Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) After she catches her boyfriend cheating, Liv goes on a social media tirade that lands her in court for slander, and the judge forces her to make amends by composing one positive comment for every negative comment she posted, while under the supervision of a reclusive mediator also on the rebound from a failed relationship. Inspired by true events.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 9 votes. The script got writer Erin Rodman a job writing “The Bear,” an upcoming movie about a high school teen who uses her school’s bear mascot costume to become a viral sensation, but is afraid to tell everyone who she really is.
Writer: Erin Rodman
Details: 102 pages
I find social media to be the technological embodiment of evil (which is why I’m no longer on it). Since no one has to look anyone in the face in a virtual conversation, people say the worst things to each other. But that’s not even the bad part. The bad part is that a whole generation of kids are growing up THINKING THIS IS NORMAL! That yelling at people over Twitter is a normal thing you should engage in and take with you into your adult life. I’m hoping the planet comes to its senses at some point and figures out a way to make social media kinder. But I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, we have people like Erin Rodman exploring the idea through a screenplay. Let’s see if it’s any good.
Social media-obsessed Liv is a party organizer in Vegas, mainly for bachelorette parties. She’s currently growing her business at a rapid rate, when she comes home one day and finds her boyfriend, Austin, in bed with some chick name Shinee.
Liv is enraged. So much so that she starts drinking and begins an epic night of social media bashing her now ex. She writes on his Facebook page. His instagram. She e-mails all his friends and family members, telling them all sorts of things about Austin’s underwhelming sexual prowess. We’re talking HOURS of messages here.
The next day Liv wakes up and… isn’t resentful at all. She’s proud of what she’s done. But she’s about to get a reality check because she’s served with papers. Yes, Austin has sued her for slandering him all over the internet! Cut to a court room where the judge informs Liv that either she pay Austin 100 grand or she apologize and post 100 nice things about Austin online to make up for every non-nice thing. To that Liv says…. F OFF!
But cooler heads prevail when Liv’s lawyer informs her that as much as she hates the idea of writing nice things about her ex, it’s better than writing a check for 100 thousand dollars. Liv isn’t so sure but she decides to give it a try. She talks to friends, family, polls random people in the club – trying to find any generic nice thing she could say. But she turns down every suggestion because they aren’t true.
With time running out, Liv realizes that the judge didn’t say she had to compliment Austin specifically. Just their relationship. So she’s able to find 100 things in their relationship that helped make her a better person (stuff like, since you weren’t around, I could focus on my business and get better at that). So, in the end, our Liv wins. And, in the process, becomes a slightly better person. Very slightly.
I can see why Say Something Nice got Black List votes even if I didn’t personally like it. The voice here is strong. By the way, scripts that get the same rating on here aren’t always exactly the same. For example, if you contrast this script with last week’s comedy, Assisted Living, this writer is one million times better than that writer. It’s not even close. Assisted Living felt like it was written by someone who learned screenwriting in January. Rodman has much more control over the craft.
But Say Something Nice still didn’t work for me and it’s because it suffers from something we only talk about generally. Today we’re going to give it a name. UPP. Otherwise known as the Unlikable Protagonist Paradox.
UPP works like this. You need to give your protagonist a negative trait – known as their ‘fatal flaw’ – in order for the character to arc over the course of the story. If your character doesn’t have anything wrong with them, there’s nothing for them to learn, and therefore there’s no change. Not every character needs to change. But most of them, in this form of storytelling known as screenwriting, do.
The paradox comes in that if a person’s defining characteristic is negative, the reader is prone to disliking them. Unlikable heroes are one of the fastest ways to lose a reader. Because why would we root for someone we hate? And there is no middle ground here. Liv is hateable. I mean this is a girl who’s more angry about the fact that she has to take down instagram photos of her boyfriend because she looks good in those photos, than, you know, that she just lost her boyfriend.
The solution to UPP is actually quite simple. Focus on ONE flaw. Not a ton of them. Just one. The more unlikable traits you dump onto your hero, the less we’ll like them. Liv is a drunk, she’s vindictive, she’s a liar, she’s mean-spirited, she’s selfish, she’s image-obsessed, and worst of all, she likes puns. It’s negativity overload. Here’s a line from Liv in the script, which is par for the course: “This isn’t about fast, Daisy. This is about winning. Everyone’s against me. But they underestimate me. I’m coming for them now. I’m fucking Wonder Woman.”
I get that that’s the point of the concept – a nice person would never have written all these mean things about her boyfriend. But character consistency doesn’t matter if we hate your character.
Focus on one negative thing for your hero’s flaw. Like selfishness, for example. This is what Groundhog Day did. Phil was selfish. That was his flaw. Period. And, look, you can still go negative with that flaw. You can go all in on it. You just can’t pile on a bunch of other negative things.
Unfortunately, there’s an additional component to character like-ability that can’t be measured. And that’s FEEL. How the reader FEELS about the character. It’s no different from real life. There are people you just don’t like and you don’t know why. That happens to readers too. Liv is one walking complaint in this movie. She’s always complaining about something. And always playing the victim. I got annoyed listening to her.
Some of you may wonder, well then Carson, how come the script got 9 votes and landed on the Black List? Well here’s the thing. You can still pull in a crowd of people who relate to someone. If I just came off a breakup and found out my ex cheated, I would be in that angry headspace that Liv is in. So I would relate to and understand her better. You’re going to get those people. But I believe character likability trumps that. You don’t want to have to scrape readers off the angry scrap pile to be the main cheerleaders for your script. You should be aiming for a wider audience.
Another problem with this script is that it embraces this punk rock rebel approach in making its heroine so unlikable, yet uses cheesy 80s movie tropes to form its backbone. The goofy court mandate. You’ve got to say 100 nice things (so specific). You’ve got 30 days to do so. Our hero falls in love with the jerk she hated in Act 1. This is the kind of Blake Snyder stuff that’s passed the screenwriting world by. It’s too transparent. But more importantly, it clashes with the edgy sensibility the writer is trying to push through her main character.
Again, this script isn’t bad. But it’s more of a showcase for the writer than it is a script that’s good by itself.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you have a strong voice, especially in the dialogue department, you don’t have to write a great concept or even a perfect execution of that concept. You just need an idea that’s clear and that gives you room to play with for what you do best. The script, then, becomes more of a container to display your voice than a great story. That’s how I see Say Something Nice. The setup is contrived. The execution feels like it was discovered in a 1988 Paramount garbage can. But Liv is a lively character who, like her or hate her, makes an impression. She definitely has pop. And if your main character has pop, producers who read endless piles of boring scripts with boring characters are going to remember you. That’s why this script made the Black List.
