Genre: Thriller
Premise: A broke TaskRabbit in debt to her estranged sugar daddy holds a stolen painting
she’s been tasked to deliver for ransom, leading to a deadly cat-and-mouse chase
across the weirdest corners of New York City.
About: This script finished fairly high on last year’s Black List. It is being produced by Rian Johnson’s production company.
Writer: Caroline Glenn
Details: 113 pages
Anger is helpful in some situations.
I’m not convinced it’s helpful when writing a script.
The pages start to feel more like you’re working out your issues than it does you’re writing a screenplay.
Let’s see where that experiment takes us.
25 year old Parker lives in New York where she’s barely surviving. She’s got her roommate, Hallie, an aspiring actress who does feet stuff on Only Fans. And the two are struggling to make this month’s rent. Parker needs 900 bucks by 8am tomorrow or they’re both kicked out. Parker tells Hallie not to worry. She’ll handle it.
Parker heads out on the town, turning on her Task Rabbit app. She does tasks like taking things out of boxes. Putting together Ikea furniture. Finally, she gets a legit job from someone named Grace, who gives her a box to deliver across the city.
Almost immediately, men start appearing out of nowhere attempting to snatch the box from her. So Grace runs into the M&M store in Times Square, opens the box, and finds a stolen painting worth 50 million dollars. Someone placed a tracker on the painting, which is why all these men are chasing her.
Back with Grace, we meet Ben, her boss slash fkbuddy, who screams at her when he learns that she gave the painting to someone instead of delivering it herself. Parker then calls them and says she knows what the painting is and wants 50 million dollars or she’s going to destroy it.
During this negotiation, her phone dies, which forces her to go to her old Sugar Daddy’s house nearby where she will have sex with him in order to covertly charge her phone and speed off. After she does this, she goes to her cruel ex-boyfriend’s place to steal his gun, just in case she needs it. While there, she talks to a girl who says their mutual friend is Hitler’s great grandaughter.
She eventually meets back up with Hallie, who informs her that these people she’s making a deal with probably aren’t going to give her the money. She then berates Hallie with insults and tells her she’s a terrible actress. We learn that Grace was actually playing Ben and was going to steal the painting from him. So now Parker has to deal with Grace. It’s time to make the exchange. Will she survive? Gosh, I sure hope she doesn’t.
A script that celebrates the worst of humanity – that asks us to endure 15 people who suck – is a hard sell to any reader. And it’s an especially hard sell to me.
The movies that most resonate with me are the ones that offer some element of hope. You’re introduced to a good person who’s struggling. That person then endures two hours of challenges where they keep getting knocked down and keep getting knocked down and keep getting knocked down. Despite all that, they keep getting up, until finally, they overcome the big bad wolf. I then leave the theater thinking, “If they can do it, I can do it.”
I’m not saying that’s the winning formula for all movies. But it’s the winning formula for most of them.
That formula, however, falls apart if the person taking us on that journey sucks.
And Parker sucks.
Throughout this story she demonstrates that she’s selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, judgmental, mean-spirited, not to mention morally bankrupt, as she’s invested a large portion of her life into being a sugar baby.
That’s not to say that a sugar baby character couldn’t be sympathetic under the right circumstances. One of the most beloved characters of all time is Vivan Ward, a prostitute (Pretty Woman). There were major differences in that character, though. She was nice. She was sweet. She had morals. She was funny. She saw the best in others.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
How you shape your main character is crucial, especially when writing something dark. If you’re not careful, the darkness can swallow your script whole, dragging it into the Sarlacc Pit. The experience can easily turn into a bitter, angry cry for help.
This script also proves that GSU is not a guarantee that your script will be good.
Cause this script has tons of GSU.
In fact, it uses the most reliable GSU formula there is:
GOAL – MONEY.
STAKES – IF YOU DON’T GET IT, YOUR LIFE IS OVER.
URGENCY – 12 HOURS.
Money money money money money.
Money, stakes, and urgency have been responsible for hundreds of great movies.
But, if you plop that formula down onto a script with not even a single likable character? It won’t work. Cause a reader isn’t going to be happy if they hate every time a character starts speaking.
And the thing was, the main character here started off so likable! If you would’ve just left that alone, we end up rooting for Parker the whole screenplay. In her first scene, she’s up for a job interview at a museum and when the interviewer makes fun of her lack of education, Parker digs in and fights. She makes strong points about how it isn’t her fault that she couldn’t afford Yale. She worked with what she had. Readers LOVE characters who fight. Love them! So we were all in.
Then Parker proceeded to insult and look down upon every single character who entered the script, even her supposed friends. Every time that happened, I liked Parker less.
So, you’re probably wondering how it is that this script is so high on the Black List. Note that I never said the writing was bad. Actually, it’s quite good. The writer clearly has a voice. I may not like that voice. But there are a lot of unhappy cynical people on the planet who are more likely to resonate with these miserable characters than I am.
And I suppose someone could make an argument that Parker is easier to root for than I’m making her out to be. I just, personally, don’t like people who hate everyone. In their world, they’re the only person on the planet who is worthy and everyone else sucks. That’s Parker in a nutshell.
This had the potential to work. Had you made Parker a good person caught in a bad situation, many of the script’s issues would have resolved themselves. But as it stands, this is the kind of story that lingers in the worst way, leaving the reader drained and disheartened long after they’ve finished.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be mindful of injecting personal commentary into your script. The goal is to immerse your reader so completely in the story that they forget they’re reading (this is the essence of suspension of disbelief). However, if you repeatedly insert your own opinions, especially overtly political or emotionally charged asides, you risk shattering that illusion. The moment the reader becomes aware of the writer’s presence, they’re pulled out of the narrative, making it far less impactful.
