Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: In the year 2035, companies can help you control your dreams so you can have amazing dream experiences. But one of the dream “writers” learns that her company may be using the dreams to control the clients after they leave.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List. From what I understand, co-writer Tricia Lee is a director. So she and her co-writer may be writing this for her to direct.
Writers: Tricia Lee and Corey Brown
Details: 104 pages
Constance Wu for Jayden?
Dreayuhyuhyuh dreams… dream dream dreeeeeeams.
Dreayuhyuhyuh dreams… dream dream dreeeeeeams.
For as long as there has been time, there have been screenplays about dreams.
And why not?
Dreams are mysterious. Dreams are elusive. Dreams are weeirrrrrd.
But dream movies rarely work. (What Dreams May Come, Vanilla Sky, The Cell, The Science of Sleep, Dreamgirls)
The reason dream stuff doesn’t work is because screenplay is STRUCTURE and dreams are ANTI-STRUCTURE. Often to the point of frustration. Case in point: Has anybody ever shared a dream with you that you actually enjoyed hearing about? Of course not. I don’t care if you were naked in high school and got eaten to death by a band of tiny land whales while your teeth fell out.
So, I go into this script skeptical.
But I am encouraged that the script has two writers. When you’re a lone writer, going into a loosely structured subject matter, you’re more likely to justify randomness and weak choices. In concepts like this that have the potential to go off the rails, it helps when you have a second voice to keep you in check.
Let’s see how that plays out…
30-something Jayden Chan works for a company called Dream Dynamics. She’s one of the dream writers there. Basically, you sign up, you come in, you give Dream Dynamics an idea of the dream you want to have, and the dream writer comes up with it in real time. They’re sort of like your Dream Operator, painting the dream as it happens.
But it’s imperative that the writer always retain 80/20% control of the dream. If the ratio ever dips below that (70/30, 60/40), then that’s REALLY BAD. Bad in what way, you ask? I wasn’t sure. That could’ve been made clearer. I just know that when Jayden’s dream control ratio went down to 70/30, everybody at Dream Dynamics freaked out.
A guy named Kato comes in for a session – KATO (37, Black) watches the intake video. Long braids, handsome as hell, a strong chest you just want to touch under his inauspicious gray sweater – whose dream ratio gets all the way down to 60/40, which nearly gets Jayden fired.
Later that night, Jayden is approached by her brother, Bing, who is a big protestor of Dream Dynamics. He thinks they’re evil. He lets Jayden in on something she didn’t know. That a handful of recent clients, all of them minorities, have died soon after their sessions!
After Kato nearly kills himself, Jayden realizes that something is not right. She suspects that the evil head of the corporation, Richard Fox, is using the dream technology to control the clients after they leave. This allows him to kill them off if need be.
Through a series of character interactions, we learn that this specific dream system is designed to “keep people of color down.” Richard Fox doesn’t want minorities to leave their dreams thinking they can also achieve those dreams in real life. So if they leave optimistic, he must kill them. Jayden teams up with her ragtag crew – basically Kato and Bing – to take down the evil corporation she works for and the nasty man who runs it.
Whenever you’re exploring a big topic like dreams, you need to find a *specific* way into the idea. Because the more you approach an idea from a 10,000 foot point-of-view, the blander the script is going to be. Ideas become more interesting the closer to them you get.
To expand on that, let’s take one of my favorite topics, aliens. Think about all the angles that have been explored through this topic. A kid finds an alien in his backyard and befriends him (E.T.). A family holes up in their farmhouse when aliens arrive on earth (Signs). A group of soldiers try and take out an alien that’s landed in the jungle (Predator). A linguistics professor attempts to communicate with aliens before the U.S.’s adversaries do (Arrival). A city resigns a bunch of aliens to a walled-off ghetto where they’re barely able to survive (District 9).
All of these are very specific ways to explore the topic. We’re not covering the grandiosity of Aliens with a capital A. We are looking at them from a highly specific point of view.
Getting back to dreams, the most successful dream movie is probably Inception and a big reason that worked was because of the specific genre Nolan told the story through. All dreams were explored as heists.
American Dreams is told through too broad of a lens in my opinion.
You’ve got this giant company. They’re helping people control their dreams. But really they’re using the dream control to control them after their dreams. I don’t know. It just feels too big to be interesting.
Granted, execution plays a big part in this. In a seasoned screenwriter’s hands, the execution of this story’s going to look a lot better. But, as constructed, it doesn’t feel like the idea has been explored with any sort of curiosity. Every first idea they came up with, they went with.
There’s some basic understanding of screenwriting structure. But the creative choices all feel cliched and predictable. It’s been a while since I’ve read a villain this one-dimensional. He’s mean because….. he’s mean! That’s the extent of his depth.
It’s kind of like watching my rookie quarterback on the Bears through three games. I’m hoping for him to dial up complex 70-yard passing plays for touchdowns. In the meantime, he’s barely able to successfully hand it off to his running back.
I want complex exciting storytelling here but the reality is, these writers are only barely able to execute character descriptions. I get it. We all start somewhere. But for this script to be on the Black List, I’ve got to think Franklin Leonard has transformed into Howard Hughes, randomly throwing darts at titles on the wall.
I would be interested to see what Chat GPT would come up with when given this same idea. Cause I suspect the script might be better than this. What Chat GPT does well is cliches and soft story choices. That describes American Dreams to a T. Cliches and soft story choices. It’s the polar opposite of yesterday’s film, The Substance, which had its own problems but a lack of bold choices was not one of them.
I mean, a good 30 pages of this script were dedicated to cutting to the good guys in a room saying, ‘We have to take down the meanie bad guys,’ then cutting to the bad guys in their room saying, ‘We must take down those good guys!’ It was like being transported back to 1984 watching an episode of The Smurfs. Just change the names “Papa Smurf” and “Gargamel” to “Jayden” and “Richard Fox.”
If you want to see a better version of what this script is trying to achieve with its social commentary, check out They Cloned Tyrone. While I didn’t love that script, it takes a lot more creative risks with both its storytelling and the way it explores this subject matter (white people exploiting people of color). Everything here felt rushed, first choice, with, I’m assuming, little to no critical pushback between drafts. Someone needed to challege this writing team with some hard-hitting notes for it to reach its potential.
[x] Gargamel
[ ] Azrael
[ ] Brainy Smurf
[ ] Papa Smurf
[ ] Smurfette
What I learned: I feel so confident the readers of Scriptshadow could’ve done better than this that I challenge everyone here to come up with a better way into this concept: A company that writes your dreams. I bet we get 4-5 ideas that are notably better than whatever this was. Share your ideas in the comments section.
