Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: Two weed growers who have been dating for over a decade have their relationship upended when one of them wins a reality TV show contest to fly to Mars.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with six votes. It’s an adaptation of a short story from Deborah Willis in her book, “The Dark and Other Love Stories.”
Writer: Kaitlin Fontana (from a story by Deborah Willis)
Details: 115 pages
Someone told me not long ago that Mars movies were dead.
To them I say, WRONG-O!
And CHECK URSELF B4 U WRK URSELF!
One of the first lessons I learned about Hollywood is that something is only dead until it isn’t. A year after I was told that Hollywood would never make a pirate movie again, Pirates of the Caribbean came out. So I learned to distrust Hollywood rhetoric early on.
As long as you have a good idea, you can make any “dead” genre work. But that’s the key. It has to be a good idea.
Today’s idea is… funky. Different. I like the title! That’s what made me open the script. But does the script live up to that title? Let’s find out.
Kevin and Amber have been dating for twelve years. Both of them lack purpose. They start growing weed in their basement so that they never have to do anything with their life. But then Amber goes off and applies for a reality show that ends with two people going to Mars.
Kevin watches helplessly as the newly purposeful Amber flies to the reality show location to start her training. While this is happening, we jump back to earlier points in Kevin and Amber’s relationship to show how they met. I would say “how they met and fell in love” but this relationship is more a relationship of convenience.
The script also turns Kevin into a somber version of Ferris Bueller who will talk straight to us, the viewer, about why this situation sucks so badly. Well, Kevin, it’s about to get worse. Every Thursday Kevin watches his girlfriend on the reality show as she becomes closer and closer to another contestant, the handsome and cool, Adam.
Eventually, Amber and Adam are sent up on a space capsule for six months to simulate the trip to Mars. See if they can handle each other for that long. The answer comes to us in a stunning visual. When the two exit the capsule, Amber’s pregnant!
But don’t worry. Kevin starts screwing around with some druggie chick named Tanya who not only comes around to smoke weed all the time, but happily watches the reality show with Kevin’s girlfriend in it. Alas, Kevin gets bored of Tanya and dumps her. Will Kevin ever find happiness? And will Amber and Adam be heading to the real Mars? Check out Girlfriend on Mars to find out!
I’m going to isolate this script’s problems down to a single issue.
A depressed inactive aimless main character is too much for a script to overcome. It’s hard enough to get an audience to root for a depressing character. But then when you add in that he doesn’t do anything but sit on the couch all day and watch his ex-girlfriend’s reality TV show, that’s something no screenplay can make work.
On top of that, you have two storylines. One where a girl is training to go to Mars and the other where a guy sits on the couch all day. Which one of those storylines sounds more interesting? I’m hoping you said the first one. But we don’t spend any time with Amber. We instead stay back at the house, on the couch, with Kevin.
You have to look at this logically.
You’re trying to make a movie.
So you have to imagine what your movie is going to look like onscreen. If 80% of your movie is a guy on a couch, how is that going to look onscreen? I’d imagine it would look pretty un-cinematic.
So either focus on the part of your movie that IS cinematic or repurpose the story you want to tell (in this case, Kevin’s) so that it’s MORE cinematic. And that goes right back to our main character. The simple adjustment of making Kevin more active means he’s going to be out there in more situations encountering obstacles and trying to overcome them, which is cinematic.
Now you may say, well Carson, the whole point of his character is that he’s the opposite of his girlfriend. He’s depressed. He has no motivation. That’s his character’s flaw! And what I would say to you then is, okay, so is it a good idea to write a movie about that character?
This is why I always say, one of the best things you can do when you’re putting your story together is to figure out how your character is going to be active.
The only time I’ve found that lazy inactive characters work is when they’re FORCED to be active and when it’s a comedy. Two classic stoner comedies, The Big Lebowski, and Pineapple Express, take stoner passive characters then thrust them into their worst nightmare. THEY MUST BE ACTIVE. That’s why those movies are so fun. Lebowski would not be a classic character and Pineapple Express would not be a beloved comedy if those characters were able to chill out doing nothing but smoking pot the whole movie.
This leads to a bigger question, which is, is there a movie here?
I think there is if you go the full comedy route. And you’d need to figure out a way to keep Kevin and Amber around each other. He would need to go to wherever she was training so they’d still be spending time together.
Because by making her so far away, you dilute the importance of their relationship. You want characters who are having problems with each other to be around each other. That’s when they’re the most interesting to watch. Cause we want to see if they’re going to resolve those issues or not.
It’s hard to feel any emotion with the two on the phone or Kevin watching her on TV. It all feels so far away and unimportant.
But, yeah, this needs to be a full-blown comedy. I mean, the title is, “Girlfriend on Mars.” That’s a title that elicits a laugh. You need a funny script to accompany it.
In the writer’s defense, this is a first draft of a book adaptation and those first drafts tend to follow the book narrative too closely. Books and movies are soooooo different. The storyline of a movie needs to be tighter, it needs a focused hook, and it needs to be simpler. This isn’t the kind of movie you want to burden with a bunch of jumping around in time. It just isn’t that kind of story.
I hope they figure it out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Novels tend to be more introspective. Movies are more in your face. That’s why adapting a novel or a short story can be tough. But that’s the skill you need to bring to the table as a writer. You must figure out a way to take something that’s largely in a character’s head and make it active and cinematic. Sometimes that means drastically changing the story. But you gotta do what you gotta do! Don’t be a slave to the original material if it’s going to make a lousy movie.
What I learned: If there’s a problem facing your hero, you should write the movie so that they have the opportunity to tackle that problem. One of the reasons Girlfriend on Mars is so frustrating is because Kevin has this huge problem – his girlfriend is training to go to Mars and she’s falling in love with her co-pilot – and all he can do is watch. If there isn’t even an option for your hero to solve the problem, there’s going to be very little drama in your movie. This is why I said it would’ve been a good idea to get Kevin and Amber around each other. Now he has a shot at disrupting this.
