announces a hobbyhorse competition at the local high school at the end of the month, Margarita throws everything she’s got into her routine. What she doesn’t know (major spoiler) is that her mom has just been told that the cancer is spreading. As Sandy builds up the courage to tell her daughter the grim news, Margarita readies herself for her big shining moment.

I was just talking to a professional writer and he taught me a new term I was unaware of: Protagonitis. Protagonitis is the act of every character in your movie being interesting EXCEPT YOUR PROTAGONIST. This happens because protagonists need to ground the film. Their job is to stabilize the movie so that all the other characters can fly. Unfortunately, this often leads to your protagonist being the weakest character in the story.

I can confidently say that this is NOT the case with Horsegirl.

Horsegirl owns this script. She’s easily one of the best written characters of the year. She could even be one of the best written characters I’ve come across. There may be some recency bias in that assessment but read this script and try not to remember this character for the rest of your life.

I mean check out this introduction.

I talk so much about writing strong memorable introductions for heroes yet writers still struggle with it. Most introductions are either bland or boring. If that’s a common problem for you, it might not be that you can’t come up with a good introduction. It might just be that your character is weak. Write a unique character and you’ll find it easier to write a unique introduction.

How awesome is this character? When she rides her bike home from the gym, she sings songs ABOUT HERSELF! Not gonna lie. I’m getting some E.C. vibes here. I could totally imagine E.C. writing a song about himself.

And when she gets home, we get this gem: “She’s fresh out of the shower, hair wet, and in a horse night gown. She interpretive dances as she watches the TV. Her interpretive dancing includes galloping, contemporary, hip-hop, and ninja movements.”

There were so many moments in this script like this that would bring a smile to my face. Who integrates ninja movements into their self-dance sessions, lol???

Margarita is what I call in my upcoming dialogue book, the “highly opinionated socially unaware” character. These characters are amazing for comedies. If you nail them, they can carry the entire script without you needing to do much at all on the plot side. We just want to follow and listen to this weird character, regardless of what she does.

I was enjoying Margarita so much that I was bummed out about the cancer storyline. It’s indie to the indieth degree. Why can’t she just be a normal mother? Not a cancer mother? It’s not like there isn’t enough for her to deal with already. She has to take care of a girl who will never grow up. There’s a scene in the middle of the script where Sandy has to take Margarita to the doctor and in order to avoid a shot, Margarita hides underneath the table and refuses to come out. Sandy just stares at her, embarrassed, with no idea what to do.

That’s a lot of stress right there. Do we really ALSO need a cancer story?

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

And then Sandy gets the call from her doctor that the chemo isn’t working. That she must accept what’s coming. And Sandy is terrified to tell Margarita. Margarita is a special girl as it is. She has no idea how to even broach the subject with her.

That’s when I realized the genius of the cancer storyline. The best screenplays take your emotions on a roller coaster ride. They don’t hit one monotonous emotional beat over and over again. They take you up high then pull you down low then shoot you right back up high again. What this strategy does is it loosens up your emotional state. You become more susceptible to the heartbeat of the story because all of your defenses are down.

And there was something particularly effective about juxtaposing the wild Napoleon Dynamite-esque adventures of Margarita against something as tragic as cancer. It really hit me hard in a way that I wasn’t expecting at all.

I’ll tell you, also, when this script went from a “double-worth-the-read” to the elusive “impressive” for me. Major Spoiler here, by the way. They kill off the mom BEFORE the final hobbyhorse competition. If that doesn’t happen and the mom, instead, attends the hobbyhorse competition? And THEN dies? This is a b.s. Hollywood script. It’s manipulative. It’s desperate for your tears. For those reasons, it wouldn’t have worked. The mom dying the night before, Margarita still going to the composition, and competing without her mom watching her – that turbo-charged the emotion in the scene, multiplying it a hundred-fold. It was 1000% the perfect creative choice.

I’m still a bit shocked by this reading experience. The script lures you in with this funny weird character. But then it takes advantage of that and brings you into a much more complex story that’s not easy to get through at times, yet is so rewarding when it’s all said and done.

This is not going to be for everyone. But for those of you writing character pieces or anything that has an intense emotional through-line, you need to memorize every page of this script. This is how you get it done. Excellent work by the writer. If anybody knows Lauren Meyering, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. I would love to interview her and learn about her process for creating characters.

P.S. Who in the world would play this character? Any ideas???

Script Link: Horsegirl

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

What I learned: This script reminded me of the value of juxtaposing emotional extremes. Ping-ponging between ‘insanely wild’ and ‘incredibly deep’ loosen ups your emotional state and makes you more vulnerable to the emotional beats in the story. I am not afraid to admit that I was sniffling up a storm during that final dance.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A stoner comedy about one family trying to save Christmas from itself after Santa eats the wrong batch of cookies.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on the 2019 Black List. Writer Dreux Moreland is new to the game. Co-writer Hannah Mescon was a producer on the Adam Driver movie, The Report.
Writers: Dreux Moreland & Hannah Mescon
Details: 108 pages

As tempting as it was to publish a “Why You Are Drinking Too Much Blue Milk” rebuttal article after yet another commenter incorrectly labeled Andor a good show, cooler heads prevailed and I decided to, as the great X-Wing pilot, Jek Porkins, once said, “Stay on target.”

And so a Christmas script it is!

Tom and Leah Mercer are a rich suburban couple. She’s a Type A lawyer. He grew up on a WACO like commune. Bit of a weird choice there since it has nothing to do with the story but, no worries, I’m going to roll with it.  They’ve got two daughters, one 7, the other 17. Leah also has a sister, Sasha, who frolics into town. Sasha is the family black sheep and cares more about 4:20 than 4 Calling Birds.

It’s Christmas Eve and Sasha bakes some pot cookies that Tom and Leah snarf down. Then, while they’re in the other room, Santa shows up and likewise stuffs some baked sugar yumminess into his gullet. He instantly becomes very high. After first encountering this assumed Santa imposter, Tom and Leah eventually realize that he really is Santa, and he’s way too high.  Which means if they don’t deliver presents in his stead, Christmas is canceled.

Just to be clear – and I’m doing this more for myself – talking through it.  Santa, the guy who’s been delivering presents for 600 years is very high.  Tom and Leah, who have never delivered a present in their lives, are equally high.  Yet Tom and Leah are the ones being counted on to save Christmas.  Okay, got it!

So the three of them climb up on their roof, get in the sleigh, and proceed to fly to a single house, go inside to deliver the presents, only to get yelled at by one of comedy’s favorite knee-slappers, the swearing parrot, which says things like, “Little b**ch!” as loud as it can. Cause why wouldn’t the talking parrot swear? It’s a comedy. Wackiness rules!!

After this delivery failure, Santa gets the munchies and decides to take everyone to Miami because he wants a Cubano sandwich. When the Elf team back at North Pole 1 hear of this, they assume he’s been kidnapped by the Mercers and spring into action to locate Santa and get him back on track.

Luckily, with this version of Santa Claus, Santa doesn’t actually have to do anything. He has drones that fly down into houses and deliver the presents, as well as retrieve cookies for him. So it looks like, even though Santa is high as heck, that Christmas is going to end up okay. Hallelujah!

I don’t know what it is about screenwriting but when you first get into it, you always want to write a Christmas script. Every single screenwriter I know, me included, has a Christmas movie idea. So I don’t begrudge anyone who writes one. But just as we learn every year why eggnog is so terrible, we learn that writing a Christmas script is no smooth ride down the chimney.

Here’s the big issue with High on Christmas. And it’s a mistake a lot of comedy writers make. You think of this overall wacky idea and assume it’s going to do all the work for you. I mean, how can ‘wacky’ not result in laughs, right? They go together like Nutella and crepes.

But, in my experience, writers rely so heavily on that “wacky = comedy” premise that they don’t do the work necessary to come up with *actual* funny scenarios.

Let’s go back to one of the final great feature comedies in cinema – The Hangover. There is a “wacky” version of The Hangover that could’ve been written. It’s the version 99% of writers would’ve written. You’ve got a group of friends in Vegas for a bachelor party. You simply follow them around as they party all night.  There’s so much wackiness to draw from, right?

But the writers of The Hangover made a much more difficult choice. They focused on the day after the wackiness. All of the supposed “easy laughs” were left behind. So then why is that movie better than all the other comedies that have come out since 2000, including this one? Because now the writers actually have to think in order to craft a funny scenario. They can’t just throw Zach Galifianakis on a blackjack table and have him poop himself. They have to craft a plot with a clever series of goals that take our characters through a progression of funny scenarios.

High On Christmas didn’t have that. It had the swearing parrot. If you like swearing parrots, it’s got that.  But how many times have I told you this?  You want to include comedy THAT CAN ONLY HAPPEN IN YOUR MOVIE.  The swearing parrot can be in any movie, ya nutcrackers!

Now, to the writers’ credit, they did have one moment like this. I like that when Santa gets the munchies, he doesn’t just go to 7-11. It’s Santa. He has a device that can take him anywhere in the world. So, flying to buy a Cubano sandwich that you can only get in Miami – that’s much closer to what I expect in a comedy about a high Santa Claus.

But that was basically it on the creativity front.

Drugs, in general, hurt comedies more than help them. Cause all ‘getting high’ really does for comedy is give you one or two scenes where it’s funny watching your characters try to do something normal but they’re way too high to do it. Yeah, that scene is going to funny. And we do get that here. Tom and Leah trying to take selfies when they first see Santa’s sleigh but continually screw it up – it’s kind of funny.

But now what? You still have an hour and forty minutes of movie left to fill. You can’t just keep doing that joke over and over again.

I don’t mean to be the Grinch but… you gotta come correct here. The characters may be high. But that doesn’t mean you get to write the script high.

LEAH: Tom, I need you to get on my level. That degenerate licking the cookie jar is not Santa.

TOM: But what if he is? He coughed up glitter.

LEAH: So did I at that Bowie concert — and I’m not Santa.

What does this joke even mean?? Do David Bowie’s concerts have a lot of glitter in them? Even if for some reason they do – and I don’t think they do – but let’s say that’s the case. How many people have been to a David Bowie concert and therefore would know that? .0000000001% of the population? So you’re writing jokes for .0000000001% of the population now?

I’m shaking my head here. There’s nothing more frustrating than reading a comedy that doesn’t make you laugh. You get angrier and angrier as you go on. Which is silly, of course. But there’s a deal that’s made between the comedy writer and the reader and that is: you make us laugh. You renege on that deal and we will turn on you m**herf**er.  When we don’t laugh, each page feels like a minute of time being ripped out of our life.

The script is also another tonal mismatch. They’ve got the same SEAL-TEAM Elves from the movie, The Santa Clause, but the script also contains lines like, “What a dumb f**king name.” So, is this written for small children or grown adults? I’m confused.

I want to push out good holiday vibes as we move towards Christmas. But we need better Christmas scripts than this if I’m going to do that. This feels like two people got high, wrote a script in a week, and people giggled at the logline and therefore voted it onto the Black List.

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

What I learned: The Black List celebrates one or two Christmas scripts a year, regardless of how good they are. That’s because they’re voting on December 11th every year. So Christmas is hot on everyone’s mind. In other words, if you write a Christmas script, go out with it in the month of December.

GALE by Taylor Hamilton!

Congratulations to Taylor. I’ll be reviewing his script on Friday. You can read the script yourself here.

I noticed frustration in the comments from some of you about the concepts that were picked. I understand where you’re coming from. But something you have to keep in mind is that everyone submitting here is, basically, an amateur screenwriter. And when you have strictly amateurs submitting, you’re not going to get a lot of world-beating loglines. That’s just the facts.

I wish it wasn’t. But there’s clearly a process writers need to go through in order to understand what a good idea looks like. Part of that process is simply sending out all those early script ideas, not getting requests, and realizing that the bar is higher than you thought it was.

Another part of it is that we all have a personal attachment to our ideas that clouds our ability to see them objectively. That confuses us when other loglines, which we feel are inferior, get chosen above ours.

A third component is coming up with an actual story to go along with your idea. You have to come up with the central conflict. You have to come up with a strong way into your idea. This is what fleshes your idea out into a full-fledged story.

Once you get better at these things, you start to come up with better ideas. It’s not surprising to me that the script that finished with the second highest number of votes comes from a writer who’s had the script optioned by a legit company. That “pro” perspective was a big reason he was able to come up with the idea in the first place.

The truth is, with all of the entries I received, Gale and Weekend Warriors were the only ones that had the trifecta. They could be classified as “high concept,” they were actually good ideas, and the construction of the logline was professional. Every single other entry had problems in one, two, or all three of these areas.

Let’s take a popular entry from our very own Mister Laurie. A few of you were surprised his script, Call of Judy, didn’t make the top 5. Full disclosure, his script did make the top 10. So it still did really well. It made the top 2%. It just didn’t make the top 1%.

For me, Call of Judy’s biggest strength was its title. However, the further I went into the logline, away from that title, the less interested I became. And that’s not good. It needs to be the opposite. The title should get you excited. And then the logline should get you even more excited.

“When a shy, chubby console kid wins first play of a wild, new VR-games machine but gets lost in its digital limbo, his Xbox-phobic single Mom stumbles to the rescue by completing four videogames designed just for him.”

Let’s take a look at this. First of all, it’s too long. Why does “too long” matter?  It denotes a writer who overwrites. That’s been my experience when I’ve opened up these scripts. Not a script-killer. But a red flag. From there, I don’t like the term “console kid.” It’s a weird way of saying a kid who plays video games. I don’t like the term, “digital limbo” either. It’s too vague. You don’t want vagueness in loglines.

But the absolute killer was the last part. “…by completing four videogames designed just for him.” It’s not an interesting enough exploration of the concept, for one. What’s interesting about the mom having to complete video games for her son? It would be more interesting if she had to complete four video games created *by* her son. But even that doesn’t feel like enough. And why “four” video games? Feels like too much. Jumanji didn’t have four video games. They were just sent into a video game and had to get out. It was simple.

That’s what I feared when I read this logline. I feared an overwritten script that’s not going to be simple. And that’s why I didn’t pick it.

I would go with something more like this:

“When a shy kid gets stuck in a new virtual reality game, the only person who can save him is his mother, who’s never played a video game in her life.”

It’s not perfect but notice how much cleaner it is. Notice how you immediately understand the movie. Whereas in the original logline, you’re sort of squinting and reading it twice, trying to make sure you understand all the parts. You eventually figure it out, but not without straining. And that can never be the case with loglines. The reader should never ever strain to understand them. Even a little bit. If they do, your logline is toast. People don’t care enough to figure out a problem that you created. They expect you to figure out all the problems yourself, fix them, so that when the product is presented to them, all they have to do is enjoy it.

I want to improve this issue. Cause it’s obviously a problem for a lot of writers. So I’ve decided that in 2023, we’re going to add a new Scriptshadow feature. On the third weekend of every month, I am going to post 5 loglines from submitted screenplays. Not the full scripts. Just the loglines. You guys will then vote on your favorite over the weekend, just like we do with Amateur Showdown. And then, at the end of the following week, I’ll review the winner.

This will give us once a month to really dive into loglines – what hits, what doesn’t, why something works, why it doesn’t. And you’ll also be able to see the resulting scripts from those loglines, which will additionally teach you about concepts and loglines. Because, almost invariably, the problems you see in a logline are present in the script as well.

This will be an ONGOING submission process. You can submit your script any time of the year you want. And your script will then be in the running for the logline showdown that month. Even scripts that didn’t make the cut for this past showdown could pop up in the January Logline Showdown. So, definitely something to look forward to!

Also, before I go, one quick movie suggestion for everyone. Watch Stutz on Netflix. If you’re anything like me, you had no interest in this doc that Jonah Hill made about his therapist. But someone recommended it to me and it turns out that this therapist is amazing. What I particularly liked about him was that he has keen insight into the battle artists go through and he’s come up with some amazing concepts to combat those internal struggles all artists deal with.

One of his concepts I loved was something called the “string of pearls.” And it essentially addresses the artist’s need to do everything all at once. Write the script (for writers), make the movie (for directors), produce the movie (for producers) – and how we, as artists, get so lost in achieving the big final product that we become overwhelmed and end up doing nothing instead.

“String of pearls” recommends that all you need to do is add the next pearl. Just focus on adding the next pearl. Not the 50 pearls after that one. Just focus on the next one. That’s all you can do. And, eventually, you’ll have a necklace.

He also talks about something called Part X, which is that part of yourself that tells you you can’t do it. It was illuminating when he pointed out that every single person has this. And it never goes away. But there are ways to manage the Part X so it doesn’t sabotage you.

On top of that, you get this secondary storyline of Jonah Hill’s struggles when he was at the height of his fame and battled depression (mainly having to do with his weight) and how this guy basically saved his life. If you’re in a rut right now, this is a great watch. It will inspire you. It will teach you. It’s sort of the perfect motivator to get you in the right artistic head space going into 2023.

See you guys tomorrow!

One of my favorite things while going through the entries of these showdowns is writers who try to hide multiple entries by sending them in under different e-mail addresses, but they use THE EXACT SAME FORMATTING as their other e-mail, making it obvious it’s the same person. I love that. Especially because there’s no limit to how many entries you can submit.

As always, it was fun reading through all the submissions. The main two reasons scripts didn’t make it was that the ideas weren’t high concept enough or the ideas were just messy. For example, I’d get stuff like, “A married couple trying to defeat a demon get stuck on a plane with a bomb on it.”

The most bizarre entry I got was a body-swap movie between Vince Vaughn and Chuck Schumer. The writer said their inspiration was they were listening to an interview with Chuck Schumer but thought they heard him introduced as Vince Vaughn, so they decided to write a body-swap movie about Chuck Schumer and Vince Vaughn. Hey! Who knows? Maybe it was great. A little too weird for High Concept Showdown though.

Every once in a while, I’d see a submission that would make me smile. It wasn’t quite right for the showdown. But it’d be creative. Here’s an example: “Simultaneously, across the world, everyone’s feet get stuck in place – trapping them to the circumstances of that moment. This is the story of the people in and around Toronto, Canada, as they navigate this unprecedented event.”

There were a lot of loglines that could’ve used consultations. I’m not just saying that because I offer them. But, seriously, a lot of you guys are majorly handicapping yourselves going out there with these loglines. They’re overwritten, or messy, or the first half doesn’t match the second half. It’s a huge problem that you have to figure out.

I’d say that 90% of the entries were out of the running just because their loglines were messy. As always, feel free to post your logline if you think your submission is better than what’s been posted. If you get overwhelming support from the community, I may just add your script to the mix on-the-fly. That’s how we do it here on Showdown weekend!

Of course, if you want it straight from the horse’s mouth, you can order a logline consult ($25), and I’ll give you a logline evaluation where I tell you what’s wrong with the concept, as well as the logline. And you get a logline rewrite.  E-mail me carsonreeves1@gmail.com if interested.

And with that, it’s time!

Read as much of each script as you can, then VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE in the comment section. To do that, write a comment with the title of the script you like best. Every writer here would love it if you explained what you liked about their script. And you can also share what you didn’t like about the others.

But the key is, VOTE. Voting ends at 11:59pm Pacific Time Sunday. Whoever gets the most votes gets a review next Friday!!!

GOOD LUCK EVERYBODY!!!!!!

Title: The Castle
Genre: SciFi
Logline: In 1209, a reluctant German crown princess must defend her castle against a brutal group of bandits, consisting of special forces soldiers from the 21st century.
Why you should read: The Castle started as a first act contender and it did advance into the next round. In the last months I had time to finish and polish it, and so I will now throw it into the wild arena that is the amateur showdown.
Why Carson chose it: I remember reading the first 10 pages of this in the First Act Contest (which I will finish after the Dialogue Book!) and really liked them. And it’s just a big idea.

Title: Weekend Warriors
Genre: Action-Comedy
Logline: After a mysterious overnight event turns humanity into hordes of mindless violent drones, two hard-partying office rivals—still inebriated from the evening before—discover that the drugs and alcohol in their systems are the very things preventing them from becoming infected; the only way to stay alive long enough to save mankind will be to party like it’s the end of the world.
Why you should read: This drug-fueled blitzkrieg of a script was optioned in early 2020 by a major production company but died on the covid-coinciding vine. The rights are mine once more and I’m hoping a showdown appearance is just what is needed to give this wild ride a second life.
Why Carson chose it: This is a hilarious premise.

Title: Fleshy: The Selective Slaughter
Genre: Horror
Logline: A gathering of furries find themselves in a fight for survival at an infamously abandoned zoo when one of their own, revealed as anything but an ally, vows to hunt them down like the animals they dress as.
Why you should read: Scary movies have always been seen as a reliable moneymaker, and the box office results for 2022 have only further proven that audiences crave strange and subversive horror. FLESHY: THE SELECTIVE SLAUGHTER flips the classic slasher formula (in this script, the killer is the only one NOT wearing a mask) and, through the terror of a targeted hate crime, aims to shine a light on an underrepresented subculture while also telling a story about staying true to yourself which all audiences can relate to.
Why Carson chose it: I’m always looking for that one offbeat unique idea to feature in these showdowns and this one fit the bill. I’m hoping for the next “Fatties.”

Title: The Burning Ones
Genre: Supernatural Thriller/Horror
Logline: Long thought to have disbanded in the 14th century, a secret order of Templar Knights operate in the modern age, hunting down the Seraphim, GOD’s fallen warrior angels who have chosen to join the forces of darkness.
Why you should read: This is the perfect mashup of action, adventure, and horror. 3 genres that bring every demographic to the theatre and will fill seats. Angels, Demons, Warriors, and Soldiers, as well as a child who may be humanity’s savior… or it’s doom. IT HAS IT ALL CARSON!  That’s why you should click open and dive in!
Why Carson chose it: I wanted one entry that felt like a big fun action movie.

Title: GALE
Genre : Action – Thriller
Logline : When a violent, North Pacific storm traps two turbine techs on an offshore windmill, they must weather the storm overnight in order to survive.
Why you should read : Disaster films are tried-and-true blockbusters which always allure an international crowd. Now, let’s contain the threats of that disaster around a monstrous, yet claustrophobic structure that’s never been featured in a studio film. This location is susceptible to fires, explosions, destruction, and other electrifying outbursts that will make any action director salivate at the opportunity to get behind the camera. With a main cast of two, trapped in a battle between human nature versus mother nature, including hints of acrophobia, the most common fear, this movie will have any audience on the edge of their seats. GALE is an action-packed screenplay pitched as “Gravity on an offshore windmill”.
Why Carson chose it: This is right up my alley as an idea. It’s got everything I like in a spec script and a budget-friendly marketable movie in it.

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THURSDAY – DEC 1 – IS THE DEADLINE FOR THE HIGH CONCEPT SHOWDOWN!
SUBMISSION DETAILS HERE!
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We are just about 24 hours away from the deadline to the High Concept Showdown. This has got me thinking about ‘concept’ and what kind of concepts get people to read scripts. Because, as I like to remind screenwriters, screenwriting is a numbers game. But it’s a numbers game you can win if you play the numbers right.

You simply do whatever you can to increase the number of people who read your script. The number one way to do that outside of having an agent hawking your script all over town, is to come up with a concept that intrigues people enough that they request your script. Too many writers skip this part of the process. Or they put their fingers in their ears and scream “lalalalaalalallalaal” so they don’t have to deal with it. They’d rather write whatever they want and deal with the potential downsides of a weak concept later.

Don’t do that!

A couple of days ago, I read a script from a young writer. Talented guy. Good with dialogue. He made interesting creative choices that gave his script an unpredictable narrative. But I had a talk with him afterwards and I told him, straight up, that promoting this script is going to be difficult (but not impossible) because it doesn’t have an obvious hook. It doesn’t have that juicy concept that gets a lot of people requesting the script. And, as we established, less requests means less of a chance that someone falls in love with it and wants to make it.

As I was explaining this to him, something occurred to me. The idea of a “hook” has changed over the years. By the way, the difference between a concept and a hook is that a concept is the whole enchilada – your whole idea. Whereas a hook is a component of the concept. It’s the part that gets potential readers/viewers excited.

So, if you look at the concept for Cocaine Bear, it would be, “A rural town is upended when a bear gets into a stash of ditched cocaine and becomes a raging predator, determined to take down anyone in its path.” That whole thing is the concept. But the actual hook is just a bear high on cocaine. As soon as the reader sees that, that’s the reason they want to read the script. (by the way, if you have this script, SEND IT TO ME! – carsonreeves1@gmail.com)

So, back in the day, a “hook” was synonymous with “high concept.” Aliens coming to earth to kill us all (Independence Day), a dinosaur theme park (Jurassic Park), a kid who can see dead people (Sixth Sense). There was an expectation that a movie had to feel BIG in order to get that “hook” label. That’s not the case anymore. Our entertainment becomes more fractionated every day. Big movies are relegated to a few key franchises.

This has expanded the definition of hook and it’s important to understand this new definition because, again, a hook is the reason someone wants to open your script. You don’t have to have the most amazing high concept in the world to get someone to request your screenplay. But you certainly need a hook. So let’s look at what that means in 2022.

The most obvious hook-y ideas are high concept ideas. These include the ones I mentioned above. It also includes movies like The Hunger Games, Inception, Don’t Look Up, Finch, and A Quiet Place.

The next class of ‘hook’ is ideas that have that one flashy element you can build a marketing campaign around (a poster and a trailer). The overall story doesn’t have to be some giant concept. You just need that poster-worthy element. Remember, all studios care about is people showing up. So the primary thing they’re concerned about is an idea that GETS PEOPLE TO SHOW UP. So any flashy item that achieves this is enough. Snakes on a Plane. Twister. Cocaine Bear. X. An evil smile (Smile).

The ‘cool idea’ hook is our third type. These are hooks where the overall movie idea itself is fun, interesting, or clever in some way. These movies usually take place in the real world. They don’t have anything fantasy-related or sci-fi related about them. They’ve just got a fun premise that captures your interest. This would be movies like Good Will Hunting, Knives Out, Parasite, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Hurt Locker.

The fourth class of hook is NAME BRAND RECOGNITION. This one has sort of always been around. But it’s increased in value recently. This hook includes anything in the world, past or present, that has some popular recognition. The idea here is that people will show up to watch things they know. This includes biopics (Elvis). It includes well known true stories (a movie about D-Day, for example). House of Gucci, the Dahmer series. I would even place “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” in this category since it was promoted as a movie that indirectly covered Charles Manson. Lesser known real people or true stories do not fall into this hook category by the way. Bling Ring – no hook. Breaking (John Boyega movie based on a true story) – no hook.

The final and newest class of ‘hook’ is, in a way, a false hook. I’m not convinced that audiences care about this hook. But industry people are obsessed with it and since they’re the ones who can make your movie happen, impressing them is all that matters. And this is the social hook. It’s building your movie around a social issue. She Said. Fruitvale Station. Hidden Figures. Do The Right Thing. The Crying Game. All social hooks.

And yes, there is occasionally crossover with “Social Hooks” and “Name Brand Recognition Hooks.” Crossover is fine. Actually, you can crossover between all five of these with a single idea. But you need at least one hook element to hook a reader.

To that end, what does a movie idea without a hook look like? Unfortunately, we don’t usually see movies without hooks because a major reason the movie was able to get made was that it had a hook. If it doesn’t have one, it doesn’t get made. Sometimes, artsy writer-directors can get non-hook movies made because the movie is greenlit for them, not their idea. A few examples would include Nomadland, Cha-Cha Real Smooth, Columbus, Causeway, and Palmer. Some of you are probably saying, “I’ve never even heard of those movies.” And that may be the best example of why not having a hook is such a problem.

In order to gain a little more clarity over this, here are some movies and their hooks.

She Said – A social hook and a NAME RECOGNITION hook. The movie is about the #metoo movement as well as Harvey Weinstein. A good example of why social hooks are great for studio executives but not so great for audiences.

Nope – Nope definitely has a hook. I would put it in the first category. High concept hook. A group of people on a horse farm believe that an alien entity in the sky is stalking them.

The Whale – This is an interesting one because it does have a unique element to it that could arguably sell a film – a 600 pound man. There’s never been a movie before about a 600 pound man. So it does have some marketing value to it. But this is an example of how having a hook doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good hook. On the “hook” scale, this is probably between a 6 and a 7 out of 10.

The Social Network – A good example of a NAME BRAND RECOGNITION hook. This was in the early days of Facebook so everyone was curious about Facebook at the time. It marketed itself.

Good Time – This movie doesn’t have a hook. A guy is trying to get his brother back and if he fails, his brother goes to jail. It takes place within 24 hours and speeds things along at an insane clip. But just as an idea? It doesn’t really have a hook. Trying to save someone is such a common setup for a movie that it’s not enough.  Which is why, even though it’s a great movie, nobody was interested in checking it out.

Nightcrawler – This is another tough one because the world of late-night blood-chasing indie news vans was certainly an unknown world at the time. So it did have that unique element. But a clue as to whether something has a legit hook or not is how much the marketing campaign leans into the actor playing the role rather than the idea itself. Their whole marketing campaign for this movie was built around Jake Gylenhaal. Not what he was doing.

Ladybird – This one had a negative hook. Almost all coming-of-age scripts do. If you’re trying to break in as a screenwriter, stay away from these. They only get made if you’re the director and someone decides to finance the film.  Although writer-directors can get them made.

The Big Short – Yes, this one would fall under BRAND NAME RECOGNITION. The 2008 financial collapse was a big enough event to create marketing recognition. With that said, it wasn’t the highest scoring hook. People eventually went to see it because of the actors. But graded as a hook alone, it was probably a 6 out of 10.

If all of this confuses you, take a step back and internalize what I’m about to say: Just write something you can honestly imagine people paying money to see. Where writers get into trouble is when they only write ideas that interest them, never considering the audience. Those are the ideas that tend to lack hooks.

Will be interesting to see which of your ideas hooked me tomorrow. HIGH CONCEPT SHOWDOWN is 24 HOURS AWAY!!!

Get A Screenplay Consultation from Carson! – Do you want me to look at your script?  Tell you how it stacks up against the other 10,000 scripts I’ve read?  How it stacks up against all the scripts being sent around town?  Is it up to par with those scripts?  Is it better than those scripts?  Is it not as good?  If so, what’s wrong?  How can you fix it?  This is my area of expertise so if you’ve been thinking about getting a consultation, now is the time to do so!  I can give you $50 off if you mention this article.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get started!