Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: In the near future, terminal patients are given the opportunity to go out with a bang with personalized VR “perfect endings.” But when the best Transition Specialist gets far too close to a patient, he finds himself questioning everything in his life.
About: Brian T. Arnold wrote on a web series called “Open House.” This script of his landed on last year’s Black List, with the ninth-most votes. He also won the Tracking Board Launch Pad competition and finished Top 50 in the Nicholl (I believe in both instances with a different script, though I need someone to confirm that).
Writer: Brian T. Arnold
Details: 109 pages
Is today the day it all changes?
Is it finally time for me to recognize that the Sci-Fi & Drama categories mix can produce a good screenplay?
I don’t know, guys. Movies like Swan Song have left such a stain on the sci-fi/drama legacy that it looked like the genre combo would never recover.
Maybe writer Brian T. Arnold has recruited his screenplay acumen from some sort of parallel universe where things that shouldn’t go together suddenly do. A peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich? Gin and milk? Sci-fi and drama?
It’s the near future and 30-something Peter Grimsby, an intensely focused man, is helping an old guy live his dream – take down Hitler during World War 2. The process requires that the man sacrifice himself to do so, and afterwards we learn that we were in a simulation, and that this man is now dead in real life.
Peter, you see, is a “transition specialist.” If you’re dying, the company he works for, Ascension, gives you an opportunity to go out your way. Ascension creates your perfect ending and then, concurrently with the climax, they, poof, inject your real body with poison so you die on the spot.
Lately, Peter’s been struggling. Part of creating these “final endings” is getting to know the people he’s going to murder. So when they die, a little piece of him dies as well. To make matters worse, Peter’s about to meet his biggest challenge yet, Gale, a fast-talking 70-something who hates what Ascension does but realizes it’s the best of a bunch of bad options.
At first, Peter is annoyed by Gale. But once he starts to uncover her rockstar life – she was once a famous photographer who traveled all over the world – he warms up to her. Meanwhile, Peter starts dating the daughter of the man he most recently terminated and, as you can imagine, their relationship is complicated.
As Gale’s perfect ending grows near, Peter begins having an emotional breakdown, which is when we learn that Peter is working on his own perfect ending, tied to a traumatic experience from his childhood. Is this an ending he’s planning on doing soon? Or is it for the far-off future? We’re not sure, leaving us wondering if our hero is going to make it out of his story alive.
Whenever I read a good script, there’s an indication early on that that’s where it’s going. I’ll share with you what that moment was in “In The End.”
The script is tasked with explaining how its rules work. What is the ‘perfect ending’ and what are the logistics to how it works? To answer this question results in exposition which you, the writer, must include. Every writer deals with exposition differently. There are cheap and lazy ways to dole out exposition. And there are thoughtful ways. I can spot a good writer by which option he chooses.
Here, after our World War 2 teaser, Arnold takes us inside a hospice where our hero, Peter, is explaining to a group of dying people how Ascension works. He shows them a little company video, fills in the holes himself, then asks the group if they have any questions. A few of them ask questions and he answers them.
This scene is pure exposition. And yet, any person watching this movie would have no idea that it’s pure exposition because the scenario is organic to the story. Of course to get clients, they have to go places where people are dying and pitch them their business. So we don’t question it.
The lazy way would’ve been for Peter to have a meeting with his boss, and his boss all of a sudden went into an unmotivated exposition monologue: “Do I have to remind you what we do, Peter? We go to old people and we ask them to die with us. You are the creator of their death. You get to choose what it is. I consider that a privilege. And sure, it’s a little barbaric that we shoot poison into them the moment they die in their simulation but…”. I read exposition like this all the time.
Another thing I liked about this scene is that a plot thread emerges from it. Peter receives his next client. That might seem obvious to you. But when you’re staring at a blank page, it’s never obvious. You compartmentalize scenes to do what you want them to do – “Okay, this is going to be the exposition scene where we explain to the audience how the perfect ending works.”
You forget that you can combine things. The fact that one of the patients wants to sign up and he’ll be a part of the plot moving forward means that the scene is not an island. The veins of the following scenes are now laced within it.
I admit that about 40% of the way through the script, I didn’t know where we were going or if I liked wherever that was. Gale took some getting used to. All the other characters felt real whereas Gale felt like something out of an early 2000s indie movie. Here’s a typical line from her: “I almost got a tattoo once that said “No Regrets.” But, I didn’t. Because I knew I’d regret it. And, I have no regrets.”
But the more we got to know her, we realized that that was partly an act to protect herself. Once we started un-peeling her layers, she became more grounded. And that’s when I realized what the script was doing. It was going to make you love this woman so that when Peter had to kill her, it was going to be waterworks. That’s another thing I liked about the script. It sets up an ending we’re sure we’re headed towards before throwing a couple of curve balls at us. It not only doesn’t end up the way we expect it to. It ends better.
I did have a couple of issues with the script. Arnold needed to spend more time on the believability of the “perfect ending” productions. A Hollywood movie takes 1000 people to create. Yet Peter and two assistants are able to put together incredibly complex realistic three-dimensional real-time movies for the clients. It wasn’t as lazy as that Neil Blomkamp movie that just came out (you lay down on a bed and somehow because there’s a wire nearby you’re magically in a simulation). But since that’s the heart of the concept, it needed to be more believable.
I also thought Arnold overcomplicated Peter’s character journey. I never quite understood what was going on with him. Sometimes it was that he got too close to his clients. But then, also, he hadn’t gotten over his traumatic childhood event. And maybe he was considering suicide but maybe not. Also, he was a workaholic and needed to quit and do something he loved to do even though he supposedly loved this job. It was confusing.
Despite that, the bones of the script are so solid and you get so attached to these dying characters, that, emotionally, this is a home run. It really hits you hard at the end so I definitely recommend it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I think what I learned here is that sci-fi dramas don’t work. But drama sci-fis do. What I mean by that is if we expect sci-fi and you give us a bunch of crying and melodramatic scenes, we’re going to be disappointed. But if your story is essentially a drama with sci-fi aspects used minimally to support the drama, that can work. But the marketing needs to be on point. You have to be clear that it’s a drama first. Cause I’m telling you – there’s nothing worse than when you’re excitedly expecting one thing in a script and you get something different. It’s the worst.
