Big script with some big attachments!
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A hotel bellhop with low self-esteem is plucked from obscurity by an up-and-coming self-help guru who teaches him everything he knows.
About: As you may have noticed, The Rock is rebranding himself. I’ll leave it up to the commenters to come up with a new clever nickname for this “indie” version of The Rock. This script somehow attracted The Rock and Darren Aronofsky, no doubt to become an Oscar contender next year. It’s written by a complete newcomer in Zeke Goodman, who, up until now, has only written short films. He’s also an actor and has appeared in a dozen TV shows.
Writer: Zeke Goodman
Details: 112 pages
I have a theory on why The Rock is rebranding himself away from big action movies and toward more thoughtful, deeper films. I don’t think it’s a move where he’s bored of action films. I actually think he’s been juiced up on so many roids for so long to maintain that body that he knows if he continues, he’ll be buried under a rock within five years. So he’s had to ditch the roids, which is why he’s so much smaller. And he’s using this new, more natural version of himself to be in more natural, realistic movies.
Which is ironic because this script is anything but natural. It’s one of the more artificial story constructions I’ve run into in a while. One of the harder things to determine is how scripts like this get big names attached. What I’ve learned is that if a script can approximate a story based on subject matter that the actor or director really likes, they’ll buy it and try to fix the script. So I’m guessing The Rock and Aronofsky are both intrigued by self-help gurus.
This story is set in 1999 and follows 20-something loser Jacob, who works as a bellhop at a hotel. He works all day, then goes to community college at night, then goes home to take care of his mentally challenged mother. The two are survivors of Jacob’s father, who used to beat her and sexually abuse him.
One day, Jacob learns that his favorite self-help guru, Charles Evans (The Rock), is holding a show at his hotel. So Jacob writes a letter to him asking for direction in his life. That letter ends up getting to Charles and, during his performance, he reads it to the audience and comes down to ask Jacob to join him on his journey because he thinks Jacob is special.
Jacob drives out to Charles’ mansion the following week and begins training with him. During this time, Charles oddly becomes just as obsessed with Jacob as Jacob is with him. In fact, he gets his hands on Jacob’s journal, which details the sexual abuse by his father, and Charles ends up putting that in his own book, saying it happened to him.
For reasons I cannot explain, Jacob is completely fine with this and keeps working on his self-help skills as he moves up the ladder in Charles’s company. He even takes over the role of Charles’s current assistant, Tiffany, who’s the one who gave Jacob’s letter to Charles that day. Needless to say, she’s not happy.
When 9/11 happens, it provides an opportunity to work with Rudy Giuliani and really up the profile of the company. During this time, Jacob shines and begins to unleash his stage presence in a way that threatens Charles. This results in a mano a mano showdown between the two, and only one can win. In the end, Jacob has bitten off more than he can chew and ends up being kicked out of the club, making him anonymous again. It’ll now be up to Jacob alone to rise up and make something of himself.
Wow.
Um.
Guys?
This was NOT good.
I’m actually shocked. Because Darren Aronofsky is really good at picking material. And this just… I wouldn’t call it “garbage,” but it’s really poorly written. Everything about this script is inauthentic. Unsure of itself. Confusing.
I don’t know where to begin.
I’ll just list a bunch of strange happenings that made this read one of the most frustrating I’ve had in a while.
There’s a section of the script where Jacob has just come onto the team. They have a seminar coming up. Charlie poses a challenge to all the junior team members. Whoever cold-calls and gets the most sign-ups for the seminar gets to run one of their own group sessions.
We watch a cold call from Jacob, who tries to get a guy to sign up by awkwardly telling him about how he was sexually abused by his father. The man hangs up on him. We then cut to Tiffany saying to Jacob, “You did it! You were the top cold caller. You get to run your own session.”
Wait, what?? We saw him do one call and fail. How did he win???
Speaking of Tiffany, Jacob is enamored by her beauty when he first meets her. They start hanging out a lot and, one night, Tiffany initiates sex with him. Afterwards, Jacob sits awkwardly on the bed and won’t look at Tiffany. She asks him, “Hey was this okay?” But he doesn’t answer. The next day she checks with him again. “Hey, was last night okay?” And he doesn’t answer her then either.
And that’s just… it! Jacob is clearly obsessed with this girl. She sleeps with him. He doesn’t seem to like it. And then WE ARE NEVER TOLD WHY!!!
There’s a lot of that in this script. Things that don’t have any finality happen and we’re never told why.
Then you have this giant plot development where Charlie copies and pastes Jacob’s sexual assault backstory from his journal to put in his own book, which becomes a best seller, and Jacob NEVER REACTS. At one point, Tiffany asks him, “Do you have an opinion on that?” And Jacob doesn’t respond.
I think I know what may be happening here. This happens a lot with newbie writers, which it looks like Goodman is, where they just assume that the reader knows what’s going on in their head. So, the writer knows what Jacob thinks about Charlie stealing his father-rape backstory, but he doesn’t think he needs Jacob to say it out loud because the reader will just read Goodman’s mind and know.
Beginner Screenplay Tip: Never assume that because you know something, the reader will know something. The reader doesn’t know something UNLESS YOU TELL THEM.
There are other badly written moments in the script as well. A big emphasis is placed on how, earlier in the story, when Charlie and Jacob are alone, Charlie pats Jacob on the back for doing something right and: “Charlie’s hand lingers on Jacob’s back. Moves up to his neck.”
So you think this is going to be some abuse story where Charlie is bringing Jacob in solely because he’s sexually interested in him. That’s what a moment like that would imply, right? Well, nothing about Charlie being interested in Jacob that way IS EVER MENTIONED AGAIN.
That’s what was so frustrating about this script. You’re desperately trying to figure out: what is the story here? What is the writer trying to say? What is the point of all this? At a certain point, I thought it might be like Nightcrawler, where the student becomes consumed with being the best and mercilessly takes down the teacher.
But when that moment actually comes, it turns out Jacob’s not interested in that at all!
Again, this script keeps setting potential storylines up only to abandon them seconds later.
So, why was it purchased by these big dogs again? I do think that self-help gurus are interesting character studies for anyone who likes to tell stories. The idea of someone telling other people how to live their lives when their own lives are so faulty is a character dilemma steeped in irony.
But I don’t even think this gets anywhere close to mining this dynamic. Because while Charlie doesn’t have a tough childhood to overcome, which is why he had to steal Jacob’s, he seems like the real deal otherwise. He seems to have studied hard to become this person and genuinely cares about others. So, it’s not like he’s this con man, which would’ve been way more interesting.
It’s just bad writing, man. It honestly feels like it was written by a freshman in high school. No real life experience to draw upon and therefore just guessing how these sorts of life things work.
Very disappointing screenplay.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Commit to a side, dude. What is the point of your story? Whatever it is, commit to it. I have no idea whose story I was supposed to side with here. Jacob’s? Charlie’s? If you’re just throwing a bunch of random ideas on the page and expecting the reader to do the ‘figuring out’ for you, you’re going to write a really frustrating script.
