Genre: Drama
Premise: Recently dumped Ezra Green accidentally brings a terminally ill woman home to Bridgehampton for a long weekend with his eccentric family. Don’t judge–he needs to cope with his estranged father who just got out of white-collar prison.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Jeremy Leder
Details: 105 pages
Logan Lerman for Ezra?
How’s my new Black List script-picking strategy going? For those who didn’t read last week’s review, I have a new strategy for taking on the highly uncertain quality of Black List scripts. I read the first page of two scripts and go with whichever one has the better writing.
Today’s two scripts are A Band of Wolves, about a rival tribe’s raid and a woman who must befriend a wolf to survive the aftermath, and this script, Bridgehampton.
I was hoping that Wolves would win, cause it sounded more like a movie than Bridgehampton, but then I read Wolves’ first page
One of the clearest indicators of a weak script is a cold open presented as a major event, despite being entirely ordinary. It’s made worse when the writer slaps on the movie title immediately after, as though emphasizing the significance the scene failed to earn.
When I see the above in a script, the script will be bad 99.9% of the time. That made choosing between the two easy. But now it’s up to Bridgehampton to prove I made the right choice.
30-something Manhattanite, Ezra, just got dumped by his girlfriend and is in relationship mourning. His sister, Stella, is dealing with the fact that she’s fallen out of love with her husband, Brooks, who’s so much of a dummy, maybe she never loved him in the first place.
The two are heading back to their mother’s giant mansion for the weekend because their father is getting out of prison after engaging in some Bernie Madoff scam that lost thousands of people their life savings.
A day before heading there, Ezra meets a pretty girl named Harper at the coffee shop and she tells him straight up she wants to have sex as soon as possible. So they go back to his place and have sex. Afterwards, he asks her to be his date for the weekend. She reluctantly says yes. Not long after, he learns about her secret, which is that she’s dying.
Once everybody gets to the mansion, it’s really about the unhealed breach of trust between Ezra and his father. We find out that Ezra worked for his dad and that the dad had secretly used Ezra’s name to put together a lot of shady deals, which nearly got him sent to prison as well.
Since that happened, Ezra has been steadfast in that he’ll never talk to his father again. It takes Harper, who has more perspective, since she’s at the end of her life, to convince him that holding grudges is stupid. (spoiler) But before Ezra can have the big conversation, someone attacks his dad. And now the family must spend the end of their weekend praying that daddy makes it through.
Noooooooo…
My perfect undefeated streak for how to pick good Black List scripts has ended.
The streak ends at 1.
:(
Bridgehampton, unfortunately, fell victim to the old “crazy family” series of tropes that focuses on a family so wacky ya just can’t get enuf of’em! Except, you can. And by page 30, you do.
These types of scripts are a trap. You need to be one of those Level 6000 “super-amazing-voice” screenwriters to pull them off. You need to have that “once in a generation” thing going for you.
The story’s structure works like this: you introduce a family loaded with unresolved issues, place them inside an artificially compressed timeframe, then give them no real goals. Instead, we’re simply waiting for their broken relationships to sort themselves out.
When you use this kind of structure, all the pressure shifts to the dialogue and moment-to-moment scene writing. There’s no suspense, no mystery, no plot movement. The script ends up building set pieces out of the family walk, the trip to the store, the night out. Ordinary activities that aren’t inherently dramatic.
These scenes can only entertain if the writer’s talent elevates them, because there’s not enough natural dramatic tension to make them compelling on their own.
In case you were wondering, here’s the first page of Bridgehampton…
Ironically, I liked that we jumped into the plot right away. Someone’s getting dumped. And then in the next scene, we’ve got conflict between a couple. There’s actually a ton happening in this one page, which is why I chose it.
As for the selling point of the screenplay, which is terminal Harper, I don’t think that aspect of the script worked. In many ways, it’s a red herring. This isn’t about Ezra and Harper at all. It’s about Ezra and his family, specifically his father. Harper just operates as a wild card, a “larger than life” element who’s supposed to give the script some edge. But she never quite fits into the story in an organic way.
This issue was telegraphed early on. We meet Harper on a train giving out pre-created post-it notes to random men with her number on them.
Let’s think about that for a second. Cause if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of screenwriting, this is a topic where you can do so.
On the one hand, the act creates mystery and then, later, we see it as a setup for the eventual payoff that she’s terminal.
BUT – let’s ask the tough question here. Would someone do this in real life? Would any woman, cancer-stricken or not, fill up a stack of post-it notes with her number and hand it out to men throughout the day?
No.
Never.
Her entire character begins with an inauthentic action. And because readers put so much weight on how they first meet a character, we immediately see her for what she is: a mystical falsehood. She doesn’t feel like a real person.
Now, you might argue, “But this is the movies. You’re allowed to create bigger, more fantastical actions than in real life.” And that’s true. You are. In Being John Malkovich, there’s a 7½th floor in the protagonist’s office building. Do 7½th floors exist in real life? No they do not.
But this is where writing becomes tricky. You have to understand the tone of your screenplay and make sure every creative choice stays within that tonal boundary. Being John Malkovich literally takes us inside a man’s head, so a 7½th floor doesn’t feel out of place. Here, we’re watching a real family spending a real weekend together. In that world, a terminally ill girl whimsically handing out “fuck me” cards just doesn’t fit the tone.
If I were guiding this script, the first thing I would do is get rid of Harper. She’s not necessary for the story AT ALL. In fact, if you took her out of the story, it’s exactly the same. Literally nothing changes.
I would also change the dad’s situation so he’s going to prison rather than coming back from it. A character returning from prison in this scenario isn’t inherently interesting. Good stories emerge from things that go wrong, not things that go right. Him coming home is something going right. Also, if he’s about to go to prison, the family gathering suddenly has purpose.
The kids, all of whom rely on the family money, come home for the weekend so everyone can confront what’s about to happen to the family fortune. Their lives are on the verge of a major shift.
It’s still not a premise I’d personally write, but it’s stronger than what we have now. As written, the story is basically: “Dad’s back from prison, so let’s get drunk and argue for three days.” There’s no purpose to it because there’s no actual goal. Changing the dad’s circumstance would at least give the story that clear driving goal.
As I sit here, I wonder how good that Wolves script was.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You don’t need to be a once-in-a-generation writer to write a good thriller script, a good action script, a good horror script, a good adventure script. You need three things. You need a good concept. You need enough experience to know what you’re doing (have written at least 5 scripts). And you need to be willing to work harder than the next writer. That’s it! With scripts like this, you need to be extremely talented (top .1% of professional writers) to make them work.
