Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) A sociopath obsessed with self-improvement claws her way to the top of the fitness world, leaving a trail of broken bodies in her wake.
About: Joe Epstein made some noise last year when Darren Aronofsky bought a secret script of his that follows a courtroom case with an artificial intelligence component. Strangely, that script did not make last year’s Black List. But this one did, sneaking in with the minimum number of votes.
Writer: Joe Epstein
Details: 108 pages
I’m sure it’s hard for any movie fan to focus right now, what with the biggest movie in history coming out tomorrow. But I’ll try and help you pass the time with a little scripty-loo Scriptshadow review.
Today’s script feels like something that would’ve been at the top of the Black List eight years ago, before the dark times, before the Biopic Wars. I find it fun that the Black List has its own trends, just like the real marketplace. But if this nonsense continues, they’re going to be renaming themselves the Biopic List.
Actually, I didn’t know what I was getting into today. Here’s a little behind-the-scenes look into a reader’s head. When a reader starts reading something, the first thing they do is try to identify the genre or movie type they’re reading. They need to understand what movie is playing on that screen so they can judge the script against similar movies.
I was 20 pages deep into this and still couldn’t identify what movie I was reading. I’d never read something like it before. And then it hit me. Ohhhhh. This is the female version of Nightcrawler. Once I understood that, I knew what the script was going for. Let’s find out if it succeeded.
30-something Jacqueline Heath is a hustler. Her current scam is picking up stray cats, drugging them so they look nice and peaceful, then selling them to pet stores. The naturally in-shape Jacqueline sees a much bigger business opportunity one day, however, when she passes a gym. There’s something about the dogged intensity of all the members that inspires her to become a trainer.
Cut to three months later where Jacqueline is a bottom-level trainer at a gym. Jacqueline’s good at her job. But maybe too good? She doesn’t have any limits, so she often overworks her clients to the point where they run away. Pussies.
But that doesn’t stop Jacqueline from pursuing her ultimate goal – to become a superstar trainer. So she heads to FitCon and scams her way in front of the sleazy guy who runs it, Shawn (“with the lean bulk, deep tan, and low-rent confidence that scream either “salesmen” or “pornstar”… receding, Axe-spiked hair that never left Phoenix.”).
Shawn gives Jacqueline some advice. Do a game-changing body transformation video with a client and post it on social media. In fact, he adds, these days fitness trainers can’t just train. They have to invite the world into their lives. So he tells her to get a boyfriend. Get a cute apartment. Video-document-instragram all of it online. People need to believe in a lifestyle. If she can do that, he’ll get her in front of the FitCon sponsor – Reebok!
Jacqueline goes harder than she ever has before. She convinces a weak married dork named Peter to become her transformation project. And she takes advantage of a poor post-breakup dude named Alex, pretending to be his girlfriend so she can post pictures of them as a couple on social media. Sell that lifestyle, baby.
Eventually (spoiler), in her pursuit to make Peter the ultimate transformation, Jacqueline kind of kills him with a heart attack. But this is minor setback in Jacqueline’s eyes. After a fallout with Shawn, she goes over him and takes a direct meeting with the female Reebok rep.
Lucky for Jacqueline, the rep loves her take-no-prisoners female-empowerment message. If Jacqueline can hold everything together for just a few more weeks (and we’re talking about Jacqueline here – a woman who can accidentally kill people), she’ll launch her brand and become the next fitness superstar.
To start, you gotta love any script where the writer starts off with a LITERAL Save-The-Cat scene. Jacqueline saves a stray cat……… only to drug it and then sell it afterwards. I knew immediately I’d been transferred into the dark mind of a clever writer.
The script does a pretty good job setting up its structure. Jacqueline must get Peter into shape to get Shawn to introduce her to Reebok so she can launch her brand to the world. Goals people. That’s the first thing you want to figure out in a screenplay. What’s my character’s goal? Everything else will fall into place after you’ve got that.
I liked the choice of making Jacqueline a sociopath. In general, obsessive people are great character studies. The act of being obsessive necessitates that conflict will come. And conflict is the heart of drama. So that’s good!
With that said, I struggled with this. My biggest problem with the script was that the main character was manufactured. Most sociopaths have a robotic quality to them. I get that. But this goes far beyond the norm, to the point where I stopped seeing Jacqueline as a real person, and instead saw her as a writer creation. Here’s a taste of Jacqueline’s dialogue. In the scene, she’s trying to convince a FitCon worker to let her present.
JACQUELINE
After some consideration, I’ve decided my dynamic program won’t best be showcased with a static booth. So I’ll simply skip that and present to the reps on stage.
MIKE
Unfortunately, presentations are only for enrolled vendors, and enrollment includes a booth.
JACQUELINE
Let’s innovate and find a solution.
“Let’s innovate and find a solution.” She sounds like an A.I. program. And I got tired of that lifeless tone quickly. It was weird because I thought back to Nightcrawler and wondered why I was okay with it then. What I realized was that Louis Bloom still had personality. He could still charm you. We don’t see anything like that with Jacqueline. It’s almost impossible to connect with her.
Another problem was that Jacqueline didn’t have any backstory. When we meet her, she’s literally wandering the streets. She’s too attractive and driven to be homeless. So what is she doing? Where does she live? What was her life like before this?
This is a pet peeve of mine: characters who don’t exist until the writer introduces them. Characters should be seen as real people by their writers. They need an entire life that informs who they are and why they’re at this place when we meet them. I never got that here. And I’m not saying we needed to start with flashbacks of Jacqueline as a little girl. But the writer needs to do that off-page research so that bits and pieces of that character’s past can bleed into the present.
I bring this up because I didn’t believe this was a real person. And if I knew just a little more about her past, maybe that would’ve humanized her.
It’s too bad because the script explores a lot of interesting themes about self-employment and making your own way in a world that’s increasingly uninterested in helping you. How, in order to be successful in a media-obsessed world, you have to invite people into your lives 24/7. And if you’re putting all of your life in front of everyone else, is it really your life anymore?
That stuff was good. I just couldn’t get past this character. There was something inauthentic about her.
Unfortunately, this continues the “wasn’t-for-me” streak to six reviews now! Let’s hope Friday’s Amateur review changes that.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The “train wreck” structure is pretty reliable. It requires you to come up with a character who’s on a path to self-destruction, knowingly or not (preferably “not”). We then watch them barrel, head-on, towards a giant explosion in the third act. Nobody can turn away from a train wreck. So it’s hard for readers not to finish these scripts.
