Black Swan meets Promising Young Woman?
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A woman who discovers she is suffering from severe synesthesia gets recruited into the secretive, cult-like industry of color design by a mysterious corporation but then uncovers the bloody, dark, and twisted reality of what it really takes to make the world’s next great hues.
About: Palette is written by Zack Strauss and received 9 votes on last year’s Black List. Strauss was a writer on the comedy show, “SMILF,” as well as “NCIS: New Orleans.”
Writer: Zack Strauss
Details: 101 pages
This feels like a Saoirse Ronan part
When I wrote up my evaluation of every Black List entry from 2023, only two of them got a coveted “must read.” This was one of them. I love this concept. It’s weird. It’s different. Most of the time, us readers read the same old concepts again and again. If we’re lucky, we read a fresh take on a familiar idea. But if we’re really lucky, a concept like this drops into our laps – something that’s truly original.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be good! As the old saying goes, “You can’t execute the target if you can’t shoot straight.” I just made that up. Nobody’s ever said that. But the point is, you have to execute your unique idea. Let’s see if our color-hungry writer has given us a pot of gold at the end of this luxoriously colorful rainbow…
When Dolly was a kid, she got bullied. In a fit of rage, she jammed the tip of a rake into her bully’s eyeball, inadvertently killing him. Cut to years later and Dolly is an adult. Dolly believes that her overstimulated hearing, which helps her see colors others can’t see, was the reason she attacked the boy. So she now wears noise-canceling earplugs. Essentially, she operates as a deaf person even though she isn’t deaf.
But life as a handicapped person with a murder on her record doesn’t get you the best work. So she’s basically working as a slave at a printing factory. That is until, one day, on the subway, her earbud pops out, allowing her to see colors better. She sees an ad that says, “If you can see this, come to our company. We’ll give you a job.” When she puts the earbud back in, the advertisement turns red and the message is gone.
She goes to the company, called Palette, where she meets a manager there, Latrice. Latrice gives her a color test (line up 100 objects, all the same color with tiny variations, from brightest to darkest). Dolly refuses the test, saying she can only do it if she takes out her earbuds but taking out her earbuds makes her violent. Latrice leaves the room, allowing Dolly to remove the earbuds and she aces the test.
Latrice brings her into the fold, explaining how valuable color is. Color can pretty much make anybody do anything. It’s the OG hypnosis. And the good news is the company is dedicated to finding colors that save lives. That’s important to Dolly who, even 20 years later, still holds a lot of guilt for taking a life.
Dolly’s main rival in the company is a girl named Sidney. Sidney is unlike the rest of the colorists in that she’s not as talented as them, but she’s willing to do anything to find the next game-changing color. For example, she tortures a bear in the lab because this unique bear has a particular bile color that can potentially save lives. Sidney’s arguments are sound (what’s one bear if we can save thousands of people?) but Dolly doesn’t like her.
Late in the movie, Dolly and Sidney have a blow-up and Sidney starts calling her a freak, just like that bully did so many years ago. (Spoiler) Let’s just say it doesn’t end well for Sidney. But because Palette is so dedicated to the cause, they overlook this minor infraction. Dolly is still their best colorist and they need her if they’re going to continue the mission!
So, there’s a phase in the writing of every script where you’re trying to find your script. Because, when you came up with the idea, you had a good feel for what the movie was going to be. But once you laid that idea down onto 100 pages, you realized that there wasn’t enough there yet and you needed to fill things in.
This is an exploratory phase of the screenplay that you *want* to go through. Actually, to me, it’s the most fun phase of screenwriting. Cause you find all this cool stuff that you didn’t think of initially. This phase has no set number of rewrite drafts. It could take you 2 drafts. It could take you 10 drafts. It all depends on how easily you’re able to find your script.
After you’ve figured out your script, you usually need several “solidifying” drafts. This is where you take all of the threads that didn’t go anywhere and get rid of them. This is where you take that big plot thing you finally figured out and set it up better (as opposed to bringing it in late without much explanation). This is where you solidify that big important thing you finally figured out about your main character. This is where you tighten the screws.
The mistake a lot of writers make is they stop one or two drafts before they get to the “solidifying” stage. So the script has all these promising pieces. But they don’t come together yet. They’re these individual things that you appreciate but they’re not yet part of a movie.
This is exactly where I would place Palette. It’s 1-2 drafts shy of finishing the exploratory phase. And then it would need at least a couple of drafts to solidify.
For example, this concept of alchemy keeps coming up in the story so you’re under the impression that we’re heading towards a reveal where we learn this color company is a front to recruit people who can help create gold. Instead, this obsession with alchemy is never paid off.
Then you have this overly complex rule set in regards to Dolly’s character. When she hears things, it causes her to imagine violent colors and therefore she becomes violent? So she wears ear plugs. Yet, this cuts off her natural ability to hear heightened colors. Every time I read that, my face got scrunched up because it was more complex than it needed to be. Just make her good at seeing color! Why the wacky rule set?
Then there’s the overarching plot. There was none! We’re just watching her come to work every day and work on colors. There’s no bigger plot. Which is a fairly simple fix. You just give them a really big client and this client needs a rare color. If they don’t deliver, it could result in the entire company getting shut down. So there’s a race to find that color.
Despite these issues, the script had its moments! There’s an early scene where Dolly is touring Palette and is unsure if she wants to join. They then explain to her how important color is. There were a ton of men in Tokyo committing suicide in subway stations. Then they started putting a certain type of blue LED light in those stations. That shade of blue was known to calm people. So suicides went down 94%.
That’s a cool fact. And it helped it feel like our protagonist’s work was important.
Then, of course, later, (big spoiler), we have the murder of Sidney. Any time you have a dead body in a story, you’re in good shape because there are real stakes involved now.
But these little bright stars in the script were way too far from the center of the galaxy. They felt like outliers. Because of that, Palette reads more like a dream than it does a screenplay. Maybe it’s meant to be this artsy film that doesn’t work on the page. But that doesn’t help me as a reader. I just want to be entertained and Palette didn’t give me enough of that.
One final note. People make fun of E.C.’s lit expression. But this script could’ve used some lit expression. It’s a script about color yet the whole thing was written in black and white. It’s very hard to get people to imagine color that way.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You need humor even in sad scripts. There’s an overarching sadness to every beat in this story. Audiences don’t like when the rollercoaster never dips or rises. They need SOME VARIETY in their emotion. And humor is a great way to provide those rises.
What I learned 2: You know how you don’t want to take banana bread out of the oven too early? Same thing with your script. It’s got to bake the full 90 minutes. Not 75 minutes. Not 85 minutes. Not even 88 minutes. 90 MINUTES!
