Today we review a big spec sale pitched as Knives Out in the White House!
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Premise: The president is murdered during a private dinner, and Secret Service agent Mia Pine has until morning to discover which guest is the killer before a peace agreement fails and leads to war.
About: Pitched as “Knives Out set in the White House,” this one sold for big money to Paramount last year. Jonathan Stokes broke onto the scene with a hot script in 2011 called “El Gringo,” which would go on to get made. Since then, he’s had a ton of scripts in development and I’m sure he’s been working steadily on assignments. This was a spec script that went for high six-figures against seven-figures. It also got onto last year’s Black List with 9 votes.
Writer: Jonathan W. Stokes
Details: 114 pages
The Black List?
More like The Black Hole List.
The list where quality goes to die.
Where are all the good scripts? It’s gotten to the point where every time I open a Black List script, I expect it to be bad. There have always been bad scripts on the Black List but it used to be that the good ones outnumbered them. I don’t think that’s the case anymore.
We had a debate on here a couple of years ago where we discussed if there were any amateur scripts – IN THE ENTIRE WORLD – that were good enough to be on the Black List. And one writer was actually saying, no, there wasn’t. Which is ridiculous of course. But I think even he would now concede that the bottom half of the Black List is basically a randomized group of scripts that ended up being in the right place at the right time.
Or is it?
I am hoping that with today’s high concept premise and already sold status, we’re getting a different level of writing. Join hands and pray with me for Murder in the White House!
30-something secret service agent Mia Pine is having sex with someone in an office in the White House when she hears a scream. She quickly gets dressed, runs to the Oval Office, and sees the first lady, Gail Wood, hugging her dead husband, who’s been stabbed in the neck with a knife.
That night, the president was having an exclusive dinner with six people. They included Vice President tough guy James Steele. Speaker of the House, Terra Brookes. Russian Ambassador Pyotr Kamenev. World renowned Israeli cellist, Adara Lehava. The president’s wife. And someone I’m forgetting.
After taking pictures of the crime scene, Mia brings everybody into the War Room and explains that they’re going to wait until tomorrow morning to announce the president’s death. But right now, they’re going to figure out which of them is the killer. Because the president was killed with a rare steak knife that there are only six of, and each of the guests had one of those knives during dinner.
The early assumption is that it’s the Russian ambassador, of course. Especially since the Russians moved into Syria less than an hour ago. Everyone assumes the two things are related. But the person who has the most to gain from the president’s death is obviously the VP, an intense war-hungry man. If he kills the president, he becomes the president!
You would think the wife wouldn’t have killed her beau. But Mia happens to know that the husband has cheated on her several times. Could this have been a revenge murder? Especially since this hot Israeli cellist isn’t exactly White House dinner quality. Could she and the president have been having an affair?
Meanwhile, Mia has to hide the fact that the reason she wasn’t around when this happened was because she was bumping uglies with White House Chief of Staff, Holland Atkinson. Should that get out, all her credibility would be shot. So Mia must hope nobody solves her mystery while attempting to figure out who murdered the president. And she’s only got six hours to do it!
So, did Murder in the White House break the streak?
While the script was a step above a lot of the amateur-ish writing of other scripts in this vote-range, it still didn’t crack the ‘worth-the-read’ threshold for me.
I like the idea of an Agatha Christie murder mystery in the White House.
And there’s no doubt the contained setup of this high-stakes situation is fun.
But something was missing.
The script made a critical mistake early on, in my opinion, by starting Mia off having sex with some guy. This created a slew of problems. For one, it’s not the greatest way to introduce a character that you want us to root for. Someone who can’t control their sexual urges to the point where they have to sneak off with their bang buddy in the white house while they’re on duty? Errrr….
This issue continued into Mia’s interactions with Holland (the man she slept with). During Mia’s individual interrogations of everyone, Holland comes in and they start making out and joking around. It undermined her entire character. You’re supposed to be leading one of the ten most important murder investigations in the history of this country and you’re still horny? What’s wrong with you?
But the biggest of all the issues is the fact that we learn Mia WAS SPECIFICALLY BROUGHT HERE TONIGHT BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT THOUGHT HE’D BE MURDERED. And STILL you’re doing the horizontal happy dance with some guy?? You couldn’t keep it in your pants on the one night you’re being asked to guard the president’s life?
No matter how many good moments occurred in the screenplay, that problem was always in the back of my head.
But there are some lessons to learn from this script.
One thing I noticed was that the script was stumbling for a good 20 pages early on as the characters rushed in and out of different rooms. It’s a mad scramble that, while dictated by the crazy circumstances, felt wild and sloppy. I was losing interest quickly.
Then Stokes added an interrogation sequence. For about 10 pages, Mia interviews, one-at-a-time, all the major suspects. I’m not going to say the sequence was amazing. But, for the first time in the script, we had structure. And this reminded me just how powerful structure is as a storytelling mechanism.
By the way, when I say “structure,” I’m not talking about the three acts or the 8 sequence method. I’m talking about anything you can add to your story that gives it boundaries – a setup that the audience understands and can participate in.
For example, if you were writing a movie about a company, you could write a bunch of scenes where we’re bouncing all over the office seeing different people and different situations. But if you did that for too long, it would start to feel unfocused. And when a script becomes unfocused, it’s only a matter of time before the reader loses focus.
However, if you bring 10 of those office members into a boardroom for an important meeting that determines the future of the company, now you have something structured. We’re all inside a space. We all have a clear objective. There’s form to this setup that isn’t there when we’re randomly jumping around to a bunch of people.
And Murder in the White House has a lot more jumping around than it does structure. Which is why my mind was wandering half the time.
So always be conscious of that. Look for opportunities to add structure to your story, especially if you’re writing something big and unwieldy with lots of characters. The Godfather is something that could’ve become big and unwieldy. But it knew how to structure scenarios to keep us focused. Like the wedding. Like the assassination in the restaurant. Like the attempt to kill the dad at the hospital. All of those moments were meticulously structured.
I liked this idea. And it’s a smart pitch on the heels of Knives Out’s success. But the execution didn’t do it for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The Emotional Reality Of The Situation – Mia has been waiting for her CSI technician, Nancy, to get to the White House all night. When she finally does, the first thing Nancy says is, “I love what you’ve done with the place.” “Nancy, thank god. Tell me good news,” Mia replies. “The Cavaliers won tonight,” Nancy says. Now you tell me something. Does this sound like the exchange two people would have less than two hours after the president was murdered? Of course not. And yet, I’ve made this mistake myself. We rewrite and re-read a script so many times that we become numb to it and forget what the current emotional situation would really be. We end up dropping knock-knock jokes twenty minutes after a school shooting. Be aware of the emotional reality of the situation always and write dialogue accordingly.
