Genre: Drama
Premise: After exhausting all financial options to save their dying daughter, Frank and Abby are forced into a final act of desperation: rob a local bank.
About: This was a script on last year’s Black List. The writer just completed his second feature film, called, “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers.” Here’s the logline for that one: A family man, hoping to prove his survivalist capabilities and manliness to his family, decides to irresponsibly head off into the woods and go deer hunting by himself. His first film was, “The Killing of Two Lovers” which got into Sundance and was acquired by NEON. It received a 93 Rotten Tomatoes score.
Writer: Robert Machoian
Details: 106 pages
Next Thursday, on the 11th, I’ll be dropping the 2022 Black List Re-Rankings, which means I gotta get through the last of these scripts.
In the spirit of what Scriptshadow does better than anyone else on the internet – give opinions on movie concepts – I’ll share with you why this one never got on my radar. The idea isn’t bad. Usually, in these bank robbery scripts, it’s a group of tough guys. I like that the writer *is* giving us a fresh angle, with the married couple being the robbers.
There’s just something kinda depressing about the set up. This really sad-sounding couple has to rob a bank to pay the bills for their sick daughter. Whenever I read the logline, I felt deflated. That’s not how you want your loglines to go over.
With that said, there are plenty of avenues to make a concept like this work. Just like any script, if we like the characters. If the writer does a good job of evoking sympathy. If the writer brings a unique voice to the proceedings – explores the idea in a slightly different tone than we’re used to seeing – then yes, it can be good.
That’s something all of us are going to be tasked with when we write our passion projects over the first half of 2024 (in the Scriptshadow One For Me One For Them Screenwriting Challenge – don’t worry, I’ll be putting up an official post for this by the end of the year). You’re going to have to turn what, initially, looks like a weak premise, into a great story.
So, let’s see if today’s writer was able to do that.
We begin in the grocery store, where 40-something Frank is staring at some strange woman’s a$$ who’s trying to grab a can of beans at the top of the shelf. The combination of this woman’s awkward plight and four random kids running around, bumping into things, causes the shelves to fall down. Frank makes a run for it with his 10 year old daughter and they check out the produce section.
Several minutes later, the woman comes over to Frank and we learn that they’re married. We also learn that those four kids are theirs. It’s quite the elaborate trip to the store. They all leave, where we then meet ANOTHER girl, 17 year old Ruby, who has some form of cancer and is waiting in the car.
Once home, they make a call, get news they don’t want, and confirm their 2-day “trip” to the city. This is framed to the kids as a vacation for mommy and daddy, but really, it’s so that Frank and Abby can rob a bank to pay for Ruby’s medical bills.
Off the two go, to whatever Utah’s version of a city is, and proceed to have wild explicit sex in their hotel room. The next day they meet up with a couple of friends at Denny’s who are going to act as lookouts for their robbery. This is followed by the robbery itself. Frank gets badly injured but they get the money. They make a run for it. I won’t spoil anything for you but let’s just say, things get gnarly in the last 20 pages. The End.
I want to start today’s analysis talking about scene reversals.
Scene reversals are when you start off a scene making the audience think one thing, then, at some point, there’s a reversal and we realize it’s the opposite (or different from what we were led to believe).
I remember the first time I became aware of this practice. It was in the opening scene of the 1994 movie, When A Man Loves A Woman, starring Meg Ryan in one of her only serious roles. The scene has Meg’s character at a bar by herself and then a man comes up and starts hitting on her. Over the course of the scene, she’s drawn in by him, and then, by the end of the scene, they’re making out. It’s then when we realize, they already knew each other. They were together. This was just a game.
That’s a scene reversal.
But here’s the thing about scene reversals. It’s tricky to pull them off in that opening scene because WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING YET. We don’t know who’s who. We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know jack s**t. So if there’s any nuance at all to your scene reversal, there’s a good chance we won’t catch it.
The reason that the When A Man Loves a Woman opening scene works is because the scenario is so simple and familiar. Man hits on woman at bar. There isn’t any nuance to that scenario, so we get it immediately.
But here in I Love You Now And Forever, there’s a whole lot going on in the opening scene. And, therefore, when the writer tries to pull a scene reversal, we’re straight up confused. The first beat of the scene has Frank looking at a woman’s butt who’s up on the grocery store shelves looking for something, and saying this: “That a$$, that is a thing of beauty, Noni. Oh the things I could do with that. First the One-Eyed Pirate, then, The Terminator, then I’d climb inside and just take a na…”.
However, about five pages later, this woman finds Frank in another part of the store and calls him by name. They then start talking. And now we realize they know each other. They’re married. It was suuuuper confusing, especially when you consider that there were all these kids around who are presented as random, who we then learn are Frank and Abby’s kids! It’s what I call “unnecessarily confusing” writing. And so many beginner writers are guilty of it.
Because you have to consider the bang you’re getting for your potentially confusing buck. In When A Man Loves a Woman, the payoff is fun. It’s fun when you find out these two already know each other, so we leave the scene satisfied. With this scene, all we think is, “Why did you make it unnecessarily challenging for us to understand that these people are related?” What’s the payoff for that? Particularly when, if we lose the thread at any point, we’re lost and frustrated.
Clumsy or confusing or overly complicated first scenes are a huge pet peeve of mine because they start scripts off on the wrong foot. And I’m reading these mistakes CONSTANTLY. In the last 10 consultations I did, half of them had this problem: writers trying to be too clever by half with their openings and just making them confusing as a result. So watch out for this. Only do opening scene reversals if you’re a REALLY SEASONED WRITER and know how to navigate the pitfalls. Or if the scenario is super simple, like When A Man Loves a Woman.
So, does I Love You Now And Forever recover after that?
I’ll tell you this. You probably don’t want to waste 10% of your screenplay on a grocery store run. That’s valuable real estate that you’ve turned into a real-world errand. Unless there’s dramatic value to a scene, it should not be long. So that started the script off on a weak note.
A lot of the script feels like it’s spinning its wheels. The writer knew he had a bank robbery scene. He knew he had a getaway scene. And to his credit, both work well. But before that, it doesn’t feel like there’s a plan. For example, there’s an oddly specific sexual undercurrent to the screenplay so there’s this giant emphasis placed on the two getting jiggy with it the night before. And then they’re sort of enjoying the town the next day.
You need narratives that give your characters purposeful things to do throughout the movie. Not just during the big obvious set pieces.
It’s not necessarily a bad script. There’s a theme here about the struggle that the average American family is going through financially. There’s a theme about how crappy health care is. There’s a theme about family sticking together no matter what. And all of these are noble things to write about. But, in the end, all that matters is, “Are we entertained?” I was confused by the opening. I was bored by the second act. And then the end was pretty good. But this script needed much better plotting for it to do what it was trying to do.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Unless it’s a true story and you’re locked into it, avoid giant families. Giant families, in the screenwriting world, translate to: A TON OF CHARACTERS BOTH YOU AND WE HAVE TO KEEP TRACK OF. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. One child is fine. Two is fine. You only want to go three and above if you absolutely need to to tell your story. Otherwise, I promise you, they’ll get in the way.
