Holy Guacamole. I’ve actually found a good Black List script!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: An obsessed fan maneuvers his way into the inner circle of his hip hop idol and will stop at nothing to stay in.
About: This script finished pretty high on last year’s Black List, with 11 votes. The writer is young and relatively unknown but he did work as a story editor on “Dave,” which is a really funny show on Hulu. I’m not sure what a ‘story editor’ on a show does so maybe one of you TV guys can fill me in. Either way, this is a brand new writer so let’s see what he’s got!
Writer: Alex Russell
Details: 109 pages
Whatever happened to the stalker genre?
I love a good stalker movie.
Remember “The Fan?” With Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes? Funny story about that film. In one of the pivotal scenes, DeNiro and Snipes had a charged conversation while throwing a baseball back and forth to each other (Snipes plays a star baseball player in the film). Everybody in the production had been looking forward to shooting the scene since the beginning of the shoot. It was one of those Mano a Mano scenes between your two big stars where they really go at it.
So they start shooting this scene in a wide shot and they realize very quickly that DeNiro can’t throw a baseball. He literally looks like a little kid trying to throw a ball for the first time in his life. Here DeNiro is playing this ultra-tough guy stalker in the movie. The scene is about him covertly threatening Wesley Snipes’ character. And he’s spraying the ball around like a spastic monkey.
Everyone in the production had to huddle together – away from DeNiro of course – to figure out how to deal with this unforeseen obstacle. After talking it through, they realized the only way to do this without letting DeNiro know how embarrassing his throwing was, was to shoot the two players in ultra close-up, which hid DeNiro’s inability to throw. So if you go watch the movie, you’ll notice this scene plays out a little weird, with these ultra close-up shots that don’t really allow you to enjoy the scene.
Just goes to show how hard making a movie is. You never know what kind of problems you’re going to run into on a day of shooting.
Matthew is 22 years old and works at American Rag on La Brea (great place to find jeans by the way). Like a lot of people in LA, he’s lonely and confused. He can’t seem to make friends no matter how hard he tries. Hell, he lives with his grandma. He’s not exactly ‘killing it.’
Then, one day, across the street from work, Matthew notices his idol, a fast rising music artist named Oliver. Oliver hurries over to American Rag to escape a gaggle of fans. Since Matthew knows everything about Oliver, including the music he likes, he quickly changes the music in the store to what he knows is one of Oliver’s favorite tunes.
As soon as Oliver hears this, he asks who’s in charge of the music, and Matthew introduces himself. They talk about old music for a while and Oliver is so impressed with Matthew’s knowledge of music that he invites him to his concert that night. Keep in mind, Matthew has pretended this entire time to have no idea who Oliver is, which is one of the main reasons Oliver likes him. Matthew is not a “fan.” He’s a “real person.”
At the concert, Matthew meets Oliver’s entire crew. They’re a little skeptical of him at first, especially Shai, Oliver’s longtime friend and manager. But because he’s harmless, they let him in. This leads to Matthew visiting Olivier’s house. And, after a while, being given the reins to shoot an informal documentary about Oliver and his entourage. It allows Matthew to get very close to Oliver. He’s officially living his dream.
That dream leads to Matthew becoming his own celebrity of sorts since he’s all over Oliver’s Instagram. Everything is going great until Matthew revisits his old job where he runs into his co-worker Jamie. He stupidly invites Jamie to Oliver’s next event and the crew unexpectedly loves Jamie. They love him so much, in fact, they invite him on a big trip to London! All of a sudden, Matthew is losing status within the group.
Matthew needs to find a way to get Jamie out of the group without it looking like he tried to get Jamie out of the group. So he covertly injures him on the next video shoot. The move backfires as Oliver finally realizes that Matthew is just another crazed fan. After he kicks Matthew out of the group, Matthew must come up with a last ditch plan to get into Oliver’s good graces… forever.
Goal. Stakes. Urgency.
None of these are present in Lurker.
And yet the script still works.
Why?
Well, remember. All goal, stakes, and urgency do is provide your screenplay with an engine that propels the plot forward. Give characters a tesseract to go after (goal). Establish that if they don’t get it, the world blows up (stakes). And give them a short time frame to do it in (urgency). The reason I push GSU is because it’s the most powerful engine you can use to generate a story. But it’s not the *only* engine.
Another engine is the “levee breaks” engine. You either tell or imply to the audience that, at some point in the movie, the levee is going to break, and then you slowly build up to that moment. Since the reader knows the levee is going to break, they don’t necessarily need immediate goals. They still need characters doing things. But they don’t some giant involved plot.
The most famous example of a “levee breaks” engine is Titanic. Titanic doesn’t have a goal other than for Jack to try and seduce Rose. The engine that’s really driving our interest is the impending doom of hitting that iceberg and a good chunk of these people on the boat dying.
The “levee break” in Lurker is slightly different. It’s Matthew’s obsession with Oliver. We know that Matthew can’t help himself. That he’ll keep pushing and pushing until Oliver has no choice but to push back. And that eventual clash – the levee breaking – is why we keep reading. We know it’s coming and we can’t help ourselves. We want to see what happens.
By the way, just because you employ a “levee breaks” engine, that doesn’t mean your script is going to write itself. In fact, the reason this isn’t as common of an engine is because it’s harder to execute. Think about it. When you have GSU, you always know what your character’s going to do next since the character’s job is to achieve his goal. If the goal is to take down an island dictator (The Suicide Squad), then you just keep writing scenes that bring your heroes closer to that goal.
But what do you do if your character doesn’t have a narrative-defining goal? The options aren’t as clear. However, Lurker gives you a good template for tackling the problem. Have your hero push for more as the script goes on (Matthew wants to be more involved in the group – every 15 pages he wants more access, more responsibility) and then you introduce obstacles that create setbacks for your hero (Oliver starts to like Matthew’s buddy Jamie more than him, Oliver says he only wants Matthew to document the team, nothing more).
This struggle creates conflict and, remember, conflict is the lifeblood of drama. And drama is what generates entertainment. So we’re entertained by Matthew desperately trying to get closer and closer to the center of the group – he won’t stop until he’s practically INSIDE Oliver.
The script also has a beat on the Gen Y crowd. It feels modern. It feels up-to-date. Just the fact that Matthew becomes a quasi-celebrity because he’s on a famous person’s Instagram is a real thing. These celebrities have people around them all the time and they’re taking pictures of them, posting them, and people who want to know everything about those celebrities of course want to know who the people surrounding them are as well.
Finally, the script has something to say. It’s shining a light on the shallowness of today’s celebrity. There’s a scene in the script where Matthew is approached on the street by someone who recognizes him and he starts asking Matthew what he can do to be like him. What skills can he build? What classes can he take? And Matthew just kind of stands there realizing he has no skills. He’s just some guy who got lucky and is now stalking a dude. Which begs the question – is that the definition of celebrity in 2021?
If you like stalker scripts like I do, you’re going to love this. Check it out!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Plot beats that shake up the story must make sense logically and dramatically. One of the only mistakes in the script was when Matthew willingly invited Jamie to one of Oliver’s events, which led to Oliver and the crew liking Jamie more than they liked Matthew. If you think about this plot beat, it doesn’t make sense. Why would Matthew bring someone else into the fold who could potentially expose him (remember, Matthew pretends that he’s never heard of Oliver until Oliver walks in the store – but Jamie knows otherwise). The more logical beat would have been for Jamie to have gotten into the event on his own somehow, and surprisingly bumped into Matthew and Oliver.
