Is this Tony Gilroy’s Megalopolis?
Genre: Drama
Premise: A womanizing cellist lands a job scoring a new film, prompting reflections on the journey that brought him to this moment.
About: To some, he wrote the best Star Wars material since the original trilogy. To others, he sucked every ounce of fun out of Star Wars and bored the fans to pieces. Well, now that Gilroy is finally finished with a galaxy far far away, he can take us into his obsession with scoring movies with classical music.
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Details: 128 pages
This may be the first time I’ve ever seen a writer write a script for the age 85-100 demographic.
Ho-boy.
I know I shouldn’t say this. Cause it’s going to piss some people off. But I have to be truthful. If I’m not being truthful with you guys then what’s the point?
Tony Gilroy is a REALLY REALLY bad screenwriter.
I’ve always felt like something was off about his writing. This confirms it. There’s a lack of focus to his material that is consistently infuriating. We saw it in Andor. Five full episodes would go by before an important plot point arrived. Every once in a while in his scripts, he does stumble into a good scene. But, in the meantime, it’s like listening to a homeless man ramble.
And that’s exactly how I would describe this script. A homeless man rambled it off in one sitting.
Oh boy. How do I summarize this plot?
So, there’s this cellist named Alex. And he’s a ladies’ man. He plays in a bunch of different orchestras and makes sure to bang the hottest girls in the orchestras wherever he goes. Honestly, I could stop there and you’d have 98% of the story, lol. I’m not lying. That’s pretty much ALL THAT HAPPENS.
And some of you might say, “Actually, that sounds pretty good to me, Carson. We get to see this guy hook up with all these hot ladies.” No. No, it’s not. It’s sooooooo boring. We just see him talk to a series of girls over the 20 years he’s been in the orchestra: sometimes before sex, sometimes after sex. And they all fall in love with him but he moves on to the next chick and leaves them behind.
I suppose there’s one special one named Nadia. He had a bang-buddy relationship with her while she was preparing to get married to some other man. And then, 20 years later, she dies. So he goes to her wake and meets some other girl who knew her and the other girl says Nadia’s dying wish was for Alex to have sex with her too. So he does.
And I guess the main storyline is happening in the present. There’s this movie that needs to be scored and Alex is no longer a hotshot cellist. But he’s still really good. So he’s working on the movie.
There are zero stakes to this job. It doesn’t matter if it works out or not. He’ll find work somewhere else tomorrow. Like everything in this movie, we don’t care about the story at all. It actually feels like it was designed to bore readers. I’m not even lying. There’s no other way to explain this atrocity of a screenplay.
The climax has Alex obsessed with a teenager named Viviana, who’s a trip-hop artist. They’ve interacted for like two seconds in the script before this. But now we’re supposed to care that Viviana is taking over for the lead orchestra position in the movie that’s being scored. Without spoiling things, we learn something “shocking” about Viviana and how it relates to Alex. And that’s the movie! The end!
How do you know a script is bad?
There are numerous ways. But I just found a new one! You have no idea what to write for a logline until you read the entire thing. Good movies let you know what the concept is by the end of the first act. This one did not give me that information! Heck, I don’t even know if Behemoth had acts!
How else do you know if a script is bad?
When there’s a car crash in the first twenty pages AND IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY EFFECT ON THE PLOT WHATSOEVER! The Uber driver was even killed! But Alex got a couple of scrapes and bruises and just headed home the next day and the movie continued. WTF????
How else do you know if a script is bad?
The scenes have no structure. You just drift into a conversation between two people with no point. They talk about absolutely nothing that anybody would care about. “Where are you now?” “Boston. What about you?” “I got a new house.” “You must love it.” “I do.” That’s paraphrased but VERY ACCURATE trust me. 95% of the scenes read like that. It’s either that or this endless montage that Gilroy writes in. We’re whisking from one area to the next.
I have no idea what Tony Gilroy is trying to do here.
Maybe he’s on such an advanced path of screenwriting that he’s five generations ahead of the rest of us and we can’t comprehend how baller his writing is. Maybe in the future, scenes don’t need a point. Who knows?
But come on. Let’s be real here. In the first 60 pages, there is one significant scene between Alex and his lover, Nadia. And then on page 60, we’ve flash-forwarded to Nadia’s wake. And everybody who knew her, including Alex, talks about her and plays music in remembrance of her. And it’s supposed to be this really important moment in the screenplay.
WE KNEW THIS BITCH FOR ONE SCENE!!!
WHO CARES???????
Now, if one other person makes it through this script and therefore knows what happens, they might say to me, “But Carson. That sequence is actually important because it sets up the big reveal at the end of the movie.” No. That only works when the rest of the script is compelling. You don’t get to write a setup on page 60 and write a payoff on page 128 and then fill the rest of your script with rambling conversations and montages and call it a movie.
That’s not how it works.
One of the biggest things I look for when I read a script is something I can tell that the writer slaved over. I can tell that they were OBSESSED with making every scene perfect. OBSESSED with their plotting. OBSESSED with every line of dialogue. OBSESSED with every single word that was written in the script.
You DEFINITELY do not get that feel here at all. You leave this script feeling like… hmmm… what’s the best way to put it? ……… This is the type of script I would expect someone to write who has not had a single person be honest with them for decades. They just assume everything they write is gold. And the irony is, it’s the complete opposite.
Look, I’m guessing this is a writer-director thing. And since Gilroy has 856,921 orgasms describing different classical music pieces in this, it can’t be fully judged until we’re watching it on screen with the music. But I just don’t see how this can possibly overcome such a rambling narrative. It’s sooooooooo all-over-the-place. There is no plot. And you know how I feel about scripts with no plot. They’re narcissistic experiments forced upon the masses. Or, in this case, forced upon the five people who will pay for this movie.
This was not it, guys.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Give the reader a steady diet of entertaining plot points. This script had one single entertaining plot point. Its ending reveal. That was it! A good script should have a solid plot point, where something interesting happens that moves the story forward in an entertaining way, once every 15 pages.
What I learned 2: Be careful about writing a movie completely on “feels.” No structure. No plan. Just feels. When you do that, you get this, which always feels amazing to you, the writer, cause it’s got all those feels you felt down on the page. But to everyone else, it feels like landing inside the brain of a madman.
