Genre: Thriller
Premise: After an ambitious doctor cheats on her aimless husband with the most esteemed doctor at her hospital, she must decide whether to continue the affair or fess up to her husband.
About: Today’s script comes from a relatively new writer, Julia Cox, who worked as a writer’s assistant on Parenthood before penning this script, which finished strongly on the 2015 Black List. Joel Silver would later snatch up the screenplay, which is currently set up at Paramount.
Writer: Julia Cox
Details: 117 pages
One of the things you want to ask yourself when you come up with an idea is, “What’s the ceiling for this premise?” How many different directions can it go? How capable is it of being unique? What is its potential for being unpredictable?
For example, Office Christmas Party. There’s a clear ceiling to that concept. You’re limited to a very straight-forward narrative. And all the characters are probably going to be characters we’ve seen before.
The Equalizer is another example. I liked that movie. But there’s no denying the fact that it had limited upside. That doesn’t mean you should shy away from lean concepts. Hell or High Water was a lean concept and a lot of people loved it.
But because choosing your concept will influence every aspect of your screenplay moving forward, you want to make sure that you’re okay with the height of your idea’s ceiling.
On the flip side, look at a show like 13 Reasons Why, which I’m discussing in tomorrow’s article. You’ve got mysterious tapes targeted to take people down one-by-one. You’ve got mysteries of who did what. You’ve got wolves in sheep clothing. You’ve got sheep in wolves’ clothing. You’ve got a flashback format mashed up against a present-day format. It was a show that could’ve gone in a lot of different directions.
Fight Club is another idea with a high ceiling. You’ve got a fight club. Some dude who quits his life. Another who’s making soap from discarded human cellulite. Male boxers with giant breasts. A mysterious plan to take over the city.
The point is that rich ideas have more upside. And that’s the issue Do No Harm runs up against. It has to stay in a predetermined lane the whole way through. But! If the characters are compelling and the author makes some unexpected choices, you can still write a cool little flick. Let’s find out if that’s the case.
35 year-old surgeon, Charlotte, is one hell of a doctor, routinely saving lives. And she’s on the brink of taking her career to the next level. Her only real competition is 39 year-old Adrian Coons. Adrian isn’t only a brilliant doctor. He’s a master marketer who routinely gives TV interviews. He even has a Vine feed for six-second medical tips.
Back at home, Charlotte is preparing for a life with her lawyer-in-training husband, Will, until Will hits her with a bombshell. He walked out of the BAR exam and has decided, after a grueling stint in law school on Charlotte’s dime, that he now wants to be… a screenwriter! No, I’m kidding. He wants to be a photographer (I do know a ton of writers who quit law though).
Concurrently, back at work, Adrian wants Charlotte to join him in Laos for six weeks where they can save a bunch of lives. Charlotte’s flattered, and that flattery turns to attraction, and then lust. Within days, the two are doing 50 shades of teal.
Then one evening, when Charlotte thought she was off, she gets called in to do an emergency surgery. What nobody knows is that Charlotte is drunk. Because of this, she kills a man. When Adrian finds out, he uses his pull to get Charlotte out of a really bad situation.
Unfortunately for Adrian, the event has shown Charlotte what’s truly important in life, so she fesses up to Will and tries to save her marriage. Adrian is devastated. And angry. And because he’s got major dirt on her, the implication is: “Keep fucking me or else.” Charlotte attempts to navigate the worst mistake of her life. But she quickly realizes that she’s going up against a monster.
Sticking with our original topic, one of the first things you want to do when you set out to write a low-ceiling premise is figure out where the audience thinks the story is going to go. You literally want to close your eyes, play out the first version of your movie in your head, and track the most obvious path for it to go down.
Then: DON’T WRITE THAT MOVIE!
Remember, with a low-ceiling premise, you don’t have many options for how the story can go. So there’s a good chance the audience will get ahead of you. Therefore, you MUST eliminate the most obvious option.
There’s a catch to that though. You DO want the audience to THINK you’re going down that path. So the first act, and even some of the second act, should feel like it’s going down that obvious path.
The reason this is important is because when you hit them with your first deviation from the obvious, it slams into them. With Do No Harm, we’re primed to believe this is going to be a straight-forward Charlotte mistake which she then tries to recover from. But when the balance shifts to make Adrian an obsessed stalker (a reverse Fatal Attraction scenario), I was caught off guard.
Coupled with the malpractice situation, and a final act in which I had no idea where things were going, I was surprised by how unexpected the script got. None of this was some huge deviation (again, this concept never had a high enough ceiling to provide that) but it deviated enough to keep me invested.
But plot is only so much. You have to get the characters right for us to care (can’t spell ‘character’ without ‘care!’). And Cox does a nice job with that. She sold me with the complex relationship between Charlotte and her husband, Will. I loved how you’d leave all their arguments not knowing who the clear winner was.
For example, in an early argument, this is what’s covered:
Will bailed on the BAR because he’s decided he hates the idea of being a lawyer.
Charlotte helped pay for his law school so she’s pissed.
Will would rather be happy and a good partner than bitter and a shitty husband.
Charlotte says sometimes life requires you to do things – like your job – that aren’t enjoyable.
This is so important in screenwriting – not being one-sided with your conversations. Once your hero makes a point, you need to jump into the head of the other character and make sure you understand THEIR point-of-view as well so that they can make a good point. There’s nothing worse than writers artificially slanting arguments to fit their hero’s narrative.
Do No Harm is a great example of a simple premise, solidly executed. Personally, I would’ve started with a concept that had more umph and room to play. But there’s something about simple movies that know exactly what they want to be that make them fun to watch.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s always good to add a lingering problem hanging over the hero’s head like an albatross. Here, we get that in the form of the malpractice suit that’s been brought against Charlotte. It could end her career. If the only thing your character has to worry about is the main problem at hand (in this case, an obsessed co-worker), you’re not doing enough with the character. Always add a dark cloud over their head that could start raining at any moment. And hold off on the rain for as long as possible!
