Genre: Teen Comedy
Premise: A young Asian-American teen basketball fanatic who just wants to dunk and get the girl ends up learning much more about himself, his best friends, and his mother.
About: This script finished all the way up at NUMBER 2 on the 2020 Black List, which was just released this week. While there hasn’t been an official announcement yet, it looks to be set up over at Disney +. The writer, Jingyi Shoa, was a staff writer on the show, Boomerang.
Writer: Jingyi Shao
Details: 109 pages
One of the reasons I started this site was because I wanted to learn more about these successful screenwriters who sold screenplays for a million dollars. Their success seemed magical to me, almost intimidatingly so. Were they always to remain enigmatic mysteries? Unobtainable gods whose keys to success would forever be locked up in some secret screenwriting vault behind the Hollywood sign?
There were times where I thought the answer was yes. Monday, the readers of this site learned that it doesn’t take magic. What it takes is writing a lot of screenplays and trying to get better with each one. That’s what Angela and Mayhem showed you. Success is obtainable. But you do have to work for it. It’s not going to be handed to you.
Now that I’m thinking about it, both Mayhem and Angela were very active on the internet – posting and getting their scripts read repeatedly. Taking feedback. Using that feedback to improve. Neither of them buried their heads in the sand and dogmatically declared, “My way or the highway.” They embody the 2020 screenwriting path to success. You got to get your work out there. If the only people who see your script are you and your cat, you’re never going to get anywhere. Unless your cat becomes the president of Paramount.
And with that PSA out of the way, join me and Chang. Cause we’re going to show you how to dunk!
Chang is 16 years old and plays bass in the marching band. And he loves basketball. He doesn’t love it enough to play on any teams. Or, I should say, the teams don’t love him enough to let him play on the team. But that doesn’t stop Chang’s enthusiasm for the fastest growing sport in the world.
Chang’s world of basketball love is interrupted one day by real love! A fellow sophomore named Kristy, she of the emo variety, moves into town and joins the band. She takes an immediate liking to Chang but then the worst thing imaginable happens. MATT. Yup, that darn Matt. Greek God. Beautiful blue eyes. Star basketball player. Worst of all, he can dunk like nobody’s bidness.
Once Kristy starts hanging around Matt, Chang realizes that to get her back in his orbit he’ll need a hail kristy. So after a basketball game, in front of the whole school, Chang bets Matt that he can dunk a basketball by the end of the season. That would be 12 weeks from now. Matt laughs. This 5’8” kid who’s not even on the team? Yeah right. But you’re on.
In a stroke of luck, Chang meets an AT&T rep, Devin, who used to be the star of the Romanian league. Chang asks Devin to teach him how to dunk and Devin’s in. But only if he can put it on his Youtube channel. The next 12 weeks entail a lot of Rocky style montage training until Chang is literally within one inch of dunking. But time has run out. His first dunk will have to happen on the big day! By the way, this is the midpoint of the screenplay. And, wouldn’t you know it, Chang does it! He dunks! In front of the whole school!
When the dunk heard round the school uploads to Devin’s channel, it goes viral. Which leads to local news wanting to interview Chang. Then ESPN. Then, while he’s at ESPN, he meets NBA basketball player Gilbert Arenas, who takes him out to a strip joint! Where Chang makes it rain. As the Chang legend grows, so too does a rumor. A rumor that, if it gains traction, could end all of this. That rumor is… Chang cheated. That Chang… cannot dunk!
First off, I love when writers play with the expected format. On the first page, instead of “Based on a true story,” we get, “Based on countless true stories.” As if to imply that thousands of Asian teenagers everywhere are trying to get the girl by learning how to dunk. That single line tells you exactly what you’re in for with Chang Can Dunk. This is turn-your-mind off 1200 degrees of surface-level entertainment.
But if we’re being real, this script is not a #2 worthy Black List script. It doesn’t have enough meat on it. And I’ll tell you exactly where it’s lacking – character development. A script at this level with this kind of story needs heavier character development to earn its place. Scripts like Edge of Seventeen come to mind. You get the impression that the writer of Edge of Seventeen was interested in creating real people. Where this script is more about creating archetypes.
Which is fine. I’m only judging it by that high bar because it’s so high on the list.
One of the characters who had a ton of potential in this script was the mom, Chen. She’s a single mother who’s a little overprotective of her son. But the problem with her is that she was never clearly defined. We don’t know what her “issue” was. If you don’t establish a clear character “issue,” then we don’t know what needs to change in that character for them to arc.
A few weeks back I reviewed a short story about an Asian family called The Paper Menagerie. In that story, the mother’s issue was clear. She wouldn’t learn English, which created a chasm of communication issues between her and her son. The whole story was about how that lack of communication destroyed their relationship, all the way up until her death. The reason that story is one of the most emotional you’ll ever read is specifically because the writer so clearly identified the mother’s issue in the story.
The character issues didn’t stop there. All of the characters outside of Chang felt off. Kristy is the romantic interest for the first 20 pages after her entrance. And then she just straight up disappears, occasionally making cameos when she gets bored. Or there’s Devin, the coach. He had potential as a character but he didn’t have a single flaw. There was nothing in his life that he was having trouble with or trying to overcome. When you don’t explore the weaknesses in your characters, your characters remain one-dimensional.
But the biggest problem with Chang Can Dunk is that it makes a pivotal error right at the midpoint. Chang isn’t sure he can dunk yet when going into the day of the dunk. So what he does is he sneaks into the gym the night before and lowers the rim a couple of inches. So what’s the story issue? It isn’t clear that this happens. The writer doesn’t show it. We see Chang sneak through the gym window. But we don’t see him with tools or anything. So we don’t know what’s going on. I only found out 50 pages later that he cheated when Chang admits he lowered the rim.
This is the kind of thing that would’ve worked better if you clearly showed Chang lowering the rim. This would create a powerful state of dramatic irony that runs through the second half of the story. We know Chang is a fraud but nobody else does. That type of setup ENSURES the reader will keep reading because they want to see what happens when the secret gets out. They want to be there for the fall.
I was trying to think of a similar movie to compare this to and then it came to me. Chang Can Dunk is Spiderman: Homecoming but without Spiderman or any superheroes or super powers. It has that same tone and sense of humor. So if you liked the last two Spiderman movies, you’d probably like this. Me? I needed a lot more from the characters to connect to this story and care about its conclusion.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I like when writers take a chance and complete the story goal at the midpoint (as opposed to waiting until the end of the movie). It makes for a more unpredictable script because now we’re wondering where the story goes from here. Chang Can Dunk actually has Chang dunk at the midpoint! It’s unexpected and genuinely had me wondering what would happen next.
