Genre: Serial Killer
Premise: Based on the incredible true story of serial killer Paul John Knowles and the week he spent with British journalist Sandy Fawkes in the midst of a murderous killing spree.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. This is Greg Navarro’s breakthrough script. Am I the only one who thinks this should’ve been titled, “Handsome Strangler?”
Writer: Greg Navarro
Details: 115 pages
Handsome Stranger caught my eye because I’ve been obsessively watching “You” on Netflix, which is about an unorthodox serial killer and the girl he covets. I just finished the first season and it’s about as good of a season of TV, start to finish, as I’ve seen all year. The main thing I like about it is that they do things on that show that you’re not supposed to do in screenwriting. Without getting into spoilers, you won’t believe how it ends.
That’s what I’ve taken from the series – that, as writers, we should be asking ourselves, “What are you never supposed to do?” and then do that. Because if you’re doing something you’re not supposed to do, you’re guaranteed to be original. This is how Louis C.K. became famous. He asked, what are you not supposed to make fun of? Something comics never made fun of was their own children. It was considered in poor taste. So Louis started doing bits about how much he hated playing with his kids. That’s “You’s” secret weapon. It asks what you’re never supposed to do and then does it.
Which brings us to Handsome Stranger, a script that employs the same power punch that “You” does, by putting us in a relationship with a serial killer. We, the audience, know the woman is dating a serial killer. But she does not. That dramatic irony is what powers the story.
It’s 1974, Atlanta, Georgia. We meet a woman named Sandy Fawkes. She’s a reporter out of England looking for her next story in the states. Her last several articles have been weak and her newspaper is thinking of dumping her. Bummed out, she grabs a drink at a local bar and, in the process, meets a handsome mustached stranger named Paul John Knowles (who introduces himself as Daryl).
Sandy is a good 10 years older than Knowles and is the first woman he’s ever met that takes control. He finds himself smitten by her. She feels the same way and so the two participate in the horizontal lambada at a local hotel. Sandy is supposed to head back to England that night but decides to stick around. Knowles needs to head down to Florida to chat with his lawyer so she joins him.
While this is happening, we’re flashing back to a series of horrific crime scenes. Teenagers, older women, men, it doesn’t matter. Somebody is brutally murdering people and since this is the 70s, it’s virtually impossible to find the killer. All they can do is throw their arms up and hope for a lucky break.
That lucky break is coming because Knowles confesses to Sandy that he has big aspirations of being remembered and he’s got a bunch of audio tapes that he’s left with his lawyer. After he dies, which he promises will be soon, he wants Sandy to listen to the tapes and write a book about his confessions. “What confessions?” She asks him. But he doesn’t answer her.
The script executes a major shift at the midpoint, with Sandy and Knowles parting ways. The second half of the script is the cops closing in on Knowles. They connect him with Sandy after Knowles beats the crap out of a friend she introduced him to, which makes Sandy the key to the case. After filling in the last few holes about Knowles’ true identity, the cops catch him. But Knowles never goes to trial. He’s killed by a cop while trying to escape during a prison transfer. Sandy would later go on to write a book about the week she spent with him.
There’s this new sub-genre that’s snuck into the ether I call the “serial killer adjacent” genre. This is when you write about serial killers but not really. We saw this, for example, when Zac Efron played Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil an Vile, where not one killing was shown.
Here, we do get killings. But the focus is more on the relationship between Sandy and Knowles. Since that’s what I have to grade this script on, I’d say the script isn’t that great. What’s awesome about “You” is that we know that the main character, Joe, is dangerous. That he’s killed people who Beck knows. And, therefore, he could kill her. So we’re always on pins and needles when they’re together.
However, we’re never worried for Sandy when she’s with Knowles. We’re told from the pictures on the title page that she will go on to write a book about this guy. So we know he doesn’t do anything to her. And that boils all their interactions down to a bunch of mundane conversations. There is some irony in this awful man falling in love with this girl. But it’s not enough to carry the movie.
I think Navarro recognized this as well, which is why he splits the two at the midpoint, focusing the rest of the story on the cops hunting Knowles down, making it more of a traditional serial killer script. But the structure is kind of odd in that, while he’s on the run, we flash back to a bunch of his murders. I’m not sure why we did that. It almost seemed exploitative, to show all these gruesome murders in a vacuum. Can’t these things just be implied?
I can’t help but feel like there was a better way into this story. The strange attractor is Sandy. She’s the one who experiences something nobody has experienced before. So why isn’t the narrative exploiting that more? The psychological effects of unknowingly sleeping with the devil would be crippling (I’d assume). Not to mention the way the world looks at you after doing so. On top of this, you, Sandy, are making a profit off of it. That’s a pretty complex character study you could have and yet we don’t get any of that from Sandy. She’s more of an ancillary character once her and Knowles split up.
I give the script points for being different. But nothing happened here that grabbed me and said, “This needs to be a movie!”
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: How much you show of a killing can really change the tenor of your serial killer script. If you show the nitty gritty details of a killing, even if it’s after they’re already dead, you can make the story very dark. I mean, here, we show the aftermath of a 15 year old murdered girl and it was just too much. Meanwhile, I noticed with “You” that if Joe ever killed someone we liked, they never showed the killing. They only implied it. Which keeps the series light and entertaining. So be careful about how much violence you show because it can have a massive affect on the reader’s response to your material.
