Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of how Elon Musk juggled two of the riskiest business ventures in history, creating a direct-to-consumer electric car and building a privatized space exploration company.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Jordan Barel, is new to the game. He doesn’t have any produced credits yet, but he has worked in the business as an assistant to celebrated comedy actor Paul Scheer.
Writer: Jordan Barel
Details: 120 pages
You.
Can’t.
Stop.
The biopic.
Can’t stop it folks. Don’t even try to stop it with your anti-biopic kill spray. Like cockroaches, biopics are immune to serial biopic killers. Yesterday I gave you the best genre to write in to get your movie made (the Contained Thriller). Today I’m giving you the best genre to write in to get noticed (the Biopic).
There is no genre the industry is more forgiving of than the biopic. You could literally copy and paste a Wikipedia page and sprinkle a few pages of dialogue in and have a shot at making the Black List. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it’s not THAT big of an exaggeration.
For this reason, I only read biopics to torture myself. But I’ve picked The Man From Tomorrow for a specific reason.
Because Elon Musk is crazy!
Musk ROUTINELY makes promises he doesn’t keep – such as saying a few years ago that he’d have a colony on Mars by now. He’s made TWO DEADLINE PROMISES with the new Tesla Model 3 that he’s missed. And it’s not even close. There’s no clear date on when the car will arrive. Oh, and he thinks we’re living in The Matrix AND in danger of being killed off by A.I. No, I’m serious. He really does. Google it. And we’re looking up to this guy as a genius??
It’s the Mars one that gets me though. We haven’t even put a person on Mars. And he’s planning colonies? That’s not a miscalculation. It’s delusion. Not only that, but he’s doubling down! He’s saying he’ll have someone on Mars by next year! Which means they’ll have to leave by… well, tomorrow! I guess that’s why the title is “The Man From Tomorrow.” Cause he’s been to tomorrow and therefore knows that he’s launched a person to Mars.
I don’t know what I’m talking about. But let’s get to this script anyway.
We meet Elon Musk in 2000 when he’s getting ousted from the company he co-founded, Paypal. Musk was fired because instead of wanting to make billions of dollars by selling the company, he wanted to change the way banking was done. Those noble aspirations got him terminated.
No problem. Musk still came out of the venture with a cool billion. Why not put his money where his mouth is? If he really wants to change the world, let’s change the world. Musk’s current fear is that if an asteroid hits earth, humanity will be lost forever. No, I’m serious. He really worries about this. Which is why he wants to colonize Mars. But that means getting to Mars. How do you do that?
By founding SpaceX, a private space company that will do everything that governments have done for decades, but at a fraction of the cost. Everyone thinks Musk is nuttier than a can of Planters but he doesn’t care. He’s on a mission.
Meanwhile, Musk deals with his wife of 10 years (who he’s had 5 children with) questioning why he has to change the world so much that he can never be around to change some diapers. But in Musk’s mind, he’s done everything for his family. They’ve got a mansion, money, the best health care. They’ve got it made! Why does he have to be around?
As SpaceX roars towards creating a cheap rocket that can reach orbit, he starts another billion dollar venture – Tesla. He’s so sick of us recklessly poisoning the world with all these carbon emissions, he’s determined to create an affordable electric car that everyone in the world can own.
This propels us into our third act, when Musks’s wife files for divorce, and both of his companies, after several failures, plummet towards bankruptcy. Musk will have to pull off the biggest coup of his life. Bring the first car to market built from a new company in 50 years, successfully launch the Falcon 1 to prove to the world that he’s capable of bringing mankind into space, and save his marriage. Can he do it?
The Man From Tomorrow is a tale of two movies. The first half is the dreaded Wikipedia article, an exposition-fest that might as well have an audiobook narrator so you can do other things while you listen to it. And the second half is where things get good. I want to help you understand why.
The reason the first half is a struggle is because there’s no drama. And by drama I mean two things. There are no problems that lead to interesting situations and there’s no conflict. For example, Paypal could’ve been a problem that led to an interesting situation. Musk starts feeling the board move against him. He must form a plan of attack to keep the company. And then a showdown happens. It would’ve been fun to watch that showdown.
But there’s no showdown. Musk gets a call while on vacation that he’s been ousted. The drama, it turns out, happened off-screen.
Likewise, there’s no conflict in the first half. Lack of conflict is easier to spot because its easier to define. It’s a resistance to your character’s objectives. But there’s literally no resistance in the first half. Everything Elon Musk does is working. Someone will occasionally call him out in the media for being delusional, but nothing gets in his way.
I suppose you could make an argument that this is setup time. You’re setting everything up so that you can throw all the conflict at your hero later. But I don’t buy that. You can always add conflict. In Arron Sorkin’s “Jobs,” Steve Jobs hit the ground running with conflict in his face – Could he pull off the Mac Computer announcement? The tension was in the air from the get-go. The Man From Tomorrow asks the reader to be bored for long enough to get to the good stuff.
Luckily for the script, good stuff arrives. Barel wisely injects our hero with a double-dose of likability to ensure we’ll root for him. The first dose is Musk getting fired by someone he trusted. We always root for people who get fucked over. And second, Elon Musk keeps going despite everyone telling him he’ll fail. I would argue this is one of the most powerful ways to make us root for a character – a hero who says ‘yes’ in the face of so much ‘no.’ And the effect this script had on me is proof. I wanted Elon Musk to succeed.
I also liked how all three of these major parts of Musk’s life – his marriage, SpaceX, and Tesla – were falling apart at the same time. That almost made up for the lack of drama early on. Barel also did a nice job of establishing the stakes of this moment. If the rocket fails, SpaceX is done. If they can’t get the price of the car down to what they promised, Tesla is done. And these “the sky is falling” portions of the script always hit harder when the hero’s personal life is falling apart as well.
So by the end, I was in full Musk-Fever mode. Hmm… That sounds weird. But you know what I mean!
As far as what could’ve been improved, I would’ve liked a real antagonist. A villain. We had some tech giants chirping in from newscasts that Musk would fail. But we needed A FACE. Some of you will argue that Musk was both the protagonist AND antagonist, but at the risk of sounding crass, I find that dual protag-antag stuff to be bullshit. It’s cool to say that in film school. But in reality, it’s better to have an actual villain. And it wouldn’t have even been hard! There’s got to be someone out there who’s a noted anti-Muskite.
Not a perfect biopic by any means. But if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you hit the end of the second act, you want your main character’s work AND personal life to come crashing down at the same time. This needs to be the lowest point in your character’s journey. If ONLY their work fails or ONLY their personal life fails, it doesn’t seem as hopeless. You need this moment to feel completely hopeless on every level.
