Genre: Drama/Period/Conspiracy
Premise: A young upstart at NASA suggests that in order to beat the Soviets to the moon, the US have Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing.
About: For those of you who caught yesterday’s post, Stephany Folsom is the co-writer of Toy Story 4. She got that job after writing this script, which made the 2013 Black List. Pixar is known for finding fresh writers who write darker/sophisticated material, presumably because they like themes that go further than skin deep. Folsom’s influences include Lou Reed, Steven Soderbergh, Kurt Vonnegut, Jean Renoir, and John Hughes.
Writer: Stephany Folsom
Details: 10/13 draft – 115 pages
One of the downsides of the Black List is that 70 scripts all get bunched up together with one big thumbs up and you don’t know which of them are actually good. The only way to find out is when they get written up on other sites and the only site that goes through them to find out is, well, this one. So until I read a Black List script myself, I never know what’s good. Apparently, this script was featured in several publications outside of the Black List and therefore was one of the few scripts getting legit endorsements (as opposed to making the list because an ambitious agent lobbied a bunch of development kids to vote for his client’s script). How I missed it? I don’t know. But, hey, better late than never.
It’s 1969 and two American spies in the Soviet Union have determined that rising leader Mikahil Suslov is less than a month away from launching a manned mission to the moon, three full months before the US will send their team. The American government believes that if the Soviets beat them to the moon, Suslov’s power will skyrocket and he will initiate an all-out nuclear attack on America.
A little known U.S. government NASA liaison named Barbara comes up with a solution for this: Fake the moon landing. Everyone ignores her until she gets an official government letter approving her request. Barbara believes there’s only one man for the job: eccentric director Stanley Kubrick. She practically barges into his home and makes her pitch. Kubrick declines until Barbara offers him an elusive government-made camera lens that can shoot in lower light than any other lens in the world. Kubrick is in.
The kooky Kubrick begins playing his games immediately, waiting until Barbara has driven him to the airport to tell her he doesn’t fly. She’s forced to drive him from New York to Florida. Once there, nobody at NASA seems to pay attention to Barbara and Stanley’s sideshow. I’m not sure why since I thought this was the key to saving the world. Kubrick busts out all the hits. He only communicates with Barbara via written notes. He shoots until the astronauts physically can’t move anymore. And after entire sets are built to his particularly stringent standards, he decides at the last second to tear them down and start over again.
At the last second, Kubrick decides to quit. Despite everything he shot being perfect, he never filmed the astronauts walking out of the module onto the moon – the most important part of the whole movie! So it will be up to Barbara to find Kubrick and convince him to come back, film the ending, and save the free world.
I’ll cut straight to the chase. Your reaction to this script will depend exclusively on whether you’re a Kubrick fan or not. If you love Kubrick’s movies and you love all the rumors surrounding his eccentric directing style, you’ll flip for this. Me, on the other hand, I’ve never connected with Kubrick’s work. It’s too dark and nihilistic for my taste. So while I love the stories about what a weirdo Kubrick was (i.e. doing 60 takes in a row and never asking for anything different from the actors), I’m far from what you’d call a Kubrick sycophant. Which is probably why I didn’t respond to this script the way others have.
My first issue with the script is that it’s too dry.
The characters only speak to say what the writer needs them to to move the plot forward. Outside of Kubrick, they don’t have a life of their own. They all sound exactly alike – government drones trying to do a job. Even Barbara. If you’re worried that your dialogue isn’t up to professional standards, this script should give you hope. The dialogue here is as standard as it gets and it made the Black List.
The bigger issue, however, is how unclear the overall goal is. While I knew they were filming a fake moon landing, it was never clear how it was going to be used. We’re being told that, concurrently with Kubrick shooting the landing, NASA is still going forward with the real trip to the moon. So was this a backup plan in case they didn’t launch in time? Was it to be used in conjunction with the launch (show the launch then cut to the fake moon landing footage)? Was NASA going to try a moon landing the legit way, and, if they didn’t make it, throw the fake footage up at the last second? Was the plan not to televise the launch and just say to the world that they’re at the moon then show the fake footage?
A big reason this was so hard to follow was because Barbara’s fake landing was a side hustle nobody in the White House or NASA cared about. It made the whole movie seem like it didn’t matter. Honestly, half the time we’re with Kubrick on set, it feels like play time. An excuse to get to the next Kubrick shenanigan.
That’s not to say there weren’t stakes. If Russia’s top engineer beats the U.S. to the moon, he would win the presidency and launch a nuclear war against America. But that only confused the narrative more. If it was so important that this fake landing work, how come nobody in government was paying attention to it?
If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think the writer thought about anything other than the Kubrick/Barbara scenes. These are the only scenes that pop. And I use that word generously. Outside of the scenes with Kubrick screwing around, we haven’t got one character who stands out. Not to mention a plot with an extremely hazy goal.
Here’s the thing with readers. Every time we see a script with a good concept, we prepare ourselves for one of two outcomes. Either the writer is going to give us exactly what we’re expecting from the concept. It will be serviceable and nothing more. Or the writer is going to elevate that concept into something way better than what we imagined. This script definitely lies in the former pile. There’s nothing here that a thousand other screenwriters wouldn’t have done with the same idea. It honestly seems like an excuse to write eight scenes where Kubrick is acting like a weirdo. Everything else is tossed in there to fill up space.
And that sucks because I was really looking forward to this script. I guess it goes to show that when you get to work with the Pixar storytelling team, you are getting the best screenwriting help in the world. So many characters fall flat on the page here whereas in Toy Story 4, they’re all fun and memorable.
All right you Kubrick nuts – feel free to tear me to pieces.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: That 2001 was originally deemed a failure. It only became cool when the hippie counter-culture began dropping acid and going to screenings. It then miraculously became a “masterpiece.” This helps explain why I never never saw what others saw in this film.
