Genre: Biopic
Premise: While a student at Stanford University, Evan Spiegel creates the American multinational technology and social media company Snapchat.
About: This is the number 1 script on the 2018 Black List, which was released yesterday. The writer, Elissa Karasik attended Stansford, and would later work as an assistant to two showrunners, on both Backstrom and Bones (according to The Hit List, which had Frat Boy Genius as its number 13 script).
Writer: Elissa Karasik
Details: 116 pages
The Black List is here and already the complaining has begun! I know the Black List has its issues, but Barky put up a great comment yesterday and I echo everything he had to say in it: “I hate to say it, but most who complain about the quality of the scripts in these lists just have sour grapes. Generally, if you spend any time reading the scripts, it’s pretty easy to tell why there was interest in them. No script is perfect, but there is always SOMETHING, be it concept, voice, character work, etc, that stands out in these scripts. I guarantee you, no matter whose script is up there, someone is going to say it doesn’t deserve to be there. Instead of griping and tearing these scripts down, we should be asking ourselves what it might have been that got interest in the first place, and how we can add such elements to our own scripts.” Well put!
So what are my thoughts on this year’s scripts? For starters, I’m ecstatic that Michael Voyer made the Top 10 with The Broodmare. It wasn’t long ago he wrote me an e-mail confessing he was thinking about giving up. Just goes to show, you gotta keep at it. Normally, I would turn my nose up at the number 2 script, King Richard, as it is yet another member of the tiresome genre known as the biopic. However, a lot of you know my previous life was tennis-centric and Richard Williams was one of the strangest, most controversial figures in tennis for a long time. I’m interested to see if the writer can bring us anything new about him.
Harry’s All Night Hamburgers is a great title and since it’s science-fiction, I’ll definitely check it out. Of course Get Home Safe is in the top 3. The script and its 2-page (or 100 page, depending on how you look at it) FU to white males may have turned a lot of people in the industry off. But the important thing is that it GOT PEOPLE TALKING IN THE FIRST PLACE. It’s hard to stand out when all you have is paper and ink, and Christy Hall figured out how to do it. I’m shocked Cobweb is ranked so high. It’s a very average script. It reads fast, though.
“In Retrospect” reminds me of the old days with its mind-bending high concept. I always felt that like-minded “The Cell” could’ve been a great movie. They didn’t do enough rewrites on the script though. This concept (going into other people’s minds to get something done) is still there for the taking. I feel bad for perennial Black Lister, Gary Spinelli. His script, Rub & Tug was on the fast track to getting made before the trans community shamed Scarlett Johansson for daring to portray them. That baffling play has ensured the movie will never be made (or, if it does, the budget will be 1 million and no one will see it). Not sure what the endgame was there.
Queens of the Stoned Age sounds decent at best, but Elyse Hollander has ensured I’ll read anything of hers after Blonde Ambition. A Vanilla Ice biopic might be too much for me to handle. Unless I light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle. The Fastest Game sounds interesting. I like when writers find a new angle into old subject matter. I’ve heard of gambling before. But I’ve never heard of the sport “Jai Alai.” I want to know more. There was another script about Bob Ross a few years back. This one, Happy Little Trees, with its conflict-heavy logline, sounds a lot better. A logline without conflict is like a burger without fries.
Good to see The Beast made the list as it proves The Black List can still have fun. “Dark” sounds cool. Oil rigs and creatures hidden away for hundreds of years? Count me in. Kill the Leopard has the single most confusing logline I’ve ever read in my life. There may be 17 movies going on in that sucker. “Mamba” is one to keep an eye on. Kobe’s sexual assault case came during a time when that sort of thing could be buried. If it resurfaces as a “thing” in this era, especially with Bryant moving into movie production himself, it could get ugly.
It’s EXCELLENT to see Nicholas Mariani back on the Black List. The Defender doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. But if it’s from Mariani, I’ll read it. For those who don’t know, Mariani wrote the number 1 script on my Scriptshadow Top 25 list, Desperate Hours. I don’t know if I’m reading this right. But I’m pretty sure there’s a thriller on the list about a rabbit. Former Black List topper Graham Moore is back with a new script. His last project about Tesla got buried due to a similar project. Good to see him back in the saddle.
I find it baffling that every year on the Black List, there are two scripts with similar concepts that end up suspiciously close to each other in the vote tally. This year we have both The Second Life of Ben Haskins and The 29th Accident, both about dead partners who come back to life. There’s got to be a glitch in the voting process due to how often this happens.
Inhuman Nature sounds like a comedy set up but I think it’s being sold as serious? Nobody Nothing Nowhere sounds like one of those trippy ideas that could be either really good… or really bad. Wendi sounds okay. I didn’t know that Murdoch’s second wife came from the slums of China.
So, yeah, there’s a lot of good reading ahead. And, no doubt, there will also be some surprises. If you read anything on the list before me, please share your thoughts in the comments section. I’d rather go off recommendations from people I know than randoms. In the meantime, let’s check out the number 1 script on the list!!!
Evan Spiegel, as our title implies, is a frat boy. He is not, however, a genius. At least according to our story’s narrator, Lily, who uses the majority of her voice-overing to paint Evan as an entitled douchebag idiot. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One day in college Evan hears a student discussing accidentally sending an embarrassing photo to his mom, which gives him the idea for Snapchat (then titled Picaboo). Snapchat deletes photos several seconds after they’re sent.
Evan teams up with his two best pals, Bobby (who handles coding), and Reggie (who handles day to day operations) and moves to California where they desperately try and get their app off the ground, all while Lily offers her unfiltered thoughts on how dumb Evan is. Eventually, Evan realizes he should be targeting high school kids, and that’s when his app blows up. One of those kids ends up being the daughter of Michael Lynton, then CEO of Sony Entertainment. Michael gives Evan the money to take Snapchat into the stratosphere, and that’s exactly where it goes. The app is worth 13 billion dollars within a couple of years.
Despite it being increasingly unclear why Lily is in the movie, she continues her verbal voice over assault on Evan. The journey culminates in the infamous Sony Hack of 2014, where Michael Lynton’s e-mails are exposed, some of which expose how stupid he thinks Evan is. Evan is furious, goes on a retreat to get his mind straight, then comes back promising to be a better listener. Unfortunately, the damage has been done, and Snapchat is now worth 14 billion dollars instead of 29 billion. We’re left with the now infamous quote from Kylie Jenner, who, with one tweet, temporarily sank Snapchat’s worth by 15 percent: ““Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.”
Frat Boy Genius has an unsympathetic hero and an even more unsympathetic narrator, which makes for a tough read. When you don’t have anyone to root for, why would you keep reading? In the case of Frat Boy Genius, the answer is you want to see how all of this ends. When this much success is attained, when this much money is made, you know you’re cruising towards a wreck. And I wanted to be on the highway when that wreck happened so I could slow down and gawk at the carnage.
But holy hell was the ride tough. Lily, our narrator, is the equivalent of a five year old child who keeps asking if we’re there yet. Except instead of asking if we’re there, she’s making quip after redundant quip about how awful Evan is. Here she is after Evan hits on a random girl. “I don’t have words for this interaction. It’s like you don’t even have to be attractive to be a fuccboi anymore.” There are lots of lines like that.
It’s no surprise, then, that the script picks up considerably during the stretches where Lily disappears. There’s actually a really interesting story here about a guy fresh out of college with a weak app idea who’s in way over his head. Where The Social Network was about the CEO’s control, Frat Boy Genius is about a guy who has no idea what he’s doing having to navigate shark-infested waters, making life-changing decisions on the fly and somehow, impossibly, making just the right combination of moves to create a 29 billion dollar company. When we’re focused on that, Frat Boy Genius is borderline awesome.
Unfortunately, Lily comes back to rain on the 3rd Act’s parade, and the story must weather her irritating Mystery Science Theater’esque opinion on everything. Eventually, we learn why Lily is so angry, which is that she came up with the “Stories” portion of the app and Evan gave her idea to someone else in the company more qualified to work on it. The problem is it’s too little, too late. We already hated Lily with a passion. So the fact that her hatred of Evan is finally explained has no bearing on us.
This is something that could’ve been corrected with a couple of changes. Karasik needed Lily to tell us up front – possibly with a flash-forward – that Evan screwed her over. It’s kind of in there now, but it’s vague. It needs to be clear. That way, we understand why she’s so angry and judge her less for it. The second thing Karasik needed to do was tone down the jealousy and over-the-top anger of Lily. It made Lily come off as a grade-A bitch.
Had she done that, Lily becomes someone we root for, which is something this script needed. Again, there are no heroes in Frat Boy Genius and that makes the story hollow. One of the reasons The Social Network resonated with audiences was that Eduardo, Mark Zuckerberg’s business partner, was once his best friend. We understood how hurt he was by being ousted, which gave the script a stronger emotional through-line. Frat Boy Genius does’t have that because it’s too wrapped up in its own anger.
But I will say this – I wanted to get to the end. I wanted to see what happened to these people. And that’s still a rarity when I read a script. Mostly, I finish scripts because I’m obligated to (we’re going to be exploring this in the First 10 Pages Challenge in the new year so stay tuned!). This one I finished because I wanted to. Which was just enough for me to rate it worth the read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Have at least ONE PERSON to root for in your screenplay. It doesn’t have to be the hero. It doesn’t even have to be the second biggest character. But we do need SOMEONE. Or else the script ends up feeling sad.
What I learned 2: Vendetta Writing. If you’re writing something with some sort of vendetta, your writing comes across as cruel and one-sided. To write a good screenplay, you need to find the humanity in everyone. We’re all shades of gray. One could argue that the whole point of making movies is to explore that gray area. I would’ve loved to have seen that here.
