Genre: Comedy
Premise: Ten years after a group of girlfriends bet on which of them would be the last to get married, their adult lives and relationships are completely upended when they discover the $80 they drunkenly invested in Bitcoin
is now worth $5.2 million.
About: We’ve definitely got the best name of all the Black List writers with this script: Daisygreen Stenhouse. Stenhouse writes with Liv Auerbach. Both are new enough to professional screenwriting as this is their first notable script, which finished on last year’s Black List with 6 votes.
Writers: Liv Auerbach & Daisygreen Stenhouse
Details: 97 pages
Anna Kendrick for Skyler?
You’ll have to excuse me if I sound a little off-kilter today. About a year ago I lost the back up set of my keys and unfortunately, the remaining keys all say “do not duplicate” on them so I’ve spent the last year putting off getting a new back up set since I knew it would be such a hassle.
Then yesterday somebody told me that the whole “do not duplicate” thing is not legally binding. You can go to any hardware store and they’ll ignore it, copying the key for you! When the HEEEEEELLLL did this happen?? I feel like my whole life has been a lie. I apologize to the writers of this script as this world-changing view made it hard to concentrate on any other matter than not duplicateabitable keys.
22 year old Skyler, an aspiring sports agent, is a Duke student who makes a bet with her seven best friends – the main ones being Willa, a lesbian hopeless romantic, Frankie, a super slut, Nisha, a “posh narcissist,” Jules, the “no filter” girl, and Poppy the hippy – that whoever gets married last wins the pot of money.
They’re all going to put in 10 bucks. For some reason, there’s a bracket involved, like a tournament. But it doesn’t really make sense since nobody is actually playing against each other. It’s whoever marries last wins. So that was a little confusing. But anyway, at the last second, they decide to throw the pot of money into this new thing called “bitcoin.”
Cut to 10 or so years later and Skyler, who’s frustrated about still being an agent’s assistant, goes to check the bitcoin pot only to find out it’s now worth 5 million dollars!! She tells her friends and insists that they stick to the competition agreement. No sharing. The only two people left besides Skyler are Willa, who’s way too passive on the dating scene, and Frankie, who has only ever said she’ll marry Tony Hawk.
Thus begins Skyler’s secret plan to speed up Willa’s dating life and somehow convince Tony Hawk, who’s already married, to marry her friend. She figures if she can get this money, she can quit her bigoted agency and start her own company. Meanwhile, Frankie starts secretly hanging out with Skyler’s fiancé, Mark, encouraging him to pop the question to Skyler as soon as possible. Who will win out and force the other to marry first? That is the 5 million dollar question!
This script opens up an interesting discussion about what to do when you’re faced with two different paths for your chosen concept. Because one version of this concept is a fun silly Hollywood comedy. But that’s also the less interesting version of the concept.
The more interesting variation is the dark comedy version where people get nasty when they realize how much money is on the line. Maybe they even start killing each other. Unfortunately, that version is a lot less marketable. Look no further than the difference between Bridesmaids and Bachelorette. Both movies covered bridesmaids in a comedic fashion. But while one was a megahit that became a part of popular culture, the other is nearly forgotten.
However, what you’ll note is that the writer of the dark comedy version of the idea, Leslye Headland, went on to have a cool career that involved making shows like Russian Doll. Her darker comedic voice made her a “cool kid on the block.” And the thing about becoming a Hollywood cool kid is that you always get invited back to the cool kids’ table where you can pitch your latest cool project.
The people who write movies like The Man From Toronto or Me Time don’t get that courtesy. They’re actually some of Hollywood’s most discriminated-against writers (is “comedyist” a thing?) because broad comedy is thought to be the hackiest of all the genres. Then again, you don’t really care about that if you’re clearing 750,000 dollar checks.
In the end, you have to decide what is more organic to you. What are you better at? Also, what do you want to be? Do you want to make fluff yet buy a house in Hancock Park? Michael Bay once famously said, “I make movies so I can buy Ferraris.” If you want to be that kind of screenwriter, I have NO QUALMS with that. But you have to be willing to sacrifice some artistic integrity and be okay with a few sneers when you walk past the cool kids table.
Okay, about the script.
It’s working under a problematic structure – namely, it’s being dictated by a negative goal, and negative goals are hard to pull off. What’s the difference between a negative and positive goal? Well, a positive goal would be that all these girls are trying to get married as fast as possible because the first person who gets married wins the money.
That’s not this movie, though.
Each person is trying to AVOID getting married. That’s a negative goal. Now, why would that be a writing problem? Because it’s easy to not do something. You just don’t do it! It’s simply not as compelling as doing something. Also, negative goals are really bad at pushing the plot forward.
Today’s writers try to circumvent this with some sleight of hand. The negative goal is turned into a positive goal by having Skyler try and get her unmarried friends married. So now Skyler technically has a positive goal that makes her active. But it still doesn’t solve the issue that Skyler, herself, doesn’t need to get married. So then where’s the drama? Where’s the suspense? I suppose that by Skyler being active and getting her friends married, she receives the money faster. But I don’t know if I care about that. I mean am I really going to be in the theater, on the edge of my seat, saying, “Oh man! I really want Skyler to win this money as soon as possible!”
You know how when a writer uses a double negative in a sentence, we, the reader, have that hiccup while reading it? It takes you an extra second to understand the meaning of the sentence. That’s this script in a nutshell. You constantly have to remind yourself why people are doing what they’re doing because it’s all reversed. It’s not a clear easy-to-understand goal.
Whenever you have goal issues, you’ll have stakes and urgency issues. Cause your goal dictates your stakes and urgency. There is zero urgency here. The only urgency is Skyler’s impatience. It doesn’t matter if she gets the money today or four years from now, she’s still going to get it.
Even still, the objective we’re after takes so long to complete (a wedding that officially eliminates a contestant) that we don’t feel any tension from the situation. Skyler is trying to find a girlfriend for Willa. Let’s she say she does. Now we have to wait a year for them to get married and we can cross Willa off the list? That’s not how movies work. Movies work in tight timeframes. We’re talking weeks. We’re talking days. That’s the timeframe you want to be working with. Especially in comedy, where things need to move fast.
The writers do display some creativity. For example, the movie starts at a Duke basketball game and the announcers of the game break the 3rd-and-a-half wall and start commentating on our group of girls instead. That then becomes a running theme throughout the movie where sports announcers will narrate the latest developments with the girls.
I like it when writers think outside the box so I appreciate this. But, at the time same, when I see this sort of thing, I tend to think that the writers are trying too hard. Sort of like, “Look at me. I came up with this clever thing. I’m so clever.” Unless it feels soooooo organically ingrained in the writing, I can’t help but label stuff like this “try hard.”
One of these days, I’m going to write an article about where the line is when it comes to acceptable sloppiness in comedy. I think today’s concept is too overbearing and not believable enough. I mean, let’s be honest. Wouldn’t these girls just split the money? They’re all friends. None of them are greedy. So for them to go along with this ancient bet thing feels forced. And if you don’t believe in that premise, nothing in the movie will work, since all the dramatic tension is dependent on you caring about the bet.
But is that my fault? This is comedy. Shouldn’t I loosen my grip a little bit? Why am I being so anal about every part of the script being airtight? Would a family really drive their dead grandma around on the top of their car as they did in National Lampoon’s Vacation? Probably not. And yet that movie is a classic.
But, for me, there’s way more loose than tight here. I’m fine with a little sloppiness in comedies. It can actually help the comedy at times. But if I don’t even believe that what’s happening would happen, it’s hard for me to invest emotionally. And if I’m not invested emotionally, it’s hard for me to laugh. I’ll chuckle. I’ll have a few of those surface-level laughs. But for those deep uncontrollable laughs, the screws have to be way tighter than they are here.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The one thing this script gets right is that the money represents something. Money is always a far more effective tool in a screenplay when it represents something important to a character. In this case, we establish Skyler’s desire to get promoted to an agent. That way, when the windfall of money enters the equation, she becomes obsessive about it, because it means she can finally quit her job and start her own agency, something she’s dreamed of since she was a kid.
