Genre: High School/Comedy
Premise: A high school gossip blogger uses his influence to help a nobody win prom queen while subsequently taking down the most popular girl in school.
About: This script broke through two years ago and made the Black List. The writers, Hannah Hafey and Kaitlin Smith, are brand new on the scene.
Writer: Hannah Hafey & Kaitlin Smith
Details: 107 pages
I encountered an interesting scenario the other day.
I’m working with a writer on a script who ran into another writer at a party, who he then told about the script. After listening to the pitch the other writer said, “Well the first thing you should know is that I hate those kinds of movies.” But she still offered some suggestions about the script, including one about the ending, which it turns out, was a good idea.
It got me thinking, who’s the better person to give you notes on a script? Someone who loves that type of movie or someone who hates that type of movie? You’d think it would be someone who loves those movies. They’re more tuned into the genre and what makes it work. Therefore, they know the trappings better. And they’re more familiar with the world, which gives them an advantage in how to critique it.
But the thing about the reader who hates those movies is they have no attachment to the genre and therefore are completely objective. They’re much better at calling out the bullsh#t because they have zero patience for how these movies operate. This creates a scenario whereby, if you can win this person over, you can win anybody over.
They also push you in directions that aren’t usually taken in that genre, since they don’t know the blueprint, which results in more original stories. Then again, the flip side of that argument is that if you’re asking for notes on your horror script from someone who hates horror and their note is, “Horror is so cliche. Focus more on the drama,” you might end up with a horror movie that isn’t scary. Has your script really gotten better in that scenario? Thoughts in the comments!
One thing I do know is that if you can win me over in a genre I don’t like, you have something special. It just happened a few weeks ago so let’s see if it can happen again!
High school senior Ollie St. John is a cross between Perez Hilton and James Charles, a high school blogger who dishes on all his high school’s gossip. While not popular himself, he can make or break anyone in school with a few choice sentences.
One of his ongoing targets is Harper West. Ollie doesn’t hate Harper West so much as he hates the idea of Harper West. She comes from a well-off family. She’s gorgeous. She doesn’t have to do anything but show up to school to be insanely popular. Despite years of attacks on her, though, Harper has survived his onslaught.
Enter Ava LaMonte, the new ugly duckling transfer. Ollie knows he can Rachel Leigh Cook in She’s All That this girl so he makes an alliance with her. He’ll help her become popular with his endless fashion and beauty knowledge along with the power of his blog, as long as once she’s in the ring of popularity, she invites him in.
Everything goes according to plan until Ava gets a true taste of popularity and wants more. More more more! She starts going rogue, not content with being popular. Now she needs to take Harper’s place! To win prom queen! So she screws up Harper’s college interview. Befriends her friends. Befriends her parents. Even steals her boyfriend! Say what!? Yes, Ava has done the impossible. In just a few months, she’s become the most popular girl in school.
Ironically, this forces Harper into a temporary alliance with Ollie, who’s kind of embarrassed about his creation. But do the two have enough power to take down the 10 billion megawatt star that Ava has become? All before prom? It’s not likely. Which means they’ll need to pull out every trick in the book to win.
I’m going to kill the suspense.
This was not one of those disliked genre scripts that won me over.
It started off strong. The first couple of pages (an Ollie voice over where he lays out high school and the power of popularity) contained a wit and an edge that reminded me of the gold standard in this space, “Election.” That’s what you have to be good at to excel in the high school genre. You need to have a bite to your dialogue. And you need to have a little bit of edge to your storytelling.
Ollie:What? Was I not supposed to let the people in on when Jackie Powers let a Golden Retriever lick peanut butter off her snatch?
The reason for that is high school stories work better when you lean into the messiness of them. If you try to play them too sweet, they come of as generic, no different from one of the 50 high school TV shows anyone can watch. With a feature, you have to give them something they don’t get elsewhere (I know these lines are getting more blurred every day but I still think the general rule applies).
But after those first couple of pages, the script backs into the trenches. It never quite goes after the story the way it did in the beginning. Whenever you’re too reserved with a high school script, you’re giving us a story we’ve seen before. Because high school is one of those subjects where it’s hard to say something new about it.
Storytelling is about having something to say. What is it you want to say about people? What is it you want to say about this world? If you’re not asking questions like that when you’re writing one of these movies, you’re probably not getting the most out of your story.
“Popular” had some nuts and bolts screenwriting issues as well. It has a really weird approach to its characters. Ollie is our narrator. So he’s who we meet first. But then the baton is passed to Harper, so we think she’s our protagonist. But then Ollie keeps peeking back in, jostling for position. Then Ava arrives and since she’s the most active of the three, she becomes the de facto protagonist (pro tip: Whoever the most active character in your script is, that should probably be your protagonist).
You might say, “Maybe it’s a multi-protagonist script, Carson. You’re being too dogmatic trying to find a traditional hero.” And, in the writers’ defense, they did something similar to this in Election. And I love that script. But there’s an elegant way to do it and there’s a messy way to do it. Election was so clean in the way it delineated between its protagonists. It separated them into their own clear storylines. Whereas this just throws characters at you willy-nilly, with no rhyme or reason to why they’re being introduced in the order they are, and puts the onus on you to figure it out.
To make matters worse, there wasn’t a lot of good to choose from. We have an evil gossipy blogger, a cutthroat nerd, and a current popular girl. Of the three, Harper was probably the nicest. But she didn’t do a whole lot to make me sympathize with her. Which means you’ve given me three imperfect options, none of whom are sympathetic.
At the risk of piling on, all three of these characters are built on top of a mean goal. Two people are trying to take down a third person. Mean goals can work. It’s just harder to make them work because it’s harder to get on board with people who are trying to do something bad.
BUT!
I didn’t like Booksmart. I didn’t like Mean Girls. I didn’t even like Clueless. So maybe these scripts just aren’t my thing. I’m interested to hear what those of you who like these kinds of movies thought of Popular.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You have to put the same amount of effort into the rest of your script as you do your first two pages. If I had an In and Out burger for every time I read a script where the first two pages were the sharpest, cleanest, coolest best-written pages ever, only for the rest of the script to read messy, jumpy, ragged and weak, I would be 9 million pounds and have some major artery issues. I mean what do you think is going to happen? I’m not going to notice? I’m going to magically not realize that one page that’s been rewritten 3 times isn’t different from the previous page which was rewritten 7000 times? I know it takes longer, but you need to treat EVERY PAGE like those first couple of pages. If you’re going to rewrite that first page sixty times, make sure you rewrite page 72 sixty times. Make sure you rewrite page 14 sixty times. When I see that drop in quality after the first couple of pages, I know I’m in for a bumpy ride.
