Genre: Comedy
Premise: After a 30-something female thief is framed for stealing a 2 million dollar piece of jewelry, she dresses up in an old woman suit and hides out in an assisted living facility.
About: This script finished low on last year’s Black List and sold for NEARLY 1 MILLION DOLLARS to Paramount. Writer Kay Oyegun wrote on the NBC show, This is Us.
Writer: Kay Oyegun
Details: 112 pages
If you’re a spec screenwriter – and by that I mean, if you’re someone who writes original screenplays that you hope to sell to Hollywood – the studio you want to be paying attention to is Paramount. They’re buying a bunch of stuff. The reason for this is Paramount has the smallest library of BIG IP of all the studios. Therefore, they have no choice but to take chances on original material. And that’s why you see them buying stuff like Assisted Living.
Today’s script continues this week’s theme of: to find the future, look to the past. Monday’s entry harkened back to cheesy 90s thrillers. Yesterday’s pilot took us all the way back to the 60s. And today is about going back to the wonderful world of over-the-top 90s disguise comedies. Hold on, do you hear that? Me too. It’s Martin Lawrence calling his agent setting up a Big Momma’s House reboot!
Amber is a thief. She grew up learning the trade with her mother, a drug addict who used to run with a guy named Dragon. Mom and Dragon would use Amber’s “lost child” routine to create a diversion and steal jewelry. So Amber never had any choice but to get involved in the crime trade.
But these days, in her 30s, Amber is finally ready to go on the straight and narrow. Her boyfriend slash local crime boss, Jamie, tries to pull her in on his latest job – stealing a two million dollar piece of jewelry known as “the golden bird” – but Amber tells him no. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter. Jamie not only goes through with the robbery, but frames Amber, using Amber’s former friend Pam who looks just like Amber! Once video footage of Pam stealing the golden bird hits the web, the police are convinced that the woman in the footage is Amber.
Oh no! Amber charges over to Jamie’s place to yell at him. He tells her tough luck. You should’ve come with us. A fight ensues, and during the pandemonium, the golden bird falls to the ground. Amber pockets it and runs off. Once home, Amber realizes she needs to hide from the cops. So she gets her good friend Nell, who’s a costume artist, to design an old person’s suit for her then heads over to Meadow Lane Assisted Living where her grandma is staying.
Amber is still mad at her grandma for allowing her crime-ridden mother to ruin her life, so she tries to stay away from her. Meanwhile, she spends most of her time walking around the place trying not to look conspicuous. She makes friends. She develops a crush on a 40-something doctor who she can’t have (because she’s an “old woman” in his eyes) and generally hopes this whole Golden Bird thing blows over. But will it blow over? Or is Amber just delaying the inevitable?
Okay, so here’s the deal.
I’m not sure it’s worth going into all the things that are wrong with this script. Cause there are a lot. For example, Amber grabs the golden bird during the fight with Jamie. Later, she’s asked by her friend why she took it. “I don’t know,” she says. When your character doesn’t know why they’re executing a major plot point, that’s a strong indication that the script is a mess. That sort of stuff needs to be on lock. And there’s a lot of that here.
I still don’t understand why a freeze framed picture of Pam stealing the golden bird has convinced the police that it’s Amber who’s done it. Yes, it’s established that the two look alike. But no matter how similar they look, THE PERSON IN THE VIDEO LOOKS MORE LIKE PAM BECAUSE IT’S PAM.
But here’s the thing about Hollywood. There are two worlds. There’s the “Get a script into the theoretical best shape it can be in” world so it has the best shot at attracting interest. I remember Ben Ripley, who wrote Source Code, telling me that. That he kept going back and applying notes over and over every draft until it was perfect. And then they went out with it.
But then there’s another side of the business that’s all about THE MOVIE. A studio wants to make a certain movie and if your script comes along at the right time and it checks most of the boxes, they don’t care if it’s any good. They just know they have a type of movie they want to make and this concept is similar enough to that theoretical movie that they slot it into that production lane and off they go.
To them, it’s the overall sweeping ideas of the script that appeal to them. A woman dressing up in an old person’s suit hiding from cops and bad guys at an assisted living facility. They can SELL THAT IDEA. They know how to market that idea. Hell, they already have a mockup of the poster on some computer in a back room on the Paramount lot. To these people, the “wouldn’t they be searching for Pam, not Amber?” plot hole is insignificant to them. Some writer down the line will fix that.
Yes, we all would prefer to be in the “LET’S MAKE A MOVIE” lane. It’s a much wider faster lane. You see all those cars bunched up together in four lanes to your right? SUCKERS. You’re in the movie lane where things actually happen. When a studio decides to put a project in the movie lane, it’s like being in first class. And yes I know I’m mixing metaphors. But that’s what it’s really like. You not only are assured of getting to your destination. But you’re going to get treated like a God along the way. Need Kevin Hart? Why of course you can have access to an offer of 20 million dollars.
I remember when Mark Guggenheim wrote the spec, Safe House. Very average script. But, for whatever reason, it was awarded access to the “LET’S MAKE A MOVIE” lane. Denzel and Ryan Reynolds were contacted within days of the sale. Sony was making that movie NOW and nothing would get in the way.
And what’s so frustrating is that nobody knows how to consistently make it into the Let’s Make a Movie lane. You don’t know that you’ve done it until you’re in the lane. Safe House was Mark Guggenheim’s first industry sale. And yet I know his next 4-5 scripts got sold but none of them were allowed in the elusive “Let’s Make a Movie” lane. It’s crazy. You just don’t know.
But one clue I do know is that the types of projects that are granted access into that lane tend to be safe simple ideas that are based on templates that have worked before. Safe House was your basic buddy-cop setup, but adjusted for the FBI and centered around a safe house. This script is just like those goofy 90s comedies where people dressed up in fat suits all the time.
And I think that’s why a lot of writers struggle to get into the elusive “project fast lane.” These ideas are as sexy as a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper. Who wants to write these movies? And even if you do write one, it’s a game of luck. There’s nothing in these scripts that distinguish them from each other. There’s no voice. Diablo Cody would’ve never written Assisted Living or Safe House.
But if you can get these projects to the right person right when they’re looking for it, you’ve found the golden ticket.
So in defense of the writer, you can say they’re smarter than we are. Here we are trying to break in with our dark comedy about the furniture sales world while they’re getting an e-mail from PayPal telling them their balance has just broken the double-comma barrier. Sure, the furniture sales comedy is a better script by everyone’s measurement. It’s better written. It’s got better characters. The dialogue is way better. But Paramount doesn’t have a box in their “success generation computer algorithm” for “dark furniture comedy.” They do have one for “the next Mrs. Doubtfire” though.
I’ll be honest, these types of sales depress me. I know the industry likes to make them and I know they make money. They’re just not the reason I got into screenwriting.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned : Where’s the irony? Concepts like this need irony to work. For example, if you made Amber a really depressed hateful person, an ironic premise would have her hide in a clown school, a place where she’d be required to act happy and helpful, the last things in the world she’s comfortable doing. There is zero irony in a 35 year old woman hiding in an old person’s home. It’s random. She could be hiding anywhere. She could pretend to be a fireman hiding in fire station. She could pretend to be a chef hiding at a culinary school. She could pretend to be a teenager hiding at a high school. Without any irony, a comedic premise isn’t comedic.
