Genre: Thriller
Premise: A highly publicized AMA session with an aging musician goes off the rails when a hacker starts revealing dark secrets from his past.
About: This script finished in the top 10 of last year’s Hit List. The writer, John Wikstrom, is a Florida State grad who has a couple of short films under his belt. Wikstrom is repped by one of the last big spec agents in Hollywood, David Boxerbaum.
Writer: John Wikstrom
Details: 105 pages
Praise the LOOOORRRD! A non-biopic. I feel like throwing a party.
One of the hardest things to do in screenwriting is to find an idea that nobody’s come up with yet. But doing so is not impossible. In fact, a quick way to circumvent the issue is to choose a subject that’s only recently been added to the public lexicon.
While AMAs aren’t rolled-off-the-assembly-line-yesterday new, they’re new to most people. And that makes them potential fodder for a movie. But can someone build an entire narrative around people asking questions? Let’s find out.
Margo is that rare Los Angeles publicist who’s actually sweet. That wholesome quality has made her popular with artists, and that popularity results in the Johnny Cash-esque David Dollar requesting that Margo personally direct his AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) on Reddit, where he’s promoting yet another greatest hits album.
Margo heads over to Davey’s enormous mansion in the hills and is immediately charmed by the 70 year old legend in spite of herself. Davey seems amused by this thing they’re doing. This is a man who came up in the old school era where you remained elusive and mysterious. Nowadays artists are sharing their latest bowel movement on Instagram. It’s all a bit confusing for an old man.
Margo tells him not to worry. She’ll take the reins. She’ll read off the most upvoted questions, he’ll answer them, and she’ll type. An hour of painless fun. And it is painless for awhile. Until a mystery user posts a picture of Davey’s old girlfriend, Elizabeth Kelly, with a black eye, and asks the question, “Did you beat her?” Margo tells Davey he doesn’t have to answer but he insists he has nothing to hide, and explains that Elizabeth was actually hurting herself back then, which was well documented.
The AMA gets back on track but then things get real. Someone posts all of Davey’s financial records as well as his entire e-mail inbox. And just as Margo prepares to end the AMA, a naked picture of her is posted. She gets a direct message informing her that there are more where that came from if she stops this AMA. They have no choice but to keep going.
Surprisingly, every accusation that the reddit users are able to dig up from Davey’s private files, he has a perfectly reasonable answer for. This only makes them more frantic, more determined to take him down. But what they don’t realize is that they can’t take Davey down. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Still, something about all this doesn’t seem right. But neither we nor Margo nor the Reddit users can figure out what it is. Is Davey hiding something? Or is he yet another victim of a society who will do anything to get their piece of flesh?
I have to say, this one kept me guessing.
And I’ll explain why.
I want everyone to imagine the version of this story that came into their head when they read the logline. It probably went something like this. A young female publicist goes to an older entertainer’s home for an AMA. A hacker comes into the AMA. He starts exposing #metoo’ish secrets from the musician’s past. Our musician character fights back, denies, tries to explain it away, cover his tracks, until finally the hacker exposes him as the evil predatory monster that he is. He even tries to assault our poor little heroine.
The fact that you would’ve written that version of the story is why this writer has moved into the professional ranks and you haven’t.
When you come up with an idea – especially an idea inspired by headlines, like this one – it is imperative you not give us the execution we’re expecting. One of the first things the professional screenwriter asks when they come up with an idea is, “What is the movie the audience expects me to write?” Once they have that locked down, they make sure they don’t write that movie.
That doesn’t mean they won’t include parts of that movie. In fact, it’s advantageous to do so. In order to use an audience’s expectations against them, you must start by leading them down a path they expect to be led down. However, the further into the woods you get, the more you should be veering off that path.
I don’t want to spoil this script since it has a lot of surprises, but I’ll say this. There’s a moment after the midpoint where you realize Davey is innocent of the charges these people are leveling against him. Once that reality hit, I had no idea where the story was going. I thought I knew. I thought for sure I was getting the obvious version of the story. The fact that Wikstrom didn’t give me that was awesome.
Another thing I admire about AMA is how big it seems for such a small movie. That’s really hard to do. When you’re writing a typical contained thriller, one of the limitations is that the story feels tiny. A home invasion thriller can be riveting. But it’s only ever a story about those people in that house. What’s cool about AMA is that despite it being a single location movie centered around two characters, it feels huge, because it’s playing out on a world stage. That’s a producer’s dream. To have a movie you can make for so little money that feels enormous.
These types of movies live and die on the dialogue and while I wouldn’t classify the dialogue here as great, it’s pretty good for a thriller. A key component to creating good dialogue is power dynamics. You want to set a power structure between the characters that has one person above the other. This allows for conflict and subtext. Margo has to be respectful, since she works for this person. Davey has enormous power in the dynamic as he’s a legend and knows he can do what he wants. It’s hard to convey exactly why this is important but if you can imagine, for a second, two characters who are on the same level conversing in this situation, you can deduce that their conversation wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as one with this much of a power tilt.
The only thing I didn’t like about the script was that it was hard to buy that this would happen. I’ll give it to Wikstrom that he made sure there were reasons at every turn for why the AMA had to keep going (Margo was being threatened with nude selfies if she quit). But I’m not sure the whole thing passes the smell test. It’s a bit ridiculous. With that said, it was highly entertaining ridiculousness.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The three E’s. Educate, Elevate, and Entertain. Use your story to educate people about something (#metoo). Elevate the idea above what the average writer would do with it (went in a different direction than what was expected). Entertain (package it as a contained thriller). A common mistake with a lot of writers is they only focus on the first two. In other words, they write an uber-serious morality thesis about where we are as a society. Never forget that the first two don’t mean anything without the last one.
