Note: These next 10 days are going to be weird so grab a notepad and write this down. I’m doing the weekly article tomorrow instead of Thursday because Matrix is coming out on Wednesday and I want to review it Thursday. So I’m switching those two days around. I will be sending out a newsletter by the 27th. And I probably won’t post anything next week but you never know. Us Americans are trained by our government to feel guilty when we don’t work. So we’ll see what happens!
Genre: Children/Holiday
Premise: Twas the night before Christmas and five kids have to find three items to save their foster father’s home from being repossessed.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on this year’s Black List. Writer M. Miller Davis has spent much of the last decade working on production crews. He has also written for several small TV shows. But this is his breakthrough moment as a screenwriter.
Writer: M. Miller Davis
Details: 104 pages
Tis the season!
You would think it would be easy to write a Christmas movie. You’ve got eccentric characters like Santa Claus, Rudolph, Ebenezer Scrooge, Frosty the Snowman. And Christmas is such an emotional holiday as it’s built around family and connection and healing. The ingredients are there for a good screenplay. And yet, like every genre, it ends up being a lot harder to write these things than you think.
You know what they should do? Writers should start adapting Christmas songs into movies. There are so many beloved Christmas songs. And Hollywood loves themselves an adaptation. Why not? Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. Sounds like there’s a story to that one! Am I just giving out free money at this point? Maybe. Either that or free embarrassment. I’m sure we’ll find out which at some point.
Right now, though, we’re going to find out if Operation Milk and Cookies is as good as its title. Jump in the back of Santa’s sleigh with me and take a magical journey into the world of getting to read a screenplay in just five paragraphs.
12 year old comic book nerd, Henry, 11 year old selfie-obsessed, Nadia, way too big for being 13 years old, Tomas, and 9 year old cute little oddball, Astrid, have just found out that their foster dad, Brian (described as “a Paul Rudd type”), doesn’t have enough money to pay this month’s mortgage. Which means that they’re going to be kicked out of their house on Christmas!
With only two days before the holiday, the foster siblings come up with a plan to raise money by shoveling sidewalks and selling old partially destroyed barbie dolls. After their entire day’s work results in making 5 dollars, they prepare for homelessness.
But then they happen upon a nice old man’s home, who invites them in. His house is filled with Christmas decorations and he’s warm and sweet, even making the kids cookies! He tells the kids a story about when he was a kid, he researched how to find Santa and learned that Santa couldn’t resist three things: Cocoa butterscotch cookies, a golden fir pinecone, and something that represented Christmas spirit.
The kids put a second plan together. They’ll find these three items by tomorrow night (Christmas Eve), luring Santa to their home, and ask him to give them money to pay for the mortgage so they don’t get kicked out. Their mission is soon complicated, however, by a group of bank robbers who are using an old cookie factory as a hideout.
Realizing that the kids can rat them out to the cops, they go all ‘Goonies’ on them, chasing them around town. This is happening, in addition to, Brian trying to find them. If either party finds them before they can locate the three items, Santa won’t show up, they’ll lose their house, and it will be the worst Christmas ever!!!
Sometimes you read a script that does everything technically right yet you still find yourself not invested in the story. That was the case for me with Operation Milk and Cookies.
I mean, the story has a classic GSU setup. We have a clear goal – find these three items. We have clear stakes – if they don’t, they lose their house. And we have clear urgency – they have until tomorrow, Christmas.
We have the ‘next level’ stuff as well: a legitimate set of obstacles that get in the way of the characters’ objectives throughout the second act. That comes in the form of the bank robbers, who chase them.
So what’s wrong here? Why didn’t this light my yule log? Well, there could be a couple of things. Sometimes, when you follow the formula too rigidly, the plot becomes predictable. And Milk and Cookies is definitely a standard plot. It’s very straight-forward with virtually no twists or reinvention involved.
The second possibility is the characters. Usually when plot and structure are on-point and you’re still not enjoying a screenplay, it has something to do with the characters. But this is where it gets tricky. The characters in Milk and Cookies weren’t bad. There’s this cute little storyline where Nadia gets her hands on a cell phone for the first time and goes absolutely nuts with it, becomes obsessed with selfies. There were a handful of fun little character moments like this.
However – and this is a mistake I see in 95% of amateur screenplays – there was nothing exceptional about any of the characters. The kids were all kids we’ve seen before in these types of movies. They were fine. Absolutely fine. But “fine” isn’t good enough. Nobody remembers a screenplay for characters who were “fine.”
You need at least one main character to be exceptional. You need to take risks with them. Do something different. That’s the only chance you’re going to write a character who pops off the page. I’ll give you a perfect example. Jojo in “Jojo Rabbit.” A kid who has Imaginary Hitler as his best friend. That was a huge risk. I remember when I reviewed that script and people were getting butt-hurt about it in the comments. “Why would anyone create a movie that made Hitler sympathetic. This is awful!” The script went on to win an Oscar.
But the point is that that was a risky choice. I’m not saying you have to take that extensive of a risk in a script like this. But you have to take some risk. And I felt like the writer was playing it safe with all the characters.
The reality is, this is how most screenplays are written. With writers playing it safe. Which I understand. It’s scary to take risks. Especially in this day and age where one wrong comment could get you canceled for life. But let’s be real. The best art always has some risk attached to it, whether it be through the concept (Eternal Sunshine), the characters (Joker), or the plot execution (Parasite).
With the Matrix sequel coming out tomorrow, that’s the perfect example of risk. They made a movie about people living in a simulation, and when those people fought each other, they only fought with kung-fu. How does that even make sense? I don’t know. But it captivated the world and influenced movies for the next 20 years.
Even Cauliflower, the top-ranked script on the Black List this year, a script I didn’t like, took some big risks. It made some weird choices. I didn’t like the final product but that’s the reason why so many people don’t take risks. They know there’s a bigger chance of failure. Still, I would rather read another Cauliflower than I would another Operation Milk and Cookies.
I understand that some people may argue this is just a fun Christmas movie. It’s not meant to be Jojo Rabbit. But I would push back on that. You don’t have to take Academy Award level risks to write a good script. You can take a risk with just a single character. Come up with one wild weird memorable character. Like Bill Murray’s gopher-obsessed weirdo grounds manager in Caddyshack. You do that and people will remember your screenplay.
I wanted to like this but it just didn’t leave enough of an impression on me. I felt like I’ve seen this movie many times already.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Split a goal into parts to give yourself more plot. In the “Goal” part of GSU, you can often run into a situation where a single goal isn’t big enough to give you a 100 page plot. If that’s the case, split the goal up. They just did this in Red Notice with the three jeweled eggs. And the writer does it here with the three items (Cocoa butterscotch cookies, a golden fir pinecone, and something that represented Christmas spirit). It’s an easy and effective way to ensure that your plot doesn’t end on page 45!
