Genre: Romantic Comedy/Historical
Premise: Set in 1968 during the space race, a compulsive liar ad exec is added to the NASA team to drum up money (and support) from the American public to fund a moon trip that’s 400 million dollars over budget. She runs into a flight director who wants nothing to do with the woman, yet can’t take his eyes off her.
About: The most interesting thing about this project for me is that it’s written by Rose Gilroy, who wrote one of my favorite scripts from last year, The Pack. Here’s that logline: “A documentary crew in contention at the Emmys for their film about wild Alaskan wolves is hiding several big secrets about their troubled 3 month shoot.” This is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of that script. That script was very artsy and unique. This is a rom-com. So I’m curious to see what she does with it.
Writer: Rose Gilroy (story by Kennan Flynn and Bill Kirstein)
Details: 135 pages!
Many years ago, it was hard to get a movie through the system.
It really had to be battle-tested and go through the wringer of development. At that time, people always said, “What would happen if the studios actually took chances and didn’t do all this movie-by-committee stuff?” The prevailing theory is that we’d get a neverending stream of perfect movies.
But part of the sly gig of saying such a thing was that the sayers knew they would never have to answer to their predictions. There would be no situation in which studios would make 200 million dollar movies that didn’t have to perform well.
And then the streaming revolution happened.
Amazon, Apple, and Netflix had hundreds of billions of dollars to spend and, therefore, didn’t care how their 200 million dollar movies performed. They gave carte blanche to whoever wanted it.
So the big experiment got to play out.
Did we ever get that revolution of amazing movies we thought we would?
No.
A good argument could be made that movies have gotten worse – 6 Underground (150 million). Red Notice (200 million). The Tomorrow War (200 million). And then you had artsy duds like Killers of the Flower Moon, Roma, The Irishman, and Mank. If you don’t force a project to go through any sort of development process to EARN its spot at the theater, it’s only natural that you’re going to get weak products.
This is why everything comes down to the screenplay. If the screenplay is good, the movie is almost always good. So it’s worth it to battle-test your screenplay. I used to think that development was bad just like everyone else outside the system. But now I know, as long as people are giving you notes in good faith, that every time someone notes an issue in your script, it’s an opportunity to make the script better.
I look at a project like Fly Me to the Moon and I think – this is the exact type of movie that clueless streamers greenlight. It’s got little-to-no market value. It doesn’t have a very exciting premise. You could argue it feels dated.
BUT! I could be wrong. This could be an amazing screenplay and THAT’S the reason why they decided to make it. Let’s find out.
It’s 1968 and NASA is 400 million dollars over-budget for their plan to put men on the moon. Cole, the 40-something flight director (played by Channing Tatum) doesn’t care. His job is to get men to the moon before Russia or else communism takes over the world.
But you know who does care? Moe Berkus. The Berkster is our resident villain and bureaucratic suit who storms in and says they need to change things around here before they go bankrupt.
The plan is to bring in 35 year old Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johanson), the female version of Don Draper. But don’t quote me on that. I only saw 5 episodes of Mad Men. Kelly is an advertising genius who is not above lying ABOUT ANYTHING to get the gig. Actually, when we meet her, she’s pitching a company while pregnant. Except immediately afterwards, we find out the baby bump was a pillow. She just used it to get the job.
The nuts and bolts straight-as-an-arrow Cole may find Kelly attractive but he hates what she represents. She brings in every advertiser in the book, starting with Tang, and even hires actors to pretend they’re NASA engineers because the real engineers are all young and clueless.
The two bicker back and forth and as the launch gets closer, Moe comes in and tells Kelly she’s got to tell her biggest lie yet. They’re afraid that they might not get to the moon and, in that case, they need a backup. Hence she needs to lead the production of a faked moon landing.
As the real launch approaches, Moe tells Kelly that they’re going to go with the fake landing no matter what. And hence, Kelly must decide if this history-changing lie is worth her integrity.
Fly Me to the Moon is attempting to pull off the movie concept equivalent of a menage-a-trois. That’s when you write a romantic movie that has a MALE component to it. You see, usually, romance movies are just for the girls. But sometimes, they try to pull in guys too by adding a guy-like angle.
Titanic is the ultimate example of this formula’s success. You have the love story between Jack and Rose and then you have the historic sinking of a boat to pull in all the dudes. But just like when you go for the menage, if it fails, it fails spectacularly. Let me introduce you to Cameron Crowe’s, Aloha. You’ve got the romance storyline in that movie and then you have the cool launch of a satellite to pull in the guys. The fact that you don’t even know what movie I’m talking about tells you how bad this formula can go.
Original book the movie was based on
Luckily for Fly Me to the Moon, it’s not as bad as Aloha.
Actually, as a screenplay, it does a lot of things [technically] right. We’ve got the goal – get to the moon. The stakes are high – Communism takes over. You have your urgency – It’s a race against the Russians.
You’ve got your obstacle – they don’t have enough money, which is why they hire Kelly. You’ve got your conflict between the two romantic leads – Cole needs to get this mission ready while Kelly keeps interrupting that so she can advertise the mission to the American people. This is complicated by the sexual tension between them.
And you’ve got very clear flaws for each of your main characters. Cole will always tell the truth to a fault. Kelly will always lie to get what she wants.
So why doesn’t the script work?
You guys hear me talk all the time about how important the fundamentals are. Get all that stuff right and your script has a much better chance of succeeding. Yet they do so much right here, and it still turns out to be average at best. Why?
For starters, the concept isn’t wonderful. This is a strange combo. A romance built around the moon race? Those two things don’t roll off the tongue, you know what I’m saying.
This is true for almost every idea. If the concept is flawed, no manner of execution is going to save it. At best, good execution of a weak concept gets you an average screenplay, which is exactly what this is.
Also, they took a big risk by introducing the fake moon landing subplot. It’s a risk because you’re already pushing two things together (the romance and the moon landing) that don’t go together. So to then add a third awkward plot point to the movie made it feel even sloppier. Simple as that. Like the writers weren’t sure what kind of movie they were making.
Now, I understand what they were trying to do. They were trying to pay off Kelly’s flaw. What is the biggest obstacle we can place in the way of someone who lies about everything? Come up with a lie so big that she’d be betraying not just this guy that she likes, but the entire country.
So it makes sense when you talk about it out loud. I could see this conversation going over REALLY WELL at the writer’s table. But sometimes writing is like coaching basketball. You can’t just put the five guys with the best stats on the floor all the time. You have to find the five guys who complement each other best. There’s a “feel” aspect to it just like there’s a “feel” aspect to writing.
And while it sounds well and good to place this giant lie obstacle in front of your big lying co-protagonist, it ultimately hurts the script because it sends the story down this other direction that isn’t that interesting to the audience. Also, if you’re adding subplots that make your movie 140 minutes instead of 110 minutes? Think long and hard about whether that subplot is worth it.
So, unfortunately, this will continue Apple’s streak of making movies for its service that nobody watches. It wouldn’t matter if Hawk Tua Girl and Edmonton Flasher Chick made out for the entire first act – this movie doesn’t even make it out of the troposphere.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Introduce and introduce big. Have you ever been at a store or at an event or just out and about and some random person says something to you? Chances are, you turn to them and ask, “Huh? What’d you just say?” You missed what they said because you weren’t prepared for their question. That’s a lot like how readers experience character introductions. In that first act, you’re introducing a bunch of characters to them. And it’s happening so fast that they’re not catching them all. If you introduce 10 characters in the first 15 pages, there’s a good chance that the reader will only remember half of them. Therefore, when you introduce somebody important, introduce them IN A BIG WAY. Kelly is a big character here. How do we introduce her? We introduce her pregnant, pitching an advertising campaign, then afterwards saying, “I need a drink,” before pulling her fake baby bump out from under her shirt. That’s how you introduce a character who we’re going to remember.
