Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) Still hurting years later from the suicide of her mistreated best friend, a woman is torn between seeking vengeance on the lost friend’s behalf and moving on with her life.
About: Emerald Fennell hardly came out of nowhere. The English actress/writer graduated from Oxford, is the daughter of famous jeweler Theo Fennell, played the Duchess on the Netflix series, The Crown, and is writing on the hot series, Killing Eve. This script finished with the sixth highest number of votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Emerald Fennell
Details: 106 pages
What’s the theme for this week? It appears to be revenge! Of all the scripts in the top 10, this one seemed the most unlikely. It’s not a biopic. It’s not a true story. It’s not an adaptation. It’s not a popular genre. It’s not high concept. Going off the logline, it sounds like we’re about to read a glorified Lifetime movie. For all these reasons, it’s gotta be great, right?! I mean, if a script can leap to the top of the Black List ranks without doing any of the things the Black List loves, it must be awesome. This year’s Daddio, maybe? Join me and let’s find out.
29 year-old Cassandra is not in a good way. The med school dropout works at a coffee shop and lives with her parents. Worse still, she spends her nights getting blasted in bars and dance clubs. That’s where we meet her in fact, alone, sloshed, her skirt riding up so high you can see her underwear. A group of guys see her, one of whom decides to take her home. Once there, he takes her to his room, starts to pull her panties down, when, all of a sudden, Cassandra sits up, stone cold sober, stares into the man’s eyes and says, “What are you doing?”
It turns out Cassandra is a faker. She pretends to be drunk at clubs to teach men a lesson about preying on wasted women. Even keeps count of every man she’s successfully conned in a diary she keeps under the bed. Outside of this, Cassandra lives a joyless life. She comes into work late every day, lies to her parents to keep them from questioning her, and glares at any man who even considers smiling in her direction.
That’s until Chris shows up. Chris was her classmate back in med school. He’s shocked to see Cassandra, and instantly flirts with her, somehow convincing her to go out with him. When Chris starts reminiscing about school, we learn why Cassandra does what she does. Back then, a friend in their group, Nina, was sexually assaulted by another mutual friend of theirs, Al. Nina reported it, but nobody in their group or at the college believed her. She eventually dropped out and committed suicide.
Chris was only a periphery friend so he only barely remembers the incident. However, this reminder lights a fire under Cassandra, who begins a “project” to enact revenge on everyone involved. First she lures the now-married friend who most vocally didn’t believe Nina into a hotel room with a predatory man. She kidnaps the daughter of the school administrator who didn’t believe Nina and places her in a room full of drunk frat boys. She even shows up to the rapist’s bachelor party for a final get-even play.
Poor Chris has no idea any of this is going on. But when shocking new evidence emerges that peripherally ties him to that fateful night, he must figure out a way to cut ties with Cassandra and keep his career in tact. Because Cassandra is her own worst enemy, he just might pull it off. Of course, never underestimate Cassandra (MAJOR SPOILER). Even in the afterlife, she’s savage.
Okay so now that I’ve read the script, it’s obvious why it made the Black List. It pushes 2018’s most pronounced narrative – that all men are evil rapists. For this reason, I was so ready to bail. There was only problem. The writing was really good. And the more I resisted, the more I got pulled in.
The script’s biggest strength is its main character, Cassandra. One of the harder things to do in screenwriting is create complex characters. Unlike books, you can’t get inside a character’s head and hear why they’re doing the things they do. Instead, you must convey who they are through action. And if their actions are contradictory (one second they’re an asshole and the next they’re sweet), the character comes off as confused. To avoid this, most movie characters are on the nose. Captain America is the embodiment of selflessness. John Wick really wants revenge. John Krasinski lives solely to protect his children.
In contrast, Cassandra is really complicated. Here’s a girl who quit med school to work at a coffee shop, who still lives at home at 30, and who goes out every night pretending to be drunk to teach predatory men that they’re assholes. Watching her do something as simple as go on a date is fascinating. Will she open her heart and have a good time or will she crack, spewing all her demons out at her unsuspecting foe? The big reason why you have to keep reading Promising Young Woman is to figure out who this girl is.
Yesterday, one of my big criticisms was that we didn’t get to meet the daughter who was the motivation for our hero’s journey. How can we care if we never connect with that person ourselves, I argued. Today’s script reminded me that the real problem with that script was that it sucked. And when you’re a bad writer writing bad screenplays, every choice is wrong.
We never meet Nina in this script yet I was captivated by Cassandra’s journey. And that’s because Cassandra herself was such a great character. And it’s because you never knew where the script was going next – the complete opposite of yesterday, where you might as well have tacked the climax onto the first act because we all knew it would happen. I didn’t know Nina was going to wait outside a high school and lure a teenager into her car under false pretenses and then threaten her mom with her safety later. And don’t get me started on the ending. I definitely didn’t see that coming.
Another great thing about this script is that Fennel never lets one side take over. This is a mistake lots of writers make. They don’t show the other side of the argument. Fennel gives us plenty of scenes where we ask, is this right? What happened to Nina was terrible but is this the best way to handle it? Is Cassandra justified, or is she a full-on nutcase? If Fennel only played to one side of the narrative (all women are perfect, all men are awful), it would’ve been boring.
Everybody should read this script. It’s a great example of how to keep the reader’s attention. At the very least, read the first 10 pages because I’m going to be referencing them tomorrow in the First 10 Pages Article. Finally! A genuine spec script – not a biopic or adaptation or period piece – that’s actually good. This is what the Black List used to be known for!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Mix up the alphabet. You don’t always have to be logical (First comes A, then comes B, then comes C). You can play around with the order. In an early scene, Chris comes into the coffee shop and has a meet-cute with Cassandra. There’s clearly electricity between the two. At the end of the scene, Chris asks her out. We hold on Cassandra. She likes him. Cut to later that night, her putting make-up on, getting ready for the date. But we…. CUT TO THE CLUB, Cassandra pretending to be sloshed in the corner. Noooo… she’s opted for yet another night out. A few scenes later, Chris comes in again and they eventually go out. But, as you can see, it doesn’t happen in this perfect logical progression. Instead of A then B then C, you can do A then C then B. This helps keep the narrative unpredictable, lest you slip into Inevitability Syndrome.
