Genre: Comedy
Premise: In the early 2000s, two totally opposite best friends, Mike (an uptight lawyer) and BJ (a stoner slacker), awake one morning to find that they have swapped bodies, are stuck in a time loop, and are afflicted with many other high-concept comedy premises of that era. Drawing upon their knowledge of those type of movies, Mike & BJ must learn their lesson(s) and get their lives back to normal.
About: This script finished number 5 on last year’s Black List!
Writers: Alex Kavutskiy & Ryan Perez
Details: 110 pages
Jermaine Fowler for BJ?
First of all, it took everything in my power not to call an emergency press conference about the new Star Wars Mandalorian/Grogu movie announcement. Cause I got a loooottttt of opinions on that. But cooler heads prevailed when I realized the film didn’t have anything to do with screenwriting. I will be addressing it at some point, though – probably in the newsletter.
Speaking of Grogu, I’d be curious what that little green matcha shake thought about today’s script because today’s script starts with a preparatory page. The writers prepare you for how to read their script! They talk about what inspired the script and which actors should play the parts and which tone should be in the back of your mind while reading. I’m not ready to send these two into the Sarlaac Pit for this choice, but let’s just say that, if you do your job as a writer, you shouldn’t have to tell the reader how to read your script.
BJ and Mike are roommates. Mike, white, is a trial lawyer who is currently defending a man accused of killing seven men. He’s also preparing to dump his longtime girlfriend, Bethany. BJ, black, currently spends a lot of time watching old VHS tapes while daydreaming of winning over his dream girl, who happens to be Mike’s sister, Julia.
After a drunken night out doing bar trivia, BJ and Mike wake up in each other’s bodies! Not only that, but they soon learn today is the same day as yesterday, and deduce that they’re in a loop. Luckily, the two have watched a lot of movies and understand that the fastest way out of these kerfuffles is to learn a lesson about themselves.
In the meantime, they decide to take advantage of the loop. BJ (in Mike’s body) goes and tries to win the murder case that Mike lost yesterday. While Mike, in BJ’s body, runs to the airport to tell Mike’s sister that he loves her, a task icki-fied by the fact that Mike is trying to win over his own sister.
They’re able to solve these problems but nothing changes. They then learn that BJ’s jerky 10 year old brother, Cody, who had a birthday today, used his blow-out-the-candles wish to become a star player for the Boston Red Sox. The only way to solve this problem, they deduce, is to buy a universal remote at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (a la “Click”) that allows them to stop time. Unfortunately, doing this unleashes even more magical movie premises on them, pushing them deeper and deeper into their movie universe nightmare.
Eventually, they realize that BJ, who stole all the movie tapes from a small rental shop, was cursed with living those movies’ premises when the shop went out of business. The two will have to dig even deeper into what’s wrong with themselves in order to find the big overall lesson each must learn to make all this go away. But are they up to the task??
Adam Devine for Mike?
High Concept is a fun script that never quite becomes as funny as the concept promises. Like a lot of professional comedy scripts, it makes you smile a lot. But it doesn’t make you laugh enough.
The script has a unique problem specific to body swap scripts. I can speak to this issue because I’ve read more body-swap scripts than anyone in Hollywood. Once the characters switch bodies, the writers have to make a choice on how to name the characters. Do you say, “BJ (AS MIKE)” before every line? Or “MIKE (as BJ)?” Do you prompt the reader, after the body switch, with an explanation as to how the new naming situation is going to work? Or do you do what these writers did and simply keep the same names but expect us to understand that the new characters are in those bodies, and therefore even though BJ is speaking, we understand that it’s Mike?
Unfortunately, I have never found a perfect system for this. It’s always confusing to read. But what these writers do is probably the most confusing option. For me to mentally understand that every time Mike is talking, it’s BJ, is not easy to do. And I did find it funny that the writers spent an inordinate amount of time explaining to you how to read their script and not a single line on how to understand which character was talking after the body switch.
Man, Carson. You’re brutal. Did you laugh at all? Yes, I did laugh, thank you very much. The writers do a great job establishing how Bethany is an awful person to BJ. So when BJ is in Mike’s body and gets to dump Bethany, he doesn’t hold back. Mike even tells him beforehand, “Be nice. Let her down easy.” And we watch the whole thing from outside the restaurant as BJ (in Mike’s body) is screaming at her, letting out years of frustration of having to deal with this girl, ending with him throwing a drink in her face, apropos of nothing. That part I laughed at.
I also thought everything with Mike having to romance his own sister was funny. Because of the loop situation, he tries everything under the sun to win over Julia for BJ. When he finally does it and Julia falls for him, the bewitched onlookers cheer them on, pushing them to “KISS KISS KISS!” So Mike has to kiss his own sister. And we see how incredibly grossed out he is as it’s happening. I thought that was funny.
And there were a few other legitimate laugh out loud moments. But that’s why comedy is soooooo hard. It’s hard getting a SINGLE legitimate laugh from a reader. Yet a good comedy script needs to make the reader laugh out loud 25-30 times. That’s why you really have to be a comedy expert to pull a comedy spec off. Also, there came a point in this script where the number of movie rules we had to keep track of began to impede on the jokes. If I have to remember a body-swap time-loop kid-makes-a-wish universal-remote-control honey-I-shrunk-the-kids combo to get a joke, you’re probably asking too much from the reader.
I have a lot of respect for these writers, though. They swung for the fences. This was not an easy premise to tackle. And they did make it all make sense in the end. Which not many writers could’ve done. But I was just telling this to a writer earlier today in a Zoom consultation about his comedy script. All the reader cares about in the end with comedies is “did I laugh enough?” The plot is secondary. I didn’t laugh enough here to recommend it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the mistakes I see comedy writers make is they don’t let their scenes breathe. Every single scene in this script is 1 and a half pages or less. Usually a lot less. When no scenes are able to breathe, no scenes have a beginning, a middle, or an end. So what the reader experiences is this rapid scene-fragment-after-scene-fragment machine-gun type story. You have to put that 3-4 page scene in there every once and a while. And you need a couple of 7-page set-pieces. The writing style here was so fragmented that I never felt like I was able to connect with these people.
