Genre: Mystery?
Premise: (from Black List) A writer struggling to crack her second novel starts to lose her sense of reality as the book bleeds into her life…and her life bleeds back.
About: This script made last year’s Black List just as writer Elaina Perpelitt’s career started to take off. She got a staff writing job on the Amazon show “Absentia” and wrote two episodes. That show is about a woman who goes missing and then ten years later, after her family has moved on, reappears inside a tank of water. It’s got a pretty good pilot episode so check it out. I’m guessing that this script was used as a sample to win her a job on that show. By the way, this is one of the best ways to get your career started as a writer. Write an original screenplay that’s not exactly marketable, but is a good indication of your voice. Lots of writers get staffed this way.
Writer: Elaina Perpelitt
Details: 115 pages
Is the curse true? Is writing about writing boring? I don’t know. The most successful writer of all time, Stephen King, seems to be doing okay with that setup, using it for, oh, I don’t know, every story he’s written! But a writer in a novel is different from a writer in a movie. In movies, things need to be visual. More movement is required (move-ment = move-ie). So it’s a trickier balancing act. Let’s see if Perpelitt pulled it off.
Winnie is a “genius” writer if we’re to believe her perfect husband, Jax. Then again, isn’t every writer a genius in the eyes of their other half? It’s a prerequisite for being in a relationship with a writer, yes? But in this case, it’s true. Winnie has already written a bestseller and she’s flying with Jax to Palm Springs to get away from it all and write her next one.
The 27 year-old Winnie is not the easiest person to be with. She’s on multiple anti-depressants and pain killers and she’s extremely moody. A single day with Winnie can result in the best AND worst moment of your year. But Jax is a loving understanding hubby who cares about one thing and one thing only – the well-being of his wife.
Once in Palm Springs, Winnie starts writing, and that’s when shit gets crazy. Her main character, Mara, is 16 years old. Mara used to be in a sexual relationship with her father when she was 12. Now she’s out there banging DJ’s who end up dead afterwards, as well as coupling with sugar daddies with terminal cancer. Yeah, you read all that correctly.
When Winnie is bored, she brings over her new best friend, the young hot-as-fuck neighbor, Sloan, and the two do coke together and talk about Winnie’s ex-boyfriend, RJ. RJ was dangerous and cool and crazy, everything Jax isn’t. And while Winnie hates to admit it, she thinks about him all the time. One night, when she gets black-out drunk, she invites RJ up to Palm Springs, and the next day, she watches in horror as a clueless Jax (who has no idea what RJ looks like, only that Winnie used to date someone with that name) opens the door to RJ.
Winnie does a nice job resisting that temptation, but the combination of drugs and exhaustion and depression send her deeper into the mind of her protagonist, Mara, and, at a certain point, we’re not clear if Mara is the real story or Winnie is. Don’t corner me at a party and ask me what happens next because I don’t know. Things get so unclear that you basically have to draw your own conclusions. But I’m pretty sure several people died. Just don’t quote me on that.
Every writer has to get one of these scripts out of their system – these “nothing is real, or is it?” screenplays. Typically, you write this script in that 24-28 age range, when you’re a few years into the “real world,” but still a low rung on the ladder and unsure why. This results in confusion and frustration. Luckily, you’re a writer. And all your writing teachers tell you to take that emotion and put it on the page! So you do that, hurling complex feelings onto a helpless keyboard like Jackson Pollock, and it feels so good. If feels like you’re examining yourself and saying something. Unfortunately, that experience is one-sided. To the rest of the world, the pages are directionless, an interesting experiment on a road to nowhere.
The problem occurs when you start favoring craziness over plot. The script becomes more about fucking around than answering questions. And that’s exactly what happened here. Midway through this script I wasn’t sure what it was about anymore. I think it was about an unsolved murder. But maybe it was about a girl going crazy? Or maybe it was more about this fictional character Mara trying to find herself? You get the idea. The script wants to be everything and nothing and if there’s any confusion, the burden is on you, the reader, to figure it out.
Perpelitt really stacks the deck against herself, too. This character, Winnie, is extremely unlikable. She’s got this perfect husband who does everything for her and she treats him like garbage, doesn’t appreciate him. She pines for her much more dangerous ex-boyfriend, the one she’s badmouthed to her husband, despite the fact that she’d drop him in a hot second if RJ would be with her. When you mix that in with a story we don’t understand, it’s nearly impossibly to make it work. I know. I’ve been there. Plenty of other writers have been there as well.
A script that did this story much better was Diablo Cody’s “Tully,” specifically because of Cody’s maturity as a writer. She knew that writing this “nothing and everything is real all at once” stuff is a suicide mission so she SIMPLIFIED the story down to one woman having one friendship (spoiler) and it wasn’t until the end that we learned it was all a dream. That setup works so much better, guys. Because that way we’re not so confused all the time and you can use the scenes to explore real conversations and real moments.
That’s not to say the script is a disaster by any means. There’s a clear voice here. The world of the novel is big, colorful, and interesting. And I liked Sloan. Actually, Sloan could’ve been the key to this script working. Had Winnie been a more likable wholesome character, the dark and evil Sloan would’ve contrasted against her more, making their dynamic more compelling. But as written, both of them are bitches. So there was some redundancy there (again, this is something Tully did way better).
Anyways, so yes. I DO think all of you should write one of these scripts to get it out of your system. But they’re minefields, man. Try to keep in mind that, at the end of the day, a script is not meant as a therapy session for yourself. It’s meant to entertain. So if you’re prioritizing the former over the latter, expect a less than excited response.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Another ALWAYS WORKS tip today. This one is the “person in the other room” scene. Here’s how this scenario works. You have three characters. Two characters share a secret or some knowledge that the third character doesn’t know. You then write a scene where that third character has to leave the room for a moment, and your first two characters have a limited amount of time to discuss that secret. It ALWAYS WORKS. And it works because of the ticking clock. We love conversations that have a sense of urgency to them. And this situation sets up the best version of that urgency. So that scene here in Innocent Monsters occurs when RJ shows up at the Palm Springs house. A clueless Jax welcomes him in. The three talk for a moment in the main room. Jax says he’s going to get something to drink, and now we have our scene. Winnie has to convince RJ to leave but now that RJ is here, he wants her. This is one of the best scenes in the script and the “person in the other room” scene is the reason why.
