Genre: Sci-fi/Rom-Com/Drama
Premise: Teddy thinks he’s the only living person left in a world where humanity is frozen in time… until his ex-girlfriend, Leyna, shows up at his doorstep. Together, they must go on a journey to find the cause behind the freeze and in the process, confront the issues that plagued their relationship before it’s too late.
About: This is the number 1 script on the 2019 Black List. The writer, Ken Kobayashi, graduated from USC Film School. This project is set up at Sony with Will Gluck producing. Gluck is no stranger to championing breakout scripts. He directed Easy A, one of the biggest spec scripts of 2009.
Writer: Ken Kobayashi
Details: 104 pages
Late last night, someone posted a comment regarding the low vote count for this year’s Black List. Writers don’t have agents this year, they reminded me. Duh! How could I forget?? And agents are the ones doing the heavy lobbying to get their clients on the Black List.
But it goes deeper than that. Yesterday, I championed the death of the biopic, as the dreaded genre was practically absent from the 2019 Black List. But now I realize that was almost certainly because the big agencies weren’t involved. Agencies promote projects for their talent arms, and biopics are actor favorites, since the actors get to play famous flawed figures and those movies always get Oscar noms. Once you remove the main people incentivized to promote that genre, however, you’re not going to have as many of them on list.
Which means maybe biopics aren’t dead after all. :(
This would also explain the uptick of original concepts in this year’s list. Managers are more willing to take chances on and develop original projects and they’re now the primary lobbyers. It’s a reminder that these things are never black and white. You take away one variable for a list and there might be 20 scripts out and 20 new scripts in. I suppose we’re going to find out if this change results in a better list or not. And it starts today with the top screenplay, Move On.
28 year-old Teddy has just asked his girlfriend, Leyna, to marry him. Leyna doesn’t mince words with her response. “No,” she says, and walks out the door. Teddy is devastated, lamenting to his best bud, Squid, who came to cheerlead, that nothing matters anymore. On his drive home, he tries to call Leyla but gets clipped by a truck, nearly dying. But it gets worse. A few minutes later, the entire world freezes.
Cut to three months later and Teddy is biking around a frozen world. Some things still work, like hot water and all the food stays fresh (since it’s frozen in the moment) but other than that, being alone in the world blows. But on his way home from biking, Teddy sees an impossible sight. It’s Leyna! She’s unfrozen as well!
She pops into his place and the two lament the situation they’re in. For some reason, they don’t discuss her marriage rejection. They hang out and the next morning Teddy shows her a google map of this giant black line off the west coast. He saw a black wall in person off the east coast and he wants to see if this other black line is also a wall. So the two go on a road trip together to find out.
During the trip, we occasionally cut back in time to the two meeting, getting to know each other, and starting their adult lives — all the things that led up to the proposal. What we learn is that Ted’s a moron. He took a job in Japan without clearing it with Leyla and then tried to save face by proposing to her. It turns out that rejection is the least of his worries, though, as Ted is about to find out the shocking reason why the world is frozen.
I saw a lot of people commenting on “Move On” in the comments yesterday and the consensus seemed to be that nobody made it past the first 20 pages. I can see why. The writing here doesn’t crackle loud enough to inspire that page-turning tick all writers strive for.
So what would’ve happened had you kept reading? Well, the script has a nice twist. There’s no doubt about it. And that led to an interesting final act. But before we get to that, let’s talk about everything else.
There were too many small but frustrating miscalculations in Move On to buy into it. For example, we get hit with the most gigantic story development ever. THE WORLD IS FROZEN. That’s something you need to sit in for a while. It’s not something you flippantly throw in before sprinting to the next plot point. But that’s exactly what happens. Less than ONE PAGE after the world freezes, Teddy sees Leyla. I knew at that moment the script was in trouble.
Understanding time and pacing and when to draw things out and when to move things along is an essential skill in screenwriting. Some writers do it naturally. For others, it takes time to learn. But, I mean, one page of Frozenville and we’re already throwing the girlfriend back in there?
Then, our lead characters aren’t acting like real people would. If two people lived in a frozen world for three months then ran into each other, it doesn’t matter who they are, they would spend the next 48 hours talking about this bizarre event and how it’s changed their lives and how scared they were and everything they saw and experienced. Instead, we get a brief conversation between Teddy and Leyla before she says, “We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow.”
The trifecta for me was when Teddy says he’s found this black line on the West Coast on Google Maps. He’s already been to the East Coast and seen a black wall off the beach. So he wants to “check to see” if this line is also a black wall. Here’s your answer, Teddy. Yes. Yes it is. What else would it possibly be? Yet that’s the goal we use to drive the story. At that point, I mentally gave up on the script and only read on because I was going to review it.
To the writer’s credit, we do get that twist. —SPOILERS— It turns out that on his way home that day, Teddy didn’t get clipped by a truck. He got flat-out T-boned and was killed. This is a simulation (both the world and Teddy) for people who need to find closure with those who they’ve lost. Leyla was devastated because she never got to discuss what happened and why she did what she did. So, five years later, she’s finally gotten a chance to get that closure.
I’ve read a lot of scripts where people are in simulations. I’ve even read a good number of scripts where people create simulations to connect with dead loved ones. But I’ve never read a script where we take the point of view of the simulated dead person inside the simulation.
It just goes to show how powerful POV can be in story creation. If you’ve been doing this long enough, you’ve come up with a hundred concepts, many of them discarded because they were too similar to other movies. But what if you changed the obvious POV to a non-obvious one? For example, everyone’s come up with a Die Hard idea. But what if you wrote a Die Hard idea from the point of view of Hans? The villain? It would be a completely different movie (I’m not saying it would be good – I’m talking off the top of my head here – but it would be different). So I give credit to Kobayashi for finding a cool angle that no one else thought of. I’m guessing that’s why he made this year’s list.
Unfortunately, the script wasn’t up to snuff in many other areas. I loved the twist. And I even liked the dark tone the script shifted to in those last 20 pages. But then you have stuff like Teddy learning he’s a simulation and, within one scene, being okay with it, and then, in the next scene, cheerfully ready to be turned off for good. There were so many story beats like this one that lacked genuine human reactions that I was constantly being pulled out of the script.
But it does show you how powerful a big concept and a big twist can be. If you’re a young writer who’s a long ways away from mastering this skill, those two things can act as turbo boosters. Because both of them are memorable. You remember the concept. You remember the twist. In most cases of reading screenplays, you don’t remember anything about a script after a couple of weeks.
Move On is a fun screenplay when viewed in totality. But it’s an uphill battle getting to the twist that saves it. It wasn’t enough for me to recommend the screenplay.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Screenplays where a character acts bizarre for reasons that aren’t revealed until late in the story are hard to pull off. Once we hit the twist on page 70, we get a better understanding of why Leyla is acting so strangely (why she just conveniently appeared out of nowhere and why she’s so laid back in spite of the outrageous circumstances). This is her simulation. She doesn’t have to talk or answer anything from Teddy if she doesn’t want to. She just wants to spend time with him to get closure. Think about what you’re doing to the reader here, though. You’re having a character act unlike any rational human being would for 70 pages before you tell them why. It’s not that you can’t pull this off. But you have to creatively find ways to make the character feel real in the meantime. Or else the reader sees this character who’s doing all these things that no normal person would do and they give up on the script before they get to the great twist. So travel down this road cautiously.
