Genre: Period
Premise: The Kennedy assassination told in real-time through the eyes of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite.
About: Expect this project to shoot for a table at the Oscars next year. The high-ranking 2017 Black List script (Top 15) nabbed Seth Rogen to play Walter Cronkite and David Gordon-Green to direct. The rest of the cast hasn’t been rounded out yet, but there are rumors that Bryan Cranston and the Hulk, Mark Ruffallo, will sign on. The writer, Ben Jacoby, has a couple of small indies to his name, but nabbing a star like Rogen makes this his biggest career achievement yet.
Writer: Ben Jacoby
Details: 108 pages (undated)
Let me start off by saying I love the setup for this script.
I’m a sucker for juxtaposing period pieces with high-speed narratives. There’s something thrilling about turbo-charging a genre that’s traditionally slow as molasses. Don’t ask me where I developed this script kink but dammit if I don’t have it (share your script kinks in the comments section!).
I always say that if you’re going to dip your toes into the period piece waters, you’ve got two choices. Find an unknown great story and tell it. Or find a well-known story and find a fresh angle into it. Going real-time on one of the biggest news stories in history is a boss move.
The opening title card informs us that the following story takes place between 1:15 and 3:02 pm, November 22, 1963.
We meet a 47 year old Walter Cronkite hanging out at the CBS News offices, wondering if he’s going to have a job in a month. The ratings for his nightly news show are bad and his boss, Jim Aubrey, is threatening to replace him with a new show they’re currently shooting called Gilligan’s Island.
As Walter ponders his future, a shocking piece of news comes across the switchboard: “President’s been shot.” Walter and the rest of the newsroom jump into action and begin the excruciating process of trying to figure out what’s happening in a world before cell phones, before cable news, and before, well, anything.
Cronkite awkwardly interrupts As The World Turns to give a hit-and-run announcement that the president was shot. Quickly afterwards he sends the public back to the soap opera. This is how they did it back then. You didn’t stay on the air unless you had real news to report. And since that’s all the info he had, that’s all the info he gave!
Jim Aubrey flies into studio and starts arguing with Cronkite about how to report the story. He wants Cronkite on the air non-stop whereas Cronkite believes they need to do some information-gathering first. There’s a young reporter, Dan Rather, who’s managed to get to the hospital that’s treating Kennedy. If they’re patient, they can report the truth instead of rumor.
Aubrey doesn’t care about all that. He wants Cronkite to be the first to report Kennedy’s death. The intense showdown culminates in a fierce battle that ends with Cronkite on-air, refusing to report the death until it’s officially confirmed, even as the competition around them reports the death, one by one.
I gotta hand it to Jacoby.
Genius idea this concept is.
You take a famous moment in history. You tell that story in a non-traditional way (through a news reporter as opposed to Kennedy himself). You add a real-time component to spice it up. You’ve got the director-porn location of a 60s news station. You’ve got a main character that a bankable actor is going to want to play. You’ve got a budget-friendly setup in that the locations are limited.
I could never write a script like this because I don’t gravitate to the subject matter. But this is the kind of setup that gets a script made into a movie.
So why the hell didn’t I like it??
Let’s start with this this: I couldn’t tell if this was a movie or a documentary. Cause all it does is recount what happened that day. If all you’re going to do is recount, you might as well make a documentary.
The reason you make a movie is because there’s a compelling conflict to explore at the center of the story. For example, if you were to make a movie about the Cuban-Missile crisis, you wouldn’t just report how it happened. You’d zoom in on the fact that if the U.S. doesn’t get Russia to turn around, it may lead to nuclear war.
Where’s the conflict in a guy trying to get a story?
What happens if he fails?
I’m pretty sure the world would still find out that JFK was assassinated.
It seems like the conflict they’re going with is that if Walter Cronkite doesn’t nail this story, he MAY be let go from CBS News. Not WILL be let go. But MAYBE (quick Scriptshadow screenwriting tip: never deal in maybes with movies, always absolutes). But is the consequence of Walter Cronkite losing his job really what we’re worried about in the wake of one of the worst moments in American history?
The other conflict is between Aubrey and Cronkite in regards to whether they should be reporting news before it’s confirmed. This is always a compelling argument when it comes to news and happens to be timely in the wake of today’s media. The problem is that this conflict is late-arriving. It’s almost like the writer figured out, “Oh yeah, THAT’S what my movie’s about,” halfway into the script, then built the remainder of the movie around it.
This happens sometimes. You’re writing a script and it isn’t until well into the process that you understand what your script is about. If that happens, it’s your job to go back and pepper that theme throughout the first half of the story as well. The reader shouldn’t be able to identify the moment an idea struck you.
Despite these issues, I have admiration for this idea and how the writer approached it. Not to mention, I love writers who care about the reader. Every sentence here is an economy of words. There’s a ton of dialogue, which also makes the read fast. Pop this script open and read the first five pages. I guarantee you’ll whip through it in two minutes. That stuff never goes unnoticed by me. I just wish there was some true conflict to make this script pop. Maybe they’ll figure it out in the rewrites.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a great way to write a spec that makes the Black List and gets studio interest. Pick a famous moment in history. Something everyone knows about. Then find a slightly different angle to tell the story from. In this case, it was Kennedy’s assassination being told through the real-time exploits of a news reporter. In the number 3 script on the Black List, Keeper of the Diary, it was about Anne Frank’s experience, but told through her father trying to get her diary published. The famousness of the moment catches an audience’s interest, and the unique angle intrigues them enough to check it out.
