Genre: High School Comedy
Premise: When two nerdy seniors realize they’re the only girls in class without boyfriends, they try and use the same skills that made them straight A students to ace the ultimate test: find dates for the prom.
About: Booksmart is the directorial debut of Olivia Wilde. It just premiered at SXSW to good reviews. What’s interesting about this project is that the script was written all the way back in 2008 and chronicled the three months leading up to prom for its two heroines. However, the SXSW program summarizes the updated story this way – “A high school comedy about two best friends who decide to spend the evening before graduation cramming four years of partying into one wild night.” This tells us two things. One, that scripts evolve. The story you start with is almost never the story you finish with. And two, Wilde (or whichever producer helped develop this script) wisely incorporated some good old fashioned Scriptshadow advice – CONDENSE. YOUR. TIMEFRAME. The more condensed your timeframe, the faster your story will move.
Writers: Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins
Details: 121 pages (11/24/08 draft)
Let me make something clear.
When I see a comedy screenplay that’s 120 pages long, I know immediately I’m dealing with a beginner. There is no reason whatsoever for a comedy spec to be 120 pages. Professional writers know this. So as soon as I see that horrifying number, I’m expecting problems. And it wasn’t long before I found them in Booksmart.
This script wanders through its first act like an old woman with Alzheimer’s. Your first act turn occurs when your characters begin the pursuit of their goal. The goal in this movie is to find prom dates. The characters don’t announce that until page 37!!! That would be 12 full pages after it should’ve been announced (page 25).
Some of you may say, “12 pages isn’t that long, Carson.” And you’d be wrong. A reader can get bored with a script within half a page. I don’t need to tell you guys this. You experienced it yourselves reading some of the 10-Page Finalists this weekend. Readers reading your scripts are no different than you reading those scripts. They’ll lose interest in a heartbeat if you’re not keeping things engaging. So if you’re plopping down an extra 12 pages before you even tell us what your script is about? Expect us to get bored.
And yet, this script got made. How is that possible? Read on to find out.
Molly and Amy are seniors at a high school in a small Michigan town. They’re also huge nerds. Sure, they both got into great universities. But they’ve never known the touch of an adolescent boy who’s just gone through puberty. And make no mistake, both Amy and Molly want to know what that touch feels like.
They try going to parties even though they don’t see the point of them (you don’t get graded so…?). And it’s during one of these parties that they realize every senior girl they know has a boyfriend. That night they have a eureka moment. What if they spent just as much time and energy on getting dates for prom as they do studying for school? It’s time to put those booksmarts to the test.
After this initial plan goes nowhere, the two recruit their old friend Julie, who’s somehow landed a hot college boyfriend and therefore knows what she’s talking about. Julie says the most important thing they need to do is be around guys more, specifically the guys they like. So she assigns Amy to join the softball team, since her crush plays baseball and both teams travel together. And Molly must join the high school play, since her crush is one of the actors.
The plan sputters from the start. Neither girl makes any headway. And on top of that, their friendship starts to fracture! They will need to pull it together if they want to go to prom with actual boys, a task that that’s looking increasingly outside of their particular set of smarty-pants skills.
Booksmart is a dangerous script to read if you’re an aspiring screenwriter because after finishing it your first thought will be, “That’s it? This script got recognition and mine didn’t??” Booksmart feels more like a writing team learning how to write a screenplay than it does a finished product. So here’s something to keep in mind. This script took 10 years to get made. It’s likely that someone liked the idea and decided to develop it with the writers. Through those rewrites, the script became more polished before it was finally ready to be placed in front of someone like Olivia Wilde’s eyes.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that as long as there’s a kernel of a hook at the center of your screenplay, there’s a chance – even if the rest of the script is weak – that somebody will want to explore it. This hook of nerds applying their particular set of nerdy skills to get boyfriends is a fun one. I’m going through this myself. There’s a script I read last year that has a great hook but the writer is a total newbie. He’s not ready yet. So I have to decide do I want to work with him on the script and try to guide him towards a salable screenplay. I like the idea enough that I’m considering suffering through endless rewrites where I’m basically teaching the writer how to write. This kind of dilemma happens to producers every day in Hollywood.
As for the story I read today, it’s a classic example of writers feeling out a medium they don’t yet understand. For example, there are a lot of these quick goofy flashbacks. Like when Amy and Molly realize they’ll have to go to parties to get boyfriends. “Remember the last time we went to a party?” Flash back to Molly and Amy showing up to a party at 6:30pm. — I’m not saying this isn’t funny. But it’s the low hanging fruit of the comedy screenwriting world and I see it with beginner screenwriters a lot. I guess the best way to put it is – any writer could come up with this idea. To stand out as a screenwriter, you got to give us stuff we’re not used to seeing.
Another mistake beginners make is they think they have to set up a lot more than they actually do. I could tell the writers wanted to write about these smart girls who drop everything to learn how to get boys. And yet two nerds obsessed with academia would never just “drop everything.” So Halpern and Haskins write several early scenes to establish that Molly and Amy are “second semester seniors” who’ve already gotten into college and therefore don’t have any commitments. They literally write a scene where a teacher says, “You’re second semester seniors. You can go have fun now. It doesn’t matter.” There are some story points that the audience doesn’t need spelled out for them. If you choose to include these story points anyway, your script takes forever to get where it’s going.
The pacing problems continue into the second act, as we’re occasionally given updates on the prom countdown. Unfortunately, this works against the script. We’ll get a title card that says: 63 days before prom. Then we’ll spend 15 more pages watching the girls get ready and a new title card appears: 52 days before prom. STILL??? Countdowns work well when there’s, say, 5 days left. They don’t work well when there’s 50 days left, lol.
That’s not to say the script was all bad. It felt, at times, like the high school version of Broad City, which I love. There’s a lighthearted vibe to the proceedings. Both our characters are underdogs and likable. While the dialogue doesn’t pop off the page like, say, Juno, listening to Molly and Amy is a bit like listening to a couple of friends who are having a good time. But the simple truth is that this is the “before” thumbnail in a weight loss video. I’ll tell you what the “after” photo looks like when I see the movie.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “As Molly and Amy pass the cashier, we cut to the standard wide shot of a high school cafeteria.” It was action lines like this that screamed “newbie” throughout Booksmart. This line of description does two things wrong. One, it’s breaking the reader’s suspension of disbelief by mentioning a “shot.” Don’t mention shots in screenplays. And two, nothing should ever be “standard” in your script. When you write that, you’re basically saying, “Here’s a boring shot you’re bored of cause you’ve seen it in all those other boring movies that show similar boring shots.” How does it make your script look when you’re admitting that you’re giving the audience the exact same shot they’ve always seen? Come on. Sell the moment! Even if it’s a standard shot, commit to describing it.
