Genre: Drama
Premise: Two former best friends, at opposite ends of their sport’s success spectrum, take each other on in a match for the ages in front of the woman they both love.
About: Big one here! Zendaya in a tennis movie! With “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino directing! That may be the most unorthodox trio of elements (Zendaya, tennis, Luca Guadagnino) I’ve ever seen in a project. And I love tennis so I’m here for it! The writer is brand new.
Writer: Justin Kuritzkes
Details: 128 pages (lots of dialogue, though, so it doesn’t read that long)
Normally, I go into scripts naked. I have no idea who wrote them or where they came from. All the stuff you read in the “About” section is usually research I do after I’ve read the script. I do this so I can judge every script equally. This time, however, I know a little about the script.
That’s because it’s a tennis script. And anybody who knows me, knows I’m a tennis guy. To give you a peek behind the curtain, I had the Miami Open on Tennis Channel playing, literally, on a loop, all last week. So when a tennis script comes around, I’m more curious than usual.
In this case, I’m insanely curious because it’s a tennis script……… directed by Luca Guadagnino. Well respected critically acclaimed directors don’t typically direct tennis movies. And even when they do – Woody Allen – the movie isn’t any good. In fact, tennis movies still have an 0-19 track record in cinema.
And yes, I’m including King Richard, which I don’t consider to be a tennis movie. It’s a movie about a crazy dad who turns his daughters into tennis players. A legit good tennis movie that focuses on tennis has not happened yet.
Adding some spice to the dish is that Zendaya is starring. Four months ago I wouldn’t have cared about that. But since then, I’ve fallen in love with Euphoria, and now consider myself a Zendaya fan. I am soooooooo so so so very interested in if this script is actually good. The pieces indicate literally ANYTHING is possible. Let us find out together, if this is finally the first good tennis screenplay.
Our story opens on the beginning of a tennis match between 6-time Grand Slam champion, 33 year old, Art Donaldson, and 32 year old tennis journeyman, Patrick Zweig, playing the finals of a Challenger (low-level) tournament in the middle of nowhere.
The best player in the world is playing a tiny Challenger because he’s coming off an injury, needs his confidence back, and therefore wants some cupcake wins leading up to the U.S. Open.
Watching the match is 33 year old Tashi Donaldson, Art’s hard-nosed wife and coach, who seems very into this tiny nothing match where the winner only gets $7000. That’s because, as we’re about to find out, there’s a LOT of history between these three.
Flash back nearly 20 years ago when the three were juniors. Art and Patrick were the toasts of the junior boys’ world, winning the junior U.S. Open doubles championships together and facing off in the singles final. And that’s where they meet Tashi, who’s better than both of them. There’s an instant connection between the three.
The script then jumps back to the present day, where we’re a little further along in the match. This is the structure we’ll be following. We’ll play a little of the match, then jump into the past for a while, before coming back again.
Each time, we learn something new about the relationship and the players. We learn that Patrick, who decides against college and joins the tour, starts dating Tashi. We watch as both Tashi and Art go to Stanford and become good friends. We watch as Art starts to undermine Patrick in an attempt to date Tashi himself. We see Tashi experience a devastating injury in college that kills her career in an instant. And we see this strange entanglement of the three until Art and Patrick begin to detest each other.
This makes their present-day match all the more compelling, as talent and skill go out the window. This is not the number 7 player in the world playing number 207. It’s two former best friends committed to destroying each other out of pure hate. Who will win?
Let’s cover the biggest question on everyone’s mind: Was the tennis stuff accurate?
Okay, maybe nobody cares about that except me. But actually, it is important. Even if you, the reader, don’t have a clue about the subject matter, you can always tell when the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a sense you get. And as soon as you get it, you don’t trust the screenplay as much. It’s no different from walking up to your tennis lesson and catching the last few points of your pro playing against a good player, and seeing him get his butt kicked. All of a sudden, you’re not so sure about learning tennis from this guy anymore.
The tennis stuff was, for the most part, accurate. I never read anything and thought, “That would never happen.” Sure, it’s unlikely that one of the best players in the world would play a Challenger tournament. But they made a pretty good case for it. Art needed a few easy wins under his belt to gain confidence going into the U.S. Open and this was the only tournament available with a week left.
Where the script runs into trouble is in the love triangle. At times I was into it but there were these super-long dialogue scenes that didn’t always feel genuine. It felt like a writer trying to put the words HE wanted into the character’s mouths, as opposed to the words that would actually come out of peoples’ mouths.
We all are guilty of this. In fact, this is one of the hardest things about screenwriting, is letting go enough to let your characters speak. The challenge is that scenes need to push the story forward so you do need to GUIDE the conversation. But finding that balance of guiding the conversation and also letting the characters speak is a line finer than any of the lines you’ll encounter on a tennis court.
For example, early on, when the characters are just 17 years old, they’re hanging out at a big tournament for the first time. There’s some flirting going on as the guys try to gauge if Tashi likes them. Tashi mentions that she’s seen them play before and Patrick has some fun with it, replying, “I didn’t know you’d been watching.” Tashi responds: “I haven’t been. I just watched you play once at the Junior Australian Open, and it was obvious to me that no one’s ever taught you anything. They’re all afraid of messing with the magic. That’s why you still have that atrocious serve.”
I have been in hundreds of conversations with tennis players at tournaments and no player has ever said to another player, who they’ve just met, that one of their strokes is horrible. When you get to know someone, sure, you have fun with that sort of thing. But first time you meet? Come on. Imagine coming off any field or rink or court, meeting someone, and them saying, “God, you can’t dribble worth shit!”
Yeah, the writer is trying to establish that Tashi says what’s on her mind. Which I sort of get. But you still have to play by the rules of reality. Especially if you’re writing a drama, which this is. A comedy, you might be able to get away with that if you’re going for a laugh. I could see Will Ferrell delivering that line. But this is supposed to be real life. It’s not realistic to insult someone about their passion within a minute of meeting them.
With that said, the writer gets more right about this 3-way relationship than wrong. I know that because I found myself caring more and more about the match the more I learned about the characters’ history. Each new piece of information deepened the grudge in this grudge match, which tells me I was buying into it.
But I do think Tashi is the weak link here and I think I know what’s going on. Art and Patrick are the ones who get to play. They get all the action. Tashi is relegated to watching on the sidelines. So the writer knew that he needed to make a really strong character. Somebody who left an impression. That, Tashi is. She’s incredibly strong, opinionated, brash, intense. The problem is, she’s so much of these things, that you kind of hate her. She’s always angry. She’s always yelling at someone, always telling them off. I was kind of thinking of Jada-Pinkett Smith whenever she spoke. I’m not sure that “pissed off” is the best defining trait for a character.
A cool thing about Challengers, though, is that it shows you you can create big stakes without needing a big plot. All the tennis scripts I read have the players playing in the final of Wimbledon or something. It’s cliche. And, as a result, we don’t take it seriously.
The way to create big stakes in a smaller movie is through the characters. You raise the stakes through the relationships you build between them. And Challengers is really good at that. From learning these two used to play doubles as kids, when they were best friends, to falling in love with the same girl, to both dating that girl at different times in their life, to one of them becoming great and the other flaming out — all of that makes their puny little Challenger match a big deal. Ironically, the tournament doesn’t even matter. All that matters is beating this person they detest.
The script also has some… we’ll say… surprising developments towards the end. Not on the court. Well, sort of on the court. But more so off the court. Ehh, if I say anything more, I’ll spoil it. But I want to say one more thing because it’s an important screenwriting point. The dialogue gets noticeably better towards the end. And I was wondering why. I finally realized that the earlier dialogue, which was occasionally on-the-nose, no longer felt on-the-nose since the characters were in these climactic heated “everything’s coming to a head” conversations. Those are the moments where characters really say what they mean. So what was on-the-nose before, now felt authentic. I think the writer just needed to dial that “I’m a character who says exactly what he thinks all the time” stuff down in the earlier portion of the screenplay. But at the end, it was great. It led to some truly powerful moments.
It’s for these reasons that I recommend Challengers. Will it be the first truly good tennis movie ever? I don’t know. Tennis movies, like Patrick’s career, tend to flame out onscreen. But they’ve got a great director and an ace up their sleeve with one of the hottest actresses in town so maybe they crack the code. I’ll know right away once they drop the trailer and report back to you then!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Think long and hard about what a character’s defining trait is. Because that’s the trait that we’re going to see over and over again in the majority of the scenes they’re in. So if you want us to like someone and their defining trait is, “pissed off,” you’ve probably failed. There’s all sorts of defining traits to choose from. So pick the ones that both capture the character but also make the audience see that character the way you want them to be seen. Ripley’s defining trait in Aliens was, “determined,” or “brave.” Ruby’s defining trait in Coda was that she lacked confidence in herself. Guy’s defining trait in Free Guy was, “optimistic.” Julie’s defining trait in The Worst Person in the World was, “noncommittal.” She never knew what she wanted. I’ve noticed that when a writer picks the wrong defining trait for a character, the character doesn’t work. And that’s what I think happened with Tashi. Don’t get me wrong. She’s not a terrible character. But she was grating, like sandpaper, and I’m not sure that’s what the writer was aiming for.
